NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week – The Advocate

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NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn't happen this week

A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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CLAIM: The nasal swab test commonly used for to diagnose COVID-19 involves obtaining a sample from a protective layer of cells known as the blood-brain barrier, which can result in inflammation of the brain.

THE FACTS: The swab used to diagnose COVID-19 goes so far back into the nose that it can be uncomfortable, even causing some peoples eyes to water. But it doesn't touch the area known as the blood-brain barrier, where blood vessels and the brain exchange important nutrients, despite social media posts that claim it does. This week, Facebook posts viewed more than a million times shared a diagram of the nasopharyngeal swab test next to an anatomical picture of the brain, suggesting the swab disrupts the blood-brain barrier. The blood-brain barrier is exactly where the swab has to be placed, the image read, with a raised eyebrow emoji. Coincidence??? I dont think so. However, Dr. Morgan Katz, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, said these posts fundamentally misunderstand whats happening when the test is conducted. The swab would have to go through layers of muscle and fascia, as well as the base of the skull, which is a thick bone, in order to get anywhere near the blood-brain barrier, and I would say that it is not possible, Katz told The Associated Press. Instead of the brain, the test collects a sample from the nasopharynx, an area between the back of the nose and the back of the throat where respiratory viruses often live. Thats just a place where we expect to see the highest yield of respiratory viruses, she said.

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CLAIM: Wearing a face mask for extended periods of time can cause pleurisy, an inflammation of the lining around the lung.

THE FACTS: Multiple experts told The Associated Press there is no medical evidence that wearing a face mask could lead to this condition, despite Facebook posts claiming it could. Be careful healthy people, shared from a friend, read one Facebook post, which described a story of a healthy 19-year-old frontline grocery store worker who started feeling sick and was diagnosed with pleurisy. They basically tell her.. Its because shes been wearing a mask for over 8 hours a day 5-6 days a week. Breathing in her own bacteria. Carbon dioxide.. Caused an infection. Another Facebook post featured a diagram of a lung with an inflamed lining. Result of wearing mask for 8 hours a day, the caption read. Why are they not reporting the number of people being hospitalized for this?? YOU NEED FRESH AIR. But doctors who study the respiratory system say a face mask doesnt pose this risk. There is absolutely no truth in that claim, said Humberto Choi, a pulmonologist at Cleveland Clinic, in an email. There are thousands of health care workers wearing face masks everyday including masks that are much tighter than simple surgical masks. Nobody is getting pleurisy because of that. I dont see a medically plausible mechanism for mask wearing to cause pleurisy, said Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer at the American Lung Association. Claims that mask-wearing leads to harmful conditions, including bacterial and fungal infections, pneumonia, hypercapnia and other ailments are also false, according to AP reporting.

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CLAIM: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent out COVID-19 tests seeded with the virus.

THE FACTS: Social media users shared an illustration of a COVID-19 nasal swab test where a six inch long swab is placed into the cavity between the nose and mouth with false information that the CDC sent out tests that contained the live virus. The post asserts that COVID-19 tests are tainted and could expose people to the virus. According to one Instagram post that shared the illustration with false information: COVID-19 test has the virus ... the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent states tainted lab tests in early February that were themselves seeded with the virus, federal officials have confirmed. The Instagram caption further states: ... if one person in the family could have gotten tested with one of those tainted Planted COVID-19 tests that would potentially expose the entire family to the virus In February, the CDC distributed a batch of faulty COVID-19 test kits to laboratories, but the kit did not contain the live virus. The contaminated tests were not sent out to patients. The CDC produced two types of test kits in January. There was no evidence that the first batch had any issues. The second type of test kit, which was developed to be manufactured by the CDC, was contaminated. The Department of Health & Human Services published an investigation of the failed rollout on June 19. The report states: After receiving these tests from CDC in early February, public health laboratories attempted to validate the test kits before using them on real specimens. They could not validate the test a negative control gave a positive result and thus, the test kits were not used and no patient received an inaccurate test result. According to the review, One of the three reagents in this initial batch of manufactured test kits was likely contaminated. These tests are so sensitive that this contamination could have been caused by a single person walking through an area with positive control material and then later entering an area where tests reagents were being manipulated, the report states. Positive control material is the synthetic, non-infectious part of the virus. Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, professor of pediatric infectious diseases and of health research and policy at Stanford University School of Medicine, told the AP that this is not the live virus. The false post implies that nasal swab tests are tainted with the virus. We only use sterile swabs, Maldonado explained. Thats actually the problem with getting the swab is that we have to make sure that theyve been sterilized. We cant just take Q-tips from a box.

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CLAIM: Teachers are the number one occupation of the antifa terrorist organization according to the FBI.

THE FACTS: False. There is no evidence that teachers make up an outsized portion of antifa, a shorthand term for anti-fascists. The FBI told The Associated Press it has not made any such statements about the occupations of people who are attracted to particular ideologies. This false claim has gone viral online recently, both as part of longer blog posts promoting conspiracy theories around COVID-19 and the death of George Floyd, and independently on Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook alone, posts connecting teachers with antifa have been viewed more than a million times in the past week. But the posts dont reflect the way the FBI actually investigates criminal activity or people who identify as antifa, which has become an umbrella term for left-leaning militant groups that oppose neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations. While FBI director Christopher Wray recently told Fox News the agency is investigating various violent anarchist extremists, some of whom self-identify or otherwise link to the antifa movement, the agency does not initiate investigations solely based on an individuals identity. Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on individuals who commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security, the FBI told the AP in a statement. Accordingly, the FBI said it has not made any statements about the occupations of people who are drawn to particular ideologies, such as anti-fascism. Though President Donald Trump has tweeted that the United States will designate antifa as a terrorist organization, it does not qualify for inclusion on the State Department's foreign terror organizations list because antifa is a domestic movement.

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CLAIM: Dr. Anthony Fauci is married to Ghislaine Maxwells sister.

THE FACTS: Fauci is married to Christine Grady, chief of the bioethics department at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. Dr. Faucis role as the nations top infectious disease expert has made him a target of false information. Social media users are now attempting to link Fauci to conspiracy theories tied to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who died in jail after being charged with sex trafficking underage girls. Posts online say that Faucis wife is related to Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite who was arrested last week and charged with helping recruit girls for Epstein. Maxwell is one of seven siblings, including twin sisters Christine and Isabel. Their father Robert Maxwell was a billionaire publishing magnate whose nude body was recovered from waters off the Canary Islands in November 1991. He had disappeared from his yacht named Lady Ghislaine. The Associated Press reported at the time that Robert Maxwell had four daughters and three sons. Two of Maxwells children died: Michael, who died in 1968 at age 21, and Karine, who died in 1957 at age 3, of leukemia. His daughter Christine is not Christine Grady. The National Institutes of Health interviewed Grady in 1997 about her life where she said she grew up in New Jersey as one of five children. But when I was fairly young, I thought I wanted to be a nurse, and my mother encouraged it the most, even though she was not one herself. She thought nursing was a noble profession and a good thing for me to do. So she encouraged that, Grady says in the oral history interview. Grady served on the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues from 2010 to 2017 and received a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing and biology as well as a doctorate in philosophy from Georgetown University. Former GOP candidate DeAnna Lorraine tweeted the photo of Fauci and Grady Sunday, saying Grady was Maxwells sister. Lorraine later corrected the tweet. Looks like the connection may not be accurate w Fauci wife/Maxwell. When ppl sent me this I researched it & it checked out at first, Im sorry for getting excited about the connection & jumping gun, she later tweeted. Posts making the false claim online shared a 2016 photo, which can be found in the Getty Images archive, of Fauci with Grady at the White House state dinner held by then-President Barack Obama for the prime minister of Italy, Matteo Renzi. No coincidences, one post with 1,429 likes on Instagram said sharing the photo of the two.

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CLAIM: The dress Melania Trump wore during Fourth of July celebrations featured drawings by various victims of child sex trafficking.

THE FACTS: The sketches on the dress were made by art students in a class, not by victims of sex trafficking. On July 3, during a visit to Mount Rushmore to commemorate the Fourth of July, First Lady Melania Trump wore a white dress with black lines, black shoes and a black belt. Social media users criticized both the appearance and the price of the garment, which cost $3,840. Others claimed the dress featured drawings from sex trafficking victims. The media mocked First Lady Melanias dress, read one Facebook post with more than 8 million views. They said it looked like childish scribbles. Little did they know, they were the drawings of several young victims of sex trafficking who tried to explain their pain through pictures. But posts like this are not correct the dress actually shows sketches of dancing girls made by design students from the British art school Central Saint Martins. The students worked with Julie Verhoeven, a fashion illustrator, during a class at the Alexander McQueen flagship store in London. In early May, Paper magazine published a story explaining that the sketches of dancers were first made on sheets. Afterwards, Creative Director Sarah Burton enlisted the entire McQueen staff to hand-embroider and stitch over the sketches of a single ivory linen dress, the story reads.

___ Reporter Abril Mulato contributed to this item from Mexico City.

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CLAIM: Kansas City Chiefs CEO and owner Clark Hunt told NFL players, coaches and staff that they are all simply paid performers on a stage and he will immediately fire anyone who does not stand, with their hand over their heart, during the playing of the national anthem.

THE FACTS: Hunt did not hold such a meeting, although he has publicly expressed support for Chiefs players standing during the national anthem. Facebook users for years have circulated a false letter that claims to reveal the Kansas City Chiefs owner called a dramatic meeting to tell NFL players they need to stand during the anthem or face immediate dismissal from the team. The hoax is gaining traction, again, on Facebook before the football season resumes and after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized last month for the way the league has handled peaceful protests over racial injustice. They included players taking a knee in 2016 during the national anthem an effort led by former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Goodell made the comments this year, the day after Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes urged the league to condemn racism. The letter first began circulating on Facebook in 2016, as debate over football players decision to kneel during the anthem raged. At the time, Hunt told the Kansas City Star the posts were a hoax. I have heard about it, Hunt told the Kansas City Star in 2016. It was an Internet hoax. Brad Gee, the director of football communications for the Kansas City Chiefs, also confirmed to The Associated Press that the contents of the viral letter are inaccurate. Hunt has publicly stated in years past that he prefers players to stand during the national anthem but several Chiefs players have sat or taken a knee during the national anthem, without being fired, including star tight end Travis Kelce. In 2017, after President Donald Trump called on NFL owners to fire players who didnt stand during the national anthem, Hunt responded with a formal statement, saying he believes in honoring the American flag but encouraged everyone to work together to solve these difficult issues.

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This is part of The Associated Press ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform.

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Find all AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck

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Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

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NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn't happen this week - The Advocate

OPINION | 100 days of lockdown: Success stories need to bring some balance to Covid-19 narrative – News24

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Health workers may be experiencing challenges as they fight Covid-19, but there are also positive developments happening in the field that need to be celebrated, writesMarc Mendelson.

The pandemic of novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19, has now claimed over half a million lives and close to 11 million confirmed infections worldwide.1 At home, the seriousness of the situation has required a state of national disaster to be declared, with all the health, social, and economic consequences that it brings.

Lifting of the lockdown brings with it its own challenges for how we, as a society, embrace the new norm of how we live our daily lives and prevent the transmission of the virus to our family, friends and within our communities and at work. There is no getting away from the seriousness of the situation, nor can any broadening of the narrative belittle its gravity.

However, it is time that a modicum of balance is brought to the sense of helplessness and nihilism that is becoming entrenched in society. There are success stories out there, that need to be heard.

Scientific tools

We have remarkable scientific tools at our disposal, that have allowed us to isolate, diagnose, monitor and treat the virus, at a pace not seen with even modern epidemics of Ebola, HIV or previous coronaviruses.

From the start of this epidemic, we were faced with a rapidly evolving field. The last decade has seen quantum leaps in scientific advances that we are now benefitting from, especially in the field of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases; the identification of SARS-CoV-2 only days after the announcement of atypical pneumonia cases in Wuhan occurred at unprecedented speed, closely followed by a diagnostic test for the virus that allowed outbreak investigations and accelerated understanding of the rapidly expanding global pandemic.

South African expertise in outbreak control, including listeria and drug resistant TB, along with public health expertise in HIV, have allowed for rapid in-depth analysis in a way that rivals many European countries and certainly the US.

In addition, new ways in which we perform clinical trials with "adaptive" designs means that medicines that may be of benefit in treating an emerging infection can be studied rapidly, and a "go-no go" given much earlier than previously possible.

Again, South Africa's rich research community, largely having cut its teeth on infectious diseases and vaccine research during the last 20 years, has swiftly pivoted and begun evaluating a large number of prevention and treatment options. In South Africa, and across the globe, our management of this pandemic has been greatly improved by these advances.

In just a few months, we have acquired enough knowledge to return most people to health, with increasing success in people with severe disease. The pandemic has transfixed society on macro-level numbers, chief among which are the number of cases and the number of deaths. Little attention is given to the number of persons who have recovered.

While about half of the people infected by SARS-CoV-2 will have no symptoms at all (asymptomatic), most of those that do develop symptoms (~80%) will have mild disease, which can be managed at home.

What about outcomes of those that have the most severe disease and require admission to hospital? The most recent DATCOV report from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD 28th June 2020) tells of 14 555 people admitted to 278 public and private hospitals, countrywide.2

Advances

Although 2 115 (15%) persons had died, 8 189 (56%) had been discharged alive or transferred out, and 4 250 (29%) were still in hospital. Every death is a tragedy, but every person who survives is equally a triumph.

Those successes have been aided by advances in our knowledge of how we treat the sickest patients who are admitted to hospital. Two main advances are the use of the steroid dexamethasone, and alternative ways of delivering more oxygen to patients, short of intubation and mechanically aiding their breathing in the intensive care unit.

Dexamethasone is a commonly used corticosteroid (steroid) available in South Africa and across the world. Recently, results of its use in hospitalised patients with severe Covid-19 were announced by investigators of the UK RECOVERY trial, that set out to study six different possible treatments for Covid-19 at the same time, an example of an adaptive clinical trial alluded to above3.

They found that people admitted to hospital, who needed oxygen support, had a reduction in death of one fifth, and for those on a ventilator in ICU, the reduction in death was one third if they took dexamethasone daily for 10 days. There was no effect for patients who did not require oxygen. This is a major advance as it is the first medicine to show an effect on death rate in severely ill patients with Covid-19.

Another medicine, remdesivir, has been shown in a trial in the US to reduce the duration of symptoms, but did not affect the mortality. Since the publication of these results, doctors in South African hospitals have rapidly started to use these approaches, treating patients with Covid-19 who require oxygen by giving dexamethasone or an equivalent steroid to benefit the patient.

Covid-19 is first and foremost an infection of the lungs, and we are also advancing the way in which we support the sickest patients by giving greater amounts of oxygen in an attempt to reduce the need for people to be ventilated on the ICU.

Like dexamethasone, treating critically ill patients with humidified high flow nasal oxygen (HFNO) is not new, but the global experience, and now ours in South Africa, has taught us that using HFNO in the general wards as well as in the ICU, can improve survival of some patients.

Added to this, the incredibly simple understanding that nursing patients with them lying on their front (proning) also improves oxygen supply to the body. This, too, has been previously used in ICUs, but is now being employed in the wards. Some patients will still need to be ventilated on the ICU.

Despite these sickest patients having the highest risk of dying, we are seeing some patients survive and come off the ventilators to be discharged. The public perception that going into hospital invariably results in death is not the case, despite the very high numbers that do sadly succumb.

This balance in narrative that healthcare workers can provide needs to be matched with the stories of survivors of Covid-19 in South Africa. We need to hear and learn from the experiences of patients, relatives, and staff in our health services, if we are to make further improvements and gain greater insight into how best to manage Covid-19, and its place in society.

Equally, it is absolutely critical that clinical trials of new medicines and vaccines can take place in our country, so that we can ensure that they work in our setting, which is unique in so many ways.

Physical distancing and masks

We welcome the vaccine trials that are under way4, and clinical trials, such as the international World Health Organisation SOLIDARITY trial5among others, that will start shortly in South Africa, looking at new treatment options for Covid-19.

Lastly, the positive benefits of reducing coronavirus transmission by following the simple public health measures of social distancing, universal masking, hand hygiene, regular decontaminating of often-used surfaces, and isolating if symptoms develop, cannot be stressed enough.

These are truly positive rather than negative narratives, in so much as they protect our most vulnerable older populations and those with comorbid medical conditions.

An understandably nihilistic viewpoint of Covid-19, especially for the sickest of our population, needs to be balanced with the positive developments that are happening in the field.

This, coupled with the outstanding ability and dedication of the South African health workforce, gives hope for the coming months, despite the incredible challenges that we face from Covid-19.

-Marc Mendelson isProfessor of Infectious Diseases, Head of Division of Infectious Diseases & HIV Medicine atGroote Schuur Hospital,University of Cape Town and a member of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Covid-19.

References

1. Johns Hopkins University. Covid-19 Dashboard by the Centre for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE). Available at https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 (Accessed on 3rd July 2020)

2. National Institute for Communicable Diseases. Covid-19 Surveillance Reports. Available at https://www.nicd.ac.za/diseases-a-z-index/covid-19/surveillance-reports/ (Accessed on 3rd July 2020)

Randomised Evaluation of Covid-19 Therapy (RECOVERY): Low-cost dexamethasone reduces death by up to one third in hospitalised patients with severe respiratory complications of Covid-19. Availablehttps://www.recoverytrial.net/files/recovery_dexamethasone_statement_160620_v2final.pdf (Accessed on 3rd July 2020)

3. University of Witwatersrand. The first Covid-19 vaccine trial is South Africa begins. Available at http://www.wits.ac.za/covid19vaccine/ (Accessed on 3rd July 2020)

4. World Health Organisation. "Solidarity" clinical trial for Covid-19 treatments. Available at https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/global-research-on-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov/solidarity-clinical-trial-for-covid-19-treatments (Accessed on 3rd July 2020)

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OPINION | 100 days of lockdown: Success stories need to bring some balance to Covid-19 narrative - News24

How wearing masks and masculinity got confused – Religion News Service

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(RNS) It was only a matter of time before masks became a battleground of the culture wars. Once upon a time in late May, Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota, pleaded with his constituents not to make wearing a mask out-of-doors a political thing. "I would really love to see in North Dakota that we could just skip this thing that other parts of the nation are going through, where they're creating a divide either it's ideological or political or something around mask versus no mask."

Four days later, Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University in Virginia and an ardent Trump supporter, tweeted that he would comply with his state's mandate only if his mask bore an image, which had caused a scandal last year, of Falwell's governor, Democrat Ralph Northam, in blackface as a young medical student.

By late June, 63% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said masks should regularly be worn, compared with just 29% of their Republican side counterparts, according to Pew Research Center.

There are many factors that seem to go into the decision to wear a mask: trust in government, the risk an individual feels from the coronavirus, how much we feel our actions can control the disease at all.

But central to the politicization of mask wearing seems to be the issue of masculinity. Men are much less prone to don a mask, Pew's data showed, and opponents of mask-wearing largely code their decision in terms of bravery and risk-taking and, by implication, brand mask wearers as effete, or cowards. A study from Middlesex University in the United Kingdom found that men were significantly less likely than women to wear masks, in part because they thought it was a sign of weakness or femininity.

Some of the most robust arguments against masks have also come from some of the political and religious right's paragons of performative masculinity. About the time the Middlesex University study appeared, Rusty Reno, editor of the conservative journal First Things, tweeted "Masks = enforced cowardice. It was a mindset he'd already laid out in a May 12 "Coronavirus Diary" on the First Things website, in which he boasted of going unmasked while on a weekend cycling jaunt.

"Providentially," he wrote, "I found a mask in a gutter just before reaching the Staten Island Ferry, allowing me to board and steam back to Manhattan."

Reno later tested positive on an antibody test, making it possible that he had been unwittingly spreading the coronavirus; he has since deleted his tweets and issued a brief apology for "over-heated rhetoric and false analogies."

Reno has long made a personal brand out of an atavistic pursuit of primal strength quite literally: Reno's latest book is called, "Return of the Strong Gods." Mask-wearing like meat-eating, weightlifting and other shibboleths of masculinity has entered into the discourse of a kind of nominally Christian traditionalism that opposes neoliberal modernity as the agent of the sissification of civilization.

Often coded as inextricable from urbanization and multiculturalism, neoliberal modernity embraces nontraditional gender roles, female equality and LGBTQ people. In answer, Reno's brand of Christian traditionalism deploys a kind of cultural hand grenade blowing things up real good often for the purpose of owning the libs or beating the system, but as often to deconstruct that system to reveal purportedly primal human values beneath: Reno bemoans our mask-minded culture that, on the same quarantining impulse, allows our elderly to die of COVID-19 alone.

This is why the traditionalist indulges in acts that manage to be individualistic and transgressive at once. Putting the lives of other people at risk is in this mindset dangerous, sexy" and all the more authentic for opposing the advice of sclerotic or faceless institutions (such as, say, the coronavirus guidance of the CDC).

But the traditionalism of Reno is a thoroughly unsatisfactory salvo against modernity. As a critique of our culture, it doesn't afford any avenue to revolution or change, offering instead what looks on the surface like an inward-looking nihilism. (In fact, Reno is a Catholic who sneaks off to an undisclosed church, he confesses in his First Things post, to be "cared for" by a priest who leaves the doors unlocked as he celebrates the Eucharist.)

It's also a distinctively modern form of traditionalism. Its "nostalgia" for a time when gender was binary and politics were incorrect is not just an affect, but an element of a personal brand, a stake in the digital marketplace.

So while Reno and his ilk use the refusal to wear masks as a shibboleth for those who aestheticize rugged individualism, or pious authenticity, their death worship is disguised as bravery. That, for all its claims to reject and overthrow the Modern Age, is thoroughly and completely of its time.

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The Old Guard movie review: Charlize Therons Netflix film about ageless warriors gets old real fast – Firstpost

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The Old Guard fails to capture the appeal the novel had for readers to the uninitiated viewers.

With Marvel'sBlack Widowand DC'sWonder Woman 1984delayed, Netflix bringsThe Old Guard, a new superhero film to fill the blockbuster void left by closed theatres this summer. While seeing the spectacle may impress some, seeing through it, they may find it curiously empty. Adapted from the graphic novel by Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernndez,The Old Guardfeatures Charlize Theron as Andy, a millennias-old warrior who leads a quartet of immortal mercenaries.

Andy is short for Andromache of Scythia, but the film glosses over her Scythian origins and Amazon warrior queen past. What little backstory we get is this: the death of her first immortal companion, which reveals their immortality is more quasi than absolute; the sadistic confinement of her second companion after being accused of witchcraft, which serves as a hook for a potential sequel; and her brief love affair with Auguste Rodin, namedropped as a joke. Her brothers-in-arms include Crusades rivals-turned lovers Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli), and Napoleonic War veteran Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts). If this were aBill & Tedfilm, these interesting backstories could have been used to take the viewer on excellent adventures through history. But this is not that kind of a movie.

Charlize Theron as Andy in The Old Guard

Sporting short hair and dark clothes, Andy is a superhero tormented by the tragedy of living forever and watching loved ones die, one by one. Even though they have been alive for centuries, the Old Guard have still not figured out why they have been chosen and their roles throughout history. Accustomed to suicide missions, they have been covertly protecting humanity from self-destruction, without being discovered until their identities are discovered by an ex-CIA agent named Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), hired by a corporation that aims to market eternal life to the masses. The bad guys personify Big Pharma and all the ambitious billionaires with messiah complex. The Old Guard are pitted against Merrick (Harry Melling), head of a pharmaceutical company trying to use his unfettered power to do as he pleases, hiding under the excuse of scientific advancement and the good of humanity.

Serving as the audience surrogate in the film is Nile (Kiki Layne), a US Marine killed in action in Afghanistan only to wake up to immortality. Going through the usual stages of disbelief to eventual acceptance, her initiation provides necessary exposition to establish the Old Guard's battle-weary bonafides. She introduces a sense of renewed optimism that counters the nihilism that has crept into their judgment of humanity. Even Theron cannot make us warm up to a character designed to be a little cold. So Nile becomes the emotional glue that binds us to the plot.

Charlize Theron and Kiki Layne as Andy and Nile, respectively.

The Old Guardis most compelling when its story focuses on Andy and Nile, who gain narrative texture with each conversation.

For director Gina Prince-Bythewood, it is not just about representation in a genre formerly devoted to men. Sure, the movie passes the Bechdel and Vito Russo Tests. But she wants to do more than just correct some statistical parity.

She empowers Andy and Nile, and Joe and Nicky, with the same agency and dimensionality that are granted to their straight male counterparts.

A still from The Old Guard

The combat sequences are filmed with thrilling immediacy, likeJohn Wick-lite battles that rack up a sizeable body count by the end. With immortals as heroes, you however might not get the same level of tension you do with mortals (not Keanu Reeves) aware of the fatal consequences of living every moment in danger. While their age and ever-healing bodies might hide the physical toil of every injury sustained over centuries of killing, the psychological toll is plainly visible.

The tragedy of living forever carries with it the immortality of all things: war, disease, poverty, death, and the endless losses that the Old Guard have had to face since time immemorial. So nihilism manifests itself as a loss of idealism and disillusionment with humanity, symptoms that arise from a loss of time's meaning. This explains their cynicism and feeling of nothingness even as they dish out violence. The endless cycle of violence repeats itself, and they are forced to re-watch humanity doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

The Old Guardhighlights the dilemma with fidelity being considered a merit in adaptations. The key challenge is to transpose the appeal of the source material faithfully on screen, without delivering a mere cinematic facsimile. This was the issue with Zack Snyder'sWatchmen. By contrast, in therecent HBO adaptation, Damon Lindelof consciously updated the graphic novel, re-embodying it as a contemporary cinematic work that was as creative and daring as the source material. ThoughThe Old Guarddoes not favour one audience over the other, it still fails to capture the appeal the novel had for readers to the uninitiated viewers. What it does succeed in doing is bring an alt-superhero film as a substitute to the usual Marvel and DC fare. Of course, it is more a fresh symptom than a solution to superhero saturation. For if you stick around for the credits, you will know Netflix is planning a whole new franchise.

The Old Guard is now streaming on Netflix.

Rating: **1/2

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The Old Guard movie review: Charlize Therons Netflix film about ageless warriors gets old real fast - Firstpost

Will Ferrell and Jon Stewart drop dated comedy bombs onto streaming platforms – Pacific Northwest Inlander

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EUROVISION SONG CONTEST: THE STORY OF FIRE SAGA (NETFLIX)If you've never heard of the Eurovision Song Contest, stop reading right now and go fall down a YouTube rabbit hole of its most famous televised performances. It's been an annual tradition since the 1950s and has produced superstars like ABBA and Celine Dion. It's one of those long-standing cultural traditions that has, over the decades, settled into the perfect blend of earnestness and goofiness that would seem ideal for a movie parody.

But a new Netflix film with the ungainly title Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga is a mostly laugh-free farce about a couple of idiots who bumble their way into Eurovision and surprise, surprise become unlikely favorites in the competition. They're played by Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams, lifelong friends who have started a terrible band called Fire Saga and who dream of representing their native Iceland in Eurovision.

There's no way they'd make the cut in a normal year, but a series of bizarre circumstances (including a yacht explosion) lands them a spot as Iceland's representative musicians. Soon they're in Scotland for the big show, rubbing elbows with a flamboyant Russian pop star played by Dan Stevens (the brightest spot in the film) and desperate to prove their critics wrong.

All of this sounds funnier than it actually is: Somehow the idea of Will Ferrell singing a dance-pop song while running inside a giant hamster wheel isn't as amusing in practice as it probably seemed on paper. The already thin premise is stretched out to two hours, so that it drags on and on and on, repeating a lot of jokes that weren't all that hilarious the first time.

Director David Dobkin is best known for comedies like Wedding Crashers, but he's also got a background in music videos, and Eurovision Song Contest works best when it becomes a full-blown musical extravaganza. The only really good sequence in the movie comes about an hour in, when our heroes go to a party with past Eurovision contestants and perform a mashup of songs while the camera swirls around them. The fake songs, meanwhile, are pretty believable: A '90s house-inspired song called "Double Trouble" is genuinely catchy, as is the barroom sing-along "Ja Ja Ding-Dong," an incessant earworm built on childish double entendres.

But goofy songs only get you so far. The film was made with the cooperation of Eurovision, and maybe that's the problem. There's almost too much reverence here and not enough bite. It has apparently already found a devoted following in the two weeks it's been on Netflix, so maybe you'll find it funnier than I did.

IRRESISTIBLE (DIGITAL RENTAL)Irresistible purports to be a satire of our current political climate, and yet it somehow seems completely unmoored not only from contemporary politics but from the real world and normal human behavior. What's most surprising about it is that it was written and directed by Jon Stewart, who hasn't been a regular TV presence since 2015, which may explain why his satirical muscles have apparently atrophied.

The movie stars Steve Carell as a Democratic strategist and Clinton family confidante named Gary Zimmer, still licking his wounds from losing the 2016 election. He sees his possible redemption in a popular YouTube clip that shows a farmer and former Marine in rural Wisconsin defending the rights of his immigrant neighbors. Zimmer thinks he can transform that virality into political success, so he hops on a private jet and heads to the Midwest.

What he finds is like the Twilight Zone as directed by Frank Capra, a small town so hospitable that it's almost creepy. But Zimmer successfully convinces that farmer (Chris Cooper) to run for mayor as a Democrat, and it causes enough of a ruckus in the media that Zimmer's right-wing counterpart (Rose Byrne) shows up to throw her weight behind the sitting mayor.

Now, I'm willing to grant the film its premise of the entire country turning its attention to a measly mayoral election, but did we really need tired jokes about how people from big cities like organic food while people from small towns like burgers and beer, or dated references to people like Joe the Plumber? Stewart never settles on a tone, either, and he often lets Carell mug in ways that feel less like character choices and more like, well, an actor mugging in front of a camera. A third-act plot development sort of explains away some of the movie's weirdest choices, but it also reverses the entire purpose of the story and then cuts to black.

I came of age when Stewart was the sharpest voice in political comedy, when he took to Comedy Central every night to point out the hypocrisy on both sides of the ideological aisle. He now seems as out-of-touch as the elitists he's lampooning: There are times when he appears to be aiming for the caustic, all-sides-are-bad nihilism of Alexander Payne, or the bombast of Sidney Lumet's all-time great media satire Network (the latter's most famous line gets a shoutout here), but he's too glib and didactic to nail either one.

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Will Ferrell and Jon Stewart drop dated comedy bombs onto streaming platforms - Pacific Northwest Inlander

How I found freedom from COVID-19 isolation with feathered friends – Houston Chronicle

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This is a story with a lot of perhapses and maybes based on a simple fact: There is much we dont know about birds.

The nest appeared one morning in early June, as unexpected as the tutu-shaped mushrooms that pop up in our lawn after a hard rain. A sliver of translucent plastic poked out from one side of the wide cone, whose design of bent twigs, leaves and ropey strands of silver dichondra (plucked from my garden) was more Frank Gehry messy than Philip Johnson classic.

How could we not have seen its owners building it in a rose trellis we walk underneath daily to get to the garden hose and its faucet?

In April, we had been a little too curious and close to a cardinal that set up house in a Texas pomegranate not far from our deck. A miscreant squirrel that taunted her with its acrobatics didnt help. She was sitting but abandoned that nest without laying eggs.

Was this the same couple? Cardinals are monogamous in their sense of the term, Gary Clark, the Chronicles birding columnist, tells me. They pair up for one season at a time but might find different mates the next season.

Many songbirds live in our yards trees and eat from our seed-producing shrubs. Cardinals have been abundant in the last year or so, and while they are super-selective, its impossible for humans to tell them apart.

Whoever they were, we knew this couple needed space. To avoid walking under the trellis, we left the hose unrolled and began walking around the house to turn on the faucet. Incredibly, we had a, well, birds-eye-view from inside. The trellis stands about 3 feet from our bedroom window, and the nest was tilted toward us.

As cooped up as we have been since March, this was a thrilling development. All spring, while our world spun apart in the chaos of the pandemic, the garden grounded us. Now nature was going to demonstrate release.

The Mrs. situated herself one day with her back to us, as if she was confident no predators would penetrate the thorny stems of LaMarque behind her. Still, she was hyper-alert. We could neither raise and lower the window shades without startling her, nor leave them open. She sensed even the slightest movement on our side of the window, or perhaps saw us with her peripheral vision. Maybe she could hear our feet on the wood floors.

We had to be stealth to watch the show, but we peeked out every few hours in the beginning. If we stood on our toes and peered through a slit between the shades and the window frame, we could see through the window screen, into the nest.

Time has become so hazy, I cant say exactly how many days passed a few until we saw the eggs while the Mrs. was out for breakfast or lunch or whatever. There were two, smaller than thimbles, bluish with brown splotches. Soon she was bringing food, some kind of regurgitated mush she poked into the open mouths of the small pink beings stirring deep in the nest.

One day the chicks poked up their heads like wobbly little dinosaurs. Bald and blind and not even half-covered with their first feathers, they had geeky sprouts atop their heads baby tufts! and beaks that gaped open constantly, hungry. During this altricial stage, baby birds are completely helpless, Clark says.

Papa stood guard while Mama foraged. The tuft atop his bright red head stood up straight when we came around or he sensed some other need to look aggressive. Although they were vigilant all day, the adults disappeared at night, and I imagined them bone tired from all that intense parenting, up there in the trees somewhere. Maybe they were in our big pecan, or a neighbors sprawling live oak.

Probably to their dismay, I stepped within a few feet of the nest on June 18, holding out that human appendage, my iPhone, just long enough to videotape the chicks while I thought the adults were gone. The babies lifted their ragged wings ever so slightly, not looking at me. I dont think they could see yet. On June 19 they were more alert, eyes open and fidgeting.

Then came the morning of the 20th, when I went out to check on the nest, and they were gone. My heart sank. Was it my fault? Had they fallen out? Had something eaten them? Where was the neighbors big Siamese cat that prowls our yard?

But the parents were around, chirping. And sure enough, a weak peep came from the yaupon shrub beside our air conditioning unit, maybe 10 feet from the nest. One fledgling was hiding deep among the stems, in the shadows.

The second fledgling bounced out from the boxwoods below the rose trellis onto the grass, a little too careless. Trying to herd it toward cover, Papa flew up and down, up and down, from the fence to the grass. If this was a flying lesson, it wasnt going well. The fledgling, a funny little fluff ball of gray-brown down above toothpick legs, flapped its slightly oversized wings and looked at me, then at Papa, breathing heavily.

As it hopped through the fence slats toward its sibling, I positioned myself nearby to watch. Maybe I had begun to look like part of the furniture, but this baby didnt seem to know to be afraid. I was close enough to see the thin strips of white flesh around its beak, as if someone had endowed it with a clowns face.

It hobbled and lurched toward me and before I knew what was happening, the chick was standing on top of my foot, nearly weightless except for the gentle grip of its tiny feet. It stayed there a few seconds, a brief miracle in which time stopped. Then it went awkwardly on its way, toward a garden bed, where it disappeared into a mound of red fountain grass.

The last time Im sure I saw one of the fledglings, a little later that morning, one of them had made its way around the front of the house. It slipped under the fence, returning to the backyard, and hid under a border of tall liriope as an adult male landed nearby, chirping loudly. Then another the real Papa? chased the other male away.

Maybe two days later, in the afternoon, a few cardinals showed up alongside sparrows near our front door. The fledglings had grown fast, but could they really look so grown already?

No, Clark tells me. They would have been branchlings then, living in trees but fed by their parents for at least a week. Branchlings dont fly until they have developed tails and other juvenile feathers and can forage for themselves.

Although food availability can speed up their growth, our young cardinals probably havent gone far yet, Clark says. By his clock, the branchlings may be learning to fly now. Assuming they are still alive. According to David Allen Sibleys new book, What Its Like to Be a Bird, songbirds tend to have a 50-50 chance of making it to adulthood.

I listen and watch for them constantly. One day this week, talking on the phone, I happened to be looking through a window near my desk, barely aware of cardinals and sparrows foraging near the street until a hawk descended from nowhere, lightning fast, and snatched up someone. I recognized it by its reddish-brown and white coloring, but the hawk didnt even have to stop to carry off its prey.

Wednesday near dusk, soon after I spoke to Clark, cardinals and mockingbirds chirped up an urgent racket out front. I stepped out to investigate. And there was a very young juvenile, making its clumsy way across trees in the front yard, closely followed by a female adult. It disappeared but the chirping continued.

A small army of birds, including cardinals, had perched along a utility wire. I wondered if they were all watching the show of this little one learning to fly. Then the cat slinked out from behind a fence. I shooed it away.

molly.glentzer@chron.com

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How I found freedom from COVID-19 isolation with feathered friends - Houston Chronicle

RuPauls Drag Race All Stars serves up fashion and frustration at The Charles Family Backyard Ball – The A.V. Club

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The final cuts are always the toughest on Drag Race, but the format of this season of All Stars twists the knife. Usually, viewers can fall back on the judges critiques and ultimately, RuPauls instincts to make sense of the rankings. With this latest change, however, the safety net is gone. Putting every queen but the challenge winner up for elimination seems like a good way to up the drama, but that only works if queens are willing to play boldly, like India did. With more cautious players, it destabilizes the proceedings, resulting in muddled deliberations and this episode, a frustrating elimination. The combination of fairly uniform performances from the queens and RuPaul abdicating responsibility for who goes home saps the episode of its energy, setting up a perfunctory march to the finale.

The episode begins with the queens still reeling from Indias elimination and her allegation that Alexis campaigned to vote out Shea. Alexis is emotional, very aware of how close she came to going home. Shea goes quickly for the voting box: One vote for Alexis (presumably India), the rest for India. Alexis is heartened, but as she says in her talking head, shes well aware that the queens dont trust her. Shell need to win the next challenge or shell be out.

B

B

The next day, the queens are surprisingly muted. Going to a strictly popular vote for elimination, no safe queens, is already impacting the workroom dynamics. RuMail teases some family togetherness and Ru comes into the workroom to announce the challenge. Theyll be having a backyard barbecue ball, with the queens serving up two looks. First theyll create a country cousin persona and write and record a comedic monologue to walk to, then theyll need to construct a high fashion second look using materials found in ones backyard. Michelle Visage narrates a game show-style display of the materialstable cloths, picnic supplies, pool toys, etc.a fun and efficient way to show what the queens will be working with.

The queens return from choosing their materials and immediately, Jujubees in trouble. Alexis may be tentative about her standing with the queens, but she has experience sewing. Jujubee cant even tell which side of her fabric is the front. Shea went to college for theater costume design, so she steps in and helps Jujubee get started, encouraging her to power through. Crackers family has a tradition of crafting garments from found objects so shes in good shape considering, but even she hits a wall trying to sew her unconventional materials. After some quick pointers from Shea about the sewing machines settings, Cracker gets back on track and seems confident. As for Blair, she seems completely at home pinning her fabric, excited to have a challenge that plays to her strengths.

Ru comes in for a walk-through and stops by Alexis station first, asking about her relationship with Vanjie, her drag daughter, and Alexis emotions during the previous lip-sync. Nothing like poking at a fresh bruise. Over at Sheas station, Ru reminds viewers of Sheas ball challenge win in season nine and they discuss design before pivoting to family. Sheas father died from cancer two days before the season nine cast was announced, so while the season was filmed while he was in remission, he never got to see Shea compete on the show. Then a month later, Sheas oldest sister died from breast cancer. Because of the timing, these losses are wrapped up in Sheas experiences on Drag Race, coloring what would have felt to viewers like a thrilling whirlwind as Shea slayed her way through season nine, only to get eliminated in the finale. Shea is emotional as she shares with Ru and the audience. The loss still incredibly painful, but she holds both her father and sister close to her heart.

Ru stops off at Jujubees station before leaving, fishing for an emotional, cathartic moment by asking Jujubee about her family. When Jujubee was a teen, her father died and six months later, her mother had a breakdown, abandoning the then 15-year-old Jujubee and her two sisters. Jujubee was able to live with her aunt, but her sisters were placed into foster care and they remained disconnected for five years. RuPaul then asks after her friends and Jujubee shares that a couple years ago, she made the difficult choice to separate herself from the found family shed built, including her fianc of 12 years, and start over in order to stay healthy. She stopped using drugs and drinking and has built her current circle from friends shes met at meetings. Ru is moved and encourages Jujubee to hold fast to these new friends. Without going into specifics, Ru underscores the need for that kind of support, saying, I wouldnt be here today without those friends. They banter their way back from the emotional edge joking about potato salad and Jujubees lack of sewing skills, but the weight of their moment lingers.

The next day, spirits are high in the workroom. Cracker is over Blairs love of high fashion and Shea has a lot of work left to do, but the mood stays light, buoyed by moments of silliness like Jujubee quietly noshing on her fake watermelon. As the queens paint, Cracker asks how everyone plans to vote. Jujubee says shell vote with her heart, and then immediately admits she has no idea what that means. The other queens more or less keep quiet, not wanting to ruffle feathers, and the episode heads to the runway.

Ru comes out in a delightful yellow dress with light green accents, a terrific on-theme choice. After welcoming guest judge Bebe Rexha, Ru introduces her sisters before kicking off the runway with the first category: Country Cousin Realness. First out is Cracker as Jocelyn Opal Rose. Cracker looks good in a flowing and somewhat tattered beige dress and stocking feet, but the standout is definitely her backstory, which is a hoot. Jujubee goes a different way with her character Ping, aka Amber, sporting shredded Daisy Dukes, a pink top, and a truly massive hat. Jujubee gives good specificity to Amber, though her secret family gossip isnt quite up to Crackers I need a kidney reveal. Blairs next as Darlene, aka Stinky, Rus Nascar-loving cousin from Indianapolis. Shes also in cut-off jean shorts, but goes for thigh-high boots, a racing tee and bandanna, a star-spangled fanny pack, arm tattoos, and a mullet to complete her look. Darlenes backstory is entertaining but a bit wordy, though her paternity test gossip helps her finish strong.

Shea is up next as Sheaquita, aka Lil Kiki, Rus baby niece. She looks great in a head wrap, studded collar, and an airbrushed tee-shirt dress, paying tribute to her grandma Grandrea, Sheas character on season nines 90210 parody. Her secretAuntie Ru is her best friendis lacking, but the rest is on point. In contrast, Alexis Carmen, Rus former housekeeper, falls flat. Shes in a tight lime green mini dress and bright pink wig, but while the others went outsized with their details and accessories, Alexis just carries a bottle of coquito. Alexis does have a wig reveal, but rather than getting bigger or more ridiculous, it tones down her look. The queens all look good, but compared to the others, Alexis comedic persona lags behind.

The second category is: Backyard Ball Eleganza. Cracker comes out in a red cocktail dress with a red gingham tablecloth for a skirt, red seat belt material for the top, a red choker, and Wiffle ball, badminton racket, and birdie accessories. Its creative and fun, albeit stiff, particularly in the top. Jujubee is next, in a cute yellow body-con dress with magenta trim and watermelon accents, and carrying a watermelon purse. The dress is shaky in its construction, but its cute and a good fit for the backdoor barbecue setting. Blairs look is much more fashion, a draped striped tablecloth with lavender accents, paired with a lace choker and wet hair. The garment is part dress, part leotard, and Blair works it down the runway, though it starts to come apart as she leaves.

Shea has a smart concepta backyard weddingbut her look doesnt quite sing as one would hope due to the clash between her faded check leotard and bright blue check chaps. Her veil is clever, but given Sheas track record, its hard not to want a bit more from her. Last is Alexis, who comes out in a fabulous red gown with Solo cups, forks, and paper plates repurposed into accents for her shoulders and bustline and on her train. She also shows off the kiddie pool she used as a hoop, giving her gown its mermaid shape. Its a dramatic, creative look, and one that celebrates rather than obscures the materials she used.

Its time for judging and unfortunately, its a rather even match. Cracker takes the first category, but Alexis gown is the standout in the second, though Carson doesnt love her proportions. Jujubee and Shea do well in both, with Jujubee getting particular praise for her comedic touches, and Blair is critiqued for her construction of her second look. Unfortunately for Alexis, her memorable second look isnt enough to make up for her underwhelming first look, and RuPaul gives the win to Cracker, who is now headed to the top four. That leaves Jujubee, Blair, Shea, and Alexis in the bottom and the queens waste no time getting down to business once they return to the workroom.

Cracker is very clear with the other queens: Shell be judging based on report cards, and for her, Shea and Jujubees previous wins keep them safe. That leaves Blair and Alexis as the bottom two. Shea and Jujubee are happy to cosign, and the conversation quickly closes in on the oldest and the youngest queens in the room. For her pitch, Blair focuses on her hard work, her library challenge co-win, and her pre-All Stars friendship with Cracker. Alexis keys into her track record and her staying power, the fact that shes still delivering at this high level nine years after her Drag Race debut. Theres almost no discussion of their specific performances in this challenge, and little sense that the remaining queens are all that interested in considering performance. The tension builds as the queens vote. While theres some uncertainty, Cracker, Jujubee, and Shea seem to be voting as a bloc, and when its down to the final fiveassuming the challenge winner breaks tiesthats all it takes.

Back on the main stage, Cracker has changed into a blue dance ensemble and the lip-sync assassin is revealed to be Roxxxy Andrews, queen of the Drag Race wig reveal. She makes an entrance in a giant red ostrich plume coat, a striking contrast to Cracker. The song is Ariana Grandes One Last Time. Cracker does a few more restrained moves early, while Roxxxy remains still, working her coat to dramatic effect with fewer, more pointed moves. After the first verse she shakes it off, revealing a red leotard and sheer throw. This is only the first level, though, as Roxxxy eventually takes off the sheer layer as well and reveals the final look: The same red leotard front and a barely-there back with a stoned Thick & Juicy strap lovingly labeling her cheeks. Roxxxy looks amazing, but its the audacity and playfulness of this move that takes the cake. She works her final look, completely in the moment and joyful, and despite Crackers attempts to sell Ariana, all eyes are on Roxxxy. She takes the lip-sync by a mile, a ridiculous breath of fresh air after an episode full of drama.

With the queens assembled on the stage, Roxxxy reveals the result of the group vote. Alexis has been eliminated, leaving the top four as Cracker, Shea, Jujubee, and Blair. Alexis has certainly done well on All Stars, but her elimination is both surprising and entirely predictable. She is arguably a stronger competitor than some of the queens still contending, but she did have the weakest first category look. Had India played the previous episode differently, Alexis second look may have been enough to save her, but it didnt even factor into the deliberations. Alexis elimination also puts the nail in Blairs coffin. Unless she wins the next challenge, Cracker, Shea, and Jujubee will cite track records and vote her out. This seasons twist of a popular vote has merit, but there are still some kinks to work out to keep the show at its most compelling. Hopefully RuPaul and the producers have at least one twist left up their sleeves.

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RuPauls Drag Race All Stars serves up fashion and frustration at The Charles Family Backyard Ball - The A.V. Club

European Union Seeks to Restrict Tech Giants From Grinding Smaller Competitors WIth Updated Tax and Content Ru – Tech Times

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The European Union is initiating to set more restrictions on the activities and responsibilities of Tech giant companies. Margrethe Vestager, EU digital policy and antitrust chief, disclosed that this would have a tremendous impact on the taxes, privacy, and online content after implementing the limits. The continuing attempts at gaining power and influence by these Tech giants like Apple, Facebook, Google, and Amazon.

(Photo : YouTube/ Speech at ALDE Congress)EU is preparing for the digital taxes and new content rules to be set for Tech Giants like Apple, Google, Amazon and others.

The European Commission is submitting proposals intended to affect these dominating companies. EU official Vestager also hopes to use the plans to change the companies' responsibilities that will go further to the current laws.

Vestager said, "It's a full complex of things. It's not done with just one piece of legislation."

He then added, "After the first mandate and the first specific competition cases, what I have seen very clearly is that we need rigorous competition-law enforcement, but we also need regulation."

The initiatives cover several areas and have been outlined over the last few weeks by the European Commission. Last week, Vestager pointed out three areas that are anticipated to be affected by new legislation, which is to be presented to the European Parliament before the end of 2020.

One area is to determine what the responsibilities of tech companies are regarding content posted by users. Under public consultation, the changes to the current Digital Services Act would update rules initially determined in 2000, in which the information is outdated.

According to the competition chief, The Digital Service Act was created when no one could have foreseen the situation we're in today. He then added, "that platforms would not just be channels, but full ecosystems were a lot of what is ongoing and monetized by the platform itself."

The Current rule segregates platforms such as social media platforms from being sued for controversial or misleading content. However, there have been suggestions of scaling back protections by lawmakers in both the EU and the United States to curtail misinformation, with the rules, thought to be the EU's solution. Vestager suggests the states would allow for the creation of redress mechanisms for removing content.

Vestager added, "As part of the same measures, companies operating such platforms would have to establish themselves as business entities within Europe to allow them to be governed by these sets of rules."

Apple commented on the Digital Services Act proposals and suggested that the "limited liability regime has helped deliver choice and innovation," but simultaneously advising for any new rules to be flexible. "What makes sense for public-facing, content-sharing platforms may not be appropriate or technically feasible for services used to facilitate private communications or storage," Apple continued.

As per Vestager, she wanted to have a refined investigative power to order companies within a sector to change how they behave, curb monopolies, and "prevent new gatekeepers from arising."

The Legislation proposals also incorporate measures to prevent significant firms from grinding smaller competitors in the market. This initiative is inspired by the antitrust cases laid against Google.

The Commission is running an investigation with Apple, explicitly covering App Store and its Apple pay.

EU is preparing to proceed with the Digital Taxes despite the disagreement with US lawmakers over the matter. According to Vestager, the digital tax that affects Apple and other large-scale multinational tech firms is justified because it is fair.

"So many businesses have to work very hard to make a profit, and from that profit to then pay taxes," Vestager suggested. "They should not be met with competitors for capital, skilled employees and customers who do not contribute to society. That has nothing to do with where you come from; it has to do with doing business in an equal manner."

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European Union Seeks to Restrict Tech Giants From Grinding Smaller Competitors WIth Updated Tax and Content Ru - Tech Times

Death is part of life, and there is a lot we can learn from it – BBC Focus Magazine

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I grew up around dead bodies. In fact, some of my earliest childhood memories are of dead bodies in caskets, and I mean dozens of corpses not the occasional family friend or relative. The reason I saw so many dead people was because my father was a funeral director for thirty-five years in Midwest America.

Fast-forward now through some strange twists of fate, and I am currently the Director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath, the worlds only interdisciplinary research centre focused on death, dying, and the dead body. Human mortality looms so large in my upbringing and academic career that my younger sister, Julie, is on the record calling me the Overlord of Death.

As a result of these labours, I published a book called Technologies of the Human Corpse in which I cover the history and meaning we living humans assign to dead bodies by using different kinds of technologies: embalming, photography, rail transport, science museums, detention camps, radical life extension, the list goes on.

I have spent many years trying to understand what the bodies of the dead can teach us about the living, and here are some of the lessons I have learnt.

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When you see a dead body, you see causation. Some set of events or actions caused that dead body to be in front of you. Dead bodies do not just happen and require either an internal or external force (sometimes both!) to appear. Place a dead body in any situation and that situation automatically becomes far more serious.

One of the great 17th Century human inventions was the autopsy (literally seeing for oneself ), which stressed peering into the dead body to understand causes of death. The autopsys historical success is also one of the reasons we 21st Century humans find it so distressing when a cause of death cannot be determined.

How is an indeterminate cause of death possible, many people ask, with all our advanced bio-medical technology? And it is on this very ship 1,000 different CSI television programmes sailed

TV shows might not be the best example of medical autopsies Getty Images

But set aside the impossible forensics portrayed on popular television programmes for one minute, since we are living in a historical moment dominated by very real dead bodies with clearly defined causation.

Dead bodies from COVID-19. Dead bodies from police violence. Dead bodies from lack of access to necessary medical care. Dead bodies from interconnected social inequality that accelerates death, which leads me to lesson number two.

Human corpses invisibly surround we the living on a daily basis, so much so that under normal conditions approximately 1,700 people die each day across the UK.

But there are moments when disease and political protest suddenly make these dead bodies far more visible. The current visibility of dead bodies due to COVID-19 and the global protests around George Floyds death in Minneapolis are examples when human corpses become a catalyst for action.

Whether it is the over 550,000 COVID-19 deaths from across the globe or the singular dead body of one black man in Minneapolis these human corpses create new political meanings when answering some fundamental questions: why is this person dead and what political dynamics led to the death?

The death of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police sparked protests across world including this one in London Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

In many ways we have seen aspects of the current COVID-19 dead body politics before. In chapter 3 of my book I focus on HIV/AIDS corpses and the postmortem political changes produced by that pandemic.

So, for example, a key question during the height of the AIDS epidemic was whether or not it was safe to touch the body of a person killed by the HIV virus. It was safe, but it took many years for that answer to arrive.

Historical examples of dead body politics and race also abound. George Floyds death is part of a much broader US context captured in the book Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (2000) that documents how white Americans collected photographs of lynched black people and turned those images into collectible postcards. I highly recommend this book to any white person wondering why so many black communities feel such rage and anger about their dead.

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I describe lesson three as part of a National Death Infrastructure into which dead bodies are absorbed by any nations very local but also quite global system for managing human corpses.

Any National Death Infrastructure includes systems such as local cemeteries and city morgues alongside international air transfer companies handling postmortem repatriations. It is when those systems overload that we begin to see the dead bodies and cannot stop seeing them since there are simply too many corpses to store. The dead bodies must be moved somewhere.

The recent COVID-19 experiences in many cities, New York and London in particular, demonstrate how pandemics can produce mass fatality events that quickly overload the everyday death infrastructure and create the need for rapid adaptation. In these moments of emergent adaptation, we begin to see how quickly the dead really do impact the world of the living.

But many of us do eventually look away and forget about the dead bodies. In the not-to-distant-future, I have a feeling that the dead bodies created by COVID-19 will be forgotten about, especially by the people who did not lose someone close to them.

Here is a quick test how many people have died from AIDS? The answer is 38 million and counting. That is an enormous number of largely invisible dead bodies.

Virological determinism is the concept I use to describe the current US and UK response to the COVID-19 pandemic, that is, we humans blame the virus for creating all the COVID-19 dead bodies as opposed to recognising human failures (and here I mean government leaders as much as anything) at mitigating the contagion.

This is similar to the way we use technological determinism to explain human problems by saying, the computer did it! as opposed to accepting responsibility for our own actions.

COVID-19 created a whole new linguistic dynamic for 2020s human catastrophes blame the virus. Name a problem and the coronavirus caused it. And while this is correct in some instances, the virological determinist rationalisation only goes so far with dead bodies.

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The sudden surge in COVID-19 dead bodies that overloaded National Death Infrastructures everywhere meant hiding the bodies was not possible. Most countries face a real dilemma right now with care homes since the number of dead cannot be easily glossed over.

Governments may try (and some will surely succeed) but here is a key rule: one dead body makes any given situation a tragedy. Twenty-thousand dead bodies make the same situation a mass fatality catastrophe.

Any government that attempts to hide these dead bodies, and here hiding can also mean not acknowledging, faces an immediate problem all attempts at obfuscating the dead will only make their loved ones and advocates work even harder to name the deceased.

There is a parallel here, too, with the George Floyd case. The video recording of his death resonated so deeply because it showed his death in clear-cut terms that meant nothing was going to hide his dead body from public view.

Finally.

I opened these five-lessons with my younger sister Julie calling me the Overlord of Death. Julie died on 29 July 2018 from brain cancer and I wrote at length about her death in the preface to my book. She died in Italy (where she lived), and took her final turn while I boarded a Milan-bound plane at Bristol Airport.

When I arrived at the hospice where she died I immediately asked to see my sister and was taken to her body. I spent a long time talking with Julie about how much everyone loved her and how much everyone would miss her.

I also suddenly found myself next to a dead body, similar in so many ways to my youth, but this time it was my sister. And sitting next to her dead body taught me what loss truly felt like, since I couldnt just call my sister on the phone and tell her what was happening.

She was dead but that experience with her in the hospice meant that Julie would forevermore remain an active presence in my everyday life. And she is.

Technologies of the Human Corpse by John Troyer is out now (20, MIT Press).

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Death is part of life, and there is a lot we can learn from it - BBC Focus Magazine

Keeping on the shady side of life – North Country Public Radio

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Jul 11, 2020

One of the perks of having trees nearby is that social-distancing rules dont apply you can hug as many as you like without risk of contracting Covid-19. Another benefit, of course, is shade. When the heats on and you need to lie low for a while, its great if some of your friends are shady characters. Especially if theyre tall, mature types with solid builds. Yeah, trees are cool.

Air temperature is up to 10 degrees cooler in the shade of a large deciduous tree. Photo: pxfuel

When the thermometer spikes, any shade is welcome. If youre lucky enough to have large trees where you live, not only can you get a break from the sun, but the air temperature will be cooler as much as ten degrees compared to out in the open. Its an awesome, natural, and free kind of air conditioning.

Deciduous shade trees on the south and west sides of a house can cut air conditioning costs by 30-50 percent in summer and let sunlight through in winter. Photo: National Park Service

On those blistering summer days when you think its too hot to work outside, youre not alone trees share your outlook. Photosynthesis, that amazing process which turns carbon dioxide and sunlight into sugar (thereby keeping the trees alive) and oxygen (thereby helping keep us alive), does not work well above 85 degrees. All that solar energy going to waste! Incidentally, leaves can get too hot in full sun even when the air temperature is moderate, much like the way an asphalt parking lot gets scorching in the sun.

Hopefully youre drinking plenty of water in the summer heat. It might surprise you that trees can run short of water, especially in hot, dry seasons like 2016, 2018, and this year. While we tend to think tree roots dive deep in search of a cool drink, 90% of tree roots are in the top 10 inches of soil, and 98% are in the top 18 inches.

While many shady characters dont take well to a soaking, your tree will appreciate a thorough weekly drench. Forget the lawn it can fend for itself. Please remember your trees, and water them thoroughly if it hasnt rained in more than a week.

I wish you all a healthy, well-hydrated summer, and lots of hugs with your shady associates.

Paul Hetzler is a Certified Arborist and a former Cornell Cooperative Extension educator.

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Justice League: 10 Interesting Behind-The-Scenes Details – Screen Rant

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With a long-awaited directors cut slated for HBO Max next year, DCEU's Justice League had one of the most famously troubled productions in Hollywood.

After Man of Steel introduced us to the DCEUs Superman and Batman v Superman introduced us to the DCEUs Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg, 2017s Justice League united the six with an ensemble team-up. With a long-awaited directors cut set to appear on HBO Max next year, Justice League had one of the most famously troubled productions in Hollywood history.

RELATED:4 Movies Warner Bros. Should Remove From DCEU Canon (& 4 They Should Keep)

Director Zack Snyder stepped down in the middle of the production due to a personal tragedy, allowing Warner Bros. to hijack the movies tone and bring in Avengers director Joss Whedon to make a pale imitation of the MCU.

After Zack Snyders daughter tragically took her own life, the director stepped down from directing Justice League to mourn and spend time with his family. Warner Bros. was still determined to get the movie finished in time for its 2017 release date, and hired Joss Whedon of the first two Avengers movies to complete it.

Based on tone, its pretty clear in the final cut which scenes were directed by Snyder and which were directed by Whedon. The #ReleaseTheSnyderCut campaign has since raised a ton of money for suicide prevention.

The DCEUs Commissioner Gordon is being rebooted in Matt Reeves The Batman with Jeffrey Wright taking the role, but the franchises first Gordon appeared in Justice League, played by J.K. Simmons.

Before Simmons was cast, the role was offered to Bryan Cranston, who had previously voiced Gordon in Batman: Year One, but he turned it down.

By the time that the reshoots began for Justice League, Henry Cavill had begun shooting Mission: Impossible Fallout, and hed grown out a bushy mustache to play August Walker.

Paramount and Warner Bros. got into an intense legal battle over whether Cavill could shave his mustache for the Justice League reshoot, but Paramount wouldnt budget and the mustache had to be removed digitally instead. In a few scenes, this really stands out.

After Zack Snyders previous DCEU entries, Man of Steel and Batman v Superman, were both commonly criticized for being overlong, Warner Bros. demanded that the runtime of Justice League had to be two hours or less.

RELATED:5 Things Batfleck Got Right (& 5 It Got Wrong)

However, Snyder had set up so many storylines in BvS not to mention having to introduce every member of the Justice League before they had their own solo movies that the movie simply couldnt be less than two hours long andbe coherent. The final runtime is 119 minutes.

Both Zack Snyder and Ray Fisher considered Cyborg to be the heart of Justice League as it was originally envisioned. However, when Joss Whedon took over, most of Cyborgs scenes were cut.

An early draft of the script revealed that Victor Stones injuries were a result of the wide-scale destruction at the hands of Doomsday in Batman v Superman.

Before the Justice League finally made it to the screen under the direction of Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon, there were a few League movies in development that never made it to the screen. Mad Maxs George Miller worked on a movie called Justice League: Mortal, which was called off due to a writers strike.

It wouldve starred Armie Hammer as Batman, D.J. Cotrona as Superman, Megan Gale as Wonder Woman, Adam Brody as the Flash, Common as Green Lantern, Santiago Cabrera as Aquaman, and Hugh Keays-Byrne as the Martian Manhunter. Tim Burton was also expected to direct a Justice League movie after Superman Lives, his unproduced Superman movie starring Nicolas Cage as Clark Kent.

The score for Justice League was originally set to be composed by Hans Zimmer, although he swore off superhero movies after Batman v Superman (but then went back on his word and scored X-Men: Dark Phoenix and Wonder Woman 1984), so he was replaced by Junkie XL.

RELATED:10 Ways Green Lantern Could Be Introduced In The DCEU

When Zack Snyder departed from the project and Warner Bros. decided to lighten up the tone, Danny Elfman was brought on to write a new score. He even incorporated some of his own Batman theme from the 1989 movie.

After being offered the chance to direct Man of Steel and turning it down, then being cast as Bruce Wayne in Batman v Superman, Ben Affleck was considered to direct Justice League.

He was also in line to direct himself in a Batman solo movie, which would make him the first Batman actor to do so, before he departed from the role.

The post-credits scene at the end of Justice League reveals that Lex Luthor has somehow escaped from prison and hes putting together the Legion of Doom.

This begins with Luthor meeting with Deathstroke on a lavish yacht. This scene was actually shot on Zack Snyders personal yacht.

Warner Bros. initially announced two Justice League movies Justice League: Part One and Justice League: Part Two that would follow Batman v Superman and be released one year apart. The first part wouldve ended by teasing the arrival of Darkseid and the second part wouldve sent the League into space to fight the big bad.

However, the second part was called off and Justice League was streamlined into a single movie. The producers have since given conflicting reports about whether or not a two-parter was actually planned.

NEXT:DCEU: 10 Characters We Hope To See In The Next Justice League Movie

Next The 5 Best (& 5 Worst) 2010s Romance Movies

Ben Sherlock is a writer, filmmaker, and comedian. In addition to writing for Screen Rant and CBR, covering a wide range of topics from Spider-Man to Scorsese, Ben directs independent films and takes to the stage with his standup material. He's currently in pre-production on his feature directorial debut (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema and BabbleTop.

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Justice League: 10 Interesting Behind-The-Scenes Details - Screen Rant

Op-ed | On the verge of a new era for space exploration? Assessing the impact of the ongoing crisis – SpaceNews

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Establishing an international long-term sustainable lunar presence in partnership with the private sector remains the core focus in space exploration

For more than 50 years, our desire to explore space has led to new discoveries while providing a continuous stream of socioeconomic benefits here on Earth. Space exploration, moreover, has increasingly cemented itself as a field of high strategic importance for governments around the globe.

Fueled by these multiple factors, global government investment in space exploration has grown in the past decade driven by programs in leading countries and joined by an increasing number of actors. According to Euroconsults latest research, Prospects for Space Exploration 2nd Edition, global government investment in space exploration totaled nearly $20 billion in 2019, increasing at a 5% compound annual growth rate over the past five years. Thirty-one countries and space agencies lead this global investment with the United States accounting for 71% of it.

The strategic and geopolitical value of the Earths natural satellite plays an important role behind the rationale of heading back to the moon, and it is considered as a central piece toward future crewed Mars missions. Moreover, space agencies share the objective of creating a sustainable lunar market environment, with cost-sharing, risk-sharing, and partnering as key goals for this new wave of lunar exploration.

Leading space agencies also agree on the importance of maintaining a sustained presence in low Earth orbit. The International Space Station remains the worlds largest international cooperation program to date and the cornerstone for human spaceflight. Funding for the station is secured by all partners until at least 2024 and support has grown for extending operations to 2028 or 2030 in cooperation with the private sector. NASAs future vision for LEO includes a sustainable U.S.-led commercial human spaceflight marketplace. China, in the meantime, has ramped up investments to ensure the launch and completion of its LEO space station in the coming years. Meanwhile, astronomy and planetary missions to Mars and other destinations will continue expanding our scientific knowledge and technical capabilities.

To achieve these goals, global government investment for space exploration is forecast to increase to $30 billion by 2029. This forecast funding growth of about 50% over the coming decade reflects government support of large-scale, ambitious plans, which have started to materialize with the moon as a core focus.

Space exploration is not only attracting the interest of an increasing number of governments but also the private sector. From startups to large companies, players are seeking to exploit the commercial potential of space as human and robotic presence expands beyond Earth. The next decade promises numerous commercial exploration initiatives, significantly impacting the strategic planning of governments and their agenda for space exploration. New public-private contractual schemes are taking shape, reflecting the willingness from space agencies to act as both a strategic partner and a potential future customer of commercial services to achieve a sustainable model for space exploration. However, while enthusiasm for space exploration and the moon in particular is real, numerous missions remain uncertain due to a great number of external risk factors accentuated by the current global context.

The unprecedented context created by the COVID-19 pandemic is causing repercussions of varying degrees throughout the global economy. The precise impact of the current health and economic crisis are, as of today, still difficult to predict with exactitude. The space sector has already experienced the direct effects of the lockdown caused by the pandemic: Space missions operated by employees at home, science missions on standby, launches postponed, and manufacturing plans on hold are some of the examples that have challenged the daily activities of the space sector during the past months. However, as the world slowly returns to normal operations, it is expected that space activities will do so as well. We are experiencing, for instance, the excitement of NASAs Commercial Crew Program, including the first crewed launch to the International Space Station from the United States since 2011. This summer will also see the launch of notable planetary exploration missions if all proceeds as planned such as NASAs Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover and the United Arab Emirates Mars HOPE orbiter.

Nonetheless, the space sector is not immune to the global international context and will experience the ripple effect of the economic fallout. It remains uncertain how readjustments in investments or new allocations will fully develop, as countries around the world might experience higher pressure created by the current turmoil. The impact of the pandemic is anticipated to vary greatly among countries and space verticals. Space exploration activities are long-term in nature and often experience inherent delays. While the current crisis may accentuate further potential delays, it is unlikely to disrupt governments long-term objectives. Space exploration stands high on the space agenda of leading government space programs due to its ties with national strategic interests. Recent announcements such as NASAs contracts awarded to American companies for the development of the lunar human landing system are some of the examples that reaffirm governments ambitions in exploration despite current events. These milestones, nonetheless, are the result of the strategic planning and budget allocations that space agencies made over the past months.

The outlook for space exploration will also be largely influenced by the steps taken by the U.S. in the coming months, as the country remains to date the largest investor and a major driving force in defining the global strategy in space exploration. While the American moon-to-Mars exploration campaign has gained increased bipartisan support, the potential implications that a change of administration during the upcoming elections could have in exploration objectives remain debatable. Space exploration remains deeply tied to American politics as every new administration defines new objectives. The fact that lunar exploration has consolidated as a key strategic asset for many governments around the world, including China, might be a key factor for the U.S. to maintain a moon focus in its exploration strategy independent of a potential political change. However, even if the lunar objective prevails in the United States, questions would arise on the potential delays in programs (such as its moon 2024 objective or the lunar Gateway program), which could also be further stressed due to the economic downturn caused by the pandemic. A deferment of exploration projects could have a negative effect on the current momentum of exploration initiatives, with detrimental effects to international and private partners.

Within the private sector, the increase in private investment in the past decade has facilitated the emergence of new commercial exploration initiatives. Despite this increase, the total private funding in space exploration continues to be, to date, moderate and with investments concentrated only on a rather limited number of actors. Investors remain more reluctant to fund space exploration initiatives due to the inherent high risks and long-term vision of this field, a reluctance which may be further exacerbated by the current global context. The pandemic crisis might additionally accelerate preexisting fragile conditions of startups, challenging their survival. Support from the governments as a customer and a partner will continue to be (even more) critical to the success of commercial initiatives.

Despite the current global scene and the many challenges associated with it, the coming decade may well present opportunities for many. Global leading actors are expected to reinforce their position, while new entrants might face higher difficulties to enter an increasingly competitive field. International collaboration and public-private cooperation are expected to continue consolidating as an essential requisite in the public stakeholders exploration strategy and road map to achieve a sustainable model for space exploration moving forward.

Natalia Larrea is a principal advisor at Euroconsult and chief editor of the Prospects for Space Exploration research.

This article originally appeared in the June 15, 2020 issue of SpaceNews magazine.

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Op-ed | On the verge of a new era for space exploration? Assessing the impact of the ongoing crisis - SpaceNews

2 Tampa Bay area counties are vying to become home of the US Space Force – WTSP.com

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Gov. Ron DeSantis has endorsed all eight nomination letters for communities looking to host the U.S. Space Force headquarters.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. As the new U.S. Space Force looks for a prime spot for its headquarters, eight communities in Florida have submitted nomination letters to land it.

Space Florida, the state's aerospace economic development agency, held a call on Tuesday with staff from the Florida Congressional delegation. Following an eligibility screening process, the agency announced Gov. Ron DeSantis had endorsed the nomination letters from all eight communities vying for the Space Force headquarters.

The areas trying to convince Space Force to make a home there include Brevard County, Hillsborough County, city of Jacksonville, city of Miami-Dade, Orange County, city of Pensacola, Pinellas County and Seminole County.

Each area's letter pitched the strength and eligibility of the community to host another military headquarters. Florida currently is home to three combatant commands and more than 20 military installations.

In Hillsborough County's letter addressed to Assistant Secretary John Henderson touts the area is home to MacDill Air Force Base and both Central Command and Special Operations Command.

The letter, signed by Tampa Mayor Jane Castor and Commission Chair Les Miller, also notes the area's nearly 100,000 veterans and the "large concentration of defense and security industry businesses that are prepared to support United States Space Command."

"The State's defense and aerospace ecosystem provides unique capabilities and opportunities that would benefit the USSPACECOM," Space Florida said in a release. "The creation of Space Force generates prospects for commands, supporting structures and related business development as this new branch of the military continues to develop in the coming years."

DeSantis announced his endorsements of the proposals on Monday in a letter to Air Force Assistant Secretary John Henderson, noting the state's long history of supporting American space exploration and technology through Kennedy Space Center, the 45th Space Wing and the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

"These installations provide great support to our national defense and provide a significant economic impact to our state," DeSantis said. "Equally important as our military installations is Florida's robust commercial space industry."

Space Florida on Thursday will host a video call to discuss the current status of the headquarters competition and how the agency can assist communities vying for the Space Force win.

So far, the U.S. Air Force has received dozens of nomination letters from communities across the country. Final selection is expected to be announced in early 2021.

In mid-May, the newest branch of the armed services revealed its own flag. The Space Force was officially established in December 2019 as the first new military service since the U.S. Air Force was created in 1947.

The 16,000 airmen and civilians that make up the Space Force technically remain part of the Air Force. President Donald Trump, however, has made clear he sees the new branch as critical to the future of American defense.

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2 Tampa Bay area counties are vying to become home of the US Space Force - WTSP.com

Global Optical Telescope Market Insights And Extensive Research (2020-2025) : Celestron, Meade, Vixen Optics, TAKAHASHI, ASTRO-PHYSICS, Bushnell,…

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This latest report provides a deep insight into the Global Optical Telescope Market 2020 covering all its essential aspects. This ranges from macro overview of the market to micro details of the industry performance, recent trends, key market drivers and challenges, SWOT analysis, Porters five forces analysis, value chain analysis, etc.

This report presents a detailed study of the global market for Optical Telescope by evaluating the growth drivers, restraining factors, and opportunities at length. The examination of the prominent trends, driving forces, and the challenges assist the market participants and stakeholders to understand the issues they will have to face while operating in the worldwide market for Optical Telescope in the long run.

The study offers the major key aspects related to industry driving factors, opportunities, challenges, market threats, restraints, new product launch, geographical analysis and competitive tactics developed by key players in the competitive market. Crucial players are analyzed Celestron, Meade, Vixen Optics, TAKAHASHI, ASTRO-PHYSICS, Bushnell, Bresser and more along with their product portfolio, market share, and other details.

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General Type

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Amateur astronomy hobbyProfessional research

This Report Forecasts Revenue Growth At A Global, Regional & Country Level, And Provides An Analysis Of The Market Trends In Each Of The Sub-Segments From 2020 To 2025.

North America (Usa., Canada, Mexico, Etc.)

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Europe (Germany, Uk, France, Italy, Russia, Spain, Etc.)

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Further, In The Optical Telescope Market Research Reports, The Following Points Are Included Along With An In-Depth Study Of Each Point:

Production Analysis Production Of The Optical Telescope Is Analyzed Concerning Different Regions, Types, And Applications. Here, Price Analysis Of Various Optical Telescope Market Key Players Is Also Covered.

Sales And Revenue Analysis Both, Sales And Revenue Are Studied For The Different Regions Of The Optical Telescope Market. Another Major Aspect, Price, Which Plays An Important Part In The Revenue Generation, Is Also Assessed In This Section For The Various Regions.

Supply And Consumption In Continuation With Sales, This Section Studies Supply And Consumption For The Optical Telescope Market. This Part Also Sheds Light On The Gap Between Supply And Consumption. Import And Export Figures Are Also Given In This Part.

Competitors In This Section, Various Optical Telescope Industry Leading Players Are Studied Concerning Their Company Profile, Product Portfolio, Capacity, Price, Cost, And Revenue.

Other Analysis Apart From The Aforementioned Information, Trade And Distribution Analysis For The Optical Telescope Market, The Contact Information Of Major Manufacturers, Suppliers And Key Consumers Is Also Given. Also, Swot Analysis For New Projects And Feasibility Analysis For New Investment Are Included.

In the End, Optical Telescope market collecting historical and recent data from various authentic resources and depending on all the factors and trends, the report presents a figurative estimate of the future market condition, along with compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

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Global Optical Telescope Market Insights And Extensive Research (2020-2025) : Celestron, Meade, Vixen Optics, TAKAHASHI, ASTRO-PHYSICS, Bushnell,...

Astrophysicists May Have Discovered the Hidden Source of Mysterious Cosmic Neutrinos Seen on Earth – SciTechDaily

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NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of Galaxy NGC 1068 with its active black hole shown as an illustration in the zoomed-in inset. A new model suggests that the corona around such supermassive black holes could be the source of high-energy cosmic neutrinos observed by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Excess neutrinos and missing gamma rays? Coronae of supermassive black holes may be the hidden sources of mysterious cosmic neutrinos seen on Earth.

The origin of high-energy cosmic neutrinos observed by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, whose detector is buried deep in the Antarctic ice, is an enigma that has perplexed physicists and astronomers. A new model could help explain the unexpectedly large flux of some of these neutrinos inferred by recent neutrino and gamma-ray data. A paper by Penn State researchers describing the model, which points to the supermassive black holes found at the cores of active galaxies as the sources of these mysterious neutrinos, appears June 30, 2020 in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Neutrinos are subatomic particles so tiny that their mass is nearly zero and they rarely interact with other matter, said Kohta Murase, assistant professor of physics and of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State and a member of Center for Multimessenger Astrophysics in the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos (IGC), who led the research. High-energy cosmic neutrinos are created by energetic cosmic-ray accelerators in the universe, which may be extreme astrophysical objects such as black holes and neutron stars. They must be accompanied by gamma rays or electromagnetic waves at lower energies, and even sometimes gravitational waves. So, we expect the levels of these various cosmic messengers that we observe to be related. Interestingly, the IceCube data have indicated an excess emission of neutrinos with energies below 100 teraelectron volt (TeV), compared to the level of corresponding high-energy gamma rays seen by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.

Scientists combine information from all of these cosmic messengers to learn about events in the universe and to reconstruct its evolution in the burgeoning field of multimessenger astrophysics. For extreme cosmic events, like massive stellar explosions and jets from supermassive black holes, that create neutrinos, this approach has helped astronomers pinpoint the distant sources and each additional messenger provides additional clues about the details of the phenomena.

For cosmic neutrinos above 100 TeV, previous research by the Penn State group showed that it is possible to have concordance with high-energy gamma rays and ultra-high-energy cosmic rays which fits with a multimessenger picture. However, there is growing evidence for an excess of neutrinos below 100 TeV, which cannot simply be explained. Very recently, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory reported another excess of high-energy neutrinos in the direction of one of the brightest active galaxies, known as NGC 1068, in the northern sky.

Reference: Hidden Cores of Active Galactic Nuclei as the Origin of Medium-Energy Neutrinos: Critical Tests with the MeV Gamma-Ray Connection by Kohta Murase, Shigeo S. Kimura and Peter Mszros, 30 June 2020, Physical Review Letters.DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.011101

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Astrophysicists May Have Discovered the Hidden Source of Mysterious Cosmic Neutrinos Seen on Earth - SciTechDaily

New map of the universe unveils a stunning X-ray view of the cosmos – Space.com

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Wish you had X-ray vision? An extraordinary new map showcases the universe in striking, X-ray radiation.

Scientists created this stunning X-ray map of the universe using eROSITA (Extended Roentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array), an instrument on the German-Russian satellite mission Spectrum-Rntgen-Gamma, or Spektr-RG.

The scientists completed a full sweep of the sky over the course of about six months, looking for sources of X-ray radiation a type of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. These X-ray sources include black holes, galaxy clusters and leftover remnants from supernova explosions.

In scouring the skies, eROSITA spotted over a million sources of X-ray radiation from all across the cosmos, with most of the sources being active galactic nuclei, or the luminous, compact region at the center of galaxies. This number of sources roughly doubles the number of known X-ray sources that have been discovered over the 60-year history of X-ray astronomy, according to a statement from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching, Germany. By studying clusters of galaxies with this new, detailed map, researchers hope to track how these cosmic structures grow.

"This all-sky image completely changes the way we look at the energetic universe," Peter Predehl, the Principal Investigator of eROSITA at MPE, said in the same statement. "We see such a wealth of detail the beauty of the images is really stunning."

Because it is not only stunning but incredibly detailed, this new X-ray map could "revolutionize" the way that we look at the cosmos, Kirpal Nandra, head of the high-energy astrophysics group at MPE, said in the same statement.

"With a million sources in just six months, eROSITA has already revolutionized X-ray astronomy, but this is just a taste of what's to come," Nandra said. "This combination of sky area and depth is transformational. We are already sampling a cosmological volume of the hot Universe much larger than has been possible before. Over the next few years, we'll be able to probe even further, out to where the first giant cosmic structures and supermassive black holes were forming."

Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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New map of the universe unveils a stunning X-ray view of the cosmos - Space.com

AstroDancing With The Stars | astrobites – Astrobites

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Title: AstroDance: Engaging Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students in Astrophysics via Multimedia Performances

Authors: J. Nordhaus, M. Campanelli, J. Bochner, T. Warfield, H.-P. Bischof, J. Noel-Storr

First authors institution: Rochester Institute of Technology

Journal: Open Access here

Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students commonly come into and out of the classroom knowing less content than their hearing classmates (Marschark et al. 2008). As a direct consequence, DHH students earn STEM bachelor degrees at lower rates than their hearing classmates (15% DHH vs. 25% hearing); this in turn causes the DHH community to be underrepresented in STEM fields as a whole. It is important that we, as a scientific community, make science accessible and scientific careers attainable to all. One such method of making astronomy more inclusive to the DHH community is AstroDance!

What is AstroDance?

Created by a team of astrophysicists, science educators, dancers, computer programmers, and choreographers, AstroDance is a multi-media performance that incorporates both signed and visual components. Based largely around gravitational wave astronomy, each scientific section of this program starts with a short story narrated in English and American Sign Language (ASL) and is then followed by an interpretive dance with music and scientifically accurate images projected on the back of the stage. These images were largely taken from scientific work done by members of the Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation at the Rochester Institute of Technology. See the video below from the authors of this paper summarizing their work and showing clips from a performance. AstroDance first premiered at the Little Theater in Rochester, NY as part of the Fringe Festival in 2012. Following this premiere was a year-long, 20-stop tour around the Northeastern states of the US.

What did audiences take away?

After each show, attendees were asked to complete a brief anonymous survey about their experience. In addition to demographic information {age, (binary) gender, race/ethnicity, & hearing status}, the survey asked participants to rate their enjoyment of the program, how much science they learned, and how much they participated in other science activities. Finally, survey participants were asked to describe the performance, share what they learned, and whether they had any comments.

Of the ~20 performances of AstroDance, 971 survey responses were collected. Though only binary gender options were presented, of the 971 responses, there were roughly equal numbers of boys/men and girls/women. 89% (866) participants offered ethnicity data (see Fig. 1 for a pie chart); all non-white ethnicity percentages are above the national average! Shown in Figure 2 is the distribution of hearing status of audience members by age. There were roughly equal numbers of DHH members as there were hearing.

When analyzing results from the scaled questions, the authors of todays paper enlisted an age cutoff of 22 years, as they expect a large majority of those responses are from students. The results from these three (3) questions are shown in Figure 3. Both the hearing and DHH groups equally enjoyed the performances, but the DHH group significantly learned more science from the performances and participated in more science related activities (p-values of 0.001 and 0.00001, respectively).

When analyzing the responses to the free-response questions, the authors chose to present a few representative responses for each in the paper. When asked how they might describe the performance to a friend or colleague, many of the responses said that this performance was a positive and complementary blend of art and science. A shared response was:

Different from regular performances I normally attend. There was narration, sign language interpretative audience interaction/participation, glow in the dark props. Yes, I learned that scientists and artists can work together to collaborate ideas/views.

Continuing on with the other free-response questions, when asked to explain something they had learned from the performance, many talked about the astrophysical objects taught in the show such as black holes and gravitational waves. The last free-response question allowed survey takers to leave any comments. The authors of the paper provided two given responses: This is great, creative, beautiful and didactic > do something please about cell biology and Artistic expression is a great way to teach an understanding of complex. scientific concepts. Beautiful costume design & props. Love the body movements forms!

What did AstroDance show?

Although dance is not usually someones idea of what science communication can be, this program has shown that it not only can be, but perhaps should be! The agreement between DHH and hearing students that they enjoyed the performances and learned a lot of science shows that AstroDance is an inclusive and effective science communication tool! The fact that DHH students learned more science than their hearing schoolmates highlights the importance of a program like AstroDance even more, as it shows that it was especially effective at engaging DHH audience members. Its important that we, as a scientific community, take every approach to make science accessible to all, especially by trying unconventional methods. AstroDance has offered us one way to make science, especially astronomy, more inclusive to the DHH community. I am excited to what AstroDance inspires us all to become!

About Huei SearsHuei Sears (she/her/hers) is a second-year graduate student at Ohio University studying astrophysics! Her research is focused on Gamma-Ray Burst host galaxies & how they fit into the mass-metallicity relationship. Previously she was at Michigan State University searching for the elusive period of B[e] supergiant, S18. In addition to research, she cares a lot about science communication, and is always looking for ways to make science more accessible. In her free time, she enjoys going to the gym, baking a new recipe, listening to Taylor Swift, watching the X-Files, and spending time with her little sister.

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AstroDancing With The Stars | astrobites - Astrobites

Nyx: Stellar Stream of Stars Discovered in Milky Way That Originated in Another Galaxy – SciTechDaily

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Still from a simulation of individual galaxies forming, starting at a time when the Universe was just a few million years old. Credit: Hopkins Research Group, Caltech

Caltech researchers use deep learning and supercomputing to identify Nyx, a product of a long-ago galaxy merger.

Astronomers can go their whole career without finding a new object in the sky. But for Lina Necib, a postdoctoral scholar in theoretical physics at Caltech, the discovery of a cluster of stars in the Milky Way, but not born of the Milky Way, came early with a little help from supercomputers, the Gaia space observatory, and new deep learning methods.

Writing in Nature Astronomy this week, Necib and her collaborators describe Nyx, a vast new stellar stream in the vicinity of the Sun, that may provide the first indication that a dwarf galaxy had merged with the Milky Way disk. These stellar streams are thought to be globular clusters or dwarf galaxies that have been stretched out along its orbit by tidal forces before being completely disrupted.

The discovery of Nyx took a circuitous route, but one that reflects the multifaceted way astronomy and astrophysics are studied today.

Necib studies the kinematics or motions of stars and dark matter in the Milky Way. If there are any clumps of stars that are moving together in a particular fashion, that usually tells us that there is a reason that theyre moving together.

Since 2014, researchers from Caltech, Northwestern University, UC San Diego and UC Berkeley, among other institutions, have been developing highly-detailed simulations of realistic galaxies as part of a project called FIRE (Feedback In Realistic Environments). These simulations include everything scientists know about how galaxies form and evolve. Starting from the virtual equivalent of the beginning of time, the simulations produce galaxies that look and act much like our own.

Concurrent to the FIRE project, the Gaia space observatory was launched in 2013 by the European Space Agency. Its goal is to create an extraordinarily precise three-dimensional map of about one billion stars throughout the Milky Way galaxy and beyond.

The FIRE and FIRE-2 simulations follow the region that will become a single galaxy by the present time, tracing the evolution of dark matter and gas, which eventually turns into stars. Credit: Hopkins Research Group, Caltech

Its the largest kinematic study to date. The observatory provides the motions of one billion stars, she explained. A subset of it, seven million stars, have 3D velocities, which means that we can know exactly where a star is and its motion. Weve gone from very small datasets to doing massive analyses that we couldnt do before to understand the structure of the Milky Way.

The discovery of Nyx involved combining these two major astrophysics projects and analyzing them using deep learning methods.

Among the questions that both the simulations and the sky survey address is: How did the Milky Way become what it is today?

Galaxies form by swallowing other galaxies, Necib said. Weve assumed that the Milky Way had a quiet merger history, and for a while it was concerning how quiet it was because our simulations show a lot of mergers. Now, with access to a lot of smaller structures, we understand it wasnt as quiet as it seemed. Its very powerful to have all these tools, data and simulations. All of them have to be used at once to disentangle this problem. Were at the beginning stages of being able to really understand the formation of the Milky way.

A map of a billion stars is a mixed blessing: so much information, but nearly impossible to parse by human perception.

Before, astronomers had to do a lot of looking and plotting, and maybe use some clustering algorithms. But thats not really possible anymore, Necib said. We cant stare at seven million stars and figure out what theyre doing. What we did in this series of projects was use the Gaia mock catalogues.

The Gaia mock catalogue, developed by Robyn Sanderson (University of Pennsylvania), essentially asked: If the FIRE simulations were real and observed with Gaia, what would we see?

Necibs collaborator, Bryan Ostdiek (formerly at University of Oregon, and now at Harvard University), who had previously been involved in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project, had experience dealing with huge datasets using machine and deep learning. Porting those methods over to astrophysics opened the door to a new way to explore the cosmos.

At the LHC, we have incredible simulations, but we worry that machines trained on them may learn the simulation and not real physics, Ostdiek said. In a similar way, the FIRE galaxies provide a wonderful environment to train our models, but they are not the Milky Way. We had to learn not only what could help us identify the interesting stars in simulation, but also how to get this to generalize to our real galaxy.

The team developed a method of tracking the movements of each star in the virtual galaxies and labelling the stars as either born in the host galaxy or accreted as the products of galaxy mergers. The two types of stars have different signatures, though the differences are often subtle. These labels were used to train the deep learning model, which was then tested on other FIRE simulations.

After they built the catalogue, they applied it to the Gaia data. We asked the neural network, Based on what youve learned, can you label if the stars were accreted or not?' Necib said.

The model ranked how confident it was that a star was born outside the Milky Way on a range from 0 to 1. The team created a cutoff with a tolerance for error and began exploring the results.

This approach of applying a model trained on one dataset and applying it to a different but related one is called transfer learning and can be fraught with challenges. We needed to make sure that were not learning artificial things about the simulation, but really whats going on in the data, Necib said. For that, we had to give it a little bit of help and tell it to reweigh certain known elements to give it a bit of an anchor.

They first checked to see if it could identify known features of the galaxy. These include the Gaia sausage the remains of a dwarf galaxy that merged with the Milky Way about six to ten billion years ago and that has a distinctive sausage-like orbital shape.

It has a very specific signature, she explained. If the neural network worked the way its supposed to, we should see this huge structure that we already know is there.

The Gaia sausage was there, as was the stellar halo background stars that give the Milky Way its tell-tale shape and the Helmi stream, another known dwarf galaxy that merged with the Milky Way in the distant past and was discovered in 1999.

The model identified another structure in the analysis: a cluster of 250 stars, rotating with the Milky Ways disk, but also going toward the center of the galaxy.

Your first instinct is that you have a bug, Necib recounted. And youre like, Oh no! So, I didnt tell any of my collaborators for three weeks. Then I started realizing its not a bug, its actually real and its new.

But what if it had already been discovered? You start going through the literature, making sure that nobody has seen it and luckily for me, nobody had. So I got to name it, which is the most exciting thing in astrophysics. I called it Nyx, the Greek goddess of the night. This particular structure is very interesting because it would have been very difficult to see without machine learning.

The project required advanced computing at many different stages. The FIRE and updated FIRE-2 simulations are among the largest computer models of galaxies ever attempted. Each of the nine main simulations three separate galaxy formations, each with slightly different starting point for the sun took months to compute on the largest, fastest supercomputers in the world. These included Blue Waters at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), NASAs High-End Computing facilities, and most recently Stampede2 at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC).

The researchers used clusters at the University of Oregon to train the deep learning model and to apply it to the massive Gaia dataset. They are currently using Frontera, the fastest system at any university in the world, to continue the work.

Everything about this project is computationally very intensive and would not be able to happen without large-scale computing, Necib said.

Necib and her team plan to explore Nyx further using ground-based telescopes. This will provide information about the chemical makeup of the stream, and other details that will help them date Nyxs arrival into the Milky Way, and possibly provide clues on where it came from.

The next data release of Gaia in 2021 will contain additional information about 100 million stars in the catalogue, making more discoveries of accreted clusters likely.

When the Gaia mission started, astronomers knew it was one of the largest datasets that they were going to get, with lots to be excited about, Necib said. But we needed to evolve our techniques to adapt to the dataset. If we didnt change or update our methods, wed be missing out on physics that are in our dataset.

The successes of the Caltech teams approach may have an even bigger impact. Were developing computational tools that will be available for many areas of research and for non-research related things, too, she said. This is how we push the technological frontier in general.

Reference: Evidence for a vast prograde stellar stream in the solar vicinity by Lina Necib, Bryan Ostdiek, Mariangela Lisanti, Timothy Cohen, Marat Freytsis, Shea Garrison-Kimmel, Philip F. Hopkins, Andrew Wetzel and Robyn Sanderson, 6 July 2020, Nature Astronomy.DOI: 10.1038/s41550-020-1131-2

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Nyx: Stellar Stream of Stars Discovered in Milky Way That Originated in Another Galaxy - SciTechDaily

Astronomers spot mysterious objects in deep space, say unable to explain what it is – DNA India

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A team of researchers headed by kectes Ray Norris, Professor of Applied Data Science in Astrophysics for Western Sydney discovered four mysterious circular objects made of radio waves in deep space.

The discovery was made while the astronomers were mapping the night sky as part of Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) project. As these objects were brighter alon the edges, the astronomers named them odd radio circles or ORCs.

The astronomers stated that the four ORCs are only visible in radio wavelengths. They are invisible in X-ray, optical, or infrared wavelengths.

"We have found an unexpected class of astronomical objects which have not previously been reported, in the Evolutionary Map of the Universe Pilot survey, using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope. The objects appear in radio images as circular edge-brightened discs about one arcmin diameter and do not seem to correspond to any known type of object." the astronomers cited in their paper.

"Circular features are well-known in radio astronomical images, and usually represent a spherical object such as a supernova remnant, a planetary nebula, a circumstellar shell, or a face-on disc such as a protoplanetary disc or a star-forming galaxy," it further added.

"They may also arise from imaging artefacts around bright sources caused by calibration errors or inadequate deconvolution. Here we report the discovery of a class of circular feature in radio images that do not seem to correspond to any of these known types of object or artefact, but rather appear to be a new class of astronomical object," the statement further read.

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Astronomers spot mysterious objects in deep space, say unable to explain what it is - DNA India

Barron inducted into Spring Valley Elementary’s Foundation Hall of Fame – Bureau County Republican

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SPRING VALLEY - Spring Valley Elementary School is proud of the districts rich history.

Charles Palia played a major role in establishing the school district and he became the Spring Valley Elementary Foundation's first inductee into the Spring Valley C.C.S.D. Foundation Honors Hall of Fame in 2019.

The Foundation announced Darcy Barron as the the 2020 inductee in the virtual awards program that was held Thursday, July 9.

Barron grew up in Spring Valley and began her education at Lincoln Elementary School. She was always a straight A student, but her top scores on the fifth grade Illinois State Achievement Tests encouraged her teacher, Mrs. Hillstrom, to allow her to advance her studies at her own pace.

In sixth grade at JFK, Barron followed the same accelerated program. By the time she entered seventh grade, it was apparent to the teachers and staff that she should be allowed to skip seventh grade. She took the leap and continued with her extracurricularactivities as a seventh-grade cheerleader, and participated in girls basketball, volleyball, track, band and swing choir.

She shared valedictorian honors at eighth grade graduation.

At Hall High School, Barron continued her straight A streak. She also continued with sports, becoming track captain her senior year and setting a school record in the triple jump. She worked summers as a lifeguard at Spring Valley pool and helped with her familys business - Graphic Electronics - part-time during the school year.

She took the ACT twice to prepare for college applications, scoring 34.5 in her first attempt, and a perfect 36 on the second attempt. Only 134 students out of over a million who took the test that year achieved perfect scores. At graduation she shared valedictorian honors, graduating in 2004.

Barron attend the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, joining her two older sisters. She chose to major in Engineering Physics, following a passion for physics and cosmology first discovered while reading science magazines from the library as a child.

She became involved in research soon after arriving at U of I, beginning as a research assistant in professor Les Allen's materials science research group. Her undergraduate years at U of I also included two summers working for LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) at Caltech and participation in the Intel Scholars undergraduate research program during the academic year. She graduated with honors in 2008 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering Physics, with a minor in Astronomy.

Barron continued her physics education, entering the PhD program at the University of California, San Diego in 2008. She joined a class of 27 students from all over the U.S. and around the world, but she was only one of two women. The other woman in the class grew up in Poland, but had a similar strong interest in cosmology. They remain close friends today.

Barron joined professor Brian Keatings experimental cosmology group as a graduate research assistant in 2009. The group builds telescopes and analyzes their data to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), with the goal of discovering new properties of our universe.

In 2011, she helped commission a new CMB experiment, known as POLARBEAR, and continued to help design the next series of telescopes necessary to expand and improve the experiment. The group worked towards adding two more telescopes known as the Simons Array, named for funding through the Simons Foundation and its founder, mathematician and hedge fund manager Jim Simons.

When she first arrived at the experiment's new location in Chile, the observatory was just shipping containers and a bare telescope structure. By the time Barron graduated in 2015, the group had completed the initial CMB observations and published exciting new results, detecting the signal they had set out to measure, the B-mode gravitational lensing signal.

In 2015, after finishing her Ph.D. at UC San Diego, Barron moved to UC Berkeley to continue working on the POLARBEAR/Simons Array project under an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics postdoctoral fellowship. The fellowship supported her continued research as well as expanded involvement in education and outreach. Through the Multiverse group at UC Berkeleys Space Sciences Lab, she led an NSF-funded summer research experience program for undergraduates, aimed at first-generation college students and community college students.

The program brought a group of students to the lab over the summer to complete a research project in support of one of the NASA missions or other projects at the lab.

Barron received an offer to become an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, N.M. in 2018. In addition to teaching physics courses, she is building up her research program.

She has designed and built a custom lab space, which features a new refrigeration system for cooling detectors within 0.01 degrees of absolute zero. She also continues her work with the POLARBEAR/Simons Array project, traveling to Chile three times in the past two years.

An additional project was funded in 2019 through the UNM Women in STEM awards, with the title Improving Physics Retention Rates through Early Undergraduate Research Experiences at UNM. Through this program, Barron aims to give students better context for their physics course work in the form of independent research projects.

New Mexico was a natural fit for Barron because she enjoys spending time in the mountains: backpacking, hiking and stargazing. In addition to spending significant time in the mountains of Chile, she has traveled frequently to Japan to work with collaborators building instruments for POLARBEAR/Simons Array. She has also had the opportunity to travel in Europe and Australia for cosmology conferences.

A favorite part of traveling for her is trying new foods, whether its exotic dishes at restaurants or exploring new snacks at a local grocery store. A memorable snack was fried pasta chips from a 7-Eleven in Japan. One of her absolute favorite treats is still Spring Valley Bakery cookies.

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Barron inducted into Spring Valley Elementary's Foundation Hall of Fame - Bureau County Republican