WVU Robotic Technology Center to play crucial role in the future of in-space assembly – WBOY.com

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MORGANTOWN, W.Va. The West Virginia University Robotic Technology Center (RTC) is playing a role in the space race that is underway throughout the globe.

This is according to a WVU press release, which stated that Maxar Technologies, a trusted partner and innovator in earth intelligence and space infrastructure, has announced more than $2 million in funding for the RTC, from a $142 million NASA funded project. The project is performing the first in-space assembly demonstration of a satellite using a lightweight robotic arm. RTC will be building that robotic arm called the Space Infrastructure Dexterous Robot (SPIDER) and it will be attached to the satellite servicing spacecraft bus being built by Maxar.

Well myself and all of the team, we all are extremely happy and very excited to be part of this effort. We are very passionate to our work and we really like to be part of an effort which promotes the development of space robotics for the future.

Giacomo said a big problem with space travel is that it is difficult to get big objects from Earth to space, so there is a great demand to have the ability to assemble objects in space.

During the demonstration, SPIDER will assemble multiple antenna reflector elements into one large antenna reflector, according to the release. This revolutionary process allows satellites, telescopes and other systems to use larger and more powerful components that might not fit into a standard rocket fairing when fully assembled.

This mission is very important for us to establish the data for this metric and allows us to increase the path and open the door to more important things to do, like building a base on the moon and moving toward Mars and doing everything that humans can accomplish, Marani said.

Building in space is something very important, Marani said, but also making sure that the work can be done with robotics because that is a far more efficient strategy. This mission, he said, moves space exploration one step closer toward having robotic systems being able to do the work humans currently do in space.

This is something very important, Marani said. The more we can trust the robots to do a job for us, the more this field will go well.

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WVU Robotic Technology Center to play crucial role in the future of in-space assembly - WBOY.com

Scientists Have Developed a Way to Make Human Skin More Protected from Space Radiation – Universe Today

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Earth is a radiation cocoon. Inside that cocoon, the atmosphere and the magnetosphere keep us mostly safe from the Suns radiaition. Some ultraviolet light gets through, and can damage us. But reasonable precautions like simply minimizing exposure can keep the Suns radiation at bay.

But space is a different matter altogether. Among the many hazards it poses to astronauts, ever-present radiation is one that needs a solution.

Now a team of researchers have developed a new biomaterial to protect astronauts.

This new development is centered around melanins, pigments that are found in most living things on Earth, including animals like us. Melanins are responsible for red hair, for turning fruit brown, and for darkening skin after exposure to the Suns uv radiation. And its that last point thats crucial to this work.

The title of the new study is Selenomelanin: An Abiotic Selenium Analogue of Pheomelanin. Nathan Gianneschi, a Professor of Chemistryat Northwestern University, and associate director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology, led the research. Wei Cao from the Department of Chemistry at Northwestern is the papers first author. The study is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

As ambitious space travel plans take astronauts further from Earth for longer periods of time, the astronauts face increased risks. Leaving Hollywood-style catastrophes aside, some of the hazards are chronic rather than acute. Just like here on Earth, protection from solar radiation over time is important.

Given the increased interest in space travel, and the general need for lightweight, multifunctional and radioprotective biomaterials, weve become excited about the potential of melanin.

But the risk in space is much greater. Once outside of Earths cocoon, astronauts are exposed to much more radiation. Not only from the Suns regular, steady output, but from solar flares, and even cosmic rays. Space is awash in dangerous ionizing radiation.

When astronauts spend time outside of Low Earth Orbit, they face greater risks from exposure to that radiation: cancer and other degenerative diseases, radiation sickness, and even central nervous effects, according to NASA. In fact, NASA says that astronauts can be exposed to doses of radiation ranging from 50 to 2,000 Milli-Sieverts (mSv). But even 1mSv is equivalent to approximately three chest x-rays, so its like astronauts are exposed to between 150 and 6000 chest x-rays. (Would you sign up for that?)

We could encase astronauts in leador put them behind lead shields like x-ray technicians in hospitalsand they would be protected. The problem is, how can astronauts perform all their duties, while still being protected from all the hazardous radiation?

Lead is also extremely heavy, and its impractical to launch lead into space for radiation shielding. Its unlikely that were going to be able to fly dedicated radiation-shielding mass, for missions like Artemis, said Kerry Lee of NASAs Johnsons Space Radiation Analysis Group, in a press release.

Thats what led to the interest in melanin.

Given the increased interest in space travel, and the general need for lightweight, multifunctional and radioprotective biomaterials, weve become excited about the potential of melanin, said lead researcher Nathan Gianneschi, in a press release. It occurred to our postdoctoral fellow Wei Cao that melanin containing selenium would offer better protection than other forms of melanin. That brought up the intriguing possibility that this as-yet undiscovered melanin may very well exist in nature, being used in this way. So we skipped the discovery part and decided to make it ourselves.

On Earth, when our skin is exposed to UV radiation, we produce more melanin. That darkens the skin, and the melanin pigmentation is effective at absorbing light. In fact, it can absorb up to 99.9% of UV radiation.

Researchers already know that melanin has potential to protect astronauts from radiation. A separate research team is experimenting with samples of it on the International Space Station, to see how it responds to the radiation there, which is not only UV radiation, but more energetic radiation like x-rays.

But there are different types of melanins. The one being tested on the ISS is actually a composite of fungal melanin and polymers. The lead researcher on that work is Radams J.B. Cordero from Johns Hopkins. The goal will be to take melanin and create biomaterials inspired by nature, Cordero explained. Were seeing if we can mimic biology and learn from biology to our benefit.

But this new research is going in a slightly different direction, by looking at melanin enriched with selenium. Selenium has an interesting relationship with light, and is used as a pigment, in glassmaking, in x-ray detectors, and in solar cells. Clearly, somethings up with selenium when it comes to radiation.

Previous research has shown that selenium compounds can protect animals from x-rays. So the team behind the new work wondered if combining melanin with selenium would yield a new way of protecting astronauts.

Rather than spend who knows how long trying to find the compound somewhere in nature, they decided to make their own compounds in a lab. They synthesized a new biomaterial that theyre calling selenomelanin. They treated cells with the new material, alongside cells treated with synthetic pheomelanin and eumelanin. They also used cells with no protective melanin as a control group.

Then came the radiation. They exposed all of the cells to a dose of radiation that would be lethal to a human. The result? Only the cell treated with their synthesized selenomelanin showed any normal cell cycles.

Our results demonstrated that selenomelanin offers superior protection from radiation, Gianneschi said. We also found that it was easier to synthesize selenomelanin than pheomelanin, and what we created was closer than synthetic pheomelanin to the melanin found in nature.

It gets better.

The team also found out that unlike the samples sent to the ISS by a separate research team, which are expensive to produce, this teams selenomelanin can be bio-synthesized. That means that live cells can produce it when fed the right nutrients. And the biosynthesized selenomelanin retains its protective properties.

With an abundant source of selenium in the environment, some organisms may have been able to adapt to extreme circumstances such radiation through the beneficial effects of selenomelanin, Gianneschi said.

Our work points to the possibility that melanin may act as a repository for selenium, helping ensure that organisms benefit from it, said Cao. Selenomelanin may play an important role in how selenium is metabolized and distributed biologically. Its an area for further investigation.

This discovery could lead to better protection for astronautsand radiation sensitive materialswhile in space. The team of researchers envisions a topical material like sun-screen, that can be applied to skin or materials for protection.

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Cyclists should claim their space on the road to travel safely – The Courier

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The idiom Its as easy as riding a bike is often thrown about when something is seen as easy to master, except the problem is that riding a bike isnt as easy as the phrase may lead you to believe.

Of course, straddling a bike, pushing off and keeping your balance is fairly straightforward if all you want to do is cycle in a straight line.

For many aspects of cycling, mountain biking for example, practice is the road to perfection, or in my case the road to fewer incidents of embarrassing myself as I launch myself over the handlebars.

But if you are cycling on the road, then you dont have the luxury of gradual learning. To cycle safely on the road, you need to be confident in many different abilities, such as being able to cycle one-handed as you signal, or look over your shoulder and maintain a straight line; and all this with other road users around you.

It is ideal that you first practise these skills in a safe environment, but when you head out on the road, confident with your ability, it is easy to be suddenly intimidated by the other vehicles around you. This can knock your confidence and mean that riders end up feeling forced to cycle on the pavement, or may even put their bike away for good.

Defensive cycling is a term that is often used in road cycle training. Essentially, it is a way of training cyclists to become confident road users by showing them skills to prevent others on the road from taking advantage of their relatively small size and slow speed.

One cycle trainer once told me: You dont have to expect the worst to happen to prepare for it and this is what defensive cycling is all about: giving the rider the tools and knowledge that will allow them to react more quickly should they feel at risk. It is about expecting the unexpected.

One thing I always tell my trainees is that their eyes and ears are the most important things they use when riding their bike. They should be constantly alert when riding, as often other road users will not be so alert.

When I drive my car, I am always super aware of cyclists around me and often observe their actions and reactions.

I can always tell the cyclists who arent so confident cycling with traffic around them they shrink into the side of the road, letting traffic intimidate them even more and boxing themselves into a dangerous situation.

As a cyclist you should give yourself space other road users wont give it to you, so you need to claim it.

Space is your best friend. It will offer you that last-minute escape route; it will keep you away from that car door that just opened and it will give you room to avoid that deep pot-hole that lies ahead of you.

Giving yourself space will also allow you to become part of the flow of traffic and, despite what some may think as you cycle along a busy road, it will be you on the bike that is moving forward faster.

Riding defensively does not mean being angry at other road users; on the contrary giving other drivers a smile will move you from the position of being a cyclist to being a human being on a bike.

I use this tactic a lot when I am stopped at traffic lights to let the driver in the car behind know I know they are there. It also gives me the chance to see if they are distracted and texting on their phone, in which case I know to be aware when the lights change to green.

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Cyclists should claim their space on the road to travel safely - The Courier

The Memo: Airbnb travel up, a new business and more – Duluth News Tribune

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Duluth's Cedar and Stone Nordic Sauna business used the pandemic to its advantage.

It initially started out as a community sauna business, where people would use the mobile, health-focused sauna for individual or group use.

As with many businesses, the pandemic disrupted this plan. So Cedar and Stone pivoted and ventured into sauna manufacturing for homes and cabins. It hired more staff and established a manufacturing facility in West Duluth.

The company's custom-designed, Nordic saunas built with high-quality, sustainable material is meeting an unmet need, a news release from the company said.

Customizations include increasing sauna space for customers with large families, adding outdoor showers or including smart technology so users can enable the sauna's stove remotely.

"Now revenue is up rather than down," the release said.

The Duluth Studio Market, which we covered back in February and checked in on in March, opened last week.

Owned by Stacey LaCoursiere, the artisan market sells curated items from fair trade companies and local artists. Merchandise includes pottery, jewelry, childrens gifts, illustrations and local apparel.

The space, located at 512 N. 45th Ave. E., also doubles as a photography studio for LaCoursiere's marketing business, Duluth Studio Co., which offers commercial photography, videography and design services.

LaCoursiere's initial plan was to open in late spring but that was pre-pandemic. Back in March, she told the News Tribune that rolling with the punches is "what you have to do as an entrepreneur."

She's certainly rolled with the punches, and opened the business last week.

Northern Minnesota was one of the nation's "top trending destinations" over the Fourth of July weekend.

Airbnb hosts in the area saw a 50% increase in income compared to the same holiday weekend last year, according to Airbnb.

In addition to northern Minnesota, rural areas, in general, were also popular destinations for holiday travelers.

Rural hosts in the U.S. earned more than $200 million in June an increase of over 25% compared to the same time last year.

We all know what's influencing these figures: COVID-19.

To Airbnb, the weekend's outcome shows that people are itching to travel, but don't want to go to great extents to do so.

Kelly Busche covers business and health for the News Tribune. She wants to hear from people currently on unemployment, especially as we near the end of the additional $600 in unemployment benefits that runs out later this month. Drop her a line at kbusche@duluthnews.com.

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Why The War of the Worlds producer George Pal was the Spielberg of his time – SYFY WIRE

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Last week, the consistently remarkable Criterion Collection brought us the first-ever Blu-ray release of the 1953 sci-fi classic The War of the Worlds. The film, based on the 1898 novel by the great H.G. Wells, has been remade several times since, but this first version set a high standard for the others that came in its wake. While director Byron Haskin did an admirable job bringing the Martian invaders to life, the unsung hero of the film (alongside the common cold, of course) might be producer George Pal one of the pioneers of filmed science fiction as we know it.

"George is considered the father of sci-fi films," says Bob Burns in The Sky Is Falling, the making-of documentary included in the Criterion package. "And he pretty much is, because he was the first one to really do sci-fi films that had that name.

According to an illustrated essay by critic J. Hoberman also included with the Blu-ray, Pal started his career as a designer and animator in the Hungarian film industry. Pal, born Gyrgy Pl Marczincsak in Hungary in 1908, first worked during the 1930s in Berlin, Prague, Paris, and Holland, where he perfected his style of puppet animation in both shorts and advertisements. Pal was lured to Hollywood in 1939, where he created more than 40 animated shorts for Paramount Pictures, known as "Puppetoons."

His first feature as a producer, The Great Rupert, reportedly featured an animated squirrel so lifelike that some viewers were convinced it was a trained animal. But it was Pal's second film, 1950's Destination Moon (directed by Irving Pichel), that changed the course of his career and possibly that of sci-fi cinema.

Based loosely on a novel by legendary sci-fi author Robert A. Heinlein (who also worked on the screenplay), the film was the first major genre picture produced in the U.S. that addressed the nuts and bolts of space travel in serious fashion.

"If you believe in (your concept), really, you make a better picture," says Pal in an audio recording included on the Blu-ray of a seminar he gave at the American Film Institute (AFI) in 1970. "Because it shows the sincerity. In other words, you don't fluff it up or go, 'Oh, what the hell, the public doesn't know this or that.' That's not so. The audience feels if you're sincere in your effort."

Although it certainly may seem dated and stodgy now noted critic John Baxter called it "rather dull viewing" just 20 years later in his book Science Fiction in the Cinema Destination Moon represented an important step forward for filmed science fiction overall.

It was an important step forward for Pal as well, whose next film as producer, When Worlds Collide, came out just a year later. Based on the 1933 novel by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer, it revolved around efforts to build a "space ark" on which selected representatives of humanity can escape an oncoming cataclysmic collision between Earth and a "rogue star" called Bellus by landing on Bellus' sole planet, Zyra.

While Destination Moon at least attempted scientific accuracy, Pal threw all that out the window with When Worlds Collide and focused on sheer spectacle. The film, directed by Rudolph Mate, is best remembered for scenes of massive devastation that pre-dated later epics like Independence Day and Deep Impact by decades.

When Worlds Collide cost nearly $1 million to make in 1951 dollars (equivalent to roughly $10 million today still a bargain!) and, like Destination Moon, won the Academy Award for Best Special Effects, paving the way for Pal's next and almost certainly greatest sci-fi achievement with The War of the Worlds.

"So many writers and producers tried to make it, but they couldn't lick the script," says Pal in the AFI seminar. "Nobody was thinking of the simplest thing, which is really to follow the book as closely as you possibly can. I came over to Paramount, found it in the files, and thought, 'This is wonderful, War of the Worlds is a great story.'"

The latter in turn hired director Byron Haskin, whose knowledge of special effects, according to John Brosnan in his book Future Tense, made Haskin an "apt choice" to direct a film as complex as The War of the Worlds. Haskin would work with Pal twice more, while also later directing Robinson Crusoe on Mars and several classic episodes of the 1960s TV series The Outer Limits, including the show's masterpiece, "Demon With a Glass Hand."

Even though The War of the Worlds had a relatively robust budget of $2 million, Pal, Haskin, and screenwriter Barre Lyndon made accommodations to keep the movie financially feasible. The first was updating the story from Wells' Victorian England to modern-day Southern California. "With all the talk about flying saucers, War of the Worlds had become especially timely," Pal told Cinefantastique in 1977. "And that was one of the reasons we updated the story."

The second was changing Wells' Martian war machines from walking tripods to vessels shaped like manta rays, with long necks and snake-like heads that blast out the Martian death rays (although the machines are visibly supported by three energy beams that touch the ground below, which still make them tripods in a way).

A third decision was casting the movie with mostly unknowns. Lead scientist Clayton Forrester was played by stage and TV actor Gene Barry in only his second big-screen appearance. "George Pal produced wonderfully strange, different kinds of movies," says Barry in The Sky Is Falling, recalling his appearance in what was then a massive production. "Movies that had physical accomplishments in them that had to be done, and he did them. He made them happen. Magic. He brought a magic to the screen."

Indeed he did. Even for a film made 67 years ago, The War of the Worlds works as an all-out, often terrifying spectacle. Cities are obliterated, the military is vanquished, and the Martian death machines run rampant over the countryside. Just as Wells' book was one of the first to detail afull-scale invasion from another world, Pal and Haskin's film effectively brought home the sheer horror of what that might look like. According to Hoberman, Haskin said, "I wanted to stress the total helplessness of humanity."

The War of the Worlds established Pal as one of the great showmen of his era and a major filmmaker in the realm of science fiction. The movie, the third Pal film to win an Oscar for Best Special Effects, reflected the atomic fears of the Cold War era and mostly holds up. There probably hasn't been an alien invasion film since that doesn't owe something to this genuinely harrowing classic, from Independence Day to Edge of Tomorrow to Steven Spielberg's own, even darker version of the same story in 2005.

Pal would continue to make sci-fi and fantasy films after The War of the Worlds, although his 1955 follow-up to Destination Moon, The Conquest of Space, was a pricey flop. He also began to direct pictures himself, starting with 1958's musical fantasy, Tom Thumb, and in 1960 returned to H.G. Wells for what might be considered his second great film, The Time Machine.

"H.G. Wells' ideas were always very, very good for motion pictures," recalled Pal, who said he got the rights to The Time Machine after the Wells estate saw The War of the Worlds and approved of it. "I wish he was alive today because I think he would make a wonderful screenplay writer."

Somewhat more faithful to the book than The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine featured another Oscar-winning slate of innovative visual effects, while its combination of time travel with the period setting of the late 19th century could be viewed as the precursor to steampunk. It portrayed the far future in a way that had not been seen before on the screen, and the movie's blend of action and mind-bending ideas is echoed in many of today's films.

Pal delved back into fantasy for his next three films Atlantis, the Lost Continent (1961), The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962), and 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964) but only the second film generated box-office results. His final sci-fi outing, 1968's The Power, reteamed Pal with director Byron Haskin for a trippy, cerebral story about a research team who learn that one of their members is a mutant with enhanced mental powers.

Although The Power has gained a small cult following over the years, that and Pal's last film, 1975's Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze based on the pulp adventure hero of the 1930s and '40s were not widely seen by audiences. While he tried to develop other projects like an abandoned adaptation of Logan's Run in the late 1960s and a sequel to When Worlds Collide he did not produce another finished film before his death in 1980.

Nevertheless, Pal's place would be secure in the history of sci-fi cinema even if he had only produced The War of the Worlds. But that, combined with other successes like When Worlds Collide and The Time Machine, not to mention the vision and imagination he brought to all his pictures, makes him an important figure in the genre's ongoing evolution.

"It was the Atomic Age, and (Pal) had always had an interest in fantasy and fairies and gnomes and creatures of the woods, but now he transposed them to a new genre," says visual effects artist Robert Skotak in The Sky Is Falling. "He made good films about these popular subjects, and for a while there he was kind of what George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and James Cameron are to later generations."

The War of the Worlds, which has been restored with a stunning 4K visual presentation, accompanied by its original mono soundtrack and a brand-new 5.1 surround track created by legendary Star Wars sound designer Ben Burtt, is out now on Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection.

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Blast off to Mars in this stellar new exhibit at a Texas science museum – culturemap.com

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Given the state of the world in 2020, one couldnt be blamed for fantasizing about life on another planet. Fortunately, a new exhibit debuting in Texas will jet locals out of this world to the fourth planet from the sun without having to deal with weird suits, space travel, or Elon Musk.

The new, stellar exhibit at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, dubbedMars by Luke Jerram, will transport viewers to the Red Planet via a 23-foot, internally lit globe of Mars suspended above their heads. Mars opened on July 1 and runs through October 7.

The exhibit centers on Martian topographic features and details the history of Mars exploration with rovers and landers, according to a press release. Guests will also learn about scientists search for water (and life) on the Red Planet and the future of human exploration of the planet.

"Mars" boasts 120dpi detailed NASA imagery of the Martian surface compiled from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter data. The sculpture lets viewers see our neighboring planet in exquisite detail, floating in three dimensions. At an approximate scale of 1:1 million, each centimeter of the internally lit spherical sculpture represents 10 kilometers of the Martian surface.

British artist Luke Jerram is no stranger to the Houston museum, as it also has showcased his similar "Moon" and "Earth" floating sculptures. Almost harking to the movieThe Martian, this exhibition will also feature a living Martian garden, showcasing plants growing side-by-side in Earth and Martian soil.

Our Mars Farmers show the successes and failures of Earth plants growing in simulated Mars soil, said vice president of astronomy at HMNS and exhibit curator Carolyn Sumners in a statement. We already have our first Mars tomato! (Eat your heart out, Matt Damon.)

Guests can also spot distinctive Martian features, like craters, canyons, and rover landing sites, and learn about the future of space exploration. The artwork transports viewers to this desert wasteland, to imagine what life is like on a planet with blue sunsets.

Landers and rovers have made Mars a real world with hills, valleys, volcanoes, and weather, Summers noted. We can imagine living there.

And given this crazy year, that doesnt sound so bad.

---Mars by Luke Jerram runs July 1 through October 7 at the Houston Museum of Natural Science; 5555 Hermann Park Dr., Houston. For tickets and more information, visit the museum online.

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Iris, the mini space rover thats been tasked with a big job – The South African

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The task of exploring other worlds in space is a big and challenging job. But it seems that you dont need to be big in size to take on the task.

A new lunar rover tasked with helping NASA to prepare for its next series of manned spaceflights by scouting the surface of the moon will, remarkably, be no bigger than a shoebox.

It will also weighs just a little over 2kg. To put that into perspective, it tips the scales at less than some Chihuahua dogs.

The rover, called Iris, will launch next year and once it arrives on the moon it will drive over the rocky and dusty surface for just under 50m, in other words about half the length of a soccer field.

Its aim is to give engineers back on Earth more information about how best to travel over the moons surface in future.

The drive will take the rover far enough away from its landing site to study how the landing itself alters the surface of the moon.

Feedback from Apollo astronauts who were on the moons surface in the 1960s and 70s is that the all-encompassing dust and debris makes it difficult to operate there and the potential for damage to sensitive equipment is ever-present.

At the semi-permanent lunar outposts that will be set up in the future, sandblasting as a result of take-offs and landings could cause catastrophic damage.

So Iris needs to help engineers find answers before the next manned flights to the moon, which are scheduled to take place in 2024 as part of NASAs Artemis programme. This will put astronauts back on the lunar surface and develop an ongoing presence there.

The Artemis programme is a renaming of several earlier activities NASA was already undertaking to return humans to the moon. These were mandated by President Trumps Space Policy Directive 1, which tasked the agency with focusing on missions to the moon. Earlier this year, Vice President Mike Pence set an ambitious deadline to land humans at the lunar south pole by 2024, explains the website Space.com.

According to Space.com, Iris and is the first of a new, small and simple design called CubeRovers. The name is a nod to CubeSats, which NASA says are a class of nanosatellites (tiny satellites) that use a standard size and form.

CubeSats now provide a cost effective platform for science investigations, new technology demonstrations and advanced mission concepts, the space agency notes on its website.

For such a tiny rover, Iris has a big mission to lead America back to the moon, and Im so proud to lead this team of passionate students who are paving the way for future planetary robotic exploration, Raewyn Duvall, Deputy Program Manager for Iris and a doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University, said in a statement. Were all excited for Iriss launch, to drive a rover on the lunar surface, and to see what we can discover!

This content has been created as part of our freelancer relief programme. We are supporting journalists and freelance writers impacted by the economic slowdown caused by #lockdownlife.

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Iris, the mini space rover thats been tasked with a big job - The South African

White Fragility Is Everywhere. But Does Anti-Bias Training Work? – The New York Times

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DiAngelos White Fragility article was, in a sense, an epistemological exercise. It examined white not-knowing. When it was published in 2011 in The International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, it reached the publications niche audience. But three years later it was quoted in Seattles alternative newspaper The Stranger, during a fierce debate with white defensiveness on full view about the Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Societys casting of white actors as Asians in a production of The Mikado. That changed my life, she said. The phrase white fragility went viral, and requests to speak started to soar; she expanded the article into a book and during the year preceding Covid-19 gave eight to 10 presentations a month, sometimes pro bono but mostly at up to $15,000 per event.

The language she coined caught on just weeks before Michael Brown was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, and just as Black Lives Matter gained momentum. White liberals were growing more determined to be allies in the cause of racial justice or at least, as DiAngelo always cautions, to look and feel like allies: She has only tenuous faith that white people, whatever their politics, are genuinely willing to surrender their racialized rungs on societys ladders. And then Trumps election stoked white liberals into an even more heightened receptivity, she said, to the critique of their failings that she laid out in her book and workshops. Institutions, too, began to be desperate to prove good intentions. For almost everyone, she assumes, there is a mingling of motives, a wish for easy affirmation (they can say they heard Robin DiAngelo speak) and a measure of moral hunger.

Last September, I joined a two-day workshop, run by Singletons Courageous Conversation, for teachers, staff and administrators from four Connecticut school districts. From the front of a hotel conference room in Hartford, Marcus Moore, a Courageous Conversation trainer, said that his mother is a white woman from Germany, that his biological father was a Black man from Jamaica and that he identifies as Black. (The father who raised him, he let me know later, was a Black former sharecropper from Mississippi.) He projected a sequence of slides showing the persistence and degree of the academic achievement gap between Black and white students throughout the country, and asked us, at our racially mixed tables, to discuss the reasons behind these bar graphs.

At my table, Malik Pemberton, a Black racial-equity coach at a middle school, who had been a teenage father, wanted to talk, he said in the softest of voices, about accountability, about how it starts inside the household in terms of how the child is going to interpret and value education, about what can happen in schools without consequences, where they cant suspend. He wasnt suggesting this line of thought as the only explanation but as something to grapple with. One of Courageous Conversations affiliate trainers, stationed at the table, immediately rerouted the conversation, and minutes later Moore drew all eyes back to him and pronounced, The cause of racial disparities is racism. If I show you data thats about race, we need to be talking about racism. Dont get caught up in detours. He wasnt referring to racisms legacy. He meant that current systemic racism is the explanation for devastating differences in learning, that the prevailing white culture will not permit Black kids to succeed in school.

The theme of what white culture does not allow, of white societys not only supreme but also almost-absolute power, is common to todays antiracism teaching and runs throughout Singletons and DiAngelos programs. One of the varied ways DiAngelo imparts the lesson is through the story of Jackie Robinson. She tells her audiences whether in person or, now, online to alter the language of the narrative about the Brooklyn Dodgers star. Rather than he broke through the color line, a phrase that highlights Robinsons triumph, we should say, Jackie Robinson, the first Black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball. Robinson fades, agency ablated; whiteness occupies the forefront.

Running slightly beneath or openly on the surface of DiAngelos and Singletons teaching is a set of related ideas about the essence and elements of white culture. For DiAngelo, the elements include the ideology of individualism, which insists that meritocracy is mostly real, that hard work and talent will be justly rewarded. White culture, for her, is all about habits of oppressive thought that are taken for granted and rarely perceived, let alone questioned. One unnamed logic of Whiteness, she wrote with her frequent co-author, the education professor Ozlem Sensoy, in a 2017 paper published in The Harvard Educational Review, is the presumed neutrality of White European Enlightenment epistemology. The paper is an attempt to persuade universities that if they want to diversify their faculties, they should put less weight on conventional hiring criteria. The modern university, it says, with its experts and its privileging of particular forms of knowledge over others (e.g., written over oral, history over memory, rationalism over wisdom) has validated and elevated positivistic, White Eurocentric knowledge over non-White, Indigenous and non-European knowledges. Such academic prose isnt the language of DiAngelos workshops or book, but the idea of a society rigged at its intellectual core underpins her lessons.

Singleton, who holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford, and who did stints in advertising and college admissions before founding whats now known as Courageous Conversation in 1992, talks about white culture in similar ways. There is the myth of meritocracy. And valuing written communication over other forms, he told me, is a hallmark of whiteness, which leads to the denigration of Black children in school. Another hallmark is scientific, linear thinking. Cause and effect. He said, Theres this whole group of people who are named the scientists. Thats where you get into this whole idea that if its not codified in scientific thought that it cant be valid. He spoke about how the ancient Egyptians had ideas about how humanity works that never had that scientific-hypothesis construction and so arent recognized. This is a good way of dismissing people. And this, he continued, shifting forward thousands of years, is one of the challenges in the diversity-equity-inclusion space; folks keep asking for data. How do you quantify, in a way that is scientific numbers and that kind of thing what people feel when theyre feeling marginalized? For Singleton, societys primary intellectual values are bound up with this marginalization.

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White Fragility Is Everywhere. But Does Anti-Bias Training Work? - The New York Times

Chile and the Perils of Technocracy – National Review

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Chiles President Sebastin Piera delivers a speech in Santiago, Chile, January 29, 2020.(Edgard Garrido/Reuters)In the midst of a pandemic, the possibility of a government led by experts looks more attractive than ever. But the Chilean experience should make us weary of technocratic promises.

On paper, Chile is Latin Americas most developed economy and most stable democracy. In less than 40 years, the country went from being one of the poorest nations in the region to having the highest GDP per capita on the continent. Unlike many of its South American counterparts, the Chilean government has embraced free markets and implemented business-friendly tax and labor-market reforms. While these policies have exacerbated inequalities, the proportion of the population living below the poverty line has decreased from 52 percent in 1987 to less than 5 percent in 2019. In short, until recently at least, Chile was a shiny example of successful modernization, efficient neoliberalism, and competent governance.

This state of affairs might be due to the composition of Chiles government. After the fall of military dictator Augusto Pinochet, the country moved away from totalitarianism and adopted broadly liberal norms. When Chilean President Sebastin Piera began his second term in 2018, he made sure to assemble a cabinet that would look just like him. Piera, a Harvard-educated economist and billionaire, gathered a team of foreign-educated technocrats ready to address the countrys most pressing challenges with tact and data. Welcoming the influence of renowned academics, Piera even partnered with American political theorist John Tomasi, a brilliant professor at Brown University whose research focuses on the intersection between social justice and free markets. In his work Free Market Fairness, Tomasi draws on moral insights from defenders of economic liberty such as F. A. Hayek and advocates of social justice such as John Rawls. Synthesising the two antagonistic traditions, Tomasi presents a new theory of justice. This theory, free-market fairness, is committed to both limited government and the material betterment of the poor. For Piera, Tomasis innovative conception of bleeding-heart libertarianism represented an ideal to be attained.

And Piera did manage to reconcile efficiency and equity in the first few years of his presidency. Consider the example of the Chilean education system, which Pinochet had decentralized and largely privatized. In 2011, Piera upheld the countrys reliance on school choice and per-student subsidies (vouchers) to promote competition among schools. Weary of growing inequalities, however, the Chilean president founded a $4 billion fund to increase the availability of university scholarships and ease interest rates on government-backed student loans. The results were clear: Test scores improved for students from all socio-economic groups, even if privileged students benefited the most. Yet the government failed to defend its reforms before the Chilean people. Despite Pieras empirical success, the country was torn apart by a series of riots and demonstrations demanding radical changes in education policy.

This failure marked the beginning of a pattern. One after the other, Pieras reforms proved efficient but disproportionally beneficial to the wealthy. Naturally, inequality need not matter as long as the rising tide lifts all boats; to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, only the most ardent socialists would rather have the poor poorer provided the rich were less rich. But this growing sense of disparity required a strong response on the part of the Chilean government. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher and President Reagan managed to handle concerns surrounding growing inequalities because they were fine rhetoricians who defended the workings of the invisible hand with fire and tact. Unfortunately, Piera and his cabinet were no firebrand statesmen; they were a pack of academics, experts, and technocrats who thought that numbers would eventually speak for themselves.

But they did not. At the end of 2019, to the great astonishment of virtually every foreign commentator, Chile descended into a state of chaos. As had happened many times elsewhere in South America, an increase in public-transportation fees provoked a wave of public outrage, one that quickly degenerated into a series of protests and riots. But this particular reaction was remarkable insofar as its causes did not seem to warrant the violence. The 3.75 percent fee increase was only marginally higher than inflation, and wages had been going up consistently for 10 years. Further, while transportation did represent up to 20 percent of yearly expenses for the poorest Chileans, this percentage had been going down for more than a decade. As for the general state of the economy, the government had kept inflation under control, stimulated job creation, and maintained a GDP growth of about 3 percent.

Once more, the only tangible cause of the unrest was the Chilean governments total inability to move beyond spreadsheets and talk to its people. Not only did the transportation minister take more than a week to respond, but her eventual intervention was filled with technical details about macroeconomics and long-run cost-benefit analyses. By the end of the week, the Chilean people realized what their government was really made of namely, a panoply of English-speaking upper-middle-class intellectuals and business leaders who had no fraternal ties to the populace.

Why would a people choose to revolt against a government that has made their nation better off than at any time in its history? Perhaps because politics is not what John Stuart Mill called a marketplace of ideas, that is, an antechamber of objectivity where perfectly rational human beings engage in Enlightenment-style discourse. Despite Mills best efforts, man is not a rational animal. In fact, we could draw parallels between the failures of the Chilean government and Edmund Burkes astringent portrayal of the French National Assembly after the 1789 Revolution. For Burke, the French parliament was filled with lawyers and technocrats devoid of practical experience who would turn politics into a set of theoretical abstractions. The 18th-century statesman and philosopher reiterated this point in his Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs:

Nothing universal can be rationally affirmed on any moral or any political subject. Pure metaphysical abstraction does not belong to these matters. The lines of morality are not like the ideal lines of mathematics. They are broad and deep as well as long. They admit of exceptions; they demand modifications. These exceptions and modifications are not made by the process of logic, but by the rules of prudence.

Burke understood that politics is a world filled with indignation and uproar, a universe of shouting, growling, and protesting. Perceived inequalities matter at least as much as actual inequalities, and the fundamental role of the statesman is to master popular perceptions, control their excesses, and temper the disenchantment of the populace with care and prudence. No matter how brilliant and needed technocrats may be, they will never fulfil the demands of Burkean prudence. Experts such as Piera and his neoliberal companions suffer from years of isolation within the well-insulated walls of academia and airport business lounges. And to say as much need not make one an avid admirer of populists. Real statesmanship lies between demagoguery and detached rationalism, between hyperbolic injunctions and jargon-heavy analyses, between personality-based politics and non-existent leadership.

Chiles response to the coronavirus further illustrates the statesmantechnocrat distinction. Four months ago, the world lauded Chile for its surgical approach to the pandemic. Leaving the matter in the hands of experts, Pieras government implemented wide-ranging testing programs and strict neighborhood lockdowns. In appearance, Pieras calculations were impeccable; strong measures would rapidly vanquish the virus, and the economy would re-start in peace. But the Chilean government rapidly encountered a simple problem: Trapped in overpopulated neighborhoods, Chiles poor could not afford to stay in their houses. In the end, poverty, overcrowding, and a massive off-the-books workforce overcame the governments response. Today, Chile has one of the worlds highest rates of per-capita infections, and its once-praised health minister has been forced to resign.

But what is most interesting about the Chilean situation is that Pieras government, despite conducting a myriad of data-driven studies, did not have the common sense required to realize that its response to the pandemic was incompatible with the day-to-day life of most Chileans. Responding to Bloombergs reporters, Diego Pardow, executive president of the Espacio Pblico think tank, declared: If the government is going to make decisions about a world it doesnt know, then it should include people from that world in the decision-making process. The problem with this government is that it just surrounds itself with its own people.

Naturally, this type of criticism could apply to any kind of disconnected elite. But there is a world of difference between Pieras government and, say, the 18th-century landed aristocracy that Burke praises in his Reflections. While traditional elites were grounded in local traditions and community-specific bonds, Piera embodies a new kind of technocratic establishment that is neither culturally nor socio-economically close to the people it governs. While the pandemic should certainly make us reflect upon the importance of scientific leadership, Chiles dreadful state of affairs acts as a handy reminder that behind the veil of graphs and spreadsheets, governance remains a deeply political matter that requires statesmanship, not abstract competence.

In the Republic, Plato proposes to raise the sons and daughters of the citys guardians along with everybody elses children; this way, Plato argues, subjects and rulers will share common cultural references and life experiences. While we need not agree with what Karl Popper called Platos totalitarian blueprint, the Greek philosophers aspiration to form generations of leaders rooted in the traditions of their community should inspire us to do away with all kinds of technocratic dreams.

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Chile and the Perils of Technocracy - National Review

The imminent brumby cull in the Australian alps – Sydney Morning Herald

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Its just after 8am on the Nunniong Plains in Victorias high country when professional horse-breaker Lewis Benedetti, atop a big grey thoroughbred named Stones, trots out of the bush leading a raggedy black foal on a rope.

Were on an open plain of snow grass and tussock, five hours east of Melbourne, and the wind is unforgivingly cold. A frigid stream cuts through the field, gurgling under a layer of ice as thick as toast.

The little black horse a wild or feral horse, Equus caballus, also known as a brumby tugs at the rope Benedetti tossed around his neck mere moments ago. Its a skill the 30-year-old horseman honed in nearby Buchan as a child from when he was nine, lassoing his letterbox after school.

The captured foal whinnies, nostrils huffing mountain air. And he bucks clumsily, jumping at everything and nothing, like an obstinate puppy. Hes furrier than you might imagine. Fluffy almost, with a white rectangle on his forehead.

Professional horse-breaker Lewis Benedetti emerges from the Nunniong Plains bush with a wild colt. Credit:Josh Robenstone

For retraining, this is the size you want, brother! Benedetti hollers from the saddle. He comes to state forest areas like this in his spare time to go brumby running chasing wild horses to domesticate and rehome. When theyre too old, mate, theyre too hard to train. But hes just right.

Weve been up for hours, eyeing mobs of mares in the darkness, and three black stallions at dawn. Benedetti found this colt in a glade between snow gums. Caught him like you would not believe. Easy as piss, he says, grinning. Lets get him back to camp, eh.

Around the fire now, Benedetti pours his coffee, scalding hot from the billy, and the morning sun melts away the last of the crunchy overnight frost. Why do I do this? he asks, nonplussed. The adrenalin is unreal. To catch a wild horse pretty good feeling, eh? Youve gotta get set, be fit, have your horse fit, know what youre doing. Then come back for a feed at the fire. What better life is there than that?

As I stoke the coals and our eggs sizzle in popping bacon fat, its hard to argue. But there is, however, another more urgent reason Benedetti is here. Hes catching brumbies today not just for recreation but because of what might happen this winter.

That little pony will make someone really happy, says Benedetti, who might be able to sell this pretty brumby for $500, or just give it away. But see, theres only two options for him now. He can come home with me, or he can stay here and get shot.

This is not an exaggeration. A brumby cull is coming. Its long overdue.

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Thousands of wild horses are trampling the alpine wilderness of Victoria and NSW wreaking havoc on heritage-listed ecosystems, pugging up fragile water catchment areas and threatening the habitats of native species. Theyve been doing so for more than a century, of course, but the fight to be rid of these horses which are, technically, non-native ungulate pests has intensified in recent years.

In May 2018, NSW deputy premier John Barilaro introduced his brumby bill (The Kosciuszko Wild Horse Heritage Bill), which formally recognised the historical significance of the brumbies, protecting them from slaughter. (It became law the following month.)

Later that year, a brumby advocacy group launched a Federal Court action to prevent a trapping and culling program by Parks Victoria. Those two actions produced a two-year stay of execution an amnesty in which the animals multiplied. Current estimates put their population at 25,000 in the alps of both states alarming, given the vast swaths of national park that burnt last summer.

Demography is destiny. Numbers are everything. And its going to get to the stage where without culling the problem is unsolvable, says retired CSIRO botanist Dick Williams. The situation demands a dramatic correction, he says, quoting a maxim often attributed to British economist John Maynard Keynes: When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

Parks Victoria decided enough was enough. Having finally won its case in May, an immediate plan was announced to cull hundreds of horses using expert ground snipers with thermal imaging and noise suppressors.

It provoked an emotional outcry, and Andrew Cox of Australias Invasive Species Council understands why. Nobody wants to shoot horses, Cox says. People plead, There must be a better way because its horrible, yes. But Im sorry, there is no better way.

A problem with no easy solution, the brumby conundrum raises complicated questions of environmental science and agricultural management, while skirting delicate facets of animal welfare and our own colonial mythology.

Benedetti plans to train the young brumby, and either sell it or give it away. That little pony will make someone really happy.Credit:Josh Robenstone

Naturally, the issue has become yet another skirmish in the culture wars, pitting greenie against grazier, science against lore, rationalism against ideology. There are two irreconcilable and intractable sides to explore in this debate, but lets start with the horsemen in the high country.

In mid-May I head to the sleepy hamlet of Omeo, an hour north-west of Nunniong, to visit Jim Flannagan, 87, whose family has been farming the region since 1856. We shelter from a biting rain in his lounge room, near his rodeo trophies and show ribbons. He wears denim and flannel and has huge hands with waxen skin. I was a very capable horseman, he says, tipping his head. I dont mind an old boast on that one.

On the issue of brumbies theres no hysteria: merely a few points he wants to get off his chest. Theyve bred up to the extent that they are overpopulated, Flannagan concedes. No matter what the animal, youve gotta have a culling rate. But you do it humanely. Trap them, he says, and take them out of the park, even down to the knackery in nearby Maffra. Better that than leaving corpses in the bush for the wild dogs or feral pigs to eat. Shoot a horse, and a sow with nine piglets will have a feast, he says. Its gonna make them real healthy. Then youve got another problem.

Flannagan has that enviable rural pragmatism, but I want to hear the romantic history, riding into the hills as a young man to catch buckjumpers and maneaters. There are beautiful black-and-white films of such musters, and Flannagan was the star of one: the 1965 documentary Buckrunners about a world of canvas swags and yodelling mountain music.

Away youd go on a Friday afternoon, up the bush. It was big-time fun. Big-time! he says, closing his eyes. It was glorious country. Riding up onto the Bogong High Plains on a beautiful day, you grow to 10 foot tall. Waiting by makeshift stockyards, the anticipation built before he heard the hooves. Here they come, whispers Flannagan. Sound carries a long way up there, and the horse youre sitting on hello he can sense it, too. His ears prick up, he trembles. He knows the actions on.

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I want to see this for myself, so I leave Flannagan and drive north-west for an hour to the Bundara River in Anglers Rest, where Victorian Liberal MP Bill Tilley is waiting by his caravan. Hes here to support an audacious plan to save the brumbies by catching them, then giving them sanctuary on private land until theres a change of government.

As night falls, Tilley clarifies: This plan to go out and indiscriminately slaughter horses without proper consultation is why people are outraged. Theres a deep mistrust here says the member for Benambra, without irony of government. You cannot manage our parks from a desktop in Nicholson Street, Melbourne. Youve gotta resource people on the ground, and communicate and consult, with those who live it and breathe it every day.

The brumby thus becomes a cause to be harnessed in the fight against change imposed from the state capital. To members of the resistance, the expanding ski resort at nearby Mt Hotham is a scar on the hill, a proposed mountain bike trail in Omeo is a misuse of grazing property, and keeping cattle out of national parks is locking up the land.

You want to talk about destruction? Look at people, pleads Ensay farmer Carol Faithfull. Walking tracks of wood and steel. Ripping up tracks with four-wheel drives. Campsite areas that are just trashed. I camp later with Faithfull and her partner, Charles Connley, in forest to the south. People believe this is a disaster area, but we dont believe that, Connley says. Look around you.

A brook bubbles nearby. Thin moss clings to mottled branches. Im sipping beer and eating a crispy sausage with my fingers, while a fire pit crackles with mountain ash, the embers floating up into the dark where that old chandelier the Milky Way galaxy dazzles down. Theres a tall tree with a plaque in memory of an old bushie who used to chase brumbies here. Nailed to the trunk is a cross with an upturned horseshoe and a carved message: Living the dream.

People here fear that getting rid of the brumby is just the first step in something bigger, warns Connley. We think what they want to do is get rid of recreational riding, and remove the horses from the landscape altogether.

Yet perhaps the biggest point of contention is the brumby population estimate, which was based on a 2019 aerial survey covering 7443 square kilometres of Victoria and NSW, and used statistical modelling to determine brumby density. Opponents believe such estimates are compromised that the bushfires last summer would have dramatically thinned the population.

In search of brumbies: a survey estimates the Victorian and NSW wild horse population to be more than 25,000.Credit:Josh Robenstone

Many celebrity brumbies have already disappeared, like the magnificent stallion Paleface and his son Bogong, and their herds in the Kiandra region. The survey spotters also only laid eyes on 1748 actual brumbies, so the estimated total (25,318) includes what the sceptics call an imaginary 23,570 wild horses.

Connley puts it best: If you wanted to guess the population of Victoria, you wouldnt fly over the MCG on grand final day, and extrapolate your numbers from the people gathered on one acre in Melbourne.

It might snow tonight, 1497 metres above sea level on the Bogong High Plains, but Philip Maguire, who owns land below us, leans back in a camp chair, cloaked in his Drizabone, and comfortably holds court, reciting his own poetry.

I was born here in the mountains, where the life is wild and free, And I love the rugged beauty, theres just nowhere else for me. From their snowy peaks in winter to the summer sunlit plains, The splendour of the flowers in the gentle soaking rains.

He continues, deeper and deeper into a ballad of joyous unrestricted gallops and whistling winds, all from memory. But nearing the end his tone shifts, abruptly, to a lament. Traditions are under threat. Malevolent forces are pushing horsemen off the hills.

The next generations, they too have a right, To a life riding free, same as us. Not to be lackeys and carry the bags, when the tourists arrive in a bus. I can tame a wild stallion or face a wild bull, I can handle a wild rushing mob. But arguing politics isnt my game, I just cant handle the job.

Its a salty last line, but not quite true. Maguire, you see, is a political animal. A former journalist for the Sunday Herald Sun, he wrote that poem in 1984, when he was a senior adviser to Peter Ross-Edwards then leader of the Victorian National Party the same year he helped organise the famous protest in which 304 mounted graziers converged on Melbournes Parliament House.

Anti-culling activist Philip Maguire, who is taking the brumby cause to the High Court. Credit:Josh Robenstone

Some people disparage the 60-year-old as a showman or a milk bar cowboy, but to the brumby cause he is a volatile messiah, with huge support, not least through the Rural Resistance Facebook page he established where many of the 23,000 members refer to him as the leader of The Maguire Army. He launched his own 11th-hour Supreme Court injunction a few weeks ago to prevent the cull, claiming a lack of community consultation. The Victorian court swiftly dismissed his appeal, but his supporters see him as a man who acts. He has already solicited $250,000 in donations to keep fighting, all the way to the High Court.

There is a touch of PT Barnum in him, too. This plan to give wild horses sanctuary was his, and it brought me up here as well as the ABC, the Herald Sun and The New York Times. When I told one old bushie the plan, at first he laughed. Phil? Phils a bloody hopeless horseman! Couldnt ride a black horse out of sight at midnight! he roared. Then he turned reflective: But he knows how to get people interested.

Theyll have an uprising on their hands. Were not going to stand for it any more.

We go for a walk the next day, and come to the ancient stockyard where farmers used to muster cattle and brumbies. Its all charred now, and Maguire blames the Labor government for cultural vandalism and not managing the land (by allowing grazing up here, to reduce fuel load). If I had Daniel Andrews here right now, Id fing deck him, Maguire spits. Id drop him.

That has nothing to do with the brumby, of course, but up here grievances past and present grow entangled as one. Maguire is gathering names for a petition, for instance, with thousands of people stating that they no longer recognise Parks Victoria as a legitimate authority. Theyll have an uprising on their hands, he broods. Were not gonna stand for it any more.

This is not specific to Maguire. Exasperated advocates for the brumby cause often turn to opprobrium, rumour and conspiracy theory. If brumby sightings are down in a given week? Culls probably begun. If they see disturbed earth? Could be a mass grave.

To some, particularly online, the reason for the cull is obvious: Dictator Dan is trying to drive all horsemen off the land in a shadowy scheme to sell public land for a ski resort owned by Chinese nationals. On a recent morning after The Age printed a look at the science behind the issue, a lobbyist emailed me in a rage. Why has your colleague produced such a one-sided bullshit article? she wrote. Its propaganda shit again.

The Maguire family emerge out of the regrowth at the back of the property in the Bogong High Plains. Credit:Josh Robenstone

The Great Alpine Road unspools slowly, patiently hugging the hills, leaping Swifts Creek and the Haunted Stream. Five hours later Im in Melbourne, where Ive come to meet more brumby huggers in Treasury Gardens. A demonstration is in full swing, protesters holding posters of big-eyed brumbies in rifle crosshairs, because #brumbylivesmatter.

The crowd of about 200 is 95 per cent female, which one woman at the rally attributes to Black Beauty and My Little Pony. Horse-breaker Angel Tanner from Narrandera, NSW, thinks there are simply two ways of tackling the same problem. Theres the romance of The Man from Snowy River, and the cracks and cowboys the fantasy, says Tanner, who has thin dreadlocks and a nose ring. And then theres the women presenting and petitioning in a peaceful manner.

Jill Pickering, 73, surveys the scene from her mobility scooter. It doesnt buck, she jokes in a British accent. Pickering grew up in Woking, in south-west England, and contracted polio at nine. Horse-riding was part of the regimen used to build strength in her legs. She was 60 when she saw her first brumby, on a horseback trek in Victoria. I was just captivated, she says, blue eyes gleaming. It was incredible.

Brumby advocate Jill Pickering. She was 60 when she saw her first brumby, on a horseback trek in Victoria. I was just captivated.Credit:Josh Robenstone

Saving this part of our national psyche became a calling. She helped found the Australian Brumby Alliance to bring together disparate advocacy bodies, became president, and in late 2018 launched the Federal Court action to save the animals. We speak the week after that case is lost, costing her about $400,000. Shes devastated. But like any worthy cause, you just have to keep pushing, she says. Its like the brumbies are my children anyway my inheritance is their inheritance.

She introduces me at the rally to Colleen OBrien, who runs Brumby Junction a sanctuary solely for brumbies, two hours west of Melbourne in Glenlogie. Its a prohibitively expensive passion project. Ive been a full-time volunteer for 12 years, OBrien says. My husband thankfully is CEO of an international synthetic textiles manufacturer, and he funds all of this.

One of her main causes and cause for disappointment is a rejected plan to sterilise the brumbies. OBrien has made trips to the United States, investigating successful fertility control programs for mustangs in Nevada, Wyoming and Colorado. You do it with a dart gun, then 12 months later you dart them a second time, and they wont have a foal for two years, she says. In Wyoming theres a woman whos 80, named Ada. She pulls out her deck chair, sets herself up with her thermos of tea, waits for the mustangs, and just picks them off as they pass.

Colleen OBrien, who runs Brumby Junction a sanctuary solely for brumbies, two hours west of Melbourne in Glenlogie at a Save The Brumby protest at Parliment House in Melbourne.Credit:Josh Robenstone

OBrien took this plan to Parks Victoria, offering to cover costs, volunteer staffing, and research engagement, but was turned down. She sees this as ideologically driven stubbornness, and it leaves her doubting the experts. I didnt realise how subjective science could be, she muses. It can go either way, a bit like the Bible. Is it An eye for an eye? Or is it Thou shalt not kill?

Its for that reason that the pro-brumby team found its own scientist. David Berman is a research fellow in sustainable agriculture at the University of Southern Queensland, and has written extensively on feral horses. This year he began a longitudinal study on horses in the Victorian high country, examining 16 sites from a previous survey, counting horse-dung mounds and measuring stream bank damage.

It wont be finished until 2024, but the impact he recorded was limited and isolated. The other research seemed to focus on areas where there was impact, where it was concentrated, Berman says, and it distorts the reality of the damage.

Berman is a horseman, however a showjumper since he was a child and admits that in these circumstances he is trying to be a scientist: objective within an emotional conflict. His contribution was dismissed in Federal Court by Justice Michael OBryan, who described his testimony as idiosyncratic conjecture: The evidence presented by Dr Berman was not supported by scientific studies and was not persuasive.

Botanist Dick Williams. He says it's the denial of science that "irks him most". Credit:Josh Robenstone

One scientist whose work the court did find persuasive, however, is botanist Dick Williams. We meet one brisk morning at Elwood Beach, as he strides out of Port Phillip Bay in fluorescent Speedos not exactly the ivory-tower egghead his opponents might imagine. Mate, were bushies, Williams says, clenching fists. We get out and up there, and are as tough and self-sufficient as anybody. Weve gotta be, because we spend long periods of time in the alps.

He loves the place, and the people, too. But science has to work hard against tales passed down from one farmer to the next, and the deep sense of proprietorship those stories engender. While I was in the high country, for instance, I watched in horror as a local grazier named Sonia Buckley filming a documentary about brumbies tore strips off a Good Weekend photographer over the most minor imagined slight.

Im a fifth-generation high-country cattlewoman! she barked, pointing a finger. And we dont need people from the city coming up here, treating us with disrespect. So f off home!

Williams nods. Thats their branding, he says. But we have that heritage, too. Alpine science started in the 1850s with Baron Ferdinand von Mueller, and from there you can draw a research lineage through Alfred Howitt in the 1870s, Richard Helms in the 1890s, then Professor John Turner, who supervised David Ashton, who in turn supervised Williams himself. Williams has mentored scientists of his own, who are now supervising students of their own. In a way, he says, Im an academic grandfather.

Energised by his winter dip, Williams is ready to offer rebuttals. I point out how cattlemen often dismiss the value of moss beds and sphagnum whatevers, or mock the broad-toothed rat, whose existence is threatened by the brumby along with the stocky galaxias fish and the southern corroboree frog. Theyre not as flashy as a horse jumping over a log, says Williams, but these species have their own intrinsic value, and some are as rare as rocking-horse poo.

But the denial of science is what irks him most. If we ran agriculture, transport or medicine according to the dismissive, anecdotal logic being used here, wed starve, planes would fall from the sky, and the hospitals would be full. Its like the ludicrous notions of anti-vaxxers theyre immune to evidence. Australians produce 2 per cent of the worlds science, which is punching massively above our weight. Were smarter than saying, Green tops and white-coaters dont know anything about the bush. Were better than that.

Im not sure we are. The image of a man on horseback, pinching the front of his Akubra, seems to pack more punch than any peer-reviewed paper, which is why someone like Professor Don Driscoll, director of the Centre for Integrative Ecology at Melbournes Deakin University, finds himself constantly retelling grim anecdotes like the tale of the cannibal horses.

Driscoll was hiking a snowy peak in 2014, in Kosciuszko National Park, when he stumbled upon a gruesome tableau at the aptly named Dead Horse Gap. Horses often get trapped above the snowline and starve to death, so its not uncommon to see a dead brumby. Then he saw three emaciated horses gathered around the carcass. I thought they were nuzzling it, pining for a loved one, Driscoll says. But their heads were actually inside the abdominal cavity of the dead one, up to their ears. I think they were after the semi-digested grass still inside.

I point out how many high-country people reject such descriptions: there are no starving masses or trampled flora in their alps. Its very insulting, Driscoll says. One cattleman claimed there couldnt be more than 3500 horses in the alps, and thats based on what? Riding your horse around and looking? Its laughable rubbish.

Yet there are places in which brumby advocates have legitimate cause for outrage, including Parks Victorias Feral Horse Strategic Action Plan (2018-2021). The document carefully details a government plan to remove up to 400 horses per year by passive trapping, and specifically notes in bold font that shooting will not be used to control free-ranging feral horses. The plan makes an allowance to revisit that latter policy but explicitly promises further public consultation and dialogue. No such consultation has happened so far.

Phil Ingamells is head of the Victorian National Parks Associations Park Protection Project, and has been involved in endless meetings between graziers and brumby runners, RSPCA staff and ecologists, in which he says every option has been discussed, ad nauseum. Short of putting a 10-page advertisement in every newspaper, someones always going to say, No one asked me! Parks Victoria is no longer really obliged to consult.

What about the argument that deer are more prolific than horses, or that pig wallows are a more intrusive form of destruction, or that the wild dog and feral cat problem is ignored in favour of the scapegoat brumby? Its called the Look over there! argument, Ingamells says. When the cattlemen had cattle in the high country, they pointed at the brumbies as causing the damage. Now when you try to deal with the brumbies, they want you to focus on the deer. And rest assured, deer are definitely in the gunsights. More than 1500 deer, pigs and wild goats have been shot in aerial culls this year, while fox baiting continues. But theres been no aerial shooting of horses in the alps, and there will not be.

Thats an important point. Aerial culling has a bad reputation, owing largely to the infamous killing of 606 horses 20 years ago, in the NSW Guy Fawkes National Park. Fiona Carruthers, author of The Horse in Australia, saw the aftermath of the 2000 cull. She flew overhead and remembers the smell.

What was so appalling was that some of those brumbies had up to 10 bullet holes through the rump, thigh, neck not a clean kill straight into the eyes or heart. A couple of the brumbies killed were mares, and one had started foaling, and her carcass was there with the foals head dead sticking out.

An official report cleared the operation as appropriate and successful, with evidence of only one horse suffering a prolonged death, but few on the ground believe this. Aerial culling of horses has been shelved ever since. Carruthers, however, notes that we freely shoot from above to kill kangaroos and camels, and no one makes a fuss. People caring more about the horses makes me think of Animal Farm, she says. Are some animals more equal than others?

Wild brumbies spotted in the early morning on the Nunniong Plains.Credit:Josh Robenstone

Mobs of wild horses have roamed the Australian alps for more than 150 years, having either escaped or been set free from pastoral properties, while some are said to carry the bloodline of the Waler, horses bred to meet the vast cavalry needs of the Australian Light Horse in World War I a popular origin story that connects the courageous brumby to the ANZAC legend. But the fact is they have no particular genetic heritage thats worth preserving, Deakin Universitys Driscoll says. The evidence available says that a horse is a horse.

Extensively inbred, many brumbies today look mangy and small, with pencil necks and pot bellies, and they were regarded as a worthless scourge long ago. In 1889, the Richmond River Herald described how mobs were driven into trap lanes, where a man stood waiting with a keen knife: As each animal passed, its jugular vein was severed, and the bleeding creature tore madly away into its native scrub, only to stagger and die from loss of blood.

Literature helped render a more flattering portrait, particularly the wildly popular Silver Brumby novels of Elyne Mitchell. Yet Mitchell also wrote two lesser-known non-fiction books Speak to the Earth and Soil and Civilisation about protecting the Australian bush.

The Man From Snowy River by Banjo Paterson has the most resonance, of course, but the poem doesnt use the word brumby even once. Patersons wild bush horses are little more than a prop for the bloody chase after a millionaires thoroughbred, which makes sense coming from a lawyer in blue-ribbon Yass, who mixed with skiers and Sydney doctors. Paterson was a hopeless romantic, too, and was mercilessly lampooned by his great rival, Henry Lawson, a miserable cuss and alcoholic who produced verse that was distinctly more gloomy and accurate arguing that Paterson was blinded to the real.

Apparently we all are, too. In a random survey of community attitudes, 78 per cent of Victorians didnt know that brumbies are listed as a pest animal, despite the fact that weve spent more than a century treating them as something to be chased, shot and chopped into pet food.

Thats not the goal, though. I dont think its even possible to eradicate horses from the alps, says Matthew Jackson, the CEO of Parks Victoria. And we havent said we aim to eradicate them. But we want these parks to be pristine, and we have obligations not only ethically but legally under acts to maintain these cultural assets.

They also have no plans, he says, to lock out recreational riders. For some members of the community, horses in the high country are paramount to their lives. Taking that away is simply not on the table.

Rehoming the animals would be wonderful, but Parks Victoria advertised five expressions of interest in the past year and could only rehome 15 brumbies. The sterilisation option proposed by OBrien? The inaccessibility of our alps, says Jackson, means the Australian and American settings arent an apple-to-apple comparison.

In 2018, the CSIRO published a study Could current fertility control methods be effective for landscape-scale management of populations of wild horses (Equus caballus) in Australia? and the short, resounding answer was no.

Jackson understands the squeamish resistance to shooting horses, but what he finds unacceptable are the attacks on his department. We refer those to Victoria Police, he says. Its inappropriate for people to be threatened at work or online, on the phone or in the street. Whether in jest or joking, we take it seriously.

So does Richard Swain, 50, a Wiradjuri man of the Dabee clan who grew up near where he now lives, in Cooma, NSW. Swain runs Alpine River Adventures in nearby Jindabyne, but has put the business second to protecting his country. When I call the night before he heads out bush to undertake a feral-cat trapping program (protecting the smoky mouse and mountain pygmy possum) he sounds defeated. Barilaros brumby bill was his breaking point. It was like taking a sledgehammer to a baby; like killing the last bit of the Barrier Reef.

Being Australian to them is Vegemite, or a Holden car, or Bradmans average. I want to shame them into caring for country.

Swain takes people on Indigenous walking tours, educating them about the way the land has been disrespected and desecrated, and last year held a ceremony to sing healing back into the land. His message is not being met well. Online he has been mocked as a half-caste wanker, while opponents have used fake social media accounts to discredit him and online notice boards to rubbish his business.

He was walking in the bush recently with his 83-year-old mother when an opponent screamed at them: Go suck a dick! His wife often finds her car plastered with Save the Brumby stickers. Hes started getting flat tyres, punctured with nails.

Im completely fed up. I now call them Aussies by name and not by nature. But its a broader cultural issue, Swain says. Being Australian to them is Vegemite, or a Holden car, or Bradmans average. They belligerently dont want to form a connection. I want to shame them into caring for country.

Lewis Benedetti says he will keep coming up to the high country, pulling the big horse float he hopes to fill with sturdy little hooves.Credit:Josh Robenstone

Some of them already care deeply for country, of course, even if their perspectives diverge. Benedetti, the horse-breaker, is one. He says he will keep coming up to the high country in the near future, pulling the big horse float he hopes to fill with sturdy little hooves. Im gonna give this winter a hard crack, says Benedetti. Id like to save a few from the rifle, and have a brumby sale in spring. A couple of dozen.

In the weeks after I leave, he roams our landscape alone, catching mares and foals, posting luminous photos of the shimmering Snowy River, and fresh green pick on the steep side of Mt Kosciuszko. But I remember him best in my final moments on the Nunnet Plains, an expanse of thick grass and dead gums silvering in the sun.

He sees a mob before him, but the dozen blacks and bays and greys twig to his presence early, and charge away. The crack rider follows light in the saddle, digging spurs and clutching reins and he closes as the tree line nears.

A brutal silent wind whips across the land now, and the pursuit vanishes into the bush. As the familiar chase continues, dark cloud shadows creep over the plains. The brumbies are on the run.

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The imminent brumby cull in the Australian alps - Sydney Morning Herald

How is the new digital landscape affecting the way we learn? – Landscape News

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As live online events are taking off due to states of quarantine and restricted travel, the growing medium is changing the way people consume information, learn and interact. How might we evolve to adapt to new digital mediums? And while increased digitization might lessen our environmental impact, how is it accelerating the spread of knowledge while affecting our states of deep learning and focus?

On 17 July at 11:00 EDT / 17:00 CEST, Landscape News editor Gabrielle Lipton will speak with acclaimed author Nicholas Carr, whose book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize, and Brad Simmons, who leads the digital events platform of the World Bank, World Bank Live, about how the rapid growth of digital spaces is changing the course of human connections, equity and shared info.

Nicholas Carr is an acclaimed writer whose work focuses on the intersection of technology, economics, and culture. His books include the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (2010), Utopia Is Creepy (2016),The Glass Cage: Automation andUs (2014), The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google (2008) and Does IT Matter?(2004). Carrhas also written for many newspapers, magazines, and journals, includingTheAtlantic,The Wall Street Journal,TheNew York Times,TheWashington Post,Wired, Nature,andMIT Technology Review. He is a visiting professor of sociology at Williams College in Massachusetts and was the former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review. In 2015, he received the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity from the Media Ecology Association.

Brad Simmons is an External Affairs Officer for Corporate Communications at the World Bank, where he has spent the last 13 years in several roles from web and multimedia production, to digital marketing and engagement and live streaming. He currently manages World Bank Live a digital platform for live streaming and engaging with global audiences in open conversations about international development.Brad has directed the streaming for over 700 live events and 200+ live interviews.Before joining the World Bank, Brad worked for the US Department of Defense for 6 years in ICT, education technology and web development. Previously he was a research associate at the Center for International Policy in Washington D.C.Brad graduated with an M.A. in Digital Communications from Johns Hopkins University and holds his B.A. in International Relations from Syracuse University.

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How is the new digital landscape affecting the way we learn? - Landscape News

Comic-Con@Home: Amazon Sets Panels For The Boys, Upload, Truth Seekers And Utopia; Launches First-Ever Virtual-Con – Deadline

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Amazon Prime Video is not just bringing a roster of horror, comedy and superheroes to Comic-Con@Home, but they are also bringing the first-ever Amazon Virtual-Con which will include virtual experiences and activations that you can enjoy from the comfort of your home. Things are set to kick off on San Diego Comic Cons official YouTube channel and on the Amazon Virtual-Con portal starting at 12 p.m. PST on July 23.

The Amazon series joining this years virtual edition Comic-Con include The Boys, Upload, Truth Seekers and Utopia.Like every Comic-Con, the panels will include cast, creators and crew of the series and will feature fan Q&As, behind-the-scene-stories, breaking news from the aforementioned series.

To further heighten the Comic-Con experience, Amazon Virtual-Con, a virtual convention content hub, will be a destination for fans to access and engage with Amazons full range of Comic-Con activations. Fans will be able to gather as a community to share in the experience of seeing their favorite stars, learn how to draw some of their favorite comic book characters from the industrys leading illustrators, and test their comic book movie knowledge with like-minded fans in a round of trivia.

Virtual-Con will be available free of charge to all fans in front of the Prime Video paywall from July 23-26.

Below are the full details for the panels and Amazon Virtual-Con

COMIC-CON@HOME PANELS

Truth SeekersThursday, July 23 at 12:00 p.m. PSTA new original supernatural horror-comedy by Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead), Nick Frost (Hot Fuzz), James Serafinowicz (Sick Note) and Nat Saunders (Sick Note). Join as they discuss the making of the hilarious eight-episode series about a team of part-time paranormal investigators, who team up to uncover and film ghost sightings across the UK, sharing their adventures on an online channel for all to see. Discussion and Q&A moderated by Empire Magazines Chris Hewitt.

UtopiaThursday, July 23 at 1:00 p.m. PSTA twisted, eight-episode thriller about a group of young comic fans who discover the conspiracy in a graphic novel is real, and embark on a high-stakes adventure to save humanity from the end of the world. Join writer and executive producer Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) and series stars John Cusack (High Fidelity), Rainn Wilson (The Office), Sasha Lane (American Honey), Ashleigh LaThrop (Fifty Shades Freed), Dan Byrd (Cougar Town), Desmin Borges (Youre The Worst), Javon Wanna Walton (Euphoria), and Jessica Rothe (Happy Death Day) for a Q&A moderated by Entertainment Weeklys Christian Holub.

UploadThursday, July 23 at 2:00 p.m. PSTJoin creator, executive producer and director Greg Daniels (The Office, Parks and Recreation) and stars Robbie Amell (Code 8), Andy Allo (Pitch Perfect 3), Kevin Bigley (Undone), Allegra Edwards (New Girl), and Zainab Johnson (American Koko) as they discuss how they brought this futuristic comedy to life, share behind-the-scenes details from Season One, and tease what fans can expect in Season Two. The panel will be moderated by Engadgets Cherlynn Low. Upload Season One is a ten-episode, half-hour, sci-fi comedy that takes place in the near future, where people can be Uploaded into a virtual afterlife of their choice.

The BoysThursday, July 23 at 3:00 p.m. PSTJoin executive producer Eric Kripke, along with series stars Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, Erin Moriarty, Jessie T. Usher, Laz Alonso, Chace Crawford, Tomer Capon, Karen Fukuhara and Aya Cash, with moderator Aisha Tyler, for a behind-the-scenes look at the upcoming second season of The Boys. Executive producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg will also make a special appearance. Based on The New York Times best-selling comic by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, The Boys is a fun and irreverent take on what happens when superheroes who are as popular as celebrities abuse their superpowers rather than use them for good. The even more intense, more insane Season Two finds The Boys on the run from the law, hunted by the Supes, and desperately trying to regroup and fight back against Vought.

AMAZON VIRTUAL-CON PROGRAMMING

ComiXologys Comic-Con@Home Panel, Plus Live Artist Drawing Sessions, Creator Interview Series, and Comic Book Movie Trivia NightSaturday, July 25 at 3:00pm PST (Comic-Con@Home panel)Are you currently reading digital comics? Are you familiar with comiXologys exclusive digital content program comiXology Originals? Join comiXologys Head of Content, Chip Mosher and a cast of beloved comic creators and rising-stars including, writer Chip Zdarsky and artist Jason Loo (Afterlift), artist Claudia Aguirre (Lost on Planet Earth), writer Curt Pires (YOUTH), along with some surprise guests, to get the scoop on the latest comiXology Originals series direct from the creators making them! Theyll intrigue you with behind-the-scenes stories about the process of bringing comics from concept to the page and what its like pushing the envelope with digital comics, and beyond.

For the superfan seeking even more comic book content, comiXologys own Kiwi will host live drawing sessions on comiXologys Twitch channel with some of the industrys most renowned illustrators, including GLAAD Media Award-winning illustrator Tula Lotay and three-time New York Times best-selling British artist Jock. In addition to drawing sessions, Kiwi will also host an interview series with creators from comiXologys Originals line of exclusive digital content, including Curt Pires & Dee Cunniffe (YOUTH) and the creators behind two yet to be announced original graphic novels. And if all that isnt enough, comiXology and Eisner Award winner Chip Zdarsky will host Comic Book Movie Trivia Night on Friday, July 24 at 5:00p.m. PST on their Twitch channel.

For the schedule of live drawing sessions and creator interviews, please continue to check amazon.com/virtualcon for updates.

Summer Game Fest is Better on TwitchAmazon Virtual-Con brings fans select programming from Twitchs on-going Summer Game Fest, the biggest gaming event of the year. Twitchs Summer Game Fest is the only place where you can witness the future of gaming and join the conversation live with the largest gaming community on the planet.

Prime Videos The Boys Customizable Promo ItemBringing to life one of the most beloved convention experiences, Amazon Virtual-Con will give fans the opportunity to create their own customizable promo items free of charge. Attendees of Amazon Virtual-Con can choose between two promo items, then customize the design using a variety of preset images inspired by the Amazon Original series, The Boys. Each customized item will ship to guests, free of charge, 10 15 days following the event.

Prime Videos Hanna Unlocked Adventure GameHanna Unlocked is a digital adventure game presented by Amazon Prime Video and powered by The Escape Game. The game will be available to play for free through Amazon Virtual-Con. Hanna Unlocked drops players into the Hanna universe between the end of Season 1 and the beginning of Season 2. Players will take on the role of a UTRAX agent and must piece together a sequence of events, gather intel, and ultimately track the whereabouts of their targets, Hanna and Clara, all while receiving communication from top brass, agent John Carmichael, a leading character in Season 2. Once the mission is completed, players are then shown footage that takes them seamlessly into the beginning of season 2.

Audibles Sandman ExperienceTo celebrate Audibles release of The Sandman, based on Neil Gaimans iconic graphic novel, fans are invited to submit a description of a memorable dream at drawnfromthedreaming.com or via U.S. mobile phone at 515-SANDMAN (515-726-3626), a hotline narrated by creator Neil Gaiman, who serves as fans guide through the Drawn from The Dreaming experience. Selected fan-submitted dreams will be illustrated by a top DC artist, possibly one of the original artists from the graphic novels. Dream drawings will be featured in an Instagram dream gallery, @DrawnFromTheDreaming, and fans will be tagged in their customized artwork. Everyone who submits a dream will be rewarded with an exclusive free audio episode from The Sandman, including a brief overview of the story so far, told by Neil Gaiman himself, only on Audible.

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Comic-Con@Home: Amazon Sets Panels For The Boys, Upload, Truth Seekers And Utopia; Launches First-Ever Virtual-Con - Deadline

Three Spacecraft Need to Leave For Mars in The Next Two Weeks or Wait Until 2022 – ScienceAlert

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By this time next year, Mars will be abuzz with robotic activity.

That's because three countries are sending spacecraft to the red planet this month. In the final weeks of July, the US, China, and the United Arab Emirates all plan to rocket rovers or orbiters into space.

NASA has sent five rovers to the red planet in the past, but this will be China's and the UAE's first attempts.

The robots are expected to make the first global map of the Mars climate, drill into the planet's surface, and search for signs of long-dead microbes that may have once thrived in Martian valleys and riverbeds. These missions could find the first footprints of life on another planet.

The launches are all scheduled for this month in order to catch Mars as it passes close to Earth. If they miss this chance, they won't have another opportunity to launch until 2022.

Russia and the European Space Agency had also planned to send a rover to Mars this year, but had to back out after the coronavirus pandemic caused delays. They will try again in two years.

Here's what to know about the three rovers slated to begin their journeys to Mars within the next few weeks.

An illustration of NASA's Perseverance rover. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Engineers began assembling Perseverance two years ago at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. It was previously called the Mars 2020 rover a placeholder until NASA chose Perseverance as the winner of anaming competition.

"We as humans evolved as creatures who could learn to adapt to any situation, no matter how harsh," Alexander Mather, a 7th-grader from Virginia who proposed the new name, wrote in the essay he submitted to the competition. "We will meet many setbacks on the way to Mars. However, we can persevere."

NASA has already run into some of those setbacks. It haspushed back the launch datetwice, delaying it to July 30. That leaves the agency just two more weeks of flexibility until the launch window closes on August 15.

If all goes well, the rover will land on February 18, 2021 in Mars' Jezero crater an ancient riverbed that could harbour signs of past microbial life. The mission, which will cost a total $US3 billion start-to-finish, will drill into the Martian surface to collect samples of rock and soil, then stash them at a collection point for a future mission to bring back to Earth.

After it lands, the rover is programmed to drop a small helicopter from its belly.

The helicopter, called Ingenuity, is a technology demonstration. If successful, it will conduct the first-ever powered flight on another world.

Perseverance itself will carry a suite of cutting-edge tools: a new navigation system to make landing on the red planet less risky, a machine designed to produce oxygen from carbon dioxide, and instruments to collect data that could help scientists better predict Martian weather.

Together, all these developments could get us closer to putting human boots on Mars's harsh surface.

"We're making history right now," NASA associate administrator Thomas Zurbuchen said during the announcement of the rover's name. "It will be the first leg of the first round trip of humanity to Mars, bringing back these samples that tell us secrets about life itself."

NASA flew the rover to Cape Canaveral, Florida in February to begin launch preparations.

The Mars Hope Probe. (UAE Space Agency)

The United Arab Emirates is poised to launch its SUV-sized spacecraft from Japan on Wednesday local time.

The Hope orbiter will be the Arab world's first mission to another planet. The probe will join six other spacecraft that orbit Mars it won't land on the surface. While circling the red planet, the satellite will study the Martian atmosphere by monitoring how it interacts with solar wind and tracking the loss of hydrogen and oxygen.

Hope's goal will be to chart a global map of the planet's climate across an entire Martian year. It would be humanity's first such picture of Mars's atmosphere.

Because of its large, oval-shaped orbit, the probe should be able to capture most of the planet in each of its 55-hour orbits.

"We'll be able to cover all of Mars, through all times of day, through an entire Martian year," Sarah Al Amiri, science lead for the mission and the UAE's minister for advanced sciences, toldNature.

Illustration of China's rover. (Chinese State Administration of Science/Xinhua)

After its recent success sending a rover to the far side of the moon, China's National Space Administration is taking its space robots to the next planetary body. The mission is called Tianwen-1, meaning "quest for heavenly truth," according to Nature. If successful, it will be the first Mars mission to drop a landing platform, deploy a rover, and send a spacecraft into the planet's orbit all at once.

The rover will be equipped with a radar system that can detect underground pockets of water. It will also help China prepare for its own mission to return a sample from Mars to Earth in the 2030s.

For its first attempt at landing on another planet, China has chosen a relatively hazard-free site at Utopia Planitia, a vast field of volcanic rock, according toThe Planetary Society.

China hasn't announced a specific launch date yet but like NASA it's planning for late July.

This article was originally published by Business Insider.

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Three Spacecraft Need to Leave For Mars in The Next Two Weeks or Wait Until 2022 - ScienceAlert

Occupy City Hall Struggles as Homeless Move In – The New York Times

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When it first kicked off last month, the activist encampment that billed itself as Occupy City Hall was viewed as the latest wave of the citys George Floyd protests an innovative political space that, under summer skies, attracted peaceful crowds to speeches and teach-ins focused on a narrow goal: cutting $1 billion from the New York Police Departments budget.

In the past week, however, the number of protesters has dropped off sharply and those who have remained have taken on a new responsibility: caring for dozens of homeless people who were drawn to the compound for its free food, open-air camping and communal sensibility.

It has not been easy.

Brawls have erupted. Passers-by and journalists have been harassed. Local residents even those who say they support the camps politics have complained that it has turned into a disorderly shantytown where violence has occurred. Several medics who had been there from the start announced this week that they were leaving, citing a lack of safety in a statement.

The coronavirus has also become a growing concern as people cluster together, sometimes without masks.

On recent nights, about 100 people have typically slept in tents and on the ground in the park, most of whom are considered homeless, organizers said. Signs denouncing racism and the police are everywhere, taped to tables or attached to metal fences. On many days, music blares out of speakers.

The organizers of the camp renamed Abolition Park defended the project, saying that by serving meals to homeless people and helping to provide a safe place to sleep, they are doing what they said the city had not: addressing the needs of its most vulnerable residents.

They acknowledged that disagreements, even acts of violence, had occurred in the park, but they said they were looking for ways to deal with such troubles without involving the police.

Its not pretty all the time and were not just going to abandon it because its not pretty right now, said Desirae, the 20-year-old leader of the compounds media team, who declined to give her last name. Were going to stay here through the ugly.

The camp, just feet from City Hall, presents a thorny political problem for Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has been criticized by the demonstrators and by his Black supporters since the George Floyd demonstrations started in late May.

A spokeswoman for the mayor, Avery Cohen, noted that since the protests at City Hall Park started, there have been just 12 complaints to the 311 hotline about the area near City Hall, none of them concerning homeless people.

We are wholly committed to protecting the health and safety of all New Yorkers, she said. To ensure the well-being of those peacefully exercising their right to protest, our outreach teams have been at the site to engage those who may need our assistance. We stand ready to help any person who needs a helping hand.

The Police Department referred questions to the mayors office.

Some organizers said the complications were the inevitable growing pains of unlearning and relearning concepts such as leadership, ownership and safety.

Others said they considered this past week a transition stage as their movement, which is led by Black organizers, figured out internal structures, communication strategies and programming that can be sustained long-term. The physical space is also being reorganized, and a new grand opening is expected soon, they said.

And they said they were taking steps to curb the spread of the coronavirus, distributing masks and sanitizer.

Still, there have been tense situations, including violence.

At a community gathering on Tuesday night, several protesters clashed with one another verbally and physically. Then on Wednesday morning, two more protesters assaulted a person who entered the encampment with a sign proclaiming support for the police.

Throughout the day on Wednesday, joggers and passers-by including one reporter were confronted by people in the park, accused of having trespassed or of being spies for the police.

Over the weekend, a resident of 49 Chambers Street, a condominium complex across from the camp, said in an email that some people from the camp had tried to break into the building and had threatened to burn it down.

Weve spoken to the N.Y.P.D., and the response was that the mayors office ordered them to stand down and not interfere with crimes being committed on this specific block, the resident said. This leaves our building the only residential building out of multiple government buildings on the block defenseless.

The occupation began on June 23 when about 100 people, led by the grass-roots group Vocal-NY, set up shop on a small patch of grass to the east of City Hall with the sole mission of bringing pressure on the City Council to cut the Police Departments funding at an upcoming vote before the July 1 budget deadline.

The little squatters colony grew into a kind of happy Hooverville, a sprawl of tarps, tents and bedrolls that spread through the plaza that lies between City Hall and the ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge. There were food tables, cleaning crews, a hand-sanitizing station and even a library where campers could go to hear lectures on the school-to-prison pipeline.

While the protest was mostly peaceful, the facades of the nearby Surrogates Court and Tweed Courthouse buildings on Chambers Street were marred with graffiti, though it was not known who was responsible.

The encampment reached its peak on June 30 when thousands of people crowded into the plaza after dark to watch the Council vote on a giant video screen.

While the Council ultimately decided to shift nearly $1 billion away from the police, many of the protesters expressed disappointment, wanting deeper cuts. Most of them, along with leaders from Vocal-NY, went home within days.

But some, like Adi Sragovich, stayed largely, she said, out of a sense of duty to the homeless people who had in the meantime flocked to the park.

On Wednesday morning, Ms. Sragovich, 20, was still at the compound, fixing people sandwiches and plastic bags of granola for breakfast.

It felt unethical pulling out, she said.

Beyond the free meals and the help-yourself clothes bin, the park activists have set up a makeshift mental health tent, where a licensed social worker has been advising people suffering from trauma, mental illness or substance abuse.

A team of volunteer de-escalators has also been drafted to move about the camp defusing disputes and soothing frayed tempers.

This space has transitioned a lot in the last two weeks, said Ren Jean-Baptiste, 24, a protester who has been at the camp since the beginning. We know its not permanent, but it is a safe space, and were trying to get the people the services they need.

David Terry said he appreciated the gesture. A few weeks ago, Mr. Terry, 56, said he became homeless when a fire damaged his apartment in Harlem. He made his way to the camp near City Hall. Now he spends his days listening to the music in the plaza or lounging about with others talking politics. He has even tried his hand at the meditation tent.

Theres other places I could go, he said, but I like it here.

At least so far, the organizers have not come up with a specific list of demands or any explicit agenda for this latest version of the camp. But they have said they would like to refocus the conversation more on abolishing the police than merely defunding it.

Abolishing prisons and police does not just mean subtracting those institutions from society but building a world where everyone gets the care they need, said Katherine, 27, an organizer who would not give her last name.

Twice during the occupations first phase, before July 1, scores of police officers pushed into the park and fought with large crowds of protesters, leading to arrests and injuries. But in the past few days, while the police have loomed in the distance, there have been no physical confrontations.

Some activists said they were more worried about outsiders or those within the camp.

This is a utopia among chaos, said a man who calls himself Professor Kannon and has been giving history lessons on police brutality and civil rights since the start of the encampment.

We have disputes and disagreements if we didnt, we wouldnt be a family, Professor Kannon said. The only people in here thats going to harm us is us.

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Occupy City Hall Struggles as Homeless Move In - The New York Times

J.M. Coetzees States of Exile – The Nation

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A statue of Jesus atop St. Peters Basilica at the Vatican. (Andreas Solaro / AFP via Getty Images)

A man and a boy arrive before a low, sprawling building, hurrying to enter before it closes for the day. The place is a government office of some kind, a Centro de Reubicacin in a fictional town called Novilla. Speaking in halting Spanish and unfamiliar with the word reubicacin, the man asks the clerk for help. He is seeking employment and a place to live. We are new arrivals, he tells the functionary. I have a child with me.Ad Policy Books in Review

So begins The Childhood of Jesus, the first in a trilogy of novels by J.M. Coetzee that continues with The Schooldays of Jesus and comes to a perplexing climax in The Death of Jesus. What is it like to start life anew? the first novel asks. The two that follow extend this line of inquiry, working into it questions of education and labor, of parenting and love, even if the overall conclusion remains ambiguous. The novels offer no definitive answers, although they do suggest that within this trilogy-length puzzle of what it means to begin, one might find the even bigger question of what the art of the novel means for Coetzee at this stage of his prolific career.

The opening lines of the first novel, with their sparse but carefully chosen details, prepare the reader for a kind of stripped-down realism. The Spanish relocation center is inspired, one assumes, by the global refugee crisis in Southern Europe. The reader is primed, almost by force of habit, to think of overcrowded camps along the Mediterranean, of displaced humans making their slow, painful way north, hoping against hope to secure the benefits reluctantly offered by the residual welfare states of Europe. And because the series bears the aura of Jesuss name, one also expects a touch of allegory, the kind of symbolism beloved of the dominant writers, artists, and human rights campaigners of our time. A liberal message about Jesus resurrected and retrofitted for our contemporary turbulence, one thinks. What could be a more apt response to authoritarian demagogues and their border walls? Jesus, after all, was a refugee.

Yet as we make our own uncertain way through the trilogy, we begin to realize that the contemporary refugee crisis provides little more than a rudimentary scaffold for the questions Coetzee is interested in pursuing. We see the occasional obtuseness of the city bureaucracy, the generosity of the stevedores among whom Simn, the man, finds work carrying sacks of grain, and the eccentricity of the neighbors encountered by David, the child, at the housing complex where the new arrivals are assigned an apartment. Throughout, we look for the clues that might give us insight into the trilogys titles, the signs that might be portents. And yet steadily, almost every element of the novels interpretive schema crumbles, before it completely falls apart.

Simn, it turns out, is not Davids father but a fellow refugee met on their boat. His mother is believed to be somewhere in Novilla, but they have no name or description for her, even though Simn believes he will recognize her by instinct. And as he and David go about their existence, life in Novilla turns out to be safe but dull. The diet is composed mostly of bread, the labor largely manual, the interactions among adults more or less devoid of erotic charge. Workers can attend philosophy classes, and all the buses are free. We begin to realize that Coetzee has led us intorather than an allegory of our contemporary world or a representation of Jesussan in-between nowhere place, a mildly oppressive utopia or a relatively humane dystopia, a paradoxical realm where human beings arrive, no matter their age, as if they had just been born.

Readers of Coetzee have been in such a world before, although it may take them a while to realize it. In 2003, the year he received the Nobel Prize, he published the beguiling Elizabeth Costello. Structured as a series of lectures delivered by its eponymous protagonist, a writer and fierce campaigner for animal rights, the novel features talks that had been delivered by Coetzee, a vegetarian who has written about animal rights. And if this metafictional slippage is insufficient, Elizabeth Costello goes even further: It includes a dazzling chapter, At the Gate, that is a reworking of the Before the Law episode in Kafkas The Trial.

In contrast with the realist locations where Costello delivers her lectures, mostly colleges and universities in the West, this final chapter presents her disembarking from a bus in a town that has not much specificity to it and whose minimalist features (cafs, a windowless dormitory for new arrivals, and a bandstand on which the musicians play Strauss waltzes) seem to belong to an obscure Italian or Austro-Italian border town in the year 1912. Costello, otherwise our contemporary, has, it seems, slipped into a time that is not historical so much as an amalgamation of the literary and the metaphysical. Beyond the gate lies the great unknown, visible to herwhen a guard allows her a peekonly as a flash of blinding light. The journey that brought her here, to this country, to this town, that seemed to reach its end when the bus halted and its door opened on to the crowded square, was not the end of it all.Current Issue

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One wonders if her arrival is a gesture toward the afterlife. Many of the novels lectures, after all, are concerned with questions of aging, physical decline, and death. But if so, this gesture comes with a twist: When asked by the authorities in charge of the gate to write a statement of her faith, Costello has trouble articulating this in a manner both truthful and emotionally satisfying to her. God has failed in her world, as has socialism; she cannot even quite believe in art anymore. And so the novel ends, leaving us with a question: What is the afterlife for those who do not believe in one?

This question of belief and its absenceaesthetic and metaphysicalanimates the Jesus trilogy as well. Like Elizabeth Costello, the novels take place in a world that veers away from realism as well as allegory. Even if a Kafkaesque realm circa 1912 is not quite the setting, Novilla and Estrella, where Simn and David move later, are cities that deliberately deny the contemporary. There are televisions but no cellphones, cars but no aircraft, soccer but no Internet. Yet what makes the Jesus novels even more disorienting, perhaps, is that their rejection of realism and contemporary reality comes not at the end point of a life, as with Elizabeth Costello, but is instead inserted into an existence that is both at its beginning and its end, where the arc of a life flashes by so quickly that one might wonder if it existed at all.

Five years old in The Childhood of Jesus, David is 10 by the time the trilogy comes to a close. In those five years of living, the questions about art, God, morality, and politics that so troubled Costello abound. Now, however, they are inflected with an even greater ambiguity. Seen largely through the eyes of Simn, one of a series of father figures encountered in the novels, David is an unsettling character for the reader. In the first novel, he is initially portrayed as an ordinary child, understandably bereft in his new, bewildering surroundings, his metaphysical questions only as troubling as those encountered from the lips of anyone that age. Yet Coetzee is only sporadically interested in interiority and relationships, and the trilogy takes the first of its many perverse turns when Simn, against the desperate protestations of David, hands him over, along with the apartment he has been allotted by the Novilla bureaucracy, to a woman called Ins.

Even though Ins is clearly not Davids biological mother or particularly maternalher days until then involved playing tennis with her two brothers in the company of a German shepherd called BolvarSimn is certain that this is the mother David was destined to have. At first reluctant to assume such a role, Ins eventually accepts this responsibility, even as Davids behavior puts him at odds with a series of educational institutions. Although this leads at the end of the first book to Ins and Simns fleeing with David, his resistance to all but the most unconventional forms of pedagogy persists in The Schooldays of Jesus, where David, now nearly 7, has enrolled in what is called the Academy of Dance. There he falls under the tutelage of a mysterious musician, Seor Arroyo, and his charismatic wife, Ana Magdalena, and can finally indulge his singular epistemology, which revolves around the notions that the only book worth reading is Don Quixote and that numbers are connected to the stars. When he performs his special dance of Seven at an academy gathering, the effect is uncanny: As if the earth has lost its downward power, the boy seems to shed all bodily weight, Simn observes, to become pure light.

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As we make our way through The Schooldays of Jesus, we begin to realize there is more than just the ethereal to David. His resistance to learning and his difficult relationship with adults contain something other than trauma, something that seems to be almost a thought experiment on Coetzees part, a dismissal of theories of both nature and nurture in relation to the development of a child. Characters flit in and out of Davids penumbra, the other children reduced mostly to bit parts. Toward Simn, who often comes across as pedantic and affectless, David is willful and dismissive. Ins, he treats as his follower.

Then there is Dmitri, encountered first as a doorman at the Academy of Dance, a large, slovenly figure given to showing pornography to the children and fixated on Ana Magdalena. David, who seems strangely drawn to him, becomes even more interested after Dmitri sexually assaults and murders Ana Magdalena. A long, confusing trial leads not so much to Dmitris incarceration as to frequent encounters between him and David, whom Dmitri considers his king.

The Death of Jesus picks up their stories after the trial. With the Academy of Dance temporarily shut down, David takes to soccer. Revealing himself to be a gifted winger on the field, he is scouted by a man who runs an orphanage. David moves there, abandoning Simn and Ins, but his tenure as a player at the orphanage proves to be brief, and soon he is reacquainted with Dmitri: A mysterious ailment leads to a long hospitalization for David, and Dmitri resurfaces as a hospital worker. The doctors are unable to diagnose Davids illness, and midway through the novel comes the death signposted in the title. This is a bold move for any novelist, but Davids death brings no closure. Instead, the mystery continues, as Dmitri believes himself to be the sole recipient of a message from David, even if the content of that message, he writes in a long letter to Simn, is still obscure. For Simn, struggling with sorrow after Davids death and leafing through their copy of Don Quixote as if it were a relic, there is no message at all or at least none that can ever be known. The question of faith and its absence that we saw in Elizabeth Costello returns but in even more contradictory fashion, leaving us with almost nothing beyond the fact of the labor that has produced this puzzling trilogy.

Writing about the works produced in the twilight of an artists career, Edward Said marked out for special scrutiny those in which the artists late style was expressed not as harmony and resolution but as intransigence, difficulty, and unresolved contradiction. Building on a phrase and idea taken from Adorno, Said used Ibsen to make his point. Ibsens final playsin particular When We Dead Awakenoffer, in contrast with Shakespeare, not harmony, Said explains, but only an occasion to stir up more anxiety, tamper irrevocably with the possibility of closure, and leave the audience more perplexed and unsettled than before. As description, this seems quite apt for Coetzees Jesus trilogy, which raises so many questions and offers almost no definitive answers.

One wonders, for instance, in spite of the intermittent allegorical elements, whether the problem being wrestled with here is art rather than religion. It is an interpretation given some weight by the recurrent, quasi-talismanic status of Don Quixote and by the possible reading of David as a variation on its archetypal fictional protagonist as much as a version of Jesus of Nazareth, a boyish echo of the late knight of La Mancha. If David is adrift, it is perhaps also because he is traveling through a form that, while new to Cervantes, is undeniably worn some four centuries later in the hands of Coetzee.

Much of Coetzees career has, in fact, tilted at the windmills of literary realism. The struggle is there in his first book, 1974s Dusklands, with its twinned but stylistically quite different novellas that take on the Vietnam War and colonialism in southern Africa. The campaign is continued in anti-apartheid works like Waiting for the Barbarians and Life and Times of Michael K. Only in his most popular novel, Disgrace, does he offer us something of an exception, one that comes across as the norm only because its thematically freighted realismof white masculinity in postapartheid South Africawas rewarded by prize committees, winning its author the Booker for a second time as well as reliable placement in liberal arts curricula everywhere.

Coetzees angular relationship with realism has grown only more acute after he was awarded the Nobel and moved from South Africa to Australia. His subsequent fictional works appear to campaign against realism with even greater intensity. Elizabeth Costello was followed by Slow Man, another novel about the aging body that also features Costello, who appears a third of the way through, claiming that its protagonist is a character in a novel she is working on. Coetzees challenge to the realist form found its most singular expression in 2007s Diary of a Bad Year. Riffing on Defoes A Journal of the Plague Yeara work that suddenly has its own ominous valenceCoetzee produced not so much a novel as an extended set of essays on the modern state. The narrative element reduced mostly to footnotes, the main text of the novel involved a series of treatises by Seor C, a writer who, like Coetzee, has just immigrated to Australia from South Africa and who excoriates Anglo-American democracy for its self-congratulatory rhetoric even as it leaves in its wake the wreckage of the Iraq War, Abu Ghraib, and Guantnamo.

If not realist, though, there was no doubt that Coetzee was addressing the moment in Diary of a Bad Year. There was no escape or evasion here, only a fiercely moral intelligence that has been in operation since his earliest works of fiction, a courage to take on the same liberal Anglo-American world that has, by and large, celebrated his status as an artist. The Jesus trilogy, however, while rejecting realism, seems also to jettison the contemporary world. Readers must make their way through a series of novels that do not seem to pose political questions and whose metaphysics often appear to pertain to a realm far removed from that of humanity. There are barely any reference points, only a bewildering succession of Spanish names in a land that could be anywhere vaguely European and where all the charactersother than perhaps David, the boy knight-kingare devoid of memories.

So, just as the past is more or less absent, the present in the Jesus novels (and in particular the final one) is not fully substantial, either. In spite of the housing and work and food provided to new arrivals, everyone is in some deep sense unhoused. Different as the adult characters Simn, Ins, and Dmitri may be from one another, they all give the impression of wandering through the fragmentary remnants of modernitythe state, the novel, and realism. They are in exile in a manner that sidesteps the contemporary questions we thought in the beginning they were intended to examine: border control regimes, displaced people from the Global South, the new authoritarianism.

There is no reason to believe, given Coetzees long writing career, that he is not opposed to the latest manifestations of cruelty expressed by the modern state. But the Jesus novels also suggest that the estrangement felt by their charactersand by us as readerswhile disquieting and profound, occupies an uneasy relationship to our alienation from the contemporary. In Diary of a Bad Year, Seor C talks about a helpless quietism that has become the norm for citizens of modern Western democracies, an inner emigration. But in writing an allegory that is barely an allegory and a trilogy of novels that are often not novels, Coetzee appears to have made his own literary displacement total, external as well as internal. Drawing on Adorno, Said spoke of difficult late works as constituting, for the intransigent artist, a form of exile. Coetzees late work is exemplary in that regard.

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J.M. Coetzees States of Exile - The Nation

People this Week: New hires, promotions, awards New Orleans CityBusiness – New Orleans CityBusiness

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Accounting

Christian Moises APR, practice growth specialist at Ericksen Krentel CPAs and Consultants, has been elected to the national board of directors for the Association for Accounting Marketing.

Advertising/Public Relations

Gambel Communications has named Amy Boyle Collins as CEO of the agency. Founder Betsie Gambel will remain actively involved in long-range planning and business development.

The Ehrhardt Group ranked number 137 in PR Weeks annual review of the top agencies in the country, which was announced in the publications June issue.

Architecture

Samantha Johnson has been promoted as a studio design manager at Nano LLC. Kristine Kobila has been promoted as the QA/QC director at NANO LLC.

Shelby Shankle has joined Campo Architects as a Historian. Her role includes navigating the challenges of the historic tax credit process specific to each state for historic preservation and adaptive reuse projects.

Awards

Ryan Gootee General Contractors has been awarded the 2020 Construction Risk Partners Build America Award in the Building Renovations ($10 million $75 million) category for the Sazerac House.

Justin Landry, Stirling Properties vice president of finance and capital markets, has been awarded the CRE (Counselor of Real Estate) credential by The Counselors of Real Estate.

General Business

CSRS has announced that Domoine Rutledge has become a shareholder of the firm.

Ed Reynolds, vice president of DA Exterminatings Covington branch, has been appointed to the Louisiana Structural Pest Control Commission.

Kingsley House has announced its board officers and three new members: Richard Roth, president; Chimene Grant Saloy, president-elect; Claudia Powell, treasurer; Christine Mitchell, vice president; Ralph Mahana, secretary; and Miles Thomas, immediate past president. New board members include Steve Corbett, Alan Philipson and Sue Williamson.

SMPA SeLA has announced its board of directors for the 2020-21 term: Fannie Marcotte-Bennett, president; Rebecca Moses, president-elect; Alexis Vigier Miranne, past president; Brock Piglia, director at large programming; Kelly Primeaux, director at large, member services; Lorraine Lorio, director at large, communications; Gia Pieri, treasurer; and Glen Duncan, secretary.

Paul Aucoin, executive director of the Port of South Louisiana, has been elected vice president of the Ports Association of Louisiana.

Shayna Beevers Morvant will serve as 2020-21 president of the Louisiana Center for Law and Civic Education.

Digital Engineering has hired Alan Krouse as senior project manager and Fannie Marcotte-Bennett as director of client services.

Health Care

Kirsten Riney has been promoted to chief nursing officer of North Oaks Health System.

Mac Barrient has been promoted to administrator of North Oaks Rehabilitation Hospital.

Meredith Sugarman, associate director of the Louisiana Community Health Worker Institute in the Center for Healthcare Value and Equity at LSU Health New Orleans, has been selected as a Fellow in Families USAs Health Equity Academy in System Transformation.

Law

Daigle Fisse & Kessenich PLC has announced that Katelin Varnado has joined the North Shore office as an associate.

Real Estate

Alex Shows has been hired to be Latter & Blum Property Managements new human resources director.

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People this Week: New hires, promotions, awards New Orleans CityBusiness - New Orleans CityBusiness

Nano Gas Sensors MARKET ESTIMATED COVID-19 OUTBREAK IMPACT ON GLOBAL GROWTH IN 2020-2024 |by Top Key Players-Raytheon Company, Ball Aerospace and…

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Global Nano Gas Sensors Market Overview forecast to 2020 :

The Global Nano Gas Sensors Market research report presented by garner insightspresents a detailed analysis of the ongoing market scenario. This report also covers the impact of COVID-19 on the global market. The pandemic caused by Coronavirus (COVID-19) has affected every aspect of life globally, including the business sector. This has brought along several changes in market conditions. Moreover, the study offers an analysis of the latest events such as the technological advancements and the product launches and their consequences on the global Nano Gas Sensors market. With a view to provide an in-depth analysis of key regions, the authors of the report have provided a comprehensive analysis on market attractiveness therein. The report includes key strategies and the effect of key market players on the Nano Gas Sensors Market. Additionally, the report provides market summary, SWOT analysis and the total market share.

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In terms of geography, the Nano Gas Sensors market includes regions such as the Middle East and Africa, Latin America, North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Europe will show high growth in the following couple of years. India and China will likewise show notable growth, thereby increasing the count of employments. North America, on the other hand, is expected to have a leading share in the Nano Gas Sensors Market over the coming years. Countries in the Latin America will have significant share in the overall market.

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Nano Gas Sensors MARKET ESTIMATED COVID-19 OUTBREAK IMPACT ON GLOBAL GROWTH IN 2020-2024 |by Top Key Players-Raytheon Company, Ball Aerospace and...

Israeli Researchers Develop Test to Identify Covid-19 in Less Than a Minute – The Jewish Voice

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Edited by: JV Staff

An Israeli-designed one-minute breath test to tell whether someone has coronavirus could soon be installed at hundreds of global entry points if it gets approval from the US Food and Drug Administration, according to the gvwire.com web site.

The clever contraption, which uses frequency to detect the deadly SARS-CoV-2, was designed by a team based at an Israeli university and has a success rate of more than 90 percent in trials to-date.

Current tests for the new coronavirus use throat or nose swabs and look for particles but the team led by Professor Gabby Sarusi at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev thought outside the box in terms of detection, as was reported by gvwire.com.

Right from the beginning of the trials, we received statistically significant results in line with our simulations and PCR tests, said Sarusi. We are continuing clinical trials and will compare samples from COVID-19 patients with samples from patients with other diseases to see if we can identify the different stages of the COVID-19 infection.

Bioworld.com reported that the test works with particles from a simple breath test or throat and nose swab, such as are already currently used for other COVID-19 tests.

These are then placed on a chip with a dense array of metamaterial sensors that was designed specifically for this purpose, as was reported by Bioworld. The system then analyzes the biological sample and produces an accurate diagnosis within a minute, via a cloud-connected system.

We asked ourselves, since this virus is just like a nano-particle or a quantum dot with a diameter between 100 nm to 140 nm in terms of its size and electrical properties, can we detect it using methods from the worlds of physics, photonics and electrical engineering? said Sarusi.

We discovered that the answer is yes, this virus resonates in the THz frequency, and spectroscopy in these frequencies reveals it promptly, he added, according to the BioWorld report.

A June 30th report in HaModia indicates that tests done on hundreds of patients in Israeli hospitals, among them Ichilov and Poriyah, point to an accuracy rate of over 90% for the new breathalyzer test. The test was developed with assistance from the Health Ministry.

Hamodia reports that the company says that the test identifies carriers of the virus who are asymptomatic from four days after being infected. The cost of the test is one dollar, whereas the cost of the actual kit is tens of thousands of dollars.

NanoScent is the Israeli company that has produced an examination kit, as was reported by HaModia. He companys sensors combine digital technology with nanoscale materials, called chemiresistors, which change their electrical resistance in response to chemicals in the environment. If successful, the sensor will rapidly detect viral infections from breath exhaled through the nose, as was reported in HaModia.

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Israeli Researchers Develop Test to Identify Covid-19 in Less Than a Minute - The Jewish Voice

Coalition backs ‘cloud-brightening’ trial on Great Barrier Reef to tackle global heating – The Guardian

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A government-backed research program to make the Great Barrier Reef more resilient to global heating will spend $4.7m this financial year developing technologies that could shade corals and make clouds more reflective during marine heatwaves.

The announcement confirms the development of a technique known as marine cloud brightening, trialled on the reef in March, will be backed as part of the governments $443m grant being coordinated by the not-for-profit Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

On Tuesday the government and the foundation announced how it would spend $96m this financial year under the Reef Trust Partnership the $443m collaboration between government and the foundation.

Included in the spending for this financial year is more than $15m to try and control coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish, $39m to improve water quality and more than $3m for community-based projects, including citizen science.

Earlier this year the reef suffered its third mass coral bleaching event in five years. About one quarter of the reef suffered severe bleaching in the most widespread event ever recorded, affecting the full length of the 2,300km world heritage marine park.

Dr Daniel Harrison of Southern Cross University is the scientific lead for the $4.7m program to investigate cooling and shading techniques.

Harrison told Guardian Australia: We want to know if this will work, and we want to know as quickly as possible.

Its critical that [greenhouse gas] emissions come down, but that alone wont preserve a lot of the ecosystem value of the reef so we need to do other things as well.

About half of the $4.7m will be spent developing atmospheric modelling and monitoring to understand how particles in the air that clouds need to form behave over the reef.

In-kind support of $1.86m from a consortium of academic institutions led by Southern Cross University, including the CSIRO, will be added to the $4.7m.

Guardian Australia revealed that in March Harrison led a small research team to trial cloud-brightening equipment on Broadhurst reef near Townsville.

In the experiment, a modified turbine with 100 high-pressure nozzles was placed on the back of a boat to spray trillions of nano-sized salt crystals into the air.

When deployed at a larger scale, those salt crystals theoretically mix with low-altitude clouds to reflect more solar energy away from the waters around the reef.

Brightening clouds could work on a scale large enough to both shade corals and cool sea surface temperatures that could be the difference between corals dying from bleaching or recovering.

A technique known as fogging will also be developed over the coming 12 months. Using a similar deployment technique, larger droplets create localised fog that would aim to give some protection to individual reefs or groups of reefs that hold particular importance, either because of their cultural values, importance to tourism, fishing or for their biodiversity.

Harrison said atmospheric modelling and surveying would be used to check whether the cloud-brightening approach could have any wider impacts. Engineering facilities would also be built.

He said the cloud-brightening approach, if proven, would be deployed over the course of a month or two if temperatures got too high. The fogging technique would be used over a shorter time frame.

He said both approaches could be switched off rapidly and the salt crystals remained in the air for only a day or two depending on conditions.

Announcing the $96m of spending for the year, environment minister Sussan Ley said: Over the next 12 months we will be testing new approaches and technologies to protect and preserve the Great Barrier Reef, building on the partnerships key on-ground achievements from its first two years of operation.

Anna Marsden, managing director of the foundation, said there were more than 60 reef-saving projects under way in regional Queensland.

She said: The significant investment of $96m will mean that two-thirds of the $443m partnership will have been committed to reef-saving projects within a year.

Saving the reef is a huge task, but there is hope. We are proud to be doing our part to bring together people and science to deliver outcomes that will preserve the reef in the face of growing threats.

The foundation has a target to raise $357m in donations to top up the government funding, but Guardian Australia revealed last week that only $21.7m had been raised so far.

A world heritage committee meeting scheduled for early July this year in China has been postponed, but was to consider if the reef should be placed on an in danger list.

Australia has already conceded that climate change has caused damage to the unique attributes that led to it being listed as a world heritage site in 1981.

Greens senator Larissa Waters criticised the work plan for this financial year, saying it talks about the need to tackle climate change and transition to clean energy, but does nothing towards that goal.

She said plans to tackle crown-of-thorns starfish and shading the reef were Band-Aid solutions.

She said: This work plan is more rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic by a federal government that ignores and worsens the climate crisis, and underfunds water quality improvement by orders of magnitude.

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Coalition backs 'cloud-brightening' trial on Great Barrier Reef to tackle global heating - The Guardian

An (Infinite) Game Theory strategy for India to be a global power – The Sunday Guardian

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The methods India must use to set objectives, design strategies, and forge alliances will shift in approach and urgency.

India is at a unique inflection point. In 2019-20, our GDP was nearly $3tn, catapulting us into the top 5 economies. In terms of purchasing power parity, we are a top 3 economy at $12.6tn, behind China and the US. For the first time this year, due to the economic fallout of COVID-19, India will witness 4% negative growth. The pandemic is realigning the global order and may have forever changed the world. There are generational opportunities here, and the challenge is deciding which goals to pursue.

Here, game theory offers a useful framework for decision-makingto understand the theatre, build alliances and common objectives, formulate strategies to reach milestones, and then make the necessary nearand long-term decision-cascades to execute these strategies. The theory classifies all contests as finite or infinite.

Recent events, especially at the Indo-China border, have demonstrated that a stable economy is a prerequisite for indomitability. With it comes global respect, a shift in attitudes from allies and adversaries, optionality in resource allocation, and a security apparatus that can pre-emptively protect its borders and citizens. A robust economy has tremendous feedforward effectshigh incomes and quality of life, capacity to maintain peace at all costs, and the unrelenting pursuit of excellence. Sustaining a resilient economy in a sovereign nation is an infinite game.

By definition, an infinite game has no beginning or end, can support known and unknown players, must continue with an evolving ruleset, and the only known boundary condition is that the game must be perpetually played. In contrast, finite contests have bounded rules, scores, and playtime. Unlike basketball or chess, players in an infinite game cannot call time on the game after it reaches a pre-agreed result. For example, India cant achieve a $10tn GDP by 2031 and then retire its growth and development. Building a resilient economy can only be defined in terms of intermediate objectives that perpetuate the gamegrow the country to a $5tn GDP by 2026, $10tn by 2031, $20tn by 2041, and beyond.

Having established that India is playing an infinite game, the methods it must use to set objectives, design strategies, and forge alliances will shift in approach and urgency.

More importantly, India must align its decision-making, policy formulation, incentives, and investments toward these goals. With this lens, here are some of the growth drivers India has to pursue to become a dominant player in this infinite game.

URBANIZE SYSTEMATICALLY BUT RAPIDLY

Urbanization concentrates human activity, leading to depth of specialization and irreversible productivity enhancements; crucial to accelerating socio-economic growth. India (34% urban) lags behind the world (55%), China (59%) and the US (82%). Urbanization is critical for Indias growth, as exemplified by these two superpower contenders.

No longer should Indias growth depend only on 10 cities with a combined GDP of $1 trillion (33% of India) and a combined population of 11 crores (8% of India). The next 100 cities must be planned to contribute $1 trillion and house 20 crore people. Another tier of 1,000 towns can be developed for the next $1 trillion. In this manner, we could develop a total of 5,000 census towns all over the country, connect them with high-speed infrastructure, and concentrate resources to develop a tiered and reliable urban engine of growth. An India-wide phenomenon means every citizen can fully participate.

We can do this systematically by incorporating sustainable energy technologies, incentivising job creation and training, urban mobility solutions, and supporting quantum leaps in material reuse and recycling. This distributed growth engine can maintain a value-added agricultural surround system, self-reliant manufacturing ecosystem, increase overall savings and investment, and support human capital development.

LABOUR-INTENSIVE GROWTH

For self-reliance and sustained economic growth, India has to develop high labour-utilization strategies via urbanization, construction, manufacturing and services like tourism. It is the only sustainable way to support wage-growth and mass-upskilling of the 50% of India that is unskilled or low-skilled. After 70 years, agriculture even today employs 43% of the workforce which must quickly reduce to 25%.

The recent migrant crisis has demonstrated that six states in the north have surplus labour that migrates for a living. The Rs 50,000 crore PM-GKRY program has to be dovetailed with creating labour-intensive industries. An incentive program could be worked out where for 1 crore jobs created in specific industries in these six states, the government could pay Rs 2,000/month/worker employed with verifiable social security. With a combined Centre-state program, this will work out to INR 24,000 crores a year for 1 crore jobs; the creation of which will radically transform these states. Moreover, a majority of the 6,844 products we import from China at $65.3Bn can be produced domestically with labour-intensive strategies.

HIGH VALUE-ADDED MANUFACTURING

Labour-intensive manufacturing unlocks opportunities for current economic growth while hi-tech manufacturing unlocks opportunities for the future. Todays frontier technologies are tomorrows growth engines. Electronics design, 3D printing, advanced biotechnology, defence parts, space applications, robotics, and other areas are a formidable value-add to the nation that holds the intellectual property (IP) and manufacturing rights.

The worlds superpowers deploy significant innovation budgets because they have strategized the value of this investment in securing economic growth. While India has an abundance of talent, we have not pursued a perpetuating strategy here. To maintain a resilient economy, decades into the future, we must invest today in deep research, IP creation, and specialized workforces supported by centres of excellence, world-class R&D laboratories, manufacturing facilities and a deepening startup ecosystem. A Rs 50,000 crore PM Hi-Tech Industry Abhiyan is required. The returns on this investment will translate into extensive value-added output and growth.

EXPORT ORIENTATION

The endurance game strategy around export-orientation is evident: if we target only domestic markets, the limit is $3tn. With export-orientation, the market swiftly expands to the $82tn global economya 27x expansion. In a decade, even this would have expanded further at 4% YoY. With export-orientation, all Indian producers have an opportunity to expand their market reach, growth and earnings.

Indias IT industry has proven this value proposition. Three Indian IT companies are in the Top 5 globally, and five in the Top 10. In the early 1990s, if the then-burgeoning IT industry had limited itself to the domestic market, it would have probably died out because the market was limited. By consciously orienting their services toward the global economy, IT companies saw exponential growth and took advantage of the expansive growth opportunities.

INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT AND SUPPLY CHAIN EFFICIENCIES

Chinas infrastructure boom has enabled unprecedented delivery and supply chain efficienciesa significant contributor to their ability to produce and deliver high-quality goods at cheap prices. To compete, reducing our supply chain costs from 14% of GDP to 6% is essential.

The introduction of GST, and focus on road and airport development is paying off. In the wake of economic standstill, the administration can consider fast-tracking a National Infrastructure Pipeline 2.0 program, the freight corridor projects, and developing ports throughout the coastlines. We have to match carriage speeds and port turnaround times of China, Singapore and other places to capture export market share.

AGRICULTURAL EXPORTS

India is a fertile, multi-climate country with a strong agricultural base. We are the largest producer of milk, cotton, spices, and second largest in food grains, horticulture, and sugar. We are a major producer of agrochemicals, tea, jute and oilseeds. We have the largest cropland and livestock sector in the world. Despite this, we lag in agricultural exports and value-add due to the lack of a cohesive growth strategy.

A long-term vision to increase value-add in agriculture necessitates export-orientation, building a global India agri-brand, food processing, grading and sorting standardization, large-scale dairy procurement and branding cooperatives, and more. Agriculture will also capitalize on the increased supply chain efficiency to drive output up.

GOVERNANCE AND TAXATION REFORMS

Indias economic growth is heavily weighed down by compliance laws, some dating to the colonial era of the late 1800s. TeamLeases analysis of Indias compliance universe shows the centre and states together have 1,536 Acts, 69,233 compliance paradigms and 6,618 filings for companies and citizens to navigate. This impossibly high compliance burden is a drain on the time and resources of taxpayers, wealth-creators and job-creators, and is antithetical to value creation.

There are also discrepancies in taxation laws. Domestic investors pay higher taxes than equivalent overseas investors. Higher capital gains tax is levied on unlisted stock compared to listed, despite the highly variant risk-reward paradigms.

The worlds most productive economies have all deployed vastly-simplified compliance and tax regimes. President Trump has reduced friction by 30% in one term. With Indias pioneering tech-enabled governance, this is a generational opportunity to build transparent compliance and taxation systems that boost Indias productivity multifold. India needs a new movement to free citizens from the tyranny of over-compliance, a PM Zero-Friction Compliance Yojana.

AN ENDURING INDIAN NATION

An enduring nation is borne by a robust economy that continuously unlocks pathways for economic growth. While India has grown admirably since 1991, it has been mostly organic with the lack of a long-term cohesive strategy that every citizen can align behind. By formulating an infinite game perpetuating strategy today, India can become an inclusive growth driver for the whole world.

T.V. Mohandas Pai is Chairman, Aarin Capital Partners, and Nisha Holla is Technology Fellow, C-CAMP.

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An (Infinite) Game Theory strategy for India to be a global power - The Sunday Guardian