Category Archives: Evolution

In honor of Black History Month, the Alamo is hosting a virtual event discussing how slavery evolved in Mexico, Texas, and the U.S. during the early 19th century.

The event, called "The Alamo Addresses: Slavery in Texas, Mexico, and the U.S. from 1820 - 1846 - An Interactive Discussion," will allow participants to learn about how slavery factored into the time period before and after the Texas Revolution.

Carey Latimore, Ph.D., associate professor of history at Trinity University and author of the Alamo's report on Civil Rights in San Antonio: WWII to 1960s, will discuss how slavery changed during the early 1800s.

News from around the state of Texas.

"The impact of slavery continues to leave its mark on our nation," Carey Latimore said. "I am honored to have this opportunity to engage in this most important topic at the Alamo. There is so much more to discuss than I can possibly fit into a single event. Knowing that, we will focus on how Texas fits into the broader context of slavery's evolution in the region during this period."

The virtual event will be hosted by Texas Representative Babara Gervin-Hawkins, and it will feature an interactive Q&A session with participants in real-time.

The event is free, and it will be available via Zoom at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

Spots for live participants are limited, so viewers must reserve a spot on theAlamo.org.

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The Alamo Hosts Virtual Event Discussing the Evolution of Slavery in Early 1800s Texas - NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

Durban-based tech company, immedia has invested R10-million to help African media entrepreneurs to build sustainable community radio by using Fabrik (www.Fabrik.cloud), a set of cloud-enabled digital tools that empower media entities to live-stream shows, grow and engage with audiences around the world, and benefit financially by monetising their audiences.

The 25-year-old company, which has the backing of Microsoft and the Industrial Development Corporation, has been developing their Fabrik technology since 2017. Fabrik allows media entrepreneurs to upend the traditional notion of we broadcast and you receive, by creating a feedback loop that directly helps the stations and listeners that use it to leapfrog old technology, to become citizen journalists, and find their strategic space in a digitally transformed world. It is already being used by 15 commercial clients, including radio stations Gagasi FM, Smile 90.4FM and YFM.

As part of its Digital Leap programme (https://bit.ly/2Z8oQme), immedia will be giving its platform to qualifying media entrepreneurs across Africa for free for a year. This includes consultation, training and support to help monetize the technology, cumulatively valued at R10 million.

Phil Molefe, a veteran of broadcast radio in South Africa, Fabriks Head of Business Development & Strategy, says the programme was key to the companys vision to spearhead media transformation. He says the uptake of Fabrik by energetic entrepreneurs at community radio stations showed how empowering the suite of digital tools is. It enables them to deepen their relationship with their audience and monetise it sustainably because the quality of their engagement with listeners is meaningful.

Building stable, sustainable community radio across Africa

Molefe points out that while community media is often under-resourced and struggles to retain skills, the companys case studies have shown that it is more than possible for them to thrive and that the Digital Leap programme is the kind of opportunity they need, and can succeed on. Fabrik helps media entrepreneurs by solving key challenges for them, including:

Fabrik has a range of users, and about 60% of their listeners have an opt-in relationship with their broadcasters. By building and growing owned communities, stations then stand to benefit financially by serving highly relevant ads to their digital listeners. In addition, where sales conversions on social media are around 2%, Fabrik users enjoy 8%.

According to Tamie Mbombo, head of Marketing and PR at Izwi loMzansi, one of the largest community radio stations in South Africa, says that the platform has revolutionised the stations engagement with its listeners, and has led the digital charge with featured podcasts and integrated advertising campaigns on the Izwi mobile app. Community medias aim is to provide trusted information and expression, and Fabrik has helped do that, he says.

A change of mindset is required

The Fabrik team made some interesting observations based on the experiences of early adopters of the technology, including around community radio, where many advertisers and business decision makers are often dismissive of the audience. For example, one of our clients is a station with an audience in the LSM 4-6 range. That audience is typically regarded as too poor or too marginalised to go digital and yet our clients are proving that they are taking to it like ducks to water, Molefe says.

He says that the take up by media entrepreneurs, either regarded as on the fringes or as outliers, is the best showcase for Fabrik. They are doing what they do because nobody told them they couldnt and it is proving to be a great leveller. Weve seen how powerful this platform is in the community media space, which is why we are looking at boosting the rate of transformation.

Applications for the Fabrik Digital Leap programme are now open. For more information visit the website (https://bit.ly/2MXxy4e) or contact Jonathan Lumley at jonathan@fabrik.cloud.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Fabrik.

About Fabrik:The Fabrik (www.Fabrik.cloud) platform helps broadcast entities build independent, valuable and trusted communities in a safe space that you own and manage. Fabrik gives you progressively deeper data insights into your own community through real-time, human engagement. With the Fabrik platform and its impressive suite of services including customer data and insights and a powerful mobile application, you can grow audiences, increase customer engagement, gain valuable audience insights and statistics to help optimise content, and ultimately monetise your radio station.

For more information visit http://www.Fabrik.cloud.

Phil Molefe, Business Development and Strategy Lead at Fabrik, is a veteran journalist and Media Executive with a wealth of experience in both the print and electronic media that spans nearly 40 years.

Jonathan Lumley, Clients, Channels and Markets Lead at Fabrik, is a radio promotions veteran who now empowers stations to bring new value to their audiences and advertisers through innovative technology-enabled workflows and campaigns.

Africanews provides content from APO Group as a service to its readers, but does not edit the articles it publishes.

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Community radio gets a R10m boost to accelerate the digital evolution in Africa - Africanews English

Scientists have cracked the world's largest animal genome to better understand the evolution of life on land.

Researchers say the Australian lungfish, native to the Burnett and Mary Rivers, is the closest living fish relative to humans and other land dwellers.

A group of European scientists, led by evolutionary biologist professor Axel Meyer from the University of Konstanz in Germany, sequenced 43 billion DNA building blocks, 14 times larger than the human genome.

The sequencing was only made possible through recent technological advancements.

Through analysis of the genetic mapping, the scientists linked the emergence of fish onto land 400 million years ago by observing the lungfish's physical characteristics, including its ability to breathe air and use its fins like limbs.

"Among the fishes, they are our closest living relatives, we are sure about this now," Professor Meyer said.

"We can see a lot in the genome and in the biology of the lungfish that helps us understand what the features must have been important for the conquest of land."

Finding the link between fish and life on land has been a lifetime passion and journey for Professor Meyer.

As a child, he read Old Fourlegs, a book about a prehistoric fish known as a coelacanth being caught in a South African fishing net.

Professor Meyer has spent the last three decades studying evolutionary biology and genetics, but the lungfish's DNA sequence was too complicated to code until now.

Assembling a team from laboratories in Konstanz, Wurzburg and Hamburg in Germany and Vienna in Austria, Professor Meyer was finally able to crack the animal world's longest DNA code.

"If you want to leave water, you have to be able to breathe air and not continue to rely on breathing through your gills, so you have to have lungs," Professor Meyer said.

"Then you have to be able to walk on land, and that's a different thing to accomplish for a fish that is used to being neutrally buoyant and paddling with their fins.

"Lungfish, if they moved on land, would have to crawl like a salamander and they already do that underwater."

The Australian lungfish is a protected species that was first described in 1870 by zoologist Gerard Krefft.

It is a common sight in the Burnett and Mary River with people fishing or canoeing often receiving a fright after mistaking the nearly 2-metre fish for a crocodile.

The fish rises to the surface and makes a large gasping noise as it breathes air.

There is still much to learn from the fish that hasn't changed in 100 million years and has been popularly described as a "living fossil".

Scientists still don't know how long the species live for, with the oldest lungfish dying in captivity in 2017 after being taken from the wild in 1933.

And while the ability to use its single lung to stay alive out of water makes it quite unique in the fish world, Professor Meyer understands it's the bone structures of its fins, including finger bones, that sets it apart from the other species of lungfish.

It can also help explain the evolution of animal life on land.

"The Australian lungfish has a bone structure that is similar in the basic arrangements of the bones to our upper arms or to our legs," he said.

"There is one strong humerus, the upper arm bone, and then two bones that branch off like our lower arm, then come the digits.

"That makes the Australian lungfish much more interesting than the South American or African lungfish."

Professor Meyer and the European science laboratories involved in the sequencing will continue their research and focus on the other species of lungfish DNA.

Professor Meyer hopes to visit the Wide Bay region in Queensland to study the Australian lungfish in its natural environment. He feels they are an important living link to the past we can continue to learn from.

"Both the coelacanths and lungfish are really, really important," he said.

"They are the only lineages still alive that tell us something that might have happened 400 million years ago.

"Of course, paleontologists have found fossils that are even closer to us, that show features of limbs and other aspects of their body. But these creatures are no longer alive. You are only dealing with rocks."

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Ancient Queensland fish 'close living relative' to humans, scientists believe - ABC News

Five nights into the NBA season, when the Pacers dismantled the Chicago Bulls, a number of Indiana players left their imprint on the contest.

Former Rookie of the Year Malcolm Brogdon finished with 18 points and six assists. Two-time All-Star Victor Oladipo caught fire, going 5-for-5 from deep en route to 22 points. Domantas Sabonis, an All-Star himself, logged 22 points of his own and had a triple-double. Swingman T.J. Warren, continuing his NBA bubble-based flamethrowing, managed to outscore everyone, logging a game-high 23 points.

Far less distinguishable in the lopsided box score that evening was center Myles Turner, who tallied 9 points, five rebounds and one assist on 4-for-8 shooting a performance that wasnt all that far off from his seasonlong averages of 13.7 points, 6.7 boards and 1.1 assists on 51 percent shooting from the field. And a closer look at Turners metrics shows that his statistics this year are near-carbon copies of his four prior seasons, a span in which he averaged 13.2 points, 6.9 rebounds and 1.3 dimes on 49 percent shooting.

[The Best NBA Players, According To RAPTOR]

The 24-year-olds numbers havent budged, showing a Gorilla Glue-style consistency from one year to the next. While that could be spun as a negative teams clearly prefer when young players improve their scoring by leaps and bounds, like Jerami Grant or Christian Wood theres evidence that Turners game has evolved immensely, even as his counting statistics have hardened in historic fashion.

Among NBA players who had logged at least five seasons by the age of 25, Turners total year-over-year movement in points, rebounds and assists per game is tied with Greg Monroe for the second-lowest of any player in a five-year span in modern NBA history. (We measured a players movement by adding together the absolute value of change in each per-game statistic from year to year.)

Smallest year-over-year movement in points, rebounds and assists per game over a five-year period for players age 25 or younger, since 1977

Movement is calculated by summing the absolute value of change in each per-game statistic from year to year. Players had to average at least 10 points per game each season.

Source: Basketball-Reference.com

In that sense, Turner is a bit like basketballs version of Khris Davis, the Texas Rangers slugger who once hit exactly .247 in four consecutive seasons. But while Daviss reaction to his lack of year-to-year change was largely sanguine, Turner objects to the implication that his game hasnt evolved.

If people are going to judge me on my numbers and not watch how Im performing on the floor, I think theyre doing themselves a disservice. You can deep-dive all you want, but it doesnt fully translate, Turner said. Ive grown on both ends, year in, year out.

[2020-21 NBA Predictions]

Turners claim that hes more than just his box score is undeniable. Take that blowout win over the Bulls back in December. He managed to swat four shots, including two in the first five minutes of the game, but the full story went deeper. Chicago, which shot a season-worst 37.4 percent from the field that evening, never found a rhythm from close range when Turner was nearby.

After the first two swats, players grew more mindful of Turners presence. Both Tom Satoransk and Coby White dished the ball off quickly to teammates mid-drive after seeing Turner step up to protect the paint. In another situation, Turners presence changed a shot from White, who lofted an awkward runner a tick or two earlier than he otherwise would have, prompting a miss from the second-year guard.

At 57.9 percent from inside the paint, the Bulls have been one of the NBAs most efficient teams from that part of the floor this season. But against Indiana, they connected on just 31.8 percent, or 7-for-22, of their shots from the paint with the rangy, hawk-like Turner on the court. (Further highlighting Turners impact: Chicago shot far better, 10-for-20, in the paint that night when Turner was off the floor.) Aside from making the close-range shots more challenging, he also forced players to make kick-out passes that took the Bulls out of prime scoring range. On some level, this explains how Turner finished that game as a plus-15 in plus-minus without having monster box-score stats.

The outing was far from an outlier. Much like they did with Roy Hibbert before, the Pacers guards funnel opposing ball-handlers into the lane, allowing them to challenge Turner at the rim. They arent shy about the strategy: Indiana allows more drives to the basket per 100 possessions and more close-range attempts than any team. Yet the Pacers are also the best at stopping those point-blank looks. And Turner, an early Defensive Player of the Year candidate who averages an NBA-best 3.6 blocks per game, can single-handedly take credit for the elite goalkeeping.

So far, Turner has held opponents 16.5 percentage points beneath their averages when shooting from within 6 feet of the rim, second among players who defend at least four such shots per game, according to NBA tracking data. And in a sign that points to his evolution, this is the third year in a row hes improved in the metric. After holding foes 4.5 percentage points below their normal shooting averages around the cup in 2017-18, he held them 8 points below their average in 2018-19, and then kept them 10.9 points under that threshold in 2019-20, per NBA Stats.

Taking advanced metrics like those into account, Turners defensive contributions stand out far more than his traditional offensive numbers do. FiveThirtyEights RAPTOR metric which leans on a high-level combination of box score metrics, tracking data and plus-minus has the Indiana big man rated as the leagues second-most impactful defender this season, behind center Clint Capela.

None of this even touches on the refinements Turner has made on the offensive side of the ball over time.

Most noteworthy: The 6-foot-11 big man, who used to take 97 percent of his shots from 2-point range, now takes almost half his attempts from behind the 3-point arc, giving his team more space to operate within. He appears to have a greater awareness of when to run from one rim to the other in transition, versus when its better to fan out to the corner in those situations. And heading into Wednesday nights games, he was taking a bigger chunk of his threes from the corner, where hes shooting a respectable 38 percent.

A mere box score wouldnt explain the context behind these shifts: That Turner has been a part of three largely different regimes, from the one with Paul George, to Oladipo, and now with Sabonis. Or that there have been serious questions about whether Turner and Sabonis fit together dating back to 2017-18, when the Pacers got drilled by 8.7 points per 100 possessions in the 270 minutes the duo shared on court together.

[Joel Embiid Changed His Offseason Conditioning. Now Hes Playing Like An MVP.]

First-year coach Nate Bjorkgren, who came over to the club as an assistant from the Toronto Raptors a team that frequently played two bigs at once has quickly altered the dynamics of the Pacers offense. Much of Bjorkgrens attack is predicated on being able to play the two bigs together. Where former coach Nate McMillan embraced taking quick, midrange shots if they were left open, Bjorkgren has encouraged his players to pull the trigger from outside far more often. And in Turners case, being more comfortable from the perimeter allows more breathing room for dribble-handoffs and playmaking chances with the ascendant Sabonis, a screen machine who operates from the same elbow area that Turner once occupied.

Even if box scores fail to capture the tweaks and triumphs Turner has made in his game, that doesnt mean there arent clear areas for improvement still. If Sabonis shines as a passer, Turners passing represents something far more dull, where logging a 1:1 assist-to-turnover ratio would be a positive development. At the same time, the Pacers certainly wont complain about his 62.2 percent true-shooting mark so far fueled by vastly improved 2-point shooting which is the best of Turners career by a sizable margin.

From where Turner sits, he doesnt mind if the most widely used numbers paint him as static. He sees a downside in trying to change them. If you start looking at your numbers and stuff as a player, you start getting in your own head and maybe start doing things that are out of character that your team doesnt need you to do, he said. As long as my numbers translate to winning, thats all I care about.

Neil Paine contributed research.

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Myles Turners Game Has Evolved. The Box Score Doesnt Know It Yet. - FiveThirtyEight

Researchers have reconstructed the ancestral sequence of the great ape Y chromosome by comparing three existing (gorilla, human, and chimpanzee) and two newly generated (orangutan and bonobo) Y chromosome assemblies. The new research shows that many gene families and multi-copy sequences were already present in the great ape Y common ancestor and that the chimpanzee and bonobo lineages experienced accelerated gene death and nucleotide substitution rates after their divergence from the human lineage. Credit: Dani Zemba and Monika Cechova, Penn State

Researchers reconstruct the ancestral great ape Y and show its rapid evolution in bonobo and chimpanzee.

New analysis of the DNA sequence of the male-specific Y chromosomes from all living species of the great ape family helps to clarify our understanding of how this enigmatic chromosome evolved. A clearer picture of the evolution of the Y chromosome is important for studying male fertility in humans as well as our understanding of reproduction patterns and the ability to track male lineages in the great apes, which can help with conservation efforts for these endangered species.

A team of biologists and computer scientists at Penn State sequenced and assembled the Y chromosome from orangutan and bonobo and compared those sequences to the existing human, chimpanzee, and gorilla Y sequences. From the comparison, the team was able to clarify patterns of evolution that seem to fit with behavioral differences between the species and reconstruct a model of what the Y chromosome might have looked like in the ancestor of all great apes.

A paper describing the research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Y chromosome is important for male fertility and contains the genes critical for sperm production, but it is often neglected in genomic studies because it is so difficult to sequence and assemble, said Monika Cechova, a graduate student at Penn State at the time of the research and co-first author of the paper. The Y chromosome contains a lot of repetitive sequences, which are challenging for DNA sequencing, assembling sequences, and aligning sequences for comparison. There arent out-of-the-box software packages to deal with the Y chromosome, so we had to overcome these hurdles and optimize our experimental and computational protocols, which allowed us to address interesting biological questions.

The Y chromosome is unusual. It contains relatively few genes, many of which are involved in male sex determination and sperm production; large sections of repetitive DNA, short sequences repeated over and over again; and large DNA palindromes, inverted repeats that can be many thousands of letters long and read the same forwards and backwards.

Previous work by the team comparing human, chimpanzee, and gorilla sequences had revealed some unexpected patterns. Humans are more closely related to chimpanzees, but for some characteristics, the human Y was more similar to the gorilla Y.

If you just compare the sequence identitycomparing the As, Ts, Cs, and Gs of the chromosomeshumans are more similar to chimpanzees, as you would expect, said Kateryna Makova, Pentz Professor of Biology at Penn State and one of the leaders of the research team. But if you look at which genes are present, the types of repetitive sequences, and the shared palindromes, humans look more similar to gorillas. We needed the Y chromosome of more great ape species to tease out the details of what was going on.

The team, therefore, sequenced the Y chromosome of a bonobo, a close relative of the chimpanzee, and an orangutan, a more distantly related great ape. With these new sequences, the researchers could see that the bonobo and chimpanzee shared the unusual pattern of accelerated rates of DNA sequence change and gene loss, suggesting that this pattern emerged prior to the evolutionary split between the two species. The orangutan Y chromosome, on the other hand, which serves as an outgroup to ground the comparisons, looked about like what you expect based on its known relationship to the other great apes.

Our hypothesis is that the accelerated change that we see in chimpanzees and bonobos could be related to their mating habits, said Rahulsimham Vegesna, a graduate student at Penn State and co-first author of the paper. In chimpanzees and bonobos, one female mates with multiple males during a single cycle. This leads to what we call sperm competition, the sperm from several males trying to fertilize a single egg. We think that this situation could provide the evolutionary pressure to accelerate change on the chimpanzee and bonobo Y chromosome, compared to other apes with different mating patterns, but this hypothesis, while consistent with our findings, needs to be evaluated in subsequent studies.

In addition to teasing out some of the details of how the Y chromosome evolved in individual species, the team used the set of great ape sequences to reconstruct what the Y chromosome might have looked like in the ancestor of modern great apes.

Having the ancestral great ape Y chromosome helps us to understand how the chromosome evolved, said Vegesna. For example, we can see that many of the repetitive regions and palindromes on the Y were already present on the ancestral chromosome. This, in turn, argues for the importance of these features for the Y chromosome in all great apes and allows us to explore how they evolved in each of the separate species.

The Y chromosome is also unusual because, unlike most chromosomes it doesnt have a matching partner. We each get two copies of chromosomes 1 through 22, and then some of us (females) get two X chromosomes and some of us (males) get one X and one Y. Partner chromosomes can exchange sections in a process called recombination, which is important to preserve the chromosomes evolutionarily. Because the Y doesnt have a partner, it had been hypothesized that the long palindromic sequences on the Y might be able to recombine with themselves and thus still be able to preserve their genes, but the mechanism was not known.

We used the data from a technique called Hi-C, which captures the three-dimensional organization of the chromosome, to try to see how this self-recombination is facilitated, said Cechova. What we found was that regions of the chromosome that recombine with each other are kept in close proximity to one another spatially by the structure of the chromosome.

Working on the Y chromosome presents a lot of challenges, said Paul Medvedev, associate professor of computer science and engineering and of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State and the other leader of the research team. We had to develop specialized methods and computational analyses to account for the highly repetitive nature of the sequence of the Y. This project is truly cross-disciplinary and could not have happened without the combination of computational and biological scientists that we have on our team.

Reference: Dynamic evolution of great ape Y chromosomes by Monika Cechova, Rahulsimham Vegesna, Marta Tomaszkiewicz, Robert S. Harris, Di Chen, Samarth Rangavittal, Paul Medvedev and Kateryna D. Makova, 5 October 2020, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2001749117

In addition to Cechova, Makova, Vegesna, and Medvedev, the research team at Penn State included Marta Tomaszkiewicz, Robert S. Harris, Di Chen, and Samarth Rangavittal. The research was supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, the Institute of Computational and Data Sciences, the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, and the Eberly College of Science of the Pennsylvania State University, and by the CBIOS Predoctoral Training Program awarded to Penn State by the National Institutes of Health.

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Genetic Analysis Reveals Evolution of the Enigmatic Y Chromosome in Great Apes - SciTechDaily

In 1939, Albert Einstein published a paper in Annals of Mathematics, arguing that black holes do not exist in nature. A quarter of a century later, Maarten Schmidt discovered quasars as powerful sources of light at cosmological distances. These enigmatic point-like sources were explained in the mid-1960s by Yakov Zeldovich in the East and Ed Salpeter in the West as supermassive black holes that are fed with gas from their host galaxies. When gas flows towards the black hole, it swirls like water going down the drain. As the gas approaches a fraction of the speed of light at the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) around the black hole, it heats-up by rubbing against itself through turbulent viscosity.

Consequently, its accretion disk glows brightly, radiating away about a tenth of its rest mass and exceeding by orders of magnitude the total luminosity from stars in its host galaxy. High feeding rates make quasars visible all the way out to the edge of the visible Universe. Decades later, astronomers found that almost every galaxy hosts a supermassive black hole at its center, which is starved most of the time but bursts sporadically for merely tens of millions of years during each burst. The quasars resemble a baby that tends to remove food off the dining table as soon as it is fed by virtue of becoming too energetic.

This year, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel for providing conclusive evidence that a black hole, albeit starved at the present time, lurks also at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy. This monster, weighing four million Suns, is dormant right now, glowing as the feeble radio source Sagittarius A* (abbreviated SgrA*), which is a billion times fainter than it would have been if it was fed as generously as a quasar.

Even though SgrA* is dim right now, we have clues that it must have experienced episodes of vigorous feeding in the past. This is not a surprise, given that a gas cloud approaching the Galactic center or a star passing within ten times the horizon scale of SgrA* (which translates to roughly the Earth-Sun separation), would get spaghettified by the strong gravitational tide there and turn into a stream of gas that triggers a quasar-like flare.

The smoking gun evidence for recent feeding episodes of SgrA* by massive quantities of gas is that young stars around SgrA* orbit in preferred planes. This implies that these stars formed out of planar gas disks, just like the planets in the Solar system plane or the stars in the Milky Way disk. Since the age of the stars near SgrA* is less than a percent of the age of the Milky Way galaxy, major accretion episodes from disruption of gas clouds must have occurred at least a hundred of times around SgrA*, based on the Copernican principle that the present time is not special. Indeed, a pair of giant blobs of hot gas, called the Fermi bubbles, are observed to emanate from the Galactic center along the rotation axis of the Milky Way, implying a recent accretion episode around SgrA* that could have powered them. Theoretical calculations imply that in addition to disruption of massive gas clouds, individual stars are also scattered into the vicinity of the black hole and get tidally disrupted once every ten thousand years. The intense feeding from the resulting debris streams could lead to the brightest flares from SgrA*. Such tidal disruption events of stars are indeed observed in other galaxies at the expected rate.

Would the resulting flares of SgrA* have any implications for life on Earth? In principle, they could, since they carry damaging X-ray and Ultraviolet (XUV) radiation. In collaboration with my former postdoc, John Forbes, we showed in 2018 that the XUV radiation emitted during such flares has the capacity to evaporate the atmospheres of Mars or Earth if the Solar system had only been ten times closer to the center of the Milky Way. But even at larger distances, the XUV radiation could suppress the growth of complex life, creating an effect similar to stepping on a lawn so frequently that you inhibit its growth.

At the current location of the Sun, terrestrial life is safe from XUV flares of SgrA*. However, recent studies indicate that the birthplace of the Sun may have been significantly closer to the Galactic center and that the Sun migrated to its current location through gravitational kicks. The exposure to past XUV flares from SgrA* at closer distances, could have harmed complex life during the early evolution of the Earth. This might explain why the oxygen level in the Earths atmosphere rose to its currently high level only after two billion years, perhaps only after the Earth was sufficiently far away from SgrA*. In collaboration with Manasvi Lingam, I am currently exploring this possible connection between terrestrial life and the migration of the Sun away from the Galactic center.

Traditionally, the Sun was thought to be the only astronomical source of light that affected life on Earth. But it is also possible that the black hole, SgrA* played an important role in shaping the history of terrestrial life. A surprising realization of this sort is similar to figuring out that a stranger might have impacted your family history before you were born. If a link between SgrA* and terrestrial life can be established, then this supermassive black hole might trigger a second Nobel Prize.

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Did a Supermassive Black Hole Influence the Evolution of Life on Earth? - Scientific American

Since 2019, government-sponsored initiatives around AI have proliferated across Asia Pacific. Such initiatives include the setting up of cross-domain AI ethics councils, guidelines and frameworks for the responsible use of AI, and other initiatives such as financial and technology support. The majority of these initiatives builds on the country's respective data privacy and protection acts. This is a clear sign that governments see the need to expand existing regulations when it comes to leveraging AI as a key driver for digital economies. All initiatives to date are voluntary in nature, but there are indications already that existing data privacy and protection laws will be updated and expanded to include AI. To anticipate this, data and technology governance initiatives must evolve now.

Traditionally, data governance and the governance of tech associated with data has focused on topics such as master data management, data quality, and data retention -- all primarily operational. With the rise of privacy laws and data protection acts such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU and the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) in Singapore, the scope of data governance has been expanded to include data privacy, personal data protection, and data sovereignty. This has shifted data governance out of the operational corner and into the spotlight of regulatory compliance and enforceable laws.

With AI being ready for prime time -- that means large-scale production deployments -- data and technology governance must step up again and include data and AI ethics and AI risk management.

Like cybersecurity risk before it, regulatory initiatives and consumer demand join forces to drive AI risk management to the top of the corporate agenda. Evaluate your data and technology governance initiatives now to identify gaps and maturity challenges when it comes to the responsible use of data and AI. Prepare for AI risk management to follow cybersecurity risk to the boardroom and kick off corporate collaborations and cross-functional initiatives, including governance, risk, corporate social responsibility, and ethics. Ultimately, understand how you can build trust with your customers, partners, and employees into your responsible use of data and AI -- and turn this trust into your competitive advantage!

For more business and technology trends critical for the year head, download Forrester's 2021Asia PacificPredictions Guidehere.

This post was written by Principal Analyst Achim Granzen, and it originally appearedhere.

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AI drives the evolution of technology and data governance - ZDNet

Mathematical modeler and statistics. Credit: Image is provided by the Anthro Illustrated project (https://anthroillustrated.com)

Current reforms to end the rat race between scientists can help; but are they enough?

Science is societys best method for understanding the world. Yet many scientists are unhappy with the way it works, and there are growing concerns that there is something broken in current scientific practice.

Many of the rules and procedures that are meant to promote innovative research are little more than historical precedents with little reason to suppose they encourage efficient or reliable discoveries. Worse, they can have perverse side-effects that harm both science and scientists. A well-known example is the general preference for positive over negative results, which creates a publication bias giving the false impression that certain effects exist, where in reality the dissenting evidence simply fails to be released.

Arizona State University researchers Thomas Morgan and Minhua Yan, working with ASU graduate Leonid Tiokhin, now at University of Technology Eindhoven in the Netherlands, have developed a new model, published this week in Nature Human Behaviour, to better understand the challenges facing the scientific process and how we can make it better. They focused on the priority rule: the tendency for the first scientist to document a finding to be disproportionately rewarded with prestige, prizes and career opportunities while those in second place get little to no recognition.

Many scientists have sleepless nights worrying about being scooped fearing that their work wont be considered novel enough for the highest-impact scientific journals because a different group working on the same topic manages to publish first. The priority rule has been around for centuries. In the 17th century, Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz haggled over who invented calculus. And in the 19th century, Charles Darwin rushed to publish On the Origin of Species to avoid being scooped by Alfred Russel Wallace.

Rewarding priority is understandable and has some benefits. However, it comes at a cost, Tiokhin said. Rewards for priority may tempt scientists to sacrifice the quality of their research and cut corners.

The idea is that competition encourages scientists to work hard and efficiently, such that discoveries are made quickly, said Morgan, a research affiliate with theInstitute of Human Originsand associate professor with theSchool of Human Evolution and Social Change.But if everyone is working hard, and you need to come in first to be successful, then theres a temptation to cut corners to maximize your chances, even if it means the science suffers.

This is partly why some academic publishers, such as PLOS and eLife, now offer scoop protection, allowing researchers to publish findings identical to those already published within a certain timeframe. The problem is that science and publishers currently dont have a good idea about whether these reforms make sense.

To figure out how exactly the preference for priority affects science, and whether recent reforms offer any solution for its potential drawbacks, the collaborators developed an evolutionary agent-based model. This computer model simulates how a group of scientists investigate or abandon research questions, depending on their own results and the behavior of other scientists they compete against.The benefit of an evolutionary simulation is that we dont need to specify in advance how scientists behave. We just create a world in which success is rewarded, and we let selection figure out what kinds of behavior this favors, Morgan said. We can then vary what it means to successful for instance, whether or not its critical to come first and see how selection changes the behavior of scientists in response. We can also measure the benefit to society are scientists being efficient? Are their findings accurate? And so on.

The researchers found that a culture of excessive rewards for priority can have harmful effects. Among other things, it motivates scientists to conduct quick and dirty studies, so that they can be first to publish. This reduces the quality of their work and harms the reliability of science as a whole.

The model also suggests that scoop protection, as introduced by PLOS and eLife, works.

It reduces the temptation to rush the research and gives researchers more time to collect additional data, Tiokhin said. However, scoop protection is no panacea.

This is because scoop protection motivates some scientists to continue with a research line even after several results on that topic have been published, which reduces the total number of research questions the scientific community can address.

Scoop protection reforms in themselves, while helpful, are not sufficient to guarantee high-quality research or a reliable published literature. The model also shows that even with scoop protection, scientists will be tempted to run many small studies if new studies are cheap and easy to set up and the rewards for negative results are high. This suggests that measures that force scientists to invest more heavily in each study, such as asking scientists to preregister their studies or get their research plans criticized before they begin collecting data, can help.

We also learned that inefficiency in science is not always a bad thing. On the contrary inefficiencies force researchers to think twice before starting a new study, Tiokhin said.

Another option is to make large-scale data collection so straightforward that there is less incentive to skimp on data, alternatively, reviewers and journals could be more vigilant in looking out for underpowered studies with small sample sizes.

This project is an example of metascience, the use of the scientific method to study science itself.

It was a great pleasure to be part of this project. I got to use my modeling skills not only to make specific scientific discoveries, but also to shed light on how the scientific procedure itself should be designed to increase research quality and credibility. This benefits the whole scientific community and ultimately, the whole society, said Yan, a graduate student in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change.

Reference: Competition for priority harms the reliability of science, but reforms can help by Leonid Tiokhin, Minhua Yan and Thomas J. H. Morgan, 28 January 2021, Nature Human Behaviour.DOI: 10.1038/s41562-020-01040-1

Written by Julie Russ (ASU) and H.G.P van Appeven (Eindhoven University of Technology).

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Ending the Rat Race: How Evolution Can Change Science for the Better - SciTechDaily

E! has set a premiere date for Overserved with Lisa Vanderpump, its latest entre into the pop culture reality sphere.

The new half-hour series from Evolution Media sees the British restauranteur, author and TVpersonality invite audiences into her Villa Rosa garden where she hosts two to three celebrity guests for an unforgettable night full of cocktails, games, and delicious feasts, all crafted by Vanderpump (pictured).

Fans of Evolutions Real Housewives franchise will recognize the celeb from Real Housewives of Beverly Hills before she expanded her personal brand of over the top lifestyle with Vanderpump Rulesand an appearance on ABCs Dancing With the Stars. In Overserved,Vanderpump creates themes like Diva Tea, Beverly Hills Comfort Food and Ladies who Brunch, and more alongside her trademark games of ros pongand diva croquet.

Guests for season one include Anna Camp, Cheryl Burke, Cheryl Hines, Gabriel Iglesias, Iggy Azalea, Jaleel White, James Kennedy, Jeannie Mai, Jeff Lewis, Jim Jeffries, Joel McHale, Kym Whitley, Lala Kent, Lance Bass, Loni Love, Margaret Cho, Mario Lopez, Meagan Good, Sheryl Underwood, Steve-O, Dr. Terry Dubrow and Heather Dubrow, Tori Spelling, Trixie Mattel, and Vivica A. Fox.

Overserved with Lisa Vanderpump is produced by Evolution Media with Douglas Ross, Alex Baskin, Lisa Vanderpump, Aliyah Silverstein, Bill Langworthy and Brian McCarthyserving as executive producers.

E! will broadcast the series debut on March 18 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. A trailer for Overserved with Lisa Vanderpumpcan be found below:

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E! sets the table with Evolution Media's Overserved with Lisa Vanderpump - Realscreen

NuOrder is a wholesale e-commerce platform digitising the buying and selling process for leading global brands and retailers. Hosting more than 3,000 labels, such as Tom Ford, Ermenegildo Zegna, Acne Studios and Shiseido, and 500,000+ retailers, including Nordstrom, Bloomingdales and Saks Fifth Avenue, the B2B platform supports thousands of market appointments and processes over $38 billion in orders globally across more than 100 currencies.

As business moved online overnight in 2020 to account for pandemic restrictions and non-advisable travel, NuOrders digital solutions buoyed many of fashions grounded physical events, partnering with the likes of Milan, Copenhagen and New York fashion weeks and American trade show group Informa Markets Fashion, which owns industry stalwarts Coterie, Magic and Micam requiring just an internet connection and login for event attendance.

NuOrder Co-Founder and Co-CEO Heath Wells. NuOrder.

Keen to learn from their community of users during the disruption of 2020, NuOrder conducted multiple surveys to gather the concerns and strategies of an industry in flux. In its report, The Future of Wholesale, NuOrder found 87 percent do not plan to move away from wholesale into DTC. Forty-three percent of respondents hold a positive outlook for the future of wholesale distribution, while some 21 percent hold a negative outlook a view predominantly held by smaller companies with $5 million or less in revenue.

Now, BoF sits down with co-founder and co-CEO Heath Wells to discuss the future of wholesale and what NuOrder has learnt about what to expect in 2021.

How do you expect wholesale to evolve in 2021?

The pandemic has forced everyone to adopt a technology platform. Before, you had buyers flying around the world, collecting samples or taking photos on iPhones and then trying to marry that with Excel sheets. You dont get any visualisation of a total assortment on a spreadsheet. It was ineffective, meaning retailers were doing their best, but really had one arm tied behind their back simply put wholesale was broken. Putting NuOrder aside, new technologies are just good for the industry because its going to be a win-win for everyone.

According to our Future of Wholesale report, nearly every respondent reported using a B2B software solution in 2020. We think about B2B e-commerce for both the brand and the retailer. On one side, a brand needs selling tools, visual line sheets, virtual showrooms, inventory, et cetera. On the other side, retail needs a cross-brand buying experience and an easy way to view the total assortment online.

Our USP is about how we pull both sides together into a single platform, and how we allow a brand to sell more effectively to unlock all the value for the retailer. For example, we ran an industry survey when Covid-19 hit to ask retailers questions like, How many orders are you going to cancel? We can then communicate to our customers findings on what we were anticipating from the retail community.

How is digital buying evolving as it becomes better embedded in the industry?

Our solution enables real-time collaboration, mimicking the virtual showroom experience. As a buyer, I could put together a live assortment with a counterpart in another city and even with the brand itself. It facilitates a back and forth, which is a key function of success for us. And the technology behind that sounds simple, but its damn hard.

New technologies are good for the industry.

We expose all of our data findings to buyers through pivot tables and visual components, which allows buyers to get back to what they are really great at selecting awesome product. We then have algorithms that work out the allocation of where those should go by region.

To pick the right product requires art and science, and buyers are really good at the art part. It is our job to help them with the data and science part.

How are you evolving the forecasting capabilities you offer?

Forecast and planning is also a pain point for people its a finger-in-the-wind type of thing. But we have the aggregate and standardised product data to inform our partners buying decisions, which we currently leverage on the retail side in terms of optimising size and allocation models. We help them make those decisions. Solutions around forecasting and planning is the area that the Future of Wholesale survey respondents reported as holding the highest value in the B2B market.

A view of the NuOrder platform. NuOrder.

We want to do the same thing with brands, which is to say, Heres what were seeing on the retail side, heres what you should be thinking about. For example, youre just about to place this order of military jackets NuOrder shows that they are trending so maybe you want to overcut that by 20 percent? or Youve only sold a hundred units in three weeks, maybe its time to retire it or cancel a future order.

How will the evolution in the marketplace impact smaller brands?

When Covid unfolded, we knew smaller brands had no other choice than to sign up to platforms like NuOrder, despite the challenge they have to afford a service like ours. Indeed, 37 percent of surveyed respondents not using a B2B solution said it was due to budget restraints. We felt it was our duty to help as best we can, so we started NuOrder Now. It is a free service that allows smaller companies to create and share product catalogues and line sheets, with up to 3 brand users and unlimited access for retailers, as well as learning guides and webinars.

We now have a full-time employee who handles education. They run webinars and teach people not just the basics but also how to set up your range and go to market. Tommy [Fazio], our fashion director, has been a strong advocate with New York Fashion Week and Informa Markets Fashion about helping smaller brands and being an advisor to them.

How did your experiences in 2020 inform your strategy?

Last year was a bit of a sprint. We launched a digital trade show in September, which generated a lot of traction, connections and leads after all, 36 percent of the Future of Wholesale respondents said they rely heavily on tradeshows to secure retail accounts. From that event, we learnt that buyers want curation.

For example, the keywords that buyers searched for the most during Informa Markets digital trade shows were sustainability and dropship when the brand will ship inventory directly to the customer on behalf of the retailer. The great thing about digital is that you dont need to set up a new trade show to implement findings. We are taking these mass experiences and curating them for specific segments.

The luxury industry is looking for an upgraded solution.

Then, with the fashion weeks, were moving to a more commerce-based model. From your seat on the runway, how do you now start shopping? We threw a lot of things at the wall last year and learned a lot. It looks again like we may not be able to see collections and events in-person for another six months or so, which is disappointing, but we are here.

What are your main priorities for 2021?

The luxury market is a big focus for us. That industry is looking for an upgraded solution. Theyve got so many big business problems, and we offer assistance from merchandising to virtual showrooming to collecting an order. Weve seen a lot of pickup demand from brands seeking a deeper and integrated company solution.

As a sidestep to luxury, Europe follows. Weve got 200 people in the company and were growing as quick as we can in Europe. Theres a decent-sized team in Milan, London and Paris, but Id say that would probably triple in the next year or 18 months. So, the next biggest priority is people. The growth that were experiencing is so large and were trying to hire as quickly as possible, but what you want to ensure is that you are hiring with culture in mind, with all the specific skillsets in mind, to make sure that the team is A+.

Finally, we are also building some cool stuff in product. Were soon to be supporting a full 3D CAD. You can move it; you can turn it upside down. Then, youll be able to put it in situ to see what it looks like on the shop floor, for example. Were also rolling out a Shop by Look feature and taking our digital trade show 365 into an advanced marketplace.

This is a sponsored feature paid for by NuOrder as part of a BoF partnership.

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At NuOrder, the Evolution of the Wholesale Industry | Sponsored Feature | BoF - The Business of Fashion