We evaluated C-reactive protein (CRP) and troponin T (TnT) for predicting six-month cardiac risk in patients with unstable angina.
Troponin T is predictive of cardiac risk in patients with unstable angina. The clinical implications of elevated CRP in such patients remains controversial.
Baseline TnT and CRP values were determined in 447 patients with unstable angina enrolled in the placebo group of the Chimeric c7E3 AntiPlatelet Therapy in Unstable angina REfractory to standard treatment trial (CAPTURE) trial. All patients underwent a coronary intervention and were followed for a six month period in which 13 deaths and 47 myocardial infarctions were documented (MIs).
Troponin T was >0.1 μg/liter in 30% and CRP was >10 mg/L in 41% of the patients. For the initial 72-h period (including coronary intervention), TnT (17.4% vs. 4.2%; p < 0.001) but not CRP (10.3% vs. 8%; p = 0.41) was predictive of mortality and MI. The TnT-positive patients displayed more frequent recurrent instability before the planned intervention (44.8% vs. 16.9%; p < 0.001), but in the CRP-positive patients, no such increase was observed (25.9% vs. 24.8%; p = 0.92). In contrast, for the six month follow-up period, CRP was predictive of cardiac risk (mortality, MI) (18.9% vs. 9.5%; p = 0.003). Using multivariate analysis, both CRP and TnT emerged as independent predictors of mortality and MI at six- month follow-up. Furthermore, the incidence of coronary restenosis during six-month follow-up was not related to TnT status (3% vs. 4.5%; p = 0.49); however, it was significantly related to CRP status (7% vs. 2.3%; p = 0.03).
Troponin T, but not CRP, was predictive of cardiac risk during the initial 72-h period, whereas CRP was an independent predictor of both cardiac risk and repeated coronary revascularization (coronary artery bypass graft surgery and percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty) during six month follow-up.
For patients with unstable coronary artery disease (i.e., unstable angina or non–Q wave myocardial infarction [MI]), the main pathophysiologic mechanisms, in the form of plaque rupture or erosion, are followed by exposure of thrombogenic contents, such as collagen, to the circulation (1,2). The resulting platelet activation and adhesion promote thrombus formation. Pathohistologic studies have disclosed focal cell necroses distal in the myocardium supplied by the culprit artery, which have been attributed to repetitive embolization from such friable thrombi (3,4). The resulting minor myocardial damage leads to troponin T (TnT) release in about one-third of such patients (5–13). Although enzyme activity of creatine kinase (CK) remains within the normal range, there is a five- to 10-fold higher incidence for mortality and MI during the 30-day follow-up period for such TnT-positive patients (5,6,13).
There is growing evidence that local and systemic inflammation plays a role in the initiation and progression of atherosclerosis (14,15); patients with unstable angina had higher plasma levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) than did patients with stable angina (16,17). Such inflammatory reactions may promote plaque fissuring or erosion and may be involved in the onset of an acute coronary syndrome. However, the clinical implications of elevated CRP levels for improved early risk stratification of such patients remain controversial (14,18–22). To shed light on the clinical significance of elevated CRP levels, we performed a comparative analysis of the predictive values of both CRP and TnT for patients with unstable angina by using the data set of the Chimeric c7E3 AntiPlatelet Therapy in Unstable angina REfractory to standard treatment (CAPTURE) trial (23). The CAPTURE trial was designed to assess outcomes in patients with refractory unstable angina who were given either abciximab or placebo up to 24 h before scheduled percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA).
The CAPTURE trial enrolled 1,265 patients with refractory unstable angina (61% men, 61 ± 10 years old) between May 1993 and December 1995. All CAPTURE patients had recurrent chest pain at rest associated with electrocardiographic (ECG) changes during treatment with intravenous heparin and glyceryl trinitrate for an average of 14 h. This entire group had coronary angiography before randomization, indicating significant coronary artery disease with a culprit lesion of ≥70% diameter stenosis suitable for angioplasty. The patients were randomly assigned to abciximab or placebo; treatment was initiated within 2 h of randomization. For all patients, coronary interventions were scheduled between 18 and 24 h after beginning study treatment (23).
The primary end points of our study were mortality, MI or the necessity for an urgent intervention (PTCA or coronary artery bypass graft surgery [CABG]) due to instability during the 30-day and six-month follow-up periods. Patients with MI during the index hospital stay were defined as having values of CK enzyme activity more than three times the upper limit of normal in at least two samples or an ECG with new significant Q waves in two or more contiguous leads. This strict definition was chosen to exclude any insignificant minor CK rise after PTCA. Patients with an MI after hospital discharge were defined as having values of CK enzyme activity more than two times the upper limit of normal or an ECG with new significant Q waves in two or more contiguous leads. The secondary end point was symptomatic coronary restenosis of the treated lesion with ≥70% diameter stenosis and the necessity for repeat revascularization during the six-month follow-up period.
Four time periods were considered for this study: 1) up to 24 h before PTCA; 2) up to 72 h after randomization (including coronary intervention); 3) 30-day follow-up period; and 4) 6-month follow-up period.
Determination of the cardiac markers in serum samples obtained at baseline (n = 1,096; mean 8.7 h [75% confidence interval 3.6 to 11.3] after the onset of symptoms) and before discharge (n = 918) was performed without knowledge of the patients' histories and allocated treatment. For quantification of TnT, a one-step enzyme immunoassay based on electrochemiluminescence technology (Elecsys 2010, Boehringer Mannheim, Germany) was used. The lower detection limit of this assay was 0.01 μg/liter, and the diagnostic threshold level was 0.10 μg/liter (24,25). C-reactive protein was measured by N Latex CRP Mono tests, performed on a Behring BN II Nephelometer (Behring Diagnostics) using polystyrene microbeads coated with monoclonal mouse antibodies (26). The intensity of scattered light due to formed aggregates was proportional to the CRP level present in the sample. The detection limit of the assay was 0.2 mg/liter. For clinical practice, a threshold level of 5.0 mg/liter is recommended.
After blind assessment of CRP and TnT, the test results were merged with the CAPTURE data base. Continuous variables are expressed as the mean value ± SD, with analysis of subgroups by the Mann-Whitney U test (two-sided). Categoric variables were compared using the Fisher's exact test. Significance was set at p < 0.05.
To distinguish between patients with different degrees of cardiac risk, an exploratory data analysis was chosen. Patients were categorized according to the CRP concentration of quintiles of ∼90 patients each. For each of the four time points, logistic regression analysis was performed, and patients in the first quintile (<2.8 mg/liter CRP) served as the control group (27,28). Receiver-operating characteristic curve analysis over the dynamic range of the CRP assay was used to identify the threshold level for CRP providing the highest predictive value for risk stratifying patients with unstable angina. Further, reverse stepwise logistic regression analysis, including the variables TnT >0.1 μg/liter, CRP >10 mg/liter, ECG findings and baseline characteristics, identified independent predictors of cardiac risk. All analyses were accomplished with SPSS 8.0.1 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, Illinois) or StatXact-3 (Cytel Software Corp., Cambridge, Massachusetts) software.
Because we have previously shown that patients with elevated TnT concentrations have outstanding benefit from additional treatment with abciximab (13), patients receiving abciximab had to be excluded from the main analysis. Furthermore, a subset of 100 patients of the 547 patients enrolled in the CAPTURE placebo group experienced MI within 14 days (6.5 ± 3.2 days) before enrollment. Because elevated TnT levels in these 100 patients do not necessarily reflect acute minor myocardial damage, data from this subset were also not included in the main analysis. Thus, the total number in our study was 447, with a total of 13 deaths and 47 MIs during six-month follow-up (total event rate 13.4%).
For 30% of the patients (n = 134), TnT was above the diagnostic threshold level of 0.1 μg/liter. Baseline characteristics, according to the TnT status, are depicted in Table 1, with no significant differences between the groups. Figure 1A shows the clinical outcomes of patients during the first 72 h after randomization according to TnT status. Notwithstanding identical treatment regimens, cardiac risk (mortality, MI) was higher in TnT-positive patients during both the first 24 h before PTCA (6.6% vs. 0.7%; p < 0.001) and, especially, within first 72 h including the coronary intervention (17.4% vs. 4.2%; p < 0.001). This absolute difference in cardiac risk (Δ13.2%) increased only slightly during the 30-day follow-up period (Δ14.7%; 19.6% vs. 4.9%; p < 0.001); this absolute difference was sustained during the six-month follow-up period (Δ14.5%; 23.9% vs. 9.4%; p < 0.001).
Event rates (mortality and MI) according to the patients' TnT status during first 72 h (top panel) and after six months of follow-up (bottom panel).
Within the first 24 h before the planned coronary intervention, 44.8% of the TnT-positive patients had at least one episode of recurrent angina pectoris (mean 2.1 episodes). In contrast, symptoms recurred at least once for only 16.9% of TnT-negative patients (p < 0.001; mean 1.2 episodes; p = 0.004). Premature coronary revascularization before scheduled PTCA was necessary for 6.7% of the TnT-positive patients as compared with only 0.6% of the TnT-negative patients (p = 0.002). Further, for TnT-positive patients, the rate of urgent coronary reinterventions (PTCA, CABG) remained higher during the 30-day follow-up period (11.2% vs. 3.8%; p = 0.006), whereas repeat nonurgent coronary revascularization (PTCA, CABG) did not significantly differ between TnT-positive and TnT-negative patients (3.0% vs. 4.5%; p = 0.49).
Patients were stratified into quintiles according to their measured CRP levels: CRP-1) <2.8 mg/liter (n = 83); CRP-2) 2.9 to 5.3 mg/liter (n = 85); CRP-3) 5.4 to 9.0 mg/liter (n = 94); CRP-4) 10.0 to 22.6 mg/liter (n = 98); and CRP-5) >22.6 mg/liter (n = 87). The CRP concentration did not correlate with measured TnT levels (r2 = 0.12). A significantly higher mean level of TnT was documented for the fifth CRP quintile only (p < 0.01). Likewise, the proportion of patients with a positive TnT test result (>0.1 μg/liter) was significantly higher only for the highest CRP quintile (p < 0.01).
For the first 24- and 72-h periods, mortality and the incidence of MI, respectively, for the second to fifth quintile were not increased as compared with the first quintile (Fig. 2). However, patients in the forth and fifth quintiles (CRP >10.0 mg/liter) had significantly higher event rates at 30-day and six-month follow-up, as compared with patients in the first quintile. For the end point mortality at six-month follow-up, in each of the first three quintiles, one patient died, whereas in the fourth and fifth quintiles, four and six patients, respectively, died. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis confirmed a threshold level of 10 mg/liter of CRP for maximized predictive value.
Event rates observed for the CRP quintiles according to the four investigated periods after randomization.
In respect to the aforementioned findings, the patient sample was dichotomized according to this calculated threshold level. We identified 185 patients (47%) with CRP >10 mg/liter (CRP-positive) and 262 patients with CRP <10 mg/liter (CRP-negative). As Table 2shows, there are no significant differences in the baseline characteristics between the two groups.
For CRP-negative patients, events (mortality and MI) during the first 72 h were not significantly different from those in patients with elevated CRP levels, neither during 24 h before the procedure (2.7% vs. 2.2%; p = 1.00) nor after 72 h (including the coronary intervention) (10.3% vs. 8%; p = 0.41) (Fig. 3). During the six-month follow-up period, however, the event rate curves for CRP-positive and CRP-negative patients continually diverged. There were significant differences both after 30 days (14.1% vs. 7.6%; p = 0.03) and especially at six months (18.9% vs. 9.5%; p = 0.003). This elevated risk in CRP-positive patients was related to both a higher incidence of MI (13.5% vs. 8.4%; p = 0.16) for this subgroup and a significantly higher mortality rate (5.4% vs. 1.1%; p = 0.005).
Event rates (mortality and MI) according to the patients' CRP status during first 72 h (top panel) and after six months of follow-up (bottom panel).
Within the first 24 h before the planned coronary intervention, 25.9% of the CRP-positive patients had at least one episode of recurrent angina pectoris (mean 1.5 episodes). Symptoms recurred at least once in 24.8% of the CRP-negative patients (p = 0.92; mean 1.7 episodes; p = 0.74). Likewise, the rate of urgent coronary reinterventions (PTCA, CABG) was not elevated in CRP-positive patients both before planned PTCA (3.1% vs. 1.6%; p = 0.61) and during the first 72 h including the coronary intervention (5.9% vs. 3.1%; p = 0.46). A trend toward a higher rate of urgent interventions was observed in the CRP-positive group only at 30-day follow-up (9.2% vs. 3.8%; p = 0.08). Further, repeat nonurgent coronary interventions (PTCA, CABG) during the six month follow-up period were significantly more frequent in CRP-positive patients (7% vs. 2.3%; p = 0.03).
A second blood sample drawn before discharge (7.2 ± 4.5 days after randomization) was available for 402 (90%) of the 447 patients included in this study. Baseline CRP levels of 17.1 ± 25.6 mg/liter increased until hospital discharge to a mean value of 26.1 ± 32.9 mg/liter (p < 0.001). The CRP level was above the threshold level of 10.0 mg/liter for 265 patients (66%). For these CRP-positive patients, the incidence of mortality and MI did not differ from that in patients with CRP concentrations below this threshold level. This was observed at 30 days (7.2% vs. 7.3%; p = 1.00) and also at six months (11.7% vs. 9.5%; p = 0.61). There were also no significant differences of recurrent instability requiring an urgent coronary intervention between CRP-positive and CRP-negative patients during the 30-day follow-up period (4.9% vs. 6.6%; p = 0.44).
Stepwise backward regression analysis was used to identify variables of independent predictive value for six-month outcome (mortality and MI). Only TnT (p < 0.001), CRP (p = 0.01), age >65 years (p = 0.02) and a history of MI were independent predictors of an adverse clinical outcome (Table 3). The inclusion of CK, MB fraction >5 μg/liter and ECG findings such as ST segment depression and T wave inversion or cardiac risk factors did not improve the fit of the statistical model. When both clinical and ECG findings were forced into the model first, the insertion of both TnT and CRP significantly reduced the deviance of the regression model. The likelihood ratio statistic was 5.31 after inclusion of clinical findings (p = 0.023) and 18.38 after inclusion of both CRP and TnT (p < 0.001). After inclusion of TnT and CRP, however, clinical and ECG findings did not provide significant predictive value anymore, and consequently were dropped from the model.
Patients with elevation of both TnT and CRP had the highest incidence of mortality (5.3%), as measured at six-month follow-up. For the TnT-negative group, the determination of CRP identified a subgroup of patients with increased mortality (2.1%). No deaths were documented during the six-month follow-up period in those patients with all negative tests for both TnT and CRP (n = 202) (Fig. 4).
Predictive value for the end point of mortality during the 6-month follow-up period according to both TnT and CRP status. Open bar = CRP-negative patients; solid bars = CRP-positive patients.
For this analysis, we examined data from both the placebo (n = 447) and abciximab (n = 433) groups of the CAPTURE trial participants. Regression analysis, including a term of interaction, indicated no significant correlation between CRP level and benefit of treatment with abciximab. The treatment benefit was consistent throughout all concentration levels for any chosen threshold level and for all four time periods. At 30-day follow-up, no significant differences were observed between benefit of treatment with abciximab in patients with CRP levels >10 mg/liter (odds ratio [OR] 0.52, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.21 to 0.92; p = 0.011) and patients with CRP levels <10 mg/liter (OR 0.56, 95% CI 0.18 to 0.97; p = 0.008). At six-month follow-up, the benefit of abciximab was not statistically significant for either group of patients; for the samples with CRP levels >10 mg/liter, the OR was 0.72 (95% CI 0.34 to 1.32; p = 0.21) and for patients with normal CRP values, the OR was 0.67 (95% CI 0.46 to 1.06; p = 0.13).
Because no interaction was observed between CRP values and benefit of treatment with abciximab, the predictive value of CRP was also investigated for the entire CAPTURE study population, including all 1,081 patients with an available baseline serum sample. A total of 23 deaths and 89 acute MIs were documented, resulting in a total event rate of 10.4% at six month follow-up. For the first 72 h, as already seen for the substudy group, CRP-positive patients (n = 516) did not have a higher event rate, as compared with CRP-negative patients (n = 565), neither during the 24 h before the procedure (1.7% vs. 1.2%; p = 0.72) nor after 72 h (including the coronary intervention) (6.4% vs. 5.1%; p = 0.56). During the six-month follow-up period, however, event rates were significantly higher for CRP-positive patients both at 30 days (8.1% vs. 5.3%; p = 0.04) and at six months (14.9% vs. 6.2%; p < 0.001). This elevated risk for patients with CRP levels >10 mg/liter was driven by both a higher incidence for MI (OR 1.92, p = 0.04) for this subgroup and, in particular, a significantly higher mortality (OR 3.62, p < 0.001).
Consistent with previous studies (5–13), our results show that patients with refractory unstable angina and minor myocardial damage, evidenced by elevated TnT, are at highest cardiac risk. Such risk was particularly marked during the first 72 h after randomization and primarily associated with evidence of MI after the percutaneous coronary intervention. In contrast, CRP did not serve as a significant predictor for such immediate risk. During the first 72 h after randomization, including the coronary intervention, cardiac risk in CRP-positive patients did not differ significantly from that in CRP-negative patients. However, for the six-month follow-up period, this study confirms a strong and independent prognostic value for this inflammatory marker. Elevation of CRP in patients with refractory unstable angina differentiated TnT-negative patients with increased cardiac risk.
Cardiac TnT is a strong predictor for elevated cardiac risk within the first days after the onset of symptoms. In the CAPTURE trial, in addition to the allocated treatment (abciximab vs. placebo), all patients were identically treated with aspirin, intravenous heparin and nitrates before their scheduled coronary interventions (Table 1) (23). Despite such maximized treatment, there were significantly more cardiac complications occurring in patients with a positive TnT test, both during the first 24 h before the coronary intervention (6.6% vs. 0.7%; p < 0.001) and, in particular, in association with PTCA (17.4% vs. 4.2%; p < 0.001). Likewise, recurrence of symptoms (45% vs. 17%; p < 0.001) and, consequently, recurrent instability with the necessity for a premature coronary intervention before the scheduled intervention were more frequent in the TnT-positive group than in the TnT-negative group (6.7% vs. 0.7%; p < 0.001).
Such high risk patients should be given the highest priority for transfer to a tertiary care center or to a catheterization laboratory. However, these striking differences, despite aspirin and intravenous heparin therapy, emphasize the necessity for a new and more effective therapeutic strategy for such high risk patients. Increasing evidence suggests that TnT elevation in patients with unstable angina must be understood as a surrogate marker for friable thrombus formation and complex lesion characteristics (29,30). Accordingly, more potent platelet blockade appears to be a reasonable approach. The glycoprotein IIb/IIIa antagonist abciximab was particularly effective in the treatment of TnT-positive patients in the CAPTURE trial, with an 82% reduction of primary end points (mortality and MI) during the first 72 h after randomization (OR 0.18, p < 0.001) (13). In contrast, TnT-negative patients were less symptomatic and at lower cardiac risk before and in association with the coronary intervention. There were no significant benefits of treatment with abciximab documented during the first 72-h period (OR 1.07, p = 0.37). After this 72 h after randomization, there were no significant differences in cardiac risk between TnT-positive and TnT-negative patients (6.5% vs. 5.2%; p = 0.47)—a finding that was independent of treatment. Troponin T, a marker of acute risk in patients with unstable angina, identifies those patients with the greatest benefit from abciximab.
There have been several recent studies regarding elevated levels of CRP in patients with unstable angina (16,17–19). They found that CRP in patients with unstable angina was predictive of adverse clinical outcomes. Because the present study embraced a large high risk patient group, we expected CRP to be a significant predictor of increased cardiac risk. However, in our work, the predictive value of CRP was not correlated with increased cardiac risk during the first 72 h; rather, it was associated with a higher incidence of cardiac events during the six-month follow-up period. Event rate curves according to the CRP status diverged only slightly during the immediate phase of the coronary syndrome, with no significant differences at 72 h (10.3% vs. 8%; p = 0.41). However, the curves diverged during the six month follow-up period, resulting in highly significant differences (18.9% vs. 9.5%; p = 0.003). Because no interaction between treatment with abciximab and CRP level was documented, we were able to confirm these findings by investigating the predictive value of CRP for the entire study population (n = 1,091), which cannot be done for TnT due to the significant interaction between abciximab and TnT level.
Thus, CRP levels might be of less predictive value for the acute risk of patients with unstable angina than has been suggested from previous experiences in, however, limited patient groups. The larger FRagmin during InStability in Coronary artery disease (FRISC) trial documented no differences in cardiac risk (mortality and MI) for their patient groups categorized in tertiales according to the patients' CRP level (20). This finding was consistent for both the first hospital period and the six-month follow-up period. The CRP tertiales differed only slightly in the respective measures of the end point mortality at six-month follow-up. However, it should be noted that for the subgroup analysis of the FRISC trial, those patients treated with low molecular weight heparin for five weeks and those patients receiving placebo were included, possibly biasing the analyses. Further, the total event rate in FRISC was markedly low as compared with that of the CAPTURE trials. In the Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) 11A substudy of patients with unstable angina or non–Q wave MI, elevated CRP levels at presentation (threshold level 15.5 mg/liter) were associated with increased 14-day mortality (19). This was observed even in patients with a negative TnT rapid test. These findings are fully consistent with our CAPTURE results. Our analysis shows that despite the negative TnT test result, the group of patients with elevated CRP levels had particularly high mortality, both at 30 days and six months (5.4% vs. 1.1%; p = 0.002). All CRP-positive patients died of cardiac causes, mainly MI.
Discharge CRP values were not predictive of either the composite end point of mortality/MI or the end point of restenosis at six-month follow-up. This might be due to the fact that all patients underwent a coronary intervention, and CRP levels consequently increased from baseline to hospital discharge.
In contrast to the findings with TnT (13), the efficacy of treatment with abciximab in the CAPTURE trial did not differ between patients stratified according to CRP status. Studies with platelet glycoprotein IIb/IIIa receptor blockers have unequivocally shown that after the unstable phase of the acute coronary syndrome, cardiac events continue to occur for both the treatment and placebo groups at comparable frequencies (23,31–33). In such studies, there was no incremental benefit of glycoprotein IIb/IIIa receptor blockade in preventing later events. Because CRP values did not predict the instability of patients during the first days after the onset of symptoms, it was not unexpected that CRP was not predictive of the efficacy of treatment with abciximab.
However, the observed event rate after stabilization of the patients for the period between four-day and six-month follow-up is of clinical significance. In the CAPTURE trial, event rates during first 72-h period were 4.2% for the abciximab group and 8.3% for the placebo group (p = 0.003). Between day four and six-month follow-up, however, the event rate was ∼5% and was independent of randomized treatment. In this study, CRP was identified as a marker of increased risk after this first 72-h period. All patients with positive CRP baseline values, regardless of treatment group, were at increased risk during the follow-up period (8.7% event rate for the placebo group and 8.3% for the abciximab group), whereas patients with normal CRP values were at low risk (1.5% for the placebo group and 2.6% for the abciximab group). Further, the incidence of symptomatic coronary restenosis during the six-month follow-up period was not related to the patients' TnT status (3% vs. 4.5%; p = 0.49), but was significantly correlated to the patients' CRP status (7% vs. 2.3%; p = 0.03).
These findings support the hypothesis that local or systemic inflammation plays an important role in the progression of atherosclerosis. The absolute difference in cardiac risk of ∼7% between CRP-positive and CRP-negative patients may be useful in clinical practice to guide more aggressive and uncompromising medical treatment. We speculate that these patients, in particular, would benefit from treatment with cholesterol-synthesizing enzymes inhibitors (34).
This study was presented in part at the 48th Annual Scientific Session of the American College of Cardiology, New Orleans, Louisiana, March 7–10, 1999.
Revision received December 7, 1999.
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text:
$250b power push on the cards
Generation to double in 5 years, solar power to contribute 1 lakh mw, wind power 40,000 mw
The power revolution could be on the way. The government, which has promised to provide electricity to 1.25 billion people by 2019, expects a $250 billion investment in the power sector in the next 4-5 years, including $100 billion in renewables by scaling up the solar power target five fold to one lakh mw.
"I visualise an investment of nearly $250 billion in the (power) sector in the next four or five years…The government is targeting $100 billion of investment in renewables and $50 billion in transmission and distribution to create a national grid where power can flow seamlessly," power minister Piyush Goyal said at a global industry meet on Thursday.
India now has a total power generation capacity of 2,50,000 mw including renewables and with this investment, the government expects to virtually double generation to over 4,50,000 mw. About 53 million homes in the country are yet to get electricity and many industries depend on diesel generation sets to meet their requirements due to power shortage.
India today generates a mere 3,000 mw of solar power, originally scheduled to be scaled up to 20,000 mw by 2022. With this addition, generation would go up to one lakh mw. Wind power, which has 22,000 mw capacity, will go up to 40,000 mw.
The government seeks to avoid a repeat of 2012 when one of the world's biggest blackouts hit large parts of northern India, Goyal said, adding nuclear power too offered the potential to help resolve India's energy shortages.
But at the same time government wanted to ensure that it is not saddled with a nuclear technology that is discarded by the west, he added.
The power minister announced that the government would also double coal production to one billion tonnes by 2019 to meet its energy requirements.
The goals set by Goyal are welcome, but Grant Thornton India LLP partner, HV Harish, said there are several unresolved issues in the power sector, which need to be addressed. For starters, what is required a desirable mix of nuclear, thermal, hydel and other sources.
Each of these has its own peculiar issues, which need to be addressed. "We also need to tackle the challenges of environmental issues that arise from power projects," he said, adding, "We need to be creative in involving the private sector and work on creating the power revolution just like the telecom revolution."
Goyal said that India's total power consumption would double to 2 trillion units by 2019 and the majority of investments would come from the private sector, although the government would also invest more. As many as 400 million Indians are still not connected to the grid, while the average Indian household uses about a third of the power consumed by a family in China.
In thermal power, the ultra mega power projects (UMPP) in the pipeline are the 4,000 mw Bedabahal project in Odisha and 4,000 mw Cheyyur in Tamil Nadu. The two together would involve an investment of $10 billion. From the solar stable, the major projects include Sambhar Solar project in Rajasthan, a 4,000-mw project with an estimated investment of Rs 30,000 crore and the ultra mega solar project in Gujarat with a capacity of 4,000 mw and Rs 30,000 crore as investment. With the resolution of coal allocation issue recently, investments close to Rs 3 lakh crore are expected in this segment from private players, including JSPL, Essar, Tata Power and Adani over the next three to four years. NTPC is expected to invest more than Rs 50,000 crore till 2017 to add about 10,000 mw of capacity.
In wind power, an investment to the tune of Rs 90,000 crore is expected for putting up a new capacity of about 15,000 mw. Close to 3,000 mw of nuclear capacity is expected to come up over the next four years with an investment of about Rs 20,000 crore. Two mega solar power projects of 4,000 mw each in Gujarat and Rajasthan have already been conceived with an investment of Rs 60,000 crore. The government, which plans to invest $1 trillion in infrastructure including power, had no major funding issues in the past though there was some struggle to attract foreign investment into the power sector because of low tariffs.
Some funding constraints are emerging with huge NPAs of banks to the tune of Rs five lakh crore, mainly due to stalled projects in the power sector. The government will now have to look at massive funding from abroad as well as alternative source of long-term funds like corporate bonds, insurance and pension funds.
"The most important thing for infrastructure-related investments is how to make the project bankable," Masakazu Sakakida, MD of the Indian arm of Japan's Mitsubishi Corp, said earlier this week. "In a coal based power plant, the price of electricity is almost fixed, it's not related to the price of the coal."
Hanwha Group's MD, Dong-Kwan Kim, said if the government could provide a stable regulatory environment, "investors are ready to flock to India." Kim raised the issue of air quality and questioned coal's role as a sustainable energy option. "As India doubles capacity in power generation I think [air pollution] is going to become a more political issue.''
Gangadhar Rao, COO manufacturing, at Lanco Solar, said the investment plan of $100 billion on solar power is doable and would cater to the aggressive target of 100,000 mw of solar power capacity. Globally the annual capacity is around 50 gw, which is expected to go up to 80 gw by 2017-18. By then India would contribute around 20 per cent of the world capacity.
All states have individually announced around 500 mw of solar capacity every year in addition to the JNNSM plan of the central government. The government also plans to set up the solar mega parks, which would be of minimum 500 mw capacity and would require huge investments. The investment would come handy in development of the sector. From next year itself, India would start to produce around 4 gw to 5 gw of solar power. Sudershan Gupta, executive vice president strategy and IPP at Jakson Power, said the very fact the government revised its target to 100 gw by 2022, requires aggressive funding and the $100 billion announcement for solar power is just the back up for the target set.
"If the hype generated by the government for India is backed by deeds we can expect foreign funds to flow into the country for any project of this nature. Though we will have to protect the domestic manufacturers with adjusted quota, they will have to scale and ramp up drastically if they will have to match the imports especially of modules," said Gupta.
The article appeared in the Financial Chronicle. The article can be found here.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Strength of Spirit and Hope
Lori Benson | lori_benson@usc.salvationarmy.org | (573) -68-2-71
Jefferson City, Missouri (May 28, 2019) – The TV announced the tornado would hit Jefferson City in just a few minutes. There was no time to run. No time to seek safety. The closest shelter was anywhere from 10 to 20 miles away.
"We had to stay and ride out the storm," said Bonnie McBrearety, who lives about eight miles outside the city limits of Jefferson City. "If I had been a few minutes later pulling our son out of bed and to the middle of our home he wouldn't be here today. Debris fired through the walls of his room and where he was sleeping when the tornado hit."
Heritage Highway was one of the areas hit hardest by the tornado on May 22, 2019. As Bonnie walked along the road, once more taking in the damage, she finally turned back and looked at The Salvation Army Disaster Worker walking with her. "There were 10 homes here, only three are left and they are all damaged and will probably be leveled."
The Salvation Army following the tornado delievered meals, drinks, snacks, and kits to the residents along Heritage Highway daily. Never failing to stop by the mobile home park and checking on Bonnie and her family each day. "The Salvation Army has been wonderful. They've been so helpful."
Major Paul Ferguson sat down with the family as they ate the meals The Salvation Army provided, while one family member was making calls to their insurance company. He gave Bonnie information on other ways The Salvation Army would be able to help in long term recovery. Before leaving the family he asked if he could pray with them. All bowed their heads as Major Ferguson prayed for strength, not only physical streghth, but strength of spirit and hope.
To date The Salvation Army has provided 864 meals, 1,372 drinks, 1,434 snacks, 94 cleaning kits and 91 comfort kits.
To help support those affected by the tornado and Jefferson City and Eldon please visit www.donate.stlsalvationarmy.org/springdisaster or Text to Give at SPRINGDISASTER to 41444.
To learn more about the work of The Salvation Army visit salvationarmyusa.org, or locally at facebook.com/SalvationArmyJC.
The Salvation Army, established in London in 1865, has been supporting those in need without discrimination for more than 135 years in the U.S. More than 23 million Americans receive assistance from The Salvation Army each year through a range of social services: food for the hungry, relief for disaster victims, assistance for the disabled, outreach to the elderly and ill, clothing and shelter to the homeless, and opportunities for underprivileged children. For every dollar donated to The Salvation Army, 82 cents is used to support those services in 5,000 communities nationwide. The Salvation Army tracks the level of need across the country with the Human Needs Index (HumanNeedsIndex.org). For more information, go to salvationarmyusa.org or follow on Twitter @SalvationArmyUS.


text:
Throughout these overviews I've highlighted the issues with Joseph Smith's prophetic works, looking at the different ways that scholars can assess the authenticity of the translations whether it's biblical scholarship, historical analysis, or our abilities to translate ancient languages since Joseph Smith's lifetime.
For this post I wanted to give a super quick summary of some areas where Joseph Smith translated during his time of prophet that we either have the source material for or have the original account that we can assess to its accuracy. I thought this might be a worthwhile post because it gives a more detailed picture of Joseph Smith's ability as a prophet.
We've already written a lot about the different areas of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints whether it's the Book of Mormon translation, Book of Abraham, Kinderhook Plates, or other areas where Joseph Smith was translating as a prophet. This overview will have some overlap with earlier overviews, but I wanted to put the different translations of Joseph Smith in one page to really highlight the common threads between them.
As you read below, please evaluate the translations of Joseph Smith that we have source material or accounts for as you would any other religious or spiritual leader that claimed to have the power of translation via the gift and power of God. Last, as I've been repeating on these overviews often, take these translation accounts in totality and not in isolation, because there are a lot of similarities to their production and authenticity.
The Book of Mormon "Caractors"
Since we don't have the Book of Mormon plates to look at nor do we have any facsimiles of their contents, the only examples of both Book of Mormon text and 'Reformed Egyptian' is from the group of "caractors" that Joseph Smith claimed to copy from the gold plates.
When Joseph Smith was recruiting Martin Harris to help fund the publishing of the Book of Mormon, Harris wanted to have the language verified by scholars before he would mortgage his property to give money to Joseph. This led Joseph Smith to copy a group of characters from what he claimed were the gold plates, which Martin Harris famously took to Charles Anthon to examine.
The problem here is that no one at the time could read Egyptian as the Rosetta Stone was only being discovered, and 'Reformed Egyptian' was not considered a language then nor is it considered one now. Compounding the problem is that when you take a closer look at the characters that Joseph Smith copied for Martin Harris, it becomes clear that they are strikingly similar to the English (Latin) alphabet. Take a look below at the characters from Joseph's 'Reformed Egyptian' rotated and isolated:
While apologists look for similarities between the characters and other Egyptian characters, as you can see above they are unmistakable for crudely modified English characters that Joseph Smith was obviously familiar with. So much so, in fact, that Sandra and Jerald Tanner released this image years ago using Joseph Smith's copied characters that summarizes the issue as clearly as you can:
And to make one final point on these characters, while the apologists continue to search for parallels between Joseph Smith's copied characters and various forms of Egyptian, the church has continued to go out of its way to distance themselves from the very characters that were claimed to be directly from the gold plates.
After releasing an edition of the Book of Mormon in 1980 with the characters off the gold plate printed on a golden cover, the church has recently avoided using them. In their recent "Now You Know" videos posted on YouTube in 2019 and 2020, the church has actually created an entirely different set of characters to show what Reformed Egyptian would look like, even though they already have what Joseph Smith copied and could have used them in the video. The church did this in both the video on the gold plates as well as the video on seer stones. If you look at the images below (one from each video), you can see the church created a set of fake characters to look more authentic instead of using the characters Joseph Smith claimed to copy directly from the plates:
If you really want to dig into the Book of Mormon "caractors" in more detail, I highly recommend Dan Vogel's YouTube video series. Over three videos Vogel examines the creation of the "caractors" document and where Joseph Smith came up with the letters, numbers, and symbols on the document not just using the English language that he was used to in daily life, but also from his family's magical parchments as well.
Furthermore our Book of Mormon overviews give much more depth to the idea of 'Reformed Egyptian' as well as how Joseph Smith produced the Book of Mormon. The bottom line is that there is absolutely no evidence that 'Reformed Egyptian' was ever a language, but that Joseph Smith created this because at the time no one else could translate it. If the gold plates had been written in Hebrew, which would have made the most logical sense, they could have been translated by a lot of people without any need for God to reveal it. However, Joseph Smith knew Egytpian could not be translated by anyone around him, and much of the world was captivated by Egyptian relics at this very time.
Last, Joseph Smith held the commonly held belief that every character in Egyptian held sentences worth of meaning, which allowed for him to create a book that was 273,725 words long with just a small set of plates. Unfortunately for Joseph Smith, however, this is simply not how the Egyptian language works, as the world would learn after Joseph Smith's death. Not only are gold plates engraved with vast records anachronistic, but Joseph Smith's understanding of the Egyptian language, which he used to craft the Book of Mormon, was simply wrong.
Pure Adamic Language
On March 20, 1832 Joseph Smith produced a sample of the 'pure, Adamic language' spoken by Adam. This was after the church was established and Joseph Smith was a great believer in being able to translate ancient languages as well as the gift of speaking in tongues.
For super quick background, in November 1830 Joseph Smith had already produced the verse in the Book of Moses that refers to a book created by Adam "in the language of Adam" along with further clarification that Adam's children "were taught to read and write, having a language which was pure and undefiled." (Moses 6:5-6)
Below is the text of this discussion from the Joseph Smith Papers - it is exactly as was dictated from the words of Joseph Smith:
A Sample of pure Language given by Joseph the Seer as copied by Br Johnson.
Question: What is the name of God in pure Language
Answer: Awmen.
Q: The meaning of the pure word A[w]men
A: It is the being which made all things in all its parts.
Q: What is the name of the Son of God.
A: The Son Awmen.
Q: What is the Son Awmen.
A: It is the greatest of all the parts of Awmen which is the Godhead the first born.
Q: What is is man.
A: This signifies Sons Awmen. the human family the children of men the greatest parts of Awmen Sons the Son Awmen
Q: What are Angels called in pure language.
A: Awmen Angls-men
Q: What are the meaning of these words.
A: Awmen's Ministerring servants Sanctified who are sent forth from heaven to minister for or to Sons Awmen the greatest part of Awmen Son. Sons Awmen Son Awmen Awmen
The church teaches that Adam and Eve would have lived about 6,000 years ago and as we know is essential to Mormon doctrine due to the reliance on this story in the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and even the temple endowment ceremony. (D&C 77) I covered the problems with a literal, historical Adam and Eve story in a separate overview, which is a must read to understanding just how incorrect Joseph Smith is with an Adamic language. Even beyond how problematic a literal, historical Adam and Eve story is, Joseph Smith's production of the 'pure Adamic language' is even more troubling.
Just as with Joseph Smith's 'Reformed Egyptian' covered above, this appears to be another instance where Joseph is crudely modifying the English language he is familiar with to produce ancient language. Just as with Adam and Eve, we have an overview that covers the problems with a literal, historical Tower of Babel. But even setting that aside for a moment: If the Tower of Babel is a literal story and the "pure language" was lost and the inhabitants on the Earth confused, is it even possible that the language spoken in America during 1832 just happened to be almost perfectly linked to a forever lost language?
Joseph Smith says the name of God is "Awmen," which sounds like he took the concept of a "Man" who inspired "Awe" and smashed it together. Then Joseph claims that the English word "son" in pure Adamic language is... "son." And last, Joseph says that the word "angels" in pure Adamic is "Awmen Angls-men," which I think at this point speaks for itself.
The underlying problem here is that Joseph Smith believed that both the story of Adam and Eve and the Tower of Babel were literal, historical events. Both of these stories are etiological myths, which were late additions to the Pentateuch as they compiled the first five books, and are absolutely not historical events.
What I want to make clear is that there never was a pure Adamic language because there was never an Adam and Eve story as presented in the Bible. This goes against everything we've come to learn about the development of languages, and when you put Joseph's sample in context it's nonsensical to imagine that 6,000 years ago they were effectively speaking a crudely modified version of the same language spoken in America.
So now we have covered two translations from Joseph Smith - the Book of Mormon characters and the pure Adamic language - both of which resemble crudely modified English text and language that he was familiar with.
Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible
As we mentioned in the pure Adamic language, Joseph Smith translated the Bible almost immediately following the completion of the Book of Mormon. In 1984, Bruce R. McConkie stated that: "The Joseph Smith Translation, or Inspired Version, is a thousand times over the best Bible now existing on earth. It contains all that the King James Version does, plus pages of additions and corrections and an occasional deletion. It was made by the spirit of revelation, and the changes and additions are the equivalent of the revealed word in the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants... Reference to this section and to the footnotes themselves will give anyone who has spiritual insight a deep appreciation of this revelatory work of the Prophet Joseph Smith. It is one of the great evidences of his prophetic call." (The Bible, a Sealed Book)
The problem, of course, is that recent research done at BYU has shown that Joseph Smith borrowed heavily from Adam Clarke's Bible commentaries in making his changes. The BYU study "uncovered evidence that Smith and his associates used a readily available Bible commentary while compiling a new Bible translation, or more properly a revision of the King James Bible. The commentary, Adam Clarke's famous Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments, was a mainstay for Methodist theologians and biblical scholars alike, and was one of the most widely available commentaries in the mid-1820s and 1830s in America. Direct borrowing from this source has not previously been connected to Smith's translation efforts, and the fundamental question of what Smith meant by the term "translation" with respect to his efforts to rework the biblical text can now be reconsidered in light of this new evidence... "Our research has revealed that the number of direct parallels between Smith's translation and Adam Clarke's biblical commentary are simply too numerous and explicit to posit happenstance or coincidental overlap. The parallels between the two texts number into the hundreds, a number that is well beyond the limits of this paper to discuss. A few of them, however, demonstrate Smith's open reliance upon Clarke and establish that he was inclined to lean on Clarke's commentary for matters of history, textual questions, clarification of wording, and theological nuance.3 In presenting the evidence, we have attempted to both establish that Smith drew upon Clarke, likely at the urging of Rigdon, and we present here a broad categorization of the types of changes that Smith made when he used Clarke as a source."" (A Recently Recovered Source: Rethinking Joseph Smith's Bible Translation, BYU)
Again, we have the source material for the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible since Joseph Smith produced it himself, and now we can compare to material in his day and show that Joseph Smith's prophetic ability here amounted to using available commentaries to make changes to the Bible itself.
Apologists will point to Joseph Smith's revelations such as D&C 88 that "And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith." (D&C 88: 118) That is a problematic argument once you look at Joseph Smith's translations as a whole along with the way he himself called them translations and revelations.
It might be splitting hairs, but D&C 88 was recorded in December 1832 and January 1833 while at that point almost all of the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible would have been completed. I would imagine the apologetic reply would be that he was aware of this commandment as he translated the Bible (such as the claim with polygamy being received in 1831 in order to explain his sexual relationship with Fanny Alger), but again Joseph Smith never made mention of using outside sources in any of these productions.
If you would like to read more about the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible and the issues of lifting from the Adam Clarke Bible commentaries, please check out our overview covering this topic.
Of all of Joseph Smith's translations, the Book of Abraham is far and away the most problematic for the church's truth claims. With the Book of Mormon, we only have the characters he wrote down and then the text of the book itself, so we can only judge the Book of Mormon by the text itself and the history behind it, but with the Book of Abraham we have the source material as well.
The introduction to the Book of Abraham states the following:
"A translation of some ancient Records that have fallen into our hands, from the Catacombs of Egypt, purporting to be the writings of Abraham, while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus." (The Book of Abraham)
The problem is that we know the papyrus dates about 2,000 years after when Abraham would have lived, they have nothing to do with Abraham, and could not possibly have been written by Abraham. The church is now forced to concede these very points - here are the quotes from the official gospel topics essay from the church itself:
"These fragments date to between the third century B.C.E. and the first century C.E., long after Abraham lived."
"None of the characters on the papyrus fragments mentioned Abraham's name or any of the events recorded in the book of Abraham. Mormon and non-Mormon Egyptologists agree that the characters on the fragments do not match the translation given in the book of Abraham, though there is not unanimity, even among non-Mormon scholars, about the proper interpretation of the vignettes on these fragments."
We have written about the Book of Abraham on the site a lot including two lengthy overviews that cover both the translation of the Book of Abraham and what we can learn from the text itself, but if you're looking for more material I recommend the following two write-ups that go into the issues with the Book of Abraham:
The Book of Abraham in 1,000 Words: This is a quick blog post of just 1,000 words the explains the problems with the Book of Abraham along with the two apologetic arguments commonly used which are the idea of a lost scroll along with the catalyst theory.
Our annotated Gospel Topics essay on the Book of Abraham: This is a very in-depth look at the church's official essay on the Book of Abraham, looking at what the evidence tells us not just about the translation, but what Joseph Smith claimed he was translating, the apologetic responses to the problems, and what Egyptian scholars have to say.
I don't want to get into a ton of detail here as this is meant to serve as an overview, but Joseph Smith got it entirely wrong with his translation of the Egyptian papyrus. As we explain in the Book of Abraham overviews, we have the source material for the text of the Book of Abraham, and you can see in the manuscript scans below that Joseph Smith was translating each character from the papyrus surrounding facsimile 1 as if they contained a paragraph's worth of info.
Even if you want to contend that Joseph Smith was not "translating" the symbols that both scribes wrote in the margins, we still have facsimile 1, 2, and 3 to assess Joseph's prophetic skills by. Because they were produced contemporaneously, we know what Joseph was translating and what he claimed they say.
In my opinion, the most important is facsimile 3, because it contains Egyptian characters that Joseph Smith translated. Take a look below at facsimile 3 and the characters above the figures.
If Joseph Smith could truly translate ancient languages as he claimed, then his translation of those characters should match what every Egyptian scholar knows they say. Let's take a look at a few:
Fig. 2:
Joseph Smith: King Pharaoh, whose name is given in the characters above his head.
What it actually says: "Isis the great, the god's mother"
In other words, Joseph Smith not only got the Egyptian characters wrong, but he failed to see that this figure was a woman and not a man. Also, Pharaoh is a title and not a name, so Joseph Smith here is translating as if we would call the American president King President or, even more silly yet plausible, President President.
Joseph Smith: Prince of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, as written above the hand.
What it actually says: "Maat, mistress of the gods"
Again, this figure is female - not a man. I don't know what more to say, but it gets worse.
Joseph Smith: Olimlah, a slave belonging to the prince.
What the figure actually is: Anubis, guide of the dead, who is there to support the deceased. Writing above figure: "Recitation by Anubis, who makes protection(?), foremost of the embalming booth..."
As we've discussed recently about the curse of dark skin, Joseph Smith used the Book of Abraham to tie the curse of Ham/curse of Cain into the Book of Abraham, which was a root cause for the priesthood being denied to black members of the church.
Because of this worldview, Joseph Smith made the assumption that the one black figure in the facsimile must have been a slave when in fact this figure was an Egyptian god! And again, if Joseph Smith could truly translate ancient languages he would have known this because the writing was right above Anubis' head in Egyptian!
In the annotated essay above we look at sources that Joseph Smith likely pulled from when producing the Book of Abraham, but again this is a translation where we have the source material to compare to and Joseph Smith got it absolutely, undeniably wrong. The church itself admits that the papyrus fragments have nothing to do with Abraham and were dated 2,000 years after Abraham would have even lived, and that's not even getting into the problems with the translation itself.
Please read our overviews on the Book of Abraham if haven't before and you're interested in more detail, but I believe for an overview this sums up Joseph Smith's complete inability to translate ancient Egyptian.
The Kinderhook Plates
We cover the Kinderhook Plates in more detail in our last overview, but this is another area where Joseph Smith produced a translation even if a partial one. I would recommend that anyone unfamiliar with the Kinderhook Plates read that post because it will give many more details than this overview, but just to quickly cover Joseph Smith's translation:
On April 16, 1843, Robert Wiley began his "dig" in Kinderhook, IL which uncovered the plates. A member of the church was there and "leaped for joy at the discovery" and the Times and Seasons noted that the Kinderhook Plates would "undoubtedly" prove the authenticity of the Book of Mormon.
Two weeks later on May 1, William Clayton made a journal entry about the Kinderhook Pates:
"I have seen 6 brass plates which were found in Adams [Pike] County by some persons who were digging in a mound. They found a skeleton about 6 feet from the surface of the earth which was 9 foot high. [At this point there is a tracing of a plate in the journal.] The plates were on the breast of the skeleton. This diagram shows the size of the plates being drawn on the edge of one of them. They are covered with ancient characters of language containing from 30 to 40 on each side of the plates. Pres[iden]t J[oseph]. has translated a portion and says they contain the history of the person with whom they were found and he was a descendant of Ham through the loins of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the ruler of heaven and earth." (William Clayton Journal, entry of 1 May 1843, as cited in James B. Allen, Trials of Discipleship: The Story of William Clayton, a Mormon (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 117)
This is, unfortunately, all we have from Joseph Smith's translation of the Kinderhook Plates. However we have an account from Apostle Parley Pratt, who said on May 7th that:
"Six plates having the appearance of Brass have lately been dug out of a mound by a gentleman in Pike Co. Illinois. They are small and filled with engravings in Egyptian language and contain the genealogy of one of the ancient Jaredites back to Ham the son of Noah. His bones were found in the same vase (made of Cement). Part of the bones were 15 ft. underground.…A large number of Citizens have seen them and compared the characters with those on the Egyptian papyrus which is now in this city." (Reprinted in Ensign, August 1981, page 73)
Furthermore, The Nauvoo Neighbor republished the Times and Seasons letter on May 10th along with facsimiles of all 12 sides of the Kinderhook plates. They also include the note at the end that states "the contents of the plates... will be published in the 'Times and Seasons,' as soon as the translation is completed,"implying that members were given the impression that a full translation was forthcoming.
In 1879, Wilbur Fugate writes a letter to James Cobb in Salt Lake City to tell him the plates were a hoax and the church would spend the next one hundred years claiming that they were real, ancient plates because they knew Joseph Smith translated a portion of them.
It was not until 1980 when science proved without a doubt that the plates were a hoax that the church finally reversed course with an August 1981 article in Ensign conceding that the plates were a hoax.
The bottom line is that these plates were a hoax and the symbols were completely made up, and yet Joseph Smith claimed "they contain the history of the person with whom they were found and he was a descendant of Ham through the loins of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the ruler of heaven and earth."
Apologists argue that Joseph Smith was merely approaching this from a scholarly viewpoint, and thus saw a similar symbol from the Book of Abraham symbols to compare to. The problem is that the Book of Abraham symbols were all incorrectly translated, so even if you accept this apologetic argument, it still shows that Joseph Smith had zero prophetic ability to translate ancient languages as he claimed. To put it another way, this incident shows that Joseph Smith, even if we are to leave room that he could have received some inspiration from God, could not tell the difference between what might have been from God and what was clearly a hoax. That's a massive problem if we are to believe he was a prophet of God when he had no ability to discern truth from fiction.
Again, we cover both the history of the Kinderhook Plates and the apologetic arguments supporting Joseph Smith in our Kinderhook Plates overview, but it is yet another instance where we can assess Joseph Smith's translation and it again is completely wrong. Obviously the Kinderhook Plates are not nearly as damning to Joseph Smith's prophetic abilities as the Book of Abraham, but it also adds not just to Joseph Smith's incorrect translations, but to church leaders defending their truthfulness until science forced them to reverse their positions.
Honorable Mention: The Writings/Record of John
In D&C 93, Joseph Smith reveals writings/records of the author of the Gospel of John. In this revelation, Joseph Smith refers to the writer as John even though biblical scholarship has since shown the authors of the gospels to be anonymous. Regardless, what is interesting here is that as Joseph Smith produces this writing/revelation, he is using language that the author of John would never have used.
This is a small problem compared to the others (hence an honorable mention), but it's explained really well by former CES instructor and biblical scholar David Bokovoy. From his episodes going through biblical scholarship on Mormon Stories (Episode 1022):
"Notice, for example, verse eight... "Therefore, in the beginning, the word was and he was the word, even the messenger of salvation, the light and the redeemer of the world. The spirit of truth." You think you were reading from the Gospel of John there. It's all Johannine language: 'who came into the world because the world was made by him and in him was the life of men and the light of men. Worlds were made by him.' This is all Johannine. John's literature really wants to emphasize this idea of contrast between light and dark. And then we read first person:
Verse 11: I John bear record that I beheld his glory is the glory of the only begotten of the father.
And then move down to versus 12 and 13. In Joseph Smith's revelation:
Verses 12-13: I John saw that He (Jesus) received not of the fullness at the first, but received grace for grace; And He received not of the fullness at first, but continued from grace to grace until he received a fullness.
Therefore meaning because he did not receive the fullness of first, but he received it a little bit by little bit and grew and grew, he was called the Son of God... because he received not of the fullness of first... The fact of matter is, the author of the Gospel of John would have been so offended by this language because that's the Gospel where Jesus wasn't called the son of God. Jesus was the son of God from the beginning. He didn't receive grace for grace - it was all from the beginning... That's (the revelation) presented as if it's John's language. But John would never have said that. Mark could have said something like that, (Jesus) was called the Son of God at his baptism. But even Luke and Matthew would have struggled a little bit with that because he's born as the son of God. This idea here reflects a theology, a Christology that is completely antithetical to the to what the author of The Gospel of John would have written. There's no way he could have been responsible for any of this material. Yet it's presented that way in Joseph Smith's revelation that presents a significant challenge for traditional believers once they're exposed to higher criticism in the New Testament and to see how that effects Mormon scripture." (Dr. David Bokovoy, Mormon Stories (Episode 1022))
Again, this is not nearly as important as Joseph Smith's other translations, but it again shows how Joseph Smith created material with the sources that he was surrounded by, but left his fingerprints all over the material. In this case, it shows that Joseph Smith often created revelation in the voice of God that becomes incompatible with history when looked at through the critical eye of biblical scholarship. This is very apparent in how Joseph Smith incorrectly claims that Abraham was commanded to implement polygamy by God in D&C 132.
Just like the Adamic language, we do not have the source material to compare to, but we do have Joseph Smith's direct account of what he is translating and we can look at that through the lens of scholarship to show that it simply is not what Joseph Smith claimed it to be.
The idea of this overview was not to be a comprehensive list of everything that Joseph Smith claimed to restore or reveal, but to look at the items that Joseph Smith claimed to translate with his prophetic abilities from God that we have the original material for whether the direct source material (the Book of Mormon characters, the Book of Abraham, Kinderhook Plates, and the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible) or direct chain of custody of the accounts (Adamic language and writings of the author of the Gospel of John). With the Book of Mormon we focused only on the characters that Joseph Smith claimed were from the gold plates, but obviously the ideas that Joseph Smith brought to the Book of Mormon are important to look at such as the idea that Native Americans are the descendants of Lamanites, the Deutero-Isaiah verses that were not written before Lehi left, and his inability to re-translate the "Lost 116 pages."
We can only measure Joseph Smith's prophetic abilities by what he produced, and thankfully we still have the source material for a few key areas of Joseph Smith's works such as the Book of Mormon characters, the Book of Abraham papyri, the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible, and his partial translation of the Kinderhook Plates.
I hope that as you read this article, you look for the patterns in Joseph Smith's works. One area that apologists are very skilled at is taking one problem at a time and ignoring the new problems that are created with apologetics. We see this not just with websites like FAIR Mormon, but also with the Gospel Topics essays on the church website. When you look at all of these together, I believe that it paints a pretty good picture of not just of Joseph Smith's inability to translate ancient records, but how much of his productions rely entirely on the material that was available to him when he produced it.
It probably feels like I'm beating a dead horse here, but it is crucial to view these problems just as you would any other religious leader, church, or organization. If Warren Jeffs or the Pope had made these translations that were later proven to be a hoax, would you then make excuses for how they might've actually gotten them right against the evidence? The moment we stop privileging Joseph Smith above the history, it becomes possible to see the patterns in his productions and to see that the problems simply cannot be reconciled in totality.
As we start on the home stretch of these overview topics, i hope that I've done a good job at trying to link together how these problems all weave together starting with Joseph Smith founding the church all the way to the present day. While apologetics seek to 'divide and conquer' by looking at these topics one at a time, I want to point out the bigger problem with just the translations listed here.
In order to believe the Book of Mormon is a true ancient text, you have to believe that the Book of Mormon people wrote in an Egyptian language the resembled crudely modified English, with almost every letter and number of the English language incorporated into Reformed Egyptian. This defies all research that we have about the Egyptian language and is not supported by a single non-church funded scholar.
Even if we are to accept that premise against the longest of odds, we then have to believe that there was a single Adamic language spoken by Adam and Eve, which goes against all studies in linguistics as the history shows the multiple languages were spoken well before the etiological myth of the Tower of Babel was written into the Pentateuch.
But, again, even if we want to believe there was a single Adamic language, we then have to believe that this language again resembles the very language that Joseph Smith was familiar with, calling God "awman" which sounds like 'awe of man,' or that the Adamic language for the Son of God is simply "the Son Awman." The odds that the Adamic language would resemble a language spoken 6,000 years later by random chance are astronomical.
Yet still, just for fun we will accept that the first two translation problems are plausible against microscopic odds. We then have to accept that Joseph Smith translated the Egyptian papyri for the Book of Abraham correctly even though the church itself admits that the papyri dates 2,000 years after Abraham would have lived and that the text of the papyri has nothing to do with Abraham.
Beyond that, we have to then believe the source material we have is not actually the source material, even though the characters on the manuscripts match perfectly with the source material that also just happens to tell the reader through the Book of Abraham exactly where it would be found on the papyrus fragment. To put it simply: The writer of the Book of Abraham was literally telling the reader where to look, and that the characters are exactly where they are told to look on the fragment that we have today which is the source material for the Book of Abraham.
Now the odds of these first three problems all actually being true are so impossibly small that I can't imagine anyone taking that bet if they were not privileging the source of the material, but even then we have to look at the problems with the Kinderhook Plates being a hoax and yet Joseph Smith not realizing it. This again, statistically speaking, puts Joseph Smith's odds of being a prophet of God even slimmer, because he could not recognize a hoax from ancient text.
What I'm trying to say is that without even looking at the specifics of these texts themselves, we can show beyond any reasonable doubt that Joseph Smith was not able to translate ancient sources and was not a prophet of God. I know people can play around with statistics as has been shown in the recent Interpreter article called "Joseph Smith: the World's Greatest Guesser," where they took my same approach here as proof that Joseph Smith was a prophet.
To that point (and I'll cover apologetics more in a future overview), I would ask any reader to check out what is a very long and thorough discussion of the Interpreter's approach at the Mormon Discussions message board (not affiliated with this site) @ if they want to get an idea of what apologetics at the Interpreter look like these days.
So while statistics can be manipulated if they are not used properly (and the Interpreter certainly was playing fast and loose with the Bayes' theorem), the basic idea of probability is that if you take a coin and flip it once, you have a 50/50 odds of getting heads or tails. But if you need to flip heads twice, the odds drop to 25%. If you need to flip heads three times in a row, it drops even further to 12.5%.
In the case of Joseph Smith, we're not starting with a 50/50 proposition. The Book of Abraham, for example, has consensus among all non-church Egyptologists that is without any doubt whatsoever an incorrect translation. In other words, Joseph Smith does not have a 50/50 chance that he got the translation right, but probably one in many millions. The same can be said for the Book of Mormon characters, Kinderhook Plates, and Adamic language.
Even if we're generous and put one in a thousand odds on Joseph Smith getting each of these translations right, for those four items you would come up with odds that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God at 0.000000000001%.
I realize that might sound incredibly arbitrary to believing members who are reading this, but understand that I am being generous at putting Joseph Smith's odds at 1 in 1,000 when it comes to the Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon characters, or Adamic language. There is so much scholarship out there that shows that in no possible way is Joseph Smith translating ancient material that if you asked linguists, Egyptian scholars, or biblical scholars they would tell you the odds aren't 1 in 1,000, but zero.
We've linked to a lot of our pages in this post, but please check them out if you have not read our overviews up until this point. I know how uncomfortable these topics are when you're still in the church, but all I can say is that it gets better. Please read our other posts and compare them to the church's official essays and talks - we believe that our research will stand up to apologetic works which is why we often start with their conclusions. If the church is true, you have nothing to fear in studying these topics from non-correlated sources, and if the church's truth claims cant stand up to scrutiny using historical documents, church materials, and scholarly works, you deserve to know the truth.
Check us out on Twitter or Facebook as well for future posts and updates. Thanks for reading!
Next section: Overview on Race and the Scriptures of Mormonism
Mormon Discussions Podcast: Mormon Discussion: 310: Translate, You Keep using that Word
Book of Abraham Overview: The Translation
Overview of Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible
Mormon Stories Essay: Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible
Mormon Discussions Message Board Thread: The Interpreter; Bayes Theorem; Nephites and Mayans


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Home Cybersecurity
IBM Acquires Security Software Provider CrossIdeas
IBM announced it has acquired CrossIdeas, a provider of security software that governs user access to applications and data across on-premise and cloud environments.
Big Blue said its acquisition of CrossIdeas extends IBM's leadership in delivering innovation, services and software for securing enterprises. IBM has now made more than a dozen acquisitions in security over the past decade and invested extensively in dedicated research and development in the security space.
IBM officials said they believe this blend of organic innovation and acquired technologies is helping IBM customers defend against advanced threats and manage risk in an era of unprecedented technology change. Financial terms of the CrossIdeas deal were not disclosed.
Yet, under the burden of more government regulations and increasing sophistication of security threats, business leaders are demanding that IT and security executives implement access governance policies and solutions that provide visibility into operational and IT risks.
Based in Rome, Italy, CrossIdeas helps organizations manage identities and application access by bridging the gap between compliance, business, and IT infrastructure to help reduce the risk of fraud, conflicts of duties and human error in business processes, IBM said.
"The addition of CrossIdeas extends IBM's market share leading portfolio of identity and access management capabilities," said Brendan Hannigan, general manager of IBM Security Systems, in a statement. "IBM can now provide enterprises with enhanced governance capabilities and transparency into risk from the factory floor to the board room, giving leaders the insight they need to protect their brand and customers."
As part of IBM's Identity and Access Management portfolio, CrossIdeas will deliver new identity and access governance capabilities to help mitigate access risks and segregation of duty violations. The combined business-driven approach provides integrated governance and full lifecycle management of a user's time with an organization, IBM said.
For example, a stock trader working in a financial institution may be promoted and given access to approve trades in a new system while retaining access to enter trades in the previous system. This dual access may constitute a segregation of duties violation, which could expose the institution to failing a compliance requirement. With CrossIdeas' technology, auditors and managers could detect and remediate the segregation of duties violation before it becomes a security risk and audit exposure.
"The innovative technology of CrossIdeas' IDEAS solution strongly complements IBM's Identity and Access Management portfolio" and expects to contribute to IBM's worldwide expansion in the IT security market, said Alberto Ocello, CEO at CrossIdeas.
CrossIdeas addresses the business requirements of auditors and risk and compliance managers with role analytics, intuitive visualizations for better insight into user access, and alignment with compliance and access risk requirements. This capability, known as Identity Intelligence, is delivered via centralized compliance dashboards for auditors to evaluate access risk and activity-based segregation of duties across enterprise-wide applications. These dashboards are populated using a broad array of identity and access repositories including IBM Security Identity Manager.
Integrating CrossIdeas' governance capabilities with IBM's security portfolio will be expedited by the two companies' existing relationship. By its participation in the Ready for IBM Security Intelligence program, CrossIdeas already allows IBM customers to deploy integrated access governance and user lifecycle management technologies leveraging IBM's Security Identity Management (ISIM) portfolio. This integration will help ISIM customers rapidly introduce access governance capabilities with minimal changes to their existing environment.
IBM's security portfolio provides the security intelligence to help organizations protect their people, data, applications and infrastructure. IBM offers solutions for identity and access management, security information and event management, database security, application development, risk management, endpoint management, next-generation intrusion protection and more. IBM also operates a vast security research and development, and delivery organization. In addition, the company monitors 15 billion security events per day in more than 130 countries and holds more than 3,000 security patents, IBM officials said.
As an example, with the threat of cyber-security breaches impacting the electric power sector increasing, IBM has come up with a set of best practices for energy and utility organizations to adopt and live by.
"As the leader in the identity and access management market, IBM will drive the shift from using identity and access management as an administrative control to an analytics-centric approach that is risk- and behavior-based for better business decision-making," Hannigan said in a post.
Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.


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← An adventure waiting to be painted
Privacy concerns with new facial recognition apps like a war on terror →
Engineers develop real-time, 3-D teleconferencing technology
Nik Karpinsky, left, and Song Zhang show off their 3-D teleconferencing technology by displaying an image of Zeus. They say Zeus is a great model for their technology because of the complexity of his face and beard. Larger photo. Photo courtesy of Nik Karpinsky.
Nik Karpinsky quickly tapped out a few computer commands until Zeus, in all his bearded and statuesque glory, appeared in the middle of a holographic glass panel mounted to an office desk.
The white statue stared back at Karpinsky. Then a hand appeared and turned the full-size head to the right and to the left. Yes, it was quite clear, Zeus really was pictured in 3-D.
And there it was from one computer work station on the second floor of Iowa State University's Howe Hall to another down on the first floor: 3-D teleconferencing that's live, real-time and streaming at 30 frames per second.
"Four years ago, this would not have been possible," said Karpinsky, an Iowa State doctoral student in human computer interaction who's been working day and night to make the technology a reality.
Part of the problem is the complexity of the technology, said Song Zhang, Iowa State's William and Virginia Binger Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, an associate of the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory and the leader of the 3-D imaging project.
"There are a lot of skills involved," he said. "You have to do programming, optical engineering, hardware, software and networking."
To make it all work, Karpinsky and Zhang had to solve three big technical problems: capturing the 3-D images, transmitting the images and displaying the images.
"I was originally worried about transmission," Karpinsky said. "But we had to focus on all three."
The result of successfully combining those technologies is a proof-of-concept prototype that Karpinsky and Zhang call "Portal-s."
It all starts with a projector that shines a light straight at a teleconferencer, in this case, that bust of Zeus. There's a camera to the right of the projector and one to the left, both angled toward the subject. The cameras record two images of the light as it's distorted by the subject. The images are combined to create a single 3-D image.
That optical hardware is networked and connected to a standard computer with a graphics card. The computer combines, processes and compresses the images. (And it really compresses them – from 700 megabits per second to less than 14 megabits per second.)
The compression allows transmission of 3-D images to another computer, even over wireless networks.
The idea, Karpinsky said, is for the projectors to become the eyes of the teleconferencing system: "What the projector sees is what you see."
Karpinsky and Zhang see a bright future for the technology they've developed with the help of support from the National Science Foundation and Iowa State's Virtual Reality Applications Center.
Zhang said the next steps include developing and testing applications for smart phones. He thinks the technology is only a few years away.
"In the future, we can do all of this 3-D video conferencing on the phone," he said. "These phones are powerful enough to do all the computation."
Zhang also wants to develop the 3-D teleconferencing technology for use in powerful virtual reality environments such as Iowa State's C6, a six-sided room that surrounds users with 100 million pixels of 3-D images.
(Karpinsky won't be part of the continuing research and development work at Iowa State. He graduates this semester and will move to Washington state to work for Microsoft. He'll also work for a startup imaging company called Phasica3D that spun out of Iowa State research.)
All of these 3-D developments, Zhang said, are coming far faster than he expected.
"When Nik first proposed this idea to me," he said, "I never believed we could reach this level by now."
This article was published by the ISU News Service. You may view the original article at http://www.news.iastate.edu/news/2013/10/30/3dconference


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CREAD will be key to combat the negative effects of climate change, says Foreign Minister
by: - December 13, 2018
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Minister for Foreign and CARICOM Affairs, Francine Baron
Minister for Foreign Affairs Senator Francine Baron said the Climate Resilience Executing Agency of Dominica (CREAD) will be key if Dominica is to combat against the negative effects of climate change as the only Caribbean island worse than Dominica was Montserrat which suffered from volcano damage.
Senator Baron made these remarks while presenting the Bill on CREAD for debate at the Parliament on Wednesday 12th December, 2018.
"In the case of Dominica the scientific model show that even at the lowest prediction of a 1 meter sea level rise 14% of our road networks will be lost and food supplies and rural livelihoods in Dominica will be negatively impacted by 5% as a result of the loss of agricultural land." Senator Baron reported.
She also stated that "an IMF study that was published in 2017 before the passage of hurricane Maria ranked Dominica third [among] small island developing states in disaster damage at a percentage of GDP during the period 1970 to 2016."


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FBI: DNA disproves man's claim that he is Illinois boy missing since 2011
A breakthrough seemed possible in the search for a boy who disappeared 8 years ago. Instead it's another bizarre turn in the ongoing case.
Author: DAN SEWELL and DON BABWIN, Associated Press
Updated: 10:32 PM CDT April 4, 2019
CINCINNATI — A young man's claim to be an Illinois boy who disappeared under tragic circumstances eight years ago was disproved by DNA tests and pronounced a hoax Thursday, dashing hopes that the baffling case had finally been solved.
For a day and a half, a breakthrough seemed to be at hand when a young man found wandering the streets of Newport, Kentucky, on Wednesday identified himself as 14-year-old Timmothy Pitzen and told police he had just escaped from two men who had held him captive for seven years.
Timmothy disappeared in 2011 at age 6, and a note left behind by his mother before she took her own life said he was being cared for and would never be found. Timmothy's family was cautiously hopeful over Wednesday's news, as were neighbors and others who have long wondered whether he is dead or alive.
But the FBI said Thursday afternoon that DNA tests determined the young man was not Timmothy.
Newport Police Chief Tom Collins identified him to ABC as Brian Rini of Medina, Ohio, a 23-year-old ex-convict. He was released from an Ohio prison less than a month ago after serving more than a year for burglary and vandalism.
Authorities did not say whether Rini would face charges over the alleged hoax or what his motive was.
"Law enforcement has not and will not forget Timmothy, and we hope to one day reunite him with his family. Unfortunately, that day will not be today," FBI spokesman Timothy Beam said in a statement.
RELATED: Man claiming to be missing teen near Cincinnati is 23-year-old Medina native
In Timmothy's hometown of Aurora, Illinois, police Sgt. Bill Rowley said that over the years his department has received thousands of tips about Timmothy, including false sightings.
"We're always worried about copycats, especially something that has a big national attention like this," he said.
Timmothy's family members said they were heartbroken at the latest twist.
"It's devastating. It's like reliving that day all over again, and Timmothy's father is devastated once again," said his aunt Kara Jacobs.
The boy's grandmother Alana Anderson said: "It's been awful. We've been on tenterhooks, hopeful and frightened. It's just been exhausting." She added, "I feel so sorry for the young man who's obviously had a horrible time and felt the need to say he was somebody else."
Timmothy vanished after his mother, Amy Fry-Pitzen, pulled him out of kindergarten early one day, took him on a two-day road trip to the zoo and a water park, and then killed herself at a hotel. She left a note saying that her son was safe with people who would love and care for him, and added: "You will never find him."
Police have said she might have dropped the boy off with a friend, noting that his car seat and Spider-Man backpack were gone.
Timmothy's grandmother said her daughter had fought depression for years and was having problems in her marriage to Timmothy's father. News reports suggested she was afraid she would lose custody of the boy in a divorce because of her mental instability.
At Greenman Elementary after the boy's disappearance, Timmothy's schoolmates, teachers and parents tied hundreds of yellow ribbons around trees and signs. A garden was planted in his memory.
The brief but tantalizing possibility that the case had been solved generated excitement in Timmothy's former neighborhood.
Pedro Melendez, who lives in Timmothy's former home, didn't know the boy but saved the concrete slab with his name, handprint and footprint etched in it when he redid the back patio. It is dated '09.
A slab of concrete sits in the backyard of the house where Timmothy Pitzen used to live in Aurora, Illinois, Thursday, April, 2019.
RELATED: Man describes seeing teenager claiming to be Timmothy Pitzen walking street in Newport, Ky.
Linda Ramirez, who lives nearby and knew the family, said she was "pretty excited" but didn't "want to have false hopes."
Rowley expressed hope that the flurry of activity and attention had renewed interest in the case.
"Perhaps, it has people looking at the case with new eyes," the police sergeant said.
Babwin reported from Chicago. Associated Press reporters Carrie Antlfinger in Aurora, Caryn Rousseau in Chicago and Corey Williams in Detroit contributed.
This undated photo provided by the Aurora, Ill., Police Department shows missing child, Timmothy Pitzen. Police in the Chicago suburb of Aurora say the department is sending two detectives to the Cincinnati area to investigate a missing child report that could involve the Aurora boy who disappeared in 2011. Aurora Police Sgt. Bill Rowley said Wednesday, April 3, 2019 that the department knows there is a boy involved but they don't know who he is or if he has any connection to the Timmothy Pitzen case. (Aurora Police Department via AP)


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Ram's CEO Has a Simple Plan To Compete in the Electric Truck Market
by Savannah Keaton | More Articles: Trucks
With so many automakers going electric, having an EV or two is no longer enough when it comes to standing out from the pack. This is especially true when it comes to electric trucks. There aren't many on the market yet, and Ram's CEO thinks he has the perfect method for making the new Ram Revolution shine.
Ram trucks logo | Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Ram's CEO had some bold remarks about how its electric truck will stand out
Ram has yet to release its first EV, but that's all about to change. The American automaker known for its trucks is ready to electrify its lineup with a rather simple, but effective plan.
Ram CEO Mike Koval Jr. told Kelley Blue Book, "Trucks still need to do truck things." He went on to add, "More and more truck intenders are open-minded to the idea of electrification in their pickups. But they're not willing to sacrifice our most core attributes that make a truck a truck, like towing, like hauling, and in the future, range and charge time."
This is a good point, as many rivals are focused on the electric engine and range. By remembering why many consumers are drawn to trucks in the first place, Ram has already set itself apart.
We don't have any major details about how much the new Ram EV truck will be able to tow, or how it will do off-road at the moment, but Koval did have one more statement which will offer a clue.
"If you're towing a 10,000-pound trailer behind your vehicle across the state or across the country, it's nerve-racking. We will push past what others have announced with our fuller portfolio of electrified solutions."
Ram will soon prove itself on the sales floor
Words are great, but when it comes to the auto world, sales are where it counts. Ram hasn't released it's first electric truck, as of yet, but that will soon change.
Even though a Ram electric truck is not close to hitting the sales floor, it's on the way. Ram has been releasing images of its concept truck, the Ram Revolution, and the internet has been flooded with fans trying to figure out what it will look like based on small teasers released by Ram.
This may prove to be a good move, as everyone is eager to find out more. Some may be wondering if Ram has waited too long, however.
Is Ram late to the electric truck game?
What Does the New Ram Electric Truck Look Like? Get a Glimpse in Ram's Latest Video
Other automakers, like Ford, already have an electric truck, so Ram is behind in some regards. Some may wonder if it's too late for Ram to catch up, and the good news is that it's never too late when it comes to the auto world.
It's constantly evolving and changing, so what's in right now will soon be old news. With this in mind, Ram is taking the ideal route by keeping its eye on the reason behind why people want a truck in the first place. Having a truck that's an EV is certainly a great selling point, but if it can't function like a truck, then it'll remain sitting on the lot.
Plus, there's the fact that Ram knows what others are doing, and can act accordingly. This will help when it comes to planning and designing new trucks, so that Ram can develop something newer and superior.
Because of this, many will be drawn to the Ram electric truck, as opposed to rivals who are more focused on the fact that they're selling an EV. Going forward, as more electric vehicles hit the market, this will no longer be enough, however, which is why Ram may be ahead of the game.
Tags:electric vehicles Ram