All the Horror You Need to Stream in February 2021 – Film School Rejects

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Welcome to Horrorscope, a monthly column keeping horror nerds and initiates up to date on all the genre content coming to and leaving from your favorite streaming services. Heres a guide to all the essential horror streaming in February 2021.

Smell that? Love is in the air. A loveof horror, that is!

Valentines Day may fall in February, but dont let the cheap chocolates and the gradually increasing daylight fool you: this months as spooky as the rest of em! After all, what could be more romantic than pledging your undying love for horror films? Passive entertainment remains a challenge as the world continues to burn (thanks, ongoing global pandemic!). So, if you can, give yourself and the genre a little love this month.

Speaking of which: February comes bearing blood-soaked gifts, from hotly anticipated new releases to old bangers waiting to be re-discovered. Weve got a body-swapping sophomore flick from Brandon Cronenberg, a nihilistic family haunting, an underrated British counterculture gem, and the best Dracula dance film ever made.

Be sure to peruse the complete list below, calendar in hand, for a full picture of what horror flicks are coming and going from your favorite streaming services this February.

Synopsis: Theres losing yourself in your work, and then theres this. Tasya Vos is an elite assassin; a corporate mercenary who commandeers the minds and bodies of unsuspecting victims to fulfill her deadly contracts. But when her latest assignment gets the better of her, Vos finds herself trapped in the mind of a hostile target that would see her destroyed.

Possessor makes good on the often unfulfilled promise of its peers. For a change, the gore actually lives up to the hype! The films two nightmares are devilishly compatible: an intrusive sense of dissociation coupled with a corpulent knockdown of chipped teeth and mangled flesh. While ultimately Possessor amounts to more of a concept than a narrative, its visceral gait is more than enough to get under your skin. The loss of bodily autonomy, a simultaneous crunch of bone and self, is more compelling than half of the lesser fare in Possessors elevated weight class.

Brandon Cronenbergs second film deftly quells any residual handwaving leftover from his wanting debut. There can be no doubt: he is a tremendous talent well worth watching. As Vos, Andrea Riseborough is as fantastic as weve come to expect; a cool killer who finds herself in the throes of an identity crisis at work and at home. Christopher Abbott has been fantastic for a long time (especially in 2018s Piercing), and I hope more directors follow Cronenbergs lead and give the man more starring roles. All told: Possessor is not above being genuinely queasy and disgusting. And I respect that.

Arrives on Hulu on February 1st.

Synopsis: In an otherwise peaceful English village, spoiled brat Tom Latham chooses to raise hell with his occult motorcycle gang. Sure enough, the goth apple doesnt fall far from the tree. Toms black-magic dabbling mother just so happens to know the secret to immortality. So, how do you cheat death? Frog magic and just plain deciding not to die, of course! Thrilled at the prospect of being an eternal public nuisance, Tom giddily sails off a bridge, only to burst out of his grave with a vengeance. Soon enough the gangs name, The Living Dead, takes on a more literal meaning.

Released as The Death Wheelers in the US, the 1973 film Psychomania is a bonkers example of a larger aesthetic shift in early 1970s British horror from the gothic chills to modern thrills. Of the bunch, Psychomania is perhaps the weirdest example of an attempt to cash in on the youth market. The kids love nothing more than pagan frog cults, zombies, and motorcycle culture. Right?

Psychomania was directed by Australian-born Hammer Films veteran Don Sharp (The Kiss of the Vampire), and he brings much of the black humor and efficient pacing that defined his marvelous work throughout the 1960s. Ted Moore, who shot seven of the James Bond films, contributes his professional touch. And the legendary John Camerons pre-synth score is as haunting as it is underrated.

Beryl Reid (Dr. Phibes Rises Again) and George Sanders (Village of the Damned) co-star as Toms Satan-worshiping mother and her spooky butler, respectively. All this amounts to a wonderfully offbeat gem with eccentricities to spare. There is no better film about a frog-worshiping, motorcycle death cult.

Arrives on Shudder on February 22nd.

Synopsis: In the late 19th century, a mysterious foreigner, Count Dracula, arrives in London. The unsuspecting socialite Lucy invites the stranger into her home. Her mistake proves fatal, and Dracula bites Lucy, who succumbs to the Counts curse. Her fianc entrusts her care to Dr. Van Helsing, who confidently diagnoses the vampiric source of her affliction. When Lucy dies under mysterious circumstances, Van Helsing and literatures preeminent himbo, Jonathon Harker, are on the case!

Look, Im Canadian. And there is nothing more Canadian than the government producing a silent-era-styled performance of the Royal Winnipeg Ballets adaption of Bram Stokers Dracula directed by our nations greatest weirdo, Guy Maddin. If this isnt already a Heritage Minute, it should be.

Dracula: Pages From a Virgins Diary is, as The New York Times astutely remarks, simultaneously beautiful and goofy. A fine line to walk, no doubt, but one which Maddin frequently, and graciously, skips across with ease. Here, Maddins reputation for stylish anachronism is on full display, with Dracula mimicking many of the aesthetic traditions and special visual effects of the era.

Amidst its delirious stylish flares, the film is impressively loyal to Stokers text, making it one of Maddins most accessible films. And yet, Maddins pointedly postmodern touch is undeniable. Notably, in casting Chinese-Canadian Zhang Wei-Qiang as the titular Count, Maddins Dracula underlines the xenophobic themes of Stokers text in ways past and future films have yet to match.

Think youre well-versed with the Dracula corpus? I implore you: this wildly sexy Canadian silent-era pastiche dance film is the Dracula film.

Arriving on The Criterion Channel on February 28th.

Synopsis: Drawn to their rural childhood home, a sister and brother visit their dying, bed-ridden father. Isolated on their secluded goat farm, the siblings grow increasingly paranoid and suspicious that something evil is targetting their family. After a horrific tragedy confirms their unease, the siblings are forced to confront their grief and lack of faith as the increasingly hostile presence strengthens its chokehold on their lives.

The Dark and the Wicked is a rare 2020 release in that it is a film that was released in 2020. What a concept. For a decidedly dark year, the film is, well, fittingly dark. There are enough jump scares to satisfy the contingent of genre ghouls who get off on a good jolt. But The Dark and the Wicked hits hardest when it leans into ambiguity and its admirably unrelentingly bleak atmosphere.

The film sits comfortably on the same shelf as other modern psychological family affairs like The Babadook and Mama. Though, if you take issue with the increasingly popular trauma-as-horror trend, your mileage may vary. But if youre a fan of nihilism (like our own Rob Hunter, who christened the film as one of the years best horror offerings), The Dark and the Wicked may just be worth a peek.

Arrives on Shudder on February 25th.

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All the Horror You Need to Stream in February 2021 - Film School Rejects

Manifestations of Higher Meaning: On Dana Gioia’s The Catholic Writer Today and Studying with Miss Bishop – Los Angeles Review of Books -…

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FEBRUARY 7, 2021

FOR 15 YEARS Dana Gioia held down a day job as an executive at General Foods, successfully managing Jell-O and Kool-Aid. Meanwhile, he established a growing reputation as a poet that he concealed from his corporate colleagues. He was Catholic, like his working-class Mexican/Sicilian parents, and he had studied poetry at Harvard with (among others) the illustrious Elizabeth Bishop. Recently, this former director of the National Endowment for the Arts and founder of The Big Read, this poet laureate emeritus of the state of California, has published two new volumes of admirably finished essays, the first on his religious identity and some authors who share it, and the second on his early personal acquaintance with great poets and writers. In The Catholic Writer Today, Gioia does not turn to the contemporary church to find a renewal of arts and culture, instead looking to a rosary of Catholic writers who keep stepping into the center of the western tradition. In Studying with Miss Bishop, Gioia reflects, heymishly, often hilariously, on his coming of age as a poet in the company of poets.

These are not Gioias first major works of nonfiction. His essay Can Poetry Matter? made the cover of the May 1991 issue of The Atlantic, making it impossible for him to hide his writing life from his fellow execs. He opens that essay with the following assessment: American poetry now belongs to a subculture [] Like priests in a town of agnostics, [poets] still command a certain residual prestige. But as individual artists they are almost invisible. This paradigm-shifting homily, delivered with the logic of a 13th-century Scholastic, marked Gioia as a meaning-maker on the national stage, a position he continues to occupy. Gioias most recent essays land far from the precinct of Limbo that coterie poetry and its criticism have come to inhabit. These memoirs especially endow otherwise mundane experiences with numinous significance. As he says in the poem The Stars Now Rearrange Themselves, Another world / Reveals itself behind the ordinary.

Dana Gioia has become increasingly a spiritual writer. The Catholic Writer Today describes close encounters with Catholicism both lived and represented:

Catholicism currently enjoys almost no positive presence in the American fine arts [Though] Roman Catholicism now ranks overwhelmingly as the largest religious denomination in the United States with more that 68 million members. (By contrast, the second largest group, southern Baptists, has 16 million members.) [] To visualize the American Catholic arts today, dont imagine Florence or Rome. Think Newark, New Jersey.

Yet, as Gioia continues, there is more to contemporary Catholicism than sociopolitics. By Catholic, for example, he means not only the immigrant peasant religion that many of us in Gioias generation inherited, but an assumption that there is a sharable language that transcends words. In Gioias work, small manifestations of higher meaning sunder time, like a breaking and entering of the divine into the earthly, like a blade of lightning / harvesting the sky (Prayer). In the essay Poetry as Enchantment, he explains that, in the creative realm, Catholicism foregrounds the larger human purposes of the art which is to awaken, amplify, and refine the sense of being alive.

My favorite essay in the book is Singing Aquinas in L.A., which begins, When I was a child in parochial school, we began each morning with daily Mass. [] The Mass, which was conducted entirely in Latin, meant little to me. I endured it respectfully as a mandatory exercise. As for the singing, he writes, Here is the hymn [in Latin]. If you dont know what the words mean, dont worry; neither did I. Nor do I intend to translate them now. That is the point of the essay. He means that the power of poetry transcends the words on the page, or, as he puts it in the poem Words, Words, Words, Words are the cards, not why the game is played.

The Catholic Writer Today seeks, above all, to acknowledge the continuity between the living and the dead, and advocates for a common redemption through literature without pedantry or the crotchets of the fanatic. The table of contents lists essays on St. Paul, Elizabeth Jennings, Brother Antoninus, Dunstan Thompson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and John Donne.

At 12 years old, Donne attended Hart Hall, Oxford (today Hertford College) as a Roman Catholic because they had no chapel and he could avoid common worship. His mothers great-uncle was St. Thomas More. When Donne was 21, his younger brother, Henry Donne, died of a fever in prison, where he had been sent for harboring a proscribed Catholic priest. His two maternal uncles, both Jesuits, were forced into exile. After these things, John Donne opened a massive division within himself, and became Anglican. Upon this matter, Gioia comments:

The Catholic cult of martyrdom troubled Donne as a sort of theologically assisted suicide. In his family the topic had been much pondered. His mother took pride in the familys legacy of martyrs. He had also begun to dislike and distrust Jesuit intrigues against Elizabeth I and the Anglican Church that so often occasioned the arrests and executions.

This, I think, underemphasizes the anguish Donne must have experienced in leaving the Catholic Church in whose defense his close relatives had suffered and died. Gioias commentary on Donnes anti-saccharine deployment of the English sonnet, however, is remarkable. Gioia never doubts, furthermore, Donnes familiarity with sin and its attractions, and highlights the consciousness of sin in his work. Gioia says, Donne took the song-like form of the Renaissance English lyric and gave it a quality of symphonic development. Donnes interior torment, especially as he faces death, gives rise to a baroque conversation between violence and salvation. Yet, as in Holy Sonnet 14, he never submits entirely to God I, like an usurpd town to another due, / Labor to admit you the constricted opening of a sinful soul cannot contain the divine.

Donne was a convert to the church which made him famous; the same is true of Gerard Manley Hopkins (184489), the other major poet included in this volume. Hopkins sacrificed much for example, a career at Oxford by converting to Roman Catholicism when he was an undergraduate. Catholics could not receive degrees at Oxford until 1911, a lively reminder of the survival of English anti-Catholicism. His parents disowned him. He abandoned hope of a major Oxford professorship to teach the equivalent of parochial middle school. He tried to give up writing; even after he began, under obedience, to write poetry again, he published nothing. His friends and religious superiors hated his work. Gioias essay on Hopkins acknowledges his eventual status as one of the most frequently reprinted poets in English. Gioia also recognizes his holiness:

If modern Christian poetry has a saint, it is Gerard Manley Hopkins. No other poet, at least in English, occupies such a lofty position in terms of both literary achievement and spiritual authority. [] His reputation transcends questions of purely literary merit. He is venerated as a figure of sanctity, redemptive suffering, and heroic virtue.

Its probable that Roman Catholicism taught Hopkins who was raised as a High Anglican amid luxury and learning more about being a devisor of major art than did private drawing lessons, prep school, or Oxford. His celebration of the nature he observed approaches but skirts the pantheism of his Romantic forebears. The preeminent detail about both Hopkins and his extraordinary body of writing is surely that he foregrounded theological considerations. For him, a world without a living God would have been unthinkable. Gioias essay put this into clear focus. This clarity of focus and of exposition are the chief merits and pleasures of every chapter in The Catholic Writer Today.

In My First Acquaintance with Poets (1823), William Hazlitt details his meetings with Romantic poets, especially Coleridge, and so reveals a great deal about his youthful self: My heart, shut up in the prison house of this rude clay, has never found, nor will it ever find, a heart to speak to; but that my understanding also did not remain dumb and brutish, or at length found a language to express itself, I owe to Coleridge. So too does Dana Gioia assign credit to his early literary influences in his newest and fantastically charming collection of essays, Studying with Miss Bishop: Memoirs from a Young Writers Life.

Gioia introduces the volume with an acknowledgment of six people whose examples helped me become a writer. He also makes clear that literary life is strange and that, given everything we will learn about the author in his first chapter, Lonely Impulse of Delight, the course his adult life took was unlikely. He quotes Goethe, who says that to be lucky at the beginning is everything. Growing up in a large, crowded apartment in Hawthorne, California, constantly surrounded by his extended family, Gioia had a lucky beginning because he inherited an enormous eclectic library from his late uncle, the proletarian intellectual Ted Ortiz. One observation from this chapter expresses Goias quiet pride in his background: Italians, he writes, admire any highly developed special skill carpentry, cooking, gardening, singing, even reading. The best skills helped one make a living. The others helped one enjoy living. And with the same practical humility, he reveals the origins of his autodidactic impulses: Kids had time on their hands. We had to entertain ourselves, which meant exploring every possible means of amusement our circumscribed lives afforded. I paged through every book on every shelf.

By the time we reach the title essay, Gioia, the first in his family to attend college, has reached the academic pinnacle of advanced study Harvard graduate school and has enrolled in a tiny seminar with one of the major American poets of the 20th century, Elizabeth Bishop:

Im not a very good teacher, Miss Bishop began. So to make sure you learn something in this class I am going to ask each of you to memorize at least ten lines a week from one of the poets we are reading. Had she announced that we were all required to attend class in sackcloth and ashes, the undergraduates could not have looked more horrified.

Since that moment, Gioia has famously memorized thousands of lines of poetry and can recite them with the skill of a Shakespearean actor (check out his son Michael Gioias project, Blank Verse Films, for a selection of Gioias recitations). Thus we glean one solid piece of advice for any young poet.

The essay Studying with Miss Bishop was first published in The New Yorker on September 15, 1986. To what greater Olympus could a young man of letters aspire? Some readers at that time, including me, had also studied at Harvard under Miss Bishop in the 1970s, and the essay struck us as so spot-on that it took our breath away. Gioias subject emerges as self-effacing, and in representing her so astutely, he effaces his own ego as well. She is a reluctant teacher, a shy performer, quietly meticulous. She is dizzy with relief when the semester finally ends and she need teach no longer in that drab subterranean seminar room in Kirkland House.

Gioia describes Miss Bishop as his favorite teacher at Harvard, and also writes that Robert Fitzgerald the acclaimed translator of classical poetry was his favorite. Gioias essay on Fitzgerald is the masterpiece of the collection. Fitzgeralds History of English Versification has proved so influential on certain young writers and through them on current poetrythat it merits description, Gioia begins, following up with his own mini-seminar. He also took Fitzgeralds Comparative Literature 201: Narrative Poetry, about which he comments:

Fitzgerald slowed down our reading not only by compelling us to take careful notes but also by forcing us to differentiate Ktesippos, Agelaos, Amphimedon, Antinoos, and Eurymakhos from one another figures we would otherwise have lumped together indiscriminately as Penelopes suitors.

The essay contains numerous extended punctilios (by the time Fitzgerald dismissed us with several handouts to scan, a hundred pages of Saintsbury to read, and two verse exercises [three stanzas in strict Sapphics and fourteen lines of Catullan hendecasyllabics], the class had become less crowded) and I wondered if Gioia had fully measured how very, very much he had himself been formed by the great Boylston Professor. Toward the end of the chapter, he delivers a wise and beautiful analysis of how Fitzgeralds teaching had driven home the immense difficulty of mastering the humane arts: They require a life of constant application. Also, Forty years later [] the extent of Fitzgeralds influence appears a verifiable fact of literary history. Also, He was the only professor I had in eight years of college and graduate school who was a practicing Catholic.

This, Gioias latest book also proves his most self-revelatory. In it, one of our countrys best literary personages takes pains to position himself on the shoulders of such unexpected giants as his Uncle Ted Ortiz, merchant marine, killed in a plane crash in his 20s. He pays a characteristically Catholic obeisance of not just reverence but also homely affection to the process and people who helped him arrive at himself.

Peggy Ellsberg is a poet and scholar who teaches English at Barnard College. She is the author of Created to Praise: The Language of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Oxford University Press, 1987) and The Gospel in Gerard Manley Hopkins: Selections from His Poems, Letters, Journals, and Spiritual Writings (Plough, 2017).

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Manifestations of Higher Meaning: On Dana Gioia's The Catholic Writer Today and Studying with Miss Bishop - Los Angeles Review of Books -...

RPT-COLUMN-Populist crowd fails to breach the silver fortress for now: Andy Home – Yahoo Finance

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(Repeats without change. The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters)

* Fund positioning on CME silver contract: https://tmsnrt.rs/2LiXUNw

By Andy Home

LONDON, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Robinhood's army of small retail investors may have failed to storm the silver market, but the online broker's devotees certainly gave it an almighty shake.

The spot silver price surged by 20% between last Thursday and Monday this week, briefly hitting an eight-year high of $30.03 an ounce.

An increase in the margin required to trade silver on the CME exchange has curbed animal spirits and the metal has fallen back to $27.12, though a collective stampede for physical metal continues to deplete retail supplies of bars and coins.

The crowd has found that squeezing a commodity market such as silver is a very different proposition from cornering a short-seller in an individual stock such as GameStop. Particularly when the targeted big short doesn't exist.

They'll probably be back again, though, in silver or the next big thing.

Crowd surges organised through social media regularly rock Chinese commodity markets and the strategy is starting to catch on in the West, even if this particular silver squeeze seems to be fizzling out.

THE BIG SHORT

The rallying call for an attack on the silver market came on Thursday in the form of a post on the r/wallstreetbets Reddit message board, the same one used to spark frenzied buying of GameStop and other shares shorted by hedge funds.

The post urged investors to buy physical silver via exchange-traded fund (ETF) iShares Silver Trust SLV, the shares of which represent ounces of silver sitting in vaults.

Retail investors heeded the call and snapped up 37 million ounces worth of shares in the next 24 hours, with others rushing to their local bullion dealers.

But who is the "biggest short"?

Not the hedge funds that were targeted by Reddit traders in the stock market. The fund community has been net long of the CME silver contract since the middle of 2019.

Story continues

Ironically, the silver squeeze may have benefited the very funds that have come in for vilification for shorting stocks.

That counterintuitive outcome seems to have sapped morale among the core Reddit crowd, with many questioning whom they are supposed to be squeezing.

SILVER REVOLUTION

Chasing the big silver short has sucked the Robinhood stocks army into a whole different world of precious metals conspiracy theory and radical populism.

This is a world populated by those who believe that Wall Street is in cahoots with the U.S. government to keep the price of gold and silver artificially suppressed to protect the existing economic order.

"Big banks have made big fortunes by manipulating the silver market for decades," said the #SilverSqueeze Manifesto.

"This is a movement to help level the playing field between everyday people and the billionaires who control the big financial institutions that control the money, and thus control us," it said, adding that the silver market is "the Achilles heel of the old system, and its time has come".

PAPER METAL

This belief that the likes of JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are using futures short positions to suppress the price of physical metal has been around a long time.

It is based on a binary world view that paper transactions contradict physical reality.

Commodity markets operate more holistically than that, however, with transactions in the futures market often deriving from the need to hedge holdings of the physical commodity.

The Reddit crowd may have bought up 37 million ounces of silver in one day last week, but at the end of December there were another 33,608 tonnes of the stuff sitting in London vaults, according to the London Bullion Market Association.

That's more than a billion ounces valued at $28.6 billion. That stockpile is continuously being borrowed, lent, bought and sold as banks interact with the industrial supply chain and the investment sector. Given its value, all of it will be hedged.

The biggest short on the CME silver contract is not the hedge fund community but the 52,750 contracts held in the "producer/merchant/processor/user" category.

The big paper short, in other words, is a big physical long. Squeeze it too hard and industrial quantities of silver may be coming your way.

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS

While the Robinhood army's energies seem spent for now, the ability of the crowd to move prices, even in markets as globally deep as silver, has been amply demonstrated. And some early movers on the silver squeeze will have made large profits.

Chinese retail investors have been using the same mass effect for many years, coordinating surges in WeChat rooms.

The crowd moves from one hot market to the next, using its strength in numbers to generate a giant momentum machine. The target is often less important than the potential to catch a moving trend.

The Zhengzhou ferro-silicon contract was squeezed in 2019 simply because retail traders had been pushed out of the bigger steel market by exchange margin increases.

Shanghai copper has been crowd-shorted a couple of times in the past few years, in one instance in a collective battle of strength against a major fund long position.

Social media facilitates the same bewildering mix of mutual exhortation, snippets of genuine information and lots of wild rumour-mongering, as is evident in the #SilverSqueeze meme.

The phenomenon is spreading. In South Korea they're called "ants". In Thailand they're called "moths". There's a lot of people in this world of low interest rates looking to make a fast buck in the markets.

Chinese regulators have been battling the problem for years. The first line of defence is to increase trading fees, the second is to issue increasingly strident government warnings and the third is to intervene directly, either by suspending some types of trade or mobilising a team of state-owned banks to crush the crowd.

CME's margin hike and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's pending meeting with regulators to discuss recent market volatility conform to the standard Chinese operating procedure of how to deal with speculative excess.

Western regulators will need to catch up fast with their Chinese counterparts because the retail army is likely to resurface with new tactics.

"Reddit's Wall Street Bets community (...) has set a shining example that other movements can follow," according to #SqueezeSilver Manifesto's anonymous author.

"A dedicated army of everyday people can leverage their collective skills and resources (...) to alter deeply entrenched power dynamics and level the playing field."

Small investors from Shanghai to Seattle may well agree.

(Editing by David Goodman)

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RPT-COLUMN-Populist crowd fails to breach the silver fortress for now: Andy Home - Yahoo Finance

The Grassroots Organizers Hoping to Move Manchin in a More Populist Direction – The New Republic

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We have lots of wonderful people who have been doing amazing work, trying to work in their communities, Frankenberry continues. Itd be helpful if these folks would, you know, send us the money to help us support those organizations instead of just putting billboards up or radio ads that dont have any input from West Virginians. Were fully capable of communicating with our people.

West Virginia Cant Waits Smith agrees and argues the real task for those hoping both to push Manchin and change the states political landscape long-term will be building out a local organizational infrastructure that can sustain itself after and beyond campaign season. A couple of billboards or out-of-state TV ads arent going to move these folks because they can ignore it and wait, knowing that that energy will leave come election time, he says. But the long-term building of political infrastructure, like whats happened over the last 10 years in Arizona and Georgia and other places, is the kind of thing that will move politicians in the short run because they know their political future is in jeopardy if they dont.

Smith also sees this as the key to winning Manchins support on structural reforms, including the elimination of the Senate filibuster and statehood for the District of Columbia. If his vote will be won at all, itll be won not through arguments about reforms in and of themselves but through West Virginia voters coming to understand reform lies between them and passing the policies that actually animate them. Were hearing some of the same things from allies inside and outside West Virginia who want to turn this into a wonky debate about 51 votes or 52 votes, and how do we do this or how do we do that, he says. And our experience is that those debates are largely academiceven if you win them in the public sphere, they dont actually affect the way power operates. Power will respond to a direct threat.

Smith says the threat to Manchin is compounded by the number of West Virginians who feel disaffected from both parties. Although outsiders have come to think of West Virginia as a red state in recent years, it wasnt so long ago that the states Democratic Party comprised its political establishmentuntil 2014, Smith notes, it had held full control of the states legislature for over 80 years. And before the election of Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginias junior senator, in 2014, the state hadnt elected a Republican to the chamber since 1956.

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The Grassroots Organizers Hoping to Move Manchin in a More Populist Direction - The New Republic

Astronomy surveys aim to up the pace with army of tiny robots – Science Magazine

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Hundreds of fibers, arranged by hand, capture light at the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys New Mexico telescope.

By Daniel CleryFeb. 3, 2021 , 3:25 PM

It was one of the stranger and more monotonous jobs in astronomy: plugging optical fibers into hundreds of holes in aluminum plates. Every day, technicians with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) prepped up to 10 plates that would be placed that night at the focus of the surveys telescopes in Chile and New Mexico. The holes matched the exact positions of stars, galaxies, or other bright objects in the telescopes view. Light from each object fell directly on a fiber and was whisked off to a spectrograph, which split the light into its component wavelengths, revealing key details such as what the object is made of and how it is moving.

Now, after 20 years, the SDSS is going robotic. For the projects upcoming fifth set of surveys, known as the SDSS-V, plug plates are being replaced by 500 tiny robot arms, each holding fiber tips that patrol a small area of the telescopes focal plane. They can be reconfigured for a new sky map in 2 minutes. Other sky surveys are also adopting the speedy robots. They will not only save valuable observation time, but also allow the surveys to keep up with Europes Gaia satellite, the upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, and other efforts that produce huge catalogs of objects needing spectroscopic study. Its driven by the science of enormous imaging surveys, says astronomer Richard Ellis of University College London.

COVID-19 has delayed the SDSSs robotic makeover. The surveys northern telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico began to take SDSS-V data in October 2020 using plug plates. It aims to switch over to the robots by mid-2021. The southern scope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile will follow later in the year. Its bananas, says SDSS-V Director Juna Kollmeier of the Carnegie Observatories, but were seeing the end of the tunnel.

The robots mark a new chapter for the SDSS. For 10 years much of its time went to the study of dark energy, the mysterious force that is accelerating the universes expansion. The SDSS prised apart the light of millions of galaxies to determine their distance, via a redshifta Doppler shift in their light due to the expansion of the universe, like the wail of a receding siren. Results from the galaxy survey, released in July 2020, traced the universes expansion back through 80% of its history with 1% precision, confirming the effects of dark energy, perhaps the biggest mystery in cosmology. Cracking it will require looking further back in time to fainter galaxies, which is beyond the capabilities of the surveys 2.5-meter telescopes.

Instead, the scopes will carry out three new surveys. Milky Way Mapper will gather spectra from 6 million stars, probing their composition to find out how long theyve been burning and forging heavy elements. Stars are all clocks, Kollmeier explains. With age estimates, astronomers can work out when parts of the Milky Way formed. Subtle shifts in composition can also reveal whether a group of stars originated in another galaxy or star cluster that has been subsumed into oursan unwinding of Milky Way history called galactic archaeology.

In a second survey, Black Hole Mapper, the optical fibers will gather light from bright galaxies to learn about the supermassive black holes they harbor. Doppler shifts in the spectra of glowing gases surrounding these black holes could reveal how fast they fling this material aroundand thus how heavy they are. Shifts in the spectra could trace how they gobble up and spit out streams of this gas. By tracking the gases over time, Kollmeier says, astronomers may learn how the black holes grow, seemingly in concert with their galaxies.

The third survey, Local Volume Mapper, will bunch fibers together like a multi-pixel detector to get spectra from clouds of interstellar gas within nearby galaxies. Were mapping a whole galaxy in exquisite detail at one time, Kollmeier says. By determining the motions and composition of the gas clouds, the SDSS team hopes to identify why some collapse into stars and others dont.

Meanwhile, the dark energy quest pioneered by the SDSS will move to the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, a 5000-fiber robotic spectrograph on a 4-meter telescope in Arizona. It will soon begin to track the distances to tens of millions of galaxies in the remote universe.

To speed up the ability to split light from thousands of stars at once, sky surveys are turning to robot-controlled optical fibers.

In the coming months, the William Herschel Telescope, a 4.2-meter telescope in the Canary Islands, will join the robot revolution by sending light to a 1000-fiber spectrograph called the WHT Enhanced Area Velocity Explorer (WEAVE). Instead of using robots to hold fibers in place, WEAVE has two of them working offline, picking and placing magnetic fiber ends onto a metal plateautomating what the SDSSs plate pluggers did. One of WEAVEs goals is to gather Doppler shifts from the billion stars Gaia has mapped, nailing down their full 3D motions. Then, We can run the clock backwards and see where they came from, says project scientist Scott Trager of the University of Groningen. Its another way to do galactic archeology.

Next year, the European Southern Observatorys (ESOs) 4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope in Chile will be fitted with yet another robotic technology. Its 2400 fibers will be fed through controllable spines that stick up into the telescopes focal plane and can be made to move, like wheat stalks in a breeze. Like WEAVE, it will follow up on sources identified by European spacecraft, including Gaia and Euclid, an upcoming dark energy mission.

It and other fiber spectrographs will also help with studies of fast-moving cosmic events such as supernovae or the violent collisions that produce gravitational waves. The Rubin Observatory will spot many of them. From 2023, its expected to detect 10 million fast-changing objects every night. For the thousands that demand scrutiny, spectra are really critical for understanding what a source is, says Eric Bellm of the University of Washington, Seattle, who is the science lead for Rubins alert stream.

Even some of the worlds largest scopes, in the 8-meter range, are adding robotic spectrographs. Japans Subaru and ESOs Very Large Telescope are both developing systems that will vacuum up spectra from faint, distant objects. Ellis says a fiber spectrograph combined with Subarus 8.2-meter mirror would be able to pick out spectra of individual stars in the Andromeda galaxy, the Milky Ways nearby twin. With a big telescope, we can do galactic archaeology in our nearest neighbor, he says.

*Correction, 5 February, 3:10 p.m.:An earlier version of the table in this story misstated the total number of fibers for both of the SDSS-V telescopes.

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Astronomy surveys aim to up the pace with army of tiny robots - Science Magazine

Astronomers are now Finding Planetary Disks Around the Smallest, Least Massive Stars – Universe Today

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Astronomers have been watching planetary systems form around sun-like stars for decades. And now, new observations with the ALMA telescope reveal the same process playing out around the smallest, but most common, stars in galaxy.

The smallest stars in the universe, red dwarf stars, are known to have planetary systems, as shown by the famous examples of Proxima b and the TRAPPIST-1 system. But to date, astronomers have never seen one of these stars in the process of actually forming those planets.

But also to date, astronomers havent had ALMA, currently one of the most powerful telescopes in the world. ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) is jointly operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), and by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ).The wavelengths of its observations are especially good at observing young planetary systems in the process of forming.

So thats exactly what Nicolas Kurtovic, a PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany, did, mapping and analyzing six protoplanetary disks around young very low-mass stars (VLMS), which are no bigger than 20% of the mass of the sun.

Despite the tremendous progress in understanding planet formation during recent decades, we dont know much on how the planets of the most common stars form, Kurtovic said.

The observations showed the characteristic ring-like gaps in the disks around some of the young stars, which is a telltale sign of planet formation.

This pilot study was a challenging task because the VLMS disks are small and possess relatively little material, resulting in feeble signals that are very hard to detect, said Dr. Paola Pinilla. Pinilla leads a research group at MPIA titled The Genesis of Planets in which Kurtovic is a member.

These are crucial and very lucky observations, because the dust an essential ingredient for seeding the formation of planets tends to migrate inwards towards a young star, where its obliterated (and isnt much use in building planets). For VLMS, this process can happen up to twice as fast as a sun-like star, shutting down planetary formation before it even starts.

However, these observations show that its still quite possible, leading to systems like Proxima b and TRAPPIST-1.

We still do not know how common planets around red dwarf stars are, Kurtovic conceded. However, the longevity of red dwarf planetary systems is intriguing concerning habitability and hypothetical civilizations, he added.

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Astronomers are now Finding Planetary Disks Around the Smallest, Least Massive Stars - Universe Today

Astronomers identified a piece of the Milky Ways missing matter – Tech Explorist

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The majority of the universes mass is believed to be mysterious dark matter and dark energy. 5 percent is normal matter that makes up stars, planets, asteroids, etc. This is known as baryonic matter.

For quite a long time, researchers have been puzzled about why they couldnt represent all the matter in the universe as anticipated by hypothesis.

For the first time, Astronomers used distant galaxies as scintillating pins to locate and identify a piece of the Milky Ways missing matter.

Yuanming Wang, a doctoral candidate in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney, has developed an ingenious method to track down the missing matter. Using the technique, Wang pinpointed a hitherto undetected stream of cold gas in the Milky Way about ten light-years from Earth.

The cloud is about a trillion kilometers long and 10 billion kilometers wide but only weighing about our Moons mass.

Ms. Wang, who is pursuing her Ph.D. at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy, said, We suspect that much of the missing baryonic matter is in the form of cold gas clouds either in galaxies or between galaxies.

This gas is undetectable using conventional methods, as it emits no visible light of its own and is just too cold for detection via radio astronomy.

Astronomers observed radio sources in the distant background to see how they shimmered. They discovered five twinkling radio sources on a giant line in the sky.

Their analysis also shows that their light must have passed through the same cold clump of gas.

When visible light is distorted while passing through the atmosphere, it gives stars their twinkle. Similarly, when radio waves pass through the matter, it affects their brightness. It was that scintillation that Ms. Wang and her colleagues detected.

Dr. Artem Tuntsov, a co-author from Manly Astrophysics, said: We arent quite sure what the strange cloud is, but one possibility is that it could be a hydrogen snow cloud disrupted by a nearby star to form a long, thin clump of gas.

According to theorists, some of the universes missing baryonic matter could be locked up in these hydrogen snow clouds. They are almost impossible to detect directly.

Ms. Wang said, However, we have now developed a method to identify such clumps of invisible cold gas using background galaxies as pins.

Professor Tara Murphy said: This is a brilliant result for a young astronomer. We hope the methods trailblazed by Yuanming will allow us to detect more missing matter.

For the study, scientists gathered the CSIROs Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in Western Australia.

Dr. Keith Bannister, Principal Research Engineer at CSIRO, said: It is ASKAPs wide field of view, seeing tens of thousands of galaxies in a single observation that allowed us to measure the shape of the gas cloud.

Professor Murphy said: This is the first time that multiple scintillators have been detected behind the same cloud of cold gas. In the next few years, we should be able to use similar methods with ASKAP to detect a large number of such gas structures in our galaxy.

Ms. Wangs discovery adds to a growing suite of astronomers tools in their hunt for the universes missing baryonic matter. This includes a method published last year by the late Jean-Pierre Macquart from Curtin University, who used CSIROs ASKAP telescope to estimate a portion of matter in the intergalactic medium using fast radio bursts as cosmic weigh stations.

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Astronomers find origins of "galactic cannibalism" with discovery of ancient dark matter halo – CBS News

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Astronomers have detected what they believe to be one of the earliest instances of "galactic cannibalism" when one galaxy consumes one of its smaller neighbors in an ultrafaint dwarf galaxy called Tucana II. The findings stem from the discovery of an ancient dark matter halo, located in a galaxy 163,000 light years from Earth.

Tucana II is just one of dozens of dwarf galaxies surrounding the Milky Way. Theyare thought to be artifacts left over from the first galaxies in the universe and Tucana II is among the most primitive of them.

In a new study, published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy, astrophysicists report detecting nine previously unknown stars at the edge of Tucana II, using the SkyMapper Telescope in Australia and the Magellan Telescopes in Chile. The stars are shockingly far away from its center but remain in the small galaxy's gravitational pull.

The configuration of stars provides the first evidence that the galaxy contains an extended dark matter halo a region of matter three to five times larger than scientists originally believed in order to keep a gravitational hold on its distant stars. The findings suggest that the earliest galaxies in the universe were much more massive than previously believed.

"Tucana II has a lot more mass than we thought, in order to bound these stars that are so far away," one of the authors of the study, MIT graduate student Anirudh Chiti, said in a statement. "This means that other relic first galaxies probably have these kinds of extended halos too."

Every galaxy is believed to be held together by a halo of dark matter, a type of hypothetical matter thought to make up over 85% of the universe, MIT News explains. But the new findings represent the first time one has been detected in an ultrafaint dwarf galaxy.

"Without dark matter, galaxies would just fly apart," Chiti said. "[Dark matter] is a crucial ingredient in making a galaxy and holding it together."

Scientists also found that these far-flung stars are older than the stars at Tucana II's core the first evidence of such an imbalance in this type of galaxy. Their discovery points to the possibility that the galaxy could be the product of one of the first mergers between two galaxies in the universe, which scientists refer to as "galactic cannibalism."

"We may be seeing the first signature of galactic cannibalism," said MIT Professor Anna Frebel. "One galaxy may have eaten one of its slightly smaller, more primitive neighbors, that then spilled all its stars into the outskirts."

Using a telescope's imaging filter, astronomers are able to study the metal content of a galaxy's stars to determine just how primitive it is. They had previously found stars at Tucana II's core with such low metal content that the galaxy was identified as the most chemically primitive of the known ultrafaint dwarf galaxies.

New research found the outer stars were three times more metal-poor than the ones at the center, making them even more primitive.

"This probably also means that the earliest galaxies formed in much larger dark matter halos than previously thought," Frebel said. "We have thought that the first galaxies were the tiniest, wimpiest galaxies. But they actually may have been several times larger than we thought, and not so tiny after all."

An early galactic merger is one likely explanation for the imbalance. Galactic cannibalism occurs "constantly" across today's universe, according to MIT News, but mergers in the early universe are not so certain.

"Tucana II will eventually be eaten by the Milky Way, no mercy," Frebel said. "And it turns out this ancient galaxy may have its own cannibalistic history."

The team hopes to use their approach to discover even older, more distant stars in other ultrafaint dwarf galaxies.

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Astronomers find origins of "galactic cannibalism" with discovery of ancient dark matter halo - CBS News

Astronomers Think They’ve Found Another Trojan Asteroid Lurking in Earth’s Orbit – ScienceAlert

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A recently discovered object sharing Earth's orbital path around the Sun could actually be a trojan asteroid, astronomers have found.

If confirmed, it will be only the second object of its type identified to date, suggesting that there could be more of these hidden asteroids lurking in Earth's gravitational pockets.

Trojan asteroids are space rocks that share the orbital path of larger planetary bodies in the Solar System, hanging out in gravitationally stable regions known as Lagrangian points.

These are pockets where the gravitational pulls of the planet and the Sun balance perfectly with the centripetal force of any small body in that region to basically hold it in place.

Each two-body system has five Lagrange points, as seen in the diagram below. There are five between Earth and the Moon; and another five between Earth and the Sun.

These are really quite useful, actually we can put spacecraft in them and be reasonably confident they will stay put. The James Webb Space Telescope, for instance, will be going in the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrangian.

(NASA/WMAP Science Team)

Lagrangians, however, can also capture space rocks, and the phenomenon is well-known in the Solar System.

Jupiter has the most trojans, with well over 9,000 documented, but the other planets are not going without. Neptune has 28, Mars has 9, and both Uranus and Earth have one confirmed apiece.

Earth's confirmed trojan, named 2010 TK7, is a chunk of rock around 300 metres (984 feet) across, hanging about the Earth-leading L4 Lagrangian in an oscillating tadpole-shaped orbit known as libration.

The new object, named 2020 XL5, which was first observed in November and December of last year, seems similar.

According to amateur astronomer Tony Dunn, who calculated the object's trajectory using NASA's JPL-Horizons software, it, too, librates around the Earth-Sun L4 Lagrangian, looping close to the orbit of Mars, and intersecting the orbit of Venus.

In the gif below, the asteroid's orbit is in teal, with Earth in blue and Mars in orange. Venus and Mercury are both white.

(Tony Dunn/Twitter)

Because it draws so near to Venus, if 2020 XL5 is a trojan, it may not be stable on long timescales. According to simulations run by Dunn, for a few thousand years, the asteroid will pass above and below the orbital plane of Venus when it intersects, keeping the planet from disrupting its orbit.

Eventually, however, gravitational interactions should move it away from the L4 point. This is supported by simulations run by amateur astronomer Aldo Vitagliano, creator of the Solex and Exorb orbital determination software.

"I can confirm that 2020 XL5 is presently a moderately stable Earth Trojan (I mean stable on a time scale of 2-4 millennia)," he wrote on the Minor Planets Mailing List.

"I have downloaded the nominal elements and their covariance matrix from the Neodys site, thereby generating 200 clones of the body. All the 200 clones, integrated up to AD 4500, although becoming spread over an orbital arc of more than 120 degrees, keep librating around the L4 point. The first clone jumps over the L3 point around year 4500, and by year 6000 many of them have done the jump and a few of them are librating around the L5 point."

2010 TK7 isn't necessarily stable in its current position long-term, either. A 2012 analysis found that it only became a trojan around 1,800 years ago, and will likely move away from the L4 point in about 15,000 years, into a horseshoe-shaped orbit, or into L5.

Although only one more data point, 2020 XL5 could help us figure out how to search for other potential Earth trojans. We have done so both the OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa2 spacecraft scanned the L4 and L5 points respectively in 2017 while en route to their respective targets, but found nothing. Searches from Earth have been nearly as fruitless.

That is not necessarily surprising. Any objects inhabiting the Lagrangians would be moving around a lot, leaving a very large patch of sky to scour looking for relatively small objects. From Earth, also, the placement with respect to the Sun makes detection challenging.

Scientists have ruled out a stable population of primordial trojans hiding since the beginning of the Solar System.

Nevertheless, even with current observational limitations, scientists have estimated that we could be able to detect hundreds of Earth trojans comparable in size to 2010 TK7. Gaining a better idea of how they move around the Lagrangians could help us narrow down where in the sky to look.

What we find whether it's a whole bunch of trojans, or a whole bunch of nothing is bound to tell us more about the dynamics of our Solar System.

H/T: Sky & Telescope

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Astronomy on Maunakea and in Hawaii will be put at significant risk, UH says of request for new governance – KHON2

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Posted: Feb 3, 2021 / 12:08 PM HST / Updated: Feb 3, 2021 / 06:35 PM HST

Courtesy Maunakea Observatories.

HONOLULU (KHON2) In a House Chamber meeting on Tuesday, House Speaker Scott Saiki called for an end to University of Hawaiis management of Maunakea.

[Hawaii news on the goLISTEN to KHON 2GO weekday mornings at 7:30 a.m.]

In his speech, the speaker announced that the house would be looking into legislation that pushes for a new governance structure of Maunakea. The University of Hawaii, who conducts astronomy research atop the mauna, currently holds a master lease of the land. That lease is set to expire in 2033.

The University of Hawaii has held the master lease to manage the astronomy precinct and the natural, cultural and preservation area since 1968, said Speaker Saiki. The master lease is set to expire in 2033 and the University is currently working to extend it. The University has tried to manage Maunakea, but for too long the Universitys work has been shrouded by its inability to appropriately manage cultural practices, resources and education. This is why the University of Hawaii must no longer manage Maunakea and it should cease its work to extend the master lease.

In a news release sent out just one day after the speakers announcement, the University said it will continue to work to improve stewardship of Maunakea but that it believes a new governance is not the answer.

The University of Hawaii remains steadfast in its commitment to continue to improve stewardship of Maunakea. The University is willing to work with anyone to honor that commitment, which includes considering different governance structures, said a spokesperson for the University.

The University says the legislature has proposed similar ideas in the past with no real result stemming from them, except for hindering the efforts of the observatories to secure proper sponsorship and funding for continued astronomy research.

It will take substantial time to reach an agreement on a new approach, if that can be done. If a new organization is recommended, it will need to be created and funded, and even if it already exists it will have substantial work to complete the necessary plans, assessments and approvals, UH said.

In its commentary, the University added that those who oppose the development of the thirty meter telescope on Maunakea will most likely continue to oppose it regardless of a new governance or land manager. UH highlighted past achievements, including an internal restructuring and community outreach, that the school says shows responsible stewardship of Maunakea.

Meanwhile, Speaker Saiki says the legislature will work with advocacy group, Ku Kiai Maunakea, in its efforts to pursue a new governance.

To read the University of Hawaiis full news release, click here.

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Astronomy on Maunakea and in Hawaii will be put at significant risk, UH says of request for new governance - KHON2

Explore Scientific, the Explore Alliance, and Astronomy Magazine Team Up for Global Star Party Celebrating Pluto – Yahoo Finance

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TipRanks

Weve got a full month of 2021 behind us now, and a few trends are coming clearer. The coronavirus crisis may still be with us, but as vaccination programs expand, the end is in sight. With President Trump out of the picture, and the Democrats holding both Houses of Congress and the White House, politics is looking more predictable. And both of those developments bode well for an economic recovery this year. Looking back, at the year that was, we can also see some trends that stayed firm despite the pandemic, the shutdowns, and the supercharged election season. One of the most important is the ongoing rollout of 5G networking technology. These new networks bring with them a fuller realization of the promises inherent in the digital world. Faster connections, lower latency, higher online capacity, clearer signals all will strongly enhance the capabilities of the networked world. And it wont just be mundane things like telecommuting or remote offices that will benefit 5G will allow Internet of Things and autonomous vehicles to further develop their potential. There is even talk of medical applications, of remotely located doctors performing surgery via digitally controlled microsurgical tools. And these are just the possibilities that we can see from now. Who know what the future will really bring? To this end, we pulled up TipRanks database to learn more about three exciting plays in the 5G space. According to the Street, we are likely to see further interesting developments in the next few years as this technology takes over. Skyworks Solutions (SWKS) The first 5G name were looking at, Skyworks, is a semiconductor chip manufacturer that brought in $3.4 billion in total revenues for FY2020. Skyworks, which is a prime supplier of chips for Apples iPhone series, saw a massive 68% year-over-year increase in 1QFY21 revenues the top line reached $1.51 billion, a company record, and also much higher than analysts had forecast. Much of Skyworks fiscal Q1 sales success came after Apple launched the 5G-capable iPhone 12 line. Strong sales in the popular handset device meant that profits trickled down the supply line and Skyworks channels a disproportionate share of its business to Apple. In fact, Apple orders accounted for 70% of Skyworks revenue in the recent quarter. iPhone wasnt the only 5G handset on the receiving end of Skyworks chips, however the company is also an important supplier to Koreas Samsung and Chinas Xiaomi, and has seen demand rise as these companies also launch 5G-capable smartphones. Finally, Skyworks supplies semiconductor chip components to the wireless infrastructure sector, specifically to the small cell transmission units which are important in the propagation network of wireless signals. As the wireless providers switch to 5G transmission, Skyworks has seen orders for its products increase. In his note on Skyworks for Benchmark, 5-star analyst Ruben Roy writes: SWKS significantly beat consensus estimates and provided March quarter guidance that is also well ahead of consensus estimates as 5G related mobile revenue and broad-based segment revenue continued to accelerate In addition to continued strength of design win momentum and customer activity, we are encouraged with SWKS confident tone relative to the overall demand environment and content increase opportunities. In line with his comments, Roy rates SWKS a Buy along with a $215 price target. At current levels, this implies an upside of 20% for the coming year. (To watch Roys track record, click here) Roy is broadly in line with the rest of Wall Street, which has assigned SWKS 13 Buy ratings and 7 Holds over the past three month -- and sees the stock growing about 15% over the next 12 months, to a target price of $205.69.(See SWKS stock analysis on TipRanks) Qorvo, Inc. (QRVO) Qorvos chief products are chipsets used in the construction of radio frequency transmission systems that power wifi and broadband communication networks. The connection of this niche to 5G is clear as network providers upgrade their RF hardware to 5G, they also upgrade the semiconductor chips that control the systems. This chip maker has a solid niche, but it is not resting on its laurels. Qorvo is actively developing a range of new products specifically for 5G systems and deployment. This 5G radio frequency product portfolio includes phase shifters, switches, and integrated modules, and contains both infrastructure and mobile products. Qorvo posted $3.24 billion in total revenues for fiscal 2020. That revenue represents a 4.8% year-over-year increase and the companys sales have been accelerating in fiscal 2021. The most recent quarterly report, for the second fiscal quarter, showed $1.06 billion in revenues, a 31% yoy increase. Rajvindra Gill, 5-star analyst with Needham, is bullish on Qorvos prospects, noting: Qorvo reported strong sales and gross margins as 5G momentum rolls into CY21 on atypical seasonality... The company is planning for 500M 5G handsets to be manufactured in 2021, with an incremental $5-7 of content/unit from 4G to 5G. Management believes that ultra-wideband adoption will be a key growth driver in for smartphones going forward..." To this end, Gill puts a $220 price target on QRVO shares, suggesting room for 31% upside in 2021. Accordingly, he rates the stock a Buy. (To watch Gills track record, click here) What do other analysts have to say? 13 Buys and and 6 Holds add up to a Moderate Buy analyst consensus. Given the $192.28 average price target, shares could climb ~15% from current levels. (See QRVO stock analysis on TipRanks) Telefonakiebolaget LM Ericsson (ERIC) From chipsets, well move on to handsets. Ericsson, the Swedish telecom giant has long been a leader in mobile tech, and is well known for its infrastructure and software that make possible IP networking, broadband, cable TV, and other telecom services. Ericsson is the largest European telecom company, and the largest 2G/3G/4G infrastructure provider outside of China. But that is all in the background. Ericsson is also a leader in the rollout of Europes growing 5G networks. Ericsson is involved in 5G rollout in 17 countries in Europe, the Americas, and Asia, and its product line includes infrastructure base units and handsets, giving the company an interest in all aspects of the new 5G networks. Ericssons revenue performance in 2020 was not notably distressed by the corona crisis. Yes, the top line dipped in Q1, but that was in line with the companys historical pattern of rising revenue from Q1 through Q4. While the companys 1H20 revenues showed small yoy declines, the 2H20 gains were higher. In Q3, the $6.48 billion top line was up 8.7% yoy, and Q4s $8.08 billion revenue was up 17% from the prior year. The companys shares have also performed well during the corona year, and show a 12 month gain of 64%. Raymond James 5-star analyst Simon Leopold bluntly assigns Ericssons recent gains to its participation in 5G rollouts. Japan's awaited 5G roll-out has started. Share gains continue as Ericsson benefits from challenges facing its biggest competitors and more operators embrace 5G it seems obvious that Ericsson should be gaining market share... Competitor Nokia shunned the Chinese 5G projects, citing profitability challenges, yet Ericsson appears to be profiting in the challenging region. Leopold rates this stock an Outperform (i.e. Buy), and his $15 price target implies an upside potential of ~14% for the year ahead. (To watch Leopolds track record, click here) The Raymond James analyst, while bullish on ERIC, is actually less so than the Wall Street consensus. The stock has a Strong Buy consensus rating, based on a unanimous 5 reviews, and the $16.50 average price target indicates 25% growth potential from the share price of $13.19. (See ERIC stock analysis on TipRanks) To find good ideas for 5G stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks equity insights. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.

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Explore Scientific, the Explore Alliance, and Astronomy Magazine Team Up for Global Star Party Celebrating Pluto - Yahoo Finance

Astronomers Can Predict When a Galaxys Star Formation Ends Based on the Shape and Size of its Disk – Universe Today

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A galaxys main business is star formation. And when theyre young, like youth everywhere, they keep themselves busy with it. But galaxies age, evolve, and experience a slow-down in their rate of star formation. Eventually, galaxies cease forming new stars altogether, and astronomers call that quenching. Theyve been studying quenching for decades, yet much about it remains a mystery.

A new study based on the IllustrisTNG simulations has found a link between a galaxys quenching and its stellar size.

About 10 billion years ago, the Universe was in what cosmologists call the Cosmic Noon. That was when star formation in galaxies peaked. How and why galaxies stop forming stars since then has been mysterious.

In a new paper titled MOSEL and IllustrisTNG: Massive Extended Galaxies at z = 2 Quench Later Than Normal-size Galaxies, a team of researchers wanted to examine quenching. The lead author of the study is Dr. Anshu Gupta of Australias ARC Centre of Excellence in All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D). The paper will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Theres a period in the life of the Universe known as the cosmic noon, which occurred about 10 billion years ago, said Dr. Gupta in a press release. That was when star formation in massive galaxies was at its peak. After that, gas in most of these galaxies grew hot in part because of the black holes in the middle of them and they stopped forming stars.

Cosmic noon also saw galaxies develop the characteristics we see today: regular rotating disk and bulges, for instance. That was also when a population of dead galaxies, or quenched galaxies, started to emerge. Something was going on.

Cosmic noon wasnt only a period of peak star formation. It was also a period of peak black hole accretion. As the black holes at the center of galaxies grew more massive, they drew the galaxys gas towards them, compressing and heating the gas. But stars need cold gas to form; hot gas refuses to coalesce and collapse into a star.

But this compression and heating effect didnt dominate all galaxies. For a puffier, less dense galaxy with more space between stars, the black holes didnt have the same effect. They couldnt reach enough of the gas to quench star formation.

In galaxies that are really, really stretched out, however, we found that things didnt heat up as much and the black holes didnt exert such a great influence, so stars kept getting made over a longer period.

The team of researchers focused on whats called the galactic disk. The galactic disk is a flattened circular region surrounding the nucleus, and it contains stars, gas, and dust. If that disk is spread out instead of compact, then star formation persists, and quenching is delayed.

Where the stars in the disk are widely distributed you could call it puffy the gas stays cooler, so continues to coalesce under gravity and form new stars, said Dr. Gupta. In galaxies with more compact disks, the gas heats up quite quickly and is soon too energetic to mash together, so the formation of stars finishes by just after cosmic noon. Puffy disks keep going much longer, say as far as cosmic afternoon tea.

Their study found that by z=1, only 36% of extended massive galaxies had become quenched, while 69% of the more normal size massive galaxies had become quenched. By z=2 to 4, they found that normal-size massive galaxies build up their central stellar mass without a significant increase in their stellar size. But for extended massive galaxies, their stellar mass nearly doubled.

This research relied on both observations and simulations.

The IllustrisTNG simulations were an ambitious effort involving mostly German and American scientists. The IllustrisTNG website describes the effort best: Each simulation in IllustrisTNG evolves a large swath of a mock Universe from soon after the Big-Bang until the present day while taking into account a wide range of physical processes that drive galaxy formation. The simulations can be used to study a broad range of topics surrounding how the Universe and the galaxies within it evolved over time.

So what do these results mean? The results mean that for the first time weve been able to establish a relationship between disk size and star-making. So now astronomers will be able to look at any galaxy in the Universe and accurately predict when it will stop making stars just after lunch, or later in the cosmic afternoon.

The Milky Way is humanitys home. Where does our galaxy fit in all this? The Milky Way is a late bloomer, as it turns out. It was here at cosmic noon, but it was still very small and decidedly un-massive. At that point in time, it had only one-tenth of the star mass it has now. Its grown more massive over time, thanks to mergers. Now its a massive galaxy, but its still making stars.

So where are we now in the cosmic-galactic day timer? Cosmic noon was a long time ago, said Dr Gupta. Id say that by now the Universe has reached cosmic evening. Its not night-time yet, but things have definitely slowed down.

The team behind this study integrated the IllustrisTNG simulations with observations from the Multi-Object Spectroscopic Emission Line (MOSEL) Survey. MOSEL relied on the Hubble Space Telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatory. The team included scientists from the UK, Germany, Mexico, the USA, and Australia.

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Astronomers Can Predict When a Galaxys Star Formation Ends Based on the Shape and Size of its Disk - Universe Today

A blue bolt out of the blue: On the edge of space, lightning leaps *upward* – SYFY WIRE

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Chances are, you've seen, heard, or felt a lightning bolt erupt in the sky somewhere near you. After all, there are well over a billion lightning flashes on Earth per year. That's about four dozen per second, somewhere over our planet (sometimes in one spot, where an astronomer with a phonecam can get video).

Thunderstorms are a common feature of our planet, and the electrical fields therein are the root source of the power of lightning. But they also generate other phenomena, too, ones that we're just starting to learn about.

One of the most mysterious of these is a blue flash. As the name says, these are intense, short blasts of blue light that occur near the tops of storm clouds, and last for only ten microseconds (one one-hundred-thousandth of a second). They sometimes trigger blue jets: upward-reaching tendrils that last for perhaps a few tenths of a second. These pulsate with energy as they go from being narrow channels to fanning out into wide cones as they propagate into the stratosphere, 1020 kilometers above the ground. But we don't know a huge amount about them.

Because they happen above the clouds, it's hard to see them from the Earth's surface. That's why scientists built a device called the AtmosphereSpace Interactions Monitor (or ASIM), which is mounted on the outside of one of the modules on the International Space Station (ISS). It looks to the Earth below, and can take data at 10 microsecond intervals, allowing these weird phenomena to be studied.

On February 26, 2019, a thunderstorm brewed in the South Pacific Ocean near the equator. The ISS passed almost directly over it, giving ASIM an incomparable view. Happily, the storm didn't disappoint: Five blue flashes were seen, including one that generated a blue jet.

The flashes occurred 16 kilometers above the ocean, near the center of the storm where deep convection was seen this is the rising and falling of air inside the cloud, which is how the strong electric fields inside are generated. These flashes may be from electrons accelerated to high speed inside the cloud slamming into nitrogen molecules in the air, which respond by emitting ultraviolet and blue light.

When this happens, the air becomes ionized electrons are stripped from the molecules creating a channel in the air that can conduct electricity. There's a huge charge difference between the top of a cloud and the air above it, and if conditions are just right, that blue flash can create a blue jet, a tremendous but narrow discharge of electricity upwards into the sky (similar to a lightning leader). The one seen by ASIM stretched about 50 kilometers up.

There was also a very faint red pulse at the start of the flash, which may have been the start of the leader, the first ionized channel carved upward, probably a few hundred meters long. This is also due to electrically excited nitrogen gas emitting light as well (the same reason some aurorae are red).

The blue flashes did more than make a blue jet, too: They made ELVES, which stands for get this Emission of Light and Very low frequency perturbations due to Electromagnetic pulse Sources. A blue flash strongly accelerates electrons, which in turn generate powerful pulses of radio waves. These pulses move upwards into the ionosphere (80 kilometers or more above Earth's surface) which themselves accelerate electrons there. This creates rapidly expanding rings of blue and ultraviolet light as the pulse propagates horizontally at the bottom of the ionosphere, like a ripple moving away from a rock dropped into a pond.

I know, this is all quite complicated, but that's part of the point. The theory is partly there, but scientists have lacked observations to back them up. These ASIM observations really help.

Mind you, there are lots of other bizarre phenomena generated in clouds you may not have heard of. Terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, for example, are blasts of extremely high-energy photons out of the tops of thunderstorms, generated when electrons in the cloud are accelerated to nearly the speed of light and then interact with molecules of air. Maybe; the details of these flashes also aren't well understood even though they've been studied for decades.

There are also red sprites, which are tendril-like features that flash upwards from the tops of clouds. Pilots had reported seeing them for years but they were never caught in photos, so scientists were perhaps overly skeptical. In the 1990s these faint flashes started turning up in digital images, and now they're understood more or less in general. They're on my bucket list of Things I Want To See For Myself, but it's hard; since they appear over storms you have to be far enough away to see above the storm, and they're faint. We do see enormous storms to our east in the summer, and at some point I'll see about trying for them.

I know I usually write about mysterious objects and phenomena quadrillions of kilometers away, but there's a lot of very cool stuff going on much closer to us. It's not technically astronomy, but hey, it's still over our heads. Unless you're ASIM, looking down on Earth. But that's just a matter of perspective.

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A blue bolt out of the blue: On the edge of space, lightning leaps *upward* - SYFY WIRE

UPDATES: Phosphineless Venus and dustless Betelgeuse? – SYFY WIRE

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I have a couple of updates on some news stories I've been following for quite some time, both of which caused quite a stir when first announced: Phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus, and dust causing the dimming of Betelgeuse in late 2019/early 2020.

The versions of both are: Venusian phosphine may have actually been sulfur dioxide, and Betelgeuse dimming may have been from it getting cooler.

You may recall that back in September 2020 a team of astronomers announced they may have found evidence of the molecule phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus. Normally that would be a pretty esoteric discovery, but the thing is you wouldn't expect to find that particular molecule there, since it gets destroyed pretty easily in the hellish environment of Venus and, on Earth, phosphine is made primarily by anaerobic bacteria as they dine on dead things that used to be alive.

So yeah, kind of a big deal. But then doubt was cast on that, with other scientists saying that the data used weren't calibrated using the right files, which could make it look like phosphine was seen when it's not actually there. There were some other issues as well.

The original team then responded, saying that the detection persisted when they used updated calibration files, though it was weaker. But then things got interesting.

The astronomers who made the original discovery looked at a spectrum, breaking the light from Venus up into individual colors. Different molecules absorb light at different specific colors, allowing them to be IDed. However, sometimes molecules absorb very similar if not overlapping colors, confusing the issue. A new paper has come out making this very point, saying that sulfur dioxide (SO2) has been mistaken for phosphine, since it absorbs light at the same wavelength as phosphine.

It's an interesting argument. Sulfur dioxide is known to exist in the Venusian atmosphere, and they argue (using models of the planet's atmosphere) that the signature seen in the data could be explained by SO2 existing in a layer about 80 km above the surface of Venus. Phosphine was claimed to be seen about 50 km up, but the new paper argues phosphine would be rapidly destroyed there.

The argument is compelling, and could very well be correct. Phosphine may not be what was seen in the first place. The problem here is these data were on the edge of what could be seen, so without getting further, deeper observations the issue may not get resolved. I expect we'll be hearing more from the original team about this soon, too.

Moving from a planet 40 million kilometers away to a bloated star 640 (or possibly 530) light years away, let's talk Betelgeuse.

The iconic star shocked everyone in late 2019 when its brightness plummeted like a stone, dimming by about 50%. It was easily noticeable by eye, and fairly freaky how rapidly it dimmed.

Betelgeuse is a known variable star, with its brightness varying by several percent on a couple of different cycles. But this deep plunge was unprecedented, and weird. Astronomers immediately started coming up with ideas to explain it. One was giant starspots, which turned out not to be very likely. Another was that perhaps its temperature dropped. A third, and the one I felt was most likely due to support from different sources, is that it belched out a huge cloud of dust that blocked some of its light.

But a new paper has just been published which brings temperature up again. Or down, I suppose: They show that part of Betelgeuse's upper atmosphere could have cooled quite a bit, explaining the drop in light.

Stars emit light because they're hot. If they cool down, they get fainter. However, Betelgeuse is a red supergiant, an enormous bag of gas more massive and far, far larger than the Sun. The physics of its outer layers is very complex, and not terribly well understood.

The upper parts of the star physically expand and contract over a period of months to years, making the star brighter and dimmer, changing its color slightly as well as the temperature. In the new work, the authors show that parts of Betelgeuse's upper atmosphere may have cooled by several hundred degrees, explaining the dimming.

They looked at the molecule titanium oxide (TiO), which is commonly seen in very cool stars. It absorbs light at very specific colors in a characteristic way, and what they found is that the absorption by TiO changed when Betelgeuse was dimmer, indicating it was cooler than previously thought. The exact temperature drop is hard to determine, but at one point they show a clear drop of 150 Kelvins (one degree Celsius = 1 Kelvin). They claim that if the temperature dropped by 250 K then no dust is needed at all to explain the dimming.

Complicating this is that extremely high-resolution images of the star show that only the southern hemisphere faded, so it's likely (they reason) the temperature drop happened there. If the temperature only dropped in one part of the atmosphere it would be hard to find out how much, because the northern hemisphere stayed the same, confusing the measurement. So a 250K drop isn't necessarily unreasonable.

It makes me wonder if more than one cause is behind the dimming then, both dust and a temperature drop. That's not out of the question; when something extreme happens in the Universe it's commonly because two or more phenomena ganged up to increase their effect. I'm speculating here, but I certainly wouldn't rule that out.

Funny: Venus is the brightest planet in our sky and the one that gets closest to Earth, and Betelgeuse is one of the brightest stars in the sky and also relatively close as stars go. Yet for both, mysteries abound.

There's a lot we know and understand well about the cosmos we live in, but there's also a whole lot we don't, even about our next-door neighbors. And these back-and-forth arguments by scientists about data and cause and physics are normal for science; when we push the boundaries of knowledge it takes time to figure out what we're seeing. I expect both of these mysteries will be solved to everyone's satisfaction, and then we'll move on to the next weird thing Venus and Betelgeuse will do. That's the way the Universe works.

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UPDATES: Phosphineless Venus and dustless Betelgeuse? - SYFY WIRE

A Warp in the Milky Way Linked to Galactic Collision – University of Virginia

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When most of us picture the shape of the Milky Way, the galaxy that contains our own sun and hundreds of billions of other stars, we think of a central mass surrounded by a flat disc of stars that spiral around it. However, astronomers know that rather than being symmetrical, the disc structure is warped, more like the brim of a fedora, and that the warped edges are constantly moving around the outer rim of the galaxy.

If you have ever seen the audience making a wave in a stadium, its very similar to that concept, said Xinlun Cheng, an astronomy graduate student in the University of Virginias College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Each member of the audience stands up and then sits down at the correct time and in the correct order to create the wave as it goes around the stadium. Thats exactly what stars in our galaxy are doing. Only in this case, as the wave is going around the galaxys disk, the galaxy disk is also rotating around the center of the galaxy. In terms of the sports-fan analogy, its as if the stadium itself is also rotating.

What caused that warp to occur has been the subject of debate. Some researchers suggest that the phenomenon is a result of the instability of the galaxy itself, while others assert that it is the remnant of a collision with another galaxy in the distant past.

A recent article published in The Astrophysical Journal by Cheng, who studies the movements of the stars, and his colleagues, Borja Anguiano, a post-doctoral research associate at UVA, and Steven Majewski, a professor in the Colleges Department of Astronomy, may finally put that debate to rest.

Using data from the Gaia space observatory, a satellite launched in 2013 by the European Space Agency to measure the positions, distances and motions of billions of stars and information from APOGEE, an infrared spectrograph developed by UVA to examine the chemical composition and motions of stars, astronomers now have the tools to observe the movements of the stars in the Milky Way with an unprecedented degree of accuracy.

By combining information from the APOGEE instrument with information from the Gaia satellite, were starting to understand how the different components of the galaxy are moving, said Anguiano, who is interested both in the movements of those components and what phenomena may have originally caused those movements to occur.

It is now possible to characterize those movements with unprecedented accuracy because of the precision and statistical robustness of the huge catalogue of stars that has been probed by the Gaia satellite, Majewski explained. Meanwhile, our own large database of stellar chemistries generated by APOGEE gives us the unique ability to infer stellar ages. This allows us to explore how stars of different age participate in the warp and lets us zero in on when it was created. Knowing this, then, gives us an idea of why it was created.

Using those data, Cheng and his colleagues have developed a model that characterizes the parameters of the galactic warp, where it begins in the outer disk, how fast the warp is moving and the shape of the warp. The model has helped them determine that the warp, which doesnt affect our own sun, but is passing our solar system now at speeds that allow it to make a full rotation around the galaxy every 450 million years, is not a result of the Milky Ways own internal mass. Instead, it is the relic of gravitational tugging on the Milky Ways disk by the nearby passage of a satellite galaxy, possibly the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy, about 3 billion years ago.

We can still see the disk of our galaxy shaking as a result, Anguiano said.

The data the team collected from the new tools available to astronomers may be just the beginning of a new wave of discoveries about our universe and how it came to be.

Were entering an age in astronomy, especially in galactic astronomy, in which we are measuring the movement of the stars at such a level of precision that we can map their past orbital paths and start to understand how they may have been affected at earlier times and how other galaxies approaching our own interacted with stars as they were being born, Anguiano said. This level of precision has opened a new door to understanding our galaxys past and how it was assembled.

The article, Exploring the Galactic Warp through Asymmetries in the Kinematics of the Galactic Disk, by Cheng and his colleagues, was published in the December issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

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A Warp in the Milky Way Linked to Galactic Collision - University of Virginia

A Threat to You and Your Business – Building Indiana

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If youve got a long career in construction or the trades, chances are youve been exposed to asbestos. Now you face two potential threats: life-threatening diseases like mesothelioma and potential liabilities for your business.

We have had members from every trade diagnosed with mesothelioma due to the fact that asbestos was almost inescapable in the 1960s and 1970s. If a person was around any sort of construction or heavy industry, they were invariably exposed to asbestos. Both mesothelioma and lung cancer are extremely serious cancers that can result in death within one year from diagnosis.

As a contractor and business owner, being aware of these diseases is extremely important. On an individual basis, you personally may have been heavily exposed to asbestos early in your career. If so, its important to see your doctor right away should you experience shortness of breath or fatigue. If you are diagnosed, there are multiple avenues to seek compensation and you should consult with an attorney.

As an employer, its important to be aware of this if you have an employee that was exposed to asbestos on your watch and now has lung cancer or mesothelioma. If he or she was employed at your company in the 1980s or earlier, your company likely had an insurance policy in place that will defend your company against any potential asbestos lawsuit in the present day. Its important to dig that policy up to make sure youre protected. Companies like Policy Find can be utilized if you have a larger company with a long history to locate insurance policies.

Specific Asbestos Illnesses

There are two main diseases a worker can get from asbestos exposure: lung cancer and mesothelioma. These cancers result from asbestos exposure from 20-50 years ago. Often, someone with lung cancer was also a smoker. This combined exposure to smoke and asbestos puts them at great risk of being diagnosed with lung cancer; a risk higher than an individual that was only a smoker or only exposed to asbestos.

A person with mesothelioma has only gotten that cancer from asbestos exposure. Smoking history is irrelevant with this particular cancer. A mesothelioma tumor is formed when the asbestos fibers are breathed in and subsequently work their way out of the lung and into the lining of the lung over a period of many years. Eventually the tumor wraps around the lung itself, much like an orange peel.

Where Asbestos is Encountered

Asbestos is often a problem that contractors face when dealing with almost any building constructed prior to 1985. Whether its the gaskets on a flange, floor tile in the basement, an old roof, or the worst problem of asbestos pipe covering, the most important thing to remember is to not cut it, sand it, or otherwise manipulate it. If asbestos-containing material is cut, the fibers can linger in the air and be breathed in by people across the room for the next several hours.

This is why asbestos abatement teams exist. A hose and a mask are not sufficient protection from fibers that can get into your clothing and be brought home to families. We have had far too many tragic cases of wives getting cancer from shaking out their husbands clothing.

Relief for Victims

If you have an employee that gets lung cancer or mesothelioma, its often a devastating diagnosis. Financial compensation from bankruptcy trusts from now defunct asbestos companies are also available to help compensate a victim and his family. While this can never make a person or their family whole, compensation can go a long way in helping defray medical costs and other financial hardships.

Hopefully, you, your company, and your employees wont have to deal with asbestos issues on any basis. However, if you do, as with most problems, it is better to address the issue head on and tackle it properly before it grows into a bigger problem.

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A Threat to You and Your Business - Building Indiana

Hampshire scientists make major breakthrough in the fight against mesothelioma – Free Radio

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Scientists in Hampshire have made a major breakthrough that could help patients with mesothelioma survive for longer.

People diagnosed with the aggressive form of cancer, linked to breathing in asbestos fibres, could have more time with their loved ones when prescribed an immunotherapy drug currently used to treat several other types of cancer, new research has found.

The CONFIRM trial was led by researchers in Southamptons clinical trials unit, which is funded by Cancer Research UK, alongside their colleagues in Leicester.

Funded by Stand Up To Cancer a joint fundraising campaign by Cancer Research UK and Channel 4 the trial found that an immunotherapy called nivolumab increased survival and made the disease more stable for patients who relapsed following standard treatment.

A total of 332 patients whose tumours were still growing after receiving chemotherapy and who were not able to have surgery, took part in the randomised trial.

A total of 221 of those patients were given nivolumab and the remaining 111 given a placebo once every fortnight for up to 12 months.

Its the first study to show that a treatment has been able to improve survival in patients with mesothelioma that has come back after chemotherapy.

Until now, no treatment had been found that could significantly improve outcomes for patients.

The impressive findings, which saw those who had nivolumab survive an average of 9.2 months compared to those in the placebo group who survived 6.6 months, were presented to oncologists and researchers around the world at the World Conference on Lung Cancer at the weekend.

Patients who received nivolumab also had more stable disease.

The risk of their cancer progressing was reduced by 39%, with people not seeing their cancer worsening for 3.0 months compared with 1.8 months in the placebo group.

Mesothelioma develops in the lining of the lungs or abdomen, with most cases caused by exposure to the now outlawed industrial material, asbestos.

Currently seven per cent of people survive their disease for five years or more.

Each year, around 90 people are diagnosed with mesothelioma in Hampshire.

Cases of mesothelioma in the UK have increased by 61% since the early 1990s. It is particularly high in areas where shipping and mining industries formerly thrived.

Patients are usually treated with chemotherapy, surgery or radiotherapy. But treatment options start to become limited once people stop responding to their treatment.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, NHS England endorsed nivolumab for use in some people with malignant mesothelioma as an alternative to chemotherapy because it has less of a suppressive effect on the immune system and may reduce the risk of someone becoming seriously ill during the pandemic.

This decision is currently in place until the end of March but the data from the CONFIRM trial could help to make this option permanently available to patients.

Professor Gareth Griffiths, Director of the Cancer Research UK Southampton Clinical Trials Unit, said: "This trial shows clear evidence of benefit and marks a major breakthrough in the treatment of mesothelioma, a disease where there are currently very few options for patients when first-line chemotherapy has stopped working and prognosis is often very poor.

"This is the first study ever to show improved survival and we therefore believe that nivolumab could be a game-changer for treating mesothelioma patients in the future."

Michelle Mitchell, Cancer Research UKs chief executive, said: "Nearly half a century ago, Cancer Research UK scientists added to the understanding of just how dangerous asbestos could be.

"This research helped change regulations, reducing workers exposure to this deadly substance. But mesothelioma can take over 40 years to develop, and the long and painful legacy of asbestos use is still sadly being felt today.

"Its wonderful news to hear that we may have found a new treatment for people with mesothelioma who have run out of options, when there has been so little progress over the years.

"We hope that NICE considers nivolumab as a treatment option, which will give people with mesothelioma precious extra time with their loved ones."

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Hampshire scientists make major breakthrough in the fight against mesothelioma - Free Radio

Im for Abolition. And Yet I Want the Capitol Rioters in Prison. – The Nation

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The breach at the US Capitol. (AP Photo)

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To talk about the attempted Capitol coup, I must make frequent use of the word rage. Not the entitled white rage of the insurrectionists, which I and many others have already talked about enough. Im referring to my own angerthe rising rage I felt over hours of watching, in real time, white supremacists not so much laying siege to the national seat of government as strolling unbothered into the building. Thousands of white terrorists were allowed to spend a whole afternoon just hanging out on the Capitol lawn, chilling on its stairways, waving fascist flags from its terraces, a spectacle of menacing whiteness just doing its carefree thing.

Black folks like LaQuan McDonald and Freddie Gray were murdered for looking at cops the wrong way, but here I was watching police hand-holding white terrorists down the Capitol stairs. Police fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice for having a toy gun and being Black, but the white folks on my screen with real guns were allowed to shut down the government, brawl with cops, and walk out unscathed. Apparently, the white supremacist state prefers white supremacist terror to Black anti-racist resistance, even when that terror leaves a trail of broken police bodies and dead cops in its wake. The Capitol insurrection may have, at least for now, failed as a coup. But it succeeded in reminding the rest of us that American whiteness is American freedom.

My anger over all this has tested my ideals. In particular, my commitment to prison abolition. And as of this writing, Im failing that test miserably.

Let me say here that I still believe we should be working toward a society without prisons. The state offers incarceration as the sole remedy to every criminal harm, falsely conflating retribution with justice. This cycle of eye-for-an-eye revenge has put 2.3 million people behind barsmore than any other country in both raw numbers and per capitawith millions more living under correctional surveillance through parole and probation. We know Black and brown people are disproportionately targeted by a racist carceral system rife with physical violence, sexual abuses, and psychological torture inflicted by solitary confinement. And yet, study after study proves locking people up doesnt reduce crimein fact, mass incarceration has destroyed countless families and communities, yielding the very conditions that produce crime. I believe there are humane alternatives to imprisonment that, instead of perpetuating violence and trauma, seek to heal the harms done and address the structural issues that lead people to commit crime in the first place. No one, whatever their crime, is irredeemable. And by the same turn, no one deserves the brutal and dehumanizing treatment thats endemic to our carceral system.Related Article

Yet I still want every lawless white-supremacist Capitol insurrectionist to be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Intellectually and morally, I know nothing good will come out of a continued national reliance on the corrupt racist for-profit prison-industrial complex. But viscerally, my gut is seduced by the statist myth Ive been steeped in of jail as a route to justice. Not because I think revenge will yield a satisfying end, but because I want white-supremacist violence to be treated, perhaps for the first time in this countrys history, as a serious crime that demands accountability. And on this, Im not alone.

Writing at The Atlantic, prison abolitionists Neal Gong and Heath Pearson note that in response to law enforcements hands-off approach to the storming of the Capitol on January 6, some on the left have demanded harsher policing of right-wing extremism to match the often-brutal treatment of Black Lives Matter and leftist protest. That is, the very people who supported police reform or outright defunding over the summer seemed to want a crackdown.Current Issue

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In other words, like me, there are plenty of people who believe that increased criminalization isnt workingbut who want consequences for those criminals who never seem to be handed them. Part of me wants Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis cop who bore down on George Floyds neck until long after he had choked him to death, to spend the rest of his life in a prison cell. That same part hopes all three men who took part in the execution of Ahmaud Arberywho spat the words fucking nigger at Arbery as he lay dyingto never experience freedom again. I have wished that Donald Trump and his adviser Stephen Miller, the architect of the administrations cruelest immigration policies, were jailed in cages just like those they filled with migrant children. Ive hoped that Kyle Rittenhouse, the white 17-year-old who murdered two Black Lives Matter protesters in August and more recently flashed white-power signs in pics with Proud Boys, will grow into an adult behind bars. And I have fantasized about George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martins murderer who sued the teens bereaved parents for ruining his reputation, suffering a lifelong prison sentence. Thats just a partial list.

The only truly immutable law of this land is that Black life has no value to white America, an estimation that denies Black folks justice as both victims and offenders. Again and again, Black folks witness how a biased criminal systemfrom its cops to its courtsdelivers systematically unfair outcomes. What results is a kind of desperation for any semblance of fairness or justice. Michelle Alexander, pointing out how the state presents imprisonment as the one and only response to crime, writes that when we ask victims Do you want incarceration? what were really asking is Do you want something or nothing? And when any of us are hurt, and when our families and communities are hurting, we want something rather than nothing. The only thing on offer is prisons, prosecutors and police.

Black folks are rarely given even that binary choice. And so the conflict between my ideals and my rage is the desperate want to see Americas white-supremacist criminal systemwhich is, by design, unequipped to punish white supremacy for its harmsfinally work for Black folks. That is, I want something rather than nothing, just this once.

And I want white-supremacist violence to be treated like the danger it is. Black folks have been warning about the increasing threat of white terrorism since Barack Obamas election, and the fears of his assassination by white racists that accompanied it. Americas intelligence agencies have known that white terrorists are the greatest threat to national security since at least 2015, and that only became more true when an open white supremacist became president. But still there was no real response. When the state views peaceful Black protest as more of threat than armed white terrorism, its clear white supremacy is the goal.

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Yet somehow I foolishly thought that armed white supremacists swarming the Senate chambers to stalk politicians who disagree with them might trigger a self-preservationist response. Instead, a complicit Republican Party is seemingly ensuring an attempted coup will be followed by a successful coup. Recently, The Washington Post reported that, behind closed doors, Justice Department officials are debating waiving charges against some of the Capitol terrorists. And while authorities have since denied the report, most of the white insurrectionists who were apprehended have been allowed to await trial at home. The majority of the estimated 800 Capitol invaders were never even arrested.

Meanwhile, historians compare the Capitol attack and the culture of election lies and conspiracies around it to Germanys Stab in the Back myth that led to the rise of Naziism. German historian Michael Bremmer urges that everyone who precipitated and carried out the attempted insurrectionmust face swift and severe consequences for their actions. Princeton historian Rhae Lynn Barnes writes that slavery, Jim Crow and Reconstructions failures to prosecute treasonous Confederates ultimately led to a strain of white-supremacist terror that continues with the Capitol insurrection. Using history as a lesson, both scholars now caution that prosecution and prison is the only way to ensure democracy and national security. And honestly, that message reverberates with me right now.

I know the fear and vengeance that fuel my desire to see Capitol insurrectionists in jail is a reaction to the same systemic abuses that make prison abolition necessary. Of course, American law enforcement, an institution that evolved in part from slave patrols, fulfilled its long-standing role as the protector of white supremacy. Its also no surprise that members of a terrorist mob who spent months openly declaring their intent to kill lawmakers and occupy the Capitol are being undercharged with misdemeanor trespassing by federal officials, even as some Black Lives Matter activists face decades in jail for bringing umbrellas to a protest.

But putting those folks in cages would most likely only make them more vicious and violent, and more likely to externalize that violence toward Black people and other nonwhite folks. An abolitionist framework would attempt to locate the underlying and long-standing societal problems that encourage white-supremacist terror to thrive. This is not to absolve any of the full-grown adults who chose to commit multiple crimes, the very least of which was breaching the Capitol, and in some cases included brutal acts of violence and murder. But without question, the Capitol attack is a symptom of a disease in a white settler colony founded on genocide and enslavement, a sickness that was always lethal. If only we were actually committed to addressing the long-standing conditions that permit American fascism to grow, we could transform society in ways that would preclude future white-supremacist insurrections. Whats more, this unfair racist criminal punishment system cannot be trusted to provide equal justice. When, out of desperation, we lean into this corrupt and primitive system, we cosign its abuses and validate its crimes across the board. Thats why decarcerationnot just selectively, but for everyoneis the only way to ensure this treacherous system can longer inflict harm.

I recognize that truth, and yet, in this moment, find it hard to square so much else with its overwhelming logic. The orgiastic celebration of white power we saw at the Capitol, on the heels of so much white grievance in recent years, has made me look to the only system I know for answers it cannot provide. For everyone also struggling to reconcile the irreconcilable, I see you right now. I have a lot more work to do to bring my anger into alignment with my desire for things to be better. That will ultimately mean wanting abolition even for those I see as the worst.

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Im for Abolition. And Yet I Want the Capitol Rioters in Prison. - The Nation

Reform, abolition, and vision – UC Santa Cruz

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COVID-19 forced the cancellation of many parades and marches marking Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year.

But the pandemic will not put a damper on UC Santa Cruzs 37th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Convocation, which will pivot to an unprecedented all-virtual format when it takes place on Friday, February 12, from 5:30 to 7 p.m.

Usually the event is held at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, which was packed to the rafters and with lines around the block for such speakers as activist, author, and distinguished UC Santa Cruz Professor Emerita Angela Davis and Black Lives Matter cofounder Alicia Garza.

This time around, the Martin Luther King Jr. Convocation Planning Committee, made up of students, professional staff, and faculty,expect a robust online crowd to hear keynote speaker Mariame Kaba, an organizer, educator, curator, and prison industrial complex abolitionist who is active in movements for racial, gender, and transformative justice.

Registration is free for the convocation, which is open to the public.

Kaba will take part in an onstage dialogue with UC Santa Cruz associate professor of feminist studies Gina Dent.

We are fortunate to learn more about Mariame Kabas work on racial and gender justice and abolition, which is instrumental in dismantling the prison-industrial complex, structural racism, and anti-blackness, said Associate Vice Chancellor/Chief Diversity Officer Teresa Maria Linda Scholz. She will provide transformative guidance to members of the UCSC community and beyond who are committed to community organizing and abolition work.

Kaba is the founder and director of Project NIA, a grassroots abolitionist organization with a vision to end youth incarceration. She is also a researcher at Interrupting Criminalization: Research in Action at the Barnard Center for Research on Women, a project she cofounded with police misconduct attorney and organizer Andrea Ritchie in 2018.

She has cofounded multiple other organizations and projects over the years including We Charge Genocide, the Chicago Freedom School, the Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls and Young Women, Love & Protect, the Just Practice Collaborative, and Survived & Punished. She is a member of the Movement for Black Lives Policy Table.

Kaba offers a radical analysis that influences how people think and respond to how violence, prisons, and policing affect the lives of people of color.

She is the author of Missing Daddy, in which a child narrator explores the emotions she feels surrounding her fathers incarceration. Her forthcoming book, We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice, will be published in February.

The convocation celebrates the life, dream, and enduring vision of Martin Luther King Jr. High-profile speakers who have addressed the crowd at the convention include Yolanda King, activist, actress, and daughter of Martin Luther King Jr.; the late actress and activist Cicely Tyson; Harvard University professor Cornel West; author and social activist bell hooks (Ph.D. '83, literature); and poet, commentator, activist, and professor Nikki Giovanni.

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Reform, abolition, and vision - UC Santa Cruz

Angela Davis discusses the importance of abolition, intersectionality and community in USG Justice Now event – UConn Daily Campus

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On Feb. 1, the Undergraduate Student Government at the University of Connecticut hosted esteemed speaker, Dr. Angela Davis, in a virtual conversation on Abolitionist Movements in the 21st Century. Dr. Davis discussed the necessity of abolishing prisons and policing, as well as the intersectionality between race, class and gender in abolitionist movements of both the past andpresent.

The event began via event streampromptly at7 p.m. and was moderated by UConn student Mason Holland. The discussion is part of USGsJustice Now Initiative, which was conceived in large part by Student Development Chair Christine Jorquera, USG Alumni Senator Darren Mack and Student Development Deputy Chair Rita Tsafack-Tonleu.

I know as a non-Black student, theres nothing I can do to heal generations and generations of trauma and pain this community has faced, Jorquera, a sixth-semester psychology and human rights major, said about the inspiration behind the speaker series. The least I could do was help center initiatives and events dedicated to the Black community. To me, diversity, inclusionand equity are more than words. They are a promise meant to be keptand held accountable for.

Holland opened the discussion with an introduction of the Justice Now Initiative and Dr. Davis herself. Dr. Davis then launched into a 30-minute keynote speech on 21st century abolitionist movements.

Dr. Davis linked the past to the present in her speech by explaining the genealogy between 19th century abolition movements calling for the end of slavery and 21st century abolition movements calling for the end of prisons and the police. In a similar manner to the way in which reforming the system of slavery would not have solved any problems, Dr. Davis argued that reform has become the very glue that has held these institutions together, referring to carceral and law enforcementinstitutions.

Let me just continue to encourage you to do the work, consolidate your community, allow yourself to imagineand at the same time, discover that there is also joy and pleasure in doing work that is going to transform the world.

In addition to looking at abolition movements surrounding prisons and the police, Dr. Davis also discussed the overlap between the feminist movement and the abolitionist movement. Dr. Davis stressed the inability to look at gender as a separate entity from class and race, since doing so causes one to default to Whiteness as the norm. This is how Whiteness came to take over the mainstream feminist movement, Dr. Davis argued, as well as contributed to the development of carceral feminism, or feminism that is willing to rely on the racist carceral system as those feminists feel that it benefits them more so than harming others.

Black feminism, meanwhile, attempts to rewrite historical records by showing the legacy of work done by Black feminists and other feminists of color in regard to anti-rape campaigns. This approach to feminism allows us to understand that abolitionist movements are at their best when they are globally interconnected, Dr. Davis noted.

The event then entered the Q&A portion, moderated by Holland. Students had the ability to submit questions to Dr. Davis before the event took place. Questions ranged from those on specific topics that Dr. Davisdiscussed to thosethat were more personal.

In response to a question on balancing attempts to move away from a carceral state while also demanding justice for victims of police brutality, Dr. Davis attested that there were always contradictions in movement work. However,she thought there were more effective ways of holding perpetrators accountable rather than just calling for the arrest and imprisonment of the cops that killed Breonna Taylor, for example.

Simply sending people to prison accomplishes nothing and oftentimes reproduces and intensifies the violence, Dr. Davis said.

Dr. Davis ended her speaking event on a note of hope, discussing her sense of being connected to communities larger than just herself as a key motivator for her continued activism.

Our work is collective; its not about whats in it for me, but changing the world for all of us, Dr. Davis said. A major piece of movement work is challenging individualism and realizing that were allproducedin and through a larger community.

Dr. Davis ended with advice for UConn students;dontgive up, recognize that this is the moment that you should be thinking deeply and calling for change, and look at the role that police play on your campus, she said. Let me just continue to encourage you to do the work, consolidate your community, allow yourself to imagineand at the same time, discover that there is also joy and pleasure in doing work that is going to transform the world.

Originally from Birmingham, AL, Dr. Davis rose to prominence as an activist and scholar during the Black Freedom Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Known as a radical feminist, member of the Communist Party and affiliate of the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party, Davis was listed on the FBIs Ten Most Wanted Fugitiveslist in 1970 due to her support of the Soledad Brothers, three inmates who were accused of killing a prison guard at Soledad Prison. She is currently a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Listening to Dr. Davis talk about mobilizing on college campuses was incredibly empowering, said Prachi Arora, a sixth-semester economics and biology major with a minor in business fundamentals. I want to commend Mason Holland and everyone at USG who set this up because theyve gotten amazing speakers for this panel. Im looking forward to seeing what kind of change these discussions will ignite on the UConn campus.

The next event in the Justice Now Initiative will take place on Feb. 11 at 7 p.m. via event stream. Melting Pot: Multi-Cultural Diplomacy/Multi-National Patriotism will be a moderated discussion between Ilyasah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X and a professor, author and activist, and UConn student Shane Young. For more information on the rest of the Justice Now Initiative, go to theUSG InstagramorUSG website.

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Angela Davis discusses the importance of abolition, intersectionality and community in USG Justice Now event - UConn Daily Campus