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Peterson: Iowa State checks all the important boxes after beating TCU – Des Moines Register

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

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AMES, Ia. Touchdowns on possessions inside TCUs yard line.

Check.

Solid third-down defense.

Check.

Brock Purdy, the successful play-manager.

Check.

Iowa States 49-24 victory against TCU Saturday at Jack Trice Stadium checked all the Cyclones boxes or at least most of them and coach Matt Campbell can be happy that it happened sooner rather than later.

Another loss would have put Iowa State behind the bowl-eligibility 8-ball. Saturday, however, the Cyclones showed what happens when you play consistent good football. Histeam was so good, most of the time, that it scored the most points a Cyclones team has scored in this 11-game series. The previous high was in Iowa States 37-23 victory in 2012.

Iowa State quarterback Brock Purdy (So.) (15) motions as he runs in for a touchdown to make the score 27-3 during their football game at Jack Trice Stadium on Saturday, Oct. 5, 2019 in Ames.(Photo: Brian Powers/The Register)

They kicked out butts, TCU veteran coach Gary Patterson said. Every phase, pretty simple. Not much more you can say.

Quarterback Brock Purdy managed an offense that hung 21 first-halfpoints against the Big 12s No. 2 defense. Thats more points than three Horned Frogs opponents scored in full games, and it happened because the Purdy-led offense had 198 yards, including 133 on the sophomores first 13 completions.

He did it with mid-range passes in front of the secondary, and behind the linebackers. Eight of his first 13 completions went to flanker Deshaunte Jones, a combination that thrives on quick and short throws becoming 20-yard or so gains.

They had a quarterback run game that they had not done up to this point out of tight end sets, Patterson said. We didnt do a good job adjusting.

You didnt have to look too far to see the improvement of Iowa States defense. Jon Heacocks guys set the tone early, holding on seven of eight third-downs in the first half. Thats been a point of emphasis throughout the season, and Saturday, it came to fruition.

The Cyclones defense also had a sack and fumble recovery and touchdown on the same second-quarter play, when ORien Vance knocked the ball loose while sacking Max Duggan. Enyi Uwazurike scooped the ball up at the 1-yard line and stepped into the end zone for a touchdown.

The play resulted in Iowa States second fumble recovery this season, and the Cyclones second defensive touchdown this season.

You have to be ready to raise your level of excellence every week, Campbell said. We have really good players. We have guys that have the ability to do what they did today. Zach (Petersen) took a huge step.

Iowa State defensive end JaQuan Bailey didnt play. Now the question is whether hell play another Cyclones game.

Campbell said the senior underwent surgery Tuesday to repair a lower leg injury suffered against Baylor. The coach also brought up the fact that Bailey redshirting also is a possibility for the senior, considering hes played in just four games and didnt redshirt as a true freshman.

Well see how that plays out, Campbell said.

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Petersen, a sophomore, has played well as Baileys backup. He started Saturday, and hell start the rest of the season, too, assuming Bailey doesnt return.

Not returning this season seems highly likely.

Maybe the horrible weather pattern will be gone by Iowa States next home game, which is Oct. 26 against Oklahoma State. Maybe.

Before Saturdays 2-hour delay before TCU game, there was rain when Louisiana-Monroe played at Jack Trice and a couple lengthy lightning delays against Iowa. Weather for the Northern Iowa game was all right, and going back to last season, Drake at Iowa State was played on a sloppy field.

If you want to carry this one step further, Iowa States game at Baylor was played in intense Waco heat.

Did the cold, rainy conditions slow down warm-weather TCU? I doubt it, considering the sun actually came out a few times. Iowa State was the reason for the outcome, not chillier weather than the Horned Frogs were accustomed to.

Iowa State tight end Charlie Kolar (R-So.) (88) reacts after catching a touchdown pass during their football game at Jack Trice Stadium on Saturday, Oct. 5, 2019 in Ames. After a two hour rain delay, Iowa State would take a 21-03 lead over TCU into halftime.(Photo: Brian Powers/The Register)

Back to scoring on drives inside the TCU 50-yard line Iowa States offense scored touchdowns a whopping six times out of 10 times in whats considered the plus side of the field.

When we play really good football, that happens, Campbell said. (Saturday), our offense had the consistent ability to move and ball and consistently finish.

Consistency is something thatd been lacking in the losses against Iowa and Baylor. Consistency must continue for the Cyclones to come close to realizing their goals. Saturday was a great confidence-building start, however.

Randy Peterson is the Iowa State columnist for the Register. Reach him at rpeterson@dmreg.com, 515-284-8132, and on Twitter at @RandyPete. No one covers the Cyclones like the Register. Subscribe today at Des Moines Register.com/Deal to make sure you never miss a moment.

Futurist predicts well be cyborgs in 4th industrial revolution – NEWS.com.au

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

Over the years many young Australians have been urged to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics STEM for short but one Sydney futurist has some very different advice.

With technology playing an increasing role in our lives, its not surprising that many in the industry and within government have urged young people to engage with the concepts that look set to change their lives.

Skills shortages in areas like cyber security, data and software development could also lead many to think they taking a smart path and training for jobs with a future.

However, futurist Anders Sorman-Nilsson has a slightly different view.

For the last 13 years, Mr Sorman-Nilsson has consulted with some of the biggest companies in the world including Facebook, Apple and Mercedes Benz, helping them to understand how to future-proof their businesses.

When it comes to the jobs of the future, Mr Sorman-Nilsson said people should think deeply about the skills that would be needed.

Dont listen to the Government when it says to only learn code and STEM, he told news.com.au.

Computers can do logic and maths better than a human.

Mr Sorman-Nilsson believes embracing technology is important but parents should be encouraging their children to also improve their skills in areas that computers werent good at, such as creativity and emotional intelligence.

Theyve got to recognise that human and creative qualities really need to be nurtured to differentiate them in the future, he said.

Re-engineering Australia (REA) executive chairman Dr Michael Myers agreed with Mr Sorman-Nilsson and said the focus of education should be on lifelong learning and how to use knowledge.

REA consults with industry and runs STEM programs in public and private schools around the country. Mr Myers said tools like Google have made it easy for people gain access to information and it was now about developing the skills to understand and apply that knowledge.

Its about analytical problem solving and communication, he said.

Kids still need to learn maths and science but only in context, he said.

Mr Myer said industry was overwhelmingly asking for soft or enterprise skills.

The skills that people want are about team work, collaboration, communication, problem solving and innovation.

WE ARE ALREADY IN A FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

It is Mr Sorman-Nilssons view that the world is already in the midst of a fourth industrial revolution described by the founder of the World Economic Forum, Professor Klaus Schwab, as potentially challenging ideas about what it means to be human.

Mr Sorman-Nilsson believes weve lived through a third revolution marked by the rise of computers and is predicting the next change will merge physical, digital and biological worlds.

In the years to come, the world will look like a hugely different place, where humanity and technology merge like never before, Mr Sorman-Nilsson said.

Science fiction is fast becoming science fact.

Mr Sorman-Nilsson said people had already started to evolve into cyborgs, whose mental and physical abilities were being extended courtesy of technology like artificial limbs and the cochlear implant, a device that is surgically implanted into a persons inner ear to help people hear better.

The development and popularity of these tech fixes will only continue to gather speed with some fascinating results.

Mr Sorman-Nilsson believes eventually we will embrace these technological enhancements so much we will evolve into transhumans.

In order to adapt to this new future, Mr Sorman-Nilsson believes people need to stop thinking of humans as humans, and robots as robots.

Getting rid of the us versus them mentality can make the changes feel less intimidating, and he believes this will allow people to focus on how technology is being developed by transhumans for transhumans.

This may sound like a wild idea, but Mr Sorman-Nilsson believes humans need to get used to concepts like this if they are going to thrive in the future.

GET CURIOUS ABOUT THE FUTURE TO SURVIVE

The integration of technological and physical systems will also be seen in our homes.

Samsung already has a $6000 smart fridge with built-in cameras that can be accessed remotely and a touchscreen that can be used for watching TV and ordering groceries. Nespresso has developed a coffee machine that can be controlled using a smartphone.

Eventually. fridges will be able to order milk automatically when supplies are running low, and coffee machines will be smart enough to start a morning brew after being alerted by someones wearable device they have woken early.

It might seem futuristic but these things already exist in the world, Mr Sorman-Nilsson said.

Its been said the future is already here, its just being distributed unevenly.

These developments could have positive and negative consequences, and Mr Sorman-Nilsson said it was important to be aware of privacy settings and to change passwords frequently.

Recently, a casino in the US was hacked and real money was lost because a hacker broke in using the internet connected fish tank, he said.

Many worry that humans are headed for a dystopian future, but Mr Sorman-Nilsson said it could equally be a utopia for those who embraced it.

In many ways this revolution could be very disruptive for individuals or companies not adapted to change, he said.

But it could also be the greatest time to be alive if you are adapted, willing to change and evolve to a new reality.

Some potential advantages of the technological changes include allowing businesses to be able to be global from day one.

Factories of the future could use virtual reality to predict potential problems on production lines and avoid accidents. Autonomous cars could also reduce deaths due to human error.

If your car breaks down, rather than waiting three weeks for a new part to be shipped from overseas, it may be possible to 3D print a new part. The rise of 3D printing could also lead to organs being printed using human stem cells.

In every industry Mr Sorman-Nilsson said people should get curious about the humanising impact of technologies.

Hes noticed the more his clients learn about new products, the more excited they become about the potential.

I think one of the first things we should do is to learn about technology and not be worried about it, he told news.com.au.

Even just watching a few sci-fi movies might help to get people used to concepts around artificial intelligence. Playing with technologies can also help.

Its hard to learn to think about a computer without ever having used a computer, he said.

Go to an Apple store, attend a workshop and find out how consumer technologies can improve your life. Experiment.

Get serious about technology and learn more about it.

ANDERS EXPERT TIPS ON PLANNING FOR THE REVOLUTION:

Be open to unlearning everything you know

Shift from a reactive mindset to a proactive one. Analyse how automation and technology will impact your industry. This can lead to simple corrections, such as business owners changing the types of training staff are doing.

Stop thinking of humans as humans, and robots as robots

By understanding that people have already started to evolve into cyborgs, whose mental and physical abilities are being improved through technology and artificial limbs etc, the transition can be less intimidating.

Think more about the past to change the future

New technologies have the potential to fix issues that have posed a problem in the past. For example, 3D printing can allow car parts to be printed at lower cost, and companies like Ford are already using this technology. People and companies should be reassessing whether problems they have struggled with in the past can now be fixed and to start realising that every company is now a technology company.

Idiots Are Trying to Run Themselves Over With Their Own Teslas – Futurism

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

Dumb Summon

Teslas Smart Summon feature, which lets cars navigate themselves in parking lots, isnt even out of beta yet. But Tesla owners are already using it in some mind-bogglingly stupid ways, Electrek reports.

In a video uploaded to YouTube account Dirty Tesla, a Model 3 owner tries to walk in front of his vehicle while the Smart Summon feature is activated. Luckily, the Model 3s cameras spot him the first time. On the second time around, the vehicle appears to almost roll over his toes while he approaches it from the cars blind spot.

This is and we nor Tesla should have to tell you this a bad idea.

In the release notes of Teslas Version 10 update,which includes the Smart Summon feature, Tesla points out that you are still responsible for your car and must monitor it and its surroundings at all times within your line of sight because it may not detect all obstacles.

Drivers are already reporting minor fender benders as a result of Summon. Twitter user David Guajardo even had somebody crash into his Model 3s bumper while he was Smart Summon-ing his vehicle in a parking lot. His insurance claim could turn into a real headache.

Other party thinks that I was actually driving because I ran to my car before he got out, he wrote in a follow-up tweet.

READ MORE: Tesla owners are already doing dumb things with Smart Summon [Electrek]

More on Teslas Summon: See Teslas Enhanced Summon Pick up a Driver in a Parking Lot

Astronomers Just Found the Oldest Galaxies in the Universe – Futurism

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

Old Ones

Astronomers just spotted a protocluster of galaxies that are older than any others in the known universe.

The discovery only recently became possible, because the light given off by the galaxies stars reached Earth after making an epic 13-billion-light-year journey across the universe, Live Science reports. The ancient group is just about 800 million years younger than the universe itself and its unexpected behavior could shed light on how the cosmoshave changed over the past 13 billion years.

In tightly-packed galaxy clusters, star formation tends to be stunted the most active galaxies tend to be more spread out. But the opposite seems to have happened in this ancient cluster, according to research published Monday in The Astrophysical Journal, with 15 times more star density than expected.

The twelve galaxies that make up the newly-discovered protocluster seem to have been hotbeds of stellar activity, back in the early days of the universe, Live Science reports but thelarge, international team ofresearchers behind the discovery havent yet figured out why.

That mystery aside, Live Science reports that the very fact that such a dense group of galaxies could long ago upends how astronomers thought the cosmos worked.

These results will be a key for understanding the relationship between clusters and massive galaxies, University of Tokyo researcher Masami Ouchi, who contributed to the discovery, said in a press release.

READ MORE: Huge Cosmic Structures Already Existed When the Universe Was a Baby [Live Science]

More on space: Astrophysicists Warn That Entire Galaxies Are Being Killed

Astronomers Just Found the Oldest Galaxies in the Universe - Futurism

Northwest CT Chamber of Commerce: Charting the course – Torrington Register Citizen

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

Join us as we host Charting the Course Through Demographic Change presented by Ken Gronbach on Thursday, Oct. 10, 7:30-9:30 a.m. at Chatterleys Banquet Facility, 371 Pinewoods Road, Torrington.

Ken Gronbach is a gifted keynote speaker and nationally recognized author, expert and futurist in the field of Demography and Generational Marketing. Come explore the common sense, but very counter-intuitive and fascinating realm of demography.

Let Gronbach bring you into his world of counting people. His understanding of worldwide demographics, fertility, migration, aging, immigration and dying have enabled him to forecast societal, political, economic, cultural and commercial phenomena with uncanny accuracy.

What nations are demographically doomed? How will the workforces change? What is the future of communications? How will our childrens children get their education? Will big data change marketing and branding forever? What is the fate of mass media? What countries and continents are demographically positioned to excel?

Learn this and more from Ken Gronbachs presentation.

The cost is $30 per person which includes a full breakfast. Reservations are required. RSVP at http://www.nwctchamberofcommerce.org/calendar . Sponsored by Connecticut Department of Labor Office of Workforce Competitiveness and Northwest Hills Council of Governments.

Check out our website at http://www.nwctchamberofcommerce.org for more Chamber happenings. *This institution is an equal opportunity provider*

Originally posted here:

Northwest CT Chamber of Commerce: Charting the course - Torrington Register Citizen

Here’s the First-Ever Pic Of "Cosmic Web" Connecting All Galaxies – Futurism

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

Cosmic Links

For the first time, scientists have directly observed something called the cosmic web, a vast network of hydrogen channels believed to connect all the galaxies in the universe.

Astrophysicists were able to spot the cosmic megastructure lurking between galaxies 12 billion light years away in the Aquarius constellation, The Guardian reports. Not only is a landmark scientific breakthrough, but the confirmation of the webs existence lends credibility to a particular hypothesisabout how galaxies came to be.

As the story goes, the Big Bang flooded the newly-formed universe with clouds of hydrogen gas that eventually collapsed into sheets and filament-shaped structures. The points at which those filaments of the cosmic web met became formation sites for galaxies that fed on the hydrogen to form stars.

This particular hypothesis has long been supported by computer simulations, but the direct observations of new galaxies forming along the cosmic web serve as much-needed tangible evidence, according to research published Thursday in the journal Science.

Before this, scientists had only spotted an occasional gas cloud extending outward from a galaxy, The Guardian reports. Finding the particularly-dim filaments themselves required the ability to filter out the rest of the light in the cosmos.

This suggests very strongly that gas falling along the filaments under the force of gravity triggers the formation of starbursting galaxies and supermassive black holes, giving the universe the structure that we see today, lead researcher Hideki Umehata of the University of Tokyo told The Guardian.

READ MORE: Scientists observe mysterious cosmic web directly for first time [The Guardian]

More on space: Astrophysicists Warn That Entire Galaxies Are Being Killed

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Here's the First-Ever Pic Of "Cosmic Web" Connecting All Galaxies - Futurism

NASA’s Chief Scientist is Oddly Terrified By Finding Life on Mars – Futurism

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

Life on Mars

Chief scientist at NASA Jim Green believes werejust years away from finding life on Mars thanks to the agencys Mars rover and the European Space Agencys ExoMars Rover, both scheduled to launch in 2020.

If the missions find life, Green is terrified of the implications.

It will start a whole new line of thinking, he told The Telegraph. I dont think were prepared for the results. Ive been worried about that because I think were close to finding it and making some announcements.

Both rovers are planning to drillinto the Martian surface to take rock samples and analyze them for organic matter something that could indicate the presence of living organisms on the Red Planet. If all goes well, the Mars 2020 rover will eventually send tiny test-tubes of samples back to Earth.

Greens remarks come after ESA researchersannounced the first -ever evidence of a planet-wide groundwater system on Mars back in February water that could have allowed the planet to harbor life.

Evidence of organisms on Mars would raise a host of new questions about life beyond Earth, according to Green. Does life on Mars resemble life on Earth in any way? Could ithave jumped from planet to planet?

There is no reason to think that there isnt civilizations elsewhere, because we are finding exoplanets all over the place, told the paper.

READ MORE: Life on Mars could be found within two years but world is not prepared, Nasas chief scientist says [The Independent]

More on life on Mars: Theres A Huge Subterranean Lake of Liquid Water on Mars

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NASA's Chief Scientist is Oddly Terrified By Finding Life on Mars - Futurism

Here’s Why Elon Musk is Feuding With the Head of NASA – Futurism

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

On paper, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk should be the best of friends. Years of collaboration and hard work are about to pave the way for the long-awaited return of launching humans into space from American soil but instead of chumming it up, the duo are at each others throats.

The trouble started when Bridenstine released a statement on Friday a day before Musk took to the stage to present the latest Starship updates to complain about the lack of progress on SpaceXs contract to deliver astronauts into orbit with its Commercial Crew project. The implication, whether intended or unintended: stop showing off Starship and deliver the NASA-contracted Commercial Crew.

I am looking forward to the SpaceX announcement tomorrow, read Bridenstines statement. In the meantime, Commercial Crew is years behind schedule. NASA expects to see the same level of enthusiasm focused on the investments of the American taxpayer. Its time to deliver.

It was an unusual dig at SpaceX, which has been a close partner with NASA for years so unusualthat CNET even called Bridenstine a party pooper with this troll job.

SpaceXs Crew Dragon has made a decent amount of progress, making an uncrewed visit to the International Space Station in March and successfully completing an emergency escape system test earlier this month.

But things didnt always go that smoothly. In April, a massive explosion of the Crew Dragon capsule during an engine fire test represented a major setback.

There is no doubt the schedule will change, Bridenstine said of the Crew Dragon project at the time, according to Reuters. It wont be what was originally planned.

Demo-2, SpaceXs first crewed test flight to the ISS, is currently scheduled for no earlier than November, according to reports. The company has yet to announce a date officially.

But the beef between Musk and Bridenstine wasnt over yet. Things escalated further during a CNN Business interview with Musk following his presentation on Saturday. When asked about Bridenstines statement on Friday, he interrupted the question, shooting back did he say Commercial Crew or SLS? likely a dig at NASA for going way over budget and running years late in developing its own Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

A NASA spokeperson told Futurism that the agency actively supports SpaceX in developing Starship. But Bridenstines position and the exact reasoning behind his Friday statement remain unclear.

Bridenstine continues to emphasize that the return of launches of American astronauts, on American rockets and spacecraft, from American soil should be the top priority for NASAs commercial crew partners, the spokesperson said. SpaceX has leveraged NASAs expertise and test facilities for aerodynamic modeling and testing of Starship.

Plenty of questions remain unanswered about the strange back-and-forth. Besides, why did Bridenstine release his statement in the first place? Senior Space Editor at Ars Technica Eric Berger,a close industry observer, suggested it was simply a reflection of [Bridenstines] desire to see all NASA contractors meet their deadlines for government contracts according to a Friday tweetthat Bridenstine himself later retweeted.

Jim would happily embrace commercial space more, but his hands are to some extent tied by the Senate, Berger followed up on Twitter.

NASAs relationship with the current administration has been on a steady decline this year. The White House has approved some extra funds for NASAs Artemis mission to the Moon in 2024 but also claimed that the space agency was in no way ready to return American astronauts to the Moon.

NASA has stuck to its guns, with Bridenstine asking for an additional $1.6 billion in funding for Artemis back in May. Months later, Bridenstine is still lobbying for extra funds likely a great source of frustration for the NASA administrator.

So far, the Senate has approved only $1.2 million for all of NASAs exploration programs and only $744 million of the $1 billion NASA requested specifically for human lunar landers.

Meanwhile, NASAs Commercial Crew Program is making progress albeit slowly. NASA astronauts have been trying on SpaceXs sleek new flight suits for size, and testing emergency escape systems at the Kennedy Space Center.

The Bridenstine-Musk tiff shows that theres at least some tension between the private and public space industries one is building a shiny stainless steel rocket to get to Mars, while the other is stuck lobbying Congress for taxpayer money.

This story has been updated with a comment from a NASA spokesperson.

READ MORE: NASAs Bridenstine gives SpaceX a reality check [The Hill]

More on Bridenstine: Pluto Is a Planet, Insists NASA Chief Jim Bridenstine

See more here:

Here's Why Elon Musk is Feuding With the Head of NASA - Futurism

The Great Thinkers | Nikola Tesla: The futurist behind electrifying inventions – An-Nahar

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

When Nikola Tesla was born in present-day Croatia on the stormy night of July 10, 1856, its said that the midwife thought of the lightning as a bad omen and that he will be a child of darkness, to which, interestingly enough, his mother replied: No. He will be a child of light.

His career went from rags to riches, a rollercoaster of breathtaking successes and monumental failures that irreversibly ignited a world of wireless communications and electromagnetism.

His mother was also an inventor as she invented household appliances while raising her five children. Her hobby spurred Teslas interest in electrical invention, and its said that he inherited her sharp photographic memory.

As a child, Tesla was so brilliant in solving hard mathematical problems that he was accused of cheating at school. He trained for an engineering career at the Johann Rudolph Glauber Realschule Karlstadt in Germany, the Austrian Polytechnic Institute in Graz and the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague during the 1870s.

At Graz, he first saw the Gramme dynamo that operated as a generator and became an electric motor when reversed, so he tried to conceive a way to use alternating current (AC) to advantage. The AC motor introducedpower transmission by using two- or three-phase current.

After his fathers death, he left college after completing only one term.

He later moved to Budapest, where he became a chief electrician at the Central Telephone Exchange in 1880and was later promoted to an engineer. There, he was able to visualize the principle of the rotating magnetic field, so he developed plans for an introduction motor, his first step towards the usage of alternating current.

He was later hired as an engineer at the Continental Edison Company in Parisand constructed his first induction motor in 1883 in Strasbourg, France. However, the Edison Company didnt pay him the money he was promised, so he quit.

In 1884 and at the age of 28, he left Europe for the United States, with a letter of introduction to inventor and businessman Thomas Alva Edison, whose DC-based electrical works fast became the standard used around the country. After Edison hired him, he contributed to troubleshooting the companys efforts to create an urban power utility.

He was also approached in 1885 by investors who asked him to invent an arc lightning system in exchange for financing his newly founded Electric Light Company in New Jersey. The engineer was forced out of the company after he completed the work, left without any investment.

He and Edison also parted ways amidst a troubled business-scientific relationship.

Thereafter, he worked as a ditch digger for $2 a day during the 1886-1887 winter that he described as a period full of terrible headaches and bitter tears.

In 1887, Tesla received funding for his company by investors Alfred Brown and Charles Peck. Each of them owned one-third of the interests. Right after, he ventured in a Manhattan laboratory on creating his alternating current induction motor, the polyphase system, which solved various technical problems that formerly bedeviled other designs. This new polyphase system would now allow AC electricity to be transmitted over important distances.

With his technology patented, Tesla demonstrated his device to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (now the IEEE) at Columbia University in New York, in 1888. George Washington, head of the Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburgh, licensed Teslas invention for 25000$ in cash in May 1888, hired him and provided him with plus stock and royalties per horsepower for each motor, knowing that Westinghouse was seeking this type of inventions to integrate into his alternating-current power system.

During that time, the so-called War of the Currents opposed proponents of the alternating-current (AC) and those of the direct current (DC) over the two currents safety systems. The Tesla-Westinghouse approach eventually won out, proving that AC power was a workable and economical long-distance system.

Tesla also enjoyed a reputation as a philosopher, poet,and connoisseur and owes his creativity to the fact that he never married, as he once said: I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men. Single Tesla focused all his energy on invention, to the extent that he only slept two hours a night, always looking for a project to work on.

Wireless transmission of energy became his lifelong obsession in 1890, after he illuminated a vacuum tube wirelessly, with the energy being transmitted through air. He also developed the first neon and fluorescent illumination and took the first X-rays photographs.

In 1891, the same year Tesla became an American citizen, and based on the apparatus used in 1887 by the German experimentalist Heinrich Hertz, the Tesla Coil was originally developed as an induction coil to power Teslas new wireless lighting systems and is still used in radio and television technology today. The eponymous coil produces high-voltage, low-current, high-frequency alternating-current electricity.

Tesla conducted demonstrations of his AC system at the 1893 Worlds Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where the Westinghouse Corporation was chosen to supply the lighting. The fair illuminated more light bulbs than could be found in the entire city of Chicago.

This success helped Westinghouse win the contract to be the first to generate electrical power at Niagara Falls, a model that made the first AC hydroelectric power plants in the States.

In 1898, Tesla publicly demonstrated at the Electrical Exposition in New York City his automaton technology by controlling a model boat with a remote control, which could be best described by the term robot, which was not introduced until 1920 by Czech playwright Karel apek. This radio-controlled boat model is the ancestor of todays remote-controlled drones.

A new geo-electrical phenomenon, the terrestrial stationary waves, was observed by Tesla in 1899 in Colorado, which later became the basis for his wireless communications and wireless energy transfer plans so they provide free energy worldwide. This discovery proved that the Earth could be used as a conductor that could resonate at a certain electrical frequency. To widen his testbase, he built a laboratory in Colorado, where he detected signals that he claimed were transmitted by an extraterrestrial source.

Before Tesla could perfect this scheme, Guglielmo Marconi transmitted the first radio message across the Atlantic in 1901, which drove Wall Street financiers to invest in Marconi and not Tesla.

By the end of 1901, the construction of the World-Wide Wireless System, known as Wardenclyffe Tower, had begun in Long Island, New York. The project was mainly leaning towards a massive transmission of free energy. However, the site had fallen into foreclosure in 1915.

Marconi and Ferdinand Braun won the 1909 Nobel Prize for physics in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy, which infuriated Tesla. He unsuccessfully sued Marconi in 1915, claiming infringement on his patents. In the same year, it was rumored that he and Edison would share the Nobel Prize. However, this never happened but he did receive numerous awards and honors in his lifetime, including the Edison Medal in 1917.

Tesla set wheels going round all over the world... What he showed was a revelation to science and art unto all time, said Professor A. E. Kennelly of Harvard University when the inventor received the Edison medal.

He also received a congratulatory letter from Einstein on his 75th birthday. Furthermore, Tesla played the part of a mad scientist in the popular imagination. He continued his research and turbine design, and at 81, he claimed to have completed a dynamic theory of gravity, which was never published.

The increasingly eccentric engineer died alone of coronary thrombosis on January 7, 1943, at the age of 86 in New York City, where he had lived for nearly 60 years. His ashes are now kept at the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade and his nephew Sava Kosanovich inherited his papers, diplomas, letters, and laboratory notes.

Belgrade has an airport named after him, as does the worlds most famous electric car, and the SI-derived unit of magnetic flux density.

The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine, Tesla once said, and one can hardly imagine a world without his contributions. Many of our technologies today would not have seen the light without him, such as the remote control, X-rays, laser, radio, and even robotics.

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Welcome to Annahars latest section The Great Thinkers. This profile series focuses on influential thinkers who have expanded humanitys web of knowledge and contributed largely to shaping the world we live in today.

This section aims to spread knowledge, encourage critical thinking, and popularize science and philosophy.

To contribute, send an email to The Great Thinkers editor Ghina Awdi: ghinaawdi@gmail.com

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The Great Thinkers | Nikola Tesla: The futurist behind electrifying inventions - An-Nahar

Electronic and krautrock-inspired jazz from Germany collected on 2xLP – The Vinyl Factory

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

Published onSeptember 30, 2019

CategoryNews

Spanning from motorik rhythms to psychedelia and beyond.

A new compilation called Kraut Jazz Futurism is showcasing the sounds of electronic and krautrock-inspired jazz from Germany.

Read more: 10 essential Conny Plank records

Kraut Jazz Futurism features 17-tracks, including music by by Karaba, David Nesselhauf, and Torben Unit.

Helmed by Toy Tonics Mathias Modica, it follows TTs German new wave compilation Teutonik Disaster released earlier this year.

Head here for more info in advance of Kraut Jazz Futurisms 1st of November release on Kryptox and check out the tracklist below.

Tracklist:

LP 1

Side A

1. Karaba Der Inder2. SALOMEA Magnolia Tree3. David Nesselhauf Space Station4. Shake Stew Shake The Dust5. Karl Hector & The Malcouns Orange Man

Side B

1. Stimming x Lambert The Little Giant2. Sissi Rada Acrasian Beat3. C.A.R. Dick Schaffrath4. Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra J Schleia

LP 2

Side C

1. Oracles That Was I2. Onom Ogemo and the Disco Jumpers Liquid Love3. Torben Unit Free (Get Your Self Together)4. JJ Whitefield 14/08

Side D

1. Niklas Wandt Balanphontanz in drei Schben2. Ralph Heidel // Homo Ludens The Flood3. Keope A Night In Bacalar4. Toresch El Fuego

Electronic and krautrock-inspired jazz from Germany collected on 2xLP - The Vinyl Factory

China Reveals Spacecraft Built to Ferry Astronauts to the Moon – Futurism

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

To the Moon

China just showed off the next-generation spacecraft it plans to use to send astronauts to the Moon and back, according to Space.com.

The China Academy of Space Technology released a promo video showing more details about the spacecraft, which is designed to house up to five astronauts. The 30-foot, fully reusable spacecraft has a maximum mass ofabout 22 tons at liftoff.

China has successfully launched astronauts into space in the past, but never beyond Earths orbit. To this day, the U.S. remains to be the only country to have sent astronauts all the way to the Moon.

Chinas space program has been using the Soyuz-derived Shenzhou spacecraft to carry astronauts to low-Earth orbit since 2003. The last launch of the Shenzhou 11 capsule was in 2016.

The first uncrewed test flight of the next-generation spacecraft will take place in the first half of 2020, according to Chinese authorities.

The U.S. is also working hard on returning humans to the Moon. SpaceX recently showed off the latest prototype of its Starship, while NASA recently tested the abort system of its Orion deep orbit spacecraft.

READ MORE: This Is Chinas New Spacecraft to Take Astronauts to the Moon (Photos) [Space.com]

More on Moon missions: SpaceX Unveils Massive Starship Prototype Design

Continued here:

China Reveals Spacecraft Built to Ferry Astronauts to the Moon - Futurism

Check Out The Mini Cooper Interior’s Evolution Over The Decades – Motor1.com

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

The Cooper Hardtop was an engineering marvel when it arrived in 1959 because of its compact powertrain packaging that used a transverse engine layout and front-wheel drive. This layout allowed for four passengers in the cabin, despite the tiny overall footprint.

12 Photos

While originally meant to be inexpensive transportation, the Mini turned out to be a fantastic performance car, too. Racer and auto manufacturer John Cooper saw the possibilities, and the Mini Cooper was born. A larger displacement engine and better brakes made for a potent competition machine for rallying and on circuits.

The Mini was a huge success in the 1960s, but it stuck around for a lot longer. Tiny design evolutions continued through 2000, but the tweaks never altered the model's classic shape. The first big change happened when BMW took over Rover Group and decided to rejuvenate the vehicle by launching Mini as a separate brand.

The original Mini became an automotive icon of 1960s Britain both in the streets and on the track. Even after that initial heyday, the little vehicle managed to stick around with only minor changes until 2000. Then BMW revived the model a few years later and built a whole brand around it.

The talented artists fromBudget Direct Car Insurancecreated these images that chronicle the Mini's changing interior over the years. Things started quite basic with just a single, circular gauge on the bare dashboard. For many years, the Mini used center-mounted gauges, and BMW revived this look when it revived the brand.

Read the original here:

Check Out The Mini Cooper Interior's Evolution Over The Decades - Motor1.com

Evolution or revolution? BP’s incoming CEO tasked with navigating energy transition – CNBC

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

BP upstream chief executive Bernard Looney will take the reins from CEO Bob Dudley early next year, with investors eager to understand what this means for the FTSE 100 giant.

The U.K.-based oil and gas major announced Friday that Dudley, who has worked with BP for 40 years and held the position of CEO for almost a decade, will be replaced by Looney on February 5, 2020.

In a press release, BP Chairman Helge Lund said that it was a logical time to make the announcement "as the company charts its course through the energy transition."

Dudley, who is 64 years old, has decided to step down after the delivery of the firm's 2019 full-year results on February 4, 2020. He will then retire on March 31 later that year.

Looney, 49, will continue with his current role until February 5, at which point he will take the reins from Dudley and join the BP board.

"I think one thing that has really marked Bernard's tenure as the head of upstream is a move towards digitalization and he has also had a very strong focus on cost control," Jason Gammel, senior oil and gas analyst at Jefferies, told CNBC's "Street Signs" on Friday.

"So, those are things that are evolutionary in some respects. But digitalization for the industry could be revolutionary as well."

Gammel said that while Dudley's legacy has been "absolutely outstanding," Looney's track record made him a "great" choice to become CEO of the energy giant next year.

Shares of BP had risen by more than 1% by early Friday afternoon.

Looney has run BP's upstream business since April 2016 and has been a member of the firm's executive management team since November 2010.

The upstream division includes 17,000 people operating across almost 30 countries and produces around 2.6 million barrels equivalent of oil and gas a day.

An Irish citizen, Looney joined BP in 1991 as a drilling engineer and worked in operational roles in the North Sea, Vietnam and the Gulf of Mexico.

Former WPP CEO Martin Sorrell told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" on Friday that Looney is likely to find making his mark at BP more difficult than when Dudley first took charge in 2010.

That's because Looney is "taking it over at a time when things are in relatively better shape."

Sorrell added that Looney would likely be forced to take his time in revising BP's traditional operation.

"The trend is towards transforming at relatively low speeds and I think that's the big issue that all companies face in digital transformation," he said.

"You have to take big hits because if you're trying to restructure a legacy operation which has outlived its purpose and is not for purpose, you have to make legacy cuts and you have to take hits to the balance sheet that shareholders are often unwilling to take."

Dudley took over as CEO of BP on October 1, 2010 in the wake of the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. The Deepwater Horizon catastrophe killed 11 people and threatened the company's existence.

His job was to try to restore the company to a position it held before the explosion, managing the company's balance sheet as it faced billions of dollars' worth of penalties and clean-up costs.

More recently, BP agreed to a request from shareholders in May for greater detail and transparency on how each capital investment decision would align with the Paris climate agreement an international accord that seeks to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius.

Last month, Dudley said BP would sell some of its most carbon-intensive projects and reduce investment in others to try to improve the firm's environmental footprint.

The energy giant has been targeted by climate activist groups on numerous occasions in recent months, with demonstrators increasingly angry about the lack of progress toward a lower-carbon future.

"The new CEO has an opportunity to turn the page on years of denial, inaction and prevarication," John Sauven, executive director at Greenpeace U.K. told CNBC via email.

"BP should now pivot away from fossil fuels, shift to renewable energy and support a just transition for its workers," Sauven said.

Greenpeace has urged BP to end exploration projects for new oil and gas and switch to investing only in renewable energy.

In an apparent reference to Greenpeace's demands when speaking to CNBC earlier this year, Dudley said: "The reality is it is going to take all forms of energy to solve this. One of the groups wants us to go 100% into renewables (but) it has got to be a race to reduce emissions not a race to renewables."

See the rest here:

Evolution or revolution? BP's incoming CEO tasked with navigating energy transition - CNBC

The Evolution of the Hard Hat – The New York Times

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

In 1919, when Edward W. Bullard had just returned to the United States after serving in the cavalry in France, he saw skyscrapers going up all across the country, and dams and bridges were growing ever larger.

These projects brought new life to cities after World War I, but they also presented new dangers for the construction workers who placed girders, poured concrete and pounded nails.

Mr. Bullard, whose father had a business making carbide lamps and other supplies for miners, had an idea: What if the company built a helmet for miners and other laborers, modeled on the metal helmet he and the other soldiers known as doughboys had worn overseas?

The Bullards cobbled one together, and that was the birth of the hard hat, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year.

Hard hats are now so ubiquitous that they often go unnoticed. They are often embellished with union stickers and American flags, perched on the heads of men and women ambling to work, lunch coolers in hand. They are reliable props for V.I.P.s at ribbon cuttings, and in the crowds at political rallies.

The safety helmets, along with gas masks and umbrellas, have taken a symbolic role this summer in Hong Kong, where demonstrators have been wearing them at rallies to protest the influence of Chinas government in the semiautonomous region.

Theyve also become emblems of authority, revealing much about their owners. A shiny new hard hat can suggest a neophyte. But a well-worn one represents experience as easily as a carpenters broken-in tool belt or a loggers weathered but well-oiled boots. Even the color can denote status: Some workplaces require one color for employees, another for contractors and yet another for apprentices.

Now in its fifth generation of family ownership, Bullard makes millions of hard hats each year for tens of thousands of customers, primarily at its headquarters in Cynthiana, Ky., said the companys chief executive, Wells Bullard.

The company even has a Turtle Club, whose members have been saved by their hard hats. Its motto: Shell on head, youre not dead.

Bullards first hard hat was called the Hard Boiled hat. It was made of steamed canvas and leather (metal was too expensive), was covered with black paint and featured a suspension system. Orders surged in the 1930s when engineers building the Golden Gate Bridge required workers to wear Bullard hard hats, which were upgraded to protect against falling rivets. Standard hard hat design has evolved over the years, from canvas to metal to fiberglass and, eventually, to plastic.

In 1970, Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act, creating the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which required that hard hats be used on many job sites.

As the industry grew, Bullard faced more competition, from companies like Honeywell, Kask, MSA Safety and 3M.

Over the years, the popularity of hard hats surged beyond safety requirement to status symbol, said Beth Rosenberg, an associate professor at Tufts University School of Medicine.

During Bostons Big Dig construction project, she wondered why construction workers were not wearing respirators and hearing protection where it would have been advisable, even though nearly everyone on the $24 billion project wore a hard hat. Compliance was so high that even those not required to wear hard hats donned them. This prompted her and a colleague to research the social history of hard hats for a 2010 paper.

Dr. Rosenberg said hard hats had become associated with masculinity and patriotism. There was a confluence of social factors that made hard hats cool that has not happened with hearing protection or respirators, she said.

The term hard hats even became shorthand for working people with a conservative patriotism, and New York tabloid reporters still use the term to denote construction workers.

Bullard said it did not make gender-specific hard hats, but acknowledged that women were a fast-growing part of the construction industry. In 2016, 9 percent of construction workers in the United States were women, according to a report from the National Association of Women in Construction.

Over the years, hard hats have prevented injuries in a wide range of workplaces.

William Ross Aiken, an electrical engineer who became a pioneer in TV technology, recalled the close call he had while working in a shipyard during World War II. I was saved by my hard hat once when some metal fell 60 feet from a gantry crane and hit me on the head, he said in a 1996 oral history for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. It made a big dent in my aluminum hat, but it saved my life.

Didier Bonner-Ganter, an arborist in Maine, does not remember being hit by a tree while working on a logging crew during his college years, but does remember standing in the forest with a sore shoulder, and his hard hat on the ground next to him, newly cracked. He does not know what would have happened to him if he had not been wearing a hard hat, but said, It certainly would have been worse.

Scott Storace was a project manager on a residential high-rise in San Francisco when a worker dropped a metal scaffolding coupler from six floors up.

The hard hat did its trick, he said. Its got that little bit of room between where it sits on your head and where the hard plastic is, and that cushioned the blow.

Ms. Bullard, the company chief, said she heard a lot of stories like these.

She said her great-grandfather would still recognize the hard hats the company produced today.

The technology of the hard hat really hasnt changed so dramatically in 100 years, she said. Theres a suspension, and theres a shell.

But changes are coming. Ms. Bullard said her companys products were evolving not only to protect workers from falling objects, but also to protect them when the workers were the falling objects.

Early next year, Bullard will introduce a new line of hard hats with foam padding and integrated chin straps, similar to climbing helmets, but designed for industrial workers, and with their input.

Head protection reinvented, Ms. Bullard said. One hundred years ago, we invented it, and now were reinventing it.

Falls are the No. 1 killer on construction sites, said G. Scott Earnest of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. A 2016 report from the agency found that more than 2,200 construction workers died from traumatic brain injuries from 2003 to 2010.

Dr. Earnest said he believed redesigned hard hats could better protect falling workers.

The next generation, the ones that are just starting to be seen on construction sites, are a lot more like a helmet a mountain climber might wear, or a hockey player, or a kid on a bicycle, he said. Anything we can do to provide better protection for construction workers is important, because its a very hazardous industry.

Originally posted here:

The Evolution of the Hard Hat - The New York Times

Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein On The Band’s Evolution, Defying Expectations – Wisconsin Public Radio News

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

When Sleater-Kinney formed in the mid-1990s, they were a rock 'n'roll powerhouse from the start. Between Corin Tucker's commanding vocals, Carrie Brownstein's fierce guitar riffsand (eventually) Janet Weisss signature drumming, the trio quickly became one of the most influential bands of theera.

Sleater-Kinney has evolved since the '90s and just released their ninth studio album, "The Center Won't Hold." And while the album contains Sleater-Kinney's essential ingredients, it was produced by musician Annie Clark, better known as St. Vincent.

Clark helped add a new industrial and electronic element to the band, a sound that was a departure from the groups previous albums. Shortly following the records release, Weissleft the group after 20 years as their drummer.

Maureen McCollum of WPR's "BETA"caught up with Carrie Brownstein who you may also recognize from the comedy show "Portlandia."They talked about life after Weiss and the bands musical evolution.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Maureen McCollum:I've been a fan of yours for many years now. Youre one of those few bands that I feel like I'm growing up alongside, like Im witnessing and experiencing your musical evolution with you in some ways. Can you talk about that evolution and where you are right now as a band?

Carrie Brownstein: We've been a band for 25 years. Corin Tucker and I started this band way back in 1994 when we were still in college in Olympia, Washington.

When you start out, I think very few musicians imagine themselves one, five, 10 years down the road let alone over two decades. I think a goal with every record, every transition has been to challenge ourselves to do something different, to defy expectations. Eventually, we just reached a place where we wanted to set the bar higher for ourselves and to have a sense of freedom.

When you finally get to making your ninth studio album, which we just did, it really felt like, "What else do we have to prove?"

Our goal is to make music that doesn't sound like the last thing we did and to still enjoy it. To come at it with a sense of gratitude and always to do it with a sense of integrity and passion. To need it as much as the fans do because we understand that people want to feel seen and heard in our songs. We need to approach it with that same kind of urgency and that same sense of wanting to connect and belong within the context of music.

So yeah, that's kind of been our journey and we're sometimes as surprised as anyone that we're still making music. But we don't take it for granted at all.

MM: With this new album, "The Center Won't Hold,"the sound of the music is completely different. But, your message and your lyrics are still so on course with who you are as a band. You have songs about longing, technology, the daily grind, working through dark times. So while it might sound sonically different, I still hear you as a band.

CB: Yeah I mean, fundamentally this is a band that's always merged the political and the personal. That's a very popular idea right now, but it's one we've been doing for a long time a lot of other artists have as well. When we were surveying the political and cultural landscape, there is a sense of tumultuousness and fractiousness. We wanted to couch that in a more personal narrative and really speak to how chaos and anger and trauma and despair has an effect on the body, specifically the female body and the female psyche. I think a lot of this record is an exploration of that.

Those are themes that we've been grappling with on multiple albums. Your songwriting is who you are in the present day. So as you change and grow and age, your perspective on things shifts. The stories also reveal themselves in new ways and stretch out in new patterns. It's not uncommon to kind of go back and wrestle with the same ideas. Each time you return to that struggle, you're approaching it differently. That's kind of the nice thing about longevity you get to retool things.

MM: Annie Clark, also known as St. Vincent, produced this album. Can you talk about how she pushed you musically in different directions?

CB: It started with just a change in methodology, where Corin was up in Portland and I was down in Los Angeles. Because we were not always writing in the same room although we did sometimes we were sending ideas back and forth on our computers and writing as much on synthesizer and keyboards as we were on guitar. So, the demos already had a different sonic palette.

And then Annie talked a lot about sounds that were kind of corrosive and ugly, kind of creating a paradox where you had some grittier sounds paired with a lot of melody. Those two worlds were kind of existing simultaneously.

Corin was listening to a lot of Depeche Mode. I was listening to a lot of Ministryand Nine Inch Nails. And I think for Annie, especially with Nine Inch Nails, that's a vernacular that she really embraces.

I think we really saw the studio as an instrument in and of itself. So it became, you know, an act of discovery and not just documentation,which is a little new for us. Really, each song is a planet. Each song was just something that we could completely immerse ourselves in one at a time.That was something that Annie, aka St. Vincent, really encouraged from us maximalism and a lot of imagination applied to each individual track.

MM: Yeah, it almost has this dystopian sound.

CB: Yeah, I think thematically we were circling around that sense of dystopian ideas. I think we wanted to match that sonically with things feeling tense and dire. Then, pairing that with choruses that really were bright, so that it didn't feel like a cynical record. I think cynicism is its own form of toxicity. We wanted glimmers of hope throughout.

MM: I want to ask you what your take is on the current state of music. I'm looking at some acts that you've been associated with over your career with Sleater-Kinney. So, we can look at Lizzo, who opened for you thelast time your band played in Wisconsin. She's experiencing this meteoric rise. Another band you're somewhat associated with,Bikini Kill, they reunited this year. How are you processing musically what's going on right now? And how does Sleater-Kinney fit into that?

CB: I usually process things as a fan, you know? I love checking out new music. I like buying records. I like going to shows. I try to have a sense of curiosity. I tend to usually be listening to new stuff although, obviously, there's a ton of old stuff to dig through as well.

I think we're in a great, great time for music. It's accessible. It's copious. It is genre-bending and very fluid. It just feels like it has a powerful place right now. Certainly there's more diversity of artists and genres and that's really great.

I don't know how Sleater-Kinney fits into that landscape. I guess that's not really for me to determine that's for other people to figure out. We just we do what we do and hopefully people like it.

MM: I have to ask about some of the transitions within your group. Obviously longtime drummer Janet Weiss left the band. You've picked up Angie Boylan as a new drummer. Can you talk aboutworking with a new drummer and tell us a little more about Angie? Is that going to change the sound of Sleater-Kinney?

CB: I mean, we've never played these songs live, so I don't think that's going to be ... It's not like the songs from "The Center Won't Hold" have been out in the world live. I think for us, we're just looking forward to the future. We were sad that Janet left and we also wanted to continue. We really feel like it's a privilege to play in a band.

I think Angie is the really great drummer. I don't I think it's just about wanting to play the songs. We played a show in Raleigh and the response was great. For us, it's just about chemistry on stage and enjoying it.

In the live context, I think of all the disparate sounds on each record. You know the differencebetween "The Hot Rock" and "Dig Me Out" is massive. The difference between "The Woods" and "All Hands On The Bad One" is massive. So, there's always been these variations between albums, but it's in the live show that it all comes together under the umbrella of Sleater-Kinney. For us, it's just important to have a really powerful show and connect with the audience.

Sleater-Kinney will return to Milwaukee for a show at The Pabst Theater on Oct.16, 2019, with special guest Shamir. Below is a video of Sleater-Kinney's "Entertain," performed the last time the group played in Wisconsin in 2015.

Go here to see the original:

Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein On The Band's Evolution, Defying Expectations - Wisconsin Public Radio News

Vital Clues Revealed About Recycling in the Evolution of Life in Our Universe – SciTechDaily

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

New research by Kent astrophysicists reveals vital clues about the role recycling plays in the formation of life in our universe.

By investigating the different stages in the life journey of stars and gaining new knowledge about their evolutionary cycle, scientists at the Centre for Astrophysics and Planetary Science have discovered more about a crucial stage in the emergence of life in our universe. Their research reveals for the first time how matter discarded as stars die is recycled to form new stars and planets.

Scientists have long known that the materials that make up human life were not present during the beginnings of the universe. Elements such as carbon and oxygen form deep inside stars and are released when the stars explode. What has not been clear is what happens to these materials in the vast majority of stars which do not explode and how they are then extracted to contribute to the development of new planets and biospheres.

In their paper Numerical simulations of wind-driven protoplanetary nebulae I. near-infrared emission, which was published by the Royal Astronomical Society on September 12, 2019, Professor Michael Smith and PhD student Igor Novikov have discovered this vital missing link. By carrying out 2-D modelling on their Forge supercomputer, which mapped the pattern of light emitted from stars under different environmental conditions, the research team were able to understand how the material ejected is transferred and mixed with interstellar gas to form new astronomical objects.

For the first time, the physicists simulated the detailed formation of protoplanetary nebula. These are astronomical objects that develop during a stars late evolution. They modelled the formation of the shell of materials that is released as the star ages. These shells form planetary nebulae, or ring-shaped clouds of gas and dust, which are visible in the night sky.

The study revealed how the gas and energy expelled by stars are returned to the universe, and in what forms. It found that the elements produced by dying stars are transferred through a process of fragmentation and recycled into new stars and planets.

Professor Smith said: Initially, we were perplexed by the results of our simulations. We needed to understand what happens to the expelled shells from dying red giants. We proposed that the shells must be temporary, as if they stayed intact life could not exist in our universe and our planets would be unoccupied.

The shells are not uniform. Most are likely to be cold and molecular. They disintegrate into protruding fingers and so lose their integrity. In contrast, warm atomic shells remain intact. This provides vital clues about how carbon and other materials are transferred and reused within our universe. Our civilisation happens to exist when the generation of recycled material is at its highest. That is probably no coincidence.

Reference: Numerical simulations of wind-driven protoplanetary nebulae II. Signatures of atomic emission by Igor Novikov and Michael Smith, 12 September 2019, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stz2377

Continue reading here:

Vital Clues Revealed About Recycling in the Evolution of Life in Our Universe - SciTechDaily

The Evolution of the Bank on the Street Corner – PaymentsJournal

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

I was born in Brooklyn in the early 90s. Upon learning how to walk, my first journeys were along 5th Avenue in Sunset Park. Gentrification seems to be planting its roots here now, but back then it was a sprawling ethnic community mostly comprised of immigrant families.

I remember knowing Anchor Savings Bank, the grey-columned edifice at the corner of 5th Ave and 54th Street, was a bank long before I understood the concept of a bank. It looked a lot like Gringotts, the fictional bank of choice of wizards everywhere, and still does. Theres something about its architecture that screams important money things happen here.

My mom had an account at Anchor. Wed walk there on random weekday afternoons (she didnt work at the time) to deposit cash my father brought home from his musical gigs over the weekend. Shed make note of the transaction by hand in a little booklet given to her by the bank. Sometimes shed check on her valuables stored in the vaults downstairs. It was all very physical, and so very different from the world of digital banking we know today.

Fast forward a few years, and Anchor Bank became Dime Savings Bank of New York. Wed moved to Staten Island in the late 90s, so I never saw what happened inside. Outside, the building still resembles Gringotts. Dime Savings Bank of New York was eventually bought out by Washington Mutual, which failed and in turn became part of the assets sold by the FDIC to JP Morgan Chase. Yup, today the very first bank I ever knew is a Chase branch.

Chase is, of course, one of the largest financial institutions in the world and the largest bank in America. This story of how my mothers local Anchor Savings Bank became Chase says a lot about banking as a whole. Mergers, acquisitions, and a few financial crises have reduced a once diverse industry to an arguable oligopoly. Its worth noting that JP Morgan Chase now resembles something more like a conglomerate of technology companies than the bank it once was.

All that said, community banks are still alive and well, and very much in the game. The Economist reports that although their numbers have been falling, small banks are in fair shape. According to the FDIC, nearly 5,000 community banks reported an average return on equity of 10.6% last year less than bigger banks, but nearly two percentage points more than in 2017 and the most since the financial crisis.

In the full article, The Economist suggests a simple explanation: they know their customers. Community banks have long thrived on the personal connections with their customers and communities, and many are still family-owned and operated businesses. Collectively, many of these banks form the Independent Community Bankers of America a small but solid coalition of local and regional financial institutions. According to The Economist, almost every congressional district across the U.S. is home to at least one ICBA bank.

The financial services landscape looks entirely different than it once did, and few could have predicted the impact of non-bank entities on the industry. The evolution is far from over though, especially as banks grapple with entirely new forces like cryptocurrencies. But no matter whats to come, banks large and small will likely figure out a way to evolve along with shifts in technology, the market, and consumer demand.

Weve recently launched a Community Bank Consortium to help local and regional financial institutions expedite digital transformation and remain competitive in a rapidly evolving banking landscape. As the financial services space continues to evolve to include new players, The Walker Group is dedicated to helping community banks navigate the complexities of the industry and identify the right partnerships to stimulate growth. Contact B MEDIA to learn more about the Community Bank Consortium and get involved.

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The Evolution of the Bank on the Street Corner

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Bethany Frank

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The Evolution of the Bank on the Street Corner - PaymentsJournal

The iPhone Xs power button reflects the evolution of the smartphone – Circuit Breaker

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

In todays digital age, it sometimes feels like hardware has taken a back seat to the software that drives our devices. Button of the Month is a monthly look at what some of those buttons and switches are like on devices old and new, and it aims to appreciate how we interact with our devices on a physical, tactile level.

I think a lot about power buttons these days. With modern devices especially smartphones we dont really use them as power buttons, because our phones are never really off. But thats a double-edged sword, because while they dont actually power on our phones, we press them more than ever: my iPhone Xs power button probably gets pressed dozens of times every day now.

And its that iPhone power button that I specifically want to talk about: the one on Apples most recent Face ID iPhones. When Apple killed the home button with the iPhone X, it also killed the hardware trigger for Siri you cant press and hold a home button that doesnt exist, after all.

Power buttons are a subtle reflection of trends in modern technology. When smartphones first came about, nearly every phone had a power button on top of the device. As screen sizes grew, and that top edge got farther and farther away from the reasonable reach of most thumbs, the power button migrated to the side. When screens grew larger and home buttons went extinct, the power button got built-in fingerprint sensors. And Apple is no different: the iPhone power button experiences the same trends.

So when Apple killed the home button, it changed two things about the power button, too. First, the power button on the iPhone X is twice as big as prior models, so its always easy to press it. And it now activates Siri when held down, instead of offering the shutdown prompt (the other main function of the iPhone home button). Both of these shifts make sense, logically. iPhones were getting bigger, and making the button easier to press is a natural extension of that. And as the last major button left on the phone, having the power button trigger Siri was essentially the only option (short of adding some kind of dedicated Siri button, anyway).

But the side effect is that the power button on current iPhones cant actually do the one thing its supposed to: actually turn the phone on and off (a separate command that requires holding it and the volume up button together is needed to actually shut the phone off entirely).

It was a frustrating change at first, but the difference is a positive one, I think. I use Siri for simple tasks like setting alarms and adding reminders to return Amazon packages far more than I did to turn off my phone. And putting that function in the power button which I nearly always have a thumb on when holding my phone, even more so than the home button makes it even more accessible. Plus, the bigger button is just more enjoyable to press, especially on brand-new devices when the click is still nice and crisp.

Some Android phones are following this trend, too: the Note 10s power button doesnt shut off the phone, and OnePlus phones can be customized to launch Assistant with a short press.

Even as were starting to see phones that eschew buttons entirely, some kind of hardware to turn on a device is still needed. And as smartphones continue to get increasingly innovative and fresh designs, its a safe bet that the power button will continue to change along with them.

Excerpt from:

The iPhone Xs power button reflects the evolution of the smartphone - Circuit Breaker

Fossil fish gives new insights into the evolution – HeritageDaily

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

An international research team led by Giuseppe Marram from the Institute of Paleontology of the University of Vienna discovered a new and well-preserved fossil stingray with an exceptional anatomy, which greatly differs from living species.

The find provides new insights into the evolution of these animals and sheds light on the recovery of marine ecosystems after the mass extinction occurred 66 million years ago. The study was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Stingrays (Myliobatiformes) are a very diverse group of cartilaginous fishes which are known for their venomous and serrated tail stings, which they use against other predatory fish, and occasionally against humans. These rays have a rounded or wing-like pectoral disc and a long, whip-like tail that carries one or more serrated and venomous stings. The stingrays include the biggest rays of the world like the gigantic manta rays, which can reach a wingspan of up to seven meters and a weight of about three tons.

Fossil remains of stingrays are very common, especially their isolated teeth. Complete skeletons, however, exist only from a few extinct species coming from particular fossiliferous sites. Among these, Monte Bolca, in northeastern Italy, is one of the best known. So far, more than 230 species of fishes have been discovered that document a tropical marine coastal environment associated with coral reefs which dates back to about 50 million years ago in the period called Eocene.

This new fossil stingray has a flattened body and a pectoral disc ovoid in shape. What is striking is the absence of sting and the extremely short tail, which is not long as in the other stingrays, and does not protrude posteriorly to the disc. This body plan is not known in any other fossil or living stingray. Since this animal is unique and peculiar, the researchers named the new stingrayLessiniabatis aenigmatica, which means bizarre ray from Lessinia (the Italian area where Bolca is located).

More than 70 percent of the organisms, such as dinosaurs, marine reptiles, several mammal groups, numerous birds, fish and invertebrates, disappeared during the fifth largest extinction event in the Earths history occurred about 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous. In marine environments, the time after this event is characterized by the emergence and diversification of new species and entire groups of bony and cartilaginous fishes (sharks and rays), which reoccupied the ecological niches left vacant by the extinctions victims. The new species experimented sometimes new body plans and new ecological strategies.

From this perspective, the emergence of a new body plan in a 50-million-year-old stingray such asLessiniabatis aenigmaticais particularly intriguing when viewed in the context of simultaneous, extensive diversification and emergence of new anatomical features within several fish groups, during the recovery of the life after the end-Cretaceous extinction event, states Giuseppe Marram.

UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA

Header Image One of the three fossils of Lessiniabatis aenigmatica (MNHN F.Bol.566) from the famous fossil site of Monte Bolca (Italy) preserved as part and counterpart. The specimen is housed in the Museum National dHistoire Naturelle of Paris.

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Fossil fish gives new insights into the evolution - HeritageDaily

Evolution Has Not Been Kind to Jerry Coyne – Discovery Institute

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

Professor Coyne, it seems, never evolved a divine sense organ, which he laments. Without a divine sense organ, Jerry Coyne cannot believe in God, though he doesnt lament that.

Writing at Why Evolution Is True, Coyne explains that because he cannot sense God, therefore God does not exist. Ironically, Coyne cites English broadcaster David Attenborough, a Darwinist who ought to be Coynes ally, who is agnostic because he muses about a hive of termites (Darwinists are always thinking in terms of insects). The termites work busily, not noticing Attenborough observing them, because they lack the sense organs to see him. Attenborough wont commit to atheism because he thinks that his inability to see God may be termite-like. Hes missing the organ, so he might as well keep his options open.

Coyne thinks hes missing the same organ, but takes his evolutionary impasse as positive evidence of Gods non-existence. If God exists, Coyne reasons, He would have evolved Coyne better.

The irony of the whole thing is that Coynes lament about his sensate inadequacy is itself the product of his capacity for reason, which is his actual divine sense organ. It was right under his nose (or above his nose) all the time. God is immaterial spirit, and we can only know Him by reason and love Him by will. Our senses alone arent evolved to know or love immaterial Reality.

I pointed this out to Coyne, with all the politeness I could muster given the nature of the argument, and I suggested that Coyne might use his newly located reason-organ more effectively.

Coyne, still not using it effectively, replied:

There are many problems here. First of all, even if God is not a physical thing, nearly all Christians the theistic ones think that God interacts with the world in a physical way. After all, God sent his son/alter ego down to Earth as a scapegoat to be killed for our sins, thereby expiating us. IDers believe thatGodThe Intelligent Designer either brought new species into being or made the requisite mutations to promote their appearance. Indeed, the very concept of Intelligent Design presupposes that empirical evidence science and observation itself inevitably brings us to the concept of an Intelligent Designer. And that evidence is sensed by sense organs.

God is indeed not physical, but He has physical effects in the world. In fact, most things in nature are His effects, excepting chance and evil. Chance isnt His effect because it is the un-designed conjunction of designed effects, and evil isnt His effect because its the privation of His good, not a thing in itself. Even our free will is His effect, because He wills it to be free. This is all classical theology, to which Coynes newly discovered reason-organ is unaccustomed.

We can infer Gods existence by his effects in nature just as we infer number in groups of things or primordial singularity by cosmic background radiation or evolution by the fossil record. Science infers immaterial things it cant see by inferring them from material things it can see. Abstract reasoning is the cornerstone of science, just as abstract reasoning is the cornerstone of theology and philosophy. All abstract knowledge, observed Aristotle, originates in the senses, but it is the unique hallmark of the human mind that we can abstract concepts from concrete perceptions. Our capacity for reason our intellect is the mark of our humanity, and the organ by which we know God.

Coyne continues:

In other words, ID itself refutes Egnors claim thatGodThe Intelligent Designer cannot be sensed via an organ. The stupidity here (and Im not pulling punches given that Egnor engages in name-calling) is to assume that a deity who is nonphysical cannot be apprehended through sense organs. If youre a theist, thats palpably ridiculous.

The design we infer in nature is an insight we abstract from our senses, but the inference itself is acquired by our reason. We infer design in nature by abstraction, not immediately by sense image. We see biological structures that have purpose and specified complexity, and using our capacity for abstract thought we reason that such structures imply a designer. Coyne does the same process, except he reasons that purpose and specified complexity imply the absence of a designer. Go figure.

Coyne meanders to the diversity of religious belief, and he muses:

And why, over time, has reason turned more and more of the West into atheists? After all, God gave this reason to each of us, and gave it to us specifically so wed know Him (or Her or Whatever). Are some people lacking in this reason? And that includes people who seem to have plenty of reason on other fronts: atheist intellectuals like Bertrand Russell, Stephen Hawking, Dan Dennett, Stephen Fry, Richard Dawkins, and so on. AndDavid Attenboroughlacks it, too? Why did God give these people lots of ability to reason, but prevented that reason from apprehending His existence? Why are more and more people not using their organs of reason properly as time progresses?

Reason can wax and wane, and I think were in a period of wane. If you doubt this, ask Coyne a 21st-century atheist intellectual to discuss Platos Timaeus or Aristotles Metaphysics texts well-known to teenagers in Athens in the 4th century B.C. or Augustines City of God or Aquinas Summa Theologica read by parish priests in 15th century Siberia. Evolved or not, contemporary reason-organs of late are missing the bus.

Anyway, few people reason themselves out of, or into, belief in God. Reason provides a platform on which we stand, and reason may hinder us, or help us to see. The heart has reasons, for atheists and theists, and it is in the heart in the will that God is cherished or scorned.

As for atheism seeping into modernity, Coyne speaks only of the capitalist West. Most of humanity in Asia and Africa is in the midst of an explosion of theism, mostly Christianity and Islam. The eclipse of totalitarianism deprived atheism of its natural form of government, and it scurries to attach itself to any new body that will have it. The reasons for the atheist infestation (insect analogy again) in the West are debated. My hunch is that it is due to material and technological narcosis. In our opulence and our electronic cocoon we live as atheists. A culture blind to God is like a drunk, dangerously oblivious to a cold night.

Photo: Jerry Coyne on The Dave Rubin Show, via YouTube (screen shot).

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Evolution Has Not Been Kind to Jerry Coyne - Discovery Institute

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