WATCH: SpaceX Falcon 9 Booster Drone Ship ‘Just Read the Instructions’ Returns to Port Canaveral – SpaceCoastDaily.com

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booster sent U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station on May 30

ABOVE VIDEO: A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster aboard drone ship Just Read the Instructions is back at the Port after having arrived Friday morning.

BREVARD COUNTY PORT CANAVERAL, FLORIDA A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster aboard drone ship Just Read the Instructions is back at the Port after having arrived Friday morning.

The booster helped orbit a South Korean military satellite on July 20 before landing on the drone ship out in the Altantic.

Its the same booster that sent U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station on May 30.

SpaceX accomplished its first-ever hat trick by recovering the booster and both halves of the rockets nose cone, which were captured in the huge nets of Port-based SpaceX recovery vessels GO Ms. Tree and GO Ms. Chief.

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WATCH: SpaceX Falcon 9 Booster Drone Ship 'Just Read the Instructions' Returns to Port Canaveral - SpaceCoastDaily.com

ADA’s 30th anniversary marks progress for disabled Americans, but there’s still work to be done – Scottsbluff Star Herald

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WASHINGTON Michael Warners parents were presented with a choice after their baby boy was diagnosed with spastic cerebral palsy.

They could have him immediately institutionalized or raise him at home.

Luckily, they chose the latter,Warner said.

It was just a few years afterward on July 26, 1990 that the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law.

That landmark initiative sought to make it easier for Warner and other disabled Americans to stay out of institutional settings and instead be integrated into the broader community.

Warner grew up in Omaha and still lives in the city. He describes himself as a member of the first generation to come of age under the ADA, which he credited with allowing him a public school education alongside his peers.

My ability to live my life as independently as possible is directly correlated with the passage of the ADA, Warner said. I wouldnt be able to live my life as effectively as I have without it.

Advocates have been celebrating the ADAs 30th anniversary this week with events hailing the progress achieved and highlighting areas where work remains to be done.

Former Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has been a fixture of the commemorations as the chief sponsor behind the legislation. Harkin pushed for the ADA after witnessing the discrimination faced by his deaf brother.

Harkin said he saw how those with disabilities were subjected to demeaning language like cripple and moron and shut out of society.

For a person with a disability, it was a life of segregation and separation from their family and their friends and their community, Harkin said of the country before 1990. It was a life of hurtful language that you would hear all the time. And it was a life, even among the most well-meaning of people, it was a life of pity and patronizing attitudes. Life was limiting in so many ways to a person with a disability before the ADA.

The new law meant commercial buildings with accessible entryways, sidewalks with curb cuts, buses with wheelchair ramps and restrooms that disabled people could use.

More broadly, though, it helped shift the American mindset to regard inclusion and accommodation as the norm, rather than the exception.

Weve come a long way. Weve made a lot of good changes in society, Harkin said. A lot of attitudes have changed about what people with disabilities are capable of doing.

Barriers still remain for the disabled and one of the biggest challenges is economic self-sufficiency. Harkin noted that statistics show the lack of employment among disabled people has improved little over the past 30 years.

Thats a blot on our national character, Harkin said. Weve got to do a better job on that.

Warner, for example, says he has never held a full-time job but would like to. He graduated from Northwest High School in Omaha in 2005 and recently received an associate degree from Metropolitan Community College. Once the coronavirus pandemic has faded, he hopes to go back to school for a bachelors degree and has talked about working as a disability consultant to companies alongside his work as an advocate and activist.

But he said some employers are hesitant to hire people with disabilities.

They dont know how they would handle disabled employees, especially if were talking about a physical limitation that is somewhat severe. And that is an issue, Warner said. We need to get past this stigma of not understanding or not knowing how to best utilize employees that might have a disability.

Another Omahan, Rick Rodgers, was injured in a 2001 work accident in which he was thrown off the back of a tractor. The resulting surgeries left him with numerous screws and a steel rod in his body.

Im a cross between Frankenstein and an erector set, he joked.

Rodgers needs a wheelchair much of the time because of the nerve damage and pain, but he said many Omaha buildings remain difficult to get into even today, and the ramps on city buses dont always work.

Finding a job is also an issue. Rodgers went back to college and got certified to work on computers but he says potential employers dont want to be liable for his medical issues.

I cant get any companies to hire me, mainly because of my health, he said. That needs to be addressed.

Warner noted that many disabled individuals also worry about taking a full-time job because that can mean losing public benefits such as health insurance or Social Security payments.

Im glad for what we do have, as far as being able to be out in the community and gain access to commerce, but I do believe there are further steps that could be taken, Warner said.

Improving work opportunities for the disabled has been a focus for Harkin since he retired from the Senate. He has urged companies to overhaul training programs and do whatever else is necessary to increase their hiring of disabled Americans.

Congress could help the situation by passing legislation that would address the issue of disabled individuals losing benefits if they find full-time employment, he said.

Of the various ADA anniversary events Harkin joined this week, he said the most fun was a plane ride Friday with the first armless pilot, Jessica Cox, at the controls.

The two met through her advocacy work on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities treaty, which they both continue to push.

Ive been able to see around the world what people with disabilities experience and how they are not protected, Cox said.

Harkin is a lifelong aviator himself, so they quickly bonded over their love of planes and Cox offered to take him up with her.

Years went by before they were able to make it happen, but Friday they lifted off in a 1946 Ercoup plane from an airport in Frederick, Maryland.

After the brief flight, Cox talked about being in first grade when the ADA went into effect and how she quickly noticed differences, from accessible entryways to restrooms. She even got a slanted desk that allowed her to write with her feet.

For his part, Harkin said that Cox is an inspiration and that the landing she executed on Friday was among the finest hed ever seen.

I was so enthralled by watching her and seeing how good she was, Harkin said. She knows how to handle an airplane.

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ADA's 30th anniversary marks progress for disabled Americans, but there's still work to be done - Scottsbluff Star Herald

Centering Equity in the Future-of-Work Conversation Is Critical for Women’s Progress – Center For American Progress

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The ongoing discussion about the future of work has focused much-needed attention on how best to prepare for the changing nature of the workforce and the workplace. This conversation has taken on added importance with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic that has led to skyrocketing unemployment in the United Stateswhich has disproportionately affected women, particularly women of colorand devastated the economy at levels not seen since the Great Depression. The pandemic has placed new strains on workplaces already hampered by old problems, not the least of which include the persistent barriers that undermine womens economic standing and employment opportunities.

The conversation about the future of work has largely centered on readying workers by discussing the new skills they may need to acquire, jobs that are expected to grow, and how emerging technologies may change workplace operations and the nature of work. However, it is equally important to focus on preparing workplaces for the future by transforming work environments so that all workers have the best chance of success and can participate to their fullest potential.

For women, these transformed workplaces must be free of the barriers and biases that have been used for years to limit their opportunities, undermine their advancement, and depress their wages. The workplace of the future must view womenand the diverse experiences they bring to the tablenot as workers who fall short of a preferred norm but as workers who are valued and recognized for their contributions. This means a workplace where workers can take time off for their familys medical or caregiving needs without adversely affecting their job or advancement prospects. It means a workplace that is rooted in equity and free of discrimination and harmful stereotypes about womens skills, work ethic, attitude, leadership abilities, or intellect. It means a workplace where pay gaps are nonexistent and women are not funneled into a narrow selection of jobs with lower wages and little mobility. It means a workplace culture that is inclusive of diverse perspectives and diverse leadership, embraces collaboration among workers and management at all levels, and supports the individual and collective power of workers to create an environment responsive to their needs.

The task of workplace transformation for the future, however, must also be informed by understanding the successes and failures of the past. Having both a broad historical and contemporary perspective is particularly important to ensure womens continued workplace progress and to address longstanding disparities in pay, career advancement, and opportunities that have impeded womens progress and undermined their overall economic stability. This wide view makes clear that the pursuit of equity through measures aimed at leveling the playing field, countering persistent biases, and removing sex-based barriers to employment is essential to opening new doors for women and changing attitudes about their abilities.

While working women in the United States have made significant gains, including expanded job opportunities and legal protections to promote equality and combat discrimination, the path to workplace success for women has been shapedand often constrainedby their status as women.

Biases around gender, race, ethnicity, and class have resulted in the exclusion of women from jobs and have curtailed their workforce participation throughout the nations history. These barriers affected both white women and women of color, although the experiences of these groups were often very different. Historically, menprimarily white, cisgender menhave played a dominant role in shaping the structure, operations, and overall culture of American workplaces by virtue of holding the most powerful and highly paid jobs.

Women who worked in paid jobs well into the 20th century had limited employment options because many occupations were, in practice, not open to them. Additionally, white women were less likely to be engaged in paid work outside of the home than women of color, in part because of a racial and ethnic hierarchy that frequently afforded white women a more privileged societal and economic status. For example, a little more than 16 percent of white women worked for pay in 1890 compared with almost 40 percent of nonwhite women. White women who worked for pay outside of the home were primarily single women until the 1920s, when more white married women gradually began moving into the paid workforce.

During this same time period, working women of color were faced with the combined effects of race, gender, and ethnic biasesknown as intersectional discriminationand were relegated to the lowest-paid positions. For Black women, entrenched racism rooted in the nations painful history of slavery and racial oppression meant that they were expected to work in jobs with few benefits or protections, with little regard given to their working conditions or their personal or family needs. Many were limited to domestic work, caregiving work, or other service jobs. Immigrant and Native American women were also subjected to oppressive tactics that reduced their job options, primarily working as laborers, domestic workers, and service workers. Much of this work by women of color, although essential to the care and support of families, was not as valued or respected as other types of paid work. Domestic and caregiving work, whether paid or unpaid, was often dismissed as mere womens work and deemed less important.

Womens progress in moving beyond the historical limits placed on their economic participation did not occur by chance: It required intentional change in laws, workplace structures and practices, and workplace culture to create spaces that are more equitable, fair, and welcoming. These gains were grounded in the equality principles established at the nations founding, interpreted and expanded to encompass a commitment to equal opportunity and equal justice for all women. The focus on greater equity required a shift toward seeing women as deserving of equal opportunity to participate fully in the economy and determine their own direction. This shift, one that occurred gradually over time, was not merely an act of beneficence toward women. Rather, it reflected an emerging recognition of the benefits of womens workforce participation, from increased economic security for families to improving business outcomes for employers to helping boost the nations annual gross domestic product.

The passage of landmark laws such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 established critical protections to prohibit various forms of sex discrimination and ensure that women were not denied opportunities or treated unfairly solely because of their sex. These measures were bolstered by later laws, including the Americans with Disabilities Act passed in 1990, which extended additional anti-discrimination protections to women and other workers with disabilities. The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) broke new ground by enabling eligible workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for family or medical emergencies, helping to address a form of discrimination mostly faced by women who need time off to care for their families. The Supreme Court also played a role interpreting key protections, such as those available under Title VII, to cover different forms of sex discrimination including sexual harassment and, most recently, discrimination aimed at LGBTQ workers.

The implementation of these protections required a commitment to robust enforcement of the law. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), established by the 1964 Civil Rights Act and launched in 1965, enforces the vast majority of the protections against sex discrimination in employment; one exception is the FMLA, which is enforced by the U.S. Department of Labor. The EEOC has been instrumental in using its investigatory and litigation powers to enforce womens legal rights and help expand womens employment options. This enforcement remains pivotal to womens progress. Nearly one-third of the estimated 414,235 charges filed with the EEOC from fiscal year 2015 to fiscal year 2019 included charges alleging sex discrimination. These enforcement efforts complement the work employers should also be undertaking to tackle persistent disparities, eliminate systemic practices that exclude women, and transform workplace culture.

Even with the important gains women have made, too many workplaces are still marred by persistent inequities, outdated attitudes, and entrenched biases. These problems translate into adverse employment outcomes, including disparities in womens earnings, job opportunities, job mobility, and advancement opportunities. For example, researchers have found that among transgender workers, trans women are more likely to report losing a job because of their gender identity or expression than trans men or nonbinary individuals. Women also continue to experience a stubborn pay gap: Women working full time, year-round earn 82 cents for every dollar earned by male full-time, year-round workers. And this gap is even more pronounced for many women of color: Black women earn 62 cents, Latinas earn 54 cents, Native American women earn 57 cents, and Asian American women earn 90 cents for every dollar earned by white men. Researchers also have found pay disparities among trans workers, with one study finding that the earnings of trans women workers surveyed fell by nearly one-third after their gender transition. Over the course of a lifetime, these gaps can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost earnings for women.

Women also are underrepresented in leadership and in the most senior jobs in Fortune 500 companies, with women of color experiencing the sharpest leadership disparities. Even with a record-high number of 37 women as Fortune 500 CEOs in 2020, the milestone represents just 7.4 percent of the total number of CEOs. Furthermore, only three of these women are women of color, none of whom are African American or Latina. This lack of opportunity not only deprives women of higher earnings and greater economic security but also can affect the business bottom line. Research increasingly shows that businesses with greater gender and ethnic diversity at the executive level report better financial performance than industry averages.

Instilling gender equity practices requires a range of intentional interventions, including six areas for action: strong legal protections, robust enforcement mechanisms, modern workplace policies to address work-family needs, broad worker supports, deep structural and cultural change, and a strong commitment to focusing resources on workers who face the sharpest disparities.

Strengthening legal protections can fill gaps where additional support is needed and help establish a baseline measure of employer accountability. Adopting federal proposals to close longstanding loopholessuch as the any factor other than sex defense that has enabled employers to justify pay disparities without having to show a business necessity and job rationaleis critical to thwart efforts to undermine equal pay enforcement. Another potential legal improvement could replicate progress made in states such as California, which prohibits the misuse of a workers salary history when making hiring decisionsa practice that poses an obstacle to equal pay. Exploring new measures to protect workers with caregiving responsibilities from discrimination, particularly in the midst of the current pandemic, is also a legal strategy policymakers should pursue to counter sex discrimination on the job.

Additionally, substantial investments in the full range of federal enforcement mechanisms are needed to ensure agencies have the staffing, investigatory tools, and jurisdictional authority they need to achieve compliance with the law. The EEOC, the U.S. Department of Labors Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), and the U.S. Department of Justice all play a role in ensuring that workplaces in the public and private sector are free of discrimination, but more progress is needed. Policymakers should increase funding to double the available resources for federal enforcement efforts and strengthen investigatory tools such as enforcement officials access to employers pay data on an annual basis. Agencies should have the resources to respond rapidly to situations like the current pandemic and take action in real timefor example, by challenging instances of sex discrimination when employers decide not to hire or rehire women workers because they have small children or may need time off in the future.

Pushing for better workplace policies to help modernize workplaces and respond to workers diverse needs is also critical to achieving greater workplace equity. As the pandemic has painfully demonstrated, the lack of strong work-family policies such as paid sick days, paid family and medical leave, and access to flexible scheduling or telework has left too many workers without the necessary supports to navigate work-family emergencies.

Several companies, including Microsoft and Zillow, revamped their policies in response to the coronavirus crisis to provide workers with more flexibility to work from home. Such policies are particularly important to address potential discrimination aimed at women workers, who tend to assume the majority of caregiving responsibilities in their families. But higher-wage workers are far more likely to have access to such work-from-home options than lower-wage workers, and many jobs, such as home care or grocery stores jobs, are not designed for remote work. Leisure and hospitality occupationswhich comprise a disproportionately high number of women, particularly women of colorare the least likely to have telework options, with less than 10 percent of workers in the industry able to telework. Access to paid leave and other supports is even more important for these workers. Yet despite the passage of emergency COVID-19 provisions to provide more workers with paid leave, more than 100 million workers may be exempt from these protections. Some employers have expanded their paid leave policies in response to the pandemic, but many workers continue to struggle with how to care for sick family members without putting their jobs at risk.

These actions must be coupled with measures directly focused on disrupting power imbalances, workplace structures, and longstanding stereotypes and biases used to perpetuate inequity and hold women back. Supporting efforts to bolster worker powerincluding removing barriers to collective organizing, partnering with worker organizers to respond to employment violations, and providing resources for worker advocatescan help address problems in real time. For example, worker-led initiatives to combat sexual harassment among janitorial workers and farmworkers are models that have proven effective in helping to improve working conditions for many women in these sectors.

Employers must also closely examine their own workplaces to ensure that they are free of discrimination, from individual interactions to operational structures and practices. This means investing in ongoing, comprehensive training to counter implicit biases and pervasive, harmful stereotypes about women, such as mischaracterizing Black women as angry, Latinas as oversexualized, or Asian American women as submissive. It could also involve undertaking internal analyses and climate surveys to uncover differences in employee experiences, promotion rates, or pay practices. For instance, Salesforcea company that provides customer relationship management servicesbegan to take steps in 2015 to analyze their worker compensation. Over the course of the next four years, the company spent more than $10 million to correct gender pay disparities. In 2016, more than 100 companies joined an equal pay pledge launched by the Obama administration, committing to analyze their compensation and identify pay disparities within their workforces on an annual basis.

All of these strategies can be used to inject more equity and fairness into workplaces and, in doing so, create environments where women are more likely to be successful.

The ability of women across race and ethnicity, income level, disability status, and gender identity to succeed at work in the future will depend on the scope and depth of efforts to remove longstanding barriers and expand opportunities. This work not only should encompass the full range of interventions to improve legal protections, enforcement tools, workplace policies and structures, and worker supports, but also should prioritize several key measures to help drive transformational change and promote equity in the workplace.

Employers should undertake an equity assessment of their workplaces to identify disparities across measures including race, gender, ethnicity, disability, and LGBTQ status. These assessments should be used to pinpoint problems and help establish concrete, measurable targets where progress is needed. For example, women are less likely than men to advance into the most senior organizational roles, and women of color are less likely to advance into senior positions or management than their white female counterparts. Employers should adopt specific goals and targets to increase these numbers over time.

An assessment tool should utilize different types of measuresfrom hiring and promotion rates, to demographic differences in workplace morale, to overall numbers of women and people of color in leadershipand explore the different factors that determine success in individual workplaces. To help ensure that every assessment is robust and thorough in scope, research funding could be directed to support the development of a model assessment tool or template that an employer could use as a guide to conduct an internal equity assessment. Furthermore, the adoption of new rules to promote greater accountability and transparencysuch as the disclosure of salary ranges, pay gaps, and pay datamay help reduce disparities and encourage quick remedial action by employers. Future workplaces must use equity-based measures to evaluate overall quality and preparedness for the years ahead.

Workplaces of the future must be incentivized to embrace a more holistic understanding of work and family and value the full range of experiences that women and all workers bring to the table. This means centering the experiences of women to gain a deeper understanding of the harshest challenges and obstacles facing many women of color, low-income women, transgender women, women with disabilities, and immigrant women. Many low-income women, for example, are less likely to have access to vital work-family supports: Only 47 percent of low-wage workers have access to paid sick days compared with 90 percent of the highest-wage workers. In addition, Black and Latinx workers are less likely to be able to telework. Black women and Latinas are more likely to be single heads of household than their white counterparts, meaning that the lack of available child care may pose additional barriers as they try to return to work amid the ongoing pandemic. Employers ability to access lucrative opportunities, such as being awarded a federal contract, should be conditioned in part on how well they address these diverse needs through baseline workplace benefits such as paid leave and access to emergency child care.

Although there is no sure-fire remedy for eliminating bias and research shows mixed results from routine diversity training programs, there are strategies that have been shown to be effective. Researchers have found that efforts to increase diversity and inclusion have a greater likelihood of success if they are part of an ongoing program of learning rather than a one-time intervention or one-size-fits-all solution. Such efforts should go beyond solely training workers about legal requirements and seek to bridge perspectives, reverse roles, and understand power imbalances. This could include undertaking regular surveys of workplace climate; initiating trainings on implicit bias tailored to a particular work environment; and reevaluating reporting mechanisms, evaluation measures, promotion practices, and processes for pay decisions.

For example, when Starbucks experienced several high-profile incidents involving racial profiling of Black customers, the company initiated a series of anti-bias trainings over the course of one year along with other measures to address internal issues such as pay equity and greater racial and gender diversity in hiring. Other efforts that have shown promise include initiatives that bring workers and management together on a task force or committee to work collaboratively on programs to drive change. More recently, in response to the national reckoning on systemic racism spurred by a spate of killings of African Americans by police, leaders of organizations and institutions increasingly have been called upon to examine their internal structures and prioritize equity to achieve systemic change. Ongoing investments in research and study to identify best practices should be a focus of future of work efforts.

Future workplaces must focus on ways to disrupt power imbalances that perpetuate disparities and discrimination. Minimizing how power can be misused within a workplace and diversifying who holds the power to drive decision-making are important steps toward establishing a greater sense of fairness and collective engagement. This can include collective efforts to raise the minimum wage or grant overtime to domestic workers through a domestic workers bill of rights. New York, California, and Hawaii are among the states that have adopted these types of stronger labor protections, but enacting legislation at the national level would help protect more workers across the country. Addressing power dynamics can also include creating more opportunities for collaborative decision-making to foster equity and inclusion among staff at different levels. Workplace transformation often requires an intentional focus on changing the balance of power to establish a shared set of values and commitment to equity across an organization.

The future of work must include efforts to bolster enforcement mechanisms to reach a broader number of employers and foster a workplace culture where equity and accountability measures are fully integrated into regular workplace practices. This means giving enforcement agencies more resources to increase their capacity to provide assistance through trainings, webinars, or publication of model policies. These resources are also needed to increase staffing at enforcement agencies to conduct more investigations and reviews of employer practices. For example, the OFCCP conducts compliance reviews of less than 5 percent of the more than 120,000 individual establishments under its jurisdiction. Additional resources could help increase the number of reviews conducted, including targeted reviews of barriers within senior leadership levels, referred to as corporate management compliance evaluations or glass ceiling reviews. The Trump administration has repeatedly sought to reduce funding for key enforcement agencies, proposing cuts that would further deplete staffing and impair the ability of these agencies to keep up with current caseloads and investigations. Increasing budgets by 25 percent for each of the next four years would provide a new infusion of resources and allow for vigorous enforcement.

Discussions about the future of work in the United States must focus on creating a new normal around success that is grounded in a commitment to equity as a foundational principle and core value. It is essential that new jobs of the future include this focus on equity; without it, women will continue to face disparities in the workplace. This concerted effort requires centering those whose experiences are often treated as an afterthoughtwomen of color, women with disabilities, and LGBTQ women. Employers and policymakers alike must implement intentional corrective strategies specifically focused on how to inject and embed equity practices into workplace systems and structures to erode the barriers holding women back and avoid perpetuating problems into the future. Creating an equitable future also means making real a narrative about work that values the diverse experiences and skills of all womenindeed, all workersand prioritizes policies to counter longstanding disparities and create opportunity.

Jocelyn Frye is a senior fellow with the Womens Initiative at the Center for American Progress. Her work focuses on improving womens employment opportunities and economic security with a particular focus on the experiences of women of color.

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Centering Equity in the Future-of-Work Conversation Is Critical for Women's Progress - Center For American Progress

FOTAS: 11 years of progress at the Aiken County Animal Shelter – Aiken Standard

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On July 29, 2009, the South Carolina secretary of state officially approved FOTAS as a charitable nonprofit organization dedicated to the care of the homeless, abandoned and abused animals consigned to the County Shelter, kicking off the beginning of an extraordinary public/private partnership with the county and a new, comprehensive approach to caring for homeless animals. It was a massive undertaking. At the time, over 6,000 animals a year passed through the doors of the countys tiny, antiquated shelter. Only 5% made it out alive.

All of that has changed in the past 11 years. With the opening of the new shelter in 2014, the FOTAS/county partnership solidified and blossomed. FOTAS volunteers are an integral part of the shelters operations. (It is estimated that FOTAS volunteers provide the equivalent of 10 full-time positions.) FOTAS donations supplement the shelters budget and programs and provide supplies such as leashes, toys, flea and tick prevention, and medicine for heartworm-positive dogs. FOTAS has created a network of transfer partners in other parts of the country (where kennels are empty because everyone fixes their pets) where we send dogs (and pay the incurred transport costs) who could not find homes locally. The transfer program saves thousands of animals every year.

We also attack the problem of overpopulation of homeless pets. FOTAS supplements the countys spay/neuter financial assistance program for county residents who need it, as well as funds to support the TNR (trap-neuter-return) program to address the problems of community cats. We hire a mobile spay/neuter van to go to hot-spot areas around the county (the FIDO Fix-a-Pet program) to provide free spay/neuter surgeries for citizens who need financial assistance.

Our Home-to-Home program allows folks who can no longer care for their pets to use the power of the FOTAS social media to find homes without subjecting their beloved pets to the trauma of surrender to the shelter. (It's been a huge success during the COVID-19 crisis!) FOTAS works with Animal Control to provide dog houses and humane runners for dogs who are tethered to chains, as well as dog food and other supplies to help folks in a bind.

FOTAS also helps with the improvement of the physical facilities at the shelter. In addition to funding the medical wellness and isolation pod for animals with curable infectious ailments, plans are currently underway for a building that will house two, much needed adoption rooms and a training area.

In 2017, FOTAS was one of 10 (out of 14,000) charitable organizations to be awarded the Angel Award by the secretary of state, which recognizes the most efficient and effective nonprofits in the state. Plus, for the second year in a row, FOTAS and our signature event, the Woofstock Doggie Derby Day, received the Aiken Standard's Aiken Choice Best of Aiken Award.

We have managed to do all of this with only one full-time staff person and an army of volunteers. Has it worked? You bet it has. For the past two years, FOTAS and the county achieved their goal of not having to euthanize any adoptable pet.

None of this would have been possible without you, the generous Aiken community, who have donated your time and money and welcomed shelter animals into your hearts and homes.

Thank you and God Bless. Stay safe.

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FOTAS: 11 years of progress at the Aiken County Animal Shelter - Aiken Standard

Hamilton frustrated by lack of diversity progress; calls on Todt to be ‘a leader’ – GPfans

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Lewis Hamilton does not believe any progress has been made in Formula 1 since he raised awareness over the lack of diversity in the sport at the start of the season.

The topic has become a political hot potato in F1, with Hamilton's outspoken comments and his pledge towards the Black Lives Matter campaign sparking a wide-ranging debate, along with the action of taking a knee.

While there was initial support from F1 and the FIA, notably the instigation of the #WeRaceAsOne engagement, Hamilton has been dismayed by what has since transpired.

It recently led to him criticising F1 and Grand Prix Drivers' Association director Romain Grosjean, who was in turn defended by Haas team principal Guenther Steiner.

Asked as to whether he was proud of the progress made, or frustrated and disappointed given the actions of certain individuals, Hamilton replied: "We haven't made any progress.

"We've said things, there have been statements released and we've made gestures, such as kneeling, but we've not changed anything, except some of our awareness."

It appears Hamilton is irritated by the lack of a reaction from the other nine F1 teams beyond his own in Mercedes.

"I am definitely encouraged by our team and those in Formula 1 asking 'What more can we do? How can we do it better?'" added Hamilton.

"It's about communication, so I'll get back on a call with Formula 1 and see where they are, where they are feeling confused, and whether they're feeling the pressure. I'd love to know what Jean and Chase think, and what the organisation thinks moving forward.

"But there is no progress yet. So far it's been visible, but there are nine teams - I think there is one I've spoken to which is working in the background, but there are no other teams I know of that are being held accountable, or hold themselves accountable."

While the six-time F1 champion has been doing all he can to promote awareness, he feels it needs someone in authority to issue a call to arms from the rest of F1, such as FIA president Jean Todt.

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Hamilton frustrated by lack of diversity progress; calls on Todt to be 'a leader' - GPfans

BioNTech COVID-19 Progress, And Other News: The Good, Bad And Ugly Of Biopharma – Seeking Alpha

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BioNTech reports positive COVID-19 vaccine data with Pfizer, receives $2 billion order from US Govt

BioNTech SE (BNTX) reported positive early data for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, BNT162b1. The company is collaborating with Pfizer (PFE) for developing this vaccine candidate. BNT162b1 is a lipid nanoparticle formulated, nucleoside-modified messenger RNA encoding a SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain (RBD) antigen.

Phase I/II of the study is an open-label, non-randomized, non-placebo-controlled, dose-escalation trial. It is being conducted in Germany and involves 60 healthy participants aged between 18 and 55 years. Out of these, 12 participants were given 1g, 10g, 30g or 50g of BNT162b1 each on day one and day 22. The remaining 12 participants were administered with a single injection of 60g.

The data showed that the drug candidate induced high, dose-dependent SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing titers and RBD-binding IgG concentrations. These results were found after the administration of second dose. It showed a concurrent stimulation of high level CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses against the SARS-CoV-2 RBD as well. Overall BNT162b1 was found to have a manageable tolerability profile as no serious adverse events were reported.

The data did not show any clear dose level dependency of the T cell response between 1g to 50g, suggesting that low mRNA dose levels may have induced and expanded T cells. zlem Treci, CEO of BioNTech said, "The preliminary data indicate that our mRNA-based vaccine was able to stimulate antibody, as well as T-cell responses at remarkably low dose levels. We believe both may play an important role in achieving effective clearance of a pathogen, such as SARS-CoV-2." He added that the data from German study is in line with the data obtained from US study cohort.

The company plans to use the data collected from these studies to determine a dose level. BioNTech will also use the data from other preclinical and clinical studies. Further, the data will also be used for selecting vaccine candidates for a Phase IIb/III safety and efficacy trial, which may enroll up to 30,000 healthy volunteers.

The company's successful trial is followed up by a mass order for the vaccine candidate placed by the United States government. According to the reports, the US government has ordered up to 100 million dosage for $1.95 billion. The payment will be made once the vaccine is delivered, post regulatory approval. The US government may decide to opt for up to additional 500 million doses.

Further, European Union is also believed to be in fray for the vaccine candidate. However, European Union declined to individually identify the firms it is currently in talks with. The United States government has entered the deal through its Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense. The government's Operation Warp Speed aims to begin delivering 300 million doses of a vaccine for COVID-19 in 2021.

The BNT162 program is based on BioNTech's proprietary mRNA technology. Pfizer is supporting the program through its global vaccine development and manufacturing capabilities. BioNTech will hold all trademarks for the potential product and has the global market authorization. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine development program is evaluating at least four experimental vaccines, each with a unique blend of messenger RNA (mRNA) format and target antigen.

AxoGen Inc. (AXGN) reported the conclusion of its enrollment for Phase 3 pivotal RECON clinical study. The company has enrolled 220 participants in the trial. The protocol for the trial comprises one year follow up assessment as well as three-month visit window. The last patient enrolled is expected to finish the study no later than October 2021.

RECON clinical study or Comparison of Processed Nerve Allograft and Collagen Nerve Cuffs for Peripheral Nerve Repair is a multicenter, evaluator blinded and randomized clinical study of nerve cuffs and Avance Nerve Graft evaluating recovery outcomes for the repair of nerve discontinuities. The study aims to test non-inferiority between the static two-point discrimination outcomes for nerve cuffs and Avance Nerve Graft.

AxoGen expects the preliminary data to be available during the second quarter of 2022. Karen Zaderej, chairman, CEO, and president of AxoGen, "Completing enrollment for the RECON Study is a critical step in transitioning our Avance Nerve Graft from classification as a section 361 HCT/P tissue product to a section 351 biological product." The company will likely file the BLA for the drug candidate in 2023.

Avance Nerve Graft is a biologically active off-the-shelf processed human nerve allograft. It is mainly used for bridging the gap between severed peripheral nerves without the comorbidities associated with a second surgical site. The product is available in wide range of lengths and diameters. Avance Nerve Graft received a Regenerative Medicine Advance Therapy tag from the FDA in September 2018. The designation allows the candidate to go through a streamlined approval process for regenerative medicine technologies. It also provides for frequent informal meetings with the FDA.

InflaRx (IFRX) announced its plan to continue development of IFX-1 for treating severe COVID-19 induced pneumonia. The company is looking to start a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blinded Phase III trial spread across multiple sites in the US, Europe, South America and potentially other regions. The plans are subject to regulatory approvals.

The Phase III study is expected to enroll nearly 360 patients who are early intubated and are critically ill. An interim analysis is planned to be carried out once 180 patients are enrolled. There is also provision for an early stop of efficacy or futility. The primary endpoint for the trial is 28 day all cause mortality. Other proposed key endpoints include evaluation of organ support and analysis of disease improvement on the ordinal scale.

The Phase II part of the study assessed IFX-1 treatment plus best supportive care compared to best supportive care alone for up to 28 days. That phase enrolled 30 patients and was randomized. Dr. Korinna Pilz of InflaRx noted, "Data from the initial exploratory Phase II part of the study in patients with severe COVID-19 induced pneumonia suggested a positive impact of IFX-1 treatment on the all-cause mortality rate and other endpoints." The IFX-1 treatment arm had shown 13 percent 28-day all-cause mortality rate.

IFX-1 is a first-in-class monoclonal anti-human complement factor C5a antibody. It works by blocking the activity of C5a. It also shows high selectivity towards its target in human blood. The drug candidate is currently being assessed for a wide range of indications including Pyoderma Gangraenosum, Hidradenitis Suppurativa and ANCA-associated vasculitis among others.

InflaRx is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company. It is mainly engaged in discovering and developing specific and potent inhibitors of C5a using its proprietary anti-C5a technology.

Thanks for reading. At the Total Pharma Tracker, we do more than follow biotech news. Using our IOMachine, our team of analysts work to be ahead of the curve.

That means that when the catalyst comes that will make or break a stock, we've positioned ourselves for success. And we share that positioning and all the analysis behind it with our members.

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

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Elon Musk on the A.I. Apocalypse, Being the Emperor of Mars, and Texting With Kanye West – Vanity Fair

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The New York Timess Maureen Dowd recently chatted with Elon Musk at length, resulting in an out-of-this-world interview published Saturday. The South African-born futurist, whose company Tesla has soared from a stock price of $361 in mid-March to as high as $1,643 last week, didnt talk much about earnings reports or boardroom strategies. The discussion stuck to what makes Musk one of the rare businesspeople to have an ardent pop culture fanbase: colonizing Mars, robots taking over mankind, and The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy.

The conversation features brief appearances both by Musks girlfriend Grimes, who in her personal life goes by c, the first initial of her given name, Claire, but also the symbol for the speed of light, and their newborn son X A-12. Dowd confirmed that the infant cries like a regular earthling, not like a dial-up modem.

In looking back at the Musk-Grimes courtship we are reminded that they found one another online because they both made the same pun (Rococos Basilisk), and that it gives insight into the couples very real fear about Silicon Valleys cavalier attitude toward artificial intelligence.

Were headed toward a situation where A.I. is vastly smarter than humans and I think that time frame is less than five years from now, Musk, whose SpaceX rockets recently launched Americans into orbit from Cape Canaveral for the first time in a decade (so maybe he actually knows what hes talking about?) told Dowd.

He worries his colleagues in tech do not take A.I. dominance seriously, citing that smart people do not think a computer can ever be as smart as they are. And this is hubris and obviously false.

Though a man with a vision of tomorrow, Musks views on parenthood arent quite as progressive. When the kid gets older, there will be more of a role for me, he says concerning X A-12, adding babies are just eating and pooping machines. Of his other five children with his first ex-wife, Canadian author Justine Musk, he spoke about taking them on the bullet train down from Beijing to see the Terracotta Warriors when he had business in China. He also created an online school for them that, he says, actually worked out pretty well.

Musk does seem truly smitten with Grimes, though, and giddily boasted that she wore Vantablack to the Met Ball, and only Stephen Colbert knew what it was.

He also spoke of his love-hate relationship with Twitter, on mixing it up with fans, and his interplanetary persona. He rejected Kara Swishers nickname The King of Mars and one-upped with I mean, emperor, come on. Of the recent Twitter hack, he said it showed once again the importance of security, but wasnt worried about his DMs leaking. My DMs mostly consist of swapping memes, he joked.

Among the people he is in regular contact with is Kanye West. Musk said hes done his best to suggest that the musician-designer focus on 2024 for a presidential run instead of 2020. (In a follow-up, Musk confirmed the two communicated after Wests very public recent breakdown. There seem to be a lot of issues, he said.)

Musk distanced himself somewhat from Donald Trump, but said he is happy to receive the Presidents praise. (He also added that Space Force is cool.) He didnt have much to say about Joe Biden, but gushed about Barack Obama. He noted that journalists like Dowd may tend to read politics into situations where none exist. I would say the amount of thought that the general public puts into politics is quite low. Theyre mostly thinking about their day and their direct relationships and their work, he said.

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Elon Musk on the A.I. Apocalypse, Being the Emperor of Mars, and Texting With Kanye West - Vanity Fair

Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are getting richer as the pandemic gets worse – Vox.com

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Americas wealthiest tech billionaires are faring extraordinarily well six months into a historic pandemic, posing a striking contrast with the fate of other Americans during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

When the coronavirus pandemic began to ravage the economy, those who worry about inequality expressed concern that billionaires and particularly tech billionaires would amass more power and that the income gaps would grow more dramatic. And their worries appear to have been well founded.

People like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Steve Ballmer have added tens of billions of dollars to their net worths since the beginning of the calendar year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The success of the very richest was punctuated on Monday when Bezoss net worth grew by $13 billion, the largest single-day jump since Bloomberg began tracking the day-to-day changes in 2012.

Its easy to lose track of precisely how wealthy the ultra-wealthiest have become. Terms like billionaires can generalize and disguise the scale of the fortunes created in todays economy. A billion here, a billion there the very rich remain very rich. Exactly how rich can feel irrelevant.

But the particulars of their staggering success matter because at the other end of Americas income inequality divide, the extra money would not feel so irrelevant. More than 30 million Americans are now depending on unemployment benefits, some of which are set to expire at the end of the month. Low-wage workers are especially prone to layoffs. And the pandemic is pounding poorer neighborhoods in particular, where the number of Covid-19 cases is higher.

Voices on the left see this as zero-sum those extra billions can make a difference if redistributed and are calling for a remaking of the American economy after this crisis. They would like to see the very wealthy pay more in taxes in order to repair what they believe is an insufficient safety net.

Market-oriented thinkers argue that these billionaires are becoming rich because they are creating value for their shareholders which is a basic imperative of capitalism and the billionaires happen to be some of these companies largest shareholders.

That argument, though, is why it is worth assessing the figures in the uppermost echelon of Americas elite. Over the last few weeks in particular, tech fortunes have climbed to new heights.

Thats true for no one more than Bezos, whose assets in 2020 have climbed by $75 billion; his net worth is now nearing almost $200 billion.

That historic wealth gain is due to the rise of Amazon, which has proved indispensable as people around the world stay at home in response to the pandemic. Its stock has skyrocketed 70 percent since the start of the year. Thats a boom for him as well as for his ex-wife, MacKenzie Bezos, whose shares in the company have put her on the doorstep of becoming the worlds wealthiest woman, a position held now by Francoise Bettencourt Meyers. On New Years Day 2020, MacKenzie Bezos was the worlds 25th wealthiest person now shes 13th, with $63 billion to her name, per Bloomberg.

Amazon is not the only big tech company whose relative success has made the rich richer. The S&P 500 may be about flat in 2020, but the stock appreciation at Facebook, Apple, and Google parent company Alphabet has created even more winnings for its billionaires. But the rise of two other tech companies and the billionaires behind them have changed the tippiest of the tippy-top.

Ballmer, the longtime CEO of Microsoft, is not a household name for most Americans, who are far more familiar with his predecessor, Bill Gates. (Many of the countrys richest people are not faces you would recognize if you passed them on the street.)

But Ballmer is not just any rich person he has sneakily become Americas fifth-richest person thanks to the enormous growth in Microsofts stock, which has almost quadrupled over the last five years. That could draw more scrutiny to Ballmer, who remains in the public eye primarily as the animated courtside presence at the home games of the Los Angeles Clippers, which he owns. Ballmer began the year as the 15th-richest person.

The other tech billionaire who has turned a fortune into a super-sized fortune amid the recession is Musk, the idiosyncratic founder of Tesla and SpaceX. At the start of 2020, Musk ranked as the 35th richest person. But his net worth has nearly tripled over the last seven months, and Musk is now the sixth wealthiest person in the world with almost $75 billion. Teslas stock has almost quadrupled this calendar year.

All told, the coronavirus is proving to offer pretty good times for Big Techs leaders. Nine of the 15 richest people in the world come from Americas technology sector, according to the Bloomberg rankings, compared to seven at years beginning. Almost every tech billionaire is in the black, not the red, this year.

Not many Americans can say the same. And if the American economy drops further, the tech billionaire will loom fairly or unfairly as an easy scapegoat.

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Astronomy news: Never before seen cosmic structures spotted in distant galaxy – Daily Express

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A distant galaxy has thrown up some unexpected surprises to astronomers, including superbubbles, giant loops and X-shaped magnetic field structures. Astronomers have been observing a spiral galaxy known as NGC 4217, which is 67 million lightyears away, in order to understand more about our Milky Way. Spiral galaxies can have sprawling magnetic fields, but why has always remained a bit of a mystery.

However, new research used radio observations to help unravel the enigma.

NGC 4217 has several "remarkable" structures which made it the ideal candidate to look at.

Most spiral galaxies contain a flat, rotating disk packed full of stars, gas and dust, but NGC 4217 threw up some unexpected surprises.

Radio observations revealed some of the strange structures, which include an X-shaped magnetic field and "superbubbles" of gas and dust.

The team revealed these structures and the odd magnetic field are caused by star formations and explosions sending the particles of the galaxy skewiff.

Dr Rainer Beck from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn said: It is fascinating that we discover unexpected phenomena in every galaxy whenever we use radio polarisation measurements.

Here in NGC 4217, it is huge magnetic gas bubbles and a helix magnetic field that spirals upwards into the galaxys halo.

Dr Yelena Stein from Ruhr-Universitt Bochum, the Centre de Donnes astronomiques de Strasbourg and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, added: Galaxy NGC 4217 is of particular interest to us.

READ MORE:Black hole: Entire Universe will 'probably' not collapse into monster

This has never been observed before. We suspect that the structures are caused by star formation, because at these points matter is ejected outward.

Visualising the data was important to me. Because when you think about galaxies, magnetic fields is not the first thing that comes to mind, although they can be gigantic and display unique structures.

"The image is supposed to shift the magnetic fields more into focus.

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However, the team concede more observations are needed to better understand the strange magnetic field, which extends as much as 22,500 lightyears beyond the galaxy's disk.

A statement from the University of New Mexico said: "A leading explanation, called the dynamo theory, suggests that magnetic fields are generated by the motion of plasma within the galaxy's disk.

"Ideas about the cause of the kinds of large vertical extensions seen in this image are more speculative, and astronomers hope that further observations and more analysis will answer some of the outstanding questions."

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Astronomy news: Never before seen cosmic structures spotted in distant galaxy - Daily Express

Astronomers Do the Math to Figure Out Exactly When Johannes Vermeer Painted this, More than 350 Years Ago – Universe Today

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Most of us will be forgotten only a generation or two after we pass. But some few of us will be remembered: great scientists, leaders, or generals, for example. But we can add historys great artists to that list, and one in particular: Johannes Vermeer.

Vermeer was largely ignored during the two centures that followed his death, and died as other painters often did: penniless. But as more time has passed, the Dutch Baroque painter has grown in reputation, as historians increasingly recognize him as a master.

Though its not Vermeers best-known work, View of Delft has become recognized as a masterpiece in more modern times. Theres a long-standing mystery around Vermeers masterpiece: when exactly was it painted?

Historians have thought for a long time that he painted it sometime during late spring or early summer of 1660. But Vermeer is considered a master of light and shadow in his work. Many scholars have tried to figure out the lighting in the painting, and at what time of day the scene is based on.

Now a team of researchers might have figured it out. The team is led by Texas State University astronomer, and physics professor emeritus Donald Olson. Their work was published in the September 2020 issue of the magazine Sky and Telescope. Its titled Dating Vermeers View of Delft.

Some say that in the painting the light was coming from the west. Others say the Sun was directly overhead in the scene. After looking over maps of Delft, Olson and his students realized that the view is looking North. After figuring that out, it was clear that the light was coming from the southeast, making this a morning scene. This lines up with what some previous authors have concluded.

In a press release from Texas State University, Professor Olson said The students and I worked for about a year on this project. We spent a lot of time studying the topography of the town, using maps from the 17th and 19th centuries and Google Earth. We planned out exactly what we should do. On this research trip, it was the students who told us where to go to find Vermeers viewpoint and when to be there.

The team would not have figured this out without Google Earth, or at least not as easily. It helped the studentsCharles Condos and Michael Snchez from Texas State, and Tim Jenison of San Antoniomap out the landmarks in the painting. Then they determined the angles of view that were closest to what Vermeer would have seen centuries ago.

The team also concluded that Vermeers vantage point was the second floor of an inn overlooking Delft.

Google Earth is spectacularly accurate when it comes to distances and angles, so we used it as our measuring stick, Snchez said. Google Earth is basically another tool in our arsenal of techniques.

Id known about Dr. Olsons work for quite some time, and its always fascinated me, Sanchez said. Combining my appreciation for art and love of astronomy appealed to me. When he approached me about this project, I was excited.

One key to the work was the presence of a landmark in the painting called Nieuwe Kerk (New Church). Its an octagonal tower, and its a feature in Delft now as it was in Vermeers time. Some historians have said that Vermeer enlarged the tower in his painting, and the team wanted to test that claim as part of their work.

The painting itself is at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague. Olson and the others visited the museum and took detailed measurements of the work. Then they compared their measurements with high-res photographs of the tower from a similar vantage point. After also taking measurements of the tower itself, they found that Vermeer in fact had not exagerrated the tower.

Understanding that Vermeer painted the tower as it was, was key to the teams overall work. The octagonal tower has stone columns that project from the corners. In Vermeers painting, the center column almost, but not quite, shades the column to the left. A thin vertical sliver of light just grazes past the center column and lights up the left column. The presence of that detail allowed the astronomers to calculate the angle of the sun with great precision.

Vermeer is known to have worked slowly. Completing all the details on the large canvas of his masterpiece may have taken weeks, months or even years.

Vermeer is a master of light and shadow, and that little detailed sliver of light was the critical clue in solving this mystery.

Thats our key. Thats the sensitive indicator of where the sun has to be to do that, to just skim the one projection and illuminate the other, Olson said. The pattern of light and shadows was a sensitive indicator of the position of the sun.

Once the team had a solid understanding of the time of day that Vermeer painted Delft at, a bunch of other details fell into place. One of those details was the clock on the facade of a building. People have placed the hands at just past 7 oclock. But the team wasnt sure.

The team of researchers had reviewed other paintings from the same time period, and noticed that in all other paintings with clocks, both hands were lined up as well. After more research, they discovered that clocks didnt have minute hands until late 19th century. As it turns out, clocks in Vermeers time only had one handthe hour hand.

With that knowledge in hand, the team realized that the clock in View of Delft had only one hand, pointing to a time near 8 AM.

Another clue was present in Nieuwe Kerk too. In Vermeers painting, the belfry openings are clear, whereas the present-day building has bells in the openings. The team consulted historical records, which showed that the carillon and bells were installed starting in April 1660 and was completed by September of the same year. So Vermeer had to have painted the city prior to that.

The team of researchers wasnt finished yet, and as astronomers, they had more tools at their disposal than most art historians do.

They used astronomical software to calculate when the Sun would have been in the right position to cast the shadows on the towers in the painting. There were two answers, but only two. It was either April 6th to 8th, or September 3rd to 4th. But the trees are covered in leaves, which was the final clue. In Delfts climate, the trees would not have burst into full leaf in early April, whereas they would be fully leafed in early September.

The team had their answer. Vermeer painted View of Delft as it appeared on September 3rd-4th, 1659. Or at a similar date on some year just prior to that.

Vermeer is known to have worked slowly. Completing all the details on the large canvas of his masterpiece may have taken weeks, months or even years, Olson said. His remarkably accurate depiction of the distinctive and fleeting pattern of light and shadows on the Nieuwe Kerk suggests that at least this detail was inspired by direct observation of the sunlit tower rising above the wall and roofs of Delft.

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Pinning down the suns birthplace just got more complicated – Science News

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The sun could come from a large, loose-knit clan or a small family thats always fighting.

New computer simulations of young stars suggest two pathways to forming the solar system. The sun could have formed in a calm, large association of 10,000 stars or more, like NGC 2244 in the present-day Rosette Nebula, an idea thats consistent with previous research. Or the sun could be from a violent, compact cluster with about 1,000 stars, like the Pleiades, researchers report July 2 in the Astrophysical Journal.

Whether a star forms in a tight, rowdy cluster or a loose association can influence its future prospects. If a star is born surrounded by lots of massive siblings that explode as supernovas before a cluster spreads out, for example, that star will have more heavy elements to build planets with (SN: 8/9/19).

To nail down a stellar birthplace, astronomers have considered the solar systems chemistry, its shape and many other factors. Most astronomers who study the suns birthplace think the gentle, large association scenario is most likely, says astrophysicist Fred Adams of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who was not involved in the new work.

But most previous studies didnt include stars motions over time. So astrophysicists Susanne Pfalzner and Kirsten Vincke, both of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, ran thousands of computer simulations to see how often different kinds of young stellar families produce solar systems like ours.

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The main solar system feature that the pair looked for was the distance to the farthest planet from the star. Planet-forming disks can extend to hundreds of astronomical units, or AU, the distance between the Earth and the sun (SN: 7/16/19). Theoretically, planets should be able to form all the way to the edge. But the suns planetary material is mostly packed within the orbit of Neptune.

You have a steep drop at 30 AU, where Neptune is, Pfalzner says. And this is not what you expect from a disk.

In 2018, Pfalzner and her colleagues showed that a passing star could have truncated and warped the solar systems outer edge long ago. If thats what happened, it could help point to the suns birth environment, Pfalzner reasoned. The key was to simulate groupings dense enough that stellar flybys happen regularly, but not so dense that the encounters happen too often and destroy disks before planets can grow up.

We were hoping wed get one answer, Pfalzner says. It turned out there are two possibilities. And they are wildly different from each other.

Large associations have more stars, but the stars are more spread out and generally leave each other alone. Those associations can stay together for up to 100 million years. Compact clusters, on the other hand, see more violent encounters between young stars and dont last as long. The stars shove each other away within a few million years.

This paper opens up another channel for what the suns birth environment looked like, Adams says, referring to the violent cluster notion.

The new study doesnt cover every aspect of how a tight cluster could have affected the nascent solar system. The findings dont account for how radiation from other stars in the cluster could erode planet-forming disks, for example, which could have shrunk the suns disk or even prevented the solar system from forming. The study also doesnt explain certain heavy elements found in meteorites, which are thought to come from a nearby supernova and so could require the sun come from a long-lived stellar family.

I think [the research] is an interesting addition to the debate, Adams says. It remains to be seen how the pieces of the puzzle fit together.

Pfalzner thinks that the star cluster would break apart before radiation made a big difference, and there are other explanations for the heavy elements apart from a single supernova. She hopes future studies will be able to use that sort of cosmic chemistry to narrow the suns birthplace down even further.

For us humans, this is an important question, Pfalzner says. Its part of our history.

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Pinning down the suns birthplace just got more complicated - Science News

Spectacular stars in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year shortlist – New Atlas

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The Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year is one of the worlds top astrophotography competitions, and the 2020 shortlist offers a sublime selection of this years best entries, from some mind-bending close-ups of the suns surface to a series of magnificent Milky Way skyscapes.

The contest is run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich, an iconic scientific institution founded nearly 400 years ago. There are eight key categories in the contest, spanning a broad spectrum of astrophotography styles, from skyscapes incorporating land perspectives, to more focused categories looking at galaxies and aurorae.

BEN BUSH

As with previous years, the contest illustrates the incredible skill and determination these photographers display to create these images. UK photographer Ben Bushs shot of an aurora over Icelands famous Vestrahorn is a great example. To get the perfect shot of the aurora reflecting over the water, Bush waded out into the freezing North Atlantic ocean in the middle of night.

Mathew Browne

Other shortlisted images highlight the patience and timing needed to compose the ideal frame. Matthew Browns shot of the Moon passing behind Londons Shard skyscraper is an example of a fleeting moment in time that took the photographer days to catch.

Kirsty Paton

The winning photographs will be revealed later in the year, sharing 10,000 in prize money.

Take a look through our gallery at more shortlisted images from this years contest.

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Spectacular stars in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year shortlist - New Atlas

UNM astronomers on team revealing the magnetic field of a spiral galaxy – UNM Newsroom

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Galaxies not only contain stars, gas, dust, and the mysterious Dark Matter, they are also magnetized. The magnetic fields are many orders of magnitude weaker than the Earth's field or a typical bar magnet, yet scientists can measure them with radio telescopes such as National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) right here in New Mexico.

A new image released by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) shows the huge extent of a spiral galaxy's magnetic field. The galaxy, NGC 4217, is a star-forming, spiral galaxy, similar to Earths own Milky Way, 67 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major. The galaxy is seen edge-on in a visible-light image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Kitt Peak National Observatory, and the magnetic field lines, shown in green, are revealed by the VLA.

Most spiral galaxies consist of a flat, rotatingdiskcontainingstars,gas and dust, and a central concentration of stars known as thebulge. These are often surrounded by fainterhaloof stars, many of which reside inglobular clusters. Spiral galaxies are named after their spiral structure that is a feature of the disk. You can see the spiral structure when the galaxy is viewed face-on, but when viewed edge-on, you see just the disk that it resides in.

University of New Mexico graduate student Tim Braun and Professor Richard Rand from the Department of Physics and Astronomy are members of an international team of approximately 50 scientists who are part of a project called theContinuumHAlos inNearbyGalaxies anEVLASurvey (CHANG-ES), that is revealing new secrets about these magnetic fields.

Rand provided the optical image of the ionized hydrogen that was first published in 1996. It is seen in the reddish colors in the disk of the galaxy. That observation used exposures of more than three hours. The goal was to understand the occurrence and properties of ionized gas halos in edge-on galaxies in order to study vertical flows of gas in galaxies. Here, scientists are using the image mainly to show where star formation is currently occurring in the disk, although the absorption of light by interstellar dust grains in NGC 4271 limits scientists view somewhat.

The magnetic field lines extend as much as 22,500 light-years beyond the galaxy's disk. Scientists know that magnetic fields play an important role in many processes, such as star formation, within galaxies. However, it is not fully understood how such huge magnetic fields are generated and maintained. Magnetic fields area major component in the interstellar medium (ISM) of spiral, barred, irregular and dwarfgalaxies. They contribute significantly to the total pressure which balances the ISM against gravity. They may affect the gas flows in spiral arms, around bars and ingalaxyhalos

A leading explanation, called the dynamo theory, suggests that magnetic fields are generated by the motion of plasma within the galaxy's disk. Ideas about the cause of the kinds of large vertical extensions seen in this image are more speculative, and astronomers hope that further observations and more analysis will answer some of the outstanding questions.

The galactic dynamo theory is a way of explaining how large-scale, coherent magnetic fields can exist in galaxies, said Rand. They need to be continually regenerated because they are expected to be destroyed in a time much less than the age of a galaxy. The dynamo is a theory by which small-scale magnetic fields are turned into large-scale magnetic fields via motions in the galaxy. But the details are uncertain and more observations of the geometry and strength of magnetic fields in galaxies, like this one from the CHANG-ES project, are needed.

Understanding the magnetic field geometries of the CHANG-ES galaxies is just one goal of the project. Braun and Rands interest is in understanding the dynamical forces at play in galaxy halos and how they affect the motion of the gas that is ejected from the disk into the halo. Even for the magnetic field geometries, there is much more to do.

We are continuing to analyze the CHANG-ES data for magnetic field configurations in other galaxies, said Rand. Deeper observations of some of these galaxies could reveal more widespread magnetic geometries.

Last November, scientists as part of the CHANG-ES collaboration released an image of the Whale Galaxy, which reveals hair-like filaments of the galaxy's magnetic field protruding above and below the galaxy's disk.

TheNational Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

IMAGE CREDIT: Composite image by Yelena Stein of the Centre de Donnes astronomiques de Strasbourg (CDS) with the support of Jayanne English (University of Manitoba). VLA radio data from Yelena Stein and Ralf-Juergen Dettmar (Ruhr University Bochum). The observations are part of the project Continuum HAlos in Nearby Galaxies an EVLA Survey (CHANG-ES) led by Judith Irwin (Queens University, Canada). The optical data are from theSloan Digital Sky Survey. The ionized hydrogen data (red) are from the 0.9m telescope of the Kitt Peak National Observatory, collected by Richard J. Rand of The University of New Mexico. The software code for tracing the magnetic field lines was adapted by Y. Stein from Linear Integral Convolution code provided by Arpad Miskolczi of Ruhr University Bochum.

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UNM astronomers on team revealing the magnetic field of a spiral galaxy - UNM Newsroom

Apollo-Soyuz Mission: When the Space Race Ended – Astronomy Magazine

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A handshake in space

To some politicians, the ultimate symbol of dtente would be docking a Soviet capsule with an American one in low-Earth orbit for a handshake in space. Scientists and engineers saw benefits to such a joint mission, too. America had talented space pilots and advanced long-distance space technology. Meanwhile, the Soviets had focused on automation and had pioneered long-term spaceflights. Both had something the other was interested in learning about.

An American delegation traveled to Moscow in 1970 to lay the framework for the mission, and within two years, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project was officially born.

But not everyone liked the idea. Each side worried the other could steal its technology. Some defense hawks, and even a New York Times editorial board opinion, noted that Apollo-Soyuz offered a technical and scientific bonanza for the Soviet Union's lagging astronautical program. Meanwhile, the Soviets continued insulting American spacecraft.

Finally, three years after the final Apollo moon flight, the two superpowers overcame the political and engineering hurdles to make the rendezvous happen, including the design and development of an American-funded docking module that could mate the two crafts.

On July 15, 1975, a Soyuz capsule and an Apollo capsule leftover from a canceled moon flight launched within hours of each other from opposite sides of the planet. Then, two days later, they met up 140 miles over Earths surface.

Soyuz and Apollo are shaking hands now, Soyuz commander Alexei Leonov said as the two spacecraft gently docked. And as the door opened between the ships, the astronauts inside exchanged their own handshakes and posed for pictures.

Over the next two days, the men learned to work together as they toured the other countrys spacecraft and carried out five joint scientific experiments. At first, though, they struggled to even communicate. Each wanted to speak their own language, but they eventually realized that they all understood things better when they attempted to speak the others language.

We [the Americans] thought they [the Soviets] were pretty aggressive people and ... they probably thought we were monsters, Brand said. So we very quickly broke through that, because when you deal with people that are in the same line of work as you are, and you're around them for a short time, why, you discover that, well, they're human beings."

Together, the crew helped their space agencies gather new technical and scientific insights. One experiment tested the effects of low-gravity on the development of fish eggs. Another created an artificial solar eclipse using the Apollo capsule to block the sun while cosmonauts took pictures of the solar corona.

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Asteroid discovered by UH telescope will make close pass Monday – UH System Current News

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Asteroid 2020 OO1 detected near Earth, projected to make close approach

An asteroid discovered on July 20 by the University of Hawaiis Pan-STARRS1 telescope atop Haleakal will make a close pass of Earth on Monday, July 27. At its closest point, the asteroid will be only about 1.7 times the distance of the Moon. A short time after the July 20 discovery, the Center for Near-Earth Object (NEO) Studies at NASA issued a notification that it would likely come close to Earth. Several telescopes around the world, including the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Maunakea, assisted with rapid follow-up observations to verify the asteroids orbit and determine if it was possibly hazardous.

Pan-STARRS1 is the world leader in finding large Near-Earth Objects (NEO), and this recent discovery is the latest example of the fundamental role Hawaii astronomy plays in the nations planetary defense system.

The NEO has been given the temporary name 2020 OO1, and has a diameter of approximately 65 feet (20 meters)the length of about two school buses. It is similar in size to the asteroid that exploded in the atmosphere over Russia in 2013 that sent a shock wave that blew out the windows of 7,200 buildings across six Russian cities.

Finding these objects is the bread-and-butter work of Pan-STARRS, said UH Institute for Astronomy (IfA) Astronomer Richard Wainscoat, who leads the NEO project with STARRS. Our mission is to find potentially hazardous asteroids together with the larger telescopes on Maunakea, the LCO (Las Cumbres Observatory) global telescope network, and our ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) project.

After Pan-STARRS identifies an object that might be passing very close, telescopes on Maunakea and elsewhere will stop what they are working on and track the object to determine if it is a possible threat to Earth. In this case, with all of the additional observations, including some taken by Hawaii high school students, astronomers have pinned down the orbit of 2020 OO1. The object has a tiny probability of hitting Earth in 2087. Astronomers will continue to observe this object as it approaches in order to refine their projections. These new observations will likely rule out future impacts.

The search for NEOs is funded by NASAs Planetary Defense Coordination Office through its Near-Earth Object Observations Program.

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The astronomical rise of esports – The Chronicle – Duke Chronicle

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If youre bored during quarantine and looking for a fun, popular and lucrative way to pass the time, consider putting down that baking pan or pausing that Netflix show and picking up a controller to join the world of esports, a hot trend in the media and entertainment industry. Esports is a competitive video game sport that has grown to incorporate organized tournaments with professional players. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, these tournaments were almost always in-person events, complete with live audiences and referees who monitored potential cheating.

If this is your first time hearing about esports, youre behind the curve esports is one of the fastest growing industries in the world.Last year, the esports industry had an estimated audience of 453 million, up from 293 million in 2016. By 2021, that number is expected to reach 557 million. And its not just your stereotypical G Fuel-drinking, Doritos-loving high school guys pushing this growth: Universities across the nation have begun investing in this industry. According to the National Association of Collegiate Esports, more than 170 U.S. colleges have varsity esports programs and are offering around $16 million per year in scholarships. College esports tournaments have attracted over 1,350 schools and 40,000 players.

Even the most traditional Wall Street bankers are taking notice of this industrys potential to make big money. Most esport viewers are in their teens or early twenties, a much-coveted demographic for advertisers, and 43% of esports fans have an annual household income of $75,000. For brands who want to acquire new, young, high-spending customers, esports is especially attractive. Louis Vuitton, for example, is collaborating with video game developer Riot Games to design virtual items in League of Legends (such as prestige skins) that players can buy using real money. The fashion brand also spent 900 hours creating an extravagant custom trophy case that combines Louis Vuittons bougie flair with League of Legends medieval style. Meanwhile, some companies have profited from esports without even trying. In 2018, professional gamer Ninja crashed the website of MeUndies just by mentioning the underwear brand on a livestream.

Why has esports experienced this meteoric rise in popularity and significance? From a social standpoint, esports is far more inclusive than other sports. Men and women of nearly all ages and from various social groups and demographics can play on the same teams and easy translation in the virtual format tears down the language barrier. Unlike in real sports, where genetics may greatly affect your potential to succeed, in esports, anyone with enough practice can become a competent gamer and everyone has the potential to compete with the best.

From a technological standpoint, video games with increasingly life-like visuals have enhanced the viewing experience. Games now frequently run on a smooth 60 frames per second with 4K resolution, resulting in extremely realistic animations and an immersive experience. The rise of esports can also be traced to the rise of video games among youth. According to Pew Research, 90% of teens aged 13-17 played video games in 2018. The percentage is 97% among boys of that age. With a high number of youth playing games, its not hard to imagine that a few would get interested in esports and start the trend among their peers.

The viewership of esports will only grow, especially as famous names in other industries, such as Jennifer Lopez and Travis Scott, associate themselves with leading esports tournaments. The growth of advertising in esports means that brands will now interface directly with previously hard-to-reach audiences, generating previously unthinkable ways to advertise and making space for unlimited creative potential. So, if you want to curb your bread-making addiction during quarantine and spend this extra time getting ahead of the game (pun absolutely intended), consider esports.

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3 Great Mysteries About Life on Mars – The New York Times

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Mars is the most explored planet in the solar system other than Earth. With all of our robotic visitors there, weve discovered that it is a world far too dry, cold and irradiated to support the scheming humanoids or tentacled invaders once imagined by science fiction.

But our trips to Mars have opened a window into the deep past of the red planet, when conditions were far more conducive to life.

This summer, NASA will launch its latest rover, Perseverance, on a seventh-month journey to Mars. Like its predecessor, Curiosity, Perseverance will touch down in the remains of an ancient Martian lake bed. What it finds there along with missions launched by China and the United Arab Emirates could help us Earthlings understand what Mars was like as a young planet some four billion years ago, and whether life ever blossomed on its surface.

Its a serene image: A river flowing into an expansive lake that fills a crater basin. Waves lapping at the shoreline; sediment piling into a delta. A lake bed caked with clay.

This is the type of aquatic environment that might support life, and it was once a familiar sight on Mars.

The evidence for the lakes and rivers is incontrovertible, said Ken Farley, project scientist on Perseverance and a geochemist at the California Institute of Technology.

Although Mars was once a wet planet, there is substantial debate about the origins, extent and life span of its long-lost bodies of water.

For instance, early Mars might have been warmed by the gassy belches of active volcanoes, which thickened its atmosphere and caused Martian permafrost to melt. Cataclysmic asteroid impacts might have also unleashed 900-foot mega-tsunamis that flooded the planets terrain. Theres even disputed evidence that an ocean once covered its northern lowlands.

Was it weird, short, transient events, or was there an ocean? Dr. Farley said. I would say theres no consensus. Theres a lot of ideas out there, and we really need a lot more data to sort it out.

One major question concerns the longevity of Mars liquid water. Nobody knows how much time is required for life to emerge on a planet, including on Earth. But the odds of life forming get better the longer that stable bodies of water persist.

During Curiositys eight-year journey across Gale Crater, an ancient lake bed, the rover discovered sediments that suggest water was present for at least a few million years. Curiosity also detected organic compounds, key ingredients for life as we know it.

What weve learned from Curiosity suggests that Mars was habitable, said Dawn Sumner, a planetary geologist at the University of California, Davis, and a member of the Curiosity science team.

Of course, habitable does not necessarily mean inhabited. The surface of Mars is exposed to damaging solar and cosmic radiation, which could have reduced the odds of complex, multicellular life ever forming.

If life did exist on Mars, there would be a strong evolutionary force toward being resistant to radiation, Dr. Sumner said.

There are microbial extremophiles on Earth that can endure intense radiation, often healing their own DNA on the fly. So its not far-fetched to imagine that there might be Martian microbes that could tolerate an onslaught of radiation. Plus, they may have been able to retreat underground if conditions became particularly hostile at the surface.

The big lesson about life, from the revolution of being able to use DNA, is life is able to go everywhere, Dr. Farley said. It is amazing. It will fill every niche it can get itself into, and it will do it in a relatively short period of time.

The bygone oases of Mars are now mirages of a distant past, and modern Mars is a dried-up husk. Earth, in contrast, has been habitable to microbes for most of its life span and has positively burst at the seams with biodiversity for eons. Why did these sibling worlds experience such different outcomes?

As baby planets, Mars and Earth were each swaddled in two protective blankets: a relatively thick atmosphere and a strong magnetic field. Earth has held on to both comforts. Mars has neither.

Mars mysteriously lost its magnetic mojo billions of years ago. With no magnetic sheath to protect it from solar wind, the Martian atmosphere was stripped away over time, though it still maintains a thin shell of its past skies.

These changes have left Mars relatively inert for billions of years, while Earth reinvents itself through tectonic activity, atmospheric shifts and the ingenuity of life.

This is great news for Earthlings, as we need those processes to survive. Yet the sheer deadness of Mars over the past few billion years could make it easier to reconstruct its early history.

Life has been so successful on Earth that its hard to trace back its origin, Dr. Sumner said. On Earth, everything is covered with organic matter from modern life.

One of the really cool and exciting things about Mars is that, because it doesnt have plate tectonics, large parts of its surface have these super-old rocks, she continued. Its a good place to go to try to understand what an early planet would be like.

Robot explorers on Mars have turned up countless insights about the red planet, but they have never found clear-cut signs of creatures currently residing there. Life, at least as we know it on Earth, simply does not seem probable on the Martian surface.

If theres any life on Mars now, it needs at least some liquid water, Dr. Sumner said. The surface of Mars now is very dry. Just incredibly dry. If theres life on Mars now, it would be in the deep subsurface.

Theres some evidence that liquid water is locked away in subterranean reservoirs, so perhaps there are sunless ecosystems lurking there. If these habitats exist, they are beyond the direct reach of our rovers and landers.

Recent detections of methane and other gases in whats left of Mars atmosphere are a tantalizing potential signature, Dr. Farley said, bolstering speculation about subterranean Martians. Many microbes on Earth produce methane, so it is possible that whiffs of the gas on Mars could be traced to alien life-forms deep underground.

Curiosity, which is equipped with a methane-sensitive spectrometer, has compounded the mystery by recording weird spikes of the gas at the Martian surface that remain unexplained.

Unfortunately, the satellites orbiting the red planet have not been able to provide backup for these readings, and the new NASA and Chinese rovers on the red planet may not be able to solve the puzzle.

Methane can also be created by a wide range of natural processes that have nothing to do with life. Some experts, like Dr. Sumner, say that the presence of the gas on Mars is not a surprise because it has all the geological processes it needs to produce the gas without life.

The discovery of life on Mars, either in the form of ancient fossils or subterranean reservoirs, would be one of the most momentous breakthroughs in human history. At last, we would have another example of a living planet, even if it only flourished in the past, implying that, at the very least, life can strike twice in the universe.

But even if we never find Martians, Mars is a place we can go to answer some of the questions about life on Earth, Dr. Sumner said. The red planet remains an eerie time capsule of the era when life first sprouted on our own world, and the direction it could have gone had all the factors that made our world possible not turned out just the right way.

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3 Great Mysteries About Life on Mars - The New York Times

UNLV Professor Part Of NASA’s Newest Mars Rover Team – KNPR

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On July 30, NASA will launch its newest Mars rover.

The $2.7 billion Mars Perseverance is set to land February 2021 with a mission to look for evidence of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet.

UNLV geoscientist Libby Hausrathis part of that exploration project. She was selected as a 'return sample science participating scientist' after submitting a proposal to NASA.

Were basically representing the interests of future scientists, who will be analyzing the samples that come back," she told KNPR's State of Nevada.

Unlike other rover missions, the samples Perseverance collects will be brought back to Earth.

Hausrath said a fetch rover and a launch vehicle will be sent to the surface to collect the samples and then will blast off back to Earth. She said it will be the first time NASA has launched from the surface of another planet.

Bringing them back to Earth will allow scientists to get a more detailed look at them besides the cameras and instruments onboard other rover missions.

There are actually multiple different kinds of bio-signatures, signatures of past life," Hausrath said, "It can be organic molecules. It can be isotopes that are fractionated by life. It can be chemical or mineralogical signatures or morphology the shape.

Before the samples return, scientists will get a good look at what they're made of with chemical analysis and fine-scale cameras on the rover.

That would be amazing, Hausrath said of the possibility of finding signs of past life on the Red Planet, I think it would be so exciting and help us learn so much more about our solar system, potentially more about Earth as well. It would be so exciting.

While she is excited about the prospect, she's not entirely sure that it exists, but she noted life on Earth exists in harsh conditions like the dryness of theMojave Desert, the deep freeze of the Arctic and the thermal vents of ocean floor.

I dont know whether its there. I think its possible that its there, she said.

Besides the main mission of finding signatures of ancient life, Hausrath hopes the mission sparks interest in science, technology, engineering and math in kids.

I think that is one of the really important aspects of the space program and missions such as this one to Mars is that it does attract children to science and that really benefits all of us when we have more people and the fulldiversity of people in science, she said.

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UNLV Professor Part Of NASA's Newest Mars Rover Team - KNPR

Second round of testing complete at Continuing Care in Mars Hill; results underscore importance of using proper PPE – Bangor Daily News

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PRESQUE ISLE The results of the second round of COVID-19 testing at Northern Light Continuing Care in Mars Hill are in, and no additional cases were detected. The testing was done after one worker at the facility tested positive for COVID.

About 200 residents and employees were tested by the hospital on July 14 in rapid response to the positive test of a worker who became symptomatic. All those tested were negative for the first round of tests, and following CDC protocol, a second round of tests were conducted on July 21. All again remain negative.

This is truly a testament to the importance of hand hygiene, masking and the appropriate use of other personal protective equipment as needed, said Jay Reynolds, MD, senior physician executive at the hospital. It also shows that the many safety protocols we have in place are successful for protecting our residents, patients, and staff.

One of those safety steps is a screening anytime anyone enters one of AR Goulds facilities; this includes daily screenings of all employees. The screening includes basic questions and a temperature check. It is due to this aggressive screening process that the workers symptoms were quickly identified and the individual received a COVID test before being able to return to work.

The screening process was key in identifying the issue quickly, and then thanks to masking and PPE, no one this individual cared for or worked with before being diagnosed has gotten the virus, said Reynolds.

Now that residents and employees are cleared, the facility has gone back to COVID-normal procedures. This means, among other things, that they are once again accepting new patients, as well as discharging patients who are ready to go home or to move to a facility closer to home.

Continuing Care remains closed for visitors other than end-of-life circumstances. However, the facility is working diligently to introduce opportunities for in-person outdoor visits. This step was initially to begin earlier this month but was postponed due to the positive COVID case. More information will be released on this in coming days.

In a time when some are questioning the value of masking, this underscores how effective it can be when all are doing it, reminded Reynolds. Other key safety tips include proper hand hygiene (washing with soap and hot water or sanitizing) and keeping a physical distance of six feet from others whenever possible.

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Second round of testing complete at Continuing Care in Mars Hill; results underscore importance of using proper PPE - Bangor Daily News

Be a Weed Detective July 25th: An Introduction to Local Invasive Plants, Their Impacts, and How to Identify, Map, and Control Them – Tillamook County…

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Did you know that many invasive plant species have taken hold in this area changing the plant communities along our coastline?

Chrissy Smith with the Friends of Netarts Bay WEBS said these invaders, often introduced as ornamental plants, can take over an area making it hard for other plants to grow and impacting the ecosystem.

These plants have the ability to shift soil composition, change the available food source for local animals and create less than desirable habitats, Smith said.

Under normal circumstances, WEBS would be hosting an in-person event this July in conjunction with the Explore Nature Series to help people identify invasive plants and map out areas of the coastline where invasive plants exist.

Last year we piloted an effort to map invasive plants with a small group of volunteers, Smith said. This year, we launched a larger program in February but it never truly had time to get off the ground before the pandemic hit.Due to restrictions with COVID-19, WEBS is hosting a virtual presentation on July 25th instead.

While we cant go out on the trails and actually look for these plants, we still wanted to give people an opportunity to learn about local invasive plants, their impacts, how to identify them and what you can do to help including volunteering in the future with the new Weed Detectives community mapping effort, said Smith.

Smith added that if you have participated in past Weed Detectives volunteer training events, this is a great opportunity to review and learn about new plants as they emerge during different seasons.

This virtual presentation on July 25th at 10 a.m. is a part of the Explore Nature Series. Explore Nature Series events are hosted by a consortium of volunteer community and non-profit organizations, and are meaningful nature-based experiences highlight the unique beauty of Tillamook County and the work being done to preserve and conserve the areas natural resources and natural resource-based economy. They are partially funded through the Tillamook Coast Visitors Association and the Travel Oregon Forever Fund.

To learn more or register for Weed Detectives, visit http://www.netartsbaywebs.eventbrite.com. And be sure to follow the Friends of Netarts Bay WEBS and the Explore Nature Series on Facebook and Instagram.

Date: July 25, 2020Location: VIRTUAL Register online at explorenaturetillamookcoast.comTime: 10amQuestions: Contact Director @ NetartsBayWEBS.org or call 541-231-8041.Register: http://www.netartsbaywebs.eventbrite.com

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Be a Weed Detective July 25th: An Introduction to Local Invasive Plants, Their Impacts, and How to Identify, Map, and Control Them - Tillamook County...