Emory Healthcare break ground on orthopaedics and sports medicine clinic – AtlantaFalcons.com

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We are proud to be extending our partnership with Emory Healthcare in bringing this incredible facility to the Falcons campus, said Rich McKay, president and CEO, Atlanta Falcons. As an organization, it is incumbent on us to partner with organizations that have like-minded values including continuous innovation.Emory is the leader in innovative technology and this facility will be a catalyst not only to help propel sports medicine, but for world-class orthopaedics treatment for the citizens of Hall County.

Also being built on the same site as the new clinic is the Emory Sports Performance and Research Center. The center will explore the science of injury prevention and recovery, particularly in high school and younger athletes.

We know that 50 percent of anterior-cruciate ligament or ACL injuries could be prevented if poor movement patterns or imbalance in an athlete are detected in advance of that injury, Boden said. By studying how younger student athletes move, our focus is to conduct research in this new center that will help us detect high-risk injuries and how to prevent those injuries before they occur.

Emory Healthcare has been a valued partner of the Atlanta Falcons and this innovative venture will not only benefit both Emory and the Falcons, but the greater Flowery Branch community as well, said Thomas Dimitroff, general manager of the Atlanta Falcons. The care of our team is invariably at the forefront of our minds and this state-of-the-art facility will provide that.

Concussion injuries will also be a top area of interest at the Emory Sports Performance and Research Center. Emory and the Falcons will join together to offer community-facing programs for high school athletes, parents, coaches and others to learn about prevention tips and warning signs.

The building will take 14 to 16 months to complete, with an open date targeted for Fall 2020.

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Emory Healthcare break ground on orthopaedics and sports medicine clinic - AtlantaFalcons.com

Cape Cod Healthcare vision takes shape – Cape Cod Times

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Ceremonial groundbreaking marks start of $180M project.

HYANNIS Ground has officially been broken for a new $180 million, six-story patient care tower at Cape Cod Hospital as the institution nears the centennial of its founding next year.

Approximately 200 town and state officials, benefactors, medical professionals and hospital employees gathered under a large tent on the hospital grounds Monday afternoon for the private ceremony.

Speakers included Michael Lauf, president and CEO officer of Cape Cod Healthcare; DeWitt Davenport, chairman of the Cape Cod Healthcare board of trustees; and Dr. Paul Houle, chief of staff, Cape Cod Hospital.

Marylou Sudders, secretary of the state Executive Office of Health and Human Services, was scheduled to speak but remained in Boston in preparation for an announcement from Gov. Charlie Bakers office Tuesday, according to Lauf.

The new tower, part of an initiative dubbed Vision 20/22 for the anticipated completion date of the facility, will offer enhanced services and technology for cancer, cardiovascular and intensive care, as well as medical surgery. As part of the project, Cape Cod Healthcare also has embarked upon development of a fully integrated single electronic medical records system for its patients.

The new tower will occupy 120,000 to 140,000 square feet between the existing Mugar Building and the Gleason House on Lewis Bay Road. The project would increase the number of beds in the Hyannis hospital from 259 to 299, including four new critical-care beds and 36 medical-surgical beds.

Actual groundbreaking will begin with the installation of underground utilities as construction workers start to tear down the Whitcomb Pavilion housing the Psychiatric Center of Cape Cod. The behavioral unit will be moved across the parking lot into Cape Cod Hospital, Lauf previously told the Times.

Construction of the new tower requires the approval of the Cape Cod Commission and is not expected to begin until next year, with completion slated for 2022, Lauf had said.

This is a moment that redefines our commitment to our community, Lauf said at the start of the ceremony.

State Rep. Sarah Peake, D-Provincetown, said the new tower and the services it will offer are important for the communities she serves, since at nearly 50 miles away it is the closest hospital to the Outer Cape.

Ive lived on the Cape for 30 years, and over those years Ive seen the quality and care at Cape Cod Hospital improve by leaps and bounds, Peake said. I challenge any Boston hospital to compete with us down here.

DeWitt echoed Peakes sentiment.

This catapults Cape Cod Healthcare into a new dimension of patient care, he said, thanking the benefactors in the audience. The quality of our lives is defined by the quality of health care facilities. When Cape Cod Healthcare does well, so does our entire community.

State Rep. William Crocker, R-Centerville, also participated in the ceremonial groundbreaking.

This is a huge step forward that really puts Cape Cod Healthcare on the map of regional health centers, he said.

Follow Geoff Spillane on Twitter: @GSpillaneCCT.

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Cape Cod Healthcare vision takes shape - Cape Cod Times

Video: Moore’s Law is Not Dead – insideHPC

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Jim Keller is a senior vice president and General Manager of the Silicon Engineering Group (SEG) at Intel Corporation.

In this video from the EECS Colloquium, Jim Keller from Intel presents: Moores Law is Not Dead.

Moores observation has continued to be challenged and questioned. And yet, today hundreds of billions of dollars are being invested in silicon technology that will enable feature sizes just a few atoms wide. To understand this unabated growth in computing, one needs to deconstruct the Moores Law transistor count exponential as the output of numerous individual innovations across the computing stack in silicon process technology, in integrated circuit design, in microprocessor architecture and in software. To take advantage of exponentially growing transistor counts, every layer of the computing stack will continue to be redefined over and over again. While it is true that certain vectors like transistor performance and power are showing diminishing returns, other vectors like transistor architecture, microprocessor architecture, software and new materials are showing increasing returns. The combination of these will continue to make life interesting and challenging for hardware and software designers alike.

Jim Keller is a senior vice president and General Manager of the Silicon Engineering Group (SEG) at Intel Corporation. Jim has more than 20 years of experience in x86 and ARM-based microarchitecture design across a broad range of platforms, including PCs, servers, mobile devices and cars. Before joining Intel, he served as vice president of Autopilot and Low-Voltage Hardware in Tesla. Prior to Tesla, he served as corporate vice president and chief cores architect at AMD, where he led the development of the Zen* architecture. He also previously held the role of vice president of Engineering and chief architect at P.A. Semi, which was acquired by Apple Inc. in 2008. He led Apples custom low power, mobile chip efforts with the original A4 processor that powered the iPhone 4*, as well as the subsequent A5 processor. He holds a bachelors degree in electrical engineering from Pennsylvania State University.

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Moores Law for weapons? Army research find law-like progression of technologies – ScienceBlog.com

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Anticipating the technology and weapon systems of our future Army might not be entirely daunting, new Army research finds.

Trends in the progression of weapon systems from the early crossbowman to a musket to a military tank might help predict our future systems, according to a new study to be published in theJournal of Defense Modeling and Simulation, Towards Universal Laws of Technology Evolution: Modeling Multi-century Advances in Mobile Direct Fire Systems.

A number of law-like regularities are known to apply to both technological and naturally emerging complex systems, said Dr. Alexander Kott, author of the paper and a researcher at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Commands Army Research Laboratory. Identifying these regularities may help long-range technology forecasting, which this paper illustrates by exploring two systems that might appear 30 years in the future.

Certain performance measures of technological systems often exhibit exponentialand sometimes superexponentialpattern of growth over time, Kott said. A particularly well-known example of such a regularity is Moores Law, which states that a performance measure of a computer chip doubles approximately every two years. Many other technologies follow a similar law of exponential growth.

So-called allometric relations are another class of law-like regularities. Often, a universal relation exists between the scale of the organism and its various attributes, applicable across multiple organisms of widely different scales, Kott said. For example, the Kleibers Law states that for the vast majority of animalsfrom tiny mouse to huge elephantthe organisms metabolic rate scales approximately to the 3/4 power of the organisms mass, and the data for all such organisms fall on the same curve.

This research explores whether a single regularity of technological growth might apply to technologies of widely different scales, over a period of multiple centuries. Kott investigated a collection of diverse weapon systems he describes as the mobile direct-fire systems. These include widely different families of technologies that span the period of 1300-2015 CE: Soldiers armed with weapons ranging from bows to assault rifles; foot artillery and horse artillery; towed anti-tank guns; self-propelled anti-tank and assault guns; and tanks.

Ultimately, this research finds that, indeed, a single, uncomplicated regularity describes the historical growth of this extremely broad collection of systems. Multiple, widely different families of weapon systemsfrom a bowman to a tankfall approximately on the same curve, a simple function of time. Unlike a conventional curve of exponential growth with time, this regularity also depends on the physical scale (specifically, mass) of the technological artifacts. This suggests a general model that unites allometric relations (such as the Kleibers Law) and exponential growth relations (such as the Moores Law).

To my knowledge, no prior research describes a regularity in the temporal growth of technology that covers such widely different technologies, of widely different physical scales, and over such a long period of history, Kott said. However, such a regularity should be taken with a degree of caution. You cannot use it as a design guide. There is a lot more to a good system than a very parsimonious figure of performance we use in our model. Interpretations of the model require care.

This research suggests a possibility that even broader collections of technology families might evolve historically in accordance with what might be called universal laws of technological evolution, and provides related research questions for further investigation.

What I find interesting about the findings of this paper, said Dr. Bruce West, the U.S. Armys chief mathematician, is that from the evolutionary allometric perspective, this is the first set of empirical data that demonstrate the existence of a strongly time-dependent allometric coefficient. I anticipated such time dependency in my earlier papers, and here is a clear empirical confirmation.

Kott muses about this law-like but previously unrecognized trend.

In hindsight, he said, this multi-century, multi-scale regularity may not be all that surprising, but somehow nobody noticed this previously. Perhaps, the future is not a silent mystery. It speaks to us from the past, softly.

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Silicon Valley Chip Makers Add New Twist to Moore’s Law – Toolbox

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With the demands of artificial intelligence outpacing Moores Law, a pair of Silicon Valley chip designers are rethinking the architectural approaches for machine-learning applications.

In a sectorwhere smaller has beenbeautiful for decades,can bigger really be better for lowering a chips workload latency?

Designers at thecompanies, Cerebras Systems and Xilinx, used the Hot Chips symposium in Palo Alto, California, last week as the backdrop to their largest product releases, each of which aims to pack more processing power for intensivetechnologies.

To do it, the companies are bucking the trend named for Gordon Moore, the former chief executive of Intel, who observed five decades ago that transistor densities on a microchip double about every two years. While the prediction has guided R&D teams in the intervening years, the limits of physical space on a single chip now are leading designers to explore novel solutions.

Xilinx, based in Palo Alto, is touting its new Virtex Ultra Scale Plusfield-programmable gate array, or FPGA. It possessesnine billion logic cells in a system-on-chip platform that can access 1.5 terabits of memory per second. Built on a 16-nanometerstandard, thechip's 35 billion transistors are larger by 1.6 times the logic density of its previous iteration, the Virtex UltraScale.

To make their designs work,Cerebras and Xilinx both stepped back from the sector's drivetoproduce shorter distances between transistors. From 10 micrometers in 1971, designers have shrunk those lengths to infinitesimal distances to accommodate more integrated circuits on their chips.

Following Moores Law, Koreas Samsung and Taiwans TSMC began producing5nm chips earlier this year, and both companies are working on 3nm designs that could hit the market in 2021. Shortening the distance between circuits shaves processing time, but it alsoraisesissues around quality control in manufacturing and cooling in operations.

The chip's hugesize is aimed mostly at cloud services providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google that rent processing power and storage to corporationsand government agencies. While Cerebras saysselect customers are using its chip, it has yet to release details about when the Wafer Scale Engine will be available on the open market.

Xilinx scaled down its latest FGPA from the 20nm standard. Doing so allowed it to forge 2,000 user input-output connections and achieve a per-second transceiver bandwidth of 4.5 terabits. With it, users can implement advanced SoC design architectures or prototype their own, the company says.

To improve time to market, Xilinx offers co-validation that lets users integrate and customize hardware and software designs both before physical parts become available. The feature is part of a development platform for the FPGA that includes de-bugging and visibility tools. The company plans to bring the Ultra Scale Plus to market next year.

According to Open AI, a foundation that works to guide the development of artificial technology, computational resources used to train the most advanced machine-learning algorithms grew by 300,000 times between 2012 and 2018.

The rate means chip makers must redouble their efforts, both traditional and unconventional, to keep pace with demand.

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Silicon Valley Chip Makers Add New Twist to Moore's Law - Toolbox

Intels Jim Keller: Were all building nanowires Intel, TSMC, Samsung – PCGamesN

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Intels Jim Keller says that if you think Moores Law is dead and you dont believe in it youre a little delusional. And to make sure that the technology world keeps kicking along with the pace it has done were all building nanowires in the fab.

This new design of transistor sees silicon moving beyond the 3D FinFET transistor design, which our graphics cards and CPUs have been running on since planar transistors died a death, and pushing into the Gate All Around (GAA) era. Weve heard about Samsungs plans for GAA design around the 3nm mark; its already given out the design kit for the upcoming process, making it sure look like Moores Law still has a few nodes left.

Keller has been giving his Moores Law Is Not Dead talk over at Berkeley this week, and the UC Berkeley EECS Events team has live streamed the entire thing over on YouTube and you can catch up on this fascinating, intimate little chat right now. And it basically boils down to a simple if youre not prepared to let Moores Law die then it wont.

We had planar transistors, we went to FinFET, says Keller. Were all building nanowires in the fab. Intel, TSMC, Samsung, everybodys working on it. Theres a really interesting thing while the world thinks Moores Laws dead, the fabs and the technologists think its not and everybodys announced now a 10-year roadmap for Moores Law.

Keller also goes on to describe tasking his engineers with finding a pathway to 100x gate density. They came back all glum because they could only come up to 50x right now, so thats what hes going with

Theyve got clear line of sight to pitch scaling of the eponymous fins of FinFet tech, delivering a 24nm fin pitch, which is about 3x. At this point Keller feels the need to explain that there are still shrinks that can be made, after all, the tip of the fins is still over 100 atoms wide.

So were not running out of atoms, he says. We know how to print single layers of atoms but the fins themselves, theyre mountains.

Then its on to nanowire technology, then stacked nanowire technology, and on to wafer-to-wafer stacking. After that its die-to-wafer stacking because, as Keller says, 3D stacking is going to become more and more important as we build stuff.

His point is that basically, Moores Law is not dead, because theres a whole bunch of people invested in making sure it doesnt happen. John Carmack sure as hell is a smart cookie, but hes not necessarily at the leading edge of semiconductor technology development.

If your idea set says this is going to keep going, and theres a whole bunch of challenges, then I think we will rise to the challenge, says Keller. And Ive seen that over and over. If you think its running out of gas, it will. If you think its not, its not going to. And theres many people in the industry working on this.

So many people have told me computer architecture cant move any further. Really? How many times has it changed over the last thirty years? Like, over and over and over.

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Intels Jim Keller: Were all building nanowires Intel, TSMC, Samsung - PCGamesN

Gemmel Moore’s Mother and Jasmyne Cannick Praise Councilmember Lindsey Horvath for Pushing the Investigation of His Death – WEHOville

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LaTisha Nixon, the mother of Gemmel Moore, and JasmyneCannick, who led the campaign for an investigation into his death in 2017 in theLaurel Avenue apartment of Ed Buck, spoke at tonights City Council meeting inpraise of City Councilmember Lindsey Horvath for her help and were dismissiveof Mayor John DAmicos assertion that he and other members of the Council alsohad been pushing for an investigation into the circumstances of Moores death.

Bucks arrest last Tuesday on charges of operating a drug den and on Wednesday on a federal charge of distributing methamphetamine leading to a death brought an end to a more than two-year campaign by Cannick and Nixon and black activists to investigate Bucks involvement in Moores death and in the drug-related death in Bucks apartment in January of this year of Timothy Dean, a 55-year-old black man. However, the arrest, which got nationwide media coverage, has revived criticism of local politicians and District Attorney Jackie Lacey for not more aggressively investigating Buck and has prompted allegations that his donations to election campaigns of Democratic elected officials had bought him some protection.

In a recent op-ed published by WEHOville, Marco Colantonio called on Mayor DAmico and the City Council to acknowledge the effort by Cannick to press District Attorney Jackie Lacey and the L.A. County Sheriffs Department to investigate Bucks involvement in Gemmel Moores death. Lacey initially refused to file charges against Buck, saying that an investigation by the Sheriffs Department didnt turn up sufficient evidence to ensure a conviction.

DAmico, in an apparent response to the pressure, opened tonightsCity Council meeting by asking Cannick to lead with the Pledge of Allegianceand then followed with a speech in which he said: I and my colleagues on theCity Council have been seeking justice and have pressed the L.A. CountyDistrict Attorneys Office for a full investigation. DAmico acknowledged the workof Cannick and of Jerome Kitchen, a young black man who was a friend of Mooresand who had interrupted several city meetings to demand that action be taken ininvestigating Buck.

In her comments before the Council, Cannick focused onLindsey Horvath. I came down here today because I want to publicly thankLindsey Horvath, she said. I dont know about the rest of you, she said,referring to the other City Council members, but you (Horvath) stood with us.

I also want to thank the people of West Hollywood whowere (Bucks) neighbors and made sure to let us know what was going on at alltimes, Cannick said, a reference to alerts from others in and near Bucksapartment at 1234 N. Laurel Ave. about the arrival at Bucks apartment of youngblack men, some of whom who Buck has solicited on the Adam4Adam.com gay sexsite. An affidavit filed with the criminal complaint against Ed Buck in U.S.District Court on Wednesday identifies 10 young black men who have claimed tohave had drug-related sexual encounters with Buck in his apartment.

LaTisha Nixon began her comments to the City Council by saying: Mayor, I do want to thank you for the $25 donation to my sons funeral, a somewhat caustic response to the fact that DAmico has declined to redirect Ed Bucks contributions to his election campaigns to the Justice 4 Gemmel + All of Ed Bucks Victims fund, which Cannick has said will help with legal costs as well as supporting the family of Gemmel Moore and all of Ed Bucks victims.

DAmicos initial election to the Council in 2011 came withthe support of Buck, an animal rights activist, based on DAmicos pledge topush for a fur sales ban in West Hollywood. Buck has donated a total of $1,000to DAmicos 2011 and 2015 election campaigns. Buck also has donated over$500,000 to a political action committee called the Animal PAC, which is saidto have campaigned in favor of DAmico along with many other local, state andfederal Democratic Party candidates.

Speaking to Horvath, Nixon said: I want to thank you fromthe bottom of my heart, the bottom of my familys heart I want to thank youfor believing us for stepping out and advocating for us.

Nixon also criticized Councilmember John Duran, who was on vacation to celebrate his birthday and wasnt present at tonights Council meeting, for his controversial response to her request at an Aug. 21 City Council meeting that law enforcement grant immunity to prosecution to sex workers who were willing to testify about their interactions with Buck. At that meeting, Duran warned that such testimony would make the sex workers vulnerable to prosecution for prostitution or drug use. Horvath responded that she had asked the District Attorneys Office to grant such immunity, which it did.

While the City Council has been criticized for not speaking out about the deaths in Bucks apartment, in fact, it did issue a statement in January, after the death of Timothy Dean, saying it has requested a full investigation by the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department. At several meetings Council members also have questioned Capt. Edward Ramirez of the West Hollywood Sheriffs Station about the status of the Buck investigation.

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Gemmel Moore's Mother and Jasmyne Cannick Praise Councilmember Lindsey Horvath for Pushing the Investigation of His Death - WEHOville

Revisiting Douglas Moore’s anti-gay rhetoric on Council – Washington Blade

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Former D.C. Council member Douglas E. Moore died Aug. 2. (Photo via Twitter)

Former D.C. Council member Douglas E. Moore, a Methodist minister who in 1977 referred to gay activists as fascist faggots and who emerged as an outspoken opponent of a bill to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination, died Aug. 2 at a hospital in Clinton, Md. He was 91.

His wife, Doris Hughes-Moore, told the Washington Post the cause of death was complications associated with Alzheimers disease and pneumonia.

Moore won election to an at-large D.C. Council seat in 1974 during the citys first election under its home rule government approved by Congress in the early 1970s. Similar to several other D.C. Council members elected that year, Moore had been an active participant in the African-American civil rights movement in the 1960s.

However, unlike nearly all of his Council colleagues during the first four years of the citys home rule government who were strong supporters of the gay community, Moore emerged as an outspoken opponent of gay rights, including gay rights legislation pending before the Council.

In 1977, when the D.C. Human Rights Act was being considered by the Council, Moore led a campaign to delete the category of sexual orientation from the legislation. His opposition to including that category, which was defined as covering gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, came shortly after singer Anita Bryant led a widely publicized campaign in Dade County, Fla., to repeal by voter referendum an existing gay rights law in that jurisdiction, which succeeded in securing repeal of the law.

In D.C., the Council approved its Human Rights Act in 1977 with the sexual orientation protection included by a wide margin, with Moore and just one other Council member voting no.

Moores talk about organizing a possible referendum to repeal the gay rights provision similar to the Dade County vote prompted LGBT activists to help pass an amendment to the D.C. City Charter that bans initiative or referendum votes on laws that protect the human rights of D.C. residents.

A little over 30 years later, that D.C. charter provision was used to successfully prevent anti-LGBT advocates from placing D.C.s same-sex marriage law on the ballot in 2009.

Meanwhile, to the surprise of LGBT activists, Moore didnt immediately speak out against a 1976 resolution approved unanimously by the D.C. Council declaring Gay Pride Day on the same day as Fathers Day.

But in September 1977, when asked by Washington Post columnist Milton Coleman about how he was on record of voting with his fellow Council members for the Gay Pride resolution, Moore said it was a mistake and he didnt intentionally support the resolution. Coleman said Moore vowed to block such a resolution from passing again.

Unless they pass it when Im dead, cripple or paralyzed, there wont be no more Gay Pride Days in Washington, D.C., Coleman quoted him as saying.

The next year, in 1978, Moore ran for the position of D.C. Council chair while continuing to express his opposition to what he called the three Gs gays, gambling and grass (marijuana), as Coleman quoted him as saying.

To the strong relief of LGBT activists, then D.C. Council member Arrington Dixon (D-Ward 4), a strong LGBT rights supporter, beat Moore in the race for Council chair by a wide margin.

Dixons decisive victory over Moore ended overt homophobia as a viable political tactic in D.C. elections, said Craig Howell, former president of the D.C. Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance.

Moore ran and lost three subsequent bids for D.C. Council seats after his loss to Dixon in 1978. He ran and lost his race for mayor in 2002.

Longtime D.C. and Ward 8 community activist Phil Pannell said Moore had a change of heart in his years out of politics when he came to support the right of LGBT people to be free from discrimination.

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Revisiting Douglas Moore's anti-gay rhetoric on Council - Washington Blade

Paul Hollywood’s brother-in-law Simon Moores and David Hockings killed in ‘unexplained’ plane crash – Birmingham Live

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The cause of a plane crash in northern Spain in which two British pilots died will remain unexplained, a coroner has concluded.

Simon Moores - who was the brother-in-law of Bake Off star Paul Hollywood - and David Hockings died in the crash in January.

Their plane hit a mountain in Errezil near the Spanish coast amid dense fog, Mr Moores's inquest in Kent heard on Wednesday.

Coroner Ian Goldup read evidence from Spanish witnesses, one of whom had been walking on Mount Hernio at the time and heard the impact.

Mr Moores, 62, from Kent, and Mr Hockings, from Sussex, had been flying from Cascais in Portugal to Hondarribia airport on January 9 when their light plane crashed.

He posted pictures during the flight on his Twitter account, looking down on the Spanish mountains.

The inquest was unable to establish why the British-registered Piper plane collided with Mount Hernio.

The coroner cited the "dense fog" that had covered the mountain on the day in question, but was unable to say why the plane went down.

Mr Goldup said: "We do not know whether there was an engine problem, whether it was mechanical.

"We do not know why the accident occurred."

He said that despite the lack of clarity as to why the crash happened, the inquest was "probably the end" unless Mr Moores's family decides to pursue civil action in Spain.

Mr Goldup returned a conclusion of "unascertained" death on Mr Moores.

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Paul Hollywood's brother-in-law Simon Moores and David Hockings killed in 'unexplained' plane crash - Birmingham Live

Kenya Moore’s Breakup With Hubby Marc Caught On ‘RHOA’ Cameras – Radar Online

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Kenya Moore and her husband Marc Daly got into an explosive fight while RHOA cameras were rolling and that led to their split, RadarOnline.com exclusively learned.

Kenya aggressively confronted Marc at an event he was hosting, and Bravo was filming, an insider snitched to Radar about an event at the Wimbish House that was filmed for The Real Housewives of Atlanta on Sept. 17. The charity event for Black Man Lab was hosted by Marc.

The insider told Radar why she was so angry at her husband.

Marc told Evas [Marcille] husband that he is tired of Kenyas s**t, the source spilled.

He called her an attention whore.

The insider told Radar that Marlo Hampton overheard Marc talking to Evas husband and she told Cynthia Bailey, NeNe Leakes and Eva about the conversation, which Kenya overheard.

The source said that Kenya was furious with her husbands words and their ugly confrontation was caught on camera.

Marc just doesnt want to be on TV. It is plain and simple, the insider told Radar.

Kenya was shouting all sorts of threats at Marc and the cameras kept rolling.

Their troubled relationship was not a surprise to the insider.

It has been coming ever since she started filming again. Marc doesnt return her calls, he doesnt come to Atlanta, doesnt see their baby. It is all very upsetting to Kenya.

Scroll through the gallery for exclusive details of Kenyas troubled marriage.

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Kenya Moore's Breakup With Hubby Marc Caught On 'RHOA' Cameras - Radar Online

Optane persistent memory: Breakthrough or broken promise? – VentureBeat

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Companies looking to capitalize on the performance promise of Intels Optane persistent memory have been trying to vet the performance claims and calculate TCO for years now. On August 27, Intel put out a press release that led with the following tidbit (bear with us, this gets more interesting):

Intel today announced Baidu is architecting the in-memory database of its Feed Stream services to harness the high-capacity and high-performance capabilities of Intel Optane DC persistent memory. Paired with 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, building a new memory platform based on Intel Optane DC persistent memory allows Baidu to lower its total cost of ownership (TCO) while delivering more personalized search results to users.

If your eyes glazed over during the last few seconds, here are the key points:

VentureBeat started covering Optane (or, more accurately, the 3D XPoint media underlying Optane) four years ago. At that time, Intel boasted that the new memory technology was 10 times denser than conventional DRAM, 1,000 times faster than the fastest NAND SSD, and 1,000 times the endurance of NAND. However, at the same IDF presentation it was announced, Optane as demonstrated was only 7.23 times faster than the fastest available NAND SSD chips.

A year and a half later, following the announcement of the first Optane-based SSDs, tech analyst Jack Gold noted, Because it is significantly less expensive than DRAM and can have 15X 20X the memory capacity per die (e.g., 8GB vs. 128GB) while achieving speeds at least 10X that of NAND, it is an ideal intermediary memory element where adding more relatively fast memory can significantly increase overall system performance at a lower cost than stacking it with large amounts of DRAM.

Two and a half years later, thats still Optanes promise: near-DRAM performance for less cost per gigabyte than DRAM while facilitating a huge jump in system memory capacities. To grossly oversimplify matters, lots of DDR4 means that large workloads can stay in RAM and not incur the disk swaps to distant storage that can slaughter latency and throughput. So, yes, Optane PMMs are slower than DRAM, but theyre faster than NAND, and eliminating disk swapping for active workload data should yield significantly improved application performance.

Which takes us back to our article opening: Intel launched Optane DC persistent memory in early April 2019, and its a reasonable bet that buyers like Baidu had access to pre-production parts before the launch date. How, then, have we reached September with nary a results-based case study for Optane PMM in sight?

Where are the real-world numbers that prove the promise?

Total cost of ownership (TCO) discussions depend in part on, well, costs. When someone says that an Optane PMM-with-DRAM configuration (because you need both, not just Optane) yields better TCO than an all-DRAM configuration, your first impulse might be to check pricing on both and compare. Theres no reason to do that here on these pages today, because costs change and thats the point.

DRAM prices are extremely volatile, said Michael Yang, analyst and director of research at Informa Tech (formerly IHS Markit). It can double or halve in a year. Two years ago, DRAM would have been three times more than Optane. Today, theres barely any cost premium, only 20% or 30% more so cheap you can almost argue theres parity. Theres not enough difference for people to rearchitect their server farm, for sure. Thats why Intel is moving the argument away from cost.

Another factor in this shifting narrative may be the imminent arrival of DDR5 next year, which Yang says may double DIMM capacities. DDR5 is also expected to scale to double the data rates of DDR4.

If Yang sounds as if hes arguing against Optane, dont jump to conclusions. Hes an admirer of Optane technology in general and believes it holds much potential. However, he would like to see Optanes promise being delivered and observe how Optane scales going forward. Hes also quick to point out that Optane PMM isnt for everybody.

We are certainly seeing data become more valuable, and real-time analytics are on the rise, he said. Optane PMM will be the right solution for some, but not all, workloads by providing the right mix of performance and cost.

To perhaps extrapolate from Yangs sentiments, bear in mind that many, if not most, server configurations never max out their memory potential. These systems go to their graves with open RAM slots and will never need Optane PMM. Similarly, keep a wary eye on sweeping marketing messages. Yes, Optane PMM may be amazing for the elephantine workloads that could be generated by, say, smart city systems. With cameras running on every corner, and everything from automotive traffic control to retail advertising using those HD video feeds in real time, the need for Optane PMM in such applications may be critical.

But how many of those smart cities exist today?

Perhaps thats an unfair question. After all, do we need to bring up that 640K ought to be enough for anyone? Just because the immediate need for Optane may be limited doesnt mean it will stay that way. And how much easier (and cheaper) will it be to build those smart city systems if appropriate hardware and software solutions are readily available?

Also, modern-day Intel is almost phobic about making statements that cant be amply defended with a ream of citations. The company doesnt know what its customers paid for their RAM or prior platforms, so it cant make statements about case studies showing X% improvement unless the customer hands Intel that information and many enterprises, especially cloud companies, are loathe to disclose their internal platform details.

And while were talking cost of ownership, note that theres more to TCO than per-gigabyte costs. Consider a server running multiple virtual machines. If those VMs are limited by the amount of available system memory and its common for application owners to seize more than enough memory, just in case then it logically follows that increasing system memory will allow for more VMs per server. Potentially, fewer physical servers will be needed to run the same number of VMs, thus providing lower hardware costs, lower energy consumption, lower administration and maintenance, and on and on.

We spoke with Kristie Mann, Intels senior director of product management for persistent memory, and she shared with us some of the few definite statistics now emerging from early Optane PMM adopters.

These stories are cherry picked by Intel, but were presenting them here only to illustrate that results are beginning to creep into the market. Your mileage may vary, and in fact, your business may not need Optane at all today.

Still, non-volatile media suitable for system memory and/or ultra-fast storage was going to reach the market eventually, and Intel appears to have both a viable technology and the muscle to push its adoption. As with the arrival ofmost new technologies, though, adoption will likely come with a lot of resistance and the need for market education.

This is a product unlike anything weve had in the past, said Mann. Youve seen multiple tiers of storage for years. We need to do the same thing with memory because of two things. One, the rate of data generation is increasing very quickly, to the point where businesses cant quickly and adequately process that data and turn it into business insights. And two, the scaling of DRAM capacity is slowing. Weve seen the stretching out of the Moores Law timeframe for CPU architecture, and now were seeing the same thing with DRAM. Add it up, and memory cant keep pace with rising data workloads over the next five years. Thats why we need a two-tier memory system.

Above: Source: Flash Memory Summit 2015

With tiered storage, users need to right-size their SSD capacity, often using it as a sort of cache for hotter data more likely to be sought than the data kept on cold, archival disk media. According to Intel, the same principle applies with memory. Again, this isnt an either/or case of DRAM versus Optane PMM. The two work together, with DRAM serving as the faster cache to Optanes slower but far more capacious mass memory.

The obvious question for businesses follows: How much DRAM do I actually need? Surprisingly, relatively few people know, and the tools to find the answer arent within easy reach.

The answer to this question varies by data set and workload, so its very difficult to provide one-size-fits-all guidance, said Mann. Were working on building some new tools from our existing internal tools. We can check cache miss rates, latency, bandwidth all these real-time things we can analyze while a workload is running. But our tools are made for engineers, not the average customer. So, over the next couple quarters, well come out with more advanced tools customers can use to help understand their workload characteristics and effectively balance their memory investments.

Above: Source: IDC

Recognizing flash as a strong alternative to hard disk technology, the founders of SanDisk filed a patent on flash-based SSDs in 1989 and shipped the first such drive in 1991. Arguably, the first enterprise SSD arrived in 2008, and you can see from the IDC/Seagate numbers in the above graphic how long it took for SSDs to make a serious dent in the worlds storage totals. System memory may now face a similar adoption trend.

This isnt to say that the game has already gone to Intel. For instance, Samsungs Z-SSD has strong potential, and the 3D XPoint media underlying Optane is being licensed by Micron (perhaps under the name QuantX) to other storage manufacturers.

Intels thesis, though, seems sound. One way or another, its time we had a leap in capability. Now, we just need the results made public to prove that the promise of Optane is real and that we have a clear path forward for a world drowning in data.

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Optane persistent memory: Breakthrough or broken promise? - VentureBeat

Plane crash which killed Paul Hollywoods brother-in-law is still a mystery and may never be solved, rules c – The Sun

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A PLANE crash which killed Paul Hollywood's brother-in-law may never be explained, an inquest heard today.

Simon Moores, 62, the brother of Bake Off star Hollywood's estranged wife Alex, was found dead on a mountainside by rescuers after his light plane crashed in Spain on January 9.

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Mr Moores and fellow pilot David Hockings were flying the aircraft back from Portugal to Kent when the crash happened.

The Piper III single-engine aircraft, owned by Mr Hockings, had been due to make a stopover in northern Spain.

Spanish rescuers found the wreckage and recovered the bodies of the two pilots on Hernio mountain south-west of San Sebastian in heavy cloud.

Dad-of-two Mr Moores had posted a photo of mountains taken from the plane's cockpit on Twitter at 9.25am, about three-and-a-half hours before the crash.

Days before the flight he had posted a picture of the aircraft with the caption "looking good".

At an inquest today at Canterbury Magistrates Court in Kent, coroner Ian Gouldroup said the reasons behind the crash were uncertain.

Spanish locals told the inquest they'd heard the sound of the aircraft's engine through the fog, followed by a loud bang and then silence.

Coroner Mr Gouldroup said: "At 1.14pm, Echhert Schlur was doing work at the town hall in the area. He heard and saw the light plane visible among clouds.

"He said about 30 seconds later he saw the plane descend and then he heard a loud noise.

We will never know if it was a plane fault or pilot error

"At about 1.10pm, Mabrie Asmendi was standing next to his dwelling when the noise of an engine approached. There was dense fog covering the valley and the valley opposite.

"When the plane approached the mountain he heard the impact and the engine sound stopped. He called the authorities and explained what had happened.

"The next day he went to the accident site to help and they asked him to leave."

Citing poor evidence and unreliable translations from Spanish documents, the coroner concluded the reason for Mr Moores' death was "unascertained".

Mr Gouldroup said: "We have so little evidence. We dont know whether there was an engine problem or a mechanical fault. We dont know why the accident occurred.

"The cause of death is unascertained. We will never know if it was a plane fault or pilot error.

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"This will be the end unless the family bring forward civil proceedings in Spain."

There were no members of Mr Moore's family at the inquest.

An inquest into the death of Mr Hockings, of Herstmonceux, East Sussex, is being held separately.

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Plane crash which killed Paul Hollywoods brother-in-law is still a mystery and may never be solved, rules c - The Sun

Cyborgs and immortality: into the research of Dr. Huberman – University News | – University News

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Who doesnt want to live forever?

Every society has its own set of myths about finding eternal life: the Fountain of Youth for the Spaniards and Shangri La for the Chinese, for example. For the transhumanists, this myth may become a reality.

Dr. Jennifer Huberman is a cultural anthropology professor at UMKC whose recent research has focused on this emerging high-tech society. Initially, Huberman did not set out to study the transhumanists.

I came across a book by Martine Rothblatt calledVirtually Human, Huberman said. It was about developing technologies for mind-cloning so that we can live forever. I said, This is completely crazy.

But Huberman reminded herself that as an anthropologist, her job is not to judge other people, but to understand why they think the way they do.

According to Huberman, transhumanists view the body as a work in progress, and they place value on the mind over the body.

For them, the problem is our biology and our biological limitations, said Huberman.

Transhumanists have a post-human vision of the world where humans can design their evolution.

Many of the transhumanists are Silicon Valley techies, inspired by the works of science fiction authors. Huberman describes the stereotypical transhumanist as a kind of geeky, sci-fi, techie, computer savvy person. The group, as Huberman describes it, is a predominantly male, white, in many ways, elite kind of movement in the United States.

For any anthropologist, collecting data is tough work. The traditional study will bring the researcher to an exotic location, such as an isolated tribe in the Amazon. With the transhumanists, however, it isnt that easy.

There isnt one locale where they all are, she explains. A lot of their interaction in society happens online or at conferences.

Despite the difficulty transhumanists pose as a unique society, Huberman was able to collect plenty of data through her research because transhumanists are vocal and want to spread the word about their work.

A great deal of transhuman literature focuses on whether or not it is ethical, or even possible.

The biggest challenge was actually developing a proper anthropological mindset, Huberman said. That kind of judgmental thinking is antithetical to the ways that anthropologists usually work.

Huberman took this challenge as an opportunity to develop a book to equip the next generation of anthropologists with the proper tool kit to examine modern societies. Her book,Ancestors and Avatars: Anthropological Approaches to Transhumanism, is about using this very futuristic movement as a way to introduce students to the discipline of cultural anthropology, Huberman said.

The book applies anthropological wisdom to understand new and futuristic movements through its chapters by focusing on classic anthropological topics in the context of the transhumanists.

For more information on the transhumanist community, Huberman recommendedThe Future of Immortality: Remaking Life and Death in Contemporary Russiaby Anya Bernstein and articles by Jon Bialecki, who is currently writing a book about the intersection of Mormonism and transhumanism.

The transhumanists leave us with a lot of questions about our future. However, while those questions do not have immediate or simplistic answers, research like Hubermans does shed light on the futuristic topic of transhumanists.

hmgb87@mail.umkc.edu

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Cyborgs and immortality: into the research of Dr. Huberman - University News | - University News

Salvation and Immortality Are Not Just New Testament Ideas – National Catholic Register

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There are many signs of belief in the afterlife and salvation in the Old Testament

Its true that the doctrines of salvation and the eternal afterlife (both for the saved and the damned) developed quite a bit in the inter-testamental period, and then all the more so in the New Testament. But there were also many clear signs or precursors of it (some remarkably explicit) all along. The book of Job seems to allude to an eternal consciousness in a resurrected body in some sort of paradisal state with God:

Job 19:25-27(RSV) For I know that my Redeemer lives,and at last he will stand upon the earth;[26] and after my skin has been thus destroyed,then from my flesh I shall see God,[27] whom I shall see on my side,and my eyes shall behold, and not another. (cf. 14:12-15)

The prophet Isaiah (8th c. BC) taught similarly:

Isaiah 26:19aThy dead shall live, their bodies shall rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy! . . .

This is hardly a shadowy temporary existence in Sheol and then annihilation. But there is muchmore, too:

2 Kings 2:11And as they still went on and talked, behold, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.(cf. Gen 5:24: Enoch)

Psalms 16:10-11For thou dost not give me up to Sheol,or let thy godly one see the Pit.[11] . . .in thy right hand are pleasures for evermore.

Psalms 21:4He asked life of thee; thou gavest it to him,length of days for ever and ever. . . . (cf. 23:6)

Psalms 49:7-9, 15Truly no man can ransom himself,or give to God the price of his life,[8] for the ransom of his life is costly,and can never suffice,[9] that he should continue to live on for ever,and never see the Pit. . . . [15]But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol,for he will receive me. . . .

Psalms 73:24, 26. . . afterward thou wilt receive me to glory.. . . [26]. . . God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.

Daniel 7:18But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, for ever and ever.

Daniel 12:2 And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

The notion of spiritual salvation is present in the Old Testament as well:

Psalms 34:6-7This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him,and saved him out of all his troubles.[7] The angel of the LORD encampsaround those who fear him, and delivers them.

Psalms 51:1-3, 5, 7, 9-14 Have mercy on me, O God,according to thy steadfast love;according to thy abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.[2] Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,and cleanse me from my sin![3] For I know my transgressions,and my sin is ever before me.. . . [5] Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,and in sin did my mother conceive me.. . . [7] Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.. . .[9] Hide thy face from my sins,and blot out all my iniquities.[10] Create in me a clean heart, O God,and put a new and right spirit within me.[11] Cast me not away from thy presence,and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.[12] Restore to me the joy of thy salvation,and uphold me with a willing spirit.[13] Then I will teach transgressors thy ways,and sinners will return to thee.[14] Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,thou God of my salvation,and my tongue will sing aloud of thy deliverance. . . .

Proverbs 15:24The wise mans path leads upward to life,that he may avoidSheolbeneath.

Isaiah 45:17, 21-22But Israel is saved by the LORDwith everlasting salvation;you shall not be put to shame or confoundedto all eternity. . . . [21] . . . a righteous God and a Savior . . . [22] Turn to me and be saved,all the ends of the earth!For I am God, and there is no other.

Jeremiah 17:14Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed;save me, and I shall be saved;. . .

Jeremiah 31:33-34But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.[34] . . . for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

Most of these passages likely refer to physical salvation from enemies and death, but some may have a double application, and some may refer to spiritual salvation only.

The idea of being abandoned to Sheol is similar to eternal hellfire (a developmental precursor of it). Thus, eternal life or eschatological salvation is described as thou dost not give me up to Sheol (Ps 16:10). God delivers or rescues the righteous from Sheol (he brings down toSheoland raises up: 1 Sam 2:6; cf. Ps 30:3; 49:15; 86:13; 89:48). Sheol is the hopeless final state of the wicked (Ps 6:5; 9:17; 31:17; Is 14:11, 15 cf. Mk 9:48; 38:18; 66:24)

Jeremiah 15:14. . . in my anger a fire is kindled which shall burn for ever. (cf. 17:4; Dt 32:22)

Daniel 12:2And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

Many references to the pit also refer to Sheol.

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Salvation and Immortality Are Not Just New Testament Ideas - National Catholic Register

Aloe Vera: The Wonder Plant Of Immortality – Anti Aging News

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Very few plants possess the soothing properties of the aloe vera plant which is often called the wonder plant of immortality that has been used as a natural remedy around the globe due to its potent healing properties.

Aloe vera is used as a common ingredient in cosmetics, food supplements, herbal remedies, skincare, moisturizers, and many more uses for very good reasons. This thorny succulent has healing qualities within its thick leaves, its aloe gel and aloe latex juice each have their own medicinal properties. The clear and odorless gel comes from the innermost part of the plant, while the outer contains the aloe latex juice.

When an aloe leaf is sliced open the first thing you see is the yellow latex liquid seeping out of the leaf, and the aloe vera gel is so nutrient dense some consider it to be a food. The plant has therapeutic capabilities that can help you to achieve optimal health, which is why it has earned the nickname of wonder plant of immortality.

The most common use is probably the topical application to help nourish and moisturize the skin. Aloe vera helps to support the healing of mild burns, wounds, sunburns, and relief from minor irritations and rashes with its natural compounds that are tolerated by all skin types.

The plant contains the polysaccharide acemannan which supports healthy digestion, and aloe vera has been used to provide relief from occasional stomach upset to support a robust digestive system.

The succulent can help to support optimal immune system function due to its variety of nurturing compounds and high content of antioxidants, vitamins and minerals which have been studied and well documented. The clear gel contains vitamins A, B1-2-3-5-12, C, and E as well as minerals including calcium, copper, chromium, manganese, magnesium, potassium, selenium, and zinc among its beneficial arsenal.

Aloe vera can be used in gels, juice, powder, capsule, or raw form, but it is important to ensure the supply is of a trusted and clean high quality source to add to your beauty and health care routine.

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Aloe Vera: The Wonder Plant Of Immortality - Anti Aging News

The Science Behind Aging – Science Times

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(Photo : BigStock)

The quest for eternal youth is the driving force behind many pop stories and legends. For some, immortality was more than fiction, so they decided to search for it during their lives. However, the pursuits of alchemists were in vain as we have no elixir of life at our disposal. Not that we are aware of, that is.

Instead of waiting for the real-life Lazarus Pit to reveal itself, we could try to understand what is happening with our bodies as we age. Before you look into the data on long-term care and book a retirement home, take a minute to learn what happens to your body over the years.

We start aging, therefore dying, the moment we are born. The building blocks of our body are the trillions of cells. At each given moment, they are dying out, but the dead cells are replaced with new ones instantly.

Replication is the process of making DNA copies. The DNAs are clustered in tight structures which we call chromosomes. Every healthy human has 23 pairs of chromosomes.

This process has its flaws. Each time chromosomes are replicated, they lose a tiny part of the original. Eventually, the renewal process will miss out on some vital parts. At their edges, chromosomes have something we call telomeres. These are meaningless DNA data at the end of chromosomes. Replication will damage relevant data once all telomeres have vanished.

The replication process has its purpose. Old cells left behind can mess up our internal biology. The condition of cells not being replaced with new ones is called cancer. This condition can be fatal. Therefore it could be fair to say that cells dying out are keeping us alive.

The occurrences inside of us are not the only factors of aging. What we eat, our lifestyles, what are our surroundings, and our exposure to the sun all influence the aging process. If a persons' diet consists only of hamburgers and you avoid fruits and veggies, their body will age more rapidly.

Unfortunately, there is no wonder pill or elixir, which will stop the replication of chromosomes without leaving fatal damages to our bodies. But while we cannot stop aging, we can still prevent a youthful appearance.

Physical activities craft and maintain a good body, and the same actions can keep it younger for a couple of decades. There are some cosmetic products that preserve the appearance of youth, but before purchasing an ointment, we should understand our skin types.

Aging might have a bad reputation due to beauty and fashion magazines, but it's far from a bad thing. The replicated chromosomes prevent cancer, and it will be a long time before essential DNA stops renewing. Those who prefer how they looked in their youth can always resolve to cosmetic products and take some healthy changes in their lifestyles.

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The Science Behind Aging - Science Times

‘Star Wars 9’ theory reveals Order 66 was key to Palpatine’s resurrection – Inverse

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Emperor Palpatine has always been obsessed with two things: destroying the Jedi and achieving immortality. But what if those two goals were connected all along? A new theory based on some recent Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker plot leaks explains why Palps needed to kill (almost) all the Jedi before he could fulfill his old masters dream and cheat death.

Warning! Possible spoilers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker ahead.

This new Star Wars theory from redditor u/chris41336 hinges on a few key details weve already covered extensively. First, multiple Rise of Skywalker leaks suggest that Sheev Palpatines evil plan in Episode IX involves uniting the Light and Dark sides in a dyad consisting of Rey and Kylo, which will allegedly unleash an enormous amount of energy capable of bringing old Palpy back from the brink of death.

Second, were pretty sure the current Star Wars trilogy could be referencing one of the weirdest concepts in franchise canon: Mortis. Originally introduced in The Clone Wars animated series, Mortis is a mysterious region inhabited by three immortal Force users (the Father, the Son, and the Daughter) who are locked in eternal battle. More recently, Rian Johnson admitted to watching TCW while developing The Last Jedi and seemingly snuck a Mortis reference into Reys cave vision scene.

So why does any of this matter? Well, as u/chris41336 theorizes, Palpatines plan to achieve immortality could be directly linked to the immortal beings who live in Mortis. After all, the way he pitted Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker against each other in Return of the Jedi already resembles the power struggle between the Father, Daughter, and Son.

The Sith actually discovered this long ago, and its why they created the rule of two, the theory says. One master. One apprentice. Eventually, when powerful enough, when the light came to meet the rising darkness, the master would bring an equally powerful light user before his apprentice to battle, in the hopes that they would form a Force dyad. In the presence of such force energy, the Sith master would perform the ritual and create the trinity. Hence why Palpatine did this over and over.

The problem with this plan, the theory continues, is that it doesnt actually work until the three Force users involved are the only Force users in the galaxy. Otherwise, it dilutes the power of the dyad.

Enter, Order 66

As you probably remember, Order 66 was Emperor Palpatines ultimate checkmate against the Jedi. When the time came, he triggered a chip in the brain of every clone trooper that forced them to betray their Jedi commanders. The result was the immediate death of almost every single Jedi in the galaxy, which finally paved the way for Palps to complete his plan for immortality.

Of course, as we all know, Palpatines plan ultimately failed when Darth Vader betrayed him, but as the first trailer for The Rise of Skywalker revealed, the Emperor never really went away. Instead, he apparently went into hiding, waiting until his next opportunity to create the Force dyad.

During that time, Luke even tried to bring back the Jedi by training a new crop of Force-sensitive pupils, including Kylo Ren. Through the lens of this theory, it seems clear that it was Palpatine who influenced Kylo to turn on Luke and kill the other Jedi-in-training. (You could even argue that it was the Emperor, acting through Snoke, who corrupted Kylo in the first place.)

Now that Luke is dead and Rey really is the last Jedi, it seems Palpatines long-planned scheme may finally succeed. Then again, if history is any guide, we have a feeling that Kylo Ren will follow in his grandfathers footsteps and betray the Emperor just in time, finally putting an end to the greatest villain in Star Wars history.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker hits theaters on December 20.

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'Star Wars 9' theory reveals Order 66 was key to Palpatine's resurrection - Inverse

Rugby World Cup 2019: Glory in Japan can offer immortality for Joe Schmidt and Warren Gatland – The Independent

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Standing at opposite ends of a Celtic rivalry that stretches back more than 130 years, Warren Gatland and Joe Schmidt have walked curiously similar paths during their time on British shores. Meticulous architects in their own unique ways, both men have revitalised two teams that, prior to their arrival, lacked the heavyweight status they now command. Indeed, under Gatland and Schmidt, Walesand Irelandhave emerged as two of the games very best.

The influence of the two New Zealanders has been monumental, crystallising in the various idiosyncrasies that have come to define their teams over the years: dogged resilience, clinical precision, swashbuckling bravado, self-belief and composure in abundance. Yes, there have been setbacks and hiccups along the way, moments of disappointment that have drawn introspection and raised questions. But these fade into insignificance when compared with what has been achieved.

So, with their time as the head coaches of Wales and Ireland set to draw to a close, Gatland and Schmidt find themselves under the microscope like never before as they prepare for what could be their final World Cup campaigns. The questions they now face are ignore to hard. What will their legacies be once they step down? Will Japan 2019 determinethe way in which they are remembered? Can their respective sides shake the burden of history that has hung over them on rugbys grandest stage?

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In Schmidts case,the numbersare hard to ignore. Since taking charge in 2013, he has brought home three Six Nations titles to a country that had won one in the previous 28 years. Further afield, he engineered a maiden win against New Zealandas well as a first series win over Australia in 39 years, with his men showing they were capable of mixing it with the big beasts of the southern hemisphere. A second victory over the world champions followed last year confirmation that the famous win in Chicago wasnt merely a fluke.

But for some, such feats cant hide the fact Ireland have never progressed beyond the quarter-finals at a World Cup. The terrible thing is Schmidts legacy will absolutely be affected one way or another by what happens [in Japan], Ireland great Brian ODriscoll said this month. Irrespective of the Grand Slams and the series wins and the All Blacks victories, everything is hitched on this World Cup, go one step further at least than any other Irish side previously and get to a semi-final.

14 Jun 1987: The New Zealand team do their Haka dance at the beginning of the Rugby World Cup match between New Zealand and Wales in the semi final in Brisbane, Australia. New Zealand won the match 49-6. (Russell Cheyne/Allsport)

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John Drake, Sean Fitzpatrick and Steve McDowell of New Zealand prepare to pack down for a scrum during the 1987 Rugby World Cup Semi-Final match between New Zealand and Wales at Ballymore Stadium on June 14, 1987 in Brisbane, Australia. (Ross Land/Getty Images)

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Serge Blanco of France makes a break during the 1987 Rugby World Cup Semi-Final match between Australia and France at Concord Oval on June 13, 1987 in Sydney, Australia. (Ross Land/Getty Images)

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David Kirk of New Zealand kisses the Willam Webb Ellis Trophy after the 1987 Rugby World Cup Final match between New Zealand and France at Eden Park on June 20, 1987 in Auckland, New Zealand. (Ross Land/Getty Images)

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Michael Lynagh of the Wallabies scores the match winning try during the Rugby World Cup semi-final match between Australia and Ireland at Lansdowne Road October 20, 1991 in Dublin, Ireland. Australia won the match 19-18 and went to beat England in the final. (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

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England captain Will Carling introduces Queen Elizabeth to the England team before the Rugby World Cup Final against Australia at Twickenham, 2nd November 1991. Australia won the match 12-6. (Russell Cheyne/Getty Images)

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Australian scrum-half Nick Farr-Jones (left) and winger David Campese lift the Webb Ellis Cup after Australia's 12-6 victory over England in the Rugby World Cup Final at Twickenham, 2nd November 1991. (Russell Cheyne/Getty Images)

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S. Poivedin, Phil Kearns and Michael Lynagh of the Australia Rugby Union team hold the Webb Ellis Trophy in the baths after the 1991 Rugby World Cup final victory over England (Allsport UK/Allsport)

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Sean Fitzpatrick of New Zealand is treated for a nosebleed during a Rugby World Cup pool stage match against Ireland at Ellis Park, Johannesburg, South Africa, 27th May 1995. New Zealand won 43-19 and went on to the final, where they were defeated by South Africa. (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

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Jonah Lomu of New Zealand evades the diving tackle of Rob Andrew of England during the Rugby World Cup Semi Final at the Newlands Stadium in Cape Town, South Africa. New Zealand won the match 45-29. (Simon Bruty /Allsport)

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South Africa's president Nelson Mandela congratulates South Africa's rugby team captain Franois Pienaar before handing him the Webb Ellis Cup after the 1995 Rugby World Cup final match South Africa vs New Zealand at Ellis Park Stadium in Johannesburg on June 24, 1995. (AFP PHOTO/JEAN-PIERRE MULLER)

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English players (From L to R) Darren Garforth, Martin Johnson, Joe Worsley and Dan Luger watch Samoan players perform the Haka before the Rugby World Cup quarter-final play-off game between England and Fiji 20 October 1999 at Twickenham stadium, southwest London. England won 45 to 24 and qualified for the quarter-final against South Africa. (OLIVIER MORIN/AFP/Getty Images)

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Semo Sititi of Samoa celebrates victory over Wales in the Rugby World Cup Pool D match at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales. Samoa won 38-31. (David Rogers /Allsport)

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Jonah Lomu of New Zealand in action during the Semi Final match of the Rugby World Cup against France played at Twickenham in London, England. France won the game 43-31. (Ross Kinnaird /Allsport)

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The French team celebrate after beating New Zealand to win the Semi Final match of the Rugby World Cup played at Twickenham in London, England. France won the game 43-31. (Ross Kinnaird /Allsport)

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Australian scrum-half George Gregan (L) jumps to celebrate his victory as French fly-half Christophe Lamaison walks away after the Rugby World Cup 1999 final game opposing France to Australia 06 November 1999 at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. Australian won the final 35 to 12. (WILLIAM WEST/AFP/Getty Images)

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Australian winger Joe Roff drinks from the cup inside the locker room after the Rugby World Cup 1999 final game between France and Australia 06 November 1999 at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. Australian won the final 35 to 12 (WILLIAM WEST/AFP/Getty Images)

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Dave Rogers (Getty): This is Jonny Wilkinson kicking the last-minute drop goal to win the 2003 Rugby World Cup in Sydney. It was an amazing occasion for an Englishman to cover, the excitement was incredible. Fortunately, Jonny, who is predominantly a left-footed kicker, kicked this drop goal with his right and therefore was facing towards me.

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ngland captain Martin Johnson celebrates Englands victory with Neil Back and Ben Cohen during the Rugby World Cup Final match between Australia and England at Telstra Stadium November 22, 2003 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

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Dave Rogers (Getty): This is the same occasion but it shows Clive Woodward, the England head coach, taking the Rugby World Cup back down the tunnel to the England dressing room. I have known Clive, since 1980 and it was an absolute thrill to see his dreams, and England's, come true.

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Hugh McMeniman of Australia contests a lineout ball with Mike James of Canada during the IRB Rugby World Cup Pool B match between Australia and Canada at Stade Chaban-Delmas September 29, 2007 in Bordeaux, France. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

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Dave Rogers (Getty): This shows Andrew Sheridan, the England prop forward head to head with his opposite prop, Matt Dunning of Australia. Sheridan, probably the strongest prop in the world at the time, loved the challenge of taking Dunning on and I think this image shows how much he intimidated the opposition.

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The France team, wearing shirts representing the national flag, face up to the New Zealand team as they perform The Haka before during the Quarter Final of the Rugby World Cup 2007 match between New Zealand and France at the Millennium Stadium on October 6, 2007 in Cardiff, United Kingdom. (Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)

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Louis Deacon of England out jumps Cristian Constantin Petre of Romania during the IRB 2011 Rugby World Cup Pool B match between England and Romania at Otago Stadium on September 24, 2011 in Dunedin, New Zealand. (Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

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Hannah Peters (Getty): A nice try picture is often hard to get in rugby union as you're often quite far away from the action and you need a few things to go your way. A good dive always helps and also clean backgrounds behind the players and crowd.

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Mike Phillips, Alun Wyn Jones and George North sing their national anthem ahead of the quarter final one of the 2011 IRB Rugby World Cup between Ireland v Wales at Wellington Regional Stadium on October 8, 2011 in Wellington, New Zealand. (Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)

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Sam Warburton of Wales upends wing Vincent Clerc of France during semi final one of the 2011 IRB Rugby World Cup between Wales and France at Eden Park on October 15, 2011 in Auckland, New Zealand. (Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)

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Hannah Peters (Getty): This image was shot from the roof of Eden Park in amongst the light towers when the All Blacks beat France to win the final in 2011. I was harnessed in and attached to a minder so making the right lens choice and praying the play went my way on the final whistle were all big factors in making this image work.

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Captain Richie McCaw of the All Blacks celebrates winning the 2011 IRB Rugby World Cup Final match between France and New Zealand at Eden Park on October 23, 2011 in Auckland, New Zealand. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

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The All Blacks had a few parades around New Zealand after winning the Rugby World Cup in 2011. I was waiting for a few hours on top of a ladder for Richie McCaw and the World Cup to arrive. Luckily, he held it up just as they drove past a New Zealand flag to place the picture.

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Dan Mullan (Getty): Finally, here is Israel Folau of Australia competing in the air against Metuisela Talebula and Asaeli Tikoirotuma of Fiji during their match in Cardiff. Folau was known for his aerial prowess and this image displays it perfectly, winning the ball against two of his opposition.

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A general view of the action during the 2015 Rugby World Cup Pool D match between Ireland and Romania at Wembley Stadium on September 27, 2015 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

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Francois Louw of South Africa leaps on to the back of Sonny Bill Williams of the New Zealand All Blacks during the 2015 Rugby World Cup Semi Final match between South Africa and New Zealand at Twickenham Stadium on October 24, 2015 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

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Dan Mullan (Getty): In this image I captured Adam Ashley-Cooper of Australia diving over to score one of his three tries in the semi-final against Argentina to send his team through to the final. I liked this image as Adam is in full flight diving for the try line with the capacity Twickenham crowd watching on.

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Dan Mullan (Getty): Another one from the semi-final between Australia and Argentina, heres Scott Fardy spitting after being cut on the head. This image really stood out for me as something a bit different, it was away from the action and an isolated portrait that showed the brutality of rugby.

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Richie McCaw of the New Zealand All Blacks lifts the Webb Ellis Cup following the victory against Australia in the2015 Rugby World Cup Final match between New Zealand and Australia at Twickenham Stadium on October 31, 2015 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

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14 Jun 1987: The New Zealand team do their Haka dance at the beginning of the Rugby World Cup match between New Zealand and Wales in the semi final in Brisbane, Australia. New Zealand won the match 49-6. (Russell Cheyne/Allsport)

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John Drake, Sean Fitzpatrick and Steve McDowell of New Zealand prepare to pack down for a scrum during the 1987 Rugby World Cup Semi-Final match between New Zealand and Wales at Ballymore Stadium on June 14, 1987 in Brisbane, Australia. (Ross Land/Getty Images)

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Serge Blanco of France makes a break during the 1987 Rugby World Cup Semi-Final match between Australia and France at Concord Oval on June 13, 1987 in Sydney, Australia. (Ross Land/Getty Images)

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David Kirk of New Zealand kisses the Willam Webb Ellis Trophy after the 1987 Rugby World Cup Final match between New Zealand and France at Eden Park on June 20, 1987 in Auckland, New Zealand. (Ross Land/Getty Images)

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Michael Lynagh of the Wallabies scores the match winning try during the Rugby World Cup semi-final match between Australia and Ireland at Lansdowne Road October 20, 1991 in Dublin, Ireland. Australia won the match 19-18 and went to beat England in the final. (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

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England captain Will Carling introduces Queen Elizabeth to the England team before the Rugby World Cup Final against Australia at Twickenham, 2nd November 1991. Australia won the match 12-6. (Russell Cheyne/Getty Images)

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Australian scrum-half Nick Farr-Jones (left) and winger David Campese lift the Webb Ellis Cup after Australia's 12-6 victory over England in the Rugby World Cup Final at Twickenham, 2nd November 1991. (Russell Cheyne/Getty Images)

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S. Poivedin, Phil Kearns and Michael Lynagh of the Australia Rugby Union team hold the Webb Ellis Trophy in the baths after the 1991 Rugby World Cup final victory over England (Allsport UK/Allsport)

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Sean Fitzpatrick of New Zealand is treated for a nosebleed during a Rugby World Cup pool stage match against Ireland at Ellis Park, Johannesburg, South Africa, 27th May 1995. New Zealand won 43-19 and went on to the final, where they were defeated by South Africa. (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

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Jonah Lomu of New Zealand evades the diving tackle of Rob Andrew of England during the Rugby World Cup Semi Final at the Newlands Stadium in Cape Town, South Africa. New Zealand won the match 45-29. (Simon Bruty /Allsport)

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South Africa's president Nelson Mandela congratulates South Africa's rugby team captain Franois Pienaar before handing him the Webb Ellis Cup after the 1995 Rugby World Cup final match South Africa vs New Zealand at Ellis Park Stadium in Johannesburg on June 24, 1995. (AFP PHOTO/JEAN-PIERRE MULLER)

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Pool: Merit, inequality, and opportunity hoarding | Opinion – Longview News-Journal

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It is one of lifes many ironies that good things, pushed too far, turn into bad things. So it is, even when it comes to loving your own children.

Parents want to do whatever is best for their kids, and usually will sacrifice for the sake of their progeny. Children are our deepest investment in the future, and as close as we get in this world to a kind of immortality. We pass something of ourselves through the gates of death and into the future.

Still, even the deepest love must find its proper limits. Im worried that some of us, in our laudable desire to endow our offspring with all good things, nevertheless find ourselves sucking opportunities away from those less privileged.

Richard Reeves calls it opportunity hoarding. It means that the children of cognitive, educational, and economic elites crowd the ladder of success so tightly that its hard for less-advantaged children to climb it.

We and I count myself among these people engage our children in high quality athletic, aesthetic, social and intellectual enrichment activities, and we are able to pay for them.

My own child went to summer camp, took horseback, dance, and gymnastic lessons, had a math tutor, was a middle-school cheerleader, played lacrosse, swam competitively, and contributed her beautiful mezzo soprano voice to the high school choir.

When she was a little girl in elementary school, a weekend carnival might raise $25,000 in a few hours. That money paid for extras and materials at her school.

Meanwhile, across town, the less-advantaged families barely break even on fund-raising carnivals. My wife has been there and seen that.

All students in my district receive the same funding, but some of them receive more resources, thanks to parent support. That wouldnt be a terrible problem if the state and district allocations were sufficient for anything except the most basic educational services.

Im the last person to say we shouldnt invest in our own children, but all the oxygen gets sucked out of the kids who start life differently.

Part of the problem is single parenthood. Those who are married, even accounting for class and income, spend more on their kids than single parents, who are overwhelmingly mothers, do.

Two sociologists report that, While 84% of children whose mothers have a bachelors degree or higher-level education live with married parents, only 58% of children whose mothers have a high school degree or less do so. And while 75% of white children live with married parents, just 38% of black children do so.

I know, love, and respect many single mothers, including those in my own family. Theyre not always single by choice, and sometimes the choices they made are the best under their circumstances.

I also value hard work and the ability to better oneself through ones own merit. After World War II, this nation made great strides in allowing social mobility through effort and qualifications. My father was a geologist instead of a roughneck because of the G.I. Bill.

Nevertheless, as George Packer recently wrote: The system has hardened into a new class structure in which professionals pass on their money, connections, ambitions, and work ethic to their children, while less educated families fall further behind, with little chance of seeing their children move up.

The kids in my current school are packed 41 to a classroom. Thats a savage inequality. The children dont have any choice about being born into an era when the comfortable expectations of the past dont seem to apply anymore.

Somehow, all of us need to do better.

Frank Thomas Pool is a writer and a retired English teacher in Austin. He grew up on Maple Street in Longview and graduated from Longview High School. His column appears Tuesday.

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Pool: Merit, inequality, and opportunity hoarding | Opinion - Longview News-Journal

Humanists, religious share values – Times Union

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When religious voices assail humanism, they attack it as a belief in nothing, just another form of faith, no more provable than any other. They blame it for (supposed) American moral rot. But as a humanist, I don't believe morality needs some supernatural source.

Neither did our Founding Fathers. Often invoked as men of faith, their humanist values shaped the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

Humanism is a philosophy, not a religion or faith. It originated in ancient times with thinkers like Epicurus and Lucretius, with a rebirth in the Renaissance and Enlightenment. It's a way of understanding life and world, anchored in reason and reality. This does mean eschewing religious superstitions, all deities, immortality, etc.

But humanism is not simply non-belief. It's far more than believing in nothing.

To the contrary, humanists have strong beliefs strengthened by virtue of requiring no leap of "faith," no suspension of disbelief. Humanism's truths are self-evident:

For a humanist like me, there's no such thing as "supernatural." Nature has no purpose; it just is. We ourselves are products of nature, evolved with minds enabling us to use reason and science to understand our world, tackle S. problems, aspire to justice, and shape our own destinies. Humanism believes in progress, taking pride in what we strive for and have achieved. Humanism is love for humanity.

Our earthly life is the only one we get. Nothing can ultimately matter except the feelings of sentient beings. We can infer from all this that our purpose is to make human life as good as possible. This purpose gives our lives ample meaning. Humanism provides the bedrock of morality. It encourages every person, oneself included, to live fully and attain happiness, a word that signifies equal respect for the dignity of all humans and freedom of thought and expression.

This is what the Declaration of Independence says. The Constitution's preamble also regards human flourishing as our nation's goal. No deity is mentioned. America was founded not as a "Christian nation" but as a quintessentially humanist one.

The humanism elucidated here is the essence of rationality and sanity. Most people, even if professing other creeds, actually live their lives, most of the time, in accordance with these common sense humanistic concepts. And they are not necessarily incompatible with a religious faith. Believers act humanistically when pursuing social justice.

It's when we deviate from this humanistic design that trouble brews. Religions, rooted in different cultures, with irreconcilable claims to ultimate truth, are unending sources of conflict. Humanism's universal philosophy unites.

People of faith may wonder if humanists fear death more because they see it as a final end. Even if you believe in an afterlife, nobody can be sure. And if death is a tragic finish, to live at all is a glorious gift. Meantime, contemplating the possible finality of earthly life spurs one to cherish it and improve it for all of us. Humanists aim to solve problems ourselves by confronting earthbound realities rather than putting the whole burden on a God who, if he does exist, probably has plenty to do.

Only by coming to terms with the reality of our existence, as embodied in humanism, can we live authentically and meaningfully. "Being at one with everything" is a Buddhist clich; but I get a similar feeling from how humanism grounds me in my engagement with life, the world, and humankind. It's better than religion because it's true.

Frank S. Robinson is a Times Union blogger and author of The Case for Rational Optimism.

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Humanists, religious share values - Times Union