1988: The New Vauxhall Cavalier Is the Car 1950s Futurists Predicted – Autoweek

During most of the 1980s, GM's Vauxhall sold J-Body Cavaliers based on the North American Chevrolet Cavalier, and sales in Britain went well. Starting in late 1988, the Cavalier moved over to a new platform, best-known in Europe as the basis of the Opel Vectra (the later Saab 900 and the 9-3 were close relatives). This U.K.-market television advertisement demonstrates that this new Cavalier was exactly what the wisest prognosticators predicted for the year 2000.

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1988: The New Vauxhall Cavalier Is the Car 1950s Futurists Predicted - Autoweek

The death of the open-plan office? Not quite, but a revolution is in the air – The Conversation AU

What will it take to encourage much more widespread reliance on working at home for at least part of each week? asked Frank Schiff, the chief economist of the US Committee for Economic Development, in The Washington Post in 1979.

Four decades on, we have the answer.

But COVID-19 doesnt spell the end of the centralised office predicted by futurists since at least the 1970s.

The organisational benefits of the propinquity effect the tendency to develop deeper relationships with those we see most regularly are well-established.

The open-plan office will have to evolve, though, finding its true purpose as a collaborative work space augmented by remote work.

If were smart about it, necessity might turn out to be the mother of reinvention, giving us the best of both centralised and decentralised, collaborative and private working worlds.

Organisational culture, not technology, has long been the key force keeping us in central offices.

That was the case in 1974 and is still the case today, observed the father of telecommuting Jack Nilles in 2015, three decades after he and his University of Southern California colleagues published their landmark report Telecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff: Options for Tomorrow. The adoption of telework is still well behind its potential.

Read more: 50 years of bold predictions about remote work: it isn't all about technology

Until now.

But it has taken a pandemic to change the status quo evidence enough of culture resistance.

In his 1979 article, Schiff outlined three key objections to working from home:

how to tell how well workers are doing, or if they are working at all

employees need for contact with coworkers and others

too many distractions.

To the first objection, Schiff responded that experts agreed performance is best judged by output and the organisations objectives. To the third, he noted: In many cases, the opposite is likely to be true.

The COVID-19 experiment so far supports him. Most workers and managers are happy with remote working, believe they are performing just as well, and want to continue with it.

But the second argument the need for personal contact to foster close teamwork is harder to dismiss.

There is evidence remote workers crave more feedback.

Read more: Informal feedback: we crave it more than ever, and don't care who it's from

As researchers Ethan Bernstein and Ben Waber note in their Harvard Business Review article The Truth About Open Offices, published in November 2019, one of the most robust findings in sociology proposed long before we had the technology to prove it through data is that propinquity, or proximity, predicts social interaction.

Wabers research at the MIT Media Lab demonstrated the probability that any two workers will interact either in person or electronically is directly proportional to the distance between their desks. In his 2013 book People Analytics he includes the following results from a bank and information technology company.

Interest in fostering collaboration has sometimes led to disastrous workplace experiments. One was the building Frank Gehry designed for the Chiat/Day advertising agency in the late 1980s.

Agency boss Jay Chiat envisioned his headquarters as a futuristic step into flexible work but workers hated the lack of personal spaces.

Less dystopian was the Pixar Animation Studios headquarters opened in 2000. Steve Jobs, majority shareholder and chief executive, oversaw the project. He took a keen interest in things like the placement of bathrooms, accessed through the buildings central atrium. We wanted to find a way to force people to come together, he said, to create a lot of arbitrary collisions of people.

Yet Bernstein and Wabers research shows propinquity is also strong in campus buildings designed to promote serendipitous interaction. For increased interactions, they say, workers should be ideally on the same floor.

How to balance the organisational forces pulling us together with the health forces pushing social distancing?

We know COVID-19 spreads most easily between people in enclosed spaces for extended periods. In Britain, research by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine shows workplaces are the most common transmission path for adults aged 20 to 50.

Read more: As coronavirus restrictions ease, here's how you can navigate public transport as safely as possible

We may have to get used to wearing masks along with plenty of hand sanitising and disinfecting of high-traffic areas and shared facilities, from keyboards to kitchens. Every door knob and lift button is an issue.

But space is the final frontier.

Its going to take more than vacating every second desk or imposing barriers like cubicle walls, which largely defeat the point of open-plan offices.

An alternative vision comes from real-estate services company Cushman & Wakefield. Its 6 feet office concept includes more space between desks and lots of visual cues to remind coworkers to maintain physical distances.

Read more: Vital Signs: rules are also signals, which is why easing social distancing is such a problem

Of course, to do anything like this in most offices will require a proportion of staff working at home on any given day. It will also mean then end of the individual desk for most.

This part may the hardest to handle. We like our personal spaces.

Well need to balance the sacrifice of sharing spaces against the advantages of working away from the office while still getting to see colleagues in person. Well need new arrangements for storing personal items beyond the old locker, and handover protocols for equipment and furniture.

Offices will also need to need more private spaces for greater use of video conferencing and the like. These sorts of collaborative tools dont work well if you cant insulate yourself from distractions.

But theres a huge potential upside with the new open office. A well-managed rotation of office days and seating arrangements could help us get to know more of those colleagues who, because they used to sit a few too many desks away, we rarely talked to.

Read more: Goodbye to the crowded office: how coronavirus will change the way we work together

It might just mean the open-plan office finally finds its mojo.

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The death of the open-plan office? Not quite, but a revolution is in the air - The Conversation AU

RIKEN Physicists Develop Pseudo-2D Architecture for Quantum Computers that is Simple and Scalable – HPCwire

June 22, 2020 A simple pseudo-2D architecture for connecting qubitsthe building blocks of quantum computershas been devised by RIKEN physicists1. This promises to make it easier to construct larger quantum computers.

Quantum computers are anticipated to solve certain problems overwhelmingly faster than conventional computers, but despite rapid progress in recent years, the technology is still in its infancy. Were still in the late 1940s or early 1950s, if we compare the development of quantum computers with that of conventional computers, notes Jaw-Shen Tsai of the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science and the Tokyo University of Science.

One bottleneck to developing larger quantum computers is the problem of how to arrange qubits in such a way that they can both interact with their neighbors and be readily accessed by external circuits and devices. Conventional 2D networks suffer from the problem that, as the number of qubits increases, qubits buried deep inside the networks become difficult to access.

To overcome this problem, large companies such as Google and IBM have been exploring complex 3D architectures. Its kind of a brute-force approach, says Tsai. Its hard to do and its not clear how scalable it is, he adds.

Tsai and his team have been exploring a different tack from the big companies. Its very hard for research institutes like RIKEN to compete with these guys if we play the same game, Tsai says. So we tried to do something different and solve the problem they arent solving.

Now, after about three years of work, Tsai and his co-workers have come up with a quasi-2D architecture that has many advantages over 3D ones.

Their architecture is basically a square array of qubits deformed in such a way that all the qubits are arranged in two rows (Fig. 1)a bilinear array with cross wiring, as Tsai calls it. Since all the qubits lie on the edges, it is easy to access them.

The deformation means that some wires cross each other, but the team overcame this problem by using airbridges so that one wire passes over the other one, much like a bridge at the intersection of two roads allows traffic to flow without interruption. Tests showed that there was minimal crosstalk between wires.

The scheme is much easier to construct than 3D ones since it is simpler and can be made using conventional semiconductor fabrication methods. It also reduces the number of wires that cross each other. And importantly, it is easy to scale up.

The team now plans to use the architecture to make a 1010 array of qubits.

About RIKEN

RIKEN is Japans largest comprehensive research institution renowned for high-quality research in a diverse range of scientific disciplines. Founded in 1917 as a private research foundation in Tokyo, RIKEN has grown rapidly in size and scope, today encompassing a network of world-class research centers and institutes across Japan.

Source: RIKEN

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RIKEN Physicists Develop Pseudo-2D Architecture for Quantum Computers that is Simple and Scalable - HPCwire

Tech company uses quantum computers to help shipping and trucking industries – FreightWaves

Ed Heinbockel, president and chief executive officer of SavantX, said hes excited about how a powerful new generation of quantum computers can bring practical solutions to industries such as trucking and cargo transport.

With quantum computing, Im very keen on this, because Im a firm believer that its a step change technology, Heinbockel said. Its going to rewrite the way that we live and the way we work.

Heinbockel referred to recent breakthroughs such as Googles quantum supremacy, a demonstration where a programmable quantum processor solved a problem that no classical computer could feasibly solve.

In October 2019, Googles quantum processor, named Sycamore, performed a computation in 200 seconds that would have taken the worlds fastest supercomputer 10,000 years to solve, according to Google.

Jackson, Wyoming-based SavantX also recently formed a partnership with D-Wave Systems Inc., a Burnaby, Canada-based company that develops and offers quantum computing systems, software and services.

With D-Waves quantum services, SavantX has begun offering its Hyper Optimization Nodal Efficiency (HONE) technology to solve optimization problems to customers such as the Pier 300 container terminal project at the Port of Los Angeles.

The project, which began last year, is a partnership between SavantX, Blume Global and Fenix Marine Services. The projects goal is to optimize logistics on the spacing and placement of shipping containers to better integrate with inbound trucks and freight trains. The Pier 300 site handles 1.2 million container lifts per year.

With Pier 300, when do you need trucks at the pier and when and how do you get them scheduled optimally?, Heinbockel said. So the appointing part of it is very important and that is a facet of HONE technology.

Heinbockel added, Were very excited about the Pier 300 project, because HONE is a generalized technology. Then its a question of what other systems can we optimize? In all modes of transportation, the winners are going to be those that can minimize the energy in the systems; energy reduction. Thats all about optimization.

Heinbockel co-founded SavantX in 2015 with David Ostby, the companys chief science officer. SavantX offers data collection and visualization tools for industries ranging from healthcare to nuclear energy to transportation.

Heinbockel also recently announced SavantX will be relocating its corporate research headquarters to Santa Fe, New Mexico. The new center, which could eventually include 100 employees, will be focused on the companys HONE technology and customizing it for individual clients.

Heinbockel said SavantX has been talking to trucking, transportation and aviation companies about how HONE can help solve issues such as driver retention and optimizing schedules.

One of the problems Ive been hearing consistently from trucking companies is that they hire somebody. The HR department tells the new employee well have you home every Thursday night, Heinbockel said. Then you get onto a Friday night or Saturday, and [the driver] is still not home.

Heinbockel said if quantum computing and HONE can be used to help trucking companies with driver retention, and that it will make a lot of companies happy.

Heinbockel said cross-border operations could use HONE to understand what the flow patterns are like for commercial trucks crossing through different ports at various times of the day.

You would optimize your trucking flow based on when those lax periods were at those various ports, or you could ask yourself, is it cheaper for me to send a truck 100 miles out of the way to another port, knowing that it can get right through that port without having to sit for two or three hours in queue, Heinbockel said.

Click for more FreightWaves articles byNoi Mahoney.

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Tech company uses quantum computers to help shipping and trucking industries - FreightWaves

German Climate Computing Centre Orders Atos Supercomputer That Will Boost Computing Power by 5X – HPCwire

PARIS, France, June 22, 2020 Atos has signed a new five-year contract with the German Climate Computing Centre (DKRZ)to supply a supercomputer based on its latestBullSequana XH2000 technology to increase DKRZs computing power by five, compared to the currently operating high-performance computer Mistral which was provided by Atosin 2015. The new systems will be available at the DKRZ from mid-2021.

BullSequana to accelerate and deliver more precise forecasting

Just as a new, more powerful telescope provides more detailed images from space, a more powerful supercomputer allows for more detailed simulations and thus deeper insights into climate events. This significant increase in computing power will enable researchers at DKRZ to use regionally more detailed climate and earth system models in future, to include more processes in calculations, to simulate longer time periods, or to more accurately capture natural climate variability using ensemble calculations and thus reduce uncertainties. This is accompanied by a strong increase in the data that is calculated and then stored and evaluated. The BullSequana is an efficient computing and data management solution, essential for climate modelling and the resulting data volumes, to promote environmental research and deliver more reliable, detailed results.

Prof. Thomas Ludwig, CEO at DKRZ says: Our high-performance computer is the heart around which our services for science are grouped.Were really happy to be working with Atos again.With the new system, our users will be able to gain new insights into the climate system anddeliver even more detailed results. This concerns basic research, but also more applied fields of research such as improved current climate projections. This way, we help gain fundamental insightsfor climate change adaptation.

Damien Dclat, Group VP, Head of HPC, AI & Quantum Business Operations at Atos, explains: With our strong expertise and experience we have been able to successfully design the DKRZ solution integrating it efficiently with the BullSequana XH2000 systems best-of-breed components to optimize DKRZs production workloads. We look forward to continuing this joint effort to anticipate the next phases as well as to adapt applications and requirements to the next processor generation and other accelerating components.

Atos is a specialist in the provision of leading technologies for some of the worlds leading centers in the Weather Forecasting and Climate community, such as theEuropean Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecastsand the French Meteorological ServiceMto-Franceand has worked closely together to optimize applications, explore and anticipate new technologies, and look for increased efficiency and reduced TCOs.

Technical specifications

The Atos solution is based on its BullSequana XH2000 supercomputer and will be one of the first equipped with the next generation of AMD EPYC x86 processors. The interconnect uses NVIDIA Mellanox InfiniBand HDR 200G technology and the data storage solution relies on DDN equipment. The final system will consist of around 3,000 computing nodes with a total peak performance of 16 petaflops, 800 Terabytes main memory and a 120 petabytes storage system.

Financing

The new system is worth 32.5 million euros, which is being provided by the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres, the Max Planck Society and the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg.

About DKRZ

The German Climate Computing Center (Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum, DKRZ) is a central service center for German climate and earth system research. Its high performance computers, data storage and services form the central research infrastructure for simulation-based climate science in Germany. Apart from providing computing power, data storage capacity and technical support for models and simulations in climate research, DKRZ offers its scientific users an extensive portfolio of tailor-made services. It maintains and develops application software relevant to climate research and supports its users in matters of data processing. Finally, DKRZ also participates in national and international joint projects and cooperations with the aim of improving the infrastructure for climate modeling.

About Atos

Atos is a global leader in digital transformation with 110,000 employees in 73 countries and annual revenue of 12 billion. European number one in Cloud, Cybersecurity and High-Performance Computing, the Group provides end-to-end Orchestrated Hybrid Cloud, Big Data, Business Applications and Digital Workplace solutions. The Group is the Worldwide Information Technology Partner for the Olympic & Paralympic Games and operates under the brands Atos, Atos|Syntel, and Unify. Atos is a SE (Societas Europaea), listed on the CAC40 Paris stock index.

Source: Atos

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German Climate Computing Centre Orders Atos Supercomputer That Will Boost Computing Power by 5X - HPCwire

COLUMN: Future Shock — COVID-19 Channel Upheaval – CRN: Technology news for channel partners and solution providers

In the 1970 best-seller Future Shock, Alvin Toffler wrote about the enormous structural change that was taking place as a result of the shift from an industrial to a super industrial society. The state of future shock is the perfect metaphor for the technology upheaval that is ripping through the channel in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Forget super industrial. The new future shock may well be the equivalent of a supercomputer for every home given the structural changes in the global workforce. The pandemic has exposed the fault lines in IT budgets and strategies, which are now shifting at a blinding pace to provide employees the computing power and support they need.

So what does this future shock mean to solution providers? Thats the question Senior Editor Kyle Alspach takes on in this months cover story, The New Channel Normal. The deep dive on the pandemic impactwhich includes data from the COVID-19 Channel Impact Study by our sister business unit IPEDshows that the solution providers that are thriving are changing at a rapid pace what they sell and how they sell it.

The old channel playbook has been thrown out the window. Solution providers that do the same thing they were doing before the pandemic outbreak are going to find themselves grappling with the famous definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

The bottom line is customers are speedily moving to pay-per-use cloud services and anytime, anyplace and anywhere business models. Thats good news for solution providers with an end-to-end suite of recurring revenue managed IT services.

If you want a good example of a company that gets it and is moving at a blinding pace to help customers move to the new world order, then look no further than Anexinet, No. 212 on the 2020 CRN Solution Provider 500. Anexinet CEO Todd Pittman is one of the leaders who has put his Blue Bell, Pa., company at the forefront of the post-pandemic super industrial era. That means closing a blockbuster virtual sales deal with a national energy company for a new mobile and web app.

Weve revamped our approach with our customers, Pittman said, calling the virtually delivered project a major success that Anexinet is now replicating with two other customers. Frankly, [the stakeholders] at our first customer were raving fans.

Its no small matter that Anexineta Hewlett Packard Enterprise Platinum partner is also betting big on HPEs GreenLake pay-per-use platform. Everybody wants to ensure that they have the capital required to keep their business operating through this uncertain time. And so I think that will continue to drive more conversations around leveraging the cloud, pay-as-you-go models, GreenLake, Pittman said.

The future shock, by the way, also applies to vendors. HPE CEO Antonio Neri, for one, is doubling down on an edge-to-cloud Platform-as-a-Service strategy and accelerating HPEs Everything-as-a-Service model in the wake of the pandemic.

In Tofflers amazingly prescient vision of the information era, citizens are, for the most part, inextricably linked to their homes, doing their own manufacturing and consumption from those electronic cottages.

Thats the world we find ourselves living in now. Those solution providers that are able to absorb this kind of future shock are going to thrive. Those that dont will disappear into the past.

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COLUMN: Future Shock -- COVID-19 Channel Upheaval - CRN: Technology news for channel partners and solution providers

4th World Intelligence Congress to be held online – PRNewswire

In contrast with previous WICs, the event will be held online this year. Utilizing such smart technologies as artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, the congress will bring together state leaders, experts and entrepreneurs from around the world in real-time. Together, they will discuss the development of AI and the building of a community with a shared future for mankind. The WIC aims to offer an international platform for creating better lives through the development of emerging industries in the new era.

During the congress, a wide range of innovative forums, exhibitions and competitions will be held online, such as the 2020 World Intelligence Driving Challenge and Haihe Entrepreneurial Talent Competition. All these activities will center around the theme of "Intelligent New Era: Innovation, Energization and Ecology," highlighting the WIC's role in advancing the application of AI in socio-economic development.

The host city Tianjin has vigorously promoted the development of intelligent industry in recent years. Numerous achievements have been made in the city in the field of science and technology, including the Tianhe-1 supercomputer, which is among the fastest in the world, the "PK" operating system, which represents a mainstream trend in related technology roadmaps, and "Brain Talker," the world's first chip designed specifically for use in brain-computer interfaces. In addition, the pilot zone of China's Internet of Vehicles has been approved in the city.

As the birthplace of modern industry in China, Tianjin boasts a solid foundation for industrial development. With the coming of the new era, the national strategy of coordinated development in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region has presented new opportunities for the city. Standing at the forefront of reform and opening-up, Tianjin has established both a national innovation demonstration zone and a free trade zone. As such, there is great room for it to develop intelligent technology and the digital economy. In recent years, Tianjin has launched a targeted action plan, invested tens of billions of yuan in special funds, pooled the strength of universities and research institutions, and improved policies to attract more professional personnel. Through such measures, the city is positioning itself to become a vanguard of AI development, with intelligent technology being applied to transport, public services and daily life. The intelligent industry has also created new opportunities for young people looking for job or start their own business.

As one amongst many cities looking to transform, Tianjin epitomizes China's efforts to advance the development of AI, replace old growth drivers with new ones, and promote high-quality development. In fact, AI has also played a prominent role in China's fight against COVID-19.

As a new round of technological revolution is taking place, holding the WIC is in line with global demand. The event is expected to create a platform for exchanges, cooperation, win-win outcomes and mutual benefits, as well as drive the sound development of a new generation of AI. Wish the congress a huge success, and hope that AI can better benefit the people of all countries.

China Mosaic http://www.china.org.cn/video/node_7230027.htm

4th World Intelligence Congress to be held onlinehttp://www.china.org.cn/video/2020-06/22/content_76189084.htm

SOURCE China.org.cn

http://www.china.org.cn

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4th World Intelligence Congress to be held online - PRNewswire

RICH MACKE: Social media and the First Amendment – Scottsbluff Star Herald

December 15, 1791, the First Amendment was adopted as one of the 10 amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights. It states, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Our founding fathers created the First Amendment in response to two centuries of state-sponsored religious conflict and oppression in America, and with the keen understanding of the religious persecution in European nations resulting in official state religions and religious wars that were the norm.

Their understanding of the past is really all our founding fathers had to create a basic set of freedoms for each of us to have in our back pocket. Freedoms, we all use each and every day.

Although evolution and progress of a nation and its people is understood and expected, they could never have foreseen the internet. Or Social Media for that matter.

Since its inception in, social media has been at the core of Free Speech controversy. It has become common place for some users to berate, threaten, pick on, bully and/or share false information.

Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law and true threats.

The Communications Decency Act of 1996 provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an interactive computer service that publishes information provided by third party users. Basically, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have absolutely zero responsibility for what citizens share across them and how they may hurt another human being.

Fast forward to May 28, 2020. President Trump signed an executive order aimed at social media companies after Twitter called two of his tweets potentially misleading. The executive order puts to test the level of authority the White House has when it comes to Free Speech.

This also brings up the question, How much free speech should social media be allowed? And, should social media platforms be held responsible for content submitted by users? Its not as black and white as some may think.

The First Amendment, vague in its explanation, is so in order to allow growth. But when that growth alters the flow of accurate information, or the interpretation is changed, we owe it to our nation to get it right.

For all the good social media brings to us, it is here that it lets us all down daily. We dont know who to trust with factual information. We become confused with who is sharing factual information. So we end up sharing and spreading information we believe to be true whether is or is not, ultimately exercising our own right to Freedom of Speech.

Is it right to censor social media platforms to help decrease the flow of false information? Is it our right under the First Amendment to share information whether accurate or not? Is it OK that social media platforms have the right to censor its users?

The quote below was written by the 28th President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, in 1917. No matter what your opinion of President Wilson is, when reading it, it almost feels as though it is describing our nation today.

I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticize their own public officials. While exercising the great powers of the office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one through which we are now passing to lose the benefit of patriotic and intelligent criticism.

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RICH MACKE: Social media and the First Amendment - Scottsbluff Star Herald

Lawyer On How Restraining Order On CMPD Will Protect Protesters’ First Amendments Rights – WFAE

Protests of racial injustice and police brutality continued this weekend in Charlotte. As usual, Charlotte Mecklenburg police were on the scene, but they were operating under a temporary restraining order. A superior court judge on Friday signed the order halting the department's use of riot control agents like tear gas and flash bang grenades against peaceful protesters. That was a response to a lawsuit filed by groups including the local chapter of the NAACP, the ACLU of North Carolina and Charlotte Uprising. Alex Heroy helped to argue their case in court. He joins Morning Edition host Lisa Worf.

Worf: Good morning, Mr. Heroy.

Heroy: Good morning.

Worf: So how much does this restraining order change CMPD tactics? After all, CMPD says it has only used riot control agents like tear gas once people began throwing rocks and frozen water bottles at officers.

Heroy: I think it requires stricter adherence to their policy and puts limits on the policies. There's CMPD directives are, they're not always to set specific on the use of force continuum and sort of what's allowed and what's not allowed. So this is put in place. We filed a lawsuit to really protect the peaceful protesters that have been victims of, what we thought of as sort of a gross assault on their First Amendment rights, at least in particular on June 2.

Worf: So when you say it puts limits on some of their tactics, are you saying because it adds a certain level of scrutiny that wasn't there before, even though CMPD says this doesn't change that much?

Heroy: Yes. Yes. I mean, so on June 2, when you had three to four hundred protesters who are all largely acting very peaceful, marching with their hands up. No real issues that we've seen in the videos. And then the police boxed them in and gassed them and shot at them. That's not OK. That's across the line. That's way over the line. Even if CMPD says that there were some outliers throwing a water bottle or even a rock would justify that kind of use of force. And it doesn't justify that use of force indiscriminately against a large crowd of peaceful protesters exercising their First Amendment rights. That's just not allowed. It's not OK. And we had to put a stop to it and not let it, risk it happening again. That's what we had to move for this emergency restraining order to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Worf: No CMPD Deputy Chief Jeff Estes said Friday that the one difference it makes for the department is that it prohibits officers from using riot control agents like tear gas again against people who are destroying property. So officers would have to intervene physically to remove those people. Do you have concerns this could further escalate a situation?

Heroy: Well, I don't think this CMPD's communication was an accurate summary of the order. The restraining order restricts actions against peaceful protesters. If there is an individual who is causing a destruction during a peaceful protest, CMPD is supposed to go in and remove that that individual, if they're destroying property there's a use of force continuum that CMPD is allowed to use. It is not a, this is not a, an order that allows or forces CMPD to just simply let people go commit criminal activity. That is not it at all. It is a restriction on what use of force can be used against peaceful protesters gathering.

Worf: Now, this is a temporary restraining order until the lawsuit can be heard. What does the lawsuit itself seek?

Heroy: So the lawsuit itself seeks a permanent restraining order that the same thing. We're also asking for what's called a declaratory judgment against which would find that the dispersal order allegedly announced on June 2 was ineffective and did not comply with CMPD policy.

Worf: And beyond the use of tear gas and other riot control agents, how did the groups you represent want to change police tactics when it comes to handling protests?

Heroy: I say that, you know, there's a lot of groups that are plaintiffs in the lawsuitm it's a lot of different opinions. So I don't want to speak for the entire group because it's a range with a lot of things that need to be changed with police. But I think the overarching issue is the respect and lack of respect and improving that, greatly improving that and community relations with the police.

Worf: That's Alex Heroy, who helped argue the case in court on behalf of groups, including the local chapter of the NAACP, the ACLU of North Carolina and Charlotte Uprising.

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Lawyer On How Restraining Order On CMPD Will Protect Protesters' First Amendments Rights - WFAE

Hollifield: Another look at the First Amendment – Bristol Herald Courier

Note from Scott Hollifield: Please enjoy this previously published column from 2004 while I am away from the office.

While the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees us all the opportunity to speak in tongues at the Rocky Creek Church of the New Revival and Second Coming if we so choose, it does not give any of us the right to own a goat named Sparky.

Im sorry, thats just the way it is.

A survey by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that people are all mixed up about the First Amendment, which gives us freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, the right to assemble and the right to petition for redress of grievances.

A telephone survey of 1,000 people found that more respondents knew Bart as a character on The Simpsons (61%), Simon as a judge on American Idol (49%) and Federal Express as the one to call when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight (61%) than were aware that freedom of the press is included in the First Amendment (11%).

And many believe the First Amendment is much more expansive than it really is. Twenty-one percent said it guarantees each of us the right to own and raise pets (like a goat named Sparky), while 17% said the First Amendment affords us the right to drive a car.

We all need a civics lesson, but not one of those boring civics lessons where we lose interest and stare out the window at the girls track team and flunk the final and fail to get into a really good college and end up working at a newspaper and writing about goats, but an exciting civics lesson that applies the First Amendment to a real-life situation we can all understand.

Here we go. Lets say your pet goat Sparky sneaks next door and tears the trailer hitch off your cousin Eugenes Pontiac. Theres already bad blood between the two of you due to a property line dispute and Eugene, being the hothead that he is, says, Ill tell you what Im going to run for mayor and when I win Im going to pass me an ordinance outlawing goats.

Ill tell everybody I know not to vote for a goat-hating hothead! you exclaim. (Freedom of speech)

Frankly, though, youre not worried about Eugene becoming mayor since hes about as popular around town as a Danish cartoonist at an Islamic picnic. (Freedom of religion)

Then, Eugenes opponent is spotted in the background of a Kid Rock sex tape and withdraws from the race, his political career and marriage both in shambles.

GOAT-HATING HOTHEAD WINS MAYORS RACE reads the newspaper headline. (Freedom of the press)

Fearing the town will soon fall into anarchy due to Eugenes utter lack of leadership skills and functional illiteracy, you quickly tack these notices to telephone poles across the community: If you would like to help me get Eugene thrown out of office, meet me at the fellowship hall of the Rocky Creek Church of the New Revival and Second Coming on Tuesday at 8 p.m. (Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion)

That night, you address the crowd.

If yall thats handling the snakes back there will give me your attention for a minute. Now, we all know a goat-hating hothead like Eugene shouldnt be the mayor. Lets circulate this petition that calls for his immediate removal from office due to his ineptness and goat bias. (Freedom of speech, freedom to petition for redress of grievances)

PETITION SUCCESSFUL GOAT-HATING HOTHEAD OUSTED, reads the newspaper headline. (Freedom of press)

So, heres what weve learned today: The First Amendment is good. It has nothing to do with owning and raising pets. And no one should ever elect a goat-hating hothead mayor.

Continued here:

Hollifield: Another look at the First Amendment - Bristol Herald Courier

Death threats protected by First Amendment, attorney says – Alpena News

News File PhotoThe Alpena County Courthouse is seen.

ALPENA A 26th Circuit Court judge will weigh whether death threats should keep a man in jail if theyre considered free speech.

A judge set a $150,000 bond when David Frey said was arrested on a terrorism charge for allegedly threatening to kill someone, among other charges. But the terrorism charge, the most serious of the charges Frey faced, was dismissed by District Court Judge Thomas LaCross, so the bond should be lowered, Frey argued in Circuit Court.

If the alleged threats arent part of the current charges, they are protected speech under the First Amendment, defense attorney Alan Curtis argued.

Its not a crime to say, In the future, I might kill you,' Curtis said.

The bond is too high for the remaining charges, Frey said, and should be lowered to an amount he can pay so he can leave jail while his case proceeds in court.

Frey is accused of breaking car windows and kicking in a door at the home of a man Frey said he thought might be hurting Freys son.

The terrorism charges connected to verbal death threats made against the man and his family could have led to a 20-year prison sentence.

With that alleged offense no longer in play, Frey should be able to pay less to be released from jail, Curtis, a court-appointed attorney, said.

Alpena County Prosecutor Cynthia Muszynski argued the bond amount is reasonable, despite the lesser seriousness of the remaining charges, because Frey continued making threats via the phone in the county jail after he was arrested.

Curtis also made the First Amendment argument before LaCross in District Court, when the terrorism charge was dropped, but LaCross ruled the bond amount should not change.

Circuit Judge Ed Black, who has not seen a transcript of the court hearing in which LaCross decided to drop the terrorism charge, told the parties that, while retaining the $150,000 bond amount does not sound like something I would have done, he doesnt have all the facts LaCross used in his decision.

Frey will appear in court again in July, after Black has been supplied with the same information originally available to LaCross, to argue for a lower bond.

At that time, the court will also address a motion that Black recuse himself from hearing Freys case because Black handled other cases related to Frey while Black was Alpena County prosecutor.

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What the US Supreme Court Might Do With the TCPA – The National Law Review

Well folks another opinion day has come and gone at the US Supreme Court with no ruling yet on the bigBarr v. AAPCchallenge to the TCPA.

Traditionally the Supreme Court clears its April docket with rulings by the end of June. With a set Monday calendar to release opinions and a likely additional release date this Thursday, that leaves only TWO days left (the 25th and the 29th) for the Supremes to enter their final vote on the fate of the TCPA. If the traditional calendar sticks that is

Truth is, with two (traditional) opinion dates left the Supreme Court is still sitting on fourteen (14!) unissued rulings so this may end up slipping into July (although I certainly hope not since I have a big webinar to discuss the ruling set up next Tuesday, June 30, 2020. Ha!) Notably, the Supremes seem to be issuing opinions in rough order of argument, which means there are still six cases ahead of AAPC on the docket. Obviously, however, the Supreme Court canand willissue opinions in any order as they are finalized so this isnt a first come first served (TCPA) world.

But since we are all waiting with baited breath, lets go through a few possible outcomes here. As a refresher, the Supreme Court is reviewing the TCPA inAAPCon a challenge by a political consulting organization arguing that the TCPAs government-backed debt exemption is unconstitutional. There are a number of permutations to the challengeas was made clear at oral argumentand it is not entirely clear whether the Supremes will scrutinize only the exemption or the restriction itself.

Since TCPAWorlddwellers are becoming constitutional law scholars, lets also recall a couple basics of First Amendment jurisprudence:

While there is no doubt that a content specific statute must meet strict scrutinya very high test it is unclear whether that scrutiny is properly applied to the exemption in this case or to the restriction itself. The briefing of the parties below focused solely on the exemption but in the briefing on appeal to SCOTUS and in oral argument there has been noticeable creep toward arguments (for and against) applying scrutiny to the TCPAs restrictionsashift that may or may not be entirely attributable to my loud-mouthery.

So with all of this recalled, here are the possible outcomes in no particular order:

Why this might happen:AsProfessor Epps explained inUnprecedented14the doctrine of content neutrality has expanded greatly over the past few decades, arguably spiking to exhaustion inReed.It is possible that the Supreme Court usesAAPCas a vehicle to roll back (perhaps significantly) on the application of strict scrutiny in First Amendment challenges and re-focuses its application solely to instances of viewpoint specificity. (Translation: the Supreme Court might use the TCPA as an opportunity to give Congress more power to regulate speech in a neutral manner.)

Why it shouldnt/wonthappen:I mean, the TCPA is content-specific under existing case law so the Supreme Court would really have to depart fromReedin a clear and decisive way to get here. And judging by thequestions of the Justices at oral argument, this just isnt going to happen.

Why this might happen:This would be a pretty weird outcome because it would require the Supreme Court to find collecting government-backed debt is a compelling governmental interest, which is tacky to say the least. Still some district courts have reached this conclusion so it is not impossible.

Why it shouldnt/wonthappen:The Government did not even advance this argument and none of the Justices seemed slightly interested in it at oral argument. This seems like the most unlikely outcome.

Why this might happen:Really this is what should happen. The focus here would be on the restrictioni.e. the TCPAs ban on the use of ATDS/pre-recorded voice messages to call cell phonesand not the exemptioni.e. the ability of government-debt collectors to make calls. This makes more analytic sense since the First Amendment prohibits restrictions on speech not permissions (is that a word?) on speech. Plus the TCPA really should survive even strict scrutiny if the TCPAs ATDS restriction is read narrowly. So this approach allows for First Amendment doctrine to be logically applied AND for the TCPA to be upheld. I mean, feels like a win/win (since presumptively the Supreme Court does not want to strike down the popular statute.)

Why this shouldnt/wont happen:No one else thought of it but me? This actually seems to be the right answer here, but it simply wasnt briefed or argued and none of the Justices asked any questions about it from the bench. Right or wrong, the focus inAAPCseems to be primarily on applying scrutiny to the exemption and not the restriction and the assumption seems to befor whatever reasonthat the level of scrutiny to be applied to the restriction would be lower intermediate scrutiny because the content-specificity arises in the exemption and not the restriction itself. (Translation: everyone is elevating form over substance for some reason and it doesnt seem like thats going to change now.)

Why this might happen:Well, this is what the two courts of appeals below did so why wouldnt the Supreme court just do the same thing? This seems to be the odds on favorite for most observers but I think it is relatively unlikely (as I explain below). But the ruling here would come down to Congressional intent the TCPA includes a severance provision suggesting that Congress intended the exemption to be cast aside if it was unconstitutional. So the Court should do what Congress intended, right? But really this is theeasiestway for the Supreme Court to uphold the popular TCPA it is effectively a punt.

Why this shouldnt/wont happen:There are a bunch of problems with it. First, it applies scrutiny to the exemption rather than the restriction which is just flat the wrong analysis in a First Amendment case as opposed for instanceto an Equal Protection challenge. Second, it would result in the Supreme Court expanding a restriction to cover more speech, in a manner that it has never done before. Third, it would impact the substantive speech rights of non-parties to the case without notice or an opportunity to be heard. Fourth, it would afford a remedy to the Plaintiff that it did not seek and lacked standing to seek. Fifth, it would deny any remedy to a successful Plaintiff challenging a statute on First Amendment grounds. Sixth, there is nothing wrong with the exemption standing aloneagainst the First Amendment does not ban permissions on speech it bans restrictions so striking it makes no logical sense. Setting all of that aside, it just doesnt make sense that the Supremes would grant cert. on this issue when there was no split of authority below. There was areasoncert. was granted here and it wasnt just to rubber stamp what the appellate courts did.

Why this might happen:If the Supreme Court applies scrutiny to the exemption this is the result that makes the most doctrinal sense. The restriction is being applied unevenly by virtue of the exemption. Striking the exemption works violence to logic and law (see above) so there is really no other coursethe restriction must fall.

Why this shouldnt/wont happen:The TCPA is a popular statute and the Supreme Court doesnt want to allow a bunch of robocalls. There really is no doctrinal hold up here it is the right thing to do, assuming scrutiny is applied to the exemption that is.

Why this might happen:This is likely for the same reasons as 5. given thatno onehas raised the fact that certain provisions in the TCPA are not effected by the government-backed debt exemption and the issues of content-specificity it creates. Plus the entire dang statute is riddled with content specificity issues the FCC has created a number of content-specific exemptions and provisions like the DNC restrictions on marketingplainlylimit speech based on the content of the message.

Why this shouldnt/wont happen:Here is where the doctrine of severance properly comes into play. Plaintiffs below did not challenge any other content-specific provision of the TCPA other than the government-backed debt exemption. So only those restrictions of the TCPA impacted by that exemption should be struck down and severed from the statute. If folks have problems with he rest of the statute theyll just have to bring their own Supreme Court appeal. Still though, it is a little odd that this was never briefed or argued leading to a surprisingly high (15%) chance that the entire statute is gone.

Why this might happen:None of the other results are all that satisfying. Perhaps we see a carve out for political speech. Perhaps we see a remand for further fact-finding on the impact of robocalls. Perhaps there is further information needed on government-backed debt. Perhaps Justice Breyers approach of all law is speech and whats the First Amendment anyway? (not a real quote) is accepted and the TCPA brings down the freedom of speech entirely. Who knows.

Why this wont happen:Not sure why it would. The Supreme Court generally doesnt go off the rails where it doesnt have to and there was very little discussion of middle ground approaches at oral argument. Not much reason to suspect a screwball here, but you never know.

So adding it all up:

Oh and in case you missed our great coverageor just want to re-live anything our LIVE feeds of the oral argument arehereandhere. Our definitive analysis of the oralargument is here.

Stay tuned.

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What the US Supreme Court Might Do With the TCPA - The National Law Review

3 snippets to begin your day: XRP in Japan, Roger Ver takes on YT and more – AMBCrypto English

Whales on the hunt

Bitcoins price performance since the halving last month hasnt exactly lit the world on fire. While many expected BTC to surge soon after and touch the highs set last year, that hasnt happened. Instead, Bitcoin has flirted with the psychological resistance of $10,000, with the king coin well below the mark, at the time of writing.

Alls not lost, however, as the number of whale traders has continued to rise over the past few months, with the same now touching levels last seen in September 2017. The same was revealed by Glassnode in its latest report,

The price of BTC is now more than 20x higher than it was when we first saw this many whales, implying that more wealth is being held by whales. However, the average balance held by each whale has decreased during this period, such that whales actually hold less BTC now than in 2016, and less wealth (in USD terms) than in 2017.

YouTube on Roger Vers list

As if getting people interested in Bitcoin Cash wasnt enough work, popular proponent Roger Ver now has to contend with YouTube shutting down his channel for basically no reason. While YouTube, before reinstation, had claimed that Roger Ver and Bitcoin.coms channel had violated the video streaming platforms Terms of Service, Ver was quick to go all guns blazing.

Calling out the platform for its history of shutting down crypto-influencers, Ver claimed that the channel is looking into alternate platforms such as memo.cash and lbry.tv, platforms that are actually censorship-resistant.

Like always, Ver was also quick to accuse Bitcoin maximalists of being behind the complaint that led to the Bitcoin.com channel getting banned. . A bunch of these Bitcoin Core anti-competition maximalists falsely reported the video saying Its a Bit[coin] Cash scam! or some nonsense like that, he said.

Youtube is becoming a tool for social media manipulation and censorship. from btc

Good news for XRP Finally

2020 has not been a great year for XRP, with the popular crypto recently falling behind Tether on CoinMarketCaps charts. In fact, it is probably the worst performing large-cap cryptocurrency in the market, with XRP noting YTD gains of -0.05%, at the time of writing.

However, some good news may be in order as according to a survey done by Japans BitMAX, XRP continues to retain its popularity among the East Asian populace, with over 25% of those surveyed claiming that it is their favorite coin. Only Bitcoin polled a higher percentage, with Ethereum way back at 9%.

This is an interesting finding since this comes on the back of Japans Virtual Currency Exchange Association revealing that XRP is just behind Bitcoin with respect to Yen-denominated holdings. Perhaps, such popularity is understandable. After all, Japans SBI Holdings also made a lot of news after it offered XRP as shareholder benefits a few months ago.

Now, if only a Twitter poll was enough to brag about a crypto endlessly.

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Bitcoin Price Will Hit $400,000 When USD Collapses, Analyst Predicts – International Business Times

KEY POINTS

Bitcoin investor and Keiser Report host Max Keiser increased his Bitcoin price prediction from $100k to $400k, explaining that the increase in value will coincide with the U.S. dollar collapse.

Keiser said the reason for new all-time highs in the stock market is not because the economy is doing well, but because the currencies are collapsing. He toldCointelegraphwhen the dollar collapses, the Bitcoin will gap higher by 10,000 at a clip before making a run to $400k.

My target for BTC since 2011 has been $100,000 and I recently upped that to $400,000. The timing depends on when exactly the USD collapses, said Keiser.

His previous price prediction was $100k in 2011. Keiser noted that the bigger U.S. debt is an important factor, warning that when interest on the debt gets close to 100% of the GDP, America will officially be a failed state. He predicts this might happen in 5 years when short interest rates go back to 5%.

Keiser also cited multiple reasons as to why Bitcoin continues to be bullish. The worlds first cryptocurrency has outperformed every other asset class since its inception. He says billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones, who announced his Bitcoin exposure in May, is someone the Bitcoin community has never seen the likes of before. Keiser predicts that Jones will be the biggest Bitcoin hodler within the next 2 years. Hodler refers to Bitcoin investors who buy Bitcoin but never sell.

As to whether the United States will own more Bitcoins than other countries is still undecided, predicting that the country will enter into a Hash War with China, Russia, and Iran. Keiser thinks this is a Sputnik moment, in reference to that time when the U.S. decided it wanted to win the space race by catchup and doubling up efforts vs. the Soviet Unions.

The U.S. will also have some catching up to do regarding Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC). Believed to be a pivotal moment in the economy and a way to course users away from othercryptocurrencies, China has already pilot-testedCBDC in key cities while the U.S. is still studying it, as mentioned in a recent Committee Hearing.

Finally, Keiser predicts that altcoins will [not] attract enough energy to survive and regulators should actually warn people about failed projects like Bitcoin Cash.Bitcoin Cash is a hard fork of Bitcoin that claims to be the token that stayed true to the vision stated in the original Bitcoin whitepaper published in 2008. Some of its proponents include Bitcoin.com founder Roger Ver.

What's going on with bitcoin? Photo: GETTY IMAGES

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Bitcoin Price Will Hit $400,000 When USD Collapses, Analyst Predicts - International Business Times

Market Predictions, Miner Fees Fluctuate, & China Moves Fast: Bad Crypto News of the Week – Cointelegraph

An eventful week for Bitcoin this week. It ended down nearly 5 percent but at one point, things were looking much worse. A collapse to $8,900 sparked talk of a three-month correctionwhich could be exacerbated by the expiration of more than 100,000 Bitcoin options next Friday.

So far at least, the correction appears to have largely corrected itself but that might be because of the turmoil in the stock markets. Yoni Assia, CEO of eToro, predicts a market crash in three weeks. Bitcoin is currently outperforming the market and acting as a safe haven.

The week has been eventful away from the cryptomarkets too. But while demonstrations have continued against police racism and brutality, Tatiana Koffman explains why Bitcoins decentralized money supply is a practical response to government authoritarianism.

And that response is becoming more efficient. Miners produced just 71 empty blocks in the first five months of this year, less than half the percentage of empty blocks mined in the same period last year. The improvement might be down to better mining technology, a focus on transaction fees as the halving approached or just chance.

On the other hand, the size of the Bitcoin whale population is back to the levels last seen in September 2017, as the price approached $20,000. There are now 1,882 Bitcoin owners with holdings of at least 1,000 Bitcoins. However, they each typically hold less now than they held in 2016.

One way to dilute the influence of Bitcoins whales is to increase adoption. CoinGenius is holding a two-day conference on June 25-26 to discuss The Road to Mass Adoption. Attendees can register with a 50 percent discount on the full-day educational breakout sessions.

Satoshi pretender Craig Wright is still under fire. Mt. Goxs former CEO Mark Karpeles has said that 80,000 Bitcoins that Wright claims to own were stolen from the exchange in March 2011. Wright, says Karpeles, is either a liar or a thief.

REvil definitely are thieves, and theyve been busy again. The ransomware gang has hit three companies in the US and Canada. Robert Farkas has admitted to being a thief. The founder of cryptocurrency firm Centra Tech has pleaded guilty in a federal court in Manhattan after being accused of conspiring to commit securities and wire fraud during a scam ICO. He and REvil arent alone. A recent government hearing reported that cybercrimes are up 75 percent as people spend more time online.

But maybe the cons are all Facebook and Instagrams fault. Telegram founder Pavel Durov says the social media firms are making money off scam advertisements that use his name. Theyre slow to take down fake ads, Durov says, but quick to remove cryptocurrency content.

Roger Ver would agree with that. YouTube took down his Bitcoin.com channel for violating the platforms terms of service. The video site has since put it back up, saying that the channel was terminated in error. Ver is looking for alternatives.

Maybe he should just try shutting down the comments. Thats what Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has done on Twitter. He says he did it to weed out scammers, and to better respond and engage.

While some scammers are using the blockchain to steal funds, the World Economic Forum is using blockchain technology to reduce corruption. The WEF thinks that the blockchain will bring some welcome transparency to the public sector.

The US is doing something similar. Brian Brooks, the newacting head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, is hoping to update the governments financial systems using crypto technology. Brooks was Coinbases legal chief.

Brooks will need to move fast if hes to keep up with China. That country could be the first to roll out a central bank digital currency, says one expert. Glenn Woo, Ledger Vaults head of the Asia-Pacific region, believes that Chinas broad use of digital money means that it could happen without anyone even noticing. Chinas neighbor, Kazakhstan, doesnt want to be left behind either. The Central Asian country hopes to attract nearly $740 million in crypto-related investments over the next three years.

If the thought of nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars in crypto investments gets your heart racing, dont worry. The blockchain might just change the way the medical industry stores and safeguards health data. It has been an eventful week.

Check out the audio version here:

Joel Comm is an internet pioneer, New York Times best-selling author, futurist speaker and co-host of The Bad Crypto Podcast. Thats a fancy way of saying he writes words, says things and loves to play with cryptos

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

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Market Predictions, Miner Fees Fluctuate, & China Moves Fast: Bad Crypto News of the Week - Cointelegraph

10 Worst Movies By Great Horror Directors, According To Rotten Tomatoes – Screen Rant

Horror fans are worshipful of the genre's heroes,but even the mostlegendary scare makers have a mummified turkey or ten in their filmography.

RELATED: The 10 Best Horror Films From Non-Horror Directors, Ranked

Whether attempting to recapture the spirit of theirbeloved classics ortrying to switch genresto court mainstream appeal, some of horror's most celebrated directors have made career missteps over the years, while others have entered decade-long phases of irrelevance that they struggle to come back from. Below, we list ten of Rotten Tomatoes' lowest-rated films by horror genre greats.

Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner) is an aging pitcher approaching the conclusion of his career, with only one big game standing between him and retirement. But as he reflects on his accomplishments, the memories he's made with single mom Jane Aubrey (Kelly Preston) keep cropping up, making the fact that she's ready to break up with him even more painful.

Criticsappreciated the on-field portions of this Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead, Drag Me to Hell) directed sports drama, but they were less-than-moved by its soppy central romance.

In the 1960s, French diplomat to China Ren Gallimard (Jeremy Irons) falls forBeijing opera singer named Song Liling (John Lone). The two embark on a love affair, with Ren not only unaware that Song is actually a spy, but ignorant (purposefully or not) that his lover is a male performer in female dress.

Before body-horror maestro David Cronenberg (Videodrome, The Fly) had worked out the kinks in his approach to straight-up dramas (i.e.Spider, Eastern Promises), he tipped a bit toofar intosoap operaterritory with this pallid adaptation of David Henry Hwang's Tony Award-winning play.

A regiment of soldiers wanders the post-apocalyptic wastes under the command of Sarge Crockett (Alan Van Sprang), contending with zombie hordes and living off of whatever supplies they can salvage. When they catch wind of a place called Plum Island, a safe harbor for those trying to survive, it sounds too good to be true...and it is. Rather than a land of peace and plenty, Plum Island is ravaged by two warring family factions who have wildlyat odds ideas about how to deal with the undead.

RELATED: George Romero's 10 Best Movies (According to IMDb)

George Romero'slast entry in his "Dead" series (and final feature film release before his death) is worlds away from the still-sharp social commentary of Night/Dawn/Day of the Deadin terms of both quality and messaging.

When a freak accident saves Max (Anton Yelchin) the trouble of having to break it off with his overbearing girlfriend, Evelyn (Greene) he counts his lucky stars. In the wake of the accident, he meets his perfect match in Olivia (Alexandra Daddario), but there's trouble in paradise when Evelyn returns from the dead still carrying a torch for Max.

This "modest return-to-form" by Joe Dante (Gremlins, The Howling) is worthwhile for a central performance by the gone-too-soon Yelchin, but otherwise, lacks the impish comic flair of his most celebrated work.

Detective John Hunton (Ted Levine) is investigating an accidental death at a laundry mat. Short of any other explanation, Hunton starts to believe that a folding machine may have something to do with the murders, and Bill Gartley (Robert Englund) the man who runs the business, may know more about the possessed machine than he's letting on.

It's arguable that no horror director had a harder time escaping career doldrums than Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre),butThe Mangleris bad even by his own basement-low standards.

In the far-flung future, Mars is a developed mining colony with a human population numbering in the thousands. When a task force is sent out to bring a felon from anoutpost back to civilization, its soon apparent that the planetary extractions have uncoveredthe remnants of an ancient warrior race of Martians who have nothing but vicious contempt for Earth's colonists.

Few horror filmmakers flew as high as John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing) at his apex, but the director's post-80s work leaves a lot to be desired. Case in point, this 2001 camp-fest that lacks thestyle hand and scare craft that solidified the term, Carpenteresque.

After the brutal death of his wife, Jamie Ashen (Ryan Kwanten) seeks to clarify the circumstances surrounding her murder by returning to their childhood home. As he gets to know the denizens of Ravens Fair, he hears the tale of Mary Shaw, a wronged puppet maker who supposedly haunts them, and starts to believe that the legendary curse may have something to do with his departed wife's cruel fate.

RELATED: James Wan's 9 Films Ranked (According To Rotten Tomatoes)

James Wan (Aquaman, Insidious)has gone on to bigger, better things, but his first go 'round with killer puppets (Sawdoesn't technically count) was widely-panned anddisplayed little of the skill he'd later bring to the horror genre.

In this retelling of Gaston Leroux's immortal novel, Asia Argento stars as Christine Daa, the ingenue thrust into the spotlight by a mysterious admirer: the Phantom (Julian Sands) who inhabits the catacombs beneath the Paris Opera house.

Italian master of the macabre Dario Argento has had quite a few duds to his name, but this adaptation is his absolute worst. Unsexy and ugly, with a ridiculous performance by Sands as a conspicuously not-disfigured cavern dweller raised by rats, avoidthis Phantomat all costs.

When spacetrucker John Canyon (Dennis Hopper) and his fiancee are tasked with hauling an unmarked load to Earth, they're unaware that the cargo contains a fleet of killer robots, until a pack of pirates hijack their vehicle, unleashing the deadly and unstoppable force.

Frequent Lovecraft adapter Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, Dagon) is woefully out of his element directing this hammy actioner, the kindest critical review of which calls, "unquestionably terrible, but [...] rather fun."

Eight years after Bobby (Robert Houston) witnessed his family's torture and destruction at the hands of a clan of desert cannibals, he tries to live a normal lifeand manage amotocrossbusiness. Ruby (Janus Blythe), the only member of the cannibals who helped him escape, assists him in this endeavor and working through their shared trauma, but things revert to savagery when her bloodthirsty family re-emerges to wreak havoc again.

Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street,Scream) only did this follow-up to his classic desert shocker for a paycheck, and it's obvious. Padded with clips from the first film and featuring an infamously ludicrous dog POV flashback, The Hills Have Eyes, Part 2is a waste of time and talent.

NEXT: Blumhouse: Their 5 Best (& 5 Worst) Horror Movies, Ranked According To Rotten Tomatoes

Next Harry Potter: 10 Ways Hermione Got Worse & Worse

Rocco is a Chicago-based writer, editor, and programmer. An avid devotee of all things weird and outrageous, he's most in his wheelhouse discussing cult oddities and horror classics. Follow him on Instagram: @rosemarys_gayby

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Space Perspective is a startup that wants to balloon you toward space – Business Insider – Business Insider

If you're looking for a life-altering adventure, have more than $100,000 to spare, and are willing to wait a few years, a new startup called Space Perspective may have the ticket you.

The space tourism company came out of hiding on Thursday, and its business centers around planned flights of a nine-person "Spaceship Neptune" a top-shaped crew capsule that's surrounded by big windows, has a mini bar, and even comes equipped with a hidden lavatory.

An illustration of Space Perspective's planned crew capsule, the Neptune, dangling from the end of a stratospheric balloon with eight passengers and a pilot inside. Space Perspective

Ostensibly, the 10,000-pound capsule would launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center while dangling from the end of a high-altitude balloon pumped full of hydrogen gas.

After a two-hour ascent, Neptune would reach an altitude of nearly 19 miles and hover over the Atlantic Ocean for another two hours. That's about 44 miles short of the Krmn line, which is what most researchers recognize as the edge of space(though there's no consensus on the matter).

However, there is about 1% of the atmospheric pressure at 19 miles that is present on the ground, which is practically a vacuum, making it a potentially valuable platform for scientists to attach experiments, such as exposing materials to a space-like environment or sampling layers of the atmosphere on the way up and down.

Neptune should also soar high enough for a pilot and eight passengers or "Explorers" to see Earth's curvature and soak in a view that, so far, has been afforded to only a few hundred space-flying humans. Launching before dawn would allow passengers to take in starry sights before seeing a unique sunrise.

"As Neptune glides along the edge of space, the sun slowly rises over the curved limb of Earth, scattering rainbow colors of light across the planet and illuminating the thin, bright blue line of our atmosphere," Space Perspective's website says of a flight.

An illustration of Space Perspective's planned stratospheric balloon capsule, the Neptune, with passengers looking out of parabolic floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Space Perspective

Passengers could look out floor-to-ceiling parabolic windows to take in views. They might also take turns poking their head into a glass viewing dome on top of the capsule.

Looking up, the sky would appear "completely inky black" and show the stars "like you've never before seen them," according to the website.

While all of this is not yet real, it's not a huge stretch to believe that it could be.

A major reason is the history of the new startup's co-CEOs and cofounders, Jane Poynter and Taber MacCallum: a married couple who have years of experience launching both people and payloads high above the planet on the end of giant balloons. They've also tried this before, but business conflicts apparently stood in the way, not any insurmountable technical hurdles.

Taber MacCallum and Jane Poynter at World View headquarters in Tucson, Arizona, on November 13, 2017. Dave Mosher/Insider

In a July 2018 feature about MacCallum and Poynter, Bloomberg Businessweek dubbed the duo "masters of the stratosphere," and with good reason.

MacCallum and Poynter achieved fame in the 1990s for their two-year mission inside Biosphere 2, a grand experiment to see if a crew could sustain themselves within a sealed, miniature version of Earth that essentially functioned as a faux Mars colony.

While living in the 3.14-acre facility, the couple co-founded Paragon Space Development Corp, which specializes in life support systems and has supported dozens of missions to orbit. The company later flexed its technological muscle by helping send pilot, computer scientist, and former Google executive Alan Eustace on a world record-breaking flight and leap from a balloon lofted to about 25.75 miles high.

Amid that project, called StratEx, MacCallum and Poynter created a high-altitude balloon company in Tucson, Arizona, called World View Enterprises with Alan Stern, the principal investigator of NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto. The group worked with dozens of engineers and even a retired astronaut to build a business around launching payloads on hydrogen balloons high into the stratosphere, which ranges from 9 to 31 miles in altitude.

A ground telescope's view of one of World View's Stratollite balloon-craft floating in the stratosphere. Travis Deyoe, Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona

The key to World View's current business is a pyramid-shaped surveillance platform called the Stratollite. The device can host ground-observing instruments including cameras and radio beacons and control the balloon above it to hover over a desired area for weeks or, in the future, possibly months at a time. World View was also developing a Voyager crew capsule to loft tourists into the stratosphere for $75,000 a piece.

But in early 2019, after helping push World View toward regular commercial operations, MacCallum and Poynter stepped aside, and the company's board hired drone-business expert Ryan Hartman as CEOto run the company. With that executive transition, Voyager crewed got tabled indefinitely.

The reason why is now partly clear: MacCallum and Poynter, who remain minority shareholders In World View, wanted to urgently pursue crewed experiences. The larger board of the company they helped create, however, no longer did; balloon flights with people were viewed as a large liability exposure, a very different customer-facing business, and a distraction from uncrewed Stratollite flights, which seemed better poised to make World View money sooner.

"We have a huge financial interest in the success of World View. So we're cheering them on. But we also needed to give them their own ability to go forth and make it make it happen," MacCallum told Business Insider. "Having a bunch of founders looking over your shoulders can be tricky."

So the couple have rebooted the concept with a new approach, location, and company, Space Perspective. The pair eventually convincedSpace Ventures Investors to supply enough cash to fund a staff of 15 people through most of 2021, Poynter said. (She declined to provide a dollar figure, saying "we told our investors that we're going to keep that confidential.")

The company's crew roster is a who's-who of high-altitude ballooning, including Eustace and other StratEx team members, as well as former World View engineers. Their first big goal is to use their funding to get through the first uncrewed test flight of a Neptune prototype.

An illustration of Space Perspective's planned crew capsule, the Neptune, taking off from NASA's old space shuttle landing facility in Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Space Perspective

Although Space Perspective is perusing possible launch sites in Hawaii, Alaska, and locations outside the US, it plans to base its first launch operations at NASA's space shuttle landing facility, which was last used in July 2011 (the month that 30-year-old government spaceflight program ended).

Space Perspective's first uncrewed test flight is planned for the first quarter of 2021. If all goes according to plan, the team will create a full-size Neptune prototype, though one that weighs less. During the test, the Neptune dummy would soar to nearly 19 miles up at what MacCallum jokingly described as a "blazing" speed of 12 mph a trip he noted would take about two hours. The capsule would float for about two more hours at that altitude before beginning its descent.

A seafaring ground crew would then recover the Neptune prototype after its splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean some 200 miles off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida. MacCallum said the full-up test should help the company try out the concept of operations or "ConOps" for the system, including its launch, flight, descent, and recovery stages.

"We're reasonably calling it 'the early slap in the face with reality,'" MacCallum said of test. "We want to give it an early run before we really start getting into detailed design on the capsule."

He added: "I think it's only really a failure if something goes wrong and you can't figure out what happened. The assumption here is that a whole bunch of things aren't going to go as we planned, and we'll learn from those."

Barring radical design changes to Neptune, data from the test will help the company work toward crewed test flights in 2023. Along the way, Space Perspective would perform tests of every major subsystem, including an emergency parachute to bring the capsule back to Earth in the event that a balloon catastrophically bursts.

Poynter believes Space Perspective is about four years away from commercial flights but said the company will fly its first customers "when we're good and ready."

"Our strategic plan has us getting to something on the order of 500 flights a year within a few years after [first] operations," Poynter said.

To that end, the company secured a 30-year lease for the shuttle landing facility from Space Florida, an organization which represents the interests of spaceflight companies in the state. But the co-CEOs said they're still formulating an exact per-passenger ticket price. Poynter said they'd announce a dollar figure toward end of 2020, then put the first tickets up for sale sometime in 2021.

"We are anticipating that it will be on the order of half, or less than half, of the current Virgin [Galactic] ticket price," Poynter said, referring to the now-public company's rocket-powered SpaceShipTwo vehicle, which is designed to carry six passengers per flight.

Virgin Galactic has sold about 600 tickets for between $200,000 and $250,000 a seat, though a new round of 400 additional tickets will likely cost more, CEO George Whitesides recently told Business Insider. This suggests an individual ticket to ride Neptune may cost between $100,000 to $125,000, though perhaps more.

With a target of 500 flights and eight passengers per flight, annual revenue at full scale may range between $400 million and $500 million. And that's not including any ancillary research payloads, which can be attached to the outside of the balloon craft.

Reuters/Alexander Gerst/NASA

Aside from trying to establish a profitable business, MacCallum and Poynter who espouse the fact that Earth is essentially a giant spaceship that humanity shares hope to spread a philosophy with Space Perspective flights.

In particular, they want customers to walk away having experienced what astronauts refer to as the "overview effect:" a sometimes life-changing shift in perspective that comes with gazing upon Earth from above and contemplating its finiteness and connectedness.

Astronauts, who may live in space for months or even a year, are constantly exposed to that shift in thinking by orbiting Earth once roughly every 90 minutes while moving at about 17,500 mph.

"It is endlessly fulfilling. You never quite see the same thing as you are orbiting. There is a different ground track every time. The time of day is different; the clouds are different. The cloud patterns show different colors. The oceans are different; the dust over the deserts is different. It doesn't get repetitive," Joseph P. Allen, a now-retired NASA astronaut who flew twice aboard space shuttles, told author Frank White, who coined the term "overview effect" and wrote a book about it in 1987.

MacCallum and Poynter say that, unlike a brief rocket ride which would grant passengers about five minutes a weightlessness and views of Earth outside a window a relatively gentle ride on Neptune would be more accessible to those who can't make such a trip.

And according to MacCallum, retired NASA astronaut Jeff Hoffman an advisor to Space Perspective said the balloon-based experience should also provide a more genuine opportunity to experience the overview effect, in part because a flight would last hours instead of minutes.

"He said for him, the quintessential spaceflight experience is very calmly quietly looking at the Earth from space for a long time," MacCallum said, adding: "It is sort of like a meditation."

This story has been updated.

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Space Perspective is a startup that wants to balloon you toward space - Business Insider - Business Insider

There Might Be Ocean World Planets Within the Milky Way, Planetary Scientist Claims – Science Times

Lynnae Quick, a planetary scientist, pondered one day, several years ago, if bodies of water existed on other planets. Beyond our solar system are other planets, or exoplanets, that maybe 'ocean worlds.'

Astronomers have discovered about 4,000 exoplanets with some having atmospheres covered in ice. They have become NASA's focus for possible life outside of earth, similar to Enceladus, Saturn's moon, and Europa, Jupiter's moon.

'Plumes of water erupt from Europa and Enceladus, so we can tell that these bodies have subsurface oceans beneath their ice shells, and they have energy that drives the plumes, which are two requirements for life as we know it,' she said. As one of NASA's planetary scientist who specializes in volcanism and ocean worlds, Quick said, 'so if we're thinking about these places as being possibly habitable, maybe bigger versions of them in other planetary systems are habitable too.'

In NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, they began searching for planets similar to the ocean world moons, which hypothetically was possible. If such exoplanets existed, telescopes would be able to detect volcanic-like structures on their surface which could geologically be active.

Using a mathematical analysis of exoplanets, including those in the TRAPPIST-1 system, they found that more than 25% of them were possibly 'harboring oceans beneath layers of surface ice,' like Enceladus and Europa. Quick also predicted that one day, astronomers would be able to measure heat emissions, volcanic activity, and cryovolcanoes, which spew liquid or vapor instead of lava.

However, technology today cannot see exoplanets in detail yet and are too far away. All theories are just mathematical models for now. Astronomers are hopeful for the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope and future space explorations to explore deep space for signs of life.

Aki Roberge, a NASA Goddard astrophysicist said 'future missions to look for signs of life beyond the solar system are focused on planets like ours that have a global biosphere that's so abundant it's changing the chemistry of the whole atmosphere,' Working alongside Quick, he said that even though exoplanets are far from the Sun and may have significantly colder temperatures, 'they have the features we think are required for life.'

Read Also:110 Humans Sufficient for Mars Colony, French Expert Says: Who's Up for It?

Quick and her colleagues chose 53 exoplanets that were the closest to Earth's size, assumed to be more solid than gaseous. Likely able to support water on and below the surface, they also determined how much energy these exoplanets generated and released as heat.

The first of two possible heat sources was radiogenic heat, the result of billions of years of radioactive decay from the exoplanet's mantle and crust. Next is heat produce by tidal force, or energy from gravitational attraction when one planetary object orbits another, like the relationship between the exoplanet and its stars.When the heat from this relationship generates to the planet's surface, one possible exit route is via volcanoes or cryovolcanoes.

Another pathway may be tectonics, movement of the planet's outer rocky or icy layer. Discovering how much heat exoplanets discharge can determine whether or not life can survive on them. "Forthcoming missions will give us a chance to see whether ocean moons in our solar system could support life," said Quick. 'If we find chemical signatures of life, we can try to look for similar signs at interstellar distances.' An exoplanet with temperatures that allow liquid water becomes an ocean world.

Read Also:Dubai's Martian City Is Currently Being Built by Architects - Here's an Inside Look

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There Might Be Ocean World Planets Within the Milky Way, Planetary Scientist Claims - Science Times

The Sky This Week from June 19 to 26 – Astronomy Magazine

Saturday, June 20Even in you werent able to view yesterdays occultation of Venus by the Moon, you can still spot the bright planet this morning. About an hour before sunrise, Venus is 2.5 high in the east-northeast and climbing as the sky brightens. It glows at magnitude 4.6; through a telescope, youll see its a crescent just 9 percent lit. The entire disk spans 51".

Above Venus in the sky this morning is the Pleiades star cluster (M45), also called the Seven Sisters although how many of those seven you can make out depends on factors such as your own eyesight and the brightness of the sky (or your viewing site). Without optical aid, most people can easily count six stars in the small, dipper-shaped cluster. Can you see all seven?

The Pleiades is also an excellent object for your binoculars or small scope. Spanning about 110', the cluster actually contains more than 1,000 members, although most are invisible even with optical aid.

The summer solstice occurs today at 5:44 P.M. EDT, marking the first day of Northern Hemisphere summer.

Sunday, June 21New Moon occurs at 2:41 A.M. EDT.

An annular solar eclipse can be seen by observers in parts of Africa and southern Asia today. Greatest eclipse will occur near the India-China border, with a 38-second duration and 99 percent coverage. Annular eclipses take place when the Moon completely covers the Sun (as with a total solar eclipse); but sometimes, either the Moon is too close to Earth or Earth is too close to the Sun for the Sun and Moons apparent sizes to match up. When that happens, a thin ring of sunlight remains visible even at greatest eclipse.

Slooh will be broadcasting the event live online on YouTube:

Monday, June 22Look west after sunset to see Leo the Lions stately figure headed down toward the horizon as the night progresses. Regulus, Leos magnitude 1.4 alpha star, is envisioned as the Lions heart. Lying very near the ecliptic plane, this star is often occulted by the Moon. Regulus also marks the base of the handle of the constellations Sickle asterism, whose hook is made up of several other bright stars to Regulus northwest. At the other end of the constellation, Denebola (Beta [] Leonis) marks Leos tail. This star shines at magnitude 2.1 and is a little over 1.5 times the Suns radius.

Within Leo are numerous bright galaxies, including the famous Leo Triplet of NGC 3628, M65, and M66 Each of these three spirals is tilted differently with respect to our line of sight, making each look quite distinct from its companions. Youll find the group a little over 7 west-southwest of Denebola, and less than 3 south-southeast of magnitude 3.3 Chertan (Theta [] Leonis).

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The Sky This Week from June 19 to 26 - Astronomy Magazine

Five Jansky Fellows Look to the Future of Radio Astronomy – Newswise

Newswise A central mission of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is to nurture and inspire the next generation of radio astronomers. One way NRAO does this is through the Jansky Fellowship Program. Jansky Fellows are allowed to pursue their personal research interests with the support of NRAO observatories. This year, five postdoctoral awards were made.

Im looking forward to working with the many experts in Charlottesville, said Kimberly Emig. Her doctoral work has focused on the gas and dust of interstellar space. When interstellar gas is exposed to the intense light of large stars, it ionizes. Electrons in the gas break free of their atoms. When the atoms and electrons recombine, they emit radio light. Kimberly can observe this light through observations made by the Very Large Array (VLA). My goal is to study the interstellar medium and its role in the evolution of galaxies.

Bang Nhan studies the early universe in the period known as the Cosmic Dawn and Dark Age. It is the time after the hot glow of the Big Bang, but before the first stars and galaxies were born. Since there is no starlight during this time, he studies the period by observing the radio emissions of neutral hydrogen, sometimes called the 21-cm line. A common challenge in the 21-cm observation is to extract the weak cosmic signal embedded in our own bright Milky Way, Bang said. To capture the faint signal of the early universe, Bang will be upgrading the telescope at Green Bank known as the Cosmic Twilight Polarimeter (CTP), to better observe this neutral hydrogen.

Pallavi Patil studies a different period of the universe, known as Cosmic Noon. It is a time about 10 billion years ago when galaxies were their most active. Pallavis doctoral research focused on active supermassive black holes during this period. As a Jansky Fellow, I will study a special class of galaxies that have recently ignited supermassive black holes. Pallavi said. Galaxies with active black holes are rare in the nearby universe, but were more common during Cosmic Noon. They play an important role in the formation of galaxies. I can't wait to be a part of the astronomical community at NRAO Socorro.

Its an incredible honor to be selected as a Jansky Fellow to work at the NRAO, said Jacob White. Through Measuring the Emission of Stellar Atmospheres at Submillimeter/millimeter wavelengths (MESAS), Jacob has been studying the atmospheres of stars. MESAS looks at the radio light emitted by a stars atmosphere through observatories such as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Young stars often have study circumstellar debris, which also emits radio light. It can be difficult to distinguish radio light from stars versus light from debris. For his fellowship, Jacob plans to build a catalog of the radio emissions of stars, to better distinguish between the two.

Dyas Utomo plans to study molecular gas in deep space. The interstellar medium is made mostly of hydrogen, but only a fraction of it is cold enough to form molecules. I will approach my research by gathering high-resolution observations in a large number of nearby galaxies, said Dyas. He is interested in how interstellar gas forms into molecules, and how molecular clouds form into stars. Dyas hopes to capture a variety of environments that may affect star formation. "I'm glad to continue my research at NRAO Charlottesville and looking forward to collaborate with people there," Dyas said.

The goals of these Jansky fellows are ambitious. Each brings a tremendous amount of skill to their work, and with the support of the NRAO these scholars will broaden our understanding of the universe in new and exciting ways.

Full text and images:https://public.nrao.edu/news/five-jansky-fellows-look-to-the-future-of-radio-astronomy/

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Five Jansky Fellows Look to the Future of Radio Astronomy - Newswise