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)
Sunday, June 13, 2021
Japan To Probe Apple, Google On Antitrust Concerns
Apple is set to face more scrutiny of its business practices as the Japanese government is said to be preparing another antitrust probe into both tech giants Apple and Google, the media reported.
According to AppleInsider, Apple has been the subject of multiple antitrust probes alongside other tech giants, including Google.
It seems that Japan will be adding its own investigation to the pile soon, one that will affect both the iPhone maker and the search giant.
A government panel will apparently launch this month to look into tightening antitrust regulations, according to sources of Nikkei in a report seen by the Mercury News.
The panel will discuss the dealings of Apple and Google with Japanese smartphone producers, including whether they handle domestic companies fairly compared to overseas vendors.
It is believed that iOS and Android make up more than 90 per cent of the Japanese smartphone market, according to the report.
An analysis by IDC in February pointed to Apple selling nearly half of all mobile phones in the country for the entirety of 2020.
The alleged Japanese probe will become the latest in a long line of similar activity by governments and regulators around the world, seeking to curtail the power of tech giants like Apple.
ELEMENTARY CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Another US Chicken Producer Charged With Price-Fixing
Claxton Poultry Farms has been indicted in Colorado on charges of price-fixing broiler chickens produced for sale to restaurants and grocery stores, the US Justice Department announced.
The company’s president, Mikell Fries, and vice-president, Scott Brady, were previously indicted for their roles in a nationwide conspiracy to fix chicken prices from 2012 to 2019.
If found guilty, Claxton could be fined US$100 million, or twice what it gained from participating in the price-fixing.
Claxton, which is based in Georgia, sells 300 million pounds of chicken annually to 750 customers, including major chains, according to its website.
In February, Pilgrim’s Pride, one of the largest US poultry producers, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to pay US$107.9 million to settle federal charges that it conspired to fix chicken prices and passed on the costs to consumers and other purchasers. It is owned mainly by Brazilian meat packer JBS.
CAPITALI$M IS CRISIS Toshiba changes board nominees as two step down in deepening crisis Makiko Yamazaki Sun, June 13, 2021
The logo of Toshiba Corp. is seen next to a traffic signal atop of a building in Tokyo
By Makiko Yamazaki
TOKYO (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp, facing a deepening crisis over corporate governance, said on Sunday it will change its board director nominees for an upcoming shareholder meeting, as two are stepping down.
The shake-up follows an investigation that found the company had colluded with the Japanese government to pressure foreign investors, a revelation that its second-largest shareholder called the greatest corporate governance scandal in the world in the last decade.
The report was commissioned by shareholders, who voted in March for an independent investigation into allegations investors had come under pressure from the company.
Audit committee chair Junji Ota and audit committee member Takashi Yamauchi will retire as board directors, the company said in a statement, following a four-hour long emergency board meeting.
Toshiba's audit committee has come under scrutiny as the investigation alleged the committee failed to take any action even when it became aware of Toshiba's attempt to prevent shareholders from exercising their rights.
Toshiba also said two executives, Masayasu Toyohara and Masaharu Kamo, will leave this month. The report alleged these two reached out to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) for support ahead of Toshiba's annual general meeting last July.
In the statement, Toshiba said it "will take action to identify the root cause without delay, in an objective and transparent manner, including the participation of third parties."
The board, particularly chairman Osamu Nagayama, is likely to continue to face repercussions from the report in the run-up to the annual shareholders meeting on June 25.
Earlier on Sunday, 3D Investment Partners, Toshiba's second-biggest shareholder, wrote in a letter to the chairman and the three audit committee members calling for their immediate resignations.
3D's letter, seen by Reuters, describes Nagayama as "ultimately responsible for Toshiba's recent governance failures, including the flawed internal investigation and the board's determination to oppose an outside, independent investigation."
Quiddity Advisors analyst Travis Lundy, who writes on online commentary platform Smartkarma, also questioned the responsibilities of Nagayama, who also serves as nomination committee chairman.
"The problem with a board, and most particularly an audit committee is that someone is supposed to watch the watcher. That is Nagayama-san's job," he said.
Shareholder advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services Inc has recommended that shareholders should vote against the re-appointment of Nagayama, saying that he should be held responsible for the re-appointments of audit committee members.
A Toshiba spokeswoman said such criticism should be mitigated as the two audit committee members are now leaving. Toshiba declined to make the chairman or executives Toyohara and Kamo available for comment.
Four independent directors, who on Friday called for a shake-up of Toshiba's management and board, released a statement welcoming the announced changes.
(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by David Dolan and Jane Merriman)
GREEN CAPITALI$M ESG/CSR
Threatened Caribbean coral reefs get a new ally: insurance
The Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, the world's second largest, will soon be covered by two insurance policies Fish swim at a coral reef garden in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia on May 28, 2021. (REUTERS)
By Reuters LAST UPDATED 12.06.2021
As climate change threatens coral reefs around the world, conservation experts in Latin America have enlisted an unlikely ally to try to preserve them: the insurance industry
The Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System - the world's second largest which runs from southern Mexico to Honduras - will soon be covered by two insurance policies that will pay out after hurricanes to fund repairs and debris cleaning. A decade after experts first discussed the idea of reef insurance, Mexico's Quintana Roo state government in 2019 took out what was likely the world's first policy, covering areas near the tourist resorts of Cancun.
The nonprofit MAR Fund will soon take out a second, covering sites in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras, paid for with grant money from the InsuResilience Solutions Fund, backed by the German government.
"How important is this from 0 to 10? I'd say 10," said Claudia Ruiz, Reef Rescue Initiative coordinator at MAR Fund, which works on the conservation and sustainable use of the Mesoamerican reef.
"You're not only helping the biodiversity of the reef but also the coastal communities that depend on the reef."
Pariama Hutasoit, a 52-year-old coral reef conservationist, along with volunteers, pick up corals from a nursery to be planted using Reef Star, a steel rod structure coated with sand at a coral reef garden in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, May 28, 2021. (REUTERS)
Coral reefs are essential for protecting aquatic life and shielding coastlines from storms, but they are under threat from pollution and warmer oceans due to climate change.
That stress has led to their bleaching - in which ailing coral expel the colorful algae living on them - which increases the likelihood the coral will die.
"The reefs are in a really bad state," said Fernando Secaira, the climate risk and resilience lead for Mexico at the environmental charity The Nature Conservancy (TNC).
"We've lost 80% of the coral here in the Mexican Caribbean."
Though healthy reefs can recover from hurricanes, climate change has made that harder, scientists say. Quick payouts to help remove debris after storms and stick broken corals back together can help, reef experts say. Fast cash
Around the world, insurers are increasingly offering policies to cover climate change-related threats, from flooding to wildfires.
The policies pay out if a pre-determined trigger is passed, such as the size of a hurricane or flood, rather than according to the actual damage, allowing for quicker delivery of needed recovery cash.
"Days and a few weeks make a big difference and so having that funding very, very quickly ...(is) really valuable," said Simon Young, senior director in the climate and resilience hub at insurance firm Willis Towers Watson, the broker working with MAR Fund. "The traditional conservation funding model does not allow for that," he added. A school of fish swim above a staghorn coral colony as it grows on the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Cairns, Australia October 25, 2019. (REUTERS)
But some environmentalists have doubts about the new approach.
Jorge Herrera, a marine biologist and coastal ecosystems specialist at CINVESTAV, a Mexican science and technology institute, said hurricanes aren't the main problem facing the region's beleaguered reefs.
He added that conservation efforts in the region focus too much on coral and not enough on mangroves, seagrasses and other less flashy but essential parts of coastal ecosystems.
"The insurance should include the whole system, not (just) the reef," Herrera said.
Those involved in the new insurance push said it was a first step and work was underway on similar insurance for mangroves, which absorb climate-changing emissions, serve as fish nurseries and protect coasts from storm surges.
Secaira, whose organization designed the training for the post-hurricane reef response brigades, said that after a storm coral fragments could be recovered and used in repairs, making it a cost-effective way of restoring the reef.
Brigades in Puerto Morelos, in Quintana Roo, repaired 15,000 coral colonies in the 40 days after Hurricanes Delta and Zeta slammed into the coast within weeks of each other in 2020, Secaira said.
Young said it was relatively simple to quantify the risks from various categories of hurricanes, making it easier to work out insurance at a good price.
"I don't think insurance at any cost is necessarily a good value proposition but at the right cost it definitely can be."
(Reporting by Christine Murray; Editing by Laurie Goering for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly)
We are probably many decades away from being able to build organs in the lab from scratch. A major hurdle is the fact that what we can produce doesn’t have the vascularization – blood vessels – we get in naturally grown organs. Without that, you can’t feed the cells if you make the tissue realistically thick.
To entice more research in the area, NASA put forward a $500,000 prize back in 2016 for the first three teams that could create “thick, metabolically-functional human vascularized organ tissue” in the lab. Five years later, there are two winners.
Both winners alight from the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) in Winston-Salem and were competing as Team Winston and Team WFIRM. They won, respectively, first place and second place. Third place, and the final $100,000, is currently being fought over by two other teams.
The teams demonstrated that their 3D-printed human tissues are capable of perfusion – the process in an organism that brings nutrients to cells and removes metabolic waste. They designed a thick tissue through which nutrients and oxygen can flow. It used gel-like molds over which the tissue is grown. The mold is then dissolved leaving the fake blood vessels in place
. Team Winston's printed tissue in the chamber where it can perform perfusion.
Image Credit: Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine
“I cannot overstate what an impressive accomplishment this is. When NASA started this challenge in 2016, we weren’t sure there would be a winner,” Jim Reuter, NASA associate administrator for space technology, said in a statement. “It will be exceptional to hear about the first artificial organ transplant one day and think this novel NASA challenge might have played a small role in making it happen.”
Team Winston will now have the opportunity to send such an experiment to the International Space Station. There it could be used to study the effect of cosmic radiation or microgravity on human tissues, and maybe lead ways to counteract that.
"The value of an artificial tissue depends entirely on how well it mimics what happens in the body,” said Lynn Harper, challenge administrator at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. “The requirements are precise and vary from organ to organ, making the task extremely exacting and complex. The research resulting from this NASA challenge represents a benchmark, a well-documented foundation to build the next advance upon.”
Space might also be crucial to future designs into vascularized tissues. Thanks to the microgravity environment, it could be easier to 3D print human tissues in space.
SPACE RACE 2.0
NASA'S MARS ROVER SHARES NEW 2.4 BILLION-PIXEL, 360-DEGREE PANORAMIC IMAGE FROM JEZERO
Credit: NASA/JPL Jun 12, 2021,
Since gently dropping down onto the Red Planet's surface on Feb. 18, NASA's amazing Perseverance Mars rover has been quite busy, trundling around Jezero Crater, deploying a little drone helicopter, making microphone recordings, and capturing more than 75,000 images of the surrounding terrain.
Now NASA has released the rover's latest photographic impressions of our neighboring planet in the form of an impressive 360-degree panorama pieced together using 992 separate images snapped by its Mastcam-Z stereo imaging system.
Perseverance Mars rover obtained these photos as it sat idle out at the “Van Zyl Overlook” inside the Jezero Crater while its accompanying Ingenuity Mars helicopter finished up its initial flights between April 15 and 26.
Hold your breath and have a look around...
Stitched together into a single mosaic, these images represent 2.4 billion pixels of Mars' barren world. The rover shot in this panorama was taken on Mar. 20, 2021 and added to deliver a more accurate sense of scale and perspective.
Imaging coverage of the sky has been digitally smoothed over based on the true observed sky color. The video's accompanying audio recording was created on Feb. 22, 2021 and contributes an eerie mood while you explore the landscape.
Per NASA, Perseverance is about to kick off its new science phase this month as it exits the “Octavia E. Butler” landing site.
““We are putting the rover’s commissioning phase as well as the landing site in our rearview mirror and hitting the road. Over the next several months, Perseverance will be exploring a 1.5-square-mile patch of crater floor,” said Jennifer Trosper, Perseverance project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement. “It is from this location that the first samples from another planet will be collected for return to Earth by a future mission
FORBES Science I inspire people to go stargazing, watch the Moon, enjoy the night sky Discover the celestial mechanics behind eclipses and why they come in seasons.
NASA'S SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION STUDIO
Eclipse season is done. Thursday’s annular solar eclipse—mostly seen as a partial “bite” out of the Sun by the Moon, though to some as a “ring of fire”—was the second and final eclipse of the current season.
Wait. Eclipses come in seasons? Yes—and the next one beginning on November 19, 2021 is going to be way more spectacular than the one Earth just experienced.
Here’s everything you need to know—and the dates for your diary—of 2021’s second eclipse season, and the celestial mechanics behind these dramatic periods: What is an ‘eclipse season’ and why do two eclipses follow each other?
Every 173 days an eclipse season begins. They last between 31 and 37 days and occur when the Moon is lined-up perfectly to intersect the ecliptic—the apparent path of the Sun through our daytime sky and the plane of Earth’s orbit of the Sun.
The Moon’s orbit of Earth is tilted by 5º to the ecliptic, so it must cross the ecliptic twice each month, but that tilt means it usually doesn’t align with the Sun and the Earth.
However, when it does align to cause a solar or lunar eclipse, it’s still precise enough a couple of weeks later to cause the other type of eclipse.
When is the next eclipse season?
2021’s second eclipse season begins with the full Moon of November 19, 2021 with a partial lunar eclipse that’s so nearly a total lunar eclipse. It will be visible in North America.
It will be followed on the next New Moon—December 4, 2021—with that most dramatic kind of eclipse of all, a total solar eclipse.
A full blood moon is seen during a partial eclipse in Taipei on May 26, 2021 as stargazers across ... [+] AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
What will the ‘Frosty Half-Blood Moon Eclipse’ look like?
November 19, 2021’s full Moon—known colloquially as the “Frosty Moon” is technically a partial lunar eclipse since the whole of the Moon won’t enter Earth’s shadow in space. But it will be so close! In fact, 97% will turn red as seen from North and South America, Australia and Asia.
Lunar eclipses can only occur at full Moon, when the Earth is between the Moon and the Sun.
The diamond ring effect occurs with Baily's Beads at the end of totality during The Great American
What will December’s total solar eclipse look like?
Occurring low in the sky above the floating icebergs of the Wedell Sea on December 4, 2021, this total solar eclipse in Antarctica won’t be witnessed by many, though over 20 cruise ships are planning to be in the area.
Solar eclipses can only occur at New Moon, when the Moon is between the Earth and the Sun.
They’ll feel the Moon’s shadow rush towards them and the temperature drop while the light plunges to twilight. With naked eyes in clear skies they’ll see the last ray of sunlight form a beautiful “diamond ring” around the Moon before the big reveal of the Sun’s delicate ice-white corona spraying into space.
Jamie Carter I'm an experienced science, technology and travel journalist and stargazer writing about exploring the night sky, solar and lunar eclipses, moon-gazing, astro-travel, astronomy and space exploration. I'm the editor of WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com and the author of "A Stargazing Program for Beginners: A Pocket Field Guide" (Springer, 2015), as well as many eclipse-chasing guides.
Is The North Pole On Fire? Watch Last Week’s Eclipse Do Something No Other Will This Century
FORBES Science I inspire people to go stargazing, watch the Moon, enjoy the night sky
Jun 12, 2021
The Moon's shadow from yesterday's eclipse is easily visible on top of the Earth in this image from ... [+] NASA
If you glimpsed the solar eclipse last week you were witness to something really special—an eclipse that made the
In these incredible images from NASA’s EPIC satellite—taken during the solar eclipse on Thursday, June 10, 2021—it’s possible to see the Moon’s shadow as it passes across the Earth’s surface.
Although most of the world saw a partial solar eclipse, a narrow stretch of the surface experienced a “ring of fire” annular solar eclipse during which a dark shadow crossed from Canada to Russia.
This article’s main image, above, shows the shadow over the North Pole.
It was the only solar eclipse of the 21st century to do such a thing.
It was also the only one whose shadow across Earth first traveled north across Canada and Greenland, then south into Siberia.
Here’s another shot of Earth, taken minutes earlier by EPIC, of the start of the annular solar eclipse:
The Moon's shadow from yesterday's eclipse is visible on top left of the Earth in this image from ... [+] NASA
And another as the shadow moved into Siberia, eastern Russia:
The Moon's shadow from yesterday's eclipse is visible on top right of the Earth in this image from ... [+] NASA
Venus scientists have long complained that the planet wasn’t getting its due in robotic investigators. But those days are over: space agencies have announced three new missions to Earth’s mysterious twin in just over a week.
On June 2, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced that the agency would pursue two new Venus missions dubbed DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, aiming to launch the spacecraft between 2028 and 2030. Today (June 10), the European Space Agency (ESA) joined the rush to Venus, announcing that it would launch a mission dubbed EnVision to the planet in the early 2030s.
“A new era in the exploration of our closest, yet wildly different, Solar System neighbour awaits us,” Günther Hasinger, ESA’s director of science, said in a statement. “Together with the newly announced NASA-led Venus missions, we will have an extremely comprehensive science programme at this enigmatic planet well into the next decade.”
The mission was chosen over an astrophysics project called Theseus, which would have studied very distant gamma-ray bursts and other transient events, with the goal of understanding the life cycle of the very first stars, according to ESA.
The new mission won’t be Europe’s first visit to our neighboring world: ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft orbited the world from 2005 to 2014, studying the planet’s thick atmosphere, which is rich in carbon dioxide.
EnVision will also orbit Venus, but its instruments will be able to get a deeper look at the planet than those onboard Venus Express did. The spacecraft’s tools will include a sounder to investigate layers within the planet, spectrometers to analyze gases in Venus’ atmosphere and compounds on its surface, a radar instrument to map the planet’s surface, and a radio science experiment that will probe the planet’s structure and gravity field, according to ESA.
Although the project is led by ESA, the spacecraft’s radar instrument will come from NASA. “EnVision’s VenSAR will provide a unique perspective with its targeted studies of the Venus surface, enriching the roadmap of Venus exploration,” Adriana Ocampo, EnVision program scientist at NASA, said in a NASA statement.
Meanwhile, NASA’s VERITAS mission (short for Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography and Spectroscopy) will generate a global map of the topography of Venus. The data will be a vital upgrade compared to what we have from NASA’s Magellan mission, which used a much older version of the technology to map Venus between 1989 and 1994.
DAVINCI+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble Gases, Chemistry and Imaging) will be the only one of these new missions to venture through Venus’ atmosphere. The spacecraft includes a main orbiter plus a probe that will travel all the way down through the planet’s atmosphere to its surface, gathering measurements of how the atmosphere changes with depth.
EnVision will launch after the two NASA projects, with ESA officials evaluating Ariane 6 launch windows in 2031, 2032 and 2033. The spacecraft will then take 15 months to reach Venus and another 16 months to reach its final orbit.
Taken together, the three new missions will be a powerful tool for scientists looking to better understand how Earth and Venus started out so similar but became such different worlds, Tom Wagner, NASA’s Discovery Program scientist, said in the NASA statement.
“The combined results of EnVision and our Discovery missions will tell us how the forces of volcanism, tectonics and chemical weathering joined together to create and sustain Venus’ runaway hothouse climate.”
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The European Space Agency's EnVision mission and NASA's VERITAS and DAVINCI+ missions will explore Venus' geology and atmosphere. (NASA/JAXA/ISAS/DARTS/Damia Bouic/VR2Planets)
The European Space Agency has announced it will be launching its own mission to Venus that will join two American spacecraft announced earlier this month, to explore our sister planet. It is part of a broad effort to solve the mystery of why a world so much like ours turned out so differently.
The European mission, called EnVision, will orbit Venus and probe the surface with radar, looking for signs of volcanic activity both past and present. Volcanoes are believed to be the source of a planet's atmosphere and the atmosphere of Venus is incredibly different from ours and that of Mars.
If you have felt the intense heat when you open the door of an oven that has been baking at 200 C, that would be considered a cold day on Venus. The temperature on the surface is more than twice that, an unimaginable 464 C — higher than the melting point of lead.
This image made available by NASA shows Venus with data from the Magellan spacecraft and Pioneer Venus Orbiter. On Wednesday, June 2, 2021, NASA’s new administrator, Bill Nelson, announced two new robotic missions to the solar system's hottest planet, during his first major address to employees. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/The Associated Press)
Any spacecraft we send there has little chance of surviving for long. The only craft to land on Venus were the Russian Venera series. In fact, Venera 3 was the first spacecraft to touch another planet in 1966. However, it was a crash landing, as the spacecraft failed in the atmosphere.
Several following missions were lost due to the harsh conditions, and even those that landed successfully didn't last for long. Venera 9 operated for a full 53 minutes, but in that time was able to successfully send back the first image of Venus's surface. The Venera 13 mission survived for just a bit over two hours. In 1978, the U.S. sent its Pioneer Venus missions, and while one of the atmospheric probes survived to reach the surface, it succumbed after 45 minutes.
This panorama image, taken by the Venera 13 spacecraft on March 1, 1982, is one of the few images ever taken on the surface of Venus, Earth's nearest neighbour. The planet's thick clouds make its surface impossible for an orbiter to see. (NASA History Office)
Given the conditions, it's highly unlikely a human will ever set foot on Venus.
We have three planets in our solar system, Venus, Earth and Mars, all made of similar rocky materials, all within the habitable zone of the sun, but with three very different environments. One is a super-hot runaway greenhouse, enshrouded in a dense carbon dioxide atmosphere. One is in a permanent ice age with frigid temperatures under an extremely thin carbon dioxide atmosphere, and the other, right in the middle, is just right with nitrogen and oxygen air to breathe and live in.
The intriguing part of this mystery of why the planets are so different is the fact that at one time in the distant past, they were much more alike. There is evidence that billions of years ago Venus was cooler with liquid water on its surface and we're pretty sure that Mars was warmer and wetter as well. That means there could have been a time long, long ago when there were three blue planets.
This radar map from the Magellan spacecraft's visit to Venus in 1990 shows a Venusian mountain and lava fields. Conditions on the planet are incredibly hostile today, but a billion years ago might have been quite pleasant. (NASA)
The reason we explore other planets is to better understand our own. Venus and Mars changed from conditions that might have supported life to dramatically different environments and have remained that way ever since. The Earth on the other hand, is in a constant state of change, with ice ages and warm periods battling for dominance over geological time.
It's clear that planets are capable of dramatic global transformations. In the past, those changes have been the result of volcanic activity, impact of objects from space or the movement of continents. Now we humans are affecting the climate on a global scale in a very short time, pushing a system that has the ability to transform profoundly. Nobody is suggesting that the Earth is in danger of turning into something like Venus or Mars. But they are a vivid illustration of what can happen to a planet when its climate goes awry.
Bob McDonald is the host of CBC Radio's award-winning weekly science program, Quirks & Quarks. He is also a science commentator for CBC News Network and CBC-TV's The National. He has received 12 honorary degrees and is an Officer of the Order of Canada
