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Bren Brown on how to get through a pandemic: ‘We have to be intentional about choosing kindness and generosity’ – Yahoo News

Posted on April 29, 2020 by Danzig

Bren Brown shares advice for navigating the current crisis. (Photo: Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for Netflix)

Bren Brown, the research professor with the celebrity following and Netflix documentary, is using her new podcast to help people navigate uncomfortable moments in life including the one the world is facing right now.

Unlocking Us, which launched in March, was not planned with a pandemic in mind, but Brown, made famous for her incredibly popular TED talk The Power of Vulnerability, is now using the platform to talk to experts about topics that are impacting listeners in COVID-19 isolation, including loneliness, suffering, grief and empathy.

In an interview with the New York Times, Brown shared more about her thoughts on what the public can look to learn, and perhaps even gain, from this collective coronavirus experience. A crisis highlights all of our fault lines, she said in the interview. We can pretend that we have nothing to learn, or we can take this opportunity to own the truth and make a better future for ourselves and others.

Brown peppered the interview with other pearls of wisdom. Get curious about what youre feeling and introspective about where that comes from, she said while also making sure to note that in these times, we need to allow ourselves some grace and compassion.

A lot of us already felt like we were half-a**ing it with work and half-a**ing it with the kids now were like quarter-a**ing it. We need empathy around that rather than perfectionism.

Brown says that in order to get through this difficult time it will be important for us to note the scale of the trauma were all facing. Its not just what we can see or are personally affected by, she tells the New York Times. We need to take a step back and look at the loneliness, and the joblessness, and the racial disparities, so that we can understand how to help different communities that were disproportionately affected.

Brown, who played herself in the Amy Poehler movie Wine Country, also spoke about the individual impacts of this moment and how people are all dealing with it on a personal level. If there was ever a time to avoid working your stuff out on other people, this is it, she said.

Story continues

As for how shes been managing, Brown says she is conscious about how much coronavirus news she reads or watches. If she finds herself taking in too much, I start going down this rabbit hole, and then I get frustrated and scared and snap at my husband, she said.

Her most salient advice for getting through this time seems to be the most simple: We have to be intentional about choosing kindness and generosity.

For the latest coronavirus news and updates, follow along at https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus. According to experts, people over 60 and those who are immunocompromised continue to be the most at risk. If you have questions, please reference the CDCs and WHOs resource guides.

COVID-19 and the crisis in memory and compassion – rabble.ca

Posted on April 29, 2020 by Danzig

"Mattresses full of urine; wheelchairs they were sitting in were drenched with urine. I believe they were sitting in urine and feces for about a day or so When I got into my car, I still had the stench of urine and feces up my nose. I broke down and cried." (City News, April 8, 2020.)

"The stench here is appalling ... Many patients are so helpless they cannot be toilet trained. The floors are scrubbed as often as three times a day by an overworked staff but, since they are wooden and absorbent, no amount of cleansing will remove the odors of 70 years." (Toronto Daily Star, 1960.)

"Several patients, they were bedridden with a wet, wet diaper and calling out incessantly for help It was just --it was mayhem." (CBC, April 5, 2020.)

"This is what it looked like. This is what it sounded like. But how can I tell you about the way it smelled?" (Geraldo Rivera. 1972.)

2020 will go down as the year of COVID-19. The global pandemic has turned cities into ghost towns and toilet paper into a fetishized commodity. As most of us try to settle into the new reality of social isolation complete with digitally Zooming into work and visits with family and friends, a horror is once again revealing itself to the nation: the warehousing of people in long-term institutional or congregative facilities.

The four quotes at the beginning of this article are describing what life is like in long-term congregative facilities. Two are describing the reality of institutional life under a COVID-19 outbreak, while the other two are describing the everyday institutional life for people with intellectual and or developmental disabilities from the 1960s and 1970s. The similarities are striking, but the details should not be surprising.

Nearly half of all COVID-19 deaths in Canada are linked to the outbreaks in long-term congregative facilities. The Lynn Valley Care Centre in North Vancouver, B.C, the Herron long-term care facility in Dorval, Quebec, and Pinecrest Seniors Home in Bobcaygeon, Ontario have all been lead stories in the media in April 2020.

The current debate over what went wrong has connected this crisis to neoliberal politics that have caused the rise of austerity measures, and privatization and deregulation. It's all about the rights of corporations over citizens; profits over people. The effects this has had on long-term care facilities is the reduction of government inspections, understaffing, an emphasis on part-time, low-wage work with few benefits, and low staff-to-resident ratios. There has been a call for increasing the wages for support staff and workers, and to stop workers from working at more than a single workplace. Support staff and workers are essential workers, and they should receive higher wages with benefits. However, putting more money into long-term congregated care facilities is not the answer. While neoliberal politics are responsible for the deterioration of the social safety net, neoliberalism is not responsible for why long-term congregative facilities make up nearlyhalf of all deaths and represent the epicentrefor most outbreaks.

What went wrong was the decision to provide institutional care. Public or private, institutional care leaves people vulnerable to neglect and abuse, and, as COVID-19 is demonstrating, vulnerable to viruses on a massive scale. Institutions are not determined by how many people live in them, but rather are characterized by the following:

Lack of autonomy --little to no choice.

Housing connected to health care and personal assistance.

Congregating statistically similar people together.

Living with strangers.

Isolated from families and wider community.

Distrust of staff.

Restraining routines.

Poor quality of food.

Delays in getting help.

Little to no privacy.

Inadequate facilities.

Long, boring days.

Not a home.

Abuse and neglect.

Once you remove someone's rights and autonomy, you start to see them as somehow less-than human. It then becomes easier to adapt to a culture of abuse and neglect. Key to the disciplinary power of institutions is the culture of fear amongst the residents, and the culture of silence between staff who despite not perpetrating abuse remainsilent and tell no one.

In 2018, CBCexamined six years of statistics from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and found that on average six seniors were being abused every day in 2016. A 2018 World Health Organization report examining nine studies from six countries found that while only oneout of 24 cases of abuse are reported, twoout of threestaff admitted perpetrating abuse over a one-year period.

While neoliberalism began in the 1980s, the institutional model first emerged in the late 1800s and is deeply connected to the ideology and history of colonialism and eugenics. Significant in this history and forgotten in our collective memory is the institutionalization of children and adults with intellectual disabilities. These institutions were located right across Canada and were government run. Families were not given a choice as to whether to keep their children and loved ones at home with no supports or hand them over to the institutions where they were assured they would get an education and the full supports they needed. For the most part, they were cut off from their children and loved ones and lost decision making abilities and visitation rights while their children were victimized by the institutional culture of abuse and neglect.

In 1960, Pierre Berton wrote an expos published in the Toronto Daily Star that documents the Huronia Regional Centre in Orillia, Ontario, which was at the time called the Ontario Hospital School. This institution was run by the provincial government. The second quote at the beginning of this article is from that story. The centre first opened in 1876 and was an institute for children and adults with intellectual disabilities. At the time of Berton's story there were 2,808residents living there. Former residents described experiences of"being kept in caged cots, having all their teeth removed for safety reasons and being held upside down with their heads under running water as punishment for not eating"and "routine beatings, degrading treatment and the frequent use of psychotropic drugs to manage behaviour."

The Woodlands Institute was run by the provincial government of British Columbia and opened in 1878. It was located on the Fraser River in New Westminster, a mere 30-minute drive from Vancouver. Trapped inside with windows too high to look out of, children and adults with intellectual disabilities were victims of not only isolation but also abuse. In 2001, a provincial government report identified horrific physical and sexual abuse as well as neglect. Documented abuse included "kicking, smacking, slapping, striking, restraining, isolating, grabbing by the hair or limbs, dragging verbal abuse including swearing, bullying and belittling sexual abuse included assault, intercourse and in the result, injuries and in a few cases, a pregnancy."

Woodlands closed its doors in 1996, marking the end of large-scale institutional care in British Columbia. The Huronia Regional Centrewas closed in 2009, and Ontario ended its large-scale institutionalization policy the same year. There were class action lawsuits and provincial apologies. Despite the closures and apologies, the industrial warehousing complex that saw 3,000 children with intellectual and or developmental disabilities living in Woodlands has now been replaced with new institutional models called centers, homes, group homes, intentional communitiesand facilities.

Today, there are approximately 30,000 adults with intellectual disabilities living in long-term congregated facilities in Canada while there are approximately 425,000 seniors. A further 10,000 adults with intellectual disabilities under the age of 65 are living in hospitals and seniors long-term congregated facilities. Everyone in a facility that is founded on the institutional model is vulnerable to abuse, neglectandpandemic.

It isn't just seniors'facilities that have seen COVID-19 outbreaks, neglectand abuse. Participation House in Markham Ontario receives government funding and is a 42-bed group home for adults with intellectual disabilities. As of April 15, 2020, 37 residents and at least 13 staff have tested positive.Two residents, Martin Frogley and Patty Baird, have both died from the outbreak. Make no mistake, this is not a home.

The fourth quote that started this article was from a Geraldo Rivera documentary from 1972 exposing the infamous Willowbrook Institute in New Jersey. The following headline captures what was happening in New Jersey in April 2020:

"Death Toll Climbs Inside Group Homes for the Developmentally Delayed: Advocates say that because many of the [intellectually] disabled live in congregate residential settings with underlying health conditions, they are exponentially more likely to get sick and die from the novel coronavirus"

Pierre Berton closed his expose on the Huronia centrewith the following warning:

"But Orillia's real problem is one of public neglect. It is easier to appropriate funds for spectacular public projects such as highways and airports than for living space for tiny tots with [disabilities]. Do not blame the present Department of Health for Orillia's condition. Blame yourself.

Remember this: After Hitler fell, and the horrors of the slave camps were exposed, many Germans excused themselves because they said they did not know what went on behind those walls; no one had told them. Well, you have been told about Orillia. It is, of course, no Belsen. In many respects it is an up-to-date institution with a dedicated staff fighting an uphill battle against despairing conditions. But should fire break out in one of those ancient buildings and dozens of small bodies be found next morning in the ashes, do not say that you did not know what it was like behind those plaster walls, or underneath those peeling wooden ceilings."

We have been warned again about the horrors of warehousing people in facilities that are founded on an institutional model. Only this time the warning occurred not because of a fire or an old dilapidated building, but over COVID-19. You have heard the history, you have heard the stories, and now you know. But will you remember? We need to say no to all institutions and work with our governments and our community partners to create inclusive communities where everyone, young or old, receives the supports they need and can live a life with dignity and free from fears of abuse, neglector deadly outbreaks.

What does this newer rights based model of long-term care look like? That will be discussed in the next article.

Fiona Whittington-Walsh, PhD, teachesat Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia. She is president of the board of directors for Inclusion BC.

Image: PublicDomainPictures/Pixabay

COVID-19 and the crisis in memory and compassion - rabble.ca

Calling attention to #StanfordEarthSoWhite – The Stanford Daily

Posted on April 29, 2020 by Danzig

A meme called Earth Systems Starter Pack was posted on the Stanford Facebook meme page in November 2019. Gathering more than 300 likes and 100 comments, the meme included photos such as the Patagonia logo, Teva sandals and Nalgene water bottles, all attributes of a typical white environmentalist who grew up backpacking in national parks and wears high-end outdoor clothing brands. Outdoor recreation has historically been dominated by white people because of cost barriers, privilege and cultural norms.

Throughout the United States and at Stanford, environmental fields have historically been dominated by white students, and studies show little improvement in diversity over the past 40 years. The white-dominated outdoorsy environmentalist identity translates to an equally white-dominated study of environmental sciences. Even though students of color are not absent from environmental spaces at Stanford, white students have the loudest voices and the largest presence. White students can feel confident that they belong in these spaces while students of color might feel like visitors or even intruders.

I am a Chinese-American earth systems student and Ive never owned a Patagonia quarter-zip or a pair of Teva sandals. My parents never took me skiing because they had never skied before, and it was very expensive. I didnt see any aspects of my own identity in the meme. Though it was meant to be humorous, the meme highlighted exactly how marginalized students can feel left out of a mainstream white environmentalist culture.

The worlds climate problems are continually intensifying, and we are rapidly heading toward a point of no return. Without diversity in the environmental sciences, valuable knowledge is missing to help solve one of the greatest challenges of our time. Researchers Douglas Medin and Carol Lee argue that diversity improves scientific development, citing examples where indigenous knowledge about sustainability have broadened scientific theories. This lack of diversity is therefore detrimental to creativity and innovation in a field that has huge problems to solve.

Furthermore, the lack of diversity in the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences (SE3) that affects a sense of belonging for undergraduates of color has broader implications for academia and professional careers in the environmental sciences. Stanford boasts a relatively diverse student body, yet students of color continue to feel marginalized in environmental spaces.

In a widely-read opinion piece titled, #StanfordEarthSoWhite, earth systems alumna Whitney Francis 19 critiqued the mainstream, predominantly white environmentalist culture the School of Earth embodies. Francis graduated in 2019, and I was able to interview her and hear her reflections on the Earth Systems program.

Francis is black and Japanese and served as a student advisor for the earth systems program in 2018-19. Despite being an involved member of the community, she felt out of place.

Even as I got to be more comfortable with earth systems, that feeling of being other, or feeling like my experience was different from everyone elses was always still with me no matter how close I got to everyone, she said.

I kept hearing these frustrations voiced over and over by my peers, so I wanted to see the statistics for myself. The overwhelming whiteness weve experienced was validated by the data dashboard from Stanfords initiative for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access in a Learning Environment (IDEAL).

The numbers dont lie.

Of the three undergraduate schools, SE3 has the largest percentage of undergraduate white students by far, with 50%, almost double the percentage in the School of Engineering and 10% more than the School of Humanities and Sciences.

The biggest discrepancy in undergraduate representation in the SE3 is the Asian population. Asians make up 23% of the overall undergraduate student body, while making up only 6% of the SE3. Only five of the 88 undergrad students in the SE3 are full Asian across four different majors. To know that I single-handedly represent 20% of all Asian undergrads in the SE3 is remarkable, to say the least. Its moments like these that have made me question if I belong here, why people like me arent in this field and if this is even a space where I can succeed.

Students sense of belonging is also impacted by the identities of the faculty advisors and mentors around them. SE3 undergrads of color often struggle to find faculty they share a background with because the faculty statistics in the SE3 are even more homogenous than the undergrad ones are: 83% of SE3 faculty are white, compared to 67% across the University.

Faculty diversity is so important because if you dont see yourself reflected in a space, that sends a very clear message that you dont belong, or that your perspective is not valued, said Francis.

Without diverse faculty, teaching perspectives are also narrowed and important histories can be overlooked. Coterminal masters earth systems student Talia Trepte criticized the earth systems curriculum thusly:

You cant talk about sustainable fashion without going back and acknowledging that the foundation of our cotton was slavery. I dont think you can look at the national parks system without realizing a lot of those places used to have indigenous communities in them that were driven out. Its impossible to talk about island ecologies without talking about how U.S. imperialism erased and changed indigenous cultures and enforced militarism. Those conversations dont happen nearly as much in Earth Systems as some of us wish they did.

Among students of color, there has been a consistent demand for curriculums that better acknowledge the role of people of color and indigenous peoples in environmental movements,and these perspectives would be better represented with more faculty of color.

There has been great work done by environmental justice student groups such as Students for a Sustainable Stanford (SSS) and the Environmental Justice Working Group, but an environmental justice curriculum has yet to be adopted into formal curriculum within the SE3.

The disproportionately white numbers dont stop at Stanford. A lack of diversity in environmental fields is common all over the US. According to data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), 68.7% of environmental science degrees were awarded to white students in 2017, compared with 41.5% in the biological and physical sciences.

Upon graduation, students of color face an even whiter professional landscape. Environmental diversity working group Green 2.0 found that almost three-quarters of full time staff working for US environmental NGOs as well as86% of senior staff were white in a 2017 survey . All these factors can make it discouraging for students to continue pursuing environmental careers.

Faculty perspectives

Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, an assistant professor in earth systems science, spoke to me about her path to academia. Wong-Parodi completed her undergraduate, masters and Ph.D. degrees at UC Berkeley. Reflecting on her journey as a Chinese-American woman, she acknowledged the many female mentors that have supported and inspired her.

If I didnt have those female mentors, I dont think I would be here, to be honest, she said. I needed those role models in my life to show me that I could do it, and to encourage me.

Wong-Parodi stressed that it is important for students to have mentors they can relate to and feel comfortable with.

There is a huge power dynamic between faculty and students, she said. If that person seems less approachable based on their gender or place of privilege or affluence, I would imagine its even more difficult to feel secure about your place in academia.

Why is #StanfordEarthSoWhite?

For first-generation college students or children of immigrants, engineering is a more attractive path, said Lupe Carrillo, director of the SE3 Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA). There are very clear careers to pursue, whereas the earth and environmental sciences havent created as much of a narrative around that. Although there are many fulfilling career opportunities in environmental fields, they may offer less financial security than engineering or medicine, which can deter students who dont have as much of a financial safety net.

Another culprit for #StanfordEarthSoWhite is the history and culture of environmental movements. People of color have been intentionally excluded from environmental spaces throughout history. The creation of U.S. national parks forced indigenous peoples off their own lands and reserved them for only people with wealth and privilege. Environmental racism, the disproportional impact of environmental hazards upon people of color, is real and can impact the relationships people have with the outdoors and nature.

Additionally, there are huge barriers to outdoor recreation, such as time, money, equipment and knowledge. If those activities arent something someone grows up doing, entering those spaces can be uncomfortable and intimidating.

So what has the School of Earth been doing to address these issues? The answer is not much.

In 2010, Jerry Harris, a geophysics professor and the only black faculty member in the entire SE3, founded the OMA. Harris is now an emeritus professor, leaving the SE3 with zero active black faculty.

The main focus of the office has been to diversify the pipeline into academia, according to Carrillo. The OMA sponsors the Summer Undergraduate Research in Geoscience and Engineering (SURGE) program, which invites low-income, minority students from other universities to participate in summer research with SE3 Ph.D. students and professors. The OMA has done little to address diversity at the undergraduate level until recently, with the launch of a new Stanford Earth celebrates series, which kicked off Black History Month by highlighting black scholars in environmental fields.

In terms of reaching the undergrad community, we have that focus now, said Carrillo.

However, some students are doubtful, such as Francis, whose challenging experiences have given her a less optimistic mindset.

I have a lot of mistrust in the School of Earth and the administrators because at the end of the day I havent seen them putting their best foot forward and putting in an effort to begin to go in the right direction, she said.

An earth systems starter pack for students of color?

Students of color in earth systems come from so many backgrounds, it would be impossible to encompass their identities in a single meme. However, there are unique shared experiences for students of color in earth systems that can be highlighted.

Many students shared that their inspiration to study earth systems came from their own cultural backgrounds and identities, such as Mirielle Vargas, a Latina earth systems undergraduate from the southern Californian town of Santa Paula.

Its pretty farmworker heavy, a Latino community because of that, that was what I knew about environmental science, Vargas said. You know, like pollution, air pollution, pesticides, runoff, agriculture and ways to make it better, like sustainable agriculture.

Her inspiration to study Earth Systems stems more from a concern for environmental justice than conservation or hard science.

Trepte was also inspired by their upbringing to study earth systems. Trepte is black, native Hawaiian and white and grew up going to the ocean almost every day in Hawaii.

Without that cultural tie, I dont know if I would have been drawn in the same way to an interdisciplinary program like earth systems, they said.

Trepte and Vargas also share the hesitation they experience from their own families, who arent totally on board with them studying environmental science.

Vargas jokes, Every time I come home, my family is like, Y qu vas a hacer? [What are you going to do?], questioning her career prospects. Trepte has also fielded similar questions from their family, some of whom are skeptical of climate change.

In reality, there are a wide array of career opportunities in the earth sciences, but the path is not as streamlined as in other STEM fields. The skills learned in earth sciences can be applied to a number of fields such as research, scientific consulting, data analysis, nonprofits and policy work. Its the SE3s responsibility to help students understand the career possibilities in environmental fields and encourage more students to enter.

Moving forward

The SE3 needs to increase its efforts of creating intentional spaces for students of color to thrive in and feel welcomed. We need improved recruitment efforts for students of color, more faculty of color and introduction of formal environmental justice curriculum in SE3 majors.

Thats not to say there isnt anything being done.

I love the intention of earth systems, the earth systems program all around, Trepte said. Everyone there is really trying to foster a joyful community that tackles really tough issues. I do think that sometimes intentions not enough.

Even if intentions are present, they need to translate into actions. Diversity is important to scientific progress in any field, but especially in environmental sciences. Its a problem at Stanford and beyond.

The lack of diversity is such a loss for Earth Systems and the School of Earth because there are so many ways how our communities [of color] are resilient in the face of environmental injustice and climate change, Francis said.

When diversity is lost, so are important perspectives and approaches that could be key to solving our climate problems.

Contact Jessica Mi at jess3965 at stanford.edu.

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Excerpt from:

Calling attention to #StanfordEarthSoWhite - The Stanford Daily

COVID-19 Must Radicalize Doctors — We Cannot Continue to Work on the Political Periphery – Truthout

Posted on April 29, 2020 by Danzig

Medical education is known for its stress, with high rates of mental illness and burnout often attributable to a toxic work environment even in the absence of a pandemic. But I firmly believe those in the medical profession arent destined to become lifeless drones. They have the agency to change these conditions. Medicine and political activism can go hand-in-hand.

For instance, in my limited spare time in medical school, I co-organized a meeting between Occupy Wall Street and Tahrir Square activists from the 2011 Egyptian revolutionary movement. This meeting was intended to culminate in a joint protest and mutual nonviolent arrest in Zuccotti Park in 2011, as well as a trip to Cairo. The project failed for multiple reasons, including poor management as well as likely behind-the-scenes interference involving the Egyptian government. But nevertheless, it was a unique experience for a medical student.

I have often hidden my political beliefs from my co-workers throughout medical school and residency. Mainstream media may depict universities as hotbeds of radical thought. But in my experience, elite U.S. colleges tend to reward centrism and moderation over confrontation.

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Whether intentional or unintentional, medical school socializes doctors into incrementalism. Beliefs that change comes slowly and compromise is necessary fit comfortably with the upper-middle-class lifestyles we obtain after residency. Any deep recognition of structural inequalities or class privilege would ultimately lead us to implicate ourselves in that system of privilege.

Not all physicians fall victim to this mentality as witnessed in multiple organizations, such as Physicians for a National Health Program, Physicians for Human Rights, Physicians for Social Responsibility, etc. But many in our profession value comfort over ambition.

In the COVID-19 era, however, class privilege will no longer keep us safe. The pandemic will affect all socioeconomic strata, including millions in traditionally affluent developed countries. Unprepared hospital systems are overwhelmed by a disease that spares none. Health care providers are no longer protected. Health profits are no longer protected.

Global economic depression will affect millions of skilled workers, including health care workers. Even highly lauded medical specialties are experiencing the politics of austerity, as layoffs and budget cuts are occurring for many nonessential but highly trained specialists in light of this crisis. A doctors career is no longer insulated from political realities.

COVID-19 may be a radicalizing moment for many health care workers. Doctors and nurses will witness longstanding structural inequalities in the U.S. health care system, as they are thrown into surge-capacity mass casualty events. Health care providers will become sickened patients themselves, suffering physical and psychological consequences for decades to come. In the next 12 months, I suspect every physician in the United States will witness at least one or two colleagues unnecessarily killed due to federal inaction on protective equipment.

Other lower-income front-line workers, such as respiratory therapists and nursing assistants, may suffer even more severe health consequences. Ironically, even though these front-line workers have even more face-to-face time with patients than physicians or nurses themselves, they have even less access to protective equipment.

Americans can laud health care workers on social media as heroes on the front lines. But regardless of virtue signaling, a large portion of the U.S. public still support politicians who mismanaged this disaster in the first place. We need to become more confrontational as a professional community. We cannot work as doctors without engaging the political systems that influence doctors. No longer can we remain on the periphery of these conversations, in technocratic or suburban bubbles.

Fortunately, physicians are generally held in high regard. We have a level of public trust that we can use to advocate for change. Perhaps if we are more politically active, our opinions will win over the Beltway pundits that dominate our media landscape.

It is time to hold elected leaders accountable, not only now, but at the polls in November as well. Trumps current administration has been a menace to COVID-19 prevention and treatment. His administrations inaction is responsible for a bulk of current COVID-19 deaths. He has openly ridiculed hospital requests for face masks, and he has transformed his bully pulpit into a pseudoscience platform. He is literally rationing hospital supplies and doling them out to his political supporters.

Medical professionals must also hold our professional communities accountable for electing these officials in the first place. Health administrators often regularly support profit motives over patient lives, so it would make sense that their political preferences reflect this profit motive. Hospital CEOs and physician leadership organizations should be shamed publicly if they financially support re-election campaigns for politicians who failed in their responses to COVID-19. It is important for investigative journalists to identify dark money donations from these leadership organizations. Additionally, physicians must also point fingers at themselves. Let us not forget that a substantial minority of physicians voted for Trump in 2016.

Political change also encompasses more than the presidency. Many state and district Republicans took steps behind the scenes to downplay the severity of the COVID-19 crisis, to impede access to medical treatment and to block essential stimulus payouts to ordinary Americans. We must hold these local officials accountable, in addition to our national congressional and presidential candidates.

But in reality, the potential for substantial political change may be too limited in our current political system. Regardless of good voices, both the Democratic and Republican Parties are often driven by corporate donations and opportunism.

It would be easy if party politics could solve all our problems. But the COVID-19 crisis partially reflects the failures of our institutions to provide a proper social safety net. To a significant degree, the current iteration of the Democratic Party also contributed to these budget cuts. While compromise is understandable, the COVID-19 crisis demands a safety net far more substantial than anything viable in our current political system.

Therefore, we must weigh whether to transcend our political comfort zone. We must consider the role of broad social movements for change including protest movements to achieve health care justice in the post-COVID-19 era.

Many experts predict future pandemics as inevitable, especially in an era of worsening climate disruption and habitat destruction. This will not be the only pandemic in our lifetime. Nor will it be the only pandemic-associated political fight in our lifetime. Medical interventions wont do that much for communities, especially if a medical crisis is accompanied by economic instability and shock doctrine special interests. Thus, physician participation in large social movements may become necessary to truly adhere to the Hippocratic Oath.

Physicians already serve as whistleblowers for high-risk COVID-19 groups. Doctors have led the fight for vulnerable incarcerated patients and immigrant detention patients. Nurses have publicly protested anti-quarantine marches funded by right-wing groups. We should think about how our individual actions could translate into larger collective action.

Imagine strategically targeted strikes of physicians and nurses in non-surge settings, if a hospitals administration was unwilling to meet the demands of their workers for personal protective equipment. Imagine groups of health care workers from each district permanently occupying their congressional offices in civil disobedience, if upcoming stimulus bills failed to adequately protect ordinary Americans. Imagine an increasing number of U.S. physicians and organizations supporting Medicare for All. (In case youre unaware, most health care lobbying groups that supposedly represent physicians oppose Medicare for All.)

Ultimately, it would not be surprising if physicians in the United States gravitated toward anti-austerity social movements. Anti-austerity protests serve as a vanguard to protect the social safety net around the world. They reveal and oppose entrenched power systems, such as the corporate administrators and special-interest lobbyists that dominate our health care systems. One can argue that the entire Sen. Bernie Sanders presidential campaign was a homegrown tribute to these anti-austerity movements.

I still encounter antipathy and distrust when I attempt to discuss protest movements with my doctor colleagues. But U.S. hospital administrators continue to cut provider jobs, occupational protections and hazard pay, even while in a disaster response scenario such as the COVID-19 pandemic. In this environment, protests may become increasingly appealing.

If weve learned anything from the last few months, it is that previously unquestioned political norms may change in a crisis. The whole discipline of pandemic prevention was previously a side hustle in D.C. politics, relegated to the same feeding frenzy pool as other federal contract requests. But it is now the forefront of major news headlines, for weeks straight.

Americans without public health training now take to Twitter to discuss the obscure math of flattening the curve. Trump now confesses to the press that there are benefits to universal health coverage. Emergency medicine previously had some of the most lifestyle-friendly hours of the specialties. But now, emergency room doctors are literally dying on the front lines of a war. Up is down, black is red. We now live in an alternate universe.

Although U.S. physicians are largely reared in comfort and privilege, we are now literally facing our own mortality, daily, at work. Our sense of moral injury will only intensify as the true death toll kicks in for all cities. If most U.S. cities resembled the scorched landscape of New York City, will we still regard Medicare for All as controversial? Will we still regard progressive political candidates as overly divisive? Will mass protests receive our mass support?

These are questions we must consider, if doctors want to transform their collective post-traumatic stress into a movement that can heal the country. Previous public health crises in U.S. history have often reached a boiling point. Environmental health issues in the 1970s, including the Superfund movement and the anti-nuclear movement, resulted in sit-ins and civil disobedience. Union fights have been a longstanding part of hospital politics for decades. AIDS activists went so far as to shut down the entire New York Stock Exchange in order to draw attention to the cost of antiretrovirals.

If doctors want to make a difference in the COVID-19 debate, we need to think at the same level of political intensity.

Excerpt from:

COVID-19 Must Radicalize Doctors -- We Cannot Continue to Work on the Political Periphery - Truthout

City of Angels Is a Worthy Successor to Penny Dreadful, With Key Differences – tor.com

Posted on April 29, 2020 by Danzig

The original Penny Dreadful and its new spiritual sequel, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels are fundamentally different projects, at least if the inaugural episode of the latter is any indication. There are definitely some through lines in the series obsessions: a macabre fascination with ecstatic religious praxis, a characterization of mankind as essentially venal and corrupt, and a desire to acknowledge the racist history of Anglo and American empire. But otherwise, the shows seem to mostly share a desire to communicate a deep love of the times and places in which they are set. Showrunner John Logans devotion to bringing 1891 London to glorious, operatic life seems similarly channeled, here, to the Los Angeles of 1938.

The differences between localities also means a difference in tone. The original Penny Dreadful is a somber, Gothic elegy. Its protagonists were plagued by inner turmoil expressed in quiet, contemplative tones (save for the few, delicious moments when Eva Green went full Eva Green). The shows color palette was full of grays, muted greens, and dark, woody browns. City of Angels, which premiered last night on Showtime, is more brooding than sombera classic noir. Its palette is the oversaturated whites and tans and yellows that feel both surreal and, somehow, exactly like the Los Angeles outside my window (I live right along the Arroyo Seco, where much of the action of the show takes place).

City of Angels focuses on the Vega family: mother Maria (Babel and The Strains Adriana Barraza) is a maid and worshiper of Mexican folk-goddess and psychopomp, Santa Muerte (Lorenza Izzo); middle son Tiago (Daniel Zovatto) has just been promoted to the first Chicano LAPD detective; eldest son Raul (CSI: Miamis Adam Rodriguez) is a cannery worker and the leader of a protest group trying to save the Vegas Arroyo Seco community. There are two younger Vega siblings, Mateo and Josefina (played by Jonathan Nieves and Jessica Garza, respectively), who are part of the main cast but dont yet figure heavily into the plot.

This focus on a single family is another departure from the original Penny Dreadful, which was obsessively focused on a found family of outcasts, exiles, and dissidents, most of whom were estranged from or actively trying to escape their families of origin. But that tonal shift is especially apt as this incarnation of Penny Dreadful is centered on the very corporeal, external oppression of communities of color rather than the tortured convolutions of individual white psyches. If the original was, to an extent, all about the horrors of isolation, City of Angels is about the violence and tensions that build as communities press up against malicious ideologies and business interests.

This first episode sets up many interconnected strands that dont yet come together. Tiago and his partner, Lewis Michener (Broadway legend Nathan Lane), investigate the murder of a wealthy, white evangelical family whose corpses have been carved and painted to look like icons of Santa Muerte. They also clash with Police Chief Vanderhoff (Star Trek: TNGs Brent Spiner) who worries that a white family seemingly murdered by non-white cultists will inflame racial tensions.

Raul attempts to stop Councilman Townsends (Mad Men alum and Orson Welles doppelgnger Michael Gladis) plans to bulldoze Arroyo Seco neighborhoods to build what will eventually become the Pasadena Freeway (yes, this is the plot of Who Framed Roger Rabbita familiar tentpole of Angeleno noir is transportation politics, or water politics, or both). Townsend is later approached by Richard Goss (Thomas Kretschmann), a Nazi spy who offers to make Townsend Mayor of Los Angeles in return for his allegiance to Hitler.

Rory Kinnear (the only returning cast member from the original series) is allowed to have his actual hairline this time around, though not allowed to use his actual accent in his role as Peter Craft, a seemingly kindly German physician whose public, affable endorsement of Nazism is the most chilling element in an episode that includes a heavy dose of supernatural body horror.

Hovering over all of this is the demonic Magda (Game of Thrones Natalie Dormer), the sister of Santa Muerte who wants to incite an all-consuming race war. She is an earthier, less ethereal being than her sister (who sports white robes, intense contact lenses, and an ornate crown thats half Mexica calendar, half Catholic reliquary). Magda, by contrast, stalks scenes of brutality and carnage wearing what looks like a black leather reinterpretation of Eva Greens wardrobe from the original show, whispering in the ears of hapless combatants, inciting them to further violence. She also adopts human form, taking on various incarnations: pretending to be an abused, Berlin-born housewife whose son is one of Crafts patients, as well as serving as Townsends magnetic, indefatigable secretary who arranges his meeting with Goss.

By the end of this first episode, the pieces have slid into place and the Vega family is torn apart as Tiago is forced to shoot a Magda-ensorceled Raul who, in the midst of an LAPD attack on Arroyo Seco protesters, begins indiscriminately murdering police officers. Brother has killed brother, and Magdas race war has begun.

Screenshot: Showtime

Where issues of race were a decidedly mixed bag in the original series, they are front and center here, and are handled with a great deal of care. John Logan has made sure to have Latinx writers, directors, and producers on the project which, thus far, seems to have the effect of keeping characters of color from serving as disposable bit players (as they often did in Penny Dreadful).

The subject matter itself also makes such erasure and relegation far less possible. In the original series, the racist foundation of Sir Malcolms colonial African explorations and Ethan Chandlers service in the American cavalry were addressed, but they were mostly treated as bits of backstory. Here, the oppression and murder of people of color for profit serves as the axis of the plot, in keeping with the setting: Los Angeles has had a long and awful history of destroying its indigenous and non-white communities.

There has been a recent move in prestige TV to address some of that history. The second season of AMCs The Terror focused on the internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during WWII, with the raid of the Japanese immigrant community on Terminal Island being a central moment. TNTs I Am The Night told a true(ish) crime story about black identity set against the backdrop of the 1965 Watts Uprising. So far, I am cautiously optimistic that City of Angels will avoid the pitfalls of its predecessor and join the recent season of HBOs Watchmen in bringing largely forgotten American atrocities to light.

Screenshot: Showtime

Late in the episode, there is an exchange between Maria Vega and the summoned apparition of Santa Muerte wherein the Vega matriarch begs for aid:

Santa Muerte: There is a prophecy that a time will come when nation will battle nation, when race will devour race, when brother will kill brother until not a soul is left.

Maria: And is that time now?

Santa Muerte: Who can say?

This feels like one of the cleverer nods to the shows unfortunate relevance to the present day. With fascism and bigotry (especially anti-Latinx bigotry) on the rise in the United States, Marias assumption that 1938 is the singular apocalyptic moment when hatred destroys humanity feels far more tenuous than it might have four years ago. There has been a lot of recent TV devoted to the legacy of Nazism. But unlike, say Amazon Primes Hunters, which contends that, post-WWII, Nazis hid in the shadows and needed to be ferreted out, or The Man in the High Castle, which imagines that our current world is the better, less horrific timeline that we must get back to, City of Angels tackles an important question head-on: how do we confront Nazism and white supremacy that sits in the open and asks to be given polite consideration?

Townsends Faustian bargain with Goss is the typical anti-Nazi stuff: the Third Reich skulks around the corners of American society, embarrassed or unwilling to show its face in the open. But in Crafts German-American Bund, we see a far more unsettling face of fascism. Craft, throughout the entire episode, never displays any behavior that is unsympathetic. He is kind to his wife (Piper Perabo) and their children. He is good to Maria, his maid. He resists the temptation to have an affair with his patients mother while still displaying a singular empathy for her bleak situation. Even when he dons Nazi regalia and marches while flying a swastika flag, he is offputtingly charming and thoughtful, and funny.

The scene reminds me of nothing so much as the Tomorrow Belongs to Me number from the 1972 film adaptation of Cabaret. The power of the fascist state and its state-sanctioned genocide is not in the violence that America loves to represent in war films when it rightly condemns Nazis. It lies instead in its seductive, aesthetically-pleasing, pastoral fantasies of recapturing a simpler past once again. In putting the disarmingly kind Craft at the center of its Nazi plotand especially in giving us nearly ten uninterrupted minutes painting him as a likable, compassionate manCity of Angels asks us to, momentarily, sympathize with its Nazi protagonistthe better to sicken and appall us when we understand what he is asking of his fellow Angelenos. It is essentially following the argument that literary critic Stanley Fish makes about Paradise Lost in his 1967 book, Surprised by Sin: you cannot understand the danger that the Devil poses if youre never drawn in by the temptation he embodiesMiltons Satan forces us to confront our own spiritual vulnerabilities. The fact that Craft pointedly ends his speech with the words America First delivers a disquieting gut punch to the audience.

It also seems as though one of the major themes of the series will explore how evil is aided by indifference. In the aforementioned conversation between Santa Muerte and Maria, the goddess refuses to help, saying that she is so choked by the agony of death that she has no heart to care for man. City of Angels imagines a world where active malice and despair is weighed against weariness and exhaustion. Evil flourishes because those who should oppose it can no longer muster the energy to fight. Its bleak, and it feels very pointed in this particular moment.

Screenshot: Showtime

When I saw the first episode of the original Penny Dreadful, the thing that impressed me most was how much its creators clearly loved the Victorian Gothic. They wanted, it seemed, to get things exactly right. City of Angels seems to have the same approach and attitude towards Los Angeles. Now, as a Chicanx lifelong Angeleno who teaches Victorian Gothic literature, it does seem like John Logan might be interested in narrowcasting directly to me. But even if you arent Tyler Dean, I think there is still quite a bit to love about the shows portrayal of L.A.

I mentioned its perfect color palette before, but the shows location scouting and cinematography is also great. John Conroys shots capture the Los Angeles river with its arcing bridges and stark, concrete basin, looking like nothing so much as a great, sun-bleached ribcage. The doomed Arroyo Seco bungalows are an invitingly shady bit of a forgotten Los Angeles, still visible if you squint at nearby neighborhoods like El Sereno or Franklin Hills. While Goss waxes grandiloquent about Albert Speers architectural overhaul of the Third Reich, there is an impressive Art Deco majesty to L.As City Hall and the Grand Park fountain, even if it is the site of Crafts pro-Nazi oration.

There are little details as well. Though we have only gotten a glimpse of Sister Molly (Halt and Catch Fires Kerry Bish), an evangelical proselytizer held in deep reverence by Tiago and Michesons murdered family, all of her iconography looks to be a perfect pastiche of Los Angeles own Depression-era prophet, Aimee Semple McPhereson. In the opening scene where Santa Muerte and Magda battle over the souls of mankind, there is a long tracking shot of Magda wandering through lettuce fieldsfor a moment, before they erupt into fiery chaos, the plants desiccate and whither. It feels like a subtle visual nod to the last shot of the series premiere of that other great (partially) Southern California-based, 1930s supernatural horror epic: HBOs Carnivle. One of that shows alums, the great Amy Madigan, is set to be a recurring character this season, so perhaps the nod is intentional.

***

All in all, if one can forgive the weirdly subpar CGI in the opening sequence, City of Angels looks to be a worthy companion to the original Penny Dreadful. It isnt a sequel. It likely wont scratch your Eva Green itch. But, thus far, it feels like a series crafted with the same love, attention to detail, and interest in unsettling, atmospheric horror as Logans earlier story. As a shameless stan of the previous series, Im both disappointed and relieved that it is staking out its own territory, so unrelated to the original. I desperately want more of the singular magic that was Eva Green/Vanessa Ives, and that stellar supporting case. But it also frees up City of Angels to be its own show and live outside the shadow of the original. Ill take what I can get where Penny Dreadful is concerned, and if the premiere is any indication, there will be plenty of reasons to stay tuned this season.

Tyler Dean is a professor of Victorian Gothic Literature. He holds a doctorate from the University of California Irvine and teaches at a handful of Southern California colleges. He is one half of theLincoln & Wellespodcast available on Apple Podcasts or through your favorite podcatcher. More of his writing can be found athis websiteand his fantastical bestiary can be found on Facebook at@presumptivebestiary.

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City of Angels Is a Worthy Successor to Penny Dreadful, With Key Differences - tor.com

The Top Five Voter Suppression Tactics – Rantt Media

Posted on April 29, 2020 by Danzig

Learn more about the top voter suppression methods that undermine democracy in the United States and help cement minority rule.

A voter ID warning outside the polling station of Ward 1 in Nashua, New Hampshire November 5, 2013 (MarkBuckawicki/Creative Commons)

Since the Voting Rights Act was essentially sidelined by the Supreme Court in 2013, states have increasingly attempted to institute laws that infringe on the rights of voters. More than half of state legislatures have passed bills that enshrine voter suppression tactics into law, targeting poor, minority voters and seeking to disenfranchise Americas youth. The prevalence of voter suppression tactics in the United States is one of several factors that led to it being ranked as a flawed democracy in The Democracy Index alongside countries like Japan and Israel.

While draconian tactics such as literacy tests and poll taxes may sound like voter suppression methods of the past, todays less than subtle versions of those same machinations have enabled minority rule in the United States for several decades.

Suppressing votes is a dirty bit of business that both Democrats and Republicans have engaged in throughout the history of American democracy. However, in recent years, its been a focus for the Republican party who have courted rural districts and sought to control state legislatures to enact a variety of voter suppression laws.

The system of government designed by the founding fathers has been commandeered to provide greater influence to a handful of rural states. In fact, five rural states have 50% more electoral votes and three times as many senators per resident than other states. Some argue this imbalance was intended to address sparsely populated areas of the American frontier, but its been hijacked by partisan politics and weaponized to deny some Americans their right to equal representation.

Here are the five ways votes are suppressed and elections are won despite the will of the people in the United States.

It helps to win elections if you can pick your voters instead of relying on them picking you. Gerrymandering allows candidates to essentially select voters more favorable to their policies through redistricting. By moving electoral boundaries, the party in power can choose demographics that are likely to favor their platform and isolate or cut out others.

This is done through two separate strategies called packing and cracking. Packing forces more voters into a district thats likely to be won by the opposing party, freeing up other districts to be more competitive. Cracking breaks up voters into multiple districts, dispersing their influence and watering down the vote for the opposing party.

While both parties have engaged in gerrymandering, Republicans do it more often. In fact, its a well-known cornerstone of their strategy called REDMAP (Redistricting Majority Project). This Republican effort targets control of state legislatures in order to draw maps more favorable to GOP candidates.

States where this is a problem: North Carolina, Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other GOP-controlled states have blatantly gerrymandered to such an extent that court decisions have forced maps to be redrawn through an independent redistricting commission. However, most of these rulings have been based on redistricting that specifically disenfranchises minority voters. States like Wisconsin that have tried to overturn partisan or politically gerrymandered districts have not yet found sympathy with the Supreme Court.

Its estimated that more than 6 million Americans have been disenfranchised by states that deny felons the right to vote. While some states only block voting for felons while they are incarcerated, 11 states take away a felons right to vote indefinitely.

Because of the massive inequality in rates of incarceration for minorities, denying felons the right to vote significantly impacts election fairness across the United States. Many states, recognizing the racial disparity of such laws, have recently restored felons rights to enable those convicted to vote immediately after release from prison.

States where this is a problem: In Florida, Kentucky, and Tennessee, nearly 20% of the African American population has experienced felon voter disenfranchisement. A ballot initiative in Florida to allow felons the right to vote passed in 2018, but was contested by the GOP. Currently, Florida only allows its 1.4 million felons to have voting rights restored if they pay all fines, fees, and penalties associated with their incarceration. Voting rights activists say Floridas stipulation is essentially a poll tax and violates the Voting Rights Act.

Suppressing the vote has many different flavors but perhaps the most popular is a whole pack of new voter ID laws. Currently, 34 states have some sort of voter identification requirements in place with 18 of those states requiring photo identification. Because they typically require a valid drivers license, military ID or state identification card, these laws disenfranchise poor, urban, elderly and minority voters who are less likely to hold government-issued forms of identification. Its estimated as many as 11% of the eligible voting population in the United States does not have an acceptable form of identification.

In addition to identification requirements, studies show minorities experience widespread intimidation tactics at the polls. Nearly 10% of Black and Hispanic voters reported they were falsely told they did not have proper identification at the polls compared to less than 5% of white voters.

States where this is a problem: The South has some of the strictest voter identification laws in the country with widespread accounts of voter intimidation in states like Georgia and Texas. There have also been states that attempted to curtail voter registration through a litany of restrictions. Then-Secretary of State Kris Kobach tried to institute proof of citizenship requirements in Kansas and in North Dakota state officials required voters to register with a street address, which disenfranchised large numbers of Native American voters.

After evidence emerged that many voting machines were vulnerable and accessible to hackers in the 2016 election, calls to ratchet up election security mounted. Most states have aging machines with flawed software that doesnt provide a verifiable paper trail. Data suggests disinformation campaigns on social media were also part of active measures by Russia to influence the election and designed to specifically target African American voters.

However, calls for increased election security and social media accountability have gone largely unanswered, leading to speculation that the failure to secure Americas elections from foreign influence is an intentional voter suppression tactic. The Republican-controlled Senate thus far has refused to take up a single bill to address election security or to allocate funding to states to shore up their cybersecurity. The partisan divide was further underscored earlier this year when GOP senators actively blocked two election security bills Democrats attempted to bring to the floor.

States where this is a problem: States like Florida, Arkansas, Kansas, Indiana, and Tennessee have received poor grades for election security due to a lack of paper trail, no post-election auditing, and voter registration systems that were easily breached. There are also long-standing issues in Georgia, where 127,000 votes went missing in the last election in black precincts all over the state.

The last line of defense in voter suppression is to sow chaos on election day. That can be accomplished through a variety of methods, but some of the most effective are closing polling places and purging voters from the rolls. Voter purges are a way of deleting voters from the rolls due to outdated, incomplete, duplicate, or illegible information. However, these purges are often conducted in a way that targets minority voters. As many as 17 million voters were purged from the rolls between 2016 and 2018, many of them in states with a long history of voter discrimination.

Closing polling places or restricting voting hours is another time-tested suppression tactic because it concentrates volume in densely populated areas and leads to long waits and frustration. Since the Voting Rights Act was undermined by the Supreme Court in 2013, more than a thousand polling locations, many of them in black southern communities, have closed. In Arizona 1 in 5 polling places have been closed in recent years while in Texas, its estimated as many as 1 in 10 polling places have been shuttered.

States where this is a problem: Voter turnout in states appears to directly correlate to the degree of voter suppression present. Some of the states that make it the most difficult to vote include Mississippi, Virginia, Tennessee, Indiana, and Kentucky.

Voter suppression is a collection of tactics and methods used to make it harder for certain segments of the population to vote. While the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed to overcome some of the barriers that prevented minorities from having equal representation in the United States, a Supreme Court decision invalidating certain aspects of the law has lead to a resurgence of voter suppression.

During the period of reconstruction after the Civil War, voter suppression was the first line of defense for many states that wanted to deny minority voters the rights theyd earned in the 15th Amendment. These methods, referred to as Jim Crow laws, were designed to discourage minorities from voting. Voter suppression in this era was so successful that until 1940, only 3% of eligible African American voters were registered to vote.

The Rantt Rundown

Despite booming urban centers, an embrace of progressive policies, and an increasingly diverse population, some parts of the United States still manage to elect politicians that do not represent the will of the people. Voter suppression tactics often target minorities and the disadvantaged in America and continue to hamper efforts to develop an engaged and enthusiastic voting populace. As long as these suppression efforts are widespread and go unchallenged by the courts, democracy will continue to struggle and the advance of human and civil rights in the United States will suffer.

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The Top Five Voter Suppression Tactics - Rantt Media

The Inconstant Universe Weird Findings Point to a New Physics – The Daily Galaxy –Great Discoveries Channel

Posted on April 29, 2020 by Danzig

Posted on Apr 27, 2020 in Astronomy, Astrophysics, Science

Our standard model of cosmology is based on an isotropic universe, one that is the same, statistically, in all directions, says astrophysicist John Webb at the University of New South Wales about the universal constant which appears inconstant at the outer fringes of the cosmos, it occurs in only one direction. .That standard model itself is built upon Einsteins theory of gravity, which itself explicitly assumes constancy of the laws of Nature. If such fundamental principles turn out to be only good approximations, the doors are open to some very exciting, new ideas in physics.

Those looking forward to a day when sciences Grand Unifying Theory of Everything could be worn on a t-shirt may have to wait a little longer as astrophysicists continue to find hints that one of the cosmological constants is not so constant after all.

In a paper published in Science Advances, scientists from UNSW Sydney reported that four new measurements of light emitted from a quasar 13 billion light years away reaffirm past studies that found tiny variations in the fine structure constant.

UNSW Sciences Professor Webb says the fine structure constant is a measure of electromagnetismone of the four fundamental forces in nature (the others are gravity, weak nuclear force and strong nuclear force).

The fine structure constant is the quantity that physicists use as a measure of the strength of the electromagnetic force, Professor Webb says. Its a dimensionless number and it involves the speed of light, something called Plancks constant and the electron charge, and its a ratio of those things. And its the number that physicists use to measure the strength of the electromagnetic force.

The electromagnetic force keeps electrons whizzing around a nucleus in every atom of the universewithout it, all matter would fly apart. Up until recently, it was believed to be an unchanging force throughout time and space. But over the last two decades, Professor Webb has noticed anomalies in the fine structure constant whereby electromagnetic force measured in one particular direction of the universe seems ever so slightly different.

Great Unknown Question The End of Spacetime

We found a hint that that number of the fine structure constant was different in certain regions of the universe. Not just as a function of time, but actually also in direction in the universe, which is really quite odd if its correct but thats what we found.

Ancient Quasars Offer Clues

Ever the sceptic, when Professor Webb first came across these early signs of slightly weaker and stronger measurements of the electromagnetic force, he thought it could be a fault of the equipment, or of his calculations or some other error that had led to the unusual readings. It was while looking at some of the most distant quasarsmassive celestial bodies emitting exceptionally high energyat the edges of the universe that these anomalies were first observed using the worlds most powerful telescopes.

The most distant quasars that we know of are about 12 to 13 billion light years from us, Professor Webb says.

So if you can study the light in detail from distant quasars, youre studying the properties of the universe as it was when it was in its infancy, only a billion years old. The universe then was very, very different. No galaxies existed, the early stars had formed but there was certainly not the same population of stars that we see today. And there were no planets.

He says that in the current study, the team looked at one such quasar that enabled them to probe back to when the universe was only a billion years old which had never been done before. The team made four measurements of the fine constant along the one line of sight to this quasar. Individually, the four measurements didnt provide any conclusive answer as to whether or not there were perceptible changes in the electromagnetic force. However, when combined with lots of other measurements between us and distant quasars made by other scientists and unrelated to this study, the differences in the fine structure constant became evident.

Our weird universe

And it seems to be supporting this idea that there could be a directionality in the universe, which is very weird indeed, Professor Webb says. So the universe may not be isotropic in its laws of physicsone that is the same, statistically, in all directions. But in fact, there could be some direction or preferred direction in the universe where the laws of physics change, but not in the perpendicular direction. In other words, the universe in some sense, has a dipole structure to it.

In one particular direction, we can look back 12 billion light years and measure electromagnetism when the universe was very young. Putting all the data together, electromagnetism seems to gradually increase the further we look, while towards the opposite direction, it gradually decreases. In other directions in the cosmos, the fine structure constant remains just thatconstant. These new very distant measurements have pushed our observations further than has ever been reached before.

In other words, in what was thought to be an arbitrarily random spread of galaxies, quasars, black holes, stars, gas clouds and planetswith life flourishing in at least one tiny niche of itthe universe suddenly appears to have the equivalent of a north and a south. Professor Webb is still open to the idea that somehow these measurements made at different stages using different technologies and from different locations on Earth are actually a massive coincidence.

This is something that is taken very seriously and is regarded, quite correctly with scepticism, even by me, even though I did the first work on it with my students. But its something youve got to test because its possible we do live in a weird universe.

But adding to the side of the argument that says these findings are more than just coincidence, a team in the US working completely independently and unknown to Professor Webbs, made observations about X-rays that seemed to align with the idea that the universe has some sort of directionality.

I didnt know anything about this paper until it appeared in the literature, he says.

And theyre not testing the laws of physics, theyre testing the properties, the X-ray properties of galaxies and clusters of galaxies and cosmological distances from Earth. They also found that the properties of the universe in this sense are not isotropic and theres a preferred direction. And lo and behold, their direction coincides with ours.

Answers the Cosmic Why

While still wanting to see more rigorous testing of ideas that electromagnetism may fluctuate in certain areas of the universe to give it a form of directionality, Professor Webb says if these findings continue to be confirmed, they may help explain why our universe is the way it is, and why there is life in it at all.

For a long time, it has been thought that the laws of nature appear perfectly tuned to set the conditions for life to flourish. The strength of the electromagnetic force is one of those quantities. If it were only a few percent different to the value we measure on Earth, the chemical evolution of the universe would be completely different and life may never have got going. It raises a tantalising question: does this Goldilocks situation, where fundamental physical quantities like the fine structure constant are just right to favor our existence, apply throughout the entire universe?

Shape-Shifting Cosmos Physicists Seek the Question to Which the Universe is the Answer

If there is a directionality in the universe, Professor Webb argues, and if electromagnetism is shown to be very slightly different in certain regions of the cosmos, the most fundamental concepts underpinning much of modern physics will need revision.

Our standard model of cosmology is based on an isotropic universe, one that is the same, statistically, in all directions, he says. That standard model itself is built upon Einsteins theory of gravity, which itself explicitly assumes constancy of the laws of Nature. If such fundamental principles turn out to be only good approximations, the doors are open to some very exciting, new ideas in physics.

Webbs team believe this is the first step towards a far larger study exploring many directions in the universe, using data coming from new instruments on the worlds largest telescopes. New technologies are now emerging to provide higher quality data, and new artificial intelligence analysis methods will help to automate measurements and carry them out more rapidly and with greater precision.

Sources: Michael R. Wilczynska et al. Four direct measurements of the fine-structure constant 13 billion years ago, Science Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay9672. K. Migkas et al. Probing cosmic isotropy with a new X-ray galaxy cluster sample through the LXT scaling relation, Astronomy & Astrophysics (2020). DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201936602

The Daily Galaxy, Max Goldberg, via University of New South Wales

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The Inconstant Universe Weird Findings Point to a New Physics - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel

Experimenting in the Universe’s Laboratory – NC State News

Posted on April 29, 2020 by Danzig

Noah Wolfe was self-quarantining in the Homewood Suites hotel in Davidson, North Carolina, last month when the email arrived to tell him he won the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship.

He immediately set about informing his family and friends from the seclusion of his room a call to his mom, a text to a friend, a Slack message to his academic adviser Professor Carla Frhlich.

Wolfe juggles ideas and scientific theories as easily as he does communication platforms. The focus of his research is computational astrophysics, but hes also founder of an environmental nonprofit and believes strongly in outreach and education.

Im starting to realize that I really love these kinds of interdisciplinary intersections, says the sophomore and Park Scholar, who is majoring in physics and math. I dont know how environmental justice and public education exactly fit with theoretical astrophysics, but Im really excited to see what it looks like.

Wolfe studies supernovas, the explosion of stars. They occur when a star runs out of nuclear fuel at its core, cools down and collapses under its own gravitational force; or when a white-dwarf star absorbs too much matter from another star in its orbit, setting off a nuclear reaction. They are impossible to recreate on Earth, Wolfe says, the equivalent of taking something many times bigger than the sun and compressing it into the size of Manhattan Island in seconds.

Scientists use computational astrophysics to make mathematical models of supernovas and then change variables to try to learn more about them. Wolfe compares the process to cooking: Like chefs, astrophysicists experiment with ingredients, only their ingredients are things like the general theory of relativity, hydrodynamics and information about miniscule particles called neutrinos.

If we want to model the supernova, we dont have infinite computation time, so we need to create a recipe, tailored to answering a specific question, Wolfe says. What if we use general relativity code that we know is accurate? And lets say we ignore some of the hydrodynamics because we dont think its that important. And lets make a good guesstimate of how the neutrino stuff works, because it might be important. You mix all of that together, and then you actually model the evolution of this system.

Astrophysicists then compare the results of the computation to existing observations. Nearby supernovas are uncommon, but they provide plenty of fodder when they do happen. A supernova 200,000 light-years away detected in 1987 is still yielding data, Wolfe says.

A supernova doesnt affect life on Earth, and Wolfe acknowledges his research likely wont solve todays scientific problems.

To be honest and this is something Ive personally struggled with a little bit the time horizon for when this research will be applicable is up in the air, he says. And its probably after I die, to be frank.

One topic that interests Wolfe is the behavior of nuclear matter in neutron stars, which form when a collapsing star compresses into a small parcel so dense that an amount the size of a sugar cube would weigh 1 billion tons, according to NASA. Thats why Wolfe finds supernovas so exciting: They are laboratories where multiple types of physics intersect under extreme conditions.

You need to understand everything from fundamental particle physics in the center of the neutron star all the way into hydrodynamics and fluid flow in the materials surrounding it as its going crazy, Wolfe says.

To study supernovas is to push the boundaries of what scientists know about physics, he says, even if that means storing the knowledge for later.

This is the challenge of all fundamental research, he says. It says were just trying to answer these questions regardless of whether or not well know if theyll have an impact in 10 or 15 years.

Wolfe isnt waiting for his research to make a difference in the world; hes trying to make one now.

Hes president of NCStates Astronomy Club, where everyone is invited to learn more about the universe. In January, he founded a nonprofit organization called Scivir (pronounced SEE-ver) to gather data on air quality in North Carolina. Scivirs goal is to ensure everyone has clean air one day regardless of socioeconomic status.

Then theres the reason why Wolfe was self-quarantining when he received his Goldwater Scholarship email. He flew through Seattle during an outbreak of COVID-19 on the way back from an Alternative Service Break trip to Hoonah, Alaska. That trip helped Wolfe realize how much he values education and outreach. He says the scholarship will help him achieve his goal of getting his Ph.D. in astrophysics and becoming a professor and mentor. He likes the idea of teaching undergraduates while using the position to welcome newcomers to the world of physics.

Education is super important, equal to the value of research, he says. Im only so smart and theres only so much I can do. Its really important that we encourage the next generation of scientists to figure out what I miss.

Experimenting in the Universe's Laboratory - NC State News

Astronomers Have Watched a Nova Go From Start to Finish For The First Time – ScienceAlert

Posted on April 29, 2020 by Danzig

A nova is a dramatic episode in the life of a binary pair of stars. It's an explosion of bright light that can last weeks or even months. And though they're not exactly rare - there are about 10 each year in the Milky Way - astronomers have never watched one from start to finish.

Until now.

A nova occurs in a close binary star system, when one of the stars has gone through its red giant phase. That star leaves behind a remnant white dwarf. When the white dwarf and its partner become close enough, the massive gravitational pull of the white dwarf draws material, mostly hydrogen, from the other star.

That hydrogen accretes onto the surface of the white dwarf, forming a thin atmosphere. The white dwarf heats the hydrogen, and eventually the gas pressure is extremely high, and fusion is ignited. Not just any fusion: rapid, runaway fusion.

Artist's impression of a nova eruption, showing the white dwarf accreting matter from its companion. (Nova_by K. Ulaczyk, Warschau Universitt Observatorium)

When the rapid fusion ignites, we can see the light, and the new hydrogen atmosphere is expelled away from the white dwarf into space. In the past, astronomers thought these new bright lights were new stars, and the name "nova" stuck.

Astronomers now call these types of nova "classical" novae. (There are also recurrent novae, when the process repeats itself.)

This is an enormously energetic event, that produces not only visible light, but gamma rays and x-rays too. The end result is that some stars that could only be seen through a telescope can be seen with the naked eye during a nova.

All of this is widely accepted in astronomy and astrophysics. But much of it is theoretical.

Recently, astronomers using the BRITE (BRIght Target Explorer) constellation of nanosatellites were fortunate enough to observe the entire process from start to finish, confirming the theory.

BRITE is a constellation of nanosatellites designed to "investigate stellar structure and evolution of the brightest stars in the sky and their interaction with the local environment," according to the website.

They operate in low-Earth orbit and have few restrictions on the parts of the sky that they can observe. BRITE is a coordinated project between Austrian, Polish, and Canadian researchers.

This first-ever observation of a nova was pure chance. BRITE had spent several weeks observing 18 stars in the Carina constellation. One day, a new star appeared. BRITE Operations Manager Rainer Kuschnig found the nova during a daily inspection.

"Suddenly there was a star on our records that wasn't there the day before," he said in a press release. "I'd never seen anything like it in all the years of the mission!"

Werner Weiss is from the Department of Astrophysics at the University of Vienna. In a press release, he emphasized the significance of this observation.

A shows bright V906 Carinae labelled with a white arrow. B and C show the star before and after the V906 Carinae nova. (A. Maury and J. Fabrega)

"But what causes a previously unimpressive star to explode? This was a problem that has not been solved satisfactorily until now," he said.

The explosion of Nova V906 in the constellation Carina is giving researchers some answers and has confirmed some of the theoretical concept behind novae.

V906 Carinae was first spotted by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae. Fortunately, it appeared in an area of the sky that had been under observation by BRITE for weeks, so the data documenting the nova is in BRITE data.

"It is fantastic that for the first time a nova could be observed by our satellites even before its actual eruption and until many weeks later," says Otto Koudelka, project manager of the BRITE Austria (TUGSAT-1) satellite at TU Graz.

V906 Carinae is about 13,000 light years away, so the event is already history. "After all, this nova is so far away from us that its light takes about 13,000 years to reach the earth," explains Weiss.

The BRITE team reported their findings in a new paper. The paper is titled "Direct evidence for shock-powered optical emission in a nova." It's published in the journal Nature Astronomy. First author is Elias Aydi from Michigan State University.

"This fortunate circumstance was decisive in ensuring that the nova event could be recorded with unprecedented precision," explains Konstanze Zwintz, head of the BRITE Science Team, from the Institute for Astro- and Particle Physics at the University of Innsbruck.

Zwintz immediately realised "that we had access to observation material that was unique worldwide," according to a press release.

Novae like V906 Carinae are thermonuclear explosions on the surface of white dwarf stars. For a long time, astrophysicists thought that a nova's luminosity is powered by continual nuclear burning after the initial burst of runaway fusion. But the data from BRITE suggests something different.

In the new paper, the authors show that shocks play a larger role than thought. The authors say that "shocks internal to the nova ejecta may dominate the nova emission."

These shocks may also be involved in other events like supernovae, stellar mergers, and tidal disruption events, according to the authors. But up until now, there's been a lack of observational evidence.

"Here we report simultaneous space-based optical and gamma-ray observations of the 2018 nova V906 Carinae (ASASSN-18fv), revealing a remarkable series of distinct correlated flares in both bands," the researchers write.

Since those flares occur at the same time, it implies a common origin in shocks.

"During the flares, the nova luminosity doubles, implying that the bulk of the luminosity is shock powered." So rather than continual nuclear burning, novae are driven by shocks.

"Our data, spanning the spectrum from radio to gamma-ray, provide direct evidence that shocks can power substantial luminosity in classical novae and other optical transients."

In broader terms, shocks have been shown to play some role in events like novae. But that understanding is largely based on studying timescales and luminosities. This study is the first direct observation of such shocks, and is likely only the beginning of observing and understanding the role that shocks play.

In the conclusion of their paper the authors write: "Our observations of nova V906 Car definitively demonstrate that substantial luminosity can be produced - and emerge at optical wavelengths - by heavily absorbed, energetic shocks in explosive transients."

They go on to say that: "With modern time-domain surveys such as ASAS-SN, the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, we will be discovering more - and higher luminosity - transients than ever before. The novae in our galactic backyard will remain critical for testing the physical drivers powering these distant, exotic events."

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

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Astronomers Have Watched a Nova Go From Start to Finish For The First Time - ScienceAlert

NSF funds RIT researchers to develop code for astrophysics and gravitational wave calculations – RIT University News Services

Posted on April 29, 2020 by Danzig

The National Science Foundation recently awarded researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Louisiana State University, Georgia Tech and West Virginia University grants totaling more than $2.3 million to support further development of the Einstein Toolkit.

The Einstein Toolkit is a community-developed code for simulating the collisions of black holes and neutron stars, as well as supernovas and cosmology. The RIT numerical Relativity group, including Associate Professor Yosef Zlochower, Professor Manuela Campanelli and Professor Joshua Faber, have been part of the Einstein Toolkit consortium since its creation more than a decade ago.

The Einstein Toolkit has been critical to our simulations of binary black hole and binary neutron star mergers and our modeling of gravitational waveforms for LIGO, said Zlochower, principal investigator of the grant to RIT.

One of the key targets of modern numerical relativity simulations is the mergers of black holes and neutron stars, particularly the extreme mass ratio limit of binary black holes and evolutions of the hypermassive remnant from neutron star mergers. These challenging simulations will require exascale-level resources, and the NSF award to RIT of a grant of nearly $440,000 will support RIT students and faculty as they work to make the toolkit scale to hundreds of thousands of processors on some of the largest super computers in the world.

The Einstein Toolkit is used extensively by graduate and undergraduate students at RIT working with faculty at the Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation, according to co-PI Faber.

The Einstein Toolkit has been a critical resource for the Center for over a decade, added co-PI Campanelli, director of the CCRG.

Zlochower noted that these efforts will have an impact on numerical relativity groups around the world, since the Toolkit is open source and available for use by researchers and students at institutions ranging in size from small colleges up to large research universities. For more information, visit the Einstein Toolkit website.

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NSF funds RIT researchers to develop code for astrophysics and gravitational wave calculations - RIT University News Services

Hungry galaxies grow fat on the flesh of their neighbours – UNSW Newsroom

Posted on April 29, 2020 by Danzig

Galaxies grow large by eating their smaller neighbours, new research reveals.

Exactly how massive galaxies attain their size is poorly understood, not least because they swell over billions of years. But now a combination of observation and modelling from researchers led by UNSWs Dr Anshu Gupta from Australias ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) has provided a vital clue.

In a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, the scientists combine data from an Australian project called the Multi-Object Spectroscopic Emission Line (MOSEL)survey with a cosmological modelling program running on some of the worlds largest supercomputers in order to glimpse the forces that create these ancient galactic monsters.

By analysing how gases within galaxies move, Dr Gupta said, it is possible to discover the proportion of stars made internally and the proportion effectively cannibalised from elsewhere.

We found that in old massive galaxies those around 10 billion light years away from us things move around in lots of different directions, she said.

That strongly suggests that many of the stars within them have been acquired from outside. In other words, the big galaxies have been eating the smaller ones.

Because light takes time to travel through the universe, galaxies further away from the Milky Way are seen at an earlier point in their existence. Dr Guptas team found that observation and modelling of these very distant galaxies revealed much less variation in their internal movements.

We then had to work out why older, closer big galaxies were so much more disordered than the younger, more distant ones, said second author ASTRO 3Ds Dr Kim-Vy Tran, who like Dr Gupta, is based at UNSW.

The most likely explanation is that in the intervening billions of years the surviving galaxies have grown fat and disorderly through incorporating smaller ones. I think of it as big galaxies having a constant case of the cosmic munchies.

Distribution of dark matter particles around the galaxy. Big galaxies have been eating the smaller ones, this piece of research shows.

The research team which included scientists from other Australian universities plus institutions in the US, Canada, Mexico, Belgium and the Netherlands ran their modelling on a specially designed set of simulations known as IllustrisTNG.

This is a multi-year, international project that aims to build a series of large cosmological models of how galaxies form. The program is so big that it has to run simultaneously on several of worlds most powerful supercomputers.

The modelling showed that younger galaxies have had less time to merge with other ones, said Dr Gupta.

This gives a strong clue to what happens during an important stage of their evolution.

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Hungry galaxies grow fat on the flesh of their neighbours - UNSW Newsroom

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences Inducts 12 Columbia Faculty Members – Columbia University

Posted on April 29, 2020 by Danzig

TwelveColumbia professors have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, joining some of the worlds most accomplished leaders from academia, business, public affairs, the humanities and the arts in one of the nations most prestigious honorary societies.

The members of the class of 2020 have excelled in laboratories and lecture halls, they have amazed on concert stages and in surgical suites, and they have led in board rooms and courtrooms, said Academy PresidentDavid W. Oxtoby. With todays election announcement, these new members are united by a place in history and by an opportunity to shape the future through the Academys work to advance the public good.

Elena Aprile is a physics professor whose research interests include high-energy nuclear and particle physics, astrophysics, gravitational waves and cosmology. She is the founderof the XENON Dark Matter Experiment, an underground research facility in Italy that engages in experiments aiming to detect dark matter particles.

Zainab Bahrani is the Edith Porada Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Art and Archaeology. Much of her work has focused on the role of the image in art, particularly in the ancient world. A former curator of ancient Near Eastern art at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, Professor Bahrani is director of the Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments project at Columbia, which locates and assesses the condition of monuments in Iraq and southern Turkey.

Pierre-Andr Chiappori is the E. Rowan and Barbara Steinschneider Professor of Economics. He specializes in contracts and organization, development economics, health and education, and microeconomics.

Brent Hayes Edwards is a professor of English and Comparative Literature. His 2017 book, Epistrophies: Jazz and the Literary Imagination, won the 2018 ASCAP Foundation Virgil Thomson Award for Outstanding Music Criticism as well as the 2019 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism.

Bernard Faure, the Kao Professor of Japanese Religion, is interested in various aspects of East Asian Buddhism, with an emphasis on Chan/Zen and Tantric or esoteric Buddhism.His work is influenced by anthropological history and cultural theory.

Andrew Gelman is the Higgins Professor of Statistics, Professor of Political Science and director of theApplied Statistics Center at Columbia. His research spans a wide range of topics, including why it is rational to vote, why campaign polls are so variable when elections are so predictable and why redistricting is good for democracy.

Michal Lipson is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering and Professor of AppliedPhysics, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.She pioneered critical building blocks in the field of silicon photonics, which today is recognized as one of the most promising directions for solving the major bottlenecks in microelectronics.

Colin P. Nuckolls is the Sheldon and Dorothea Buckler Professor of Chemistry. His research focuses on integrating reaction chemistry into electrical devices. He is a founding member of the Columbia University Nano Initiative.

Molly Przeworski is a professor in the department of biological sciences. Her work aims to understand how natural selection has shaped patterns of genetic variation, and to identify the causes and consequences of variation in recombination and mutation rates, in humans and other organisms.

Sarah Stillman directs the Global Migration Project at the Journalism School, which offers several reporting fellows the opportunity to pursue stories on gender and migration, focusing on U.S. immigration law, border politics, international refugee policy and more. She is a staff writer for The New Yorker.

Sarah Sze is a professor in the visual arts programat the School of the Arts whose work has been exhibited in museums worldwide and spans sculpture, multimedia installations, collage and painting. She spent 2019 as the Alan Kanzer artist-in-residence at the Zuckerman Institute.

Mihalis Yannakakis is the Percy K. and Vida L.W. Hudson Professor of Computer Science. He works on the theoretical foundations of computing, seeking to understand the inherent computational complexity of problems and to design efficient algorithms for their solution.

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The American Academy of Arts and Sciences Inducts 12 Columbia Faculty Members - Columbia University

UAH reports record research results of $109.7 million in 2019: NSF survey – UAH News

Posted on April 29, 2020 by Danzig

UAH achieved a record $109.7 million in research and development expenditures in fiscal year 2019.

Michael Mercier | UAH

The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) achieved a record $109.7 million in research and development expenditures in fiscal year 2019 (FY19), according to the National Science Foundations (NSF) Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) survey.

The universitys federal research expenditures have increased by 24 percent over two years. UAH had active contracts and research partnerships with more than 90 commercial companies during 2019. The universitys five-year contract and grant research total is $489 million.

This achievement indicates the degree of trust our collaborators place in UAH research endeavors, says Dr. Robert Lindquist, vice president for research and economic development. UAH has a long history of science and engineering research and working together with our federal government and private sector partners to find creative solutions for some of the nations most challenging technological issues.

Five UAH research thrusts rank in the top 20 nationally, according to the National Science Foundation:

Key research areas at UAH include:

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UAH reports record research results of $109.7 million in 2019: NSF survey - UAH News

WATCH: Eyewitness News talks with NASA astrophysicist about Hubble Space Telescopes 30th Anniversary – Eyewitness News (WEHT/WTVW)

Posted on April 29, 2020 by Danzig

EVANSVILLE, Ind. (WEHT) Eyewitness News Joe Bird talks with NASAs Director of Physics about the 30th Anniversary of the iconic Hubble Space Telescope, what its done for science, and what we might be able to see with it in the future.

TRANSCRIPTION

Joe Bird: Well, a special something is turning 30 today. NASAs iconic Hubble Space Telescope commemorates three decades of discovery. And, joining is live this morning via Skype from NASA is NASAs Director of Astrophysics, Dr. Paul Hertz. You are responsible for the agencys research programs and missions necessary to discover how the universe began, how the universe works what a job you have, Dr. Hertz!

Dr. Paul Hertz: Thank you very much. Its got to be the coolest job in the world.

Joe Bird: I tell you, it sounds absolutely fantastic. Lets talk about Hubble, because I know you use Hubble a lot. Youve seen a lot of the images Hubble sends us. The views of the universe that we get from Hubble they have not only changed the way we think of space, but they have basically even rewritten some science books. What are some of the most important discoveries?

Dr. Paul Hertz: Well, when we launched Hubble, we werent sure how fast the universe was expanding. One of the first things we did was measure that very accurately, and by it backwards, we now know the universe is 13.8 billion years old. When we launched Hubble, we didnt know if black holes were common or rare in the universe. Hubble discovered that every galaxy has a super-massive black hole. Black holes are as common as galaxies in our universe. And, when Hubble launched, we hadnt discovered a single planet around another star. Now, we know there are planets around just about every star. Weve found over 5,000 of them. Hubble was the first telescope to observe the atmosphere of a planet around another star, was able to measure water and carbon monoxide in that planets atmosphere. So, thats just a few of the things that Hubble has done.

Joe Bird: And, the list really continues on with Hubble, and what its done and what it will do. So, lets talk closer to home really fast here, with this one. So, Hubble has also taken a look at planets right here in our region. What have we learned from our solar system, and even our own moon? What changes have we seen over all these years?

Dr. Paul Hertz: Well, Hubble has been watching our solar system for the entire 30 years its been up there. Weve seen the great red spot on Jupiter that Galileo discovered. Weve seen it shrinking over time. One of the moons of Jupiter, Europa, we have seen water plumes erupting from the surface of that moon, with Hubble, telling us about the ocean under the surface. And, we can see that theres even salt in those water plumes, letting us know there might be nutrients in that ocean. Maybe conducive for life, somewhere else in our solar system. When we launched Hubble, we only knew about one moon of Pluto. Hubble discovered four more moons of Pluto. We now know of five. So, when the new Horizon spacecraft flew by, it was able to study all of those moons, with Hubble. And, you mentioned our own moon. Because Hubble has an ultraviolet camera, and, its one of the very few there are, because ultraviolet light cant reach the surface of our Earth, the atmosphere absorbs it. So, a space telescope can take pictures in ultraviolet. With ultraviolet pictures, we can find resources on the moon, such as minerals, or possible water, that astronauts will be able to take advantage of when the U.S. returns to the moon.

Joe Bird: Now, we didnt almost have these nice, sharp images today, because there was a flaw when Hubble made it up into space with those mirrors. Thanks to astronauts, that was all fixed. So, Hubble lives on to 30. How is it doing?

Dr. Paul Hertz: Hubble is doing great! As you pointed out, its been serviced by astronauts five times, actually. The last servicing was in 2009. At that time, the astronauts upgraded all the science instruments, replaced all the aging systems lie batteries and gryos that hold the telescope steady. So, Hubble is in great shape right now. Its a hundred times more powerful now than when we launched it, because of those upgraded instruments. Everything is working fine. In fact, everything is still redundant. So, we can suffer the eventual aging failures. Were confident Hubble will last through the 2020s. well be able to use it in conjunction with the James Webb Space Telescope, NASAs next large space telescope, which well be launching next year.

Joe Bird: All right, doctor. Thanks so much for your time this morning. We greatly appreciate it. I wish I could meet you and come join you for a board game over your shoulder and just talk a little more about Hubble. We greatly appreciate your time, today. Thank you so much.

Dr. Paul Hertz: My pleasure and everybody should check out nasa.gov/hubble for lots more information.

Joe Bird: All rightie.

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WATCH: Eyewitness News talks with NASA astrophysicist about Hubble Space Telescopes 30th Anniversary - Eyewitness News (WEHT/WTVW)

Asteroid set to miss Earth, so there’s one less worry – ANU College of Science

Posted on April 29, 2020 by Danzig

As the world grapples with the coronavirus pandemic, we can be thankful that humanity will be spared from another catastrophe tonight when a big asteroid skims past Earth, according to ANU astronomer Dr Brad Tucker.

He said Asteroid 1998 OR2, which is about four kilometres in diameter and travelling 36,000 kilometres per hour based on the latest data from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, will pass the Earth at a distance of 6.2 million kilometres at 6.56 pm AEDT tonight far enough away to allow us not to panic.

This asteroid poses no danger to the Earth and will not hit - it is one catastrophe we wont have, said Dr Tucker from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

While it is big, it is still smaller than the asteroid that impacted the Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs.

Dr Tucker said an asteroid is classified as potentially hazardous if it is 150 metres in diameter or bigger, and it passes Earth within 7.5 million kilometres.

And while its far enough away to not cause concern about planet-wide extinction, the asteroid will still be close enough for us to see, he said.

Avid amateur astronomers will be able to catch a glimpse of the bright rock as it hurtles along in space, through a small telescope, by looking near the constellation Centaurus in the night sky.

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Asteroid set to miss Earth, so there's one less worry - ANU College of Science

The College honors outstanding academic achievement with 2020 Dean’s Medals – ASU Now

Posted on April 29, 2020 by Danzig

April 28, 2020

On Monday, May 11,The College of Liberal Arts and Sciencesat Arizona State University will recognize its highest achieving students from the social sciences, natural sciences and humanities at the 2020 virtual convocation ceremony.

Each department and school within The College has selected an outstanding student who has demonstrated a steadfast commitment to academic excellence during their time at ASU. These students will be awarded a prestigious Deans Medal in honor of their scholastic achievements.

Meet the outstanding spring 2020 Deans Medalist awardees from around The College.

Deans Medal:Department of EconomicsMajor:EconomicsMinor:Statistics

Mann is a student at Barrett, The Honors College at ASU, a New American University Scholar and a National Merit Scholar who is passionate about economics and statistics.

While at ASU, Mann researched projects including assisting in econometric research examining the effects of spatial and temporal disaggregation on the relationship between extreme weather and GDP in the United States.

I could not think of a more ideal recipient for this award than John, said Jose Mendez, chair of the awards committee for the Department of Economics. Not only is he outstanding academically, he is also truly remarkable as an individual. I have never had a student that was so respectful and gracious. I feel privileged having had him in my class.

During his college career, Mann worked at a number of places, including the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C., where he provided research and analysis to inform reports, and at ASUs Office of University Initiatives, where he worked as a strategic research analyst.

Deans Medal:School of Civic and Economic Thought and LeadershipMajors:Civic and economic thought and leadership, political scienceMinors:Film and media production, Spanish

Throughout his time at ASU, Doebbeling stood out as a leader among his peers. As an early adopter of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, Doebbeling was able to grow alongside a new program.

Doebbeling served as the secretary of ASU Young Democrats and is a member of ASU Students for Education Equity. Taking a substantial international approach to his education, Doebbeling participated in numerous Global Intensive Experiences including traveling to India, Israel and the West Bank, Trinidad, Spain and Cuba. His capstone project makes an interesting comparison between founding father George Washington and revolutionary founder Fidel Castro.

Cormac Doebbling possesses a rare combination of intellectual breadth and depth, said Paul Carrese, director and professor at the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. Whether it is international politics, grassroots political activism, political philosophy, film, theater or literature Cormac is enthusiastic and knowledgeable. It has been a pleasure having him as part of our schools founding generation of students.

After graduating from ASU, he plans on completing his masters degree in comedic writing at DePaul University in Chicago in order to pursue a career in political satire in television and film.

Deans Medal:School of Earth and Space ExplorationMajors:Earth and space exploration (astrophysics), physicsMinor:Mathematics

Through his endless dedication and determination, Bechtel exemplifies the interdisciplinary spirit and community engagement the School of Earth and Space Exploration thrives for. During his time at ASU, Bechtel, a New American University Scholar and ASU/NASA Space Grant Scholar, participated in several research projects (including both Barrett and senior thesis projects), mentored incoming students and volunteered in support of STEM education.

He has outperformed every other student in the class, including the graduate students by a substantial margin, said Judd Bowman, a professor at the School of Earth and Space Exploration. He is a joy to have in class. While many students balk at working with raw untested data, Shane faced the challenge head on.

Bechtel wrote and contributed to many academic papers and gave several presentations on his research. For his senior thesis, Bechtel worked with research scientist Rolf Jansen to conduct an in-depth structural analysis of a small sample of intermediate redshift galaxies.

He approached this new topic of research with enthusiasm and more importantly produced tangible results in a very short period of time, while juggling his many other commitments, Jansen said. Moreover, he implemented his code in a general pipeline that will prove useful for related future research projects.

Deans Medal:School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious StudiesMajor:Philosophy (morality, politics and law)

Leland, a Barrett student, stands out for her outstanding hard work, compelling and clear writing ability and her helpful class participation.

Her honors thesis explores disability from a personal perspective and aims to dramatically shift the way we think about disabilities while recognizing that the stigmatization of disabilities affects other marginalized identities. Leland alsostudied abroad in Greece and Italy, and served as a study abroad diversity panelist.

Shawn E. Klein, philosophy faculty at the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, said Leland is the kind of student who goes above and beyond to help her peers come to better understand content.

What distinguishes Morgan is that she is an educator, that she is committed to the potential of higher education for producing broader social changes, and that she is personally devoted to changing the content of, social relations in, and standard operating procedure of academia, Klein said.

Deans Medal:Hugh Downs School of Human CommunicationMajors:Communication, political scienceCertificates:Cross-sector leadership, political entrepreneurship through internships: local to global and international studies

Throughout Hinshaws time at ASU, she has engaged in a wide variety of opportunities, including 11 different internships across the public, private and nonprofit sectors.

Hinshaw is a Barrett student and two-time Hugh Downs School of Human Communication Scholar. She also served as the 201819 Barrett Honors Fellow, working with Keith Brown, director and professor at the Melikian Center: Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies.

It has been a great experience to be part of her ASU journey, and an inspiration to observe her clarity of purpose, her organizational skills and her poise and professionalism, Brown said. Besides her innovative and meticulous thesis work on the impact of Tempe Sister Cities youth exchange program, she also personified ASU's commitment to community engagement."

Hinshaw explored her interest in intercultural communication and international affairs while studying abroad in Ghana, Israel and the West Bank as well as nationally in Washington, D.C., with the McCain Institutes Policy Design Program.

In addition to internships, Hinshaw works as the communications coordinator for ASU Project Humanities and also served in leadership roles for the Next Generation Service Corps, the Global Leadership Development Program and the advisory board of ASU Global Guides.

Deans Medal:School of International Letters and CulturesMajor:Russian

Philipson is an outstanding student, employee and volunteer with an extraordinary talent for languages including Russian, English and Latin. She has a passion for foreign affairs, which she is using to make a difference in the world through public, government service.

With an impeccable knowledge of Russian grammar, Philipson is an outstanding student who always understands what she is reading and is prepared to discuss her ideas, said Hilde Hoogenboom, an associate professor in the School of International Letters and Cultures.

Philipson is a semifinalist for the U.S. State Departments highly competitive Critical Languages scholarship for advanced Russian study in Russia and is one of the first students from ASU who was offered a prestigious summer internship as a Russian Language Analyst with the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland.

In the fall she will attend the University of Oxford to pursue her masters degree in Russian and East European studies. Afterwards she plans on attending law school and hopes to work in the Department of Homeland Security to fight against human trafficking.

Deans Medal:Department of PhysicsMajor:Physics

Johnson is an accomplished student interested in applying physics to real-world problems, specifically when it comes to renewable energy. She is the co-author of three published papers and an award-winning presenter who has received the NASA Space Grant consecutively for the past few years.

Anna Zaniewski, an associate instructional professional in the Department of Physics, said Johnsons outstanding productivity, skills and maturity were exemplified in her work.

Holly demonstrates an ability to learn quickly, think independently and collaborate well. Her technical skills are impressive Zaniewski said. She learns each new technique quickly and carefully. She takes detailed notes and is trusted with our most essential samples and research projects.

In addition to her research, Johnson regularly volunteers and contributes to the development of other students through her position as a mentor in ASUs Sundial Project. Johnson has been accepted into several prestigious graduate programs including Princeton.

Deans Medal:School of Transborder StudiesMajor:Transborder Chicana/o & Latina/o studies (U.S. and Mexican regional immigration policy and economy)Certificate:Cross-sector leadership

Austin is known for her diligence, persistence, community outreach, involvement and educational excellence. Through her life experiences in between high school and college, Austin realized that she wanted to dedicate her life to public service and building a better community.

Austin served as the transfer chair for the Next Generation Service Corps scholarship where she connected and assisted potential transfer students by providing them with resources. As a transfer student herself, she was able to provide helpful insights that have helped many students succeed in transitioning to the university.

Throughout her time at ASU, Austin successfully balanced schoolwork, community service and leadership roles while simultaneously working two to three jobs. Austin has also been a strong ambassador for the School of Transborder Studies by representing the unit in The College Welcome Assembly and being recognized as a Student Leader in The College.

Lorena is vividly passionate about her current studies and future career in law. In the classroom, she is fully engaged and contributes to the learning of every student, said Irasema Coronado, director and professor at the School of Transborder Studies.

Deans Medal:School of Social TransformationMajors:Justice studies, politics and the economyCertificate:Socio-legal studies

Saunders, a Barrett student, has actively shown her commitment to social innovation and fostering a more inclusive and just society by participating in campus residence life and leadership positions in political advocacy and nonprofit organizations.

In her honors thesis, Saunders drew from her own experience as a walking paraplegic and aimed to expand access for ASU students with physical disabilities. By conducting an extensive inventory of nearly all buildings on the Tempe campus, she identified physical accessibility issues across campus.

Mackenzie is a pathbreaker who rises above the small-mindedness of individuals and the restrictions of society, said Annamaria Oliverio, a lecturer in the School of Social Transformation. She elegantly transforms challenges into opportunities, not just for herself, but also others.

Saunders works as a deputy campaign manager for the November 2020 and March 2021 elections for the Phoenix City Council and as Director of Operations for a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that advocates for disability rights.

Through an early decision, two-year deferral program that encourages students to gain professional experience before law school, Saunders wasaccepted to Harvard Law School. After earning her law degree she aspires to work in disability rights law to strengthen the ADA and eventually become a federal judge.

Deans Medal:T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family DynamicsMajor:Family and human developmentMinor:Sociology

Since her freshman year, Berendzen demonstrated a high level of involvement in research, teaching, optional advanced coursework and leadership roles.

She pursued advanced statistical methods courses, served as a research assistant on six research projects and worked as a grader or teachers assistant for four different courses. Through this work, she has a first-author manuscript in progress and presented at the National Conference on Family Relations.

Clearly, Hannah is a highly accomplished student. More importantly, however, interacting with her is a pleasure, said Stacie Foster, director of undergraduate programs at the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics. She is kind, compassionate towards others, and incredibly hard-working.

Following graduation Berendzen plans to continue her education in family and human development by pursuing her PhD at ASU.

Deans Medal:Department of PsychologyMajor:PsychologyMinor:Statistics

Smola is a first-generation college student whose early experiences inspired her to pursue a psychology degree at ASU with a focus on success and well-being of students and adolescents from underrepresented backgrounds.

Xochitl Arlene Smola is an exemplary student who has overcome adversity and taken advantage of everything that ASU has to offer, the Department of Psychology awards committee said in their nomination letter. She represents us all well and is truly worthy of the Dean's Medal.

She worked for multiple research programs including as a field manager for the Bridges Project at the REACH Institute during her freshman year, where she interviewed parents and adolescents, oversaw program interventions and supervised the field work of 30 of her peers. During her junior year, she worked in the Adolescent Stress and Emotion Lab, where she studied the Latino transition to college. Smola also represented ASUs Department of Psychology in summer research training programs at the University of California, Los Angeles and University of Minnesota.

Following graduation, Smola will attend graduate school for developmental psychology at one of the five programs that she was accepted into. She aspires to be a research professor in developmental psychology.

Deans Medal:School of Life SciencesMajor:Biological sciences (biology and society)Minors:Spanish, civic and economic thought and leadershipCertificate:History and philosophy of science

In her time at ASU, Buckerexplored a diverse span of activitiesand engaged in a variety of leadership positions, often forming connections and establishing partnerships across departments and academic disciplines at ASU and on a global level. Bucker, an ASU Tillman Scholar, successfully channeled her passion for community development, educational access and science communication with her skills in design-based research and curriculum-building.

Bucker co-founded the community initiative, INvision, which seeks to excite low-opportunity background youth about higher education through partnering ASUs diverse learning opportunities with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Arizona.

She studied abroad in the rural village of Tilonia, Rajasthan, India, where she developed an understanding of mental health in the rural context through participant observation, interviews and community engagement.

In addition to her academic and research work, Bucker participated in athletic endeavors on the womens triathlon team swimming, biking and running her way to two consecutive NCAA National Championships.

Deans Medal:School of Mathematical and Statistical SciencesMajors:Mathematics, physicsCertificate:Cryptology

Burgueno is a first-generation college student who is known for her creative, self-driven and collaborative nature. She performed several research projects on MRI imaging and on applications of p-adic number theory to quantum physics.

In her honors thesis Burgueno continued her research on applications of p-adic number theory to quantum physics. Her research has been published and presented at conferences. In her work, Burgueno also initiated collaboration with researchers in Europe

Burgueno served as an officer of the schools flagship program, Association of Women in Mathematics, various extracurricular activities as a tutor and a contributor to an online physics program for high school students.

Upon graduation she plans on continuing her studies and pursuing a PhD in mathematics modern particle physics.

Deans Medal:Department of EnglishMajors:English (literature), French, political scienceMinor:Asian languages (Chinese)Certificate:International studies

McCrearys diverse set of interests pushed him to take on three majors, a minor and a certificate while working as a teaching assistant at Barrett and a research assistant and French tutor.

During his time at ASU, McCreary participated in both the International Chinese Language Program and the French Language and Culture in Lyon programs. He is the founder and president of ASU Cultural Attachs, hosting weekly meetings where American and international students practice languages and learn about other cultures. In addition, he serves as a chief ambassador of ASU Global Council of Diplomats and as the membership chair of ASU United Nations Association.

As a student, Micah was prepared, attentive, respectful and participated regularly and thoughtfully, said Stephanie R. deLus, principal honors faculty fellow at Barrett. His willingness to learn and inquiring mind served him well as he built on his strong foundation to become even more excellent as time unfolded.

McCreary studied abroad several times, traveling to China and Taiwan to immerse himself in his study of the languages. McCreary was accepted to many prestigious law programs and will pursue his graduate degree at Harvard Law School in fall 2020.

Deans Medal:School of Molecular SciencesMajor:ChemistryMinors:Materials science and engineering, mathematics

Howell has been extensively involved in undergraduate research at ASU in the interfaces of materials chemistry and health and co-authored several peer-reviewed, published papers. Her accomplishments have been recognized with the Goldwater Scholarship, the highest recognition for undergraduate research in science in the nation.

Howell excelled in her coursework and her research, receiving the ACS Divisions of Physical Chemistry and Inorganic Chemistry awards from the School of Molecular Sciences.

It is remarkable for a student to earn one of these awards, and almost unheard of for a student to earn two, the school of Molecular Sciences awards committee said in their nomination letter.It is a testament to Ms. Howells success and its recognition broadly by SMS faculty. In short, Ms. Howell is a standout who makes an impression on those who interact with her.

Following graduation, Howell plans topursue a PhDin physical chemistry at Harvard University. Her long-term career goal is to become tenure-track faculty at a large research university.

Deans Medal:School of Geographical Sciences and Urban PlanningMajor:GeographyMinors:Sustainability, urban planning

Berry is atop-performing graduating seniorin the geography, urban planning and sustainability programs, making the Deans list every semester. She has balanced her studies while juggling many duties in her position as a student retention assistant.

Faculty in the school speak glowingly about Berry, noting her exemplary performance in class and her outstanding projects including her study of agricultural land loss in the U.S. using GIS and statistics.

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The College honors outstanding academic achievement with 2020 Dean's Medals - ASU Now

HPU Students, Faculty and Staff Recognized for Research and Innovation – High Point University

Posted on April 29, 2020 by Danzig

HIGH POINT, N.C., April 24, 2020 Members of the High Point University community frequently conduct, publish and share research and creative works in a variety of ways. Below is a recap of recent research initiatives.

HPU Biology Professor Leading Student Research on COVID-19

Dr. Davin Townley-Tilson, instructor of biology, is working with students to take the novel coronavirus genome and perform real-time phylogenetic analysis, which compares the new genomes to other coronavirus genomes. This allows students to see how their learnings can be applied in the real-world, while supporting efforts to understand the COVID-19 virus.

We are teaching students crucial genomic and bioinformatic techniques through experiential learning, using real-world data that is incredibly germane to current events, said Townley-Tilson. The students analysis of the novel SARS-CoV-2 genome may serve to be incredibly important for clinicians and scientists who are using this data to produce therapeutics and vaccines against the virus.

The research started in March as part of a class assignment in Townley-Tilsons Principles of Genetics Lab. Although students are currently learning remotely, they were able to monitor and analyze the evolution of the novel coronavirus in real-time through the National Center for Biotechnology Information, a genetic-sequence repository that is part of the National Institute of Health.

The students have been able to observe that, unlike influenza virus or rhinovirus, which are responsible for the flu and common cold, that this novel coronavirus actually mutates relatively slowly, Townley-Tilson said. Using multiple sequence alignment of several CoV-2 isolates, or viral strains, demonstrates the evolution, or mutation rate, of the virus is slow enough to allow for an effective vaccine, something that is exceedingly difficult with most other viruses.

Townley-Tilson plans to use both the teaching methodology and research findings in an upcoming National Science Foundation (NSF) Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) grant proposal.

HPU Faculty Research Recognized by Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior

Dr. Matthew Ritter and Dr. Sarah Vaala, assistant professors of strategic communication in the Nido R. Qubein School of Communication, were recognized by the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior for a co-authored article, titled, Child-Oriented Marketing on Cereal Packaging: Associations with Sugar Content and Manufacturer Pledge.

The research assesses sugar content and child-oriented promotional features on packaging among cereals manufactured by companies with varying Childrens Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI) participation.

Consumers often confuse what they consider to be a single serving and what is listed as the products suggested serving size, generally eating more than what is recommended for a healthy diet, Ritter said. Through this research, we found child-oriented features were rare on low-sugar cereals and highest on cereals with higher sugar content per ounce produced by CFBAI-participating companies.

Findings suggest variable cereal-suggested serving sizes may contribute to consumers misunderstanding of sugar content, and CFBAI manufacturers continue to market cereals with high sugar to children.

There is a long history of the food industry being at odds with public health advocates when it comes to child-directed foods, said Vaala. Raising awareness of this issue is important.

HPU Religion Professor Published in Multiple Research Journals

Dr. Joe Blosser, associate professor of religion and philosophy and Robert G. Culp Jr. director of service learning, recently had three separate research articles published in national journals.

Maintaining an active research agenda is critical to being a relevant and innovative teacher who can prepare students for the world as it is going to be, said Blosser. I work at the intersections of economics and religion, helping students understand the ways our faith shapes our world and the economic choices we make.

The Journal of Business Ethics Education published Blossers piece titled, Faith and Ethics at Work: A Study of the Role of Religion in the Teaching and Practice of Workplace Ethics. The research is based on a study Blossers students conducted around young professionals in High Point, through a partnership with the High Point Chamber of Commerce.

This is a practical article that demonstrates how faith works to impact ethical decision-making in the lives of young professionals in High Point, said Blosser. As my students conducted this research, they met these young professionals, and a few of my students even ended up with internships based on the connections they made through these classes.

Secondly, Blosser was featured in Intgrit: A Journal of Faith and Learning, for his work, titled, Johnny Cash: An American Prophet. The article explores how Cashs faith shaped his music and his life, and includes original interviews with his family members.

I grew up in a small town, went to school in Texas and Nashville, and have always loved country music, said Blosser. Cash is a legend and lived out his faith in unique and powerful ways. I love teaching at local churches about Cash because his faith is a relatable way to connect people to the power of Christianity.

The third article, published by the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics, is titled, Relational History: Adam Smiths Types of Human History, which expands on how capitalism has shaped our world.

Adam Smith set the foundations for capitalism as we know it, and this work explores how he understood human development over time, said Blosser.

These three scholarly publications demonstrate Blossers commitment to an active research agenda in Christian ethics and economic thought. As the director of service learning, he uses insights gained from his research to ensure HPU students are doing the kind of service that makes the biggest impact on our local community so they grow to become responsible citizens in a global environment. He is available to local churches and civic groups for lectures on any of these topics.

HPU Faculty Research Recognized with National Award

Dr. Allie Blosser, assistant professor in the Stout School of Education, along with her co-authors Dr. Joe Blosser, HPUs Robert G. Culp Jr. director of service-learning, and Mrs. Pam Greene, volunteer coordinator with Communities in Schools High Point, were recently awarded the Service-Learning and Experiential Education SIG Outstanding Conference Submission Award from the American Educational Research Association (AARA) for research conducted in Blossers honors social scientific inquiry service-learning class.

Their paper, titled, How can I uproot the system?: Justice-oriented outcomes from community-based research in schools, analyzed student learning. The class partnered with local Title I schools to collect data and research topics the local schools wanted to address, like school readiness, parent engagement, teacher morale and student transiency. Then, students presented their recommendations to the schools based on the data they collected and analyzed.

We found that partnering with local Title 1 schools cultivated several justice-oriented learning outcomes for students, like a recognition of deficit perspectives, a deepened understanding of systemic poverty and the ability to distinguish empowering models of service from paternalistic ones, said Blosser. Essentially, the course prepared students for being better stewards in their communities because it taught them how research, as a form of service, can be used to promote positive social change in organizations like schools.

Through a rigorous blind review process by colleagues and experts in the field, Blossers work was identified as exceptional at the level of general AERA conference submission and again by the Service Learning special interest group, which is dedicated to bringing together researchers, practitioners and community partners to build and promote understanding and practice of service-learning and experiential education for the betterment of the field and the reform of PK-20 education, both in the United States and abroad. The AERA Conference is one of the most highly revered conferences in the field of education.

I am thankful to teach at a place like HPU that values experiential education and service learning because I believe that students learn more by doing, said Blosser. In this case, my students learned a lot and simultaneously empowered schools with the research they needed to make informed decisions that will benefit students and families.

HPU Psychology Professor Published in National Journal

Dr. Sarah Ross, assistant professor in the Psychology Department, was recently published in the peer-reviewed, American Psychological Associations The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention for her article, titled, The Suicide Prevention for College Student Gatekeepers Program: A Pilot Study.

American college students are exhibiting increasingly lower levels of mental health and higher levels of anxiety and depression, said Ross. Designed to provide college students with information about the warning signs of suicide, as well as how to intervene when indicated, I worked with a team of students to develop the Suicide Prevention for College Student Gatekeepers training program.

HPU graduate, Megan Deiling, co-authored the article, which highlights the campus suicide prevention program that Ross and colleagues developed based on evidence-based practice in suicide prevention. Ross and her team of student researchers implemented suicide prevention training across HPUs campus, and to-date, have trained over 500 students.

Because of the programs success, Ross and colleagues have received SAMSHA funding to disseminate the program across other campuses in the United States.

HPU Astrophysics Professor, Physics Student Publish Research in Top-Tier Journal

Senior physics major Stephen Walser and Dr. Brad Barlow, associate professor of astrophysics and director of the Culp Planetarium, recently published an article titled, Hot Subdwarf All Southern Sky Fast Transit Survey with the Evryscope, in the Astrophysical Journal,alongwith collaborators from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.The peer-reviewed article presents a survey of 1,400 stars and the discovery of more than two dozen new variable stars, including several rare compact binaries.

We have been working hard on this survey for several years, and its nice to publish our results and share our efforts with others, said Barlow. Stephen played an integral role in helping us nail down the properties of one of these exciting binaries by taking follow-up observations with a remote telescope in Chile.

The work was carried out with the Evryscope, the worlds first gigapixel-scale telescope built by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and deployed on Cerro Tololo in the Chile Andes mountain range. The work was also supported in part by a $349,621 research grant the group received from the National Science Foundation.

This is my first peer-reviewed publication, said Walser. I am grateful for the opportunity to work alongside Barlow and other great astrophysicists and gain this invaluable experience conducting astrophysics research and disseminating science results

Barlow is a member of the Evryscope Science Collaboration and has been working with their team over the past few years to identify and study new variable stars. He also helped advise and served on the Ph.D. committee of the lead author, Jeff Ratzloff.

HPU Students, Faculty and Staff Recognized for Research and Innovation - High Point University

Oral Probiotics Market 2020 Future Growth Prospects and Trends | Oragenics, Life Extension, TheraBreath and Others – Cole of Duty

Posted on April 28, 2020 by Danzig

Futuristic Reports, The growth and development of Global Oral Probiotics Market Report 2020 by Players, Regions, Type, and Application, forecast to 2026 provides industry analysis and forecast from 2020-2026. Global Oral Probiotics Market analysis delivers important insights and provides a competitive and useful advantage to the pursuers. Oral Probiotics processes, economic growth is analyzed as well. The data chart is also backed up by using statistical tools.

Simultaneously, we classify different Oral Probiotics markets based on their definitions. Downstream consumers and upstream materials scrutiny are also carried out. Each segment includes an in-depth explanation of the factors that are useful to drive and restrain it.

Key Players Mentioned in the study are Oragenics, Life Extension, TheraBreath, Lallemand, Bluestone Pharma, Jarrow Formulas, Now Foods, BioGaia, ProBiora Health, Hyperbiotics, Bifodan

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On the basis on the applications, this report focuses on the status and Oral Probiotics outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, and growth rate for each application, including-

Child Adult

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Powder Chewable tablets Others

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NOTE: Our team is studying Covid-19 impact analysis on various industry verticals and Country Level impact for a better analysis of markets and industries. The 2020 latest edition of this report is entitled to provide additional commentary on latest scenario, economic slowdown and COVID-19 impact on overall industry. Further it will also provide qualitative information about when industry could come back on track and what possible measures industry players are taking to deal with current situation.

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Oral Probiotics Market Regional Analysis Includes:

Asia-Pacific (Vietnam, China, Malaysia, Japan, Philippines, Korea, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and Australia) Europe (Turkey, Germany, Russia UK, Italy, France, etc.) North America (the United States, Mexico, and Canada.) South America (Brazil etc.) The Middle East and Africa (GCC Countries and Egypt.)

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Gain perceptive study of this current Oral Probiotics sector and also possess a comprehension of the industry; Describe the Oral Probiotics advancements, key issues, and methods to moderate the advancement threats; Competitors In this chapter, leading players are studied with respect to their company profile, product portfolio, capacity, price, cost, and revenue. A separate chapter on Oral Probiotics market structure to gain insights on Leaders confrontational towards market [Merger and Acquisition / Recent Investment and Key Developments] Patent Analysis** Number of patents filed in recent years.

Table of Content:

Global Oral Probiotics Market Size, Status and Forecast 20261. Market Introduction and Market Overview2. Industry Chain Analysis3. Oral Probiotics Market, by Type4. Oral Probiotics Market, by Application5. Production, Value ($) by Regions6. Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2016-2020)7. Market Status and SWOT Analysis by Regions (Sales Point)8. Competitive Landscape9. Analysis and Forecast by Type and Application10. Channel Analysis11. New Project Feasibility Analysis12. Market Forecast 2020-202613. Conclusion

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Oral Probiotics Market 2020 Future Growth Prospects and Trends | Oragenics, Life Extension, TheraBreath and Others - Cole of Duty

Stay-at-home extension causes tension throughout the state – Leader-Telegram

Posted on April 28, 2020 by Danzig

More than a month ago, Gov.Tony Evers issued the emergency order directing citizens to stay at home and non-essential businesses and operations to close until April 24 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Concerns have only mounted since then, coming to a head recently when Evers extended the safer at home order until May 26.

Not long after announcing the extension and unveiling his Badger Bounce Back plan to get Wisconsin safely reopened, Evers, a Democrat, was met with backlash as Wisconsin Republicans expressed their own concerns, stating the order goes too far and has far-reaching economic and human impacts throughout the state.

I have heard from business owners and farmers in my district who are losing everything that they have worked for their entire life. They cannot endure this shutdown much longer, said Rep. Todd Novak, a Republican who represents Assembly District 51 in southwest Wisconsin. Im concerned about my businesses and farmers being able to survive.

Our hard-working constituents are ready to go back to work to support their families and communities. It is unfair to ask them to sacrifice these things for so long, said Rep. Treig Pronschinske, a Republican who represents Assembly District 92 in northwest Wisconsin.

With the Wisconsin Department of Health Services reporting that 60% of the states 72 counties have fewer than 10 cases, and 10% of those 72 counties have no reported cases, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald have now decided to challenge the governors action by asking the Wisconsin State Supreme Court to weigh in.

We continue to call on the governor to retreat from his one-size-fits-all approach and allow the state to safely open up regionally so people can get back to work, Republicans Vos and Fitzgerald said in a joint statement. Wisconsin is a diverse state; obviously, the Northwoods cant be treated like Dane and Milwaukee counties.

Farmers, who are no stranger to uncertainty, especially over the past several years, have expressed their frustrations with the stay-at-home order extension as well.

For Joe Bragger, president of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation and a dairy farmer in Buffalo County, most farmers understand the logic of herd immunity and the dangers of disease spread when something enters a herd that does not have a vaccine.

Taking proactive measures to keep livestock healthy and following biosecurity protocol on the farm is nothing new, he said. But at the same time, as a farmer, I am no stranger to the pain the agricultural community is feeling as a result of this pandemic.

Farmers are incredible people. Even while they face some of the most challenging times in recent memory, they are not afraid to step up and help people in need. Continue to support each other, because together is the only way we will get through this.

Bob Uphoff, a pork producer in south central Wisconsin, said theyve had zero sales of pork products since the first week of March because of the closure of restaurants. He had spoken to his distributors last week, and had hoped to have a possible production run on April 27.

Once the governor extended the closure of restaurants, we were back to no orders, he said. With the closure of major packing facilities in the Midwest, we are unable to get any hogs moved until sometime in May.

The Wisconsin Dairy Alliance, along with 18 other Wisconsin trade associations and 33 Wisconsin Chambers of Commerce, signed a letter to the governor in early April, urging him to begin the process of reopening the state on April 24, when the safer at home order was originally set to expire.

This was the last scenario dairy farmers anticipated, the Wisconsin Dairy Alliance said in a news release. Prompt action is critical to save this essential industry.

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Stay-at-home extension causes tension throughout the state - Leader-Telegram

How to live when nobody dies – E&T Magazine

Posted on April 28, 2020 by Danzig

Three score and ten is so 1970s. Today, the average baby born in the UK will live long enough to see the beginning of the 22nd century. Increasingly we also hear claims of longevity breakthroughs that could propel those children and maybe even their parents into triple digits and beyond. Is eternal life something we want outside of science fiction? And how will society cope if it is?

The first ten million years were the worst, said Marvin. The second ten million years, they were the worst, too. The third ten million years I didnt enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.

So opines Marvin, Douglas Adams paranoid android, who follows the protagonists of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy around like a bumbling, grumbling storm cloud. Functionally immortal (and cursed with a brain the size of a planet), Marvin is the hubristic dream of eternal life printed and stamped in circuitry. While his human shipmates stumble from one disaster to another, devoting their limited talents to avoiding death at all costs, Marvin plods glumly along, bemoaning the pointlessness of an infinite existence in which there is nothing new to learn, no challenge to his intellect and in which everyone even his closest friend, a rat that nested for a time in his foot dies. Except him.

Marvin is archetypical of immortals. Our stories are not kind to them. The Ancient Greek gods were positively psychopathic in doling out eternal damnation as punishment for everything from stealing fire (the titan Prometheus, who was lashed to a rock and whose liver was pecked out by an eagle, every day, forever) to winning a sewing contest (Arachne, who with perhaps limited foresight challenged Athena to a weave-off and was transformed into a forever-spinning spider when she won). For centuries since, thats more or less been the lot of would-be immortals: vampires are stuck in castles, the future rich keep their youth (but lose their humanity), and seekers of life-giving plants, elixirs and artefacts end up eaten, cursed or crushed under collapsing temples. If ever you are invited on a quest to find the... well, anything of eternal life, the entirety of our literary canon says: dont go.

Yet at the same time life extension is, almost by definition, what we expect of medicine. Its feels odd to frame chemotherapy or cardiovascular treatments as life-extension technologies, but for cancer and heart disease patients thats exactly what they are. More generally, we expect some small increase in life expectancy for each new generation. Every ten years, the Office for National Statistics releases data on how long the populations of England and Wales are living, and for the last five decades, life expectancy at birth has risen by around two-to-three years per decade. And when that increase stalls (as it did in the late 2010s), scientists are rounded up for television interviews and grilled over what or who is toblame.

This is a paradox of human life extension: we expect our kids to live longer than we do, but not much longer. An extra half-decade sounds about right. An extra half-century does not. The latter would seem outrageous and unfair if it werent so fanciful. And yet, serious people are treating the postponement of ageing increasingly seriously. The UKs Nuffield Council on Bioethics, by way of example, published a paper titled The Search for a Treatment for Ageing in 2018, listing eight avenues of current life-extension research. In 2013, Google a company associated with many things, but not life extension funded Calico, a company which specialises in exactly that.

Various studies in mice and rats have shown what well-publicised studies in mouse and rat populations often do: that a thing (in this case, a potential anti-ageing treatment) has done something miraculous (slowed down ageing) for the mice and rats (who have since been dissected) from which we can extrapolate a comparable result for humans (who will live longer and healthier lives and not be dissected). Theres no one clear indicator that radical life extension is around the corner but this rise in funding, debate and vivisected mouse carcasses suggests that our everyday assumption that there is a right amount of life for people may be rooted more in experience than in rational thought.

I havent really, fully absorbed how deep-seated the irrationality is, says Dr Aubrey de Grey, biogerontologist and co-founder of the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) Research Foundation. De Grey has been both researching and campaigning for what he calls radical life extension for nearly two decades. His two most recognisable features are the long grey beard that reaches almost to his waist, and his utter impatience with what he has called The Global Trance: the cross-cultural acceptance that one day, in the not-so-far-future, all of us must necessarily stop existing. De Greys view that functional immortality may not only be possible, but that its disparate foundations have already been laid in laboratories around the world, is highly controversial.

Scathing appraisals of his proposals have been made by experts across the biological sciences, who argue that the technologies he presents as joint candidates for life extension are too early in their development to be useful for decades, if ever. But taking this macro view of deGreys ideas feels like missing the point. SENS is far from the only organisation with the goal of increasing lifespan and it is far from the largest. But deGrey is a powerful orator, cowing audiences into listening with the air of an otherwise jovial science teacher who cant quite believe how badly his class has done in their mock exam.

These days Im very strong on not only saying, Look, have a sense of proportion, boys and girls: [ageing] is by far the major cause of suffering in the world. Hands up anyone who wants to get Alzheimers? Hands up anyone who wants anyone else to get Alzheimers?, he says, contrasting his current presentational style with the impatient brusqueness of his 2005 Ted Talk. But now I also tend to spend a fair amount of my time being a little bit more sympathetic to this irrationality and acknowledging that it only became irrational very recently... 20 years ago, it made sense to trick oneself into putting ageing out of ones mind and getting on with ones miserably short life rather than being preoccupied with this terrible thing, because there was no real reason to believe that we had much chance of moving the needle of actually accelerating the arrival of therapies that really bring ageing under control. So it kind of made sense; I have some sympathy.

20 years ago, it made sense to trick oneself into putting ageing out of ones mind and getting on with ones miserably short life rather than being preoccupied with this terrible thing, because there was no real reason to believe that we had much chance of moving the needle.

De Grey and the other researchers at SENS lay out seven factors that contribute to ageing, including cell loss and tissue atrophy, cancers and mitochondrial mutations along with novel biotechnologies that may one day mitigate their deleterious effects. SENS is not alone in suggesting potential therapies to delay ageing other candidate treatments have included the diabetes drug Metformin, resveratrol (the chemical compound/viticultural PR mega-win found in red wine) and gruesomely the transfusion of the blood of young people into the elderly. Life extension, as an investment, is high-risk-enormous-reward hence the glut of proposed therapies.

De Grey stresses that any sudden and significant change in life expectancy will not be the result of one breakthrough, but of many treatments working in concert. Attacking ageing from multiple angles will lead to what he terms Longevity Escape Velocity the idea that if you can develop treatments for age-related disease more quickly than they can kill people, not only does lifespan increase exponentially, but frailty is similarly delayed. Lifespan is almost the wrong term for what life-extension proponents are seeking a better term, already in academic use, is healthspan. Living to 150 and feeling it would be nightmarish. Proposed therapies must offer something more akin to eternal youth than eternal life.

This is something that I have to spend an enormous proportion of my time on, says deGrey. Just driving [that distinction] over and over again into peoples heads that lifespan is a side-effect of healthspan. Youve got to stay healthy to stay alive, and health is the major contributor to quality of life.

This is the second challenge for advocates of life extension: because we havent evolved, literally or culturally, to view extended, healthy lives as anything but fiction, almost nobody outside of the insular debate is equipped to properly assess its risks and virtues. If you accept that a sudden jump in healthy life expectancy is coming whether thats 50 years or 500 the lack of public discourse is troubling.

Very few studies have been performed to properly assess the publics view of living dramatically longer, and those that have show little coherence among subjects. The University of Queensland performed two such studies face-to-face studies and focus groups with 57 Australians in 2009; another, larger telephone study of 605 people in 2011. In both cases, participants views ranged from being strongly in favour to strongly against, with reasons for the latter position including issues of distributive justice, overpopulation, the breakdown of the traditional family unit and religious concerns. They showed, essentially, that most people dont know what to think, but one thing that is broadly shared is a concern that radical life extension threatens a sense of fairness.

Part of our attitude to what we think of as premature death dying before your time, is that its a sort of unfairness, and that idea of unfairness absolutely permeates across society, says bioethicist Professor John Harris. Besides teaching, Harris has acted as ethical advisor to the European Parliament, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the UK Department of Health; has published or edited more than 20 books, and written over 300 academic papers on subjects from cloning to human enhancement to the ethics of ageing both in how we treat the elderly now and why we should be supportive of life extension in the future.

There are limitless examples of the unfairness of some people getting what they want and others not getting what they want not just lifespan, but money, or sex, or whatever, Harris continues. But we cant eradicate that, because to eradicate that unfairness would mean always levelling down, rather than levelling up. We dont say wed better make sure nobody goes to university, because that would give them an unfair advantage looking for a job. The alternative to living with that unfairness of accepting that some people get what others would like but cant have is not just applicable to life extension: its applicable to almost everything that is valued.

The question of who would have access to life-extension therapies might be the biggest concern in the debate. The refugee crisis and the post-2008 focus on the widening gap between rich and poor in the UK often viewed through the lens of an overstretched NHS have raised disturbing questions about how human life is valued. The spread of Covid-19 has further highlighted how closely intertwined money and life expectancy have become, with millions of people around the world simply unable to afford to heed governments advice to self-isolate and miss work. Recent science-fiction has mined this inequality to great effect, perhaps most successfully in Netflixs Altered Carbon (based on the novels by Richard K Morgan), in which the super-rich have literally ascended to a place where they will never die, leaving the rest of humanity to exist in violence, criminality and squalor. The idea of billionaires escaping not only taxes but death as well is becoming an increasingly popular dystopia.

We dont know how this would play out, Harris continues. There are ways [we could distribute treatments]: some would be fair and some would be unfair, like not funding them through national health services. Those arent arguments against life extension per se, but they may be arguments about how certain societies choose to deal with the desirability of longer life. There would be many strategies open and hopefully in democratic societies they would be debated democratically.

That distinction between life extension and what creates inequality is important. As Harris explains, the availability of life-extending therapies tells us nothing about how they should be used.

We are very familiar with life extension, but mostly it has appeared in the guise of life-saving strategies, like vaccination, he says. The vaccinations for polio and smallpox have saved hundreds of millions of lives, or to put it another way, have enabled hundreds of millions of people to live who otherwise would have died. Vaccination is an exercise in life extension but nobody throws up their hands in horror about its huge effect on life expectancy.

De Greys first answer not just to the concern of fair distribution, but also to fears of seismic societal and institutional change that may follow major breakthroughs in healthy life extension is also political: in functioning democracies, we have term limits on governments, and in his view any government that did not make life extension for all a priority as it became feasible would collapse in popularity with voters. His second answer is that whatever possible negatives we can imagine, its difficult to imagine a dystopian setting so bad that death would be preferable.

Which is not to advocate complacency: part of deGreys frustration with the lack of public debate is precisely that he sees these advances in increased longevity as potential flashpoints that a revolution in healthcare poorly handled could devolve into an actual revolution. Its not just a matter of when [these therapies] are ready: its the lead-up to it, he explains. One thing that Ive been putting more and more energy into is getting policymakers to understand that the planning needs to happen now, before the therapies are ready... At some point, public opinion is going to undergo a very sudden sea change.

Handled competently, what could radical life extension offer, beyond the obvious benefits of extra time enjoying the people and things that we value? One possibility is that, in the same way that we tend to value life more the longer it has to go (people die tragically young nobody dies tragically old), adding decades of healthy living onto the national or global average might raise the value we place on life in general. De Grey sees evidence of this over the past century.

[The world] has become, both at the individual societal level and also at the global international level, a much, much less violent place, he says. And a huge part of why [thats happened] is that there is greater value given to life. If we look, for example, within the USA at the areas that have the greatest amount of violence, they are the areas that have the lowest life expectancy. But thats not because a lot of people are dying from violence: its because a lot of people are dying from poor nutrition, lack of access to medical treatment and so life is valued less.

As a species weve become increasingly familiar with the clash between our biology and the mutagenic effects of technology upon it, but we have survived through adaptation. We think in tribes but thrive in cities. We cross the world without losing our roots. We marry our Tinder matches. If the next technological shift in our stars is the collapse of the milestoned life birth, work, family, frailty, death it will be because we see more opportunities than costs. We arent Marvins: were good, as individuals and as a species, at finding new things to do when the world changes around us.

The great thing about longevity is that you wouldnt have to choose just one career, Harris reflects. If I had my time again, I would probably have liked to be a biologist. And then once I had my 70-odd years as a biologist I might want to do something else. Nobody wants to just go on doing the same old stuff, but if we have the time and ability we can change. Its one of my regrets now, at the age that I am, that while I do go on doing philosophy and writing about the things I like writing about, I would like to learn about new things and do other things.

There are people who say, Oh, youd just get bored if you had all that time. But I dont think I would. I would gladly sample a few million years and see how it goes.

Finance

Postponing ageing isnt just a natural extension of what our healthcare system does (which, at its core, is stop people from dying) theres also a strong economic argument to pursue life-extension research.

According to the most recent available figures from the Office for National Statistics, the UK spent 197.4bn on healthcare in 2017 just under 10 per cent of GDP. As life expectancy rises, so does the length of time the average person can expect to require care or live in poor health. The number of chronic conditions linked to ageing is rising (dementia, for example, currently affects an estimated 850,000 people in the UK, with that number expected to grow to one million by 2025).

The cost of fighting these age-related conditions is astronomical: according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the NHS spends more than twice as much on the average 65-year-old as on the average 30-year-old. Patients aged 85 and over require, on average, five times as much spending as 30-year-olds.

All of which sounds like a pretty good argument against life-extension if we struggle to treat the elderly now, it follows that dramatically extending life should be disastrous. But there are two problems with this line of reasoning. First, it ignores the fact that life-extension is something that happens albeit slowly already. A child born today is predicted to live, on average, a little over eighty years or about five years longer than a child born in 1980. An increase in age-related diseases is a crisis were living already.

The second problem is that the financial argument conflates age and health. No-one who advocates radical life-extension is suggesting the goal should be an extra 50 years in a nursing home. A treatment for ageing isnt the same as a cure for death: the proposal is to extend healthy life.

The humanitarian benefits of longer and healthier lives aside, extending life while reversing the current trend (in which longer life correlates with a longer period of physical and mental decline) would not only reduce the burden on the healthcare service, but also mean that fewer people would be forced into retirement due to poor health.

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How to live when nobody dies - E&T Magazine

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