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Corona SeroStatus App Launches, Leverages Blockchain and Testing to Offer a Pathway to Reopen Economies While Protecting User Privacy – PR Web

Posted on May 21, 2020 by Danzig

FRANKFURT, Germany (PRWEB) May 21, 2020

Today Anyblock Analytics, a German firm noted for its enterprise blockchain expertise, announced the launch of the Corona SeroStatus app. Many facilities, cities, states/provinces, and countries are eager to begin re-opening their economies. Yet with more than 4.7 million confirmed cases of coronavirus globallyincluding nearly 1.5 million in the United States aloneserious concerns remain about how to do so safely. The SeroStatus app offers a solution thats easy to use and which avoids the pitfalls of cybersecurity and data privacy issues with contact tracing apps and central databases.

As stay-at-home restrictions start to relax and businesses start to re-open, theres a lot of concern about how to be smart about it, so that we dont see a new spike in coronavirus cases, explained Jens Griesing, co-founder of the SeroStatus app. Unlike contact tracing that attempts to notify individuals if they might have been exposed to coronavirus from a person who tested positive, the SeroStatus app tells who does or doesnt pose a risk based on actual test results. And we do this while protecting individuals data privacy.

Using the SeroStatus app is simpleif you know how to take a selfie and scan a QR code, you can use the app. Heres how it works:

The versatile app can document whos healthy (such as via a negative rapid test) as well as whos recovered from previous exposure (via a positive antibody test). This is crucial information for intelligently reopening businesses, venues, and services, including:

Just as importantly, the SeroStatus app does this with a decentralized approachin part using blockchain technologythat protects user data. Approved medical professionals attest users results, which are securely stored on a persons mobile phone without a central cloud database that could be manipulated or hacked. Venues scan a users phone to confirm the results and approve or deny entry, without the user ever having to compromise sensitive personal information. This is another key distinction between the SeroStatus app and other approaches that use a central or even government-controlled database. With SeroStatus, everyone is in charge of their own data, while keeping that data accurate so venues can be confident in the results.

For more details on the investment opportunity or to find out how to roll this out in your region, please visit https://www.serostatus.com/ or learn more in our explainer videos.

About Anyblock AnalyticsAnyblock Analytics GmbH is a German blockchain solution provider with the mission to build bridges between different organizations, across various blockchain networks and most importantly between people. Anyblocks Analytics GmbH offers methods, tools and data to integrate business processes with blockchain. The solution portfolio comprises a complete set of products and services for enterprise blockchain use cases on both public and private consortia chains.

ContactNicole Arnone+1.770.856.7185 | nicolearnone@inflectionpointagency.com

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Corona SeroStatus App Launches, Leverages Blockchain and Testing to Offer a Pathway to Reopen Economies While Protecting User Privacy - PR Web

Blockchain Bites: What You Need to Know About the Last Day of Consensus: Distributed – CoinDesk – CoinDesk

Posted on May 21, 2020 by Danzig

Top Shelf

The sun rises on the last day ofConsensus: Distributed, our first foray into the world of virtual events.

We've heard from former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers describe the current monetary system astoo private, Governor Harvesh Seegolam of the Bank of Mauritius inch closer to acentral bank digital currency and World Economic Forum Blockchain head Sheila Warren say digital cash mightopen the doorfor niche privacy coins.

So where does that leave us? With a full day of programming.

This is what my colleague Leigh Cuen will track throughout the day:

Weve finally reached the last day of Consensus: Distributed and theres still so much going on.

If you havent perused the Sponsors section of Brella and talked with companies such as eToro, CME Group and Kraken, many of which are hiring, thats a great way to start the morning.

Then theres a show on cryptocurrency in Japan, starting at 11 a.m. ET with experts from the Financial Services Agency Japan, Coinbase and Soramitsu Holdings. Japan is the quiet juggernaut in Asia, home toBTCPayfounder Nicolas Dorier, the Bitcoin Core contributors of DG Labs, and a careful regulatory climate ever since the infamousMt. Goxhack. As such, the market arguably has fewer scams coupled with a robust bitcoin community.

Japans cultural impact on the global crypto industry shouldnt be underestimated. After all, Satoshi Nakamoto is a Japanese alias.

Next, I recommend Bailey Reutzels show about bitcoin mining, with Edge CEO Paul Puey and Alejandro De La Torre of Poolin at 3:30 p.m. ET. Its titled Subsidies and Secret Messages: All About Mining.

Then your brain will probably need a break from all that blockchain chatter. Luckily, weve got an after-party led by a group including the artist Josie Bellini, Travis Blane of ConsenSys and Reckless VR founder Udi Wertheimer. Starting at 5 p.m. ET, the virtual reality meetup will open with a panel about spaces, both virtual and physical. After that there shall be much avatar revelry, merrymaking and networking.

If youve got a VR headset, check it out and post your experiences on social media using the hashtag #ConsensusDistributed.

Thanks for joining us for the first virtual New York Blockchain Week!

What to Watch

9:30 - 11:00 a.m. ET Content: Reimagined - Hosted by Davis Wright TremaineThis workshop will explore the use of decentralized systems for media in the age of disinformation.

12:00 - 12:30 p.m. Beyond DAOs and Foundations: The Decentralized Autonomous Association (DAA) ModelLawyers, tax advisers and blockchain experts gather to discuss the emergent model of the decentralized autonomous association.

1:00 - 2:00 p.m. Econometrics: Securing Your Blockchain Through Economic AnalyticsLearn how real time data analytics can boost the economic security and increase the usability and functionality of your blockchain network.

3:30 - 4:00 p.m. Filecoin, IPFS, and The Future of Web3Juan Benets Protocol Labs is building a better internet through decentralized systems and cryptographic hacks. In this program Benet will look into Protocol Labs two biggest projects, Filecoin and IPFS.

5:00 - 5:30 p.m. A VR Meetup To Talk About VR MeetupsConsenSys Travis Blane, "Crypto Twitters" Udi Wertheimer and CryptoMondays Lou Kerner are joined by the crypto artists Jin and Josie Bellini to discuss the future of conferences: VR.

The CoinDesk 50

The CoinDesk 50is an annual list celebrating the most important organizations in crypto. We've been announcing five nominees per day, and have highlightedBinance,Cosmos,Brave,Bitmain,MakerDAO,Besu,Silvergate Bank,Bitcoinand thePeoples Bank of Chinaas particularly noteworthy. Today we look at Bakkt, the first U.S. firm to offer physically settled bitcoin futures. Read about the final companyhere.

CoinDesk COVID Response

#NYBWGivesCoinDesk has joined Gitcoin, The Giving Block and Ethereal Summit to support charities helping communities in difficult times. We're raising $100,000 and giving you a voice through the quadratic funding model.Learn how it worksand how to donate.

In addition,New York-based abstract artist Mr. Star Citycreated an original piece of artwork, shown above, as a part of Consensus: Distributed. The art, inspired by love, unity and technology, will be up for auction this week. Follow@coindeskon Twitter to find out how to bid the proceeds will go to the same cause.

Consensus Magazine

Generation CryptoFreelance journalist Jess Klein writes about an emerging psychographic of people who see the world through the lens of decentralization. In a series of eight profiles, Klein examines Generation Crypto, a diffuse grouping of people of all ages, races and sexes, bound together as children of Satoshi.

This excerpt examines the life ofShanga Mbuli, a father of six living in Kenya, who uses the little-knownsarafu cryptocurrency in daily life.Read thefull series here.

A 42-year-old father of six, Shanga Mbuli lives in the small Kenyan village of Miyani, just a few kilometers from the ocean, where he catches shrimp to sell to fellow villagers. The nearest city is Mombasa, but Mbulis life as a rural farmer doesnt include many visits there. Most of his buying and selling takes place among other community members. Since 2017, hes been using a community currency, called sarafu, established by the non-profit Grassroots Economics to exchange local goods and services.

Sarafu is a digital currency built on blockchain technology so users can trade it with trust. It was designed for villages that are full of people with goods and services to offer but little government-issued currency to spend. In Mbulis 6,000-person community, nearly all are registered with the Sarafu Network. Mbuli accepts sarafu in exchange for shrimp he catches and maize he grows on his farm, and uses it to pay for rice and services like transportation and maize grinding. He likes sarafu because he finds it to be secure, and it makes his community more connected, he told me one evening in mid-March while walking to the nearby river to fetch water. Kids passing by and roosters calling sounded in the background.

At that time, Kenya had just one confirmed case of coronavirus, in its capital city Nairobi. By the time we caught up again on Sunday, April 4, no cases had made it over to Mbulis rural community, but people there were preparing. City dwellers from Mombasa were returning to their families in rural villages like his in time for a shelter-in-place order to go into effect on April 11, and some could have been carrying the virus. Most in Mbulis village were readying to be confined to their homes for at least 21 days. Mbuli had stockpiled enough food for at least two to three years.

People are now purchasing a lot of food through Sarafu so they can have a stock in their house to feed their families during the time of the virus, Mbuli says. The day before we spoke, Mbuli sold almost 100,000 Kenya Shillings ($94) worth of maize in Sarafu, compared to the usually 15,000 or 20,000 worth he might sell daily.

Sarafus user numbers have gone up, too, with the return of people from Mombasa to Mbulis village. Those in Mombasa werent registered, so more people have been registered this week and are using more Sarafu, he says, since the currency is local. The more you use Sarafu, the more you save Kenya Shillings, which are often the only currency accepted at institutions like schools.

Theres another upside to using Sarafu over Kenya Shillings during the Covid-19 outbreak users dont have to touch it. They can just send Sarafu through their phones, a convenience that will likely outlast its temporary usefulness during a viral outbreak.

Money Reimagined

Is bitcoin the answer for a global monetary system not longer served by the dollar standard? Airing Friday, May 15, episode 3 ofThe Breakdown: Money Reimaginedexamines bitcoin and permissionless stablecoins - both of which are forcing the global monetary system to examine deeply ingrained beliefs.

The Breakdown: Money Reimaginedis a podcast crossover micro series exploring the battle for the future of money in the context of a post COVID-19 world. The four-part podcast features over a dozen voices including Consensus: Distributed speakers Niall Ferguson, Nic Carter and Michael Casey. New episodes air Fridays on theCoinDesk Podcast Network. Subscribe here.

First Mover

Miners Hodl asBitcoin RalliesBitcoin is rallying again, though new data shows mining pools are hanging onto the cryptocurrency they mine rather than sending it to exchanges for a quick sale, according to the Korean analytics firm CryptoQuant.One possibility explaining this behavior is that the miner community might be expecting a big price rally at some point down the road, said Brad Keoun in the latest First Mover newsletter. Another is that miners might be worried the market is looking weak, or thin: If they transferred their bitcoins to an exchange en route to cashing out, the heavy surge in sell orders might cause prices to collapse. You cansubscribe to First Mover here.

Media Diet

First State-Owned Entity Joins Libra AssociationTemasek, one of Singapores two government-owned investment vehicles, is among thelatest companies to join the Libra Association, the consortium Facebook set up to create a global digital currency. The addition may help explain why the Singapore dollar has figured prominently in Libras plans from the early days. In the initial vision of a new currency backed by a basket of different sovereign currencies, the sing was included alongside the U.S. dollar, the euro and the British pound.

Telegrams TON Was Built on Sand. Its Failure Isnt All Bad For CryptoPreston Byrne argues in a CoinDesk op-ed the SAFT structure Telegram would have used to distribute coins from its ICO, once regarded as compliance best practice in the cryptocurrency industry, will begreatly diminished in its usefulness in the U.S. And thats a good thing.

Aggrieved Investors Mull Suing Telegram Over Canceled TON Blockchain ProjectInvestors in Telegrams TON project are in discussion tosue the companyafter it abruptly shuttered the blockchain effort earlier this week, according to four individuals familiar with the situation.

Who's Holding up the #Cryptoverse?

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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Blockchain Bites: What You Need to Know About the Last Day of Consensus: Distributed - CoinDesk - CoinDesk

New COVID-19 Antibody Test Platform Combines Antibody Testing and Blockchain Technology – HospiMedica

Posted on May 21, 2020 by Danzig

Image: The ADIONA platform (Photo courtesy of Rymedi, Inc.)

The ADIONA COVID-19 antibody testing platform developed jointly by Kahala Biosciences LLC (Irvine, CA, USA) and Rymedi, Inc. (Greenville, SC, USA) is the first system available in the US that integrates antibody testing with a blockchain-based smartphone software application to bring predictability and traceability to COVID-19 antibody testing.

The ADIONA platform combines a rapid point-of-care antibody (IgG/IgM) test performed using a simple finger stick with an end-to-end blockchain solution. The platform is designed to authenticate each test kit from manufacturer to patient, ensure patient privacy via encrypted data, prevent results tampering and data loss, allow instant access to their test result from the cloud and, ultimately, enable symptom tracking. The technology behind the ADIONA platform incorporates a mobile device application for real-time test results and geolocation reporting, as well as cryptographically secured QR codes to verify the authenticity of kits, reagents and test results. Blockchain-enabled data management provides predictive analytics to better anticipate and respond to disease outbreaks, while fully complying with HIPAA, GDPR and cGxP requirements.

In practical use, the ADIONA platform enables the patient to confidentially input health information and receive a personalized QR code prior to testing. The QR code is used to track them through the testing process, and allows them to depart immediately after their finger-prick test and receive their private test results to their phone within 15 minutes. All information about the test manufacturer, shipping, user health and personal information, payment, time and location of testing, and results will be accessible on the patients phone secured by blockchain technology. This information will not only be important to employers in checking employee health status with the employees permission, but will also be useful for regional tracking of disease trends while protecting individual patient privacy. Future capabilities of the platform include point-of-care testing from home or work outside of a healthcare environment, and symptom tracking via a daily digital questionnaire completed on a smartphone app that assesses risk.

Authentication and reliability of antibody testing has been an issue as it has been introduced to this country, said Kahala Biosciences CEO Francis Duhay, MD. We are focused on ensuring the quality and scalability of our antibody test, and to that end, have created a proprietary, first-of-its-kind, secure platform that will ensure the authenticity of our products making their way to healthcare professionals and the patients for which they care. Beyond that, and perhaps more important to restarting our country, our platform technology will serve as a virtual clearinghouse to centralize protected, tamper-proof patient test results, which facilitates decision-making between employer and employee, so no other identification or testing is required to certify employee COVID-19 status. We believe this end-to-end, point-of-care platform addresses all the requirements to enable employers to bring their employees safely back to work on a broad scale.

Our blockchain-enabled technology builds trust into the very fabric of the integrated solution, said Rymedi CEO David Stefanich. From the quality of test kits, to the integrity of data, to the security of private data, we will provide healthcare providers, employers, patients, regulators and public health officials with a solution that supports critical decision-making in order to protect patient and public health and safety.

Related Links:Kahala Biosciences LLCRymedi, Inc.

Could the ‘liberal’ Dutch have learned from Taiwan’s approach to coronavirus? – The Guardian

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Danzig

The whole world has been struggling to contain the coronavirus and flatten the curve, but Taiwan has had no curve. Out of a population of 24 million, only 440 people have tested positive for Covid-19, and there have been just seven deaths. Compare that with the Netherlands: while it is similar in size to Taiwan with a population of 17 million, well over 5,000 lives have been lost to the virus.

What has made the difference? Clearly, the Netherlands is not an island that could cut itself off from the rest of world, lock down completely and thus contain the disease. Taiwan is but Taiwan didnt do that either.

Public spaces in Taiwan, restaurants, shops and schools, have all remained open since the initial Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan. Life in Taiwan has continued pretty much the same as before. What Taiwan did however, was opt for a complex tradeoff involving virus containment strategies and information gathering, while balancing individual autonomy with trust and control.

But lets first consider the Dutch situation. As Covid-19 hit the Netherlands in March 2020, the public was simply advised to restrict travelling to and from affected areas. When the crisis rapidly worsened, almost all subsequent efforts were directed at minimising the spread of the disease and reducing the influx of patients into hospitals.

The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, appeared on television and said that as he trusted citizens to behave responsibly, it would suffice to request that people remained at home as much as possible, observed the 1.5-metre distance protocol, and self-quarantined or self-isolated when feeling unwell. Since no mass testing for Covid-19 took place, the number of infected people and information about who they were or where they had been was anybodys guess.

To minimise transmission of the virus, schools, offices, restaurants and bars were closed. Work that could not be contactless was suspended, and all public gatherings were cancelled. But no complete lockdown, as in Italy or Spain, was deemed necessary. This was seen as too much of an invasion of our Dutch privacy. When the day-to-day numbers of Covid-19 deaths started to drop below 100 per day, it was considered a vindication of the policy of intelligent lockdown.

Taiwans decisions have been partly motivated by its lack of trust in the information shared by China and by Taiwans exclusion from the World Health Organisation at Chinas insistence. These factors have required it to be self-contained and to insist, within a democratic framework, on a policy of maximum health information transparency, both with and from the Taiwanese population. Taiwans history and culture means there is a strong emphasis on the collective over the individual. But its longstanding experience with epidemics such as Sars in 2003, and bird flu in 2013 have also been influential in shaping the response.

From the outset, Taiwans president, Tsai Ing-wen, took aggressive steps to prevent a possible epidemic, such as a travel ban on visitors from China and other epidemic regions (Europes travel bans came much later).

Taiwans approach relies essentially, however, not on its citizens anonymous individual responsibility, but on a completely transparent form of supervised self-discipline. And although the Taiwanese measures are considerably more intrusive, paradoxically, they result in a remarkably liberal policy.

A centralised epidemic command centre (the CECC) was quickly activated to provide immediate information, including detailed surveillance of the movements of infected people.

If anyone reports to a hospital with Covid-19 symptoms, the hospital is obliged to report to the CECC, which then traces the patients recent whereabouts and draws up an anonymised footprint for them in public spaces, such as supermarkets or restaurants. Mobile phone service companies are asked to send out text warnings to anyone else who may have been in these spaces at the time. A typical message reads:

Epidemic Alert. You have been in the proximity of an infected person. Please maintain self-health management, keep to social distancing rules, wear a mask in public and wash hands regularly. If you have any physical complaints, please contact your local healthcare provider.

All this is done on the basis of confidentiality; the infected person is never identified.

Taiwan has also introduced an electronic fence system. This allows local authorities to monitor the whereabouts of a quarantined person. It uses mobile phone signals to detect if an individual leaves their designated quarantine area; if they do, the authorities are immediately notified.

While Taiwanese citizens are aware that intensive monitoring involves an invasion of their privacy, the vast majority acquiesce in the use of personal data and are willing to comply with government regulations. Equally, mask-wearing in Taiwan has become a cultural norm. It is considered a moral virtue to protect others from ones own infection, so as to break the chain, for the benefit of all.

So could a country like the Netherlands have learned from the Taiwanese approach? The Dutch government contemplated the voluntary use of a coronavirus tracking app to alert a user if they had been in contact with a confirmed case, but dismissed it after a national debate about privacy and security. Meanwhile, Rutte and his cabinet have started to implement a four-month plan to relax restrictions.

A key difference, though, is that the western emphasis on autonomy and liberal values, so solidly rooted in Dutch culture, assigns responsibility for the collective health of a nation to the individual, whose behaviour is neither especially informed nor monitored. Ironically, Dutch residents have paid for this unsupervised self-governance with heavy restrictions on their right to free movement, considerable uncertainty and a high death toll. In contrast, Taiwan has demanded more monitoring and compliance of its people, but the result is a healthier population, greater certainty, and ultimately more liberty.

Cha-Hsuan Liu is a lecturer in social policy and public health at Utrecht University; Jaap Bos is associate professor at the department of interdisciplinary social science at Utrecht University

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Could the 'liberal' Dutch have learned from Taiwan's approach to coronavirus? - The Guardian

The Times Smith Versus The New Yorkers Farrow: The Great Powers of Liberal Journalism Go to War – Vanity Fair

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Danzig

In the navel-gazing nation of journalism, it was the shot heard round the world: Is Ronan Farrow Too Good to Be True? That was the headline of Ben Smiths latest for the New York Times, which landed with a bang on Sunday night and quickly set Twitter ablaze. The more than 3,500-word column was an assiduous accounting of various bombshells Farrow has reported for The New Yorker, including his groundbreaking work on Harvey Weinstein. It was as if Farrow had his very own public editor, and while Smith conceded that the 32-year-old investigative reporter is not a fabulist he does not make things up, it was a brutal portrayal nonetheless.

In Smiths words: He delivers narratives that are irresistibly cinematicwith unmistakable heroes and villainsand often omits the complicating facts and inconvenient details that may make them less dramatic. At times, he does not always follow the typical journalistic imperatives of corroboration and rigorous disclosure, or he suggests conspiracies that are tantalizing but he cannot prove. New Yorker editor in chief David Remnick, meanwhile, gave a full-throated defense of Farrows reporting: Working alongside fact-checkers, lawyers, and other editorial staff members at The New Yorker, he achieved something remarkable, not least because he earned the trust of his sources, many of whom had to relive traumatic events when they talked to him. We stand by Ronan Farrows reporting. Were proud to publish him.

Smith has been the Times media columnist for more than two months now, following in the footsteps of Jim Rutenberg and David Carr. Hes a bomb-thrower, not exactly a normal Timesian role, and his columns have made waves one way or another. There was Smiths inaugural installment that questioned whether his new employers runaway success was good for journalism; a searing postmortem of Fox Newss early coronavirus coverage; a contrarian Tara Reade take that turned out to be arguably a bit premature; and even an unflattering assessment of the state of Cond Nast, which owns Vanity Fair. (Cond Nast also owns The New Yorker, which is where my wife works; conflicts all around!) But Smiths Farrow column has been the biggest talker of them all, and perhaps the most polarizing too.

The voluminous reactions on Twitter appear to be split between people applauding Smith for doing the uncomfortable but necessary work of holding an influential and highly regarded peer to account (Super-deep accountability journalism by @benyt on Ronan Farrow's written record. Muscular debunking, tweeted Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple), and those who detect whiffs of grudge-settling and hypocrisy (or who at least think Smith failed to deliver a kill shot befitting the length and aggressiveness of his examination). To quote one person in the latter camp, John Carreyrou, the former Wall Street Journal investigative reporter who took down Elizabeth Holmes: Journalistic high-mindedness from @benyt, the guy who pubbed the Trump dossier without fact-checking a shred of it and who later refused to retract the Trump-instructed-Cohen-to-lie-to-Congress story. Rich with irony and quite brazen.

I checked in with both Smith and Farrow, and neither had anything to add. (Nor did the Times or The New Yorker.) But there are undeniably rich dynamics to the whole episode, in which a relative Times outsider has targeted one of journalisms sacred cows, and, in so doing, created a sort of institutional face-off between two of the industrys most venerable news organizations. The Times and The New Yorker compete robustly with one anotheras they did on the Weinstein story, which the Times broke firstbut they would typically be seen more as allies than antagonists. Adding to the complexity is the fact that they shared the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 over some of the same #MeToo reporting by Farrow in The New Yorker that Smith is now prosecuting in the Times. If nothing else, its rather fascinating to watch. As Politicos Jack Shafer put it: There is something wonderfully cleansing about a full-bore @nytimes vs. @NewYorker fight.

Liberals vow to resurrect Roe 8 if elected next year – WAtoday

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Danzig

Opposition transport spokeswoman Libby Mettam said the Liberal Party was still committed to Roe 8 and the Perth Freight Link.

If necessary it is a decision we would most certainly reverse and we are comfortable fighting the government on this issue given it has the support of the community of the southern suburbs, she said.

Ms Mettam said WA needed big ticket infrastructure projects to help the state recover from the coronavirus pandemic and with $1.2 billion in federal funding still on the table, now was the time to get it started.

Were finding it is quite extraordinary that 62,000 people have lost their jobs in the past four weeks and the McGowan government would come out with a plan to block Roe 8, she said.

The Perth Freight Link was envisioned to connect Fremantle Port with Perths southern suburbs but it was scrapped after the Labor party won the 2017 election in a landslide with stopping the road as a headline commitment.

The Liberal Party maintains the road would reduce congestion and remove trucks from Leach Highway while future proofing the Fremantle port.

Ms Saffioti said the McGowan government had been given a clear mandate to stop the freight link.

It was a deeply flawed, controversial project that I am pleased has now been laid to rest, she said.

Environment Minister Stephen Dawson said the land that was cleared to make way for the freight link was already being rehabilitated which would ensure the Beeliar Wetlands and its conservation values would remain for future generations.

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Liberals vow to resurrect Roe 8 if elected next year - WAtoday

Liberals embrace super PACs they once shunned | TheHill – The Hill

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Danzig

Progressives are embracing super PACs with newfound vigor as they look to put their political influence and organizing tactics to use in the aftermath of Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersBiden wins Oregon primary Joe Rogan announces exclusive deal with Spotify Author: Biden 'completely different' from FDR MOREs (I-Vt.) presidential campaign.

A handful of new liberal outside groups have cropped up in recent weeks, many of them founded by former aides and allies of Sanders and other prominent progressives. Their goals range from boosting the presidential campaign of former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenPro-Trump outside groups raise .8 million in April Biden wins Oregon primary Graham to release report on his probe into Russia investigation before election MORE to patching what they see as electoral holes in the Democrats organizing strategy.

But the proliferation of super PACs has come at a cost for some in the progressive movement, which has long denounced the existence of such groups and the influence of money in politics.

Sanders himself has privately expressed frustration with one such super PAC, originally called Future to Believe In PAC after the Vermont senators campaign slogan. The group was formed late last month by a handful of former aides to Sanderss campaign, including senior adviser Jeff Weaver, to boost Biden among progressives.

Sanderss displeasure with the formation of the super PAC prompted its founders to change its name this week to Americas Promise PAC to avoid the appearance that it is tied to Sanders or his campaign.

For Weaver and others, the decision to form a super PAC appears to stem more from a sense of urgency than a genuine comfort with such groups, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money so long as they do not coordinate with a candidate or campaign.

In a memo issued on Friday, Weaver warned that lagging support and enthusiasm for Bidens candidacy among progressives has the potential to sink the former vice presidents chances of ousting President TrumpDonald John TrumpPro-Trump outside groups raise .8 million in April Biden wins Oregon primary Graham to release report on his probe into Russia investigation before election MORE in November. Americas Promise PAC, he wrote, could help Biden make up that ground.

[D]espite best intentions, the Biden campaign and the [Democratic National Committee] are far behind on digital organizing, Latino outreach and progressive coalition building all critical to reaching and winning over Sanders supporters, Weaver wrote.

Chuck Rocha, a former senior adviser to Sanders who is involved in Americas Promise PAC and is spearheading the creation of another group, Nuestro PAC, said that super PACs are simply a means to an end: helping Democrats and progressives win up and down the ballot.

Unlike traditional political action committees and political nonprofits, super PACs can act as a partisan hammer, Rocha said, a role that traditional campaigns and PACs cant necessarily fill.

I am anti all this money in politics and if we can operate without super PACs, I would vote for that everyday, Rocha told The Hill. But Ive got to do something right now. I dont have the privilege to be able to wait around until there arent super PACs on either side.

Rocha and his political consulting firm Solidarity Strategies launched Nuestro PAC last month to turn out Latino voters in the fall using the same playbook that helped Sanders win broad support among Latinos during his primary campaign. Rocha himself is currently the largest donor to the super PAC. He said that hes courting other progressive and Democratic-leaning groups to help fund the effort.

Rocha said he wont accept contributions from corporate interests or business executives.

Super PACs arent the problem. The problem is corporate money in super PACs, he said. I dont know any corporations who would give Chuck Rocha or Nuestro Pac any donations anyway.

Still, the move towards super PACs has received blowback from some progressives. Rocha said he has lost thousands of followers on Twitter since started Nuestro PAC last month. And after Americas Promise launched in late April, the grassroots collective The People for Bernie Sanders advised its followers: Dont give them a dime.

One of the basics of the Bernie campaigns was a refusal to go there in terms of anything like a super PAC, Norman Solomon, a longtime activist and the co-founder of the progressive online initiative RootsAction.org.

I think thats in harmony with the politics that if youre opposed to huge money running the political show then you dont take huge money in super PACs.

Solomon is among a group of advisers to the newly-formed Once Again PAC, a traditional political action committee focused on helping Sanders win delegates in upcoming Democratic presidential primaries in order to exert influence over the partys platform and rules at its national convention this summer.

Also involved in that effort is Nina Turner, a former co-chair of Sanderss presidential campaign, and Winnie Wong, a former adviser to Sanders.

While Solomon said that most activists on the left share Bernies detest for super PACs in general, he also emphasized that progressive super PACs are a relatively small part of the terrain, especially given the massive outside groups funded by ultra-wealthy donors that often back Republicans or more centrist Democrats.

Its David vs. Goliath, he said. Even David needed a slingshot and I think thats how some people see it.

Sanderss former aides arent the only ones formingoutside political groups. Earlier this month, Justice Democrats, the progressive groupaligned with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-CortezAlexandria Ocasio-CortezOvernight Defense: Pentagon memo warns pandemic could go until summer 2021 | Watchdog finds Taliban violence is high despite US deal | Progressive Dems demand defense cuts The Hill's Campaign Report: Biden leads Trump by 6 points in new poll Ocasio-Cortez primary opponent Caruso-Cabrera goes on fierce attack in online debate: 'AOC is always MIA' MORE (D-N.Y.), filed paperwork with the Federal Election Committee (FEC) to create a hybrid PAC also called a Carey Committee similar to a super PAC.

Sanders himself has benefited from super PACs in the past. Vote Nurses Values PAC, the super PAC funded by the nurses union National Nurses United, spent more than $700,000 in support of the Vermont senator during the 2020 presidential primaries.

To me, theres a big difference between a labor lobbyist who is an advocate for working people versus a corporate lobbyist for Goldman Sachs or General Electric, said Jonathan Tasini, a progressive strategist and former surrogate for Sanderss 2016 presidential campaign. I sort of see super PACs the same way.

Tasini said that the end goal for Democrats should be to get rid of all this money in the U.S. political system. But he added that progressives should be practical in their approach to super PACs.

I dont think we should be so ideologically rigid about this, he said. Everyone would love to get rid of all this money. But that isnt the reality today.

One of the draws of super PACs in addition to being allowed to raise and spend unlimited sums of money is that they promise political operatives freedom that they often dont get within the rigid and bureaucratic structure of traditional campaigns, said Linh Nguyen, a former presidential campaign staffer for Sen. Cory BookerCory Anthony BookerBipartisan Senate group offers new help to state, local governments Liberals embrace super PACs they once shunned Trump and Biden signal bitter general election with latest attack ads MOREs (D-N.J.) and former New York City Mayor Michael BloombergMichael BloombergLiberals embrace super PACs they once shunned .7 billion expected to be spent in 2020 campaign despite coronavirus: report Bloomberg wages war on COVID-19, but will he abandon his war on coal? MORE.

Nguyen and other former campaign staffers filed paperwork with the FEC late last month creating PAC That A$$ (PTA), a super PAC aimed at boosting Democrats up and down the ballot, while aggressively mocking GOP incumbents. The group isnt tied directly to the progressive movement, but is "very much anchored in the idea that we are trying to fix the system," Nguyen said.

In an interview this week, Nguyen said the group isnt only going to be run by political operatives, but is also hiring writers and comedians particularly black and brown creatives with the goal of reaching young voters and communities of color online ahead of the 2020 election.

Our donors that are funding this have specifically said we want you all to try different things, Nguyen said. Experiment and figure out how to break through the noise.

Nguyen said that PTA is built around the notion that super PACs are detrimental to the political process. The groups website touts that if their efforts to get Democrats elected are successful, there wont be any more Super PACs.

We want to fight fire with fire. This is something that Republicans are very, very comfortable in, and as Democrats, we shy away from it or we take the higher road, she said. We want to lean into it. Were going to get a lot of criticism, but we dont want to shy away from it.

Link:

Liberals embrace super PACs they once shunned | TheHill - The Hill

@Home with SF State: Adjusting to Remote Learning | College of Liberal & Creative Arts – SF State News

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Danzig

Lyn Bafour, a Cinema and Chinese major, has used her nightstand as a desk for online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

If I just reorient myself on my bed, I feel like thats enough mentally to make the switch of, this is where you sleep versus this is where you work, Bafour said in a new video series exploring how students have adjusted to online learning this semester.

Despite the challenges with taking classes from home, the Trader Joes employee has found a way to prepare herself every day: Wake up, get in the mindset and shake everything off and just start doing the work.

Cinema major Nithin Kumar said keeping his workspace clean and simple has helped him stay on task.

I have my monitor. I have a keyboard. Basically, I have [my workspace] set up for maximum productivity with as little distractions as possible, he said.

Sabrina Mota, a Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts major, said students shouldnt be too hard on themselves, especially during this unprecedented crisis.

Forgive yourself if this isnt going to be your best semester, Mota said. Understand that a lot of people, they take a long time to go through school and they still end up being able to get to their aspirations and make change.

The pandemic and shelter-in-place ordinances have made Bafour value the importance of human interaction more than ever.

Whats going on right now is very isolating, and during the first few days, I was very lifeless. I didnt know what to do with myself, said Bafour, an employee at Trader Joes grocery store. But talking to somebody really did help feel like things are normal and reaffirmed that other people are going through the same thing.

Video produced by Sreang Hok and Kavin Chan

NP View: Will these Liberals be willing to do what Chrtien and Martin did? – National Post

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Danzig

A Liberal government will reduce the deficit. We will implement new programs only if they can be funded within existing expenditures. We will exercise unwavering discipline in controlling federal spending . Expenditure reductions will be achieved by cancelling unnecessary programs, streamlining processes and eliminating duplication.

Its hard to imagine the Liberals making such a promise in this day and age, but that is what they pledged to do in their 1993 Red Book. Contrast that to the 2015 election, when the party campaigned on the idea of running $10-billion deficits for three years, for a total of $30 billion a limit they blew through (and it wasnt even close). Or the 2019 election, when it gave up on balancing the books altogether and introduced a plan to run yearly deficits of $20 billion over its four-year mandate.

The coronavirus, however, changes everything. Those deficits now seem like chump change in the face of the Parliamentary Budget Officers (PBO) April 30 forecast of a $252.1-billion deficit in 2020-21 a number that, given the spate of spending announcements since then, he now says is likely to prove very optimistic.

As a percentage of the economy, even the optimistic number would be the highest on record. And that doesnt include the provinces, which have also seen their expenditures balloon. All told, a National Bank Financial report this week estimated that combined federal and provincial deficits could reach a staggering $350 billion, which represents about 20 per cent of gross domestic product.

If theres any good news, its that the massive increase in government spending that weve witnessed since the start of this pandemic will (hopefully) be temporary. Yes, COVID-19 has exposed critical holes in our health-care system, long-term care facilities and supply of critical goods that will require long-term expenditures in order to address. But the vast majority of the spending the financial support for workers who have lost their jobs and companies that have lost their revenue streams can easily come to an end once the health threat subsides.

Thats not to say that it is inevitable, though. We have already heard calls for the government to transform the Canada Emergency Response Benefit into a universal basic income program, for the state to use this crisis as an opportunity to replace fossil fuels with green energy pick your pet cause and chances are that someone is using the coronavirus as an excuse to push it.

But the Liberals must resist these calls, because the fact is that we will not be able to afford any of it. We wont even be able to afford any of the programs, like universal pharmacare, that Parliament was considering at the beginning of the year.

The Liberals justified their deficit spending before the pandemic by citing Canadas relatively good debt-to-GDP ratio, the amount of government debt relative to the size of the economy. Yet the PBO estimates that the national debt will hit $962 billion this year, up from $685 billion in 2018, and could easily top $1 trillion thats a one with 12 zeroes the year after.

Meanwhile, Statistics Canada released a flash estimate last month, which suggested that real GDP shrank nine per cent in March. The PBOs scenario estimates that real GDP will decline by 12 per cent this year, which would be four times worse than the worst year since we started keeping records in 1961.

Divide those two numbers and we could be looking at a debt-to-GDP ratio of nearly 50 per cent by the end of the year. This, however, would not be unprecedented: it stood at a whopping 66.6 per cent in 1995.

That was when Prime Minister Jean Chrtien and Finance Minister Paul Martin launched an aggressive effort to balance the budget that still makes conservatives jealous. They did so not by massively increasing taxes, but by cutting federal spending by 14 per cent between 1995 and 1998. Thanks to these austerity measures, the economy prospered, growing between four and five per cent a year between 1997 and 2000. Accordingly, our debt-to-GDP ratio dropped to 29 per cent by 2009.

Barring a sudden end to their minority government, when the current crisis abates, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Finance Minister Bill Morneau will face a similar situation. It has always seemed somewhat paradoxical that Chrtien and his American counterpart, President Bill Clinton, were able to balance their budgets in the 90s, while their conservative successors watched them balloon once again. Yet centre-left governments often find it easier to drastically reduce spending, because people tend to believe that they are doing it out of necessity, rather than ideology, and therefore are more inclined to give them a pass.

Will this current crop of Liberals follow in the footsteps of their predecessors and do what needs to be done to stabilize this countrys finances, retaining the prosperity that sustains our way of life and preserving it for future generations? We certainly hope so, but their own recent history is cause for concern.

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NP View: Will these Liberals be willing to do what Chrtien and Martin did? - National Post

Is it the Beginning of the End for the Neo-Liberal Era? – NewsClick

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Danzig

Representational Image.

Across the world, people are jostling with many ideas during the present COVID-19 pandemic. Some of their major concerns are: What will happen once the pandemic is over? Will things return to normal? Will the system continue to function as it did before the pandemic or will there be a radical shift in the socio-economic and political discourse? All of these concerns are being addressed by different people, differently. That is bound to happen because the socio-economic background that we all come from induces us to think differently.

In an interesting article titled The neo-liberal era is ending, what comes next, Rutger Bregman writes: There are those who say this pandemic shouldnt be politicised. That doing so is tantamount to basking in self-righteousness. Like the religious hardliner shouting its the wrath of God, or the populist scaremongering about the Chinese virus, or the trend-watcher predicting were finally entering a new era of love, mindfulness, and free money for all. There are also those who say now is precisely the time to speak out. That the decisions being made at this moment will have ramifications far into the future. Or, as Obamas chief of staff put it after Lehman Brothers fell in 2008: You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.

But the silver lining is that changes are immanent and imminent. Crisis, be it economic, like the 2008 financial melt down or the present pandemic, which is morphing into an integrated crisis encompassing health and economics, sprouts a new beginning within the system. We will have to wait and see how the present pandemic will induce such a beginning, and make it happen with all our efforts.

The economic paradigm professed and advocated throughout the world, from federal governments to provincial, and even to city governments, was the neo-liberal laissez faire model. Minimum government and maximum governance was the dictum of rule. A whole bunch of bureaucrats from the Indian bureaucracy were sent to such schools across the world to become ardent supporters of this model.

One of the foremost fallouts of this model has been the complete unsustainability of the system. The 2008 crisis led to the development of the ideas of sustainable development goals. The 17 SDGs, out of which nine goals directly are to address inequity in the system and the society at large, have not been able to address core issues. During a discussion in UN Habitat III at Quito on the SDGs, John Closs, the executive director of the Habitat, kept stressing on the idea that one has to go back to the basics of planning. The free market economy, among other ideas, will not make the system more sustainable, but will increase the vulnerability of the cities and the people.

The present pandemic has further exposed the un-sustainability of the system. According to CMIE data, 27 million youth in the age group between 20-30 years have lost jobs in India and the unemployment rate is almost 27%. In the United Kingdom, according to the British central bank, England is on the eve of the largest recession since the year 1709. In the US, 17 million people applied for economic impact payments over the space of three weeks. In the 2008 financial melt down, it took two whole years for the country to reach even half that number. This explains the widespread impact that the pandemic is having across the world, its people, economies and their livelihoods.

The drive towards privatisation has been exposed during the present pandemic. The private health infrastructure was hardly seen across the globe as mitigating the crisis due to COVID-19. Spain and a few other nations had to nationalise their health care system. Even in India, public health institutions and the states that rely more on them were able to tackle the crisis for the moment. The vibrant Gujarat model that had a crumbled health infrastructure faltered badly. In such a scenario where governments were not seen as investors, nation states across the globe have infused an economic stimulus in their economies.

The five G20 countries with the largest COVID-19 stimulus programmes are:

1. United States: $2.3 trillion (11% of GDP)2. Germany: $189.3 billion (4.9% of GDP)3. China: $169.7 billion (1.2% of GDP)4. Canada: $145.4 billion (8.4% of GDP)5. Australia: $133.5 billion (9.7% of GDP)

Does it mean that the role of the nation state has once again been reinforced as a prime investor and that the neo-liberal era is at the beginning of its end?

Look at the Indian story. Instead of following the trend of infusing liquidity into the market and giving cash to the people to buy goods, the stimulus packages announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman were nothing but a big fraud committed by the PM and the FM in order to cast a veneer over their blunder rather than accept their failure.

The demand in the economy has fallen massively owing to the lockdown. Daily wagers and even the salaried earners who have been laid off, are in no position to buy. The middle classes are also confined to their homes and are not buying items except for alcohol and food. The hospitality, entertainment and transport sectors are closed.

The basic premise of the stimulus of awarding loans to the entrepreneurs and other sections has just not taken off, for the simple reason that there is no security in the economy. Even if loans are taken, there is no guarantee that they will be paid back. Moreover, it is down to the delinquency of the buyer and for that the purchasing power of the buyer must be enhanced. Instead, the government has harped on facilitating loans, which are not going to take off.

Many economists, including those who are not from the Left, have argued for a Keynesian pump in the economy to ensure that demand gets generated. However, the government chose a different path. Why? Some of them are of the opinion that it is the gibberish mindset of the leader of the government, which was initially felt during demonetisation, and another such round happened during the lockdown which was followed by the stimulus package. However, Prabhat Patnaik makes a distinction between the two decisions. Demonetisation could have been a foolish idea, but the present package which does not infuse currency in the market to create demand, thereby increasing the fiscal deficit, is actually linked to credit ratings by the globalised financial capital. The Modi government does not want to annoy foreign capital by increasing the fiscal deficit in the fear that it will fly off. However, the reality is that the global financial capital is moving out and what is required are more regulations.

In such a scenario, where the government is committed to appease corporates by even allowing for the dilution of the labour laws, its legitimacy comes under question. In order to distract from the real issue of its failure to provide any relief to its people, the government is harping on greater authoritarianism and spreading the communal virus to legitimise its presence.

Whether it is the beginning of the end of the neoliberal era would be quite premature to say, at least in the Indian context!

The author is former Deputy Mayor of Shimla. The views are personal.

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Is it the Beginning of the End for the Neo-Liberal Era? - NewsClick

Intro to Mathematics For Liberal-arts At The Large Sky Arts Council Of Wilson, Michigan – NewsDay

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Danzig

One among the arts schools within the country was one of the earliest from the Midwest to provide continuing education courses for art students, art teachers, and skilled artists.

Artwork Institute of Michigan gave their Wilson College faculty members the chance to design the industry has an on-line program that has been broadly accepted from the business. One of the applications is Intro to Mathematics for Liberal Arts. This class will offer a newcomers introduction into learning the arts and math.

Students will profit from representation. They will be introduced into an on-line course which empowers pupils to interact with fellow pupils and professors via conversation, on line journals, and also chat rooms.

Students will learn about linear equations, likelihood theory, algebra, and probability and they will get hands on experience as a result of the practice of graphing utilizing information. After finishing the class, pupils are going to have the ability to solve quadratic equations and also will soon be prepared to complete calculus.

It has been said that the statistics of the Manhattan Art Institute are based on superstition. It follows that one of many greatest worth of the art school is demonstrating and demonstrating reality. The data for buy custom essays Liberal Arts section is really a curriculum that gives factual information that will provide them with the ability apply it and to comprehend data to students.

A student will be educated to select one of two themes you will be in theory and the other will likely probably be in implemented math. Students will probably be taught how to apply statistics and the https://ctl.yale.edu/using-technology/online-learning way they employ it. One other crucial area of the program could be exactly to decide on the chances of this research being negative or positive and the selection of research topics.

The Huge Sky Arts Council of Wilson, Michigan is Currently a member of This National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD). NASAD performs to be sure the safety of all students and teachers. The faculty will also offer certification plans to art educators from all areas of education.

It will provide them with practical skills which they can use within the actual life, although the Introduction to Mathematics for Liberal Arts are not only going to give students a fundamental understanding of the arts and statistics. Students will be educated how to learn and rate, and also just how to read, the way to produce advice.

The utilization of stats will undoubtedly probably be properly used across the plan of the app, and pupils will work through practical issues. While a number of these math will be used care of to their own with their educators, the arts will possess them researching their abilities and thoughts.

As a way to choose the class, the scholar has to be a dynamic player in the major Sky Arts Council. Will be awarded for some class that offer their individual viewpoints and innovative capabilities together with class education.

Being a real member of the massive Sky Arts Council is totally free and there is no expense to the university scholar. By finding out with others who are also interested in this particular subject, pupils will learn they might otherwise have overlooked on.

The arts colleges in their state of Michigan http://www.essay-company.com/ have been profitable in offering a comprehensive level. The problems at many schools seeing math now are actually becoming a thing of their past together using all the coming of mathematics for liberal arts in the Wilson College of Arts Council.

Do you have a coronavirus story? You can email us on:news@alphamedia.co.zw

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Intro to Mathematics For Liberal-arts At The Large Sky Arts Council Of Wilson, Michigan - NewsDay

Inside ultra-luxurious disaster survival kits where super-rich can pay 4k for night vision goggles and posh – The Sun

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Danzig

PREPPERS have been infamous for their tin foil hat theories and apocalyptic paranoia since time immemorial.

But now that a terrifying pandemic is our daily reality, being prepared for the worst doesn't seem so silly after all and wealthy celebs are buying into the idea with super-stylish survival kits.

Those used to leading lives of luxury want to make sure they can get through doomsday in style.

That's why there's now a whole industry catering to mega-rich stars worried about the apocalypse.

For a few thousand quid, you can get night vision goggles that come in a bag monogrammed with your own initials.

Kim Kardashian shared a selfie of herself with a survival kit back in February, writing "I travel prepared".

And billionaires worried about civilisation breaking down are currently snapping up five-star nuclear blast-proof bunkers fitted with wine cellars and swimming pools.

But even lowly millionaires might be more inclined to take survivalism seriously after their Beverly Hills homes burned in wildfires and their New York penthouses have been shuttered in lockdown.

Here's a look at the luxury survival kits offering the great and good a stylish solution for getting through armageddon.

For those seeking Kardashian-endorsed survival glamour, look no further than Judy.

Created by Simon Huck, a celebrity PR whiz, Judy is a survival kit company whose products have cropped up in the Instagram accounts of the Kardashians.

The firm offers a range of kits that have been flying off the shelves since the start of the pandemic.

The emergency Judy packs are designed in bright orange and range in price from 49 to 204.

Designed to help one person survive for 24 hours, the company's smallest kit is called The Starter (49).

The bum bag contains a first aid kit, a poncho, a water pouch, a blanket, a phone charger, a whistle, glow sticks, and nutrition bars.

But for those feeling more flush, they can get The Mover a big rucksack containing everything in The Starter, plus extras like a dust mask, biohazard bag, and of course hand sanitiser.

"The Starter and the Mover sold out in the first three weeks they went on sale," Huck told The Times.

"A lot of millennials bought Judys for their parents."

But if you're looking to stylishly survive with your loved ones, you can splash out on The Safe for 204.

Designed to support four people for 72 hours, the big box of survival goodies has everything included in The Mover, plus candles, a hand-cranked radio, and waterproof matches.

"The foundations of all emergency kits are food, water and first aid," Huck added.

Having the foundations of a survival kit is one thing having the most suped up kit money can buy is another.

For a mere 4,116, you can get yourself The Prepster Ultra Advanced Fireproof Emergency Bag.

As the name suggests, the bag is made with a special flame-retardant material used in firefighting suits.

And it can be monogrammed with your initials so you don't mix it up with anyone else's four-grand survival kit when the apocalypse comes.

Each bag, made by Preppi, contains practical necessities like a Garmin satellite messenger and SOS locator beacon, a night vision scope, a solar panel, and an emergency charging kit.

It also holds a water purifier, a Leatherman black carbon steel multitool, and a comprehensive first aid kit.

But it also affords its well-healed owners a few luxuries including premium chocolate and a poker set.

Preppi says the Prepster Ultra Advanced provides "ample luxe comforts" for two people that will sustain nutrition, hydration, power, and communication.

Everything you could ever need, really, for when the aliens invade.

If the apocalypse turns out to be zombies rather than aliens, one company has you covered, provided you're in the US.

OpticsPlanet put together its specialist ZERO kit Zombie Extermination, Research and Operations for those determined to make it through doomsday.

For just 16,207, the company will ship you everything you need to fend off the flesh-eating undead and the equipment to find a cure.

"When the undead hordes rise from their shallow graves to wreak havoc on all decent civilisation, you'll need to both fight back (Extermination), and find a cure (Research)," OpticsPlanet says.

The pricey kit includes a zombie knife, a thermal imaging camera, and gun attachments like shotgun torches and red dot sites to spruce up your personal arsenal.

It also includes a "Battle Mug" which, as well as being an indestructible drinking vessel, doubles up as a blunt-force weapon.

But what really sets the ZERO kit apart is its inclusion of lab equipment so you can pass time in the apocalypse working on a cure for the zombie virus.

It comes with a microscope, pipettes and beakers to aid your world-saving research efforts assuming you have any idea what you're doing.

For those who aren't looking for a fight, there's now a huge industry of luxurious survival shelters for the uber-wealthy.

A far cry from the dingy Anderson Shelters of the Blitz, billionaires are now snapping up subterranean luxury bunkers that boast swimming pools, tram systems, and even wine cellars.

Some, like the Oppidum in the Czech Republic, will even include a spa for their billionaire buyers but they're going fast.

Despite costing at least $1.5million, all of the units in a converted nuclear missile silo at the Survival Condo in Kansas have already sold out.

"Your father or grandfather's bunker was not very comfortable," Robert Vicino, the CEO of high-end shelter company Vivos, told CNN.

"They were grey. They were metal, like a ship or something military. And the truth is mankind cannot survive long-term in such a Spartan, bleak environment."

Vivos XPoint bunkers in South Dakota are made from repurposed military munitions depots costing up to 160,000 and could one day be home to 5,000 survivalists.

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The firm also offers a "modern day Noah's Ark", in a former Cold War-era ammunition storage facility in Germany.

This particular shelter includes its own tram network to transport residents to the bunker's restaurants, cinema and games rooms.

"We have all the comforts of home, but also the comforts that you expect when you leave your home," Robert added.

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Inside ultra-luxurious disaster survival kits where super-rich can pay 4k for night vision goggles and posh - The Sun

Else Blangsted, Who Fled the Nazis and Found a Hollywood Ending, Dies at 99 – The New York Times

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Danzig

Else Blangsted, who fled Nazi Germany as a teenager believing she had given birth to a stillborn child, then gradually built a career as a leading music editor on Hollywood films, died on May 1 in Los Angeles. She was 99.

Her death was confirmed by her cousin Deborah Oppenheimer, an Oscar-winning producer.

For over 30 years, Ms. Blangsted played a major part in shaping how movie music was heard, through her work on features like The Color Purple, Tootsie and On Golden Pond.

She broke down film scripts to provide detailed instructions showing composers where, in dialogue or action, to place parts of their scores, and for exactly how long. She was also the composers representative through the recording sessions.

The information that came from her was crucial, Dave Grusin, the Oscar-winning composer who was Ms. Blangsteds collaborator on Tootsie and many other films, said in an interview. I knew what I was doing was working if she said I was on the right track.

But music editing is an unsung profession. Music editors do not receive Academy Awards, as film and sound editors do. When Mr. Grusin won an Oscar for his score for The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), Ms. Blangsted, his editor on the film, went unrecognized.

Her only major industry honor was the 2006 life achievement award from the Motion Picture Sound Editors, an industry group. In written remarks read at the ceremony, Robert Redford, who directed two of the films Ms. Blangsted worked on, Milagro and Ordinary People, said she had the mind of an artist and the soul of a saint.

But even as Ms. Blangsted had firmly established her reputation as a creative and outspoken partner to composers, the story of her child was about to enter a new chapter.

Else Siegel was born on May 22, 1920, in Wrzburg, Germany. Her father, Siegmund, was a horse trader, and her mother, Lilly (Oppenheimer) Siegel, was a homemaker, with whom Else had a difficult relationship. In a profile in The New Yorker in 1988, she said her mother subjected her to a life of misdemeanors, punishments and a lack of forgiveness.

When she was 15, she began dating Eric Seelig, then, 24, and soon after became pregnant. She told no one. Soon after, with the Nuremberg Laws restricting where Jews like her could attend school, her family sent her to a Jewish boarding school in Switzerland. It was September of 1936.

By January 1937, when she was seven months pregnant, the tightness of her corset was causing her to faint. Desperate and ashamed, she tried to kill herself by lying on a snowy hill near the school, hoping to freeze to death.

She was found hours later, her lower legs frostbitten. Her secret was out.

In early March, she went into labor. They used chloroform in those days, and I passed out and came to and I must have said, Is it a boy or a girl? and they put the mask back on, she said when she was interviewed for a documentary, Looking for Else (2007).

Later, I demanded: Where is the baby? I need somebody to take the milk.

There is no baby, a nurse told her. The baby is dead.

Else thought she had killed her baby by keeping the corset too tight. But her family, who was ashamed of her behavior and fearful of Nazi repression, lied to her and sent the baby girl to a nursery where a German-Swiss couple adopted her.

Knowing nothing of the deception, Else returned to Wrzburg and in August boarded a luxury liner for New York City. After arriving alone, she headed to Los Angeles, where a sponsor family put her in touch with a local rabbi, who found her work as a maid and, later, as a nanny for Warner LeRoy, the son of the prolific director and producer Mervyn LeRoy.

At 17, she had made her Hollywood connection, but it was, at best, a modest one. Mervyn LeRoy was married to Doris Warner, a daughter of Harry Warner, one of the founders of Warner Brothers studio. After a year as a nanny, Else found work at Warner Brothers; in shoe and pants factories and as a seamstress at Warner Brothers.

But she was lonely. She wrote to Eric, who was living in Argentina, and asked that he marry her. In 1940, they wed, and had a daughter, Erica Seelig, four years later. They eventually divorced.

Her jobs continued: She was a wardrobe woman, helping actresses look their best in their costumes, an actress, and a waxer, who protected film emulsions. In 1960, she was hired as a music editor at a postproduction house; her only credentials were being able to read music and play the piano and guitar. That led to work at Paramount and Columbia.

Her reputation was building. Her importance to me was not only her portfolio, but her charisma, her sense of authority, her humility and her survivalism, said Van Dyke Parks, the musician and composer who wrote the music with Perry Botkin Jr., for the 1978 comic western, Goin South, starring and directed by Jack Nicholson.

Then one day in 1984, she got a call from an aunt who read an ad in Aufbau, a journal for German-speaking Jews. Her daughter was not only alive, but wanted to meet her. She went by Lily Kopitopoulos, was 47 and living in Switzerland.

Ms. Blangsted tracked down her number and called.

This is your Mama, she said, according to the article in The New Yorker. Forgive me. The nurse told me you were dead.

When they finally met, Ms. Blangsted said in Looking for Else, It was the end of drama, the end of shame, the end of accusations, the end of migraines.

Their reunion included trips to each others homes and several years in which Ms. Blangsted moved to Switzerland to be near Ms. Kopitopoulos. They drifted apart after about 20 years, during which one of Ms. Kopitopouloss sons, Sandy, directed Looking for Else, with Daniel Maurer.

In addition to her daughters and grandson, Ms. Blangsted is survived by another grandson, and two great-grandsons. She married Folmar Blangsted, the Danish-born film editor of A Star is Born (1954) in 1960; he died in 1982.

Ms. Blangsted, a witty person known for her frequent laughter, had many actor friends including Lee J. Cobb, Gregory Peck, James Cromwell and Mr. Moore. She met Mr. Moore, the star and composer of Six Weeks (1982), when he was already working with a music editor. The director, Tony Bill, wanted him to meet Ms. Blangsted.

After watching the film together, she recalled in a 2011 profile of her in Patch, a local news website: I said to him, You have two-and-a-half minutes to make up your mind that I will be your music editor. I went away. Came back and he nodded his head, very definitely.

They remained friends until 2002, when, as he lay dying, she called to read him Dickens over the phone.

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Else Blangsted, Who Fled the Nazis and Found a Hollywood Ending, Dies at 99 - The New York Times

Far More Valuable Than a Stockpile of Food and Money – Investment U

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Danzig

Financial Freedom

By Joel Salatin

Originally posted May 19, 2020 on Manward Press

Editors Note: Exciting news Joels latest book is available for pre-order! Called Beyond Labels, the book confronts the biggest issues in Americas food supply and shows how easy it can be to take charge of your own health one bite at a time. The ideas, evidence and takeaways from this book have the power to reshape Americas declining health. Click here to pre-order today.

I remember like yesterday the conversations and conundrums surrounding Y2K. Pundits were all over the map, from Nothing will happen to Were going to be living in caves and whittling cooking utensils with pocketknives.

Sorting out the proper response occupied hours of reading, seeking, praying and late-night discussions.

Back in Y2K, the issue was internet failure, grid failure, microchip failure. It was a technology malfunction that would bring the world crashing down to something resembling the 1940s.

Today, the issue is not really COVID-19; its a complete collapse of what some call the Everything Bubble.

We all follow certain thinkers who earn our respect because they have a track record of good decisions. One of my guys says the pandemic enabled governments that were bankrupt to blame something else for economic collapse. Its the perfect scapegoat.

Whether it was contrived or not, it certainly bailed out our spendthrift politicians from having to own their financial chaos.

Most wise people realize by now that the pandemics issue is not sickness; its money.

It begs the question If by December were in postapocalyptic times, what will you do?

Too Late

Last week I spent an hour on the phone with two bright, middle-aged couples who were looking for the proper survival response to a cultural cataclysm.

The husbands in both of these couples were ex-military and believed things would be dire over the next few years. Their question: What is our best avenue to create security for our families during cultural chaos and collapse?

Steeped in survival lore, they looked first at hermit mountain man strategies.

The word survivalist conjures up the thought of a lone existence sequestered in a cave or cabin in a remote wilderness living on edible wild plants and backwoods cunning. Deadfall traps, cordage made from sinew and clothes made from buckskin this life certainly has an appeal, especially for introverts or people who have been abused and hold a strong distrust of neighbors.

The problem with this scenario is that it requires massive amounts of self-reliance skills. You dont just step out of your computer job and know how to set a deadfall trap to successfully kill a rabbit.

And you have to figure out where youre going to go to survive. People who create survival podcasts and YouTube presentations eat, drink and sleep survival techniques. And they do it for a long time.

If you wait for things to start collapsing before you head for the hills, youre too late. Youll never learn the skills fast enough to survive.

If this is your option, you have to do it now, way ahead of the collapse. But almost no one is willing to do that. Were all enamored by the skills these survival gurus have, but few of us are willing to spend the years building to that mastery. For a lot of reasons, this survival trajectory is simply not practical.

Whats the other option?

Invest in Connections

Its on the opposite end of the spectrum, what I call communal survivalism.

In that scenario, you invest in relationships. Ive always said Id like to be Amish without the costume. If you surround yourself with an eclectic blend of expertise, youll collectively have the knowledge and skills to weather the chaos.

That is something you can do without actually jumping off a cliff. It will take time, to be sure, but it can be cultivated while youre still enjoying the benefits of a quasi-functional culture.

Im not talking about a cult; Im talking about something far more basic than an insurance policy and far more long-lived than a stockpile of food.

Interestingly, in the last couple of years Ive helped several people find property near us as a bunker for hard times. Some moved here and some didnt. They realized that our farm, with its low carbon footprint and our team that can grow, build, and fix things, is as secure as just about anything. And so they bought land nearby that we manage for them while securing a haven in case of ground zero.

I have no idea if the monetary system will collapse or if savings will be wiped out. I do know that realtors report skyrocketing interest in rural properties right now. But nobody is listing because of uncertainty.

The properties listed prior to the pandemic are on the market and not being taken off. But no new ones are coming on yet. They will once the dust settles a bit.

Building Your Fort

In times of uncertainty, people head to the fort. In todays world, the fort is not a physical stockade; its a knowledge and skill stockade. The physical part is simply a land base with resources to support the people occupying the property.

Goals for preparing, then, revolve around land, expertise and as much independence as possible.

When people start talking about not being able to get electricity or not being able to buy gasoline and grain, they must realize that in such a postapocalyptic world, we wont be techno cherry-picking. Well be eating herbivores and growing seed-saved vegetables, and society will be in complete breakdown.

Thats an extreme scenario and probably wont happen.

But hiccups in supermarket supplies are quite likely. Hiccups in your 401(k) are certainly possible. Restrictions to commerce, nationalization of business and other key disruptions could happen.

The pandemic has awakened a new sense of urgency for personal security in uncertain times.

But rather than casting off from society and heading for the hills, I suggest a more prudent and practical course of action is to develop a relationship with a place and an outfit, or community, that exhibits principles of resilience. That investment might yield a better return.

Like what youre reading? Let us know your thoughts here.

Joel Salatin calls himself a Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer. With a room full of debate trophies from high school and college days, 12 published books, and a thriving multigenerational family farm, he draws on a lifetime of food, farming and fantasy to entertain and inspire audiences around the world. Hes as comfortable moving cows in a pasture as he is addressing Fortune 500 CEOs at a Wall Street business conference. A fierce defender of personal freedom and choice, he brings an unorthodox viewpoint that readers of Manward Digest cant get enough of.

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Far More Valuable Than a Stockpile of Food and Money - Investment U

UWMadison astrophysicists donate computing resources to aid COVID-19 research | WIPAC – Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center – University of…

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Danzig

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is possibly the worlds strangest telescope. Located at the South Pole, it is made up of over 5,000 basketball-sized light sensors embedded in a cubic kilometer of ice. Thousands of computers back at the University of WisconsinMadison, IceCubes lead institution, scour data from those sensors for evidence of elusive subatomic particles that originate in outer space: astrophysical neutrinos.

Now, some of these computing resources are being used to simulate something differentprotein folding of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19. How proteins fold into three-dimensional shapes is difficult to predict but has big effects on biological interactions, like those between a virus and its host. These simulations will help researchers understand how the virus compromises human immune systems and reproduces.

While IceCube remains operational, its home research center at UWMadison, the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center, WIPAC, is temporarily providing some of its available computing resources to Folding@home. This citizen-science distributed-computing project crowdsources computationally intensive tasks like simulating protein dynamics. Distributed computing projects like Folding@home combine the power of thousands of individual computers contributed by their owners to process different portions of data simultaneously, significantly speeding up their results.

It just feels right to make the effort to share computing resources from fields as far removed from virology as neutrino astrophysics, says Kael Hanson, director of WIPAC. Were pleased to aid in research that could ultimately lead everyone impacted by the current COVID-19 situation out of the crisis.

Folding@home started in 1999, but it has recently seen a surge in interest as people seek ways to help researchers understand COVID-19. They include Benedikt Riedel, global computing coordinator for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and computing manager at WIPAC.

Riedel had been in touch with his scientific computing collaborators since mid-March to discuss how they could help the COVID-19 effort. When he heard from them about Folding@home, Riedel suggested supporting it to WIPAC administration, who then received approval from IceCubes primary funder, the National Science Foundation. Since the donated computing cycles primarily come from already available resources, they do not significantly hamper WIPAC or IceCube projects.

These are unprecedented times, and I feel like we should do what we can to help other researchers, says Riedel. So far it is going well, and I am hoping that we can continue to donate even after this ends.

IceCubes computing resources consist of roughly 5,000 traditional computers using CPUs (central processing units) and 300 computers using GPUs (graphical processing units), each containing massive numbers of simple parallel computing elements. As a member of the Open Science Grida national distributed-computing partnership that provides high-throughput computing resources to science projects around the countryIceCube had already been sharing computing resources for other projects. Dozens of other Open Science Grid members are also contributing their resources to COVID-19 research.

WIPAC is able to contribute to Folding@home thanks to software that manages the allocation of the centers diverse computing resources to different users competing computational tasks. Specifically, WIPAC uses tools from the HTCondor software suite that was developed and is maintained by UWMadisons Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC) to effectively manage the computational workload.

The long partnership between WIPAC and CHTC is founded on a commitment to share resources and knowledge, says Miron Livny, director of the CHTC. It is gratifying to see this partnership contributing to the computing challenge of protein folding of SARS-CoV-2.

The first protein-folding simulations received high priority and will continue to be executed along with the day-in-day-out IceCube workload, which is continually submitted to the system. You can follow WIPACs contributions to Folding@home here.

Contact:

press@icecube.wisc.edu

608-515-3831

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UWMadison astrophysicists donate computing resources to aid COVID-19 research | WIPAC - Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center - University of...

Mystery of a massive neutron star merger in Milky Way explained by new astrophysics theory – Firstpost

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Danzig

FP TrendingMay 20, 2020 13:15:44 IST

Scientists had announced earlier this year that they had detected a second gravitational wave signal fromacollision of two neutron stars. The event, which wasdubbed GW190425,resulted inthe two massive neutron stars mergingto form a binary objectlargerthan any other binary neutron star system formed by this processobserved till date.

The combined mass was 3.4 times the mass of the sun, according to the researchers. The team of astrophysicistsargue that they might have anexplanationfor the formation of the massive binary star.

An artist's illustration of merging neutron stars. The rippling space-time grid represents gravitational waves that travel out from the collision, while the narrow beams show the bursts of gamma rays that are shot out just seconds after the gravitational waves. Image: NSf/LIGO/Sonoma State Uni/A Simonnet

The theory for its formation was put forward by researchers from Australias ARC Center of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), led by Isobel Romero-Shaw from Monash University. The researchers claim to have explained both the high mass of the binaryobject andwhysimilar systems arent observedusing traditional radio astronomy techniques.

As per Romero-Shaw, GW190425 was formed through a process called unstable case BB mass transfer. Itbeginswith a neutron star that has a stellar partner a helium (He) star with a carbon-oxygen (CO) core. If the helium part of the star expands enoughthat it engulfs the neutron star, the helium cloud of the neutron star ends uppulling its stellar partnercloser beforethe clouddissipates and a binary object is formed from the two objects merging.

"The carbon-oxygen core of the star then explodes in a supernova and collapses to a neutron star, Romero explains. Thebinary neutron stars that form in this manner can be significantly more massive than those that are observed through radio waves, he adds.

Find latest and upcoming tech gadgets online on Tech2 Gadgets. Get technology news, gadgets reviews & ratings. Popular gadgets including laptop, tablet and mobile specifications, features, prices, comparison.

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Mystery of a massive neutron star merger in Milky Way explained by new astrophysics theory - Firstpost

Astronomers discover a massive rotating disk galaxy in the early universe – UC Santa Cruz

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Danzig

Most massive disk galaxies like our Milky Way formed gradually, reaching their large mass relatively late in the 13.8 billion-year history of the universe. But the discovery by an international team of astronomers of a massive rotating disk galaxy, seen when the universe was only ten percent of its current age, challenges the traditional models of galaxy formation.

The discovery, reported May 20 in Nature, was made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Galaxy DLA0817g, nicknamed the Wolfe Disk after the late astronomer Arthur M. Wolfe, is the most distant rotating disk galaxy ever observed. The unparalleled power of ALMA made it possible to see this galaxy spinning at 170 miles (272 kilometers) per second, similar to our Milky Way.

Its properties are astonishingly similar to our own galaxy, despite being only 1.5 billion years old, said coauthor J. Xavier Prochaska, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz.

While previous studies hinted at the existence of these early rotating gas-rich disk galaxies, thanks to ALMA we now have unambiguous evidence that they occur as early as 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, said lead author Marcel Neeleman of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany

How did the Wolfe Disk form?

The discovery of the Wolfe Disk provides a challenge for many galaxy formation simulations, which predict that massive galaxies at this point in the evolution of the cosmos grew through many mergers of smaller galaxies and hot clumps of gas.

Most galaxies that we find early in the universe look like train wrecks because they underwent consistent and often violent merging, explained Neeleman. These hot mergers make it difficult to form well-ordered, cold, rotating disks like we observe in our present universe.

In most galaxy formation scenarios, galaxies only start to show a well-formed disk around 6 billion years after the Big Bang. The fact that the astronomers found such a disk galaxy when the universe was only ten percent of its current age indicates that other growth processes must have dominated.

We think the Wolfe Disk has grown primarily through the steady accretion of cold gas, Prochaska said. Still, one of the questions that remains is how to assemble such a large gas mass while maintaining a relatively stable, rotating disk.

Star formation

The team also used the National Science Foundations Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to learn more about star formation in the Wolfe Disk. In radio wavelengths, ALMA looked at the galaxys movements and mass of atomic gas and dust, while the VLA measured the amount of molecular massthe fuel for star formation. Hubble observed massive stars in ultraviolet light.

The star formation rate in the Wolfe Disk is at least ten times higher than in our own galaxy, Prochaska said. It must be one of the most productive disk galaxies in the early universe.

A normal galaxy

The Wolfe Disk was first discovered by ALMA in 2017. Neeleman and his team found the galaxy when they examined the light from a more distant quasar. The light from the quasar was absorbed as it passed through a massive reservoir of hydrogen gas surrounding the galaxy, which is how it revealed itself. Rather than looking for direct light from extremely bright, but more rare galaxies, astronomers used this absorption method to find fainter and more normal galaxies in the early universe.

The fact that we found the Wolfe Disk using this method tells us that it belongs to the normal population of galaxies present at early times, said Neeleman. When our newest observations with ALMA surprisingly showed that it is rotating, we realized that early rotating disk galaxies are not as rare as we thought and that there should be a lot more of them out there.

In addition to Neeleman and Prochaska, the coauthors of the paper include Nissim Kanekar at the National Center for Radio Astrophysics in Pune, India, and Mark Rafelski at the Space Telescope Science Institute.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA construction and operations are led by ESO on behalf of its Member States; by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), on behalf of North America; and by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) on behalf of East Asia.

Astronomers discover a massive rotating disk galaxy in the early universe - UC Santa Cruz

Formation of pair of baby planets around their parent star captured in remarkable first – Firstpost

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Danzig

FP TrendingMay 20, 2020 14:13:43 IST

Astronomersat the W M Keck Observatory in Hawaii have captured the first-ever images a pair of giant planets being born around their parent star PDS 70. They achieve the feat using anovel infrared pyramid wavefront sensor, whichoffers adaptive optics (AO) correction in astrophysics detectors.

The team of researchers published their findings in The Astronomical Journal.

PDS 70 is a star located roughly 370 light-years from us, in the constellation of Centaurus. The star, which is technically classified as aK7-type pre-main sequence star, is a young star at5.4million years old, and alsogoes by'V* V1032 Cen' and 'IRAS 14050-4109'.

An artist's impression of the PDS 70 star system. The two planets are seen clearing a gap in the protoplanetary disk from which they were born. (Not to scale). Image credit: W M Keck Observatory

A report in Phys.orgnotes that PDS 70 is the first known multi-planetary systemin which astronomers have witnessed planet formation in action. The first direct image of PDS 70b (one ofthe newbornplanets orbiting PDS 70), was taken in 2018, the report adds. It was followed by images of the second planet PDS 70c in 2019.

There was some confusion when the two protoplanets were first photographed, lead author of the study, Dr Jason Wang, toldTechExplorist.

"Planet embryos form from a disk of dust and gas surrounding a newborn star. This circumstellar material accretes onto the protoplanet, creating a kind of smokescreen that makes it difficult to differentiate the dusty, gaseous disk from the developing planet in an image, he added.

An infrared image of the newborn planet PDS 70 b and its circumplanetary disc. The size of the solar system given for comparison. Image: V Christiaens et al./ESO

For further clarification, the researchers developed a method to disentangle the image signals from the circumstellar disk and the protoplanets. Subsequently, they were able to take pictures of the baby planets and confirm their existence.

The researchers knew the disks shape should be an asymmetrical ring around the star whereas a planet should be a single point in the image, Wang said.

"So even if a planet appears to sit on top of the disk, which is the case with PDS 70c, based on our knowledge of how the disk looks throughout the whole image, we can infer how bright the disk should be at the location of the protoplanet and remove the disk signal. All thats leftover is the planets emission, he explained.

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Formation of pair of baby planets around their parent star captured in remarkable first - Firstpost

This Bionic Eye Is Better Than a Real One, Scientists Say – Futurism

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Danzig

Researchers say theyve created a proof-of-concept bionic eye that could surpass the sensitivity of a human one.

In the future, we can use this for better vision prostheses and humanoid robotics, researcher Zhiyong Fan, at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, told Science News.

The eye, as detailed in a paper published in the prestigious journal Nature today, is in essence a three dimensional artificial retina that features a highly dense array of extremely light-sensitive nanowires.

The team, led by Fan, lined a curved aluminum oxide membrane with tiny sensors made of perovskite, a light-sensitive material thats been used in solar cells.

Wires that mimic the brains visual cortex relay the visual information gathered by these sensors to a computer for processing.

The nanowires are so sensitive they could surpass the optical wavelength range of the human eye, allowing it to respond to 800 nanometer wavelengths, the threshold between visual light and infrared radiation.

That means it could see things in the dark when the human eye can no longer keep up.

A human user of the artificial eye will gain night vision capability, Fan told Inverse.

The researchers also claim the eye can react to changes in light faster than a human one, allowing it to adjust to changing conditions in a fraction of the time.

Each square centimeter of the artificial retina can hold about 460 million nanosize sensors, dwarfing the estimated 10 million cells in the human retina. This suggests that it could surpass the visual fidelity of the human eye.

Fan told Inverse that we have not demonstrated the full potential in terms of resolution at this moment, promising that eventually a user of our artificial eye will be able to see smaller objects and further distance.

Other researchers who were not involved in the project pointed out that plenty of work still has to be done to eventually be able to connect it to the human visual system, as Scientific American reports.

But some are hopeful.

I think in about 10 years, we should see some very tangible practical applications of these bionic eyes, Hongrui Jiang, an electrical engineer at the University of WisconsinMadison who was not involved in the research, told Scientific American.

READ MORE: A new artificial eye mimics and may outperform human eyes [Science News]

More on bionic eyes: SCIENTISTS PLUGGED A BIONIC EYE DIRECTLY INTO THIS WOMANS BRAIN

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This Bionic Eye Is Better Than a Real One, Scientists Say - Futurism

Biggest influencers in big data in Q1 2020: The top companies and individuals to follow – Verdict

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Danzig

GlobalData research has found the top big data influencers based on their performance and engagement online. Using research from GlobalDatas Influencer platform, Verdict has named ten of the most influential people in big data on Twitter during Q1 2020.

Ronald Van Loon is the director of Advertisement, which offers data consultancy, technology, and data engineering and automation solutions to its partners and clients. A known thought leader, Ronald believes that big data, AI, autonomous cars, analytics, and more are some technology areas that will be filling up with new job opportunities.

Twitter followers: 217,826

GlobalData influencer score: 100

Ganapathi Pulipaka is a chief data scientist at Accenture. He has developed a number of deep learning and machine learning programs and published them on GitHub and medium.com.

Twitter followers: 87,390

GlobalData influencer score: 96

Kirk Borne is an advisor and principal data scientist at Booz Allen Hamilton. An astrophysicist and big data advisor, Kirk specialises in data mining, data analytics, machine learning, and computational astrophysics, among others.

Kirk has engaged in several NASA projects, including its astronomy centre and its space science data operations for more than 20 years.

Twitter followers: 258,119

GlobalData influencer score: 86

Dr Iain Brown is a big data consultant and the head of data science for SAS UK&I. Over the past decade he has worked across a number of sectors, providing thought leadership on the topics of risk, AI and machine learning.

Twitter followers: 123,490

GlobalData influencer score: 68

Spiros Margaris is a venture capitalist and founder of Margaris Ventures. He is the first international influencer to have achieved The Triple Crown ranking.

Twitter followers: 96,901

GlobalData influencer score: 62

Yves Mulkers is a data strategist and the founder of 7wData, a digital publication that covers all types of news on data. As a data integration specialist, Yves focuses on data organisation and data architecture capabilities of an organisation. He provides technical expertise and vision on analytics, business intelligence, and data related issues.

Twitter followers: 97,174

GlobalData influencer score: 59

Mike Quindazzi is a digital alliances sales leader at PWC. He helps drive business results by offering consulting on emerging technologies such as drones, 3D printing, blockchain, IoT, big data, and robotics, among others. He has worked with brands such as Microsoft, SAP, Amazon, and Oracle, and has helped shape innovative approaches to solving their problems. Quindazzi is of the opinion that big data keeps getting bigger.

Twitter followers: 151,521

GlobalData influencer score: 58

Evan Kirstel is a top B2B tech influencer and co-creator of eVira Health, which offers consulting, product development, and business development strategies for the health tech community. He has worked with eminent brands such as IBM, Intel, and AT&T, among others to maximise their visibility and scale across 5G, blockchain, AI, cloud, IoT, AR, VR, big data, and analytics.

Twitter followers: 285,163

GlobalData influencer score: 57

Marcus Borba is the creator of Borba Consulting, an advisory and research firm which solves complex data challenges of companies through tools such as analytics, big data, and business intelligence. Regarded as one of the top data science and business intelligence influencers, Marcus has also contributed to publications such as SAPs and Microstrategys eBook.

Twitter followers: 38,723

GlobalData influencer score: 54

Michael Fisher is a tech evangelist and senior systems analyst at the Whitcraft Group. He is regarded as a top influencer of technologies such as cyber security, IoT, 5G, VR, and fintech, and specialises in areas such as cyber security, consulting, and infrastructure architecture, among others.

Twitter followers: 81,637

GlobalData influencer score: 53

GlobalData is this websites parent business intelligence company.

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Biggest influencers in big data in Q1 2020: The top companies and individuals to follow - Verdict

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