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Whales evolved large brains in the same way that we did – New Scientist News

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Danzig

By Colin Barras

Tony Wu / Nature Picture Library / Science Photo Library

The largest brains ever to have evolved belong to whales. Now we have discovered that the marine mammals gained their big brains size in the same way we did through massive expansion of two particular brain regions, fuelled perhaps through changes in diet.

Amandine Muller at the University of Cambridge and Stephen Montgomery at the University of Bristol, UK, looked at brain size data from 18 species of whale and dolphin, as well as from 124 different land animals including 43 species of primate. With few exceptions, the whales, dolphins and primates all seem to have gained large brains through dramatic growth of the same two brain regions: the cerebellum and neocortex.Both regions are important for cognitive functions such as attention, and for controlling the movement of the body.

It makes sense that the cerebellum and neocortex evolve in unison, says Montgomery, because they are physically connected by many brain pathways. Its possible one can only change so much without being constrained by the performance of its partner, and needing the other structure to catch up, he says.

But what drove these two brain regions to expand so dramatically in whales and dolphins? Muller and Montgomery first explored whether the trigger was a change in social behaviour. In common with some primates including our species whales and dolphins can form complex social groups. However, the two researchers found no strong correlation between the whale and dolphin species with the most advanced social behaviour and those with a particularly large cerebellum and neocortex.

But they did discover that the whale and dolphin species with a larger cerebellum and neocortex typically enjoy an unusually broad diet, in terms of the variety of foodstuffs they consume. This might suggest that broadening the diet encouraged the evolution of larger brains.

It is unclear why diet and brain size are linked. Montgomery speculates that a broad diet is more likely to provide the energetic resources needed to fuel brain expansion. Alternatively, it might be that marine mammals with a broader diet need to learn and use a wider range of foraging behaviours to exploit different food resources. This could require a larger brain.

Unravelling how and why brain evolution and diet are linked in whales and dolphins could be important because it might help us understand why primates evolved large brains too.

Many researchers argue that primates gained large brains as their social worlds became more complex. But in the last few years, some have given up on this social brain hypothesis because of evidence that primate brain expansion is actually better explained by changes to diet. The data from whales and dolphins provides new evidence to bolster this idea.

Journal reference: Journal of Evolutionary Biology , DOI: 10.1111/jeb.13539

When Biologists Speak to Biology Teachers – Discovery Institute

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Danzig

In her article yesterday for The Atlantic, which I wrote about here, Olga Khazan quotes Penn State political scientist Eric Plutzer on the lamentable stubbornness of many biology teachers in not evangelizing their students in favor of Darwinian evolution in its fullness:

Some educators in this ambivalent 60 percent tend to teach evolution only as it applies to molecular biology, Plutzer said, but not the macroevolution of species. Others distance themselves from the material even as they tell students it will be on a standardized test. Their primary concern is not offending the students or their parents by characterizing the science in a way that seems to be challenging religious faith, Plutzer told me. I think that in some cases, the teachers themselves have doubts. [Emphasis added.]

The teachers themselves have doubts Meaning, doubts about Darwinism. Thats what you think? Well, I know that many do, because they get in touch with us about it, and have been doing so for years. (See the Helpline page on the Free Science website.) The concern about evangelizing teachers so that theyll be better equipped to evangelizestudents has been a priority for some Darwinists, also for years. Political philosopher J. Budziszewski at the University of Texas has a brilliant post about this.

He points out a contradiction between well known sayings of two well known biologists.

Geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky famously wrote, Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.Did you get that?Nothing.

Yet after urging that Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved, molecular biologist and Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick remarked, It might be thought, therefore, that evolutionary arguments would play a large role in guiding biological research, but that is far from the case. It is difficult enough to study what is happening now.

Can both be true? Clearly not. Evolution cant be critical to all biological research, while at the same time not actually play[ing] a large role in it. So what explains the contradiction between Dobzhansky and Crick, who presumably would both know what they were talking about? Budziszewski answers: They were talking to different audiences! Dobzhansky was talking specifically to teachers:

I wonder whether part of the explanation might lie in the fact that Dobzhansky was writing not in a journal for biologists, but in a journal for K through 12 biology instructors,American Biology Teacher.

What difference would that make? Wouldnt the same views and arguments be expressed to teachers as to practitioners? Not if one of the objects of preparing teachers is to propagandize them.

He cites a couple of Darwinist academics who are explicit about the permissibility of using propagandizing deception to get the message across to what they consider to be less intelligent audiences. That would presumably include run-of-the-mill biology teachers, and students too.

In that light, lets turn back to Olga Khazans article. She continues:

Additionally, some teachers expose students to different theories about evolution and encourage them to make up their own minds. But does a 15-year-old student really have enough information to reject thousands of peer reviewed scientific papers? Berkman and Plutzer write in their article.

But that right there, from Plutzer and his colleague Michael Berkman, is itself a piece of misdirection, at best. The purpose of teach the controversy-style pedagogy isnt to encourage students to think they have enough information to reject what most biologists say in thousands of peer reviewed scientific papers they havent read. The goals are to engage and excite students intellectually, introduce them to scientific argumentation, and to acquaint them with the reality, which is that a genuine, interesting, and important scientific controversy is going about neo-Darwinian theory among scientists themselves.

Why should that last fact be hidden from young people? Or from teachers? Budziszewski concludes, ironically, I do think that if everyone laid his best arguments on the table, the results would be different than what most of the smart people expect. But different results are just what the smart people want to avoid, which is why full candor, when speaking to teachers or students, is to be avoided.

Photo: A high school biology classroom, by Dannel Malloy, via Flickr (cropped).

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When Biologists Speak to Biology Teachers - Discovery Institute

AMC’s Addressable Future: Partnerships & Evolution, Gaynor Says – BeetTV

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Danzig

SANTA BARBARA It was back in mid-2018 that AMC Networks first said it would allow advertisers to dynamically insert ads to reach specific households.

That was after AMC Networks whose portfolio includes AMC, IFC, SundanceTV, WE tv and BBC America hired Adam Gaynor, the long-time DISH Network executive who oversaw media sales including addressable TV initiatives.

Fast-forward a year, and Gaynor says AMCs addressable TV approach will involve partnership, evolution and complementary context.

At first when we launch addressability, were going to look at what I believe is versioning, Gaynor, now VP of AMCN Agility, tells Beet.TV in this video interview. If an advertiser wants to come in, they can immediately have different messages to different parts of their core audience.

As we each test out the systems, and the platform, and the capability, well then at our own pace, really be able to evolve that to what we call aggregation or multi advertiser addressability, to really think about the best ways to help those advertisers reach the audiences.

AMCN Agility is a data-driven sales team the network created early in 2018.

It includes AMCs Aurora video targeting platform, which can utilize audience segments.

To advance the opportunity, AMC has joined Project OAR, the addressable TV standards consortium that is Open Addressable Ready but is led by TV manufacturer Vizio and includes Disney, NBCU, Turner, CBS, AT&Ts Xandr and others.

There are different pieces that have to bring addressability together, Gaynor says. So you need a decisioning system, you need a watermarking system, you need tags, you need a lot of tech that helps bring that product to life.

Each of us are going down our own path of bringing those things together. Were feeling really good about the partners that weve chosen to sort of stitch things together to bring this capability to life on our national inventory across smart TVs.

With the likes of AMC Networks joining the addressable TV advertising fray, many observers may be tempted to wonder do they networks want to wrestle control of ad sales from under the noses of cable operators?

The answer is no' Gaynor says. I think everybody has talked for so long about needing more inventory and more capabilities. We look at complementing that inventory.

When you think about addressability, it really allows advertisers to find their consumers wherever, whenever. And so context gets removed from that equation. At the network level, we can bring context back into question.

This video is from a series leading up to, and covering, theXandr Relevance Conferencein Santa Barbara. This Beet.TV series is sponsored by Xandr. Pleasevisit this pageto find more videos from the series.

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AMC's Addressable Future: Partnerships & Evolution, Gaynor Says - BeetTV

The quiet evolution of Brad Pitt – will Ad Astra earn him a fourth Oscar nomination? – Independent.ie

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Danzig

The movie is set some years in the future, when the mechanics of space travel have greatly improved. Pitt is Major Roy McBride, a US armed forces astronaut whose obsession with space has come at the expense of his personal life. He comes from a proud lineage: his father, Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), was the most decorated US astronaut of all, a fearless pioneer who went missing on a daring mission to Neptune.

That was years ago, and Clifford is now presumed dead, but after a series of mysterious cosmic shocks cause chaos on Earth, Roy is summoned by his superiors who tell him that his father may still be alive. The shocks are emanating from Neptune, so Roy heads for the blue planet to find out what's really going on.

In Ad Astra, only a flicker of an eye or the odd grimace give any clue of what Ray is thinking, and Brad's always been best when he plays men of few words who hide their emotions. Maybe that's not a coincidence, because Pitt does not seem like the effusive type himself.

He gives few interviews, but recently broke his silence to tell the New York Times what's been happening since his very public split with Angelina Jolie. He told writer Kyle Buchanan how he'd curtailed his "drinking privileges", spent over a year in AA, and found catharsis in group therapy sessions. Living life in the spotlight for almost three decades had clearly taken a heavy toll, and Pitt hinted that he'll be spending less time in front of the cameras from now on. That would be a pity, because as he proves in Ad Astra, when Brad is cast properly, he brings something special to a film.

One thing I've always admired about Brad Pitt is that he's one of those people who arrived in Hollywood owning nothing and knowing no one, and worked his way steadily to the top. He's paid his dues, and never comes across as a man who takes his good fortune for granted.

He was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma, on December 18, 1963, and raised in Springfield, Missouri, which he has called "the heart of the Bible belt". After school, he briefly studied journalism before setting out for Hollywood.

He struggled through the late 1980s, taking acting lessons, queuing for auditions and supplementing his meagre income by moving furniture, driving a limo, even dressing up as a giant fast-food chicken.

His first roles were on television, in shows like Dallas and Another World, but as he approached 30, Pitt was still struggling to make his name. It was Thelma & Louise that changed everything.

Ridley Scott's hit road movie starred Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis as two desperate women fleeing unpleasant lives, and Pitt played a charming conman called JD. He stole every scene he was in, and after Thelma & Louise, better roles started coming his way.

When Robert Redford cast Brad in his elegiac 1992 period drama A River Runs Through It, critics compared his looks and acting style to that of a young Redford. But Pitt himself was more pleased with his work on Kalifornia, in which he played a baby-faced psycho.

In 1994, Pitt established himself as a major star thanks to starring roles in two big-budget movies, Interview with the Vampire and Legends of the Fall. Neither was all that good, but it didn't matter, because Brad had become a sex symbol, and an increasingly bankable actor.

He earned his first Oscar nomination playing a gabbling, shaven-headed psychiatric patient in Terry Gilliam's nightmarish fantasy 12 Monkeys. And in Seven, he began his fruitful ongoing partnership with director David Fincher in some style. A stylish and brutal crime thriller, it starred Pitt and Morgan Freeman as police detectives hunting a serial killer obsessed with the seven deadly sins. It was a huge hit, and suddenly everyone wanted Pitt for everything.

He has since admitted that he did not initially cope with the pressures of stardom especially well. "In the 90s, all that attention really threw me," he told the New York Times in that recent interview. "It was really uncomfortable for me... I really became a bit of a hermit and just bonged myself into oblivion."

Hiding from the spotlight's glare became even harder after he married Friends star Jennifer Aniston. Their relationship, and messy break-up, made headlines across the world, and it was a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire when he met Angelina Jolie. They would bear three children together, and adopt three more, but during the early part of their relationship at least, Brad seemed to recover his professional ambition and focus.

The first sign of this was his remarkably intense performance in Andrew Dominik's superb 2007 anti-western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Pitt played James as an unstable, paranoid man tormented by his violent past.

He was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for his work on Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). But he was much better (and funnier) playing a Jewish-American lieutenant who embarks on a Nazi-killing spree in Tarantino's 2009 hit Inglourious Basterds.

A third Oscar nod came in 2011 for Bennett Miller's Moneyball, in which Pitt played Billy Beane, a laconic baseball manager. And very good in it he was, too, but he was nominated for the wrong film. Because in the same year he'd played an overbearing Southern father in Terrence Malick's superb semi-autobiographical drama The Tree of Life, Pitt's best performance ever in my opinion - until now, perhaps.

Brad Pitt once said he was "too damn affable" to reach the depths that he wanted to in his acting. But he seems to have overcome that obstacle, and his mesmerising performance in Ad Astra might even win him a fourth Oscar nomination - he may not care.

Meanwhile, he's busy with his prolific production company, Plan B, which backed films like Moonlight and Selma. "I have other things I want to do now," Brad said recently, hinting he'll be acting less from now on. That would be a pity, because he really seems to have finally figured it out.

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The quiet evolution of Brad Pitt - will Ad Astra earn him a fourth Oscar nomination? - Independent.ie

Book traces evolution of campaigning in India elections – Deccan Herald

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Danzig

A new book traces the evolution of election campaigns in India by focusing on key players, rise and fall of political parties, role of digital and technology platforms, and emergence of fake news impacting poll outcome in the country and across the world.

In The Game of Votes: Visual Media Politics and Elections in the Digital Era, author Farhat Basir Khan argues that traditional ways of poll campaigns are no longer effective or enough to gain the attention of voters.

Political branding, image management, crisis communication, data analytics, microblogging, and most importantly, short crisp videos hold the key for todays elections, he says.

In the early general elections, political parties used newspapers, public meetings and door-to-door canvassing to convey their messages, policies, manifesto and information about the party.

With rapid advancement and industrialisation, the traditional methodologies of electoral campaigning also changed dramatically and gave rise to an even higher proliferation of modern media technologies, he says.

The book traces the changing political and media landscape beginning with the tepid elections of the 1950s to the feverish social media-driven elections of the 21st century, from the heady post-Independence Nehruvian era to the frenzied victory of Narendra Modi in 2019.

Former President Pranab Mukherjee has written the foreword to the book, published by SAGE, terms it as a reflection on the mood swings of the "unpredictable but very intelligent" Indian voter.

The book looks at the role of technology platforms, micro-profiling voters, clash of personalities and the rise of the national champion - all of which have been dealt with in detail," he writes.

The book discusses the art of forging political alliances, the overwhelming influence of social media companies in global politics, the menace of fake news and the worldwide rise of right-wing politics.

The unpredictable rise of brand Modi, his inexplicable persona, style of politics and vote-conversion abilities are contrasted with the losing sheen of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, loss of confidence in the Congress and electoral reverses for the party, it says.

The book also looks back at former US president Barack Obamas and incumbent Donald Trumps elections where social media, particularly Facebook, played a major role in the campaigns.

What the pundits had not reckoned with was the impact the newer kid on the block - WhatsApp will have, considering its mega role in making viral news elements that are volatile, insidious and fake, Khan, a faculty member at AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, says.

He critically looks at how new media companies and platforms have been used to the hilt by election campaign managers.

The book highlights the fact that social media has not just become a daily battleground for fake news but has spread its tentacles around the core of Indian democracy - its free and fair elections.

According to Khan, social media helps to overcome the barrier of means in communication that in turn enables strengthened relationships between voters or advocates and politicians. And when it comes to election campaigns, social media becomes the digital version of the election rallies held on the ground.

There are, however, repercussions - trolls, shaming, morphing and social bullying are the other side of the story. Yet, it allows the politician to focus on the target voter group more earnestly than on-field where they are an inseparable part of the crowd, he says.

He argues that the BJPs way of using social media is different.

It pushed as much information as possible to saturate and overwhelm the mind of an average Indian with information, not really allowing too much space for further consideration, and driving him to opt for a hurried, if not impetuous, decision on who he chooses to govern the nation for next five years.

In one of the chapters, Khan tries to decipher the visual imagery in the newspapers during the 2014 Indian elections.

The patterns that emerged from the analysis are a clear indication of a robust and well-thought photographic communication strategy in place; it does not seem to be just happenstance or coincidence.

The BJP was the only party with visible and consistent patterns in their use of photographs. They maintained a constant flow of photographic communication in both the newspapers depicting their focus on the use of newspapers for the dissemination of messages, he writes.

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Book traces evolution of campaigning in India elections - Deccan Herald

Workday and the evolution of ERP – iTWire

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Danzig

ERP has come a long way since it was flavour of the decade in the 1990s. Enterprise Resource Planning was the name given to software suites that handled an organisations core activitiesfinance, manufacturing, distribution, etc.

The biggest vendor was German company SAP, still a market leader. But, like most technologies, ERP has evolved. On the cusp of the 2020s the enterprise applications scene looks very different than it did twenty or thirty years ago.

The most important change has been the move to the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. Many organisations resisted moving mission-critical applications to the cloud. But as the technology has improved concerns about security and performance have largely disappeared, and the imperatives for cloud are now hard to argue with.

SAP and Oracle and other ERP vendors have been making the transition from selling on premise packaged software to cloud-based applications sold on a subscription basis, but the inertia of their large installed base has made this a difficult process. They are being challenged by newer vendors who have been cloud-based from the start and who come without this legacy baggage.

Workday is located on the west side of San Francisco Bay, about halfway between San Jose and Oakland. Earlier this year it moved into a futuristic new HQ building (pictured), consolidating employees who were spread across a number of buildings in the area.

Workday is particularlyinteresting because it also demonstrates one of the other major evolutions in enterprise application softwarethe rise of what has come to be called Human Capital Management (HCM). As its name suggests, HCM has to do with an organisations peopleits human capital.

As the economy continues to evolve away from manufacturing and towards service-based industries, an organisations people and the way they are managed are becoming much more important. HCM software integrates the traditional functions of HR and payroll with the finance function, bring new functionality to how people are trained and managed.

Industry analyst with Gartner says there are three major aspects to HCM - workforce acquisition, workforce management and workforce optimisation.

To get a feel for how HCM is challenging the traditional ERP model, iTWire spoke to Workdays VP of Financials Product Management, Rob Zwiebach. He knows the ERP scene well. Before joining Workday last year spent 13 years with Oracle in senior positions in that companys financial software division.

There are many reasons to run these sorts of applications in the cloud, explained Mr Zwiebach. The advantages of the SaaS model are well-known, but there are also sound technical reasons.

Traditional on premise applications are based around relational database technology. Workday uses in-memory processing. That means its faster, but also that is much more flexible. The application structure is defined as metadata, which means applications can be changed on-the-fly without having to restructure the database.

This approach has been successful. Gartner places Workday as a leader in its well-known Magic Quadrant for HCM, alongside archrival Oracle and ahead of SAP and other traditional vendors and niche players. Gartner references Workdays high level of customer satisfaction and application functionality.

Over the past few years Workday has expanded into the traditional financials market, long the exclusive preserve of specialist ERP vendors. Its financials are now mature enough that it has customers who use only that part of its application suite.

Were doing well in financials in the same reason our HCM has been successful, says Mr Zwiebach. The flexibility of our in memory processing means that we can enable our users to be much more agile. Our users tend to be services companies whose biggest expense is their workforce.

The in-memory processing model, which Workday internally calls object graphing. The company has a large team of developers, many of whom are now working on a range of new data analytics capabilities utilising Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies.

In 2018 Workday acquired a company called Adaptive Insights, an HCM planning and analytics company that significantly boost its capabilities in this area. It is also working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to incorporate that companys increasingly sophisticated AI-based analytics.

Mr Zwiebach was in Australia to visit the companys customers and prospects and visit its small planning and budgeting R&D team in Brisbane. Local users include direct marketing company Salmat, toll road operator Transurban and growing FinTech company Latitude Financial.Deakin University is also a major user, where Workday has been successful againstAustralia's most successful ERP vendor TechnologyOne, which specialises in higher education.

Enterprise applications are the most essential software any organisation runs. Everybody has a general ledger and accounts receivable and payable. And every organisation has human capital. Bringing it all together is what companies like Workday are all about.

Pokmon Go: Where to find Unova Stones and evolve fifth-gen Pokmon – Polygon

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Danzig

Pokmon Go finally has begun to add Pokmon from the Unova region. For some of the evolved forms of this regions Pokmon, players will need Unova Stones, a rare evolution item, similar to the Sinnoh Stone that released before.

Unova Stones work like other evolution items. A handful of evolutions will require them, in addition to candy, to evolve specific mons.

Currently, the only way to get Unova Stones are through completing weekly Field Research Breakthroughs. After turning in seven Field Research Tasks on different days, you can claim the stamps for a Research Breakthrough. In addition to the special Pokmon that will spawn, there is a chance to get an Unova Stone.

Note that its not a high chance to drop, so it might be awhile before you get an Unova Stone.

Currently these are the only Pokmon that uses the Unova Stone:

The three monkeys, Pansear, Pansage, and Panpour, all need 50 candy, in addition to the Unova Stone, to evolve. Lampent needs 100 candy and Sinnoh Stone to evolve.

More Unova Pokmon will likely need this stone to evolve as they get released.

Out of the four options above, Chandelure is the strongest. The fire- and ghost-type Pokmon is quite a good ghost-type attacker, and some analysis noting that its the second best ghost-type attacker in the game, only falling to Origin Forme Giratina.

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Pokmon Go: Where to find Unova Stones and evolve fifth-gen Pokmon - Polygon

Evolution of the student-athlete experience at Harvard examined – Harvard Gazette

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Danzig

GAZETTE:Could you tell us a little bit about the study that was announced recently, and what you hope to achieve with it?

GAy: Well, the departments centennial anniversary is rapidly approaching. This study is our opportunity to set our aspirations for the next century, and do so in a way that builds on the successes we have achieved over the last almost 100 years and that maintains our position as a standard-bearer among our peers in the Ivy League. The question is: How do we continue to do that in a context that has changed dramatically since the departments founding, or even since the establishment of the Ivy League? We were just talking about the change in terms of the professionalization and the specialization of youth sports as one example. But more generally we have a new generation of students on our campus, so how do we reinvigorate our core commitments and principles so that they feel relevant to the students who are here now?

Scalise:Im excited that were doing this study, because it will give us a roadmap in terms of where we want to go moving forward, and also tell us what things we might want to emphasize more in athletics. But I also think we will see that we are doing some really positive things here. And one of the challenges is figuring out how we can create that experience for more of our students. So I think there will be some good that comes from this for others, as well as for our department. Theres a real bond that is created with our students and their coaches. And whenever one of our alumni comes back, one of the first things they do is stop by to see their coach. We would love them to stop to see not only their coach, but also a key adviser or faculty member, or maybe someone they got to know in the administration. That would be ideal. So, we want to better understand what we are doing here at athletics that creates these bonds, and how can we do that all over Harvard?

GAy: I absolutely agree. One of the hopes is to take what we learn from this study and use it for the benefit of all of our students. For example, there is the strong sense of belonging that is so evident in the student-athlete community, the pride in the institution, much of it forged through their involvement in athletics. That feeling of being at home at Harvard, that is something we want for every student. How might we cultivate that for all of our students?

GAZETTE: In the announcement you talked about engaging the Harvard community. Can you tell us more specifically who, and what groups you want to hear from as part of this process?

GAy: Everybody! First and foremost the students. Im eager to hear more about their experience. Also, the coaches, athletics staff, faculty, and other campus partners to the department. We hope to connect with alums whose participation in athletics during their time at the College remains a source of continuing attachment and love for Harvard.

Scalise:One of the things Im hoping to get out of this is to make sure we have the right balance between this strong bond and affiliation with their team, and also taking advantage of the rest of what Harvard has to offer. I really want this study to include people who are not athletes. In a lot of the sports programs around the country, you see all these specialized programs just for student-athletes. And so of course the athletes all hang together.

GAy: Yes, a world apart.

Scalise: Right. Its not the approach we want to take. So how do we make sure that the student-athlete experience is similar to other students experiences, and that they intersect? How do we orchestrate the right balance there so that people can connect with one another?

GAZETTE: So while athletics is obviously the focus of this study, it sounds like the goal is to have it ultimately touch on other facets of the University.

GAy: Exactly. When we think about the student-athlete experience, at its foundation we want it to be integrated, academically and socially, and broadly similar to the experience of non-athletes. We want every student to take full advantage of everything Harvard has to offer.

Scalise:Im also hoping that this will not just be about intercollegiate athletics, but also look at our club offerings and our intramurals. And a big thing on my mind right now is overall health and wellness for our students. Are we doing everything we can do to ensure the health and wellness, both physically and mentally, of these young people we are about to send off into the world? So, there are a lot of different parts to this study.

GAZETTE:What can you tell us about the timing of the study?

GAy:Because we want this effort to benefit from extensive outreach and consultation, the work is going to take a while. We hope by early spring the study will be complete and that we will be able to share a public report with the community.

Scalise: Claudine has been dean for just about a year now, and over that time we have had extensive conversations where weve tried to make her aware of a broad range of athletics issues.

GAy: Yes, and that groundwork was critical because it helped me to frame what the questions are that we want to answer. Being able to approach this with the benefit of some contextual knowledge has been really helpful. Ive spent a lot of time on that in the last year. One thing I also want to emphasize about the study is that we not only want to engage in broad outreach, we want people to participate. And we want them to participate in an open and candid way so that what we learn from the study has real credibility. Good participation is something that will be really critical to the success of the whole effort. Many colleges and universities seem to be undertaking some sort of study or review of athletics, and a lot of it feels very reactive. Thats not what were engaged in here. This is about using this moment to think about what the future could look like for Harvard Athletics, and challenging ourselves to be really intentional about it.

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Evolution of the student-athlete experience at Harvard examined - Harvard Gazette

10M year old fossilised ape gives new view of evolution – SciTech Europa

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Danzig

A research team led by Carol Ward, from the University of Missouri, analysed the pelvis of the ape-likeRudapithecus. The team discovered that the pelvis was more similar to that of a human than previous discoveries. Human bipedalism, or the ability to walk on two legs, could be much more deeply ingrained in our ancestors than we once thought.

Discovered by a professor an anthropology at the University of Toronto, David Begun, the ape that was found inRudabnya, Hungary, was surprisingly a relative of the modern African ape.

Rudapithecus was pretty ape-like and probably moved among branches like apes do now holding its body upright and climbing with its arms, said Ward, a Curators Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences in the MU School of Medicine and lead author on the study. However, it would have differed from modern great apes by having a more flexible lower back, which would mean when Rudapithecus came down to the ground, it might have had the ability to stand upright more like humans do. This evidence supports the idea that rather than asking why human ancestors stood up from all fours, perhaps we should be asking why our ancestors never dropped down on all fours in the first place.

Due the their long pelvises and short lower backs, apes often walk on all fours when they walk on the ground. However, Ward believes that great evolutionary steps would have been taken if we were to have evolved from apes. Ward believes that human evolution from theRudapithecuswould have been far more likely.

We were able to determine that Rudapithecus would have had a more flexible torso than todays African apes because it was much smaller only about the size of a medium dog, Ward said. This is significant because our finding supports the idea suggested by other evidence that human ancestors might not have been built quite like modern African apes.

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10M year old fossilised ape gives new view of evolution - SciTech Europa

It’s hot in here: the evolution of Goth subculture in sub-tropical Brisbane – The Conversation AU

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Danzig

The crashing chords of punk echoed through the end of the 70s, heralding the arrival of a diverse bunch of subcultures. In Brisbane, none was more notable than the tribe known as Goth.

Just like the punks before them, they had a deep commitment to visual style black clothes, big hair, whiteface with the streak of red, young eyes peering from lakes of kohl. No visible skin. They were as close to vampiric as we had yet seen - that they might dissolve with a whispered howl in our sub-tropical summer seemed quite likely.

Inspired by the Sex Pistols, British Goth pioneers Siouxsie Sioux and Steve Severin had started The Banshees in 1976, on the way borrowing from contemporaries like The Slits, and Magazine. By the time the 80s arrived, they had developed a unique musical persona.

The songs were dancy, literate, smart and funny, with psychedelic guitars and skittering tom-toms, influenced by The Velvet Underground and The Doors, Rimbaud and Shelley, Poe and Wilde - mood was everything. After touring with The Banshees in 1979, The Cures Robert Smith changed not only his bands sound but his look. With UK DECAY, Joy Division and Bauhaus, a dark army was rising.

There were Australian bands dropping in to Brisbane in the 80s that can be included under the cowl of Australian Gothic, though they disavow any connection to the scene. The Birthday Partys Nick Cave was inspired by quintessential goth poets like Baudelaire, while gloomy Melbourne also produced Dead Can Dance, whose drum-driven, howling sound and dark album art was described as Goth as it gets.

Read more: Australian Gothic: from Hanging Rock to Nick Cave and Kylie, this genre explores our dark side

As the subculture bloomed in Britain in the early 1980s, Brisbane was in sync, thanks to import record stores like Rocking Horse Records, and music/pop culture press like NME, Melody Maker and The Face. Brisbanites Karen Litzow and Stephen Crowther started fashion label Salon Dada to make clothes as darkly original as the music.

The imported vinyl was played on community radio station 4ZZZ by DJs who were also instrumental in the growing the citys club scene, which formed the spine of Goth subculture in the 80s.

DJs Jane Grigg and Peter Mogg both spun 12" tracks on 4ZZZ, treating disparate, desperate suburban youth to new releases from bands like The Fall, Sisters of Mercy and The Cult. They started Club Vortex d'Junk in 1985, screaming that punk was DEAD and BURIED. It was unique and vital, and short-lived.

Around the same time, Ian Whittred and Jonny Griffin were building their own audience. First with the club Hades, and then Morticias in 1987, they created a home for the Goths and swampies - a peculiarly Australian variant who dolled up the black with a touch of paisley and loved The Church, The Scientists, Wall of Voodoo and The Gun Club.

Morticias became the Goth mainstay in the Brisbane club scene, moving from venue to venue through the late 80s and 90s as landlord greed or room size forced their hand. From Warhols to the Canberra Hotel (a teetotalling Country Party throwback) to the Brisbane Music Hall, the crowd danced and smoked and loved one another.

Morticias gave way to new clubs and new venues, like Junkyard, Midian, and Industry, with a lineage that leads to the current day.

Read more: My favourite album: The Cure's Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me

On Sunday nights today on 4ZZZ, DJ Doom presents Batcave, where she keeps the songs of Siouxsie and The Cure alive but also plays contemporary Goth bands such as Melbournes No Sister or Brisbanes Pleasure Symbols. Global warming has not deterred these gentle folk; age has not wearied them.

Although the airwaves carry the message, alternative Goth bands in Australia struggle to attract an audience. IKON from Melbourne has built a strong European following with frequent appearances at Wave Gothik Festival, but in Australia they are lucky to fill a room. The story of Vowws a Sydney Band that moved to LA, has played with Gary Numan and is now opening for The Cult shows that Australia might not be big enough for new Goth bands.

Australian born Zoe Zanias is a thriving Electronic Body Music artist but lives in Berlin where she co-founded the Fleisch collective and the record label of the same name.

Electronic Body Music springs from Industrial but it is more dance-oriented. Front 242 and Covenant are good examples of this genre.

The community continues to have a presence due to the passion of people like Rachael Blackemore, who moderates a Goth Facebook group. Originally from Adelaide, she ran the original 1334 Club dedicated to Deathrock and Trad Goth music in Melbourne from 2007.

Now based in Brisbane, the growth of the subculture online has allowed her to collaborate on interstate events like Bat Attack, where DJs from different states play similar genres like Death Rock and Trad Goth on the same night. It is evidence that the Australian Goth subculture has a strong national identity.

Although places to gather are still rare in Brisbane, Faithnightclub run by Richard Warman for nearly 20 years helps to feed the citys Goth subculture. In the early 2000s, Brisbane was the only city in the country with a weekly Goth club, a sanctuary, if you will, still running today.

Heres a glimmer from the past: Brisbane in the 90s. Summer. The Goths drift through the heat haze; insults and disapproval hang in the air. But they only have eyes and ears for one another. The tribe is everything.

On the days when those tight black pants were unbearable, with the sun bleaching the sky and the humidity closing in, the boys would discuss it, and the shorts would make a rare appearance. Still black, of course. A colour you can wear for days without washing. Friendly, familiar, black.

Continued here:

It's hot in here: the evolution of Goth subculture in sub-tropical Brisbane - The Conversation AU

What’s Next in the Evolution of the Mall Piercing? – Fashionista

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Danzig

Photo: Courtesy of Stone and Strand

Like many tweens in the '90s and early 2000s, I got my ears pierced at Claire's, with a piercing gun, surrounded by piles of disorganized, cheap jewelry, body glitter and temporary tattoos with signs for various bogo-type promotions. That was when I learned that my ears are highly sensitive to metal, as they immediately got infected. I let the holes close up, never re-piercing them until age 24, at a hole-in-the-wall tattoo and piercing shop with questionable hygiene standards on St. Mark's Place in New York City. (I'm pretty sure my ears got infected then, too, but I stuck it out.)

Strangely, for many people, these are more or less the two best options out there for ear piercing: At the low end, there's the Claire's at your local mall, and at the...well, also low end, but for adults, there are tattoo shops. There are a few, more elevated exceptions, like, say, Maria Tash, an expensive jewelry and piercing shop in New York, or 108 Atelier, an exclusive, appointment-only piercing studio founded by piercer-to-the-stars J. Colby Smith, with locations in Brooklyn and Los Angeles; but those types of experiences are only accessible for a select few in big cities.

And today, as malls struggle with major declines in foot traffic, the Claire's at your local mall is an even less viable option: Last year, it joined fellow suburban mall stores like Payless and Wet Seal by filing for bankruptcy and announcing 92 store closures (after having already closed more than 100 in preceding years). Competitor Piercing Pagoda closed 24 locations last year, but did see a lift in sales at those that remained open.

But interest in piercing has not declined, with young people still looking forward to the milestone of their first piercing and adults increasingly interested in multiple piercings so why do the options for getting them suck? Well, the startup world is starting to notice this too, it seems. And like so many sleepy industries that have lacked innovation and failed to adapt to changing consumer habits, disruption is coming, mainly from female founders.

Related ArticlesHow Maria Tash Went From Piercing Her Friends' Ears at Home to Launching a Global Jewelry LineThinking Like a Tech Company Spurred Fine Jewelry Brand Mejuri's Remarkable GrowthThe Last Line Is Trying to Turn the Traditional Fine Jewelry Model on its Head

Photo: Courtesy of Rowan

The premiere example, perhaps, is Rowan: The tween-focused, at-home piercing startup launched this year with $4 million in venture capital and a flurry of media coverage over the summer with each article declaring it to be "the next Claire's." And yes, the chain's shortcomings did inspire founder Louisa Schneider, alongside a convergence of other events and realizations.

Around five years ago, Schneider worked at a hedge fund where part of her job involved researching retailers that were paying rent at malls that weren't doing well. "One of them, that had virtually 100% overlap with every troubled mall in America, was Claire's," she explains. Around the same time, she took her pre-teen nieces to get their ears pierced at a location in a Cincinnati suburb (it was the only option) and called the experience "depressed."

"The Claire's was really not in good shape," she says. "When I thought about my own daughter, I wanted [a first piercing] experience that would be special for her."A couple of events her husband ordering an on-demand at-home massage, attending a friend's son's bris also got her thinking about intimate, at-home experiences. She also learned, from the many medical professionals in her family, that a lot of pediatric nurses end up performing ear piercings on young children.

With Rowan, trained and licensed local nurses perform every piercing, which are done with fine-quality jewelry (so no infections) made in Brooklyn and followed by thorough after-care instructions; customers can also subscribe to receive fun boxes each month containing new jewelry and other items for tweens like journals and stickers.There's also a newsletter that parents can subscribe to with topics around "how to best communicate and build confidence in your tween."

"We are very much trying to commemorate that first ear piercing for a young girl and her parents and be reachable not just to people living in urban exclusive areas that have piercing salons, but also to provide an experience that's very, very safe," saysSchneider. Currently, Rowan is only available in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and North Carolina, but Schneider says the company has already received inbound interest from about every state in the U.S. and plans to expand "thoughtfully."

"There's certainly a place for us to be what Claire's was from a digital standpoint and from a product standpoint, from an experience standpoint," says Schneider. "We're really trying to hold the hand of the parent and the girl and that's certainly not something that you get from a lot of the mall-based retailers, so that's something that really differentiates us."

The Last Line pop-up at Westfield Century City. Photo: Teddy Sanders

This is all wonderful for 10-year-olds and their families, but what about grown-ups?

For us, a group of direct-to-consumer, digitally native fine jewelry startups are increasingly incorporating piercing into their IRL experiences. (Don't call 'em stores.)

For the past couple of years, L.A.-based cool-girl jewelry brand The Last Line has hosted piercing parties for editors and influencers in L.A. and NYC. As adept at branding and events as they are at designing playful and distinctive fine jewelry, the parties have always been packed and well-documented on Instagram, prompting consumers to beg for an opportunity to partake. This month, they finally got that opportunity as The Last Line opened its first pop-up at Westfield Century City, which is, fittingly, probably the gold standard of what a successful mall looks like in 2019. One might even describe the space as luxurious.

Known for incorporating camp and nostalgia into her jewelry and events, Founder Shelley Sanders used the pop-up as an opportunity to play on the traditional mall piercing. "The Last Line rewrote the rules of fine jewelry and are now rewriting the rules of mall piercings," read the invitation for the pop-ups opening. "Customers will not have a dated mall piercing experience, but a luxury one."

"When we do things that are vintage or campy or referential of the '90s or children, we always do them with the idea of: It's a seventh-grade camp friendship bracelet, but make it for the woman who pays her own rent and bills and has her own job and loves luxury, so really elevating it," she explains. "Your options for piercings are a tattoo shop or a low-end experience in a mall. Those two experiences are incredibly different and it's like you have to choose quality over ease.It seems like the next thing we had to do was to really make that experience feel luxurious." The brand hopes to pop up in New York next, over the holidays.

Photo: Courtesy of Stone and Strand

"WAY Better than Claire's," read the subject line of an email blast from Stone and Strand in 2017, announcing its piercing pop-up series, dubbed Piercings Y'all.

"We wanted more piercings but felt like our only options were to go to a place like a traditional mall jeweler like Piercing Pagoda and Claire's where they shoot with a gunversus going to tattoo parlors, so we felt like there was a white space we were seeing and we were in a great position to fill it as a jewelry manufacturer," explains Stone and Strand FounderNadine McCarthy Kahane. "We're the first to combine the more accessible pricing that you can do as a direct-to-consumer business because we own the supply chain, alongside also offering a service at the very highest level possible in terms of piercing standards." This month, Stone and Strand expanded Piercings Y'all to include a line of high-quality threadless flat-back jewelry specifically designed for piercing.

The furthest along of these retailers is probably Mejuri, which has opened three permanent showrooms in Toronto, New York and, opening Sept. 21, L.A. Based on the success of monthly piercing parties in the first two locations, the company will open its first permanent piercing studio in L.A. with appointments available seven days a week.

"Piercing has been incredibly popular from the day we launched it it's a fun experience, serving a market that wasn't previously seen (customers looking for styling, rather than the younger demographic who are getting their first piercing)," explains Founder Noura Sakkijha over email."Over 2,000 people come in during our weekend pop-ups."

Inside Mejuri's New York showroom. Photo: Courtesy of Mejuri

Among the advantages of going to one of these more elevated piercing experiences as opposed to a mall piercer only capable of sticking a gun into your ear lobe is that they take pride in being able to "style" your ear, taking into consideration factors like balance, placement and existing and future piercings, and suggesting the right jewelry, since it all lives in ones space.The above retailers all also emphasized their use of professional piercers who offer a clean, safe experience with sterile, one-time-use needles and their desire to create a luxurious, serene, spa-like vibe. Pricing structures vary: At The Last Line pop-up, the price of the piercing is folded into the cost of the jewelry (studs can range between $150 and $750 depending on materials) along with a fee for converting the jewelry into a piercing piece. At Piercings Y'all, it's $15 for lobe, $25 for cartilage. At Mejuri events, piercings are complimentary, while the permanent L.A. shop will have an yet-to-be-determined nominal fee.

Of course, being online retailers, piercing is also a way for these companies to create meaningful brick-and-mortar experiences that will actually bring people in; if they just wanted to buy jewelry, they could do so online. It's also a clever revenue-driver separate from the piercing itself: The more piercings a customer has, the more jewelry they need. It can also help build brand awareness, especially with an independent brand like The Last Line setting up shop in one of L.A.'s biggest malls.

But each of the founders can attest that there is also just significant demand from consumers children and adults alike who want a fun, easy, special and safe piercing experience; so while each of them are in the early stages of incorporating piercing into their business models, the opportunity to expand in and outside of metropolitan cities is there.This is only the beginning.

Getting pierced as a tween remains a mainstream rite of passage, and for more and more people: "As we grow, we do want to serve everyone who wants our services and there are a lot of boys who do," says Schneider of Rowan. "This age group we're focused on is much less concerned about being perceived as very feminine or very masculine, but really just self expression."

And for adults, having multiple piercings is becoming increasingly accepted. "If you look at the tattoo industry, that reached the mainstream stage a little earlier than piercing did in its life cycle, so for me it's relevant comparison in that people still are super excited to get a tattoo," saysMcCarthy Kahane. "Piercing is set to become part of mainstream culture. It's here to stay."

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What's Next in the Evolution of the Mall Piercing? - Fashionista

Blockchain For Securitisation: Lessons From The Financial Crisis And Benefits Of Evolution – Inc42 Media

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Danzig

Securitisation market records 50% growth in Q1

Enhanced liquidity and reduced risk in securitisation with intelligent blockchains

RBI has also set-up a committee for the development of housing finance securitisation

In the recent debate on the government draft proposals on blockchain technology, so much that be done with blockchains within current regulations and under the proposed framework has hardly received a mention. One big transformation that we can achieve is in the area of asset securitisation, one of the triggers of the 2008 financial crisis.

In India, a perfect storm of Non Performing Assets (NPAs), Asset Liability Mismatch (ALM) and a related, but compounding, phenomenon of non-deposit taking entities (most NBFCs) getting a larger share of the credit market has resulted in the need for a fresh look at the need for capital of lending institutions. It has been an issue that both, Government and RBI, have been trying to address through various steps. RBI has also set-up a committee for the development of housing finance securitisation.

Securitisation market records 50% growth in Q1 reads an Economic Times headline quoting an ICRA report. What is even more interesting is that the growth in Pass-Through Certificates is 95% (Direct Assignments growing at 32%). This is on the back of a 100% growth in FY 19, making India, arguably, the fastest growing securitisation market in the world.

Still, at a projected INR 200 Lakh Cr ($29 Bn), Indias securitisation market is one-eightieth (1/80) the size of the US market, making India a rather nascent market given that the size of its economy is about one-eight (1/8) that of the US.

If you think of securitisation simply as a risk-mitigated means to funding, say, someones home loan through someone elses pension investments, it makes sense beyond short term triggers like GST rates and holding periods etc. But given all the issues we have faced, just linking the two words loan and pensions sounds scary as well.

Hence, we need to go to first principles and focus on a process that enables lenders objective of availability and cost of capital and investors requirements for the best risk-adjusted return.

With the advent of blockchain technology and the evolution of artificial intelligence technologies, it is now possible to address many of the challenges with securitization through a combination of AI and blockchain. We noted that the first step to implementing blockchain or distributed ledgers technologies (DLT) to benefit the securitization process is to simply show that a transactions data and calculations can be run and automated using DLT.

Blockchains connectivity and consensus mechanisms will provide trust, provide automation and efficiency, immutability, and eliminate or reduce human error. While further benefits can be achieved with the advent of digital title to assets and issuing digital securities, there is a lot that can be achieved without waiting for that future.

S&P Global has talked to market participants and, while listing the benefits of blockchain for securitisation, it has highlighted potential risks. We, in the context of this report, discussed with S&P that some of these risks like Key Technology Partner (KTP) risks can be addressed through appropriate contractual and governance mechanisms.

Interoperability between different platforms and system compatibility remains a challenge that the blockchain industry is addressing in different ways.

While the benefits of securitisation on blockchain are obvious, we see it is an evolution rather than a revolution. This evolution would cover three facets that may characterise phases of this evolution:

The originator, issuer (SPV), investor and potentially, the rating agency, working of the same blockchain with real-time availability of loan-level data is something that the industry can benefit from now. We see a wider adoption in six to twelve months where reconciliation and reporting get automated and all participants and the regulator benefit from auditability of the transactions.

A dematerialised loan contract and digital security based on the units of a securitised tranche almost like a mutual fund unit is already a possibility in terms of technology but needs an enabling legal and regulatory framework. We should also look at the concept of immutable loan records (something akin to an Aadhar of each loan) as built by Global Debt Registry.

One or a few industry platforms where issuers can get a lower cost of capital in return for the additional transparency offered and an efficient price discovery mechanism is what we should aim for. It will also bring in smaller originators to the market facilitating financial inclusion.

For the large originators, it will allow smaller issuances at much shorter time intervals. On the other side, with even boutique, city-based investment advisory firms achieving a few hundred crores in AUMs, a new set of investors could enter the market.

And it is worth repeating that this can be achieved mostly under current regulations and certainly within proposed government policy on blockchain.

[The article has been co-authored by Siddhartha S and Gary Miller.]

The evolution of collaborative intelligence, Education News & Top Stories – The Straits Times

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Danzig

Fancy leveraging software to carry out human-like capabilities such as natural language understanding, speech generation and recognition, and vision understanding?

These are the Artificial Intelligence (AI) skill sets you can harness by attending Republic Polytechnic's (RP)transformative Applied Artificial Intelligence programme when it is rolled out in January next year.

It is designed for individual or mid-career professionals with non-ICT background interested in switching to ICT job roles or in building a tech start-up.

One of the programme's lecturers isMr Seow Khee Wei, who says the programmewill take aspiring engineers "from a basic introduction of AI to mastery of the skills needed to build deep learning predictive models for AI solutions that exhibit human-like behaviour and intelligence."

This will be facilitated across 10 modules including Principles of Machine learning, Deep learning Explained, Computer Vision and Image Analysis, Speech Recognition Systems and Natural Language Processing.

Adds Mr Seow, who will teach the Python and Computer Vision modules: "The programme topics selected will ensure the relevancy of our graduates to match the demand from the industry.

"And as more and more industries leverage on the power of AI to increase productivity, the world will need more talents that will be able implement and leverage AI technology to help achieve this."

This new offering from the progressive educational institution is designed to equip participants with the relevant skills and practical knowledge of AI to fulfill the increasing global demand for AI professionals.

Designed in collaboration with AI Singapore and Microsoft Singapore, it is supported by the Infocomm Media Development Authority under the TechSkills Accelerator (TeSA) Tech Immersion and Placement Programme an initiative of SkillsFuture thataims to build and develop a skilledinformation and communications technology (ICT)workforce for Singapores digital economy.

The comprehensive 12-week programme teaches core concepts that not only offer fundamental knowledge of AI, but allow for the implementation ofguidelines, law, statutes, and regulations on the appropriate handling of data at various stages in their life cycle. Compliance with data policies can be monitored, while opportunities for new and emerging technology to support business requirements can be identified.

Classes will conclude with an industry capstone project enabling participants to apply theories to the real world.

The Applied Artificial Intelligence programmewill be held atthe RP Academy for Continuing Education satellite campus at Lifelong Learning Institute, located at 11 Eunos Road 8.

Graduates willbe awarded a Professional Certificate of Completion in Applied Artificial Intelligence from Republic Polytechnic (in collaboration with AI Singapore and Microsoft).

Possible career tracks include AI application developer, AI system integrator and AI or Machine Learning Engineer (entry level). Participants who complete the programme can enjoy career support opportunities for these roles through RP.

SaysMr Seow: "Prospective students should consider this programme because it will quickly jump start their careers in the AI industry. They will have the opportunity to network with professionals and potential hiring partners."

To find out more or register your place, click here.

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The evolution of collaborative intelligence, Education News & Top Stories - The Straits Times

4 species that could evolve exclusively in Pokemon Shield – Dexerto

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Danzig

Mystery is still cast over the majority of theGalar Region Pokedex but after seeing that Pokemon Sword is getting its very own exclusive evolution for an original species, what's next for Pokemon Shield?

The nature of these games, being split into two parts, can be confusing at first glance to those who don't really follow the Pokemon video gamefranchise as they always look pretty much the same.

However, those who have played them - whether that be Pokemon Red and Blue,Ruby and Sapphire, or any others - will know that there's often exclusive content in each. Following the reveal of a first-everFarfetch'd evolution coming to just Pokemon Sword, it looks pretty much certain that Pokemon Shield will get one of its own as well.

So, let's take a look at some of the top contenders...

When it comes to transforming and shifting its shape, there's no Pokemon that knows what it's all about more so than Ditto.

Pokemon

We've got an interesting idea for Ditto, actually.

There's probably a huge list of species that people would like to see evolve in the future that have never been given the chance, but the reality is - as it can become any other species so easily - Ditto doesn't necessarily fit in that category for a lot of fans.

However, after spending so much time changing its appearance and move-set, adapting to its opponents, it would be really interesting to see it evolve into another form that has different transformation abilities.

How cool would it be to have an evolved version of Ditto that looks exactly the same, butchanges into a random Pokemon that's super effective against an opponent, and catch other trainerscompletely off guard!

The water-type Pokemon is one of the most popular from the franchise's original 151, but it could change its look in the new games.

Pokemon

Would you like to see Lapras evolve in Pokemon Shield?

There are many Pokemon that change their types when entering a new region, or even after evolving, and the latter could very much be the destiny of Lapras in the future.

In terms of its size and move-set, this is a perfect standalone species. Although, as we've seen with the new Sirfetch'd evolution, evolving in some way or another could open up other options.

With the region very much based on the United Kingdom, Lapras embodies the sort of creature people talk about when they refer to the mythologicalLoch Ness Monster, in Scotland. By extending sections of its body, such as the neck and other limbs, there's no doubt that an evolved form of Lapras - inspired by the mythological beast - could be an interesting way to go in Pokemon Shield.

In fact, at that point it's actuallyteetering on the edge of a new legendary. Why not?

This one has evolved in the past, of course, with Porygon 2 being introduced in the second generation and later Porygon-Z in the fourth gen, but it could happen again.

Pokemon

Porygon would be an interesting first gen Pokemon to see evolve again.

Porygon was one of the more unusual Pokemon to be added to the Pokedex, as it looks nothing like anything else on offer. In appearance it looks somewhere between robotic and alien, compared to other Pokemon from its time.

Yet, one thing that its resulting evolutions have told us is that it can actually go on to learn some really exciting moves, such as Thunderbolt, Hyper Beam, Hidden Power and more.

With the Galar Region already changing the way a few original Pokemon look in the game, we'd like to see Porygon evolve into a secondary form inspired by its surroundings - as an offshoot from its original evolution chain - potentially with a different type.

Last, but not least, is this fighting Pokemon.

Pokemon

Sudowoodo could get another evolution in Pokemon Shield.

If you had never seen Sudowoodo before and approached it in a battle, there's a good chance that you would try out some moves that are super effective against grass-type Pokemon. Yet, despite its log-like look, attacks you would expect to deeply damage it have never been as effective.

It's never actually been able to evolve in Pokemon before, which makes this pick an interesting proposition, and it would be great to see something new from it in Pokemon Shield.

This doesn't necessarily mean a further evolution should be introduced, but maybe a lower evolution between itself and Bonsly (lower form). Think of it like Groot and baby Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy. Smaller, but just as effective.

So, there you have it! That's our list of Pokemon that could actually have an extra evolution waiting for it exclusivelyin Pokemon Shield. If you have any idea of your own, feel free to tweet us your suggestions!

See more here:

4 species that could evolve exclusively in Pokemon Shield - Dexerto

This Video For THE DARK CRYSTAL: AGE OF RESISTANCE Explores The Evolution of Muppet Greatness – GeekTyrant

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Danzig

Have you watched The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance yet? If not, what are you waiting for!? This is an incredibly well-made series that tells an incredibly epic story. If you cant tell, I loved it.

If you have watched the series and you enjoyed the Muppet puppetry work that was created and performed by the creative team at The Jim Henson Company, I have featurette here from Deep Cuts that youll appreciate as it explores the evolution of the work of The Jim Henson Company and The Dark Crystalas they brought the fantasy world back to life forAge of Resistance. We even get to see some early 2016 CGI animated tests that were done when they were exploring that route. In the end, Im glad they went the way of the Muppets.

The video features Elvis Mitchell taking a deep dive into Muppet history with Lisa Henson, who is head of the Henson Company and daughter of Jim Henson.

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This Video For THE DARK CRYSTAL: AGE OF RESISTANCE Explores The Evolution of Muppet Greatness - GeekTyrant

Human Hearts Evolved for Endurance and They Need It to Stay Healthy – D-brief – Discover Magazine

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Danzig

(Credit: lzf/Shutterstock)

(Inside Science) Millions of years ago, after the ancestors of humans diverged from the last link they shared with chimpanzees, they began developing the numerous adaptations that made endurance one of the defining traits of our species. By about 2 million years ago, the genusHomohad emerged and the process really took off. Today, humans can run for miles or walk all day thanks to those changes. In new research, scientists have shown just how substantially evolution has changed one crucial organ: the heart.

We now understand the evolutionary trajectory of the heart, said Aaron Baggish, who leads the Cardiovascular Performance Program at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And we now understand how that helps us to place common contemporary diseases into perspective.

Baggish, along with a team of co-authors that includes Daniel Lieberman, a human evolutionary biologist at Harvard, and Robert Shave, a cardiovascular physiologist at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, compared the shape and activity of the hearts of chimpanzees, gorillas and and four groups of adult humans: endurance athletes, football linemen, subsistence farmers and relatively inactive individuals. Theypublished the resultsthis week in the journalPNAS.

Gorillas and chimpanzees tend to spend a lot of time sleeping or being relatively inactive, but are incredibly strong and powerful, especially in short bursts. With chimpanzees, said Shave, its very quiet and calm, and then you have high bursts of very, very intense physical activity. We think that probably results in spikes in blood pressure.

Ape hearts are well suited to this kind of activity, with thick walls and a rounded shape. They respond well to the kinds of abrupt changes in blood pressure demanded by activities like quickly climbing trees or fighting. The team developed their insights by comparing the structure and function of more than 40 chimpanzees living in sanctuaries.

We had never had good functional data on chimpanzee hearts before, ever, said Lieberman.

Human hearts are significantly different from ape hearts. The left ventricle pumps oxygen-rich blood around the body, and in humans it is more elongated and simply larger than it is in chimpanzees.

The big advance here is the first real rigorous study of heart function in apes and humans in a comparative way, said Herman Pontzer, an evolutionary physiologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who did not participate in the research. Beneath the surface, were actually quite different.

The researchers also studied four groups of people with different exercise and activity patterns. One group was composed of 42 people from the Tarahumara, a group of indigenous people from Mexico who are known for their distance running events, although Shave said the vast majority of the time they are not doing high intensity exercise. The ventricles in their hearts did not have as large a volume as the researchers found in the 42 endurance athletes the group studied. The team also studied 40 people who played the position of lineman in American football, and a group of 42 relatively sedentary people.

Theres one additional significant difference between the hearts of humans and apes. When human hearts pump, they also rotate. This twist helps push more blood out each time it beats, and also draw more blood in for the next time it pumps.

Its something new that came in with humans, said Shave. Its not there in the chimps. Its also not there in gorillas.

Those evolutionary changes to the human heart make it possible to send more blood around the body and to maintain that effort until its time to rest. But there was a trade-off. As human hearts adapted to deal with the large volumes of blood required for endurance activity, they became less adept at responding to high pressures required to support strength activities.

Because the human heart also remodels throughout the lifetime in response to a persons activity, the heart can change shape to reflect more of a chimplike structure when people dont do endurance exercise. The researchers found that the hearts of both the football linemen and sedentary individuals experienced remodeling that made their hearts less adapted to responding to endurance challenges and more adapted to responding to pressure. The walls became thicker, and the heart didnt twist as well.

So the common teaching is that your heart is healthy and normal until you develop high blood pressure, and then the heart gets sick because of the high blood pressure, said Baggish. But the hearts of the sedentary study subjects started to look like the hearts of people with high blood pressure, with less flexible and thicker walls, although these people had normal blood pressure.

This insight challenges the established understanding about how high blood pressure begins and how the heart reacts. Ultimately it may help doctors develop a new understanding of how heart disease develops.

I did not expect this as a cardiologist, said Baggish. In relatively young, but sedentary people living in my hometown of Boston, we started to see chimplike features in those hearts, even before high blood pressure set in.

The researchers said that this study emphasizes the importance of regular exercise. A modern diet could complicate the picture, but regular walking could be sufficient previous research showed that hunter-gatherers in tropical areas tend to walk roughly 6-9 miles every day.

Humans have evolved this extraordinary long lifespan in comparison to most other species, said Shave. But to maintain a healthy blood pressure, we need to maintain that moderate intensity physical activity throughout our lives.

[This post originally appeared in Inside Science.]

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Human Hearts Evolved for Endurance and They Need It to Stay Healthy - D-brief - Discover Magazine

Blni is watching over the evolution of the Superior: it is the right way to go – The Global Domains News

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Danzig

Jupiler Pro League Sunday, he began, surprisingly, at the match against Anderlecht, but after an hour, he was sitting by his power. Steven Superior is growing gradually, getting back to his best condition to date. Laszlo Blni is holding it in place.

Last Friday, the coach the last that he its almost impossible to make, thought that a Superior is against Anderlecht though, it would start up. Sunday brought with him, tells me at the kick-off. Blni need to have a good laugh about it. You dont need to all take very seriously what I am saying. As I have often said, only 50 per cent of the truth. We waited until very late to a final decision on the case.

Superior had, however, stated not to be ready. He has performed at 60 minutes. In the meantime, we are a year further on. He has been following a special programme. Before and after the training sessions, he is doing additional things, you are specific to recovery-oriented. As it evolves, he gradually, however, he has yet to have a need to wedstrijdritme. He is on the right track. Whether hes at the Club to re-start it? That shouldnt be an issue.

for how Long, and how much work it is to get the old Superior back in action, and it can and will Blni is not specified. I dont know exactly what it is today is capable of it, but I know what they used to be. We would like to try again, at this level, and he will definitely take that direction. I think hes going Sunday, but with as much as 70 per cent of their capacity was. From 0 to 50 or 60 per cent, which is almost finished, but that procentjes that you will only get more difficult again to get. Hes getting the extra treatments, and will respond, as yet, very good in the training sessions. That is the most important thing.

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Blni is watching over the evolution of the Superior: it is the right way to go - The Global Domains News

Evolution of Matt Painter: Most malleable coach in college basketball – Yahoo Sports

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Danzig

The second installment of our memorable moments series features Purdue.

The Boilermakers played two of the best games of last years tournament, and they exemplified just how malleable Matt Painters coaching is, and just how much that matters heading into next season.

This is recency bias at its very finest, I can fully admit that, but I find it very hard to believe that you can find an example of a more heart-wrenching roller coaster ride of emotions than what Purdue fans experienced in Louisville during the second weekend of the NCAA tournament in 2019.

Lets start with that Sweet 16 game against Tennessee. Purdue blew a 17-point second half lead before Ryan Cline made four straight threes in the final six minutes to put the Boilermakers in a position where a controversial foul sent Carsen Edwards to the free throw line. He made two of three to force overtime, where Purdue pulled away. After putting the Volunteers to bed, Matt Painters boys advanced to the Elite Eight to face Virginia, owners of the nations best defense, where Edwards went nuts, scoring 24 of his 42 points and hitting six of his ten threes in the final 13 minutes before a missed box out and this heads up play from Virginias Kihei Clark forced overtime and, eventually, cost the Boilermakers a trip to their first Final Four in 39 years:

My fingernails and voice were gone by the time Tony Bennett and Virginia officially advanced to the Final Four, and all I had on the line was a couple of bets.

(For the record, I took Tennessee in the Sweet 16 and Purdue in the Elite Eight. I lost both bets.)

But beyond my degeneracy, both of these games had something else in common a Purdue player going absolutely bonkers to close out the game.

Against Tennessee, Cline scored 22 of his 27 points in the second half, hitting four straight threes in a five minute stretch to get the game to the extra period. Cline didnt even end up as Purdues leading scorer on that night. Edwards, who had 29 points and fired up 14 threes, was. Those 29 points came in between back-to-back 42 point outbursts by the 33rd pick in the 2019 NBA Draft. In total, Edwards found a way to get up 61 threes in four NCAA tournament games. Cline was able to get off 34 threes in four games, and those two stats serve as a pretty fair summation of what Purdue basketball was during the 2018-19 season.

Purdue attempted 977 threes last year. Since 2010, only four high major teams have shot more threes in a single season than Purdue did last year Villanova in each of the last two seasons, Auburn in 2018-19 and Michigan in 2017-18; the latter played in an NCAA record 41 games that season and averaged 2.5 fewer threes attempted per game than Purdue did this past season. The Boilermakers set a record for the most threes attempted in a Big Ten season with 501.

Edwards and Cline were the two guys that led the way. They took 646 threes combined last year, which is two-thirds of their team total. Edwards led the Big Ten in three-pointers attempted during league play. Cline finished second. Combined, they shot more threes 327 in total than Minnesotas entire team.

And thats fascinating to me.

Because just four years ago, the Boilermakers finished 12th in the Big Ten in three pointers attempted with just 332 as a team. That season, the first in a four-year stretch where Purdue has been arguably the best program in the Big Ten, 24.8 percent of Purdues offense came via post-ups.

For the record, that number is insane.

Oral Roberts finished second nationally in that stat in 2016, finishing with just over 18 percent of their offense coming via post-ups. Since the 2007-08 season which is as far back as Im willing to trust Synergys data only three teams have finished the season running more than 21 percent of their through the post: Purdue in 2015-16, Purdue in 2016-17 and Stanford in 2007-08, the final year that the Lopez twins were in Palo Alto.

But theres more.

This past season, just 7.4 percent of Purdues offense came via post-ups. In 2011-12, Robbie Hummels final season with the program, that number was just 2.9 percent.

In the span of seven years, Matt Painter went from running a program that played Hummel, a 6-foot-8 small forward, at the five to one that paired Caleb Swanigan with Isaac Haas to one that rode Edwards going full YOLO to within a Mamadi Diakite buzzer-beater of the Final Four.

That is not normal.

And it should tell you all you need to know about the man running things in West Lafayette.

Robbie Hummel remembers it like it was yesterday.

Its early December in 2011, just nine games into his senior season, and Purdue is fresh off of blowing a 19-point second half lead in a loss in Cincinnati to No. 11 Xavier. Hes with the rest of his team in the film room, watching as Painter is going over everything that went wrong on that Saturday in the Cintas Center. When you blow a 19-point lead in less than 11 minutes, a lot went wrong.

Hummels not looking forward to it. He scored 17 points, but it took him 21 shots to get there. He didnt play great, but there is one shot in particular that hes dreading. He knows its going to be in the edit that Painter shows. With more than 20 seconds left on the shot clock, he waves off not one but two different Purdue guards. He squares up Xaviers Travis Taylor. He goes between his legs, he crosses over, he puts the ball back between his legs, takes one dribble to get into a rhythm and lets loose with a 24-foot three that hits nothing but air.

Its not even close.

When it shows up on the screen, he knows whats coming.

Robbie, Painter says, without a hint of sarcasm in his voice, thats the worst f***ing shot in the history of basketball.

And Painter is right.

The announcers on the broadcast point out how bad the shot is. His teammates at the time know its an awful shot. Watching the clip now, Hummel says its just a horrific possession and shot, laughing with the benefit of hindsight.

Im telling you that story because its funny. Anyone that knows Painter has a story like that, hes just that kind of a guy. Maybe one day Ill share the one I heard about the time Pat Knight hosted him on a recruiting visit at Indiana, but first Ill need to iron out whats fact, whats legend and what is forever off the record. Again, thats the kind of guy he is.

But it also serves to drive home a point, one that I kept hearing from people is what makes Painter so damn good as a coach: His ability to identify what, specifically, his players can do great, how to put them in a position to take advantage of those skills and this is the important part convincing them that they need to fully understand their own scouting report and play within their own abilities.

Everybody looks at talent,' Painter told me last month, but talent is overrated if someone is not going to play within the limits of what they can and cannot do. The more guys embrace that, the more productive they can be.

And, in turn, the better the team can be.

The story I told you?

Its the perfect example of this.

As a senior, Hummel was an All-American. As a junior, before suffering a pair of torn ACLs within the span of nine months, he averaged 15.7 points for a team that was one of the five best in America. As a senior two years later, he averaged 16.4 points before becoming a second round pick. He was a damn good college player, one of the best to ever set foot in Mackey Arena.

And that shot?

The worst f***ing shot in the history of basketball?

It looks an awful lot like these, doesnt it?

Ask guys that have played for Painter about him, and theyll tell you that he is very much a believer in the idea of confidence. He doesnt want his players to be thinking when they are on the floor. If they have a chance to make a play or take a shot, he wants them to let it fly without being concerned that theyll get yanked if they miss. But that comes with the caveat that his guys understand that what is a good shot for them differs from what is a good shot for him.

Edwards was the best in the country at what he did last season. Hell spend a decade playing in the NBA specifically because of his ability to score, to make tough, deep, contested shots. Hes got the juice, Painter said. Likewise, Cline was one of the Big Tens very best shooters, and when he gets into the kind of rhythm that he was in against Tennessee, Painter is going to let him go. He has the ability to make those shots.

Hummel, as good as he was, is not a guy you want going 1-on-1 35 feet from the rim and settling for a contested, pull-up three. Thats not his game, but it is a good way to blow a 19-point lead on the road.

Which brings me back to the top.

Those post-ups.

In 2015-16, Purdue laid claim to the biggest and strongest frontline youre ever going to see. They started 6-foot-9, 250 pound Caleb Swanigan at the four alongside either A.J. Hammons who stood 7-foot, 250 pounds or Isaac Haas who checked in at 7-foot-2, 282 pounds. The following season, after Hammons graduated, Swanigan and Haas started together.

In 2017-18, Purdue ran out a lineup that looked different but played the same. Instead of using lineups predominantly featuring a pair of posts playing together, the Boilermakers put four perimeter players around Haas. That season, only 16 percent of their offense came via post-ups, which was sixth nationally.

We had some really good big guys, Greg Gary, who ran Purdues offense for the last four seasons, said. That was our advantage. Our guards would get mad because we threw it in so much.

The advantage for the Boilermakers lay in the fact that they forced the defense into making a decision. There were few, if any, players in the college ranks that were capable of slowing down any of those three Purdue bigs 1-on-1 in the post. If they got the ball where they wanted it, they were going to score. They were probably going to draw a foul. They would get your frontline into all kinds of foul trouble. You had to double, but doing so meant leaving someone that was a very good three-point shooter, because every perimeter player on the Purdue roster in recent seasons was a good three-point shooter.

Over the course of the last four seasons, even with a roster that featured the best post-up play in the country in three of those four seasons, Purdue has shot 36.7 percent, 40.2 percent, 42 percent and 37.4 percent from three. At worst, they were in the 80th percentile nationally from beyond the arc.

There is no better example of this than in 2017-18. That was the best offensive team Painter has ever had. They were the second most efficient offense in the country that season, trailing only national champion Villanova, who set a KenPom era record for efficiency that season. Your choice was either allowing Haas who shot 61.7 percent from the floor, drew seven fouls per 40 minutes and made better than 75 percent of his free throws to go 1-on-1, or you double-teamed him by leaving one of Carsen Edwards (40.6% 3PT), Vincent Edwards (39.8% 3PT), Dakota Mathias (46.6% 3PT), Ryan Cline (39.6% 3PT) or P.J. Thompson (44.1% 3PT).

So you tell me.

How do you stop that?

Everything changed this past season.

Matt Haarms took over as the starting center. He may be 7-foot-3, but he is not the post presence of his predecessors. Trevion Williams is going to be good, but he was a 280 pound freshman that just wasnt ready. What that meant was that the Purdue coaching staff had to figure out something different.

Purdue has one of the biggest playbooks in college basketball.

Painter estimates that they have roughly 50 plays, but each one of those plays can be initiated from multiple different looks and they all have counters to the counters that are countering a counter.

We would get a stapled booklet with all the plays every year during preseason, Cline said, adding that often times offseason pick-up games would double as playbook study halls, because if you dont know the plays, you dont play.

Theres so many different play calls, five word sentences where one word changes [the play].

Edwards used to joke with Gary that the play book was my toughest class at Purdue.

As a result, so much of Purdues success on the offensive end of the floor comes down to execution and deception. They dont win off of raw talent. They win because the players excel at doing what the coaching staff asks them to do, and the coaching staff excels at figuring out exactly where they have an edge.

From 2015-2017, the answer was pounding the ball into the paint as much as humanly possible. When every post touch turns into David vs. Goliath, and you have Goliath, you give him the rock.

In 2017-18, it was forcing defenses to choose between guarding Mr. Incredible with one guy or playing 4-on-3 against four of the best shooters youll find in the college ranks.

This past season, the coaching staff figured out that there were three things they could build an offense around:

1. Edwards speed. He is not only one of the fastest players on any basketball court he steps foot on, hes an absolute nightmare to chase around screens because hes small, hes compact, he can maneuver around screens better than anyone chasing him and hes capable of rising up and drilling a catch-and-shoot three at top speed, especially when running to his left.

2. Haarms mobility. He can really move for a man his size. He can also handle the ball, he thrives in dribble-handoff actions and he has an innate understanding of when he can slip a screen and get a free run at the rim.

3. Clines awkward release. He has something of a slingshot motion that he fires from behind his head with a natural fade. That makes it very difficult to contest, especially when he is sprinting around screens to his right. He also proved himself an excellent passer and decision-maker, capable of hitting a big man rolling to the rim.

The result was an offense that, quite literally, turned into Edwards and Cline running circles around the court.

We just had so much more movement because of not having a low post guy down there, Gary said. When you throw it to a guy in the post it gets stagnant. You try to get the big guy as much space as possible. We werent going to overpower anybody, so we had to have movement to occupy both sides of the floor.

Imagine trying to guard this.

Imagine chasing Carsen Edwards off of a triple-screen. Imagine being a center 22 feet from the rim knowing that if you dont help, Ryan Cline might bang a three in your face, but if you do help, Matt Haarms will slip the screen and find himself all alone in the paint without anyone within 10 feet of him.

And now imagine doing all of that knowing that one word is all it takes to change what action Purdue will be looking for, or that they can run the same thing out of three different looks.

Heres the perfect example. Purdue ran the same action a dribble-handoff in the middle of the floor that acts as a double-pindown for a shooter 10 times in the Tennessee game. Look at how many different options they have, and how many ways they can get into it:

Perhaps the most frustrating part, at least if you are a member of that Purdue coaching staff, is that youre going back to the drawing board next year.

Edwards is gone. Cline is gone. Gary is gone, too. Thats a huge chunk of their offense, the two guys they built the way they played around, not to mention the guy that was in charge of building it. Whats left is well, its different.

But its also familiar.

Of Purdues five best players next season, theres a reasonable argument to make that four of them will be bigs Haarms, Williams, Aaron Wheeler and Evan Boudreaux and the fifth will be a guard Nojel Eastern that has shot 3-for-13 from three in two years.

Bringing in Jahaad Proctor from High Point, a grad transfer lead guard, will help, and sophomore guards Sasha Stefanovic and Eric Hunter did have their moments last season. Frankly, Painter seems to like what he has in his program, and their new offensive coordinator Micah Shrewsberry has already spent time on Purdues staff, in between spending time with Brad Stevens at Butler and in Boston.

Theyre in good hands.

Theres a really big sophomore jump with talented guys, he said, and we had four freshmen come off the bench that will now be sophomores. I think all four of them will have good years, and Nojel and Matt will be able to expand what theyre doing.

I think the one think we have to make sure is that we dont try to make anyone Carsen or Caleb. Allow guys to be the best version of themselves and play through that.

Its Painters job to figure out what, exactly, the best version of themselves is.

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Evolution of Matt Painter: Most malleable coach in college basketball - Yahoo Sports

The Last Three Original Pokmon That Cannot Evolve, Explained – TheGamer

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Danzig

Pokmon has come a long way since the original 151-Pokmon line-up. Many of those who started as stand-alone Pokmon acquired evolutions, pre-evolutions, and even mega-evolutions in later generations. However, there are still a few that remain standing alone.

It has been confirmed that Gen One's Farfetch'd is finally receiving an evolutionary form (Sirfetch'd) in Pokmon's upcoming Switch games Sword and Shield. That leaves only three original Pokmon without evolutionary counterparts; Ditto, Tauros, and Lapras.

RELATED: Pokmon Home and Nintendo 3DS Will Allow DUX To Evolve Into Sirfetch'd In Pokmon Sword

Ditto almost received an evolution all the way back in Gen Two'sPokmon Gold.In a demo of the 1997 title that was recently leaked, there is evidence of Ditto evolving by way of an evolutionary item; Metal Coat. The idea of this copy-cat Pokmon evolving may seem like a moot point as it just transforms into whatever Pokmon it's battling. But, an intriguing notion has been brought to light that, possibly, the evolved form would be able to transform into the evolution of its opponent instead. That would certainly shake things up! Unfortunately, the evolution was ultimately scrapped- probably because it wound up resembling a crude form of Domo.

For a while, people also believed that Meltan, first introduced in Pokmon GO, was a Ditto evolution - this turned out to be untrue.

Tauros was also expected to gain an evolution in Pokmon Black and White.That evolution was to be Bouffalant. This makes total sense as both Pokmon embody two almost interchangeable real-life species; a Bison and Buffalo. What doesn't make as much sense, but is widely accepted by the fan base is the correlation between Tauros and Miltank. The Pokdex lumps the two together, merely because they are of the bovine persuasion, both normal-type Pokmon, and share similar biomes. Bouffalant hits all of these checkmarks as well and maintains a closer resemblance to Tauros. Both Tauros and Bouffalant represent untamed species, while Miltank represents a highly domesticated one. The creators may have been going for the chance to create another pre-evolution with the ability to evolve into multiple Pokmon - though we never saw that either - given that Tauros are all males and Miltanks all females. While some will say Miltank is the female counterpart to Tauros - a sort of Nidoking/Nidoqueen relation- Others are still aghast over this missed opportunity to see Tauros have a proper evolution.

Possibly the most anticipated of all to receive a possible evolution would be Lapras; the ever helpful, sea-dwelling Pokmon. Unlike the previous two, no one has heard more than a whisper about a Lapras evolution. That is untilPokmon Swordand Shield. Now, with the games' newest feature leak, Gigantamaxing, it looks like Lapras will - if not a true evolution - at least be obtaining a regional form in the Pokmon world's newest region, 'Galar'; similar to Alolan forms.

Lapras' Gigantamax form is said to not only take on a gigantic size, but also dawn new layers and musical notes on its shell as well. Whether it is only a new Galarian form or a full-fledged evolution, Pokmon fans will surely be excited to see what's in store for this long-time favorite in the upcomingSword andShield.

It is still unclear what the future holds inSwordandShieldfor these three original Pokmon. But, with Farfetch'd's evolution Sirfetch'd finally confirmed asSword's exclusive Pokmon, it's only fitting to speculate which one of these classic Pokmon might earn an exclusive evolution forShield!

NEXT: 10 Bad Gen 6 Designs Pokmon Fans Let Slip By

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The Last Three Original Pokmon That Cannot Evolve, Explained - TheGamer

Apeel Sciences expands trial of longer-lasting avocados with Kroger – FoodNavigator-USA.com

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Danzig

The expansion follows a successful pilot in Kroger stores in the Midwest last year that significantly reduced category food waste, said the company. Apeel avocados, asparagus and limes maintain their just-harvested quality longer than produce without Apeel and are less reliant on refrigeration, reducing food waste and extending customers access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

Santa Barbara-based Apeel which has raised $110m to support its growth to date was founded in 2012 by Dr James Rogers, a materials scientist on a mission to create an idealized little microclimate inside of each individual piece of produce, via an odorless semi-permeable barrier that modulates the rate at which water evaporates out and oxygen gets in.

Apeel - which is colorless, odorless, tasteless and leaves no sticky/waxy residue -is supplied as a powder that can be mixed with water and sprayed onto produce, or used as a dip, and is available in commercial quantities for avocados, citrus fruits, and asparagus, with multiple other applications to follow (Rogers says the company has developed formulas for more than 50 different types of fresh produce).

The food-grade coating made from lipids and glycerolipids from agricultural byproducts such as tomato skins and seeds - significantly reduces shrink in storage and transport, slows the rate of oxidation, and helps fruits maintain their desired color and taste for longer, said Rogers, who has argued that if you could quadruple the shelf-life of fresh produce, you could potentially eliminate the use of preservatives, controlled atmosphere, fungicides and potentially even refrigerated transport, altogether. (Right now, the shelf life extension is in the order of 2x+.)

Speaking to FoodNavigator-USA this week, he also noted that as produce is often sold by weight, partners using Apeel coatingsstand to gain from juicier, weightier fruits that have not lost as much moisture, providing additional cost advantages.

"It's a huge benefit. Partners just have money and quality evaporating [as produce loses moisture].It's just like us, you're not at your best when you're dehydrated."

He added: "95% of asparagus coming out of Peru today is airfreighted into the US. With Apeel, we're now able to send that via sea freight, and that's the type of transformational change that this technology is capable of."

Kroger, meanwhile, had seen the benefits of working with Apeel through trials in recent months that significantly reduced waste, he said: "That translates to millions of avocados saved every year."

Apeel is now having conversations with other major retailers and produce suppliers and will be"making some exciting announcements" on that front shortly.

Right now, the biggest opportunity for Apeel is in fresh produce, but the technology has also been tested sucessfully on a range of other foods including meat, cheeses, cut fruit and veg, he added. "They all spoil through water loss and oxidation, so we're constantly exploring the boundaries of where this technology can be used."

Produce is a living, breathing thing, even after its picked. The trick is to maintain as much moisture as possible and maintain a very delicate balance between the rate of oxygen getting in and the rate of carbon dioxide getting out. If you cut down the oxygen too much, the fruit wont develop appropriately and it will develop off flavors, and if you dont cut down the oxygen enough, youll have no impact.

James Rogers, PhD, founder and CEO, Apeel Sciences

UK retailer ASDA tests Apeel on clementines, cucumbers

"At the moment were running just a small trial [with clementines] to test how Apeel performs throughout the entire supply chain and what impact it has on shelf life. Weve been keeping a close eye on the shipment from the extra peel being applied at our growers site in South America to it arriving in the UK and have taken some samples to test how it performs under a variety of different scenarios and conditions.

Increasing shelf life means our customers can enjoy fresher produce for longer, so were really excited about the potential of Apeel. Its the first time that this type of technology has been used in the UK and its great to be leading the charge.

Should it be a success, not only could it reduce food waste and allow customers to enjoy fresher produce for longer, there are also some other potential benefits. For instance, because the extra peel protects the fruit from spoilage for longer, there is a lower need for pesticides and other post-harvest treatments.

It could also reduce the amount of packaging that is required to prolong shelf life. For example... weve been doing some behind-closed-doors tests on how it performs on cucumbers. The results have been really promising, seeing shelf lives increasing even on cucumbers left unwrapped.

Nasir Ahmed, produce technical manager, ASDA (read more HERE)

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Apeel Sciences expands trial of longer-lasting avocados with Kroger - FoodNavigator-USA.com

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