Category Archives: Evolution

The Mitsubishi Pajero Evolution was released in 1997 as the Japanese automakerslatestParis-Dakar Rallychallenger. 2,500 road-legalversions were made forhomologation purposes, internally codenamed V55W, and today theyre highly collectible.

Mitsubishi still holds the Guinness World Record for having the Most Dakar Rally Wins by An Automobile Manufacturer. In total the company has 12 victories and 150 stage wins, as well as a slew of class wins from 1985 to 2007.

Mitsubishis exploits in the Paris-Dakar Rally are the stuff of legend, the first Pajero took part in the Dakar back in 1983, by 1985 the model took its first win. It would be the first of a dozen outright wins and many more class wins over a period of 22 years from 1985 to 2007.

Above Video: This is the official review of the 1998 Paris-Dakar Rally, Mitsubishi would win again, this time with their new Pajero Evolution.

The 1997 Paris-Dakar Rally would be won by Mitsubishi however the new Mitsubishi Pajero Evolution hadnt been officially homologated yet and so the previous generation vehicle was used the Pajero T2.

Despite the fact the Pajero T2 was a little long in the tooth it still won the event, thanks in no small part to the driver Kenjiro Shinozuka the first non-European driver to win the event. Shinozuka had an incredible career that began in 1967 and continued to 2007, he would also become the first Japanese driver towin a WRC event.

In 1998 it was the turn of the new Mitsubishi Pajero Evolution to compete in the Dakar, unsurprisingly it won first time out with French driver Jean-Pierre Fontenay at the wheel and co-driver Gilles Picard on navigation.

The Mitsubishi Pajero Evolution was released in 1997 and sold until 1999, the only reason a street-legal version was offered was to homologate the vehicle for the Paris-Dakar Rally, and other rally raid entries.

It was based on the second generation Pajero but included a wide range of changes to make it better suited to high-speed off-road use.

The two-door body has wide flared fenders, a look that became a signature of the model. It has two fin-like spoilers on the back of the roof, a hood scoop, Recaro front seats, and vents on the rear side of the front fender flares.

The Pajero Evolution has independent front and rear suspension, with double wishbones up front andmulti-link independent suspension on the rear that was unique to this model.

The vehicle was also equipped with limited slip differentials, a locking centre differential, and underbody protection to avoid damage from rocks and debris off road.

Power is provided by a 3.5 liter 24 valve V6 engine with MIVEC, Mitsubishis variable valve technology the acronym stands for Mitsubishi Innovative Valve timing Electronic Control system.

This V6 produces276 bhp at 6,500 rpm and power is sent back through either a 5-speed automatic or a 5-speed manual transmission, though the manual box is relatively rare.

With just 2,500 made the Pajero Evolution is now highly collectible, perhaps the biggest issue being that good examples come up for sale relatively rarely.

The Pajero Evolution you see here is from 1997, the first year of production. It has a number of rare options including front spotlights, a heavy-duty fuel filler cap, and a carbon fiber-trimmed gear selector.

It currently rides on a set of OZ Racing rally wheels, which certainly suit the model very well, but the original alloys come with it as part of the sale. Its accompanied by itsoriginal toolkit and its most recent service was in December 2021, the fluids and battery were replaced, and the undercarriage was inspected.

Its being offered for sale in a live auction on Collecting Cars out of Sydney in Australia. If youd like to read more about it or register to bid you can visit the listing here.

Images courtesy of Collecting Cars

Ben has had his work featured onCNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine,Road & Track Magazine,the official Pinterest blog, theofficialeBay Motorsblog, BuzzFeed, and many more.

Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with millions of readers around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.

See more here:

For Sale: A Mitsubishi Pajero Evolution The Street-Legal "King Of The Dakar" - Silodrome

WASHINGTON - The future Soldier will soon be significantly more lethal.

The Army recently announced that the Next Generation Squad Weapon, the XM5 rifle and XM250 light machine gun will replace the M4/M16 rifle and the 249 light machine gun, with some Soldiers expected to receive the weapons by the fourth quarter of 2023. New Hampshire-based weapons manufacturer Sig Sauer was awarded the contract.

The new weapon system will use the 6.8 mm family of ammunition instead of the 5.56 mm ammunition the M4/M16 utilized. The 6.8 mm has proven to outperform most modern 5.56mm and 7.62mm ammunition against a full array of targets.

We should know that this is the first time in our lifetime this is the first time in 65 years the Army will field a new weapon system of this nature, a rifle, an automatic rifle, a fire control system, and a new caliber family of ammunition, said Brig. Gen. Larry Burris, the Soldier Lethality Cross-Functional Team director. This is revolutionary.

Army units that engage in close-quarters combat will be the first to receive the weapons including those with 11B infantrymen, 19D cavalry scouts,12B combat engineers, 68W medics, and 13F forward observers.

According to Brig. Gen. William M. Boruff, the program executive officer in the Joint Program Executive Office, the course of action to support readiness with the new ammunition is going to be carried out through a combined effort of the industrial base at Sig Sauer and the Lake City Ammunition Plant.

Now, consider preparing a new weapon fielding starting with absolutely zero inventory and the industrial base being established. It's daunting, Boruff said.

Despite starting from the ground up the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant has actively began producing rounds during the prototyping process and will continue to provide ammunition in the future.

In 1964, before the Army entered the Vietnam conflict, the M16A1 rile was introduced into the services weapons rotation. It was a significant improvement on the M14 rifle, and it became the standard service rifle for Soldiers.

The Next Generation Squad Weapon and ammunition will provide an immense increase in the capability for the close-combat force, said Brig. William Boruff, program executive officer for armaments and ammunition.

In 2017, the Small Arms Ammunition Configuration Study identified capability gaps, and in 2018, the Next Generation Squad Weapon program was established to counter and defeat emerging protected and unprotected threats.

We are here to establish overmatch against near-peer adversaries, and that is more urgent and relevant today than any time in recent history, Burris said. We are one giant step closer to achieving overmatch against global adversaries and threats that emerge on the battlefield of today and tomorrow.

During the prototyping phase, the NGSW outperformed the M4 and M249 at all ranges, and leaders said that the maximum effective ranges will be validated during another testing phase.

Burris said that with the help of industry partners, the Army accelerated through an acquisition process that normally takes eight to 10 years to complete in only 27 months.

More than 20,000 hours of user feedback from about 1,000 Soldiers were collected during 18 Soldier touch points and more than 100 technical tests have shaped the design of the NGSW system. The Army will continue to improve on the weapon systems by combining new technology while decreasing size, weight, power and cost.

This is a process driven by data and shaped by the user, the Soldier who will ultimately benefit on the battlefield, Burris said. The Soldier has never seen this full suite of capabilities in one integrated system.

We committed to kitting the Soldier and the squad as an integrated combat platform in order to introduce and enhance capabilities holistically. We are committed to creating an architecture that facilitates technology growth and capability integration across those platforms, Burris added.

The XM5, which weighs about two pounds heavier than the M4, and the XM250, which is about four pounds lighter, are still in their prototype phase and may change slightly by the time it is out for mass production. The XM5 weighs 8.38 pounds and 9.84 with the suppressor. The XM250 weighs 13 pounds with a bipod and 14.5 with the suppressor.

Currently the XM5 basic combat load is seven, 20-round magazines, which weighs 9.8 pounds. For the XM250 the basic combat load is four 100-round pouches, at 27.1 pounds. For comparison: the M4 carbine combat load, which is seven 30-round magazines, weighs 7.4 pounds, and the M249 light machine gun combat load, which is three 200-round pouches, weighs 20.8 pounds.

The overall length of the weapons with suppressors attached are 36 inches long for the XM5 and 41.87 inches long for the XM250. The barrel of the XM5 is 15.3 inches long and the XM250 is 17.5 inches long. The barrel on the XM250 is also not considered a quick-change barrel like the M249.

We are facilitating the rapid acquisitions of increased capabilities to enhance the ability of the Soldier and the squad to fight, win, and survive on the modern battlefield, Burris said.

See the article here:

NGSW Signifies an evolution in Soldier Lethality | Article | The United States Army - United States Army

As the worlds most infamous flu pandemic (often referred to as the Spanish flu) raged from 19181920, scientists had very few tools available to help them combat or understand the disease. Researchers didnt even know that a virus was responsible for the disease until the causal agent was finally isolated in a lab in 1930. In the years and decades that followed, improving technology has allowed researchers to look back and learn more about the often-fatal pathogen, but questions remain about the pandemics course, especially regarding how and why the virus changed over time.

Research published today (May 10) in Nature Communicationsfills in some of the gaps in that body of knowledge: researchers managed to extract viral genomes from tissue samples of people who caught the 1918 pandemic flu in different years to show how the virus mutated over time to adapt to the human immune system. They conclude that the virus may have evolved into the pathogen that circulated as a seasonal flu after the pandemic ended.

The Spanish influenza from 1918 is still a big mystery and riddle because there are so many questions [about] what really happened at the time, study coauthor Thorsten Wolff, a respiratory virus researcher at the Robert Koch Institute in Germany, told reporters at a press conference.

Studies of the nature and evolution of the 1918 pandemic virus have been limited by two major barriers: very few samples of the virus exist, and those that do are locked away in preserved, century-old specimens. Extracting them, experts tell The Scientist, is no small feat.

Colorized transmission electron microscope image of the 1918 H1N1 flu virus

CDC / C. GOLDSMITH PUBLIC HEALTH IMAGE LIBRARY #11098

When we started this work, there were only 18 specimens. . . . There was no genome-wide information about the early [stage] of the pandemic, Sbastien Calvignac-Spencer, also of the Robert Koch Institute, said at the press conference. Any new genome . . . can really add to our knowledge. But, he added, these specimens had and still have a terrible reputation of being difficult to work with.

Working with 13 formalin-fixed lung samples that were collected from people who died in Berlin between 1913 and 1920 of the flu or other bronchial diseases, Wolff, Calvignac-Spencer, and their colleagues only managed to extract one complete and two partial genomes. But these included the first-ever genomes of the virus from before the pandemics initial 1918 peak, granting new insight into the genetic changes that the virus underwent as it first adapted to humans.

As the researchers compared the newly sequenced genomes to two previously sequenced genomes of the notorious flu virus from 1918, the researchers noticed that different mutations in the gene for the polymerase complexthe enzyme that mediates viral replication and is thought to be a major factor in the viruss outsize pathogenicitywere prevalent in different years, allowing them to plot out a rudimentary history of the flus evolution over the course of its multiple waves.

I think the coolest part of this paper was that they were able to pull these sequences out of these formaldehyde-fixed tissues, Emily Bruce, a virologist at the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont who didnt work on the study, tells The Scientist, and the fact that they found specific point mutations in the polymerase that they think contributed to changes in virulence as the pandemic progressed.

The team was able to reconstitute that polymerase complex and link those mutations and others in the underlying gene to specific phenotypic changes that they say were adaptive responses. For example, the team identified multiple genetic alterations that, in some cases, nearly doubled the enzymes activity. By connecting the prevalence of mutations in a given specimen to the month and year of the persons death, the researchers saw that mutations that increased disease severity coincided with the peaks of the pandemic, suggesting that the pandemic worsened after the virus adapted to its human hosts.

The team found that there was a change in activity related to adaptive processes, Wolff said at the press conference, indicating that the virus is trying to optimize replication . . . in the human population.

The ability to take these archived medical samples and get this really interesting genomic data from them to help answer some really critical questions about the Spanish flu pandemic was the real takeaway from this paper, says Emma Loveday, an influenza researcher at Montana State University who wasnt involved in the study.

The researchers also suggest that the seasonal H1N1 flu virus that began circulating after the 1918 pandemic ended (and continued to circulate until supplanted by the 1957 H2N2 pandemic flu) is the direct descendant of the pandemic virus.

Scientists have linked the 1918 pandemic flu to the subsequent seasonal flu before, but via different mechanisms. In the past, researchers have proposed that the seasonal H1N1 virus that emerged after the pandemic did so as the result of reassortment, the shuffling of genes among multiple viruses infecting the same host cell, meaning that the virus may have become less lethal after swapping genes with other flu viruses. The authors write in the new paper that their results dont debunk the reassortment hypothesis; they simply show that H1N1 could have descended directly from the pandemic flu, no reassortment necessary.

A public health poster published during the 1918 pandemic with advice for stopping the spread of the flu

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE

Loveday tells The Scientist that the idea that the seasonal H1N1 virus that followed the 1918 pandemic stemmed from the pandemic virus is well established, but the underlying mechanism was less clear.

Wolff and Calvignac-Spencer say that going forward, their goal is to extract and analyze genomes from more specimens so that they can flesh out what they describe as preliminary findings and answer more questions about the 1918 pandemic virus. Because there are no sequences from the 15 or so years worth of flu seasons following the pandemic, fully charting the evolution of the virus for now remains impossible.

It is actually very, very difficult to [find] such specimens, Calvignac-Spencer says. We were crazy lucky to find a handful of those in the [Berlin Museum of Medical History] just around the corner.

Bruce says that, hypothetically, it would be interesting to see what scientists could learn if they reconstituted the virus at different evolutionary stages, recreating the various mutations that occurred over time and testing their phenotypic effects in tissue cultures and live animals. What do [the various genetic changes over time] mean in the viruss ability to transmit or cause disease? We know the polymerase is an important determinant in virulence, but we dont know exactly how, she says.

But she concedes that doing so would require working in facilities with a higher biosafety level than the current study because the researchers only looked at the polymerase, and that there would be more regulatory and logistical hurdles to clear in order to study viable virus.

Bruce notes that the findings presage humanitys current experience with COVID-19, and that they may help in understanding future pandemics as well. What [the authors] are saying is these mutations may represent hallmarks of early adaptions to humans, she says. The study shows that this is the normal thing thats going to happen: in a pandemic, youre going to have waves, in part because changes in the viral sequence are selected for.

Today we still have very poor information on the genetic sequences over the course of the [1918] pandemic, she adds. The data that do exist can help us understand things that were maybe surprising to us in 2020.

Read more:

Evolution of 1918 Flu Virus Traced from Century-Old Samples - The Scientist

At what point was the term "reintegration" dropped from the mental health vocabulary? Furthermore, at what point did it become a major achievement rather than the expected norm for a mental health consumer not to be incarcerated or homeless--or for it to be an accomplishment to live into one's sixth decade? At what point did it become ingrained into people's minds that a mentally ill person can't have a professional career or a decent relationship?

Two or three decades ago, the talk was all about "reintegration" for mentally ill people in recovery, an objective of rejoining society that included competitive work, healthy relationships, living as would someone in the mainstream, and being accepted by others and oneself--as someone essentially "normal." Today, the idea of reintegrating is never spoken of, and it is all about segregation, and preventing mentally ill people from disrupting, or interfering with, the orderliness of society. The underlying assumption is that we absolutely do not have the potential to live normally.

Since the nineteen eighties, society has in general become increasingly hostile, more violent, and meaner. Opportunities for advancement of the ordinary woman or man are less, and that includes any category of person. People are judged by readily obtainable information and not as much as how they presently come across. If you want to make a fresh start in life, you can't do that. Your past will come back to you electronically.

We've seen more terrorism. We've seen less tolerance. We've seen increasing expectations, and the widespread fear of becoming unhoused. Hence, it is no wonder that it is harder for a disabled person of any gender to do well.

War and other violence, in general, cause the human mind to de-evolve to lower levels of consciousness. Violence kills spirit. Violence causes people's minds to function on a primitive level, blocking higher levels of thought, and depriving people of the insights that come with feeling safe. Violence causes the human consciousness to de-evolve.

Almost all of society has, in a multitude of ways, de-evolved. There has been widespread dumbification. Mental health treatment and resources, additionally, have de-evolved. In the nineteen eighties, hope was prevalent that mentally ill people could and would do better in life. But now we're merely struggling to get mentally ill people housed and not incarcerated. We face a systemic degeneration of human thought and cognition. The shoddy treatment of society toward mentally ill people is a symptom of this.

In the latter part of the nineteen eighties, Clozaril became more widely available in the U.S. It is considered the forerunner of a newer group of antipsychotics called "Atypical Antipsychotics." The terminology has been updated to "Second-Generation Antipsychotics." In 1996, Olanzapine was approved by the FDA for use in the U.S. It is newer to chemists by decades. And while Clozaril carries a 1 to 2 percent risk of potentially deadly agranulocytosis, Olanzapine does not have that problem--it has other problems. Things began to go in retrograde at about the time that the "second generation antipsychotics" were put into circulation.

But rather than newer antipsychotics contributing to the decline in the existences of mentally ill people who take it, I'd guess the two changes are mostly unrelated. Newer antipsychotics could do more to block brain function. Second-Generation Antipsychotics act on Dopamine receptors and on Serotonin receptors. On the other hand, older antipsychotics act only on Dopamine receptors. This could make a difference in how we process information while we are medicated. Since I'm not a doctor or an expert on brain chemistry, I'd be unable to dispense any kind of advice or answer to that question.

A friend who has been around the mental health treatment scene longer than I, has made a comment that concerns me. She said that when a mental health consumer is in crisis and seeks help, they are put into facilities that are worse than jails. Apparently, that's the kind of de-evolvement that has taken shape. Mental health services are reverting to Stone Age methods of supposed treatment. What happened to an inpatient psych hospital being a "sanctuary"--a safe and kind place where we could get better?

Mentally ill people face more discrimination than we did thirty years ago. We face more prejudice. We face meaner attitudes. People will intentionally ostracize us when we have done nothing to harm them.

My friends, we have de-evolved. The exact causes could be analyzed for centuries if people still exist and can think centuries from now. And it is no wonder that the lot in life is harder for mentally ill people.

More here:

ON MENTAL WELLNESS: The De-evolution of Humans. Category: Columns from The Berkeley Daily Planet - Berkeley Daily Planet

Imagine doing a homework assignment that forced you to leave your computer running for half a year.

That is what a team of scientists at the IBS Center for Climate Physics in South Koreas Pusan National University did to answer one of sciences most compelling questions: Did climate change affect the evolution of humans?

The researchers have a supercomputer named Aleph. Led by IBS Director Alex Timmermann, the team left Aleph running for six months to complete a climate simulation that covered the last 2 million years of the Earths environmental history. The resulting 500 terabytes of data were enough to fill several hundred hard disks.

The half-year of simulation was worth it, though, as the scientists provided the first clear evidence that climate change affected early human evolution and the speciation of the genus Homo.

Scientists have struggled to prove that climate change affected human evolution, because we lack climate data from the areas where human fossils are found. Despite the lack of data, climate-related migration is such a ubiquitous force that most scientists agree it played a role in human evolution.

Specifically, climate researchers and evolutionary biologists suspect that changes in temperature, rainfall, and vegetation (a proxy for food sources) pushed humans away from their original habitats in Africa, and toward Europe and Eurasia. These patterns probably forced our ancestors to adapt by becoming global wanderers and nomads.

The idea has taken a step closer to confirmation thanks to Aleph, a state-of-the-art supercomputer. Aleph, which takes its name from the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, needs one second to complete calculations that would require 45 million years or so of effort from any one of us. The researchers wanted to use Aleph to create a climate model spanning two million years in order to determine whether climate change and human migration are correlated.

Speed aside, any computer-simulated model is only as good as the data it receives. Fortunately, the researchers had no shortage of high-quality archeological and fossil records that they could feed to Aleph. In collaboration with researchers at the Universit di Napoli Federico II in Italy, the researchers gained access to a compilation of archeological and human fossil data. The collection included 3,245 data entries across six different species of humans: H. habilis, H. ergaster, H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens. The researchers then gave Aleph data from known changes in the earths orbital eccentricity a measure of how much Earths orbit deviates from a perfect circle as well as its wobble and tilt. Equipped with this knowledge, Aleph could reliably predict large climate events such as glacial cycles and the onset of ice ages.

Aleph crunched the data to create a highly accurate climate model spanning two million years. Timmerman and his team could then look at what the climate was like in the computer simulation at the times and in the places humans lived. From these data, they created habitat suitability models for each of the six human species. For example, by comparing the climate niches of our species, H. sapiens, with those of the other five human species, the team determined that H. sapiens was the best equipped to deal with dry conditions. This adaptability probably gave us an advantage when we were moving across continents in search of the perfect habitat. Once the researchers got a better idea of what types of habitats each species liked, they could see whether and how those habitats changed geographically across two million years.

The researchers could fast-forward in time through their simulations to create changing maps of potential habitats for each species. They could then see if these were correlated with climate change. The researchers re-ran many analyses using randomly selected groups of fossils. If humans were not affected by climate, each analysis should show similar habitat distributions. For three human species H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis and H. heidelbergensis the researchers found a significant relationship between climate change and population locations. In particular, the model showed two pronounced periods of climate stress in southern Africa for H. heidelbergensis around 400,000 years ago. This timeframe correlated with an absence of the species from the fossil record and an appearance of H. sapiens in southern Africa, consistent with the hypothesis that H. heidelbergensis progressively evolved into H. sapiens. Another period of climate stress around 210,000 years ago probably put more stress on remaining H. sapiens, leading to further dispersal and genetic diversification.

In a press release, Timmermann said that this result implies that at least during the past 500 thousand years, the real sequence of past climate change, including glacial cycles, played a central role in determining where different hominin groups lived and where their remains have been found.

Next, the researchers wanted to know whether suitable habitats for different human species overlapped in space and time in areas they called contact zones. If the habitats overlapped, the different humans probably interbred and competed, informing species succession. From their contact zone analysis, the researchers created a human family tree showing that Neanderthals (H. neanderthalensis) evolved from the Eurasian clade of H. heidelbergensis around 500,000 to 400,000 years ago, while our species, H. sapiens, came from the African populations of late H. heidelbergensis around 300,000 years ago. These trees matched up with similar estimates derived from genetic and fossil data, complementing the existing evidence that supports the evolution of H. sapiens from H. heidelbergensis.

As the early human species became global wanderers, they needed to acquire new skills, which further strengthened their ability to expand their geographic range. The researchers suggest this positive feedback fueled biological or cultural shifts that allowed the species to adapt to wider climate envelopes and eventually to speciate toward H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis, both of which had larger brains than H. heidelbergensis. This connects the long-term positive trend in brain size to past climatic shifts in Africa, strengthening the role that climate change played not only in the geographic location of our species, but also in our intellectual development.

When considered alongside other research that shows H. sapiens is the only species whose climatic niche was still expanding toward the end of the analysis period, the researchers suggest that the ability to adapt to a changing climate played an unquestionable role in the radiation of our species.

Climate change can shape the evolution of life on Earth, but modern humans have shown an ability to outwit climate and make their homes in inhospitable places, from the deserts of Las Vegas to the Siberian tundra. These analyses and other research propose that climate change authored the evolution of our species, making clear its fingerprints on human extinction and speciation. Though our ability to adapt to climate has played a key role in our persistence, we are now accelerating the very climate shifts that might have doomed our closest relatives to extinction.

Link:

How climate shaped 2 million years of human evolution - Big Think

Every game day, Lightning defenseman Cal Foote gets a text message from his dad.

It usually comes around lunchtime, and Adam Foote the former longtime NHL defenseman will send his son a couple of basic reminders for anyone who plays the position:

Move your feet inside the dots.

Make hard plays.

Foote, 23, knows theyre coming, but still gets a boost from the notes. So does his brother, Nolan, a forward with the Devils AHL Utica, who said their dad will send video messages with him drawing tips on a whiteboard, or clips of other NHL players. There may be an extra detail here and there for Cal, especially in the past few weeks.

Its a little longer, Cal Foote says, smiling, Because of the playoffs.

If you asked Lightning fans even coaches midway through this season, they would have been surprised at the thought of Foote being a regular on the blue line in the first-round playoff series against the Leafs. But here Foote is, with the former first-round pick coming into his own on the biggest stage and thriving heading into Saturdays Game 7 at Scotiabank Arena. Coach Jon Cooper said Foote was their best defenseman in a Game 1 loss, and there have been many other games in which hes stood out for his poise, his physical play and his smarts.

In the Lightnings 4-3 overtime victory in Game 6 on Thursday, Foote was entrusted with key minutes with their season on the line, finishing with 20:45, three hits, two blocks and two shots on goal. What Toronto fans will remember is Foote drawing and, perhaps, selling a high-sticking penalty in David Kampf in the third period. It was the first of two penalties that led to Tampa Bays game-tying power-play goal.

But the fact that Foote, at 6-foot-4, 227, showed the instincts and confidence to carry the puck into the offensive zone and make hard plays in deep was another sign of his growth. He was just listening to his old man. Foote looks like hes been here before, and this experience will be significant for his development and his chances of earning a full-time spot in the lineup next season, especially with Jan Rutta becoming a UFA this summer.

To be honest, I thought Id be more nervous, Foote said of his first playoffs. Its felt like any other big game. The crowd is louder, you try to block that out. But everyone comes to play. Its faster. Everyone is more physical. But its fun to be a part of.

The night before Cals NHL debut in January 2021, Adam Foote scrolled through some old photos.

Foote, 50, found one from his 2001 summer workouts. The menacing defenseman, who had just won his second Stanley Cup championship with the Colorado Avalanche, was tying his skates in the dressing room. Cal, then 2 years old, stood and watched, just like he did for most of his childhood while his father was in the league.

I want to say I remember the 01 Cup, but I dont, Foote said. All I really remember about playoff time in Colorado was that they have the white pom-poms. I used to love playing with those and cheering him on.

Wed collect those pom-poms, as many as we could, Nolan said. Wed bring them home. I dont know why.

Nolan will never forget when Cal, then around 6 years old, was interviewed during an Avalanche intermission at a home game. They asked him who his favorite player was.

Peter Forsberg, Cal said.

Your second favorite player? he was asked.

He thought about it, Nolan recalled Friday. He finally said our dad.

Nolan, a fellow former Lightning first-rounder, spent countless hours with Cal on their familys backyard rink in their Denver-area home. The professional-looking sheet of ice was complete with blue and red lines and a scoreboard just underneath the trees.

Nolan loved Evgeni Malkin he had stickers of him in his room and wanted to be like the power forward. Cals position might surprise you.

All (Nolan) cared about was shooting, Adam Foote said in 2019 on Nolans draft day, laughing. And Cal wanted to play in goal. Im like, Not a chance youre playing goal. I remember Patrick Roy for way too long. Goalies are weird.

Cal is a bit different, too. When he was a young kid, he was so analytical, perceptive, cerebral. Perhaps it was the daily hockey dinner conversations with their dad, but Cal would notice little things. Hed point out to his coach that the opposing team only had a few players with white tape on their stick, or point out they had just three left-handed shots. Footes youth coach, Steve Frye, would jokingly squirt a water bottle in Cals face, trying to wake him up, only to find out he was just mentally locked in.

Cal would somehow know when the referees were looking and when they werent, and that helped a lot when others would target the kid with the high-profile name. As Fry once put it, He was the center of attention, but he didnt get anything for free here. He earned every bit of it.

And he didnt get messed with, lets put it that way. He made sure of it.

While Cal may seem reserved and more understated than his dad, hes got a bit of a mean streak, too. Nolan recalled a time when he was 13 and they were messing around, hitting each other with pillows. Nolan caught his brother in the eye. He lost it and pummeled the crap out of me with two pillows for five minutes, Nolan said, laughing. Brotherly love.

Cal said his father taught him everything he knows about hockey, but Adam has made it a point to stay in the background and let his sons make their own names. Adam Foote, for example, has politely declined interviews, only speaking on the days when Nolan and Cal were drafted. But Adam said when the Lightning drafted Cal at No. 14 in 2017 that he liked the organizations plan to take their time with the young defenseman, knowing how difficult the position is to grasp at this level.

Tampa Bay didnt have to rush Foote because of the depth on their blue line, especially after trades for Erik Cernak, Ryan McDonagh and Mikhail Sergachev. And Foote needed the work, including improving his skating and building his strength. That meant 150 American League Hockey games with Syracuse before he reached the NHL. Its just another success story of the Lightnings development system.

Hes really matured, Cooper said. Hes trusted the system, and it hasnt always been easy. Going from junior to pro then the AHL to the NHL, those are huge steps. Its taken him time to find his way, especially on a d-core where you have to wedge your way in. Hes found a way to do that, hes really simplified his game.

Hes found out, OK, you know what, I can do this here, I can use my size to my advantage. Hes become reliable back there. I think a little experience has helped and its been fun to watch him grow.

What was the turning point?

There was no lightning in the bottle moment. The coaches say there was no come to Jesus meeting or sit-down with the young defenseman. That would make a great story, a neat narrative.

But this is a process that was years in the making. There were countless hours spent on empty ice sheets with skating coach Barb Underhill, as Foote with a size 13.5 skate, size 16 shoe tried to find the necessary quickness and agility to keep up in a faster game. Syracuse coach Ben Groulx talked about Foote improving mentally in terms of putting bad shifts or bad moments behind him.

Foote played 35 games with the Lightning last season, though he was a healthy scratch for the entire playoffs. This was supposed to be the year in which hed challenge for a regular spot on the blue line, along with veteran Zach Bogosian. But a summer injury to his finger required surgery, forcing him to miss training camp and the start of the season. Cooper estimated it took Foote one-third of the season to get in the right kind of shape. There were some road bumps, like Foote getting sat for a game or two due to an internal reason, which assistant Rob Zettler dubbed minor and long forgotten. Cooper and the staff would continue to communicate with Foote when hed sit out as part of the rotation, telling him, Hang in there, you did nothing wrong here. It boosted the second-year NHLers confidence.

But did the coaches think back in February that Foote could be someone theyd rely on in playoffs?

Its hard to say, said Zettler, who runs the blue line. He just chipped away, chipped away and kept getting better and better. There are a few aspects on the physical side of it, and secondly is his ability to get involved with the rush and up in the play. Hes created some offensive opportunities because hes shown hes willing to get up in the play. Hes got good instincts, better than you think, and thats a big part of it.

Foote is at his best when hes physically engaged, but he needed to get quicker to be in position to finish plays. That all came together in the last few months of the season. Foote had the other tools: hockey IQ, a heavy shot, offensive instincts. It all began to click starting at the Feb. 26 outdoor game in Nashville, when Foote said he really started to feel good, more confident.

Nolan said he and Cal call each other or FaceTime almost every day. Sometimes its for 10 to 15 minutes. If neither has a game, its longer. Nolan could sense Cals comfort level growing, not to mention his excitement when he found out the day before Game 1 he was in the lineup.

Finally.

He handled it really well, Nolan said. There were times this year when he was in and out of the lineup every other game for Bogosian. You just have to stay confident with yourself and continue to work hard and, every practice, show how badly you want to be in the lineup, and he did exactly that. Even last year, in the playoffs, not getting a game, but the team winning, you want to have that positive mindset where youre happy youre there.

There was a time even before the playoffs this year where we FaceTimed and he wasnt fully 100 percent sure hed be in the lineup. He said, I want to play every game. Its going to be a lot of fun.'

No, Foote wont be the exact same player as his dad, but hes got that edge to his game, and Zettler said hes coming out of battles with the puck more, with opponents debating whether they want to go into the corner with him. Thats part of being a defenseman at this level. Its what Zettler calls the Cal Foote evolution.

You can tell hes his dads kid, said Brian Engblom, a two-time Cup-winning defenseman and curent Lightning color analyst. He knows how to check, he knows his job when he gets there. The rest is that flow to the game and being able to have some ease to your game in your own mind and youre starting to see that.

Hes efficient. He makes the simple plays, protects the puck well and he hasnt panicked. Thats a sign of maturity for sure, something you absolutely have to have in the playoffs.

After Game 6, Foote got a text from former Lightning teammate Luke Schenn, who used to work out with the Footes in Kelowna.

Best game Ive seen you play in the NHL. Keeper going!

Hes defending really well and trusting his skating, Schenn said Friday. Being involved in every play around the ice and having poise with the puck, yet still playing fast and being decisive. Its hard to do all that when you dont play much but now theyre trusting him more and hes trusting himself more.

The Lightning are showing trust in Foote by putting him in the lineup for Saturdays Game 7, one of the most important games of their last three postseasons. Itll be a chaotic environment in Toronto. Every mistake, every play will matter.

So its no surprise that Foote got a note from his dad on Friday, reminding him not to get caught up in a good game. The gist of the advice? Come down from the high, knowing Game 7 is going to be fast and unpredictable.

Keep it simple and hard early until things settle down.

(Top photo of Cal Foote: Kevin Sousa/NHLI via Getty Images)

Original post:

The Cal Foote evolution What it means for the Lightning in Game 7 and beyond - The Athletic

So Erling Haaland has reached an agreement to join Manchester City, which to most of his new clubs opponents is like being told that the local tyrannosaurus has grown another molar. The beast was always going to eat you in the end; it doesnt really matter that it has one more sharp tooth. Manchester City exert so much dominance over the vast majority of the football world that their recruitment of Haaland, a supremely accomplished center forward who is still only 21, feels like an indulgence. Yet Haalands imminent signing from Borussia Dortmund is much more than that: It represents a statement of intent, a desire to claim the UEFA Champions League for the first time in Manchester Citys history. For his new team, too, it will mean a significant shift in style, a greater directness of tactical approacha little like watching a Shakespearean stage actor suddenly go off to star in action movies.

For a player of Haalands youth and ability, the transfer fee Manchester will have to payHaaland reportedly had a release clause of around $60 million in his contractis relatively low in a market where stars tend to move for around twice that amount. That fee is due to smart thinking by his management team, which includes his father, Alf-Inge (himself a former Manchester City player), and wanted to make sure that Haaland would have the widest range of major clubs to choose from when he became available. Nor, in this context, is his reported salary particularly eye-catching given that it is close to what Manchester United are paying Jadon Sancho, or less than, say, Aaron Ramsey was being paid by Juventus. No: The most interesting thing here is that, with Haaland in their ranks, City have reached their final form, their last stage of evolution.

Consider this: Until Haalands arrival, City had every other type of player on their roster. They had the fullback who could engulf an entire flank with pace alone in the form of Kyle Walker; in Joo Cancelo, they had one of the worlds best playmaking fullbacks since Dani Alves; they had the hard-running, self-sacrificing midfielder in Bernardo Silva; and the supremely guileful artists in the form of Phil Foden and Kevin De Bruyne. Yet they have never had a player defined first and foremost by their sheer presence. Not just in physical terms, but in their entire aura. In that sense, Haaland is to Manchester City what Virgil van Dijk is to Liverpool. Not just a focal point for his teams play, but someone who is capable of shifting its entire center of gravity.

Thats not to say that City cant get physical: No team prevails against Diego Simeones Atltico Madrid in the Champions League if they are averse to a skirmish. But with Haaland in the mix, they can take this aspect of their play to a different level. A trio of Rodri, Rben Dias, and Haaland will be a formidable threat at any attacking set piece. Furthermore, Haaland is part of a small number of center forwardswhich includes, on current form, Harry Kane, Robert Lewandowski, Karim Benzema, and Dusan Vlahovicwho can occupy an entire defenses attention by himself.

Haalands presence carries a warning, though. Just as the Norwegian can shift gravity, Pep Guardiola must be careful not to drag Manchester City away from its ethos of collaborative attacking play. As we have seen with Lewandowski at Bayern and Benzema at Madrid, elite squads filled with attacking stars have still somehow become worryingly over-dependent on their central strikers. And how could they not? Of late, Lewandowski has broken one of the Bundesligas oldest scoring records, while Benzema has achieved rarely seen feats in the UEFA Champions League, and Haaland has averaged over a goal a game in two and a half seasons in Germany. It is just as well that both Lewandowski and Benzema are so durable since a significant injury to either of them has recently threatened to end their teams championship hopes. Haaland is not so fortunateif there is anything that stands between him and an all-conquering time at City, it is injury. Last season, he missed 16 games and 95 days of training with various ailments, statistics which will have attracted the scrutiny of Citys medical staff. Such are Citys resources, though, that Haaland can be protected so that he is available for the most important matches of the seasonthat is to say, for the closing stages of Europes premier club competition. Not since Neymar went to Paris Saint-Germain has a footballer been signed with such a singular sense of purpose. City, thanks to Guardiolas remarkable coaching, are good enough to win the Premier League without a prolific center forward, but so far the Champions League title has eluded them. The challenge for City is to do something that they have not yet managed in this tournament: They must stop losing games in which they are the superior team. Too often City overwhelm their opponents with passing and chances, only to lose: They are like the supervillain who spends an age explaining their cunning plan for world domination, only to be sucker-punched by their adversary at the last minute.

Haaland is a different proposition entirely. He is Manchester Citys chaos agent, the character who has the capacity to strike decisively before the devious scheme is fully formed. His new team now has a man without preamble, a protagonist who shoots top-corner first and asks questions later. Since their greatest European heartbreaks have come in the last minutes of close games, Haaland is there to ensure that there are no such twists in the tale. It is ironic, and maybe it is fitting, that the addition of a new and unpredictable element to their squad promises to bring an end to Citys most uncomfortable drama.

Originally posted here:

Erling Haaland Is the Final Stage in Manchester Citys Evolution - The Ringer

How will agriculture keep feeding the world's growing population? The technology keeping farms productive now is the same technology that has the power to make agriculture more sustainable for decades to come.

Northampton, MA --News Direct-- Bayer

In addition to the unfolding impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing pressures due to climate change, labor shortages, socio-political instability, and other market disruptions are threatening our food system. To overcome these challenges, farmers are relying on one of agricultures most trusted resourceshuman ingenuity.

From planting to harvest, farmers are further adopting tools like automation, digital platforms and other precision agriculture methods to keep food production moving in a sustainable fashion.

From Planting to Harvest and Beyond

Planting

It all starts with a seed in the ground. Plants used to rely on the wind to scatter their fruit. Or a hungry animal. But, with the advent of agriculture, there were hands willing to do the work. Then machines.

Automation was a giant leap forward for agriculture, and it now has the potential to keep our vital food systems producing, while reducing the need for physically demanding farm work.

Flying Seed Spreaders

In recent years, drones have begun buzzing over farmland. And they have the potential to help maintain production of rice - one of the world's most vital crops - well into the future.

Autonomous drones have many duties on a rice farm. But at the beginning of the season, their first job is to spread seeds.

Autonomous Planters

In many other crop systems, self-driving planters and tractors are becoming more and more popular, and affordable. Guided by GPS, these machines offer incredible precision throughout the planting process.

Modern planters measure the depth of each seed they drop, and the distance between it and its neighbor.

Spraying

Brilliant leaps in science and technology have kept agriculture moving forward, even in the face of daunting obstacles. When it comes to sustainably protecting crops and evading food loss, technology is becoming extremely precise.

Story continues

On the ground and above, precision sprayers protect our food supply while using less water and reducing the use of pesticides.

Rolling Autonomous Sprayers

Like drones, rolling sprayers save time and labor. But in dry fields, they provide an opportunity for farmers to get even closer to the root of their crop - and the weed that's threatening it.

These AI-driven technologies enable sprayers to target just the weeds, and avoid spraying surrounding crops or soil.

Flying Autonomous Sprayers

Drones have incredible potential in crop protection, too. With greater precision and stamina, they cover more groud, using fewer inputs like water and pesticides.

Swooping in from above, drones can assist farmers by reducing on-field labor and unnecessary exposure in application areas.

Monitoring

Sensors in the ground and satellites in orbit monitor soil moisture, plant health, and temperature and humidity variations throughout the growing season.

These tools save farmers hours of walking through fields to gather insights. When we can minimize manual labor, farms can become more productive, efficient, and sustainable.

Satellites

Satellites the size of frying pans are orbiting miles above the earth right now. And many of them are sending information to farmers about the conditions of their fields.

These technologies can detect plant health and other threats before a farmer even notices them.

Sensors

Sensors buried in the soil can give farmers information about their fields at distinct points, every day, all year long. They can see temperature variations, moisture and nutrition levels, and more.

All of this information can be sent straight to a farmers tablet or smartphone.

Harvesting

While automation has been prevalent in cereal harvesting for decades, the technology to pick and pluck delicate fruits and vegetables is still emerging. Although this field is one of the most visionary in agriculture technology, many see it as the answer to sustainability and alleviating manual labor.

Automation will play an important part in feeding all 8.5 billion of us in 2030 and beyond.

Pepper Pickers

Engineers and programmers have worked for years to perfect this type of machine. But as the need for robotics in agriculture has developed, so has the technology.

Lasers, cameras, robotic arms, and miniature saws. To pick a pepper, all of it has to come together just right.

Strawberry Pickers

With rubber and steel immune systems, farming robots offer an alternative to potentially dangerous manual labor.

How to save a strawberry: point a robot at it.

Learning

All of this agricultural machinery collects data. Together, these technologies act as nerve endings, feeling their way around the farm. But where's the brain? It's in the software.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning technology are changing the way we farm.

Climate FieldView

Climate FieldView uses artificial intelligence to collect, process and understand all this data.

Farmers use data to make more informed decisions that optimize inputs and conserve resources.

Agricultural innovations make our food system more sustainable. They limit our use of land, water, energy, pesticides, time, and labor. Computation limits the guesswork. Automation limits the inefficiency. And these growing technologies create different types of jobs in agriculture.

Now is the time to invest seriously in solutions that can help build a steadier food supply and create a more sustainable food system in the process. Because the only way to address some of humanitys most urgent and ongoing challenges is to pursue big, bold, and new ideas that benefit both people and our planet.

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View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from Bayer on 3blmedia.com

View source version on newsdirect.com: https://newsdirect.com/news/the-evolution-of-automation-on-the-farm-131909912

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The Evolution of Automation on the Farm - Yahoo Finance

The cellular network evolution is miles ahead of its early 2G and 3G days. One of the industry leaders of that evolution is Digi International. Harald Remmert, CTO for Cellular Solutions at Digi International spoke with Infinite IoTs Mat Ackley and provided insights into that journey, todays technical advancements, and the future of cellular networks.

Today, the continued shuttering of existing 2G and 3G networks will affect everyday devices that still use these older networks. One example Remmert cited was vehicle safety. Could older vehicles utilizing 2G and 3G networks for safety features suddenly find themselves outdated, putting drivers at risk? Older security panels relying on 2G and 3G networks may also be at risk of not functioning as these older networks shut down.

Remmert said Digi looked at these networks as plannable events. We work with our customers early on, for example, by providing advanced shutdown information on our website. We also enable customers to update firmware and configuration on those thousands of devices remotely. We thought this through, and were very methodical in helping our customers move up to the next level of networks.

These cellular network evolutions tend to go in waves every ten years and to make the generational leaps, new and improved infrastructure must be in place before those improved networks get up to scale. These include new base stations, antennas, and band spectrums.

It started with 4G and really pushed into 5G as well, where more and more of the functions that the network provides were compartmentalized, and theyre much easier to deploy, Remmert said. They can run on regular data-center-grade hardware. Youre not going to need to have specialized monolithic hardware anymore.

And 5G is not simply a faster network; Remmert believes it will transform how people live, work, and play with its robust capabilities. AI and edge compute technologies can advance and flourish through 5G networks as well.

More here:

The Evolution of the Cellular Network - MarketScale

Poonam Saha, better known as Doodlebug to netizens, always had a keen interest in painting, but over the years she realised that the tools of the trade were above her pay grade. And like most Bengali households, artistic pursuits don't tend to make it on the list of priorities, thus limiting the resources at her disposal.

Far from being dissuaded, Poonam resorted to doodling mandalas in her sketchbook. "I have always had a strong affinity towards drawing almost all my life," shared Poonam. "Art has been the only constant in my life and, truth be told, a getaway and stress-buster for me after a long day of classes, work, etc."

Some of the common themes that feature in her work involve mysticism, lore, ancient history and architecture. "I really like the idea of what could be/has been, the ability to create something that has no connection to our current reality."

It is this element of feeling transported to a surreal world that has resonated with the masses, bringing a much needed appreciation for doodling as its own art form. Poonam says, "For me, doodling holds a special place solely because of its simplicity and the fact that it doesn't require you to buy the most expensive equipment."

Apart from creating dreamlike worlds, Poonam also likes to play around with symmetry and balance. "Geometry is another aspect that I really enjoy incorporating into my artworks, for some reason it has always been one of my favourite topics of study. The concept of balance and proportions in simple everyday objects fascinate me."

A childhood hobby has now grown into the driving force behind Poonam's trailblazing rise in the artistic arena. Her wide collection of works have been drawing attention, both online and offline, over the last couple of years. Doodlebug's eclectic body of work emerged from Poonam's earliest medium for drawing a notepad and a basic gel pen.

Developing the signature Doodlebug style

Growing up, Poonam dreamt of becoming a fashion designer or an architect, professions involving art. Now with a 9-5 design career that allows her to draw all the time, Poonam spends her time working as a graphic designer and an interior architect.

"The sheer simplicity of doodling/illustrations is what inspired me to push myself into this sector."

She remembered coming home from classes, then tutoring kids, and finishing up her chores after a long day of work. She would get the chance to unwind with a simple drawing that she didn't think would pass more than 25 peoples' views. She didn't even spend money on buying expensive materials until 2017.

From freelancer to a professional

Starting off as a freelancer, Poonam has been working with brands as early as 2011. Her official collaboration from 'The Doodlebug Project' was when her illustrations caught Newscred's attention, and she was asked to illustrate for their in-house merchandise.

She has since collaborated with BYLC, Huawei and Bata.

"The memorable one has to be with Bata where I got to draw on their shoes for their museum collection. It was a brief collaboration where I was able to combine my love for apparel design with my artwork and to this day, I still get positive feedback from everyone for it."

Poonam's popularity as Doodlebug isn't limited to commissioned work; over the last year, her crossover series of artworks of the game 'Among Us' swept Reddit and spread to all other social media platforms. The game was at its peak, and the series' inventiveness touched people's hearts and tickled their funny bones all around the world.

The crossover series was even noticed by Buzzfeed, who covered it on their website.

Doodlebug's latest collaboration was with SHEIN, a $100 billion online retailing giant, to establish an artist line of products that combines the brand's and creator's visions.

Speaking on the collaboration, Poonam explained, "At the start of this year, I was offered the opportunity of a possible collaboration by one of SHEIN's representatives. We discussed printing some of my artworks on their apparels. Later, SHEIN and I agreed on an official contract to print my artworks on their shirts and other merchandise."

This collaboration will aid in the evolution of the creator's art and will also make her art accessible to the world.

Inspiring doodlers in Bangladesh and beyond

From a hobby to a passion, Poonam has established her brand, The Doodlebug Project which has garnered its own mass following and inspired doodler/artists in Bangladesh and beyond.

Doodlebug is influencing a generation of artists to put their own unique take on doodling.

"When my illustrations pop up in their newsfeed, I want people to feel something nice and warm, even if it's for like four seconds of their scrolling time."

Lastly, the humble self-made artist said that no matter how many collaborations lie ahead, she feels like she'll always be the girl who just drew her heart out from her little bedroom space without wondering whether anyone will ever see it.

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The evolution of Doodblebug: From doodles to deals - The Business Standard