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Magical sunrise at Tower Bridge  

primulmeusarut posted a photo:

 
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The Governor Facing Down a Drug-Fueled Rebel Movement  
Meet the young, indigenous governor daring to solve Colombia's knottiest problems.  
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Team discovers new venomous snake  

Full Text:

An international team of scientists has solved a case of mistaken identity and discovered a new species of venomous snake. The newly discovered Talamancan palm-pitviper is a striking green-and-black snake living in some of the most remote regions of Costa Rica. The coloring is a characteristic it shares with its close relative the black-speckled palm-pitviper. In fact, these two species look so similar that the Talamancan palm-pitviper went unrecognized for more than 100 years. It is a case of cryptic speciation, where two species look almost identical, but are genetically different.

Image credit: University of Central Florida

 
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The Wild Ones: The Horses  
The Wild Ones is a documentary series following the intersecting lives of the men and horses from an Arizona prison.  
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A battery inspired byvitamins  

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Researchers have identified a whole new class of high-performing organic molecules, inspired by vitamin B2, that can safely store electricity from intermittent energy sources like solar and wind power in large batteries. The development builds on previous work in which the team developed a high-capacity flow battery that stored energy in organic molecules called quinones and a food additive called ferrocyanide. That advance was a game-changer, delivering the first high-performance, non-flammable, non-toxic, non-corrosive and low-cost chemicals that could enable large-scale, inexpensive electricity storage.

Image credit: Kaixiang Lin/Harvard University

 
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the Crossing  

ShutterJack posted a photo:

A series of crosses span the beach at Santa Monica, California as part of a tribute to fallen police officers and soldiers. I especially like the Star of David and Crescent Moon breaking up the rhythm of the crosses.

 
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The Night We Landed on Mars  

Image credit: NASA/JPL

Exactly forty years ago today I experienced one of the greatest thrills of my life. It was the fulfillment of a childhood dream, the realization of a fantasy that had often drowned out the most tedious moments of my grade school classes. I can trace the roots of these antischolastic reveries to Mars and Beyond, an animated Disney documentary from the mid 1950s that had made Mars both real and alluring in my little brain.

The fantasies reached their zenith, both in grandiosity and implausibility, somewhere around the fifth grade. I imagined a sleek, black, winged spaceship landing in the playground, its crew rescuing me from history lessons to join them as their youngest companion, an essential member of the first team to fly to Mars.

By then I knew the textbook story of Mars. It was the most earthlike of all the other planets. It had an atmosphere, polar ice caps, seasons, and a twenty-four-hour day. Astronomers had seen seasonal waves of darkening spread across its surface -- thought to be a sign of plant life -- and at least one had convinced himself of the reality of a network of artificial Martian canals --evidence of a Martian civilization. Add to this the backdrop of a very real manned space program that would soon send people to the moon, and my astronautical fantasies seem in hindsight more inevitable than delusional. And I had learned enough arithmetic to work out that I would be a grown-up right around the time NASA was ready for Mars.

The lunar landings of the Apollo program came during my high school years, by which time my interests had broadened, the hormones had started to flow, and my hope of going to Mars had already begun to collide with reality. Even so I was enthralled by Apollo, and I was thrilled beyond words when the robotic Mariner 9 spacecraft, the first to orbit Mars, discovered ancient dry river beds on the red planet. But there was only so much that could be learned by an orbiting spacecraft. We had to land on Mars!

We did, and in a way far better than in my childish fantasies, or even in the best of science fiction. Anyone could be part of the crew. We all went together.

I was a student at Caltech at the time, where the Jet Propulsion Lab was running the Viking mission, but it was Caltech's Beckman Auditorium that was my spaceship. On the night of July 19-20, 1976, Beckman was showing a live feed from JPL all night, supplemented with commentary by local scientists.



I would have many sleepless nights during my years at Caltech, but this one was the best by far. There was the thrill and tension of knowing how much was at stake, how many things could go wrong with the landing, and how utterly helpless ground controllers would be during the most critical minutes.

The Viking lander camera worked like a fax machine, slowly scanning the scene in vertical stripes of pixels, and the audience fell silent as we watched the first few stripes being painted on the left edge of the screen. Tens of seconds went by with nothing more, then suddenly another vertical strip of the image appeared, now wide enough to show an unmistakable pebble on sandy Martian soil.


Image credit: NASA

The audience erupted in cheers. Tears streamed down my cheeks. We were on Mars! The Viking lander was alive and well. We knew that in the coming weeks there would be chemical tests of Martian soil for signs of life, but in that moment all we could feel was the pure thrill of being on Mars. The image continued to grow, showing one of the spacecraft's landing pads on the Martian sand.


Image credit: NASA and Roel van der Hoorn

I can't remember how long it took -- at least minutes, maybe an hour -- but a second image followed. It was a stunning panorama of a beautiful and sunny late afternoon on Mars.

Back on Earth, I stumbled out of our spaceship into the gray dawn of a Pasadena morning, my pulse still quickened, my mind expanded, and a lifelong desire finally met.

Happy fortieth anniversary to Viking 1 and to all of the scientists, engineers, politicians and taxpaying citizens who brought it to life.

And, by coincidence, happy forty-seventh to Apollo 11.

Here's a 3-minute video that includes similar reminiscences from Gentry Lee and others from the Viking team:



And here you can watch the entire Mars and Beyond documentary from Disney:

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Why Some Diversity Thinkers Aren't Buying The Tech Industry's Excuses  

Despite diversity efforts, Facebook and Google keep showing little change in the percentages of black, Latino and female workers. Facebook pins the problem on lack of talent in the education pipeline.

 
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Can Big Data Help Head Off Police Misconduct?  

An officer who has been under stress after responding to cases of domestic abuse or suicide may be at higher risk of a negative interaction with the public, a data scientist says.

 
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An anniversary to remember: The world's only air-to-air nuke was fired on 19 July, 1957  

'Genie' test simulated pocket nukes' potential to evaporate bombers

Vid The date was 19 July, the year was 1957 and America was worried that the Soviet Union could amass too many bomber squadrons to be stopped.…

 
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After Monday's landing, SpaceX wants to do it in triplicate  

Rocketeers apply for two more landing pads, but faces NIMBY challenge

SpaceX has applied to local authorities for permission to build two new rocket landing pads in Florida ahead of the launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket later this year.…

 
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Why Electing A President Who Believes In Climate Change And Wildlife Conservation Is More Important Than Ever  

Image Credit: Huffington Post Images




The signs of climate change are there, we just need to pay attention. Weather patterns are shifting, 100-year floods are now a common occurrence, while drought and loss of water-sheds are as well.

Climate change is happening.

More Americans than ever believe that anthropogenic climate change is here.

Yet somehow, Congress, hasn't gotten that message.

Today's Congress is filled with professional politicians, who don't act on this critical, important, and extremely dangerous issue. Unfortunately though, it is time to act and stem the tide of climate change. Congress should have acted a decade ago, last year, last week, or even yesterday. But, they haven't. Not in any meaningful way. Yes, we sign climate accords and agreements, but, that only addresses one small facet of the problem. Energy.

That is why it is time to "start over" and elect leaders who believe in climate change. Now. While we need a president who believes in climate change, a president only, is not enough. I know, because our current president believes in climate change. However, he is stymied and blocked on almost any measure to work on climate change, and that is because of Congress.

Climate change is not a joke. It will affect everyone's lives across the globe. No one is immune, no matter how much money he/she has.

Climate change will displace millions of people living in low-lying areas (Pacific islands, Bangladesh, Floridians). It will affect a myriad of resources from ocean fish stocks, to the ability to grow food, to the migration patterns of various animals.

While I do applaud talks and action on carbon-emissions reduction and renewable-energy; talks and treatises are only a start. To date however, not nearly enough has been done or is being done about agricultural greenhouse gas and carbon emissions.

As I've mentioned in number of other Huffington blog posts, the animal agriculture industry creates as much greenhouse gases as the entire transportation sector; and is on the rise with a larger global population craving more animal products and with the high level of food waste that occurs in our country creating methane, wasting resources, and contributing to food insecurity.

Just this week, new statistics have come out saying that nearly 50% of the food in United States is wasted. Nearly 1/3 of food globally is wasted, and this waste contributes 8% to annual carbon emissions. Our dietary habits of high meat and fish intake, our food-waste, and our levels of pollution are unsustainable in terms of resource allocation, contribution to climate change, and to oceanic degradation.

I argue that our current elected officials have proven themselves incapable of making any truly lasting meaningful policy recommendations, let alone actual policy or laws. Our elected officials are for the most part an older generation, who have condoned the major contributions to climate change. They do not appear ready or willing to change their ways. They do not appear willing to protect the planet for my generation and my son's generation.

That is not only unfair, but it is also unethical, and immoral.

It is time to clean the slate, and only elect officials who acknowledge that climate change is real, who want to act on it, and who will stop letting wealthy interest groups influence; no, rather, buy votes, against action on climate change. I advocate that we are in a crisis. We are in a crisis of inaction, a crisis of co-opting of our elected leaders, and that we are in desperate need of reformation.

This season, really look at your candidate's platform, ensure that it includes issues on climate change, sustainable agriculture, sustainable fisheries and oceans management, and only vote for those who care.

My son's world is overexploited. He may never know clean-air quality, or that certain animals existed in the wild, because they may be "functionally" or actually extinct.

We are perhaps the most powerful government in the world, if we vote for climate-sensitive elected officials who are conservation-minded, other countries will follow our lead. The time to lead-by-example is now.

To contact Dana: recipe.for.survival@gmail.com
Twitter: recipe4survival
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RecipeForSurvival/
blog: recipeforsurvival.wordpress.com

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gaia  

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Boozy primates seek out nectar with the highest alcohol content  
Aye-ayes and a slow loris preferred artificial nectar with more booze in lab tests, suggesting that tippling is an ancient strategy for primates  
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UK's £1 billion cut to carbon storage could cost £30 billion  
The government cancelled its support for carbon capture and storage technology last year, without which, the costs of meeting its climate targets will skyrocket  
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watchmen  

fiddleoak posted a photo:

instagram//blog//facebook

 
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Fiery end  

ArtGordon1 posted a photo:

 
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Golden Hour  

Mohamed Ersath posted a photo:

London from sky garden

Photographer: Mohamed Ersath

Contact me: itsmaybeme@gmail.com for full resolution image/ Printing with no watermark

 
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Dingo cannibalism makes for a dog-eat-dog world in Australia  
Australia's wild dogs have been caught on camera for the first time savaging dead dingoes, a rare case of cannibalism unprovoked by hunger  
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Winterlands by Daniel Perazzone  

Winterlands by Daniel Perazzone

Cappadocia, Turchia.

Daniel Perazzone: Photos

 
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Panorama from Christ the Redeemer by Daniel Ladenhauf  

Panorama from Christ the Redeemer by Daniel Ladenhauf

A panorama from the Christ the Redeemer terrace, built from 15 single images.

Daniel Ladenhauf: Photos

 
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How Intuitive Eating Helped Me Recover From Orthorexia  
Before I begin my preaching session on intuitive eating, I have a question: Was your last year of high school everything you wanted it to be and more? I'm going to take a shot in the dark and say, no.

Unfortunately, life has a way of crushing expectations. The parties were most likely not as exciting or numerous as you thought they would be, and you never imagined your friends wanting to kill each other over a prom date.

These were the average struggles that I heard my friends vent about, over and over. I, on the other hand, suffered from a disorder called orthorexia.

Orthorexia begins as a goal to eat more healthfully, but orthorexics obsess over food quality and purity. For me, this obsession stemmed from my need for control in my life. The thought of college freaked me out, and I turned to my diet for comfort.



I would research foods that boosted metabolism and kept you fuller longer. I would replace vegetable oil with coconut oil, and eat 75% cocoa dark chocolate, all while drinking a hot cup of green tea. I thought I was killin' the game.

Turns out, not so much. I dropped 20 pounds in about a month. However, I still did not catch onto the issue. It took me over 6 months to figure out that I had a problem. My healthy food restrictions were not providing my body with enough calories to survive, even at rest.



This was all before I discovered intuitive eating.

Intuitive eating, in simple terms, is having a positive outlook on food, and how it benefits, rather than harms your body. This approach does not restrict you from eating anything. Instead, you simply become more aware of your body, and what it is telling you.

The main rule is as follows: if you are hungry, eat, and stop eating when you are full. Rather than being disappointed in yourself for eating a cookie, intuitive eating strives to rid your brain of those negative thoughts of certain foods. 




I think of intuitive eating as a form of positive psychology, rather than a diet. Why punish yourself for fueling your body? The goal of the practice is to rewire your mind and body so that you can become the healthiest version of yourself.



There are actual principles to intuitive eating, which you can check out here to help you get started.


I did not consciously make the decision to eat intuitively. My body was failing, and I needed to eat a lot in order for it to repair itself. Once my body was getting the nutrients it needed, and I became mentally stable, I was able to change my relationship with food. My personal motto became, "everything in moderation." It was not until recently that I stumbled upon practices like the ones linked above, and realized how similar my new perspective on food was with the intuitive eating lifestyle.



I would be lying if I said I was an intuitive eating expert. I am still learning about the lifestyle myself. Today, I'm as happy and as healthy as I have ever been. I exercise regularly and I eat what I want. No, this does not mean I am taking in 4,000 calories in a day. I still eat well; a lot of fruits, chicken, vegetables, and fish. However, I do not deprive myself of a bacon cheeseburger, or those mighty-fine taquitos. My hope is that your body shaming ends before it ever gets to the point of an eating disorder and that you consider the intuitive eating lifestyle as your jumping off point.

More from Spoon University

• 
  
• How Orthorexia Threatened to Destroy my Relationship with Food
• 
  
• How to Actually Enjoy Your Food Through Mindful Eating
• 
  
• Why No Diet is the Best Diet
• 
  

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'Radiation friction' could make huge magnetic fields with lasers  
Proposal for measuring poorly understood effect could boost laboratory astrophysics  
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What is the maximum number of layers in a human pyramid?  
Roger Leyser tackles the question from a physics perspective  
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Connectzone Lynnwood  
Workshop: 20 Jul 2016, Lynnwood, washington, United States.  
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BIR Annual Congress 2016  
Conference: 3 Nov 2016 - 4 Nov 2106, London, London, United Kingdom. Organized by British Institute of Radiology.  
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Steve Bell on Labour's leadership contest  cartoon  
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Reality TV in Cleveland  
Trump's candidacy rests on his experience as a business leader, on the notion that he is the CEO ready to run America, Inc. What he has demonstrated so far at the Republican convention in Cleveland is not deviation from an ideological norm, but simple ineptitude. And for a would-be chief executive to the nation, that's not a good look.  
culture  

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Fences: A Brexit Diary  
A referendum magnifies the worst aspects of an already imperfect system—democracy—channeling a dazzlingly wide variety of issues through a very narrow gate. It has the appearance of intensification—Ultimate democracy! Thumbs up or thumbs down!—but in practice delivers a dangerously misleading reduction.  
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Steve Bell's If ... Emperor Theresa May flies her banner  
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Steve Bell on Jeremy Corbyn and the vote to renew Trident cartoon  
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http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fclaire-fordham%2Fbee-expert-dr-reese-halte_b_11056942.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Bee Expert Dr. Reese Halter Explains Why They Are So Important To Humans And What We Can Do To Save This Endangered Species  
Next time a bee invades your personal space while enjoying a picnic or barbecue, think twice before you swat it. It's an endangered species. And if the bee population dies out, as many experts fear they might, humans will also become an endangered species.


Photo by Julie Ellerton

Acclaimed conservation biologist and environmentalist Dr. Reese Halter has been working diligently to spread the word that bees are our friends, not our enemies. He is a powerful voice for bees, trees and seas. Over 12 months (April 2015 to March 2016), 44 percent of our 2.4 million commercial hives have experienced the highest death rates ever recorded. "It's an epic commercial honeybee crisis," said Halter.

There are several reasons why, all man-made. "Bees are dying from introduced insects, bacteria, fungus and poor husbandry -- including being fed corn syrup instead of honey -- and the systemic use of chemicals called neonicotinoids (neonics) in pesticides," said Halter. "Neonics are in high concentrations in most home gardening products. They kill soil and water organisms. We know neonics kill bees, yet over two billion pounds of neonics are used globally each year."

Halter is adamant the end of bees would herald the end of man. "We need healthy bees to survive on the planet. Bees give us our food, our clothes (cotton), 450 million pounds of honey and nine million pounds of beeswax in America annually. Also powerful apis therapy and pain medicines for rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia and multiple sclerosis. When the bees die, we die."

Almost one trillion bees have died needlessly since 2006. "If a bee comes into contact with neonics, they lose their minds and shake to death: Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Those poisons kill everything in the soil. It doesn't end there. They poison the water for up to a decade, then all the birds who eat the worms and critters in the soil are denied food. Bird populations have also plummeted. We're missing one billion birds in North America alone. When the predatory birds' numbers plummet, all hell breaks loose and it's 'hello, vermin.' And on it goes."

Halter has been studying Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) since it began in 2006. He wrote The Incomparable Honeybee in 2009. He says there are at least 20,000 varieties of bee with possibly another 20,000 yet to be discovered. He is also outraged that "Big Chem" and feed companies are "being allowed to run roughshod by poisoning the earth. Throw in the climate crisis and the planet is in grave danger of extinction," he says.

Neonics have been banned in many European countries, while the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "turned a blind eye," says Halter. "Finally this year, the EPA said there might be a problem with neonics, but haven't banned them."

We can all do our bit to help bees by avoiding pesticides with neonics. Instead, look for products from the Indian Neem tree. "Most bees are solitary creatures who quietly go about their business collecting nectar and pollen from sun up to sun down and turn it into the magical rocket fuel we know as honey," said Halter.

He says rocket fuel is a fair description, considering the power and energy found in honey. This liquid gold is a treasure chest of nutritional and medicinal values. Some of the bigger hives can house 100,000 bees. Halter said, "A beehive is an effective and efficient society with one queen who lays 1500 eggs a day in a colony that's 98-percent run by females. It's the perfect paradigm for the ultimate food industry with zero unemployment."

Another way to help the mighty bee is to leave fresh water out for them. "Bees get thirsty, just like us. In your yard, place a water bowl filled with marbles. Make sure some marbles poke above the water level, so the bees can perch on them and lap the water," he suggests.

If you have a deadly allergy to bees, Halter says stay away from areas with flowers in bloom. When honeybees sting they die. So bees don't look for humans to sting, stinging is a last resort for them.

And those insects that annoy us at picnics probably aren't even bees. "The buzzing at picnics is either flies or hornets. One simple trick is to place some food a little bit away from you, as a decoy. The insects will go there and leave you alone," said Halter.

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Why SeaWorld Should Emulate The Keiko Project And Retire Captive Orcas To Sea Pens  
Seems like SeaWorld and its CEO Joel Manby just cannot say enough bad things about sea pens -- or in official SeaWorld-speak, "sea cages" -- for their captive orcas and other cetaceans.

Environmentalists and scientists have been promoting the idea of large sea pens -- areas of the ocean, such as large coves, netted off from the ocean -- as a more humane and ecologically sound alternative to the current small concrete tanks that orcas and other cetaceans now live in, working every day to earn their food. SeaWorld and other aquariums use food to induce whales, dolphins and seals to do their tricks for the public. If the captive does not do the trick correctly, they don't eat. They must be kept hungry, or they ignore their trainers.

In response to reporters about the news that the National Aquarium in Baltimore was planning to retire their eight dolphins (including seven bred in captivity) to a sea pen sanctuary in Florida or the Caribbean, SeaWorld made the statement:

"While some may use today's announcement to continue to call for the release of our orcas to sea cages, our point of view has not changed. Sea cages for our whales are high risk. Most of our whales were born at SeaWorld, and the best, and safest, future for them is to let them live out their lives here, receiving top care, in state-of-the-art habitats, safe from pollution and the other environmental threats they would face in our oceans."

Then, during an online meeting with shareholders, SeaWorld CEO Manby stated:

"We have the utmost respect for the National Aquarium. We certainly know they're going to take into account what we think are some health challenges of taking dolphins born and raised in an aquarium and placing them in an unfamiliar ocean environment, but having said that, we know they intend to pursue this experiment in a very mindful way and to monitor the health of their dolphins as they move them."

CEO Manby later doubled down on his disdain for sea pens:

"Could it be done to move whales to sea cages? Yeah, it technically possibly could be done. But is it the safest thing for our animals? We do not believe it is."

Sounds like a big "NO" to me.

Yahoo Finance shows SeaWorld stock plunging another 68 cents per share (4.48%) and is issuing a Strong Sell recommendation for SeaWorld. We believe at least part of the reason for the decline is SeaWorld's continued refusal to retire their orcas and dolphins to sea pens.



Sea pens have been used for years to hold cetaceans in captivity. One example is the US Navy, which just a few klicks from SeaWorld San Diego has a large number of bottlenose dolphins and sea lions in sea pens, exploited (unfortunately) for defense purposes.

The proposals for sea pens by scientists and expert marine mammal trainers (some from SeaWorld itself) are aimed at providing the best care available for orcas and dolphins while giving them much more room and a much less sterile environment than the concrete tanks that SeaWorld and other aquariums use.

And how can they seriously suggest that well designed sea pens pose any threat of pollution or other "dangers" to dolphins and whales? These animals have adapted through thousands of years of evolution to thrive in their oceans homes. Small concrete tanks are not at all suited to these large, intelligent, and social sea mammals.

SeaWorld has criticized the Keiko release effort as being a "failure." Keiko was the name of the orca star of the hit movie "Free Willy." The parts of the film with Keiko were done in his aquarium home in Mexico City. Conditions there were poor, with artificial seawater and very tight conditions, and Keiko contracted a skin infection as well as poor muscle tone and the telltale droopy dorsal fin, characteristic of captive orcas but rare in the wild.

At the behest of Warner Brothers films, Earth Island's International Marine Mammal Project formed the Free Willy -- Keiko Foundation to rehabilitate and release Keiko. After moving Keiko to a large state-of-the-art tank in Oregon to cure his skin problems and build up his strength, he was then flown to his home waters of Iceland. Keiko lived for about five years in Iceland, spending his days, without the circus performances, in both large sea pens and the open Atlantic Ocean, eventually swimming to Norway.

Keiko was the first captive orca whale ever returned to his home waters, a historic first. He lived out his life free of the stresses and dangers of life in a concrete tank.

His death was indeed unfortunate, but what SeaWorld's Manby and the rest of the captivity industry don't say is that while the International Marine Mammal Project and the Free Willy -- Keiko Foundation were rehabilitating Keiko and bringing him back to his home waters, 17 captive orcas died in aquariums around the world. Sea pens look a lot better when one considers the hidden death records of aquariums for their captive orcas.

Manby and other critics also fail to mention that SeaWorld and other aquariums rejected bringing in Keiko to their facilities, leaving him to die in a small Mexico aquarium until the International Marine Mammal Project and the Free Willy -- Keiko Foundation efforts saved him and brought him back to health.

When Keiko died, he was the second longest-lived male orca ever kept in captivity at that time.
So sea pens can be a healthy alternative to keeping captive orca whales and dolphins alive and healthy, far more so than the constraining and sterile environments provided by small concrete tanks. SeaWorld should reconsider their active opposition to sea pens and should work with scientists, trainers, and environmental organizations to establish sea pen sanctuaries to retire their orcas, beluga whales, and dolphins.

Unlike sea pens, SeaWorld's argument against them doesn't hold water.

For more information on the Keiko project, click here.

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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jul/19/guerilla-girls-feminist-art-activists-first-uk-show-whitechapel  
Feminist art activists the Guerrilla Girls get first dedicated UK show  

Whitechapel Gallery has commissioned the anonymous group to scrutinise gender diversity at hundreds of European galleries

Three decades after they first began exposing inequality in the art world, a group of anonymous mask-wearing feminist activists called the Guerrilla Girls are to get their first dedicated UK show.

The group will this summer survey more than 400 European galleries to explore whether museums are reflecting the full diversity of art and art history.

Related: The 10 most subversive women artists in history

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https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jul/19/bjork-virtual-reality-exhibition-somerset-house-digital  
Björk virtual reality exhibition to go on show at Somerset House  

Björk Digital will showcase how the Icelandic singer has pushed boundaries, culminating in Royal Albert Hall gig

An exhibition celebrating the vast and experimental visual repertoire of the Icelandic singer Björk is to be held at Somerset House this autumn.

Björk Digital will showcase the works created by the avant garde musician that have accompanied her music over the past two decades, celebrating how she has pushed the boundaries of art and technology.

Related: Björk: 'It's no coincidence that the porn industry has embraced virtual reality'

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https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/jul/19/mary-rose-newly-decked-out-reopens-5m-makeover  
Newly decked out Mary Rose reopens after £5m makeover  

Henry VIII's warship has been revamped to give visitors a more intense experience of what life must have been like for its crew

Almost 500 years after Henry VIII's favourite warship, the Mary Rose, sank off the south coast of England as the king watched despairingly, visitors are being treated to an extraordinary new view of the vessel.

The Mary Rose was dramatically raised from the seabed in 1982 and first went on display the following year but has always been obscured by the pipes, supports and sheets of glass necessary to preserve the precious timbers.

Related: In pictures: The Mary Rose

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http://www.designboom.com/art/hula-sean-yoro-water-mural-street-art-portrait-07-19-2016/  
hula paints semi-submerged floating females in undisclosed locales at sea  

the artist continues his paddle board sojourn in search of spaces that lend themselves to the emotional states of his highly expressive subjects.

The post hula paints semi-submerged floating females in undisclosed locales at sea appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

 
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http://www.designboom.com/art/slinkachu-dubai-walls-miniature-street-art-07-18-216/  
slinkachu sets miniature scenes across dubai's urban landscape  

placed, photographed and left on the street, the tiny cast of characters forms quirky scenes within the urban landscape.

The post slinkachu sets miniature scenes across dubai's urban landscape appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

 
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We're One Step Closer to Mind Reading  
This article was originally posted on Inverse.



By Dyani Sabin

On Tuesday, a team from Johns Hopkins University made some headway in uncovering the parts of the brain involved with making decisions. Published in the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, the study is one of the first to image the brains of people making voluntary decisions.

The team performed fMRI scans of 12 participants brains while they looked at a screen. Participants were told to look at a screen with two streams of text, and to switch paying attention from one to the other a few times a minute. Because the decisions made were voluntary, researchers could see what happens in the brain before a person decided to switch streams.

Before an individual decided to view a different stream, the fMRI picked up activity in two parts of the brain associated with attention, memory, and decision-making. Activity in these regions is starting earlier in comparison to previous studies where people are told to switch attention. This suggests that the medial frontal and lateral prefrontal cortexes are likely involved in processing decision-making.'

Witnessing brain activity before an action occurs give researchers the ability to study how the brain processes decisions, says Leon Gmeindl, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins and the lead author on the research. And while it's not quite mind reading, this kind of research has the potential to get us closer by imaging more complicated decision-making tasks.



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Custom Printed Organs  



By David W. Niesel and Norbert K Herzog

Arguably, among the most exclusive waiting lists are those for organ transplantation. This is an expensive "do or die" medical procedure with limited availability. In the US, kidney transplant waiting list time wait varies from 5-189 months with only four having times of under twelve months. Consider that every 10 minutes someone is added to an organ waiting list and twenty-one people a day die waiting. Remember one donor can save up to eight lives through multiple organ use. As of 2016, there are 121,527 people on an organ transplant waiting list and in 2015, but only about 15,000 donors. Despite advances in transplantation technology and national efforts to stimulate organ donation, the difference between need and supply remains wide. This gap in the supply and demand for transplantable organs has led to desperate measures to obtain organs. In the Far East, there is a thriving organ black market where some prey on the less fortunate or some reported kidnappings and even murder to obtain them.

There are some alternatives. Researchers have developed ways to use organs from animals for transplantation, called xenotransplantation to reduce the gap in transplantable organs. Several countries including Russia and New Zealand have already approved clinical trials using pig derived cells for treating Type 1 diabetes. However xenotransplantation is controversial. One major concern is the fear that animal viruses could be introduced into humans. Finally and significantly, there are a host of religious, social and ethical issues that will be a challenge to large scale xenotransplantation.

You have likely heard about 3D printing's impact with some calling it the start of a new industrial revolution. 3D printing is a modification of the office inkjet technology but the nozzle moves both back and forth and up and down to deposit plastic or other melted material to form a 3D object. In medicine, 3D printing is important for prosthetics for children where replacement parts can be produced as the child grows. Surgeons have been using this technology to produce working models for reconstructive surgeries. Orthopedists produce working models of fractured bones to optimize the placement of screws and plates before surgery and dentists' offices produce crowns and dentures.

New advances in 3D printing are beginning to produce tissues that could one day be transplanted. Such bioprinting uses the technology to add layers of biocompatible material to make a scaffolding then adds tissue specific cells to grow in and on it. This scaffolding provides the tissue shape and structure based on anatomical location and need. For example, a bioprinted trachea would be printed to the precise dimensions needed. Eventually the biocompatible materials degrade leaving a new tissue. A new bioprinting technology also provides spaces for blood vessels insuring that once implanted, the tissue will receive nutrients and oxygen from blood. Researchers used this technique to print cartilage in the shape of a human ear, muscle and jawbone. Implanted into mice, these engineered tissues remained viable and began to develop a blood supply. While these are first steps, we may look back and characterize these as the "proof of principle" for printing organs for human transplantation. Eventually, this will mean saving lives and creating a limitless supply of life saving organs for transplantation.

Medical Discovery News is hosted by professors Norbert Herzog at Quinnipiac University, and David Niesel of the University of Texas Medical Branch. Learn more at www.medicaldiscoverynews.com.

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The Real-Life Ghostbusters of the Brain  
This article was originally posted on Inverse.

By Yasmin Tayag

"In a sense, we are absolutely the ghosts we are sensing," Giulio Rognini, Ph.D., a senior scientist at EPFL's Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, says.

Rognini is part of a team of researchers at Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne that might be best described as the real-life ghostbusters. The team is attempting to understand what makes our brains want to believe that apparitions are ghosts.

While he's more than willing to admit that ghostly sensations are completely real, he'll be the first to point out that they're not actually caused by ghosts. In his work, he's discovered that many such "encounters" are actually caused by a series of brain malfunctions, which trick us into attributing our movements and sensations to someone else.



Rognini's particular line of research focuses on a particular type of ghost encounter referred to by scientists as the feeling of a presence. "Typically, people report the type of apparition that they see," Rognini says. "Our kind of apparition is more the sensation that someone is nearby when no one is actually present." These kinds of encounters are most often reported by people with neurological disorders, like epilepsy and stroke, but they're also common in people who do extreme, exhausting sports, like long-distance cycling or mountain climbing. If ghosts aren't real, then what's triggering these experiences? Rognini and his colleagues -- who specialize in investigating the body's role in subjective experience and self-consciousness -- have spent the last decade looking for the source.

In 2006, Olaf Blanke, Ph.D., Director of the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, was implanting electrodes into the brains of epilepsy patients to investigate the source of the disease. Unexpectedly, he discovered that zapping a specific area of the brain triggered a feeling of a presence in his patients. As he investigated further, he found that the movement of the presence always corresponded to what the patient was doing. If the patient was standing, the presence was standing. If the patient was sitting, the presence was felt as sitting. "There were correspondences between movement and posture between the patient and the presence, showing what we call the sensorimotor aspect of the phenomenon," Rognini explains. "What was happening was that the patient was misattributing his own signals -- his own posture -- to the presence."

In essence, the "ghosts" the patients were sensing were really just echoes of their own movements. When our brains function normally, we have a strong sense of who we are and where we are in space. Processing touch, motor cues, and proprioception -- that is, understanding the stimuli our own bodies produce and perceive -- all goes smoothly, giving us a firm understanding of how our bodies exist in physical space. By studying people whose brains couldn't integrate their body's sensorimotor signals, Rognini and his team concluded that lesions in the parts of the brain crucial to generating the experience of "self" -- the temporoparietal, insular, and frontoparietal cortex regions -- were the root cause of the feeling of a presence.

An engineer by training, Rognini began a follow-up study by devising a robot to trigger the feeling of a presence in healthy patients. As participants manually controlled the robot's movements, the robot, in turn, reproduced those movements on the patient's back, either with or without a small delay. "When there was this small delay, in a way replicating the conflict that is present in neurological patients with brain lesions in areas that integrate body signals, the patient no longer attributes movements and touch to himself," he explains. Unable to figure out where the movements are coming from, the patient has no choice but to attribute them to someone -- or something -- else.

Some of the patients in this study, which was described in a 2014 paper in Current Biology, were too freaked out by the robot's ghostly presence to participate for its entirety and asked to stop the experiment. But the study successfully showed what Rognini was hoping to prove: Ghosts are all in our heads.

"We take for granted that we have a solid representation of our body in space and time," he says. "I think this feeling of a presence study is a nice example of the fact that when you trick your own bodily signals and you trick your brain at interpreting them, then you can have very very weird, strange sensations." His next move will be to test his robots on patients inside an MRI scanner in order to pinpoint the specific parts of the brain that are chasing phantoms.

Of course, Rognini is aware that his model can't explain all of the different ghosts humans have claimed to encounter. "The literature on ghosts and apparitions and hallucinations is huge and also highly influenced by culture," he says, explaining that his experiment provides a scientific account of only a small sliver of the supernatural. Can science suggest an explanation for everything else? Even Michael Shermer, notorious science cynic and founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, has admitted he's been forced to consider the existence of the supernatural. If you ask Rognini, he'll admit that his work only goes so far.

"We cannot, of course, explain out all the apparitions that have been reported."

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• New Research Suggests Antisocial Teens Have Different Brain Development
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• 'Pokemon Go' Accounts are Selling for Thousands of Dollars

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Ancient rocks reveal how Earth recovered from mass extinction  
Scientists have shed light on why life on Earth took millions of years to recover from the greatest mass extinction of all time.  
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Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: 'Green News Report' - JuLY 19, 2016  
The Green News Report is also available via...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Surprise! Donald Trump's running mate is also a climate science denier; U...

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Maite Arce: Latino Conservation Week: Breaking Down Barriers, Inspiring Tomorrow's Stewards  
Place matters to all people. Latinos included. Many of our families have lived in this great nation for a long time and have lived on and worked the l...

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http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/melt-water-over-arctic-sea-ice  
Melt Water Over Arctic Sea Ice  
Sea ice across the Arctic Ocean is shrinking to below-average levels this summer. NASA's Operation IceBridge, an airborne survey of polar ice, just completed its first flights studying the aquamarine pools of melt water on the ice surface that may be accelerating the overall sea ice retreat.  
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London by night  

martijnvansabben posted a photo:

There will be thousands of photo's almost looking the same, but this view was just mesmerising.

 
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Pickaboo  

felixhelgesson posted a photo:

 
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ARM and SoftBank: Why the UK needs more giant tech takeovers, not less0  

mohanrajdurairaj posted a photo:

ARM and SoftBank: Why the UK needs more giant tech takeovers, not less0

 
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http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/07/19/hackers-threaten-to-take-pokemon-go-offline-august-1-with-massive-ddos-attack/  
Hackers threaten to take Pokémon Go offline August 1 with massive DDoS attack  

Poodlecorp (yes, you read that right) has threatened to take the über popular augmented reality game Pokémon Go offline August 1 through a series of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on the game's already fragile servers. “We take the servers offline because it is popular right now and nobody can stop us,” @xotehpoodle (a member of the Poodlecorp group) said. “We do it because we can, nobody can stop us and we just like to cause chaos. We chose August 1 so we have time to relax and not care about doing anything.” The group plans to take the…

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Netflix announces a second season of ‘Making a Murderer'  

Making a Murderer, the breakout true crime documentary from Netflix, is set to return for a second season. “We are extremely grateful for the tremendous response to, and support of, the series. The viewers' interest and attention has ensured that the story is not over, and we are fully committed to continuing to document events as they unfold” said creators, Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos. In case you missed the first, a team of documentary film makers followed Wisconsin resident Steven Avery as he was released from prison after serving 18 years for the murder and sexual assault of another…

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Start an IT system administrator career with the Professional Python and Linux Administration Bundle (95% off)  

IT experts are modern day superheroes in the world of business, with the skills and insight to secure and fortify the success of companies worldwide. Available for a limited time, the Professional Python & Linux Administration Bundle will teach you, over the span of four in-depth courses, the steps and methodologies to earn a lucrative career in IT System Administration. For a limited time, readers can take 95 percent off the retail price on TNW Deals. With Python's comfortable learning curve and wide versatility it's found in everything from game development to software its applications are virtually limitless.…

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Enjoy top-tier digital security and access with TigerVPN Full: Lifetime Subscription (93% off)  

Are you still unprotected when using the internet? From malicious hackers to government surveillance to identity thieves and beyond, there are a vast number of opportunities for your sensitive data and personal information to be stolen and used for nefarious purposes. TigerVPN provides the level of security you need in a volatile digital world with more than 60 servers worldwide an 256bit SSL encryption for your online activity. For a limited time, you can pick up a TigerVPN Full: Lifetime Subscription for a fantastic 93 percent off from TNW Deals. With TigerVPN's Full plan, you'll enjoy unlimited data on easy-to-use…

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Scientists predict academic acheivement from DNA alone  
Scientists have used a new genetic scoring technique to predict academic achievement from DNA alone. This is the strongest prediction from DNA of a behavioral measure to date.  
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This cutting-edge technology lets you control multiple drones with your mind  

While we've previously seen crafty inventors fly drones with the assistance of devices like the Apple Watch or the Nintendo Power Glove, researcher Panagiotis Artemiadis is working on a technology that will take drone control to a whole new level. The scientist that heads the Human-Oriented Robotics and Control Lab at Arizona State University has come up with a way to control multiple drones using simply the power of your mind. To accomplish this, Artemiadis and his team have devised a special skullcap that connects your brain to a computer through 128 electrodes. The device then records electrical brain activity and proceeds to decipher and convert your thoughts to movements that the…

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Lawsuit alleges FBI is intentionally screwing up Freedom of Information Act requests  

A new lawsuit alleges the Federal Bureau of Investigation is willfully avoiding granting access to documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The lawsuit, filed by national security researcher and MIT Ph.D. candidate, Ryan Shapiro alleges the FBI is using an antiquated system that searches in the “universal index” of its legacy Automated Case Support system rather than two modern search applications the FBI has access to — a move he argues leads to “failure by design” and an inability to turn over requested documents due to the system's inability to find them. “When it comes to FOIA, the FBI is simply…

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Stop holding your breath for Spotify on Xbox, it ain't happenin'  

The upcoming summer update for Xbox One is packed with features, such as Cortana support, a merging of the Xbox and Windows store and (finally) background music. The music, however, won't be coming from Spotify — at least not now. Recently asked whether it could soon be coming to Xbox One, a Spotify representative (on Twitter) said “we're focused on our exclusive partnership with PlayStation,” which is a non-committal way of saying “it's not happening.” That's not to say that Sony's exclusivity agreement with Spotify won't end at some point but for now it's not happening. @PalmyGamingHD Hi! Right now we're focused…

This story continues at The Next Web  
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Homeland Vintage Jaz  
Homeland Vintage Jazz Record Covers  
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Barney Bubbles  
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2016 Climate Trends Continue to Break Records  

NASA Goddard Photo and Video posted a video:

Two key climate change indicators -- global surface temperatures and Arctic sea ice extent -- have broken numerous records through the first half of 2016, according to NASA analyses of ground-based observations and satellite data.

Each of the first six months of 2016 set a record as the warmest respective month globally in the modern temperature record, which dates to 1880, according to scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. The six-month period from January to June was also the planet's warmest half-year on record, with an average temperature 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the late nineteenth century.

Read more: go.nasa.gov/29SQngq

Credit: NASA/Goddard

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NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA's mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA's accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency's mission.

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X marks the spot at the center of the Milky Way galaxy  
Two astronomers -- with the help of Twitter--have uncovered the strongest evidence yet that an enormous X-shaped structure made of stars lies within the central bulge of the Milky Way Galaxy.  
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Undetected Alien Civilizations --"May Be Cloaking Their Existence Using Laser Technology" (Today's Most Popular)  
 
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ESA-RAL Advanced Manufacturing Laboratory - Polishing table  

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

ESA's Martina Meisnar working in the ESA-RAL Advanced Manufacturing Laboratory at STFC's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory on 14 June 2016.

The ESARAL Advanced Manufacturing Laboratory on Harwell Campus, UK, assesses new material processes, joining techniques and 3D printing technologies for application in space.

Polishing samples is necessary for microstructural analysis because it creates a better surface finish when analysed through a Scanning Electron Microscope, for example. At the end of the polishing process, the metal surface reveals the material's microstructure and texture, making it reflective.

Credit: STFCS. Kill

 
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Subatomic Particles "Maintain Ghostly, 'Neither-Here-Nor-There' Identity as They Travel Through Universe"  
 
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NASA's Rebooted K2 Mission Yields 104 New Exoplanets --"A Brilliant Second Life!"  
 
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Flat-faced longhorn  

Flat-faced longhorn beetle (Pogonocherus penicillatus) collected in Mingan Archipelago National Park Reserve, Quebec, Canada, and photographed at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics (sample ID: BIOUG12231-B05; specimen record: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_RecordView?processid=CNMIC1733-14; BIN: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_BarcodeCluster?clusteruri=BOLD:AAC6764)

 
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Neon Museum, Las Veg  
Neon Museum, Las Vegas, Nevada (© Kerrick James/Getty Images) 2016-07-19 [www.bing.com/search]  
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https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/18-24-july-2016/successfully-design-augmented-reality-games-mobile/  
Pokémon Go: Designing augmented reality games for mobile  

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks, chances are you will have come across the global phenomenon that is Pokémon Go.

Following the popularity of its initial launch in Australia, New Zealand and the US earlier this month, the augmented reality (AR) gaming app based on the original Pokémon game designed for Nintendo Game Boy in the 1990s has caused similar hysteria among UK fans since its release here last week.

To give a glimpse into just how successful the app has been so far, it now has more daily users than Twitter on Android phones in the US, according to analytics site SimilarWeb, and Nintendo shares ended on Tuesday up 14.4% at ¥31,770 (£228), more than doubling its gains since the game first launched.

As far as AR apps go, the concept behind Pokémon Go is fairly simple. Niantic the California-based mobile game developer and spin-off from Google's parent company, Alphabet has created the multiplayer app using geolocation technology. Players are able to walk around the real world catching virtual monsters, such as Pikachu, and then train them to fight other monsters.

While Pokémon Go certainly isn't the first game of its kind, the fact that it has had a huge impact on the mobile gaming world in such a short space of time is likely to pique the interest of designers working within the AR field.

But it is going to take more than a few monster holograms and some 1990s nostalgia for others to emulate that success, according to Adrian Hon, founder and chief executive officer at London-based independent game developer, Six to Start.

“If Pokémon Go was called Monster Hunter and it was just a bunch of creatures that you had never heard of, people wouldn't care anywhere near as much,” Hon says. “[Nintendo] was able to make it work because it has this brand that has been around for 20 years and sold hundreds of millions of copies of its games.”

It is crucial then for designers to avoid the temptation of opting for Pokémon Go “knock offs”. Instead, he says, they ought to be focusing on developing games that look beyond cashing in on the novelty factor.

Hon is part of the team behind Zombies, Run!, the immersive audio AR app designed to make jogging more exciting by placing the user at the scene of a “zombie apocalypse” through the use of sound. Players have to undertake tasks such as collecting supplies, rescuing survivors and of course running away from zombies.

The app has proven hugely successful since it was first launched in 2012, after an initial $73,000 (£56,000) crowd funding campaign. It currently has over two million downloads and a quarter of a million active players. Hon puts much of this success down to creating a simple yet engaging narrative.

“We developed a really strong story in a really strong world,” he says. “Pokémon Go doesn't have a story, but Pokémon the brand does…If you can't use an existing brand, then you have to work really hard to make sure that the one you make is really strong, because that's ultimately what people are going to care about.”

Hon also makes the point that with the exception of Pokémon Go, which requires people to actually get off the sofa and leave the house in order to catch Pokémon and progress through the game the majority of AR apps are only likely to have lasting success if designed to complement the user's existing lifestyle.

“With Zombies, Run! we're very keen on not requiring the user to look at the screen all the time…because for us we didn't want people to have to alter their habits,” he says.

Other experts maintain that it is important for designers to take advantage of the fact that AR gaming apps incorporate elements of both reality and fantasy.

“There's obviously something spectacular about seeing effectively holographic overlays of things seeming to exist in an environment that does exist,” says Nicolas Roope, creative partner at digital consultancy, Poke.

“But I think there has to be a reason to use a real environment…otherwise if the elements you are using are pure fantasy, then why not just present it within a full virtual reality environment?”

As well as the social design elements Roope says ought to be considered (particularly with multiplayer games like Pokémon Go, which has the capacity to create subcultures by facilitating physical meetings between game players based close by), he also thinks designers should keep in mind the more technical aspects of designing for AR.

While they may not physically be involved with the coding side of app game development, for example, Roope maintains that the two things go hand in hand.

“Thinking in game design is also understanding the logic…how do you pack the space in a room, how do you make sense of different surfaces and make the characters work within the architecture?” he says.

“The more you are able to do that, the more delightful and real these elements will feel.”

As for the future of AR gaming on smartphones, it remains to be seen how much more complex designers will be looking to develop apps like Zombies, Run! and Pokémon Go, or whether they may shift their focus altogether towards fully immersive technologies such as virtual reality (VR).

Peter Pashley, head of development at Ustwo Games, says the game developer chose to work with VR when designing gaming apps such as Land's End which is set among the dramatic landscapes of an ancient civilisation because it provides “the ultimate medium for escapist experiences”.

But he sees the fundamental design challenge for both VR and AR mobile apps as the same: “to get the player to believe what they're seeing is real.”

While the current version of Pokémon Go, for instance, is quite basic when it comes to using AR to superimpose monsters on to the real world, Pashley expects that designers could move it on a lot further in future versions.

“You can totally imagine a more advanced version, using Hololens or Magic Leap tech, where you see these creatures take cover behind real walls, [or] you can bounce Pokéballs around real corners,” he says.

For the most part though, Pashley thinks that designers will opt to go one of two ways when designing AR games for smartphones as they become more advanced.

“The mobile market usually tends towards simplicity,” he says, “so I think we'll see a splitting of this new genre into titles more focused on the geo-social aspects and those which push the limits of the AR tech.”

The post Pokémon Go: Designing augmented reality games for mobile appeared first on Design Week.

 
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https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/18-24-july-2016/design-businesses-can-survive-thrive-post-brexit/  
How design businesses can survive and thrive post-Brexit  

It's nearly a month since the EU referendum result. One month of extreme political and economic change. Many consultancy owners are concerned about how revenues and profitability may be impacted; how successfully their businesses may continue to trade and perform.

It's worth remembering the design sector has been growing at well above the rate of the UK economy, and the quality and effectiveness of our offer is world-renowned. If we pick between the worry and uncertainty, what opportunities and positives can our industry take forwards? How can we pro-actively face these challenging times?

Pro-activity

“Here's what we always advise in times of turbulence,” suggests Shan Preddy of PREDDY&CO and author of How to Run a Successful Design Business, “One: Turn up the heat immediately on the satisfaction, retention and development of current and recent clients. They are the easiest, quickest and best source of future business. Two: Check over your vision, values, goals, business strategy, finances, product quality and marketing programmes. Perfect? If not, work on them. Three: Invest heavily in your team members by giving them expert internal and external coaching and training. With the right knowledge, skills and capabilities they will perform at their best and support you fully.” And Preddy adds: “Doing these three things now will protect you from bad, and prepare you for good times ahead, whatever the eventual impact of the referendum result.”

Jack O'Hern of accountancy firm Wright Vigar supports this message when he says: “If your market is going to be affected, then appropriate contingency planning ahead of falling sales or rising costs is the duty of a responsible management team, but avoid talking oneself into acting too quickly.”

Reasons to be cheerful

“Life must go on,” says business advisor Ian Cochrane, Chairman of Ticegroup. “There will be opportunities for positive thinking design consultancies to help their clients to grow and thrive in this new trading environment.” Measures are being put in place to stave off recession and boost the economy, and Cochrane flags that there are at least three reasons to be cheerful:

1. Borrowing should be easier moving forward and interest rates are likely to remain low for the foreseeable future. This will enable agencies to invest in staff, learning and technology to accelerate growth.

2. Corporation tax may go down which will not only attract inward investment to the UK but automatically increase post tax earnings and the valuation of design businesses.

3. The weaker sterling exchange rate will boost overseas sales potential.

“Agencies have a real opportunity to build and prepare their businesses ready for a possible trade sale in 3-5 years' time,” Cochrane says.

On consultancies' financial concerns, accountant Green and Purple's managing director, Peter Carter also has some good news. Design businesses which are service providers to the EU with few overhead costs in those markets, are in fact beautifully placed they are now more competitive than a supplier in their client's home country.

“Any piece of work you quote in GBP now is worth the same to you as it was, but costs your clients less, because of the pound's weakness, which will probably recover slowly but not for quite some time. If you already have any foreign-denominated retainers: happy days, they're worth more to you than they were last month,” says Carter.

Peter also flags that during the last few downturns we have seen a gradual shift where advertising and marketing spend is being seen as a recovery tool, rather than a discretionary nice-to-have, so consultancies aren't getting “switched off” in a downturn at least no more than other essentials like people and property costs. “Hold your nerve when quoting and tendering,” he advises, “you shouldn't need to drop your prices to undercut ‘local' competitors, and the UK has long had the edge in terms of sharp and effective design.”

The long game

“There is a long way to go until we are clear again on our working relationship with our European friends,” says  design industry expert Kate Blandford of Kate Blandford Consulting. “Stay calm, keep up those friendships, continue to do your extraordinary work, building healthy commercial futures for your clients' brands.”

It's a sentiment echoed by business development consultant, Catherine Allison of Master the Art: “Surely now, more than ever, agency CEOs need to project positivity, ensure agency staff remain confident and engaged, invest in their personal development and train them to represent the agency in the best possible way? Only then will they be best placed to convert those new business opportunities that do come their way.”

So in these extraordinary days, months and years ahead, this will be the time to really master your messaging to your clients on the value you can bring to their business; the ROI and commercial growth they can expect to see from investing in design. As the DBA's chief executive Deborah Dawton says: “UK design is world leading. Our industry's proven ability to drive both business and economic growth has not changed, nor has the quality and effectiveness of our offer. UK design is a potent business asset and a sound commercial investment.”

It is our time to design a better future for business, government and society. The opportunity is there. 

www.dba.org.uk

The post How design businesses can survive and thrive post-Brexit appeared first on Design Week.

 
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https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/18-24-july-2016/new-app-designed-deliver-doctors-patients-doors/  
A new app designed to deliver doctors to patients' doors  

It's no longer only restaurant food and cabbies that smartphone users can order to their door a new doctor “delivery service” app has been designed, which allows patients to request a general practitioner to arrive at their home within an hour and a half.

GPDQ GP Delivered Quickly  is a start-up company, founded by NHS and private healthcare GP Dr Anshumen Bhagat, with the aim of creating a “more accessible and affordable private primary care solution”.

Patients are able to request a GP to arrive at any given location from Monday Sunday, 8am 11pm within an average of 90 minutes, for appointments and prescriptions. Appointments start at £120 for a 25-minute consultation, and go up in price if patients want extra time or to use the system's two-hour medication delivery service.

The company is registered with the Care Quality Commission, the medical profession's independent regulator, and uses doctors who are UK-trained and registered with the General Medical Council.

The user interface (UI) uses a simple colour scheme of white, black and pink, along a sans-serif typeface.

The UI includes a map, with plots showing where GPs are based in the user's vicinity. The user can then select an address, and they are given an expected arrival time, alongside an appointment fee.

Once they've ordered, they're given a profile and photo of the doctor they will be receiving treatment from, alongside a rating and a reviews system.

Following the appointment, they are encouraged to leave a star rating and review, and can view their past and previous appointments through a side menu.

Inspired by Uber and Airbnb

The app was designed by freelance designer Alisa Afkhami, who says Uber was the inspiration behind the user experience (UX) and digital design of GPDQ.

“You could say GPDQ is Uber but for GP visits,” she says. “A lot of user are already familiar with the Uber experience, so by following a similar experience this helps to create an instant sense of trust and ease, as they don't have to ‘learn' how to use our app.”

She adds: “As a start-up, we don't have the same resources as Uber, which now has a massive team of designers, experts, testers and developers but we can learn a lot from their design decisions and adopt them to our own concept.”

Inspiration was also drawn from the user interface design of Airbnb, Afkhami says. “It has such a clear hierarchy and visual language to display information that it just makes it so easy to digest and absorb,” she says. GPDQ aims to mimic this through its simplicity of use.

“Giving control” to patients

Afkhami says the app concept aims to “empower” patients, through allowing them to leave reviews and ratings, and giving them more control over when they see a doctor.

“Rather than waiting on hold at their GP surgery to try and get an available appointment in the next few weeks, patients can see a doctor right away at a place that's convenient for them. The rating system also allows GPDQ to maintain a high standard of care based on patient feedback.”

GPDQ is currently only available in central London but will be expanding to more UK cities soon, the company says.

The post A new app designed to deliver doctors to patients' doors appeared first on Design Week.

 
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https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/18-24-july-2016/partners-creates-new-branding-international-aids-society/  
The Partners creates new branding for International AIDS Society  

The Partners has created a new visual identity for the International AIDS Society (IAS), an organisation which brings together medical professionals, campaigners and those working towards a cure.

The new brand identity is based around a flat red ribbon icon, the universal symbol for awareness and support of HIV and AIDS. The logo sees a flat square with a black outline, with the letters IAS within it, alongside the red ribbon.

The simple colour scheme of red, white and black is incorporated throughout all visual communications, with the bright red colour being used boldly as the backdrop for advertising posters.

The Partners hopes the new design work will help to convey a sense of humanity, says Margaret Wolhuter, managing director at The Partners' health division.

“It was extremely important for us to reflect the IAS' deeply personal, human connection in our work,” she says. “The new strategy and design represent the humanity at the centre of the IAS brand and will help the organisation to grow further in their response to one of the biggest challenges facing humankind today.”

This has been communicated through taglines such as “Stronger together”, alongside stark facts about how many people contract, live and die from the condition every year, with the aim of conveying the “social and personal impact of HIV”, says the consultancy.

By using strings of ribbon motifs, each one also aims to symbolise “the voice of individual IAS members coming together as a powerful movement”, with the aim of counteracting “apathy, complacency, prejudice and ignorance” towards the condition, says Wolhuter.

IAS was founded in 1988, and is the world's largest association of HIV professionals, with members from more than 180 countries who work across all fronts to reduce the impact of HIV. It does this through initiatives that look to encourage scientific research to develop a cure, clinical management and treatment, journals and resources, the support of young people with the condition, among other things.

The post The Partners creates new branding for International AIDS Society appeared first on Design Week.

 
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Let me get me - Logo animation [gif]  

Hey there!
I've made logo animation for service called "Let me get me" which helps you to get best proposal in shops around you.

 
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Alien-Hunting 19 Years After "Contact"  
This article was originally posted on Inverse.



By Sarah Sloat

One of the most realistic parts of Contact is the blatant sexism that the brilliant young astronomer Eleanor Arroway encounters throughout the 1997 extraterrestrial-hunting film. The rumored inspiration for Arroway -- Jill Tarter -- said in 1999 that author Carl Sagan, who wrote the novel the movie was based off of, "included many of the 'character-building' experiences that are common to women scientists studying and working in a male-dominated profession, so Ellie seems very familiar to me."

"Character-building" in this scenario is being a prominent SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) astronomer who has to deal with backward dudes who think your scientific expertise is laughable science fiction and won't take you seriously because you're a woman. Great.

But for a movie that ends up with our protagonist on an intergalactic pseudo-beach chatting with an alien posing as her father, you may be surprised to know that what Contact nails doesn't stop there. Contact's realism is a reflection of the fact that Sagan knew what he was talking about. Until her breakthrough, Arroway lives a convincing life as a scientist -- working out of the same observatories as real SETI researchers, fighting for funding, and hunting for alien life by listening for radio signals between 1,200 and 3,000 MHz from systematically selected stars.

But what makes Arroway's discovery of alien-transmitted communication from the star Vega awesome material for a Hollywood blockbuster is that it's sold as a fantasy. Sagan knew the real science going on behind the fiction he created, but people who bought movie tickets didn't. People in 1997 didn't believe in SETI initiatives any more than the antagonists Arroway encountered.

If Contact was to get a remake today (but seriously, no) it wouldn't be able to instill the same sense of bewildered wonder. And that is a very good thing, namely because the work that Arroway portrays in the film is finally getting its due as a respectable field of science. Contact has proven to be prescient in 2016 (save for the actual we've-gotten-a-message-from-aliens part).


Ellie reachers for a cracker-jack compass during her journey to Vega.

Take billionaire Yuri Milner: In Contact, Arroway's work (and eventual voyage to Vega) is saved by the financial intervention of Dr. Hadden Suit, whose wealth seemingly has no bounds. Suit works from the shadows, moving the pieces in Arroway's life, without the public knowing of the alien-hunting science going on behind closed doors. Comparatively, Milner is a real life financier who has made his intentions to help find evidence of extra-terrestrials extremely public.

In 2015, Milner announced his Breakthrough Listen initiative in collaboration with the SETI program at the University of California, Berkeley -- a $100 million project that uses telescopes to listen for extraterrestrial radio signals and search for laser signals. In January, he announced another $100 million dollar project with Breakthrough Starshot, an enterprise that plans to send laser-powered lightsails to the star system Alpha Centauri with the eventual goal of encountering life in deep space. That line, in any other year, would seem straight-up ridiculous.


A Breakthrough Starshot solar sail.

But things are a bit different in 2016. Arroway probably would not need to patiently break down how radio signals work to suits in the U.S. government when they begin to investigate her work; they'd probably already know what's going on. Just look at the development of the FAST telescope being built in China, which Zheng Xiaonian of the Chinese Academy of Sciences says will have "the potential to search for more strange objects to better understand the origin of the universe and boost the global hunt for extraterrestrial life."

But mainly, a scientist of Arroway's caliber wouldn't have to take the same sort of inane criticism. SETI researchers are increasingly aware that they are no longer fringe weirdos. SETI communications director Seth Shostak told Inverse in January that, "I think there may be truth to SETI being taken more seriously by the public and it may be a consequence of the discovery of exoplanets filtering down to the public."

And while funding for exploratory science continues to be a struggle, SETI has been able to continue -- and even increase -- its programs. While it continues to monitor radio waves, sometimes with the help of public laptops, SETI is also able to use optical instruments to look for lasers and light patterns that could signify the presence of aliens.

In fact, on Thursday, SETI's Institute Director of Research Nathalie Cabrol published a proposal arguing for further developing alien-hunting techniques, specifically through the establishment of Virtual Institute with "new detection strategies."

"To find E.T., we must open our minds beyond a deeply-rooted, Earth-centric perspective, expand our research methods, and deploy new tools," said Cabrol in a press statement. "Never before has so much data been available in so many scientific disciplines to help us grasp the role of probabilistic events in the development of extraterrestrial intelligence. These data tell us that each world is a unique planetary experiment."

Cabrol's words are comparable to that of Arroway's, who praises the "acquisition of technology" as the catalyst for finally making contact probable. The good news for us: Cabrol is real, and one day, contact with aliens might be too.

MORE FROM INVERSE:

• NASA Just Shut Down That Alien Conspiracy Theory
• 
  
• The Future Of the Western Movie is the Space Opera
• 
  
• The 14 Coolest Asian Superheroes
• 
  
• SpaceX Wants to Add Two More Landing Pads in Florida
• 
  
• 6 Current Comics About Aliens, From 'Star-Lord' To 'Superman'

Photos via Giphy, Wikimedia Commons, IMDB

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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Covered California's Health Plan Rates To Jump Sharply In 2017  

After two years of moderate rate hikes, a double-digit increase in the cost of insurance premiums in California is likely to resonate across the U.S. in the debate about the benefits of Obamacare.

 
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Web Of Denial Groups Protesting Democrat Focus Get $92m In Funding  


As Democrat Senators spent two days this week outlining the cash funneled to front groups in the fossil fuel-funded climate "Web of Denial," predictably, some of the spiders started crawling out of that web.

The senators received a sharply-worded missive from a line-up of 22 free market groups, 21 of whom have received money from fossil fuel companies - or "dark money" (money laundered to hide the funders), and the majority of whom are fighting climate action - or the science. The total funding added up to more than $92m.

"Sadly, our democracy and our freedom hangs in the balance as you use your office to bully and single out groups to blame rather than ideas to debate," they lamented.

The American Citizenry "deserve and increasingly demand healthy and respectful political dialogue, and well-informed, well-debated public policies."

The letter, hosted on the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) website, started off reasonably politely, but quickly turned nasty as the writers accused the Senators of being tyrants, of shutting down free speech, yada yada yada.

In the interests of democracy and transparency, we decided to take a look at these groups.

We tallied up the funding they've received from just four entities since the late 90's: the Koch Brothers' various foundations, ExxonMobil, and the two Dark Money organizations, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.

The total tally of funding came to over $92 million to 21 of the 22 groups that signed the letter.

Not all of this (that we know of) went to climate denial specifically, because we don't know the details of why Donors Capital Fund gave them a total of $57,569,564, or, indeed, who provided the DCF with that cash. Neither do we know the details of Donors Trust, which provided $19,163,715 to these groups. But at least some of it, we know, was for these groups' fight against the climate science - or against action on climate.

And all but one of these organisations have been working to either undermine the climate science, or to prevent action on climate change, either at State or a National level.

"You were elected by the people to build consensus and find compromise--to fiercely debate the most pressing issues of our day. Often, these debates are meant to be contentious and without a clear solution because innovation comes from great challenge," they told the 19 senators.

Yet many of them have worked fiercely to oppose any solutions to arguably THE most pressing issue of the day: climate change. For example, ALEC has written model bills and resolutions designed to undermine - or kill - innovation such as renewable energy. These groups have challenged the scientific consensus on the climate science, and blocked progress at state and federal level to curb emissions.

Then there is their insistence on debate. Many of this lot use the "doubt is their product" tobacco playbook - keep the "debate" going so that the public thinks there is a debate over climate science. That this debate is over doesn't stop them. So writing to the Senators complaining they are shutting down debate is pretty much what you'd expect them to do.

Let's break down the funding a little more.

The Heartland Institute received a total of 18,645,247 from Donors Capital Fund, and a total of $20,018,747 from the four of them. That's an enormous amount of money. Heartland staff have given presentations at ALEC annual meetings. ALEC itself has received $3,556,487 from these four funders.

The Franklin Center for Government and Policy Integrity has received a total of $29,570,920- mostly from the Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust. Its affiliated news outlets regularly publish articles questioning climate science and parroting long-debunked myths around climate change.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, of course, is on the list. Again, a big recipient of Donors Trust money ($5 million), and it still coordinates the Cooler Heads Coalition, a group that's been going since the late 1990's.

Then there's the money that we haven't tallied.

For example, the John Locke Foundation, according to Robert Brulle and spelt out by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) in the debate, received $21 million from Art Pope's father's foundation 2003-2013. Art Pope is a good friend of the Koch brothers.

So in the end, one looks at these 22 organisations who've slammed the Democrat Senators' speeches in the house, and you can only conclude one thing: they would say that, it's the kind of thing they're paid to do.

Here's the full details of the funding to these groups.

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Paleontology: Aftermath of a mass extinction  
A new study of fossil fishes from Middle Triassic sediments on the shores of Lake Lugano provides new insights into the recovery of biodiversity following the great mass extinction event at the Permo-Triassic boundary 240 million years ago.  
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Mountain pine beetles infest and ravage thousands of acres of forest lands, Landsat satellites show  
In western North America, mountain pine beetles infest and ravage thousands of acres of forest lands. Landsat satellites bear witness to the onslaught in a way that neither humans nor most other satellites can.  
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Joel Kahn, M.D.: Moving From Ambulances To Fences For Strokes  
With the skyrocketing burden of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular illness, diabetes mellitus and cancer on the health and budgets of Western cou...

Read more: Health, Stroke, Nutrition, Diet, Fitness and Exercise, Smoking, Pollution, Environment, Healthy Living News

 
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Congress Subpoenas Climate Scientists In Effort To Hamper ExxonMobil Fraud Investigation  

ExxonMobil executives may have intentionally misled the public about climate change for decades. And the House Science Committee just hampered legal efforts to learn more about ExxonMobil's actions by subpoenaing the nonprofit scientists who sought to find out what the fossil fuel giant knew and when.

For 40 years, tobacco companies intentionally misled consumers to believe that smoking wasn't harmful. Now it appears that many in the fossil fuel industry may have applied similarly deceptive tactics and for just as long to confuse the public about the dangers of climate change.

Investigative research by nonprofit groups like InsideClimate News and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) have turned up evidence that ExxonMobil may have known about the hazards of fossil-fuel driven climate change back in the 1970s. However, rather than informing the public or taking steps to reduce such risks, documents indicate that ExxonMobil leadership chose to cover up their findings and instead convince the public that climate science couldn't be trusted.

As a result of these findings, the Attorneys General (AGs) from New York and Massachusetts launched a legal investigation to determine if ExxonMobile committed fraud, including subpoenaing the company for more information. That's when the House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith stepped in.

Chairman Smith, under powerful new House rules, unilaterally subpoenaed not just the AGs, but also many of the nonprofits involved in the ExxonMobile investigation, including groups like the UCS. Smith and other House representatives argue that they're merely supporting ExxonMobile's rights to free speech and to form opinions based on scientific research.

However, no one is targeting ExxonMobile for expressing an opinion. The Attorneys General and the nonprofits are investigating what may have been intentional fraud.

In a public statement, Ken Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists said:

We do not accept Chairman Smith's premise that fraud, if committed by ExxonMobil, is protected by the First Amendment. It's beyond ironic for Chairman Smith to violate our actual free speech rights in the name of protecting ExxonMobil's supposed right to misrepresent the work of its own scientists and deceive shareholders and the public. […]

Smith is misusing the House Science Committee's subpoena power in a way that should concern everyone across the political spectrum. Today, the target is UCS and others concerned about climate change. But if these kinds of subpoenas are allowed, who will be next and on what basis?

In fact, Chairman Smith also subpoenaed climate scientists at the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the fall of 2015 and again earlier this year. UCS representatives are referring to this as a blatant “abuse of power” on the part of the government and ExxonMobil.

Gretchen Goldman, a lead analyst for UCS, wrote: “Abuse of power is when a company exploits its vast political network to squash policies that would address climate change.”

The complete list of nonprofits subpoenaed by Chairman Smith includes: 350.org, the Climate Accountability Institute, the Climate Reality Project, Greenpeace, Pawa Law Group PC, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Rockefeller Family Fund, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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Sahara by HB Khoudir  

Sahara by HB Khoudir

Je suis sortie de ma bulle, J'ai pris le temps de regarder le monde et d'observer la lune, Donc voici la nouvelle Diam's en paix avec elle-même, J'préfère que ça parte aux enfants du désert....... <3

HB Khoudir: Photos

 
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Rise by Milan Vopalensky  

Rise by Milan Vopalensky

Check out my Facebook page for more photos: www.facebook.com/PortfolioMV

Milan Vopalensky: Photos

 
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The Smoggy Seas: Cargo Ships Bring Pollution, Health Risks  

Eight of the 10 busiest ports are in East Asia. A new study shows how the growing number of cargo ships are polluting the air and threatening health.

 
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How Do Clevelanders Feel About the RNC?  

Welcome to Cleveland, Ohio, where residents are telling us their thoughts on hosting the Republican National Convention. Atlantic staff writer David Graham spoke with a variety of people to understand the effects the event has had on the traditionally blue city.

 
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David Lynch on Where Great Ideas Come From  

In 2008, The Atlantic sat down with the filmmaker David Lynch as he mused about inspiration and how to capture the flow of creativity. Now, we've animated his words of advice. “A lot of artists think that suffering is necessary,” he says. “But in reality, any kind of suffering cramps the flow of creativity.”

 
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For ancient deep-sea plankton, a long decline before extinction  
A new study of nearly 22,000 fossils finds that ancient plankton communities began changing in important ways as much as 400,000 years before massive die-offs ensued during the first of Earth's five great extinctions. The research suggests that the effects of environmental degradation can be subtle until they reach a tipping point, at which dramatic declines in population begin.  
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House-hunting ants know how to take the hassle out of moving  
Ants employ a few simple and flexible rules to ensure that moving a colony to a new nest does not end in chaos, especially if this is done over some distance. A new study indicates that when it comes to giving directions, ants have it down to a fine art.  
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Twin Sisters Try To Get Pregnant With Ovaries They Froze In 2009  

Each twin had an ovary removed and frozen in 2009, when they were in their 30s, in hopes of buying more time to get pregnant and have babies. But will the thawed, reimplanted ovaries work?

 
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Fossils, islands and forests added to UNESCO World Heritage List  
Designation of several new sites around the world as having outstanding natural value to humanity could aid conservation and bring in money from tourists  
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Do more now to deliver on climate promises, world leaders told  
The Elders, a group of prominent dignitaries, have issued a statement calling on governments to stop backtracking on the Paris summit's commitments  
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HM Coastguard goes into battle against waterborne Pokemon  

As Reg news team snare art desk menacing Charizard

Suspicions are rising that Pokemon Go is some sort of massive Darwinian experiment, after HM Coastguard was forced to warn the UK populace about the dangers of attempting to capture waterborne varieties of the non-existence pocket monsters.…

 
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The Tiny Irish Island That Will Welcome American Refugees  

Inishturk, Ireland, has a population of 58 and its people—according to a widely circulated Internet rumor—have offered refuge to any Americans who want to flee from a Donald Trump presidency. This charming documentary by MEL Films, Make Inishturk Great Again, takes us to the sparsely inhabited island to get the locals' perspectives on America, the presidential election, and what Trump has said about Ireland. The film has an obvious perspective on Trump that is far from impartial, but it's entertaining and adventurous nonetheless. To see more films from MEL, visit their website and Vimeo page.

 
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Can Big Data Help Head Off Police Misconduct?  

An officer who's been under stress after responding to cases of domestic abuse or suicide may be at higher risk of a negative interaction with the public, a data scientist says.

 
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The Jwaneng Diamond Mine in Botswana is the richest diamond mine...  

The Jwaneng Diamond Mine in Botswana is the richest diamond mine in the world with an annual output of as much as 15.6 million carats (2006). Mine richness takes into account the rate of diamond extraction combined with quality of the diamonds that are mined (sale price per weight). To extract the diamonds, the facility produces 9.3 million tons of ore and an additional 37 million tons of waste rock per year. /// Source imagery: @digitalglobe (at Jwaneng Mine)

 
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crow at the field  

-- Carlosperez -- posted a photo:

 
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Demolition Day (30 photos)  

A collection of controlled explosions, blasts, kabooms, and crashes.

 
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A 30-Day Hunt For Food In A Starving Land  
The looting, the blackouts, the mob lynchings, the hospitals with no supplies. Venezuela's collapse into disarray is of a scale unseen in the Western Hemisphere in decades.  
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Grand Awakening by Drew Hopper  

Grand Awakening by Drew Hopper

Cold and misty morning from the Taj Mahal in Agra, Uttar Pradesh India. Website Follow my other social platforms: Facebook Instagram Twitter DeviantART Flickr For image licensing or print enquiries, please contact me at: drew@drewhopperphotography.com

Drew Hopper: Photos

 
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What Debt In Chicken Farming Says About American Agriculture  

History has proven many times that carrying large amounts of debt in a fluctuating market creates a dangerous situation. But the production contract model used that is spreading globally in chicken and livestock farming is a sign that agriculture itself is changing, shifting farmers into an increasingly debt-dependent scenario.

We're all familiar with the term "debt crisis." It reminds us of mortgages going underwater as property values crashed, and it rocked the world economy only a few years ago. Fewer people know about the similar farm debt crisis of the 1980s. Farmers were encouraged to maximize their loan capacity to get the newest equipment and seize momentary high prices for agricultural products. The profitability in the markets didn't last, and debt in agriculture reached an all time high of over $350 billion in 1981. Thousands of farmers found themselves underwater on their loans, in debt beyond the value of their assets. In just five years, between 1981 and 1986, more than 60,000 U.S. farmers lost their farm and were left homeless.

What many people might not realize is that many of these farmers that had never missed a single payment on their loans when they found themselves facing foreclosure, which was due to the fact that the value of their assets had dropped below the amount they owed on their loan, a situation called "non-monetary default." The loan did not change, but the market and the value of their assets did.

Today, there are worrying signs that we may be headed for more trouble. According to the USDA, total U.S. farm debt surpassed $365 billion in 2016, beating the 1980s peak in terms of sheer volume. At the same time, the U.S. farming sector is in the third year of an economic downturn as a result of an over-supply of grain globally.

There are some reasons why the record debt has not caused a replay of the 1980s crisis yet. Interest rates have been low, and farm assets are on average valued significantly higher today than they were in the 1980s. The USDA assess farm debt "health" by looking at farmers' capacity to repay the debts they have, a measurement called their Debt Repayment Capacity Utilization (DRCU). DRCU compares average farm debt levels to the theoretical amount of debt that farms could borrow and pay back, based on key factors such as their net income and current interest rates. So with low interest rates and higher value of farm assets than before, the assumption is that farmers have not yet maxed out at the "peak" amount of debt they could carry, at least in theory.

But, at the farm level, the current combination of piled up debt with decreasing income and cash-flow means farmers are facing a familiar squeeze, and that should raise serious red flags about the health and sustainability of our agricultural system.

Chicken farmers at the heart of the debt dependency in U.S. farming

Poultry (chicken and turkey) farmers are a major contributor to the statistics on rising debt levels in American farming. The contracts they have with Big Chicken companies are also the premiere model for production contract agriculture, which is spreading across agricultural industries. In this model, a company (like Tyson or Perdue) owns the chickens and independent farmers own the debt for the chicken houses and equipment required to raise them. This displaces the burden and risk of the debt related to production onto the farmer. This contract model has been praised by economists, including Tom Vukina of North Carolina State University, as being "brilliant" for solving problems of efficiency for big companies. Similar agreements are showing up in hog contracts, cattle, and even seeds. As other agricultural industries move in this direction, they are systematically exposing more farmers to higher stakes in debt related risks.

Poultry farming is "capital intensive." An average new chicken house costs $300,000 to build, and the average chicken farm today has at least 4 houses, though the current trend is to build new farms with many more. That means in order to get into the business, a farmer has to invest over $1 million just to get setup -- a lot of debt to carry when you're paid on average between $0.05 cents and $0.06 cents per pound of chicken produced.

Farmers take on huge personal risk to get this size of a loan, by putting their own assets on the line as collateral, often their family home or farmland. Many banks will not grant these large poultry loans unless they are guaranteed by the federal government; in many cases, the Farm Service Agency (FSA) and the Small Business Agency (SBA) offer guarantees to banks of up to 95% of the value of the loan if the farmer defaults. This kind of taxpayer support for farmers has a lot of positive impacts. For example, guaranteed loans ensure that many farmers have access to credit when they most need it. But in the case of poultry loans, with the lion's share of the bank's risk passed on to the taxpayers, there is concern that these guarantees reduce the bank's incentive to scrutinize the viability of the loan.

Poultry farmers are over-leveraged on average compared to other farmers. In 2007, poultry farmers had the highest DRCU of any sector in agriculture, at nearly 70%. This means that poultry farmers are have already leveraged nearly 70% of their capacity to pay back debt, just to keep the business running. This calculation does not include their livelihood: feeding their family, paying for their own home, etc. Close followers in high DRCU were hog and dairy farmers, industries that are increasingly adopting contract models similar to poultry. In the same year, according to research by USDA's Economic Research Service, the poultry sector also had a larger than proportional amount of insolvent farms, compared to other sectors.

In other words: debt dependency is business as usual in the poultry industry, and it poses a serious risk for farmers.

The Debt Treadmill

When a chicken farmer gets a loan and signs a contract, they start a cycle of debt that for some is literally never-ending. (See our infographic above for more on this topic). This same cycle happens time and again to chicken farmers in different states, with different companies; it is an industry-wide problem. Their experiences can be described in four steps:

1) An initial payout period for their loan may be 15 to 30 years long, in stark contrast with their contract. Contract lengths generally range from between 1 flock to 10 years, but a 2016 National Chicken Council study showed that over 50% of contract poultry farmers have been offered a flock-to-flock or less than 1-year contract by their company.

In the same study, the author acknowledges that even multi-year contracts lack enforceability for farmers: "In reality, a multi-year contract offers little additional assurance over a flock-to-flock contract" he states. There are several clauses in a chicken contract that will allow a company to back-out, slow down the placement of chicks, place less chicks, change the type of chicken the farmer is raising - and other decisions that can drastically affect a farmer's ability to manage debt payback.

2) Once they're in the business, farmers struggle to find stability under tournament payment systems. The means for calculating farmer payment is not straightforward. Their pay is based on how their efficiency ranks in a pool of farmers whose chickens are harvested at around the same time. But their efficiency rating also includes company decisions and actions - like the quality of the chicks and feed they get, diseases coming from the hatchery, the day their chickens are picked up and issues in transportation. These can have a significant impact on the farmer's performance and lower their rank in the tournament, which directly corresponds to lowering their paycheck. As a result, farmers paychecks vary by thousands of dollars from flock to flock. This exposes them to increased risks of short-term cash flow problems, like feeding their family and dealing with late payments and lower credit scores.

3) As farmers begin to make progress toward their loan payments, the risk of unexpected upgrades becomes a significant threat to their financial stability. Once a short-term contract has expired, farmers may be asked to upgrade their housing, even though they were told when they signed up that it would be "good" for 10-15 years. These unexpected expenses can amount to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and force farmers into a dilemma: skip the upgrade and risk losing the contract (and thus losing the farm or home as collateral for the loan), or burn up the equity they have built up to get a new loan, and extend their debt even farther into the future.

Required upgrades are unpredictable, expensive, and common. According to USDA data, between 2004 and 2006 chicken farmers spent over $650 million on upgrades to their chicken farms, an average of $38,000 per farm. In a different survey, ARMS found that over a three year period from 2009 - 2011 50% of contract poultry growers reported making an upgrade, and the majority of those (29% overall) were required to do so by their integrator.

4) The final step is starting over. Farmers refinance, and hope for the best, and the light at the end of the tunnel gets farther away. For many farmers, this treadmill means they will carry a risky loan for decades, with their personal assets tied up in it and no alternative way to service the debt.

This is not the model for agriculture that we should promote if we want to avoid another farm debt crisis.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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John Martin Scientist of the DayJohn Martin, an English...  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadak_in_Search_of_the_Waters_of_Oblivion#/media/File:Sadak_in_Search_of_the_Waters_of_Oblivion.jpg


http://collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/Record/1671627


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_Martin_-_Sodom_and_Gomorrah.jpg


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MARTIN_John_Great_Day_of_His_Wrath.jpg


http://dino.lindahall.org/man1838_l.shtml


http://dino.lindahall.org/man1838_l.shtml

John Martin Scientist of the Day

John Martin, an English painter and engraver, was born July 19, 1789.

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@IanAMaddox HIya Ian. feedsifter dead again :( is there any chance you can share the code so it can be hosted elsewhere?  

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Pride in Our Prides Saving Lions with Livestock Kraals  

Post submitted by Florian J Weise

Lions and people live a tenuous coexistence. Where their activities overlap problems are inevitable. The consequence often is fatal; sometimes for the people involved, more frequently so for the lions. In retaliation of attacks on humans or livestock, people resort to drastic measures including poisoning. Along the northern edge of Botswana's Okavango Delta poisoning killed up to 60% of the known lion population in 2013. In response, we started Pride in Our Prides to alleviate the tensions between rural communities and the lions that leave the safety of the Delta.

In December 2015 villagers in Teekae, one cattle post along the Delta's edge, were up in arms again to get rid of two male lions which had attacked their livestock for four consecutive nights.

Luckily, the hunting party could be calmed at last minute see previous blog: http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/28/into-the-lions-den-diffusing-a-lion-hunting-party/ Pride in Our Prides then pledged to return and help people prevent further attacks on livestock. Thanks to continued funding from National Geographic's Big Cats Initiative, Pride in Our Prides now lives up to its promise and started constructing a new lion-proof livestock enclosure in Teekae. This enclosure (or kraal) will protect livestock from lions at night, the time that domestic animals are usually left unguarded and become most vulnerable to predators.

Looking at the final result one may think that kraal building is a pretty straight-forward thing to do. It neither looks fancy nor very complicated. A closer look at a kraal's evolution, however, shows it's quite a formidable task!

First, during a meeting with the entire community (kgotla) a decision is made to determine who will own and use the next kraal. With multiple families facing lion conflicts, it can be a heated discussion and take several hours. Once agreed, a suitable site is found. Next you meet with the new kraal owner to decide on the dimensions and measure the plot. When all the ‘admin' eventually is finished, the kraal team pitches camp near the site, far away from their families and homes. Here they will stay for 3-4 weeks, the time it takes to complete a single lion-proof kraal.

The team then sets out to chop large amounts of mopane wood we use this abundant hardwood for its sturdiness and so that kraal owners can maintain the kraal without running short of the necessary material. For the Teekae kraal alone, the team chopped logs, support poles, and weaving branches worth 9 truck loads in total.

The logs often weigh in excess of 70 kg (or 150 pounds) and they are manoeuvred by hand!

Adding to this back-breaking work during the day, elephants visit Teekae each night. The jumbos need to be chased from the kraal site or otherwise they may simply eat up our stash of branches for weaving.

Once all the materials are on-site the team digs holes and plants the heavy logs that are connected with horizontal support poles. The smaller branches are woven into flexible, yet sturdy, panels which make up the walls of the kraal. Weaving is a common traditional skill throughout our project area but try weaving hardwood branches and for a kraal circumference of no less than 56 meters (or 61 yards)!

Finally, all sections are secured with strong wire, the only artificial material used on the kraal. When a kraal is finished we hand it over to the owner and community in a celebratory ceremony. Pride in Our Prides also continually monitors kraal use and efficiency so that we can keep refining the design. Not one of the current owners has suffered losses in any of these kraals which are hugely appreciated!

The new kraal at Teekae is the 9th that Pride in Our Prides has built in the area. And we have more work cut out for us; the next 5 kraals have been allocated to specific cattle posts already and additional requests reach us every week. We will continue to build more kraals along the northern edge of the Okavango Delta to give villagers a simple but cost-effective means to reduce their livestock losses to lions. By doing so, we aim to increase local tolerance for lions that stray out of the protected area and enter a more and more human-dominated landscape.

We thank Nat Geo's Big Cats Initiative for providing much needed kraal building funds. We also thank our fantastic kraal team who never seem to tire. Despite the hard labour these guys are always good natured, crack joke after joke, and just get on with it!

Leading his community by example, Pro adjusted PiOP's cattle kraal design and built his own private goat kraal.

And we see first successes as others follow Pro villagers regularly come to our kraals and take note of the design. An old man simply replicated one of the kraals we had built nearby. His new structure measures 20 meters x 24 meters (22 yards by 26 yards) and he constructed it all by himself!

 

 
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