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Comprehensive Report on Adrenomyeloneuropathy Treatment Market Set to Witness Huge Growth by 2026 | Ascend Biopharmaceuticals, Novadip Biosciences,…

Posted on September 9, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Adrenomyeloneuropathy Treatment Marketresearch is an intelligence report with meticulous efforts undertaken to study the right and valuable information. The data which has been looked upon is done considering both, the existing top players and the upcoming competitors. Business strategies of the key players and the new entering market industries are studied in detail. Well explained SWOT analysis, revenue share and contact information are shared in this report analysis.

Adrenomyeloneuropathy Treatment Market is growing at a High CAGR during the forecast period 2020-2026. The increasing interest of the individuals in this industry is that the major reason for the expansion of this market.

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Note In order to provide more accurate market forecast, all our reports will be updated before delivery by considering the impact of COVID-19.

Top Key Vendors of this Market includes: Ascend Biopharmaceuticals, Novadip Biosciences, Eureka Therapeutics, Human Longevity, Regeneus, Allogene Therapeutics, BioRestorative Therapies, Immatics Biotechnologies, NewLink Genetics, Cytori Therapeutics, Talaris Therapeutics

This report provides a detailed and analytical look at the various companies that are working to achieve a high market share in the global Adrenomyeloneuropathy Treatment market. Data is provided for the top and fastest growing segments. This report implements a balanced mix of primary and secondary research methodologies for analysis. Markets are categorized according to key criteria. To this end, the report includes a section dedicated to the company profile. This report will help you identify your needs, discover problem areas, discover better opportunities, and help all your organizations primary leadership processes. You can ensure the performance of your public relations efforts and monitor customer objections to stay one step ahead and limit losses.

The report provides insights on the following pointers:

Market Penetration:Comprehensive information on the product portfolios of the top players in the Adrenomyeloneuropathy Treatment market.

Product Development/Innovation:Detailed insights on the upcoming technologies, R&D activities, and product launches in the market.

Competitive Assessment: In-depth assessment of the market strategies, geographic and business segments of the leading players in the market.

Market Development:Comprehensive information about emerging markets. This report analyzes the market for various segments across geographies.

Market Diversification:Exhaustive information about new products, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments in the Adrenomyeloneuropathy Treatment market.

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The cost analysis of the Global Adrenomyeloneuropathy Treatment Market has been performed while keeping in view manufacturing expenses, labor cost, and raw materials and their market concentration rate, suppliers, and price trend. Other factors such as Supply chain, downstream buyers, and sourcing strategy have been assessed to provide a complete and in-depth view of the market. Buyers of the report will also be exposed to a study on market positioning with factors such as target client, brand strategy, and price strategy taken into consideration.

Global Adrenomyeloneuropathy Treatment Market Segmentation:

Market Segmentation by Type:

Steroid Replacement TherapyStem Cell Transplant

Market Segmentation by Application:

HospitalsClinicsAmbulatory Surgical Centers

Reasons for buying this report:

Table of Contents

Global Adrenomyeloneuropathy Treatment Market Research Report 2020

Chapter 1 Adrenomyeloneuropathy Treatment Market Overview

Chapter 2 Global Economic Impact on Industry

Chapter 3 Global Market Competition by Manufacturers

Chapter 4 Global Production, Revenue (Value) by Region

Chapter 5 Global Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions

Chapter 6 Global Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type

Chapter 7 Global Market Analysis by Application

Chapter 8 Manufacturing Cost Analysis

Chapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers

Chapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders

Chapter 11 Market Effect Factors Analysis

Chapter 12 Global Adrenomyeloneuropathy Treatment Market Forecast

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Nutrition and the Wisdom of Ethnic Cuisine: A Japanese Doctor’s Perspective – Nippon.com

Posted on September 11, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

When it comes to healthy eating, one size does not fit all. Japanese cooking, with its emphasis on rice, fish, and vegetables, may not be the best diet for everyone, but it is marvelously suited to the physiology of the Japanese, writes physician and writer Okuda Masako.

The popularity of Japanese cuisine has soared in recent decades, and one reason is undoubtedly its healthful image. The average lifespan of the Japanese people climbed rapidly after World War II. By around 1980, Japan had the highest life expectancy of any country in the world, and it still ranks near the top. (The worlds oldest living person is also a Japanese woman.) Amid a slew of investigations into the secrets of Japanese longevity, attention quickly centered on the benefits of washoku, traditional Japanese cooking.

My research and experience have taught me that the optimal diet depends on a variety of hereditary and environmental factors. But there is no denying that washoku has contributed to the health and longevity of the Japanese people. Let us begin by examining how.

In terms of health and long life, the biggest physiological factor the Japanese have going for them is a low risk of atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis occurs when fats and other substances build up along the walls of arteries, restricting or even blocking blood flow. In the brain, such a blockage is known as a cerebral infarction (stroke); in the heart, it is called a myocardial infarction (heart attack). The incidence of myocardial infarction in Japan is among the lowest in the world.

Scientists believe that both genetics and diet play a role in protecting Japanese arteries. One factor is a high level of good cholesterol, or HDL (high-density lipoproteins), in the blood. In a 2008 study, Japanese HDL levels were found to be roughly 10% higher than those of white Americans on average. Another reason is that fish is a big part of the traditional Japanese diet, and fish contains EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), two polyunsaturated fatty acids that help prevent hardening of the arteries. Since ancient times, the Japanese have been eating oily fish like mackerel, sardines, yellowtail tuna, and eel, which are abundant off the coast of Japan and are rich in EPA and DHA. In a 2015 study, the average concentration of DHA in Japanese maternal milk was determined to be up to six times that found in Western countries and about twice that found in China.

A second major contributor to Japanese health is the gut microbiota, the many and varied microorganisms living in the intestinal tract. A 2016 analysis of the intestinal microbiota of subjects from 12 countries found that the Japanese had the highest counts of beneficial bifidobacteria. (Interestingly, the gut microbiome of the Chinese subjects was closer to that of the Western subjects studied.) This can probably be attributed to the high fiber content of the traditional Japanese diet, with its emphasis on grains and vegetables. Dietary fiber provides a good nutritional environment for beneficial microbes and helps cleanse the gut of the harmful substances that unhealthy bacteria produce. Since it takes a generation or more to permanently alter the gut microbiota, todays Japanese probably owe their intestinal health to the dietary habits of their parents and grandparents.

All of this might lead one to the conclusion that eating washoku will automatically make one healthier. Unfortunately, it is not quite so simple. In general, the traditional diets that developed in various parts of the world were optimally adapted to the local environment and the needs of the native population. The physiology of the native population, in return, adapted to the diet.

There are obvious physical differences between Japanese people and Westerners. But the differences go beyond hair texture and eye color. There are also disparities in musculature, body fat, and body temperature, as well as various factors that affect digestion and metabolism of alcohol: hormone and enzyme secretion, the shape of the stomach, the composition of the gut flora, and so forth. Race is not just skin-deep.

The Japanese stomach is adapted to consumption of grain.

Figure 1 illustrates the stomach shapes typically found in Japanese people on the one hand and people of Westerners extraction on the other. The differences are the result of disparities in the traditional diet.

The Japanese have long relied on rice and other grains as their dietary staple. Grains are a good source of energy, but whole grains in particular take time to digest because of their high fiber content. The Japanese stomach is vertically elongated so as to store, mix, and break down such food before it continues on into the intestines. The intestines, in turn, are rich in the kinds of bacteria that help digest and extract nutrition from starchy foods.

By contrast, the traditional European diet, with its emphasis on meat and dairy products, is considerably higher in protein and fat. Since protein and fat are digested primarily in the intestines, the food needs to move more rapidly from the stomach to the gut. The digestive system evolved to deal with these demands. For example, a large quantity of stomach acid is produced so that the stomach can process the food quickly; comparatively thicker stomach muscles then push it smoothly into the intestines.Plenty of enzymes and other fluids are secreted to aid the digestion of fat and protein inside the intestines.

It has long been known that the ability of adults to digest milk varies by ethnicity and region. The bodys capacity to digest the lactose in milk hinges on continued production of the enzyme lactase. The map in figure 2 shows the global distribution of lactose-intolerant adults in various parts of the world, with higher concentrations indicated by darker shades. While most people in the British Isles and Scandinavia digest milk easily, close to 90% of adults in Southeast Asia and East Asia (including Japan) have trouble with it.

Darker shades indicate regions with higher rates of adult lactose intolerance.

Such differences in physiology can translate into serious health problems when people adopt different diets and lifestyles. One example involves vitamin D, which is essential to bone health, among other things. Vitamin D is produced inside the body when the skin is exposed to the suns ultraviolet rays, but it can also be obtained from dietary sources like oily fish. It has been suggested that Africans, who evolved in a part of the world where year-round UV exposure is high, may be less well equipped to absorb vitamin D from dietary sources, and this may be why African Americans tend to have relatively low vitamin-D levels. Some experts have warned that African Americans need to adjust their diets to avoid health problems resulting from vitamin D insufficiency. The optimum diet for any person depends on genetic makeup, as well as lifestyle and environment.

Genetics also influences the way our bodies accumulate fat. One characteristic of the Japanese constitution is the tendency to accumulate visceral adipose tissue, or fat inside the abdominal cavity, as opposed to the subcutaneous fat that collects under the skin. Unfortunately, visceral fat is the more worrisome kind.

Cross-sections showing the distribution of abdominal fat in representative Japanese (left) and Westerners (right) subjects.

This is a fairly recent phenomenon, mind you. In earlier times, obesity was relatively rare in Japan, and the incidence of chronic diseases associated with visceral fatincluding type 2 diabetes, along with other diseases like breast cancer and colon cancerwas correspondingly low. That began to change in the 1960s to 1980s, as the Japanese diet became increasingly westernized, leading to higher fat consumption and lower intake of fiber. And with more people doing deskwork and leading sedentary lifestyles, lack of exercise contributed to the rise of obesity and the accumulation of visceral fat. The result has been a significant increase in disease, raising concerns for the future.

Extensive studies have revealed that a traditional Japanese dietlow in meat and dairy products, high in soybeans and fish, and high in fiber from grains, vegetables, and seaweedis tied to very low accumulation of visceral fat. In other words, washoku is ideally suited to the physiological traits of the Japanese people, protecting them from their innate tendency to accumulate visceral fat. Without knowing the science, our forebears managed to develop, preserve, and pass down a dietary culture perfectly adapted to our own metabolism.

Washoku has other health benefits as well. Soybeans, green and yellow vegetables, and small fish eaten whole all help to build strong bones. Lifelong consumption of soy foods also contributes to the relativelylow incidence in Japan of diabetes, breast cancer, and colon cancer, all ailments linked closely to visceral fat levels, as compared with the West

One notable weakness of the Japanese diet as it has developed in the past two or three centuries is the overwhelming preference for polished rice. For the health-conscious, I would recommend brown rice, which has seven times the dietary fiber of white rice and contains substances that help the body burn visceral fat.

In recent years, science has made considerable progress in identifying genetic differences among ethnic groups. In 2016, a Japanese team of researchers released the first Japanese reference genome panel (JRG v1), a whole-genome assembly representing the genes of a typical healthy Japanese. Comparison with the human reference genome has revealed millions of single-nucleotide differences, many of which doubtless reflect significant differences in nutrition physiology. We need to abandon the one-size-fits-all approach to nutrition and consider what diet works best for each ethnic group.

Nowadays, the Japanese people are able to enjoy delicious cooking from every part of the world. That is a splendid thing, as long as we keep in mind that washoku is the bedrock of our much-admired health and longevity.

(Originally written in Japanese. Banner photo: Dairy and meat products figure heavily in the Western diet, while the traditional Japanese diet has much to offer in the area of human health. Pixta.)

Neurohacker Collective Achieves Top 10% Ranking in the Inc. 5000 List of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies – PRNewswire

Posted on September 2, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

CARLSBAD, Calif., Sept. 1, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Carlsbad, Californiabased NEUROHACKER COLLECTIVE achieves # 412 on the 2020 Inc. 5000 list of "Fastest-Growing Private Companies in America." This recognition comes as the supplement company reports three-year revenue growth of 1119.9% percent.

Neurohacker Collective was founded in 2015 with the mission of advancing human quality of life by creating best in class well-being products using a unique research and development methodology premised on complex systems science. This innovative scientific approach focuses on supporting the body's ability to self-regulate. The company began with a focus on optimizing human cognition with its Qualia Mind nootropic products. They've since launched a rapidly expanding and successful product lineup across categories in the trillion-dollar wellness marketplace, supporting health needs such as longevity, energy, and sleep.

The Inc. 5000 ranks the most successful companies within the American economy's most dynamic segmentits independent small businesses. Companies such as Microsoft, Intuit, Patagonia, Zappos and many other Fortune 1000 giants gained early national exposure by achieving inclusion in the annual Inc. rankings. The 2020 rankings show Neurohacker Collective among the top-5 fastest-growing companies in America specializing in supplemental nutrition products.

Not only have the 2020 Inc. 5000 companies performed well within their markets, but the list as a whole shows staggering growth. Those included have achieved a blistering three-year average growth rate of over 500 percent, and a median rate of 165 percent. The Inc. 5000's aggregate revenue was $209 billion in 2019, accounting for over 1 million jobs in the past three years.

2020's Inc. 5000 features company profiles and an interactive database that sorts ranked companies by industry, region, and other criteria. It can be found at http://www.inc.com/inc5000. Neurohacker Collective will be featured in the September issue of Inc., available on newsstands August 12th, along with the other members of 2020's Inc. 5000.

"Ranking 412 in the 2020 Inc. 5000 list is a great achievement for all our team's hard work. We are truly thankful for our community and investors who are as passionate as we are about our Qualia products." -James Schmachtenberger, CEO

In the near future, Neurohacker Collective will develop solutions for mood, pain, skin health, immune function, fitness performance, hormone balancing, and cardiovascular health.

About NeurohackerNeurohacker Collective was founded in 2015 with the mission to advance human quality life by creating best in class well-being products. Neurohacker Collective's products are radically different because they employ a unique methodology to research and development based on complex systems science. This scientific approach focuses on supporting the body's ability to self-regulate. The company began focusing on cognitive products with the launch of Qualia Mind and has released products to support longevity, energy, and sleep in the last year. Learn more about their scientific approach here.

About Inc. MediaThe world's most trusted business-media brand, Inc. offers entrepreneurs the knowledge, tools, connections, and community to build great companies. Its award-winning multiplatform content reaches more than 50 million people each month across a variety of channels including websites, newsletters, social media, podcasts, and print. Its prestigious Inc. 5000 list, produced every year since 1982, analyzes company data to recognize the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States. The global recognition that comes with inclusion in the 5000 gives the founders of the best businesses an opportunity to engage with an exclusive community of their peers, and the credibility that helps them drive sales and recruit talent. The associated Inc. 5000 Conference is part of a highly acclaimed portfolio of bespoke events produced by Inc.

SOURCE Neurohacker Collective

http://www.neurohacker.com

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Neurohacker Collective Achieves Top 10% Ranking in the Inc. 5000 List of America's Fastest-Growing Private Companies - PRNewswire

AKG Supplement Promoted Healthy Aging & Longevity In Animal Study – Anti Aging News

Posted on September 9, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Mice given alpha-ketoglutarate (AKG) supplements were reported to be healthier as they aged, and female mice lived longer than those not given the supplement, according to the researchers at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.

The big thing about this is that its safety profile is so good, says the University of North Dakota aging researcher Holly Brown-Borg, who was not involved with the study. It has potential and should be explored further, for sure.

AKG is naturally made in both mice and human bodies, and it is already considered to be safe by regulators. It is part of the metabolic cycle that cells use to make energy from food; sometimes it is used to treat osteoporosis and kidney disease, along with some bodybuilders to bulk up.

In 2014 researchers discovered that this molecule may have an anti-ageing possibility when a study published in Nature reported that it helped to extend the lifespan of C. elegans by more than 50%; and other studies showed it improving lifespan in fruit flies.

AKG levels will gradually decline with age, as such the researchers are looking for ways to restore levels to those seen in younger years. In this study published in Cell Metabolism 18-month-old mice, which is the equivalent of around 55 human years, were given AKG as 2% of their daily feed until they died or for up to 21 months, recording all changes.

Within a few months: They looked much blacker, shinier, and younger than control mice, says Azar Asadi Shahmirzadi, a postdoc at the Buck Institute who did the experiments as a graduate student. Animals in the AKG group also scored on average 40% better on tests of frailty as measured by 31 physiological attributes including walking gait, grip strength hearing, and hair colour. Additionally, female mice in the AKG group lived a median of 8-20% longer than the controls. It was noted that the mice in the AKG group did not perform better in tests for heart function or treadmill endurance, and they did not test for cognitive improvement.

Female mice in the AKG group were found to produce higher levels of a molecule that fights inflammation. Although these effects on health and longevity were smaller for AKG than for some other anti-ageing compounds, some of the other compounds have had safety issues, for example, rapamycin can suppress the immune system and may promote diabetes.

The researchers plan to test AKG in human volunteers in the near future, possibly in a group of people between the ages of 45-65 to investigate whether the molecule will improve ageing-related biomarkers such as inflammation, arterial hardening, and chemical signatures on DNA that are associated with ageing.

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AKG Supplement Promoted Healthy Aging & Longevity In Animal Study - Anti Aging News

As older consumers radically change their spending patterns, what do investors need to know? – Prospect

Posted on September 2, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Photo: Isabel Infantes/EMPICS Entertainment

Even without a second wave of infections, Covid-19 has done brutal damage to businesses such as restaurants, pubs, travel and tourism firms and those in the arts, entertainment and culture sectorsthe businesses that exist because we are (or were) social beings.

Share prices across these sectors are down by up to 60 per cent since early March. By high summer, 48 per cent of arts, entertainment and recreation businesses and 22 per cent of accommodation and food service companies were closed with no concrete plans to reopen, according to the ONS. As government life-support is switched off, weaker players will disappear.

Millions of jobs, as well as all hopes of returning to a normal social life, now depend on reviving businesses that live or die on human interaction. Tackling this challenge will be especially hard because Covid-19 is most dangerous for those we increasingly rely on to sustain these sectors: older consumers.

The International Longevity Centre published a report last year, Maximising the Longevity Dividend, highlighting huge projected growth in the spending power of consumers aged 50-plus over coming decades. This will happen, the ILC said, because the number of older people is rising, but also because their wealth is increasing. People aged 50-plus accounted for 30 per cent of total earnings in 2018, the ILC reported, which would rise to 40 per cent by 2040. Older people would account for 63 per cent of consumer spending by then. Most importantly, the ILC said: People aged 50 and over are shifting their spending towards non-essential purchases such as leisure. The top three growing sectors for older consumers are recreation and culture; transport; and household goods and services.

There are signs Covid-19 has reversed that trend. According to YouGov polling carried out as pubs were reopening, around 55 per cent of people aged 50-plus would not venture back until later this year at the earliest, and around 10 per cent said they never would. If they are as good as their word, the hit to leisure spending will be large, even allowing for areas that prosperbicycle sales, perhaps, and other outdoor pursuits.

And if the cash-strapped government ends the triple lock on annual state pension increases of at least 2.5 per cent, the impact on our struggling leisure sector could be greater still.

For investors, the message is clear. Keep an eye on how behaviour among older consumers is evolving: it will shape returns. And all of us should remember that quite apart from any moral obligation, keeping older people safe is hugely in our collective economic interests.

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As older consumers radically change their spending patterns, what do investors need to know? - Prospect

SU Greek Life moves to virtual recruitment to sustain active membership and pride – The Slate Online

Posted on September 2, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

With COVID-19 coronavirus concerns leading officials to enforce new social distancing and conduct rules, Shippensburg Universitys Greek life chapters must find a new way to stay alive.

Greek life members had a tough time dealing with the pandemic as the campus closed during the middle of spring recruitment last semester.

With human interaction being cut down, chapters have found ways to keep in contact and keep up with chapters needs. Alpha Sigma Tau member Brooke Hopkins said.

Hopkins said Zoom has provided a way for the sisters to remain connected.

The Panhellenic Council and Interfraternity Council (IFC) came to the decision to have both Zoom and in-person meetings for fall recruitment in order to safely gain new membership.

Fall recruitment is considered informal, meaning an undergraduate student may choose which sorority or fraternity event they want to attend. For many Greek life members, fall recruitment is considered more relaxed than the formal spring recruitment process.

A major part of the recruitment process is connecting and bonding with the new recruits. Many Greek chapters fear that they will not be able to properly connect with potential new members due to online meetings and social distancing. Like other student groups, Greek life chapters must limit the number of members present during in-person meetings.

Since we have a much more limited time scale with the new members, we have all been focusing on how to have the best possible conversations and how to really get to know the potential new members before giving outbids, Panhellenic Council Recruitment Chair Emily Drennan said.

The Panhellenic Council started its recruitment last Thursday by advertising on social media and providing a sign-up link in each chapters Instagram bio. The sign-up survey will show the number of potential members who prefer online sessions or in-person meetings and events. The responses will help chapter officials to plan recruitment events for the fall.

SU Greek life officials suspended all social functions other than recruitment until further notice to try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and to ensure that sororities and fraternities can continue to remain active and enroll new members.

We understand that this decision will not come easy to many, but we are asking you all to put the longevity and health of our chapters above the social culture that we have become accustomed to, IFC officials said in a statement.

All recruitment events must be held on campus this semester with all Greek chapters and potential new members wearing a mask and also must abide by the social distancing protocols.

With coronavirus concerns, sororities and fraternities are anxious on the number of new recruits they might gain. Drennan said she hopes each sorority will have a healthy sized new member class, but it is too early to tell.

The total that was set for this semester was 38,so many chapters have the potential to get about 10 new members. However, we will have to wait and see if that is possible this semester with everything going on, Drennan said.

Despite recruitment concerns, Greek Life will not allow fall informal freshman recruitment this semester. The Panhellenic Council and Interfraternity Council will not break the rules nor SUs policy of including students without a GPA.

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SU Greek Life moves to virtual recruitment to sustain active membership and pride - The Slate Online

Hulk’s Transformation Isn’t Over, According to MCU Fans – Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Posted on August 29, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

The Hulk is one of the most popular superheroes in the world, and hes been around for a long time.

As a result of this longevity, the Marvel Cinematic Universes Hulk has gone through many transformations throughout his years on screen. For example, Bruce Banner used to be played by Edward Norton, and now hes played by Mark Ruffalo. The Hulks changes have been more than skin deep, too, as Banner has been slowly learning about how to control the Hulk.

That said, in the comics, the Hulk changes even more, and some Marvel fans are convinced that in the movies, hell become similar to his comic book counterpart.

The Hulk has always been a classic case of Jekyll and Hyde, where Banner is just a regular guy but hell turn into the Hulk whenever hes angry. In the beginning of Banners story, hes just trying to figure out why this is happening to him.

However, by the time that he shows up in the first Avengers movie, Banner revealed to the team that he can transform into the Hulk whenever he wants, since hes always angry.

Banner continues to gain more control of the Hulk as the Marvel movies progress. InAge of Ultron, Scarlett Johanssons Black Widow says a lullaby that calms him down and allows him to transform back into his human form.

In the most recent Marvel movies, Banner has complete control of the Hulk, and hes able to be a regular person while in his Hulk form.

As a result, some Marvel fans on Reddit think that the Hulk has done transforming in the movies. By becoming Professor Hulk, as hes called, Banner has been able to completely control that side of him.

This would seem to be the natural end to the Hulks story, since controlling the Hulk was always the thing that Banner has strived for.

Like one fan said, Professor Hulk is the endpoint of Ruffalo. Other fans agreed, and one fan said, I think theyll drop the character for awhile.

Some fans speculate that Marvel is introducing She-Hulk on her Disney+ show as a way of passing the torch between the Hulk and She-Hulk.

That said, some fans disagree with this idea.Endgame was the endgame for many Marvel characters. Iron Man and Black Widow both died inEndgame, and Captain America retired and passed his shield off to the Falcon. Fans think that if Marvel was done with the Hulk, Marvel wouldve ended his story atEndgametoo, but Marvel didnt.

RELATED: Mark Ruffalo Deserves to Star in a Stand-Alone MCU Hulk Movie

In the comics, the Hulk is able to absorb radiation to become stronger. This has led to some interesting stories, and they could potentially be where the Marvel movies will take the character.

For example, many fans on Reddit think that the Hulk will eventually transform into Worldbreaker Hulk. Worldbreaker Hulk is one of the most powerful characters in Marvel history, and, like his name implies, hes so strong that he can destroy entire planets.

The Marvel movies has somewhat hinted at adapting this storyline, but Marvel came short of actually adapting Worldbreaker Hulk.

And then theres Maestro, which is another possible direction that Marvel can take the Hulk. In the comics, the Hulk absorbs so much radiation that he becomes Maestro. Hes still as strong and as tough as the Hulk is, but Maestro gained new powers after his transformation, and they include a few psychic abilities.

These were the two most popular theories, but there are more options. Either way, many Marvel fans are still hopeful that Ruffalos Hulk will show up again in the MCU.

BioMed Realty Relocates Headquarters to University Towne Centre – Yahoo Finance

Posted on August 29, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

BioMed Realty, a leading provider of real estate solutions to the life science community, has relocated their headquarters to discover@UTC at University Towne Centre, a campus the company has assembled and transformed over the last several years into a premier life science park in one of the top biotech markets in the country.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200825005293/en/

BioMed Realty, a leading provider of real estate solutions to the life science and technology industries, has relocated their headquarters to discover@UTC at San Diego's University Towne Centre. (Photo: Business Wire)

"Placing roots at our discover@UTC campus puts us at the center of our core San Diego market and adjacent to the regions leading life science and technology companies and research institutions," said President and CEO Tim Schoen. "This move demonstrates our commitment to continuing to invest in and serve the thriving San Diego life science community through all economic conditions, as the biotech industry and our innovative tenants advance the next generation of medicines and therapies."

Located at the intersection of Towne Centre Drive and Executive Drive, discover@UTC is a premier life science campus comprised of four buildings with 288,000 square feet. BioMed Realtys new headquarters brings the propertys leasing percentage to 94%. Other tenants that also moved their corporate headquarters to discover@UTC include Poseida Therapeutics, Samumed, and Human Longevity.

BioMed Realty acquired the campus in phases in 2010 and 2016, and successfully remodeled and repositioned the entire campus in 2017 under Blackstones ownership. In 2020, BioMed Realty completed significant improvements, including converting the properties to state-of-the-art lab/office buildings, enhancing the exterior faade, and adding new interior and exterior amenities.

To support the community of life science companies occupying discover@UTC, the property provides a host of amenities designed to enhance collaboration, support wellness, and provide convenience for tenants, including an on-site fitness center and caf, subterranean and surface level parking, and on-site security. In addition to this, the property contains a newly designed, eco-friendly parklike setting with tranquil water features, outdoor meeting spaces and a recreation/athletic field. The campus provides ideal ingress and egress access points to both the I-5 and I-805 freeways, and is centrally located within walking distance of the newly renovated Westfield Mall and a number of nearby retail stores, high end restaurants, fitness centers and hotels.

About BioMed Realty

Founded in 2004, and a Blackstone portfolio company since 2016, BioMed Realty owns, operates and develops high-quality life science real estate comprising 13.6 million square feet, including 2.5 million square feet of Class A properties in active development, to meet the growing demand of the life science and technology industries. BioMed Realtys portfolio is located in the leading innovation markets throughout the United States and United Kingdom, led by Boston-Cambridge, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, New York and Cambridge, U.K. With over 200 tenant partners, BioMed Realty provides real estate solutions for global enterprises, established biotechnology and innovation companies, leading universities and premier research institutions. Follow us on Twitter @biomedrealty.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200825005293/en/

Contacts

Hamilton McCullohAllison + Partners on behalf of BioMed Realty206-910-9797hamilton.mcculloh@allisonpr.com

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BioMed Realty Relocates Headquarters to University Towne Centre - Yahoo Finance

The recession should remind us that health and wealth are political choices – The BMJ – The BMJ

Posted on August 16, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

While health and longevity are matters of social justice and fairness, they are also cornerstones of economic productivity

This weeks news that the UK has officially entered a recession will have left many people deeply concerned. Chancellor Rishi Sunaks Dickensian announcement that hard times are here will have felt a particularly poorly chosen phrase to the millions for whom hard times have never gone away since the last recession in 2008-9.

Massive cuts to local authority budgets and a fall in health spending as a proportion of GDP in the last decade have been associated with poorer population health and increased child poverty. It has been estimated that the austerity measures introduced in the UK following the 2008 crash might have resulted in up to 150,000 excess deaths (excluding those relating to the covid-19 pandemic).

The 2008 crash prompted renewed political attention to the impact of poverty on health. The World Health Organizations Commission on the Social Determinants of Health was published in 2008, and Michael Marmots landmark review, Fair Society Healthy Lives two years later. Both laid bare the brutality of health and wealth inequalities both globally and in the UK. Today, such inequalities result in a massive 16-year disparity in the average life expectancy between Africa and Europe and, even more starkly, a 30-year difference in healthy life expectancythe number of years lived in good healthbetween the highest country (Singapore) and the lowest (Central African Republic). A similar picture is seen between different areas of the UK: the difference in healthy life expectancy between the highest and lowest areas is currently at 21.5 years for women and 15.8 years for men.

The pandemic has forced us to watch the impact of neoliberal economic policy on health as if on fast-forward. Deaths and morbidity from covid-19 have been on a steep socioeconomic gradient, and black and minority ethnic people have been particularly badly affected. An underfunded, marketised and fragmented NHS has only been able to cope with increased demand by cancelling almost all elective surgery and sidelining cancer care. Alfred Saad-Filho at Kings College London has argued that economic policies accelerated by post-2008 governments have directly resulted in the UKs unenviable pole position for highest covid-19 mortality rate in Europe.

Both the WHO Commission and the Marmot review set out a course to reduce health inequalities, a plan which they argued had economic as well as social benefits. While health and longevity are matters of social justice and fairness, they are also cornerstones of economic productivity.

However, a decade of austerity in the UK has shown governments since 2008 took a dim view of the recommendations from WHO and Marmot. In the 10 years on follow-up to the Marmot review, the team at the Institute of Health Equity has drawn a stark picture of the UK governments economic policy choices. Gains in life expectancy began stalling in 2011, and in some areas of England both life expectancy and healthy life expectancy have started falling.

But while the deleterious effect of a decades worth of austerity on public services and public health were predictable (and indeed predicted), they were not inevitable. Economist Jonathan Portes has shown that claims made during pandemic that there is a trade-off between health and negative economic growth are based on a false premise, arguing that it was not the recession that resulted in the terrible outcomes unearthed in Marmots follow-up review, but rather the political choice to disinvest in the welfare state. In their 2013 book The Body Economic, Stuckler and Basu argue:

Conventional wisdom holds that recessions are inevitably bad for human health. Thus, we ought to expect a rise in depression, suicide, alcoholism, infectious disease outbreaks, and many other health problems. But this is false. Recessions pose both threats and opportunities for public health, and sometimes can even improve health outcomes.

Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights made a similar point after a visit to the UK in 2018: the driving force [behind increasing levels of poverty] has not been economic but rather a commitment to achieving radical social re-engineering.

The tenacity of those who have fought in the anti-austerity movement over the last decade has meant that the argument against austerity as a response to a recessionwhich many Conservatives, including George Osborne, would like to rerun after the current downturnnow has high levels of public support. A 2018 UK poll found that a 66% majority thought austerity had gone too far and the British Social Attitudes survey in the same year found 60% were in favour of raising taxes, compared to only 31% when the same question was asked in 2010.

Marmots 10 years on report concluded that health is getting worse for people living in more deprived districts and regions, health inequalities are increasing and, for the population as a whole, health is declining. The report was published in February of this year, just before the devastating impact of covid-19 on the UK became apparent. The challenge is now even harder, the stakes higher, and the fight even more important.

JosephFreeris anNIHR Academic Clinical Fellow,Institute of Population Health Sciences, Queen Mary University London. He worked at The BMJ as the editorial registrar and Clinical Fellow, Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management, 2016-17.

Competing interests: None declared.

Original post:
The recession should remind us that health and wealth are political choices - The BMJ - The BMJ

Could the latest in OLED lighting be heading into an RV? – LEDs Magazine

Posted on August 21, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

The only thing missing from the serenity is an OLED. (Photo credit: Image by Steve Adcock via Pixabay; used under free license for commercial or non-commercial purposes.)

OLED proponents have long struggled to make substantial inroads into the lighting market, but they continue to push, and to identify new segments where the technology could be just right. The latest example: OLEDWorks wants to outfit recreational vehicles yes, RVs with the technologys soft and sleek illumination.

Its a market that excites the Rochester, NY-based company with growth potential, because as director of user experience Kathleen Vaeth noted in a recent blog post, RV sales are on the rise as people rethink their vacations in the era of social distancing and international travel restrictions, and start heading to national parks and the like.

On top of that, thin and flexible OLEDs are simpatico with modern RV interior design which Vaeth notes, has come on in leaps and bounds.

First, our obligatory, quick refresher: OLEDs (organic light-emitting diodes) are different from LEDs in that OLEDs are a thin material that entirely lights up in response to an electric charge, whereas LEDs are single light points. Invented at Rochester-based Eastman Kodak in 1987 (OLEDWorks was founded 10 years ago by former Kodak scientists), OLEDs have long failed to live up to the expectation that they will revolutionize lighting by literally weaving into the fabric of everything from lamps and fixtures to ceilings, walls, furniture, fashion, building faades, you name it. One problem is that the design of LED fixtures continues to improve; and OLEDs have trailed LEDs in energy efficiency.

But OLEDs are declining in price, improving in efficiency and slowly creeping into general illumination.

They are also finding specialty, niche, and architectural design uses. OLEDWorks will be supplying tail lights to Audi, for example.

RVs could be next, if OLEDWorks has its way. The company certainly thinks theres a big need.

The interior design has progressed significantly in recent years, allowing travelers to bring the comforts of home along with them, waxes Vaeth. High-quality cabinets, quartz countertops and spacious kitchens, leather seating, flat-screen TVs, air conditioning, solar power, and Wi-Fi connectivity are common features in todays models. But what about comfortable lighting?

Of course, she has the answer: The artificial lighting in these units have not progressed as much by comparison. At OLEDWorks, we think that this is the next frontier for designers to address and continue the revolution of the indoor RV space.

Vaeth points out that OLEDs, with their slim profile, fit the tight spaces of an RV, and also reduce overall vehicle weight, which reduces fuel consumption.

OLED lighting panels, measuring 1.4 millimeters in thickness and weighing less than 40 grams, offer an ultracompact and lightweight form factor that opens up the possibility of easily integrating lighting on horizontal and vertical surfaces, or in compact locations such as under cabinets and in drawers, she notes.

The thinness provides an aesthetic complemented by a mirror finish in the off state that can be used to accent the space, or blend into the background, Vaeth adds. She also trots out an attribute that OLED supporters often ascribe to the technology: The light is soft, diffuse, and glare free. Likewise, she notes that OLEDWorks thin panels avoid the blue spectrum that can undermine sleep when used at night, and that it avoids ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths which can be damaging.

This makes OLEDs compatible with lighting trends emphasizing lighting design for sustainability and human health, she notes.

Vaeths blog noticeably does not identify any signed-up RV customers. As OLED vendors hit the RV highway in search of deals, they will undoubtedly run into LED competitors, who offer many similar benefits, with LEDs probably still maintaining an edge in efficiency and in longevity. OLEDs might just have the leg up in design advantages, especially considering the space restrictions of an RV.

Describing the state of RV lighting today with technologies including incandescent, compact fluorescent, and LEDs, Vaeth notes, Most fixtures are small and compact but tend to be integrated into ceilings as recessed lighting or circular flush-mounted fixtures with push button switches. Specialized fixtures integrated for closer, more flexible illumination in spaces such sleeping areas can often be overly bright, or too dim. This can make for an illumination experience, even in the most state-of-the-art models, that is uneven with sharp contrast and shadows, and high in glare, which can cause discomfort and eye strain.

To paraphrase Vaeth, theres nothing like an OLED to take care of those shortcomings.

Wi-Fi. Quartz countertops. Flat-screen TVs. OLEDs. Ah, the great outdoors.

MARK HALPERis a contributing editor for LEDs Magazine, and an energy, technology, and business journalist (markhalper@aol.com).

For up-to-the-minute LED and SSL updates, why notfollow us on Twitter? Youll find curated content and commentary, as well as information on industry events, webcasts, and surveys on ourLinkedIn Company Pageandour Facebook page.

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Could the latest in OLED lighting be heading into an RV? - LEDs Magazine

From Parrots to Black Cowboys, Walter Thompson-Hernndez is Telling the Stories That Matter – Sports Illustrated

Posted on August 14, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Los Angeles is beaches, eclectic food and sunshine kissed boulevards. But its also not. Its a crime to whittle any city down to its most superficial assets and forget the good stuff that makes it pulse with vitality, its heart.

Walter Thompson-Hernndez is a reporter dedicated to telling stories. Hes done just that over several years for such publications as the New York Times, NPR, Fusion, the BBC and the Guardian.

With the support of LAist Studios, Thompson-Hernndez recently published his newest storytelling venture, a podcast series appropriately titled California Love.

Inspired by the 1995 2Pac song by the same name, he explains in the show's prologue episode that Pac and Dr. Dres lyrics and deliciously addictive beat were revelatory for a young kid.

Dres voice eventually listed cities and landmarks throughout the state; it made the song feel not just flashy and cool but also informative, Thompson-Hernndez said in the shows opening salvo. It felt like a social studies class that I always wanted but never had.

The 32-year-old is holding class in this love letter to the city. A town in which he was raised, cutting his teeth on avenues that arent always represented in mainstream media or in the pages published on this here Internet.

Theres a kinship of telling stories that are grossly underrepresented that drew me to the podcast.

One of the more engrossing episodes thus far is that of the Compton Cowboys. Familiar to so many out there but unfortunately foreign to far more, they recently joined the chorus of protests that took place in the wake of George Floyd's death.

The group remains a beacon of calm and healing for a community that is often without either, abeloved contingent of horse-riding African-Americans who hail from a part of Los Angeles more renowned for hip-hop shoutouts than bucolic ranch living.

Thompson-Hernndez covered the community back in 2018 for the N.Y. Times and again in his book The Compton Cowboys: The New Generation of Cowboys in America's Urban Heartland, for which he won the Whiting Creative Non-Fiction Award in 2019.

The Cowboys ride again, making an appearance in the Aug. 6 episode of the podcast. Its a refreshingly deep dive into a group and a location that remains an important source of peace.

The ranch isnt just a ranch, Thompson-Hernndez explains in the episode. Beneath all the jokes and the shit-talking, theres something more profound taking place that can maybe help Compton heal from some of its wounds.

Its a refreshing but harrowing narrative into a group that has found their slice of heaven but also struggles to maintain its longevity.

Ranch owner and Cowboy leader Randy Hook doesnt hold back as he expresses the stress and dismay at keeping the ranch and the cowboys riding into the next generation, a generation that is already hooked.

One of the parting shots is from a boy named Keenan who says with bursting energy, When youre on top of the horse, its like the world just chills out for a minute. Its like youre in control of something.

Stories matter. From book to movie to podcast, the human experience deepens when you walk a mile in anothers boots. Empathy is in short supply these days, and Thompson-Hernndez has us going back to the well.

The sports world will certainly love the episode dedicated to Kobe Bryant and the impact he had on a budding writer.

My favorite in the series has to be Parrots: A Parable. Los Angeles is a city made up of natives and transplants. So many of the latter came to the City of Angeles of their own accord, seeking vitality in a bustling city.

But some, like the ubiquitous and often chatty parrot, came here without much of a say.

Thompson-Hernndez stretches his pen in a story that not only explains how L.A. came to house this prolific bird but also addresses humanity's ability to cage our own kind, something that is especially salient in 2020 with an administration that has separated migrant children from their parents.

The show makes the connection seamlessly and without a heavy hand, delivered with a moving story you will carry with you long after the episodes conclusion.

California Love resonates and educates. And like a great song from the 90s, you cant get it out of your head.

California Love is available from LAist Studios and can be heard wherever you stream your podcasts.

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From Parrots to Black Cowboys, Walter Thompson-Hernndez is Telling the Stories That Matter - Sports Illustrated

Cleaning Up Our Polluted Air Would Save More Money Than It Costs – CleanTechnica

Posted on August 14, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Fossil Fuels

Published on August 13th, 2020 | by Steve Hanley

August 13th, 2020 by Steve Hanley

On August 5, Drew Shindell, a professor of Earth science at Duke University, appeared before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Shindell is the lead author of the two most recent IPCC reports. He told the committee the latest study by his colleagues and NASA shows that Over the next 50 years, keeping to the 2 C pathway would prevent roughly 4.5 million premature deaths, and about 3.5 million hospitalizations and emergency room visits. He said many of these preventable deaths are tied to diseases resulting from poor air quality, including stroke, heart disease, and pulmonary diseases. The 2 C pathway refers to the guidelines adopted at the COP 22 climate conference in Paris in 2015 designed to prevent average global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Centigrade.

As Dave Roberts of Vox points out, Shindells testimony reveals that the effects of air pollution are roughly twice as bad as previously estimated. That is a bombshell in a sane world, it would be front page news across the country. But we do not live in a sane world. We live in a world dominated by a lunatic who wants to bring back incandescent light bulbs because LEDs make his skin look orange and to trash low-flow shower heads because his hair has to be perfect.

The air quality scientific community has hypothesized this for at least a decade, but research advances have let us quantify and confirm this notion, over and over, says Rebecca Saari, an air quality expert who teaches in civil and environmental engineering at the University of Waterloo. The air quality co-benefits are generally so valuable that they exceed the cost of climate action, often many times over. (emphasis added).

So lets see if we have this straight. Pollution from burning fossil fuels is making millions of people sick and many of them are dying prematurely as a result. The benefits of cleaning the air and making it safe to breathe would far outweigh the costs of doing so, and still we cannot find the political will to make that happen? It is enough to make a sentient person question whether humans are not, in fact, a form of environment-eating virus bent on destroying the only home they will ever have. That is the theory put forth in the movie The Matrix.

Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment; but you humans do not. Instead you multiply, and multiply, until every resource is consumed. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern a virus. How fitting that the world today is in the grip of just such a virus and yet we shrug our shoulders and wonder when things will get back to normal as if normal will somehow save us from ourselves.

The Shindell report says, The avoided deaths are valued at more than $37 trillion. The avoided health care spending due to reduced hospitalizations and emergency room visits exceeds $37 billion, and the increased labor productivity is valued at more than $75 billion. On average, this amounts to over $700 billion per year in benefits to the US from improved health and labor alone, far more than the cost of the energy transition.

Roberts writes, Scientists now know that exposure to smog (tiny, microscopic particulates) hurts prenatal and young brains. Even though they dont yet fully understand the biological mechanism, they know it reduces impulse control and degrades academic performance. Similarly, they know it hurts the kidneys, the spleen, even the nervous system.

Shindell adds. The well understood pathways, things like strokes, lower respiratory infections, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, only seem to capture about half the total. When you look at the [new] studies, you find that air pollution seems to affect almost every organ in the human body. About twice as many people die in total as die just from the pathways we understand. Weve been underestimating all along.

A recent study from the national academies of multiple countries, including the US, concludes, The scientific evidence is unequivocal: air pollution can harm health across the entire lifespan. It causes disease, disability and death, and impairs everyones quality of life. It damages lungs, hearts, brains, skin and other organs; it increases the risk of disease and disability, affecting virtually all systems in the human body.

What accounts for the latest study finding the effects of dirty air are twice as high as previously thought? Access to more data specifically information on 60 million Medicare patients. Such massive amounts of data allow researchers to control for socioeconomic status, temperature, hypertension and other existing conditions, says Shindell. You can convincingly demonstrate that correlation is in fact causal, because you can rule out essentially every other possibility.

The finding that the impacts of dirty air are twice what they were previously thought to be probably still underestimates the actual situation. On both air pollution and climate change, the study omitted many effects that are clearly present but cannot yet be reliably quantified. The true numbers are almost certainly higher, Dave Roberts writes.

And thats precisely where the so-called president of the United States and his cohort of deplorables have decided to attack the science. This group of fossil fuel industry apologists proposes to prohibit research based on randomized data because, you know, we need to be able to interrogate each and every one of the people in the survey to make sure they are not malingerers or immigrants or people of color or any of the other categories of people despised by Trump and his acolytes. They also want to exclude any secondary effects of air pollution from consideration, even thought those so-called co-benefits are by far the most significant when it comes to determining the total impact air pollution has on peoples health.

Dave Roberts concludes his remarks with these thoughts:

The extraordinary level of suffering humanity is currently experiencing from air pollution is not necessary for modernity; it could be reduced, at a cost well below the net social benefits, with clean energy technologies on hand..The millions of lives ended or degraded by fossil fuels every year are a choice (emphasis added). And when suffering on this scale, that is this brutally inequitable, becomes a choice, it enters the same ethical terrain as war, slavery, and genocide. The effects are more distributed over time and geography, as are the decision-making and the moral culpability, but the cumulative impact on human well-being on our longevity, health, learning, and happiness is comparable, and every bit as much worth fighting.

US policymakers have a chance to kick start an energy transition that could save 1.4 million American lives over the next 20 years, especially among the most vulnerable, even as it creates jobs and saves consumers money. As Shindell says, it would be unconscionable not to act on it.

As we at CleanTechnica often put it: Earth Justice = Social Justice = Racial Justice. This administration has not taken the actions needed to prevent 166,000 Americans from dying from COVID-19. What in the world makes anyone think they care a flying fig leaf about 1.4 million more unnecessary deaths over the next 20 years? They have shown absolutely no compassion for those afflicted so far. Instead, they plan to roll back pollution standards on mercury emissions from coal-powered generating plants, auto emission standards, and rules limiting how much climate killing methane fracking companies can spew into the atmosphere free of charge.

A seasoned criminal prosecutor could probably find grounds to charge most members of the current maladministration, industry lobbyists, and fossil fuel company heads with negligent homicide if not worse. Is that over the top? Perhaps, but when one considers the amount of harm being done deliberately to defenseless people who are innocent of any wrong doing, the idea may not be so far fetched. Perhaps they should be in the dock at the World Court in The Hague charged with crimes against humanity? You can form your own opinion on that subject.

What cannot be denied any longer is that burning fossil fuels is killing us and the planet that sustains us. At this point, nothing else matters. We must immediately find ways to stop making the burning of fossil fuels the basis of our economic system or perish. Make of that what you will.

Appreciate CleanTechnicas originality? Consider becoming aCleanTechnica member, supporter, or ambassador or apatron on Patreon.

Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Send us an email: tips@cleantechnica.com

Tags: air pollution, dave roberts, Dr. Vox, Drew Shindell, IPCC, secondary effects of air pollution

Steve Hanley Steve writes about the interface between technology and sustainability from his homes in Florida and Connecticut or anywhere else the Singularity may lead him. You can follow him onTwitter but not on any social media platforms run by evil overlords like Facebook.

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Cleaning Up Our Polluted Air Would Save More Money Than It Costs - CleanTechnica

Is the solar industry prepared for a wave of end-of-life inverters? – Solar Power World

Posted on August 11, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

SunSystem Technology

Many commercial and utility-scale solar projects installed at the beginning of the solar construction boom are celebrating their 10th birthday around the year 2020. But instead of something to revel, this milestone is a nuisance for many project owners given that the string inverters on these systems are nearing their average 15-year lifespans.

In a new report, Wood Mackenzie estimated that approximately 4.2 GWDC of global solar assets will run into premature failures in 2020, with the annual total jumping to 36 GWDC in 2025.

The big question is are project owners adequately prepared for the O&M necessary to handle an influx of expired inverters between now and 2025?

In the study, Wood Mackenzie found the basic scope of solar O&M contracts cover very few basic maintenance activities.

Silvia Blumenschein-Schtz, CEO of solar monitoring provider Solar-Log, has found a similar theme in conversations with project owners. She recalls an EPC approaching her at a solar tradeshow in early 2020, saying he was thinking about adding monitoring to his portfolio of about 10,000 projects. She mentioned it would be helpful to also add monitoring hardware to the inverters to collect more comprehensive performance data, and he bristled at the thought of having to visit every site to install them.

I said, Dont you go out there one time per year? And he looked at me and said, I dont see a need for that,' Blumenschein-Schtz said. If you just talk about the typical residential/commercial/industrial sector, I think we would all be surprised to learn how many sites are not properly monitored yet. People dont know that they are losing a lot of money, and how easy it is to get back into that business to make money on the long term.

Solar-Logs monitoring platform.

There are plenty of options in the solar monitoring space. The technology continues to advance to alert project owners of failures or maintenance requirements with greater accuracy. But many asset owners still arent investing in it.

Solar-Log chief marketing officer Anne Nelson said more education is needed to show project owners the importance of monitoring.

O&M and the idea of selling services is a relatively new topic when were talking about the solar market, Nelson said.

Many first-generation solar projects were installed without monitoring, so project owners likely have no way of knowing if those aging inverters are working properly.

Solar-Log Base hardware

When we talk about the amount of money that would be lost, especially if an inverter dies on site and is completely undetected, even a small drop means a big financial loss, but if the inverter completely dies, thats a lot of money lost, Nelson said. So a lot of plant owners, if they knew that, would be totally willing to invest in having a service provider come out and add monitoringso that they can detect and protect this investment thats supposed to last 20 to 25 years,much after the lifetime of the inverter.

Most new inverters come with built-in monitoring options, but when sites have multiple inverter brands due to replacements over the years, monitoring is best performed by one neutral third-party system.

I really believe its so important to have a neutral inverter-agnostic monitoring platform, because when were talking about older plants, if you have to swap out components that are not matching the brand thats already on site, how do you monitor that unless you have a neutral system that can connect all of the different components regardless of which brand or model it is? Nelson said.

Another issue for project owners and O&M companies is that all inverters wont fail at the same time, costing more money for multiple one-off truck rolls to sites.

Youre not going to be able to be super-efficient about this because theyre all going to be a bunch of one-offs and failing at different times, said Derek Chase, CEO of O&M provider SunSystem Technology. If youre able to aggregate all of these and then make a mass purchase and schedule them all really smoothly with dense routes, you could really reduce the cost of all this. But nobodys going to be that proactive theyre just going to wait for one to go off and another one to go off. Somehow, somebodys got to see the bigger picture here and try to aggregate all this stuff together.

SunSystem Technology

SunSystem is working on pioneering such an aggregation with Palmetto Solar for the residential solar segment. The O&M company was struggling to organize sales and financing logistics for all the individual homeowners needing inverters fixed. SunSystem decided to partner with financier Palmetto Solar to aggregate all the individual, non-leased PPA customers and sell them new inverters, service and maintenance through Palmettos existing financing plan. That way, residents arent looking at one staggering bill for an inverter replacement.

But inverter maintenance for the larger-scale solar market is more complicated. Chase thinks many asset owners still view O&M as an afterthought. He also thinks there should be more inspections to ensure systems are safe throughout their lifespans.

Theres not even a standard and theres no enforcement of any of this, so thats what I think makes it be an afterthought. [Owners think], Hey, whatever, if something happens well figure it out,rather than, If I dont do this, an inspector might show up and shut our plant down and that would be bad news,' Chase said.

Chase also has concerns about whether string inverter manufacturers are prepared to handle the influx of inverters approaching their 15-year lifespans that require maintenance or replacement.

When SunSystem has to troubleshoot an inverter, Chase first calls the manufacturer to verify the unit is actually dead and the warranty is out of play. Then he sees if there are any monetary breaks if the unit is replaced with that companys product vs. switching brands.

Unfortunately, many inverter companies from the early 2010s are no longer in business. The inverter market has always been volatile, with high-profile company exits and acquisitions happening almost every year. Even if the original manufacturer is still in business, 10-year-old inverters most likely are out of warranty.

SunSystem Technology

For those companies still around, SunSystems team of 170 technicians has found that calling a manufacturer to help diagnose specific inverter issues can take up to an hour.

If you multiply that by 170 technicians, plus whatever other technicians are out there from different companies, the amount of just sheer on-hold time from a labor cost standpoint is crazy, Chase said.

He thinks inverter manufacturers should either scale-up their customer service workforce or offer digital solutions that allow technicians to submit return merchandise authorization requests through an app or similar streamlined process.

String inverter manufacturer CPS America has heard the customer service issues from O&M technicians and is working on solutions to streamline the process. The company uses RingCentral to route calls and has a goal for a human representative to answer the phone 90% of the time.

CPS also launched an Authorized Service Provider training program in early 2020 to help O&M techs learn specifics about its inverter line to help them troubleshoot in the field by themselves. The training is virtual and also offered at the companys Texas headquarters, which helps O&M techs form relationships with CPS workers.

The inverter companies are squeezed and under pressure. Not every inverter company has enough resources to be able to answer the phone all the time, said Ed Heacox, general manager of CPS America. One way to help make sure good service is available is to anticipate it and get the relationships in place in the region.

CPS has warehouses full of refurbished spare inverter models available for O&M technicians to swap with failed units. But as 2025 gets closer and old units start reaching end-of-life en masse, that stockpile will eventually run out.

In addition to checking with suppliers like us on readiness to support the field, another diligence some companies are going through is thinking ahead to, well, whats a reasonable retrofit of an old site to a modern inverter? Heacox said.

He expects retrofitting to grow in popularity as the original inverter fleet ages, whether its replacing old central inverters with string, replacing 600-V inverters with 1,000-V or higher, or other configurations.

SunSystems Chase said typically the most affordable solution in the case of string inverter failures would be to swap with another string inverter, but systems may have more longevity if the old string inverters are swapped in favor of new technology like string inverters with optimizers, or even microinverters. It may also be an opportune time to add storage to projects.

One thing that I always tell everybody if youre going to get a new inverter [or] make any investments your first dollars need to go toward a monitoring system, Chase said.

Detecting that an inverter is down in the first place is crucial as early inverters inch closer to their 15-year lifespans.

Were 10 years in now. Its a perfect time to go back to your original customer base and say, Hey, you could be losing money, lets take a look at the system. Lets install adequate professional monitoring so we can detect these issues,' said Nelson.

Continued here:
Is the solar industry prepared for a wave of end-of-life inverters? - Solar Power World

This Dinosaur Relative Has Links to Humans, Its DNA May Unlock Secrets of Longevity – International Business Times, Singapore Edition

Posted on August 11, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Tuatara used to be one of the several Rhynocephalia species that had once lived in the continent of Gondwana millions of years ago. Tuataraalso known as the dinosaur survivorhas genetic links to not only reptiles but also to the mammals like humans and scientists think that its DNA may hold the secret of longevity.

Neil Gemmel, a professor of anatomy at the University of Otago in New Zealand, in a recently conducted study, published in the journal Nature, said that this creature, one of the world's oldest species, has a genomic architecture "unlike anything previously reported, with an amalgam of features that have previously been viewed as characteristic of either mammals or reptiles."

Amniote vertebratesa clade of tetrapod vertebrates comprising the reptiles, birds, and mammalsare thought to have first appeared on earth around 312 million years ago and then branched off into two groups. Synapsids included ancient mammal species and now-extinct reptiles which had mammalian characteristics. Sauropsids were once dinosaurs and used to be ancestors of reptiles that have vanished from the earth or evolved into modern birds, lizards, and snakes.

But the Tuatara, which is also called New Zealand's living dinosaur, has puzzled researchers for so long due to its synapsid and sauropsid features which could reveal what we never knew about the evolution of amniote.

Synapsid and sauropsid characteristics similar to tuatara include extreme night vision and a sense of smell that could identify potential mates, as well as potential prey.

As per scientists, Tuatarawhose name derives from the Mori language that means "peaks on the back"has one of the largest vertebrate genomes ever. There are some repeating elements, unique to this lizard-like species, which became the entire phylum after it separated from snakes and lizards.

Hope for The Future

Tuatara shares parts of its genome with modern species like turtles, chickens, and even humans. The types of repeating elements in its DNA are closer to mammals, in comparison with lizards and birds. As per the scientists, Tuatara has evolved specialized genes for immunity, metabolism, thermal regulation, and odor reception.

Scientists believe that replicating such 'major histocompatibility complex' genes in humans could save several lives in the future. After conducting the recent study on the ancient-still living creature, scientists believe that the understanding of its extremely low metabolism and Methuselan longevity may open a new door of possibility to extend the human lifespan.

As Tuatara can live up to 100 years, making it the longest-lived reptiles after a tortoise, scientists believe that there may be a link to certain proteins in the species along with the genes that protect them from free radicals.

Gemmel explained that the MHC genes play an important role in "disease resistance, mate choice and kin recognition, and are among the most polymorphic genes in the vertebrate genome." While explaining the recent research process he also added that "Our annotation of MHC regions in the tuatara, and comparisons of the gene organization with that of six other species, identified 56 MHC genes."

As per the scientists, further research on Tuatara could help unlock still-unknown amazing advances in the future.

NeoGenomics Slumps in Q2 but Readies for Second-Half Rebound – The Motley Fool

Posted on August 5, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

The coronavirus pandemic hit the business pretty hard, but NeoGenomics (NASDAQ:NEO) had been preparing investors for months. Properly setting expectations turned out to be a great move.

Shares of NeoGenomics reached all-time highs shortly after the company announced second-quarter 2020 operating results. The financial metrics weren't pretty, and there's lingering uncertainty about the course of the coronavirus pandemic and its effects on the business, but investors are largely confident in the long-term strategy.

Can the growth stock maintain its expensive valuation?

Image source: Getty Images.

NeoGenomics is an oncology reference lab operating two business segments: clinical services and pharma services. The former collects patient samples from doctors, performs the test(s) selected by customers from a comprehensive menu, and returns the data. The latter helps biopharmaceutical companies to identify biomarkers for drug development, access oncology-specific datasets from pathologists, and develop and validate companion diagnostics.

When first-quarter 2020 operating results were announced, management prepared investors for a sour showing in the second quarter. The coronavirus pandemic was expected to impact clinical trials, which would hurt both business segments. However, NeoGenomics announced it wouldn't furlough employees and would continue investing in the business.

For the second quarter of 2020, total revenue slipped 14% compared to the year-ago period -- a sharp contrast to the double-digit growth investors have grown accustomed to in recent years. Gross profit sank due to lower revenue per test and higher costs, leaving investors with a relatively weak first-half showing for the business.

Metric

First Half 2020

First Half 2019

Change (YoY)

Clinical services

$166.9 million

$175.2 million

(5%)

Pharma services

$26.1 million

$22.1 million

18%

Total revenue

$193.0 million

$197.3 million

(2%)

Gross profit

$74.4 million

$96.1 million

(22%)

Operating income

($24.2 million)

$7.0 million

N/A

Net income

($13.8 million)

($0.4 million)

N/A

Operating cash flow

($5.0 million)

$1.4 million

N/A

Data source: SEC filing. YoY = year over year.

Pharma services revenue was the only bright spot, although the increase was entirely explained by the recent acquisition of assets from Human Longevity.

Despite the tough operating environment, management didn't flinch. On the second-quarter 2020 earnings conference call, CEO Douglas VanOort laid out a six-part business update comprising strategy and investments. Two developments in particular stood out.

NeoGenomics has converted a portion of its lab space to run up to 10,000 SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic tests per day, which could increase in the future. The business has also made a $25 million investment in a liquid biopsy start-up called Inivata. The equity investment gives the oncology reference lab the exclusive option to acquire Inivata.

More important, the investment provides NeoGenomics the option to commercialize the company's InvisionFirst-Lung liquid biopsy test. The diagnostic tests 37 relevant genes to drive care decisions for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), is covered by Medicare and multiple private insurance payers, and is one of only two next-generation sequencing (NGS) tests with specific Medicare coverage.

NeoGenomics ended June with $331 million in cash, which is more than enough to weather a prolonged downturn. Management acknowledged the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic, but has already begun to see signs of a rebound.

In April, test volumes were down 30% compared to the year-ago period. By June, test volumes were back in line with the prior-year period, although they were about 15% below pre-pandemic expectations for 2020. Volumes had not recovered to pre-pandemic expectations through July.

But management remains confident in the long-term plan. NeoGenomics is well-positioned for a strong recovery if and when the market permits. The business doesn't need an exceptional recovery -- a "V-shaped" recovery, if you will -- to climb back to profitability or growth. What's more, it could take advantage of the economic effects of the pandemic to acquire smaller peers that might be struggling.

That said, shares of NeoGenomics are certainly expensive. Is that the price to pay for profitable growth in an uncertain world? Perhaps, but investors might be better off waiting for a pullback, as the current valuation (as with many stocks right now) appears unsustainable in the near-term.

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NeoGenomics Slumps in Q2 but Readies for Second-Half Rebound - The Motley Fool

Boost your health with a step counter – Blaine Northern Light

Posted on August 5, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

By Beth Sanborn

Its summer in Whatcom County. That generally means pleasant weather, usually not too hot or rainy, and longer daylight hours. Add in the coronavirus pandemic and many people are getting their daily exercise outdoors, often with walking or running. Using a fitness tracker to monitor activity levels is popular, often with a goal of taking 10,000 steps each day.

For some people, that goal of 10,000 steps is motivating and helps them be physically active. But for others, especially if they arent reaching their goal, its discouraging, reduces motivation and may lead to less physical activity.

Have you wondered how scientists came to recommend 10,000 steps per day as a fitness goal? Well, the truth is, the idea has little to no scientific research behind it. In 2019, Harvard Medical School researcher I-Min Lee looked into the history of the 10,000 steps a day goal and discovered that it most likely originated in the 60s when a Japanese company marketed a pedometer called Manpo-kei, which in Japanese means 10,000 steps meter. Most likely the name was chosen because the Japanese character for 10,000 looks a little like a man walking. Ads for the step counter said, Lets all walk 10,000 steps a day. This idea has persisted through the decades.

While theres nothing wrong with that goal, it may not be necessary for achieving health and longevity. Multiple researchers have concluded that while 10,000 steps is a good goal, there is nothing magical about that number and even 7,000-8,000 steps can improve health and longevity. (The average American adult takes about 3,000-5,000 steps a day.) Or, looking at exercise goals another way, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has done, aim for at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise five days a week (which correlates to 7,000-8,000 steps a day).

The human body was designed for movement and physical activity is important for good health. Physical activity like walking can help control blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol levels. It can also stimulate creative thinking and is associated with living longer and healthier.

So if using a step counter or fitness tracker motivates you to exercise and you reach 10,000 steps a day (or more), thats great. But dont be discouraged if you dont reach that number. Make it your goal to be physically active above the level of your normal daily activity and enjoy the beauty of summer in the Pacific Northwest.

Beth Sanborn is a licensed nutritionist who lives in Birch Bay and holds a masters degree in public health nutrition.

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Boost your health with a step counter - Blaine Northern Light

Global Molecular Diagnostics Cancer Oncology Market to 2023: New Diagnostics Create New Markets, New Roles for Diagnostics, Longevity and Outcomes,…

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

DUBLIN, Oct. 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Molecular Diagnostics Cancer Oncology Global Market Size, Strategy and Forecasts - 2019 to 2023" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

A market that just keeps on growing. Molecular Diagnostics for Cancer is positioned to directly benefit from the explosion in genomics knowledge. A range of dynamic trends are pushing market growth and company valuations.

Some of these include:

Exciting technical developments especially in the area of pharmacogenics hold the promise of a dynamic, growing and evolving world market that is moving out of the national and regional orientation and onto a global stage.

In addition customization work, breakouts for particular segments, assistance and support is included free of charge with every report.

The report provides data that analysts and planners can use. Hundreds of pages of information including a complete list of Current 2018 United States Medicare Fee Payment Schedules to help understand test pricing in detail. See lists of all current FDA Approved Molecular Diagnostic Tests. Make facilities planning decisions. Forecast demand for new testing regimes or technologies. Make research investment decisions.

Based on extensive primary and secondary research the testing volume data is broken down into price and volumes allowing researchers and investors to quickly create informed and reasonable forecasts of demand. Assistance in providing specific growth and market size estimates for new technology tests is normally provided without additional charges. Existing laboratories and hospitals can use the information directly to forecast and plan for clinical facilities growth. Again, assistance in using the information is normally provided without additional charges.

The report includes detailed breakouts for 18 Countries and 4 Regions. A detailed breakout for any country in the world is available to purchasers of the report.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Introduction and Market Definition1.1 What is Molecular Diagnostics1.2 The Diagnostics Revolution1.3 Market Definition1.3.1 Revenue Market Size1.4 Methodology1.4.1 Authors1.4.2 Sources1.5 U.S. Medical Market and laboratory Testing - Perspective1.5.1 U.S. Medicare Expenditures for Laboratory Testing

2. Market Overview2.1 Market Participants2.2 Market Segments2.2.1 Traditional Market Segmentation2.2.2 Laboratory Focus and Segmentation2.3 Industry Structure2.3.1 Hospital Testing Share2.3.2 Economies of Scale2.3.3 Physician Office Labs2.3.4 Physicians and POCT2.4 Profiles of Key MDx Companies

3. Market Trends 3.1 Factors Driving Growth 3.1.1 New Diagnostics Create New Markets3.1.2 New Roles for Diagnostics3.1.3 Longevity and Outcomes3.1.3 Expanding the Pharmaceutical Toolbox3.1.4 Regulatory Retreat3.2 Factors Limiting Growth3.2.1 Falling Prices3.2.2 Lower Costs3.2.3 Testing as a Controllable Cost3.2.4 Wellness has a Downside3.3 Instrumentation and Automation3.3.1 Instruments Key to Market Share3.3.2 Bioinformatics Plays a Role3.4 Diagnostic Technology Development3.4.1 Next Generation Sequencing3.4.2 Shifting Role of Diagnostics3.4.3 Multiplexing and Foundation One3.4.4 Pharmacogenomics Technology3.4.5 Whole Genome Sequencing 3.4.6 Gene Editing and Gene Therapy

4. Molecular Diagnostics Recent Developments

5. The Global Market for MDx Cancer5.1 MDx Cancer - Global Market Overview by Country

6. Global MDx Cancer Markets - By Type of Cancer6.1 Global Market by Cancer Type - Overview6.2 MDx Breast Cancer 6.3 MDx Colorectal Cancer 6.4 MDx Cervical Cancer6.5 MDx Lung Cancer6.6 MDx Precancer6.7 MDx Prostate Cancer6.8 MDx Melanoma6.9 MDx Blood Cancer6.10 MDx Other Cancer

7. Cancer Treatment and Trials7.1 FDA Cancer Drug Approvals by Year7.2 Clinical Trials Started 2010 to 2016 7.3 Prevalence of Cancer Treatments - 2015

8. Appendices I. United States Medicare System: January 2019 Clinical Laboratory Fees Schedule II. FDA Approved Human Genetic TestsIII. FDA Approved Microbial TestsIII. FDA Approved Pharmacogenomics Tests

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/wtq27v

Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.

Media Contact:

Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager [emailprotected]

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Global Molecular Diagnostics Cancer Oncology Market to 2023: New Diagnostics Create New Markets, New Roles for Diagnostics, Longevity and Outcomes,...

Human ageing process biologically reversed in world first – Telegraph.co.uk

Posted on November 21, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

The ageing process has been biologically reversed for the first time by giving humans oxygen therapy in a pressurised chamber.

Scientists in Israel showed they could turn back the clock in two key areas of the body believed to be responsible for the frailty and ill-health that comes with growing older.

As people age, the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes called telomeres shorten, causing DNA to become damaged and cells to stop replicating. At the same time, "zombie" senescent cells build up in the body, preventing regeneration.

Increasing telemere length and getting rid of senescent cells is the focus of many anti-ageing studies, and drugs are being developed to target those areas.

Now scientists at Tel Aviv University have shown that giving pure oxygen to older people while in a hyperbaric chamber increased the length of their telomeres by 20 per cent, a feat that has never been achieved before.

Scientists said thegrowth may mean that the telomeres of trial participants were now as long as they had been 25 years earlier.

The therapy also reduced senescent cells by up to 37 per cent, making way for new healthy cells to regrow. Animal studies have shown that removing senescent cells extends remaining life by more than one third.

"Since telomere shortening is considered the 'Holy Grail' of the biology of ageing, many pharmacological and environmental interventions are being extensively explored in the hopes of enabling telomere elongation," said Professor Shai Efrati of the Faculty of Medicine and Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University.

"The significant improvement of telomere length shown during and after these unique protocols provides the scientific community with a new foundation of understanding that ageing canindeedbe targeted and reversed at the basic cellular-biological level."

Many scientists now believe ageing itself is responsible for major conditions such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, arthritis, cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.

It is also known that obesity, smoking, lack of physical activity, vitamin deficiency and inflammation can speed up the shortening of telomeres, demonstrating that they have a major impact on longevity.

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Human ageing process biologically reversed in world first - Telegraph.co.uk

How to live longer: Scientists discover enzyme which could be used to boost longevity – Express

Posted on September 9, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

The secret to long life expectancy lies in the details. Tiny tails at the ends of chromosomes called telomeres erode with age but can be lengthened. Deep inside a persons cells DNA-based clocks slowly tick away and determine ones "biological age." By tweaking this cell, could humans be able to boost their longevity? Researchers from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology were able to dial up and down creatures' lifespans by altering protein activity levels.

The enzyme "tweaked" by researchers allows roundworms to convert sugar into energy when cellular energy is running low - the team found a way to "control it". Humans also have these proteins, offering up the possibilities of developing longevity-promoting drugs, according to the researchers.

The roundworms used in the study experienced a boost in longevity when researchers tinkered with a couple of proteins involved in monitoring the energy use by its cells.

Using a range of different biological research tools, including introducing foreign genes into the worm, a group of researchers were able to dial up and down the activity of the gene that tells cells to produce the VRK-1 protein.

Control worms lived about 16.9 days on average typically roundworms only live about two to three weeks.

However, the first line of worms who had elevated levels of VRK-1 lived about 20.8 days.

A second line lived about 23.7 days on average. Seung-Jae Lee is a professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and the paper's senior author.

He spoke of how longevity could switch by activating "a key cellular energy sensor and anti-ageing protein" called AMPK.

The key to activating AMPK is VRK-1 and this enzyme is found in worms but also has a close relative in human cells.

"We showed that the activation of AMPK by VRK-1 occurs in human cells as well as in the roundworm C. elegans," says Professor Lee.

"Therefore, it is possible that this mechanism can be applied to promoting human longevity in the future." Metabolic disorders involve the disruption of chemical reactions in the body, including diseases of the mitochondria.

But before metabolic disorder therapeutics or longevity drugs can be contemplated by scientists, further research still needs to be carried out to better understand how VRK-1 works to activate AMPK, the team explained.

They said they also need to figure out the precise mechanics of how AMPK controls cellular energy.

The study team notes that inhibiting mitochondrial respiration "increases life span in Drosophila and mammals" though some scientists argue that this is part of a bigger, more complicated picture.

This is only a small experiment on roundworms and a few human cells.

To really prove that VRK-1 can trigger these longevity-related changes in AMPK, the team will have to replicate their findings in other mammals, like mice.

Though mouse studies are still steps away from human ones, they provide clearer parallels to human beings that worm studies do, says Lee.

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How to live longer: Scientists discover enzyme which could be used to boost longevity - Express

USMS’s 50th Anniversary: Expanding the Age Range | US Masters Swimming – U.S. Masters Swimming

Posted on September 11, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Over the years, certain contentious issues have vexed the leadership and tested the ability of U.S. Masters Swimming to grow and develop. One of the most debated of these issues to hit the House of Delegates floor was the simple question of how old swimmers needed to be to participate in Masters Swimming.

For the first two decades or so of USMSs existence, swimmers had to be at least 25 to become members. Adult swimming, it seemed, was something you couldnt do until years after you were legally allowed to have a drink or cast a vote in an election. And a lot of that goes back to how swimmings international governing body, FINA, was set up.

FINAs official rules for Masters swimming do not extend to cover swimmers under the age of 25. USMS was in step with this until the mid-1980s when some folks began advocating for adding a younger age group. This faction wanted to see that change made so that the organization could be more inclusive and reach a segment of the swimming population that didnt have other options for swimming.

But simply adding an age group turned out to be a lot more difficult than we might expect looking back now.

We had huge arguments over this, says Tom Boak, a longtime member of the Woodland Masters Swim Club in Texas who also served as USMSs president from 1981 through 1985. One segment of the USMS leadership believed that because FINA didnt recognize swimmers younger than 25, USMS simply couldnt have swimmers younger than 25 involved either.

There was another faction that said, Thats crazy. We have all these people out here, we need to service this group, Boak recalls. The huge gap between collegiate swimmers leaving college and when they can start swimming with Masters made no sense.

To help address this issue, Boak recalls that proposals were floated starting in the mid-1980s, but it was an uphill battle to get it passed.

Nancy Ridout, longtime Masters swimmer and volunteer who served as president of the organization from 1997 to 2001, remembers the anti-younger age group faction really used scare tactics to try to sway more people to their side.

There was a rule that prohibited amateur swimmers from being tainted by professionals, Ridout says. The rule stated that an amateur swimmer couldnt swim in a pool or a meet or competition with a professional. Because Masters were considered professional, they figured that if college kids came home for the summer and wanted to work out, and the best place to do that was with a Masters group, they would forfeit their opportunity to swim in college or in the Olympics. They were afraid that leadership within FINA would not look kindly on this and it would jeopardize our American swimmers on the world and collegiate stages.

After much lobbying on both sides, a final vote was held at USMSs annual meeting in 1990. It was such a contentious issue and such a close vote that we counted the votes like five different times and every time it came out different, Boak says.

To break the stalemate and arrive at an accurate count, we had to actually physically divide the House of Delegates at the annual meeting, Boak recalls. Everybody in the House of Delegates had to stand up from their chairs and move to one side or the other of the room so that we could count the votes.

On that final vote, the proposal to add a 19- to 24-year-old age group passed by two votes, which is unbelievable, he says.

Looking back now, Boak says the opposition to adding the younger swimmers was totally illogical. But it was a hot-button issue that required a lot of time and effort to work through. In the end, however, that decision was monumental in terms of what Masters Swimming became.

The addition of the younger age group meant there would be no gap at all for someone who wanted to continue swimming after they got out of high school or college, and it helped increase USMSs membership numbers. With the more recent addition of College Club Swimming as a USMS program, the ranks of younger USMS members continue to grow.

In 2002, the age at which a swimmer could register with USMS was again loweredto 18but these 18-year-olds would have to wait until age 19 to compete. That rule was changed in 2005 when 18-year-olds were granted permission to register and compete just like any other adult.

At the other end of the age spectrum, it appears human longevity may be the only limiting factor in how many age groups get added. In 1989, the 9094 age group was added. Although FINA still doesnt recognize Masters swimmers younger than 25, it defines Masters age groups in five-year increments starting at age 25 and going as high as necessary. The organization spells out age groups through 9094 in its rule book.

USMSs rule book lists out all age groups running from 1824 right up though 100104 and includes a provision for additional five-year age groups to be added as high as is necessary. As humans continue to find ways of living longer and healthier, look for additional defined age groups to be added in the future.

Link:
USMS's 50th Anniversary: Expanding the Age Range | US Masters Swimming - U.S. Masters Swimming

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