It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, May 27, 2024
Brighton-made documentary about the role of art during times of conflict to feature at Tate Britain
Art on the Streets, co-created by design historian Dr Harriet Atkinson will show as part of Tate Britain's exhibition, Artists International – The First Decade.
22 May 2024
Co-created with filmmaker Jane Dibblin and Four Corners film, narrated by author and poet Michael Rosen and featuring animation by University of Brighton Illustration alumnus Kate Bilbow, the documentary explores the role of art as a platform for resistance and a beacon of hope during the darkest times.
The film focuses on the For Liberty exhibition, held in 1943 in the bomb-damaged ruins of the John Lewis department store on London’s Oxford Street. Featuring interviews with historians, artists families and archive footage and photographs, the film sheds light on the contributions of refugee artists who fled Nazi persecution and brought their unique vision to Britain.
Following its release in 2023, Art on the Streets garnered widespread praise and won awards at international film festivals, including Best Short Documentary at both the California International Shorts Festival and the Lulea International Film Festival.
Dr Atkinson said:
"It's a wonderful coincidence that my new film, with the Artists International Association (AIA) as its central focus, has launched in the year that Tate Britain is mounting their archival show about AIA, whose collection they hold. I'm very excited that the film will be shown for over a year at Tate and am looking forward to the conversations that will follow".
Andy Friend, curator of the Tate Britain exhibition said:
“Harriet Atkinson’s research and film have appeared at a perfect time to compliment Tate Britain Archive Gallery’s Artists International The First 10 Years. Both display and film culminate in coverage of For Liberty, an extraordinary exhibition held in 1943 on the John Lewis bombsite in Oxford Street calling for an imaginative peace. Being able to show the film alongside key works and ephemera from the event brings the whole to life and adds a new intriguing dimension for visitors to the gallery.”
Artists International – The First Decade, featuring Art on the Streets, opens at the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Archive Gallery, Tate Britain on 24 June 2024.
The free exhibition will feature works from Tate’s art collection alongside a mixture of material drawn from the archives of the Artist International Association itself, and from notable members including Ewan Phillips, Morris Kestelman, and Paul Nash.
No Grenfell charges until end of 2026, police say
Tom Symonds,
It will be almost a decade after the Grenfell Tower disaster before any prosecutions could take place
It will be 10 years after the Grenfell Tower fire before potential criminal prosecutions can begin.
The Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service said no charges would be announced until late 2026 at the earliest because of the increasing “scale and complexity” of the inquiry.
Nineteen companies or organisations are currently under investigation, along with 58 individuals, over the disaster which killed 72 people in June 2017.
Grenfell United, the bereaved families and survivor group, said they need to see justice and the wait is "unbearable".
Senior officers have confirmed they are continuing to gather evidence of potential corporate manslaughter or fraud.
The police investigation, codenamed Operation Northleigh, has been under way for nearly seven years alongside the two-part public inquiry.
The delay announced today means it is likely no defendants will appear in court until 2027, if there are prosecutions.
The public inquiry into the fire is expected to publish its final report in the summer or autumn of this year.
Police will then spend 12 to 18 months considering its contents, a legal requirement, senior officers said.
What happened at Grenfell Tower?
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy said the Metropolitan Police had promised victims of the fire it would “follow the evidence wherever it would take us.”
He said police have "one chance" to get the investigation done to the right standard, and that "we owe that to those whilst their lives or who have been affected by the Grenfell Tower tragedy."
Mr Cundy accepted the timeline was "incredible". "That isn’t justice denied, but it’s a long time to get to that point."
"A worse case scenario would be if we rushed the investigation," he said, because it might expose flaws in the cases the police will pass to prosecutors.
Grenfell United, the group for bereaved families and survivors, said people's lives are "on hold while those responsible walk free".
"Ten years until we see justice [...] 10 years until those responsible for the murders of 72 people are held to account for their crimes," the group said in a statement.
The investigation has become increasingly complex as the Metropolitan Police considers the web of organisations and companies involved in the disastrous refurbishment of Grenfell Tower before the fire.
This added a layer of highly flammable cladding, which led to a small fire in a flat spreading fast.
Police are examining the role of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and its tenant management organisation, companies involved in doing the work, and others which supplied and manufactured building materials.
They have also gathered 27,000 pieces of evidence from the tower itself.
Allowing reporters into a secret warehouse for the first time, they demonstrated how the plastic filling of a cladding panel had melted and dripped, one of the key reasons the fire had spread.
The exhibits also include the burnt remains of the fridge, in which an electric fault sparked the fire, and racks of insulation.
Prosecutors say they need until the end of 2026 to decide on criminal charges over the disastrous 2017 blaze that killed 72 people.
METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPUTY ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER STUART CUNDY SAID THE POLICE OWE IT TO THOSE AFFECTED BY THE FIRE TO GET THEIR INVESTIGATION RIGHT (AARON CHOWN/PA)
PA WIRE
MARGARET DAVIS
Bereaved families and survivors face waiting until the end of 2026 for a decision on potential criminal charges over the Grenfell Tower fire, nearly 10 years after the deadly blaze
The Metropolitan Police said their investigators need until the end of 2025 to finalise their inquiry, and prosecutors will then need a year to decide whether charges can be brought.
Grenfell United, the bereaved families and survivor group, said the wait, which could stretch to a decade after the catastrophic 2017 fire that killed 72 people, was “unbearable”.
We need to see the people who perpetrated Grenfell held to account and charged for their crimes. The wait is unbearable
GRENFELL UNITED SPOKESMAN
A spokesman said: “Ten years until we see justice. Ten years until we see prosecutions.
“This should be shocking for everyone, but for us, we live our lives on hold while those responsible walk free.
“We need to see the people who perpetrated Grenfell held to account and charged for their crimes. The wait is unbearable.”
The report from the second stage of the public inquiry into the fire is due to be published later this year.
Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy told journalists on Wednesday that investigators will need another year to 18 months after the publication to finalise their inquiry.
Senior investigating officer Detective Superintendent Garry Moncrieff said investigators will need to go through the report line by line to assess the impact on their probe.
Rosemary Ainslie, from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), said prosecutors will need until the end of 2026 to make final decisions about any criminal charges.
The mammoth police investigation into the fire has already generated 27,000 lines of inquiry and more than 12,000 witness statements
A total of 19 companies and organisations are under investigation for potential criminal offences, and 58 individuals, and more than 300 hours of interviews have taken place.
Potential offences under consideration include corporate manslaughter, gross negligence manslaughter, perverting the course of justice, misconduct in public office, health and safety offences, fraud, and offences under the fire safety and building regulations.
So far eight out of 20 files have been sent to the CPS for early investigative advice that would be passed back to police, with a typical case file more than 500 pages long with 17,000 pages of evidence.
The current timeline would mean it would be nearly 10 years before anyone could appear in court over the Grenfell Tower blaze.
We as the police have one chance to get this investigation done to the right standard, the right quality, and done the right way
DEPUTY ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER STUART CUNDY
Up to the end of March this year, the Met has spent £107.3 million on the inquiry, and there are 180 investigators currently working on the case.
Mr Cundy said the publication of the report will be a landmark moment for the police and those directly affected by the fire.
He said: “Based on where we are now, our estimation is that it will take at least another 12 to 18 months, once the inquiry publishes its report, before we will be in a position to finalise in essence what many people would call the charging file for us to then pass across to… the specialist lawyers within the Crown Prosecution Service.
“I know that sounds such a long period of time.
“Seven years ago, we made a commitment to the bereaved and the survivors that we would follow the evidence wherever it would take us, we remain true to our word with that.
“We as the police have one chance to get this investigation done to the right standard, the right quality, and done the right way.
“We owe that to those who lost their lives, owe it to everybody who has been affected by the Grenfell Tower tragedy.”
Ms Ainslie said: “Due to the sheer size and volume of the completed evidential files, we will need to take the necessary time to properly evaluate the evidence and to provide final charging decisions.
“It’s not possible to be definitive about timescales, but it would be our hope that by the end of 2026 we will be in a position where we are making final charges.”
In a briefing with journalists at New Scotland Yard on Wednesday, Det Supt Moncrieff acknowledged that the police inquiry is taking a long time but said it is “a really complex” investigation.
Officers have retrieved more than 152 million files and gathered 75,000 photos and 27,000 exhibits.
Forensic teams spent 415 days examining the tower itself after the deadly blaze and painstakingly gathering evidence.
Exhibits are being stored in an enormous warehouse that is big enough to store 25 double decker buses.
It includes the charred remnants of cladding panels that would have had molten plastic dripping down them while the building was on fire.
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said: “I understand and share the deep frustration of the bereaved, survivors, the local community and all those affected seeking justice following the appalling Grenfell Tower fire tragedy.
“The Met have today set out their ongoing work to hold those responsible to account and will leave no stone unturned in their investigation.
“This sadly still means that those impacted could be waiting up to a decade after the fatal fire to see those responsible brought to account.
“Justice delayed is justice denied. It’s vital that investigators and the Crown Prosecution Service are given the resources they need for this unique investigation to progress as swiftly as possible.”
The victims have been identified as Daniel Paul Peterson from the UK and Pas Tenji Sherpa from Makalu, Sangkhuwasabha, the Himalayan Times newspaper reported.
PTI
Updated on: 22 May 2024
A British climber and a Sherpa mountaineer guide have been missing since Tuesday morning after they fell while returning to the lower camps after summiting Mount Everest, according to media reports on Wednesday
The victims have been identified as Daniel Paul Peterson from the UK and Pas Tenji Sherpa from Makalu, Sangkhuwasabha, the Himalayan Times newspaper reported. The duo was part of 8K Expeditions.
The British climber and the Sherpa fell when a section of the route in the Hillary step below the summit collapsed on Tuesday morning, the report quoted a source as saying at the base camp.
The incident reportedly occurred when the duo was returning to the lower camps after summiting the world's highest peak at around 4:40 am on May 21.
According to the report, a team led by Nga Tenji Sherpa and Pasang Sherpa of Summit Force Pvt Ltd carried out rescue and saved other climbers when the route broke at the Hillary section.
“A few climbers were immediately rescued but Peterson and Pas Tenji fell down," eyewitnesses told the base camp officials
Earlier on May 13, two Mongolian climbers — Usukhjargal Tsedendamba and Prevsuren Lkhagvajav — died above 8,500m while descending from the summit point, the report said.
On Wednesday, Nepal’s veteran summiteer Kami Rita Sherpa made history by scaling Mt Everest for the 30th time, breaking his own record that he made 10 days ago for the highest number of ascents on the world's highest peak.
The 54-year-old legendary mountaineer reached the 8,849-metre peak at 7:49 am local time, according to Tashi Lakpa Sherpa, Chief Executive Officer at the 14 Peaks Expedition high-altitude sports company.
Altogether, 414 climbers from 41 expeditions have acquired permission to scale the 8,848.86 m-tall peak this season.
Official data from 2023 showed that since 1953’s Hillary-Norgay summit, around 7,000 mountaineers have successfully scaled Mt. Everest while over 300 have lost their lives.
The impact of environmental decentralization on the export domestic value-added rate of enterprises in China
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 11, Article number: 654 (2024) Cite this article
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Abstract
This paper examines the impact of environmental decentralization on the export domestic value-added rate of enterprises using combined data from 2000–2014 from China Industrial Enterprise Database, China Customs Database, WIOD, China Environment Yearbook and China Enterprise Patent Database. The research findings show that the overall environmental decentralization has an inverted U-shaped impact on enterprises’ export DVAR, with 94.4% of the sample in the promotion interval. 73.2% of ordinary trade enterprises and 85.7% of processing trade enterprises are in the suppressive interval of the U-shaped impact of administrative decentralization; 69.2% of ordinary trade enterprises are in the suppressive interval of the U-shaped impact of monitoring decentralization, and 85.7% of processing trade enterprises are in the promotion range of the inverted U-shaped impact; 66.0% of ordinary trade enterprises and 86.7% of processing trade enterprises are in the suppression range of the U-shaped impact of monitoring decentralization. In addition, cost markup and R&D innovation as mediating variables are important transmission channels for environmental decentralization to influence enterprises’ export DVAR.
Introduction
Since 1980, the global trade landscape has gradually evolved from inter-product to intra-product specialization. As the system of international division of labor deepens and value chains expand, a nation’s export competitiveness depends less on quantitative measures like export volume and more on enterprises’ ability to add value to products and their positioning within the global value chains, an increasingly pivotal role as highlighted by Koopman et al. (2012). Benefiting from its comparative advantage in low factor costs, China has witnessed a surge in its export volumes and has emerged as the “world’s factory,” commanding a significant presence in the global value chains. However, despite these “achievements” in export scale, Chinese manufacturing enterprises continue to grapple with challenges such as size without strength and generally low value-added capabilities. For instance, an exported Chinese iPod priced at $150 generates less than $4 in value added (Linden et al. 2009), whereas the value added from an iPhone export represents only about 1.8% of the device’s total value (Kraemer et al. 2011). While Chinese manufacturing has yet to develop a comprehensive export competitive edge, the long-standing production approach characterized by high input, high consumption, and high pollution has also led to a gradual decline in the domestic natural environment, triggering severe pollution issues and social crises, such as the “2005 Songhua River” contamination, the “2009 Hunan Liuyang cadmium pollution,” and the “2011 Yunnan Qujing chromium slag pollution” incidents. This dire situation compels China to hasten the enforcement of environmental management policies. In practice, the fragmented environmental management system spread across varying levels of government hampers the efficiency of delivering crucial environmental public services. Theoretically, it also impedes the enhancement of domestic manufacturing enterprises’ export competitiveness from an institutional arrangement perspective.
Research on environmental decentralization has unfolded along two principal lines: first, the measurement of environmental decentralization, where most studies have used indirect methods, focusing primarily on legal frameworks, institutional evidence, and practical characteristics (Fredriksson and Svensson, 2003; Lutsey and Sperling, 2008). Second, investigations into the impact of environmental decentralization have examined its economic and social effects, including environmental quality, individual behavior, transboundary spillovers, and government governance (Zhuravskaya, 2000; Faguet, 2001). Another body of literature pertinent to this research is the domestic value-added rate in exports (hereafter referred to as export DVAR). This concept largely stems from outsourcing and division of labor theories (Feenstra and Hanson, 1997; Grossman and Rossi-Hansberg, 2008) and covers two main areas: firstly, the measurement of export DVAR has progressed from early industry-level assessments based on input-output tables (Koopman et al. 2012) to more recent micro-level evaluations utilizing resources such as the China Industrial Enterprise Database and China Customs Database (Upward et al. 2013; Kee and Tang, 2016), with the latter method experiencing continuous refinement and widespread application. Secondly, the influence of export DVAR has been examined from various angles, including environmental regulation (Sun et al. 2023), value-added tax implications (Wu et al. 2021), employment effects (Chen et al. 2012), foreign direct investment impacts (Lu et al. 2022), and industrial agglomeration considerations (Liu et al. 2022).
In summary, while research on environmental decentralization and export DVAR has yielded substantial findings within their respective domains, there remains an academic void concerning the interplay between the two. This study aims to bridge this gap by integrating environmental decentralization and export DVAR within a singular analytical framework, endeavoring to augment the extant literature on three fronts: firstly, by assessing the influence of environmental decentralization on corporate export DVAR; secondly, by disaggregating environmental decentralization into administrative, inspection, and monitoring facets, and delving into the effects of such decentralization on export DVAR through the lens of heterogeneous attributes such as trade patterns, ownership structures, and pollution-intensive industries; thirdly, by refining the construction of enterprise DVAR indicators to surmount the limitations identified in the current body of literature.
CONTINUE READING HERE The impact of environmental decentralization on the export domestic value-added rate of enterprises in China | Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (nature.com)
By Li Cohen
May 22, 2024 / CBS News
The massive "doomsday glacier" known for its rapid destabilization is undergoing a "vigorous ice melt" that scientists say could reshape sea level rise projections.
In a new study, glaciologists from the University of California, Irvine, found that warm, high-pressure ocean water is seeping beneath West Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier, making it more vulnerable to melting than previously thought. The glacier is roughly 80 miles across, the widest on Earth. It packs so much ice that if it were to completely collapse, it could singlehandedly cause global sea levels to rise by more than two feet, according to the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, prompting its moniker as the "Doomsday Glacier."
The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was used on data scientists gathered from March to June last year. It was previously difficult to "figure out what was happening" because of limited, sporadic data, UC Irvine professor and lead author Eric Rignot said. But using satellites, they were able to observe what was happening better than ever.
"We see the seawater coming in at high tide and receding and sometimes going farther up underneath the glacier and getting trapped," Rignot said.
The sea water is hitting the glacier at the base of its ice sheet and flowing through conduits and collecting in cavities, "creating enough pressure to elevate the ice sheet," Rignot said.
"There are places where the water is almost at the pressure of the overlying ice, so just a little more pressure is needed to push up the ice," he said. "The water is then squeezed enough to jack up a column of more than half a mile of ice."
As global temperatures continue to warm, that's also causing ocean currents to push warmer ocean water to Antarctica's shores which is saltier and has a lower freezing point. That difference in water is what has led to what researchers describe as a vigorous melt.
"Thwaites is the most unstable place in the Antarctic," study co-author Christine Dow said, estimating the equivalent sea level rise at 60 centimeters, or about 23.6 inches. "The worry is that we are underestimating the speed that the glacier is changing, which would be devastating for coastal communities around the world."
Dow said there's not yet enough information to know how much time there is before the saltwater intrusion is "irreversible," but that the researchers hope the new information will improve existing models make better predictions "for decades versus centuries."
"This work will help people adapt to changing ocean levels, along with focusing on reducing carbon emissions to prevent the worst-case scenario."
Scientists say they can make zero-emission cement
PARIS — Researchers on Wednesday said they were a step closer to solving one of the trickiest problems in tackling climate change: how to keep making cement despite its enormous carbon footprint.
In a world first, engineers from Britain's University of Cambridge have shown that cement can be recycled without the same steep cost to the environment as making it from scratch.
Cement binds concrete together but the whitish powder is highly carbon-intensive to produce, with the sector generating more than triple the emissions of global air travel.
Demand for concrete—already the most widely used construction material on Earth—is soaring, but the notoriously polluting industry has struggled to produce it in a less harmful way to the climate.
The team at Cambridge believes it has a solution, pioneering a method that tweaks an existing process for steel manufacturing to produce recycled cement without the associated CO2 pollution.
This discovery, published in the journal Nature, could provoke "an absolutely massive change" by providing low-cost and low-emission cement at scale, said Julian Allwood, who co-authored the research.
"It is an extremely exciting project... I think it's going to have a huge impact," said Allwood, an expert on industrial emissions and key contributor to reports from the UN's scientific panel on climate change.
To produce cement, the basic ingredient in concrete, limestone must be fired in kilns at very high temperatures usually achieved by burning fossil fuels like coal.
On top of that, limestone produces significant additional CO2 when heated.
'Bright hope'
The cement industry alone accounts for nearly eight percent of human-caused CO2 emissions—more than any country except China and the United States.
Some 14 billion cubic meters of concrete are cast every year, according to industry figures, and more still will be needed as economies and cities grow in future.
The International Energy Agency says that if emissions from the cement industry continue to increase, a pledge of carbon neutrality by 2050 will almost certainly remain out of reach.
Many efforts to produce low-carbon or so-called "green cement" are too expensive or difficult to deploy at scale, rely on unproven technologies, or don't come near zero emissions.
The Cambridge researchers approached the problem by looking at an industry that was already well established—steel recycling, which uses electric-powered furnaces to produce the alloy.
They substituted a key ingredient in that process with old cement sourced from demolished buildings, Allwood said.
Instead of waste being produced, the end result was recycled cement ready for use in concrete, bypassing the emissions-heavy process of superheating limestone in kilns.
This method—which has a patent pending—was "a very low disruption innovation" requiring little change or additional cost on the part of business, Allwood said.
If powered by renewable energy, he said, these furnaces could hope to produce zero-emission concrete at scale.
"Once the electricity has no emissions, then our process would have no emissions," Allwood said.
Countries could not hope to bring CO2 emissions to zero by 2050—the key pledge of the Paris climate agreement—using concrete as it exists today, he added.
"This is the big bright hope, I think," Allwood said. — AFP
By Heather Hall | May 22, 2024
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has completed the development of a hydrogen-fueled Class-8 demonstration vehicle, built as part of its industry-supported H2-ICE consortium. The central focus of the demonstration includes Hydrogen Internal Combustion Engine (H2-ICE) development producing ultra-low NOx and CO2 emissions while still providing enough torque and power for most heavy-duty applications.
Launched in November 2022, the H2-ICE consortium gathered transportation industry leaders —engine and truck manufacturers, fuels and lubricants providers, and Tier-I suppliers — with a unified vision of advancing sustainable mobility through innovative hydrogen engine technology. The consortium focused on demonstrating the potential for H2-ICE vehicles to complement other zero-emission vehicle technologies in the industry’s
decarbonization roadmap.
As part of its industry-supported H2-ICE Consortium, SwRI has developed a hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engine for the heavy-duty market. Bringing together industry leaders from the energy, automotive, and manufacturing sectors, the consortium is committed to accelerating the transition toward sustainable mobility through innovative technology in hydrogen-fueled propulsion systems. Photo Credit: Courtesy of SwRI
To achieve the consortium’s goals, the engine needed to demonstrate industry-leading nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions as well as the low carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions expected from hydrogen combustion. Despite a relatively short 18-month timeline, the SwRI team set an aggressive target of meeting the California Air Resource Board’s (CARB) Ultra-Low NOx designation of 0.02 g/hp-hr (grams per horsepower-hour).
“We wanted the program to align with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Phase-3 greenhouse gas policy, so we knew our timeline was ambitious,” said Ryan Williams, a SwRI Powertrain Engineering Division manager and the H2-ICE consortium’s program manager. “It took incredible planning by the integration teams to ensure the build proceeded smoothly.”
SwRI consortia are hubs for industry collaboration. The SwRI consortium pulled together experts from within the consortium’s membership to advance the development and overcome technical hurdles related to hydrogen combustion. SwRI converted an X15N natural gas engine provided by consortium member Cummins to run on port-injected hydrogen using components supplied by other consortium members.
“From custom-built parts and prototype components to specially formulated lubricants, this has truly been an industry-wide effort,” said Williams. “We could never have completed the demonstration vehicle in the short time that we did without the support and collaboration of the consortium.”
The H2-ICE vehicle represents a compelling zero-GHG option in the difficult-to-decarbonize long-haul trucking market. Its 370-horsepower engine produces 2,025 Newton meters (nm) of torque, which is suitable for most heavy-duty trucking applications. Engine efficiency is above 40%, peaking at 43%. Only trace amounts of carbon emissions have been measured in the exhaust, totaling about 1.5 grams of CO₂ per horsepower-hour (g/hp-hr).
SwRI built on experience from previous heavy-duty low-NOx projects to develop a novel after-treatment system specifically adapted to the hydrogen exhaust environment. Paired with the H2-ICE’s already low engine emissions, the addition of the after-treatment system reduces NOx emissions to 0.008 with aged catalysts, well below the 2027 EPA limit of 0.035 g/hp-hr and an industry-first.
“The NOx emissions produced by the H2-ICE platform are already at or below the best numbers achieved in our previous diesel low-NOx programs,” said SwRI Institute Engineer Chris Sharp, who led the after-treatment calibration effort. “We anticipate the H2-ICE reaching near-zero tailpipe NOx emissions, with single-digit mg/hp-hr levels under nearly all operating conditions. I am extremely proud of the team’s accomplishments and excited for the project’s future.”
The completed demonstration vehicle is on display at the 2024 ACT Expo in Las Vegas, May 20-24, where it will be showcased alongside other leading low-carbon and zero-emissions technologies. It will be displayed at the California Hydrogen Leadership Summit on June 16-17 in Sacramento, California.
Click here to watch a video highlighting the H2-ICE technology.
The 1972 Q1 microcomputer could fetch $60,000 at auction
Aaron Boorstein
Staff Contributor
Last December, employees at Just Clear, a London-based house clearance company, were emptying a property when they stumbled across two decades-old computers.
At first, the workers were unsure what they had uncovered. They didn’t recognize the items and couldn’t find any relevant information online, Just Clear’s founder, Brendan O’Shea, tells Live Science’s Keumars Afifi-Sabet. After speaking with an expert, however, O’Shea learned that his team had found rare pieces of technology history: a 1972 Q1 desktop microcomputer with an internal printer and a 1976 Q1 Lite with an external companion printer.
Created by the New York City-based Q1 Corporation, the Q1 was the world’s earliest microcomputer, featuring a single chip (Intel 8008) rather than multichip microprocessors. It boasted a built-in screen, keyboard and printer.
“Every year, our sustainable clearance teams collect thousands of computers from homes and businesses nationwide,” says O’Shea in a statement. “Occasionally, we encounter items deemed important enough to preserve and archive for the future.”
In February, the newly resurfaced microcomputers went on view in “Creating the Everything Device: Showcasing the Machines That Built the Future,” an exhibition of vintage computers and gaming machines held at Kingston University London. Later this week, on May 24 and 25, the two computers (plus the Q1 Lite’s companion printer) will go up for sale at Heritage Auctions, where they could fetch more than $60,000 each, the Observer’s Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly reports.
“Keep in mind these have never been to auction, and there is no record or precedent set for them,” Sara Balbi, the managing director of Heritage Auctions’ London office, tells the Observer. “We’ll have to see what the market decides.”
Over the past decade, similarly rare relics of computer history have gone under the hammer at auction houses around the world. In 2022, a prototype of Apple’s first computer, the Apple 1, sold for $677,196; in 2023, a fully operational Apple 1 signed by company co-founder Steve Wozniak fetched $223,520.
Few Q1 computers survive today. But the machines played a key role in the development of modern computing technology. As Valarie Spiegel, Heritage Auctions’ director of video games, explains in a separate statement:
The shift to a microprocessor-based architecture allowed the Q1 to punch well above its weight and support capabilities usually reserved for larger systems. … It hinted at the future of personal computing and marked a pivotal moment in technological history, demonstrating the vast potential of microcomputers to transform both professional and personal computing landscapes.
The Q1 debuted in December 1972. Four years later, the Q1 Corporation produced the Q1 Lite, a smaller, sleeker version of the 1972 device that did not include a built-in printer.
According to Heritage Auctions, the Q1 and the Q1 Lite originally sold for upwards of $90,000 each, making them too expensive for individuals use.
“The Q1’s champagne customer was NASA, and Q1 Lites were installed in all 11 NASA bases in 1974,” Paul Neve, a senior lecturer at Kingston, tells All That’s Interesting’s Kaleena Fraga. “I suspect owners of Q1s in the [19]70s would have used their Q1s for many of the same tasks we use our PCs for in the office; one of the advertising straplines was ‘the ultimate office machine.’ A 1977 promotional brochure even suggests electronic mail as a use for the machine.”
Though the Q1 Corporation is now a relic of the past, it’s worth noting that the company’s devices appeared years before today’s major players, including Apple and Microsoft.
“The early pioneers in the 1970s and 1980s laid the foundation for today’s everything device: the modern computer now so ubiquitous in everyday life,” says Neve in the university statement. “We rely on computers for our work, communication, productivity and entertainment, but without the early trailblazers, none of these would exist. There would be no PCs, no Macs, and no Apple or Android phones without Q1 Corporation, Sinclair and Acorn.”
Researchers say the carved artifact was not a utilitarian item and instead served a symbolic purpose
Julia Binswanger
Daily Correspondent
The stereotypical image of a Neanderthal is that of a brutish, unintelligent and uncivilized caveman. However, a new study from researchers at the University of Wrocław in Poland is attempting to demonstrate that our Homo sapien predecessor possessed cognitive abilities and was even artistic.
The study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, argues that a 130,000-year-old bear bone with Neanderthal carvings may be one of the oldest known art pieces in Eurasia.
The bone, which measures four inches long and has 17 markings, was originally discovered in 1953 in the Dziadowa SkaÅ‚a Cave in southern Poland. Experts unearthed it from a layer dating approximately 115,000 to 130,000 years old and originally mistook the bone for a bear’s rib.
Seventy years later, the bone is getting a reexamination. It’s not a rib, but a radial bone from a juvenile bear’s left foreleg. Using 3D microscopy and X-ray computed tomography, the team was able to create a digital model of the artifact.
They found that the 17 parallel markings on the bone were likely placed intentionally, as they repeat and follow an organized pattern. The bone, therefore, is neither a tool nor a ritual object, but a decorative and artistic piece. "It is one of the quite rare Neanderthal objects of symbolic nature," Tomasz PÅ‚onka, an author of the study and an archaeologist at the University of WrocÅ‚aw, tells Live Science’s Soumya Sagar. It represents the oldest known art created by Neanderthals in Europe north of the Carpathian Mountains.
"That such series of parallel incisions really appear with the Neanderthals and not before, suggests that they were a cultural practice that had meaning and function, and not, say, the product of unconscious personal habits like modern doodling," Paul Pettitt, an archaeologist at England's Durham University who was not involved in the study, tells Live Science.
Although researchers still don't know exactly what the markings mean, Pettitt adds, "the Dziadowa Skala Cave incised bone at the very least shows us that Neanderthals were using visual culture to encode information, a truly human capability."
To learn more about how the carvings were made, the team recreated the markings on cattle bones with replica tools, such as flint knives and middle Paleolithic blades. They then experimented with seven different carving techniques.
The team learned that the Neanderthal who created the symbolic markings likely did it in one sitting with what they think was a flint knife. The artist also probably moved quickly, making swift, repeated incisions.
"Most of the incisions have a very characteristic comma-like end that curves to the right. When our experimenter, who was a right-handed person, moved the flint instrument towards himself, the incisions curved to the right," PÅ‚onka tells Live Science. "Therefore, we know that the Neanderthal who made these incisions was a right-handed person."
This isn’t the only example of Neanderthals exhibiting the unique habit of carving symbolic parallel cuts into bones. In the past, researchers have also uncovered the cranium of a Neanderthal female, featuring 35 similar incisions.
The discovery of the intricately carved bear bone not only enriches researchers' understanding of the Neanderthal lifestyle, but it also suggests creative tendencies in Paleolithic people.
Julia Binswanger is a freelance arts and culture reporter based in Chicago. Her work has been featured in WBEZ, Chicago magazine, Rebellious magazine and PC magazine.
Scientists discovered that removing specific molecules from developing mice can completely reverse their sex from male to female.
Mammals' chromosomes have a huge influence over whether an individual develops as male or female — but a new study reveals that the pull of these sex chromosomes can be overridden by tiny molecules called microRNAs.
The study, published May 7 in the journal Nature Communications, showed that deleting the genes behind specific microRNAs could transform male mice into females in the womb, sparking a complete sex reversal.
"We did not expect that the results would be as spectacular as they are," study co-author Rafael Jiménez, a professor of genetics at the University of Granada, told Live Science.
Sex determination in mammals relies on a fine balance between "opposite" sets of genes — one that drives the development of female characteristics, such as ovaries, and another that produces male characteristics, such as testes. Early in an animal's development, the scales tip one way or another, leading to an irreversible cascade of steps that ends in the development of either set of sex organs.
"In a very early stage of our development, all the mammals have the capacity of being male or female, potentially," said study co-author Francisco Barrionuevo, a professor of genetics at the University of Granada.
Related: The human Y chromosome has finally been fully sequenced, 20 years after the 1st draft
A gene called SRY, which is only found on the Y chromosome, triggers the series of events that forms testes. The gene's absence in individuals with only X chromosomes results in the formation of ovaries. Scientists know a great deal about the genes involved in making the proteins needed for these processes. But a huge portion of mammals' DNA — including about 98% of the human genome — doesn't code for any proteins, so scientists were unsure what role these other genes play in sex determination, if any.
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Long considered "junk DNA," these stretches of genetic material are converted into molecules called non-coding RNA, rather than proteins. The RNA can affect many biological processes. About one-quarter of these molecules are microRNAs, which can attach to numerous genes and regulate their activity levels.
Out of thousands of known microRNAs, the team focused on a group of six known to interact with genes involved in sex determination. They deleted these molecules from growing mice fetuses that had either XY or XX chromosomes. The XX mice developed ovaries, as expected, but the XY mice showed early signs of developing uteruses and had ovaries indistinguishable from those in XX mice.
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"We saw the gonad [under the microscope] and it was full of the signal for this female marker," Alicia Hurtado, first author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at the Andalusian Center for Development Biology in Seville, told Live Science. To confirm the results, they repeated the experiments multiple times, using different strategies to delete the microRNAs.
For testes to develop properly in XY animals, the protein made by the SRY gene must be made in the appropriate amounts and at the right times. The absence of the six microRNAs in XY mice caused this protein to be made about 12 hours later than normal, the researchers found. This, in turn, impacted the production of a different protein that's essential for the growth of male sex organs. Ultimately, this chain of events led to the mice's sex reversal.
"[These findings] fit very well with what we know, except it brings another layer of complexity," said Serge Nef, a professor of genetic medicine and development at the University of Geneva who was not involved in the study. "It is one additional brick in our understanding of the whole [sex determination] process in mammals," he told Live Science.
While the study has only been done in mice, the six key microRNAs are found in all vertebrates and date back to the first vertebrates, about 500 million years ago. Therefore, it is very likely that this cluster of microRNAs works similarly in other mammals, as well — including humans.