Daily Archives: July 10, 2017

DARK NIGHTS: METAL #1 First Look – The Hints, Symbols, & ‘Ocean of Possibilities’ – Newsarama

Posted: July 10, 2017 at 8:18 pm

Credit: DC Comics

DC Comics released the first handful of pages from Dark Nights: Metal #1 and theyre a doozy. Not only do they feature DCs greatest heroes in a knockdown, drag-out battle on an alien planet befitting the rock n roll epic feel that Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo are going for, there are a number of fun cameos and Easter eggs hidden throughout.

The Symbols?

Page one opens with three symbols in the sand - a wolf, a paw, and a bird. The symbols echo what readers were shown in June's Dark Days: The Forge #1, which Snyder has described as a "zero issue" to the event. In Forge, Hawkman described a "glimpse" he experienced while investigating Nth Metal - a story that began with the first men to walk the Earth - three tribes. He was shown to have some type of artifacts that represented what he discovered about these tribes, as readers are shown what appear to be the sign of a hawk, a bear and a wolf.

Other clues in The Forge indicate that the three symbols probably refer to the following:?

It's worth noting here that Vandal Savage, the Immortal Man, and Hawkman were all three given immortality by a metal that fell from the sky (the first two from a meteorite and the last from a spaceship). With Metal's exploration of the "dark energy" in certain metals on Earth (which all seem to be connected to Nth Metal), it's likely that Snyder is connecting those pre-historic meteorites to the same strange energy in Nth Metal. After all, they all imbued earthlings with immortality.

Of course, this is just speculation, and the three tribes don't necessarily refer to these characters. This is a Batman story and Batman has been teaming with Vixen over in Justice League of America, who would lend herself well to symbols featuring animals. Also, considering the Grant Morrison connection that shows up elsewhere in the issue, maybe this is a reference to Animal Man and an opportunity for Snyder to make a more meta-statement about these DC heroes.

In the last couple panels of the "symbol" page, a shadow that looks like Batman's cowl appears, seemingly looking at the three icons. In the next panel, it looks like someone (Batman? Or an alternate version of Batman?) has wiped away the three symbols, spilling blood on top of them.

More symbolism, we presume?

Mongul's Warworld?

The next couple of pages show off the coliseum-like setting known as Warworld, introducing the Justice League and the villain Mongul. Warworld has shown up in past DC stories where Mongul forced heroes to participate in gladiatorial games, and this scene seems to go along with that premise. The heroes are wearing armor and, at least in the scenes we're shown, are not using all their powers.

Aside from Capullos excellent interpretation of Mongul, there are some interesting hints on the pages. We get close-ups of Supermans crest, what looks to be the Flashs foot, and Wonder Womans crest. Whats notable here is that Diana is sporting a golden snake on her breastplate. The snake could also be a clue about the involvement of some serpent-themed characters from Wonder Woman's mythos - maybe Medusa or Deimos (a minor god with something of a snake theme), or even some new god-like threat such as Apep or Apophis. Maybe Diana has called upon some dark power to aid in this fight?

Then again, the snake could just be an attempt by Capullo to make Wonder Woman's armored costume even more intimidating.

There's another character on one of the Warworld pages - a more generic-looking gladiator fighting near Aquaman. He could be fighting beside the Justice League, or he might just be one of Mongul's "gladiator handlers" who got caught in the crossfire.

Watching the fight, Mongul sits in a huge throne-type chair with a small human nearby. It appears to be Hiro Okamura, the young Toyman, who previously turned from being a menace to Superman and Batman to being the Justice League's helpful ally. It looks like Hiro is a prisoner, and maybe that's why the Justice League is being forced to fight. Or even more likely, the genius Toyman was forced by Mongul to design custom giant robots to fight each of the heroes, because...

There are a couple more pages of the League fighting giant robots that are matched to their costumes and, probably, designed to counteract their various skills and powers.

Mountain Invasion

The next page shows a mountain that has apparently risen up and destroyed part of a city (possibly Gotham, if that Wayne-like tower looming over other buildings means anything). The mountain resembles the Challengers of the Unknown mountain (which, honestly, we wouldn't have realized if not for the following page featuring the Challengers themselves).

Standing in the city, looking at the mountain, is the League, in their normal costumes. The Flash scouts ahead and finds a door that features an hourglass logo in a circle. That hourglass might be a reference to Hourman, but it's more likely a play on the Challengers of the Unknown symbol an "X" in a square.

However, the X symbol here is in a circle, and it indicates that time is passing. (In fact, the hourglass looks like there's very little time left.)

Blackhawks and Cameos?

The last two pages have a ton of cameos of fan-favorite heroes - but they're only in pictures that are being shown to the Justice League by the Blackhawks.

This isn't the old-school Blackhawks (although they show up in one of the photos). This is the new Scott Snyder Blackhawks - the group calling themselves the "Blackhawks" who showed up in recent issues of All-Star Batman, fighting against Batman. And someone calling herself "Lady Blackhawk" (but wearing a mask while piloting a jet) was seen in The Forge, talking about hiding something from Batman.

On these preview pages, a woman with dark auburn hair is showing League members photos from the past. Wearing a Blackhawk symbol on her uniform, this might be Lady Blackhawk.

The photos feature the Challengers of the Unknown, the old-school Blackhawks, Red Tornado, the Metal Men, their creator Dr. Will Magus and T.O. Morrow and Starman. They're all seemingly from the past (the Starman is the Will Payton one from the '80s). Also, keep in mind that DC is launching a New Challengers title (by Snyder and Andy Kubert) this fall when the "Dark Matter" line spins out of Metal.

And theres what leads us to a big reveal in all of this. One of the Blackhawks is holding the Map of the Multiverse, last seen in Grant Morrisons epic Multiversity.

Due to the nature of that event, readers werent able to look at every piece of the Multiverse - some earths were still unknown, left for other writers to explore in later stories. That might be an explanation for some of the strange Batman characters teased in upcoming Metal one-shots - they're from other worlds. This Multiversity map certainly indicates that's true.

However, we should remember that Scott Snyder specifically told Newsarama all the way back in May that Dark Nights: Metal is exploring the "Dark Multiverse" beyond Multiversity.

He made it clear that he was exploring something outside of the 52 universes that Morrison had established - in fact, he said the Dark Multiverse was 'beneath" the known Multiverse.

"I started thinking," Snyder told Newsarama, "what if the Multiverse essentially has these 52 universes, but has almost this ocean of possibility, this ocean of almost reactive matter beneath it that's like a Dark Multiverse."

The preview ties directly into the 52 universes, but as Newsarama readers know - and, apparently, Batman and Hawkman are discovering - there's something dark and sinister beyond them.

Do the Blackhawks know about the Dark Multiverse? Are they trying to hide it from Batman? Why are they telling the League about it? Why is Challengers Mountain suddenly invading the DCU? And what do the Metal Men and Starman have to do with it?

We can't even begin to guess on the answers to those questions. But we should emphasize that just about everything else we've said is just that - a guess. There's a reason comic books (generally) have words on them. Sometimes it's a little hard to know exactly what youre looking at. But theres no harm in guessing.

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DARK NIGHTS: METAL #1 First Look - The Hints, Symbols, & 'Ocean of Possibilities' - Newsarama

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What is cryonics?

Posted: at 8:17 pm

Cryonics is an effort to save lives by using temperatures so cold that a person beyond help by today's medicine might be preserved for decades or centuries until a future medical technology can restore that person to full health. Cryonics is a second chance at life. It is the reasoned belief in the advancement of future medicinal technologies being able to cure things we cant today.

Many biological specimens, including whole insects, many types of human tissue including brain tissue, and human embryos have been cryogenically preserved, stored at liquid nitrogen temperature where all decay ceases, and revived. This leads scientists to believe that the same can be done with whole human bodies, and that any minimal harm can be reversed with future advancements in medicine.

Neurosurgeons often cool patients bodies so they can operate on aneurysms without damaging or rupturing the nearby blood vessels. Human embryos that are frozen in fertility clinics, defrosted, and implanted in a mothers uterus grow into perfectly normal human beings. This method isnt new or groundbreaking- successful cryopreservation of human embryos was first reported in 1983 by Trounson and Mohr with multicellular embryos that had been slow-cooled using dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO).

And just in Feb. of 2016, there was a cryonics breakthrough when for the first time, scientists vitrified a rabbits brain and, after warming it back up, showed that it was in near perfect condition. This was the first time a cryopreservation was provably able to protect everything associated with learning and memory.

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From Inequality to Immortality – INSEAD Knowledge (blog)

Posted: at 8:17 pm

A burgeoning industry promises to help the wealthy defeat the ultimate equaliser: Death.

In the year 42 I.E. (Inequality Era, post-Piketty), mankind built its first hibernation machine. This allowed some to jump to the future. A brighter future, a better future. More precisely, hibernation machines became an actualisation of a powerful idea that tomorrow is better than today. A tomorrow that has a cure for cancer and diabetes, where strokes, respiratory diseases and heart attacks are a hazy remembrance (much as we think of typhoid and tuberculosis today), where longevity spans centuries, and Ray Kurzweil's Singularity, in which humans merge with A.I. to transcend biological limitations, is within reach. The end of Death and a future everlasting beckon.

But only a select few can afford hibernation machines and jump to the future: The rich and the powerful, the rentiers and the capitalists, the titans of industry and the masters of finance. Those who can afford it skip to a future paradise, while those who cannot remain in what they now perceive as a dark and depressing present, whilst building the paradise for the few.

This is a short chapter in Death's End, the culmination of Liu Cixin's stunning trilogy, Remembrance of Earth's Past. Former U.S. President Barack Obama recommended it, in a bygone era when leaders used to read, reflect, and write, rather than rant in 140 characters. It is fascinating to think systematically about . Are we willing to tolerate inequality in income and wealth as long as our basic needs in Maslow's hierarchy are satisfied? Or will we have a revolution in our hands when inequality is literally a matter of life and death?1 Hollywood which gave us Elysium which certainly sees revolution as the most probable outcome.

This is not some abstract sci-fi scenario. Today, there are four major companies that provide cryogenic or cryonic services Alcor in Arizona, Cryonics Institute in Michigan, American Cryonics Society in California and KrioRus in Russia. Alcor seems the most developed and well-funded. Morbid as it sounds, this could be you in the future, vitrified and then stored in a thermos. Their pricing policy has a weird two-part tariff structure an annual membership fee of US$525 and then an additional US$200,000 for Whole Body Cryopreservation. There is a discount if you only cryogenically freeze your brain; and a US$10,000 premium if you live outside the United States and Canada which rises to US$50,000 if you live in China. A topic for another day is whether this is price discrimination or whether the price differences reflect cost differences.

Interestingly, only 5 percent of the U.S. population has an annual income exceeding the US$200,000 charged by Alcor. But since the amount can be paid out of retirement savings, slightly more than 10 percent of U.S. households theoretically could afford to freeze at least one person (see below). Ironically, most would be bankrupted in the process, meaning they would thaw out to penury. Theyd have to hope that the utopian future awaiting them would be free of the sort of inequality that enabled them to cheat death in the first place.

Meanwhile in Silicon Valley...

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the co-founders of Google, are reading Homo Deus, by Yuval Harari. On page 28, the book predicts that they are going to die. Death, after all, is the ultimate equaliser. Steve Jobs was unable to beat pancreatic cancer. Harari is sceptical whether Googles Calico, short for the California Life Company and founded in 2013 with a billion dollars in funding, will solve death in time to make Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin immortal. This is immensely frustrating to the likes of Brin, Page, Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel, all billionaires eager to stretch lives, or, at least their own, to forever in Thiel's words.

Many believe that aging is encoded in our DNA and if anything is encoded it can be cracked. If something can be cracked, then it can be hacked. Cue applause! And cue billions of dollars for aging research with Bill Maris, the founder and CEO of Google Ventures, leading the way. In the fall of 2016, the life extension start-up Unity Biotechnology raised an enormous round of funding from Silicon Valley billionaires interested in the prospect of humans living much longer lives.

Others are bringing big data and machine learning tools to bear. BioAge Labs, whose tagline is faster drug discovery for aging, has been using machine learning and crunching genomics data to search for biomarkers that predict mortality.

Venture Vampire Capital

In 1615, a German doctor suggested that the hot and spirituous blood of a young man will pour into the old one as if it were from a fountain of youth. In 1924, the physician and Bolshevik Alexander Bogdanov performed young-blood transfusions on himself. He claimed that his eyesight improved, that he stopped balding and a fellow-revolutionary wrote that he seems to have become seven, no, ten years younger. Ironically, Bogdanov injected himself with blood from a student who had both malaria and tuberculosis, and subsequently died. Today, this procedure goes by the innocuous-sounding name parabiosis a surgical union of two organisms sharing the circulation of blood. And the search for the fountain of youth continues.

Of mice and men

Researchers at Stanford University showed in a 2014 study that infusions of blood from young mice reversed cognitive and neurological impairments seen in older mice. These reinvigorated mice performed like ones half their age in memory based tests. Immediately, emails flooded the inbox of the lead researcher, Tony Wyss-Coray. Numerous billionaires, some of whom were experiencing onset of Alzheimers, wanted infusions of young blood. Some had even arranged for what the HBO show Silicon Valley termed blood boys.

There is currently a clinical trial called Young Donor Plasma Transfusion and Age-Related Biomarkers looking for participants. The trial, run by a start-up called Ambrosia, injects young people's blood into older people. Healthy participants aged 35 and older, pay US$8000 for a transfusion of blood plasma from donors under 25, and researchers monitor their blood over the next two years for indicators (biomarkers) of health and aging. Thiel (yes, him again) is looking seriously into parabiosis.

Today, most reporting on these advances takes one of two perspectives: weary scepticism or unadulterated wonder. In either case, my grim forecast is that a world where such miracles of longevity are confined to billionaires will see socio-political upheaval, the likes of which will make the current hand-wringing and brow-furrowing on the rise of inequality seem quaint in comparison. In the meantime, expect a lot of books and articles and blog posts, targeted at the thought-leader industrial complex, that will at the least, make for stimulating conversation.

Pushan Dutt is the Shell Fellow of Economic Transformation and a Professor of Economics and Political Science at INSEAD. Professor Dutt directs the Asian International Executive Programme.

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1Of course, with unequal access to health care in many countries, with direct consequences for differential mortality rates among the rich and the poor, we already live in such a world.

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Valtrex after expiration – Alternative medicine for herpes simplex 2 – Van Wert independent

Posted: at 8:17 pm

VW independent/submitted information

DELPHOS A Delphos couple were injured in a home invasion assault that occurred Saturday morning.

David and Dianna Allemeier of 209 S. Pierce St. in Delphos were both taken to St. Ritas Medical Center in Lima for treatment of injuries received when a man gained entry to their home and reportedly assaulted them.

Delphos Police were first called out at 6:05 a.m. Saturday on a report of a suspicious person in the 300 block of Jackson Street who was knocking on doors and then walking away. However, while en route to that call, officers were informed that a man had been injured and was bleeding in the 200 block of Pierce Street.

When officers arrived on the scene, they found Allemeier bleeding from an injury to his neck. The Delphos resident said he received the injury from a man who had gained entry into his home.

Officers approached the residence and found the back door unlocked and a lot of blood at the scene. The home was secured and a K-9 and Crime Scene Unit sought from the Allen County Sheriffs Office.

Allemeier then said his wife was still in the house and officers then entered and found Mrs. Allemeier, who was also injured, in the bedroom area of the residence.

After the Allemeiers were transported to the hospital, a K-9 search was made of the area, and the house was processed by an Allen County sheriffs deputy.

No information was released on whether items were taken from the Allemeier house.

Police are currently seeking a young, skinny white male with black hair, possibly wearing cutoff shorts. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Delphos Police Department or Allen County Sheriffs Office.

The investigation is continuing, with no further information forthcoming at this time.

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Sacred Space, University of Miami partner to educate community on wellness – Miami Herald

Posted: at 8:17 pm


Miami Herald
Sacred Space, University of Miami partner to educate community on wellness
Miami Herald
She will work with Osher Center Director Dr. Robert Schwartz, who shares her passion for alternative medicine. Schwartz was named director of the new Osher Center in May as a result of a $5 million endowment from the Bernard Osher Foundation. Schwartz ...

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End-Of-Life Policy Solutions: A Cautionary Note – Health Affairs (blog)

Posted: at 8:14 pm

In a new special issue of Health Affairs focused on health care around the end of life, we see that health care costs rise as patients approach death and/or after they are diagnosed with a life-limiting disease. This relationship holds across many diseases, ages, and types of health care systems and countries. Whether describing the cost-savings associated with palliative and hospice care, training primary care physicians to have conversations about prognosis and care planning, or the need to better understand patients preferences for treatment or comfort, most the papers in the issue take an optimistic stance regarding the impact of informed patient choice and transparency. That is, if only the barriers to real communication could be brought down or the proper incentives established, inappropriate care at the end of life would decline dramatically. As Ill explain, while some optimism may be warranted, there are many forces pulling in the opposite direction.

What all these strategies for better end-of-life conversations have in common is the assumption that if people talked realistically about their prospects and preferences, or if physicians could take the time necessary to explain things clearly, patients and families would come to accept their prognosis and not seek costly treatments; they would avoid intensive care units (ICUs) and accept palliative and hospice care earlier in the end-of-life process. There are significant barriers, however, to shared decision making in the face of unfamiliarity and ambiguity. Simply understanding prognostic predictions requires sophisticated numeracy, which most of us dont possess. Physicians approach to practice and communication style are other important variables that go into the mix.

Over the last few decades, improving advance care planning has been the mechanism widely promoted to ensure that patients receive the type of end-of-life care they want. Whole communities have been the targets of The Conversation Project, a program that encourages families to establish an actionable plan for end-of-life care. Since physicians are so often in the position of explaining to their patients what a diagnosis means and what treatment options are available, numerous programs have been directed at improving their communication skills on these delicate topics, all with the goal of reducing the rate of inappropriate end-of-life care. Increased access to palliative care, concurrent with disease modifying treatment, has also been advocated to allow for patients gradual transition from costly, aggressive treatments with limited chances of arresting disease progression.

However, it is likely that all physicians have had more than one patient caught in a paradox of understanding their prognosis while not being able to internalize its meaning for their own lives. They continue to live with some degree of denial and make choices as if each new sign of worsening disease is a minor setback or side effect from which they will recover. While this is probably more prevalent among younger patients, families of older patients sometimes play the role of denier by proxy continuing to press for treatment long after health care professionals (and at times the patient) think warranted.

Since stated advance care preferences are acknowledged to be unstable over the course of an illness, physicians are likely to be wary of making assumptions about what patients want as they approach end-of-life health care decisions. Many physicians will remember a surprise remission or recovery and may be loath to propose options that preclude that same opportunity to another patient lest they feel responsible for a terminal phase that could have been delayed. Any indication of patients ambivalence might lead physicians to offer treatments that might not be offered were there no ambiguity. Physicians fears of foreclosing options may be as great as those of patients and families, so all conspire to do what the other wants.

This natural ambivalence is amplified by very real changes in the effectiveness of treatments for even advanced disease. Even though small and incremental, there are enough examples to shift the tone of the discussion, engendering doubt about patients resolution to forego further treatment. Personalized medicine, with molecular or genetic targeting, has achieved some tantalizing successes, raising hopes of patients and physicians alike while complicating discussions about palliative and hospice care.

Perhaps in consideration of this discussion, we should be more tolerant of the slow progress advance care planning has made and the difficulty of getting physicians to have in-depth and definitive conversations about care preferences. It may not just be the inadequacy of the financial incentives or the poor training physicians receive in holding such conversations. Nor is it necessarily the fractionated process of referring patients from one part of the health care system to the other that keeps patients from hospice. Ambivalence, hope, and denial may all serve to alter our willingness to make definitive decisions to stop treatment and to embrace palliative care. This combination can undermine patients, families and physicians decisions to pursue palliation and comfort care. This makes it so much easier to fall into the inertia of ongoing treatment, hospitalization, and even ICU admission, particularly in light of the growing availability of such services.

If this is the case, our calculus about cost savings from advance care planning, physician training, and palliative care may not be as large as research suggests. Patients, families, and physicians volunteering to participate in research studies may not be representative of the entire population approaching end-of-life decision making. While research clearly points to a way to reducing inappropriate care at the end of life, in the US, at least, these initiatives are unlikely to put a halt to the relentless rise of disease-oriented treatment at the end of life in the foreseeable future. Financial incentives in our health care system conspire with the legitimate reluctance of patients, families, and physicians to give up hope for life extension.

On the other hand, there is reason to be somewhat optimistic since the changes discussed in this special issue of Health Affairs are prone to make a difference. However, the scope of the difference is likely to leave plenty of room for further interventions, although what types these will be remains to be seen.

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Mller criticises Pope for the way he dismissed him and offers to help mediate ‘deep rift’ in the Church – The Tablet

Posted: at 8:13 pm

10 July 2017 | by Christa Pongratz-Lippitt 'Churchs social teaching must also be applied to the way employees are treated here in Rome', Mller told a German newspaper

Cardinal Gerhard Mller, who was informed by Pope Francis on 30 June that his mandate as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) would not be prolonged, has sharply criticised the way in which the Pope dismissed him.

The Pope informed me within one minute of his decision not to prolong my mandate. He did not give a reason, just as he gave no reasons for dismissing three highly competent members of the CDF a few months ago. I cannot accept this way of doing things. As a bishop one cannot treat people in this way. The Churchs social teaching must also be applied to the way employees are treated here in Rome, Mller told the Bavarian daily 'Passauer Neue Presse' on 6 July.

He had informed Cardinal Joachim Meisner of the Popes decision not to renew his [Mllers] mandate in a long telephone conversation on the evening of 4 July, a few hours before Meisner unexpectedly died in his sleep. Meisner had been particularly upset to hear of the Popes decision, Mller said. He thought it would harm the Church.

Meisner had also been most concerned about the current situation of the Church, about the disputes and altercations that were standing in the way of church unity and the truth, Mller added.

Asked if Meisner had been upset that Pope Francis had not answered the letter he (Meisner) and three other cardinals had written to the Pope and later published asking Francis for clarification on whether or not remarried divorcees could in certain individual cases receive the Eucharist, Mller said it would have been better if instead of publishing the letter, thedubia, that is the four cardinals doubts, had been discussed at a confidential meeting.

He recalled that he himself had never taken part in the dubia debate, but added, I must stress with all due clarity that the attempts to date to explain how the balancing act between dogma, that is church teaching and pastoral practice can be achieved by Cardinals Schnborn, Kasper and others, are simply not convincing.

He recommended that Pope Francis discuss the dubia with the three remaining cardinals. And I suggest the Pope entrust me with the dialogue as I have the competence and the necessary sense of responsibility required. I could moderate the discussion.

He had no intention, however, of allowing himself to lead a movement which was critical of Pope Francis. Dialogue and cooperation were called for. Bridges are needed to prevent a schism, he emphasised.

Asked in the 'Passauer Neue Presse' interview of 6 July on his relationship with Meisner and what he thought of Meisners views, Mller replied:

We were on good terms and I admired his courage to raise his voice against certain currents of the zeitgeist. It is easier to swim with the current than to speak up for the truth. The Apostles already experienced that standing up for the truth meant giving witness, and giving witness has something to do with martyrdom not necessarily martyrdom of the blood. There is also martyrdom of the word for which one has to suffer certain disadvantages - especially if one is not part of the main stream.

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Resisting The Deregulation Of Environmental Protection – HuffPost

Posted: at 8:13 pm

When the fundamental structure of American environmental law was put into place in the 1970s and 1980s, protecting the environment was a consensus, a nonpartisan goal supported by over two-thirds of the American public. Support was so widespread that the 1972 Clean Water Act was enacted over then President Richard Nixons veto. There was a real debate about how to best protect the environment, and Congress knew how to compromise. The deal that led to the Superfund toxic waste clean-up bill in 1980 was a compromise between conservative Senator Jesse Helms and liberal then-Representative (later New Jersey Governor) Jim Florio. The political attack on environmental regulation from the right began with Ronald Reagan as an attack on big government regulation, not on the goal of protecting the environment. Since that time, the environment has become a more partisan issue. Huge majorities of Democrats and Independents support environmental regulation, and while Republican support often exceeds 50 percent, it is lukewarm at best. The problem remains, how do you keep the environment from being polluted without laws making pollution illegal?

The answer is you cant prevent pollution without rules, and because all air pollution crosses state boundaries and many water pollution problems also cross state borders, some of the rules must be set by the federal government. In the case of climate change, greenhouse gas pollution crosses both state and national boundaries. Still, many environmental issues are local and state specific. In these cases, state and local rules can be very effective in maintaining environmental quality. Additionally, over the past several decades, a central strategy of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been to delegate federal regulatory authority to the states. EPA did this, in part, due to federal resource constraints, and in part due to a belief that environmental rules needed to be adjusted to the specific needs of Americas diverse local conditions. Each community has its own economic, social, political, cultural and ecological environment and what works in Portland, Oregon, might not work in Portland, Maine.

Today we have an EPA Administrator who is willfully and aggressively deregulating elements of environmental protection. He is not trying to repeal environmental laws, since he knows he will lose those battles. Instead he is focusing his attention on regulations, starting with rolling back rules issued under the Obama Administration. He is revising rules without the advice of long-time EPA professionals and instead consulting with outside think tanks, industry representatives, and conservative advocates to redraft rules. While this means that many Obama-era rules will not be implemented, it does not mean that the new weaker rules will automatically be put into effect. Courts will be reviewing these changes, and some will be rejected due to an inadequate process of public participation prior to revision, while others will be rejected because they do not fulfill the intended mandates of the law. Regardless of federal action, states may well continue their own more stringent rules. We are in uncharted territory with a determined, anti-environmental EPA Administrator. The only point that is certain is that environmental lawyers will be fully employed during Scott Pruitts shameful term as EPA Administrator.

One of the key arguments for national environmental standards nearly half a century ago was the fear that states and localities would use lower environmental standards to compete for industry. However, in the last several decades the connection between pollution and health became widely understood, and the desire to protect housing values and a communitys way of life led to the development of NIMBY the not in my backyard syndrome. Local opposition to new factories, waste treatment facilities, power plants, and, in some cases, any construction at all has resulted in local anti-development politics that can be quite powerful. When development is permitted it is often only allowed once developers commit to specific measures designed to limit pollution, traffic, and other factors that impact local quality of life. This local and state level political force was not widespread when EPA was established in 1970. It is not universal since there are communities that will accept any kind of development they can get, but NIMBY is a major political force in a majority of American communities.

Another change since 1970 has been the growth of environmental liability law and the development of internal practices of sustainability management in many large corporations. Companies are more careful about their environmental impacts because they fear being sued by those who suffer damages due to those impacts. They are also more careful about their use of energy, water and other materials due to the rising costs of those resources.

I mention these factors not to argue that EPA is unimportant, because the agency is very important, but because EPA is not the only institution available to protect the environment. Its no longer the 1970s or 80s. Environmental protection is hardwired into Americas governmental, nonprofit and private institutions. It can be weakened, and unscrupulous businesses may take advantage of Trumps approach and could start drilling soon on public lands and in fragile ocean environments. But when the first leak, spill or environmental disaster takes place, these folks will come to learn that Americans do not want to see their beaches or national parks damaged or destroyed. Most people really like to breathe and they expect government to ensure that their air, water and land is free of poisons.

The starting point for opposing environmental deregulation is the recognition that the U.S. federal government is not all powerful. The founders designed a political structure of checks and balances and shared sovereignty. States, cities, corporations and large nonprofits have enormous power and resources. While it would be helpful for the federal government to do its fair share of the heavy lifting in protecting the environment, it is not essential. Federal deregulation should and will be fought in the courts. States will be suing, as will environmental interest groups. The environmental groups will need private money to battle the federal government. But in addition to fighting weakened rules, we should focus our attention and creativity on state, local and private institutions. Lets not be defined by opposition. Lets not be overly engaged with stopping foolish federal policies and instead look to develop more creative and positive approaches that ignore and bypass the federal government.

Weve been used to a dysfunctional and deadlocked federal government for decades. What weve not seen since the days of Anne Gorsuch in the early Reagan years is an effort to attack and dismantle fundamental environmental rules. As in those years, it is not clear how successful Pruitt will be in modifying his corner of the administrative state. After two years of noise, President Reagans political advisors convinced him to cut loose his Interior Secretary and EPA Administrator, after which Reagan brought back the first EPA Administrator, William Ruckelshaus, a serious and creative environmentalist. It is far from clear that anything like that could ever happen under Trumps very strange decision-making process.

But just as Trump and his attention-getting antics are a distraction from the difficult work of governance, Pruitts moves at deregulation must be countered, but not obsessed over. The long and difficult transition from a finite resource to a renewable resource based economy was never going to originate in Washington anyway. The main engine of change will be communities, businesses, nonprofits and cities. So, while we resist federal cutbacks in environmental protection policies and programs, we need to continue to keep our eye on the daily, operational tasks of creating sustainable homes, businesses, cities and communities. We need to build the public-private partnerships that will transform the way we live. We need to counter the effort of state-level electric utilities that want to destroy the household solar industry. And we should remember to offer Scott Pruitt a discount when he stops by in a few years, finally in the market for a used Tesla.

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Resisting The Deregulation Of Environmental Protection - HuffPost

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Automation Without Process Engineering is not Uncommon – PR Newswire (press release)

Posted: at 8:10 pm

Automation and Process Engineering are a cart vs horse discussion. Before approaching software as a solution to an automation issue, take a deeper look at the business process itself. Is this business process one that lends itself to automation or will automation take away the necessary controls to run things with the flexibility needed to meet subscriber/customer needs.

A major factor in establishing a process is first identifying missing controls.A company spoke to me recently about their need to automate bill collections and understand why clients are delinquent. After reviewing their business process and discussing their sales and pricing models, we discovered that each new deal was highly negotiated and uniquely priced. The problems began to layer upon each other: Unique pricing tends to lead to unique products in the catalog just because the current billing system did not separate products from pricing.

Example: A router that is rented monthly becomes a completely new SKU than one that is rented annually or one that is a pay by usage. One router can become ten listings.

We needed to discuss a lack of a pricing model. Why would that impact collections? Without a standard model to track bill cycles and prices, you can't cancel a discount. The threat of a price hike for cause seems to ring louder than a reminder letter. Without a payment calendar template, there can't be a revenue projection, dunning campaigns triggered by client revenue values, or "at risk client" discussions.

Had the company established a pricing, discounting and approval routing model, then they could've defined the product core value indicators and sent regular value statements to the clients, which would then remind the clients between invoices what value was brought and improve collecting payments on time. Net statement? Standards lead to automation, preventing customers from questioning the value of the service. People pay quicker for things they like.

Automation comes from defined standards. Do you have a cost basis, a limited number of operational steps or fulfillment activities, a standardized message you want and give for customer satisfaction checking, a standardized business operation? Until the standard is established, automation is not a solution but more an expensive way to bail water (a false success).

Essentially, if I do X, can I automate an outbound communication? The answer is always yes. Ask what you want to accomplish by sending it and what action you'd like the recipient to do (buy more, pay quicker, etc.). Without an overall goal of why you're automating an event, removing the manual process doesn't solve anything. If the purpose of sending the automated message is to notify subscribers of an order status, think about what the subscriber will do with the info and how you can infuse it with a benefit statement. This is what is meant by a well thought-out business process design.

With the growth of AI and machine learning, we're getting to the stage where voice commands can take over the activities of call center agents. These are initiation action triggers for keyboard strokes. At best, they become powerful when they stream together and continue automated operations. Asking your Amazon Echo what the temperature is outside isn't worthwhile if it doesn't also recommend which clothes to wear, remind you to take your umbrella and use a better route to work.

If I solve the questions I'm being asked without diving deeper into why the issues exists, I'm ignoring the potential of solving the overall challenges my customers truly face.

Invest time in process engineering and save in automation expense. The result is a semi-automated business process that can be interacted with, not just depended on; an overall more stable, cost-effective, scalable and growth-oriented operation.

~ Adam Kleinberg, CEO of ChikPea, Inc.

ChikPea is the first SRM solution suite on the Salesforce platform.

Company: ChikPea Inc. Contact: Chris Nguyen Email: cng@chikpea.com Web: http://www.chikpea.com

View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/automation-without-process-engineering-is-not-uncommon-300485393.html

SOURCE ChikPea Inc.

http://www.chikpea.com

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Automation , AI will transform tomorrow’s workforce – Information Management

Posted: at 8:10 pm

While the use of automation and artificial intelligence technologies is increasing, they will become widely used in the coming years and have a profound impact on the workforce and job security. Many low skill jobs will be lost. Some new highly skilled jobs will be created. Most jobs will be impacted to some degree.

That is the message from a new report from Forrester analyst J. P. Gownder, Automation Technologies, Robotics, and AI in the Workforce, Q2 2017, which warns that millions of jobs are at stake as we change how tasks are performed.

Gownder says automation technologies are already reshaping the workforce, driven by physical robots, software and AI, and customer self-service solutions. Technology managers who understand, evaluate, deploy and manage these technologies are now finding themselves working with a wide array of business, HR, and operational leaders.

One of the most important roles ahead for these managers will be the task of eliminating jobs, Gownder says.

Automation will displace 24.7 million jobs in the US by 2027, Gownder predicts. Most at risk will be jobs like office administrators, salespeople, construction workers, and call center employees, though there is a long list of other positions as well.

Because of automation, your company is likely to eliminate jobs, too, but not necessarily via layoffs, Gownder notes. Many of these jobs will be lost in the sense that, absent automation, they would otherwise have materialized over time. One company told us that it reduced employment in a shared service function by 8 percent and capped future hiring but gained far more efficiency for those remaining. For you, this means developing a strategic viewpoint on the future size and scope of your workforce and how automation should play a role.

The prospect of adding new jobs

The new automation economy will also create jobs an estimated 14.9 million new jobs in the US by 2027, Gownder says.

Some of these jobs will fall under the technology management umbrella, and all of them will deeply link to your automation infrastructure, Gownder explains. Technology and HR leaders will have to partner to develop a strategy for recruiting, training, and managing the right skill sets for the automation economy. Employees with science, technology, engineering, and math skills are obvious additions.

Perhaps less obvious? Change management professionals to help mixed human machine digital workforces succeed, Gownder says.

The opportunity to transform existing jobs

Even employees who havent lost or gained a job due to automation will be profoundly influenced by it, Gownder stresses.

Forrester calls this working side by side with robots, and it refers to how automation transforms existing jobs by removing certain tasks from an employee's responsibilities.

Gownder provides the example of Autodesk, a software company that is using cognitive tools from IBM Watson to reshape customer contact center support. Watson handles more and more tier 1 support calls, but humans jobs have changed, too: Using natural language processing (NLP), the system can route customer queries to human agents more effectively and offer contact center employees more and better information to help them solve problems faster.

Artificial intelligence is driving the next wave of job automation

Leaders of other large technology firms, including Baidu CEO Robin Li and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, have already announced a move from mobile first to AI first in their innovation efforts, Gownder says.

AI technologies mimic various human brain functions, creating solutions to intellectual tasks and opening up the possibility of replacing and/or augmenting white-collar, thinking-based jobs, Gownder says.

Gownder says AI is already having the following effects on the workforce:

Have already begun to penetrate enterprises at scale

Although AI emerged in the 1950s, only in the past two decades has it begun to successfully live up to its promise of solving complex tasks. Enterprises have responded in recent years, with 41% now saying they are implementing, have implemented, or are expanding implementations of cognitive and AI tools.

Take on increasing numbers of job tasks, including white-collar duties

Thinking machines threaten numerous jobs that used to require human inputs. For example, office and administrative support jobs will be among the earliest, and most heavily, affected by automation.8 Robotic process automation (RPA) which applies to much of the work of customer service, office, and administrative staff will play a key role in cannibalizing these jobs in the next few years.

Inject intelligence into new and existing applications

New cloud-based tools offer enterprises the opportunity to infuse a wide variety of employee- and customer-facing applications with the power of AI. Such tools include natural language processing and generation, visual search and image recognition, machine learning, deep learning, and others. By tapping into tools like Amazon AI, Microsoft Azure Machine Learning, and Microsoft Cortana Intelligence Suite, developers can easily add AI algorithms to their apps.

Transform business processes

With AI, companies can serve both employees and customers with proactive, informed, contextual insights. Some 43 percent of business and technology decision makers believe that AI could enable them to disrupt their industry by developing new business models, products, and services.

Grow top-line revenue eventually.

For all the excitement about AI, most enterprise decision makers remain cautious in their assessments of AIs value today. This is because they havent yet attained real-world experience, expertise, and business results.

Enterprise decision makers remain cautious in their assessments of AIs value today, Gownder concludes. When it comes to driving innovation and creating new growth, fewer than one in five believes that AI is delivering, compared with 41 percent who say performance analytics is doing so. As the technology matures, this will change, but today, the time horizon is long.

David Weldon is the editor-in-chief of Information Management.

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