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 But, some of them have outs for future price changes, and all of them could be modified or repealed if EVs arent affordable enough to mandate without overburdening people.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

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.

See the rest here:

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.

Read the original post:

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.

Read more:

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.

Subscribe or listen to Lungcast on your favorite platforms:

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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

image:Apparent stasis interspersed by periods of rapid change, associated with major technological revolutions, triggered by novel military technologies. The longest period of no systematic change was during the nearly two millennia between the Iron/Cavalry Revolution and the Gunpowder Revolution. Although empires rose and fell during this period, the maximum areas of empires fluctuated around the 3 million square kilometer level. [Brown curve: average territory of the three largest polities. Tan shading: mean SD (note the logarithmic scale of the Y-axis)] view more

Credit: Seshat: Global History Database

[Vienna, June 2022] During the past 10,000 years the Holocene human societies became larger and ever more complex. An international team of scientists led by Peter Turchin from the Complexity Science Hub Vienna (CSH) set out to test various theories on what drove this process. According to its analyses of data from Seshat: Global History Databank, the best explanation for the evolution of socio-cultural complexity is a combination of increasing agricultural productivity and the invention, or adoption, of military technologies (most notably, the invention of iron weapons and cavalry in the first millennium BCE). The study just appeared in the journal Science Advances.

Many theories need to be tested

Countless explanations have been offered over the years to explain the incredible Holocene transformation, Peter Turchin points out. Some theorists, like Jared Diamond, say that the transition to agriculture was both the necessary and sufficient condition for the rise of complex societies. Other theories focus on conflict theories, class struggle, the threat from external warfare or functionalist explanations, e.g., that complex social organization evolved to solve certain problems faced by societies.

All these theories could cite historical examples seemingly supporting their putative mechanisms; but none have ever proven decisively more convincing than the others, says Turchin, who leads a team investigating Social Complexity and Collapse at the CSH. Along with fellow members of the Seshat: Global History Databank project, he applied the tried-and-true scientific method: determine what each body of theory proposes as the key factors driving the rise of complexity and see which one best explains the available empirical evidence. The results reveal that many long-standing and influential theories receive little support from data.

Plough and sword drive human history

The best explanation for the observed patterns offers the framework of cultural evolution. Essentially, the conflict between groups over territory and resources put a tremendous selective pressure on societies, Turchin explains. It favored societies that were ever larger, more populous, could store more information and communicate effectively at greater distances and were capable of mobilizing larger numbers of people for common projects like defense and maintaining public infrastructure. While previous theories contained some of these elements, for the first time a single, coherent framework has been provided and demonstrated with the historical record, says Turchin.

The scholars also identified several major transformations during the Holocene: Following the invention of key technologies like bronze and later iron smelting or cavalry warfare and associated tactics, the scale of the largest societies rose dramatically before levelling off to a relatively stable size. New innovations and cultural adaptations continued to build until another breakthrough was achieved, propelling societies to new heights before stabilizing again, while the whole process began anew.

Big Data reveal decisive patterns

This paper is the culmination of more than a decade of intensive collaboration, says Harvey Whitehouse, corresponding author on the paper and one of the founding directors of Seshat. Our study utilized more than a hundred variables meticulously coded relating to 373 societies that flourished between 9600 BCE and 1900 CE. With the help of such big data we are able to place theories of world history head-to-head and see which ones win.

The scientists view this study as a breakthrough in the understanding of how human societies have evolved since the very first farmers settled down thousands of years ago. In the future, the team will adopt similar methods to test the diverse group of ideas that have been proposed in other areas of research, such as the causes of societal collapse or the role of religious ideology in cultural evolution.

The ultimate goal, as Turchin puts it, is to put those influential ideas that do not bear out against the empirical record to bed, once and for all.

# # # # #

About the CSH

The mission of Complexity Science Hub Vienna is to host, educate, and inspire complex systems scientists dedicated to making sense of Big Data to boost science and society. Scientists at the Hub develop methods for the scientific, quantitative, and predictive understanding of complex systems.

The CSH is a joint initiative of AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Central European University CEU, Danube University Krems, Graz University of Technology, IIASA, Medical University of Vienna, TU Wien, VetMedUni Vienna, Vienna University of Economics and Business, and Austrian Economic Chambers (WKO). https://www.csh.ac.at

Data/statistical analysis

People

Disentangling the Evolutionary Drivers of Social Complexity in Human History: a Comprehensive Test of Hypotheses

24-Jun-2022

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

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Theories on socio-political evolution put to the test - EurekAlert

Thor: Love and Thunder is the fourth solo movie forChris Hemsworth's titular Asgardian, marking the first time that an MCU hero has received such an achievement. As a result, fans are wondering if the upcoming sequel is the last time they will see the God of Thunder in the MCU. The arrival of Natalie Portman's Mighty Thor could potentiallyspell concern among viewers on that front, mainly because the franchise now has two Thors in the mix.

Despite that, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige shared that they are"excited"about Hemsworth's MCU future, saying that he can't wait to witness "how hekeeps evolving this complex character."Love and Thunder director Taika Waititi, who reinvigorated the Thor franchise in Ragnarok, previously addressed if he will return in a potential fifth film,admittingthat he hasn't even thought of that, considering how difficult they are to make.

Now, another comment about Thor's future has emerged, teasing that more stories will arrive.

DuringThor: Love and Thunder's virtual press conference, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige addressed Thor's future after the MCU sequel.

When asked what he envisions for Thor after his battle with Gorr in Love and Thunder, Feige pointed out that Marvel Comics could hold the key to mapping what's next for theGod of Thunder:

Well, there are these things called comic books that have a lot of stories in them, and thats where all of our stories come from. And the question is, Have you told all the great Thor stories from the comics in movies? Uh, the answer is no. There are lots of them."

The Marvel boss then teased that Thor has "plenty of other incarnations" in the comics that could be used as inspiration for the character's future:

"Ive always said our interest in making additional stories is somewhat about continuing the character. [However], its almost entirely about continuing the experience with the actor... I think of all of our cast, not as their individual characters, but as the Marvel players who within that character can grow and evolve and change. And if we look at the comics as our guide, there are plenty of other incarnations of Thor that we've yet to see.

Meanwhile, a reporter askedThor star Chris Hemsworth if he still had the same feeling playing the character when he first started. While saying that "there's obviously a familiarity,"the MCU veteran revealed that the fact that the character "changed so dramatically over the years" helped him to have fun during his portrayal:

"Yeah, there's obviously a familiarity, the obvious points. But he has changed so dramatically over the years as I have, and that's what's been half the fun. As the character's evolved, I've had different opinions, and we've sort of melded and crossed paths, and so on. The origin story is, I think, is not the easiest, but it's the most obvious one. And there's a set of rules and guidelines I feel like you sort of have to stick to, and it's familiar and it works, and it's relatable to people. After that is the challenge: How do you recreate the character, what can you do different each time? And the luxury has been working with different directors, different cast, and they all bring out something very different in you. As Taika said, I feel like the character has probably become more me, I hope in a fun way."

A previous rumor revealed that Love and Thunder is not the last time that fans will see Chris Hemsworth's Marvel hero.

Kevin Feige's latest comments clearly indicate that the MCU is not yet done with Thor. Mighty Thor's debut in Love and Thunder could serve as a sign of things to come for the franchise, as future installments could explore other versions while also drastically changing Chris Hemsworth's Marvel hero.

Director Taika Waititi already revealed that he doesn't think that Mighty Thor will replace Thor, saying that he's "not privy to any plans Marvel has for the future, but [he doesn't]think thats the case.The same thing could ultimately happen if other versions of Thor arrive in the future.

It's possible that the long-awaited live-action debut for Beta Ray Bill could happen after Love and Thunder.The character, who was first teased during Thor: Ragnarok as an Easter egg, has long been on the fans' radar and Marvel rumor mills. Thehorse-headed Korbonite alien's fan-favorite status mighteventually lead to an MCU appearance.

Meanwhile, there are other Variants of Thor in Marvel Comics that could be considered in the franchise's future. From Old King Thor to a Thor who's a herald of Galactus -the possibilities are endless for the Avenger.

Although Hemsworth expressed concern that fan enthusiasm for his character may be "waning,"the potential of seeing more versions of his portrayal of Thor combined with his willingness to return is clearly apositive sign of things to come.

Thor: Love and Thunder is set to premiere in theaters on July 8.

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MCU Boss Teases Thor's Next Evolution In Future Projects - The Direct

Untangling the evolution of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is a challenge similar to mapping the human genome, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). ESA's galaxy mapper, Gaia, takes trillions of measurements of 2 billion of the brightest stars in the sky. Here, we look at what it takes to unpick those measurements to reveal the galaxy's secrets.

On June 13, the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC), a collaboration of 450 European astronomers and engineers supporting the galaxy-mapping endeavor, released what DPAC chair Anthony Brown described as "the richest set of astronomical data ever published."

To create the 10-terabyte catalog of compressed data, DPAC computers had to ingest 940 billion observations of 2 billion of the brightest light sources in the sky, Brown, an astronomer at Leiden University in the Netherlands, said at an ESA news conference on June 13.

Related: New trove of Gaia data will uncloak the Milky Way's dark past and future

The data, captured by Gaia between June 2014 and June 2017, contained information about 1.5 billion stars' precise positions and motions in the sky; details about the ages, temperatures and brightness levels of about half a billion of those stars; and detailed chemical compositions of several million of them.

It took five years for the data to pass through the sophisticated computational pipeline of validation, calibration and analysis procedures, which involve six supercomputing centers in six European countries. It would take a thousand years for a single (and rather powerful) personal computer to process the data set, Gonzalo Gracia, DPAC project coordinator for data processing, told Space.com.

As of 2022, the main Gaia database contains 1 petabyte of data, Gracia added, which is equivalent to the data capacity of 200,000 DVDs. To date, the telescope has made over 100 measurements of every single one of the 2 billion light sources it sees.

"Every day, Gaia sends us between 20 and 100 gigabytes of data," Gracia said. "That might not seem like that much if you compare it to the bandwidth you have at home, but we are talking about a satellite that is 1.5 million kilometers [930,000 miles] away from Earth."

From Gaia's vantage point at Lagrange Point 2, a stable point in the sun-Earth system where the gravitational pulls of the two bodies are in balance, the spacecraft observes the cosmos while shielded from the sun's glare.

Three ESA deep-space antennas (one each near Madrid; Malarge, Argentina; and New Norcia, Australia) receive the data collected by the space probe's two telescopes and other instruments. From those ground stations, the measurements travel on conventional internet lines to the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, for basic checks, before the data are sent to the agency's Science Operations Center in Madrid.

"This is when we do the first round of processing," Gracia said. "We do some initial calibrations and run the data through a piece of software to assess the health of the satellite. This happens in the first hours after the data is received."

Then, things start to get complicated. A data-processing center at CNES, the French space agency, in Toulouse scans the data set for fast-moving objects in the solar system: asteroids and comets that might be on a collision course with Earth.

"They have a pipeline, which detects those objects and checks whether they are already known," Gracia said. "If they are not known, they raise an alarm with the solar system objects community in the world, who can do the follow-up observation and find what the object is about and what is its trajectory."

Gaia is quite efficient in monitoring asteroids and might even be able to see some that are not visible from Earth. The mission's June 13 data release contained information about detailed trajectories of 60,000 solar system space rocks. On top of that, Gaia measured light spectra of these space rocks, revealing their chemical compositions. Previously, astronomers knew detailed chemical compositions of only 4,500 asteroids.

Separately, a team in Cambridge, England, compares new brightness measurements delivered by Gaia with data acquired earlier. Significant changes in brightness levels of stars are always a reason for excitement, as they might indicate supernovas, explosions that occur when massive stars die before collapsing into black holes or neutron stars.

Sometimes, dim distant stars and galaxies can temporarily lighten up through microlensing, an odd phenomenon that happens when an extremely massive object comes between the dim star and the observer, its powerful light-bending gravity acting as a magnifying glass. Gaia, which completes a scan of the entire sky every two months, sees all that.

In the meantime, the rest of the consortium conducts what Gracia calls "cyclic processing": endless rounds of redigesting, validating and analyzing the data to extract the most accurate information that astronomers can use to create precise maps of the Milky Way galaxy and model its life into the past and future. Several thousand servers running tens of thousands of core processors are involved in the operation.

"We have to process the data several times," Gracia said. "We process it, we give it to the scientists for checks, and then we have to tune our calibrations, our algorithms; we have to improve them every time."

The data sets are also dependent on each other. For example, without information about precise positions of the observed objects, the data on brightness changes or movements of asteroids would be worthless.

"We essentially have the information about the amount of photons hitting the Gaia telescopes, and from their position in the window, we derive the positions in the sky," Gracia said. "This is done in Barcelona, where we produce this astrometric information for all the sources in the sky. This is the input for basically all the other processing that we do. It takes a lot of time to do all that and to do it with a sufficient amount of data to ensure that the data is really of the best quality."

This amount of processing is the reason behind the delay between the acquisition of the data and its release. Gaia launched in December 2013, but the astronomical community didn't get their hands on the first batch of data until September 2016. The second data release followed in April 2018. The June 13 data dump was preceded by a partial early release in December 2020. Each new catalog increases the precision of the data as well as the amount of available information about each of the 2 billion light sources the telescope sees. Although the mission is already in its ninth year, there is no stopping for the 450 researchers and engineers at DPAC.

While the world's Milky Way researchers are unpacking the gifts of the June 13 data release, looking for evidence of the galaxy's dynamic life, Gracia and his colleagues are already busy working on the next data dump, which promises, among other things, to unleash Gaia's potential to spot planets around faraway stars. Thousands of new finds are expected to enrich the existing exoplanet catalog as the DPAC researchers train their algorithms to spot the characteristic mild dimming of a star caused by a planet crossing in front of its disk.

"We started processing data for the fourth cycle two years ago and are already planning the fifth cycle," Gracia said. "It's really nonstop."

Follow Tereza Pultarova on Twitter @TerezaPultarova. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Untangling the Milky Way's evolution through big-data astronomy - Space.com

When scientists find a new disease-causing virus in humans, the first question they want answered is: Can this thing spread easily from person to person? And if not, will it someday?

Avian influenza can infect humans, but its not very good at passing from one person to another. Same with the coronavirus that causes MERS, another severe respiratory illness. Though hundreds of cases of both have been reported over the past two decades, neither virus seems inclined to evolve toward efficient person-to-person transmission.

In less than three years, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has mastered it.

SARS-CoV-2 has accumulated a suite of mutations over an astonishingly short period of time that have made it now one of the most infectious human pathogens on the planet. And for the first time ever, scientists have the tools and the knowledge to closely track that evolution in near-real time, studying the small but mighty genomic mutations that have transformed the virus to the point where it hardly resembles the strain that began infecting humans in China in late 2019.

Mapping the evolution of this virus has fed academically curious minds in every nation, and its had real world implications too. Identifying and describing new variants has helped guide public health responses and is now informing the next generation of vaccines and drug therapies.

The coronavirus rapid evolution also is helping scientists anticipate the future of the pandemic, and what mutations may make it a less or more formidable foe in years to come.

This is the first time in human history that weve been able to witness a global pandemic at the genomic, evolutionary level, said Joe DeRisi, president of San Franciscos Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, which has done genomic sequencing on the virus since the start of the pandemic.

Whats been especially fascinating, and at times alarming, is the speed of this virus evolution. That SARS-CoV-2 would mutate to better adapt to humans was always anticipated, but the pace of that adaptation has been breathtaking.

Scientists say thats in large part due to the scale of the pandemic more than half a billion infections worldwide have afforded the virus near-boundless opportunity to mutate. But its a matter of timing, too. As a human virus, SARS-CoV-2 is still in its infancy, developing rapidly to flourish in its new environment. Meanwhile, human immunity to the virus due to infection and vaccination has become increasingly complex, applying constant pressure to further evolve.

Its normal to see this kind of evolution this constant battle between human and pathogen, said Fenyong Liu, an infectious disease expert at UC Berkeleys School of Public Health. Each of us is focused on survival. We develop a better system to beat them, and theyre going to mutate and try to escape. It happens with all infectious diseases, but for COVID, the whole process really sped up because of the scale of it.

Predicting how evolution will shape the next iterations of this virus is tricky, and scientists lack the technology to do it with any precision. How the virus has mutated over the past two and a half years provides some clues: Scientists have identified dozens of specific mutations mostly associated with increasing infectiousness that have recurred in multiple variants. Those mutations likely will keep showing up, re-sorting themselves in different combinations that give the virus further survival advantages. Some of the mutations could become permanently embedded in the virus genetic code. A few already have.

Recently, the virus has mutated to evade hard-won human immunity, and most experts in virology believe it will continue down that evolutionary path. It could also acquire new mutations that make it more infectious, though its already become so efficient at spreading among humans that its hard to imagine how much more gains it can make there, some scientists say.

The most critical question and possibly the toughest to answer is whether the virus will evolve to cause more or less severe disease in humans. Many experts believe that viruses tend to become more benign over time one of the current coronaviruses that now causes the common cold may have been the source of a deadly pandemic in the late 1800s but thats not a sure thing, and no one can say how long such evolution may take. Omicron and its subvariants are causing milder disease than their predecessors, but it would be nave to assume a future variant couldnt arrive with mutations that make it fiercer once again, experts say.

Social distancing circles at Dolores Park on Saturday, May 23, 2020, in San Francisco. The 10-foot circles, which were eight feet apart from each other, were an effort to curb coronavirus spread.

Hopefully it will adapt and become a very mild seasonal disease, and our immune systems will adapt, too, Liu said. But in reality, the virus has unlimited capability to adapt and mutate.

Scientists began tracking the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 almost immediately after the virus was isolated and identified in early January 2020. Once the first genomic sequence was complete and had been shared on a public database, infectious disease experts around the world started hunting for mutations, largely to keep tabs on how the virus was spreading.

Most people by now are familiar with the role mutations play in giving the virus certain advantages. But most mutations dont actually have an obvious effect on the virus, theyre simply glitches in the code. Those mutations can serve as evolutionary breadcrumbs, though, allowing scientists to follow the virus trail as it travels widely around the globe. And throughout the pandemic, public health experts have used mutations to identify and control clusters of infections.

Still, scientists are most invested in tracking consequential mutations that may alter the public health response. For example, arrival of the incredibly infectious omicron led many officials to recommend people start wearing higher quality masks, and eventually triggered another universal mask mandate in California to help curb the spread.

The most influential mutations mostly have been identified in the spike protein, the section of the virus that projects out of the surface and latches onto the ACE2 receptor, a protein on the exterior of human cells through which SARS-CoV-2 gains entry.

The first significant mutation known as D614G and nicknamed Doug arrived sometime in spring 2020; it basically made the ACE2 receptor more accessible. It was like putting a wedge in the door to keep it open, said Shannon Bennett, chief of science at the California Academy of Sciences.

That mutation granted the virus an early boost in infectiousness, and it has stuck around in every important variant since. Identifying a mutation of that significance was surprising, and exciting, Bennett said. It was the kind of early evolutionary shift that scientists have never been able to capture before. With earlier viruses HIV, for example by the time scientists identified and were able to study them closely enough to look for mutations, they were already well established in humans and had likely gone through years of vigorous adaptations.

After D614G, the virus quickly accumulated mutations that mostly improved its ability to transmit and infect. Scientists havent yet determined exactly what all those changes are doing, at the biological level, to increase infectiousness. Some may allow the virus to replicate faster in the nose or bind more tightly to the ACE2 receptor, making it harder for the immune system to shake off an early infection. Mutations could also make the virus more durable, for instance able to survive for longer periods in the air.

By the end of 2020, it was becoming apparent that the virus was evolving quickly in an environment of widespread transmission. Troubling new variants were emerging at regular intervals, each causing new waves of infection in the country in which they emerged and sometimes on a global scale. And each new variant seemed to be at least somewhat more infectious than the one preceding it. Alpha, which dominated in the U.S. in early 2021, was perhaps 50% more infectious than the original virus, and delta, which fueled the summer 2021 surge, was perhaps 90% more infectious than alpha.

Omicron, which carried dozens of new mutations, was again more infectious up to fivefold over delta. And each of its subvariants has been more infectious still. The currently circulating strains, all offspring of omicron, are nearly as infectious as measles, which is the most contagious of all known human infections.

Scientists say the virus may have hit peak infectiousness, or close to it. Now, its evolving to get around the immune response, and that trend likely will continue. Early studies show that the two up-and-coming variants in the U.S. BA.4 and BA.5, which currently make up roughly a third of cases are the most immune evasive so far; people who are vaccinated or have already been infected, or both, may still be vulnerable.

I think theres a max in terms of how transmissible it can be, said Nadia Roan, an investigator at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco who studies immunology. Now almost the entire world has some form of immunity, whether from infection or vaccination or both, and thats the big pressure. A virus that is able to take off right now has to be immune evasive.

Immune evasion is such a concern that many experts believe the world needs to focus resources on developing next-generation vaccines that will target parts of the virus less prone to mutations. Manufacturers of the two main U.S. vaccines Pfizer and Moderna are working to update their products to better match the currently circulating variants, but thats difficult to do when the dominant variant changes every few months.

Ideally, scientists would develop a vaccine that neutralizes the virus preventing it from ever taking hold and stopping transmission entirely and doesnt fade over time. The latter may not be possible, though. It doesnt seem that this coronavirus will be inducing the same immunity that polio and measles induces that lasts for your entire life, said Raul Andino, a UCSF virologist.

Eventually, the pace of evolution in SARS-CoV-2 may slow down, or at least produce fewer consequential mutations that cause fresh surges several times a year. But its tough to guess when that will happen.

Virus evolution is relentless. The virus never takes a rest, never takes a break, and it never stops mutating, DeRisi said. The truce may come when we figure out what kind of yearly boosters we need, or what vaccination works.

We want to get the virus to where it just doesnt matter anymore, he said. Were not there yet. But theres reason to be optimistic, and also reason to be cautious and not let our guard down.

Erin Allday is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: eallday@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @erinallday

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Will COVID evolve to cause less severe disease? Why we can't assume the answer is yes - Danbury News Times

The middle of a pandemic would not be most peoples ideal time to join a new company, especially one working with ethanol producers in the middle of a fuel and climate crisis. Yet it is often in such challenging times that the most exciting and ingenious solutions are conceived.My arrival at Whitefox as head of global sales in June 2021 was the latest step in a career evolution that had begun in the speciality chemicals business, then progressed to the capital equipment business for a fuel pump manufacturer, and finally a spell in the filtration industry. In Whitefox I had found a company steeped in innovation and enjoying its own evolution, with a solution for separating mixtures in a way that reduced water and energy consumption, thus increasing profitability and minimising carbon emissions. It was a solution very much for these times, but with oil prices plummeting, nearly all new projects in the ethanol industry stopped. In such circumstances a company, and more importantly its people, can either be constrained and go into their shell, or come out determined to demonstrate their adaptability and innovative flair.The Whitefox team, based in London, Calgary, Chicago and now Omaha, rose to the challenge wonderfully and created a new and unique solution.The problem with ethanolThe amount of energy used for separating chemicals is a staggering 1015% of the world's total energy consumption1. Our quest at Whitefox is to provide modern, efficient solutions to achieve this task without that enormous energy deficit.The benefit to our customers is twofold: more efficient production equals less cost and more profit; it also reduces environmental impact in the form of steam and greenhouse gas emissions and water waste, which helps them to meet their net-zero targets. We arrived at our solution by taking the time afforded by the pandemic to get closer to customers like Kansas Ethanol. We learned from them about the rapidly evolving changes they were facing in the market and listened to what they were trying to achieve. It was important not to be prescriptive, rushing to find a fixed, premeditated solution, but to pay attention and let the solution fit the problem. Once the need was well understood, we applied 20 years of chemical and engineering experience to design, create and implement a unique membrane solution that enabled Kansas Ethanol to simultaneously produce an ultra-dry and ultra-pure USP grade ethanol with low congener levels, and a fuel grade ethanol with increased capacity and increased energy savings. The facility can now manufacture both products without the fuel grade product being an accidental byproduct of an inefficiency in the USP grade production process.A natural solutionIt was a solution born from observing nature. The way nature separates mixtures is through low energy, continuous filtering of molecules, not high-pressure swing absorption that separates by the application of brute force, which unfortunately is the energy guzzling technology used in the majority of industrial applications today. By advancing our membrane chemistry, we created a more efficient and robust separation process that gets closer to nature. Our engineering capabilities are also evolving to develop unrivalled ways of conserving energy in industrial processes and thus enabling our customers to strive for net zero objectives. It is this marriage of competencies that is allowing our ethanol customers and customers in adjacent industries, such as sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), to evolve with us and ultimately produce more with less waste of natural and valuable resources. Flexibility and sustainabilityNot only are there obvious operational and process benefits in our solution, but the ability to manufacture ethanol grades according to demand and not accident is providing Kansas Ethanol with the flexibility and adaptability to address changes in the market. Furthermore, this flexibility enables Kansas Ethanol to position itself ready to address further changes that may occur and be able to serve multiple customers with exacting specifications. In our small way, we are enabling our customers to evolve and adapt, and the reduced operational and ongoing cost benefit is more vital in this ever-changing world than it has even been. A visiting CEO of a leading ethanol provider, who visited the Kansas Ethanol site, remarked that our commissioning of this plant was an example of world class engineering.ICE XL the latest evolutionAt the Innovation Forum at the COP26 conference in Glasgow, Scotland, we were able to meet senior executives from multiple industries and the word on all their lips was decarbonisation. The cynics amongst us have heard enough buzzwords over the decades to be cautious, but post COP26 this same message is translating to real action and activity on the part of our customers.We are delighted to be working with Western Plains, an innovative producer which is working with various energy-efficient technologies with the firm objective of producing ethanol using zero carbon resources. Whitefox ICE-XL membrane technology is playing a pivotal role in this quest.Whitefox ICE-XL enables the separation of ethanol and water mixtures without the need to form azeotropic conditions. By using Whitefox membranes as the sole dehydration solution, not only is Western Plains able to increase capacity by 50-60% by avoiding all the unnecessary debottlenecking processes, but more importantly to reduce energy consumption by approximately half.We are also able to provide an energy recovery solution that will reduce energy consumption to one third of the original level. Evolution of knowledge and experience will undoubtedly see Western Plains go one step further and become a carbon negative producer in future.Sharing our knowledgeIn advance of the forthcoming FEW, and based on our feedback from comments at customer board meetings, conferences and exhibitions, we would like to stimulate thoughts on how we can help producers to lower your Plant CI score. We will describe some advanced energy-saving solutions, focusing on innovative high-efficiency dehydration processes, that will enable plant configuration and optimisation changes, integrated with the benefits of using continuous membrane technology to achieve a more tailored score, commensurate with Capex budgets, whilst also progressing with net zero objectives.After 20 years of marrying the chemistry and engineering knowhow of membrane technology, Whitefoxs evolution is demonstrating our growing relevance in multiple industries that require modern and efficient ways to separate mixtures. Come and talk to us.

Reference:1.Lively, R., Sholl, D. From water to organics in membrane separations. Nature Mater 16, 276279 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4860For more information: This article was written by Tony Short, head of global sales, Whitefox. Visit: whitefox.com

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A timely evolution for the ethanol industry - Biofuels International Magazine

Published onJune 28, 2022

CategoryNews

Featuring Sade, Billie Holiday, Janis Joplin, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, John Cage, The Rolling Stones, Beastie Boys, and more.

A new exhibition devoted to the evolution of music photography, called Studio to Stage, is opening at Paces NYC gallery this June.

Exploring exchanges across genres, ages, and locations, the exhibition features photography by Peter Hujar, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Janette Beckman, Robert Frank and more.

Spanning early jazz, NYC hip hop, British punk, European techno and beyond, Studio to Stage includes photos of Billie Holiday, Janis Joplin, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Iggy Pop, and Sade.

Ultimately, the exhibition hopes to reveal the ways that photographers have helped cultivate mythologies around performers and their respective scenes.

Studio to Stage will run from the 29th June 19th August at Pace New York.

Head here for more info.

Banner photo:

Janette Beckman, Sade, (color), New York City, 1983 Janette Beckman, courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles and Pace Gallery, New York.

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Evolution of music photography captured in new exhibition - The Vinyl Factory

The Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology was created in 1997 and currently comprises 14 primary and 8 affiliated faculty members, approximately 40 graduate students, 18 postdoctoral fellows, lecturers and research scientists, and 100 undergraduates with an EEB concentration. Our offices and laboratories are spread across the historic Osborn Memorial Labs (OML), the Environmental Science Center (ESC) and Building 31 on Yales West Campus.

The mission of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University is to achieve the highest possible quality of research, undergraduate, and graduate education in the fields of ecology, evolution, and organismal biology.

We discover, create, synthesize, and disseminate knowledge about the earths biodiversity, its ecological interactions, and its evolutionary history. We pursue integrative, interdisciplinary, and global research on phenomena that range from molecules to ecosystems.

We prepare Yale College undergraduate majors for careers in biology and medicine and educate other Yale College students in ecology, evolution, and biodiversity.

We seek to attract the most capable, promising, and diverse graduate students and postdoctoral appointees from the nation and the world and to prepare them for positions of leadership in research, education, and society.

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Welcome | Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

It is the first day of the New Year and misleading posts have already flooded social media. Several viral tweets from January 1, 2022, claim that India's largest Central Armed Police Force - the CRPF - has undergone a gear upgrade in the last decade.

"CRPF jawan 2011 Vs CRPF Jawan 2022. Choose wisely India. Jai Hind," says the claim along with two images of what is said to be of CRPF personnel.

India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the claim to be misleading. The image of a jawan has been shared as from 2011, while it was originally photographed in 2017. The second picture is of a member of CRPF's elite commando wing.

The first photo, claimed to be taken in 2011, shows a jawan donning khaki pants, an army-green vest and armed with an INSAS rifle.

A reverse search showed the photo was clicked by photographer Arbaz Mughal for Alamy News Live in Srinagar in 2017.

Hence, the first photo is not a decade old as the post wrongly claimed.

The second image shows another personnel in far-advanced military gear, including a night-vision-attached military helmet and a communication device. The word 'Commando' can be seen stitched on both sides of his grey uniform. A closer look showed the insignia on one of his sleeves that read "Valley QAT".

Using this clue, we ran a keyword search to learn that the CRPF's elite anti-terrorism commando unit in Jammu & Kashmir is called the Valley Quick Action Team or 'Valley QAT'. They are highly trained and equipped to work in close quarters with the Indian Army and Jammu & Kashmir Police during counter-insurgency operations.

A reverse image search of the commando's image - with 'Valley QAT' as a keyword - cleared our doubts. The same photo, along with a handful of similar images, was found on the website of stock photo firm Getty Images.

This answered the question of why the equipment owned by the officer in the second image is far advanced than that of the jawan in the first.

But has the CRPF altered their uniform post-2017 to grey? We checked the latest parade of the CRPF from December 23, 2021, on the YouTube channel of Doordarshan National. This confirmed that the khaki uniforms are still in place for CRPF personnel.

Thus, it can be concluded that the two photos of CRPF jawans in the viral claim were not taken a decade apart or represent the upgrades the force has undergone over the years.

ClaimA photo comparison of upgraded gear used by the CRPF in 2011 and 2022.ConclusionThe claim is misleading as the image shared as that of the CRPF jawan from 2011 was clicked in 2017, while the second image is of an elite commando of the paramilitary force.

The number of crows determines the intensity of the lie.

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Fact Check: Evolution of CRPF tactical gear over the ...

Because an immunocompromised host doesnt produce a lot of antibodies, many viruses are left to propagate. And new mutant viruses that resist the antibodies can multiply.

A mutation that allows a virus to evade antibodies isnt necessarily advantageous. It could make the viruss spike protein unstable so that it cant latch quickly onto a cell, for example. But inside someone with a weak immune system, viruses may be able to gain a new mutation that stabilizes the spike again.

Similar mutations could have built upon themselves again and again in the same person, Dr. Pond speculates, until Omicron evolved a spike protein with just the right combination of mutations to allow it to spread supremely well among healthy people.

It certainly seems plausible, said Sarah Otto, an evolutionary biologist at the University of British Columbia who was not involved in the study. But she said scientists still needed to run experiments to rule out alternative explanations.

Its possible, for example, that the 13 spike mutations offer no benefit to Omicron at all. Instead, some of the other spike mutations could be making Omicron successful, and the 13 are just along for the ride.

I would be cautious about interpreting the data to indicate that all of these previously deleterious mutations have been adaptively favored, Dr. Otto said.

Dr. Pond also acknowledged that his hypothesis still has some big gaps. For example, its not clear why, during a chronic infection, Omicron would have gained an advantage from its new bubble method for getting into cells.

We just lack imagination, Dr. Pond said.

James Lloyd-Smith, a disease ecologist at U.C.L.A. who was not involved in the study, said that the research revealed just how hard it is to reconstruct the evolution of a virus, even one that arose recently. Nature is certainly doing its part to keep us humble, he said.

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How Omicron's Mutations Allow It To Thrive - The New York Times

The oldest evidence of Homo erectus comes from an arid hillside near the border of Ethiopia and Kenya. Though the 1.9-million-year-old fossil is only a tiny shard, more complete, if more recent individuals show that the species looked recognizably human. The species had long legs and short arms. Its face was flat, without a chimp-like snout. Behind that face was a hefty brain, bigger than that of any of its predecessors.

The question, then, is what forces shaped H. erectus, and further down the line, its descendant Homo sapiens.

One popular theory has it that a meat-heavy diet allowed H. erectus to invest in its brainpower. But a new report casts doubt on the basic evidence to support the idea.

The theory that a meaty diet allowed human brains to develop is sometimes called the meat made us human hypothesis. One of the leading ideas is that if you switch from a plant-based diet towards a diet thats rich in protein and fat, like eating meat and bone marrow from carcasses, you have the energy you need to feed a larger brain, says Andrew Barr, a paleoanthropologist at George Washington University, who studies the environment of early human evolution.

Meat-eating could explain another feature of H. erectus: its dainty, human-like digestive system. The guts of other apes are shaped almost like a skirt, says Briana Pobiner, a zooarchaeologist at the Smithsonians Museum of Natural History, with a small top and a wide bottom. A modern humans is like a slim skirt as opposed to a wide skirt.

For decades the theorys proponents pointed to physical objects for support. The archeological evidence has lined up with this, says Pobiner. In the 1980s, archaeologists started finding butchery marks on fossil bones in East Africa, and going, okay, early humans were eating these animals.

Plenty of other apes eat meatchimps even use basic tools to huntbut the proliferation of butchered bones suggested that perhaps, H. erectus or its close ancestors had become more skilled carnivores.

But that evidence isnt what it appears, according to a new study co-authored by Pobiner and Barr, and published in the journal PNAS. There is an explosion of recorded butchered bones and stone tools after 1.9 million years ago, when H. erectus was wandering aroundbut it appears to be because anthropologists have excavated more sites from that period.

We definitely see an increase in the number of cut-marked bones, says Pobiner. But what we were trying to figure out is: is that a real behavioral signal? Or is it just that you get more cut marked fossils if you pull more fossils out of the ground?

[Related: Is it time to change the way we talk about human evolution?]

To get an overhead view of the evidence, the team went back to sites dating to 2.6 million to 1.2 million years ago, and counted the number of fossils and the number of butchered bones.

If the theory were true, they would have seen a higher proportion of cut bones after the emergence of H. erectus, say from 10 percent to 50 percent. Instead, the proportion of butchery didnt change with timesites with more bones just had more butchered ones, as well. That suggests that earlier hominids were also chopping up meat, but contemporary researchers just havent found as many bone stashes from that period.

After Homo erectus, theres been a lot of intensive research activity on finding these smoking guns of human carnivory, Barr says. Whereas prior, theres less research effort. Our study shows that it is influencing how much evidence is available.

The lack of pre-H. erectus fossils is also related to a quirk of geology, says Barr: The rock containing the pre-H. erectus period tends to be less accessible. Were at the whim of mother nature and Earths crust in terms of what sediments are easily exposed at the surface.

The study doesnt fully disprove the meat made us human idea. Future sites could find that earlier hominids werent eating much meat. The available evidence just doesnt say one way or another.

The study shows us that sometimes in science we need to look even more critically at data sets that fit our preconceptions and expectations, says Peter Ungar, an anthropologist at the University of Arkansas who has written extensively on the role of diet in human evolution, and wasnt involved with this new research. The results underscore the fact that the story of human evolution is too nuanced and complex for simple answers to the question of what made us human.

[Related: How to build the best cooking fire right on the ground]

Other possibilities that could have given our brains more fuel include technological shifts, like cooking, that unlocked extra nutrients. Social changes, like elders foraging food for young children, could have contributed.

Ungar cautions against latching on to any one theory. I do not think that fire made us human or stone tools made us human, he says. But all of these things are part of the story of increasing access to a broader variety of foods to fuel our ancestors bodies given ever-changing conditions.

H. erectus is also the first hominid to have unambiguously left Africathe first fossils were found in Indonesia, and its possible that it evolved somewhere in Asia in the first place. H. erectus wasnt a specialist. Like us, it was probably shaped by its ability to live through massive changes.

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Eating meat may not have been as crucial to human evolution as we thought - Popular Science

Image source: Discovery Institute Press.

A new episode ofID the Futurekicks off a three-part series featuringTaking Leave of Darwin author Neil Thomas interviewed by radio host Hank Hanegraaff. Hanegraaff lauds Thomass book and underscores how influential Darwins theory of evolution has been on Western culture. Thomas sketches the cultural milieu and individual motivations that hes convinced drew Darwin toward his formulation of the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Here the focus is not on the various evidential weaknesses of Darwins theory (which Thomas does cover in his book) but on a question that puzzled Thomas once he became convinced of just how evidentially weak the case for Darwinism was: How was it that a theory so poorly supported by the evidence (such that even some of its most ardent supporters found themselves rejecting key aspects of it) nevertheless came to dominate the academy? Tune in to find out what Thomas ultimately concluded from his autopsy of the theory and its early reception. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Excerpt from:

Neil Thomas: An Autopsy of Darwinism - Discovery Institute

As networks continue to evolve and security threats get more complex, security analytics plays an increasingly critical role in securing the enterprise. By combining software, algorithms and analytic processes, security analytics helps IT and security teams proactively (and reactively) detect threats before they result in data loss or other harmful outcomes.

Given that the average time to identify and contain a data breach in 2021 was 287 days, its more important than ever for organizations to include security analytics in their threat detection and response programs. But how has this technology changed over the last decade? In this article, I will explore the evolution and importance of security analytics.

This evolution has had two main trends.

First, security analytics is becoming more sophisticated. In the last 10 years the industry has transitioned from rule-based alerting to big data and machine learning analysis. Second, products have become more open and customizable.

As these technologies have advanced, so too have their specific use cases, with organizations using these for identity analytics (examining authentication, authorization and access for anomalies), fraud (finding anomalous transactions), and more. Today, security analytics plays a central role in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions and Network Detection and Response products (not to mention standalone security analytics software).

To better understand this evolution and the capabilities of current security analytics solutions, lets dive into the three primary generations of security analytics advancement.

Traditional security analytics focused on correlation and rules within a proprietary platform.

Users imported data into a closed database, the data was normalized and run through a correlation engine, and then the system produced alerts based on rules. Products typically included alert enrichment, which provided more useful context along with an alert, such as linking it to a specific user, host, or IP address.

However, this era often suffered from alert fatigue where the analytic solution produced more alerts than the security team could investigate, including high numbers of false positives. Sorting which alerts were important and which ones werent involved a great deal of manual work. Furthermore, these solutions were often entirely proprietary, with little to no options for customization. This prevented the security team from tweaking rules to cut down on the number of bad alerts. They were stuck with the alert fatigue issue.

The second generation of security analytics began to incorporate big data and statistical analysis, while remaining a black box to users.

These solutions offered data lakes instead of databases, which allowed for a greater variety of data to be gathered and analyzed, but they were still proprietary. New analytics capabilities emerged, such as the ability to include cloud data, network packets and flow data, but users still couldnt see how they worked or verify the results.

Data enrichment was better, but users largely could not customize the contextual data they wanted with their alerts. For example, a security team might want to add asset criticality data so they can prioritize events that affect key pieces of their infrastructure or include information from external sources like VirusTotal.

Many solutions started offering threat hunting capabilities as well, which made it easier for security teams to proactively search for suspicious activity that evaded perimeter security controls.

But false positives and limited bandwidth on security teams continued to be a major challenge. In fact, this remains a challenge today. According to the 2021 Insider Threat Report from Cybersecurity Insiders, 33% of respondents said the biggest hurdle to maximizing the value of their SIEM was not having enough resources and 20% said too many false positives.

The third generation of security analytics technologies brings us to the current day, where machine learning, behavioral analysis and customization are driving innovation.

There are now SIEM products that allow organizations to use their existing data lakes, rather than forcing customers to use proprietary ones. And some solutions have opened their analytics, enrichment, and machine learning models so users can better understand them and modify as needed.

Today, powerful algorithms find patterns in data, set baselines and identify outliers. Theres also a greater focus on identifying anomalous behavior (a user taking suspicious actions) and on prioritizing and ranking the risk of alerts based on contextual information like data from Sharepoint or IAM systems. For example, a user accessing source code with legitimate credentials might be a low-priority alert at best, but that user doing so in the middle of the night for the first time in weeks from a suspicious location should trigger a high-priority alert. Thanks to these capabilities, analytic solutions are reaching the point where they can trigger remediation actions automatically.

Security analytics have evolved quickly in recent years and as we look ahead, the industry is starting to combine SIEM, User Entity Behavioral Analytics (UEBA), Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) and Extended Detection and Response (XDR) for a more automated and telemetry rich approach to threat detection and response.

But today, the latest advancements are helping to reduce the workload on security teams, allowing them to better detect and contain both known and unknown threats more quickly. Open access to security analytics is also a monumental shift that helps teams better understand and tweak these solutions so they can verify models and generate better results.

Ideally, analytics solutions should have strong pre-built libraries of machine learning models that dont require users to be data scientists to edit them (but give them the editing option if needed). As these capabilities continue to develop, I believe theyll be a key factor in helping security teams reduce that 287-day average time to contain a breach in the coming years.

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The evolution of security analytics - Help Net Security

Sex is an expensive business, biologically speaking. Finding a suitable mate takes time and energy. Offspring are also a huge investment of resources. But sex does offer a rewarding possibility: children who are fitter than their parents thanks to new and better combinations of genes. Darwin realised that many animal species therefore carefully select their mates.

There is an innate biological inequality, however. Eggs are relatively few in number a large and costly investment while sperm are small and vastly more abundant. And embryos often need further investment in the body or outside. Since the greater investment tends to fall on females, they are often the more selective sex (while males compete to be chosen).

But according to a new paper, published in Science, Charles Darwins patriarchal world view led him to dismiss female agency and mate choice in humans.

He also downplayed the role of female variation in other animal species, assuming they were rather uniform, and always made similar decisions. And he thought there was enormous variation among the males who battled for female attention by showing off stunning ranges of skills and beauty. This maintained the focus on the dynamics of male dominance hierarchies, sexual ornamentation and variation as drivers of sexual selection, even if females sometimes did the choosing.

But do Darwins ideas on sexual selection hold up today?

When animals choose a partner, their appearance, sound and smell can all be accurate guides to the survival ability of the prospective mate. For example, large antlers in deer are a good indicator of fighting ability, dominance and overall fitness. But many other traits can be chosen because they are otherwise conspicuous and attractive yet may be a poor guide to overall genetic quality, or even misleading.

Females may evolve to choose mates with whom their offspring are less likely to survive, provided there are more such offspring as a trade off. In some species of poecilid fish, for example, male attractiveness is linked to genes that can reduce their survival. Females therefore face a dilemma: mate with a more attractive male and produce some highly attractive but otherwise less vigorous sons, or mate with a less attractive male to maximise the survival of those sons. Which strategy will produce most grandchildren?

Females may therefore select for traits in males that apparently have no other bearing upon their ability to survive. The peacocks tail is a handicap in most other aspects of its life an impediment to flight and evading predators save for the attraction of a female. However, it may also be true that the ability of a male to manage such a burden is itself a marker of overall genetic quality and rigour.

It isnt always females who choose. In pipefishes, the males invest heavily by carrying the fertilised eggs until they hatch, and it is the females who compete with each other in order to secure the attentions of males.

Optimal mate choice is not the same for all individuals, or at all times in their development. For example, younger satin bowerbirds are frightened by the most vigorous male displays, while older females typically find these most attractive. And many fishes are sequential hermaphrodites, changing sex and therefore mate choices as they age.

Research since Darwin therefore reveals that mate choice is a far more complex process than he may have supposed, and is governed by variation in both sexes.

So, is the accusation of sexism levelled at Darwin really valid, and did this cloud his science? There is certainly some evidence that Darwin underestimated the importance of variation, strategy and even promiscuity in most female animals.

For example, Darwin - possibly as a result of a prevailing prudishness - placed little emphasis on mechanisms of sexual selection that operate after mating. Female birds and mammals may choose to mate with multiple males, and their sperm can compete to fertilise one or more eggs within the reproductive tract.

Cats, dogs and other animals can have litters with multiple fathers (the gloriously named heteropaternal superfecundation - even though the sound of it is really quite atrocious!). There is even some suggestion that the human penis being thicker than our nearest primate relatives is an adaptation for physically displacing the sperm of competing males. Such earthy speculations were anathema to Darwins sensibilities.

Female blue tits often mate with multiple males in order to ensure their protection and support - a somewhat manipulative strategy when paternity for the prospective fathers is uncertain. All this challenges Darwins assumption that females are relatively passive and non-strategic.

Where males make a greater investment, they become more active in mate choice. Male (rather than female) poison dart frogs (Dendrobates auratus) protect the young, and therefore attract multiple females who compete to lay eggs for them to fertilise. Many bird species have biparental care, and therefore a richer diversity of mating systems.

Inevitably, Darwins world view was shaped by the culture of his time, and his personal writings make it difficult to mount a particularly robust defence. In a letter from 1882, he wrote I certainly think that women, though generally superior to men to [sic] moral qualities are inferior intellectually; & there seems to me to be a great difficulty from the laws of inheritance in their becoming the intellectual equals of man.

He also deliberated over the relative merits of marriage, famously noting: Home, & someone to take care of house Charms of music & female chit-chat. These things good for ones health. but terrible loss of time.

Unsurprisingly there is much that Darwin did not fully understand. Darwin like Albert Einstein, H.G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood. Ironically, he knew nothing of genetics and the mechanisms by which close relatives are more likely to have offspring with certain genetic diseases. Intriguingly, our closest relatives in the tree of life, the chimpanzees, naturally circumvent this problem, since females select mates that are more distantly related to them than the average male in the available pool.

Despite its omissions, however, Darwins understanding was radically more advanced than anything that preceded it. When combined with the subsequent understanding of genetics and inheritance, Darwins writings are still the bedrock of all modern evolutionary biology.

Excerpt from:

Evolution: how Victorian sexism influenced Darwin's theories new research - The Conversation UK