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DR Congo: UN prepared for 'all scenarios' despite low risk of Ebola spreading
MONUSCO/Jesus Nzambi
During a previous Ebola outbreak in the DRC in 2014, UN and senior government officials evaluate the response to the disease (file)
The chances of the latest Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) spreading across borders are low, said the United Nations health agency on Friday, although nine neighbouring countries remain on alert.
Peter Salama, who leads the World Health Organization's health emergencies programme said that WHO was preparing for all eventualities, speaking at a press conference in Geneva.
To date there have been 32 suspected cases in and around Bikoro in remote Equateur Province – close to the Congo River – two confirmed by laboratory testing. There are 18 probable cases and a dozen classified as "suspicious", according to WHO.
"We have three healthcare workers infected, and one who is being reported as of yesterday, as having died," said Deputy Director-General Salama, warning that those who take care of patients are at greater risk of being infected and could pass the virus to others.
Given the significant number of suspected probable and confirmed cases, "we are planning for all scenarios, including the worst-case scenario," he added.
Two of the neighboring countries – the Central African Republic (CAR) and the Republic of Congo – have "a slightly higher level of risk" because of their river-based links to DRC, Mr. Salama said.
UN agencies on the ground
WHO is working closely with authorities in DRC to scale up operations rapidly and mobilize health partners that have helped in relatively recent Ebola outbreaks in West Africa: Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
As the affected communities are located in hard-to-reach areas, implementing an effective response will be dependent on ensuring access from the air and securing sufficient funding.
"It is absolutely a dire scene in terms of infrastructure. There are very few paved roads, very little electrification, very poor water and sanitation…the only way we mount a serious response in this outbreak is through an air-bridge," Mr. Salama said.
"This is going to be tough and it's going to be costly to stamp out this outbreak," he stressed.
WHO is in discussions with the World Food Programme (WFP) to organize airlifted supplies to the affected area, and to clear ground so that planes can land.
The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has also mobilized doctors, sanitation and hygiene specialists, to help contain the spread of the disease.
WHO now has a team on the ground along with partner Médecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), and will invole an additional team of between 20-40 specialists in epidemiology, logistics, contact-tracing, and vaccination programmes, in the coming days.
Having already deployed personal protective equipment on the ground, WHO plans to have a mobile laboratory up and running by this weekend, following approval from the DRC's Ministry of Health.
The initial focus will be on surveillance and understanding the extent of the outbreak; safe burials; case by case management; and preparing for any public health measures deemed necessary in terms of vaccination.
Mr. Salama emphasized that the vaccination operation for Ebola is far more complex than that for orally-administered polio vaccine. "This is a highly complex sophisticated operation in one of the most difficult terrains on earth," he said.
$2 million allocated from emergency fund
Meanwhile, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock on Friday approved a $2 million expenditure to help UN agencies and partners to fight and contain the outbreak.
"We know that coordinated early response will be critical containing this outbreak," he said, after signing off on the spending from the UN's emergency account, known as the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF).
According to the World Health Organization, this is the DRC's ninth outbreak, since the discovery of the Ebola virus in the country in 1976.
The virus is endemic to DRC, and causes an acute, serious illness which is often fatal if untreated. The virus is transmitted to human through contact with wild animals and can then be passed from person to person. Ebola is fatal in about 50 per cent of cases.
An outbreak in West Africa which began in 2014 left more than 11,000 dead across six countries, and was not declared officially over by WHO until the beginning of 2016.
First symptoms generally include the sudden onset of fever, fatigue, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, symptoms of impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding.
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Ebola Virus Disease|Democratic Republic of the Congo
Emergency meeting called as Ebola spreads to Congolese city – UN health agency
DR Congo Ebola outbreak not yet a global 'health emergency', but strong response to disease vital – UN health experts
DR Congo: Insecurity and attacks mean Ebola will keep spreading, warns world health agency
News Tracker: Past Stories on This Issue
New Ebola outbreak confirmed in DR Congo: UN health agency scales up response
Two new cases of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) have been confirmed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by Government scientists there, prompting the UN health agency to immediately scale up its response.

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the Royal-Imperial Route?How to tour
the Royal-Imperial Route?Why is it worth
to take the Route?Take
the Route!
John Cantius High School – former Friedrich Wilhelm Grammar School - The Royal-Imperial Route
1. Trzykrotnie rozbudowywany gmach jest świadectwem zmian w budownictwie XIX-wiecznego Poznania. Fot. Jarosław Tritt
A secondary education was the highest level of schooling that could be attained in 19th-century Poznań. High school graduates were highly esteemed and given a chance to seek university admission. In the early 19th century, the city was home to only one high school, which attracted a great number of students. For this reason, in 1834 it was split into a Protestant part, almost exclusively German, and Friedrich Wilhelm Grammar School. The Prussian authorities expected this division to improve educational opportunities for the German residents of Poznań, while dampening the patriotic fervour of Polish youth. Thanks to the efforts of outstanding educators, the school maintained its high educational standards. As Germanization continued, school curricula became increasingly centred on the German language, and subjects were expected to foster Prussian patriotism. This negatively affected Polish students, who found it difficult to get promoted to higher grades. Expanded on three separate occasions, the High School building bears testimony to the construction trends followed in 19th-century Poznań.
© 2021 TRAKT Center for Cultural Tourism. Design and implementation: PSNC
Brama Poznania z lotu ptaka
http://trakt.poznan.pl/wp-content/uploads/video/04_brama_poznania.mp4


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Hwy 101 widening project
Ventura/Santa Barbara 101 HOV Project
CalTrans is planning to widen the freeway from Mussel Shoals to Bates Road, 'the Rincon' in northern Ventura County. The Ventura County Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation has been involved in this issue for the past few years, attending the public meetings and commenting on the planning process. The Caltrans plan aims to reduce traffic congestion by turning the 4 lane highway into a 6 lane freeway, with HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) lanes.
Because of the public involvement, there are many other components to the project. These include:
Four miles of California Coastal Trail (CCT) bikeway, separated from the highway by see-through safety barriers and railings designed to maximize views to the ocean.
Removal of existing shoulder concrete barrier.
Construct concrete median in a context sensitive tone.
Development of beach access points at Bates Road, Rincon Point, State Park, La Conchita, Mussel Shoals, Punta Gorda and Mobil Pier.
Additional parking for at least 211 vehicles at Punta Gorda; accessible from 101 with connections to the beach and bikeway/CCT.
Pedestrian Undercrossing (PUC) at La Conchita with beach and bikeway/CCT connection.
Bike racks at Mobil Pier, Punta Gorda, Mussel Shoals and La Conchita.
Trash receptacles at La Conchita, Mussel Shoals, Punta Gorda, and Mobil Pier.
One toilet facility between Bates Road and Mobil Pier.
Revitalization of existing Pedestrian Undercrossing at Punta Gorda.
Include a Handicap space at Mobil Pier, and
Improved beach access at Mobil Pier.
Install Soundwalls at Mussel Shoals that are the shortest length feasible.
Install Coastal Access Signage, as appropriate.
Include Hotel information sign for the Cliff House Inn.
The total cost estimate for the widening project is $151 million. $27 million is the estimated cost for the bike path, ramp and visual enhancements.
The map below shows the area with the proposed coastal trail and coastal access points.
Background: Surfrider testified to CalTrans in 1994 following the fatality of a cyclist on Hwy 101, and at that time we unsuccessfully advocated for construction of a dedicated bike path on the landward side of the freeway, or at the very least a safety barrier for cyclists riding along the highway. The current situation shown here is obviously not safe, although hundreds of cyclists ride this section of highway every week.
The original plan after initial stakeholder meetings was for a bike path on the landward side of the freeway and railroad to provide a safe and fast thoroughfare for cyclists between old PCH at Mussel Shoals and Bates Road (Rincon). However, in subsequent (closed) meetings, the Coastal Commission had the bike path re-aligned on the beach side in order to realize the goal of constructing a section of the California Coastal Trail on the beach.
The current proposal is for a multi-use trail on the ocean side of the freeway, separated by steel fencing on both sides. The path is 10 feet wide, and is intended for pedestrians and other beach users as well as cyclists. (Although it has been suggested that cyclists would still have the option of using the highway shoulder, this will not be permitted when the 'highway' is re-designated as a 'freeway.' Serious cyclists, beware!)
CORRECTION - Because of these concerns, CalTrans will make an exception and continue to allow cyclists to use the new freeway shoulder if they choose.
Coastal Access: The project will eliminate beach parking on a 1.2 mile segment of the emergency shoulder near La Conchita beach. Although Surfrider appealed this issue, CalTrans maintains that on-street parking is available in La Conchita, and a new parking lot at Punta Gorda will offset the loss.
For decades the community of La Conchita has been cut off from the beach by the highway. They have used a 4 ft high storm drain under the highway in order to access the beach. The plan calls for this accessway to be enlarged to 8ft x 8ft as shown below.
This will be a great asset to the La Conchita community, but once the new accessway is completed, this community will be impacted with beach parking on their streets. CalTrans did not pursue options to construct a new parking lot in or near this new coastal access point.
Coastal Structures: One of Surfrider's biggest concerns is the construction of coastal structures - history has proven that such engineering exacerbates coastal erosion and require constant long-term maintenance. (In the case of Surfers' Point in Ventura, the bike path was used to justify construction of a seawall - which ultimately led to the Managed Retreat project of today.)
This section of the coast highway is currently 'protected' with riprap. In order to provide beach access from the new bike path, the riprap will be removed or modified, and a new seawall will be constructed at the La Conchita Public Undercrossing:
The most recent drawings show that the beach access ramp will encroach onto the public beach, outside the CalTrans Right of Way.
At the Ventura County Board of Supervisors Hearing, these issues were brought up in response to Surfrider's appeal. The end result is that we have assurances that CalTrans will move the ramp off the public beach into their Right of Way, and add four additional coastal accessways from the bikeway to the beach. (We were concerned that surfers ending up down the coast from Rincon in huge surf would not be able to exit the beach to walk back)
Because of these additional concessions and the unlikelihood that there was anything further to gain, the Surfrider executive committee voted not to appeal the project to the Coastal Commission.
My opinion? Compromise is a good thing. But only history will tell whether this is a good project or not. When the 'new' freeway is stop-and-go with cars, waves are breaking over the seawall, and the beach has eroded away, only then may people wonder why there was no discussion of putting in a commuter rail line with the billion dollars used to widen the Ventura-Santa Barbara Hwy 101 in 2005-2015.
One thing always leads to another...
More info: CalTrans website: http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist07/travel/projects/details.php?id=28
In the News: http://www.vcstar.com/news/2010/sep/21/nxxfchighway22/
Labels: CalTrans, coastal management
Estuary breach kills fish
Patagonia online surf catalog
California and the World Ocean Conference
Margo's epic paddle


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Lanes of inbound Dan Ryan closed for tanker leaking fuel at 79th
Police investigate the scene of a three-vehicle crash early Monday on the inbound Dan Ryan at 78th Street. | Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times
CHICAGO (Sun-Times Media Wire) - Three people were injured early Monday in a three-vehicle crash on the inbound Dan Ryan Expressway.
About 2:50 a.m., emergency responders were called to the inbound lanes near 79th Street for a crash involving a car, a semitrailer and a tanker truck that was leaking fuel, according to Illinois State Police.
Paramedics took all three drivers to hospitals for minor injuries, police said.
Two were taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, and a third person was taken to Stroger Hospital, according to Chicago Fire Department Cmdr. Walter Schroeder. Paramedics listed them in "red" condition.
State police reopened all lanes at 79th Street by 5:55 a.m.
At least six vehicles from the Chicago Fire Department, including a HazMat truck, were at the scene of the crash. The HazMat situation was cleared by 3:40 a.m., Schroder said.
Additional information was not released.
Storm postpones Chicago State-CSU Bakersfield men's game


Calling all milk chocolate lovers! Our Only Milk Chocolate Assorted Set includes our 4 best selling milk chocolate dipped pretzel varieties: Sprinkles, Toffee, Cinnamon Sugar and Peanut Butter. The pretzels are decoratively held together in a clear box and finished with a white ribbon, making it the sweetest gift for your milk-chocolate loving friends and family. You'll win them over with this delicous and unique gift!


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Mom buys iPhone from online seller, ends up with 2 bars of soap
Posted 2:19 pm, September 5, 2019, by CNN Wire Service
ALLEN PARK, Mich. — Samantha Powell is a Michigan mom who says she was just trying to buy her daughter an iPhone, when she ended up getting scammed.
A few weeks ago, Powell says she made a deal with a "seller" on the app 'LetGo'. They communicated on the app and agreed on a price of $450.
Powell says she had saved money for 6 months in order to buy her daughter an iPhone before school started.
She agreed to meet the "seller" at an apartment complex in Allen Park. She had gone there with her husband, but when they exchanged the money and the iPhone box,
Powell says the "seller" took off running. Her husband opened the box and found no iPhone, just two bars of soap.
Powell told 7 Action News, "When he opened it, we were both dumbfounded. We were just staring at it: Did that just happen?"
She says they tried going after the "seller" but she was gone.
They called police and also filed a police report. Powell says she heard the "seller" even went on Facebook and bragged about what she had done.
"She was pretty much saying haha thinking that she wasn't going to get caught," she says.
But she may not be laughing now. Powell says the 18-year-old "seller" used a fake name on 'LetGo', but had provided her phone number for the sale. That's how police were able to figure out who she is.
Powell says that "seller" is an 18 year-old woman. Police say she has been ticketed and if she doesn't show up for court, a warrant will be issued for her arrest.
Meanwhile, Powell says she hopes her story will help remind others to meet up at a police department for such a transaction. She has since gotten her daughter an iPhone off Craigslist. She said she met the seller at a local police department and had no problem.
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USAF to equip TDC with AtHoc emergency mass notification system
AtHoc has been awarded a contract for the supply of its IWSAlerts emergency mass notification system (EMNS) to equip the US Air Force's (USAF) Theatre Deployable Communications (TDC) ground-to-ground kits.
The IWSAlerts system together with TDC will deliver quick two-way emergency notification to troops and their dependents to meet force protection and personnel accountability requirements during military contingencies and missions.
The system provides centralised alert activation and control from a unified Web-based console, enabling the management of alerts across multiple and redundant channels such as mobile phones, landlines, BlackBerry devices, SMS text and e-mail.
Network alert delivery and responses can be tracked to ensure that targeted recipients have received and responded to alerts during emergency situations as well as drills and training exercises.
The network-centric notification system is also capable of integrating with the USAF's existing Internet Protocol (IP) network services, thereby reducing infrastructure and maintenance costs.
The system is widely deployed at several centralised data centres, supporting thousands of air force personnel at more than 120 locations worldwide and is also in use with the US Army, Navy, Coast Guard, US Veteran Affairs.
UCLA, Microsoft, Boeing and Raytheon also rely on IWSAlerts system for their emergency alerting and critical communication needs.
The TDC is a ground-to-ground communications infrastructure designed to transmit and receive voice, data and video communications securely to or from wireless, satellite or hard-wired sources anywhere in the world for military contingencies.
Harris is the prime contractor for the programme, while AtHoc will be the subcontractor.
The USAF relies on TDC kits, Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet), and Non-secure Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNet) to receive communications in the battlefield.
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Ground Support Equipment for Military Air Forces
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Avionics Subsystems for Military and Aerospace Applications


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Te Ururoa Flavell appointed CEO of Te Wānanga o Aotearoa
12:00pm, Thursday 19 July 2018. By Regan Paranihi
Te Ururoa Flavell has been appointed the new Chief Executive Officer of Te Wānanga o Aotearoa.
Te Wānanga o Aotearoa chair Vanessa Eparaima says she is pleased to see Flavell appointed to the CEO position as he has a strong track record for his leadership and dedication to Māori, particularly in education.
"Te Ururoa has a strong background in Māori education as a leader in Māori language revitalisation and in leading Māori development. He is widely respected across Māoridom and the political spectrum and has knowledge of government from his time as a Minister as well as extensive networks in Wellington and across communities throughout Aotearoa."
Te Wānanga o Aotearoa is the country's second largest tertiary education provider, providing training and education to almost 32,000 tauira last year and employing more than 1700 staff throughout Aotearoa.
Flavell says he is pleased with his time he spent serving his people in the big house however that time has now come to an end and is looking forward to continuing his work for Māori in a different light.
"I am proud that I was able to serve our people in Parliament and of the achievements that were made for Māori. I am passionate about Māori development and Māori success. My time as a politician has come to an end and will help me in my new role. My passion for Māori and for Māori success will continue at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa."
He commends the wānanga for all the achievements they have accomplished over the years and excited to be a part of an organisation who has Māori education at its best interest.
"Te Wānanga o Aotearoa has done a wonderful job in providing access into tertiary education for many people over the years and I am excited to be given the opportunity to advance the aspirations Te Wānanga o Aotearoa has for communities around Te Reo revitalisation, Māori education, and access to quality, affordable tertiary education."
"The challenge is to take Te Wānanga o Aotearoa to the next level, to refine and enhance all that we do," says Flavell.
Flavell is set to start his new role on 20 August and will replace Dr Jim Mather who is stepping down after five years in the job.
Te Ururoa Flavell
Te Wananga o Aotearoa


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Home/Accessories/By Category/Paper-weights/Frying Pan Shape, Brass Paper Weight
Frying Pan Shape, Brass Paper Weight
Area: Ancient Greece
The frying-pan vessels are among the clay vessels, that were created during the Early Cycladic II period (2800-2300 B.C.), when the art of pottery was widely used by the ancient cycladic islanders. Their odd shape, which resemple a frying pan and the various motifs from the sea world, that are depicted on the vessels, impressed and inspired us to design a paper weight in brass for your office.
Dimensions: 9 cm x 5 mm
Among the clay vessels of the cycladic art, the frying-pan vessels stand out, which owe their name to the fact that they resemble a frying pan. They date back from the Early Cycladic II period (2800-2300 BC) and the purpose of these vessels with a forked handle is uncertain. On their undecorated side there is an upright rim. The other side is covered with incised and impressed motifs. A pubic triangle appears near the handle. The motifs decorating them are inspired by the world of the sea, such as spirals, which recall waves, the sun, stars, and the starfish.
It is not known exactly how the frying-pan vessels were used. It has been suggested that they functioned as mirrors, if they were filled with water, or drums, if they were originally covered with skin, and even as primitive navigation instrumentsor as moulds for making salt cakes, or even that their decoration was of some symbolic religious significance related to the sun, the sea and female fertility.
Since they were primarily grave gifts, a ceremonial or religious use cannot be ruled out. It may be that they were destined to hold objects used for the beautification of the dead or that they were used as containers for offering fruits to the dead or as drums in funerary ceremonies. The motifs possibly had a religious character, but it remains a fact that frying-pan vessels are sometimes found in settlements as well as graves, and that they are sometimes undecorated. It is, therefore, clear that they were used in everyday life too.
Frying-pan vessels are exhibited at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.
2800 - 2300 B.C.
9 cm x 5 mm
Gross Weight:
Paper-weight


The advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing for corporations.
On the whole, today's chief information officers (CIOs) in companies large and small are anything but enthusiastic when asked their opinion of the ubiquitous client/server networks they manage. The client computers, whether desktop or notebook, are costly to buy and maintain; given the pace of technological change, they also need to be replaced every two or three years. The servers and the networks themselves are cumbersome, very breakable, expensive, and difficult to control. Worst of all, the personal productivity applications loaded on ever more powerful clients so employees can actually get their work done — a software sector long dominated by Microsoft — require that companies spend a king's ransom not just to purchase them, but to train users. And these same users must be retrained every time vendors update the programs and add yet more features.
Considering the cost and complexity of these networks, it's no surprise that CIOs have lusted after the dream of a so-called thin-client computing environment, in which programs reside solely on servers and are doled out to cut-rate, slimmed-down, "dumb" workstations as the users need them. A minimalist version of this computing concept came into being with the invention of the Internet browser, which made it possible for individual client machines to access Web-based software — variously known as ASP (application service provider), software as a service, and now cloud computing. A good example is Salesforce.com, which provides salespeople with data management tools that can be accessed from anywhere via the Web.
But applications like Salesforce are geared toward a limited customer base. And until recently, no one had successfully offered the one thing that would make thin-client computing a widespread reality: Web-based personal productivity applications — the word processors, spreadsheets, and presentation software on which every knowledge worker has come to depend.
Finally, we have the advent of offerings such as Zoho office suite, ThinkFree Office, and, most notably, Google Apps. Even Microsoft has entered the arena, with a Web-based version of Microsoft Works, though the software giant is still shying away from offering its big moneymakers, Word and Excel, online. Although these applications aren't yet quite ready for prime time, especially in computing environments on the scale of large corporations, their strategic implications, especially in an age of vastly increased mobility and the rise of the globally integrated corporation, are profound.
The virtues of Web-based productivity applications are many and compelling. Most obvious — and an issue dear to the heart of every CIO — is the cost relative to purchasing a full Microsoft Office package for every employee who needs such tools. Office costs US$408 per user, which includes three years of maintenance. Every additional year of maintenance costs $74. So a company with, say, 19,000 employees needing Office to do their jobs would have to pony up $17.6 million over 10 years for the software. If only 20 percent of these workers were given Office and the rest were provided with a free Web-based application suite — whose maintenance and upgrading is the provider's problem, not the CIO's — the total 10-year cost would come to just $3.5 million, a savings of $14.1 million. Few organizations can afford to ignore numbers like those.
The financial advantages increase even more if one takes into account the cost savings achieved by shifting the storage burden from clients or the network to the vendor's data centers — and no longer incurring associated costs such as regular backup of employees' hard drives. And since documents and spreadsheets stored on the Web can be accessed by anyone with the appropriate privileges, the burden imposed on corporate networks to manage the exchange of countless numbers of files is eliminated, as are the risks of contamination by e-mail viruses — another large cost savings.
Most of these programs are offered at no cost as part of a "bait and switch" strategy. Developers of this software hope to sell users additional, more powerful versions of their applications — so-called enterprise versions that run on client/server networks.
Which only highlights the limitations of the scaled-down Web-based productivity software. The maximum size of a word processing file produced in Google Apps, for instance, is just 500 kilobytes, plus two megabytes per embedded image, not huge in this age of documents that include pictures, spreadsheets, and numerous other design features (but enough to store a 125-page book without images, for instance). Other offerings are more generous; Zoho and ThinkFree allow files of 10 megabytes or so. Meanwhile, formatting and revision capabilities remain either nonexistent or primitive at best. Moreover, users must be online in order to use these applications.
Yet despite the relative lack of features, two productivity benefits of Web-based applications stand out. First, users can collaborate, editing Web-based documents and spreadsheets simultaneously; viewing the changes they make almost immediately; and, because most of these applications offer integrated instant messaging, discussing these edits the moment they are made. With all documents and spreadsheets stored in a central repository that everybody can access, users can search and index the entire database. When companies compare working this way to developing and using an enterprise search application that must retrieve information from individual computers, they see immense savings both in time and in money.
The second benefit is interoperability. Because these applications are browser-based, they are free of any restrictions created by the type of computer or operating system being used. Windows, Mac OS, and even Linux users can work together seamlessly, without worrying about file or storage compatibility.
Given these features, the rise of Web-based applications offers an intriguing strategic possibility: The cost advantage of Web-based applications — and, presumably, of the low-power computers needed to run these programs — should allow CIOs to be more generous when passing out computers to the rank and file in the organization. And when personal productivity tools spread farther down into the corporate hierarchy, employees throughout the company may be able to contribute to the organization more fully as they are linked to the huge information resources of the Internet. And they may be able to work with one another more flexibly.
That advantage takes on special significance in fast-globalizing business environments. Rapidly deploying teams to new locations where infrastructure is iffy and IT support is minimal becomes much easier when all that is needed to get up and running is a lightweight notebook computer and an Internet connection. Such increased agility will let companies explore new market opportunities cheaply and rapidly, without the risk of an overinvestment of people, time, and money in marginal markets. Moreover, the relative lack of features in Web applications will probably be irrelevant in nascent markets, where skill levels may not be what we've come to expect in more developed countries. Indeed, storing proprietary and sensitive information on the Web and not on local computers would be a significant advantage in less-developed markets where the security of both data and physical computers remains a concern.
On the enterprise level, however, security and privacy concerns may be the one thing that could derail the success of Web-based applications. Despite the considerable value of storing files on Google's or Zoho's servers, that data is no longer under the direct control of the company's internal technology and is thus more vulnerable to hackers and other computer security problems. Most offerings include some level of encryption for working with and storing files, and Google, for one, guarantees the security of files stored on its applications. Yet although Google is in general a trusted name, the company has already conceded that it searches e-mails sent by users of Gmail, its e-mail program, in order to target ads at users based on their interests. Other, less well-known companies may base their storage systems outside the U.S. CIOs have to weigh whether that sort of environment is appropriate to use for sensitive corporate information.
So far, thousands of smaller companies have already availed themselves of Web-based productivity applications. Will larger corporations follow? That depends on whether, and how quickly, CIOs — and their peers at the executive level — come to appreciate the strategic value of Web-based computing. Conceivably, the competitive advantage will go to the early experimenters and early adopters, as they will have a head start on the learning curve and training these applications require. And that advantage, in both cost and strategic value, could be significant.
Rodrigo Fontecilla (fontecilla_rodrigo@bah.com), a principal with Booz Allen Hamilton in McLean, Va., focuses on innovation and the impact of next-generation technical capabilities.
Steve Wardell (wardell_steve@bah.com), an associate with Booz Allen in McLean, Va., specializes in design, development, and system applications for government agencies.


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It really is the end of an era with Delia Smith vowing to never make another cookery programme. I think most people with any interest in cooking will at some stage have seen Delia grace their television screen with some wonderfully simplistic but fascinating recipes.
As one era ends another begins, and thankfully it's not the end of Delia's input into the cookery and baking world. Delia has recently announced she is partnering up with Silverwood Bakeware and intends to leave her 40 year television career behind her and plunge into online cookery and tutorials.
At 71 years of age, it is incredibly refreshing to see a cook of this generation start to focus their efforts online and realise the potential that is out there for users at home to cook along with Delia using their iPad, laptop or mobile phone.
Delia's range of Silverwood bakeware was specially commissioned by Delia herself and has been designed to be used along with Delia's new cookbook, Delia's Cakes, a revamped and updated version of Delia's original classic cookbook.
This range of baking tins and matching liners are perfectly sized for the recipes found in Delia's new book, but can of course be used for any of your own recipes as well.
Delia's Cakes is released on Thursday 28th February 2013 and Delia's Silverwood Bakeware collection is available to buy from AJ Stuart today!
For more information, you can visit Delia Online and follow lots of Delia's free recipes.
We think Delia sums it up pretty well herself - click here to view her short introduction to the new range.
AJ Stuart are a catering equipment supplier based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Our catering blog aims to provide an insight into the catering industry whilst also providing hints & tips, recipes and the latest news & products from the catering industry. Get in touch if you have any queries!
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Age of Humans Future of Space Exploration Human Behavior Mind & Body Our Planet Space Wildlife Newsletter Earth Optimism Summit
Tim White (gesturing to Alisera men) has to deal with drought, disease and armed villagers to conduct research. (Ann Gibbons)
Ardipithecus ramidus is a female who lived 4.4 million years ago. Her skeleton has been described as one of the most important discoveries of the past century. (Tim White 2009, From Science Oct. 2 issue)
Ardipithecus ramidus lived in a forest in Africa. Her fossil skeleton shows that she walked upright and yet had an opposable toe, good for climbing trees. (Illustration by J.H. Matternes)
Paleoanthropologists have found evidence of seven different hominid species in the desert near Aramis (Yohannes Haile-Selassie, left, and Berhane Asfaw with Ardi fossils). Millions of years ago, much of the region was lush woodland. (Tim White / Brill Atlanta)
Hunting for hominid fossils in Ethiopia, researchers "collect every piece of bone, every piece of wood, every seed," says White. (Tim White)
Researchers take care of what they excavate by adding a glue-like preservative. (Tim White / Brill Atlanta)
Ardi's species was cooperative, says C. Owen Lovejoy (examining fossil bones with Scott Simpson, left, at the National Museum of Ethiopia). (David L. Brill)
Researchers long assumed early human ancestors were chimpanzee-like. But Ardi's comparatively flexible wrist points to a primate breakthrough: she did not walk on her knuckles, as chimps do. (David L. Brill)
Hominid evolution produced many species. Some overlapped in time. All but one—Homo sapiens, us—ended in extinction. This chart shows roughly when some of the known species in the human family lived.
Like-colored bars denote closely related species. H. sapiens may be a direct descendant of H. erectus.
View Larger Diagram (Pedro Velasco / 5W Infographics)
The Human Family's Earliest Ancestors
Studies of hominid fossils, like 4.4-million-year-old "Ardi," are changing ideas about human origins
By Ann Gibbons
Smithsonian Magazine | Subscribe
Tim White is standing with a group of restless men atop a ridge in the Afar desert of Ethiopia. A few of them are pacing back and forth, straining to see if they can spot fragments of beige bone in the reddish-brown rubble below, as eager to start their search as children at an Easter egg hunt. At the bottom of the hill is a 25-foot-long cairn of black rocks erected in the style of an Afar grave, so large it looks like a monument to a fallen hero. And in a way it is. White and his colleagues assembled it to mark the place where they first found traces, in 1994, of "Ardi," a female who lived 4.4 million years ago. Her skeleton has been described as one of the most important discoveries of the past century, and she is changing basic ideas about how our earliest ancestors looked and moved.
The Top Ten Deadliest Animals of Our Evolutionary Past
Sculpting Evolution
A Closer Look at Evolutionary Faces
More than 14 years later, White, a wiry 59-year-old paleoanthropologist from the University of California at Berkeley, is here again, on an annual pilgrimage to see if seasonal rains have exposed any new bits of Ardi's bones or teeth. He often fires up the fossil hunters who work with him by chanting, "Hominid, hominid, hominid! Go! Go! Go!" But he can't let them go yet. Only a week earlier, an Alisera tribesman had threatened to kill White and two of his Ethiopian colleagues if they returned to these fossil beds near the remote village of Aramis, home of a clan of Alisera nomads. The threat is probably just a bluff, but White doesn't mess with the Alisera, who are renowned for being territorial and settling disputes with AK-47s. As a precaution, the scientists travel with six Afar regional police officers armed with their own AK-47s.
Arranging this meeting with tribal leaders to negotiate access to the fossil beds has already cost the researchers two precious days out of their five-week field season. "The best- laid plans change every day," says White, who has also had to deal with poisonous snakes, scorpions, malarial mosquitoes, lions, hyenas, flash floods, dust tornadoes, warring tribesmen and contaminated food and water. "Nothing in the field comes easy."
As we wait for the Alisera to arrive, White explains that the team returns to this hostile spot year after year because it's the only place in the world to yield fossils that span such a long stretch of human evolution, some six million years. In addition to Ardi, a possible direct ancestor, it is possible here to find hominid fossils from as recently as 160,000 years ago—an early Homo sapiens like us—all the way back to Ardipithecus kadabba, one of the earliest known hominids, who lived almost six million years ago. At last count, the Middle Awash project, which takes its name from this patch of the Afar desert and includes 70 scientists from 18 nations, has found 300 specimens from seven different hominid species that lived here one after the other.
Ardi, short for Ardipithecus ramidus, is now the region's best-known fossil, having made news worldwide this past fall when White and others published a series of papers detailing her skeleton and ancient environment. She is not the oldest member of the extended human family, but she is by far the most complete of the early hominids; most of her skull and teeth as well as extremely rare bones of her pelvis, hands, arms, legs and feet have so far been found.
With sunlight beginning to bleach out the gray-and-beige terrain, we see a cloud of dust on the horizon. Soon two new Toyota Land Cruisers pull up on the promontory, and a half-dozen Alisera men jump out wearing Kufi caps and cotton sarongs, a few cinched up with belts that also hold long, curved daggers. Most of these clan "elders" appear to be younger than 40—few Alisera men seem to survive to old age.
After customary greetings and handshaking, White gets down on his hands and knees with a few fossil hunters to show the tribesmen how the researchers crawl on the ground, shoulder to shoulder, to look for fossils. With Ethiopian paleoanthropologist and project co-leader Berhane Asfaw translating to Amharic and another person translating from Amharic to Afariña, White explains that these stones and bones reveal the ancient history of humankind. The Alisera smile wanly, apparently amused that anyone would want to grovel on the ground for a living. They grant permission to search for fossils—for now. But they add one caveat. Someday, they say, the researchers must teach them how to get history from the ground.
The quest for fossils of human ancestors began in earnest after Charles Darwin proposed in 1871, in his book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, that humans probably arose in Africa. He didn't base his claim on hard evidence; the only hominid fossils then known were Neanderthals, who had lived in Europe less than 100,000 years ago. Darwin suggested that our "early progenitors" lived on the African continent because its tropical climate was hospitable to apes, and because anatomical studies of modern primates had convinced him that humans were more "allied" with African apes (chimpanzees and gorillas) than Asian apes (orangutans and gibbons). Others disagreed, arguing that Asian apes were closer to modern humans.
As it happened, the first truly ancient remains of a hominid—a fossilized skullcap and teeth more than half a million years old—were found in Asia, on the island of Java, in 1891. "Java man," as the creature was called, was later classified as a member of Homo erectus, a species that arose 1.8 million years ago and may have been one of our direct ancestors.
So began a century of discovery notable for spectacular finds, in which the timeline of human prehistory began to take shape and the debate continued over whether Asia or Africa was the human birthplace.
In 1924, the Australian anatomist Raymond Dart, looking through a crate of fossils from a limestone quarry in South Africa, discovered a small skull. The first early hominid from Africa, the Taung child, as it was known, was a juvenile member of Australopithecus africanus, a species that lived one million to two million years ago, though at the time skeptical scientists said the chimpanzee-size braincase was too small for a hominid.
In 1959, archaeologist Louis Leakey and his wife Mary, working in Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, discovered a bit of hominid jawbone that would later become known as Paranthropus boisei. The 1.75-million-year-old fossil was the first of many hominids the Leakeys, their son Richard and their associates would find in East Africa, strengthening the case that hominids indeed originated in Africa. Their work inspired American and European researchers to sweep through the Great Rift Valley, a geologic fault that runs through Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia and exposes rock layers that are millions of years old.
In 1974, paleoanthropologists Donald Johanson and Tom Gray, digging in Hadar, Ethiopia, found the partial skeleton of the earliest known hominid at the time—a female they called Lucy, after the Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," which was playing in camp as they celebrated. At 3.2 million years old, Lucy was remarkably primitive, with a brain and body about the size of a chimpanzee's. But her ankle, knee and pelvis showed that she walked upright like us.
This meant Lucy was a hominid—only humans and our close relatives in the human family habitually walk upright on the ground. A member of the species Australopithecus afarensis, which lived from 3.9 million to 2.9 million years ago, Lucy helped answer some key questions. She confirmed that upright walking evolved long before hominids began using stone tools—about 2.6 million years ago—and before their brains began to expand dramatically. But her upright posture and gait raised new questions. How long had it taken to evolve the anatomy to balance on two feet? What prompted some ancient ape to stand up and begin walking down the path toward humanness? And what kind of ape was it?
Lucy, of course, couldn't answer those questions. But what came before her? For 20 years after her discovery, it was as if the earliest chapter of the human story were missing.
One of the first teams to search for lucy's ancestor was the Middle Awash project, which formed in 1981 when White and Asfaw joined Berkeley archaeologist J. Desmond Clark to search for fossils and stone tools in Ethiopia. They got off to a promising start—finding 3.9-million-year-old fragments of a skull and a slightly younger thighbone—but they were unable to return to the Middle Awash until 1990, because Ethiopian officials imposed a moratorium on searching for fossils while they rewrote their antiquities laws. Finally, in 1992, White's graduate student, Gen Suwa, saw a glint in the desert near Aramis. It was the root of a tooth, a molar, and its size and shape indicated that it belonged to a hominid. Suwa and other members of the Middle Awash project soon collected other fossils, including a child's lower jaw with a milk molar still attached. State-of-the-art dating methods indicated that they were 4.4 million years old.
The team proposed in the journal Nature in 1994 that the fossils—now known as Ardipithecus ramidus—represented the "long-sought potential root species for the Hominidae," meaning that the fossils belonged to a new species of hominid that could have given rise to all later hominids. The idea that it was a member of the human family was based primarily on its teeth—in particular, the absence of large, dagger-like canines sharpened by the lower teeth. Living and extinct apes have such teeth, while hominids don't. But the gold standard for being a hominid was upright walking. So was A. ramidus really a hominid or an extinct ape?
White joked at the time that he would be delighted with more fossils—in particular, a skull and thighbone. It was as if he had placed an order. Within two months, another graduate student of White's, Ethiopian paleoanthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie, spotted two pieces of a bone from the palm of a hand—their first sign of Ardi. The team members eventually found 125 pieces of Ardi's skeleton. She had been a muscular female who stood almost four feet tall but could have weighed as much as 110 pounds, with a body and brain roughly the same size as a chimpanzee's. As they got a good look at Ardi's body plan, they soon realized that they were looking at an entirely new type of hominid.
It was the find of a lifetime. But they were daunted by Ardi's condition. Her bones were so brittle that they crumbled when touched. White called them "road kill."
The researchers spent three field seasons digging out entire blocks of sedimentary rock surrounding the fossils, encasing the blocks in plaster and driving them to the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa. In the museum lab, White painstakingly injected glue from syringes into each fragment and then used dental tools and brushes, often under a microscope, to remove the silty clay from the glue-hardened fossils. Meanwhile, Suwa, today a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tokyo, analyzed key fossils with modified CT scanners to see what was inside them and used computer imaging to digitally restore the crushed skull. Finally, he and anatomist C. Owen Lovejoy worked from the fossils and the computer images to make physical models of the skull and pelvis.
It's a measure of the particularity, complexity and thoroughness of the researchers' efforts to understand Ardi in depth that they took 15 years to publish their detailed findings, which appeared this past October in a series of 11 papers in the journal Science. In short, they wrote that Ardi and fossils from 35 other members of her species, all found in the Middle Awash, represented a new type of early hominid that wasn't much like a chimpanzee, gorilla or a human. "We have seen the ancestor and it's not a chimpanzee," says White.
This came as a surprise to researchers who had proposed that the earliest hominids would look and act a lot like chimpanzees. They are our closest living relatives, sharing 96 percent of our DNA, and they are capable of tool use and complex social behavior. But Ardi's discoverers proposed that chimpanzees have changed so dramatically as they have evolved over the past six million years or so, that today's chimpanzees make poor models for the last common ancestor we shared.
In his lab at Kent State University, Lovejoy recently demonstrated why Ardi is so unusual. He gently lined up four bones from Ardi's hand on his lab bench, and he showed how they fit together in a way that allowed Ardi's hand to bend far backward at the wrist. By comparison, a chimpanzee's wrist is stiff, which allows the animal to put its weight on its knuckles as it moves on the ground—knuckle walking. "If you wanted to evolve Ardi's hand, you couldn't do it from this," he said, waving a set of bones from a chimpanzee hand in the air. If Lovejoy is right, this means Ardi—and our upright-walking ancestors—never went through a knuckle-walking stage after they came down from the trees to live on the ground, as some experts have long believed.
As evidence that Ardi walked upright on the ground, Lovejoy pointed to a cast of her upper pelvic blades, which are shorter and broader than an ape's. They would have let her balance on one leg at a time while walking upright. "This is a monstrous change—this thing has been a biped for a very long time," Lovejoy said.
But Ardi didn't walk like us or, for that matter, like Lucy either. Ardi's lower pelvis, like a chimpanzee's, had powerful hip and thigh muscles that would have made it difficult to run as fast or as far as modern humans can without injuring her hamstrings. And she had an opposable big toe, so her foot was able to grasp branches, suggesting she still spent a lot of time in the trees—to escape predators, pick fruit or even sleep, presumably in nests made of branches and leaves. This unexpected combination of traits was a "shocker," says Lovejoy.
He and his colleagues have proposed that Ardi represents an early stage of human evolution when an ancient ape body plan was being remodeled to live in two worlds—in the trees and on the ground, where hominids increasingly foraged for plants, eggs and small critters.
The Ardi research also challenged the long-held views that hominids evolved in a grassy savanna, says Middle Awash project geologist Giday WoldeGabriel of Los Alamos National Laboratory. The Ardi researchers' thorough canvassing—"You crawl on your hands and knees, collecting every piece of bone, every piece of wood, every seed, every snail, every scrap," White says—indicates that Ardi lived in woodland with a closed canopy, so little light reached grass and plants on the forest floor. Analyzing thousands of specimens of fossilized plants and animals, as well as hundreds of samples of chemicals in sediments and tooth enamel, the researchers found evidence of such forest species as hackberry, fig and palm trees in her environment. Ardi lived alongside monkeys, kudu antelopes and peafowl—animals that prefer woodlands, not open grasslands.
Ardi is also providing insights into ancient hominid behavior. Moving from the trees to the ground meant that hominids became easier prey. Those that were better at cooperating could live in larger social groups and were less likely to become a big cat's next meal. At the same time, A. ramidus males were not much larger than females and they had evolved small, unsharpened canine teeth. That's similar to modern humans, who are largely cooperative, and in contrast to modern chimpanzees, whose males use their size to dominate females and brandish their dagger-like canines to intimidate other males.
As hominids began increasingly to work together, Lovejoy says, they also adopted other previously unseen behaviors—to regularly carry food in their hands, which allowed them to provision mates or their young more effectively. This behavior, in turn, may have allowed males to form tighter bonds with female mates and to invest in the upbringing of their offspring in a way not seen in African apes. All this reinforced the shift to life on the ground, upright walking and social cooperation, says Lovejoy.
Not everyone is convinced that Ardi walked upright, in part because the critical evidence comes from her pelvis, which was crushed. While most researchers agree that she is a hominid, based on features in her teeth and skull, they say she could be a type of hominid that was a distant cousin of our direct ancestor—a newfound offshoot on the human family tree. "I think it's solid" that Ardi is a hominid, if you define hominids by their skull and teeth, says Rick Potts, a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. But, like many others who have not seen the fossils, he has yet to be convinced that the crushed but reconstructed pelvis proves upright walking, which could mean that Ardi might have been an extinct ape that was "experimenting" with some degree of upright walking. "The period between four million to seven million years is when we know the least," says Potts. "Understanding what is a great ape and what is a hominid is tough."
As researchers sort out where Ardi sits in the human family tree, they agree that she is advancing fundamental questions about human evolution: How can we identify the earliest members of the human family? How do we recognize the first stages of upright walking? What did our common ancestor with chimpanzees look like? "We didn't have much at all before," says Bill Kimbel, an Arizona State University paleoanthropologist. "Ardipithecus gives us a prism to look through to test alternatives."
After Ardi's discovery, researchers naturally began to wonder what came before her. They didn't have long to wait.
Starting in 1997, Haile-Selassie, now at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, found fossils between 5.2 million and 5.8 million years old in the Middle Awash. A toe bone suggested its owner had walked upright. The bones looked so much like a primitive version of A. ramidus he proposed these fossils belonged to her direct ancestor—a new species he eventually named Ardipithecus kadabba.
In 2000, Martin Pickford of the College of France and Brigitte Senut of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris announced their team had found an even older hominid—13 fossils representing a species that lived six million years ago in the Tugen Hills of Kenya. Two of the fossils were thighbones, including one that provided the oldest direct evidence of upright walking in a hominid. They named this creature Orrorin tugenensis, drawing on a Tugen legend of the "original man" who settled the Tugen Hills. Informally, in honor of its year of discovery, they called it Millennium man.
Hot on the heels of that discovery came the most surprising one of all—a skull from Chad, about 1,500 miles west of the Great Rift Valley of eastern Africa where many of the most ancient hominids have been found. A Chadian student named Ahounta Djimdoumalbaye picked up a ball of rock on the floor of the Djurab Desert, where windstorms blow sand dunes like waves on a sea and expose fossils buried for millions of years. When Djimdoumalbaye turned over the stone, he stared into the vacant eye sockets of an ape-like face—the skull of a primate that lived six million to seven million years ago on the shores of an ancient lake. It had traits that suggested it was a hominid—a small lower face and canines and a skull that seemed to sit atop its spine, as in upright walkers. Paleontologist Michel Brunet, then of the University of Poitiers in France, introduced it as the oldest known hominid, Sahelanthropus tchadensis. (Its nickname is Toumaï, which means "hope of life" in the Goran language.) But proving that a skull walked upright is difficult, and questions linger about whether Sahelanthropus is a bona fide hominid or not.
Taken together, fossils discovered over the past 15 years have provided snapshots of several different creatures that were alive in Africa at the critical time when the earliest members of the human family were emerging. When these snapshots are added to the human family album, they double the time researchers can see back into our past—from Lucy at 3.2 million years to Toumaï at almost 7 million years.
One of the most sought-after fossils of that distant era was Lucy's direct ancestor. In 1994, 20 years after Lucy's skeleton was discovered, a team in Kenya led by Meave Leakey (the wife of Richard Leakey) found teeth and parts of a jaw as well as two pieces of shinbone that showed the creature walked upright. The fossils, named Australopithecus anamensis, were 4.1 million years old.
"This has been a fascinating 40 years to be in paleoanthropology," says Johanson, "one of the great times to be in this field." But, he adds, "there's still enormous confusion" about the murky time before 4 million years ago.
One thing that is clear is that these early fossils belong in a class by themselves. These species did not look or act like other known apes or like Lucy and other members of Australopithecus. They were large-bodied ground dwellers that stood up and walked on two legs. But if you watched them move, you would not mistake them for Lucy's species. They clung to life in the trees, but were poised to venture into more open country. In many ways, these early species resemble one another more than any fossils ever found before, as if there was a new developmental or evolutionary stage that our ancestors passed through before the transition was complete from ape to hominid. Indeed, when the skulls of Toumaï and Ardi are compared, the resemblance is "striking," says paleoanthropologist Christoph Zollikofer of the University of Zurich in Switzerland. The fossils are too far apart in time to be members of the same species, but their skulls are more like each other than they are like Lucy's species, perhaps signaling similar adaptations in diet or reproductive and social behavior.
The only way to find out how all these species are related to one another and to us is to find more bones. In particular, researchers need to find more overlapping parts of very early fossils so they can be compared directly—such as an upper end of a thighbone for both Ardi and Toumaï to compare with the upper thighbone of O. tugenensis.
At Aramis, as soon as the clan leaders gave the Middle Awash team their blessing, White began dispatching team members like an air traffic controller, directing them to fan out over the slope near Ardi's grave. The sun was high in the sky, though, making it hard to distinguish beige bone among the bleached out sediments. This time, the team found no new hominid fossils.
But one morning later that week, the team members drove up a dry riverbed to a site on the western margin of the Middle Awash. Only a few moments after hiking into the fossil beds, a Turkish postdoctoral researcher, Cesur Pehlevan, planted a yellow flag among the cobbles of the remote gully. "Tim!" he shouted. "Hominid?" White walked over and silently examined the molar, turning it over in his hand. White has the ability to look at a tooth or bone fragment and recognize almost immediately whether it belongs to a hominid. After a moment, he pronounced his verdict: "very good, Cesur. It's virtually unworn." The molar belonged to a young adult A. kadabba, the species whose fossils began to be found here in 1997. Now the researchers had one more piece to help fill in the portrait of this 5.8-million-year-old species.
"There's your discovery moment," said White. He reflected on the fossils they've bagged in this remote desert. "This year, we've got A. kadabba, A. anamensis, A. garhi, H. erectus, H. sapiens." That's five different kinds of hominids, most of which were unknown when White first started searching for fossils here in 1981. "The Middle Awash is a unique area," he said. "It is the only place on the planet Earth where you can look at the full scope of human evolution."
Ann Gibbons is a correspondent for Science and the author of The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors.
A recreation of Lucy's full skeleton at the new Hall of Human Origins at the National Museum of Natural History. (Chip Clark, Smithsonian Institution)
"Lucy" makes another appearance in this display from the exhibition, which shows how the size and shape of the human body has changed. From left, "Turkana Boy," a Homo erectus from Kenya; "Lucy"; and a composite skeleton of a Homo neanderthalensis, made from skeletons found in France and Israel. (Chip Clark, Smithsonian Institution)
These 30,000 year-old shell beads found in France appear to have been a necklace—one of the earliest indications that humans wore jewelry. Necklaces like these are believed to have helped early humans identify social status, age, sex or social group. (Chip Clark, Smithsonian Institution)
A collection of hand axes shows how early hand tools changed over time. The basic teardrop shape, however, stayed the same. (Chip Clark, Smithsonian Institution)
This hand axe, found at Olorgesailie, Kenya, is about 780,000 years old. Humans crafted the tool by removing stone flakes from around the stone's core, which left a sharp edge for either hunting, chopping wood, or making other tools. (Chip Clark, Smithsonian Institution)
A sickle, from Egypt, and blades, found in Iran, were one of the earliest tools humans used for farming and harvesting plants. (Chip Clark, Smithsonian Institution)
Fossils of human skulls, which span 2.5 million years, show how the shape of the human brain and face have evolved.
From left, the Australopithecus africanus; about 2.5 million years old; the Homo rudolfensis, about 1.9 million years old; the Homo erectus, about 1 million years old; the Homo heidelbergensis, about 350,000 years old; and the Homo sapiens, about 4,800 years old. (Chip Clark, Jim DiLoreto & Don Hurlbert, Smithsonian Institution)
A recreation of this 30,000 year-old handprint, found in France's Chauvet Cave, represents one of the earliest expressions of human creativity. (James DiLoreto and Donald Hurlbert, Smithsonian Institution)
A 90,000 year-old bone harpoon point, from the Republic of Congo, was thrown like a spear to hunt prehistoric catfish, which could weigh up to 150 pounds. The meat from the fish could feed 80 people for about two days. (Chip Clark, Smithsonian Institution)
Humans began to communicate with symbols about 8,000 years ago. Cuneiform symbols, seen on this tablet from Chakma, Iraq, began as a way to communicate concepts. They later began to represent more specific things, like sounds and syllables. (Chip Clark, Smithsonian Institution)
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Free from their mother's care, five young lions must fend for, and feed, themselves. Their first challenge: a giant giraffe who refuses to be caught.
Incredible: Five Lions Take Down a Giraffe (2:49)
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Does 'The Last Supper' Really Have a Hidden Meaning? (4:03)
A diver stumbles across a whale shark trapped in a commercial fishing line. Sensing the diver is there to help, the goliath lies still while the rope is cut.
A Whale Shark Cooperates With a Diver Saving Him (1:28)
Eric Green, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, explains how genomics are revolutionizing medicine at Smithsonian's "The Future is Here" event
The Human Genome: Unlocking Life's Code (15:37)
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This Map Lets You Plug in Your Address to See How It's Changed Over the Past 750 Million Years
Egypt Opens Its 'Bent Pyramid' for the First Time in More Than 50 Years
The First Investigation Into the Allied Waterloo Field Hospital Is Unearthing Cannonballs—and Limbs
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Gambling turnover more than doubled in Italy in the period between 2008 and 2017, according to the recently released report. It amounted to €101.8 billion in 2017, up from €47.5 billion in 2008 and from €15.5 billion in 2003.
Overall gambling revenue hit €19 billion in 2017. Of that amount, a total of €10 billion was contributed to the nation's coffers, Eurispes' Italy 2019 Report showed.
According to the study, three in ten Italians, or 28.2% of the country's population, have engaged in one form of gambling or another. Around 18.3% of all gamblers took part exclusively in offline gambling activities, only 2% told Eurispes researchers that they gambled online only, and 7.9% gambled both online and offline.
Based on the responses of interviewed gamblers, Eurispes researchers listed scratchcards as the most popular gambling activity with a participation rate of 85%, other lottery products also occupied the top spots in the gambling participation ranking. Around 52.7% of all interviewed gamblers engaged in sports betting, while 22% opted for casino gambling.
Eurispes researchers also asked interviewees to list the most dangerous forms of gambling. Slot machines were defined as l'uomo nero (boogeyman) of gambling, with 83.4% of those surveyed saying they were the gambling activity that was most likely to incur great harm.
Slots were followed by online gambling with 78.3% of those interviewed considering digital gambling services extremely harmful, sports betting with 71.8%, and scratchcards with 66.7%.
Nearly 28% of all respondents listed the hope for a big win as what motivated them to gamble, followed by the search for easy money (22%), and just for fun 21.1%.
The growth of Italy's gambling market is expected to slow down in the coming years in the wake of the newly implemented blanket ban on all forms of gambling advertising and the newly revised taxes on gambling services.
As from January 1, licensed online casino operators are required to pay a 25% tax on gross gaming revenue, up from 20%. The Italian government projects the increased rate will bring an additional of €50 million a year for the budget.
Online sports betting operations are now taxed at €24% on revenue, up from 22%. Retail betting is now taxed at 20% following the introduction of the new taxation regime. The government projects additional sports betting tax revenue of €30 million a year.
The increased gambling tax rates came as part of Italy's budget plan that aims to cut the nation's deficit to 2.04% of GDP.
The post Italian Gambling Market Has Exploded in the Past 15 Years, Report Finds appeared first on Casino News Daily.


text:
\section{Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} Metamaterials: Design}

\begin{figure*}[t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.9\linewidth]{Dispersions3.pdf}
\caption{The three unit cell configurations and their respective dispersion curves: (A) Schematic of the unit cell for the symmetric configuration, with edges highlighted in red where periodic boundary conditions have been employed in FEM modelling \cite{comsolSolidMech}. (B) Dispersion curves obtained via frequency domain eigenvalue simulations. The colourscale depicts the value of the normalised integrated mechanical energy flux in the direction of the periodicity, $\int_{S}\tilde{I}_x dS$, over the regions $S$ which denote either the connectors (left hand side of dispersion plot) and arms (right hand side of dispersion plot). At the band edge the eigenmode-shapes are shown, with colourscale showing the normalised out-of-plane displacement, $u_z$; the displacement of the perpendicular arm is purely odd or even in $z$. The dashed lines indicate $k_x = \pm\pi/3a$ and $k_x = \pm2\pi/3a$. (C,E) Schematics of the unit cells for the asymmetric and parallel configurations respectively. (D,F) Dispersion curves, as in (B), but for the asymmetric and parallel configurations respectively. Shown next to (F) is a schematic of the regions $S$ (the connectors and arms) over which the complex mechanical energy flux has been integrated.}
\label{fig:disp}
\end{figure*}

\begin{figure*}[t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=.75\linewidth]{BlowUpAndComponentsAndExperiment.pdf}
\caption{Schematic diagrams. (A) instruction-manual style diagram for constructing the unit cell (symmetric configuration example). (B) Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} pieces required for the unit cell. Note the central beam shown is periodically repeated and forms a whole beam the entire length of the structure. (C) Experimental setup for acoustically characterising the dispersion curves of the structure. Full details in Materials and Methods section.}
\label{fig:Setup}
\end{figure*}

To facilitate the design of an elastic metamaterial with BNN coupling, we turn to a canonical mass-spring toy model, akin to Brillouin \cite{brillouin53a}. The toy model is composed of two coupled chains of dipole-like masses, linked to nearest neighbours by springs, with additional BNN coupling to the third nearest neighbour, a schematic of which is shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:Toy}(C). The two supported modes have $L - 1 = 2$ extrema within the first BZ, forming a pair of orthogonal modes as shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:Toy}(B). Figure~S1 details the masses and springs constants used to formulate the governing difference equation and ensuing eigenvalue problem as detailed in the supplementary information. The toy mass-spring model allows intuition to be gained on the influence of symmetry breaking on the dispersion relations of the modes supported by the chains, which we investigate through our proposed reconfigurable Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} structure. In Fig.~\ref{fig:Toy}(A) we highlight the unit cell of one of the possible configurations of the Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} metamaterial, resulting from extension of the toy model.

Our Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} designs are built from cold rolled steel (see Materials and Methods), and comprise two key components to introduce coupling on different length-scales within the structure; (1) a central strip that runs the length of the sample, to which are attached perpendicular beams, and (2) inter-unit-cell connecting strips that form a scaffold above and below the central strip, making use of a convenient Pythagorean triple that fits the discrete holes available on the Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} designs, each spaced by 0.5". The central beam provides nearest-neighbour coupling between unit-cells (of width $a$), of which the perpendicular arms are the main resonant element, and the connectors provide BNN coupling. This design bares an equivalence to the toy model: the perpendicular arms and angled joints to the connectors approximate lumped masses connected by the vertical springs in the toy model. The central beam forms the spring-like connection to adjacent cells in each chain of masses, with the connectors providing the analogy to the long-range springs as shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:Toy}(C). The lowest two bending modes of the perpendicular arms, where the displacement is predominantly in the $z$ direction, then possess the same symmetries as the two eigenmodes present in the toy model.

The structure can be configured in a number of ways to tailor the mode dispersion. We demonstrate three configurations, that are easily built and re-built, and support modes with distinct dispersive characteristics. We obtain the dispersion curves for each configuration using the Finite Element Method (FEM) \cite{comsolSolidMech}, solving the 3D equations of elastodynamics in the frequency domain. We define two of the three configurations in relation to the symmetry of the perpendicular arm with respect to the $z-x$ plane through the central beam and term them (i) the symmetric configuration (Fig.~\ref{fig:disp}(A)), where the perpendicular arm extends symmetrically in $y$ from the central beam, and the connectors above and below the central beam are crossed; (ii) the asymmetric configuration (Fig.~\ref{fig:disp}(C)), where the perpendicular arm is displaced so that the arm is longer on one side of the connectors (and therefore asymmetric about the central beam). Configuration (iii) returns to a symmetric arrangement of the perpendicular arm, but now with the connectors above and below the central beam being parallel. A schematic of all parts is shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:Setup}(A-B), detailing the conventional Imperial units of classic British Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark}. The central beam section (component 1) is periodically repeated along the axis of the sample, in the $x$-direction.

The lowest eigenfrequencies of each configuration are evaluated by employing Floquet-Bloch periodic boundary conditions in the FEM model, and solving the ensuing eigenvalue problem. The periodic boundaries are highlighted as red-edges in Fig.~\ref{fig:disp}(A). Figures~\ref{fig:disp}(B,D,F) show the corresponding dispersion curves for the three configurations (i,ii,iii) respectively. The colour-scale in each dispersion diagram represents the normalised integrated complex mechanical energy flux (in the direction of periodicity) over two regions: the left half of the dispersion curves shows the integrated complex mechanical energy flux over the connectors, as highlighted in magenta in Fig.~\ref{fig:disp}(F), while the right half shows the same calculation over the perpendicular arms, as highlighted in green in Fig.~\ref{fig:disp}(F). This quantity provides a relative measure of the power flow along the different channels provided by the short- and long-range couplings that co- and counter-propagates, demonstrating that is these competing power flows that drives the extrema in the dispersion curves. Of course, the net power flow must always be away from a given source; in Fig.~S3 we show the normalised sum of the complex mechanical energy fluxes over the two channels (arms and connectors), confirming the net power is always in one direction.

Each of the three configurations possess unique dispersive properties that are related to the internal symmetries possessed by the unit cell. As we consider the lowest two bending eigenmodes, we describe the modal symmetries in terms of the out-of-plane displacement ($u_z$) of the perpendicular arms. In the symmetric configuration, the structure supports an orthogonal pair of eigenmodes \cite{makwana2018geometrically} that manifest in the form of degeneracies in the band structure, i.e. at the points where the dispersion curves of the two modes cross. The out-of-plane displacement of the perpendicular arm is (anti)symmetric, giving rise to the notion of (odd)even modes, as shown by the out-of-plane displacement fields in Fig.~\ref{fig:disp}(B) at the band edge where the wavevector $k_x = X \equiv \pi/a$; standing waves form here and the energy flux along the structure vanishes. The orthogonality of these modes suggests they can be excited independently or mixed by utilising a forcing that matches the modal symmetry (see Results).

The asymmetric configuration breaks the reflectional symmetry of the perpendicular arm about the $z-x$ plane defined through the central beam, thereby lifting the degeneracies present in the dispersion curves for the symmetric configuration. This is shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:disp}(D), where the mixing of the modes can be seen when comparing the energy fluxes of the symmetric and antisymmetric modes along the arms, resulting in anti-crossings between the positively and negatively dispersing modes. We show the eigenmode shapes where the out-of-plane displacement of the perpendicular arm is neither odd nor even in Fig.~S3.

In the parallel configuration, the perpendicular arms are once again symmetric about the about the $z-x$ plane defined through the central beam, but rotational symmetry about the $y$-axis is broken. The resulting dispersion curves are much flatter, although still retaining the same number of extrema within the IBZ. This orientation of connectors biases the direction of power flow along them, as seen by the integrated mechanical energy fluxes of the two channels that remains predominantly aligned.

Having demonstrated the reconfigurable nature of the unit cells, and the effects they have on the dispersion of the supported waves on an infinitely repeating system, we now present the experimental characterisation of each configuration and compare with FEM simulations of the finite structure.

\section{Results}

Owing to the scarcity of original Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} pieces, and the variations in its composition and material properties, a custom made Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark}--like set was fabricated following the original Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} dimensions \cite{meccano}. The set was laser cut from a single sheet of cr4 (cold rolled s275 equivalent), and assembled into the unit cells following the schematic in Fig.~\ref{fig:Setup}(A). Figure~\ref{fig:Setup}(C) shows the full structure, in the symmetric configuration, consisting of 41 unit cells, with an extended central beam to which a shaker (PASCO Mechanical Wave Driver 317
model number 2185) is attached at either position (i) or (ii), depending on the desired excitation condition. The structure is suspended from a rigid frame using nylon wire at equally spaced points long the beam length (as shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:Setup}(C)). We adopt a simple  experimental set-up to measure the vibrations acoustically. The structure was driven to a steady state at discrete frequencies and a microphone was manually moved and spaced $2$ mm from each perpendicular arm along the array, as shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:Setup}(C). The local pressure fluctuations in the air generated by the vibrating arms was measured by the microphone, and the dispersion spectra recovered by spatio-temporal Fourier analysis of the data by means of the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). The experimental results are shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:Results} on the right side of each plot; the left side of each plot shows the results from frequency domain FEM simulations that mirror each of the experimental configurations: the same finite number of unit cells are simulated with corresponding forcing conditions at the shaker positions, and the out-of-plane displacement is extracted along the perpendicular arms and analysed by a spatial FFT to obtain the dispersion spectra along the Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} device, as shown in Fig.~S4.

Figure~\ref{fig:Results} shows the excellent agreement between the numerically simulated and experimental dispersion curves, normalised on a per-frequency basis. Figure~\ref{fig:Results}(A) shows comparisons of the numerical and experimental dispersion for the symmetric configuration excited in position (ii) as shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:Setup}(C), which contains a mixture of the even and odd modes shown in Fig~\ref{fig:disp}(B). Figure~\ref{fig:Results}(B) shows a similar comparison but for excitation at position (i); this only drives modes with an even out-of-plane displacement of the perpendicular arms as the source is aligned with the Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} axis. Figures~\ref{fig:Results}(C,D) show the comparisons for the asymmetric and parallel configurations respectively. In all four plots the eigenfrequency results for the infinitely periodic case are overlaid (Fig.~\ref{fig:disp}). For the case of the asymmetric configuration (Fig~\ref{fig:disp}(C)), the shaker and measurement position was on the longer side of the asymmetric perpendicular arm  (Fig.~S4).

\begin{figure*}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=.85\linewidth]{Results.pdf}
\caption{Comparisons between numerical (FEM) and experimental results. (A) Normalised, per frequency, Fourier amplitude of numerically (left hand side) and experimentally (right hand side) determined dispersion spectra, for the symmetric configuration excited in position (ii) from 30-100 Hz in 1 Hz steps. Overlaid are the eigenfrequency solutions from the infinitely periodic model (Fig.~\ref{fig:disp}). (B) As for (A), but for excitation in position (i), therefore isolating the even mode. (C) As for (A), but for the asymmetric configuration. (D) As for (A), but for the parallel configuration. }
\label{fig:Results}
\end{figure*}

\section{Discussion}
The dispersion characteristics of elastic metamaterials and other periodic structures are conventionally fixed once the sample has been fabricated. Here we developed a novel, reconfigurable elastic metamaterial that leverages beyond-nearest neighbour interaction, capable of supporting backwards waves. Qualitative analogies to a canonical mass-spring model motivated the design paradigm surrounding the symmetries of the structure. The BNN coupling provides alternate channels for power flow, the competition between which results in extrema within the first Brillouin Zone, and as such unlocks motivation for vibration sensing applications in, for example, scaled down surface acoustic wave devices.

The device was inspired by the popular model construction kits, Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark}, and motivates the development of analogous modular metamaterials with replaceable components in addition to serving as a tactile, innovative pedagogical method for introducing beyond nearest neighbour interactions in metamaterials and phononic crystals. The acoustic experimental characterisation of the structure, by measuring the local pressure fluctuations induced by the resonant elements of the structure, provides an alternate method for vibration characterisation on the lab-bench scale using simple acoustic methods, where more complex and expensive methods, (e.g. laser velocimetry) may not be available.

\section{Materials and Methods}

\noindent{\textbf{Numerical Simulations}:}
The dispersion curves (Fig.~\ref{fig:disp}) of each configuration of the Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} were obtained via the FEM model using an eigenfrequency study in the Solid Mechanics module within COMSOL Multiphysics (version 6.0). The dispersion spectra shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:Results} was obtained through a frequency domain simulation of 41 unit cells of the Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} metamaterial (in vacuo) with free boundary conditions on all boundaries except the position of the shaker, which was modelled as a boundary load at positions (i) and (ii), as in Fig.~\ref{fig:Setup}(C). The out-of-plane displacement was then extracted along a line down the length of the sample and analysed by means of the FFT. A schematic of the computational domain and boundary conditions is shown in Fig.~S4. The mild steel mechanical material properties of the Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} were assumed as; density $\rho = 7870$ kg/m$^3$, Poisson's ratio $\sigma = 0.287$, and elastic modulus $Y = 310$ GPa.

\noindent{\textbf{Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} components}:} A Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} set was designed following the original Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} dimensions set out in the `Liverpool' engineering drawings \cite{meccano}. The Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} components were laser cut by Luffman Engineering (Tiverton, UK), from a single, 1.2 mm thick, mild steel sheet (cold rolled (CR4)).

The sample was assembled, as shown in the manual-style schematic in Fig.~\ref{fig:Setup}(A), with original Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} bolts (37b Allen Bolt $1/4$ (6mm) Zinc) and corresponding square nuts.

\noindent{\textbf{Experimental set-up and method}:} A schematic of the experimental set-up is shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:Setup}(C). The Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} sample was hung horizontally from a bar using Nylon fishing wire looped through the central strip that runs the length of the sample. The sample was excited using a mechanical shaker (PASCO Mechanical Wave Driver model number 2185) driven by a variable frequency signal generator (Agilent 33220A Arbitrary Waveform Generator). Two excitation positions were considered (i) and (ii) (Fig.~\ref{fig:Setup}(C)) to provide either a symmetric displacement excitation (in (i)), or a displacement with mixed symmetry (ii) in order to demonstrate the orthogonal nature of the modes in the symmetric configuration. For all measurements the shaker was driven by a $\pm 5$ V peak to peak sine wave.

To measure the displacement of the vertical beams, the local pressure fluctuations in the air at each vibrating arm were recorded. At each arm, a microphone (Brüel \& Kjær Type 4940 $1/2$-in Free-Field Microphone, with Pre-conditioning amplifier) was positioned 2 mm from the sample so that the head was centered in the width of the Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} bar horizontally and between the two lower holes vertically (as shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:Setup}(C) inset) and the signal recorded on an oscilloscope (Siglent  SDS2352X-E). Acoustic data was recorded with a sampling frequency of 500 kSa s$^{-1}$, for a total time of 0.28 sec, and with 16 averages.

The experimental procedure was as follows; the microphone was positioned at the first arm, the structure was driven to a steady state at discrete frequencies (30 to 100 Hz in 1 Hz steps) and the signal from the microphone recorded. This was repeated at each arm.

To determine the mode dispersion, the temporal acoustic signals were summed at each arm producing a signal (voltage) as a function of propagation distance and time $V(x,t)$. The data were processed using temporal and spatial Fourier transform with a Tukey window function applied to determine the wavenumber-frequency relation.

\subsection{Acknowledgements}
The authors thank Edward Lupton from www.meccanospares.com for useful discussions on the Meccano\textsuperscript{\texttrademark} parts used throughout. G.J.C gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 in the form of a Research Fellowship. T.A.S and A.P.H gratefully acknowledges financial support from DSTL. I.R.H acknowledges financial support from the EPSRC and QinetiQ Ltd. via the TEAM-A Prosperity Partnership (Grant No. EP/R004781/1), and from the EPSRC via the A-Meta project (Grant No. EP/W003341/1)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv