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Saratoga Jewish Community Arts to present virtual panel discussion on the film ’13th’ – The Saratogian

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Danzig

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. Saratoga Jewish Community Arts is presenting a virtual panel discussion on the film 13th.

This award-winning 2016 documentary by director Ava DuVernay explores the confluence of race, justice and mass incarceration in the United States.

In the film, titled after the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which abolished slavery throughout the U.S., DuVernay contends that slavery has been perpetuated since the end of the Civil War through criminalizing behavior and enabling police to arrest poor freedmen and force them to work for the state under convict leasing; suppression of African Americans by disenfranchisement, lynching and Jim Crow; politicians declaring a war on drugs that weights more heavily on minority communities and, by the late 20th Century, mass incarceration of people of color.

This documentary provides an opportunity for meaningful conversation about things that matter, program coordinator Phyllis Wang said in a press release. As Jews we are challenged with expressions of anti-Semitism whether through word or violence. Yet there are others, including a segment of Jews, who are challenged as soon as they show their face merely by the color of their skin.

Participants are encouraged to watch 13th on their own at a time of their choosing, then log in at 7 p.m. on Sunday, July 26 for a Zoom discussion forum in which panelists will focus on questions regarding the 13th Amendment, media and popular culture representations of Black Americans and mass incarceration.

Panelists will include Daniel Nathan (Skidmore College); Reverend Michael Bell; Pastor Mark Kehrer; Timothy Harper (Skidmore College); Kenneth Evans (Financial and Business Services); Song Lee (UVM) and Tanesha Ingram (community organizer, activist).

Individual panelist biographies will be included in the program that will be provided to registrants prior to the event.

The documentary is available through Netflix, HBO, YouTube, Amazon, Amazon Prime and other outlets.

The event format is a bit different from the SJCAs usual practice. As we all are experiencing the need to find alternative ways to deliver our education, entertainment etc., this film program will be an on your own viewing opportunity, Wang said in the release.

Nevertheless, Wang encourages participation. She added, If you want to talk about things that matter with people that matter, then join the discussion!

Advance registration is required and can be completed online at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwvdO-rrjkiE9YFVMBBiqOXt2j9DNHORxfF.

After registering, attendees will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Zoom session.

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Saratoga Jewish Community Arts to present virtual panel discussion on the film '13th' - The Saratogian

Child Trafficking Myth vs. Fact – Save the Children

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Danzig

Child trafficking affects every country in the world, including the United States. Children make up 27% of all human trafficking victims worldwide, and two out of every three identified child victims are girls[i].

Trafficking, according to the United Nations, involves three main elements[ii]:

There is much misinformation about what trafficking is, who is affected and what it means for a child to be trafficked. Read on to learn more about the myths vs. facts of child trafficking.

MYTH: Traffickers target victims they dont know

FACT: A majority of the time, victims are trafficked by someone they know, such as a friend, family member or romantic partner.

MYTH: Only girls and women are victims of human trafficking

FACT: Boys and men are just as likely to be victims of human trafficking as girls and women. However, they are less likely to be identified and reported. Girls and boys are often subject to different types of trafficking, for instance, girls may be trafficked for forced marriage and sexual exploitation, while boys may be trafficked for forced labor or recruitment into armed groups.

MYTH: All human trafficking involves sex or prostitution

FACT: Human trafficking can include forced labor, domestic servitude, organ trafficking, debt bondage, recruitment of children as child soldiers, and/or sex trafficking and forced prostitution.

MYTH: Trafficking involves traveling, transporting or moving a person across borders

FACT: Human trafficking is not the same thing as smuggling, which are two terms that are commonly confused. Trafficking does not require movement across borders. In fact, in some cases, a child could be trafficked and exploited from their own home. In the U.S., trafficking most frequently occurs at hotels, motels, truck stops and online.

MYTH: People being trafficked are physically unable to leave or held against their will

FACT: Trafficking can involve force, but people can also be trafficked through threats, coercion, or deception. People in trafficking situations can be controlled through drug addiction, violent relationships, manipulation, lack of financial independence, or isolation from family or friends, in addition to physical restraint or harm.

MYTH: Trafficking primarily occurs in developing countries

FACT: Trafficking occurs all over the world, though the most common forms of trafficking can differ by country. The United States is one of the most active sex trafficking countries in the world, where exploitation of trafficking victims occurs in cities, suburban and rural areas. Labor trafficking occurs in the U.S., but at lower rates than most developing countries.

If you suspect someone is a victim of trafficking, contact the National Human Trafficking Resource Centerat 1-800-373-7888. The confidential hotline is open 24 hours a day, every day, and helps identify, protect and serve victims of trafficking.

Sources:

[i] Give Her a Choice: Building A Better Future For Girls (Save the Children)

[ii]United Nations Office on Drug and Crime

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Child Trafficking Myth vs. Fact - Save the Children

Buying on the Dip is a Critical Piece of the FIRE Puzzle – Investorplace.com

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Danzig

This article is part of a series about the FIRE Movement and how investors can apply these principles to their lives, compiled by InvestorPlace.com.

Source: Shutterstock

Warren Buffett, arguably one of the best investors of all time, is a big believer in buying stocks when share prices fall. Back in February, on a day the markets were predicted to drop dramatically, he was telling CNBCs Becky Quick that Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A, NYSE:BRK.B) would be buying on balance.

Buffetts built a career buying stocks on the dip because thats one of the best ways to make money over the long haul.

The Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) philosophy doesnt just require a commitment to cutting your day-to-day expenses; it also demands an accelerated investment philosophy.

Buffett took 60+ years to become the billionaire he is today, so if youre dreaming of retiring at 40 when youre only 25 today, its going to take more than saving 50-75% of your income to get to the promised land.

So for this article about buying on the dip, lets assume that Im 25 years old, earn $5,000 after-tax per month, save 50% of it, and have a $10,000 initial contribution. That gives me $30,000 to invest over a year ($450,000 over 15 years), plus the $10,000 of seed money.

With 15 years to my retirement age, if I earn 10% on my capital, Ill have approximately $1.09 million accumulated over those 15 years. Of course, that doesnt take into account tax-advantaged investment accounts, etc., but thats a discussion for another article.

For now, Im interested in providing FIRE enthusiasts with a game plan for buying on the dip that will help you achieve a 10% annual return over the next 15 years. If you can do that, youll be well on your way to financial independence.

Before delving into the specifics of the plan, its essential to get an idea of how realistic a 10% return over the next 15 years really is? According to Morningstar, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) has a 15-year annualized total return of 8.89%, 111 basis points less than our target.

And thats good news. The bad news is that many financial experts dont expect the markets to do nearly as well in the next decade as they did in the previous one.

MarketWatch contributor Mark Hulbert has spent many years studying the markets. In February, he wrote an article that highlighted the many ways in which it would be near impossible for the S&P 500 to deliver its historical annualized total return of 6.9% (real return after inflation) over the next decade.

That means the index wont even come close to matching its annualized real total return of 11.5% between 2010 and 2019. For many, the best days dont lie ahead.

Taking the path of least resistance and investing in SPY isnt likely to cut it as the rates of return for equities slow in the future.

This means if you want to get your 10% return, youll have to step up the risk considerably.

On the one hand, the fact that youve committed to saving a big chunk of your income means youll have the time to investigate specific growth stocks, since you wont be out at the club dancing the night away.

However, in addition to accelerating your investment plan, you do have to remember that you cant buy on the dip if you dont have the cash to invest. Youve got to remember to watch your downside by avoiding specific company risk.

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is an excellent investment to own these days. But what happens if it ends up designing a phone that explodes in peoples ears? Its stock price implodes. If you only own AAPL, you have significant company risk. If you add a second stock, you reduce that risk, and so on.

Its for this reason that I believe FIRE enthusiasts ought to use exchange-traded funds to buy on the dip. Further, I would recommend equal-weighted ETFs because it alleviates the company-specific risk of cap-weighted ETFs.

For example, the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSEARCA:XLK) has an Apple weighting of 21.63%. It, along with Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), accounts for more than 43% of the ETFs $32.8 billion in total net assets. If you buy XLK, its essentially a bet on those two stocks and not much else.

Dont get me wrong; if youre looking to accelerate your investment returns, XLK is a great place to look. However, as I said above, if those two stocks dont perform over the next 15 years, the likelihood of reaching a million-dollar portfolio is slim to none.

So heres what I would do.

First, Id build a core portfolio that will deliver good, if not spectacular, returns. A little bit of defense mixed in with your offense never hurt anyone.

The Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (NYSEARCA:RSP) is an excellent place to start. Its an equal-weighted version of the S&P 500. It has a current AAPL weighting of 0.22%. By comparison, the SPY has an Apple weighting of 5.87%.

Also add on an international equity ETF and a small-cap ETF that charges reasonable fees. Allocate perhaps 60-75% of your permanent capital to those ETFs.

Now, to play the sector game and buy on the dip, have cash at the ready (10-30% of your total portfolio) to pounce on downtrodden sectors and industries such as energy and airlines. Again, I wouldnt be buying specific stocks, but instead looking to benefit from the old axiom that a rising tide lifts all boats.

Throughout the novel coronavirus pandemic, Ive been recommending investors avoid specific airline stocks. Instead, Ive recommended they buy into the U.S. Global Jets ETF (NYSEARCA:JETS) because it allows them to make a diversified bet on the industry, rather than hand-picking one or two that could outperform the rest.

But dont just buy JETS. Figure out how much you want to bet on airlines, use 50% of the cash youre ready to commit to buying some shares, and another 25% when it drops by more than 3-5% in a given week. Repeat the process until you feel the bet no longer makes sense.

Oh, and whatever you do, make sure you consider one or more of the ETFs from Catherine Wood and the rest of the Ark Investment Management team. Theyre in the know when it comes to technology.

FIRE away!

Will Ashworth has written about investments full-time since 2008. Publications where hes appeared include InvestorPlace, The Motley Fool Canada, Investopedia, Kiplinger, and several others in both the U.S. and Canada. He particularly enjoys creating model portfolios that stand the test of time. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. At the time of this writing Will Ashworth did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.

Women and Money: Taking Charge of Your Financial Future – Patch.com

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Danzig

Summit Financial Group invites you to attend our LIVE Zoom webinar: Women and Money: Taking Charge of Your Financial Future

Women face a unique set of financial challenges that our male counterparts dont. Longer life expectancy, the pay gap, divorce, career breaks to care for children and loved ones all take a toll on our ability to save for retirement and achieve financial independence.

During this interactive session, well dive into steps women can take to secure their financial future and avoid the pitfalls that slow our progress.

Join us on Thursday, July 23rd at 4:00 p.m. PST. Our hope is for this to be a community event where people feel welcome to ask questions in an informal environment. Please forward this invitation to those who would benefit. There is no cost or obligation for this event and no software downloads required.

Host: Financial Advisor Jeneen Slack, CFP, CDFA

Meeting Details:Register here: https://bit.ly/32PlFDl

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. We hope to see you!

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Women and Money: Taking Charge of Your Financial Future - Patch.com

COVID-19 Hit as Record Number of ALICE Families Priced Out of Survival – The Roanoke Star

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Danzig

ALICE Report: A crisis in the making with a 59% increase in Virginias ALICE households over 10 years, fueled by high-priced basics and stagnant wages

When COVID-19 hit, nearly 1.3 million Virginia households were already one emergency away from financial ruin a 10-year record high setting the stage for the unprecedented economic impact of the crisis, according to the states latest ALICE Report, released today by United Ways of Virginia, in partnership with United For ALICE.

Over the last decade, Virginias low-income families systematically lost buying power and financial stability as the high cost of essentials outpaced wages, driving the number of ALICE households to rise 59 percent by 2018, the report shows.

Weve known that our economy was increasingly reliant on these families we call ALICE, who are financially vulnerable to one emergency, said United Ways of Virginia representative Janel S. Donohue. COVID-19 became that one universal emergency. ALICE families are facing the greatest health and financial risks today, as they are the workers who dont have health insurance, have no paid sick days, and whose children receive daily meals at school.

Under the leadership of Rappahannock United Way, twenty-one local United Ways from throughout the state of Virginia have come together once again to produce this updated Virginia ALICE Report; along with the generous financial backing from state-wide sponsors Compare.com, Virginias Community Colleges, Atlantic Union Bank, and Virginia Association of Free and Charitable Clinics.

In 2018, of Virginias 3.2 million households, nearly 935,000 were ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) a record number that were unable to afford the basics for survival, despite working. Thats in addition to the more than 326,000 families that were in poverty. While wages for ALICE workers remained largely stagnant, the cost of six essentials grew on average 3.4 percent annually over the past decade. Thats in contrast to a rate of inflation of 1.8 percent.

As a result, ALICE households grew to account for 29 percent of Virginias households in 2018, up from 20 percent in 2007. In contrast, poverty levels remained largely flat at about 10 percent. The report shows ALICE households were locked out of the boom economy and unable to establish savings due to meager pay raises and inconsistent job hours, schedules, and benefits.

No matter how hard ALICE families worked, the gap between their wages and the cost of basics just kept widening, said Sarah Walsh, staff lead for the Virginia ALICE Report. These already fragile ALICE households are now facing an even deeper financial hole due to the state of emergency created by COVID-19.

ALICE in Virginia: A Financial Hardship Study shows that in 2018, the cost of survival ranged annually from $29,580 for a single adult, to $31,752 for a senior citizen and $78,528 for a family of four with an infant and a preschooler. Putting this in perspective, the median hourly wage for cashiers, the most common occupation in Virginia, was $9.98, or $19,960 per year less than all the budgets.

This mismatch between wages and costs is revealed by a new measurement debuting in this report, called the ALICE Essentials Index. This Index chronicles how the cost of housing, child care, food, transportation, health care and a smartphone plan rose at nearly twice the rate of inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index. The result is that in 2018, two parents working full time needed to earn $19.63 an hour in order to afford the Household Survival Budget for a family of four. Thats up from a wage of $13.68 an hour affording that budget in 2007. During the same period, the number of low-wage jobs grew by 34 percent, accounting for the largest number of jobs in Virginia by 2018.

The ALICE Essentials Index shows that, through no fault of their own, ALICE families have been priced out of economic stability, setting the stage for the scope of this crisis, said United For ALICE National Director Stephanie Hoopes, Ph.D. Using the Consumer Price Index alone to measure inflation provides an incomplete picture of the cost of living, severely underestimating the mounting financial pressures on ALICE families.

Walsh said the reports findings should be put in play immediately to identify state and local supports that address the unique challenges the COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted on ALICE families as businesses and schools remain closed indefinitely. As an example Rappahannock United Way is providing financial assistance to cover rent and mortgage payments to households impacted by the pandemic.

The report calls for stakeholders across all sectors to use its findings to remove obstacles to financial stability, identify gaps in community resources and build data-driven solutions to help ALICE families achieve economic stability, bolstering the states economy overall.

The ALICE Report for Virginia was funded in part by Compare.com, Virginias Community Colleges, Atlantic Union Bank, and Virginia Association of Free and Charitable Clinics and is a project of United For ALICE, a grassroots movement of some 650 United Ways in 21 states, corporations and foundations, all using the same methodology to document financial need. ALICE Reports provide county-by-county and town-level data, and analysis of how many households are struggling, including the obstacles ALICE households face on the road to financial independence.

For more information or to find data about ALICE in local communities, visit http://www.UnitedForALICE.org/Virginia.

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COVID-19 Hit as Record Number of ALICE Families Priced Out of Survival - The Roanoke Star

Best Buy Provides Updates on Evolution of Employee Pay and Sales Performance – Business Wire

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Danzig

MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE: BBY) today announced updates related to employee pay evolution and Q2 FY21 quarter-to-date sales performance.

Employee Pay Evolution

The company is raising the starting hourly wage for all Domestic employees to $15 effective Aug. 2.

Strong consumer demand, combined with shopping experiences that emphasize safety and convenience, has helped produce our sales results to date, Best Buy CEO Corie Barry said. None of this would be possible without the effort and energy of our front-line employees working in stores, supply chain facilities and customers homes. Todays announcement on pay reflects an ongoing evolution and investment in how we compensate them for their critical work and is the result of clear and consistent feedback from field employees across the country. In the early days of the COVID-19 crisis, we made a number of temporary decisions, including providing appreciation pay to hourly field employees, and were now pleased to evolve to a more structural approach that significantly invests in paying and supporting them in ways that they have asked for and so clearly earned.

Since the early stages of the pandemic, all hourly retail associates and supply chain employees who were working received incremental hourly appreciation pay. The incremental appreciation pay started March 22 and ends Aug. 1.

On April 19, the company temporarily furloughed approximately 51,000 Domestic hourly store employees, including nearly all part-time employees. At that time, the company retained approximately 82% of its full-time store and field employees on its payroll, including the vast majority of In-Home Advisors and Geek Squad Agents. On June 15, the company began bringing employees back from furlough, and approximately half of the 51,000 Domestic hourly employees have returned from furlough so far. The company has extended health benefits at no cost through Sept. 5 to the remaining furloughed employees currently enrolled in a Best Buy health plan.

Beginning Aug. 2, the company is evolving its pay structure. Driven by extensive employee feedback, and to provide more predictability in pay, a 4% increase in hourly rate will replace short-term incentive compensation for hourly store employees below the leadership level. After the 4% hourly pay increase, employees who are not yet at $15 per hour will have their pay increased to the $15 per hour starting wage.

Q2 FY21 Sales Update1

At the beginning of Q2 FY21, the company started welcoming customers back into its stores by offering an in-store consultation service to customers, by appointment only. On June 15, Best Buy began allowing customers to shop without an appointment at more than 800 stores across the U.S. As of June 22, almost all of the companys stores were open for shopping. The company has also continued to offer contactless curbside pickup and in-store consultations for those who prefer to shop that way. Throughout this entire time period and across all the ways customers can shop, the company has continued to adhere to safety protocols that limit capacity, follow strict social distancing practices and use proper protective equipment.

The companys Q2 FY21 quarter-to-date sales through July 18 increased approximately 2.5% compared to the prior year, which included Domestic sales growth of approximately 2% and International sales growth of approximately 8%. The following provides additional information regarding estimated sales results for the companys Domestic business:

As a reminder, on March 21, the company withdrew all previously issued financial guidance for FY21. The company will provide additional business updates when it releases its Q2 FY21 results on Aug. 25.

Notes:

(1) All references to sales within this release are calculated based on the companys interim period data, which the company uses to monitor transactional revenue performance on a daily or weekly interval. The company believes interim sales data provides helpful insight during periods when the company may experience significant shifts in revenue trends as a result of COVID-19-related impacts. Sales growth percentages represent the year-over-year change compared to the same period in the prior fiscal year, which are based on absolute sales dollar changes and are not presented in accordance with the companys comparable sales definition. The sales percentages in this release are unaudited and subject to quarter-end revenue accounting adjustments. When the company prepares its financial statements for the fiscal quarter ending August 1, 2020, it may identify material adjustments that would have changed the amounts shown for the periods described in this release. Other companies may track interim period sales data using different methods and systems, and therefore the estimated data presented here may not be comparable to any data released by other companies.

Forward-Looking and Cautionary Statements:

This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 as contained in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that reflect managements current views and estimates regarding future market conditions, company performance and financial results, operational investments, business prospects, new strategies, the competitive environment and other events. You can identify these statements by the fact that they use words such as anticipate, believe, assume, estimate, expect, intend, foresee, project, guidance, plan, outlook, and other words and terms of similar meaning. These statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the potential results discussed in the forward-looking statements. Among the factors that could cause actual results and outcomes to differ materially from those contained in such forward-looking statements are the following: the duration and scope of the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact on demand for our products and services, levels of consumer confidence and our supply chain; the effects and duration of steps we take in response to the pandemic, including the implementation of our interim and evolving operating model; actions governments, businesses and individuals take in response to the pandemic and their impact on economic activity and consumer spending; the pace of recovery when the COVID-19 pandemic subsides; general economic uncertainty in key global markets and a worsening of global economic conditions or low levels of economic growth; competition (including from multi-channel retailers, e-commerce business, technology service providers, traditional store-based retailers, vendors and mobile network carriers), our expansion strategies, our focus on services as a strategic priority, our reliance on key vendors and mobile network carriers, our ability to attract and retain qualified employees, changes in market compensation rates, risks arising from statutory, regulatory and legal developments, macroeconomic pressures in the markets in which we operate, failure to effectively manage our costs, our reliance on our information technology systems, our ability to prevent or effectively respond to a privacy or security breach, our ability to effectively manage strategic ventures, alliances or acquisitions, our dependence on cash flows and net earnings generated during the fourth fiscal quarter, susceptibility of our products to technological advancements, product life cycle preferences and changes in consumer preferences, economic or regulatory developments that might affect our ability to provide attractive promotional financing, interruptions and other supply chain issues, catastrophic events, health crises, pandemics, our ability to maintain positive brand perception and recognition, product safety and quality concerns, changes to labor or employment laws or regulations, our ability to effectively manage our real estate portfolio, constraints in the capital markets or our vendor credit terms, changes in our credit ratings, any material disruption in our relationship with or the services of third-party vendors, risks related to our exclusive brand products and risks associated with vendors that source products outside of the U.S., including trade restrictions or changes in the costs of imports (including existing or new tariffs or duties and changes in the amount of any such tariffs or duties) and risks arising from our international activities.

A further list and description of these risks, uncertainties and other matters can be found in the companys annual report and other reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including, but not limited to, Best Buys Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on March 23, 2020. Best Buy cautions that the foregoing list of important factors is not complete, and any forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and Best Buy assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement that it may make.

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Best Buy Provides Updates on Evolution of Employee Pay and Sales Performance - Business Wire

Mosquitoes evolved to suck human blood when they couldn’t find water – New Scientist News

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Danzig

By Michael Marshall

BSIP SA / Alamy

Mosquitoes evolved to bite humans if they lived in places with intense dry seasons, according to a study of African mosquitoes. The insects need water to breed and may have latched onto people because we store it in large quantities.

Many mosquitoes bite a wide range of animals, but some have specialised in biting humans and nobody knew why until now. Aedes aegypti mosquitoes often specialise in humans, bringing diseases like Zika, dengue and yellow fever with them. But some African populations of the species have a wider diet.

No one had actually gone through and systematically characterised behavioural variation in Africa, says Noah Rose at Princeton University in New Jersey. To do this, he and his colleagues captured A. aegypti eggs from 27 sites in sub-Saharan Africa and raised them in a lab.

They then put the mosquitoes in a chamber where they could catch a whiff of either a human or an animal a guinea pig or a quail to see which they would move towards to attempt to bite. A huge range of preferences was found.

The researchers then built a model to determine which factors affected the mosquitoes preferences. Those living in areas where the dry season was long and intense were much more likely to prefer humans. There was also a smaller effect of urbanisation: mosquitoes in cities tended to prefer humans.

A long dry season is a problem for A. aegypti, says Rose, because these mosquitoes depend on standing water to rear their young. But humans often create sources of standing water, whether by storing rainwater in barrels or by irrigating crop fields. Mosquitoes that lived thousands of years ago may have been drawn to these places and thus evolved to bite humans.

The story may well be different for Anopheles mosquitoes, which spread malaria, says Rose. These mosquitoes are only distantly related to A. aegyptiand have a different life cycle. The adults can go into a state called aestivation, where they dry out through the dry season, says Rose.

The model does suggest that more populations of A. aegypti will start to prefer humans between now and 2050. Africa is becoming urbanised and this is expected to have a strong impact on the mosquitoes evolution. Surprisingly, climate change may not make a big difference to this over the next three decades, because it isnt predicted to drastically alter Africas dry seasons.

Journal reference: Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.06.092

The evolution of infant mortality inequality in the United States, 19602016 – Science Advances

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Danzig

Abstract

What is the relationship between infant mortality and poverty in the United States and how has it changed over time? We address this question by analyzing county-level data between 1960 and 2016. Our estimates suggest that level differences in mortality rates between the poorest and least poor counties decreased meaningfully between 1960 and 2000. Nearly three-quarters of the decrease occurred between 1960 and 1980, coincident with the introduction of antipoverty programs and improvements in medical care for infants. We estimate that declining inequality accounts for 18% of the national reduction in infant mortality between 1960 and 2000. However, we also find that level differences between the poorest and least poor counties remained constant between 2000 and 2016, suggesting an important role for policies that improve the health of infants in poor areas.

In contrast to growing disparities in life expectancy between the rich and poor (19) and increasing economic inequality (1012), recent studies find decreasing inequality in mortality and health outcomes among younger age groups in the United States (13, 14). While there is a general understanding that poverty is associated with worse childhood health outcomes, including mortality (15), less is known about how such inequality evolved over a longer period.

Here, we aim to understand the evolution of inequality in infant mortality between 1960 and 2016. We ask: How long have infant mortality rates been converging between the rich and poor? How does the reduction in mortality inequality relate to the overall decline in national infant mortality rates?

We address these questions by analyzing the association between infant mortality and poverty in the United States between 1960 and 2016. Our analysis sample uses county-level data on mortality rates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and poverty data from the U.S. Census Bureau. We construct 1-year rates (per 1000 live births) for infant mortality (death under 1 year), neonatal mortality (death under 28 days), and postneonatal mortality (death between 28 and 364 days) at the county-year level, and define poverty ventiles as 20 equally sized (by population) aggregations of counties in each year. We then conduct the following analyses on infant, neonatal, and postneonatal mortality rates: (i) quantify the association between mortality rates and poverty rank using the mortality-poverty gradient and (ii) decompose national mortality rate declines to approximate the share accounted for by reduced mortality inequality. Following Currie and Schwandt (14), our methodology focuses on the evolution of level differences in infant mortality rates over the poverty distribution (although we also present results on percentage differences in Materials and Methods).

Over the last 50 years, mean poverty and infant mortality rates fell considerably in the United States. The average poverty rate decreased from 22.1% in 1960 to 14.7% in 2016, while mean infant mortality fell from 25.8 in 1960 to 5.8 in 2016. Level differences in poverty and infant mortality also narrowed considerably between the most poor and least poor counties. As shown in Table 1, the difference in average poverty rates between the poorest 5% of counties (top poverty ventile) and the least poor 5% (bottom poverty ventile) declined from 55.1 percentage points in 1960 to 22.0 percentage points in 2016 (P = 0.000). Over this period, there was a relatively larger reduction in the poverty rate among the poorest counties, which may be due to targeted federal spending (16) enacted in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the War on Poverty. Level differences in infant mortality rates also narrowed between the most poor and least poor counties, declining from 17.8 in 1960 to 3.6 in 2016 (P = 0.000). The differences in both neonatal and postneonatal mortality rates between the most poor and least poor counties also narrowed meaningfully over this period.

Poverty ventiles (equally sized groups representing 5% of the population) are defined in each year based on county-level data using population estimates from the CDC and poverty rates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Means are calculated as the population-weighted average across all counties in each poverty ventile and are reported for 1960 and 2016. Columns 2 and 3 report the average poverty rate. The remainder of the columns report 1-year mortality rates (expressed as deaths per 1000 births). Columns 4 and 5 show the infant mortality rate (deaths before age 1), columns 6 and 7 report neonatal mortality rate (deaths from 0 to 28 days), and columns 8 and 9 report postneonatal mortality rate (deaths from 29 to 364 days). Data for mortality rates are from the CDC, and data for poverty rates are from the U.S. Census Bureau.

(A) shows results for infant mortality rates, (B) shows results for neonatal mortality rates, and (C) shows results for postneonatal mortality rates (mortality rates defined in the notes to Table 1). The lines in each figure show fitted values estimated from population weighted county-level regressions each year using Eq. 1 and are shown for 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2016. Table 2 shows parameter estimates for each regression. Data points in the figures show mean mortality rates for each poverty ventile for 1960 and 2016 only to improve readability of the figures. Data on mortality rates are from the CDC, and data on poverty rates are from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Figure 1 explores the relationship between poverty rank and infant mortality rates for 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2016. Figure 1A shows results for infant mortality, Fig. 1B shows results for neonatal mortality, and Fig. 1C shows results for postneonatal mortality. The lines in each figure show fitted values from Eq. 1 that relate the given mortality rate to the poverty ventile based on population-weighted, county-level regressions estimated for each year. The data points shown in the figure plot the average mortality rate in each poverty ventile in 1960 and 2016 (shown only for these years to improve readability of the figure). Figure 1 suggests two key patterns. First, poverty rank is positively correlated with mortality rates in all years, as evident from the upward slope of the fitted lines. Second, the overall national declines in mortality rates between 1960 and 2016 mask substantial heterogeneity across the poverty distribution.

To illustrate this second key pattern, Fig. 2 plots mortality-poverty gradients, highlighting our first main conclusion: Inequality in infant mortality, as measured by the association between infant mortality rates in levels and poverty rankings, declined significantly between 1960 and 2000 but was statistically unchanged from 2000 to 2016. The mortality-poverty gradients quantify the association between a given mortality rate measure and a one-unit increase in the poverty ventile distribution. For infant mortality (Fig. 2A), the gradient decreased markedly from 0.581 in 1960 to 0.141 in 2000 (P = 0.000). As measured by the mortality-poverty gradient, the level of mortality inequality in 2000 was roughly 25% of the 1960 level. Despite a continuing decline in the national infant mortality rate between 2000 and 2016 (from 6.1 to 5.8), the gradient increased over this period from 0.141 to 0.153, although not significantly (P = 0.737). Intuitively, while the overall infant mortality rate continued to decline between 2000 and 2016, the differential mortality rate reductions among the poorest counties, relative to the least poor counties, did not. We interpret the gradient as unchanged in these later years given the small magnitude of the increase and the lack of statistical significance. Table 2 reports gradient estimates and SEs.

(A) shows results for infant mortality, (B) shows results for neonatal mortality, and (C) shows results for postneonatal mortality. The lines in each figure show parameter estimates of the effect of increasing one unit in the poverty ventile distribution on the given mortality rate, estimated in each year using Eq. 1. The shaded areas show the 95% confidence intervals based on SEs clustered at the poverty ventile level. Table 2 reports parameter estimates and SEs. Data on mortality rates are from the CDC, and data on poverty rates are from the U.S. Census Bureau.

(A) shows results for infant mortality, (B) shows results for neonatal mortality, and (C) shows results for postneonatal mortality. Each coefficient and SE (shown in brackets) is from a separate regression and represents the effect on the given mortality rate of increasing one unit on the poverty ventile distribution, estimated using Eq. 1. Gender-specific mortality rates are available in 1970 and later years only. SEs are clustered at the poverty ventile level. Data on mortality rates are from the CDC, and data on poverty rates are from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Both neonatal and postneonatal mortality gradients follow a similar pattern of large declines between 1960 and the early 2000s, with statistically insignificant increases in more recent years. For neonatal mortality (Fig. 2B), the gradient dropped from 0.218 in 1960 to 0.066 in 2010 (P = 0.000) but then increased from 0.066 to 0.083 between 2010 and 2016 (P = 0.180). For postneonatal mortality (Fig. 2C), the gradient dropped from 0.363 in 1960 to 0.074 in 2000 (P = 0.002) and then increased to 0.079 in 2010 (P = 0.704) before declining again to 0.070 in 2016 (P = 0.380).

Figure 2 also suggests that inequality reductions occurred largely between 1960 and 1980 and that declines in postneonatal infant mortality inequality explain most of the overall inequality reduction in infant mortality. In Fig. 2A, 73% of the decline between 1960 and 2000 occurred between 1960 and 1980. Decomposing the infant mortality gradient (Fig. 2A) into the neonatal (Fig. 2B) and postneonatal (Fig. 2C) gradients shows that 25% of the 19601980 decline in the infant mortality gradient is explained by neonatal mortality, whereas 75% is explained by postneonatal mortality.

Our findings are consistent with prior work analyzing infant mortality inequality over shorter time periods and with studies analyzing specific social programs. We show that the weakening association between poverty and the level of infant mortality reported by Currie and Schwandt (14) began before 1990 and that declining inequality is found for both neonatal and postneonatal mortality rates. The pattern of sharp reductions in mortality inequality that we document, starting in the 1960s and tapering off in later years, is also broadly consistent with Singh and Kogan (17). Compared to these studies (14, 17), our analysis covers a wider range of years and is notable for documenting the flattening of the gradient between 2000 and 2016. The large mortality rate reductions we find among the poorest counties between 1960 and 1980 are consistent with work that reports positive effects on infant health from federal antipoverty programs that began during those decades, including food stamps (18), Medicaid (19), and community health centers (20), as well as work that documents improvements in medical care for infants during this time period (21, 22). Last, the key role of postneonatal mortality in explaining the infant mortality gradient reductions is consistent with work showing that socioeconomic disparities emerge especially strongly during the postneonatal period (23).

We explore heterogeneity by gender in the evolution of infant mortality inequality in Fig. 3, which suggests that the raw gap in infant mortality rates between males and females narrowed between 1970 and 2016 but that changes in the level of infant mortality inequality were comparable across genders. Our data on gender-specific mortality rates start in 1970. Nationally, the infant mortality gap across genders decreased from 4.8 in 1970 to 1.0 in 2016 (P = 0.000), with continual declines over the sample period. Figure 3A shows this narrowing gender gap over time, plotting fitted values from Eq. 1 and mean mortality rates by poverty ventiles in select years. This result is consistent with work showing that excess male infant mortality generally peaked in the 1970s across 15 advanced economies (24) and with results showing a narrowing of the infant mortality gender gap in Massachusetts in the early 1990s (25). Mirroring the national pattern in Fig. 2, both male and female infant mortality gradients declined from 1970 through 2000 but then remained flat thereafter (Fig. 3B). As shown in Table 2, the male (female) gradient fell significantly from 0.406 (0.338) in 1970 to 0.150 (0.132) in 2000 and then increased insignificantly to 0.160 (0.145) in 2016. Although our gradient estimates imply a relatively larger reduction in the level of infant mortality inequality for males, the differences in the gradients across genders are not statistically different in any year, and we therefore cannot rule out equal decreases.

Both panels show results for infant mortality. Because of data limitations, the first available year of data for these figures is 1970. The lines in (A) and the gradients in (B) are based on estimates from weighted county-level regressions each year using Eq. 1. Table 2 reports parameter estimates for each regression. In (A), data points show mean mortality rates for each poverty ventile for 1970 and 2016 only to improve readability of the figures. In (B), we omit the confidence intervals to increase readability of the figure as the confidence intervals overlap in each year. Data on mortality rates are from the CDCs, and data on poverty rates are from the U.S. Census Bureau.

To highlight the association between changes in the mortality-poverty gradient and national mortality rates, we construct a set of counterfactual mortality rates. We define these counterfactual measures as the national mortality rates that would have occurred in later years if the mortality-poverty gradient from a given base year were held fixed and each poverty ventile experienced the same change in mortality as the least poor ventile. We set the base year to 1960 for aggregate results (1970 for gender-specific results). The counterfactual rates rest on two strong assumptions: (i) that mortality inequality is unchanged from the base year level and (ii) that each poverty ventile has the same trend as the least poor ventile over time. Instead of representing a likely scenario, we view the counterfactual rates as helpful benchmarks. The counterfactual poses the question: How would mortality rates have evolved nationally if each county in the United States experienced the same change as the least poor ventile, thus holding fixed the level of mortality inequality? The difference between the actual and counterfactual rates reflects the additional mortality rate reductions among higher poverty ventiles, compared to the least poor ventile, thus highlighting the role of mortality inequality reductions.

Figure 4 shows the actual (solid lines) and counterfactual (dashed lines) infant mortality rates, yielding our second main conclusion: The reduction in mortality inequality accounts for a meaningful share of the overall decline in the national infant mortality rate during our period. Compared to the actual reduction in infant mortality, the reduction in the counterfactual infant mortality is 18% smaller between 1960 and 2016 (18% smaller between 1960 and 2000). Correspondingly, by 2016 (2000), the national infant mortality rate would have been 1.6 (1.5) times larger in the counterfactual compared to the actual. The pattern is similar for neonatal (postneonatal) in Fig. 4B (Fig. 4C), with reductions that would have been 10% (40%) smaller between 1960 and 2016. This pattern is also similar by gender, with smaller counterfactual reductions of 18% (14%) for female (male) infant mortality rates between 1970 and 2016 (table S1).

(A) shows results for infant mortality rates, (B) shows results for neonatal mortality rates, and (C) shows results for postneonatal mortality rates (mortality rates defined in the notes to Table 1). The solid lines show actual mortality rates. The dashed lines show counterfactual mortality rates, defined as the mortality rate that would exist if (i) the mortality gradient remained at the 1960 value reported in Table 2 and (ii) each poverty ventile experienced a reduction in mortality rates over time equal to the actual reduction experienced by the least poor ventile. Table S1 reports the counterfactual estimates in each year. Data on mortality rates are from the CDC, and data on poverty rates are from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Alleviating inequality in health generally, and in mortality specifically, remains a major policy goal (26). Yet, the extent to which inequality in infant mortality has changed over the past 50 years is not well documented. We analyze data from the CDC and U.S. Census Bureau to address these issues and to establish new facts about the association between infant mortality and poverty over time.

Our findings suggest both positive developments and concerning patterns. In terms of positive developments, we show that infant mortality rates have become more equal across the poorest and least poor counties in the United States between 1960 and 2000, with our estimate of mortality inequality declining 76%. We estimate that this reduction in inequality accounts for nearly 20% of the overall national reduction between 1960 and 2000. In addition, we show that the gender gap in infant mortality rates narrowed substantially between 1970 and 2016. Yet, we also document that mortality inequality has remained roughly constant between 2000 and 2016 and that the level of inequality that remained in 2016 was roughly one-quarter of the 1960 level. The trend in recent years, together with the persisting level of inequality, suggests an important role for policies that improve the health of infants in poor areas.

Our study has several limitations. First, the analysis of the mortality-poverty gradients uses data aggregated to the county level. As a result, the findings do not represent comparisons of poor versus rich individuals; rather, they represent the association between mortality and residing in an area with a higher poverty rate compared to an area with a lower poverty rate. Second, our specification uses only variation in poverty across counties. It therefore does not account for inequality within a county, which could be an interesting area for future work. Third, our measure of inequality uses only the poverty rate, which overlooks other potentially important features of a countys income distribution, such as median income or income inequality. We selected this measure because it allows us to rank all counties along a single dimension in a transparent way. Fourth, our estimates of the mortality-poverty gradients cannot be interpreted as the causal effect of residing in poor versus rich areas. A countys poverty rate is likely correlated with a variety of factors that directly affect mortality in the first year of life. Because of these confounding factors, the causal effect of poverty on mortality is likely to be different from the estimates in this study.

To measure infant mortality, we use data from the CDC, and to measure poverty, we use data from the U.S. Census Bureau. We construct 1-year mortality rates (per 1000 live births) for infant mortality (death under 1 year), neonatal mortality (death under 28 days), and postneonatal mortality (death between 28 and 364 days) at the county-year level, corresponding to the years 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2016. Data on poverty rates were matched to each county-year observation using county of residence. Poverty ventiles, 20 equally sized (by population) groups of counties, were defined in each year based on rankings of the poverty rate. Although it need not be the case, each poverty ventile also represents about 5% of births each year. In table S2, we show that our results are robust to alternate samples of counties, including restricting to counties that do not undergo boundary changes over time and to the set of counties available in all years. In table S3, we show that the gender-specific results are similar when restricting to the set of counties that have nonmissing mortality rates for both genders. In table S4, we show results that hold fixed the poverty ranking of counties from 1960, which are similar to the results from our baseline approach that ranks counties in each year.

Our analysis sample consists of 21,839 county-year level observations across the years 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2016 (18,743 county-year observations for 1970 and later years). Our data include 31,606,403 births and 365,171 infant deaths (254,321 neonatal deaths and 110,850 postneonatal deaths) between 1960 and 2016. For gender-specific outcomes, our sample includes 14,008,280 male births, 13,344,195 female births, 144,195 male infant deaths (98,901 male neonatal deaths and 45,294 male postneonatal deaths), and 110,834 female infant deaths (76,137 female neonatal deaths and 34,697 female postneonatal deaths) for 1970 and later years.

We report results for race-specific mortality in table S5, although we urge caution when interpreting these findings because of two important data limitations. First, the method of assigning race at birth changes over time. Before 1989, race assignment at birth used information from both parents; thereafter, it was based on the race of the mother, as stated on the birth certificate. This reclassification results in more births classified as white and fewer births classified as nonwhite, causing white infant mortality rates to drop and nonwhite infant mortality rates to increase (27, 28). A second concern is error in race assignment at death, which may be reported by family members, or by the funeral director based on observation, and thus has differential error by race (29, 30).

To quantify the relationship between poverty rank and infant mortality, we use ordinary least squares regression analysis of Eq. 1, following Currie and Schwandt (14)mortalityct=+*povertyct+ct(1)where c denotes the county and t denotes the year. Poverty is defined as the poverty ventile (1 to 20). Dependent variables include the following mortality rates: infant, neonatal, and postneonatal. The ct term captures model error and is the intercept. We weight each county observation by population and estimate the equation separately for each year, which is equivalent to a model that includes year indicator variables and interactions of year and poverty rank. We cluster SEs at the poverty ventile level to allow for arbitrary correlation in the error structure within poverty groups.

The coefficient , referred to as the mortality-poverty gradient, reflects the difference in the level of mortality rates per unit increase in the poverty ventile (or per 5 percentile points in the poverty ranking). A zero value for this gradient would indicate equality in mortality rates across the poverty distribution. Positive values would indicate inequality, reflecting lower mortality rates in the least poor counties compared to the poorest counties. These results can be interpreted as quantifying absolute inequality, as they relate the level of mortality rates and the poverty rank. Below, we present results for relative inequality measures that relate percent changes in mortality rates and poverty rank. We then discuss our decision to focus on absolute mortality inequality measures in the main text.

We also estimate the mortality-poverty rate gradient using Eq. 1a, which quantifies absolute inequality between the mortality rate and the poverty ratemortalityct=+*poverty ratect+ct(1a)

The findings are roughly similar when using the poverty rate rather than the poverty rank. The results using the poverty rate are shown in figs. S1 and S2 and table S6. We use the poverty rank in our baseline method due to well-known concerns about comparing poverty rates over time (31) and because aggregate measures of income at the county level may not capture the dynamics of income inequality driven by rapid growth at the top of the distribution (10, 11).

To estimate the shift in the poverty rate distribution over time, we estimate Eq. 2, which relates the poverty rate to the poverty rank and present these results in panel D of table S6.poverty ratect=+*povertyct+ct(2)

Last, to quantify inequality in percentage terms (i.e., relative inequality), we report the results for transformations of the mortality outcomes using Eq. 3f(mortalityct)=+*povertyct+ct(3)

We use several functions [f()] of mortality rates, including the natural log transformation that relates the percent change in the mortality rate to the poverty rank. However, this method excludes counties with zero values of mortality rates because the natural log is not defined in these cases. There are roughly 100 such counties (0.2% of counties population weighted) in 1960, with the number generally increasing each year to 822 (2.7% of counties population weighted) in 2016. To address the issue of omitting counties with a zero mortality rate, we include additional transformations frequently used when encountering zero values (32). First, we use the natural log transformation and include counties with zero mortality rate by assigning them a zero value for the transformation. Second, we use the inverse hyperbolic sine that also facilitates a percent change interpretation and is defined for zero values. Third, we analyze regressions at the poverty ventile level that use the natural log of the mean infant mortality rate in each ventile.

The results for these transformations are shown in table S7. The point estimates generally follow an upward trend. However, the sizes of the SEs limit the extent to which we can make statistically significant comparisons across years. We interpret these results as suggesting that relative inequality in mortality was constant or perhaps increasing over our time period. The different interpretations on the evolution of infant mortality inequality when we analyze mortality in logs rather than levels stem from changes in the mortality rate over time. Conceptually, the natural log specification scales the parameter estimates from Eq. 1 by the underlying mean mortality rate in each year. Because both the level differences and the mortality rate decline roughly proportionally over time, the log differences follow a constant or slightly increasing trend. Overall, our results on relative mortality inequality raise concerns about infant health disparities over our sample period and serve to strengthen our conclusion that improving the health of all infants, but especially those in poor areas, should be a key priority for policies in the coming years.

We use the mortality rate in levels as our baseline measure because it focuses on absolute rather than relative changes. The absolute change in mortality rates reflects the number of deaths, independent of the pre-existing infant mortality level. To highlight our rationale for focusing on mortality rate levels, consider the following example modified from Currie and Schwandt (14). In the base period, the mortality rate is 2 in the least poor county and 20 in the poorest county, while in the subsequent period, the mortality rate decreases by 1 in the least poor county and by 9 in the poorest. On the basis of relative changes, the decrease is larger in the least poor county (50% versus 45%), but in absolute terms, the decrease is much larger in the poorest county (9 versus 1). We thus focus on absolute changes in the infant mortality rates as this method weights deaths in both the least poor and the most poor counties the same.

All models were estimated using STATA 16.0 MP with the regress command, analytical weights set to county-level population, and SEs clustered at the poverty ventile level. Throughout the paper, we use two-tailed tests of statistical significance at the 0.05% level.

A. Deaton, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality (Princeton Univ. Press, 2013), 123 pp.

Vital Statistics of the United States, 1989, Vol. 1: Natality (National Vital Statistics Reports, National Center for Health Statistics, Hyattsville, MD, 1992), Technical Appendix.

D. L. Hoyert, Effect on Mortality Rates of the 1989 Change in Tabulating Race (Vital Health Stat. Series No. 20, Report No. 25, National Center for Health Statistics, Hyattsville, MD, 1994).

H. M. Rosenberg, J. D. Maurer, P. D. Sorlie, N. J. Johnson, M. F. MacDorman, D. L. Hoyert, J. F. Spitler, C. Scott, Quality of Death Rates by Race and Hispanic Origin: A Summary of Current Research, 1999 (Vital Health Stat. Series No. 2, Report No. 128, National Center for Health Statistics, Hyattsville, MD, 1999).

Acknowledgments: We are thankful to seminar participants at the Federal Reserve Board for helpful suggestions and to E. Engen and B. Lutz for support. Funding: K.D. acknowledges support from NICHD R24 HD073964 and the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. K.M. acknowledges support from the NSF Graduate Student Research Fellowship Program, grant no.1122374. Author contributions: N.T.: lead conceptualization, lead methodology, lead software, lead formal analysis, data curation, lead writing original draft, lead writing review and editing, lead visualization, and supervision; K.D.: conceptualization, methodology, writing original draft, and writing review and editing; K.M.: conceptualization, methodology, software, formal analysis, data curation, writing original draft, writing review and editing, and visualization. Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Data and materials availability: All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Specific data related to underlying data on infant mortality rates by county cannot be directly shared by the authors due to limitations on disclosure established by the CDC. Interested researchers can access these data by following procedures described in the Supplementary Materials.

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The evolution of infant mortality inequality in the United States, 19602016 - Science Advances

ISO Shipping Container Market Predicted to Witness Sustainable Evolution in Years to Come – Jewish Life News

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Danzig

Latest released the research study onGlobal ISO Shipping Container Market, offers a detailed overview of the factors influencing the global business scope.ISO Shipping ContainerMarket research report shows the latest market insights, current situation analysis with upcoming trends and breakdown of the products and services. The report provides key statistics on the market status, size, share, growth factors of theISO Shipping Container Market. The study covers emerging players data, including: competitive landscape, sales, revenue and global market share of top manufacturers.

Top players in Global ISO Shipping Container Market are:

COSCO (China)

3M Company (United States)

CIMC (China)

SINGAMAS (China)

CXIC Group (China)

Shanghai Universal Logistics Equipment (China)

Maersk Container Industry (Denmark)

Charleston Marine Containers (United States)

Sea Box (United States)

Hoover Container Solutions (United States)

Hapag-Lloyd (Germany)

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Brief Overview on ISO Shipping Container

ISO shipping container is an intermodal container is made in a same specifications of height width and length. They are made according to the international organization for standardization. This standard includes size, quality and the weight of the container. The ISO shipping containers can be used for transportation of goods through different modes such as ship, rail or truck. Through these containers the goods cans be handled easily. Hence it is widely used for shipping which will propel the market of the containers.

Recent Development in Global ISO Shipping Container Market:

In March 2019, Singamas has agreed to dispose its wholly owned subsidiaries which are Qidong Singamas Energy Equipment, Qingdao Pacific Container, Ningbo Pacific Container, Singamas Container Holdings (Shanghai) Limited, and Qidong Pacific Port.

Market Drivers

Market Trend

Market Challenges

Market Restraints:

Market Opportunities:

Region Included are: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Oceania, South America, Middle East & Africa

Country Level Break-Up: United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, South Africa, Nigeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Germany, United Kingdom (UK), the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Turkey, Russia, France, Poland, Israel, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, India, Australia and New Zealand etc.

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Chapter 2: Exclusive Summary the basic information of the Global ISO Shipping Container Market.

Chapter 3: Displaying the Market Dynamics- Drivers, Trends and Challenges of the Global ISO Shipping Container

Chapter 4: Presenting the Global ISO Shipping Container Market Factor Analysis Porters Five Forces, Supply/Value Chain, PESTEL analysis, Market Entropy, Patent/Trademark Analysis.

Chapter 5: Displaying the by Type, End User and Region 2013-2020

Chapter 6: Evaluating the leading manufacturers of the Global ISO Shipping Container market which consists of its Competitive Landscape, Peer Group Analysis, BCG Matrix & Company Profile

Chapter 7: To evaluate the market by segments, by countries and by manufacturers with revenue share and sales by key countries in these various regions.

Chapter 8 & 9: Displaying the Appendix, Methodology and Data Source

Finally, Global ISO Shipping Container Market is a valuable source of guidance for individuals and companies.

Data Sources & Methodology

The primary sources involve the industry experts from the Global ISO Shipping Container Market including the management organizations, processing organizations, analytics service providers of the industrys value chain. All primary sources were interviewed to gather and authenticate qualitative & quantitative information and determine the future prospects.

In the extensive primary research process undertaken for this study, the primary sources Postal Surveys, telephone, Online & Face-to-Face Survey were considered to obtain and verify both qualitative and quantitative aspects of this research study. When it comes to secondary sources Companys Annual reports, press Releases, Websites, Investor Presentation, Conference Call transcripts, Webinar, Journals, Regulators, National Customs and Industry Associations were given primary weightage.

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ISO Shipping Container Market Predicted to Witness Sustainable Evolution in Years to Come - Jewish Life News

Baby Pushchairs Market Predicted to Witness Sustainable Evolution in Years to Come – 3rd Watch News

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Danzig

Latest released the research study onGlobal Baby Pushchairs Market, offers a detailed overview of the factors influencing the global business scope.Baby PushchairsMarket research report shows the latest market insights, current situation analysis with upcoming trends and breakdown of the products and services. The report provides key statistics on the market status, size, share, growth factors of theBaby Pushchairs Market. The study covers emerging players data, including: competitive landscape, sales, revenue and global market share of top manufacturers.

Top players in Global Baby Pushchairs Market are:

Goodbaby International Holdings Limited (China)

Newell Brands (United States)

Artsana Group (Italy)

Combi USA (United States)

Stokke AS (Norway)

Hauck group (Germany)

Dorel Industries Inc. (Canada)

Emmaljunga Barnvagnsfabrik AB (Sweden)

UPPAbaby (United States)

Peg Perego (Italy)

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Brief Overview on Baby Pushchairs

Baby pushchair also known as baby stroller, is defined as the small folding chair on wheels which a child sits in and is pushed around in. It is very flexible and provides a strong and sturdy frame. It is also convenient for turning in any direction. There are various benefits of using Baby pushchair products such as greater convenience and comfort, convenient transportation, durable childcare products last for a long time, offers safety features, among others. An increasing number of customer from the online channel and rising disposal income of consumer among middle-class families are some of the major factors which affect the growth of the market in the future. While some of the factors like issues associated with roads having complex path can affect the light weight baby pushchair product market. Around 40% of baby pushchair market is contributed by the APAC region, one of the main reason for this is technical innovation and extension portfolio of the product.

Recent Development in Global Baby Pushchairs Market:

Baby Jogger Company has launched a new city select LUX Stroller. It is available in single to double stroller on the market. Hence, this launched will increase the product portfolio of the company.

Market Drivers

Market Trend

Market Challenges

Market Restraints:

Market Opportunities:

Region Included are: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Oceania, South America, Middle East & Africa

Enquire for customization in Report @: https://www.advancemarketanalytics.com/enquiry-before-buy/31722-global-baby-pushchairs-market-1

Strategic Points Covered in Table of Content of Global Baby Pushchairs Market:

Chapter 1: Introduction, market driving force product Objective of Study and Research Scope the Global Baby Pushchairs market

Chapter 2: Exclusive Summary the basic information of the Global Baby Pushchairs Market.

Chapter 3: Displaying the Market Dynamics- Drivers, Trends and Challenges of the Global Baby Pushchairs

Chapter 4: Presenting the Global Baby Pushchairs Market Factor Analysis Porters Five Forces, Supply/Value Chain, PESTEL analysis, Market Entropy, Patent/Trademark Analysis.

Chapter 5: Displaying the by Type, End User and Region 2013-2020

Chapter 6: Evaluating the leading manufacturers of the Global Baby Pushchairs market which consists of its Competitive Landscape, Peer Group Analysis, BCG Matrix & Company Profile

Chapter 7: To evaluate the market by segments, by countries and by manufacturers with revenue share and sales by key countries in these various regions.

Chapter 8 & 9: Displaying the Appendix, Methodology and Data Source

Finally, Global Baby Pushchairs Market is a valuable source of guidance for individuals and companies.

Data Sources & Methodology

The primary sources involve the industry experts from the Global Baby Pushchairs Market including the management organizations, processing organizations, analytics service providers of the industrys value chain. All primary sources were interviewed to gather and authenticate qualitative & quantitative information and determine the future prospects.

Get More Information: https://www.advancemarketanalytics.com/reports/31722-global-baby-pushchairs-market-1

What benefits does AMA research study is going to provide?

Thanks for reading this article; you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.

About Author:

Craig Francis (PR & Marketing Manager)AMA Research & Media LLPUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA 08837Phone: +1 (206) 317 1218[emailprotected]

Connect with us athttps://www.linkedin.com/company/advance-market-analyticshttps://www.facebook.com/AMA-Research-Media-LLP-344722399585916https://twitter.com/amareport

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Baby Pushchairs Market Predicted to Witness Sustainable Evolution in Years to Come - 3rd Watch News

From boy band to men: A decade of One Directions musical evolution in 60 minutes – The A.V. Club

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Danzig

On July 23, 2010, there was a ripple across the pond. During production of the seventh series of the U.K.s The X Factor, five young ladsNiall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, and Louis Tomlinsonfailed to make enough of an impression on the judges to advance to the next round as individuals. But in a savvy move, X-Factor judge and V-necked superproducer Simon Cowell pulled the five teenagers aside and gave them a second chancethey would continue on in the competition as a group under Cowells tutelage. The boys were elated and quickly united in their mission, unanimously agreeing over text (as the story goes) to be known as One Direction. When the series hit British airwaves, fans immediately took to the mop-haired teens, watching their real-life friendships blossom as they tore their way through the competition. On December 12, 2010, they finished third on The X-Factor; their consolation prize: A reported 2 million record deal with Cowells Syco Records.

A decade later, its hard to believe that the members of One Direction1D for shortwere once the underdogs. By the time they arrived in America for their first stateside tour, the buzz over pop musics next big thing was already deafeningsome even likened it to Beatlemania. While their refusal to dance meant they werent exactly following in the choreography-heavy footsteps of the boy bands before them, it only helped make them that much more appealing: They were the every-lads, just five young guys who wanted to make music and have a good time. Mischievous, but not dangerous. Charming and crush-worthy, but relatable. Their music and image was perfectly manufactured to lean into these qualities, the boys maintaining a sense of goofy realness even under all the glossfor a while there, it really did seem like they were having a blast. But the nonstop cycle of albums and globe-trotting took its toll, and during the groups fourth world tour in five years, it was announced that Zayn Malik would leave 1D in early 2015. Later that year, the group released Made In The A.M. (which some suggested stands for After Malik), shortly followed by the announcement of a hiatus starting in 2016. In the years since, Niall, Zayn, Liam, Harry, and Louis have all released solo singles and albums, carving out space for themselves and defining their personal sounds in the shadow of One Direction.

If youre reading this, its safe to assume that youre either holding on to some affection for the former reigning boy band (without a doubt, BTS now claims that crown), or you cant believe were about to argue that they have enough worthwhile songs to fill out an hour-long playlist. Either way, welcome! Whether you love or loathe One Direction and their record-breaking career, venturing back through their discography provides a fascinating look at the evolution of a boy bandhow five young performers grew up within the contract-laden confines of the mainstream music machine, and how they found their voices while millions of Directioners (the moniker for self-described 1D stans) clung to their every word. From the starry-eyed teenage debut, Up All Night, to the (varyingly successful) string of solo adult albums, this Power Hour distills a decade of One Direction down to the tracks that highlight their growth as a quintet, eventually a quartet, and then as individuals. These are the enduring songs that define their legacy and prove that, once these five set their sights on music stardom, the only direction they could go was up.

There are more than a few similarities between One Thing and One Directions inescapable breakout hit What Makes You Beautiful, both from the debut album Up All Night: Both are driven by a clap-heavy beat and a buoyant guitar riff, and both have a chorus that begs to be shouted by adoring fans. Aside from giving all of the members their moment to shine vocally, One Thing ultimately stands out as the groups definitive early single because of its intriguing ambiguity. What is that one thing, anyway? Like Meatloafs Id Do Anything For Love (But I Wont Do That), the lyrics keep things vague, allowing the listener to imagine theyre the one One Direction cant get out of their heads.

After the runaway success of the groups debut, One Direction turned it all the way up for album two: Take Me Home is a proper charm offensive with the goal of world domination. Its third single Kiss You leans hard into their goofball personas, a gonzo love song that promises to, show you off to all of my friends, making them drool down their chinny-chin-chins. Childish? Maybe so, but the song relishes in its youthful energy. By the time it reaches the na na nas of its final bridge, youre putty in the hands of one of 1Ds catchiest tunes. Frenetic yet perfectly polished, Kiss You is a sugar rush from start to finish.

When laying out the groundwork for Take Me Home, Simon Cowell reportedly challenged industry hit-makers to submit potential No. 1s, effectively tasking top songwriters to compete for their slot on One Directions sophomore album. This go-big-or-go-home approach meant that the record was a near-exhausting barrage of bumping back-beats and radio-ready hooks. Still, Cmon, Cmon stands outits One Direction at the groups most celebratory and joyful. Indicative of the albums more electronic sound, the song emphasizes its drum-machine wallops and New Wave synths to irresistible effect, and then drops them out for a split-second before launching into a soaring chorus. Its all over in less than three minutes, but Cmon, Cmon is the kind of song that buzzes in your head for much longer.

Now certified global pop stars with a splashy tour documentary under their belts, the members of One Direction were out to prove that they could adapt to a more mature milieu for 2013s Midnight Memories. With artists like Mumford & Sons and The Lumineers giving the years adult contemporary charts a folksier makeover, a number of the albums cuts followed suit. Midnight Memories most successful foray into folk-rock, Through The Dark, doesnt shy away from its influences; following Little Lion Mans formula, it kicks off with a lone acoustic guitar, gradually building to a rollicking chorus built for boot-stomping (its pop sheen also means it holds up better than a lot of that eras hits, which already sound like relics). The song had its broadcast debut on a Paul Rudd-hosted episode of SNL wheredespite some visible discomfortthe quintet showcased their knack for harmonies, proving to the shows late-night audience there was talent behind all the hype.

Along with the groups new, grown-up sound, Midnight Memories found One Direction ditching the playful innuendos for (slightly) more overt pillow talk. Near the albums midpoint, on Happily, Payne sings, Its four A.M. and I know that youre with him; I wonder if he knows that I touched your skin. Its not quite scandalous, but the guys music had to go past puppy love if they wanted to be taken seriously as artists. Elsewhere, the refrain exclaims, I dont care what people say when were together, painting the picture of a forbidden romance, giving the bands young queer fans (of which there were many) enough wiggle room to find themselves in its narrative. With its clap-and-shout catharsis, Happily might be the closest thing 1D has to a queer anthem.

While some cited One Directions fourth album Four as evidence the group was losing a bit of its luster (the unimaginative title only highlighting this inevitability), in retrospect, it also produced some of their most potent and thoughtfully constructed tracks. Fireproof, for example, channels breezy 80s Fleetwood Mac for a tambourine-fueled testament to a love built to last. That a guitar riff takes the spotlight for its second bridge instead of another round of na na nas showcases a wizened restraintthat the group had grown beyond the need for another radio-ready sing-along. Noted Directioner Mitski (who once tweeted, disrespect 1D, disrespect me) also gave the song her stamp of approval with a killer, fuzzed-out cover, showing that even indie rockers couldnt resist the charms of One Direction.

Boy band music videos have traditionally served up big concepts and even bigger budgets, but One Directions date-night clip for Night Changes displays simple brilliance. With the videos handheld point-of-view cinematography, viewers are given the opportunity to spend a special moment with each band membera wine-and-dine with Zayn, ice-skating with Harry, cozy board games by the fire with Nialluntil they all go a bit off the rails. Indulgent, earnest, and goofy, it endures as 1Ds definitive video. Musically, Night Changes creates a similar romantic atmosphere, employing ooh ooh backing vocals and a heartbeat bass drum to woo listeners into its mid-tempo easy-listening before sealing the deal with an irresistible key change.

With its insinuation that falling in love can feel a bit like its titular psychological condition, Stockholm Syndrome has some questionable sexual politics. Nevertheless, the song is an absolute pop banger, putting some arena-ready oomph behind another classic One Direction hook. Like many of the groups later tracks, Stockholm Syndrome wears its influences on its sleeve, recalling The Polices post-punk energy with its bouncing guitar riff that swells to match the whoas! of its chorus. It should come as no surprise that the song became one of the rare 1D covers Harry Styles would trot out on his first solo world tourit highlights both his lower-register timbre and his powerful belt, planting the seeds for the rock star to come.

Throughout its tenure, One Direction endured many comparisons to The Beatles, largely in terms of the groups status as an inescapable global phenomenon. But if there was ever a track that sounded like kin to a Sgt. Peppers diddy, its the vibrant, utterly sunny Olivia. Co-written by Styles, the exuberant love song is a time machine unto itself and a joyful standout among the bands winding discography. Backed by a full orchestra, the track is an indulgent celebration of all-consuming devotion. With the power of hindsight, it would be fair to also view it as foreshadowing for what could be expected from Styles then-forthcoming solo effort: something vintage and infectious.

The bands announcement of an impending extended hiatus was met with global devastation from long-time devotees, but not that much shock. Even before Maliks abrupt departure in March 2015, the young men had been ruminating on their inevitable transition into solo work since the year prior. History was more than a folksy, guitar-driven culmination of years of hard work; it was also a fitting sign-off. Equipped with a rousing hook, the final single from the then-quartet rang like a cozy bars last-call anthem and a loving farewell to the bands historic era.

Malik explained his exit from one of the biggest modern musical acts in pop culture as an opportunity to show off his more authentic self, a way to make the music that he actually stood behind. As the first 1D member to build up his solo persona, his Mind Of Mine may have caused some understandable whiplash for those familiar with the music he was making just a year prior. Leaving the palatable, family-friendly rock-pop archetype behind and leaning more into hazy R&B and sensual soft funk, BoRdErZ bared no hints of Maliks glossy boy band roots and became one of the stronger songs among the bunch. It was also one of eight collaborations with Grammy-winning songwriter-producer Malay, and a promising look at Zayns growth as an artist (groan-inducing stylization of track titles aside).

Not every One Directioner has managed to comfortably find a distinctive sound beyond their boy band roots. Since the bands break, Louis Tomlinson has released a handful of singles and, as of this year, a debut album with Walls, although none of it has really resonated on the same scale as his former bandmates. But in 2016, Tomlinson teamed with super DJ Steve Aoki for his first official solo venture. Just Hold On was everything a listener would need from an EDM-pop jaunt: catchy, uplifting, and a solid addition to any festival lineup. It was also a sound that Tomlinson never fully revisited, later opting for the more rock-driven soundscape that underscored the majority of 1Ds discography. Now the track largely exists as a memento of a fairly untrodden path toward house and dance stardom that very well could have set him apart from the rest of his former bandmates.

Of the five original 1D members, Styles, unsurprisingly, has managed to cultivate the biggest solo career. With his boisterous style and generation-defying sound, critics often cite classic rock tentpoles like Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney in their praises. Carolina crystallized Styles appreciation of 60s and 70s rock in a rollicking ode to a girl he met once. Upbeat and reverent, the song became a tour favorite and a late-blooming summer jam. Years later, it endures as a testament to Styles determination to make music that could fit in any decade and possibly outlast us all.

Easily the star of Styles debut, Kiwi is nothing but fun, unabashed rock. The opening verseShe worked her way through a cheap pack of cigarettes / Hard liquor mixed with a bit of intellect / And all the boys, they were saying they were into it / Such a pretty face, on a pretty neckworked hard to cement a much older point of view for 1Ds breakout star. Its energetic spirit also signaled a budding soloist who was willing to exist outside of a single box, setting him apart from his former bandmates as one of the strongest songwriters in the group.

Chalk it up to his ever-present grin, but Niall Horan certainly earned a reputation as the cheekiest of One Directions merry pranksters, which made his folksy, assured solo debut that much more surprising. Flicker had one hell of a saucy single in Slow Hands, but its Seeing Blinda swooning duet with country superstar Maren Morristhat best carved out a niche for Horan in a post-One Direction world. His reedier voice trades off with Morris full-bodied twang in the verses before the two combine for a gorgeous harmony in the songs sweeping refrain. Seeing Blind is a honest-to-goodness country love song with crossover appeal that, like Tomlinsons EDM dabbling, proves the guys didnt need to stay in their former bands pop-rock lane to succeed.

With Icarus Falls, Malik offered a lengthy, 27-track followup to Mind Of Mine that truly highlighted his solo potential. It didnt quite garner the same commercial success as his debut, but it did carve a viable path forward for a growing alt-R&B artist. Its a shame that we never saw a more robust celebration of Maliks second album outside of its more favorable critical reception: Icarus Falls provided more than its fair share of both genre-bending entries and straightforward grooves like Imprint. Sleek and laid-back, the easy tune was a nice bridge between the two projects, changing the pace of the album and solidifying his signature sound.

There are a few genres at work in Fine Lines second single, the ever-charming Adore You. Rock, pop, disco, and funk have ways of registering a little differently with each listen, but all are bolstered by a thumping baseline and Styles soulful vocals in a true go-for-broke love jam. Though the subject of an elaborate (and rather brilliant) viral marketing campaign, Adore You absolutely sells Styles abilities as a wide-ranging artist on its own merit, employing lush background harmonies and an alluring energy that makes it difficult not to fall for his inherent charm. Of all the mellifluous things to come out of One Directions break, this track is by far one of the best.

If 1D were still around to grow the bands collective sound, its current music would likely be comparable to Horans Heartbreak Weatherthat is, breezy, guitar-heavy, and pleasantly melodic. Its snappy (figuratively and quite literally) bridge is so reminiscent of a One Direction hit that it sounds like a Made In The A.M. bonus track in the best way. Out of everyone, Horan held tightly to the playful spirit that catapulted the band into superstardom while injecting his own innate folksy musicality, crafting an ethos that is still very much his own. Heartbreak Weathers title track was not only an ideal opening track for casual listeners, but a security blanket of sorts for fans who still miss the spirited group that started it all.

Since were just shy of 60 minutes, theres time to wrap up this Power Hour with One Directions most meme-able moment to date. When Act My Age was released as an extra track on the Ultimate Edition of 2014s Four, it felt like something of a lark: The band sings about getting fat and old over what is, essentially, an Irish jig on adrenaline. According to Knowyourmeme.com, Twitter user @hozierlesbianin a stroke of geniusspliced the songs raucous strings over video of a familys impressive synchronized dance to Freco and Merlos Drop. Then, in early 2019, the edit fell into the right hands on Twitter, and a brand new reaction meme was born. Those unfamiliar with the One Direction deep cut were mystified by the clips pirate music, but longtime Directioners clocked the song immediately. The surprising viral moment for Act My Age may have spiked over a year ago, but it speaks to the fact that the earnest, irresistible spirit of One Directions music lives on, even if the bands in no hurry to come back from hiatus any time soon.

Biophysicists Find Water Wires Are Biological Information Channels – Discovery Institute

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Danzig

Image: Water wire, by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, via Poul Petersen, Cornell University/EurekAlert!

Water conducts electricity; it can also conduct energy and information. Biophysicists are finding that water wires at the nanoscale fine-tune enzymatic actions indeed, can be indispensable for function.

In a post here back in April, Evolution News shared a remarkable fact about dynein, one of the molecular machines that walks on microtubules. The scientist in that story theorized that water molecules bind to the stalk and help transmit kinetic energy via water waves from the reaction center, where ATP is spent, to the feet where walking takes place. The water molecules are so positioned as to create a virtual tsunami of energy from one end of the machine to the other, which causes the feet to move. Obviously, this requires very precise cooperation between the water molecules and the amino acids in the stalk. Now, other instances are coming to light of biological systems incorporating water molecules into their functional specificity.

Biophysicists have long suspected that water molecules facilitate the passage of substrates through membrane channels. The purpose of membrane channels is to permit certain molecules through the cell membrane but prohibit others. This is called active transport, because normally molecules would move by diffusion (passive transport). Cells need to both attract the right molecules to go through the channel and authenticate them through the selectivity filter. Water can assist this process via electricity. Since H2O is bipolar, single water molecules in a chain, held together by hydrogen bonds, become a sort of wire through which ions can pass. Additionally, the fact that some amino acids are hydrophilic allows biological channels to attract water molecules to the exact positions inside the channel where they can assist the selectivity filter.

In 2009, scientists in India constructed an artificial peptide nanotube just wide enough to hold a chain of water molecules. Chemistry World explains how achieving this in practice was harder than in theory:

Water behaves differently at the nanoscale, forming into single-file arrangements known as water wires. These are important in biology as they ferry protons through cell membranes, which is a crucial step in how most organisms produce energy.

The mechanism behind this proton transfer is the classic Grotthuss chain, where hydrogen bonding lets protons hop between water molecules very rapidly. But predicting how this mechanism affects a single line of molecules has been challenging. Now, a team led by Padmanabhan Balaram at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore has taken a first-hand look at how the molecules are configured, providing a useful template for future studies. [Emphasis added.]

The experiment in this early attempt did not attract water molecules to the sides of the channel but demonstrated the feasibility of doing so. In 2018, scientists from Cornell and Rensselaer made further progress in constructing artificial water wires. The news from Rensselaer, Proof of Water Wires Motivated by a Biological Water Channel, says that biological water channels called aquaporins provided the inspiration for their biomimetic experiments.

Aquaporins are proteins that serve as water channels to regulate the flow of water across biological cell membranes. They also remove excess salt and impurities in the body, and it is this aspect that has led to much interest in recent years in how to mimic the biochemical processes of aquaporins potentially for water desalination systems.

The experimenters built an artificial channel with stacks of imidazole, a ring-shaped nitrogen-based organic compound, and demonstrated for the first time that water molecules can be induced to stick to the sides of the channel in order to form a water wire. Cornell says that until then, water wires had been predicted theoretically but never seen.

I would call this the first real observation of a water wire, [Poul] Petersen said. Were not just seeing the oxygen [atoms], we see the protons, as well. Its the first observation of the hydrogen bonding in a water wire.

A key finding of this work was that the net dipolar orientation of water molecules in confined channels induced specific polarization of the channel, which drives the substrate through. The ability to mimic this action would be the gold standard for desalination technology, they say. But is this how water wires work in biological systems?

One challenge of observing biological water wires is peering inside the narrow confines of a membrane channel. Another challenge is slowing down the action. Hydrogen bond formation is predicted to change billions of times a second. This year, an international team used the ultra-high-intensity magnet at the National High Magnetic Field lab in Tallahassee, Florida, to achieve a breakthrough. Considering that the field energy of MRI machines in hospitals runs about 1 to 3 teslas (T), the power of the magnet at Tallahassee, 35.2 T, is truly astonishing. That is orders of magnitude stronger than the magnetic field of the earth or the sun.

Their paper in PNAS, Functional stability of water wirecarbonyl interactions in an ion channel, tells how they were able to pull off this feat in a well-characterized membrane channel named gramicidin A.

Water wires are critical for the functioning of many membrane proteins, as in channels that conduct water, protons, and other ions. Here, in liquid crystalline lipid bilayers under symmetric environmental conditions, the selective hydrogen bonding interactions between eight waters comprising a water wire and a subset of 26 carbonyl oxygens lining the antiparallel dimeric gramicidin A channel are characterized by 17O NMR spectroscopy at 35.2 T and computational studies.

Gramicidin A (gA), discovered in 1939, is a linear peptide antibiotic produced by Bacillus brevis. Unlike most peptides, gA consists of alternating left- and right-handed amino acid residues. This gives it a spiral helical shape that penetrates the bacteriums membrane, forming a pore that looks like a spiral staircase. This allows for the free passage of cations (positively charged ions) to neutralize the pH of the interior and exterior. The antimicrobial activity, the authors explain, derives from its ability to form a transmembrane channel that is selective for monovalent cations. It is a simple channel to use for studying the activity of a water wire.

The single file aqueous pore, terminated by the two L10 carbonyls, is only wide enough to host a single file of hydrogen-bonded water molecules: i.e., a water wire, as well as various monovalent cations ranging from Li+ to Cs+. The peptide planes of gA are nearly parallel to the pore axis, with odd-numbered carbonyls in both subunits oriented toward the bilayer center and even-numbered carbonyls toward the bilayer surfaces. Upon entering the water wire region of the channel, a cation interacts with only two waters and possibly pairs of carbonyl oxygens following a spiral path through the pore.

One surprising finding was that the hydrogen bonds in the wire are much more stable than predicted. Instead of changing in nanoseconds in the strong magnetic field, they lingered for milliseconds six orders of magnitude longer.

The results reveal that selective pore-lining carbonyl oxygens form remarkably stable hydrogen bonds with waters in the wire, such that the water wire does not change its orientation on the millisecond NMR timescale. The stable orientation of the water-wire dipole also provides a simple explanation for the low affinity of the second cation binding site in this dimeric channel, despite a separation of 24 from the first binding site at the opposite end of the pore.

The dipole formed by the 24-fold difference in binding affinity forces the cation down the channel. The water molecules are placed at the precise positions to provide optimum stability.

The water wire itself has a stability gradient from the negative end of the electric dipole to the positive end, based on optimal hydrogen bonding of the waters at the negative end of the electric dipole. The water interactions at this end of the dipole over the first three waters of the water wire are particularly stable.

Is there a reason why the hydrogen bonds need to be stable? Yes; the timing of passage of cations requires that the binding sites not flip too quickly. You can skip this passage after the first sentence unless you like the details:

Water wires are critical biological assemblies supported by membrane proteins for the purposes of transporting charge and ions across membranes. The present unique high-resolution characterization of the gA water wire provides insights into the dynamics, structure, and functional mechanism of this ion channel. In liquid crystalline lipid bilayers, the gA water wire and its associated electric dipole are stable on the millisecond timescale, both with and without cations present. Upon single cation occupancy, the influence of the electric dipole extends even further into the terminal region of the second subunit than in the absence of cations. The K+ interactions upon double occupancy do not result in symmetrization of the channel; however, there are significant impacts on water carbonyl interactions in the pore and hence on the resultant electric dipole that stabilizes the high affinity cation binding state. Furthermore, under double occupancy, the cations in the high- and low-affinity sites do not exchange sites at their respective ends of the channel on the millisecond timescale. Such exchange would flip the water wire and its associated electric dipole, resulting in averaging of the 17O spectral frequencies of the two subunits into a single value. Consequently, these cation binding sites are also stable at least on the millisecond timescale. Indeed, the water-wire orientation and its associated electric dipole dictates the high-affinity and low-affinity sites of the dimer.

In short, the spacing of all the amino acids and water molecules is optimized for function. The first ion is sucked in, forming its stable hydrogen bonds with the water, so that the second ion entering the channel doesnt flip the dipole over and break the flow. That requires precision foresight both positionally and temporally. And this is one of the simplest examples found in a bacterium! It is fair to expect even more optimization will be found in future studies of water wires in more complex membrane channels. Do the authors think this is intelligently designed? They almost say so:

The profound influence of the water wire in this model system and the stable watercarbonyl interactions illustrate the significance and functionality for such wires in many channels and materials. In particular, the stability of the water wire and its electric dipole suggests that its influence in many other systems could be more significant than generally recognized. To achieve such an understanding, unique 17O spectroscopy as reported here at a field strength of 35.2 T demonstrates the exquisite sensitivity to the chemical environs surrounding oxygen sites where so much of biological chemistry takes place.

Their awe at this system might explain their failure to attribute it to evolution.

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Biophysicists Find Water Wires Are Biological Information Channels - Discovery Institute

Lynch: A History traces the evolution of former Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch and the use of his voice – Seattle Times

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Danzig

In a time when athletes feel increasingly compelled to speak out, Marshawn Lynch remains unique for making provocative statements by barely saying anything.

Not that Lynch was always as reticent with the NFL media as his career progressed, a career that may not yet be over, though at the moment he is a free agent.

Its Lynchs path from reluctant-if-usually-dutiful interview subject to one who talked only on his own terms that is the primary topic of the documentary film Lynch: A History.

The film, which was written, produced and directed by David Shields, who is the Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington, premiered last fall at the Seattle International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Sunbreak Award for Best Documentary, and is now available on the streaming service Topic.

Shields has written books on Gary Payton and Ichiro, each athletes who captivated for the manner in which they communicated as much as what they said.

Obviously Im very interested in athletes and their language, Shields said.

That led him in 2015, after watching Lynch play for the Seahawks for five seasons, to begin planning a film on Lynch. He approached Lynch a few times and never got an interview but was told Lynch wouldnt impede his efforts.

The result is an 85-minute film categorized in a news release as a video collage.

Indeed, the film is a montage of Lynch through the years on and off the field, interspersed with scenes of his hometown of Oakland as well as cultural events of the time, such as Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the anthem in 2016. Lynch sat during the anthem on a few occasions in 2017, including during a game in Mexico City when he stood for Mexicos anthem, a sequence portrayed in the film.

Lynch is shown giving some straightforward interviews during earlier stages of his career, including at Cal and with the Buffalo Bills, and even in his first years with the Seahawks (in one clip from shortly after his trade to Seattle in 2010 Lynch jokes how he didnt like Seahawks coach Pete Carroll when Carroll tried to recruit him at USC). He essentially took a vow of silence by the time the Seahawks won the Super Bowl in 2013 (for what its worth, while Lynch was reported to have been fined a few times by the NFL for not talking, its thought he never actually has had to pay any money to the league).

But Shields says he thinks many of the conclusions for why Lynch began eschewing traditional interviews are mistaken. Shields says many observers tried to paint Lynch as either petulant or shy or random.

But to Shields, there was a pretty clear method to Marshawns seeming madness.

And that, he says, is Lynch making clear that, Ill speak in my own damn voice, thank you very much. Im definitely not going to speak in the masters voice.

As the film shows, Lynch was happy to appear on national late-night talk shows and commercials during the time he was refusing interviews in traditional NFL media settings.

When it came to media duties he felt were required by the league, he largely clammed up by the end of his second full season with the Seahawks in 2012.

Shields says the moment he decided he really wanted to try to pursue something on Lynch was watching the 2014 Super Bowl media day and Lynchs memorable interview with Deion Sanders, when Lynch uttered his famous Im just bout that action, boss, line.

It was a moment that perfectly encapsulated Lynch. He didnt answer questions in the conventional manner as did the other 100-plus players there, yet he said the only thing that day that anyone may still remember.

While Lynch was never an enthusiastic interview giver, Shields concludes it was his time in Buffalo from 2007-10 that made him distrust the media, and the NFL machine, that much more.

Lynch had never lived outside the Bay Area and found himself in about the most foreign NFL city he could have (as lots of shots of the Buffalo snow make clear).

Lynch was also suspended by the league for three games in 2009 after being arrested on a misdemeanor gun charge, and the coverage of that and a few other events in his time in Buffalo, Shields says Lynch felt was unfair, with Lynch feeling media often took his words and kind of falsified what he said.

Buffalo was a big change for him, Lynch said.

Shields, in a clip not in the film, cites a quote Lynch once gave on a talk show hosted by former NBA player Matt Barnes that I realized if I didnt talk they couldnt mangle my words.

Watching the progression of Lynch taking power of his own voice, as well as scenes of civil rights protests in the Bay Area in the 60s and Kaepernick and others in the NFL, makes the film seem even more prescient given events of the last few months (and it should be noted that since the film deals in some harsh realities, there is language that matches).

I think if the film feels slightly timely its largely because Marshawn has better antenna than most people, Shields says.

So what did Lynch think of the film?

Shields says he ran into Lynch last August following a screening in Oakland (Lynch had earlier been sent a Vimeo link of the film to watch, as well).

I wanted to hate on you, Shields says Lynch told him. But I couldnt, cause you did a damn good job with it.

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Lynch: A History traces the evolution of former Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch and the use of his voice - Seattle Times

The Evolution of Rhys Hoskins Swing Leads To Hybrid Setup – Crossing Broad

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Danzig

For a time during the 2019 season, Rhys Hoskins was excellent. Then, well, he wasnt.

Over 89 first half games a season ago, Hoskins slugged 20 homers to go with an impressive .401 on-base percentage and .931 OPS.

And then all hell broke loose.

Over 71 second half games, Hoskins added only nine more homers while posting an uncharacteristic .318 on-base percentage and a brutal .679 OPS. If batting average matters to you, and in this case I believe it should, Hoskins hit a National League-worst .180 during that same stretch.

Unsurprisingly, the Phillies, too, faltered in the second half. In attempt to spark both the first baseman and the team, hitting coach John Mallee was replaced with Charlie Manuel. But not even that change could stop the synchronized collapses of team and player.

Over the winter, Hoskins began implementing a new setup in which he lowered his hands with a downward-pointed elbow. He also opened up his base a bit and kept his lead arm rested along his front side. A look at the reworked setup:

Certainly, the new setup was quite a deviation from his previous one. In particular, note the differences in the first frame here:

Hoskins talked about the adjustments back in February at the start of spring training:

In the above video, he discusses wanting to be more consistent and repeatable with his mechanics. Unfortunately, live reps (paired with cage and tee work) are required to obtain consistency with a pretty dramatic change in setup. As it turns out, a pandemic doesnt help in that regard.

I was a bit surprised by the changes. Obviously, Hoskins experienced what, for him, had to be unprecedented struggles over the final two-plus months of 2019. Still, I wondered how much of those struggles were more about a snowball effect of doubt, one that caused an erosion of confidence rather than an erosion of his hitting skillset.

I dont think its fair to call his change in approach a panic move because a great deal of thought and reason when into the new setup, but I did wonder about the necessity of such alterations.

For what its worth, Hoskins struggled in limited Grapefruit League action. From my perspective, Hoskins also struggled in the early days of the teams summer camp. He was under a lot of pitches and wasnt consistently squaring balls up. More importantly, he didnt strike me as a player particularly comfortable or confident.

In recent days, hes made some noticeable adjustments with his hand placement. Hoskins talked about the recent swing tinkering with reporters on Tuesday afternoon.

You know, obviously, it was well documented over the offseason. I experimented with some changes in my setup, Hoskins said. Thought it was going well in the spring, but then, obviously, the pandemic hit, and I was unable to get some live reps. Since weve gotten back, its kind of turned more hybrid between those changes and what Ive done in the past.

Again, it has been an extremely limited sample of intrasquad and exhibition action, but Hoskins has looked better leading up to tonights intrasquad game. Apparently, he feels better, too.

Right now, Im feeling pretty good. Im feeling pretty comfortable with it. I feel strong in the box, I feel like Im seeing the ball pretty well, trying to swing at strikes and go from there.

One thing Hoskins has going for him as the 2020 season draws near is the presence of new hitting coach Joe Dillon.

While it is isnt fair to solely lay blame for Hoskins personal struggles (or the struggles of several young Phillies) in 2019 on the previous coaching staff, there does seem to be more confidence in the new regime across the board.

Hoskins, for one, is a believer in Dillon.

I think hes going to have a pretty tremendous impact, honestly. I think a lot of the work that he likes to do and suggests that we do are going to make the game a lot simpler, he said. He really tries to make it hard on us in the cage and in practice, so that when we get in a tight situation in a game against a guy that has 98 and with sink, well have seen something pretty similar to that already in the cage and feel a lot more comfortable when we step in the box.

As we saw throughout the Phillies underwhelming second half a season ago, theyneed Hoskins to be productive.

From this perspective, he needs to be confident in his approach and setup in order for this to happen.

An optimist will tell you these latest changes are a sign that hes getting closer in that regard.

A pessimist will tell you the changes signal self-doubt ahead of a 60-game season in which theres no time to wasteespecially in light of this:

So, whos right?

Ultimately, given his past production and recent comments, Im willing to take a more positive outlook. But were soon going to find out.

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The Evolution of Rhys Hoskins Swing Leads To Hybrid Setup - Crossing Broad

How Jurgen Klopps beautiful evolution led Liverpool back to the top and led fans to believe again – This Is Anfield

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Danzig

So the day finally came, a day many of us thought might never arrive. But here we are, Liverpool are the newly coronated Premier League champions.

I have a slightly obvious theory that the Premier League was a psychological block for Liverpool FC.

Had the old First Division, as it was, continued beyond 1992, then I dont think it would have taken Liverpool 30 years to turn title No. 18 into title No. 19.

The old First Division belonged to Liverpool and the newly formed Premier League didnt. Natural order and old inferiority complexes of others would have soon kicked in.

In the same manner, the old First Division became a weight around the neck of Man United.

An unattainable entity, of which they blew the very last iteration of in 1991/92, when it was theirs for the taking.

Had the old First Division continued, then that psychological barrier would have been harder for Alex Fergusons team to break in 1992/93 than a brand-new league was.

The Premier League represented a blank canvas for a club on Merseyside that was eroding, just as much as it was for a set of habitual underachievers that were finally letting loose in Salford.

The more the Premier League title proved to be agonisingly out of reach, the more impossible the dream seemed to become. While it was a prize that was the same thing as before with a different name, it became an irritation.

If the Premier League was an itch, it was one that was situated right between the shoulder blades.

Roy Evans and Gerard Houllier held fleeting hopes of soothing that itch, while Rafa Benitez and Brendan Rodgers came so very close to doing so.

While Rafa Benitez and Brendan Rodgers would have done it had the wind been blowing in a marginally different direction, given that they didnt, I think it had gotten to the point where nobody other than Jurgen Klopp could have generated the successes of the last 14 months, culminating in this, our first league title in three decades.

Yet here we have a potential springboard now that can not only bring other Klopp successes, but also for those that follow him into the job as Liverpool manager.

A scene has been set for the decade ahead and there is a horizon in view that can be anything Klopp and Liverpool want it to be.

There is no bigger game in football today than Liverpool FC.

They have created a blueprint for others to imitate; they have become the benchmark for what can be achieved if you are a football club that isnt blessed with the biggest chequebook.

Klopp has been shrewd and meticulous in not only the composition of his squad, but in his creation of a community that he has compelled to fight for a cause.

Klopp has invented ingredients that no chequebook can buy and along with hard work, determination and sheer bloody-mindedness, he has delivered the league title.

Frank Lampard is a case in point.

A frustrated Chelsea manager who grouses about arrogance, without the hint of irony of a man who was Jose Mourinhos midfield dynamoMourinho being the only individual that can challenge Fergusons legendary levels of antagonism.

There was also that questionable holiday Lampard took with a couple of England team-mates that spoke of his expertise in arrogance, I suppose.

Petty strops aside, what hurts rivals almost as much as seeing us lift the Premier League trophy is that we have done it on our own terms, in our own way.

For every angst-ridden rival, there is an unashamed admirer of what Klopp has done at Anfield. For instance, AC Milan have approached Liverpool for pointers in how they can break the Juventus stranglehold on Serie A.

Klopps brand of inspiration is infectious.

Liverpools marketing department have run tirelessly with Klopps throwaway remark of turning doubters into believers, but I think there are other, more accurate descriptions that better explain what he has achieved at Anfield.

Trust is everything.

It took the supporters a lot to trust again, after they had bought so emphatically into Rodgers 2013/14 bandwagon. Many of us truly believed that that was going to be the one, only for failure to arguably prove more painful than it had in 2008/09.

After the League Cup final, Europa League final, Champions League final and 97-point Premier League losses, it took a certain sense of endurance to rise again and shake off each new disappointment.

Mentality Monsters is another tagline that has been attached to this Liverpool of ours. A line that is brutally apt for Klopp and his players psychological disposition, which also, handily, fits perfectly on a t-shirt and countless other types of merchandise.

There will undoubtedly be much more to come.

This Liverpool isnt going to be like the Leeds United of 1992 or the Blackburn Rovers of 1995, or even the Leicester City of 2016, whereupon each occasion they climbed their respective mountains only to freewheel it back down the other side straight away.

We have a core of players who are the very best their positions can boast, and an aroma of evolution is in the air.

When it comes to new arrivals or those who choose to go elsewhere, it is the brain more than the brawn that is the most important thing.

Liverpool are a team of thinkers and dancers. Those who fall somewhere between the two need not apply.

We might not have been able to go to the party that was thrown at Anfield on Wednesday night, but it looked the part from my spec, sat at my dads house, where my brother also joined us.

Caught by the emotion of it all, given my dads advancing years, it was a title win that we doubted wed get to share.

Now we believe though.

How Jurgen Klopps beautiful evolution led Liverpool back to the top and led fans to believe again - This Is Anfield

Evolution of the Volkswagen Polo | Pasts entwined – EVO India

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Danzig

If there was a car that was solely responsible for kick-starting evo India magazine back in 2013, it was the humble Volkswagen Polo. You would think a performance car magazine was inspired by the high-octane, fire-breathing supercars of the day but no it was a humble hatchback with aspirations far beyond the daily commute that did the job. Four car enthusiasts from Pune, including editor Sirish, had formed a team called Slideways Industries to participate in the national rally championship. They were the first to develop the Polo for the INRC, the first to rally it, and the first to claim a class win with it as well in its debut rally, no less. While hooning around in the Polo, they realised that despite the abundance of automotive media in India, none of them quite portrayed the enthusiasm they had for cars. They decided to put together a magazine that authentically captured the joy they had rallying, but more importantly, reflected the joy of motoring and the fun that you can have with cars. With their combined expertise, they put together the first issue of evo India in October 2013 and there has been no looking back since!

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Evolution of the Volkswagen Polo | Pasts entwined - EVO India

COVID-19 has disrupted the evolution of US equity market structure, says report – The TRADE News

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Danzig

The global pandemic has interrupted a period of significant change for US trading venues, while also minimising volumes and pushing activity off-exchange, a new report has highlighted.

Greenwich Associates highlighted how coming into 2020, three new stock exchanges had announced their planned entrances and a host of regulatory actions loomed on the horizon.

These included new order-routing disclosures, a delayed Transaction Fee Pilot, potential changes to unlisted trading privileges, and a proposed overhaul of the securities information processors (SIPs) for market data.

The pandemic has halted some of these transformative developments, the research outfit explained.

The report also revealed a major shift in US equity trading volumes away from the exchanges. In 2019, the Trade Reporting Facility (TRF) reported a stable level of off-exchange trading between 35 and 40%. Only 16 days reported having TRF volume above 40%.

However, the Greenwich Associates report confirmed that as of June 2020 reported TRF exceeding 40% had already been recorded 58 times.

Standard market analysis would say that in such volatile times there would be a flight to the stability of the lit exchanges, and initially, this did indeed occur, said author of the report and senior analyst at Greenwich Associates market structure and technology, Shane Swanson. However, as the US equities marketplace proved its overall resilience, off-exchange volume not only rebounded but expanded.

The report confirmed that the role of market makers and retail trading was having a significant impact on this increase of off-exchange trading.

With proper systems, risk hedging and management, some market makers appear to have been able to internalise more trades with the retail market, resulting in the increase in market share moving away from the exchanges, said the Greenwich Associates report.

The pandemic has also halted plans for several exchanges to launch. The new exchange entrant Members Exchange (MEMX) was set to go live this month after receiving regulatory approval from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in May and financial backing from Citi, BlackRock, Wells Fargo, Flow Traders, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Virtu Financial, Citadel Securities, Fidelity Investments, and others.

However, MEMX will now launch in September this year. Other exchanges to experience delays include MIAX PEARL Equities and the Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE).

With massive proposed changes to market data infrastructure on the SIPs, new exchange entrants eager to prove their value, and, of course, the coronavirus itself, the most certain bet is that 2020 will be one for the books, added Swanson.

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COVID-19 has disrupted the evolution of US equity market structure, says report - The TRADE News

Faith-based Groups Must Evolve Messaging to Engage COVID Generation – MissionsBox

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Danzig

CHARLOTTE, NC Faith-based organizations, such as churches and nonprofit ministries, must evolve the way they communicate to engage the COVID generation or risk becoming irrelevant, a leading communications agency said today.

Many of Americas Christian organizations churches, mission agencies, schools, rescue missions and other ministries are looking for effective ways to connect with their audiences and supporters as COVID-19 continues to dominate the news, with no immediate end in sight, according to InChrist Communications (ICC, http://www.InChristCommunications.com), a national branding, marketing, public relations, and crisis communications firm.

The North Carolina-based agency is staging a free, live webinar and panel discussion COVID-19: Your Message for the Next Season July 22 at 2 p.m. EDT to help faith-based organizations develop their own plan to break through the media clutter. Communications and ministry leadership teams can register at http://www.inchristcommunication.com/inchrist-communications-webinar-panel.

Panel experts will include communications leaders from high-profile media organizations, mission agencies, faith generosity movements, donor development consultancies, and churches.

Our research shows many organizations were completely blindsided by COVID-19, and many are still struggling to find their voice, said ICC President Diane Lonsdale. However, three-quarters of those surveyed say theyve increased their marketing and communications during the pandemic, because they realize its vital to keep their audiences engaged.

Whats clear, Lonsdale says, is that faith-based organizations will have to change the ways they communicate with the COVID generation especially with rapidly evolving technology if their message is to stand out and theyre to stay relevant.

Its evident that brand messaging and methods will have to change to accommodate the emotional mindset of the public and the evolution most ministries are going through right now, said Lonsdale, a veteran marketing pro.

Our survey shows three out of every four organizations plan to change the ways they communicate in the coming 6-12 months, Lonsdale said, and more than 80 percent of Christian communications professionals are looking to new ways to use video, social media, and other digital strategies to create the dynamic online connections this generation craves.

Established in 2002, InChrist Communications (ICC, http://www.InChristCommunications.com) provides strategic integrated communications services branding, marketing, advertising, media relations, crisis communications, donor communications, social media, digital media, web for faith-based ministries, missions, churches, and businesses. A free strategy session is available at http://www.inchristcommunication.com/inchrist-communications-webinar-panel.

CONTACT: Ty Mays, 770-256-8710, tmays@inchristcommunications.com

Read more news on World Missions and the COVID 19 Pandemic on Missions Box.

GFAs Statement About Coronavirus

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Faith-based Groups Must Evolve Messaging to Engage COVID Generation - MissionsBox

China launches ambitious attempt to land rover on Mars – Las Vegas Sun

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Danzig

Yang Guanyu/Xinhua via AP

In this photo released by Chinas Xinhua News Agency, spectators watch as a Long March-5 rocket carrying the Tianwen-1 Mars probe lifts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in southern Chinas Hainan Province, Thursday, July 23,2020.

Associated Press

Thursday, July 23, 2020 | 8:30 a.m.

BEIJING China launched its most ambitious Mars mission yet on Thursday in a bold attempt to join the United States in successfully landing a spacecraft on the red planet.

Engines blazing orange, a Long March-5 carrier rocket took off under clear skies around 12:40 p.m. from Hainan Island, south of China's mainland. Hundreds of space enthusiasts cried out excitedly on a beach across the bay from the launch site.

This is a kind of hope, a kind of strength, said Li Dapeng, co-founder of the China branch of the Mars Society, an international enthusiast group. He wore a Mars Society T shirt, and was there with his wife, 11-year-old son and 2,000 others on the beach to watch the launch.

Launch commander Zhang Xueyu announced to cheers in the control room that the rocket was flying normally about 45 minutes later. The Mars rover has accurately entered the scheduled orbit," he said in brief remarks shown live on state broadcaster CCTV.

Chinas space agency said that the rocket carried the probe for 36 minutes before successfully placing it on the looping path that will take it beyond Earth's orbit and eventually into Mars more distant orbit around the sun.

Liu Tongjie, spokesman for the mission, said in a press briefing that the launch was a key step of China marching towards farther deep space. He said that Chinas aim wasnt to compete with other countries, but to peacefully explore the universe.

It marked the second flight to Mars this week, after a United Arab Emirates orbiter blasted off on a rocket from Japan on Monday. And the U.S. is aiming to launch Perseverance, its most sophisticated Mars rover ever, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, next week.

Its amazing that another nation has launched the case for Mars, said Dr. Katarina Miljkovic, a planetary scientist at Curtin University in Australia, adding that the world was no longer in a space race. Its more like this marathon of space that we all want to be running.

Chinas tandem spacecraft with both an orbiter and a rover will take seven months to reach Mars, like the others. If all goes well, Tianwen-1, or quest for heavenly truth, will look for underground water, if its present, as well as evidence of possible ancient life.

This isnt Chinas first attempt at Mars. In 2011, a Chinese orbiter accompanying a Russian mission was lost when the spacecraft failed to get out of Earths orbit after launching from Kazakhstan, eventually burning up in the atmosphere.

This time, China is going at it alone. It also is fast-tracking, launching an orbiter and rover on the same mission instead of stringing them out.

Chinas secretive space program has developed rapidly in recent decades. Yang Liwei became the first Chinese astronaut in 2003, and last year, Change-4 became the first spacecraft from any country to land on the far side of the moon.

Conquering Mars would put China in an elite club.

There is a whole lot of prestige riding on this, said Dean Cheng, an expert on Chinese aerospace programs at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

The launch was gutsy, said Dr. Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The next challenge is for the probe to be "still working when it gets to Mars and survives entry and landing.

Landing on Mars is notoriously difficult. Only the U.S. has successfully landed a spacecraft on Martian soil, doing it eight times since 1976. NASA's InSight lander and Curiosity rover still operate today. Six other spacecraft are exploring Mars from orbit: three American, two European and one from India.

Unlike the two other Mars missions launching this month, China has tightly controlled information about the program even withholding any name for its rover. National security concerns led the U.S. to curb cooperation between NASA and China's space program.

In an article published earlier this month in Nature Astronomy, mission chief engineer Wan Weixing said Tianwen-1 would slip into orbit around Mars in February and look for a landing site on Utopia Planitia a plain where NASA has detected possible evidence of underground ice. Wan died in May from cancer.

The landing would then be attempted in April or May, according to the article. If all goes well, the 240-kilogram (530-pound) golf cart-sized, solar-powered rover is expected to operate for about three months, and the orbiter for two years.

There is uncertainty even after the rover lands on Mars, said Liu Tongjie. For instance, if there is a sand storm, it needs to modify its mode of work to prevent sands falling on solar panel, which will affect its ability to get energy, he said.

Though small compared to America's hulking, car-sized 1,025-kilogram (2,260-pound) Perseverance, it's almost twice as big as the two rovers China has sent to the moon in 2013 and 2019. Perseverance is expected to operate for at least two years.

This Mars-launching season which occurs every 26 months when Earth and Mars are at their closest is especially busy.

The UAE spacecraft Amal, or Hope, which will orbit Mars but not land, is the Arab worlds first interplanetary mission. NASA's Perseverance rover is up next.

At no other time in our history have we seen anything like what is unfolding with these three unique missions to Mars. Each of them is a science and engineering marvel, the Space Foundations chief executive officer Thomas Zelibor said in an online panel discussion earlier this week.

China's road to Mars hit a few bumps: A Long March-5 rocket, nicknamed Fat 5 because of its bulky shape, failed to launch earlier this year. The coronavirus pandemic forced scientists to work from home. In March, when instruments needed to be transported from Beijing to Shanghai, three team members drove 12 hours to deliver them.

While China is joining the U.S., Russia and Europe in creating a satellite-based global navigation system, experts say it isnt trying to overtake the U.S. lead in space exploration.

Instead, Cheng of the Heritage Foundation said China is in a slow race with Japan and India to establish itself as Asias space power.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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China launches ambitious attempt to land rover on Mars - Las Vegas Sun

Teaching community steps up to help Las Vegas teacher who needs a new heart – KLAS – 8 News Now

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Danzig

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) A Las Vegas teacher is in need of a new heart. Kryn Cooper Sanders is a teacher at Goynes Elementary Stem Academy. She has been teaching for 23 years and has been part of the Goynes family since 2005.

Early into last school year, Sanders was diagnosed with the flu and then pneumonia. In March she was diagnosed with viral cardomyopathy.

Her name has been added to the United Network Organ Sharing Transplant List.

In the meantime, A GoFundMe has been set up for her to pay medical expenses and help her family as well:

Were just trying to support her and let her know that she needs to take care of herself and that everything else will get taken care of, said Melissa Rea, teacher.

We just wanted her to know how important she is to all of us she has impacted my life, said Nicole Zobrist, a friend.

I wish I can give her my heart, but I need it still, Finn, one of her students said.

Sanders has four little boys staying with relatives from California. As for her husband he is working in Las Vegas and commuting to California.

So far, her GoFundMe has raised more than $14,850. If you would like to contribute, go here.

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Teaching community steps up to help Las Vegas teacher who needs a new heart - KLAS - 8 News Now

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