Strange as it sounds, scientists still do not know the answers to some of the most basic questions about how life on Earth evolved. Take eyes, for instance. Where do they come from, exactly? The usual explanation of how we got these stupendously complex organs rests upon the theory of natural selection.

You may recall the gist from school biology lessons. If a creature with poor eyesight happens to produce offspring with slightly better eyesight, thanks to random mutations, then that tiny bit more vision gives them more chance of survival. The longer they survive, the more chance they have to reproduce and pass on the genes that equipped them with slightly better eyesight. Some of their offspring might, in turn, have better eyesight than their parents, making it likelier that they, too, will reproduce. And so on. Generation by generation, over unfathomably long periods of time, tiny advantages add up. Eventually, after a few hundred million years, you have creatures who can see as well as humans, or cats, or owls.

This is the basic story of evolution, as recounted in countless textbooks and pop-science bestsellers. The problem, according to a growing number of scientists, is that it is absurdly crude and misleading.

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For one thing, it starts midway through the story, taking for granted the existence of light-sensitive cells, lenses and irises, without explaining where they came from in the first place. Nor does it adequately explain how such delicate and easily disrupted components meshed together to form a single organ. And it isnt just eyes that the traditional theory struggles with. The first eye, the first wing, the first placenta. How they emerge. Explaining these is the foundational motivation of evolutionary biology, says Armin Moczek, a biologist at Indiana University. And yet, we still do not have a good answer. This classic idea of gradual change, one happy accident at a time, has so far fallen flat.

There are certain core evolutionary principles that no scientist seriously questions. Everyone agrees that natural selection plays a role, as does mutation and random chance. But how exactly these processes interact and whether other forces might also be at work has become the subject of bitter dispute. If we cannot explain things with the tools we have right now, the Yale University biologist Gnter Wagner told me, we must find new ways of explaining.

In 2014, eight scientists took up this challenge, publishing an article in the leading journal Nature that asked Does evolutionary theory need a rethink? Their answer was: Yes, urgently. Each of the authors came from cutting-edge scientific subfields, from the study of the way organisms alter their environment in order to reduce the normal pressure of natural selection think of beavers building dams to new research showing that chemical modifications added to DNA during our lifetimes can be passed on to our offspring. The authors called for a new understanding of evolution that could make room for such discoveries. The name they gave this new framework was rather bland the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) but their proposals were, to many fellow scientists, incendiary.

In 2015, the Royal Society in London agreed to host New Trends in Evolution, a conference at which some of the articles authors would speak alongside a distinguished lineup of scientists. The aim was to discuss new interpretations, new questions, a whole new causal structure for biology, one of the organisers told me. But when the conference was announced, 23 fellows of the Royal Society, Britains oldest and most prestigious scientific organisation, wrote a letter of protest to its then president, the Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse. The fact that the society would hold a meeting that gave the public the idea that this stuff is mainstream is disgraceful, one of the signatories told me. Nurse was surprised by the reaction. They thought I was giving it too much credibility, he told me. But, he said: Theres no harm in discussing things.

Traditional evolutionary theorists were invited, but few showed up. Nick Barton, recipient of the 2008 Darwin-Wallace medal, evolutionary biologys highest honour, told me he decided not to go because it would add more fuel to the strange enterprise. The influential biologists Brian and Deborah Charlesworth of the University of Edinburgh told me they didnt attend because they found the premise irritating. The evolutionary theorist Jerry Coyne later wrote that the scientists behind the EES were playing revolutionaries to advance their own careers. One 2017 paper even suggested some of the theorists behind the EES were part of an increasing post-truth tendency within science. The personal attacks and insinuations against the scientists involved were shocking and ugly, said one scientist, who is nonetheless sceptical of the EES.

What accounts for the ferocity of this backlash? For one thing, this is a battle of ideas over the fate of one of the grand theories that shaped the modern age. But it is also a struggle for professional recognition and status, about who gets to decide what is core and what is peripheral to the discipline. The issue at stake, says Arlin Stoltzfus, an evolutionary theorist at the IBBR research institute in Maryland, is who is going to write the grand narrative of biology. And underneath all this lurks another, deeper question: whether the idea of a grand story of biology is a fairytale we need to finally give up.

Behind the current battle over evolution lies a broken dream. In the early 20th century, many biologists longed for a unifying theory that would enable their field to join physics and chemistry in the club of austere, mechanistic sciences that stripped the universe down to a set of elemental rules. Without such a theory, they feared that biology would remain a bundle of fractious sub-fields, from zoology to biochemistry, in which answering any question might require input and argument from scores of warring specialists.

From todays vantage point, it seems obvious that Darwins theory of evolution a simple, elegant theory that explains how one force, natural selection, came to shape the entire development of life on Earth would play the role of the great unifier. But at the turn of the 20th century, four decades after the publication of On the Origin of Species and two after his death, Darwins ideas were in decline. Scientific collections at the time carried titles such as The Death-bed of Darwinism. Scientists had not lost interest in evolution, but many found Darwins account of it unsatisfying. One major problem was that it lacked an explanation of heredity. Darwin had observed that, over time, living things seemed to change to better fit their environment. But he did not understand how these minute changes were passed from one generation to the next.

At the start of the 20th century, the rediscovery of the work of the 19th-century friar and father of genetics, Gregor Mendel, started to provide the answers. Scientists working in the new field of genetics discovered rules that governed the quirks of heredity. But rather than confirm Darwins theory, they complicated it. Reproduction appeared to remix genes the mysterious units that programme the physical traits we end up seeing in surprising ways. Think of the way a grandfathers red hair, absent in his son, might reappear in his granddaughter. How was natural selection meant to function when its tiny variations might not even reliably pass from parent to offspring every time?

Even more ominous for Darwinists was the emergence of the mutationists in the 1910s, a school of geneticists whose star exponent, Thomas Hunt Morgan, showed that by breeding millions of fruit flies and sometimes spiking their food with the radioactive element radium he could produce mutated traits, such as new eye colours or additional limbs. These were not the tiny random variations on which Darwins theory was built, but sudden, dramatic changes. And these mutations, it turned out, were heritable. The mutationists believed that they had identified lifes true creative force. Sure, natural selection helped to remove unsuitable changes, but it was simply a humdrum editor for the flamboyant poetry of mutation. Natura non facit saltum, Darwin had once written: Nature does not make jumps. The mutationists begged to differ.

These disputes over evolution had the weight of a theological schism. At stake were the forces governing all creation. For Darwinists especially, their theory was all-or-nothing. If another force, apart from natural selection, could also explain the differences we see between living things, Darwin wrote in On the Origin of Species, his whole theory of life would utterly break down. If the mutationists were right, instead of a single force governing all biological change, scientists would have to dig deep into the logic of mutation. Did it work differently on legs and lungs? Did mutations in frogs work differently to mutations in owls or elephants?

In 1920, the philosopher Joseph Henry Woodger wrote that biology suffered from fragmentation and cleavages that would be unknown in such a well-unified science as, for example, chemistry. The divergent groups often feuded, he noted, and it seemed to be getting worse. It began to seem inevitable that the life sciences would grow more and more fractured, and the possibility of a common language would slip away.

Just as it seemed that Darwinism might be buried, a curious collection of statisticians and animal breeders came along to revitalise it. In the 1920s and 30s, working separately but in loose correspondence, thinkers such as the British father of scientific statistics, Ronald Fisher, and the American livestock breeder Sewall Wright, proposed a revised theory of evolution that accounted for scientific advances since Darwins death but still promised to explain all of lifes mysteries with a few simple rules. In 1942, the English biologist Julian Huxley coined the name for this theory: the modern synthesis. Eighty years on, it still provides the basic framework for evolutionary biology as it is taught to millions of schoolchildren and undergraduates every year. Insofar as a biologist works in the tradition of the modern synthesis, they are considered mainstream; insofar as they reject it, they are considered marginal.

Despite the name, it was not actually a synthesis of two fields, but a vindication of one in light of the other. By building statistical models of animal populations that accounted for the laws of genetics and mutation, the modern synthesists showed that, over long periods of time, natural selection still functioned much as Darwin had predicted. It was still the boss. In the fullness of time, mutations were too rare to matter, and the rules of heredity didnt affect the overall power of natural selection. Through a gradual process, genes with advantages were preserved over time, while others that didnt confer advantages disappeared.

Rather than getting stuck into the messy world of individual organisms and their specific environments, proponents of the modern synthesis observed from the lofty perspective of population genetics. To them, the story of life was ultimately just the story of clusters of genes surviving or dying out over the grand sweep of evolutionary time.

The modern synthesis arrived at just the right time. Beyond its explanatory power, there were two further reasons more historical, or even sociological, than scientific why it took off. First, the mathematical rigour of the synthesis was impressive, and not seen before in biology. As the historian Betty Smocovitis points out, it brought the field closer to examplar sciences such as physics. At the same time, writes Smocovitis, it promised to unify the life sciences at a moment when the enlightenment project of scientific unification was all the rage. In 1946, the biologists Ernst Mayr and George Gaylord Simpson started the Society for the Study of Evolution, a professional organisation with its own journal, which Simpson said would bring together the sub-fields of biology on the common ground of evolutionary studies. This was all possible, he later reflected, because we seem at last to have a unified theory [] capable of facing all the classic problems of the history of life and of providing a causalistic solution of each.

This was a time when biology was ascending to its status as a major science. University departments were forming, funding was flowing in, and thousands of newly accredited scientists were making thrilling discoveries. In 1944, the Canadian-American biologist Oswald Avery and his colleagues had proved that DNA was the physical substance of genes and heredity, and in 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick leaning heavily on work from Rosalind Franklin and the American chemist Linus Pauling mapped its double-helical structure.

While information piled up at a rate that no scientist could fully digest, the steady thrum of the modern synthesis ran through it all. The theory dictated that, ultimately, genes built everything, and natural selection scrutinised every bit of life for advantage. Whether you were looking at algae blooming in a pond or peacock mating rituals, it could all be understood as natural selection doing its work on genes. The world of life could seem suddenly simple again.

By 1959, when the University of Chicago held a conference celebrating the centennial of the publication of On the Origin of Species, the modern synthesists were triumphant. The venues were packed and national newspaper reporters followed the proceedings. (Queen Elizabeth was invited, but sent her apologies.) Huxley crowed that this is one of the first public occasions on which it has been frankly faced that all aspects of reality are subject to evolution.

Yet soon enough, the modern synthesis would come under assault from scientists within the very departments that the theory had helped build.

From the start, there had always been dissenters. In 1959, the developmental biologist CH Waddington lamented that the modern synthesis had sidelined valuable theories in favour of drastic simplifications which are liable to lead us to a false picture of how the evolutionary process works. Privately, he complained that anyone working outside the new evolutionary party line that is, anyone who didnt embrace the modern synthesis was ostracised.

Then came a devastating series of new findings that called into question the theorys foundations. These discoveries, which began in the late 60s, came from molecular biologists. While the modern synthesists looked at life as if through a telescope, studying the development of huge populations over immense chunks of time, the molecular biologists looked through a microscope, focusing on individual molecules. And when they looked, they found that natural selection was not the all-powerful force that many had assumed it to be.

They found that the molecules in our cells and thus the sequences of the genes behind them were mutating at a very high rate. This was unexpected, but not necessarily a threat to mainstream evolutionary theory. According to the modern synthesis, even if mutations turned out to be common, natural selection would, over time, still be the primary cause of change, preserving the useful mutations and junking the useless ones. But that isnt what was happening. The genes were changing that is, evolving but natural selection wasnt playing a part. Some genetic changes were being preserved for no reason apart from pure chance. Natural selection seemed to be asleep at the wheel.

Evolutionary biologists were stunned. In 1973, David Attenborough presented a BBC documentary that included an interview with one of the leading modern synthesists, Theodosius Dobzhansky. He was visibly distraught at the non-Darwinian evolution that some scientists were now proposing. If this were so, evolution would have hardly any meaning, and would not be going anywhere in particular, he said. This is not simply a quibble among specialists. To a man looking for the meaning of his existence, evolution by natural selection makes sense. Where once Christians had complained that Darwins theory made life meaningless, now Darwinists levelled the same complaint at scientists who contradicted Darwin.

Other assaults on evolutionary orthodoxy followed. The influential palaeontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge argued that the fossil record showed evolution often happened in short, concentrated bursts; it didnt have to be slow and gradual. Other biologists simply found that the modern synthesis had little relevance to their work. As the study of life increased in complexity, a theory based on which genes were selected in various environments started to seem beside the point. It didnt help answer questions such as how life emerged from the seas, or how complex organs, such as the placenta, developed. Using the lens of the modern synthesis to explain the latter, says the Yale developmental biologist Gnter Wagner, would be like using thermodynamics to explain how the brain works. (The laws of thermodynamics, which explain how energy is transferred, do apply to the brain, but they arent much help if you want to know how memories are formed or why we experience emotion.)

Just as feared, the field split. In the 70s, molecular biologists in many universities peeled off from biology departments to form their own separate departments and journals. Some in other sub-fields, such as palaeontology and developmental biology, drifted away as well. Yet the biggest field of all, mainstream evolutionary biology, continued much as before. The way the champions of the modern synthesis who by this point dominated university biology departments dealt with potentially destabilising new findings was by acknowledging that such processes happen sometimes (subtext: rarely), are useful to some specialists (subtext: obscure ones), but do not fundamentally alter the basic understanding of biology that descends from the modern synthesis (subtext: dont worry about it, we can continue as before). In short, new discoveries were often dismissed as little more than mildly diverting curiosities.

Today, the modern synthesis remains, mutatis mutandis, the core of modern evolutionary biology wrote the evolutionary theorist Douglas Futuyma in a 2017 paper defending the mainstream view. The current version of the theory allows some room for mutation and random chance, but still views evolution as the story of genes surviving in vast populations. Perhaps the biggest change from the theorys mid-century glory days is that its most ambitious claims that simply by understanding genes and natural selection, we can understand all life on earth have been dropped, or now come weighted with caveats and exceptions. This shift has occurred with little fanfare. The theorys ideas are still deeply embedded in the field, yet no formal reckoning with its failures or schisms has occurred. To its critics, the modern synthesis occupies a position akin to a president reneging on a campaign promise it failed to satisfy its entire coalition, but remains in office, hands on the levers of power, despite its diminished offer.

Brian and Deborah Charlesworth are considered by many to be high priests of the tradition that descends from the modern synthesis. They are eminent thinkers, who have written extensively on the place of new theories in evolutionary biology, and they dont believe any radical revision is needed. Some argue that they are too conservative, but they insist they are simply careful cautious about dismantling a tried-and-tested framework in favour of theories that lack evidence. They are interested in fundamental truths about evolution, not explaining every diverse result of the process.

Were not here to explain the elephants trunk, or the camels hump. If such explanations could even be possible, Brian Charlesworth told me. Instead, he said, evolutionary theory should be universal, focusing on the small number of factors that apply to how every living thing develops. Its easy to get hung up on you havent explained why a particular system works the way it does. But we dont need to know, Deborah told me. Its not that the exceptions are uninteresting; its just that they arent all that important.

Kevin Laland, the scientist who organised the contentious Royal Society conference, believes it is time for proponents of neglected evolutionary sub-fields to band together. Laland and his fellow proponents of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, the EES, call for a new way of thinking about evolution one that starts not by seeking the simplest explanation, or the universal one, but what combination of approaches offers the best explanation to biologys major questions. Ultimately, they want their sub-fields plasticity, evolutionary development, epigenetics, cultural evolution not just recognised, but formalised in the canon of biology.

There are some firebrands among this group. The geneticist Eva Jablonka has proclaimed herself a neo-Lamarckist, after Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the 19th-century populariser of pre-Darwinian ideas of inheritance, who has often been seen as a punchline in the history of science. Meanwhile, the physiologist Denis Noble has called for a revolution against traditional evolutionary theory. But Laland, a lead author on many of the movements papers, insists that they simply want to expand the current definition of evolution. They are reformers, not revolutionaries.

The case for EES rests on a simple claim: in the past few decades, we have learned many remarkable things about the natural world and these things should be given space in biologys core theory. One of the most fascinating recent areas of research is known as plasticity, which has shown that some organisms have the potential to adapt more rapidly and more radically than was once thought. Descriptions of plasticity are startling, bringing to mind the kinds of wild transformations you might expect to find in comic books and science fiction movies.

Emily Standen is a scientist at the University of Ottawa, who studies Polypterus senegalus, AKA the Senegal bichir, a fish that not only has gills but also primitive lungs. Regular polypterus can breathe air at the surface, but they are much more content living underwater, she says. But when Standen took Polypterus that had spent their first few weeks of life in water, and subsequently raised them on land, their bodies began to change immediately. The bones in their fins elongated and became sharper, able to pull them along dry land with the help of wider joint sockets and larger muscles. Their necks softened. Their primordial lungs expanded and their other organs shifted to accommodate them. Their entire appearance transformed. They resembled the transition species you see in the fossil record, partway between sea and land, Standen told me. According to the traditional theory of evolution, this kind of change takes millions of years. But, says Armin Moczek, an extended synthesis proponent, the Senegal bichir is adapting to land in a single generation. He sounded almost proud of the fish.

Moczeks own area of expertise is dung beetles, another remarkably plastic species. In a cold environment, dung beetles will grow larger wings to range further for food; in a warm one, a rounder body and stomach to gorge locally. The crucial thing about these observations, which challenge the traditional understanding of evolution, is that these sudden developments all come from the same underlying genes. The speciess genes arent being slowly honed, generation by generation. Rather, during its early development it has the potential to grow in a variety of ways, allowing it to survive in different situations.

We believe this is ubiquitous across species, says David Pfennig of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He works on spadefoot toads, amphibians the size of a Matchbox car. Spadefoots are normally omnivorous, but spadefoot tadpoles raised solely on meat grow larger teeth, more powerful jaws, and a hardy, more complex gut. Suddenly, they resemble a powerful carnivore, feeding on hardy crustaceans, and even other tadpoles.

Plasticity doesnt invalidate the idea of gradual change through selection of small changes, but it offers another evolutionary system with its own logic working in concert. To some researchers, it may even hold the answers to the vexed question of biological novelties: the first eye, the first wing. Plasticity is perhaps what sparks the rudimentary form of a novel trait, says Pfennig.

Plasticity is well accepted in developmental biology, and the pioneering theorist Mary Jane West-Eberhard began making the case that it was a core evolutionary force in the early 00s. And yet, to biologists in many other fields, it is virtually unknown. Undergraduates beginning their education are unlikely to hear anything about it, and it has still to make much mark in popular science writing.

Biology is full of theories like this. Other interests of the EES include extra-genetic inheritance, known as epigenetics. This is the idea that something say a psychological injury, or a disease experienced by a parent attaches small chemical molecules to their DNA that are repeated in their children. This has been shown to happen in some animals across multiple generations, and caused controversy when it was suggested as an explanation for intergenerational trauma in humans. Other EES proponents track the inheritance of things like culture as when groups of dolphins develop and then teach each other new hunting techniques or the communities of helpful microbes in animal guts or plant roots, which are tended to and passed on through generations like a tool. In both cases, researchers contend that these factors might impact evolution enough to warrant a more central role. Some of these ideas have become briefly fashionable, but remain disputed. Others have sat around for decades, offering their insights to a small audience of specialists and no one else. Just like at the turn of the 20th century, the field is split into hundreds of sub-fields, each barely aware of the rest.

To the EES group, this is a problem that urgently needs to be solved and the only solution is a more capacious unifying theory. These scientists are keen to expand their research and gather the data to disprove their doubters. But they are also aware that logging results in the literature may not be enough. Parts of the modern synthesis are deeply ingrained in the whole scientific community, in funding networks, positions, professorships, says Gerd B Mller, head of the Department of Theoretical Biology at the university of Vienna and a major backer of the EES. Its a whole industry.

The modern synthesis was such a seismic event that even its flatly wrong ideas took up to half a century to correct. The mutationists were so thoroughly buried that even after decades of proof that mutation was, in fact, a key part of evolution, their ideas were still regarded with suspicion. As recently as 1990, one of the most influential university evolution textbooks could claim that the role of new mutations is not of immediate significance something that very few scientists then, or now, actually believe. Wars of ideas are not won with ideas alone.

To release biology from the legacy of the modern synthesis, explains Massimo Pigliucci, a former professor of evolution at Stony Brook University in New York, you need a range of tactics to spark a reckoning: Persuasion, students taking up these ideas, funding, professorial positions. You need hearts as well as minds. During a Q&A with Pigliucci at a conference in 2017, one audience member commented that the disagreement between EES proponents and more conservative biologists sometimes looked more like a culture war than a scientific disagreement. According to one attender, Pigliucci basically said: Sure, its a culture war, and were going to win it, and half the room burst out cheering.

To some scientists, though, the battle between traditionalists and extended synthesists is futile. Not only is it impossible to make sense of modern biology, they say, it is unnecessary. Over the past decade the influential biochemist Ford Doolittle has published essays rubbishing the idea that the life sciences need codification. We dont need no friggin new synthesis. We didnt even really need the old synthesis, he told me.

What Doolittle and like-minded scientists want is more radical: the death of grand theories entirely. They see such unifying projects as a mid-century even modernist conceit, that have no place in the postmodern era of science. The idea that there could be a coherent theory of evolution is an artefact of how biology developed in the 20th century, probably useful at the time, says Doolittle. But not now. Doing right by Darwin isnt about venerating all his ideas, he says, but building on his insight that we can explain how present life forms came from past ones in radical new ways.

Doolittle and his allies, such as the computational biologist Arlin Stoltzfus, are descendants of the scientists who challenged the modern synthesis from the late 60s onwards by emphasising the importance of randomness and mutation. The current superstar of this view, known as neutral evolution, is Michael Lynch, a geneticist at the University of Arizona. Lynch is soft-spoken in conversation, but unusually pugnacious in what scientists call the literature. His books rail against scientists who accept the status quo and fail to appreciate the rigorous mathematics that undergirds his work. For the vast majority of biologists, evolution is nothing more than natural selection, he wrote in 2007. This blind acceptance [] has led to a lot of sloppy thinking, and is probably the primary reason why evolution is viewed as a soft science by much of society. (Lynch is also not a fan of the EES. If it were up to him, biology would be even more reductive than the modern synthesists imagined.)

What Lynch has shown, over the past two decades, is that many of the complex ways DNA is organised in our cells probably happened at random. Natural selection has shaped the living world, he argues, but so too has a sort of formless cosmic drifting that can, from time to time, assemble order from chaos. When I spoke to Lynch, he said he would continue to extend his work to as many fields of biology as possible looking at cells, organs, even whole organisms to prove that these random processes were universal.

As with so many of the arguments that divide evolutionary biologists today, this comes down to a matter of emphasis. More conservative biologists do not deny that random processes occur, but believe theyre much less important than Doolittle or Lynch think.

The computational biologist Eugene Koonin thinks people should get used to theories not fitting together. Unification is a mirage. In my view there is no can be no single theory of evolution, he told me. There cannot be a single theory of everything. Even physicists do not have a theory of everything.

This is true. Physicists agree that the theory of quantum mechanics applies to very tiny particles, and Einsteins theory of general relativity applies to larger ones. Yet the two theories appear incompatible. Late in life, Einstein hoped to find a way to unify them. He died unsuccessful. In the next few decades, other physicists took up the same task, but progress stalled, and many came to believe it might be impossible. If you ask a physicist today about whether we need a unifying theory, they would probably look at you with puzzlement. Whats the point, they might ask. The field works, the work continues.

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Evolution today announced that it has gone live with its wide-ranging online live casino offering for operators in West Virginia

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by: Alex LambeauJun 24, 2022

In the last year, Vintage Culture has seemingly released music on every record label in sight. The Brazilian DJ is consistently one of the most supported artists in dance music, as his sound weaves genres together in artful fashion, resulting in a consistent stream of festival-ready hits.

Next up for Vintage Culture is a single with the UK based duo, Solardo. Released on June 24, Vintage Culture and Solardo come together for melodic-house single, Adidas & Pearls. As a current wave within house music looks to shift towards melodic and deep sounds, Vintage Culture continues to be at the forefront in the latest movement in trends. Dancing Astronaut connected with Vintage Culture for a chat about his ongoing sonic evolution, the labels helping him push his creative vision, and his new single with Solardo.

How has your sound evolved from your early production years of mostly Brazilian bass?

Vintage Culture: When I started as a teenager my world was smaller. My first ambition was to be playing atpopular clubs and festivals in Brazil. Maybe in my quiet moments I dreamed of touring the world, or headlining international festivals, but I didnt say that out loud.The immediate goal was to make music for myself and the audience around me. This style which is now called Brazilian bass really appealed to the fans.

I combined this stylewith international influences that I grew up listening tobands like Depeche Mode, New Order, [and] Radiohead. These artists have a great sense of melody and focus on the quality of the song itself. This has stayed with me. I think the fans can hear this on my new track, Adidas & Pearls with Solardo and Lowes.

Now, touring the world, Im exposed to influences from all over.This seeps into my productions without [me] even being conscious of it. So there was a natural evolution to the music.

How much fun have the latest So Track Boa parties been? The last one at the Belo Horizonte football stadium looked wild.

Vintage Culture: So Track Boa in 2022 was like being reunited with family and friends again.I could feel the spirit of the crowd and the positive energy of 40,000 friends as soon as I entered the venue. There is no greater feeling in the world. Being on that stage with those fans is the most comfortable place on the planet for me. This year So Track Boa, which is Portuguese for only good tracks, sold out very fast and was our biggest event yet.Im already thinking about next year.Iwill be personally selecting the artists from around the world for the festival.

Id like to take a moment to thank everyone who supported the festival and my shows around the world. I appreciate the fans so much and want them to know this.Thank you guys!

Many of your recent releases have been on some highly recognizable labels including Insomniac Records, Spinnin Records, Cercle Records, and more. How do you go about determining labels to partner with?

Vintage Culture: Just like producers, record labels seem to specialize in specific genres, or they have a particular sound and vibe. This is about the musical tastes of their A&R teams.If you listen to the tracks from Defected, you can definitely hear a similar vibe running through them.

With experience and time getting to know the people who work at each label, you realize which productions would work for each label and their A&R teams.

With such a busy touring schedule through 2022, how do you manage consistent quality in your output with such a chaotic schedule?

Vintage Culture: My mastering engineer is working around the clockshout out to Pimpo Gama in Brazil. Keep in mind I spent most of the lock-down in the recording studio. I missed playing live very much, but in another way this was a very creative time for me. I spent lock down writing, producing and recording almost every day.There is a backlog of great songs waiting to be released. Combined with my new tracks, I probably have enough music for the next two years.

The new track with Solardo is an interesting one, how did you find a balance of styles in the studio?

Vintage Culture: We have a high respect for each others work and we [each] have an appreciation of great songs.Lowes are very talented writers, so our goal was to combine our production skills to bring out the best of the song. We wanted to emphasizethe vocal melody and lyrics without stepping on the performance. Im very proud of Adidas & Pearls and together with Solardo and Lowes, we created a great track.

Featured image: @vintageculture/ Instagram

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Explore Vintage Culture's new single with Solardo, the evolution of his sound, and more [Q+A] - Dancing Astronaut

If you look different to your close relatives, you may have felt separate from your family. As a child, during particularly stormy fall outs you might have even hoped it was a sign that you were adopted.

As our new research shows, appearances can be deceptive when it comes to family. New DNA technology is shaking up the family trees of many plants and animals.

The primates, to which humans belong, were once thought to be close relatives of bats because of some similarities in our skeletons and brains. However, DNA data now places us in a group that includes rodents (rats and mice) and rabbits. Astonishingly, bats turn out to be more closely related to cows, horses, and even rhinoceroses than they are to us.

Scientists in Darwin's time and through most of the 20th century could only work out the branches of the evolutionary tree of life by looking at the structure and appearance of animals and plants. Life forms were grouped according to similarities thought to have evolved together.

About three decades ago, scientists started using DNA data to build "molecular trees". Many of the first trees based on DNA data were at odds with the classical ones.

Sloths and anteaters, armadillos, pangolins (scaly anteaters), and aardvarks were once thought to belong together in a group called edentates ("no teeth"), since they share aspects of their anatomy.

Molecular trees showed that these traits evolved independently in different branches of the mammal tree. It turns out that aardvarks are more closely related to elephants while pangolins are more closely related to cats and dogs.

There is another important line of evidence that was familiar to Darwin and his contemporaries. Darwin noted that animals and plants that appeared to share the closest common ancestry were often found close together geographically. The location of species is another strong indicator they are related: species that live near each other are more likely to share a family tree.

For the first time, our recent paper cross-referenced location, DNA data, and appearance for a range of animals and plants. We looked at evolutionary trees based on appearance or on molecules for 48 groups of animals and plants, including bats, dogs, monkeys, lizards, and pine trees.

Evolutionary trees based on DNA data were two-thirds more likely to match with the location of the species compared with traditional evolution maps. In other words, previous trees showed several species were related based on appearance.

Our research showed they were far less likely to live near each other compared to species linked by DNA data.

It may appear that evolution endlessly invents new solutions, almost without limits. But it has fewer tricks up its sleeve than you might think.

Animals can look amazingly alike because they have evolved to do a similar job or live in a similar way. Birds, bats and the extinct pterosaurs have, or had, bony wings for flying, but their ancestors all had front legs for walking on the ground instead.

(Oyston et al., Communication Biology, 2022)

Above:The color wheels and key indicate where members of each order are found geographically. The molecular tree has these colors grouped together better than the morphological tree, indicating closer agreement of the molecules to biogeography.

Similar wing shapes and muscles evolved in different groups because the physics of generating thrust and lift in air are always the same. It is much the same with eyes, which may have evolved 40 times in animals, and with only a few basic "designs".

Our eyes are similar to squid's eyes, with a crystalline lens, iris, retina, and visual pigments. Squid are more closely related to snails, slugs, and clams than us. But many of their mollusk relatives have only the simplest of eyes.

Moles evolved as blind, burrowing creatures at least four times, on different continents, on different branches of the mammal tree. The Australian marsupial pouched moles (more closely related to kangaroos), African golden moles (more closely related to aardvarks), African mole rats (rodents), and the Eurasian and North American talpid moles (beloved of gardeners, and more closely related to hedgehogs than these other "moles") all evolved down a similar path.

Until the advent of cheap and efficient gene sequencing technology in the 21st century, appearance was usually all evolutionary biologists had to go on.

While Darwin (1859) showed that all life on Earth is related in a single evolutionary tree, he did little to map out its branches. The anatomist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) was one of the first people to draw evolutionary trees that tried to show how major groups of life forms are related.

(Ernest Haeckel)

Haeckel's drawings made brilliant observations of living things that influenced art and design in the 19th and 20th centuries. His family trees were based almost entirely on how those organisms looked and developed as embryos.Many of his ideas about evolutionary relationships were held until recently.

As it becomes easier and cheaper to obtain and analyze large volumes of molecular data, there will be many more surprises in store.

Matthew Wills, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the Milner Centre for Evolution, University of Bath.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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New DNA Technology Is Shaking Up The Branches of The Evolutionary Tree - ScienceAlert

In a recent piece at The Wall Street Journal, we learn that the prices of electric vehicles, like all vehicles, are skyrocketing:

Overall, the average price paid for an electric vehicle in the U.S. in May was up 22% from a year earlier, at about $54,000, according to J.D. Power. By comparison, the average paid for an internal-combustion vehicle increased 14% in that period, to about $44,400.

EV manufacturers blame the $10,000 price disparity over gas vehicles on the rising costs of battery materials, especially rare earth minerals. Ford says that its whole profit margin for the Mustang Mach-E has been wiped out, and other manufacturers are seeing similar struggles.

Weve always known that the cost of battery packs is the reason EVs cost more than ICE cars, despite having much simpler powertrains and better design flexibility, but just two years ago prices were on the way down, with some experts predicting that the price of EVs would drop to that of gas-powered cars by 2024. Even worse, they predicted that EVs would only cost $2,000 more than gas cars by this year, which obviously didnt happen.

Rosy predictions that EVs would be as affordable as gas cars led to many jurisdictions placing their regulatory bets on EVs. Countries and US states, one after another, announced future ICE vehicle bans that would prohibit the registration of new fossil-fueled vehicles after a certain date, most often between 2030 and 2040. But, some of them have outs for future price changes, and all of them could be modified or repealed if EVs arent affordable enough to mandate without overburdening people.

So, these price increases should concern us all because if price parity or near-parity cant be achieved, much of the work toward getting EVs into mass adoptions, not to mention the mandates, is all put in danger. Battery material and refining industries need to expand greatly if theyre going to lead to competitive pricing, but we need to take a hard look at all other factors driving prices up and getting those addressed, too.

In the short term, our economic problems have one small silver lining for EVs: high gas prices. Automakers arent struggling to get people to buy EVs right now, largely because the cost of operating their gas-powered vehicle is as high as its ever been. Facing large monthly gasoline or diesel costs, the higher price for an EV just doesnt look as painful. This is no comfort to people who cant afford an EV, though.

Price parity isnt the whole story. The overall price of new and used cars can also threaten the near and long-term future of EVs, especially in places where wages are low.

Some recent vehicle shopping I did illustrates this pretty well. Its no secret that Im not happy with my Nissan LEAF. Id like to get a better EV with liquid cooling and better charging rates for regional driving, and having some more room wouldnt hurt, either. But, until recently, I was upside down in the car because I got fooled by a dealer into paying too much for the car. Recent price spikes for used cars has my cars value a little higher than what I owe, now, so I figured it might be a good time to jump ship.

But, when I started looking for a used EV, the reality sunk in. Used Teslas are all over $40,000. New EVs tend to mostly be over $50,000 (assuming you can find one). The cheapest used EV I could find that wasnt a compliance car was going for $30,000 and I couldnt get the dealer to budge more than $400. Some better deals could be found on sites like Carvana, but every single electric vehicle is marked sale in process, so that was a dead end.

The only thing that might be an option would be a new Bolt EV or Bolt EUV, oddly enough. Thats only because Chevrolet is offering big factory incentives on them, which would put the price in the range Id like to pay for one. But, Im having a hell of a time finding a dealer whos willing to sell them for MSRP minus the incentives (which would still turn the dealer a decent profit).

Instead, theyre counting on the high demand for EVs to enable them to basically steal the factory incentive. By concealing that GM is offering discounts, many dealers are selling the vehicles for MSRP and putting as much as $6300 in their own pockets. Are they in any hurry to sell it to me for whats basically MSRP? Not at all.

If I was trying to get rid of a gas-burner and trade it for an EV, Id probably be in worse shape. Im fortunate that our family has another gas vehicle we occasionally use on road trips, so I can get the cheapest EV on the market and still be OK if I need to take a road trip. But, if I only had one car, I couldnt realistically consider trading it for a Bolt of any kind (EV or EUV), as its 50 kW max charging rate wouldnt be realistic for longer trips in most cases.

Now, I know that with enough inflation for long enough, employers are going to have to start upping pay to keep families from shopping around for other employment options, but its pretty clear that the price of everything from food to gasoline to cars is vastly outpacing any gains people are making in pay right now.

If these prices, relative to incomes, for new and used EVs are here to stay, I think it could. Its going to hurt people, especially in poor states and regions. If someone toward the bottom of the economic totem pole cant afford anything but a used compliance car, EVs wont be a realistic option for them. Frugal people at all income levels certainly wouldnt waste time entertaining expensive EVs.

If this is a temporary situation, and prices start going back toward not only parity, but affordability, then its possible that EVs still have the bright future we want and need them to have.

Featured image provided by GM.

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Inflation & Battery Costs Could Hobble The EVolution - CleanTechnica

From the trailer for Hocus Pocus 2 giving us major nostalgia to the backlash surrounding the chart topping Elvis biopic, theres a lot going on in pop culture this week. So were breaking down the top five moments we cant stop talking about and revisiting a few others.

Find out the latest in the Brittney Griner case and what happened at the BET Awards without Lil Nas X.

Then, last weeks Verzuz between Omarion and Mario brought up old drama with the Post to Be singer and his former B2K group members.

But the thing that were stuck on is Beyonces summer anthem "Break My Soul." The new dance ballad along with Drakes recent album Honestly, Nevermind has fans asking if house music is making a comeback. The answer: It never went away.

Today, we explore the history and evolution of the house sound with a music and culture journalist and historian. Well give you a playlist that youll want to dance to all summer long.

Youll hear from:

Skimm'd by Senior Producer and Host Bridget Armstrong. Produced by Alaisha Key. Engineered by Andrew Callaway and Elie McAfee-Hahn. TheSkimms senior director of audio is Graelyn Brashear. Additional production help from Blake Lew-Merwin.

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Beyonc, Drake, and the Evolution of House Music - theSkimm

An international team of 114 scientists has performed the most comprehensive study of aging and longevity to date with data collected in the wild from 107 populations of 77 species of reptiles and amphibians worldwide.

MSU Professor Anne Bronikowski

The team, led by researchers at Michigan State University, Pennsylvania State University and Northeastern Illinois University, reported its findings in the journal Science on June 23.

Among their many findings, the researchers documented for the first time that turtles, salamanders and crocodilians (an order that includes crocodiles, alligators and caimans) have particularly slow aging rates and extended lifespans for their sizes.

We are committed to studying long-lived species in the wild because nature has already done the experiment of how to age slowly, wrote MSU researchers Anne Bronikowski and Fredric Janzen.

Bronikowski is one of the leaders of the study who recently joined MSU as a professor of integrative biology in the College of Natural Science and at the W. K. Kellogg Biological Station, or KBS. Janzen is the director of KBS, as well as a professor in the College of Natural Science and the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

MSU Professor Fredric Janzen

Anne sometimes calls these examples evolutions solutions to growing old, Janzen said.

They are relevant to studies of human frailty because our cellular and genomic pathways are shared across much of animal life, Bronikowski said.

If we can understand what allows some animals to age more slowly, we can better understand aging in humans as well, and we can also inform conservation strategies for reptiles and amphibians, many of which are threatened or endangered, said David Miller, a senior author of the Science paper and an associate professor of wildlife population ecology at Penn State.

In their study, the researchersapplied methods used in both ecological and evolutionary sciences to analyze variation in aging and longevity of reptiles and amphibians. These cold-blooded" or ectothermic animals offer a contrast to "warm-blooded" or endothermic mammals and birds.

One of the interesting findings was that each group has a slow or negligible aging species across all these different ectotherms, wrote Bronikowski and Janzen.

It sounds dramatic to say that they dont age at all, said Beth Reinke, the first author of the Science report and an assistant professor of biology at Northeastern Illinois University. But basically their likelihood of dying does not change with age once theyre past reproduction.

The face of a tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus), a slow-aging reptile found in New Zealand. Credit: Sarah Lamar

Negligible aging means that if an animals chance of dying in a year is 1% at age 10, if it is alive at 100 years, its chance of dying is still 1%. By contrast, in adult U.S. females, the risk of dying in a year is about 1-in-2,500 at age 20 and 1-in-24 at age 80, said Penn States Miller, citing a current U.S. Social Security Administration actuarial table. When a species exhibits negligible mortality senescence, this mortality aging just doesnt happen.

The researchers also compared their findings in ectotherms to what is known about endotherms and explored previous hypotheses related to aging.

For instance, the thermoregulatory mode hypothesis suggests that endotherms age faster than ectotherms because endotherms have higher metabolisms to help regulate their body temperatures.

People tend to think, for example, that mice age quickly because they have high metabolisms, whereas turtles age slowly because they have low metabolisms, Miller said.

The teams findings, however, reveal that ectotherms aging rates and lifespans range both well above and below the known aging rates for similar-sized endotherms. Thus, it appears that the way an animal regulates its temperature cold-blooded versus warm-blooded is not necessarily indicative of its aging rate or lifespan.

A photo of a painted turtle (Chrysemys picta), a widespread North American species of freshwater turtle. Credit: Beth A. Reinke

We didnt find support for the idea that a lower metabolic rate means ectotherms are aging slower, Miller said. That relationship was only true for turtles, which suggests that turtles are unique among ectotherms.

Then theres the protective phenotypes hypothesis, which suggests that animals with traits that confer protection such as armor, spines or shells have greater longevity. This, in turn, promotes slower aging.

The team documented that these protective traits do, indeed, enable animals to age more slowly and live much longer for their size than those without protective phenotypes.

These various protective mechanisms may reduce animals mortality rates within generations, said Reinke. Thus, theyre more likely to live longer, and that can change the selection landscape across generations for the evolution of slower aging. We found the biggest support for the protective phenotype hypothesis in turtles. Again, this demonstrates that turtles, as a group, are unique.

In fact, a tortoise named Jonathan recently made news for being the worlds oldest living land animal at 190 years old.

It could be that their altered morphology with hard shells provides protection and has contributed to the evolution of their life histories, including negligible aging or lack of demographic aging and exceptional longevity, said MSUs Bronikowski.

A female Darwins frog (Rhinoderma darwinii) in southern Chile. Credit: ONG Ranita de Darwin

Bronikowski helped seed the study with support from a grant from the National Institute on Aging, one of the National Institutes of Health, to study aging in painted turtles. Hugo Cayeula, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lyon in France, was leading a similar project on frogs and amphibians, so it made sense to collaborate, Bronikowski said.

From there, Northeastern Illinoiss Reinke reached out to more and more researchers to include more and more ectotherms (for a full list of authors and their affiliations, please see the published manuscript in Science).

The teams novel study was only possible because of the contributions of a large number of collaborators from across the world studying a wide variety of species, Reinke said.

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Revealing 'evolution's solutions' to aging | MSUToday | Michigan State University - MSUToday

Imugenes (ASX: IMU) share price rocketed this week following the announcement its lead candidate HER-Vaxx increased the survival rate in patients with advanced gastric cancer.

The clinical stage immuno-oncology company announced positive survival rates for its HER-Vaxx drug during a phase 2 clinical trial.

HER-Vaxx is a B-cell immunotherapy candidate used for the treatment of tumours over-expressing the HER-2/neu protein.

During the trials, patients treated with HER-Vaxx were found to have a 41.5% less chance of death in comparison to those with chemotherapy alone.

In simpler terms, the average survival for patients treated was 13.9 months compared to 8.3 months for those treated with just chemotherapy.

The trial successes also found that there was no further toxicity associated with the use of HER-Vaxx when combined with chemotherapy.

Imugene chief executive officer Leslie Chong said trial outcome was a significant milestone for patients with advanced gastric cancer.

The final analysis favoured the survival outcome for HER-Vaxx, and I note the Independent Data Monitoring Committee previously suggested to shorten the study by lowering the number of patients, she said.

Evolution Mining (ASX: EVN) has downgraded gold production guidance for FY2022 ending 30 June and has shelved its planned multi-million dollar expansion at the Mungari mine site in Western Australia.

The company revised its production guidance for the year to 640,000 ounces, which is lower than the 650,000oz forecast issued back in April.

Due to weather conditions and COVID-19 related issues, it will be the fifth consecutive year Evolution has had to revise its gold production targets down.

The company reported that since WAs borders opened in March, over 30% of its Mungari mines workers have experienced the seven days isolation period due to COVID-19.

On top of this, heavy rain stalled production at Evolutions Cowal mining operations in New South Wales.

Delays to the companys Red Lake mine transformation in Canada and the halted expansion at its Mungari operations were also contributors to the lower guidance.

Despite this, the company has declared the revised production figures still represented 25% growth in output over the next two years.

ALS (ASX: ALQ) has announced it has submitted an unsolicited, non-binding indicative all-cash offer to acquire 100% of HRL Holdings (ASX: HRL) at $0.16 per share.

Queensland-based laboratory giant ALS confirmed the news on Tuesday reporting the two companies inked a process deed on 7 June.

As per the process deed, ALS was allowed to conduct due diligence and negotiation.

HRL reported in a statement that both parties are still in preliminary discussion stages and the parties are yet to reach any sort of agreement.

Advisors for the proposed transaction are Highbury Partnership and Baker & McKenzie.

Macquarie Group (ASX: MQG) has announced its raising $400 million in debt through the issue of capital notes, which will be listed on the ASX.

The company declared its intention to raise $400 million with the option to raise more or less, through offering Macquarie Group Capital Notes 6 (MCN6).

MCN6 are fully paid, unsecured, subordinated, non-cumulative, mandatorily convertible, perpetual, automatically convertible notes issued at a price of $100 each.

Distributing these notes comes as Macquarie aims to maintain diverse sources of funding.

It will apply for MCN6 to be quoted on ASX, with MCN6 expected to trade under ASX code MQGPF.

Investors will be able to apply only through a Syndicate Broker, with the offer open on 6 July and available to retail and institutional investors.

On top of this, Macquarie has also cut its dividend ratio to between 50-70% of earnings and launched a $1.5 billion institutional share placement in November 2021 in an effort to secure cash.

BHP Group (ASX: BHP) has pledged to conserve or rehabilitate 30% of the land it owns or manages around the globe by 2030 and strengthen its social value credentials through greater collaboration with Indigenous groups.

The mining giant operates on nearly 6 million hectares of land and water, with 2% directly impacted by its operations.

BHP chief legal, governance and external affairs officer Caroline Cox said the company would embrace the new goal in order to create nature-positive outcomes.

Scientists tell us that to halt and reverse species loss and protect vital ecosystems that are the foundation of our economic security, we need to put nature on the road to recovery in the coming decade, she said.

This includes to protect at least 30% of the worlds land and ocean by 2030, and almost 100 countries around the world have already committed to this 30 by 30 challenge.

BHPs decision comes as mining companies face increasing pressures from the public to mitigate their impact on the environment.

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Imugene reveals positive trial, Evolution Mining downgrades gold production forecast and BHP announces 'nature positive' pledge - Small Caps

The following is the third of threearticles by Carlos Agudelo posted on The Brake Academyabout another aspect of dealing withbrakeemissions as the world and industry come to grasp with this challenge.

The first two articles:

The Evolution of Brake Pad and Rotor Emissions

The Evolution of Automotive Brake Emission: Part 2 of 3

In my last blog, I discussed ways to reduce brake emission: from reformulations of brake friction material formulations to innovations in brake coupling technology leading to less wear.

6. Accelerated electrification

The combination of multiple industries and government strategies, including a) fair trade certification for rare earth metals for electronics and raw materials for electric batteries, b) propulsion battery recycling reaching 80 % since 2030, c) stable regional supply chains for the past five years accommodating geopolitical changes in Europe, and d) the average electric vehicle price dropping below $25,000 in 2022 dollars, accelerated the pace of electrification predicted ten years ago by the International Energy Agency. A significant catalyst for this acceleration in E.V. penetration was the full deployment of The Electric Vehicles Initiative (EVI), a multi-governmental policy forum established in 2010 under the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM). Governments, regions, cities, and industries also completed plans to extend charging networks with clean energy for over 90 percent of the passenger cars, 95 percent of commercial vehicles, and 100 % of public transport. China, Korea, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, and the U.K. led the deployment of Zero Emissions Vehicles (ZEV). These countries were also leaders in achieving (China and Korea voluntary endorsing) the pledge of the Fit for 55 initiative from the European Commission.

As an intermediate step toward carbon neutrality, the E.U. has raised its 2030 climate ambition and commitments to cut emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030. The accelerated electrification has reduced brake emissions by ten-fold compared to baselines developed by the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) and the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (OICA) in 2023.

7. Voluntary compliance programs

In the United States, following the Better Brake Rule developed and implemented almost 20 years ago, MEMA and its Brake Manufacturers Council launched the Better Brakes Rule (BBR) 2.0 program. CARB, EPA, and the Office of Environmental Justice (within the U.S. Department of Justice) sponsored the program for brake systems and friction materials suppliers, including the Aftermarket. The BBR2.0 uses laboratory- or vehicle-level methods to demonstrate a reduction of at least 75 percent of brake emissions (# mg/km/vehicle) compared to the industry baseline developed in 2023. The program has subsections for light passenger cars, delivery vehicles or heavy trucks operating in urban and suburban areas, and public transport. The military and government fleets operate a similar program.

8. Artificial Intelligence for reduced wear

In the early 2020s, the fastest supercomputer in Japan had a cost comparable to the entire AI budget for the United States military (using 2022 budget estimates). A Japanese university developed a data storage device with the capacity to store the equivalent of 1 billion Blue-Ray discs using a 50-mm diamond wafer. Cloud computing services from Amazon and Google led the way in expanding AI tools and methods, making AI available to small and medium-sized companies. Also, the automotive industry leaped and implemented industrywide, open source, standard formats to exchange masked data. The participants include raw material suppliers, component manufacturers, brake system and mechatronics suppliers, vehicle software developers, vehicle manufacturers, the dealership network, research faculties, vehicle CAN data (limited due to data personal protection laws), and independent testing facilities. The AI platform includes databases from the ongoing collaboration between the HEI and the IHME for global exposure and health impacts. This AI initiative enables the simulation and development with reduced physical testing of new systems and designs to minimize frictional braking and optimize the paths to dissipate the vehicle kinetic energy (including active aerodynamic resistance and regenerative braking). To ensure a 360 view of the vehicle parc, the data available to the industry also incorporate statistics on vehicle sales, traffic volumes, vehicle crashes with or without bodily injury, fatalities, brake or powertrain service jobs, recalls, and energy consumption (fossil fuels and electricity). This activity has found new relationships and patterns that previous models could not predict. A technical AI panel works towards improving the ability of the industry to understand new findings and make them available to the industry for individual developments.

To view the entire article, as well as other charts and graphics, click HERE.

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Evolution of Automotive Brake Emissions: Part 3 of 3 - The BRAKE Report

Last week, Insider spoke to NBA Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas about a series of developments within his international holding company, Isiah International.

In a phone interview tied to a recent expansion of his utility vegetation management business, Gre3n LLC, which earlier this month won a bid to work with the Dixie Electric Membership Corporation (DEMCO), Thomas discussed how his ownership of Cheurlin Champagne led to his broader entry into the agricultural space as well as the cannabis industry.

A two-time NBA champion with the Detroit Pistons, Thomas also reflected at length, following the 2022 NBA Finals, on the evolution of professional basketball relative to his playing days of the '80s and '90s.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What does this deal with DEMCO mean for the progression of Gre3n LLC on the ground, and from a high level?

Well it gives us the opportunity to continue to expand our footprint nationwide, and what we've successfully been able to do is we've won the trust of several utility companies, starting with Entergy, our first onboard. Now we're working with DEMCO. We've worked with Southern Companies. And so as we continue to expand our footprint in the south, in Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, moving into Georgia, the goal is to continue to expand and move to the East Coast, Midwest region. But DEMCO, this bid definitely solidifies our safety record and also, I would say, let the business community know in the veg. management space that we're a real player.

I wanted to ask sort of a background question. Your father was the first Black supervisor at International Harvester in Chicago.

Ah, yes.

How did that element of your background inform your broader business sense, and in particular lead you into utility vegetation management?

You know, when you're a kid, you don't realize the influence that your parents are having on you, and the things that they say around the house, the things that you watch but you don't realize that you're learning. So seeing my father, particularly during those times in the '60s, watching him move up the ladder, and then understanding the social times and the political times during that era. He definitely had a huge influence on my business understanding and also how to navigate in some difficult spaces, racially. So his influence was huge. But again, at the time you didn't know it. You had no idea the impact that he was truly having, with his words and also his work ethic.

What led you into the cannabis and hemp industry in 2020, and what have you made of the progression of One World Products to this point?

You know, it was a series of things. It wasn't just one thing. So being in the vegetation management space, and also being in the champagne space, at that time, I didn't realize that I was in the agricultural space. The champagne space, where we cultivate and grow in Champagne, and we have 200 acres over in the Aube region of Champagne, which is the oldest region. Why is champagne called champagne? Because it comes from that region, and you have a certain amount of soil, and the sun and the climate gives excellent growing opportunities for the grapes that makes the champagne. Now fast forward, in the vegetation management space, and you're still understanding agriculture, tree trimming, how it works with the utilities. And believe it or not ... And I know this is a long winded answer to the cannabis space [laugh], but believe it or not, my Detroit Edison safety stuff came into play on the veg. management space also.

But then, when I ventured into the cannabis space, that really came from my son and my daughter, who, as you know, the younger generation fully understood the benefits of cannabis, and didn't see it as a class one felony drug, the way it had been marketed. And the more research that I started doing around the plant itself, connecting it to the agricultural space, then I started seeing the benefits of not only what the plant has for working with our body, in terms of our endocannabinoid system that's present in every human being, and your CB1 and CB2 receptors that's present in every human being, that works specifically with this plant.

It's almost as if Mother Nature put this plant here for us to use. And then I started looking at, "Okay, how did this plant affect the environment?" And that's when you got into carbon reduction, and the uses of it replacing plastics, and how at one time in our country's history, hemp was the food product. It was the fuel product. It was the environmental product. It was the textile product. And before plastics, it was the plastics product. So, you know, Mother Nature now is saying, "Hey, time's up for the synthetic things that we've been using." And now she's asking for us to use the bio-friendly products and plants that she's put on the earth.

What has the reception of the automobile industry been toward the move on your part to have hemp be a plastic replacement?

Unbelievably enthusiastic. It's like if you put the Silver Dome, the Palace, Joe Louis Arena, and Little Caesars Arena together. If you put all those crowds in one building, that's how enthusiastic they've welcomed and wanted it. And why? Because like every industry and every business, everyone's looking to reduce their carbon footprint and be friendly to the environment. Stellantis is the first group that jumped on board with us, and we started piling in the program. And since then, we've had significant conversations with GM and Ford also. So, my five-year business plan that I laid out quickly morphed into a five-month business plan. [Laugh].

[Laugh].

That's how receptive they've been to what we are moving.

You know, as the manager of an international corporation, how do you handle that day-to-day delegation, being so diversified in your portfolio, and to what extent are you hands-on and active in the individual companies?

So I am an owner-operator, and I am a CEO of all the entities internationally. Fortunately enough, for myself, being in sports and entertainment and playing with the Detroit Pistons has given us an international platform that we can move across the globe with name recognition. So operating in France and in Europe, Latin America, and here domestically in the United States, and also in Africa, has given us a unique perspective, not only of the world culturally and socially, and the business environment on each continent and sometimes in each country varies so differently.

But having a sports and entertainment background and having traveled to these places gives you a unique understanding of how you can continue to bring people together. So my involvement is very extensive. Thus, you know, the company, Isaiah International. Now, delegation. How do I delegate? Of course, you have to sign good managers in each place, and you delegate responsibilities. You hold them accountable, you set goals, you make sure that the values of the company is always presented and represented internationally, and thus far we've been successful in doing that.

You were at games throughout this year's Finals. Does a part of you wish you had come up as a player at this time, this more guard-centric time, or what have you made evolution of the game?

Absolutely. [Laugh]. When I came into the game, a scoring point guard like myself, a small scoring point guard that scored and assisted, was really unheard of. Now, Magic Johnson was accepted as a big guard at 6'9. And if you remember, when I came in, all the point guards were, you know, 6'7, 6'8, 6'9, because everyone was replicating what Magic had done. When I came in as a small guard, we were supposed to pass the ball to the big man in the post and go stand in the corner. Joe, Vinnie, and I said, "Okay, well, we can shoot." [Laugh].

[Laugh].

So, small guys scoring a basketball, shooting jump shots, playing from the perimeter and winning from the perimeter. At that time, the Pistons, we went so against the grain, because you were supposed to throw it to the big guys inside and let them do all the work. Fast forward, now today, the game has totally flip flopped. Small guards are expected to score, and not only are they expected to score, but they've changed all the rules to benefit the small guard so he can score and shoot more. And had I come along in this era, I definitely would've had ... you know, I had success in my era, but I definitely would've had more success in this era.

[Laugh].

The strength of it, and what it can convey. How has that element of your disposition allowed you to succeed in business in the way you have?

So, I would give that to my mom. Again, you don't realize how you're being impacted, until you get older and you realize the gifts that your mom and dad gave you. And my mom, for as poor as we were, in as difficult of times that we were having as a family, she was always, always positive and found a way to find humor, laughter, and song in all of our sadness. And so throughout my life, I really just have always had a positive and happy disposition. And I remember when I was in ... well, I don't remember what grade I was in, but when I was younger, my mom gave me a little piece of paper and it said, "Love conquers all." And I still use it and remember it to this day.

So I just try to be happy, and the life that I'm leading now, hell, I didn't even know this life existed when I was young. You know? So I didn't know, I couldn't even dream of the life that I'm leading now, because we were so poor. So to have a refrigerator full of food, I can pay my bills on time, and if I needed to get in the car and drive somewhere, I can do that. And I got a place to live. Really that's all I ever wanted. And, you know, my wife teases me sometimes because still, today, I'll open up the refrigerator, and I'll just stand there and look at it and be like, "We got a lot of food." [Laugh].

[Laugh].

So I give that to my mom.

In closing here, as the international LLC expands, what do you look forward to out of the progression of your portfolio?

The first thing is to uplift my family out of generational poverty. And, as you can see, it's a family-owned business. We've been in business since the early '80s, but officially, starting in '90. But there's so much poverty in my family, nieces, nephews, who are still below the poverty line. And we were so below the poverty line, we wasn't even counted by the Census Bureau. So the goal is to continue to educate nieces, nephews, keep our family business going, but also in spreading out internationally, connect different communities, different cultures, different races, different people, politically, socially, and continue the dialogue.

I would say that's the most unique gift that I've been been blessed with and given, operating in this space, where you in the US, Latin America, Africa, and Europe, where now you're connecting the dots politically and socially and having meaningful conversation, and realizing that in all of these places, you know, we all really do have the same problems. We all have the same problems with our kids. We all have the same problems individually. No one is really a hundred percent whole. Everybody's got some type of flaw, and working through those flaws is what I found most rewarding. So what do I hope to accomplish? You know, educate my family, and continue to connect the world, and hopefully make it a better place.

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Isiah Thomas on his international corporation and the NBA's evolution - Business Insider

It is the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the American Association of Bronchology and Interventional Pulmonology (AABIP), one of the first medical organizations to provide specific resources to care providers treating and diagnosing leading causes of pulmonary death including lung cancer and COPD.

In just 3 decades, the subspecialty field of interventional pulmonology has grown to receive its own certification and an exponentionally increasing relevance in treatment strategies and research into these chronic lung disease. Much has been accomplished in short timebut theres even more promising work on the horizon.

The June 2022 episode of Lungcast features an interview between American Lung Association (ALA) chief medical officer Albert Rizzo, MD, and Carla Lamb, MD, director of interventional pulmonary medicine and the relevant pulmonary fellowship program at Lahey Hospital & Medical Center.

Lamb, an innovator in interventional pulmonology, discusses the young history of the subspecialty, the evolution of low-dose CT scanning capability for lung cancer, COPD evaluations, biopsy strategies, and the future of her field with Rizzo.

Lungcast is a monthly respiratory health podcast series from the ALA produced byHCPLive.

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The Evolution of Interventional Pulmonology Field Over 30 Years - MD Magazine

Published: 6/28/2022 4:59:46 PM

When you run one of the regions most unusual restaurants, with anAsian-Jewish-Hungarian fusionmenu, youre ready to serve everything frommushrooms tobone broth to pork bellybao bun.From time to time, Miriam Kovacsgoes completely off the rails.

Sometimes I incorporate Velveeta! said Kovacs, who opened the Broken Spoonrestaurant in Franklin in November 2020 in the teeth of the pandemic. Hey, embrace it all! Our country is a melting pot of cultures why not? Its American food.

Broken Spoon will be getting a belated official ribbon-cutting on Wednesday, June 29, at 11 a.m., celebrating it as part of the changes sweeping downtown Franklin. Kovacs said shes happy for the ceremony because it will give her a picture to send to her mother, but isnt planning any changes.

Broken Spoon is take-out only due to difficulty in finding staff as well as concerns about the lingering pandemic. COVID is still very present. I cant afford to get COVID here, my whole business would go down, said Kovacs.

Both chef and owner, Kovacs is a first-generation American; her mother is from Sri Lanka and her father is Jewish, from Hungary. She grew up with culinary traditions from many places that she has incorporated into Broken Spoons menu, which features pork belly in various forms, the steamed buns known as bao, meat skewers of many typesand ramen bowls with ingredients like seaweed chiffonadeand marinated wild mushrooms. It even has an unusual take on that all-American meal of peanut butter and jelly.

Kovacs, who has a history as a cook and chef including studying at the Culinary Institute of America, came to Franklin from New Jersey for personal reasons, and stayed partly because it was affordable. She had been developing plans for a restaurant and jumped at the chance to move into a former restaurant space at 416 Central St. That made it possible to open Broken Spoon, she said, because there was already ahood system installed, saving many thousands of dollars in opening costs.

Kovacs said business has been steady and growing, perhaps fueled by peoples desire for something new after the constraints of the pandemic. People travel here from all over, she said.

The Broken Spoon is one of a number of new businesses that have opened or are planning to open soon in Franklin, spurred largely by the attention drawn to Mill City Park, New Englands first public whitewater park on the Winnipesaukee River.

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Franklin recognizes the Asian-Jewish fusion restaurant that reflects the city's evolution - Concord Monitor