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Longevity myths – Wikipedia

Posted on July 10, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

This article is about myths related to the mythology of humans or other beings living to mythological ages. For validated specific supercentenarian claims by modern standards, see List of the verified oldest people. For modern, or complete, unvalidated supercentenarian claims, see Longevity claims.

Longevity myths are traditions about long-lived people (generally supercentenarians), either as individuals or groups of people, and practices that have been believed to confer longevity, but for which scientific evidence does not support the ages claimed or the reasons for the claims.[1][2] While literal interpretations of such myths may appear to indicate extraordinarily long lifespans, many scholars[3] believe such figures may be the result of incorrect translation of numbering systems through various languages coupled by the cultural and/or symbolic significance of certain numbers.

The phrase "longevity tradition" may include "purifications, rituals, longevity practices, meditations, and alchemy"[4] that have been believed to confer greater human longevity, especially in Chinese culture.[1][2]

Modern science indicates various ways in which genetics, diet, and lifestyle affect human longevity. It also allows us to determine the age of human remains with a fair degree of precision.

Several parts of the Hebrew Bible, including the Torah, Joshua, Job, and 2 Chronicles, mention individuals with lifespans up to the 969 years of Methuselah.

Some apologists explain these extreme ages as ancient mistranslations that converted the word "month" to "year", mistaking lunar cycles for solar ones: this would turn an age of 969 years into a more reasonable 969 lunar months, or about 78.3 solar years.[6]

Donald Etz says that the Genesis 5 numbers were multiplied by ten by a later editor.[7] These interpretations introduce an inconsistency: it would mean that the ages of the first nine patriarchs at fatherhood, ranging from 62 to 230 years in the manuscripts, would then be transformed into an implausible range such as 5 to 18 years.[8] Others say that the first list, of only 10 names for 1,656 years, may contain generational gaps, which would have been represented by the lengthy lifetimes attributed to the patriarchs.[9] Nineteenth-century critic Vincent Goehlert suggests the lifetimes "represented epochs merely, to which were given the names of the personages especially prominent in such epochs, who, in consequence of their comparatively long lives, were able to acquire an exalted influence."[10]

Those biblical scholars that teach literal interpretation give explanations for the advanced ages of the early patriarchs. In one view, man was originally to have everlasting life, but as sin was introduced into the world by Adam,[11] its influence became greater with each generation and God progressively shortened man's life.[12] In a second view, before Noah's flood, a "firmament" over the earth (Genesis 1:68) contributed to people's advanced ages.[13]

Chapter 2 of Falun Gong by Li Hongzhi (2001) states, "A person in Japan named Mitsu Taira lived to be 242 years old. During the Tang Dynasty in our country, there was a monk called Hui Zhao [, 526815[16]] who lived to be 290 [288289] years old. According to the county annals of Yong Tai in Fujian Province, Chen Jun [] was born in the first year of Zhong He time (881 AD) under the reign of Emperor Xi Zong during the Tang Dynasty. He died in the Tai Ding time of the Yuan Dynasty (1324 AD), after living for 443 years."[17]

Like Methuselah in Judaism, Bhishma among the Hindus is believed to have lived to a very advanced age and is a metaphor for immortality. His life spans four generations and considering that he fought for his great-nephews in the Mahabharata War who were themselves in their 70s and 80s, it is estimated that Bhishma must have been between 130 and 370 years old at the time of his death.

Ibrahim () was said to have lived at 168169 years. His wife Sarah is the only woman in the Old Testament whose age is given. She was 127 (Genesis 23:1).

According to 19th-century scholars, Abdul Azziz al-Hafeed al-Habashi ( ) lived 673674 Gregorian years, or 694695 Islamic years, from 5811276 of the Hijra.[23]

In Twelver Shia Islam, Hujjat-Allah al-Mahdi is believed to currently be in occultation and still alive (age 1150).[24]

Extreme lifespans are ascribed to the Tirthankaras, for instance,Neminatha was said to have lived for over 10,000 years before his ascension,Naminatha was said to have lived for over 20,000 years before his ascension,Munisuvrata was said to have lived for over 30,000 years before his ascension,Mllntha was said to have lived for over 56,000 years before his ascension,Aranatha was said to have lived for over 84,000 years before his ascension,Kunthunatha was said to have lived for over 200,000 years before his ascension, andShantinatha was said to have lived even for over 800,000 years before his ascension.[25]

These include claims prior to approximately 150 AD, before the fall of the Roman empire.

A book Macrobii ("Long-livers") is a work devoted to longevity. It was attributed to the ancient Greek author Lucian, although it is now accepted that he could not have written it. Most examples given in it are lifespans of 80 to 100 years, but some are much longer:

Some early emperors of Japan are said to have ruled for more than a century, according to the tradition documented in the Kojiki, viz., Emperor Jimmu and Emperor Kan.

The reigns of several shahs in the Shahnameh, an epic poem by Ferdowsi, are given as longer than a century:

In Roman times, Pliny wrote about longevity records from the census carried out in 74 AD under Vespasian. In one region of Italy many people allegedly lived past 100; four were said to be 130, others up to 140. The ancient Greek author Lucian is the presumed author of Macrobii (long-livers), a work devoted to longevity. Most of the examples Lucian gives are what would be regarded as normal long lifespans (80100 years).

Age claims for the earliest eight Sumerian kings in the major recension of the Sumerian King List were in units and fractions of shar (3,600 years) and totaled 67 shar or 241,200 years.[35]

In the only ten-king tablet recension of this list three kings (Alalngar, [...]kidunnu, and En-men-dur-ana) are recorded as having reigned 72,000 years together.[9][36] The major recension assigns 43,200 years to the reign of En-men-lu-ana, and 36,000 years each to those of Alalngar and Dumuzid.[35]

This list includes claims of longevity of 130 and older from the 14th century onward.

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The idea that certain diets can lead to extraordinary longevity (ages beyond 130) is not new. In 1909, lie Metchnikoff believed that drinking goat's milk could confer extraordinary longevity. The Hunza diet, supposedly practiced in an area of northern Pakistan, has been claimed to give people the ability to live to 140 or more,[137] but such claims are regarded as apocryphal.[138]

Traditions that have been believed to confer greater human longevity include alchemy.[4]

The Fountain of Youth reputedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks of its waters. Herodotus attributes exceptional longevity to a fountain in the land of the Ethiopians.[142] The lore of the Alexander Romance and of Al-Khidr describes such a fountain, and stories about the philosopher's stone, universal panaceas, and the elixir of life are widespread.

After the death of Juan Ponce de Len, Gonzalo Fernndez de Oviedo y Valds wrote in Historia General y Natural de las Indias (1535) that Ponce de Len was looking for the waters of Bimini to cure his aging.[143]

How healthtech startup Bione aims to use genetic testing in the fight against coronavirus – YourStory

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Ever since the Human Genome Project began in the late 1980s, genetics and DNA have become topics of mass interest. The book Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 chapters states that the genome is a book that wrote itself, continually adding, deleting, and amending for over four billion years.

For Dr Surendra Chikara, who has been working in the field for over 20 years now, the idea of founding Bione, a healthcare startup, was a no-brainer.

Monitoring the present coronavirus outbreak scenario in the country, we have included new parameters to our Longevity Plus kit. The new updated kit provides information about the susceptibility of a person to viruses like coronavirus, SARS-like viruses, HIV, Hepatitis C virus, etc. This could be based on an individuals genetic makeup or the patterns of living, Surendra says.

Dr Surendra, Founder of Bione

Surendra says a recent addition to the Bione Genetic test can check an individuals susceptibility to coronavirus. He adds that the platforms microbiome test, combined with its predictive analytics tools and artificial intelligence, can provide tailored recommendations to individuals to strengthen their microbiome and improve their immunity.

A research paper titled 'Evidence of gastrointestinal infection of SARS-CoV-2 revealed that 23.29 percent patients infected with SARS CoV-2 showed positive results in stool after showing negative in respiratory samples. Hence, the gut microbiome test is the only way to know when a virus is no longer in your system, Surendra says.

Surendra started his career with recombinant DNA technology and worked with Dr Gita Sharma, who had created the first r-DNA vaccine for Hepatitis-B in India.

My journey in genomics started under her support and guidance. It was the time when human genome sequencing and next-generation sequencing were starting to gain importance. We were in discussions to bring D2C technology to India, but the Indian healthcare market was not ready for direct-to-consumer genetic testing," Surendra says.

This is a huge problem that all my networks were aware of. We all know that the future of the global pharmaceutical industry lies in developing precision medicines tailored for individuals based on their genes, and clinical risk for developing a disease. Indian genetic data is highly diverse and a number of breakthroughs can happen. At Bione, we are doing our part to be part of this bigger picture of making India disease-free, Surendra says.

The different types of kits depend on the number of tests covered, and include Longevity kit, Longevity Plus Kit, and MyMicrobiome kit. The Longevity Plus kit covers over 415 parameters, including health, personalised medicine, fitness, and wellness.

The team claims that it also covers a parameter that determines specific gene variants that may contribute to enhance resistance to viruses like coronavirus, HIV, Hepatitis C, and many others.

The MyMicrobiome kit identifies and quantifies the microbiome in the gut, based on which a personalised diet is recommended.

Surendra says scientific research has shown that the gut microbiome plays an important role in the function and maintenance of our immune system. In ideal conditions, this microbiome-immune system alliance allows the initiation of protective responses against germs.

The platform also offers sample collection, with samples collected from an individuals homes. A pick-up is arranged as per your convenience by Bione. The DNA sequencing is done in a well-equipped lab by expert scientists, after which a detailed report is prepared.

Bione gXplore is a user-friendly, informative, and interactive app-based platform. On it, you can go through your report and easily understand the results of DNA analysis.

Slots with genetic or food and nutrition counsellors are provided as a free-of-cost service. The expert team of counsellors guides you to proactively plan your and your familys health and lifestyle choices.

The Bione team consists of experts from global institutions and scientists domains of genomics, genetics, bio-IT, genome informatics, quality assurance, sales, marketing, genetic/nutrition/fitness counselling. The startup has a total team size of 39 people.

The startup also runs a lab with scientists, bioinformaticians, and genetic counsellors. The team is applying for ISO 9001:2015, followed by CAP and CLIA accreditation to follow global standards.

Bione is projecting to test 20,000 to 30,000 samples in the first year of operations. Tests are priced between Rs 5,000 to Rs 20,000, with the option of paying in EMIs. Customers can choose the package based on their needs.

The startup has raised angel funding from a clutch of undisclosed investors. Gourish Singla, the Founder of blockchain startup Project Shivom has invested in Bione.

Currently, startups like The Gene Box and Hyderabad-based MapMyGenome work on providing preventive solutions based on an individuals genetic makeup.

He says the startup's high tech lab is using advanced technologies, including whole genome sequencing, while the competition is still working with array technology with limited markers.

(Edited by Kanishk Singh)

How has the coronavirus outbreak disrupted your life? And how are you dealing with it? Write to us or send us a video with subject line 'Coronavirus Disruption' to editorial@yourstory.com

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How healthtech startup Bione aims to use genetic testing in the fight against coronavirus - YourStory

Longevity worldwide is the scary part of Covid-19 – Indian NewsLink

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Adam Kleczkowski and Rowland Raymond KaoGlasgow and Edinburg, Scotland, March 26, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has already caused several thousand deaths, widespread health problems, massive anxiety and economic losses.

Most people are concerned with what happens day by day as we wait for control measures to work.

But we should also be concerned about whether or not we will be living with the virus for a long time. Will we be able to eradicate COVID-19, as we did with Sars? Or will we need to learn to live with it like we do with the common cold? We have been experiencing epidemics and pandemics for centuries, so there are lessons we can draw from these examples.

The virus in the long run

To understand what happens to the virus in the long term, we need to look at how large epidemics work, starting with patient zero.

If there is significant human-to-human transmission, the virus begins to spread, causing a fast increase in the number of cases (illustrated in the figure below). At the same time, those who overcome the disease and develop resistance are henceforth immune, at least for a while.

The people who are newly infected will increasingly have contact with these immune people, rather than with those who have not yet had the disease. This process effectively protects the susceptible population and causes the initial fast growth to slow and eventually stop.

The level of immunity

The level of herd immunity needed to stop the spread depends on both the number of contacts an average person has and how infectious the disease is. If highly contagious, this can be as much as 95%. This protection can be achieved by a combination of reducing infectiousness through immunity, either natural or acquired, or vaccination, or by reducing transmission.

Quarantine and mass restrictions on travel have proved effective, as shown in China, where the number of COVID-19 infections outside of Hubei province, where it started, have been few.

What happens next depends on the disease characteristics and human actions.

The 1918 flu virus did not persist after the early 1920s probably because enough people became immune to it. However, many pathogens are difficult to eradicate globally, although local success is possible. For example, foot-and-mouth disease, which affects sheep and livestock, survives in many countries.

The outbreak in the UK in 2001 was reduced to local islands of infection by an animal movement ban and then eradicated by massive culling.

But it took a long time and high costs to finally bring it to an end (figure below). Like many countries, the UK now has strict rules of animal imports, aimed at stopping the disease from arriving again.

Vaccine for coronavirus

It is possible that we will eradicate COVID-19 in selected countries or regions, but not necessarily worldwide. Although there are hopes that a vaccine will be successful within the next year, this is not certain. If it happens, very stringent travel checks may need to be imposed for at least a substantial time such a restriction, added on to concerns of the impact of air travel on climate change, may mean that the tourism industry may never recover.

Some diseases prove impossible to eradicate even in the long term and will persist following the first outbreak (figure below).

Diseases originating in Europe and Africa were brought to North America for the first time in the late 1400s and early 1500s. Encountering a population with little immunity, smallpox and other diseases spread rapidly causing the collapse of indigenous communities.

Subsequent outbreaks were lower, but smallpox and measles persisted until the 20th century.

Seasonal ailments

In temperate climates, seasonal influenza spreads rapidly through winter but mostly dies out in summer, only to come back the following year. In between outbreaks, the flu virus survives in Asia from where it emerges every year.

Large measles epidemics, before vaccines were available, occurred every two or three years, interspersed with small outbreaks (figure below).

The recurring pattern was caused by people being born all the time without vaccine protection.

Next winter, when children went back to school, there were enough susceptible ones to create a large outbreak. With mass vaccination of children, this influx was slowed down enough to create herd immunity and almost eradicate the disease.

However, measles is returning because vaccination levels are falling below the herd-immunity threshold.

The future of Covid-19

So what is the future of COVID-2019? While we cannot be sure, mathematical models help us explore scenarios and identify potential outcomes, building on our experience of past outbreaks.

The governments are hoping that a combination of social distancing, border closures, isolation of cases, testing and increasing immunity in the population will slow down the spread of the coronavirus and will hopefully open up successful eradication strategies.

Yet, past experiences suggest that we may need to learn to live with the coronavirus for years to come.

Adam Kleczkowski is Professor of Mathematics and Statistics. University of Strathclyde based in Glasgow, Scotland; Rowland Raymond Kao is Sir Timothy OShea Professor of Veterinary Epidemiology and Data Science at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. The above article and charts have been published under Creative Commons Licence.

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Longevity worldwide is the scary part of Covid-19 - Indian NewsLink

The top HR and human capital trends for 2020 and 2021 – Consultancy.eu

Posted on April 1, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

New research among more than 7,000 business executives, HR leaders and employees across sixteen geographies has identified the four most important global HR and human capital trends for 2020 and 2021.

According to the research by Mercer, the four top trends have already increasingly been shaping the face of the human resources landscape for a number of years, but these are now accelerating in importance amid the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on economy and society. The trends are ramping up changes in the way organisations globally are working and will continue to work into the future, stated the report.

With a new, more responsible mandate emerging, the challenge for business is to rethink what makes corporations successful. Although 85% of executives agree that the organisation's purpose should extend beyond shareholder primacy, only 35% deliver on a multi-stakeholder model today.

The majority of the C-suite agrees more needs to be done: 68% of executives want to accelerate progress on environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics in 2020, and 69% believe HR should update its success models to reflect the experience economy. However, with responsibility for many ESG metrics and culture change outcomes sitting primarily with HR (71% of CHROs shoulder the responsibility for culture change, compared with between 16% and 29% of other executives), more shared responsibility is required.

Much of an organisation's success depends on employees trusting that their company is taking a holistic view of their careers, wealth and well-being. Yet career pipelines have tightened in recent years. As many as 72% of older workers say they plan to work past retirement age and 55% of Gen X say longevity in the workplace is limiting progression. Gen Z also want more transparency on the effect of career choices and the long-term outlook.

An intriguing finding of the 2020 HR Trends report is that employees who know the lifespan of their skills feel more positive about the future. Employees whose companies are transparent about which jobs will change are more likely to be thriving (72% versus 56%).

As the Covid-19 pandemic impacts productivity, better management of older workers and good financial advice for all generations will be part of creating shared value. More than three-quarters (78%) of employees want long-term financial planning initiatives. Meanwhile 75% of employees who feel in control of designing their retirement say they are thriving, compared with 29% who lack the control they desire.

Yet, with just 23% of companies providing financial education for employees today, there is a long way to go. Pandemic-driven disruption demands that organisations urgently rethink financial support and ensure that decisions include both economic and empathetic considerations (a balance that only 37% of employees say their company is currently well equipped to do).

With 99% of organisations saying they want to embark on transformation in 2020, and almost all reporting significant skills gaps, the C-suite regards reskilling as the top talent investment capable of driving business success. Workforce capability and lack of future skills are seen as primary reasons why transformations fail, and reskilling is one of the investments they hope to maintain in a downturn. Just 28% identified cutting back on reskilling initiatives as a tactic to mitigate economic softening.

Employees also see reskilling as an emerging part of the deal (rising in importance as an attraction and a retention driver this year). And although more than three-quarters of employees say they are ready to learn new skills, two in five say they lack the time to take advantage of reskilling. In this respect the Covid-19 pandemic may offer the opportunity required to kick-start reskilling. Some business areas will have more time to spare, and firms can take advantage by directing those employees toward online learning courses and career exploration.

However, just 34% of HR leaders are investing in workforce learning and reskilling as part of their future of work strategy. Moreover, 40% of HR leaders do not know what skills their workforce possesses. This can be regarded as a worrying lack of insight, given executives gut feeling that less than half (45%) of their workers are capable of adapting to the future of work.

Without redesigning roles and career options for those at risk of displacement, HR cannot address firm-wide needs to fill new roles with reskilled internal talent. The concern is that without an integrated approach to strategic workforce planning (which takes account of how skills may change) and limited data on existing skills, companies may inadvertently lose valued talent. Long-term planning would enable firms to imagine brighter futures for their employees and boost their competitiveness once economic conditions improve.

The good news is that the workforce science discipline is gathering momentum. The use of predictive analytics has nearly quadrupled in five years, from 10% in 2016 to 39% today, and the use of metrics on pay inequities and total rewards usage has more than doubled.

That said, insights into workforce management could be adopted more widely. Only 43% of organisations use metrics to identify employees likely to leave, 18% know the impact of pay strategies on performance, and just 12% use analytics to correct inequities and prevent them from recurring. Moreover, in the current disruption are companies looking in the right places to ensure sustainability? Only 24% have data on who is at risk of burnout and only 15% can determine whether it is better to buy/build/ borrow employees.

The next wave of maturity requires HR to lean in to structure analytics such that it can answer key strategic questions, like: In a downturn, which strategy offers the best chance of maintaining performance? Which departments could deliver a similar level of output with more contingent staff? Where should we locate talent hubs to take advantage of skilled talent pools?

In parallel, advances in machine learning continue to filter through departments, including HR. Although machines outperform humans at tasks related to scale and speed, humans still outpace machines in sense-checking and judgment Sixty-seven percent of HR leaders are confident they can ensure AI is not institutionalising bias. However, ethics codes about the collection, application and implications of data analytics are still in their infancy.

Talent assessment is an area where human intuition is needed alongside psychometrics to qualify findings. Today, only one in two employees have a positive assessment experience. This is just one example of data collection that will attract more scrutiny as data-informed decision-making becomes common. Leading companies are on the front foot sharing data-driven insights with employees to help them make health, wealth and career decisions: 38% of organisations today apply intelligent nudging technology to help employees make better choices. Further, exploring relevant metrics and sharing them with employees shows how the new climate of remote working affects productivity.

Delivering on the employee experience is a top priority for HR in 2020. Fifty-eight percent of organisations are redesigning their structures to become more people-centric. Yet only 27% of the C-suite believe their investment in the employee experience will yield a business return. Why? Because executives are yet to be convinced of the link between the employee experience and productivity.

Almost half (48%) of executives rank employees' well-being as a top workforce concern, but only 29% of HR leaders have a health and well-being strategy. Feeling depleted is a worrying trend (particularly for employees in Japan and the UK), and two-thirds of employees globally feel at risk of burnout in the year ahead. Burnout risk will only be exacerbated as employees now balance work with social distancing, remote working, closures and quarantines.

The Mercer study shows that action is vital, given that energised employees are four times more likely to report a healthy, flexible and inclusive workplace. Employees who are energised by their job are essential to transformation agendas: Energised employees say they are more likely to stay, more resilient and more ready to reskill. Energised employees work in cultures that are empathetic, in environments they find enriching, and in work cultures that are both efficient and embracing.

Seamless interactions and better enablement of digital working in times of social distancing have a clear role to play, yet only two in five companies say they are mostly or fully digital, the same proportion as in 2018. This will remain a C-suite priority.

Focusing on the desired interactions between HR and the business is key to unlocking energy and enhancing the employee experience. Delivering on this aspiration requires HR to step out of its traditional functional silos. Despite the benefits associated with a more joined up approach, just 40% of HR leaders say they have an integrated people strategy today.

The good news is that 50% of HR respondents have moved away from traditional structures to meet their businesses' escalating need for agility and 26% say they have built a fluid team to respond to different business priorities. Grappling with stability and agility will be a key theme in 2020.

According to Mercers 2020 Global Talent Trends study, the talent landscape will be disrupted in the coming years as jobs are replaced, new skills enter the labour market and the demands of workers changes. As employers transform to tackle these matters, they should reconsider their companys purpose and their responsibilities to employees and employees future earnings. And, they need to do so while facing unforeseen challenges like the current coronavirus.

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The top HR and human capital trends for 2020 and 2021 - Consultancy.eu

Peter Tertzakian: The crisis facing Canadas oilpatch isnt just the industrys problem, its everybodys problem – Financial Post

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Sudden shocks to a system are never good. Things break under stress, sometimes permanently, sometimes with unforeseen consequences.

In the oil world, things could start breaking in a matter of weeks. Here in Canada the situation is likely to be acute, because of our concentrated exposure to one customer, the United States.

Oil markets worldwide are under extreme stress. First, theres the price war waged by The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries a deluge of barrels thrown into markets opportunistically during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The massive glut in oil still unknown in magnitude, but potentially over 10 million barrels per day globally has pounded the price of a premium barrel to near US$20. At that price, very few producers make enough money to sustain their longevity.

Prolonged financial stress, measured in months not years, will lead many oil producers to become distressed and some to die. Its easy for people to be dismissive about this situation from an armchair, far away from where the oil and its petroleum products originate. Consumer detachment from our many supply chains leads to a lack of awareness about what goes on behind the scenes.

While the oilfields of OPEC and Russia are a world away, the COVID-19 pandemic is here and the problem is a lot closer than you think. Oilfields are the starting point of our biggest energy system, a multi-trillion-dollar grid of pipelines, refineries and distribution systems that plug into airports, gas stations and manufacturing plants that give us our modern amenities, including medical supplies and equipment.

Free-market oil companies and their related infrastructure partners have dealt with price wars and geopolitical shenanigans on the supply side in the past. But they havent experienced a catastrophic collapse in demand due to a sudden paralysis of human activity. The latter, closer-to-home problem is potentially more consequential to stressing North Americas energy system than decisions being made in Moscow and Riyadh. And these proximal stresses are about to ripple right up to Canadas oilfields.

Here is the problem: In the past week, big cities, provinces and states across North America have ordered their citizens to leave their workplace and stay at home with varying degrees of enforcement.

So, the big loss is in the use of transportation fuels, for flying and daily commuting. Fuels for light-duty vehicles represents some 40 per cent of the volume that comes out of a refinery, while jet fuel is 10 per cent.

We dont yet know how much of North Americas oil demand will be impaired over the coming weeks, but estimates suggest in the range of 30 per cent across the continent is possible, and greater in the hardest hit areas such as the U.S. Northeast.

So, where do you put the surplus petroleum products if nobody is using the stuff?

Some of the big refineries in the American Midwest are 80 per cent or more reliant on heavy oils, with much of that coming from the oilsands region.

Refineries in Ontario and Quebec are also dependent, receiving western Canadian oil through U.S. pipelines. With limited space in storage tanks, the refinery complexes are starting to turn down their volumes. And that means they need far less oil from Western Canadas oilfields.

Soon, large Canadian producers will likely shut in their production. Preliminary estimates suggest in the range of over one million barrels per day of oil supply could be turned away, mostly the heavier grades of oil. For scale, the Alberta governments 2019 curtailment order was for a mere 325,000 barrels per day.

The exacerbating issue is that not all oilfields are the same; some cant be turned on and off like a hairdryer. For instance, the steam-assisted heavy oil reservoirs can be damaged by shut-ins, as can operations that have corrosion concerns.

In a prolonged scenario, there are potential knock-on effects. Financial contracts, backed by creditors and counterparties, are potentially impacted with unknown aftereffects that can ripple into the banking system.

Pure capitalists would suggest letting the free market decide the fate of these vital supply chains across the continent. Yet, mere low oil prices are a reckless arbiter of who shuts in production and who doesnt. Price regulates volume, but it doesnt consider factors that range from permanent supply impairment to unexpected system failure.

A societal disruption of this magnitude affects the suppliers and consumers of energy, and everything in between. Because everything in between spans the continent, this looming system-wide issue isnt exclusive to Western Canadas oilfields. The entire system is affected.

If major shutdowns begin, its desirable to have a triaged, holistic process, managed from the most vulnerable segment to the least.

State-owned, integrated oil companies can manage such a task, yet in a free market like North America thats called collusion. During this exceptional crisis, maybe we can think about multiparty collaboration instead?

Our personal health is paramount, followed by putting food on the table and shelter over our heads. After that comes the protection of essential infrastructure and services necessary for our modern society to function well.

Canadas oil and gas industry remains an integral, real-time supplier of energy to some of the most populated U.S. states and eastern Canada. Annual oil, gas and petroleum exports last year tallied close to $120 billion.

Right now, in a time of crisis, this is about more than incomprehensibly large dollars in an industry that has historically polarized our society.

Canadas energy industry serves us all it heats our homes, it fuels the trucks that bring food to our tables and its relied upon to create critical medications in our cabinets. And right now, the industry is on the verge of a system-wide crisis.

Without care and consideration, the effects wont just be experienced in some far-off oilfield, we could feel them in close-to-home ways.

We need to think outside the barrel. Industry, government and all stakeholders should proactively work together to minimize damage to our energy systems. Because this isnt an industry issue anymore, its now societal.

Peter Tertzakian is Executive Director of the ARC Energy Research Institute in Calgary, Alberta.

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Peter Tertzakian: The crisis facing Canadas oilpatch isnt just the industrys problem, its everybodys problem - Financial Post

His Nickname is Dr. Disaster and at Some Point You May Need Him – Yahoo Finance

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / March 26, 2020 / "Crises are in the eye of the beholder" says Dr. Joshua Klapow, a clinical psychologist . And that's in part how he got the nickname Dr. Disaster.

Crises come in all shapes sizes and degree of impact. For some it's the down turn of their company in a struggling economy, for others it's a relationship on the rocks. Sometimes crises affect many hundreds or thousands, natural disasters, mass shootings, terrorist attacks. Sometimes they can even be global like a pandemic. In any of these scenarios the psychological and emotional toll on individuals can be devastating. Communities, cities, states, nations can suffer from global distress, a sense of helplessness, and difficulty making decisions and choices that can help them carry on. In any crisis what people do or don't do and how they do or don't do it determines in some cases whether they survive or not, and in all cases whether they thrive or not.

So where can we turn? Where should we turn? Dr. Josh believes that at the heart of every crisis is human distress that needs guidance to see it through. And for years, Dr. Josh has served that role to individuals, companies, cities, states and even nations. And that's how he came by the nickname Dr. Disaster. From his presence across media outlets when "disaster strikes".

As he says "Unfortunately I have taken on this nickname. When bad things happen you will often see me on television, hear from me on radio or read my words in print. The good news is that when bad things happen to you, your company, your city or state, you can count on me to be there with the tools, and the experience to help people tap into their psychological resiliency and work through a crisis. So I guess Dr. Disaster isn't that bad after all".

Dr. Josh has been working for decades with people in a variety of crisis situations: A CEO in the middle of a contested divorce trying to compartmentalize the stress divorce while maintaining the functioning of a multimillion-dollar business. An elite athlete who has just seen their season end due to a catastrophic injury and now must face the transition to a next life chapter. A start up company that fell on a tough economy and now is faced with massive downsizing while looking after their employees well being. A multibillion-dollar company that is struggling with the retention of high performing individuals who are leaving in droves because of a punitive management culture. Or maybe it's a tornado, or hurricane or earthquake that has decimated a city or state. Or a global pandemic that has struck fear in the hearts of frankly the world. Dr. Josh is usually there. It may be for a one on one series of consultations out of the media's eye. It may be as an advisor helping leadership making tough decisions about layoffs. You may see him on television; hear him on the radio, read his quotes in print as he tries to get the messages out to the masses.

Dr. Josh is there to help people navigate . He explains:

"In times of crises, big or small, at the individual level or global, as a general rule we, humans experience levels of distress that impact every aspect of our functioning. Crises change the way we think, the way we process information, the way we `function. Having the right tools to reduce our anxiety, focus our concentration, regulate our autonomic nervous system is critical. Even then, when people are undergoing prolonged stressful situations, they need someone who can point out the cognitive errors, the irrational beliefs, and the self-defeating actions that come with being under immense pressure. I see it at the individual level but I also see it at the group and population level. A distressed management team makes human resource decisions that often are focused on relieving their own distress but not focused on maximizing the productivity or longevity of their employees. A distressed community engages in a series of actions typically aimed at reducing individual anxiety but not looking at the interconnectedness of their interactions. Crisis does bring out the best in some people but it also brings our weakest psychological characteristics to the forefront. My job is to help guide people through the crisis of their lives. "

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While having significant life and/or business experience is a great backdrop to helping people, it doesn't formally prepare a person to manage the intense emotions, the erratic decisions, the fear, anxiety and at times irrational behavior that happens when people are experiencing a life crisis. Understanding how stress, anxiety, perceived danger, escape preferences, cognitive biases and psychophysiological deregulation impact every aspect of an individuals life is critical to help them navigate crisis situations.. There are many untrained or poorly trained individuals in the marketplace providing high-priced services to people and organizations in very high profile, high scrutiny, and high-pressured positions. Watching this happen in everyone from start-up CEOs to executives in publicly traded organizations to professional athletes and entertainers to entire communities is what motivated Dr. Josh Klapow to step in.

Joshua Klapow, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist. He has a specialization in behavioral medicine and disaster mental health. He trained at UCLA and UC San Diego and spent nearly 20 years researching the role of human behavior in health, well being and the impact of disaster and crisis on human functioning as an Associate Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has taught hundreds of graduate students and professionals the principles of psychological first aid, disaster communication and psychosocial crisis managing. He has served as a behavioral science consultant for individuals and organizations across the country as well as the World Health Organization. He has spent his entire career trying to help people thrive in situations where there are significant challenges to their physical and mental health and overall well being.

"My clinical training was specifically focused on helping people change their lives during times of challenge, strife and crisis. It was also designed to help people understand how situations and environmental settings either helped people to thrive or served as a barrier. My training was designed to help people navigate the life changes in front of them and to help people design businesses and systems of care that were much more person centered." Dr. Josh says.

Dr. Josh's traditional research and clinical work have been supplemented by a collaboration with media outlets to provide the public with the psychological first aid tools during times of crisis. From 9/11 to the variety of mass shootings, to SARS, to tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, the financial crisis of 2008, plane crashes, Ebola, and COVID-19. His passion to get the message out to help people navigate fear anxiety, distress, and frustration have resulted in products such as "The Preparedness Minute", A CDC funded series of videos that have been disseminated to public health organizations and first responders across the country help people prepare and cope with national disasters. He has been called on by media outlets across the country after natural disasters, mass shootings, and disease outbreaks to help address the social and psychological impact these events have on people. From multiple appearances on The Weather Channel, to the BBC, NBC Weekend News and local affiliates across the country. To digital outlets ranging from the HuffPost, Buzzfeed, Elite Daily, Men's Health, Today.com, US News and World Report and more. Dr. Josh has been a media partner and a psychological first aid expert for nearly two decades.

He has also worked extremely closely with the business community to address the human resource impact of difficult and life changing scenarios. He has consulted on continuity planning, employee engagement, crisis communication, executive impairment, leadership transition, and psychological first aid for organizations ranging from startups to multibillion-dollar public companies. His unique expertise as a public health academician and a clinical psychologist allows him to shift from focus on the individual to groups and populations as is needed. Sophisticated technology and a deep understanding of psychology and behavioral science.

This blend of expertise in behavioral science, disaster preparedness, crisis communication and business along with his presence in the national media has positioned Dr. Josh as a sought after resource for companies and individuals across the US helping them leverage psychology and behavioral science in crisis situations. He is called on to help people survive and thrive when high levels of pressure and stress are present. He has become a public and private "go to" for those who need his input in any crisis situation or capacity.

"I know that crises will vary greatly in terms of how many people are impacted. I also know that in crisis situations there is a need for guidance that is not always delivered in a traditional "mental health" format. People need messages that are being delivered via the media, companies need guidance to make the best decisions possible for their employees, individuals need to know there is someone on the other end of a call, video conference, or text that can offer psychological tools and resources immediately to help make critical decisions. I am not a physician or an economist. My role is to know as much as is possible about how to navigate the psychological, cognitive, emotional and behavioral challenges that arise before, during and after a crisis situation. My role is to be there to make sure that you as an individual, a company or a community or nation have the right strategies to work with the impact of humans in a state of distress.

I serve as a trusted "psychological correspondent" for media outlets nationally and internationally and I work with businesses and individuals to help them bring behavioral science and psychology to the forefront of their organizations and their personal lives in the context of crises and disasters. I am here to consult and coach, to develop and support. I am here when you need an individual who can help you or your company thrive in times of crisis, change, decision making or growth. I deeply understand human behavior and I have lived the real-life experiences. Look, in my opinion it comes down to this, if you need to understand how thoughts, emotions and behaviors impact your life during some of the most critical situations and times. If you need to understand that in the context of your company, or the life of others around you, it is important that you get it right, you have to go with someone who has training and experience. Be careful, because intuition, and experience with life strife is not what you want if you need someone to help you get it right. A high level of specific training and experience is critical, because your life is critical. I've worked my whole career to prepare me to help. And I'm here to help." Dr. Josh says.

For Dr. Josh, mindset is critical because you must be willing to look at a crisis situation that may have everyone around you deregulated, distressed and convinced there are no options or their options are the only options. Being able to sit in periods of crisis and guide people through he array of emotions and actions without getting pulled down in is a skill that has to be honed and refined if you are to be at the forefront of crisis management. You have to trust your training and trust that in the middle of chaos you can hold steady as a voice of reason.

"My advice for those who are trying to help in crisis and disaster situations is to make sure you check yourself first. Do you have the tools to be strong, to know when you are exceeding your bandwidth, to join with individuals, organizational, communities while keeping yourself psychological strong. If you haven't had this kind of training you run the risk of becoming a psychological liability versus as n asset. Dr. Josh advises.

Dr. Josh is admant about pushing the message that psychological well being is a science, with specific tools an methods that ere desperately needed for individuals and groups during times of strife. He will also tell you that the larger the crisis, the more people it impacts and the longer the duration the more we need to rely not just on being tough, but rely on the assets that come with specific and targeted experience and credentials in psychology, behavioral science and human performance

"If you are someone who is experiencing a personal life crisis, an organization that is trying to navigate a crisis or a community that is trying to contain a crisis. I have the training and understanding to help you. If you are in a high-pressure situation and need to make sure that you are getting the most out of your own psychological, emotional, behavioral and physiological resources, I can guide you through. ." Dr. Josh states.

To learn more about Dr. Josh's work or how you can reach out, go here.

CONTACT:

Paula Henderson202-539-7664phendersonnews@gmail.com

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UK and Yemen: The Catch-22 contortions of an unethical foreign policy – Middle East Eye

Posted on March 19, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

When you look at the footage of so-called Yemeni special security forces attacking Aden airport five years ago today - gaunt young men in sandals and shorts gingerly approaching their target - the only thing that appears to match their billing is their military hardware.

Creeping behind powerful armoured cars, with machine guns and rocket launchers slung over their shoulders, they wait to break cover and storm the gates.

That morning, they lost the battle, but the war they started continues to rage, albeit under new management.

Originally, those special forces were fighting alongside Houthi rebels to oust President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi and reinstall his predecessor, Ali Abdullah Saleh.

That seems a world away now. Salehs double-dealing eventually got him killed in 2017. Hadi is exiled and largely irrelevant in Riyadh.

If the last five years in Yemen have taught me anything ... it's the need to take other people's power struggles out of our equations, and take politics entirely out of our arms trade

Now what matters is the power struggle between the megalomaniacal Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, keen to add military genius to his list of precocious talents, and the fanatical Houthis, whod rather see Yemen destroyed than surrendered.

That explains both the longevity of the Yemen war, and also the sheer level of devastation it has caused. Put simply, neither side cares.

For Mohammed bin Salman, his indiscriminate air strikes and crippling blockades are yet to force a surrender, but not for the want of effort.As for the thousands of civilians blown to bits in the bombing, and the millions of children suffering malnutrition and disease, his Western allies dont seem bothered, so why should he?

The Houthis have their own long record of war crimes - child soldiers, torture, human shields, and random missile strikes on Riyadh.But the PR war has never bothered them; only the real one. And if you said it would last another five years, theyd probably count that a success.

So do we think either Mohammed bin Salman or the Houthis care about the imminent spread of coronavirus among a severely weakened population with an already shattered healthcare system?

If I sound in despair, forgive me.But what really gets me about Yemen is the sheer amount our Tory government actively chooses not to do when it comes to bringing the war to an end.

As the official UN penholder on Yemen, we could demand a comprehensive, nationwide ceasefire to allow proper peace talks and the mass distribution of humanitarian aid.We could demand a full, independent UN investigation into all alleged war crimes, and impose - with no exemptions - a total ban on all UK arms sales for use in Yemen until that investigation is complete.

Ive made those three demands of all four Tory foreign secretaries Ive faced, and everyone has refused - not for reasons of high principle or substantive policy, but just because of the naked politics that Mohammed bin Salman is in a power struggle, and they must be seen to back him up.

Watching all that across the dispatch box has changed me.It has taught me to hate the Catch-22 contortions of an unethical foreign policy - one where we accept that British arms have enforced blockades used to starve Houthi-held areas into submission, and deny children essential medical treatment.

Theyve been used to bomb weddings, funerals, school buses, food markets, homes, schools and hospitals. An impartial observer might therefore conclude there is a clear risk UK arms are being used to commit war crimes, and block their export accordingly.

But not the UK government.Instead, they applaud Saudi authorities for taking these concerns seriously and investigating all allegations, both - they argue - clear examples of good intent, and signs of positive UK influence.

Furthermore, because these investigations have supposedly only revealed a series of unfortunate accidents, not deliberate war crimes, the Tories say Riyadh deserves praise for admitting the former, not an unjustified arms ban to prevent the latter.

We must stop outsourcing UK foreign policy to Donald Trump

That, the Tories conclude, is consistent with the licensing rules put in place by former foreign secretary Robin Cook, even though Cook would have been appalled to see them applied in this way.

It was after hearing this crazed Conservative logic that I told Labour colleagues it would not be enough for us to simply operate the current arms export regime more stringently. I said we should scrap it entirely and introduce a Bank of England-style model, removing politicians from the decision-making process entirely.

Instead of ministers, an independent panel would make objective assessments of each export application, based solely on the risk to international law, free from any external interference, lobbying or personal prejudice.

Anything short of that, I argued, would allow a future Tory government simply to return to the old system, in a way they could never do on bank independence.

But my proposal met with resistance from some quarters.After all, some people like a bit of political subjectivity, so long as theyre the ones making the decisions - and especially if there are jobs at stake represented by our arms manufacturing unions.

I accepted a temporary compromise at the time, but vowed not to let it rest, and I wont do so under the new Labour leader.

Because if the last five years in Yemen have taught me anything - especially watching Tory ministers over that time - its the need to take other peoples power struggles out of our equations, and take politics entirely out of our arms trade. Only then can Britain conduct itself as an unequivocal force for peace.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

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UK and Yemen: The Catch-22 contortions of an unethical foreign policy - Middle East Eye

Viruses and the Human Immune System – Eastern Mirror

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

An epidemic, where people of a largecommunity are threatened by an infectious disease, is as bad as things can be;but an epidemic, where the disease threatenspeople on a global scale, is the worst scenario imaginable. The lateststrain of the Coronavirus, HCoV-19 or SARS-CoV 2 (severe acute respiratorysyndrome coronavirus 2) has caused a pandemic and a complimentary rise in paniclevels.

What viruses do is enter your body andstart invading body cells to making copies of itself. The cell is destroyed inthis process and these copies are released and they enter more cells, makingmore copies and attacking and destroying more cells. This goes on until thehuman immune system begins to fight back and destroys all the viruses or isunable to cope, leading to death. Specific viruses attack specific body cells,so a virus which causes coughs will attack only your respiratory system (yournose, throat, bronchial tubes, lungs etc.) while the rabies virus will attackonly your nervous system (your nerves, spinal cord, brain etc.).

What one must understand is that medicinesand vaccines do not cure infections, our immune system cures us. Specificmedicines keep specific infection levels within manageable proportions untilour immune system starts fighting back and specific vaccines train the immunesystem to fight against specific viruses.

The Human Immune System is part army, partmemory bank. Viruses have specific molecules called antigens, these antigenshelp our bodies in recognising that the virus is an alien invader. Viruses inthe blood stream are swallowed and destroyed by white blood cells (WBCs), it iswhen viruses enters body cells, to make copies of itself, that the WBCs becomeineffective. But the antigens trigger the immune system to start producingantibodies and Killer T-Cells. The antibodies lock on to the virus, renderingit powerless to invade other cells, so that WBCs can mop them up, while thekiller T-cells destroy the viruses.

Our immune systems keep a memory of everyvirus that has ever infected us. The moment they identify a known virus,through its antigen, it starts producing antibodies and killer cells. What avaccine does is introduce dead or weakened dangerous viruses so that our immunesystem may learn to produce suitable antibodies. It is when new viruses invadeour bodies that the immune system takes time to identify the intruder andmanufacture a suitable response.

The danger that a virus presents depends onvarious factors, some of which are: how it is transmitted, its longevityoutside a host, its incubation/gestation period (how long it takes before onegets sick), its target or which part of the body it attacks, which sections ofthe population are vulnerable to it and its mortality/kill rate (how manypeople infected die of the infection).

Keeping the above factors in mind, let usexamine the Coronavirus, HCoV-19/SARS-CoV 2.

(i) Transmission:- The Coronavirus can betransmitted through air, but keeping a distance of around 1.5 metres(approximately 5 feet) from an infected person, prevents transmission of thevirus.

The virus can be transmitted throughcontact with an infected person or surface, but only if you touch your mouth,nose or, possibly, eyes with the point of contact (e.g. your hands).

Viruses are just a string of moleculescovered by a layer of fat, washing your hands vigorously with soap, whilebuilding up a lather (foam), for up to 20 seconds, in warm water, dissolves thelayer of fat that protects the virus, and causes it to break down into harmlesscomponents.

(ii) Longevity:- The Coronavirus can beactive outside a host for 3 to 72 hours, depending on the surface it rests on.But you have to touch the contaminated surface and then touch your mouth, noseand eyes to get infected. So, even if you believe that youve touched aninfected person or material, avoiding touching mouth, nose and eyes and athorough hand wash removes the danger of infection.

(iii) Incubation/Gestation:- The virustakes between 1 to 14 days from when you were infected to when you startgetting sick. So if you or anyone who has been exposed to the virus does notget sick by the end of the 14th. day, youre safe.

(iv) Target:- The virus targets yourrespiratory system, mainly your lungs. This causes shortness of breath, whichmeans that your body is not receiving sufficient oxygen. Lack of oxygen cancause your internal organs to fail, resulting in death.

(v) Vulnerability:- Although the virus caninfect anyone, only elderly people and people with pre-existing medicalconditions, like diabetes, heart problems etc. are in grave danger.

(vi) Mortality/Kill Rate:- Compared to somestrains of the Ebola and Marburg Viruses (upto 90 and 80 % mortalityrespectively), the Coronavirus is much less dangerous. Out of 100 peopleinfected, only 20 need hospitalisation. Of the 20 hospitalised, about 3 to 5die, and these deaths have only occurred among the elderly and those sufferingfrom pre-existing medical conditions.

From the above points, we can see that it is not the Coronavirus, butour total unpreparedness for it, that is the cause of all the fear and panic. Respiratorsare needed to keep patients alive until the immune system finds a suitableresponse, health care professionals need protective gear to stay safe. Whenpatients are hospitalised in the hundreds and thousands, and with even the bestand largest hospitals having only a limited amount of respirators andprotective gear; the health care systems of the affected countries areoverwhelmed . Every loss of human life is a tragedy, but in terms of the actualdanger to mankind, Malaria and HIV still lead.

The lockdown by our State Government andsubsequent lockdown of India by the Central Government are good steps. Theisolation created by the lockdown will help identify individuals and pockets ofinfection so that corrective measures can be taken. But the Government ofNagaland, at least, must make immediate provisions for the poor and daily wageworkers. A system of providing them with provisions during the period of thelockdown must be implemented immediately.

In ending, I would like to inform thepolice and colony/village volunteers enforcing the lockdown that you have noauthority to beat anyone violating the lockdown. The lockdown is based on theEpidemic Diseases Act, 1897, violation of which attracts penalty under Section188 of the Indian Penal Code, which prescribes a fine ranging from Rs. 200 toRs. 1000 and imprisonment from 1 to 6 months, penalties which can only beimposed by a magistrate. Arrest them or caution them, beating them opens you tocharges of assault.

Kahuto Chishi SumiAkukau, Hevishe Village, Khaghaboto Range, DimapurKahuto107@gmail.com

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Global Solvent Based Coatings Industry Insights, 2015-2030: Adoption of PET Technology is Increasing – Yahoo Finance

Posted on March 17, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

DUBLIN, March 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Solvent Based Coatings Global Market Report 2020" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

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This report covers market characteristics, size and growth, segmentation, regional and country breakdowns, competitive landscape, market shares, trends and strategies for this market. It traces the market's historic and forecast market growth by geography. It places the market within the context of the wider solvent based coatings market, and compares it with other markets.

The global solvent based coatings market was worth $23.69 billion in 2019. It is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8% and reach $32.14 billion by 2023.

The solvent based coatings market has been geographically segmented into North America, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific, Eastern Europe, South America and Middle East & Africa. Asia-Pacific accounts for around 58% of the market.

Solvent based coatings are beneficial in humid environments. The time required to dry for solvent based coatings is very less when compared to the water-based coatings which are less efficient in humid environments. Solvent based coatings are composed of liquifying agents that are helpful in speeding up the drying process through chemical reaction with oxygen available in the environment. This nature of solvent based coatings makes it is easy to apply in humid environment and at different temperature zones. Moreover, many industries prefer solvent based coatings to avoid chemical reactions owing to its quick drying nature. For example, companies like Jamestown Coating Technologies produces industrial paints, which are solvent based and are more durable when compared to water based coatings. Thus, the nature of quick-dry in solvent based coatings benefits its application in humid environments and thereby contributes to the growth of the market.

Solvent based coating release Volatile Organic compounds (VOC) into the environment causing environmental damage and affecting human health. VOCs are carbon compounds that become gas at room temperature and become the main reason for air pollution. Governments across the world are coming up with different regulatory acts to curb the emission of VOC. For instance, to reduce the emission of VOC, Hong Kong government has implemented a regulation that restricts products exceeding the standard emission of VOC in the country. Thus, the emission of VOC in the atmosphere from solvent based coatings limits the growth of the market.

The adoption of PET technology is increasing as it enables homogenous distribution of mineral particles during painting. It is an acrylic polymer capable of encapsulating mineral pigments in organic phase, which is a solvent phase. The main performance of the coatings comes from the bulk of the binder composition, however additional polymer features such as crosslinking, oxidative or UV (Ultra Violet) curing and specific morphology can boost overall performance, improving the dirt pick up resistance in most cases. PET technology is being widely adopted by many customers and establishments to improve paint longevity and enhance resistance to climate variations and dirt from manmade and natural sources. Some of the major companies who adopted this technology are Vermont Photo Inkjet, AkzoNobel N.V., Sherwin-Williams Company and RPM International Inc.

In October 2018, Akzo Nobel N.V., a Netherlands-based chemical manufacturing company that manufactures specialty chemicals such as decorative paints and coatings, surfactants, polymer, and other chemical products acquired Fabryo Corporation S.R.L. for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition helped AkzoNobel in becoming a leader in the Romanian decorative paints market. Fabryo Corporation S.R.L. is a Romania-based company that specializes in producing products such as paints, lacquers, enamels, and solvent-based coatings.

Major players in the market are BASF, AkzoNobel, PPG, Sherwin-Williams, Henkel, Valspar, 3M, HB Fuller, Eastman Chemical Company, and Arkema SA.

Key Topics Covered

1. Executive Summary

2. Solvent Based Coatings Market Characteristics

3. Solvent Based Coatings Market Size And Growth 3.1. Global Solvent Based Coatings Historic Market, 2015 - 2019, $ Billion 3.1.1. Drivers Of The Market 3.1.2. Restraints On The Market 3.2. Global Solvent Based Coatings Forecast Market, 2019 - 2023F, 2025F, 2030F, $ Billion 3.2.1. Drivers Of The Market 3.2.2. Restraints On the Market

4. Solvent Based Coatings Market Segmentation 4.1. Global Solvent Based Coatings Market, Segmentation By Type, Historic and Forecast, 2015-2019, 2023F, 2025F, 2030F, $ Billion

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4.2. Global Solvent Based Coatings Market, Segmentation By Application, Historic and Forecast, 2015-2019, 2023F, 2025F, 2030F, $ Billion

5. Solvent Based Coatings Market Regional And Country Analysis 5.1. Global Solvent Based Coatings Market, Split By Region, Historic and Forecast, 2015-2019, 2023F, 2025F, 2030F, $ Billion 5.2. Global Solvent Based Coatings Market, Split By Country, Historic and Forecast, 2015-2019, 2023F, 2025F, 2030F, $ Billion

Companies Mentioned

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Preventing the next virus outbreak – Social Europe

Posted on March 17, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

The coronavirus is not a natural disaster but the outcome of a system of agriculture subordinating animal, and human, welfare.

Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) poses global challenges and many scientists are trying to develop vaccines for the disease. Beyond the importance of discovering a drug, one must understand why the virus has spread and learn from this to prevent epidemics erupting in the future.

The outbreak, as the science writer Brian Resnick concluded, is due to human behaviour. How so? Scientists and reporters in China explain that one must go back to 1970.

That year, there was a heavy famine in China, which resulted in more than 36 million people starving. The Communist Party administration, which controlled food production, failed miserably to save the people. As a result, in 1978 it relinquished exclusive control over agriculture and allowed private entrepreneurs to trade. The private sector began to grow.

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While most farmers domesticated animals such as poultry, pigs and cows, as well as growing cereals and legumes, a smaller, richer sector began to hunt and domesticate wildlife, such as bats, turtles and snakes. At first it was very small, growing and trading wildlife only around the home. Although initially this was illegal, the Chinese government turned a blind eye because it contributed to the livelihood of those engaged in it, necessary during those years of crisis.

Having come to realise the economic potential of selling wildlife, in 1988 the government changed the law, determining for the first time that wildlife was a natural resource which one could therefore use for ones own needs. This made wildlife trading increasingly interesting to the industry at the margin.

It soon became clear, however, that the decision was a precursor to the spread of new viruses. As the industry developed, in limited spaces huge markets emerged, selling a wide variety of animals: rhinos, wolves, mice, crocodiles, ducks and snakes, alongside pigs, chickens and more. Where there is a concentration of large animal populations, there is an opportunity for an animal disease to spread to other species and on to manwhich is exactly what happened.

In 2003, in a market in Guangdong province, the SARS virus (SARS-CoV) broke out, the source an Asian wild animal called the masked palm civet. The virus reached 71 countries, killing about 774 people. Following the outbreak, the Chinese government shunned the wildlife food industry.

Although its value was minimal for Chinas overall gross domestic product, those who lost huge profits following the decision lobbied to allow the trade to recommence. The pressure told: a few months later, the government declared 54 wildlife species as legitimate to trade in once more. In 2016, more varieties were added, such as tigers and pangolins (scaly anteaters).

In 2019 the coronavirus erupted. This time, the virus has reached more than 80 countries and it has already killed more than 3,000 people. Scientists speculate that the source was probably a bat, which transmitted the virus to a pangolin, entering humans in the market in Wuhan.

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What is common to the two markets in which the SARS and corona viruses erupted is the high concentration of different animal types in dense conditions, allowing the transmission of viruses from one to another. The interaction of the three (bat-pangolin-human) depends on close proximity. As Peter Li, a professor of animal trafficking in China, explained,The cages are stuffed with each other. The animals at the bottom are soaked in fluids. One after the other. This is exactly how viruses emerge.

After the coronavirus broke out, the administration again blocked the sale of wildlife. But organisations around the world are pushing the Chinese to repeal the law allowing it completely. Yet since the government halted the trade after the outbreak of the SARS virus only to relent under pressure, it will not necessarily take a different tack this time.

When Resnick asked Jonathan Epstein, a veterinarian and epidemiologist, why its important to understand the source of the virus, his answer was, obviously, to avoid repetition. To him, epidemics occur because of human activityit is not the animals fault.

Is the problem the sale of wildlife intrinsically or is it the living conditions of the animals? Probably both.

In other countries, animals also live under harsh conditions which cause disease outbreaks. For example, the source of swine flu which radiated from Mexico in 2009 was probably the town of La Gloria, east of Mexico City, where industrialised pig pens were located. Bird flu and the mad cow disease which erupted in Britain can also be seen in this light.

The Chinese should not be judged for consuming animals others do notthere is really no difference between slaughtering tigers and cows or chickens. The main problem is the conditions, not the species.

The solution may thus be more liveable conditions for animals or indeed the cessation of the industrialised processing of animals. Instead of putting a band-aid on the problem (vaccines), it must be addressed more fundamentally. If we, humans, treat animal welfare as a necessary thingnot only for animals but also for usand insist that public health is more important than the wellbeing of wealthy industries, then the outbreak of such plagues can be prevented.

Animal welfarehuman welfare. It is time to think about the implications of our actions for animals, not just in terms of morality but also health. And of course (but thats another topic) the environment.

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Partnership aims to accelerate cell and gene therapy – Harvard Gazette

Posted on November 25, 2019 by Prof Baldwin

MIT Provost Martin A. Schmidt said sharing the risk among several institutions will not only make possible work that would be difficult for a single institution to tackle, it will also encourage collaboration that accelerates the process of moving discoveries from lab to patient.

MIT researchers are developing innovative approaches to cell and gene therapy, designing new concepts for such biopharmaceutical medicines as well as new processes to manufacture these products and qualify them for clinical use, Schmidt said. A shared facility to de-risk this innovation, including production, will facilitate even stronger collaborations among local universities, hospitals, and companies and ultimately, such a facility can help speed impact and access for patients. MIT appreciates Harvards lead in convening exploration of this opportunity for the Commonwealth.

Richard McCullough, Harvards vice provost for research and professor of materials science and engineering, who also helped lead the project, said although the centers activity will revolve around science and manufacturing, its true focus will be on patients.

The centers overarching goal will be improving patient care, McCullough said. This would occur both by speeding access to the essential, modified cells that patients in clinical trials await, and by fostering discoveries through collaborations within the centers innovation space. The aim is that discoveries result in whole new treatments or improved application of existing treatments to provide relief to a wider universe of patients.

Organized as a private nonprofit, the center will be supported by more than $50 million pledged by its partners. It will be staffed by a team of at least 40, experienced in the latest cell-manufacturing techniques and trained in the use of the latest equipment. Among its goals is disseminating badly needed skills into the Boston life-sciences workforce.

We have to be sure that we are constantly feeding the industry with talented people who know the right things, so personally, I am very excited about education programs, Ligner said. Initiatives like [this center] are essential to advancing the industry because they help organizations build on one anothers advances. For example, the full potential of cell and gene therapies will only be realized if we collaborate to address challenges, such as manufacturing, improving access, accelerating innovation, tackling cost issues, and then sharing our learnings.

The new center emerged from conversations with state officials, including Gov. Charlie Baker and Attorney General Maura Healey, and industry sector leaders about ways to bolster Massachusetts preeminence in life science research and medical innovation. Those conversations sparked a two-year consultation process at the invitation of Garber and Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Bill Lee, that was coordinated with state officials and included representatives from industry, academia, venture capital, area hospitals, and government.

Cell and gene therapies have the potential to revolutionize the global health system. Recently, in Sweden, the first patient received cell therapy outside of a clinical trial. Its the start of an incredible time in the industry and in human health.

Emmanuel Ligner, president and chief executive of GE Healthcare Life Sciences

Called the Massachusetts Life Sciences Strategies Group, members reached out to regional experts beginning in 2017to discover what fields they considered most important and how best to support them. Cell and gene therapy rose to the top because of the considerable excitement generated by activity already going on, its potential to help patients, and its high potential for future growth and innovation. Also important were the opportunities to spread the high cost of these technologies across multiple institutions and, while so doing, capture the collaborative power of housing each player in the development chain within a single facility.

The centers board of directors will be comprised of Harvard, MIT, and industry partners Fujifilm, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, and GE Healthcare Life Sciences. Other members will include Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Womens Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Childrens Hospital, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; as well as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and life-sciences company MilliporeSigma.

When you look at the constellation of players coming together, you really have the best universities and the best teaching hospitals and the best corporate players all supporting it, McGuire said, which I think is a great opportunity.

The facility intends to provide researchers and emerging companies outside the consortium with access to excess material, though organizers said they expect it to be in high demand by center partners.

The centers boost to the areas cell and gene therapy endeavors comes early enough that it should help maintain leadership over places like California and China, which have made clear their interest in life-science research, McGuire said.

I think getting this early mover advantage is going to be huge [in] developing the technology and the know-how and, ultimately, the intellectual property around it, McGuire said.

For Sharpe, the ultimate payoff will come from using cancer immunotherapys checkpoint blockade and other cell and gene therapies to save and improve lives.

We are seeing long-term benefits in some patients whove received checkpoint blockade, Sharpe said. There are patients who are more than a decade out and are melanoma-free. I think that it really has transformed patient care, quality of life, and longevity. So Im optimistic that the more we learn, the more were going to be able to do to help patients.

Partnership aims to accelerate cell and gene therapy - Harvard Gazette

Are family businesses and investors immune to the coronavirus? – Campden FB

Posted on March 17, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Investment fund managers are appealing for calm among investors as the coronavirus pandemic spreads, anticipating a six-month market disruption but divided on if there will emerge a new normal.

Amundi Asset Management said the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak should prove short-lived to the first half of the year with the mobilisation of fiscal tools, leaving the medium-term potential growth of economies intact.

Pascal Blanque, group chief investment officer, and Vincent Mortier, deputy group chief investment officer, said once the epidemic stabilised, economies will rebound and catch up some of the lost ground. The supply shock would disappear and pent-up demand would materialise, except in some sectors where losses in activity were not recoverable, such as tourism and air transport.

At the moment, the fear factor is at full play because the whole population understands thatthe situation is likely to worsen further in the coming weeks, Blanque and Mortier said.

That being said, despite the panic that has gripped markets, we believe that investors should remain calm as much as possible.

Asked if multigenerational family businesses, with their patient capital, can ride out the storm given their historic adaptability, Omar Kodmani, Investment Director at Ruffer LLP, said in principle, a very long-term investment horizon would suggest this was a reasonable strategy.

However, the drawdowns in equity markets along the way can be devastating to capital and being allocated to a manager that is preoccupied with the downside can help navigate the rollercoaster ride of public markets and provide a stable source of capital for other investments, Kodmani said.

In other words, time horizon is helpfulbut what you are invested in matters even more. Consistent with Ruffers capital preservation objective, our portfolios are broadly flat in 2020 so far while equity markets have entered bear market territory.

Professor Pele Clamour (pictured), of HEC Paris, pointed to three cases of multigenerational family businesses which survived and even prospered during times of turmoil.

The Wendels built their fortune on steel and survived despite several crises and wars, he said.

In finance, the longevity of the Rothschilds is also emblematic. We can also cite the Wallenbergs in Sweden. These families share a capacity for resilience and adaptation that have enabled them to get through these periods of crisis.

Kodmani at Ruffer said while it was impossible to generalise about the risk of a contemporary family business going bust, we are in a new environment now and contingency plans are required. Major shocks can change behaviour permanentlywe cannot assume a return to the status quo ante.

A new-normal for families and investors post-coronavirus was also suggested by Clamour but there were more immediate concerns. Asked if families should change their acquisition, investment, marketing, growth or recruitment strategies, he said the initial outbreaks first led to the implementation of a survival plan and the anticipation of scenarios for the future. The question of investments or acquisitions was currently secondary.

The banking system must be put at the service of the SME, Clamour said.

They will be in difficulty because they do not have sufficient cash to pass the storm. Central Banks and governments are the key drivers to lead this process.

Amundi expected a significant rebound in GDP growth in the second half of 2020, if there was coo-ordination of fiscal monetary support.

Currently markets expect a longer time to recover, but no global recession, Blanque and Mortier said at Amundi said.

We think that the worst could be contained to H1 as we already see some signs of recovery in China.

Clamour said COVID-19 was a powerful reminder that a risk which threatens a family business can also crash the value of more liquid assets, just when they were likely to be needed most.

The current turmoil in global markets should serve as a wakeup call to family office investment portfolios that they should have allocations to strategies that can hold up or make money in periods of stress, he said.

Bolts really can come from the blue.

Like any other business, families are seeing capacity disruptions in their supply chains as a result of coronavirus-related transportation restrictions. Today, we see how supply chains have been globalised, how much we are dependent on a certain number of export and import. We live a health shock, which can become a geopolitical shock and will destabilize our economic system.

Italy has become the epicentre for the coronavirus. The worst-hit country after China has reported nearly 25,000 cases and more than 1,800 have lost their lives.

Alfredo De Massis (pictured), Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Business, Director of the Centre for Family Business Management, Free University of Bolzano and Lancaster University Management School, said Italian ultra-high net worth (UHNW) family business had always prioritised the saving of human lives over their economic interests.

Health comes before profits; this reflects the strong family-centered, non-economic goals that characterise the way Italian families do business, and distinguishes the behaviour of many family businesses as compared to their nonfamily counterparts, De Massis said.

So Italian UHNW family businesses are now taking strict measures to protect their people, allowing smart working or even closing some businesses when needed, showing a very socially responsible behaviour. This is also consistent with the typical propensity of Italian UHNW family businesses to build superior, long-term relationships with their employees. We will think about economic issues at a later stage, now we need to save as many lives as possible.

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Extreme C book extract: Exploring structures and user-defined types in C – Developer Tech

Posted on November 25, 2019 by Prof Baldwin

The growth and popularity of C continues. The most recent TIOBE index of most popular programming languages saw C in a virtual dead heat with Java, knocking the latter off its perch for the first time in five years.

In his new book, Extreme C(left), Kamran Amini outlines the essential features of the language before moving onto encapsulation and composition, synchronisation, as well as advanced programming with code samples and integration with other languages, including C++, Java, and Python.

This extract, exclusive to Developer, explores structures within C, as well as touching on the reasons behind the almost 50-year-old languages continued longevity.

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From the design perspective, structures are one of the most fundamental concepts in C. Nowadays, they are not unique to C, and you can find their twin concepts nearly in every modern programming language.

But we should discuss them in the history of computation when there were no other programming languages offering such a concept. Among many efforts to move away from machine-level programming languages, introducing structures was a great step toward having encapsulation in a programming language. For thousands of years, the way we think hasnt changed a lot, and encapsulation has been a centric means for our logical reasoning.

But it was just after C that we finally had some tool in this case, a programming language which was able to understand the way we think and could store and process the building blocks of our reasoning. Finally, we got a language that resembles our thoughts and ideas, and all of this happened when we got structures. C structures werent perfect in comparison to the encapsulation mechanisms found in modern languages, but they were enough for us to build a platform upon which to create our finest tools.

You know that every programming language has some Primitive Data Types (PDTs). Using these PDTs, you can design your data structures and write your algorithms around them. These PDTs are part of the programming language, and they cannot be changed or removed. As an example, you cannot have C without the primitive types int and double.

Structures come into play when you need to have your own defined data types, and the data types in the language are not enough. User-Defined Types (UDTs) are those types which are created by the user and they are not part of the language.

Note that UDTs are different from the types you could define using typedef. The keyword typedef doesnt really create a new type, but rather it defines an alias or synonym for an already defined type. But structures allow you to introduce totally new UDTs into your program.

Structures have twin concepts in other programming languages, for example, classes in C++ and Java or packages in Perl. They are considered to be the typemakers in these languages.

So, why do we need to create new types in a program? The answer to this question reveals the principles behind software design and the methods we use for our daily software development. We create new types because we do it every day using our brains in a routine analysis.

We dont look at our surroundings as integers, doubles, or characters. We have learned to group related attributes under the same object. But as an answer to our starting question, we need new types because we use them to analyse our problems as a higher level of logic, close enough to our human logic.

Here, you need to become familiar with the term business logic. Business logic is a set of all entities and regulations found in a business. For example, in the business logic of a banking system, you face concepts such as client, account, balance, money, cash, payment, and many more, which are there to make operations such as money withdrawal possible and meaningful.

Suppose that you had to explain some banking logic in pure integers, floats, or characters. It is almost impossible. If it is possible for programmers, it is almost meaningless to business analysts. In a real software development environment that has a well-defined business logic, programmers and business analysts cooperate closely. Therefore, they need to have a shared set of terminology, glossary, types, operations, regulations, logic, and so on.

Today, a programming language that does not support new types in its type system can be considered as a dead language. Maybe thats why most people see C as a dead programming language, mainly because they cannot easily define their new types in C, and they prefer to move to a higher-level language such as C++ or Java. Yes, its not that easy to create a nice type system in C< but everything you need is present there.

Even today, there can be many reasons behind choosing C as the projects main language and accepting the efforts of creating and maintaining a nice type system in a C project and even today many companies do that.

Despite the fact that we need new types in our daily software analysis, CPUs do not understand these new types. CPUs try to stick to the PDTs and fast calculations because they are designed to do that. So, if you have a program written in your high-level language, it should be translated to CPU level instructions, and this may cost you more time and resources.

In this sense, fortunately, C is not very far away from the CPU-level logic, and it has a type system which can be easily translated. You may have heard that C is a low-level or hardware-level programming language. This is one of the reasons why some companies and organisations try to write and maintain their core frameworks in C, even today.

This extract is taken from Extreme C, by Kamran Amini, published by Packt. You can find out more and buy your copy by visiting here.

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their use-cases? Attend the co-located5G Expo,IoT Tech Expo, Blockchain Expo, AI & Big Data Expo, andCyber Security & Cloud ExpoWorld Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London, and Amsterdam.

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Extreme C book extract: Exploring structures and user-defined types in C - Developer Tech

Leverates Success Task Force Scheduled to Launch Before the End of 2019 – Finance Magnates

Posted on November 25, 2019 by Prof Baldwin

Leverate announced today the launch of its Success Task Force: a unique package that aims to help Leverates clients grow and maximize their benefits.

Originally named Proactive, Leverates Success Task Force is a one-of-a-kind brokerage solution that helps clients both in the technological and business aspects of opening and running their brokerage.

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It is an elite unit within Leverate that is dedicated to helping clients realize their companys full potential.The Task Force will consist of two arms an automatic Business Intelligence unit, and a dedicated human agent.

The BI element was designed by Leverates developers to monitor the function and operation of the clients brokerage and automatically identify and repair any malfunctions or problems that arise, before the client spots and reports them.

This back office solution will also notify and alert Leverates agents to alarming changes in the brokerages overall performance, like a sudden decrease in deposits or a string of deposits declined by the PSP.

This will allow the broker to react on time and if needed change his marketing or sales strategy.

The human arm of Leverates Success Task Force consists of a personal success agent which takes a proactive approach in his relationship with the client.

His primary goal is to make sure his clients business keeps growing and meets his revenue expectations.

The agent will advise and guide the broker in all business and financial aspects of operating their brokerage, and provide a broad array of business support services for the client.

In many ways, the task force will function much like a business consulting firm. At first, the success manager will analyze the current state of the brokerage, point out existing vulnerabilities and help the client form and optimize a growth plan, including quarterly and yearly KPIs for the company, as well as for each team member.

Later on, they will inspect whether or not their designated goals are being met.

Task Force agents will regularly monitor and assess a wide range of brokerage functions: marketing campaigns, lead conversion rates, retention rates, leads stage progression in the CRM, number of calls, length of calls, performance of each team member, communication between sales and retention teams, language support, and much more.

The gathered knowledge will provide the agent and the broker with actionable insights for strategy planning. The critical mission of each agent is to accompany his clients business in the face of growing obstacles.

This becomes even more important for brokers moving to a regulated environment, which requires a different set of KPIs and objectives.

Maoz Tenenbaum, Leverates VP of Sales, explains the reasoning behind this new service: The Forex market is becoming more and more competitive, with small brokerages opening and closing at an alarming rate. This is what our Success Task Force is focused on preventing. Brokers today need a solution that can assure their longevity and allow them to succeed and grow over time. With this new Task Force, our brokers now have a wingman to help guide their growth.

In many cases, brokers are not mindful to minor changes in their performance that can have a significant effect on their business in the future. Some brokers do not track their performance adequately at all.

For example: a small decrease in the number of first time deposits in a certain week can indicate a growing trend which requires strategic planning.

On the other hand, deposits being declined by the PSP can point at a minor problem that should be addressed in time, like a spam number.

In both cases, our combined automated BI tool and human support team will detect issues in advance, respond on time, and build a future plan in coordination with the broker himself.

In conclusion, what were giving brokers with this new service is much more than a tech solution or a service. Were effectively taking the broker hand in hand towards the full achievement of his goals.

Its a kind of special business coaching unit for aspiring brokers, that will help them not only survive, but also thrive in this demanding industry.

Disclaimer: The content of this article was provided by the company, and does not represent the opinions of Finance Magnates.

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Leverates Success Task Force Scheduled to Launch Before the End of 2019 - Finance Magnates

And Another Thing: Kids in the Hall Did Almost Everything Right – Nashville Scene

Posted on April 23, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

AshleySpurgeonis a lifelong TV fan nay, expert and with her recurring television and pop-culture column "And Another Thing," she'll tell you what to watch, what to skip, and what's worth thinking more about.

Thirty Helens Agree: You cant judge a book by its cover. But you can, in many cases, learn a lot about a person based on their favorite sketch comedy show. Or at least make a few educated guesses. Do you love Monty Python? Youre probably older, probably British or an Anglophile, and probably a dork. Havent missed SNL in years? Youre very up-to-date on American pop culture, broadly familiar with contemporary political figures, probably under 40. Also: a dork. (All sketch-comedy fans are dorks; I dont make the rules.) Key & Peele, Kroll Show, Chappelles Show, Portlandia: I could play this imaginary, subjective game all day.

My personal favorite? Kids in the Hall, and I dont have to think about it. The Canadian sketch troupes (Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCulloch, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson) series aired from 1988 to 1994, and I first encountered it at the perfect time: early adolescence. Really, thats the ideal age (for dorks) to get into any sort of comedy your developing brain is still sweetly dumb enough to find ecstasy in the most puerile jokes (all the greats have poo-poo, pee-pee or vomit sketches), and the early-20-somethings who actually make the comedy are, from a junior-high perspective, worldly (though puckish) adult truth-tellers.

I loved SNL, but Kids in the Hall hit just right. I found it in reruns in the late 90s, and KITH did almost everything right as far as longevity is concerned; I just rewatched the first four seasons (to whomever I lent Season 5, please just put it in my mailbox), and it holds up. One important reason why: Its barely politically or pop-culturally topical. I think Elizabeth II might be the only real-world political figure parodied, and there is maybe one reference to Pierre Trudeau. Sometimes Madonna is referenced, and it spoils the 1990 Harrison Ford film Presumed Innocent. (His wife killed her!) Its kind of Canadian, I guess? The phrase The Ontario College of Art is a punch line to quite a percentage of the live audience here that joke is not for me. There are probably very specific observations on Quebec that elude me.

But with the exception of a handful of sketches where they play across race (big-time 2020 yikes), culturally, Kids in the Hall was pretty far ahead of its time. The most frequent academic/comedic kudos given to the show are typically in praise of how it deals with sexuality and gender. Thompsons Buddy Cole is one of the most popular and endearing recurring characters from the series (heres my favorite quote). There's also the fact that all five men created various female characters of different ages, backgrounds and perspectives, and not once was the joke, This man is dressed like a woman! or Titties!

But on this rewatch, it seemed to me that both of those aspects work so well because clear-eyed disenchantment (and sometimes disgust!) with current conceptions of masculinity kind of undergirds the entire enterprise. In fact, you cant be on board with masculinity as practiced in the White West and be that queer and perceive women as, you know, independent-thinking human characters capable of acting and reacting to situations in absurdist and comedic ways. The Colin Josts of the world just do not have a Chicken Lady in them, and I think thats a shame. Or maybe, even sadder, they do have a Chicken Lady deep down inside, and the chains of patriarchy bind her I suppose these are the kind of profound psychological questions only comedy can answer. Do many male comics these days have a good attitude towards menstruation? If you are the female partner of one, please let us know in the comments. And I havent gotten there yet, but I heard menopause is like taking ecstasy and a rocket-ship ride, all rolled up into one.

The average Kids in the Hall fan, by and large, very likely thinks masculinity is dumb. But thats a pretty deep undercurrent, and you should probably be pretty stoned and watching everything for the 15th time before you try to make these kinds of professional assessments. The most obvious reason why the show holds up is because its weird and funny. I have many, many favorite sketches that have nothing to do with anything, and they are very, very hard to find online. Our brave new world of instant access to everything does not include dozens and dozens of hours of Kids in the Hall, at least outside of Canada. Sketches come and go from YouTube all the time: Please take the time to enjoy Bass Player, Three for the Moon, and Terriers while you have the chance. If you thought the film Best in Show has the greatest terrier-themed parody song of the '90s, youd be wrong Best in Show came out in 2000.

The complete series on DVD is floating around out there for the low low price of around $30, which is a lot less than I paid for each individual season back 15 years ago. Please return Season 5.

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And Another Thing: Kids in the Hall Did Almost Everything Right - Nashville Scene

Missing Link To Longevity Discovered In The Plant Kingdom – Texas A&M University

Posted on November 24, 2019 by Prof Baldwin

lead researcher Dorothy Shippen, Ph.D., (left), graduate student Jiarui Song, first author (center) and postdoctoral fellow Claudia Castillo-Gonzlez, second author (right).

Texas A&M AgriLife

A breakthrough discovery by Texas A&M University and Arizona State University professors could provide a key component in understanding the human aging process and even aid in the battle against cancer.

Dorothy Shippen, Ph.D., is a University Distinguished Professor and Regents Fellow in Texas A&MsDepartment of Biochemistry and Biophysicsand withTexas A&M AgriLife Research, College Station.

Shippen co-led a study with Julian Chen, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry, Arizona State Universitys School of Molecular Sciences. First author, Jiarui Song, is a graduate student with Shippen.

Their study, The conserved structure of plant telomerase RNA provides the missing link for an evolutionary pathway from ciliates to humans, is being published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Our discovery of this key component of the telomerase enzyme in the plant kingdom provides an evolutionary bridge, and a novel path forward, for understanding how humans keep their DNA safe and enable cells to divide indefinitely, Shippen said.

Moreover, since plants often evolve interesting solutions to fundamental biological problems, some of the lessons we learn from plant telomerases may provide new ways for addressing stem cell disease and cancer.

We found a core component of the telomerase enzyme that had been missing all these years, Shippen said. And by finding this component in plants, we not only learn new lessons about how telomerase evolved, but we also open the door to learn new things about the human enzyme.

Back in 2001, Shippen published a paper outlining the discovery of the catalytic subunit of the telomerase enzyme from plants. The catalytic component is one of two absolutely critical parts of the enzyme, and it is now very well understood.

However, the second component, the RNA subunit, that provides the enzyme with information about what to do with chromosome ends, was missing.

Our new discovery is the RNA subunit of telomerase from the plant kingdom. In the plant telomerase RNA, we can now see the signatures for the human telomerase and telomerase from simple organisms like bakers yeast and the microbes in pond scum.

The missing piece always was this subunit. Now that we have found the correct one, its opened up a lot of interesting insights.

Plants have different, innovative solutions to so many biological challenges, and insight into these may provide important clues on how human telomerase is regulated, she said.

We can study the telomerase enzyme more deeply and see so much more now, and it can help us understand how the human enzyme is going to work. It really is this missing middle ground.

In the 1930s, Barbara McClintockwas studying the behavior of chromosomes in maize and was one of the first scientists to appreciate the importance of telomeres.The Shippen Labin the 1990s followed up on the pioneering work of McClintock in model plant systems and discovered the telomerase enzyme, which is required for maintaining these structures on the ends of chromosomes.

Shippens longtime studies on telomerase, which play an essential role in chromosome stability and cell proliferation capacity, has led her to be considered the worlds expert in plant telomere research.

The telomere is like a biological clock. There is a certain amount of telomeric DNA at the end of chromosomes. As cells divide, they lose part of this DNA.

She has likened telomeres to the plastic tip on the end of a shoelace they form a protective seal on the ends of chromosomes in plants and animals. Like the plastic tip that wears out, allowing the shoelace to fray and become hard to use, so does the telomere break down in most cells in the human body over time.

The telomerase enzyme is capable of replenishing the lost DNA at chromosome ends and it is available in cells that are immortal, Shippen said. Its active in the stem cells, but not active in other places of the body normally.

Theres a whole connection between immortality and telomerase that needs to be studied.

Why is telomerase only active in stem cells, turned off in other cells and why does it get reactivated in cancer cells? Shippen said. Weve learned a lot about the human telomerase from pond scum, but plants can provide still more clues because their growth and development is so plastic. If you cut a flower from a plant growing in the garden, it will grow another flower. But if you cut off the tip of your finger, you wont be growing a new one.

Its a big mystery.

But Shippen said the plant telomerase is still very similar to the human telomerase.

It is remarkable that even in plants, telomerase is active only in cells that need to divide many times.

She expects that what is learned in the plant system will ultimately be translatable and have significant impact in human medicine.

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Missing Link To Longevity Discovered In The Plant Kingdom - Texas A&M University

30-year-old Harvard study on longevity: Five daily habits to follow for a healthy living – Republic World – Republic World

Posted on November 25, 2019 by Prof Baldwin

Scientists at Harvard have reportedly been studying human anatomyfor years. From researching about how to eat healthy to studying what goes on inside our body, they know it all. Recently, they came up with research which discovered the 5 rules an individual should follow to lead a healthy life. The study done by Havard is 30-year long study which gives 5 rules one should compulsorily follow:

Also Read:Healthy Diet: Benefits Of Protein And Fiber In Your Diet

The Lancet stated that 1 in every 5 death globally is associated with a p[oor diet. It is believed that we consume double the recommended amount of processed meat which affects our body causing obesity and other body-related diseases. The Havard T.H Chan School of Public healths study found out that adding enough fruits, nuts, whole grains, fruits and vegetables can lower the risk of heart attack stroke by 20 per cent.

Exercising regularly is something every dietician or nutritionist might suggest. According to the World Health Organization, People who are not active enough have 20-30 per centincreased their risk of death. Experts in this field have advised that a healthy adult should exercise for 150 minutes every week.

Also Read:Eye Health And Eyesight: 5 Best Foods To Include In Your Diet

A good diet and exercising regularly helps you maintain a healthy weight. The United Nations study has found out that around 800 million people around the world are obese and the number has tripled since 2016.

It is recommended to not intake too much of alcohol. The taste of wine has been found to engage the brain than any other human behaviour. The Scripps research institute found that an ingredient in red wine can also help to reduce stress but it should be consumed in moderation, preferably justa glass or two. Nature claimed that a moderate amount of wine can be beneficial and too much alcohol is a health risk.

Also Read:Food Combinations That May Sound Weird And Gross But Taste Delicious

Smoking is injurious to health and every individual is aware of it. If a person quits smoking, within a year of quitting smoking, your risk of heart disease drops by half. After 10 years, the risk of lung cancer falls by 50 per cent, as claimed by the World Health Organization. Giving up smoking also reduces the chance of impotence and infertility among people who wish to be parents. WHO also found that maintaining these healthy habits add 12 years of life for men and 14 for women.

Also Read:Fitness Tips: Indoor Exercises That You Can Do To Stay Healthy And Fit

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30-year-old Harvard study on longevity: Five daily habits to follow for a healthy living - Republic World - Republic World

Fifty Things We’ve Learned About the Earth Since the First Earth Day – Smithsonian.com

Posted on April 23, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

SMITHSONIANMAG.COM | April 22, 2020, 7:20 a.m.

When Gaylord Nelson stepped up to the podium in April 1970, his voice rang with powerful purpose. The Wisconsin senator set forth a challenge for Americaa call to arms that he declared a big concept: a day for environmental action that would go beyond just picking up litter.

Winning the environmental war is a whole lot tougher than winning any other war in history, he said. Our goal is not just an environment of clean air and water and scenic beauty. The objective is an environment of decency, quality and mutual respect for all other human beings and all other living creatures.

In the half-century since concerned people all across the United States took steps to repair a world rife with pollution, litter, ecological devastation, political apathy and wildlife on the brink, great strides have been made and major setbacks have been recorded. An estimated 20 million Americans volunteered their time and energy to live up to Nelsons goal. Inspired by man-made disasters like the burning of Ohios Cuyahoga River and an oil spill in Santa Barbara, California, environmentalists of the day pushed the nation and the world to recognize the damage they were inflicting on the planet and to change course. Social justice lawyers and urban city planners took up the hard effort of bringing this vision to the impoverished, the hungry and the discriminated.

Today, when not battling a deadly pandemic that has shut down the world economy, Earths citizens continue that struggle, challenged by the consequences of global climate change in the form of increasingly catastrophic natural disasters, a depletion of necessary resources, and humanitarian crises on an unprecedented scale. At the same time, scientists, innovators and younger generations are fighting back against these forces and offering reasons for hope and optimism.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, and the 50th anniversary of Smithsonian magazine, the staff of Smithsonian magazine challenged scientists, historians, researchers, astrophysicists, curators and research scholars across the Smithsonian Institution to identify something about the planet that has been revealed over the past 50 years. Read on and be inspiredand sometimes saddenedby their responsesthe things achieved and the struggles still ahead.

Our improved understanding of the geological history of Earth helps us understand how the atmosphere, oceans, soils and ecosystems all interact. It also gives us a new perspective on ourselves: We are pushing the Earth to depart radically from the state it has been in for several million years or longer. Our models show that our use of energy and resources will have side effects that persist for hundreds of thousands of years into the future. These realizations have given rise to a new termthe Anthropocene, or Age of Humans. We lack the ability to destroy the Earth, thank goodness, but if we want to leave it in a condition that is pleasant for humans, we have to learn to work within the limits and constraints that its systems impose. Our scientific understanding tells us what we need to do, but our social systems have lagged behind in helping us implement the needed changes in our own behavior. This little essay is being written from self-quarantine because of the worst global pandemic in a century. The human tragedies of COVID-19 should remind us of an important principle. It is difficult or impossible to stop exponential processes like the spread of a virusor, the growth of human resource use. Global change is generally slower and more multifarious than this pandemic, but it has a similar unstoppable momentum. The sooner we flatten the curve of our resource consumption, the less harm we will cause to our children and grandchildren. If we bring our consumption of resources and energy into line with the ability of the planet to replenish them, we will truly have inaugurated a new epoch in Earth history. Scott L. Wing, paleobiologist, National Museum of Natural History

The Arctic that existed when I was born in 1980 was more similar to the one that 19th-century explorers saw than it will be to the one my children will know. Each year since 1980, winter sea ice has steadily dropped, losing more than half its geographic extent and three-quarters of its volume. By the mid-2030s, Arctic summers may be mostly free of sea ice. The Arctic is undergoing a fundamental unraveling that has not happened since it first froze over more than three million years ago, a time before the first bowhead whales. These filter-feeding whales are known as the one true polar whale for good reasonthey alone have the size and strength to deal with the vicissitudes of ice, including the wherewithal to break it up should it suddenly begin to close up around a breathing hole. Mysteriously, bowheads can live up to 200 years. A bowhead calf born today will live in an Arctic that, by the next century, will be a different world than that experienced by all of its ancestors; as the Arctic unravels within the scale of our own lifetime, some of these bowheads may still outlive us, reaching a bicentenarian age in an Arctic Ocean with far less ice and many more humans. Nick Pyenson, curator of fossil marine mammals, National Museum of Natural History. This passage is adapted from his book, Spying on Whales.

In 1978, the U.S. raised almost twice as many bovine animals as it had in 1940. The emergence of industrial feedlots made this explosion possible. The countrys nearly 120 million ruminant animals, increasingly being fed a diet of grains laced with hormones and antibiotics, were concentrated into industrialized feeding operations. The tremendous population growth that feedlots made possible, however, came with an unexpected consequence: a dramatic rise in methane emissions. In 1980, atmospheric scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan discovered that trace gases such as methane were extremely potent greenhouse gases, with a warming potential on an order of magnitude greater than CO2. And in 1986, climate scientist and Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen published an article that put the burden of increasing methane emissions on the cattle industry in unequivocal terms. Crutzen explained that 15 to 25 percent of total methane emissions were of animal origin, and of this, cattle contribute about 74 percent. Crutzen and others, thus confirmed that growing bovine numbers, were one of the largest factors behind the rise of methane emissions. Abeer Saha, curator of engineering, work and industry division, National Museum of American History

In the last decade, weve discovered that parasites move around the worlds oceans faster and in far larger numbers than we thought. Commercial shipping is the main way goods move from place to place, transporting millions of metric tons of cargo a year. In two studies published in 2016 and 2017, my colleagues and I used DNA-based methods to search for parasites in ballast water (the water that ships take on board and hold in special tanks for balance). Weve discovered that ballast tanks are full of parasites known to infect many different marine organisms. In our 2017 study, we found some parasite species in all of our samples, from ships docking in ports on the East, West and Gulf Coasts of the U.S. This signals a huge potential for parasite invasions. Knowing these ships are unwittingly ferrying parasites means we can act to limit the future spread of parasites and the diseases they cause. Katrina Lohan, marine disease ecology laboratory, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

The year 1970 was a good one for the Arctic. Northern regions buried in snow with lots of winter ice. Polar bear populations were high, and the seal hunt was producing a good income for Inuit hunters before French actress Brigitte Bardots protest killed peltry fashion. Meanwhile, scientists studying the Greenland ice cores were predicting the Holocene was over and the world was headed into a new ice age. What a difference 50 years can make. Today the Arctic is warming at a rate twice that of the rest of the world; summer pack ice may be gone by 2040 with trans-Arctic commercial shipping and industrial development soon to begin, and Arctic peoples are now represented at the United Nations. In 50 years, the Arctic has been transformed from a remote periphery to center stage in world affairs. Bill Fitzhugh, curator and anthropologist, Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History

The first Earth Day may have been observed 100 years after the invention of the first synthetic plastic, but it took place just three years after Dustin Hoffmans character in The Graduate was advised, Theres a great future in plastics. Though criticized in the 1970s as a technology of cheap conformity, plastics were nonetheless sought out as unbreakable, thus safer for packaging hazardous materials; lightweight, thus environmentally beneficial for transportation; easily disposable, thus reducing disease spread in hospitals; and suitable for hundreds of other applications.

But synthetic plastics were designed to persist, and now they are present on every square foot of the planet. If uncaptured by reuse or recycling streams, a significant amount degrades into small bits called microplastics, which are smaller than five millimeters and can be as small as a virus. These small pieces of plastic circulate in waterways, air and soils around the world. Microplastics infiltrate the food chain as animals inadvertently consume plastics. Tiny deep ocean filter feeders have been found with microplastics in their bodies, as have fish, birds, humans and other animals. By one estimate, the average American will consume or inhale between 74,000 and 121,000 particles of microplastics this year. So far, we do not know the full implications of our microplastic-filled world. Chemical leaching from plastics can affect reproductive systems in organisms. Small bits of plastics can accumulate enough to cause blockages. The challenge ahead is to invent new materials that have properties we needlightweight, flexible, able to block disease transmission, and so onbut that do not persist. Arthur Daemmrich, director, Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation; Sherri Sheu, environmental historian, research associate, National Museum of American History

Ever since the groundbreaking work of conservation biologist George Schaller and his colleagues in the 1980s, we have known the key ingredients required for bringing giant pandas back from the brink. They need mature forest with a bamboo understory, adequate birthing dens for raising their precocial young, and protection from poaching. Leaders within the Chinese conservation community, such as Pan Wenchi, used this knowledge to advocate for a ban on forest cutting and the creation of a national reserve system focused on giant pandas. The unprecedented outflow of funds from the Chinese government and the international NGOs has resulted in the creation, staffing and outfitting of more than 65 nature reserves. Taking place every ten years, the National Giant Panda Survey involves hundreds of reserve staff and documents the return of this species to much of its suitable habitat. Meanwhile, zoos throughout the world cracked the problems of captive breeding, and now sustain a population of more than 500 individuals as a hedge against collapse of the natural populations. In 2016, this massive effort paid off. The IUCN Redlist downgraded giant pandas from endangered to vulnerable conservation status, proving it is possible with a few critical advocates and an outpouring of support to put science into action. William McShea, wildlife ecologist, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute

A bridge between land and sea, mangrove forests are among the most productive and biologically complex ecosystems on Earth. Found throughout the tropics and subtropics, mangroves provide critical habitat for numerous marine and terrestrial species and support coastal communities by slowing erosion, cleaning water and much more. In 2007, after decades of rampant losses, scientists sounded the alarm: Without action, the world would lose its mangroves within the next century. In just ten years, concerted, coordinated global efforts have started to pay off. Improved monitoring and increased protections for mangroves have resulted in slower rates of loss. Governments and communities around the world have begun to embrace and celebrate mangroves. A member of the Global Mangrove Alliance and partner in conservation and restoration throughout the American tropics, the Smithsonian is contributing to ambitious goals aimed at protecting and conserving these important habitats.Steven Canty, biologist, Smithsonian Marine Station; Molly Dodge, program manager, Smithsonian Conservation Commons; Michelle Donahue, science communicator, Smithsonian Marine Station; Ilka (Candy) Feller, mangrove ecologist, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center; Sarah Wheedleton, communications specialist, Smithsonian Conservation Commons

In the 1970s, only 200 golden lion tamarins (GLTs) existed in their native Atlantic forest, located just outside of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Centuries of deforestation had reduced their habitat by a whopping 98 percent, and that along with their capture for the pet trade had decimated their numbers. In an unprecedented collaboration, Brazilian and international scientists led by the Smithsonians National Zoo accepted the challenge to rescue the species from certain extinction. Zoos genetically managed a captive breeding population and soon 500 GLTs were being cared for across 150 institutions. From 1984 to 2000, descendants of the reintroduced zoo-born GLTs flourished in the wild and Brazils dedicated GLT conservation group, Associao Mico-Leo Dourado, led an environmental education program that sought an end to illegal deforestation and the capture of GLTs. By 2014, 3,700 GLTs occupied all remaining habitat. In 2018, yellow fever reduced that number to 2,500. A painful setback, but the conservation work continues. Kenton Kerns, animal care sciences, National Zoo

The first report demonstrating major pollinator decline in North America was published in 2006 by the National Academy of Sciences. Over the past 50 years, habitat degradation has had an enormous impact on pollinators and the native plants that support them, but the public can help reverse this trend by creating native plant gardens. Tools such as Pollinator Partnerships Ecoregional Planting Guides and National Wildlife Federations Native Plant Finder can help individuals select appropriate plants that help pollinators. The Million Pollinator Garden Challenge helped connect a network of approximately five million acres, from tiny yards to public gardens, to restore and enhance landscapes to benefit pollinators. It is with hope that these collective efforts will help the populations of bees, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, birds and bats, which sustain our ecosystems, help plants to reproduce, and are responsible for bringing us one out of every three bites of food that we eat. Gary Krupnick, head of plant conservation, botany, National Museum of Natural History

Large-diameter trees are disproportionately important to the Earths carbon budget. All trees absorb carbon dioxide as they photosynthesize, but a 2018 study using data from 48 Smithsonian ForestGEO research sites across boreal, temperate, tropical and subtropical forests found that the largest one percent of trees made up about 50 percent of aboveground live biomass, which has huge implications for conservation and climate change mitigation strategies. If we lose big trees to pests, disease, other degradation, and deforestation, we lose significant carbon stores. Caly McCarthy, program assistant, Lauren Krizel, program manager, ForestGEO

Some 200 million years ago, well before the first Earth Day (and humankind for that matter) dinosaurs were dining on a coniferous tree on what is now the Australian continent. Only known to humans from the fossil record, Wollemia nobilis from the family Araucariaceae was thought to have gone extinct a couple of million years ago, until a lucky explorer brought back some interesting pinecones from an excursion in New South Wales. The ancient, Wollemi pine was rediscovered in 1994. Black-footed ferret, a big-eared bat, a fanged mouse-deer, and a cliff-dwelling Hawaiian hibiscus are more examples of Lazurus taxonspecies that seemed to have been resurrected from the dead. While we are thought to be on the precipice of a sixth mass extinction, stories of species discovered after they were once thought lost forever are welcome glimmers of hope. Its stories like this that we love to share as part of the Earth Optimism movement to maintain an inspired sense of enthusiasm for our planet and the progress and discoveries we can make in conservation. Cat Kutz, communications officer, Earth Optimism

Fungi are best known for their fruiting bodiesmushroomsbut most of their structure is hidden underground in a network of microscopic threads called mycelium. People once thought that fungi were harmful parasites that stole nutrients from plants so that they could thrive. Today we better understand the ancient relationship between mycorrhizal fungi and the plants they connect. Tiny fibers play an outsized role in the Earths ecosystems: 90 percent of land plants have mutually beneficial relationships with fungi. They break down organic materials into fertile soil, help plants share nutrients, and communicate through chemical signals. Plants supply fungi with sugars from photosynthesis; in exchange, fungi provide plants with water and nutrients from the soil. Cynthia Brown, manager, collections, education and access, Smithsonian Gardens

Confronting an extinction crisis starts at home: Field conservation, right in animals home habitats, is public health for endangered species. But when public health fails? Just as Intensive Care Units (ICUs) have to be at the ready for humans, since 1970 biologists have learned that zoos and aquariums must serve as ICUs for the extinction crisis. When field conservation isnt possible, sometimes the only alternative is to safeguard endangered species in captivity for a time, and restore them to the wild when conditions improve. In 1995, Smithsonian scientist Jon Ballou provided the first complete description of how to accomplish this, empowering networks of Zoo-ICUs to rescue dozens of species from extinction, including the Golden Lion Tamarin and the Scimitar-Horned Oryx. This research into population management means that Earth did not lose some of its most critically ill patients in the last 50 years. Kathryn M Rodriguez-Clark, population ecologist, National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute

Trees are found on every continent except Antarctica and in all the major habitats of the world. How many trees are there? Until 2015, we did not know. Now, the global number of trees across the entire Earth has been calculated to exceed three trillion individuals. But the number of trees on the planet has continually changed over the 400 million years since trees first evolved. Between 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, before the accelerated growth of human populations, however, twice the number of trees existed than are present today. Now, the number of trees is decreasing because of human activity, including forest destruction, tree exploitation, climate change, pollution and the spread of invasive species and diseases. More than 15 billion individual trees are lost each year due to human action. Humans have had a tremendous impact on trees and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future. John Kress, botanist, National Museum of Natural History

Bees are hugely influential organisms on humans and have, throughout history, had almost mythological qualities placed on them. (The ancient Greek writer Homer called honey the food of the gods.) The many species of bees may differ in some physical characteristics, but one thing they share is a pollinator role in our ecosystems. Along with other insects, bees travel from plant to plant, pollinating flowers that wind up being essential to human life. Their contributions to human societies are invaluable. I argue that contemporary awareness and activism surrounding conserving bee populations is a massive highlight in environmental history. Without our pollinators, we will experience crop failures and food shortages, so their survival and longevity is in our collective best interest. Organizations like the Honeybee Conservancy work to protect our flying friends and new research, including using fungi to protect bees against disease, gives us hope and optimism. Zach Johnson, sustainability intern, Conservation Commons

Poor and minority communities are more likely to be impacted by the consequences of climate change, they are also less likely to contribute to its underlying causes. Their carbon footprint is smallerthey purchase fewer goods, drive and fly less, and reside in smaller housing units. Impoverished communities have limited access to health care, making inhabitants more susceptible to infectious diseases, malnutrition, psychological disorders and other public health challenges caused by disasters. Due to rising energy costs, working-class Latinos may have limited access to air conditioning and because many live in urban areas, their residences are impacted by the heat island effect. They have less mobility, limited access to warning systems and language barriers may result in a slower response to looming dangers. Because many Latinos do not have homeowners' insurance or depend on inefficient public housing authorities, their period of recovery is typically longer. Experts are noticing increasing numbers of Latinos among the class of environmental migrants, sure signs of displacement and attendant economic decline and social stress. It is clear that environmentally challenged Latino communities must continue to inform a more collaborative, solutions-oriented science driven by community-directed research. Active community participation in scientific research can produce better solutions to address public health challenges and to manage natural resources during disasters. It can also create new employment opportunities for community members, strengthen social networks and build lasting, functional partnerships between research institutions and impacted communities. These approaches and outcomes are key in creating the resilience needed to withstand and thrive in the face of natural and human-induced disasters. Eduardo Daz, director, Smithsonian Center for Latino Studies (adapted from this column)

Its the Same Old Game is a color 16mm film released in 1971 by the Emmy-award winning producer and director Charles Hobson. This 20-minute documentary examines the consequences of poor urban planning and its impact on the environment and people in communities of color. At the time, environmentalism had grown as a political and social justice crusade across the United States. Its the Same Old Game, however, confronted racism in urban planning, where city planners approved of dumps in poor and minority communities, demolished housing to build highways, and built industrial plants in the middle of neighborhoods, where rumbling trucks and smokestacks spewed noise and air pollution. As an exploration of a nascent justice movement, environmental racism, the film reflects the concerns of a new generation of African American activists following the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King Jr.s death in 1968. Aaron Bryant, curator of photography, National Museum of African American History and Culture

Research from the United Nations has shown that women will be the most affected by the consequences of climate change. However, women like Wangari Maathai are also at the forefront of the fight for climate action and environmental conservation. In 2004, she became the first black woman and only environmentalist to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Rural Kenyan women, like many females in the Global South working as subsistence farmers, are both the caretakers of their land and their families. Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1984 to give women resources and compensation income for planting and tending to trees, helping them gain financial independence. Meanwhile, their communities would reap the ecological benefits of reforestation. Wangari's grassroots movement showed that its possible to tackle gender equality and climate change simultaneously through sustainable development. Fatima Alcantara, intern, American Womens History Initiative

Nearly two decades of community-led efforts to address environmental inequality and racism came to a head at a gathering in Washington, D.C. in October 1991. Over the course of four days, more than 500 participants at the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit challenged narratives that communities of color were neither concerned with nor actively combating environmental issues. Those present, representing civil rights, environmental, health, community development, and faith organizations from across the U.S., Canada, Central and South America, and the Marshall Islands, had been living with and organizing against the impacts of years of environmental inequality and racism. Conversations, negotiations and moments of solidarity produced the 17 Principles of Environmental Justice that have defined the Environmental Justice Movement in the years since. The declaration made almost 30 years ago proclaimed: We do hereby re-establish our spiritual interdependence to the sacredness of our Mother Earth; to respect and celebrate each of our cultures, languages and beliefs about the natural world; to ensure environmental justice; to promote economic alternatives which would contribute to the development of environmentally safe livelihoods. The summit forever transformed notions of the environment and environmentalism, energizing and supporting the work of Environmental Justice networks and precipitating reflection within mainstream environmental organizations who sought to address charges of exclusivity and a lack of diversity. Katrina Lashley, program coordinator, Urban Waterway Project, Smithsonians Anacostia Community Museum

In 2017, the Whanganui River in New Zealand was granted legal personhood. Environmental personhood is a legal status that gives natural entities rights, like the ability to be represented in court. In this rivers case, a committee of indigenous environmental defenders were designated as the rivers legal guardians, effectively giving the waterway a voice in court in case of future pollution or harmful development. Could granting legal personhood to vulnerable ecosystems be another tool for modern conservation? Over the past two decades, examples of environmental personhood have spread to Bangladesh, Ecuador and the United States. Rivers, lakes and mountains in those countries can now claim legal standing. Though the practice has yielded mixed results in protecting environmental resources, hope persists. Granting personhood to natural resources may spark a change in public and political opinion of ecosystem conservation, with indigenous leaders at the forefront. Fatima Alcantara, intern, American Womens History Initiative

The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, forced environmental injustice to the forefront of public discourse. It also demonstrated the importance of environmental impact studies. In 2014, facing a budgetary crisis, officials of this poor, majority-black city economized by changing its water source to the Flint River. Yet they failed to consider how the waters chemistry could affect infrastructure. Pipes corroded and leached lead and water turned foul, yet authorities dismissed residents complaints. Officials could have averted catastrophe by commissioning a studyor even speaking with scientistsbefore making this change. Poor and minority communities are more likely than others to shoulder burdens of environmental contamination. Sometimes these are legacy problems. Flints case involved deliberate obfuscation of facts and attempts to discredit a pediatrician who cried foul. Those children in Flint who were poisoned by lead will pay for this injustice for the rest of their lives. Terre Ryan, research associate, National Museum of American History

Curtis Bay in Baltimore, Maryland, has historically been a center for industrial development. It is also one of the most polluted areas in the United States, with one of the highest rates of air pollution-related deaths. In 2012, the nations largest trash incinerator was planned to be built less than a mile from a high school. Experts projected the plant would emit two million tons of greenhouse gases and about 1,240 tons of mercury and lead into the atmosphere every year. High school student Destiny Waterford and her grassroots organization, Free Your Voice, campaigned for years to stop the building of the incinerator. They employed creative strategies to win community support: everything from knocking door-to-door, to presenting songs, speeches, and videos to committees and boards. In 2016, their efforts paid off and the energy company ended all plans to continue building the plant. In recognition for her work, Destiny Watford received a Goldmans Environmental Prize the same year. Fatima Alcantara, intern, American Womens History Initiative

The visceral sense of Earths fragility against the vastness of space came home to many humans shortly before the first Earth Day, when Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders shot the iconic image (above) of our planet hovering over the surface of the moon. The profound question arose: Are humans alone? The 1975 Viking mission to Mars gave us the first chance to search for life on another planet. Half-a-century on, we have now confirmed the existence of water on Mars and determined its past could have been life-sustaining. We are now finding exoplanets in habitable zones around distant stars, too. Yet, each discovery, most importantly, confirms the preciousness of life here, the uniqueness of our home planet, and the importance of ensuring a healthy future. Ellen Stofan, director, National Air and Space Museum

Since the first Earth Day in 1970, teams of scientists have discovered regions in the mountains of Antarctica that can contain thousands of meteorites stranded on the surface of the ice. These meteorites fell to Earth from space over tens of millions of years and were buried beneath new ice forms. As the ice of the polar cap flows with gravity, the ice gets stuck against the massive Transantarctic Mountains and, as very dry winds erode that ice away, meteorites are left exposed on its surface. Teams of scientists from a number of countries have collected nearly 45,000 meteorites over the past 50 years, including the first recognized meteorites from the Moon and Mars. While the vast majority (more than 99 percent) of these meteorites come from asteroids, many new types of meteorites have been discovered, each filling in more pieces of the puzzle of how our solar system formed. Cari Corrigan, Curator of Antarctic Meteorites, Department of Mineral Sciences, National Museum of Natural History

In 1980, the father and son team of Luis and Walter Alvarez, digging into a roadcut outside the town of Gubbio, Italy, discovered a layer of rock enriched in the element iridium. Rare in the crust of the Earth, iridium is common in meteorites, suggesting that this layer was deposited after a major impact about 65 million years ago at the boundary between the Cretaceous and Tertiary geologic periods. The Alvarezes and their colleagues suggested that impact caused the extinction of dinosaurs. Ten years after that, a crater was identified in what is today the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. While impacts on Earth were well-known, these studies suggested the remarkable idea that impacts of material from space altered not just the geologic history of Earth, but the biologic history of our planet. Tim McCoy, curator of meteorites, National Museum of Natural History

The Earth and environment we have today are the result of billions of years of cosmic good fortune. The Earth is 4,567 million years old, and the first roughly 500 million years of this is known as the Hadean Eon. This eon is named after Hades, the Greek god of the underworld because we used to think that Earths early years were an inhospitable period of doom and gloom, with oceans of churning magma blanketing the surface. Now, thanks to the discovery of microscopic crystals of the mineral zircon from Australia, some of which are as old as 4,400 million years old, we have a different story of the early Earth. From these crystals, geologists know that the early Earth had liquid water oceans and continents that may have resembled the continents of todaycritical steps in laying the groundwork for the emergence of life and setting our world on its path to today. Michael R. Ackerson, curator of the National Rock and Ore Collection, National Museum of Natural History

In the past 50 years, scientists have learned an enormous amount about the evolution of Earths ecosystems, and we can now understand human impact on biodiversity from the perspective of Deep Time as never before. The fossil record provides a look at historic biodiversity by comparing recent communities of plants and animals with ancient ones. In 2016, a team of paleobiologists and ecologists at the National Museum of Natural History discovered that ancient species tended to occur more often together rather than separately, and these positive associations shaped ancient communities. Amazingly, this pattern of species aggregation lasted for 300 million yearsstrong evidence that it was important to sustaining biodiversity. About 6,000 years ago, however, these bonds began to break apart, and the dominant pattern today is more like every species for itself. Human impact, particularly agriculture, may have caused the shift because it disrupts natural habitats and drives species to compete for resources. A Deep Time perspective shows how profound this change is for life on our planet, and it also gives us valuable insight into the kind of community structure that helped sustain biodiversity for hundreds of millions of years. Kay Behrensmeyer, paleobiologist, National Museum of Natural History

Fifty years ago, anthropologists assumed they knew all about the environment in which humans evolved. Arid grassland and barren ice-age landscape presented the critical survival challenges that transformed our ancestors, impelling them to control fire and invent new technologies, for example. But a quarter-century ago, research on ancient climate began to tell a different story. Environmental records from the deep past proved that we inhabit an amazingly dynamic planet. Early ancestors encountered huge swings between wet and dry in our African homeland, and between warm and cold as populations ventured to higher latitudes. Humanitys history of confronting Earths climate swings helps explain our exceptional adaptabilitya species evolved to adjust to change itself. This revised understanding of human evolution, however, implies that our survival in the world depends on altering it. The runaway result is an unprecedented transformation of Earth a new survival challenge of our own making. Rick Potts, director, Human Origins Program, National Museum of Natural History

As scientists improve their ability to examine distant planets, the number of potentially habitable worlds has increased exponentially. However, it has become apparent that a better understanding of the intricate dynamics between environmental change and living things on Earth is necessary to identify conditions that could host such life elsewhere. One major finding is that the evolution of complex organisms (i.e. animals) occurred at a time when the availability of oxygen on Earth rose dramatically. The oldest animal fossils, more than 550 million years old, indicate that the arrival of complex animals followed changes in the amount of oxygen present in these ancient oceans. Thus, identifying exoplanets with well-oxygenated atmospheres may be critical in the search for complex alien life. Scott Evans, fellow, paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History

Today, our species, Homo sapiens, stands more than 7.7 billion strong. Yet genetic evidence from modern humans strongly indicates that despite our outward differences, we have less genetic diversity in the entire human species than among chimpanzees of the same troop. We are even less genetically diverse than wheat. How is this possible? Sometime between around 60,000 to 100,000 years ago, a small population of modern humans migrated out of Africa, and all living humans in Eurasia, Australia and the Americas are descendants of these intrepid travelers. Outside of sub-Saharan Africa, where populations remained stable, prehistoric human populations during this time were so small that we would likely have been on the endangered species list. All living modern humans are descendants of the survivors of this tenuous time for our species, and most of our species genetic diversity is African. Does our low genetic diversity mean we are more susceptible to diseases and less able to adapt to environmental changes? We might learn the answers to these questions sooner rather than later. Briana Pobiner, paleoanthropologist, Human Origins Program, National Museum of Natural History

By the first Earth Day in 1970, scientists using space satellites knew that magnetic fieldscalled beltssurrounded our planet. These belts protect the Earths atmosphere from the Suns solar wind. This interaction produces the well-known phenomenon of northern lights or aurora borealis. But only in 1972, when Apollo 16 carried a specially designed telescope to the Moon, did we begin to learn crucial new details about the Earths outermost layer of atmosphere, called the geocorona. It is a cloud of hydrogen atoms, which plays a vital role in regulating the impacts of the Sun on Earth, particularly during periods when a strong and energetic solar wind hits Earth. Such eventscalled geomagnetic stormshave the potential to disable spacecraft orbiting the earth, as well as overwhelm basic infrastructures of our daily life, such as electrical grids and communications systems. Through Apollo 16, and subsequent space missions, we have come to appreciate that space weather, as much as everyday weather, can profoundly affect our human world. David DeVorkin, curator space sciences, National Air and Space Museum

A 1970 special issue of Mad magazine on air pollution featured an ominous full-color image of Earth wearing a World War I-era gas mask. Inside, a New York City butcher is seen cutting solid blocks of air and wrapping them in paper. Fifty years later, the air is significantly cleaner that it was back then. The exception is carbon dioxide, which is up 25 percent. Since 1970 smoking (at least of tobacco) is way down, sick building syndrome is far less common, acid deposition from sulfur dioxide is lower, lead additives have been removed from gasoline, and stratospheric ozone levels are on the mend. Lets work to see these trends continue and accelerate in years to come. Jim Fleming, research associate, National Museum of American History

Many Americans are familiar with that icon of forest safety, Smokey Bear. Less well-known today is a character born out of the same ecological impetus: Johnny Horizon. Horizon was created in 1968 by the Bureau of Land Management to front an anti-littering campaign. He was a handsome combination of cowboy and park ranger, appearing like an eco-warrior version of the Marlboro man. His message was patriotic: This land is your land. Keep it clean! His popularity peaked in the mid-1970s, when he fronted a campaign to Clean Up America by Our 200th Birthday. Citizens signed a pledge to do their part, and celebrities of the time like Burl Ives and Johnny Cash joined the campaign. Thanks to Horizons pledges and similar campaigns, littering has dropped by about 60 percent since 1969. After his success in 1976, the BLM retired Horizon, according to some reports due to the expense of his campaign. Horizon lives on in Twin Falls County, Idaho, which every year hosts a Johnny Horizon Day litter-pick up.Bethanee Bemis, political history, National Museum of American History

One of the amazing environmental success stories of the past half century was the discovery and reversal of the ozone hole. Developed in the 1920s, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) served initially as refrigerants but were eventually used in hair sprays, deodorants and many more everyday products. In 1974, the journal Nature published an article by Mario Molina and Sherry Rowland declaring that large amounts of CFCs may be reaching the stratosphere and leading to the destruction of atmospheric ozone. This destruction allowed harmful ultraviolet radiation to reach earths surface, leading to increased instances of skin cancer, disruptions in agriculture, and global climate modification, they argued. Their laboratory discovery was confirmed when

NOAA atmospheric chemist Susan Solomon led an expedition to show that the hole in the ozone over Antarctica came from its chemical reaction with CFCs. Her discovery was a major step toward the 1987 Montreal Protocol, the international agreement to phase out CFCs. Representatives from 49 countries agreed to freeze the production and consumption of certain ozone-depleting CFCs at 1986 levels by the year 1990. This treaty was an early instance of global environmental cooperation on the basis of the precautionary principle. More than two decades later Molina and Rowland would go on to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work in bringing the ozone crisis to the attention of the world. In 2019, NASA and NOAA confirmed the ozone hole was the smallest on record. This rescue from planetary catastrophe shows the power of international cooperation we so desperately need today. Arthur Molella, emeritus, Lemelson Center; Abeer Saha, curator of engineering, work and industry division, National Museum of American History

President Jimmy Carter famously encouraged Americans to set their home thermostats to 65 degrees to help combat the energy crisis of 1977. In an address delivered just two weeks into his term, the president wore a beige cardigan sweater and stressed the need for conservation, a strategic energy policy, a new Department of Energy, and an increase in the use of solar power. Two years later, Carter installed 32 solar panels on the roof of the West Wing to heat water for the White House. The executive mansions experiment in solar energy only lasted seven years. During the Reagan administration the panels were removed for roof repairs and not reinstalled. Carter may have been ahead of his time. In 1979, most Americans did not follow his examples of solar panels, or pile on sweaters instead of turning up the heat. Today, tax credits are available to homeowners who take advantage of solar energy and, since 2013, solar panels are back on the White House roof. Lisa Kathleen Graddy, political history, National Museum of American History

Wetland protection became an important issue in the 1970s and legislative efforts to protect wetlands generated political battles that continue to rage today. Should isolated wetlands, sites that are physically separated but periodically linked hydrologically be protected because they are or are not waters of the U.S based on the Clean Water Act? The scientific evidence is clear: these unique ecosystems provide important benefits and should be protected. The wetland story has not ended but from small beginnings, wetlands are now part of our social fabric and wetland science highlights the recognition that natural ecosystems provide beneficial work for humans at no cost. Dennis Whigham, senior botanist, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

The first Earth Day coincided with the ascendency of television news, as Americans turned to the visual medium for reports on the space race, the Vietnam War, and urban protests. The year prior, an oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, coated 800 square miles of ocean and blackened more than 35 miles of the states scenic coastline. For decades to come, television producers and documentary filmmakers would use images of oil-soaked birds and marine mammals and despoiled beaches from the spill as historical or comparative perspectives for subsequent environmental disasters, such as 1989s 11-million-gallon Exxon Valdez spill and 2010s 210-million-gallon Deepwater Horizon spill. The Santa Barbara oil spill demonstrated the power of visual imagery in motivating and sustaining political action on behalf of the environment. Now, in an era of social media and ubiquitous cell-phone cameras, citizens continue to share visual testimonies about the most immediate and dire consequences of global climate change, helping to amplify science-based warnings and to nourish an escalating, worldwide environmental movement. Jeffrey K. Stine, curator for environmental history, National Museum of American History

The Chesapeake Bay, the nations largest estuary, is home to interconnected ecosystems. In 1970, we didnt consider climate change. Now our long-term experiments on the Bays wetlands and forests clearly show the impacts of humans on the Earth and its climate. Through advanced chemistry and mapping land use with satellites, were reducing polluted runoff from the 64,000 square mile watershed. Scientists at the Smithsonians Environmental Research Center use genomics to measure the Bays biodiversity, identify invasive species and detect recovering numbers of fishes in our rivers. Innovative telemetry tracks the migrations of blue crabs, sharks and waterfowl to protect their life cycles. Computers allow us to synthesize vast amounts of environmental data to drive improved management and wise business practices. Anson Tuck Hines, marine ecologist and director, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

Wild American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) is a valuable forest botanical that has been harvested from the Appalachian region for hundreds of years, and traded with China where its roots are widely used in traditional medicine. In 1975, it was listed as endangered by the international regulatory group known as the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). This placed restrictions on the plants gathering, even though some of the new rules were already being practiced by traditional harvesters. Others ran counter to their ecological knowledge. Opinions vary widely as to whether adding wild American ginseng on the CITES list was helpful or harmful to its conservation, and changes over the years have caused many to question the current CITES rules on wild American ginseng. Still, ginsengs recognition as an endangered plant since the mid-1970s has put a spotlight on this historically and culturally important plant and its uncertain future. Betty Belanus, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage

In the 1970s, scholars characterized Angkora tightly woven complex of temples in Cambodiaas an isolated place reserved for the dynastys kings. Recent research has revealed instead that Angkor was the largest pre-industrial city in the world during the 9th to13th centuries A.D. Vast irrigation systems were built to divert rivers and create monumental reservoirs. However, at the end of the medieval climatic anomalya period of unusually warm, wet weatherthe reservoirs dried and this urban center returned to jungle, while surrounding cities emerged. Overgrown as it became, Angkors impact can still be seen. Recent LIDAR scans peeled away the layers of time to show significant changes to the earths surface. A seemingly natural cliff is a thousand-year-old dam. A series of low-lying hills is a village. We now know that Angkor was a sprawling, highly populated city that permanently transformed the environment. Emma Natalya Stein, assistant curator of South and Southeast Asian Art, National Museum of Asian Art

A behind-the-scenes utility in everyday life, the Global Positioning System (GPS) is also an indispensable tool for learning about Earth. Originally a satellite-based navigation technology developed in the 1970s for the U.S. military, GPS is fundamentally an information system that lets us know a spot on the globe with a latitude-longitude accuracy of within 10 meters and time within nanoseconds. Applications for that kind of knowledge have revolutionized mapping and furnished a new dynamism to earth and environmental sciences. GPS is especially useful for studying phenomena in motionlike tracking shifts in tectonic plates, monitoring ice sheet behaviors, observing active volcanoes, measuring atmospheric changes, following the path of oil spills, or counting acres of diminishing forests. In all these ways and more, GPS helps us understand the modern world. Carlene Stephens, curator Division of Work and Industry, National Museum of American History

Since the inaugural Earth Day, the creation of a global satellite communications network has proven crucial. Three years before the first Earth Day, the first global broadcast was the 1967 television program Our World, which instantaneously joined together points dotted around the circumference of [our] home planet, Earth. The program reached upwards of 700 million viewers (nearly a fifth of the worlds population) promoting cross-cultural awareness and environmental action. Each segment began with a live broadcast of a baby being born, then posing the question ...but into what kind of world? That question still is very much with us today. As we deepen our understanding of climate change, satellite communications have been a crucial means to make vivid the world over our collective responsibility to shape a future for ourselves and our children. Martin Collins, curator, National Air and Space Museum

In 1978, at a 1,500-year-old site in Saglek Bay on the northeastern end of Canada, the mysterious predecessors of the Thule and modern Inuit of arctic Canada and Greenland, suddenly came to life. A small gray soapstone carving, only three centimeters high and entombed in frozen soil, was one of the first three-dimensional visuals of a person from the Dorset culture, which existed for three millennia and died out in the 15th century. After living successfully in the North American Arctic for 4,000 years, they disappeared without a trace, unable to compete with the more powerful Thule Inuit arriving from Alaska as whale hunters in a time of climate change. The Saglek Dorset Lady reminds us that the cultural isolation they enjoyed for thousands of years did not protect them in the long run. This woman wears a parka with an unusual high, open collar rather than the hood known from Inuit dress. Gouge holes in her back suggest the carving served some ritual purpose. Since then, other high-collared Dorset carvings have been found, but the Dorset Lady from Labrador was our first glimpse showing the vanished Dorsets as real people. Bill Fitzhugh, curator and anthropologist, Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History

Cement manufacturing is an incredibly energy-intensive process, and a major source of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Ferrock, a carbon-negative cement alternative developed by inventor David Stone, changes the game by incorporating recycled and waste materials, and absorbing CO2 in its production. Stone, whose work has been supported by grants from the EPA and Tohono Oodham Community College, collaborated with Richard Pablo, a member of the Tohono Oodham nation. Together, they mobilized Pablos community, collecting discarded bottles from drinking sites on the reservation; the crushed glass goes into Ferrock. These bottles are teachers! They teach a bad life, says Pablo. Stone agrees: Through the ritual of picking up bottles, of cleaning the desert, we build a space for a new and strong spirit. . . . This is a good path and will bind us and the land together. Joyce Bedi, senior historian, Lemelson Center

Over the past 50 years, we have witnessed the dramatic rise of citizen science. The most popular of these programs have been in the fields of ecology, conservation and astronomy with millions of citizens contributing billions of data points every year by exploring gut microbiomes, counting birds, and searching for new planets. With this force of on-the-ground science nerds, experts are capturing data at extremely fine spatial and temporal scales. All this information is making scientific findings more accurate, and scientific predictions more robust. Citizen science is helping folks identify plants in their backyard using iNaturalist, find rare birds in their county using Ebird, and precisely predict local weather in remote areas using the Citizen Weather Observer Program. Sahas Barve, fellow, Division of Birds, National Museum of Natural History

A major milestone was achieved over the past decade when the cost of renewables such as wind and solar became competitive with fossil fuels at both residential- and industrial-scale production. Decarbonizing the energy sector is the most important action to take to avoid the worst socio-environmental scenarios predicted by climate change models and chart a healthier future for life on Earth. As the efficiency of renewables continues to improve and costs continue to drop many investors, governments and homeowners have been making the economically and socially wise decision to switch to green energy. In terms of direct comparisons, the recent International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) report details how renewable generation is becoming more of an obvious economic decision. More than 75 percent of onshore wind power and 80 percent of utility scale solar expected to be built by 2020 will provide electricity at a lower price than the cheapest generation from new coal, oil or natural gas. Renewable generation could already replace 74 percent of U.S. coal generation with an immediate cost savings to electricity customersa figure projected to rise to 86 percent by 2025. Brian Coyle, conservation producer, Conservation Commons

Many 21st-century consumer products (particularly electronics) have been designed to be replaced. But not all products; in the U.S., the practice of repair is resurging, a promising trend that sees companies responding to consumer pressures. Sustainable design is an essential element of making the world more equitable. As a cultural anthropologist, I have studied third-party repair of cellphones and examined the circular economy of these devices as they are bought and sold around the globe. Repair helps demystify our electronics, makes us better stewards of our indispensable devices, and helps us advocate for policies that counteract built-in obsolescence, which needlessly impacts our planet. Humans are part of a wider ecology and so are our devices, which are built with precious and diminishing materials. Repair as an ethos and practice helps us all live more sustainably. Joshua Bell, curator of globalization, National Museum of Natural History

Environmentalist Fisk Johnson proudly pushed the button in 2012 putting two giant wind turbines online. The mighty leviathans standing 415 feet tall and producing nearly 8 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year provide 15 percent of the power for the sprawling SC Johnson manufacturing plant in Waxdale, Wisconsin. It was a giant step in reducing the companys reliance on fossil fuels. Has there ever been a downside to wind power? More than 100 years earlier, midwestern farmers and ranchers moving into the arid Great Plains turned to wind as a power source pumping water from underground to nourish their operations. Between 1870 and 1900, American farmers put about 230 million acres into agricultural production, much of it in the Great Plains. Were windmills environmentally sound? They did not contribute to air pollution, but they promoted new settlement, the plowing of prairie lands, and the draining of ancient aquifers. Peter Liebhold, curator of work and industry, National Museum of American History

Humans have bottled water for centuriesespecially mineral waters believed to have healing properties. But almost all water bottles were made of glass until May 15, 1973, when the U.S. Patent Office granted patent 3,733,309 for the biaxially oriented polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle to Nathaniel C. Wyeth and Ronald N. Roseveare, both working for the DuPont corporation. To call these bottles ubiquitous today seems an understatement. More than 480 billion of them are sold each year, or one million every minute. PET is nonbiodegradable but recyclablethough only 31 percent of PET bottles are recycled in the United States; the remainder goes to landfills, or even worse, into lakes and oceans. Nathaniel Wyeths brother, artist Andrew Wyeth, and his father, illustrator N.C. Wyeth are perhaps better known than the inventor of the PET bottle, but the damaging impact of Nathaniels invention on the environment is one that calls for remedy. James Deutsch, folklorist, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage

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Coping through COVID-19 | Opinion – Herald Review

Posted on April 23, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

As we continue trudging into the unknown of the COVID-19 pandemic, it continues to negatively impact not only our health, but also our social interactions, financial stability, and emotional well-being, to name a few. We are constantly adjusting to find out what is our new normal, while many are feeling that there is nothing normal about this. I have been encouraged by speaking with my clients, family, and friends, about some of the ways people are trying to deal constructively with the situation at hand, and feel the need to inform others of some of these things as well. Although these suggestions obviously will not fix the COVID-19 crisis, they may make it easier to cope with.

Physical touch is still important at this time with the people whom you are quarantined with

As long as the individuals whom you are quarantined with remain healthy, it is vital that we continue to provide physical touch to one another. Physical touch is not only beneficial as it helps us to feel good, but it also has been shown to increase our immune system and our health. Human beings are social creatures by nature, and the COVID-19 pandemic is preventing us to receive as much physical contact with others. Giving hugs, kisses, putting a hand on the shoulder of the people in your home, even cuddling your pets can assist in combating the disconnect with connectedness. Even though it is not physical touch, sending a letter to a loved one whom you cannot see right now is also a way of physically sending love and care.

Plan things you can control/maintain structure

It is extremely difficult right now as there is no foreseeable end in sight to COVID-19. The loss of activities and uncertainty in knowing when it will improve leaves many feeling a sense of loss, as well as a loss of hope. Human beings need to have things to look forward to, and it is difficult as there are distinct limitations on what we can plan and do. Instead of dwelling on the loss of certain activities, it is vital to try to plan new activities amongst yourself as well as others we can spend time with.

I have felt hopeful by the things I have been hearing from others at this time, as there have been many creative ideas which have surfaced. Making up your own family holiday to celebrate, having themed dinner parties (e.g. every person in the house dresses up in their fanciest outfit, etc.,) playing board games with a friend via FaceTime, cooking a special meal, all are things which can assist in not only providing something to do, but something to look forward to. It also assists us in maintaining structure, which can help us to feel more in control. Also, being able to have some things you will do every day, even if you are not working/going to school, can assist in maintaining a semblance of empowerment and achievement. Getting outside on a daily basis, getting dressed even if you are not going anywhere, taking showers regardless if you are seeing anyone, are all things that may help foster feelings of accomplishment, which is vital at this time.

Find meaning in daily life

Everyone has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic even if they do not have the illness. Children and teens are now having to homeschool, many individuals are unemployed, social distancing is keeping our social activities extremely limited, etc. It is extremely normal to feel a sense of loss and sadness, even grief about the loss of being able to do things we had planned. Especially in adults, the loss of a job can equate to the loss of identity. However, there are many more aspects of a person than just what they do for a living. Therefore, it is necessary to try to continue to find meaning/a sense of purpose in the things we are currently doing and the roles we have. Writing down the roles you have such as a mother, father, spouse, brother, sister, friend, grandparent, etc., can be a powerful visual to remind ourselves of what is truly important in our lives. Doing this with family/friends can also be a positive activity to remind ourselves and others of the positive impact of relationships in our lives.

Work on being present

COVID-19 continues to impact our future due to the uncertain timeline and longevity of the illness and the restrictions it imposes. Anxiety is an emotion that is most often rooted in the future, as it is unknown. As stated previously, the loss of activities also adds to depressive feelings, as we are mourning the activities we are unable to do and plan currently. It is completely OK to be sad and to even grieve the loss of activities and events we had planned that are not coming to fruition. Moreover, implementing mindfulness into our daily lives can assist with coping through these emotions. I always try to tell people that mindfulness does not have to be doing yoga or simply taking deep breaths-yes, these things can be helpful, but everyone is different and responds in various ways to various stimuli. I encourage people to try to use their 5 basic senses-touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste-to determine what thing(s) are most soothing to them. For example, if you are soothed by the scent of fresh air, getting outdoors can help with being in the present. If you are soothed by a specific type of music or various songs, making a playlist to listen to when you are feeling more anxious may be another option. In my opinion, cooking is a wonderful way to utilize mindfulness, as you are using all five of your senses.

Be creative with self-care

There are three aspects of self-care I often focus on: relaxing, escaping, and playing. Note that these can overlap, but relaxing could mean getting a massage, escaping could mean going on a weekend trip, while playing could mean having a get-together with friends. Obviously, none of those things are readily feasible at the moment due to the pandemic and the need for social distancing. Therefore, continuing to find creative ways of taking care of ourselves is also necessary at this time. Taking naps at times, having a family game night, playing video games, getting lost in a good book, and even having a spa night in your home are just a few things that can be tried to assist with filling the self-care void. I think every adult has said the phrase, If I only had extra time I would fill-in-the-blank. If you ask yourself that question and it is a feasible, healthy activity that can be accomplished with time, why not try it?

Last but not least-LAUGH

Just like physical touch, laughter also boosts health and immunity benefits. Try to find something every day that makes you laugh, whether it be your family, friends, a funny YouTube video, pets, etc. Laughing with people whom you are quarantined with is also important. Although you may be feeling more irritable with the people whom you may be at home with due to being cooped up together, it is even more necessary to attempt to combat the irritability with attempting to facilitate positive, shared experiences. We are all in this together.

If you are concerned about yourself or a loved one, please be reminded that there are resources available throughout this time. Visit the website https://mhanational.org/covid19 to find out more about mental health support as well as information on services related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Melodee Gilbertson, PsyD., works with Northern Perspectives Psychological Services located in Nashwauk.

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Coping through COVID-19 | Opinion - Herald Review

Term limits would make Congress members put the country first | Letters – NJ.com

Posted on November 10, 2019 by Prof Baldwin

I am 81 years old and I fear that I have lived through the best years of this country. The vitriolic divide between the Republicans and Democrats is tearing this country apart and will continue to do so without a major change to our governmental structure.

There are just two actions that can alter the disastrous course on which we find ourselves: a third major political party or term limits. A third party would be a very long time coming and both parties would do everything in their collective power to prevent such an occurrence. That leaves us with term limits.

The majority of the country is opposed to the power that lobbyists exercise over this country. How did they reach this position of control? Simple. They became a significant financial asset to the long-term members of Congress who, as a result of longevity, have garnered significant influence within the government. The primary objective of most elected members of Congress is re-election. If there were some way that we could incorporate term limits into our congressional structure, our elected officials might actually put the country first.

Bob Welgos, Wharton

Its time to upgrade Newarks airport

Terminals A, B and C at Newark Liberty International Airport are in dire need of replacement to accommodate the increase in record-breaking passenger volume. I have flown in and out of each terminal, and in each one there is a shortage of restrooms. When passengers deplane, they head to the restrooms, which quickly get congested. I dont think the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey would approve adding at least three more restrooms in each lane of gate locations, especially in Terminal C, which has the largest volume of passengers.

I fly into San Diego at least twice a year, and prior to the remodeling of their terminals, you never had to search for a restroom and the airport is considerably smaller than Newarks airport.

Additional restrooms have been included in the planning even though sufficient facilities were available.

Thomas A. Kujawski, Parlin

Morris County park plan an insult

I am writing in opposition to the Morris County Parks Commissions Draft Mahlon Dickerson Reservation Forest Assessment and Stewardship Plan. This is a deal to use our common lands entrusted for the public for economic stimulus to certain contractors, not in any way benefiting the state or county agencies.

This is a direct affront and insult to the perceived green initiatives and awareness of the crisis man has created through his economic endeavor to turn nature into capital in an economy to nowhere. The fact that a private not a state or government workforce is involved says much. Using machines of overscaled necessity, rather than human labor and minimum impact under this arrangements, says it all. The repeated mistakes of tree poaching or the taking of trees not earmarked by criteria, as occurred on Sparta Mountain, showed a theft of convenience by the contractor because the incentive is lumber sales, not forest management.

Sparta Mountain is a disaster. Will Mahlon Dickerson be as well? Speak up defend our remaining public forest from private deals and further unneeded intrusions. New Jersey: Love it or leave it alone.

Nick Homyak, Lake Hiawatha

Have respect for the meat you eat

In his recent column New study is red meat for us carnivores (Oct. 31), Paul Mulshine gleefully informs us that a recent study proves there is no health-related reason for people to not eat as much red meat as they want. He also states, The real objective of many of the people who push vegetarianism on us is based not on nutrition but on other factors. And he is right about that.

One thing that avid carnivores never consider because they have been conditioned not to by the meat industry is that the tasty chunk of meat you are indulging in came from a living creature that felt emotion, fear and pain when it died for you. The least you could do is show some respect for that, instead of hiding behind the rationalization of that is what they are raised for.

Ed Miller, Hillsborough

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