Litecoin, Stellar’s Lumen, and Tron’s TRX – Daily Analysis July 13th, 2020 – FX Empire

For the day ahead

Stellars Lumen would need to avoid a fall through the $0.09440 pivot to support a run at the first major resistance level at $0.09876.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Stellars Lumen to break out from last weeks high $0.09776.

Barring another broad-based crypto rally, the first major resistance level and Sundays high $0.097762 would likely limit any upside.

Failure to avoid a fall through the $0.09440 pivot would bring the first major support level at $0.09100 into play.

Barring an extended crypto sell-off, however, Stellars Lumen should avoid sub-$0.090 levels. The second major support level sits at $0.08662.

Major Support Level: $0.09100

Major Resistance Level: $0.09876

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $0.1051

38% FIB Retracement Level: $0.14336518

62% FIB Retracement Level: $0.2050

Trons TRX fell by 0.85% on Sunday. Partially reversing a 1.27% gain from Saturday, Trons TRX ended the week up by 7.24% to $0.01821.

It was also a bullish start to the day. Trons TRX rose to an early morning intraday high $0.018526 before hitting reverse.

Falling short of the first major resistance level at $0.01881, Trons TRX fell to an early afternoon intraday low $0.017921.

Trons TRX fell through the first major support level at $0.01809 before recovering to $0.01800 levels.

While moving back through to $0.018 levels, the first major support level pinned Trons TRX back late in the day.

At the time of writing, Trons TRX was down by 0.52% to $0.018115. A mixed start to the day Trons TRX rise from an early morning high $0.01824 to a low $0.01810.

Trons TRX tested the first major support level at $0.01686 early on.

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Litecoin, Stellar's Lumen, and Tron's TRX - Daily Analysis July 13th, 2020 - FX Empire

The Zeitgeist Movement UK | A Global Grassroots Movement …

Reserve your free ticket here: zdaylondon2019.eventbrite.co.uk The Zeitgeist Movement is a global sustainability advocacy group working through education & explicitly non-violent means to bring the world together for the common goal of human and environmental sustainability. Please join us in London to hear us & as always Z-Day gives members the opportunity to socialise, make []

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The Zeitgeist Movement is a global sustainability advocacy group working through education & explicitly non-violent means to bring the world together for the common goal of human and environmental sustainability. Please join us in London to hear us & as always Z-Day gives members the opportunity to socialise, make new friends, discuss & hopefully put []

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Zeitgeist Day, or Zday for short is an annual global educational symposium that works to amplify a context upon which existing/emerging scientific findings may find a concerted social imperative aiming to create a more truly responsible, sustainable, peaceful, global society. This years theme in London is based heavily on activism, what a person can set []

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Hi everybody! Count down to ZDAY London 2016. Have a look at the program for the day. Theres still tickets available, so make sure you have got them as soon as possible, if youd like to guarantee your seat. Click on program image to zoom in, please. TICKETS here:https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/z-day-london-2016-tickets-21680330452 Thank you! And see you on []

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Were glad to announce that Barb Jacobson from Basic Income UK will be speaking! She has been active in community organising since 1982, a co-ordinator of Basic Income UK and on the board of Unconditional Basic Income Europe, a network of organisations and activists in 25 countries. Basic Income UK is a collective promoting unconditional []

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The Zeitgeist Movement UK | A Global Grassroots Movement ...

How Becoming a Mother Is Like Space Travel – The Nation

The astronaut told ushe didnt look out the windowfor eight and a half minutesas the rocket launched himbeyond our atmosphere.Terrifying things happenedground vanished, boostersexploded, day becamenightand he did not look.He was focusing,he said, on his job.

He was up therea long time. He learnedto sleep suspended. He learnedhow the sunrise lookswhen you watch it every morningfrom the soft dark mouthof space. Many things,he told us, were differentthan hed once expected.Theres no space ice cream,he said. Thats a big hoax.His vision blurred.His body became a study:blood, appetite, cognitive function.

He took many pictures.All of them were beautiful.None of them showedwhat it was like to float.

When the astronaut returnedto earth, more tests were run.Scientists discovered thatseven percent of his geneshad changed in space.He left the planetas himself. He came backas himself, rearranged.

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How Becoming a Mother Is Like Space Travel - The Nation

Why is the speed of light the way it is? – Space.com

Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook and the Flatiron Institute, host of Ask a Spaceman and Space Radio, and author of "How to Die in Space." He contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

We all know and love the speed of light 299,792,458 meters per second but why does it have the value that it does? Why isn't it some other number? And why do we care so much about some random speed of electromagnetic waves? Why did it become such a cornerstone of physics?

Well, it's because the speed of light is just plain weird.

Related: Constant speed of light: Einstein's special relativity survives a high-energy test

The first person to realize that light does indeed have a speed at all was an astronomer by the name of Ole Romer. In the late 1600s, he was obsessed with some strange motions of the moon Io around Jupiter. Every once in a while, the great planet would block our view of its little moon, causing an eclipse, but the timing between eclipses seemed to change over the course of the year. Either something funky was happening with the orbit of Io which seemed suspicious or something else was afoot.

After a couple years of observations, Romer made the connection. When we see Io get eclipsed, we're in a certain position in our own orbit around the sun. But by the next time we see another eclipse, a few days later, we're in a slightly different position, maybe closer or farther away from Jupiter than the last time. If we are farther away than the last time we saw an eclipse, then that means we have to wait a little bit of extra time to see the next one because it takes that much longer for the light to reach us, and the reverse is true if we happen to be a little bit closer to Jupiter.

The only way to explain the variations in the timing of eclipses of Io is if light has a finite speed.

Continued measurements over the course of the next few centuries solidified the measurement of the speed of light, but it wasn't until the mid-1800s when things really started to come together. That's when the physicist James Clerk Maxwell accidentally invented light.

Maxwell had been playing around with the then-poorly-understood phenomena of electricity and magnetism when he discovered a single unified picture that could explain all the disparate observations. Laying the groundwork for what we now understand to be the electromagnetic force, in those equations he discovered that changing electric fields can create magnetic fields, and vice versa. This allows waves of electricity to create waves of magnetism, which go on to make waves of electricity and back and forth and back and forth, leapfrogging over each other, capable of traveling through space.

And when he went to calculate the speed of these so-called electromagnetic waves, Maxwell got the same number that scientists had been measuring as the speed of light for centuries. Ergo, light is made of electromagnetic waves and it travels at that speed, because that is exactly how quickly waves of electricity and magnetism travel through space.

And this was all well and good until Einstein came along a few decades later and realized that the speed of light had nothing to do with light at all. With his special theory of relativity, Einstein realized the true connection between time and space, a unified fabric known as space-time. But as we all know, space is very different than time. A meter or a foot is very different than a second or a year. They appear to be two completely different things.

So how could they possibly be on the same footing?

There needed to be some sort of glue, some connection that allowed us to translate between movement in space and movement in time. In other words, we need to know how much one meter of space, for example, is worth in time. What's the exchange rate? Einstein found that there was a single constant, a certain speed, that could tell us how much space was equivalent to how much time, and vice versa.

Einstein's theories didn't say what that number was, but then he applied special relativity to the old equations of Maxwell and found that this conversion rate is exactly the speed of light.

Of course, this conversion rate, this fundamental constant that unifies space and time, doesn't know what an electromagnetic wave is, and it doesn't even really care. It's just some number, but it turns out that Maxwell had already calculated this number and discovered it without even knowing it. That's because all massless particles are able to travel at this speed, and since light is massless, it can travel at that speed. And so, the speed of light became an important cornerstone of modern physics.

But still, why that number, with that value, and not some other random number? Why did nature pick that one and no other? What's going on?

Related: The genius of Albert Einstein: his life, theories and impact on science

Well, the number doesn't really matter. It has units after all: meters per second. And in physics any number that has units attached to it can have any old value it wants, because it means you have to define what the units are. For example, in order to express the speed of light in meters per second, first you need to decide what the heck a meter is and what the heck a second is. And so the definition of the speed of light is tied up with the definitions of length and time.

In physics, we're more concerned with constants that have no units or dimensions in other words, constants that appear in our physical theories that are just plain numbers. These appear much more fundamental, because they don't depend on any other definition. Another way of saying it is that, if we were to meet some alien civilization, we would have no way of understanding their measurement of the speed of light, but when it comes to dimensionless constants, we can all agree. They're just numbers.

One such number is known as the fine structure constant, which is a combination of the speed of light, Planck's constant, and something known as the permittivity of free space. Its value is approximately 0.007. 0.007 what? Just 0.007. Like I said, it's just a number.

So on one hand, the speed of light can be whatever it wants to be, because it has units and we need to define the units. But on the other hand, the speed of light can't be anything other than exactly what it is, because if you were to change the speed of light, you would change the fine structure constant. But our universe has chosen the fine structure constant to be approximately 0.007, and nothing else. That is simply the universe we live in, and we get no choice about it at all. And since this is fixed and universal, the speed of light has to be exactly what it is.

So why is the fine structure constant exactly the number that it is, and not something else? Good question. We don't know.

Learn more by listening to the episode "Why is the speed of light the way it is?" on the Ask A Spaceman podcast, available on iTunes and on the Web at http://www.askaspaceman.com. Thanks to Robert H, Michael E., @DesRon94, Evan W., Harry A., @twdixon, Hein P., Colin E., and Lothian53 for the questions that led to this piece! Ask your own question on Twitter using #AskASpaceman or by following Paul @PaulMattSutter and facebook.com/PaulMattSutter.

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Why is the speed of light the way it is? - Space.com

NASA is holding a contest to build a better toilet for moon mission – SlashGear

There are a few things you never see in movies that are about space travel. One of those is how exactly astronauts go to the bathroom. Imagine how astronauts that took part in the Apollo moon missions went to the bathroom while they were in orbit and on the surface of the moon. Astronauts aboard the ISS have a complicated toilet system that captures human waste. NASA is set to hold a contest to build a better toilet for astronauts participating in the future Artemis mission to the moon.

NASA hopes to launch Artemis by 2024. The competition is called the Lunar Loo Challenge, and the contest is inviting design entries from people around the globe with the opportunity to win $35,000. Interestingly, the ISS is set to get a new toilet this year called the Universal Waste Management System. While there is a new toilet design available at the space agency, its designed for the microgravity of space and not the heavier lunar gravity of the moon.

The new toilet will be designed to be used on the surface of the moon while a smaller version will be designed for installation on the lunar lander. Core components of the challenge NASA is inviting the public to participate in include figuring out how to capture sewage and smells in both microgravity and on the moon. The $35,000 prize purse will be distributed to three winners.

NASA hopes that the contest will attract radically new and different approaches to the problem of human waste capture and containment. Children can enter the competition as well and will receive non-cash prizes. Teams wanting to participate in the challenge have until August 17 to submit plans for their lunar loo.

Entries submitted will be evaluated on quality, feasibility, and the likelihood that the design can be developed within the next 2 to 3 years, and their innovation. Designs must be able to contain urine, feces (accommodating simultaneous urination and defecation), diarrhea, vomit, [and] menses. Those wishing to enter the contest can do so here.

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NASA is holding a contest to build a better toilet for moon mission - SlashGear

A day of Hope and pride for the UAE: Emiratis, expats excited to watch Mars probe launch – Khaleej Times

Today was all about Hope - and pride, as the UAE comes down to the last few hours before its Mars probe blasts off to space. Citizens and residents were all thrilled to have the opportunity to watch history unfold on Sunday.

Several people told Khaleej Times that they will be staying up late tonight to witness the epic moment, the first-ever interplanetary mission for the Arab world. Hope is slated for lift-off at 1.58am on Monday, after being delayed twice because of adverse weather conditions at launch site on Tanegashima Island in Japan.

Emiratis are brimming with pride, saying the Mars mission opens a new chapter in the UAE's glorious history.

Mustafa Al Husseiny, an Emirati, said: "The mission starts with Hope and it will lead to breakthroughs in science, discoveries, inventions and solutions for existing and future challenges for all mankind.

"As citizens and residents we are proud to be part of this visionary and innovative era of the UAE's growth. No doubt, this will open a new chapter in the glorious history of the UAE, where new frontiers in space travel will be explored."

Read on:Studying Mars climate will help humans understand Earth better: UAE scientist

Al Husseiny, general manager of Golden Loaf, said he is particularly looking forward to the launch countdown that will be done in Arabic. "It is a matter of honour that for the first time in history, Arabic numbers will be used for such a countdown."

Little space dreamers can hardly wait to watch the rocket soar into the sky. Mir Faraz, a 10-year-old who was born and raised in the UAE, is extremely proud of the country's achievements in space exploration. Faraz has avidly followed every space dream the UAE has turned into reality.

Mars probe inspires youth to make impossible possible: Sheikh Mohammed

"I will be staying up with my family to watch it live. I cannot believe that I will get to witness a historic event live. The UAE is a country where innovation is weaved into its DNA," he said.

"In the not-so-recent past, we've seen the state-of-the-art Khalifa satellite being launched successfully and Hazzaa AlMansoori becoming the first Emirati astronaut to reach the International Space Station on September 25, 2019. Now, less than a year later, we will see another dream come true - the launch of the Hope probe.

"Imagine, not even a year since Major AlMansoori's mind-blowing journey and, now, the UAE is set to explore Mars! This unparalleled achievement proves that in this progressive nation, today's dreams are tomorrow's achievements - that there are no limits to dreams and ambition and all goals are achievable."

Studying Mars climate will help humans understand Earth better: UAE scientist

His 13-year-old sister Mishal, who had the privilege of witnessing the launch of AlMansoori into space from the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), said: "As I wait for the launch of Hope Probe, I have a sense of dj vu. I had the privilege to be one of the lucky ones to have been present at MBRSC less than one year ago. I stood there enthralled, my eyes glued to the enormous screens. I've never seen so many people being happy at the same time and that made me understand what it feels like to see a dream being realised."

Mishal added that the launch was the hope people need in today's challenging times. "I strongly feel that this launch could not have come at a more appropriate time. The literal meaning of 'Amal' is 'Hope' in Arabic. With the whole world facing a pandemic and witnessing unprecedented losses, the launch of the Hope probe gives the message that this trying time would soon come to an end and that there is a future to look ahead to. I look forward to this event as a harbinger of positivity and optimism not just for the UAE but for the whole world."

Astronomy centres wait for 'new dawn'

Shaneer Nusrat Siddiqui, former project coordinator at Al Thuraya Astronomy Centre, said this mission is "undoubtedly a matter of pride for all residents of the UAE".

"With the way the UAE is heading towards space science, the country is set to become a key player in space industry in the coming years. Especially from the education, commercial and business point of view, it is a very new industry and, definitely, the UAE is going to have a major share in this industry."

Interest in the UAE's space industry has spiked this year, Siddiqui said. "For example, for astronomy summer camps, so many international companies are approaching the UAE market, which is a good sign. This Hope mission will be a push to the business with space-related technology and public-oriented space activities will boom."

Siddiqui said he is hoping that in the next few years, space tourism could be more accessible for the rest of the public.

Varsities look forward to the wealth of data

With the probe just a few hours away from launch, UAE varsities are looking forward to receiving the data from the payloads of the Hope Probe.

Sarath Raj, project director of the Amity University Dubai Satellite Ground Station and programme leader of Aerospace Engineering at Amity University Dubai, said: "Our aerospace students and faculty that actively work on the Amity Satellite Ground Station can play a large role in data evaluation of the Hope probe in 2021 - to analyse temperature profiles, properties of water, ice and dust in the Martian atmosphere and more. This is a great learning opportunity for our students and will inspire them to follow their space goals."

Roshan Rajesh Bhatkar, an aerospace engineering student at Amity University, said the mission would definitely encourage the youth to pursue careers in space research and development.

"I am looking forward to the success of the Hope mission, and hope to use their learnings and data to create a virtual Mars environment simulator on our University campus," Bhatkar said.

Echoing the sentiments, Ali Asgher, another aerospace engineering student, said: "I am extremely delighted by the initiatives taken by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre. I am thrilled to watch this country succeed and reach new heights in the field of space. As part of Amity University Dubai's Amisat ground station development team, I am looking forward to contributing to the mission by tracking the Emirates' Hope probe live from our ground station."

nandini@khaleejtimes.com

Continued here:

A day of Hope and pride for the UAE: Emiratis, expats excited to watch Mars probe launch - Khaleej Times

Duckweed is an incredible, radiation-fighting astronaut food – Space Daily

Current industrialized food systems were optimized for a single goal - growing the maximum amount of food for the least amount of money. But when room and supplies are limited - like during space travel - you need to optimize for a different set of goals to meet the needs of the people you are trying to feed.

NASA and the Translational Research Institute for Space Health asked my lab to figure out how to grow an edible plant for long-term space missions where fresh, nutritious food must be produced in tight quarters and with limited resources. To do this, we turned to a plant called duckweed.

Duckweed is a small floating plant that grows on the surface of ponds. It is commonly eaten in Asia but is mostly considered a pest plant in the U.S. as it can quickly take over ponds. But duckweed is a remarkable plant. It is one of the fastest-growing plants on Earth, is the most protein-dense plant on the planet and also produces an abundance of important micronutrients. Two of these micronutrients are the inflammation-fighting antioxidants zeaxanthin and lutein. Zeaxanthin is the more potent of the two, but is hard to get from most leafy greens since fast-growing plants accumulate zeaxanthin only under extremely bright lights.

I proposed to the Translational Research Institute for Space Health that in addition to maximizing nutritional, space and resource efficiency, we also try to optimize the production of these antioxidants.

With just a little bit of experimentation, our team determined that under relatively low-intensity light - less than half as intense as midday sun on a clear summer day - duckweed accumulates more zeaxanthin than other fast-growing plants do in full sunlight while still maintaining the same incredible growth rate and other nutritional attributes that make it the perfect plant for a space farm.

We are also testing another strategy that would grow duckweed in even lower-intensity light but would supplement those light levels with a few pulses of high-intensity light. In other plants, my team discovered that this can trigger high amounts of zeaxanthin accumulation and fast growth and, relevant to a spaceship, would cost less energy.

From these experiments, we are planning several customized growth conditions to optimize zeaxanthin production for a variety of different applications - whether it be a spaceship a greenhouse or even outdoors.

Why does it matter?Due to the ionizing radiation in space, astronauts are susceptible to chronic inflammation and diseases caused by cellular oxidation. Zeaxanthin and lutein have been shown to fight radiation damage as well as eye disease, another common health problem that astronauts experience.

Many essential micronutrients have a finite shelf life - often only a few months. As astronauts begin going on longer missions, the only way they will be able to get these antioxidants is to grow them on board.

What still isn't known?While we know that intense light makes duckweed and other plants produce zeaxanthin, plants quickly remove it from their leaves when light levels drop. To meet the specific challenge of producing large amounts of zeaxanthin, more work is needed on how to coax leafy greens to retain zeaxanthin post-harvest.

What's next?Our project used duckweed grown in sterile environments - we used plants stripped of the microbes that normally occur in the water on which duckweeds float. Since researchers know that optimizing soil microbes can increase plant productivity, our next goal will be to explore opportunities to further enhance duckweed productivity by experimenting with beneficial microbial communities.

Duckweed is already grown for many uses on Earth, and duckweed salad might be a high-protein staple in the diets of many future space explorers. But this work is also proof that win-win solutions to food production are possible.

With the right know-how, it is possible to make small changes to a few variables in how plants are grown and get them to produce more micronutrients. Similar approaches taken with other crops could benefit people across the world, not just astronauts. On Earth, slight changes in how people grow food, backed by scientific research like ours, offer opportunities to greatly improve food production systems such that they need less, produce more and keep people healthier.

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Duckweed is an incredible, radiation-fighting astronaut food - Space Daily

Hitting the Books: How to huck a human into low Earth orbit – Engadget

The phrase orbital mechanicslike nuclear particle physics or the theory of relativityis something that makes many peoples eyes glaze over. The average person thinks that subjects like these are far too complex to understand. But if you strip away all the math and simply try to understand what is going on, they are actually not that hard to grasp. As for orbital mechanics, it is the physics of spaceflightit describes how objects move relative to one another in space. Once you understand the mechanics of how planets and spacecraft interact with gravity, its easy to make a spacecraft do what you want it to do.

If you take a baseball and throw it straight away from yourself, it will eventually hit the dirtit runs out of speed, and then gravity pulls it to the earth. If youre a major league pitcher, your throw will probably go farther than mine because it launches off your hand faster. But gravity eventually does its thing, and the ball will come down to the earth. Now, lets build a machine to throw the ball fasterit will go farther, of coursebut the ball will always curve down and hit the dirt. That curve the ball follows, by the way, is known as a ballistic path. Because of gravity, any object thrown or fired into the air will eventually be pulled back to the earth. With every increase in speed, the ball goes farther. If we change the ball to a projectile, and start firing it from a gun, then it will go farther still.

Naval guns can fire projectiles so far that they go over the horizon before falling back to the earth (hopefully on their targets). That phrase, over the horizon, is key to understanding orbital mechanics. The spherical shape of Earth means that as you travel horizontally, the surface is always curving down. If you can throw the object fast enough that its drop, its ballistic path, is equivalent to Earths curvature, then it will never hit the planetand voil it has gone into orbit!

It takes a tremendous amount of speed to reach that point where your object is not going to hit the earthin the neighborhood of 25,000 feet per second (thats over 17,000 miles per hour) if youre talking about flying in the region known as low-Earth orbit (LEO). Lets call that anywhere from about 100 miles above the surface to about 400 milesgive or take. Thats where the Space Shuttle did all its work. If we take our imaginary baseball or projectile and keep upping the speed, eventually it will go so fast that it never falls back to Earth. The speed at which that occurs is known as escape velocity. We never worried about escape velocity with the Shuttleit didnt have the capability to go that fast. Unlike the Apollo spacecraft that took men to the moon, the entire Shuttle spacecraft was always coming back to Earth. It would have taken approximately its own weight in fuel to propel the Orbiter to the moon. (I asked my navigators to figure that out one night)

So the first element of orbital mechanics isnt that hardmake an object move fast enough relative to the planet, and it will never hit the planet. It will just keep going around and around and arounduntil, of course, something slows it down to where it begins dropping toward the surface. What might slow it down? Well, one thing might be running into the thinnest wisp of the atmosphere, the widely spaced molecules of gas that reach for hundreds of miles into space. The atmosphere doesnt just end abruptly, it gradually gets thinner and thinner as you move away from the planets surface. It never really goes away completely, it just eventually fades in density until it no longer has any effect. Just about 100 miles above Earths surface, there are enough air molecules that if a spacecraft runs into them, an infinitesimal amount of energy is lost with every collision. You cant measure the energy from any one collision, but if you add up enough of them you can eventually discover that you have lost some speed. And that speed loss adds up.

The slower you go, the more you fall back to Earth. So the effect of running into the atmosphere is that it drags you back down. If you dont add some velocity with a rocket motor burn every once in a while, you wont stay in orbit. It doesnt take a lotjust a couple of feet per second every daybut if you dont account for it, your mission isnt going to last very long. We use this effect to our advantage, of courseits how we bring a spacecraft home. If you point your spacecraft so that when you ignite an engine it slows the craft down significantly, then you will drop lower into the atmosphere where the gas is thicker, which then slows you down even moreeventually to the point where you have been captured by the atmosphere, and you fall to the earth. This is what happens when a meteor becomes a meteorite: it generates enough heat from the friction of the atmosphere to quickly burn up, which creates the streak we see in the night sky. Of course, burning up on reentry is the last thing we want a spacecraft to do, so we have to enter in a controlled fashion. Well talk about that later.

For now, lets remember that if we go fast enough horizontally, we end up orbiting Earth rather than falling back to the surface. The faster you go, the higher you go. The slower you go, the lower you go (until you fall out of orbit and are captured by the planets atmosphere). These are the basics of orbital motion (or mechanics). With that mental picture, you can understand almost anything else well talk about when it comes to the Space Shuttles trajectory.

To get the Shuttle into orbit, you have to do two things: get it out of the atmosphere and accelerate it to orbital velocity. In the simplest terms, the first part of that is done with the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs). These two monsters had enough energy to loft the entire Shuttle stack up to an altitude where the air was so thin as to be negligible. They did this in just a little over two minutes. Each SRB put out about 3 million pounds of thrust, for a combined total of 6 million pounds. By comparison, the three Shuttle main engines contributed another half-million pounds of thrust each, for a total of 1.5 million poundsa much smaller portion of the overall thrust available at liftoff. Not insignificant, of course, but stillthe SRBs dominated during what we referred to as the first stage.

When the SRBs dropped off, the vehicle was up where the air was not a real factor, but it was only going a couple thousand feet per second horizontally. It was now the job of the main engines to accelerate the ever-lightening stack (the Orbiter and External Tank) to that magic number of 25,000 feet per second to get it to stay in orbit. That ever lightening part is importantas you burn fuel, you get lighter, but with a constant thrust (about 1.5 million pounds, remember?) you are going to accelerate more quickly. Thats a consequence of Newtons basic law of motionif the force remains the same and the mass decreases, the acceleration goes up! Now the Orbiter was designed for a maximum acceleration of three times the force of gravity (3 Gs). A G is about 32 feet per second per second, so 3 Gs is just about 100 feet per second per secondyoure really gaining velocity quick! When the acceleration reached that point, the only thing you could do to keep from over stressing the vehicle was to throttle the engines back, and that is what we did. In the last two minutes or so, the throttles would come back to make sure we didnt break anything.

In the simplest terms, when you reached the desired velocity to make orbit, you shut down the engines and coasted into orbit. It sounds simplebut it isnt. Lets stretch our knowledge of orbital mechanics a bit. Lets assume that you are in a circular orbitthe same altitude above Earth at all points in the orbit. If you decide that you want to go higher, then you have to increase your speed. This is done with a thrust event, known as doing a burn, because we thrust by firingburningan engine. If you squint and allow yourself to approximate, doing a burn to increase your speed by 1 foot per second will increase your altitude by about a half mile. Thats not an instantaneous gainwhat you are actually doing is driving yourself uphill until you reach that new altitude, which you will reach when you are halfway around Earth. But you wont remain there. Think of the ballistic path that a ball takes when you throw itit first increases in height, then gravity pulls it back down, and so it comes back down again. The same thing happens when you increase the Orbiters velocityit will go uphill to the new altitude, but it eventually comes back to where it startedright to the altitude where you increased the speed. It so happens that youll reach your new altitude halfway around the world, and then youll be back where you started when you complete the orbit. It will continue in this elliptical path for as long as you let it.

However, if we want to raise the orbit all the way around, we can simply thrust again by the same amount when we reach our new height (referred to as the apogee). We will have raised our altitude at the starting point by a half mile as well, meaning that we will be in a new circular orbit a half-mile higher than when we started the pair of burns. We will have also increased our velocity by 2 feet per second total.

The math is really convenient if youre trying to do it in your headif you want to raise the orbit by 10 miles, you simply burn 20 feet per second (fps) initially, then another 20 fps at the new apogee, and voilyoure in a new circular orbit 10 miles higher, and it cost you a total velocity change (referred to as delta V) of 40 fps. Raising and lowering the orbit is how you execute a rendezvous. But for now, its important that we get into, and then know how to get out of, orbit.

Lets take a look at the very end of the initial launch. There we are, thrusting all three main engines, accelerating at 100 feet per second every second. Knowing what we now know about orbital mechanics, we know that for every second we burn the main engines at this point, we are raising the orbital altitude by 50 miles when we get around the planet. We need about 100 miles of altitude to reliably stay out of the atmosphereconsider it the minimum safe altitude we want to end up in. The International Space Station is at an altitude of about 200 miles, the Hubble Space Telescope is about 350. The Orbiter lived in the altitude band between 100 miles and 350 milesa difference of just 250 miles. In terms of orbital insertion speed, that is just five seconds of burn time.

A full ascent, from the launch pad to Main Engine Cutoff (MECO) was about eight and a half minutes, or about 510 seconds. The orbital altitude range of the vehicle meant that cutoff would be plus or minus five seconds, which is a very small percentage of that total burn time. Miss it by 1 percent and we were either not in orbit or we were going way too high, without enough thrusting capability to circularize the orbitor to get home. So MECO was criticalyou had to time it exactly right in order to get precisely into the orbit you wanted, and we considered precise to be within a couple of miles.

No problem, right? I mean, throw the switch at the right time to cut off the engines, and youve got it made. Well its not that simple, because you dont just shut off an engine thats putting out a half million pounds of thrust. It doesnt go from full thrust to zero in an instantit tapers off. Every engine tapers off a little differently, so you need to know the exact shutdown characteristics of each engine. You can measure these characteristics on a test stand on the earth, and then use that information to figure out when to command the engines off, in fractions of a second, so that you end up with exactly the amount of thrust you need to end up at the target altitude. When you look at the hundreds of variables involved, you quickly realize that its going to take a lot of smart people to figure this out. Fortunately, there are lots of engineers and physics guys who are smart enough to model it and come up with the right answer. In the earliest of rocket flights, way back to Mercury, they were happy just to know that theyd made it into orbit. In the Apollo and Shuttle eras, we needed to have precise control of where we were going to end upand the accumulation of rocket flight experience made that possible.

Now those who are following closely have already figured out that spaceflight is much more complicated than this. Recall the basics of orbital mechanics, remembering that what goes up must come down. If we have thrusted ourselves from the ground up to an orbital altitude, say 200 miles, we are only at our apogee. Like throwing a ball straight up into the air, were going to be coming back down to our starting altitude. This will happen when we get all the way around Earth. The nitty gritty, of course, is that we need to do some shaping of the trajectory to make sure we arent going to come all the way back down to the ground. Remember we need to travel horizontally at a high enough speed so that we dont fall back to the surface. If we really want to end up in a circular orbit (and not an ellipse), we need to do a burn about halfway around the planet. Since we go around the planet in ninety minutes, it means that forty-five minutes after launch we need to do that burnand we cant use the main engines to do it. For that, we switch to our Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engines.

The OMS engines are mounted in pods on the upper rear corners of the Orbiter. There are two of them, and each produces about 8,000 pounds of thrust. You can burn them together, or separately, depending on how much thrust you need and how finely you want to manage the final velocity. These engines burn propellant stored in their pods, the same kind of fuel and oxidizer used for the attitude control jetsin fact, the tanks for the OMS and Reaction Control System (RCS) jets can be shared (or interconnected) between the two systems, if need be. Once you have shut down the main engines, and jettisoned the big External Tank (about eight and a half minutes into the flight), the OMS and RCS are all that you have. Because these engines are so much smaller than the main engines in terms of thrust, you have to burn them longer to get the same amount of velocity changein fact, the acceleration available from the OMS engines is barely noticeable inside the vehicle.

But getting back to circularizing the orbit. In the simplest terms, when you get halfway around Earth from your launch site (over the Indian Ocean when launching from Kennedy Space Center), you point yourself in a direction to thrust ahead, and then burn the OMS engines to add the velocity that you need. It can be in the neighborhood of 100 feet per second or more. In the earliest Shuttle flights, we were happy to see that it worked to keep us in orbitlater on, we had learned enough about trajectory shaping and burn times that we were pretty unhappy if we missed our orbital parameters by more than a couple miles. We used ground and space tracking to confirm the orbit we needed to be up in, and we added what we learned into planning for every flight until we became very good at putting the Orbiter exactly where we wanted it to be.

Once you made it to orbit, changing that orbit was simply a matter of adding or subtracting velocity by adding speed with a burn or taking it away (you did that by thrusting backward). When you wanted to come home, you needed to thrust backward. Thats called retrograde. This is where we got the term retrofire, which was done in the early years of space travel with retrorockets. The backward thrust lasts until you slow down the vehicle enough to lower its perigee to about 80 miles, which is where you are assured of being captured by the atmosphere. If you decrease velocity by too much, you lower the perigee by too much, and that means you enter the atmosphere too steeply. Too steep of an entry means that you decelerate too quickly and have to dissipate your orbital energy in a shorter amount of time, which means that you get much higher temperatures on the skin and you burn up. Too little velocity change means that you enter the atmosphere at too shallow of an angle, and you could effectively skip off its surface, much as a rock skips off a pond. The problem with a skip is that you scrub off speed, which makes you slower, so you drop back into the atmosphere more steeply the second time, and eventually you end up with that steep entry again and burn upsort of how those stones always drop into the water and sink. By now, however, you can see that to bring the Orbiter home from a 200-mile orbit, you need to drop the perigee (the low point of the orbit) by about 120 miles (200 minus 80), and to do that, you need to slow it down by about 240 feet per second. If you filled the Orbiters tanks before launch, then you had approximately 600 feet per second total orbital maneuvering capability (the total delta V) that could be used throughout the missionto raise and to lower the orbit. The key to mission planning and execution was to use that delta V wisely.

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Hitting the Books: How to huck a human into low Earth orbit - Engadget

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy: 10 Ways The 2005 Movie Was Different To The Book – Screen Rant

This year is a pretty special year for The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, as it has been 42 years since the original BBC radio series was first aired. Douglas Adams later expanded his off-beat space-opera into a series of novels which further cemented his work as one of, if not the most, successful and popular comedic science-fiction series of all time.

RELATED: 7 Sci-Fi Books Better Than The Movies (& 8 That Are Surprisingly Worse)

It soonafter developed into atelevision show and video game but it was only in 2005 that a movie was released. As with each reiteration of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, there are always some notable differences.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is known for its off-beat and sardonic humor and one moment that exemplifies this is Ford convincing the councilman to take Arthur's place in front of the bulldozer that is meant to be demolishing his house.

Ford reasons that since Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) was going to stay in front of the bulldozer the whole time anyway, his place can easily be taken up by someone else in order to allow for things like going to the pub. Unfortunately, this hilarious and ridiculously odd moment is missing from the movie and Ford (Mos Def) instead gives the demolition crew a few beers to stop them from working.

For a book that is set in space, the crew of the Heart of Gold does very little space travel and only visit one planet, Magrathea.

Yet, in the movie, the group not only goes to Vitvodle VI, the small planet of the Jatravartid people, but they also travel to the dreary homeworld of the Vogons, Vogsphere.

As all fans of the series know, the most important thing a hitchhiker has is a towel. In the book, this appears as a quaint entry in the guide and it explains the practical and more importantly, the psychological value of having a towel. Yet, throughout the book, Ford and Arthur don't really make use of their towels.

The movie completely skips the towel entry but throughout, Ford and Arthurare rarely seen without their trusty towels. They use them as scarfs, shields, and even as a weapon to catch a spatula-shaped creature that slaps anyone with an idea on Planet Vogsphere.

Humma Kavula (John Malkovich) and Vice-president of the Galaxy Questular Rontok (Anna Chancellor) are two characters that only exist in the film. Kavula is a former political opponent of Zaphod's (Sam Rockwell) and a leader of the Jatravartid religion. They believe that the Universe was sneezed out from the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure. Rontok acts as Zaphod's second in command and is also madly in love with him.

While Kavula is completely new to the series, the Jatravartids appear in the second book in the series The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Although Adams died before the movie was released, he still had substantial input on the film and he specifically created Kavula for the movie.

One of the most noticeable changes in the film was the continuous presence of the Vogons, a truly unpleasant species with an absurd devotion to bureaucratic order. In the book, they are Arthur's first introduction to a truly alien species and serve as a way for Ford and Arthur to get on to the Heart of Gold.

RELATED: The Wizard Of Oz: 5 Things The Movie Changed From The Book (& 5 That Stayed The Same)

They become the main antagonists of the movie. Along with Rontok, they are tasked with retrieving the stolen Heart of Gold. They even take Trillian (Zooey Deschanel) to Vogsphere and nearly kill the Paranoid Android, Marvin.

Magrathea is a planet home to a luxury planet building service and on it, Arthur discovers that Earth is actually a complicated computer program meant to figure out the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.

In the film, Ford, Zaphod, and Trillian go through a portal, where they get to meet Deep Thought and are given the Point Of View Gun, while in the book, they are held captive in a catalog room. Notably, the movie version sees Arthur going to the new Earth to have a meeting with the mice in an exact copy of his house, while in the book, it all takes place in a waiting room belonging to the Magratheans.

The Point of View Gun was also another one of Adams' original ideas. A rather ingenious weapon, it allows the user to transfer their point of view onto their victim. It was designed by Deep Thought after it was commissioned by the Intergalactic Consortium of Angry Housewives to get their husbands to understand them better.

RELATED: 10 Best TV Adaptions Of Sci-Fi Books

While on Vitvodle VI, Humma Kavula forces Zaphod into retrieving the gun from Magrathea by holding his other head hostage. Kavula wants to use it in order to convert more people to his religion.

No movie is complete without a love story and the film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy certainly held nothing back. In the book, Arthur and Trillian's relationship cools off slightly and it doesn't feature strongly in the overarching story.

However, their relationship is far more intense in the movie and Arthur is completely and sometimes embarrassingly infatuated with Trillian. She eventually realizes that she feels the same way. Adams was also behind this significant progression of their relationship for their story to be better suited for film.

Out of all the characters in the book, Zaphod Beeblebrox is perhaps the most different and his portrayal in the film is often the most criticized by fans. The film version of Zaphod is a lot more obnoxious and idiotic and overall lacks the depth and complexity of the book character.

More importantly, the film completely skipped over the important and intriguing revelation that he only became President of the Galaxy to steal the Heart of Gold and that he had taken out parts of his brain to hide from the scans that he needed to take in order to become president.

Most movies have a happy ending and The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is no exception as the destroyed Earth gets replaced. After Arthur had squashed the mice and Marvin had defeated the Vogons with the Point of View Gun and his depressive thoughts, Earth carries on as if nothing happened.

Yet, this doesn't happen in the books, and Earth is lost forever. That is until the fourth book, So Long and Thanks for All The Fish, where the Earth mysteriously returns.

NEXT: 10 Classic Pieces Of Literature With The Most Cinematic Adaptions

Next 5 Best Sci-Fi Movie Climaxes Ever (& 5 Worst)

Lorinda is a freelance writer and proud Slytherin from South Africa. She has been a lover of film and TV long before she could even tie her shoelaces. She spends her days bulking up on her knowledge of random things and defeating her enemies with baked goods.

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The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: 10 Ways The 2005 Movie Was Different To The Book - Screen Rant

The secret US military device for seeing the past within a specific location – Daily Express

Founder of the Centre for the Study of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence Doctor Steven Greer described a strange mechanism that was developed at the US secret weapons laboratory at White Oaks in Maryland. During his research he described how a military advisor for the US Navy informed him of a device that could extract information in a specific location from "a century ago, or even a thousand years ago".

Speaking to Express.co.uk Doctor Greer said: "One of my military advisors was with naval intelligence.

"In the old days there was a naval facility at White Oaks outside Washington DC.

"The facility had an electronic device that could extract from any point in space something that had happened in the past in that location.

"They called it the white noise of space-time."

The UFO researcher explained this time travelling project was developed in the 1970s.

Doctor Greer described it as an electronic system "that allows you to see what happened an hour ago in the space that you are sitting in at that time".

He added: "You can also extract the information about what happened a century ago, or a thousand years ago, or a million years ago."

Doctor Greer, who is one of the world's leading authorities on extraterrestrials said that he had interviewed many "whistle blowers" about advanced technologies that seemed to work via quantum entanglement.

Quantum entanglement describes how two particles that are separated by vast distances in space, or time, can be linked and how their movements mysteriously correlate.

READ MORE:UFO sighting: Comet NEOWISE anomaly is 'absolutely extraordinary' UFO

He said: "I briefed former ministers of defence on these projects.

"There are highly compartmentalised projects that have not been revealed to even members of the UK Government.

The UFO researcher suggested that the machines tapped into "what mystics used to call the Akashic record".

The Akashic record is described as the storage place for all human events, thoughts, words, emotions, and intent that have ever occurred in the past, present, or future.

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As yet there is no scientific evidence for the existence of the Akashic record.

Doctor Greer describes that the Akashtic record stores everything that ever happened in a specific space.

He said: "This record is stored in interdimensional space and there are interfaces such as the one deveoped at White Oaks in Maryland that can interface with this realm.

"It now turns out that there are actually electronic systems that can access the Akashic record, this means everthing that has ever happened in a precise location.

"A member of my team was in the Maryland base in he 1970s and wittnessed this electronic device that would extract information from any volume of space."

Doctor Greer is an explorer of the science of what he deems "conciousness technologies".

A new research and development frontier that combines meta physics with quantum mechanics.

He describes it as the development of how "electronic systems are inferfacing with the quanta of thought".

He references Elon Musk's Neuralink project as an example of this.

The neurotechnology that the Neuralink company are progressing will ultimately allow a low latency broadband link where thoughts are able to control electrical devices.

But, with the development of artificial intelligence there is the risk of the reverse, where machines begin to control human thoughts.

The American ufologist believes that advanced civilisations from beyond our solar system are using conciousness technologies that use the properties of quantum mechanics to travel to, and appear on, the Earth.

He cites these technologies as explanations for UFO sightings and other paranormal events such as apparitions and alien contact.

This can be seen in the recent documentary about his work called, "Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind: Contact has Begun".

The documentary is now available on Amazon.

According to John Archibald Wheeler of Princeton University the quantum mechanic laws state that atomic particles exist in state of constant possibility.

For instance, they can be anywhere, everywhere or nowhere at all in both the dimensions of time and space.

What anchors them into position is the active thought of the observer, such as a scientist in a laboratory.

Doctor Greer, who has briefed presidents and heads of state on the ET phenomenon, suggests the mysterious properties associated with the quantum world can be used to allow beings to travel through time and space.

Doctor Greer said: "The mind itself is not limited to our cerebral core, or bodies or space and time."

"The CIA developed remote viewing in the 1970s were the officiers were able to see into the Soviet Union remotely.

"They used conciousness as a spy craft and the results were quite successful.

"The intelligence community took this very, very seriously.

"Neither time nor space limits awareness."

Doctor Greer has an app called "CE5 Contact" standing for 'Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind Contact'.

The app is of interest to those who wish to explore the cross-section between consciousness and technology.

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The secret US military device for seeing the past within a specific location - Daily Express

SpaceX’s Starlink Will Be Up And Running In 2020: Determining The Winners – Seeking Alpha

This article first appeared on Trend Investing on June 16, 2020; therefore, all data is as of this date.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPACE) (private) ('SpaceX') has been rapidly launching satellites for its subsidiary Starlink, with an end goal to blanket the earth with between 12,000 and 42,000 small low earth orbit satellites, to provide faster speed, low latency, global internet coverage. This will give millions of people access to the internet that may have not been able to access conventional land-based internet services, usually due to their remote or undeveloped location.

Starlink will blanket the earth with low earth orbit satellites

Source

A Starlink satellite in orbit around the earth

Source

A report states:

Starlink could bring cheap, fast internet to remote areas, airplanes, ships, and cars, plus make international teleconferencing and online gaming nearly lag-free... The goal is to finish the project in 2027, thereby blanketing the Earth with high-speed, low-latency, and affordable internet access.

Starlink's low orbit satellites to circle 550 kms above the Earth and to provide 'low latency' internet

Source

Starlink states:

With performance that far surpasses that of traditional satellite internet, and a global network unbounded by ground infrastructure limitations, Starlink will deliver high speed broadband internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable. Starlink is targeting service in the Northern U.S. and Canada in 2020, rapidly expanding to near global coverage of the populated world by 2021.

Note: Starlink's satellites will offer better internet performance due to their large number and low orbit location. This leads to industry low latency.

Soon customers in the US will be able to use Starlink's satellite internet service

Source

Starlink is a fully owned subsidiary of SpaceX. SpaceX is ~54% owned by Elon Musk. Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL) and some private funds are significant shareholders. A report states Alphabet owns 7.5% of SpaceX.

Wikipedia states:

In January 2015, SpaceX raised US$1 billion in funding from Google and Fidelity, in exchange for 8.33% of the company, establishing the company valuation at approximately US$12 billion. Google and Fidelity joined prior investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Founders Fund, Valor Equity Partners and Capricorn. In July 2017, the Company raised US$350 million at a valuation of US$21 billion... By May 31, 2019, the valuation of SpaceX had risen to $33.3 billion. In June 2019, SpaceX began a raise of US$300 million, most of it from the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan.

You can read more here on Starlink's plans to IPO.

SpaceX - Internet service provider fees

Note: As of April 2020, there are 4.57 billion internet users or 59% of the global population.

Customers in locations not able to get high speed/low latency or freedom of access to the internet (includes areas where the internet is unreliable or too expensive)

Those needing low latency will benefit

Internet giants will have more customers

It is looking increasingly likely that SpaceX may, in the foreseeable future, offer trips around the world in just under an hour. This may start with VIP cargoes, VIP travel, and eventually expand to a larger scale. An Inverse.com report quotes:

Beyond exploring planets like Mars and beyond, Musk also explained it could be used for Earth-to-Earth trips. These manned Earth trips wouldn't be pretty. Where a space-bound mission would fit 100 people in comfortable cabins, these Earth missions would pack 1,000 people into a configuration Musk compared to Space Mountain. The time savings, however, could radically transform humanity's conception of time and travel: London to New York (5,555 kilometers): From seven hours, 55 minutes by plane, to just 29 minutes by Starship.

At this stage, SpaceX is winning the race to provide the first truly global market satellite internet service. The key to their service will be 'global reach' and 'low latency'. Customers of Starlink will mostly come from low population density areas that have poor or no internet service, and Elon Musk expects this to be about 3-5% of the internet service provider market share. This means that Starlink will complement existing land-based internet services, including 5G, rather than compete against them. If built out by 2027, the Starlink service will achieve remarkable global reach, thereby offering the internet to most parts of the planet.

If successful, the big winner should be SpaceX, and hence Elon Musk. Those companies that gained access to SpaceX stock such as Alphabet and others will be smaller beneficiaries.

The other big winners should be the stocks that dominate the internet. They could potentially reap millions more customers, the real number being hard to determine at this stage.

Finally, other industries that benefit from the internet with 'global reach' and 'low latency' will benefit. Some examples would be search and rescue and salvage (lost people/planes/ships), satellite navigation companies, digital nomads and online workers, autonomous vehicles especially in remote areas, military applications, high-frequency traders, gamers/eSports, and so much more.

As usual, all comments are welcome. Feel free to share some ideas of stocks/sectors/countries that may be winners from Starlink.

Thanks for reading the article. If you want to sign up for Trend Investing for my best investing ideas, latest trends, exclusive CEO interviews, chat room access to me, and to other sophisticated investors. You can benefit from the work I've done, especially in the electric vehicle and EV metals sector. You can learn more by reading "The Trend Investing Difference", "Subscriber Feedback On Trend Investing", or sign up here.

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Disclosure: I am/we are long TSLA, FB, GOOG. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Additional disclosure: The information in this article is general in nature and should not be relied upon as personal financial advice.

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SpaceX's Starlink Will Be Up And Running In 2020: Determining The Winners - Seeking Alpha

Cloud Computing in Automotive Market is Expected to Value at USD 2.00 billion in 2018 and it is Expected to Register a CAGR of 20.8% During the…

Global cloud computing in automotive market report 2020-2025 also includes qualitative insights such as drivers and restraints. Data analytics and connected solutions are leading higher adoption of cloud computing in automotive sector.

The automotive sector has gone through the number of radical changes along with various important advancements in technology. Thus, the traditional vehicles with the basic functionalities have now transformed into connected cars with the huge number of modernized features that are not restricted to cloud computing, Big Data Internet of Things, as well as Artificial Intelligence. In addition, growing agility and automation need for bringing improved consumer experience as well as raised cost return and cost savings on investment are some of the major factors responsible for the global Cloud computing in automotive market growth. On the other hand, data prone to lack of skilled labor as well as cyber-attacks may hinder the global cloud computing in automotive market growth.

Request a PDF sample of this report:https://www.adroitmarketresearch.com/contacts/request-sample/981

The global market size for cloud computing in automotive industry is anticipated to reach USD 9.62 billion by 2025. The major driver for the adoption of cloud computing services is the cost efficiency over the traditional on-premise infrastructure. Additionally, the massive growth in data generation through multiple business functions and specific focus on customer-centric applications for improved customer engagement are some of the other factors driving the growth for the cloud computing market. Rapid development and integration of technologies such as IoT, AI, and Blockchain have enhanced the adoption of cloud computing services across the industries.

In addition, IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) is helping organizations to improve infrastructure performance as well as scalability. However, the major features offered by the IaaS comprise dynamic scaling, automated administrative tasks, network connectivity, and platform virtualization. Furthermore, IaaS allows organization to influence their infrastructure without paying for the building the physical infrastructure. Moreover, it also offers mobility, flexibility, scalable and easy access to the number of applications and improved collaborations to aid businesses focus on the core business processes.

Another important aspect of cloud computing in automotive industry is adoption of green technology. Automotive industry is constantly encountering environmental issues and todays consumers are aware and finding alternative forms of transportation. With help of cloud, vehicles can embrace green technology for efficient driving and reduce CO2 emissions. Cloud computing can develop the required systems and processes to build and design electric vehicles.

Browse more detail information at:https://www.adroitmarketresearch.com/industry-reports/cloud-computing-in-automotive-market

Furthermore, the consumer goods and retail segment if one of the fastest-growing segment in terms of adoption of innovative as well as emerging technologies such as big data analytics, cloud computing, digital stores, DevOps, and social networks. The numbers of factors driving the demand of global Cloud computing in automotive market are increasing purchasing power of consumers as well as the need to satisfy consumer expectations. In addition, cloud technologies and online retailing have expressively disrupted the consumer good and retail segment which led to the cloud computing adoption especially for security services, backup, as well as storage. This factor also contributed to the global Cloud computing in automotive market growth.

According to the geographical front, the global Cloud computing in automotive market is divided into North America, Europe, South America, Asia pacific, and MEA. North America holds the largest global Cloud computing in automotive market share. Moreover, connected cars are becoming more advanced technology and the cloud computing enables automotive software vendors as well as car manufacturers to be more responsive. On the other and, cloud applications can manage operations, improve transparency, increase governance, and offer manufacturers a highly competitive edge.

The global Cloud computing in automotive market is extremely competitive owing to the top service providers offering the high-quality service across the globe. Some of the service providers of global Cloud computing in automotive market include SAP, Microsoft, AWS, IBM, Google, Alibaba, Oracle, and many others.

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Cloud Computing in Automotive Market is Expected to Value at USD 2.00 billion in 2018 and it is Expected to Register a CAGR of 20.8% During the...

Buy Alphabet and Amazon Stock, Analyst Says. Your Head Should Be in the Cloud. – Barron’s

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One of the core themes behind the years remarkable run-up in technology shares is the accelerated adoption of cloud-based computing servicesalmost all of them stemming from the power and flexibility built by the leading public cloud operators, Amazon.com, Microsoft and Alphabet.

Mizuho Securities analyst James Lee asserts in a new research note that new contract activity for cloud computing has recovered to 85% of pre-Covid levels, and should accelerate into the years second half.

Enterprises are becoming more urgent on cloud migration, with emphasis on database management, cybersecurity and automation, Lee writes. Demand increased from core verticals such as financial services and retail. The biggest surprise was health care, which has been lagging in cloud computing, but Covid-19 accelerated adoption due to telemedicine and digitizing patient data.

Lee repeats his Buy ratings on both Amazon (ticker: AMZN) and Alphabet (GOOGL), lifting his target price to $3,450 from $3,100 for Amazon, and to $1,650 from $1,560 for Alphabet.

We believe that higher utilization for data migration to the cloud and database management applications is favorable for Amazon Web Services as it has the largest infrastructure service, the most advanced technology, and a comprehensive ecosystem for native database management, he writes.

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And he says that increased demand from the retail sector is modestly positive for Alphabets Google Cloud Platform.

For retail, the goal of investment in the cloud is to transform the retail environment by digitizing inventory and automating payments in order to compete with e-commerce pure plays, he writes. For health care, which has been lagging in cloud adoption, we believe it reached an inflection point recently as hospitals are migrating to cloud due to increased demand for telemedicine, [customer relationship management] and patient database management.

Amid a broad rally in tech shares, Amazon was up 1.3%, to $3,242.90 Monday afternoon and Alphabet was up 0.9%, to $1,553. Microsoft (MSFT) slipped 0.2% to $213.16, while the Nasdaq Composite Index added 0.7% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.7%.

Write to Eric J. Savitz at eric.savitz@barrons.com

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Buy Alphabet and Amazon Stock, Analyst Says. Your Head Should Be in the Cloud. - Barron's

COVID-19 Update: Global CLOUD COMPUTING IN RETAIL BANKING Market is Expected to Grow at a Healthy CAGR with top players China Unicom, Intuit, IBM,…

Due to the pandemic, we have included a special section on the Impact of COVID 19 on the CLOUD COMPUTING IN RETAIL BANKINGMarket which would mention How the Covid-19 is Affecting the Industry, Market Trends and Potential Opportunities in the COVID-19 Landscape, Key Regions and Proposal for CLOUD COMPUTING IN RETAIL BANKING Market Players to battle Covid-19 Impact.

The CLOUD COMPUTING IN RETAIL BANKINGMarket report is one of the most comprehensive and important data about business strategies, qualitative and quantitative analysis of Global Market. The research report gives the potential headway openings that prevails in the global market. It offers detailed research and analysis of key aspects of the CLOUD COMPUTING IN RETAIL BANKING market. The market analysts authoring this report have provided in-depth information on leading growth drivers, restraints, challenges, trends, and opportunities to offer a complete analysis of the CLOUD COMPUTING IN RETAIL BANKING market. Moreover, the report gives nitty gritty data on different manufacturers, region, and products which are important to totally understanding the market.

Key Companies/Manufacturers operating in the global CLOUD COMPUTING IN RETAIL BANKING market include:China Unicom, Intuit, IBM, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Ellie Mae, Infosys, Ucloud, Veeva Systems, SAP, Bankinter, BBVA, Huawei, Microsoft, TCS, China Telecom, Salesforce, Medidata, Alibaba, Kingsoft, Intel, Google, Wipro, Workday, Oracle and More

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On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split into:Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)Platform as a Service (PaaS)Software as a Service (SaaS)On the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate of CLOUD COMPUTING IN RETAIL BANKING for each application, including:PersonalFamilySmall and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMES)

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Regions Covered in the Global CLOUD COMPUTING IN RETAIL BANKING Market: The Middle East and Africa (GCC Countries and Egypt) North America (the United States, Mexico, and Canada) South America (Brazil etc.) Europe (Turkey, Germany, Russia UK, Italy, France, etc.) Asia-Pacific (Vietnam, China, Malaysia, Japan, Philippines, Korea, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and Australia)

Years Considered to Estimate the CLOUD COMPUTING IN RETAIL BANKING Market Size:History Year: 2015-2019Base Year: 2019Estimated Year: 2020Forecast Year: 2020-2026

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COVID-19 Update: Global CLOUD COMPUTING IN RETAIL BANKING Market is Expected to Grow at a Healthy CAGR with top players China Unicom, Intuit, IBM,...

Multi-cloud environments: Explore the pros and cons – TechTarget

The one-size-fits-all cloud model is no longer feasible for most enterprises. They want to optimize overall performance and application agility, while cutting cost and bolstering security -- and many organizations are turning to a multi-cloud strategy to do so.

Multi-cloud computing boasts a number of intriguing advantages, as well as notable drawbacks that users must weigh before adopting this type of architecture. Daryl Plummer, VP and distinguished analyst at Gartner, is a believer in the multi-cloud movement.

"Multi-cloud is necessary, and I believe multi-cloud will get better and better," he said. "There's a lot of great things going on [in the cloud market] despite the potential problems people might run into."

But before organizations go all in on multi-cloud, they must evaluate every aspect of this architecture -- good and bad -- so they know whether to implement this cloud strategy.

Organizations want it all -- flexibility, scalability, and cost and performance optimization. Multi-cloud can often address those demands better than on-premises infrastructure or single-cloud computing.

Plummer attributes three main advantages to this type of cloud infrastructure.

Different cloud providers have different strengths. This can be limiting when you use a single provider, but you can use it to your advantage with multi-cloud computing, Plummer said.

For example, Google Cloud is known for its containerization and AI services. "If you're in the Google developer ecosystem, then you've been in Kubernetes from the beginning -- because they basically came up with [the idea]. The same thing with AI, you get advantages by being associated with their particular ecosystem," said Plummer.

Developers who work with different clouds will have a deeper knowledge of each platform as well as earlier access to tools from those providers. Being up to date on offerings from multiple clouds enables users to optimize performance and management on all their clouds.

In order to attract and retain customers, cloud providers must compete on price, functionality, discounts, consulting and more. If an enterprise can viably use multiple clouds to create its cloud infrastructure, it has the power to negotiate and force vendors to compete for its business.

"Your ability to get the right deal for [your company] is measurably impacted by your willingness to work with different cloud providers."

Cloud providers must constantly evolve and expand their services and capabilities to remain competitive. And to attract new users, they often have to leapfrog their competitors to make it worth the effort to switch providers.

Your ability to get the right deal is measurably impacted by your willingness to work with different cloud providers. Daryl Plummer

If your enterprise wants to advance its IT capabilities in a continuous and seamless manner, it needs to take advantage of this vendor competition, while avoiding excess disruption, Plummer said.

Organizations can then create business value by utilizing the best of what's available across cloud platforms. "That turns into money [and] into new opportunity much quicker than you might imagine," Plummer said.

Multi-cloud is not the end-all, be-all of IT infrastructures. While it is a great choice for many organizations, it's not without its flaws. While acknowledging the benefits of multi-cloud, Plummer also highlights three drawbacks associated with this cloud strategy.

Deploying multiple clouds is complex. IT teams can struggle to configure services on one cloud, let alone configuring services on two or three clouds, Plummer said.

Multi-cloud architectures are not for everyone, especially if developers and administrators aren't prepared for the complicated management required by running more than one cloud.

It's a myth that organizations can uniformly optimize costs with a multi-cloud strategy. While it is possible, it is more complicated than you might think.

"If you do it across multiple cloud players, [you] usually wind up spending more initially, and it takes a lot longer to figure out how to optimize costs in that new model, even with better negotiation," Plummer said. This is not to say that if you adopt a multi-cloud strategy you won't be able to optimize your cost, but there is a learning curve to the process.

If you're overeager to go multi-cloud, you run the risk of picking the wrong clouds for your enterprise.

"If you think spending money, people and time to get deeply embedded in one cloud is hard, what if you pick the second or third one and it's the wrong one, so you have to pick and choose again?" Plummer said.

Enterprises do face a potential downside to cloud providers' constantly evolving platforms. Even if one cloud is a good choice for your workloads now, it doesn't necessarily mean it will continue to be.

Still, even if you pick the wrong cloud, it doesn't mean you should give up, Plummer said. A good multi-cloud strategy will involve some degree of trial and error as you try to identify the best fit for your organization.

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Multi-cloud environments: Explore the pros and cons - TechTarget

The Truth About Bankruptcy | DaveRamsey.com

You did everything you could to avoid it. You cut back on spending. You sold stuff to make payments. Youve been eating rice and beans for months now. But even with all the work, youve come to one painful conclusionyou may need to file bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy is confusing, not to mention emotionally devastating. Its a serious decision, and we dont want you to have surprises along the way. Here are some things you need to know before you take the first step.

Related: If you need help right now, contact one of our financial coaches.

Bankruptcy is a court proceeding where you tell a judge you cant pay your debts. The judge and court trustee examine your assets and liabilities to decide whether to discharge those debts. If the court finds that you really have no means to pay back your debt, you declare bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy can stop foreclosure on your home, repossession of property, or garnishment of your wages. Bankruptcy cancels manynot allof your debts.

Bankruptcy doesnt clear:

When you file for bankruptcy, creditors have to stop any effort to collect money from you, at least temporarily. Most creditors cant write, call or sue you after youve filed. However, even if you declare bankruptcy, the courts can require you to pay back certain debts. Each bankruptcy case is unique, and only a court can decide the details of your own bankruptcy.

There are two main types of bankruptcy for consumers. Youve probably heard of them: Chapter 13 and Chapter 7.

Chapter 13 means the court approves a plan for you to repay some or all of your debts over three to five years. You get to keep your assets (stuff you own) and youre given time to bring your mortgage up to date. You agree to a monthly payment plan and must follow a strict budget monitored by the court. This kind of bankruptcy stays on your credit report for seven years.

Take control of your money with a FREE Ramsey+ trial.

Related: Dave explains where a Chapter 13 bankruptcy falls in the Baby Steps.

Chapter 7 means the court sells all your assetswith some exemptionsso you can pay back as much debt as possible. The remaining unpaid debt is erased. You could lose your home (or the equity youve put into it) and your car in the process, depending on what the court decides. You can only file Chapter 7 bankruptcy if the court decides your income is too low to pay back your debt. This type of bankruptcy stays on your credit report for 10 years.

Related: Dave explains the difference between Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy.

Youve probably heard of other types of bankruptcy, like Chapter 11. Its typically reserved for businesses. You may also hear of Chapter 12 bankruptcy, which is for farmers and fishermen.

For specific information about bankruptcy laws in your area, visit the United States Courts website. There youll find information on the process and where to find help in your area. There is a bankruptcy court for each judicial district in the United States90 districts in all.

Lets not sugarcoat it: Bankruptcy takes a huge emotional toll on a person. It ranks up there with divorce, loss of a loved one and business failure. Beyond the emotional impact, here are other effects of declaring bankruptcy:

Your bankruptcy becomes public domain.This means your name and other personal information will appear in court records for the public to access. Thats right . . . potential employers, banks, clients and businesses can access the details of your bankruptcy.

Filing bankruptcy is expensive.Filing fees for Chapter 13 bankruptcy will cost around $310 plus attorney fees, which can be anywhere from $1,500 to $6,000. For a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, youll shell out $335 for filing fees and $835 to $3,835 for an attorney.(1)

Buying a home could be more complicated.Unless you pay cash for a home, it could take one to four years before you qualify for a mortgage loan.(2)

Filing for bankruptcy is a big deal, so you dont want to go into the process blind. Here are some things you need to do before you take any action:

Make a list of all debts, from your mortgage to student loans to child support. For each of those debts, find paperwork to verify the amounts. If you talk to anyone (lawyer or financial coach), youll need this information.

Before you file, try your best to pay off your debt. Get on a bare-bones budget. Talk with creditors about lowering interest rates or getting better terms. Move to a smaller place. Get an extra job to pay the bills. You get the idea.

A financial coach can give you a different, unbiased perspective on your financial situation. They can talk with you about alternatives to bankruptcy and create a customized plan to get you out of the red. And they can give you encouragement and that extra kick in the right direction!

If youve done everything you can and still cant get your head above water, bankruptcy may be your only option. Filing is complicated and involves lots of paperwork and the potential for mistakes. Working with a pro is your best option for walking through the process.

No matter where you are on the spectrum of bankruptcyfrom thinking about filing to starting over after filingwe have the resources to help you establish life-long smart money habits. Here are three ways we can help:

First, if your family decides to file bankruptcy, well be here to help you during the process and give you the tools to restore your hope after your bankruptcy is discharged. Well never get angry with someone for filing bankruptcy. Its a difficult, emotional situation. We get that.

Second, if you havent filed yet, we have coaches available to meet with you to find a better option than bankruptcy if at all possible. Our ultimate goal is to help you find financial peace and change your family tree. Bankruptcy is a setback, but your situationno matter how badis never hopeless.

Third, if you think theres any possible way to avoid bankruptcy, wed like to introduce you to Ramsey+, a real money plan for real people. Start a free trial today.

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The Truth About Bankruptcy | DaveRamsey.com

Fracking Firms Fail, Rewarding Executives and Raising Climate Fears – The New York Times

A recent report by Carbon Tracker estimated that the cost to plug a typical shale well is close to $300,000 far higher than the estimates used by companies, regulators and financial analysts because the wells are far deeper than conventional ones.

Based on the new estimates, MDC, the company that paid its C.E.O. the $8.5 million in consulting fees, could require more than $40 million to clean up its 140 wells if they are permanently closed, according to an analysis by Greg Rogers, a co-author of the report and a former adviser to BP and its auditors, Ernst & Young.

Extraction Oil & Gass cleanup costs for its 1,000 wells could exceed $200 million, in excess of its reported liabilities, Mr. Rogers estimates. It may be the case that many of the U.S. frackers now heading for bankruptcy were insolvent before Covid-19 if environmental liabilities were properly accounted for, he said.

The bankruptcies have painful consequences for some employees as well.

This past January, a crew of engineers was upgrading a well head at a Chesapeake Energy site in east central Texas when leaking natural gas ignited. Three workers died; a fourth worker sustained catastrophic and permanent injuries, according to a lawsuit he later filed.

Chesapeake Energy, which declared bankruptcy last month after paying out executive bonuses, might also be environmentally insolvent, Mr. Rogers estimates, with potential cleanup costs of $1.4 billion, nearly as much as its year-end market value of $1.6 billion. Chesapeakes filings show that it has set aside only $41 million in bonds to cover the cleanup of its 6,800 wells.

Now, however, all lawsuits against the company have been put on hold by the bankruptcy process. The families lawyers are pushing to resume their cases and argue that settlements should be resolved separate to creditors claims against the company. Chesapeake declined to comment.

You have large corporations protecting and enriching their top executives, while theyre cutting corners and putting their companies in a death spiral, said Ryan Zehl of Zehl Associates, who is representing Justin Cobb, who was severely injured, and the family of Wendell Beddingfield, who died in the explosion.

Ordinary Americans, the people who need the money the most, are being left behind and neglected, he said.

Excerpt from:

Fracking Firms Fail, Rewarding Executives and Raising Climate Fears - The New York Times

Exemption from examination: Academic commitment or populist politics? – The Times of India Blog

Academic realm remains an easy prey for populist politics and demand for exemption from examination amid fighting with the Corona crisis is no exception. Confrontation of a genuine health emergency, arising out of communist Chinas irresponsible infliction of COVID-19 Pandemic on humanity, presupposes preferences for an enlightened national interest to partisan gains. The entrenched vested interest, however, constantly tries to deprive the country of a cohesive approach for a successful way out of this global predicament, as demonstrated in questioning the national lockdown in the name of livelihood-issue, and now resisting the much needed examination process on the grounds of life exigency and concerns related to accessibility. At the centre of this mischief is the regressive nexus between status quoist public intellectual and power monger hungry opposition.

On 6th July 2020, the UGC advised all the institutions to hold examinations for terminal semester or final year by September-end. In an immediate response, four non-BJP ruled states West Bengal, Odisha, Maharashtra and Punjab have objected to the UGCs guidelines and expressed their inability to comply. AAP led Delhi government cancelled all state university upcoming exams including final years, and its Deputy Chief Minister, Manish Sisodia, further announced award of the degree on the evaluation parameters, decided by the universities and the institutions. Senior Congress leader Mr. Rahul Gandhi joined the chorus of protest and said that exams should be cancelled and students be promoted on the basis of their past performance. Echoing to the demand of the opposition, Sukh Deb Thorat, the then UGC Chairperson between 2006 and 2011, in a letter to the current UGC Chairperson, Dhirendra Pal Singh, on 9th July 2020, made a case for the cancelation of the exams, which in itself is self-explanatory on how far he can go devastatingly in terms of global damage to the genuinely benefitting axioms and educationally uplifting norms for the students of our country. In addition, the UGCs vide letter dated 6th July, 2020 on the guidelines on examination and academic calendar for the Universities in view of Covid-19 Pandemic has surprisingly been totally ignored by him and the like on the heavy cost of true forms of goodness and welfare for the students without making any sense of real concern and cognizance of the matter related to the entire student fraternity, and that too in terms of going to any extent in the matter of opposing Govt. policies and scheme in any way knowingly.

A look into the merit of this case for exam cancelation indicates more of a political motivation rather than any genuine pedagogic or public intent. Since there is durational uncertainty of the current Corona crisis, postponing examinations for indefinite period is not a viable option. When it comes to access issues, there is ample evidence of using online mode for carrying forward teaching and learning exercises in a significant scale. One may argue for augmenting scale and scope of digital provisioning, instead of doing away with the application of newer modes altogether.

Examination is a part of ethical responsibility of the university, and exams have the major roles to play in providing necessary qualities in life such as hard work, patience, creativeness to the students, enabling them to overcome their weaknesses in order to be successful in life. The absence of examination or promoting them without examination will have a negative impact on the students further prospects. Examination and evaluation are unavoidably necessary steps in the careers of all our students. It evaluates students skills, knowledge, attitudes and values in them. It is a way to measure knowledge, and also helps measure their attainment of learning alongside. This also promotes competitiveness among students and helps in developing students personality and confidence.

COVID-19 induced emergency should not allow academic ethics to be undermined in any way. Examinations are needed to uphold academic integrity. Since extraordinary situations need (extraordinary) flexibilities, UGC has offered lenient modes of examination in the absence of perfect solution. With the current pandemic shaking the fundamentals of our system, UGC has also tried to move ahead with the precautionary measures while ensuring equity, validity, transparency and fairness altogether. It has framed the revised guidelines for the terminal examinations in the universities, considering the larger interests of the students for their academic/career progression and job placement related issues. It has given the option for offline or online or a blended mode, keeping in mind the health, safety and security of the students. This will not only give them more confidence and satisfaction but also will ensure the merit and lifelong credibility with respect to wider global acceptability in time to come.

Evaluation is of utmost importance to save our students from the adverse impact of COVID-19 situation. The career readiness and proficiency along with the future competitive examinations will be adversely affected if evaluation and assessment is scrapped altogether. It is, therefore, necessary to proceed with the examination for the final year students, taking measures to ensure equality and fairness. As assessment is essential for further education and employment of students, the degree obtained without evaluation would lead students degree, devoid of credibility in the country as well as abroad. Passing out without an actual examination deprives the brighter students of showcasing their competencies, which may adversely affect their chances of better placement and admission in the premier institutions round the globe.

From a global perspective, not having exam would have a huge repercussion on the prospective students looking abroad for their further study. With many international universities asking for final semester grade sheet, last semester hour grade points, not having an exam would be detrimental to those students. Institutions like Australian National University have a method of ranking students from all over the world against each other, who apply for the same programme. With many countries opting for exams either online or take-home format, Indian students would be put to disadvantageous category.

Examinations have an important role in the process of learning, reflecting acquisition of certain amount of knowledge by students in some branches of study. A students success in an examination, therefore, helps employers and others assess his/her mental or general ability. Exam results are one of the most important criteria for university admissions and employment requirements for many companies. The interruption of exams was delaying decisions on students progression and their graduation degree, while affecting their access to labour markets, carrying individual and broader socio-economic impact. High stake exams are considered as an important outcome of the education system. It is difficult to do away with exams students depend upon them; parents believe in them; employer looks at the mark sheet, so does the wider global community. In the current fragile situation, UGCs emphasise on conducting examinations for the terminal years is crucial, for at the end of the day when they come back to the university or the employer, they have not lost so much.

Finding solution to the problem instead of retreating from it is need of the hour. Not having exams will have far reaching consequences, leading to the collapse of countrys teaching learning process. The future growth of Students community is the prime consideration behind making any choice from the various existing alternatives of teaching-training process and condution of examinations in todays changing environment. The UGC has taken a larger perspective of academic credibility, global acceptability, and future progression into consideration. Its examination guideline has given a way forward instead of getting away with the problem

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Exemption from examination: Academic commitment or populist politics? - The Times of India Blog

Bringing Medicine To The Masses – Port Washington News

With the effects of the pandemic resulting in upwards of 130,000 deaths in the United States as of press time, the healthcare industry has adapted to the fact that patients are not visiting hospitals and primary care givers for regular checkups and screenings.

Technology has allowed health professionals to bring medicine to the masses at a time when people are fearful of catching COVID-19. According to the American Hospital Association, 76 percent of U.S. hospitals currently connect with patients and consulting practitioners at a distance through the use of video and other technology. Almost every state Medicaid program has some form of coverage for telehealth services, and private payers are embracing coverage for many telehealth services. Board-certified internal medicine physician and wellness expert Dr. Eddie Fatakhov isnt surprised at how quickly telemedicine is being embraced by the medical industry.

Telemedicine is a great solution for individual practitioners who are looking to be more available to patients as newer health systems are offering wider-reaching networks, he said. This expansion of providers marries supply with patient demand and effectively allows patients easier access to clinical care and even emergency and intensive services. Telemedicine is also a great reducer of cost. Hospital costs are expensive, so hospital visits are too. By eliminating the need to go to the hospital for care that can be handled remotely, costs scale down across the board.

Months before coronavirus became a household word, Northwell took the technology plunge when it launched a mobile app thats an Uber for blood draws back in November. Called LabFly, the app lets patients schedule blood draws at home or their workplace. It was rolled out in Brooklyn, Long Island, Manhattan and Staten Island and the Bronx as well as other surrounding New York City metro areas by the end of 2019. The app-based service enables patients a convenient and private alternative to having their blood taken at a traditional patient service center, Northwell Health officials said. To use the app, patients enter their demographic information, take a photo of their insurance card and paper prescription, then choose a day and time slot to schedule a visit from one of more than 150 Northwell Healths phlebotomists. On the day of the appointment, a patient can view the location of the lab technician similar to tracking rides on apps like Uber and Lyft. Most health insurance will cover the fee for lab testing and there is a $20 convenience fee, which includes transportation and sample collection, the health system said. Northwell Health Labs developed the app in partnership with software company MphRx and is based on its Minerva platform, an open-standards-based platform. And while lab companies such as VeniExpress offer at-home blood draws, Northwell Health officials said LabFly is the first at-home blood draw mobile app launched by a health system.

At Northwell Health Labs, our goal is to bring innovative ideas to the table, said Dr. Dwayne Breining, Northwell Health Labs executive director in a statement. This app is a new way to give our patients access to the quality experience they would receive at one of our patient service centers but in their living room or place of work. Whether its young children who are anxious about a blood draw, busy professionals or someone youre caring for, this app is a convenient way to help fulfill our patients needs,

Mobile health vans have also taken on greater importance in bringing needed services to residents. Nassau County Legislator Joshua A. Lafazan (DWoodbury) recently partnered with Advanced Cardiovascular Diagnostics to offer mobile COVID-19 antibody testing aboard their mobile testing facility, which was stationed in the parking lot of the James H. Vernon School on Tuesday, July 14. Cardiovascular screenings were offered in addition to COVID-19 testing. Lafazan emphasized the importance of a program like this with COVID-19 testing being so crucial in helping identify coronavirus cases and getting those people quick treatment and immediate isolation to prevent the virus spread.

COVID-19 has profoundly impacted all of our lives during the past few months, and it is imperative to ensure that the curve remains flattened so that Nassau County can protect its residents and continue to safely re-open, he said. Antibody tests are an important tool we can use to protect our families and loved ones, and Im pleased to work with Advanced Cardiovascular Diagnostics to bring this convenient clinic to our community.

Nassau County Executive Laura Curran recently announced a renewed push for more cancer and breast cancer screenings in Nassau County via the use of mobile mammovans. With breast cancer, cervix and colon cancer screenings down between 86 to 94 percent since the pandemic lockdown began, Curran joined forces with Dr. Anthony Boutin, CEO of Nassau University Medical Center (NUMC), and local breast cancer survivor Geri Barish, executive director of Hewlett House and president of 1 in 9: The Long Island Breast Cancer Action Coalition, to announce a renewed push for more cancer and breast cancer screenings in Nassau County.

This is a nationwide trend and raises concerns that deadly cancers may go undetected if screening appointments arent scheduled soon, Curran said. We need to get the word out that early detection through screenings is the best way to successfully treat breast cancer. We wouldnt want someone to be diagnosed down the road with late stage cancer because they were afraid of COVID-19.

The mammovan will be traveling around the county to give residents greater access to screenings that features 3D state-of-the-art technology that allows radiologist to look though the tissue to better identify suspicious lesions, as opposed to a 2D composite flat view. Multiple images are taken at different angles to create a view through slices in a 3D image, with results in less than 24 hours.

Residents can call the Cancer Screening Program at 516-572-5701 to set up an appointment at no-cost or low-cost at the mammovan.

Originally posted here:

Bringing Medicine To The Masses - Port Washington News

Keenan Cortez: Words can be weapons or they can be medicine – Joplin Globe

The most powerful weapon in the universe is deployed on a regular basis these days.

I'll get back to that statement in a moment.

I haven't written in a few days. It's been really busy at work and tons of honey-do chores at home. The Cortez garden is crazy this year, and I am doing my best to keep it under control. I'm sure I have picked a minimum of 50 cucumbers and just as many jalapenos. So busy I have been.

I am currently involved in many conversations conversations about race, politics and, yes, mask ordinances conversations that have taken many directions, have been educational and have ended at times with agreeing to disagree.

It has been so humbling to be involved in so much during a time when so much is happening. I hope that I have been able to add value to some of these conversations and discussions. I have also tried to listen well during these discussions.

It is hard to listen well sometimes. It's impossible to listen well when you can't wait to be the next one to talk, so I have tried my best to hear the person who is talking.

Empathy is also valuable when talking and listening. To be empathetic to someone who may be saying something you don't necessarily agree with is hard. We tend to be mounting our rebuttal rather than listening with an empathetic ear: "Did you really hear them?"

A lot of the conversations I have been involved in lately have had a touch of emotion attached to them. Lack of empathy ... poor listening skills ... add a pinch of emotion and BOOM, you have the birth of a creature that feeds on destruction, death and division. Unfortunately, I have been in those discussions too. They never end well and most always lead to gaping wounds in one's spirit and soul.

Was that the goal when the conversation started?

So what is this weapon I started this conversation with? Well, that weapon that is on full display and being reloaded as often as humanly possible these days: words. The words that we speak to one another can cut deep. They can rip open a wound that can cause serious issues if not attended to right away. They can pierce right through your gut, causing you to double over in excruciating pain. They can produce a wound so deep that healing seems impossible.

Those same words have healing power. They can bring about an effective antibiotic that can wash away the most stubborn infection. They can lift up the most lowly spirit. They can turn that frown upside down.

I ask you: The next time you find yourself in a conversation, remember that within you lies the most powerful weapon known to mankind. The way we treat each other and the words we speak are more powerful and deadly than any virus we will ever experience in our lifetimes.

Speak life, speak encouragement, speak seeking to lift someone rather than the alternative.

You can do it. I know you can.

Keenan T. Cortez is mayor pro tem of Joplin.

We are making critical coverage of the coronavirus available for free. Please consider subscribing so we can continue to bring you the latest news and information on this developing story.

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Keenan Cortez: Words can be weapons or they can be medicine - Joplin Globe