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, November 05, 2023
Tens of thousands of ancient coins have been found off Sardinia. They may be spoils of a shipwreck Associated Press Sat, 4 November 2023 Italy Undersea Ancient Coins A picture made available by the Italian Culture Minister showing some of the discovered ancient bronze coins. A diver's spotting something metallic not far from the Sardinian coast has led to the discovery of tens of thousands of ancient bronze coins. Italy's culture ministry said on Saturday, Nov. 4, 2023, that the diver alerted authorities, who sent divers assigned to an art protection squad along with others from the ministry's undersea archaeology department. Found in sea grass, not far from the northeast shore of the Mediterranean island were the coins dating from the first half of the 4th century.
(Italian Culture Ministry Via AP)
ROME (AP) — A diver who spotted something metallic not far from Sardinia's coast has led to the discovery of tens of thousands of ancient bronze coins.
Italy’s culture ministry said Saturday that the diver alerted authorities, who sent divers assigned to an art protection squad along with others from the ministry’s undersea archaeology department.
The coins dating from the first half of the fourth century were found in sea grass, not far from the northeast shore of the Mediterranean island. The ministry didn't say exactly when the first diver caught a glimpse of something metallic just off shore Sardinia, not far from the town of Arzachena.
Exactly how many coins have been retrieved hasn’t been determined yet, as they are being sorted. A ministry statement estimated that there are at least about 30,000 and possibly as many as 50,000, given their collective weight.
“All the coins were in an excellent and rare state of preservation,” the ministry said. The few coins that were damaged still had legible inscriptions, it said.
“The treasure found in the waters off Arzachena represent one of the most important coin discoveries," in recent years, said Luigi La Rocca, a Sardinian archaeology department official.
La Rocca added in a statement that the find is “further evidence of the richness and importance of the archaeological heritage that the seabed of our seas, crossed by men and goods from the most ancient of epochs, still keep and preserve.”
Firefighter divers and border police divers were also involved in locating and retrieving the coins.
The coins were mainly found in a wide area of sand between the underwater seagrass and the beach, the ministry said. Given the location and shape of the seabed, there could be remains of ship wreckage nearby, the ministry said.
Californians bet farming agave for spirits holds key to weathering drought and groundwater limits
AMY TAXIN Sat, 4 November 2023
APTOPIX California Agave Farming Leo Ortega tours agave plants at his home in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Agave thrives on almost no water. The plant isn't grown on a large scale in California, and it would take years for that to happen, but local distillers say the spirits they've made from agave so far are selling out.
(AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
MURRIETA, Calif. (AP) — Leo Ortega started growing spiky blue agave plants on the arid hillsides around his Southern California home because his wife liked the way they looked.
A decade later, his property is now dotted with thousands of what he and others hope is a promising new crop for the state following years of punishing drought and a push to scale back on groundwater pumping.
The 49-year-old mechanical engineer is one of a growing number of Californians planting agave to be harvested and used to make spirits, much like the way tequila and mezcal are made in Mexico. The trend is fueled by the need to find hardy crops that don’t need much water and a booming appetite for premium alcoholic beverages since the COVID-19 pandemic.
It's attracted entrepreneurs such as Ortega, as well as some California farmers. They're seeking to shift to more water-efficient crops and irrigation methods to avoid fallowing their fields with looming limits on how much groundwater they can pump, as well as more extreme weather patterns anticipated with climate change. Agave, unlike most other crops, thrives on almost no water.
“When we were watering them, they didn’t really grow much, and the ones that weren’t watered were actually growing better,” Ortega said, walking past rows of the succulents.
He is now investing in a distillery after his initial batches of spirits, made from Agave americana, sold for $160 a bottle.
Consumers started spending more on high-quality spirits during the pandemic shutdowns, which spurred a rise in premium beverage products, said Erlinda A. Doherty, an agave spirits expert and consultant.
Tequila and mezcal were the second-fastest growing spirit category in the country in 2022, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.
Both are proprietary spirits under Mexican laws, which are recognized in U.S. trade agreements. Much like how champagne hails from a region of France, anything called tequila must contain at least 51% blue Weber agave and be distilled in Jalisco or a handful of other Mexican states. Mezcal can be made from a variety of agave types but must be produced in certain Mexican states.
Agave growers and distillers in California — as well as some in Texas and Arizona — are betting there is an appetite for more agave-based spirits even if they are produced outside of Mexico and not called tequila or mezcal.
“We seem to have this insatiable thirst for agave, so why not have a domestically grown supply?” Doherty said. “I am kind of bullish on it.”
Alfonso Mojica Navarro, director of the Mexican Chamber of the Tequila Industry, said tequila has a lengthy history, global reputation for excellence and close connection with Mexican culture. While he didn’t comment specifically on California’s foray into agave spirits, he said he believes Mexico can respond to the growing demand.
“The tequila industry is concerned that each time there are more players trying to take advantage of tequila’s success by producing agave spirits, liqueurs or other beverages that allude to the Mexican drink, its origins and characteristics despite not being the same,” he said in a statement.
Agave isn't grown on a large scale in California yet, and it would take years for that to happen. But spirits, made by cooking the plant's core to produce sugars that are fermented, are proving popular, said Ventura Spirits owner Henry Tarmy, who distilled his first batch five years ago.
“We’ve sold everything we’ve made,” he said.
Much like Mexico has, California is taking steps to protect its nascent industry. The state legislature enacted a law last year requiring “California agave spirits” be made solely with plants grown in the state and without additives.
A dozen growers and a handful of distillers also formed the California Agave Council last year, and the group has tripled in size since then, said Craig Reynolds, the founding director who planted agave in the Northern California community of Davis. He said those making agave spirits have a deep appreciation for Mexican tequila.
“We have about 45 member growers," he said. “All of them want more plants.”
Agave takes little water but presents other challenges. The plant typically takes at least seven years to grow and is tough to harvest, and a mature plant can weigh hundreds of pounds. Once cut, it has to be grown all over again.
Still, many see agave as a viable alternative as California — which supplies the bulk of the country’s produce — explores ways to cut back water use.
While record rain and snowfall over the winter mostly ended a three-year drought in California, more dry periods are likely in store. The state enacted a law nearly a decade ago to regulate the pumping of groundwater after excessive pumping led some residents' wells to run dry and the land to sink. Scientists expect extreme weather patterns will become even more common as the planet warms, causing more drought.
Stuart Woolf, who grows tomatoes and almonds in the state's crop-rich Central Valley, said he started thinking about agave after estimating he’ll only be able to farm about 60% of his land in 20 years due to water limitations. And that's despite investing in solar energy and groundwater recharge projects to protect the farm that has been in his family for generations.
After trying out a test plot a few years ago, Woolf went on to plant some 200,000 agave on land he otherwise would have fallowed. Each acre of agave is taking only 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) of water a year — a tenth of what row crops demand and even less than pistachio and almond trees, he said.
Woolf and his wife Lisa gave a $100,000 donation to the University of California, Davis, which formed a research fund to look at the succulent’s varieties and its potential as a low-water crop.
“I have been trying to figure out what is a crop that I can grow that is somewhat climate-resilient, drought-tolerant, so I can utilize our land,” Woolf said. “The amount of water I am giving them is so low, I don’t think I am ever going to have a problem.”
Leo Ortega and his wife walk around their property, surrounded by blue agave plants, in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Ortega started growing blue agave plants on the hillsides of his Southern California home because his wife liked the way they looked. Today, his property is littered with what some say could be a promising new crop for water-challenged California.
Agave plants grow by the home of Leo Ortega and his wife, in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Ortega started growing blue agave plants on the hillsides of his Southern California home because his wife liked the way they looked. Today, his property is littered with what some say could be a promising new crop for water-challenged California.
Agave plants are shown at the home of Leo Ortega, in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Agave thrives on almost no water. The plant isn't grown on a large scale in California, and it would take years for that to happen, but local distillers say the spirits they've made from agave so far are selling out.
Leo Ortega stands near young agave plants that are next to his greenhouse, in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Ortega started growing blue agave plants on the hillsides of his Southern California home because his wife liked the way they looked. Today, his property is littered with what some say could be a promising new crop for water-challenged California.
Agave plants are lined up at the home of Leo Ortega, in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Agave thrives on almost no water. The plant isn't grown on a large scale in California, and it would take years for that to happen, but local distillers say the spirits they've made from agave so far are selling out.
Leo Ortega and his wife pour Agave Murrieta, made from their agave plants, at their home in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023.
A bottle of Agave Murrieta, far right, is shown by Leo Ortega, made from Agave Americana plants grown at Ortega's home in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. There's been a burst of interest in growing agave, the plant used to make Tequila popular in Mexico, in California after years of punishing drought and a push by the state to regulate groundwater use to shore up waning supplies. It started with entrepreneurs like Ortega, who is now investing in a distillery to turn his plants into a California spirit.
A bottle of Agave Murrieta, a spirt distilled from Agave Americana plants grown at the home of Leo Ortega, is shown in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. There's been a burst of interest in growing agave, the plant used to make Tequila popular in Mexico, in California after years of punishing drought and a push by the state to regulate groundwater use to shore up waning supplies. It started with entrepreneurs like Ortega, who is now investing in a distillery to turn his plants into a California spirit.
Leo Ortega's home is surrounded by Agave Americana plants in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Ortega started growing blue agave plants on the hillsides of his Southern California home because his wife liked the way they looked. Today, his property is littered with what some say could be a promising new crop for water-challenged California.
Leo Ortega carries a massive, flowering asparagus spear from an Agave Americana plant, at his home in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. There's been a burst of interest in growing agave, the plant used to make Tequila popular in Mexico, in California after years of punishing drought and a push by the state to regulate groundwater use to shore up waning supplies. It started with entrepreneurs like Ortega, who is now investing in a distillery to turn his plants into a California spirit.
Leo Ortega talks about the Agave Americana plants that surround his home in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Ortega started growing blue agave plants on the hillsides of his Southern California home because his wife liked the way they looked.
Leo Ortega and his wife tour the Agave Americana plants around their home in Murrieta, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Ortega started growing blue agave plants on the hillsides of his Southern California home because his wife liked the way they looked. Today, his property is littered with what some say could be a promising new crop for water-challenged California.
(AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Succession star Sarah Snook says AI use in film industry needs ‘stringent rules’
Naomi Clarke, PA Entertainment Reporter Sun, 5 November 2023
Succession star Sarah Snook has said “stringent rules” are needed to protect the acting industry amid the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
The Australian actress, best known for portraying Shiv Roy on the award-winning HBO drama, feels it would be a “huge” development if the film world “set a precedent” on how the technology is used.
Snook is among the stars who are taking part in strike action led by US actors union Sag-Aftra, which has raised concerns over a number of issues including pay and the use of AI.
Sarah Snook (Ian West/PA)
Speaking on Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg, she said: “The main thing for me, really, that I find terrifying is the AI of it all, it’s just such uncharted landscape and we need pretty stringent rules in place in order to protect not just the acting industry.
“If we can set a precedent for other industries in regards to how AI is utilised, then that will be huge.
“I think all the deep fake stuff that’s already readily available is terrifying.
“The guy who does the Tom Cruise videos it’s uncanny.
“So imagine then having a company who owns your image, owns your voice, creating whatever propaganda at the worst.
“There are no words that would describe how important this is right now to attend to.”
Snook became a household name starring in the hit TV series Succession, which follows the dysfunctional Roy family as they fight for control over a media empire.
The actress admitted she does have concerns that it will be hard to follow on from the show, saying: “Because of the strike, in some ways, I’ve been protected from the come down in a way just because I’ve been absolutely not working and that’s totally fine, I support the strike.
“But the fear that rests there is that when we are allowed to resume and we do get back into it, that Succession will have set this enormously high bar.”
Her next venture will see her return to the stage as she will star in a one-woman production of The Picture Of Dorian Gray on the West End next year.
The actress will play 26 different characters in the show, which is an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1890 novel.
She said the text has been “delicious” to work on and feels it has parallels with the obsession on personal image in modern culture.
The original novel follows a young man who has his portrait painted, and instead of ageing, he sells his soul so the painting with age rather than him.
“I feel like that’s like Instagram… We take a photo of ourselves, we put filters on ourselves, we are constantly trying to preserve this image of now but making now the future as well,” Snook said.
“There’s a real sense of celebration of youth, a desperate clinging to youth in some ways.
“I feel like that’s what Wilde was talking about back in the Victorian era, it’s kind of a bookend from then to now I think
Hitler beetle, Trump moth, Beyoncé fly: is it time to rethink naming of species?
Robin McKie Science Editor Sun, 5 November 2023 Photograph: Lawren Lu/Alamy
In 1937, a brown, eyeless beetle was found in a few caves in Slovenia. The new species was unexceptional apart from one feature. Its discoverer decided to name it after Adolf Hitler.
Anophthalmus hitleri has an objectionable sound to modern ears. Nor is it alone. Many species’ names recall individuals or ideas that offend: the butterfly Hypopta mussolinii, for example, while several hundred plant species carry names based on the word caffra which is derived from a racial slur once used in Africa. Similarly Hibbertia, a genus of flowering plants, honours George Hibbert, an English slave owner.
As a result, many scientists are pressing for changes to be made to the international system for giving official scientific names to plants and animals to allow the deletion and substitution of past names if they are deemed objectionable. Current taxonomy regulations, which do not allow such changes, must be altered, they say.
Other scientists disagree. Arguing over names that some think are unacceptable while searching for alternatives would waste time and create confusion. Species names should remain inviolate once they have been agreed by taxonomists, they argue, and changes should only be allowed if a mistake in designation has been made or an earlier designation is found to have been overlooked.
The row now threatens to become a major international dispute. “People have very, very strong opinions one way or the other about this,” said botanist Sandra Knapp, of the Natural History Museum in London. “There’s been a certain amount of shouting about it but we have to discuss issues like this. We cannot avoid them.”
As a result, Knapp has arranged for a discussion before voting on the issue occurs at the next International Botanical Congress, which will be held in Madrid in July 2024. One motion put forward by a group of botanists calls for a committee to be set up with powers to judge whether scientific names for plants that are now considered unacceptable should be suppressed or changed. Anophtalmus hitleri, a beetle named after Adolf Hitler. Photograph: Dpa Picture Alliance Archive/Alamy
Plant naming is only a part of the taxonomic controversy, however. Naming animals after racists, fascists and other controversial figures causes just as many headaches as those posed by plants. Last week, the American Ornithological Society announced it was changing the common names of dozens of birds because of their associations with racist or misogynist individuals. And many zoologists want this process to be expanded so they permit changes to be made to a species’ full scientific name. It is proving to be an awkward, controversial process, however. Scaptia beyoncea, ahorse fly named after singer Beyoncé. Photograph: Reuters
Earlier this year, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) said it would consider the issue and later announced that on careful reflection it would not consider changing its rules. It would not allow species’ names to be altered merely because some researchers found them offensive. Renaming would be disruptive while replacement names could one day be seen as offensive “as attitudes change in the future”, it announced in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. Hibbertia, a flower named after slave owner George Hibbert. Photograph: Stephanie Jackson/Alamy
The decision triggered a furious response. “In which other spheres of human endeavour is anything still named after Hitler?” said Estrela Figueiredo, of the Nelson Mandela University in South Africa. “The codes must change and adapt, like the rest of society.”
In the wake of the ICZN announcement, the same journal later published a series of editorials from scientists who challenged the commission’s stance. Some criticised the commission because it lacked geographic representation. “It does not include anyone from the African continent,” they wrote. Others accused it of “operating in a vacuum outside of social norms of accountability”. All pressed for the creation of an ICZN ethics committee to review problematic names on a case-by-case basis.
The issue has opened up major divisions, the journal’s editor, Jeff Streicher told the Observer. “It has become very clear that we need to have a discussion about this issue right now.”
One radical solution has been proposed by scientists who say species should simply not be named after individuals. About 20% of the 1.5m animals that have been classified to date have been named after a specific person. These are known as eponyms and Anophthalmus hitleri provides an example. These should simply be banned from taxonomy, it is argued.
“The naming of species to honour people was too often a political act, and given the demographic of scientists of the 19th to 20th centuries, those commemorated were almost universally white, upper-class, male Europeans,” said biologist Ricardo Rocha from Oxford University, one of the authors of a paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution that advocates such a ban.
Nor is being named after a controversial figure good for a species. Thanks to its name, Anophthalmus hitleri has become the focus of a trade in which specimens have been bought up by neo-Nazi enthusiasts, a process now said to be driving the creature towards extinction. What’s in a name?
The system for naming a species was formalised by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the 18th century and involves identifying an animal or plant by giving it a double name in Latin or Greek: a generic name which identifies its genus and a second specific name which distinguishes the particular species within that genus.
Hence we get names like Tyrannosaurus rex, the “king of the tyrant lizards”.. The first part is the genus Tyrannosaurus which is derived from the Greek “tyrant lizards” and rex, which is Latin for king.
Many other scientific names have more prosaic roots and are often derived from figures revered by those who discover them. Hence Scaptia beyonceae, a horse fly named after Beyonce; Leucothoe eltoni, a tiny crustacean named after Elton John and Anelosimus biglebowski, a spider named after the film, The Big Lebowski. For his part, David Attenborough has had his name given to more than 50 newly discovered species and some new genera.
Not every scientific name is given as a sign of honour, however. In 2017, researchers named a moth Neopalpa donaldtrumpi because it had pale blond head scales and small genitalia.
Wild kingdom
The ‘akikiki populations in Hawaii are critically endangered due to malaria-carrying mosquitoes. - San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance
The small gray bird’s once plentiful populations have faced decimation as global warming enables malaria-carrying mosquitoes to penetrate mountain peaks where the birds live.
Conservationists are ramping up efforts to protect the critically endangered birds by scaling towering trees and collecting the birds’ eggs so they can hatch and live in a safe environment.
At first glance, the body of a sea star doesn’t have an obvious head.
But a starfish doesn’t really have a body at all, new research suggests. Instead, the unusual marine animal is “just a head crawling along the seafloor,” said Laurent Formery, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley.
Starfish belong to a group called echinoderms, which share a common ancestor with humans and animals. But at some point, their body plans wildly diverged.
— If you’ve ever suspected your feline of having “cattitude,” it’s true. Cats have at least 276 distinct facial expressions, according to new research conducted in a cat café.
Your immune system makes its own antiviral drug − and it's likely one of the most ancient
Antiviral drugs are generally considered to be a 20th century invention. But recent research has uncovered an unexpected facet to your immune system: It can synthesize its own antiviral molecules in response to viral infections.
My laboratory studies a protein that makes these natural antiviral molecules. Far from a modern human invention, nature evolved cells to make their own “drugs” as the earliest defense against viruses. How antivirals work
Viruses have no independent life cycle – they are completely dependent on the cells they infect to supply all the chemical building blocks needed to replicate themselves. Once inside a cell, the virus hijacks its machinery and turns it into a factory to make hundreds of new viruses.
Antiviral drugs are molecules that inactivate proteins essential to the functioning of the virus by exploiting the fundamental differences in the way that cells and viruses replicate.
One key difference between cells and most viruses is how they store their genetic information. All cells use DNA to store their genetic information. DNA is a long, chainlike molecule built from four different chemical building blocks, each representing a different “letter” of the genetic code. These building blocks are connected by chemical bonds in a head-to-tail fashion to produce strings of millions of letters. The order of these letters spells out the genetic blueprint for building a new cell.
Many viruses, however, store their genetic information using RNA. RNA is built from a chain of four chemical letters, just like DNA, but the letters have slightly different molecular structures. RNA is single-stranded, while DNA is double-stranded. Viral genomes are also much smaller than cellular genomes, typically only a few thousand letters long. This diagram shows how four different classes of antiviral drugs inhibit HIV. One stops viruses from entering cells, and three inhibit different viral enzymes. Thomas Splettstoesser/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
When a virus replicates, it makes many copies of its RNA genome using a protein called RNA polymerase. The polymerase starts at one end of the existing RNA chain and “reads” the string of chemical letters one at a time, selecting the appropriate building block and adding it to the growing strand of RNA. This process is repeated until the entire sequence of letters has been copied to form a new RNA chain.
One class of antiviral drugs interferes with the RNA copying process in a cunning way. The head-to-tail construction of the RNA chain requires each chemical letter to have two connection points – a head to connect to the previous letter and a tail to allow the following letter to be added on. These antivirals mimic one of the chemical letters but crucially lack the tail connection point. If the RNA polymerase mistakes the drug for the intended chemical letter and adds it to the growing RNA chain, the copying process stops because there is nothing to attach the next letter to. For this reason, this type of antiviral drug is called a chain-terminating inhibitor. Viperin as antiviral producer
Previously, researchers thought that chain-terminating antiviral drugs were strictly a product of human ingenuity, developed from advances in scientific understanding of viral replication. However, the discovery that a protein in your cells named viperin synthesizes a natural chain-terminating antiviral has revealed a new side of your immune system.
Viperin works by chemically removing the tail connection point from one of the four RNA building blocks of a virus’s genome. This converts the building block into a chain-terminating antiviral drug.
This strategy has proved to be highly effective for treating viral infections. For example, the COVID-19 antiviral remdesivir works in this way. A viral RNA polymerase has to join together many thousands of letters to copy a virus’s genome, but an antiviral drug has to fool it only once to derail its copying. An incomplete genome lacks the necessary instructions to make a new virus and becomes useless. Remdesivir (red, center) works by blocking a viral RNA polymerase (blue) from replicating RNA (violet and orange). Juan Gaertner/Science Photo Library via Getty Images
Moreover, although cells also have their own polymerases, they never replicate RNA like viruses do. This potentially allows chain-terminating antiviral drugs to selectively inhibit viral replication, reducing unwanted side effects.
Clearly, viperin does not fully protect against all RNA viruses – otherwise no RNA viruses would make you sick. It seems that some viral RNA polymerases, such as those in poliovirus, have evolved to discriminate against the antiviral molecules that viperin synthesizes and blunt their effect. However, viperin is only one arm of your immune system, which includes specialized cells and proteins that protect you from infection in other ways. Ancient antivirals
Scientists discovered viperin about 20 years ago while searching for genes that turn on in response to viral infections. However, figuring out what viperin actually does proved very challenging.
Viperin’s function was particularly puzzling because it resembles an ancient group of proteins called radical SAM enzymes that are usually found in bacteria and molds. Notably, radical SAM enzymes are extremely rare in animals. Exposure to air rapidly inactivates them, and researchers thought they likely didn’t work in people. It’s still unclear how viperin avoids inactivation. This illustration shows the structure of viperin without (left) and with (right) an antiviral bound in its center. Soumi Ghosh and Neil Marsh/Journal of Biological Chemistry, CC BY-SA
Researchers were clued in to viperin’s function when they noticed that the gene coding for viperin is next to a gene involved in synthesizing one of RNA’s building blocks. This observation led them to examine whether viperin might modify this RNA building block.
Following this discovery, researchers identified viperinlike proteins across all kingdoms of life, from ancient bacteria to modern plants and animals. This meant that viperin is a very ancient protein that evolved early in life, probably well before the advent of multicellular organisms – because even bacteria must fight viral infections.
As more complex life forms evolved, viperin was retained and integrated into the complex immune systems of modern animals. Thus, this most recently discovered arm of your immune system’s defenses against viruses is likely the most ancient. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. The Conversation is trustworthy news from experts. Try our free newsletters.
Neil Marsh receives funding from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to support his laboratory's work on viperin.
CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
UK Selfridges ownership battle threatened amid debt crisis at Austrian backer
Luke Barr Sun, 5 November 2023 selfridges department store
A battle for control of historic British department store Selfridges is brewing as the business empire of one of its major shareholders begins to rapidly unravel.
The financial crisis engulfing Signa, a retail and property investor, spiralled late last week when shareholders sought to remove Mr Benko and sent in restructuring specialists.
This is the latest hurdle for Mr Benko, who was previously named by Austrian prosecutors as a suspect in a long-running political corruption investigation. He denied wrongdoing and was cleared by a court.
After years of breakneck expansion Signa’s growth has been brought to a grinding halt by rising borrowing costs and falling property valuations.
As well as owning a 50pc stake in Selfridges, Signa’s €23bn (£20bn) empire also includes the Chrysler Building in New York and Berlin’s KaDeWe luxury department store. A bid to shore up the empire by selling the landmark Elbtower development in Hamburg to one of Signa’s own shareholders collapsed, escalating the crisis. Signa shareholders sought to remove company founder Rene Benko late last week - ANTONIO BRONIC/REUTERS
Industry sources said Selfridges could be a priority in any potential firesale at Signa given its trophy asset status.
The Telegraph revealed earlier this summer that Saudi Arabia served as a private financial backer in the takeover after teaming up with Signa.
At the time of the acquisition, Signa’s executive board chairman, Dieter Berninghaus, said he wanted to “fulfil the vision of the late Galen Weson” – who controlled Selfridges before his death.
Marcus How, head of analysis at Austrian consultancy group VE Insight, said: “I think at this stage, with different people running Signa, they are going to be trying to raise whatever money they can so I would imagine anything is fair game.
“It’s a reasonable assumption that its Selfridges stake could be sold.”
Mike Ashley’s business announced the intended acquisition of the 34-store retailer last month in a deal with Signa, which had agreed to continue financing the business until the deal was complete.
This has now been thrown into question and administrators could be called in as soon as Monday. A deal between Signa and Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group for the SportScheck chain has been thrown into doubt - John Nguyen/JNVisuals
An Austrian business consultant who has scrutinised Benko and the Signa business in recent years said: “The company became more and more over leveraged while its valuation was being inflated. There has been very little room for manoeuvre for effectively what was a loss-making business and that has precipitated the fall.
“Fundamentally, he’s been losing credibility for a while. It only seemed like a matter of time before this was going to happen.”
Already, questions are being asked over whether potential bidders will soon start circling Signa’s lucrative stake in Selfridges.
John Peterson, an analyst at Peel Hunt, said: “Selfridges continues to thrive and from that point of view, it’s absolutely an attractive asset. You’d imagine it could be snapped by Middle Eastern or Chinese investors. There would be global interest.”
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund previously supported Signa’s successful Selfridges bid as part of a shopping spree intended to boost its clout on the international stage.
A Selfridges spokesman said: “This does not change anything for Selfridges. Selfridges trades independently of any support from its shareholders. We are delighted to have the ongoing and unwavering support of Central Group.
“We are very focused and excited by the Christmas period and welcoming our customers into our stores for an exceptional experience.”
‘We need more women,’ says only female winner of Millennium engineering prize
James Tapper Sun, 5 November 2023
In this article: Frances Arnold Nobel prize winning US scientist and engineer Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
As a Nobel laureate, Prof Frances Arnold is not short of accolades. Yet being the only woman to so far win the Millennium Technology Prize – the Nobel equivalent for engineers – is one of the least appealing.
Nominations for the €1m 2024 prize closed last week, and the organisers have revealed that women formed just 16.3% of nominees, the highest of any year since the biennial award’s launch in 2004, apart from the 28.1% put forward in 2022.
“We’d love to see more diversity in the winners of these prizes because we know that diverse people contribute to technology,” Arnold, an American chemical engineer, told the Observer.
The award organiser, Technology Academy Finland (TAF), has pushed the scientific and engineering community to think about women when they consider innovations towards creating a better life.
Tim Berners-Lee was the inaugural winner in 2004 for inventing the world wide web, while others have been recognised for DNA fingerprinting, fibre optic networks and stem cell research. But Arnold said it would take time for more women to join her.
“It’s important to remember that these prizes are often recognising work that was started 20, maybe even 30 years ago, when women were not as numerous in the technology community as they are today,” she said. “So my prediction is that there will be more nominations for women because marvellous women are joining the technology community.
“Also, it’s possible women are not recognised as much because they work in teams. And these kinds of prize often try to pinpoint a contribution of one or a few – very few – individuals.”
Arnold said she was “thrilled” to have received the prize in 2016 for her work on directed evolution of enzymes. “I’m an engineer by training, and it’s a huge prize for engineers – you can think of it as the Nobel prize for engineers. Two years later, I won the Nobel prize [in chemistry] – I don’t know how those are connected, but it was for basically the same sets of ideas.”
Winning took “a lot of hard work”, she said. “And taking the blows and standing back up again. You have to be willing to take the criticism and do the hard work. I never shied away from that. I certainly wasn’t going to let someone else have all the fun. I love research, I love invention. Why would I let the men have all the fun?”
In addition to her research, Arnold also co-chairs President Joe Biden’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and teaches at the California Institute of Technology.
“Half of our undergraduates are women. So the pipeline is there. Whether they stay to compete in academic research is another question.”
Women often choose to “look more widely” than men and often go into leadership positions in industry, Arnold said, where “maybe their potential for making these big discoveries is not as great”.
Her own big discovery was that she could breed enzymes like others breed sheep or yeast. In directed evolution, unlike natural selection, enzymes are encouraged to mutate then selected by engineers for specific properties that are useful, such as for creating fuels, medicines, chemicals and consumer goods. Until then, most scientists had attempted to understand how each part of the enzyme worked so they could design enzymes.
It is similar to the black box approach of artificial intelligence, she said. “There are a lot of parallels with AI and not just generative AI, but with artificial intelligence. Because these are navigating complex problems. Engineering an enzyme is a tremendously complex problem where we can’t sit down and specify all the interactions that are important in the design – nobody’s been able to do that.
“So machine learning and AI are very good at seeing the important patterns. We may not perceive it in the same way that the machine does it. But the machine catches those patterns and can greatly speed up the process of enzyme engineering. I do a lot of AI work myself.
“They’re both methodologies for traversing complex landscapes, we’d say. And you can meld them. Evolutionary search is a very simple search process on a complex landscape. Machine learning can do it in a different way. And there are many opportunities for melding these processes.”
TAF is keen for more people to nominate women for its prize. Dr Markku Ellilä, the academy’s chief executive, said: “The problem is structural and requires that women are encouraged to work in science at a young age. We aim to participate in this work through cooperation with universities and, for instance, by organising pitching contests for doctoral students and nominating candidates for Singapore’s Global Young Scientists Summit.”
The chair of the academy’s board, Minna Palmroth, professor in computational space physics, said that progress was being made. “Within this nominations round we pilot-tested purely women-targeted content in our nominations campaign, which gained promising results. However, there is still a lot to do, and that is why the prize will continue to encourage an increasing number of women to be nominated in the coming years.”
Aston University 3D printing engineer wins Female Innovator of 2023 award
Renia Gkountiou won the title of Female Innovator for 2023
She was nominated for her role in helping SMEs use and develop 3D printing
She is based at the Advanced Prototyping Facility which increases businesses’ awareness of 3D printing opportunities.
An Aston University engineer has been recognised at the 2023 Innovation Awards.
Renia Gkountiou who is as an engineer and technician within the University’s Advanced Prototyping Facility project won the title of Female Innovator for 2023.
She was nominated by professionals in her field for her role helping small to medium size businesses use and develop additive manufacturing, also called 3D printing.
Renia has been working at the Advanced Prototyping Facility (APF) project for just over two years. It was set up by Aston University to increase businesses’ awareness of the opportunities available through additive manufacture, also known as 3D Printing.
The project has helped 75 companies improve efficiency and effectiveness of their existing designs and to develop new prototypes and products.
Renia said: “Winning the award of Female Innovator of the Year at the Innovation Awards 2023 is not just a personal achievement but a testament to the dedication and hard work of the most incredible team in APF over the last two years.
“Innovation has always been at the heart of my career journey. We have leveraged 3D printing across a variety of projects in different sectors, spanning art, engineering and healthcare, all of which have yielded tangible benefits for society.
“These projects have involved the creation of novel product designs, prototypes and the development of materials in close collaboration with other departments at Aston University. The resulting designs and components not only exhibit improved efficiency but also cost-effectiveness, and an eco-friendly approach when contrasted with traditional manufacturing methods.”
Also nominated for other awards were the team’s project director Professor David Webb and additive manufacturing engineer and designer William Utting.
Last year Aston University became the second UK university to have an engineering department awarded Athena Swan Gold which recognises a commitment to advancing the careers of women and promoting gender equality.
“These honours not only epitomise individual excellence but also represent the culture of innovation and collaboration that we are actively fostering within the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences.
“As we eagerly anticipate the formal launch of Design Factory Birmingham, the role of the APF team in amplifying this culture is set to be invaluable."
The judges assessed the nominations and then put forward a shortlist which went to a public vote.
The five finalists in each category were interviewed by an independent judging panel from a range of organisations including NatWest, EY, and Make UK.
The awards were held on 27 October at the Eastside Rooms in central Birmingham.
NASA’s Sandra Irish wins 2023 Society of Women Engineers Award
SANDRA IRISH, LEAD STRUCTURES ENGINEER FOR NASA’S JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE, STANDS IN FRONT OF THE NEARLY FULLY TESTED OBSERVATORY SHE DEDICATED A SIGNIFICANT PART OF HER CAREER TO WORKING ON, JUST PRIOR TO ITS SHIPMENT TO THE LAUNCH SITE.
Sandra Irish, mechanical systems lead structures engineer for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, has been selected to receive the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Resnik Challenger Medal Award for her visionary contributions to the development, testing, transport, and launch of NASA’s premier space telescope since 2006. The medal was awarded during the World’s Largest Conference for Women in Engineering and Technology or WE23, which took place Oct. 26-28 in Los Angeles.
As an engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for over 40 years, Irish’s mechanical systems expertise has helped to ensure the successful operation of many NASA programs including the Webb telescope.
As Webb’s lead structures engineer, Irish led a group of 12 engineers that performed meticulous analysis and testing which helped confirm that the observatory’s mechanical design was fit to survive the rigors of spaceflight and on-orbit operations. While Irish’s primary focus was on preparing the telescope for a long life of service in space, she was also intimately involved in safely transporting the telescope to various locations around the United States for testing and assembly, and ultimately to its final destination where it launched from Europe’s Spaceport located near Kourou, French Guiana. Her steadfast dedication and expansive mechanical systems knowledge were key factors in the success of the notedly complex Webb mission. In addition to performing her duties on Webb, she served, and still actively serves, as the group lead for NASA Goddard’s mechanical systems analysis and simulation branch.
“I am honored to be this year’s recipient of SWE’s Resnik Challenger Medal Award for my role in Webb,” said Irish. “For 16 years of my engineering career at NASA, I worked on designing, building, testing, and delivering the most amazing telescope that NASA has ever launched into space. It was a joy to lead Webb’s structures team of such dedicated and talented engineers. Each day we tackled challenging design and test problems together, which resulted in a telescope that is successfully operating a million miles away! I smile every time a new image or discovery is shared with the world. It was wonderful to have been a part of the Webb team!”
About the Resnik Challenger Medal Award
The Resnik Challenger Medal was established in 1986 to honor SWE’s Dr. Judith A. Resnik, NASA mission specialist on the Challenger space shuttle flight lost Jan. 28, 1986. It is awarded for visionary contributions to space programs to an individual who identifies as a woman with at least ten years of experience. This award acknowledges a specific engineering breakthrough or achievement that has expanded the horizons of human activities in space.
SWE strives to advance and honor the contributions of women at all stages of their careers and recognize the successes of SWE members and individuals who enhance the engineering profession through contributions to the industry, education, and the community.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.
For more information about NASA’s Webb telescope visit: www.nasa.gov/webb
Over the glass cliff: female chief executives have shorter tenure than men due to crisis management roles
James Tapper Sun, 5 November 2023 Photograph: skyNext/Alamy
Women experience a “gender tenure gap”, lasting in CEO roles at publicly listed companies for shorter periods than men, according to new research which may support the idea that female leaders are subject to a “glass cliff” where they are set up to fail.
Analysis of companies listed on 12 stock exchanges around the world, including the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250, shows that since 2018 women have lasted an average of 5.2 years as chief executives compared to 8.1 years for men.
Laura Sanderson, the UK head of Russell Reynolds, the executive search firm which conducted the research, said the tenure gap was explained partly because some men had been chief executives for decades, including one who had been in post for 39 years.
“While the sample size is too small to be significant, we also need to consider whether the data may support the glass cliff theory,” she said.
The concept of the glass cliff is that women are more likely to be appointed as leaders when an organisation is in a time of crisis, so that their position is seen as more precarious than male counterparts.
Researchers at the University of Exeter, Michelle Ryan and Alexander Haslam, found in 2005 that women were more likely to be appointed as board members after a company’s share price had performed badly.
Professor Ryan, who is now director of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at the Australian National University in Canberra, told the Observer that the Russell Reynolds analysis was “robust and added to the body of work in this area”.
“If women are more likely to take on leadership roles in times of crisis, then it follows that their time is office is likely to be stressful, more heavily scrutinised and shorter in tenure,” she said.
“This reduced tenure could be for a number of reasons – because there is often higher turnover in times of crisis, because they are judged as not performing well, even though poor performance was in train before their appointment, or because when things start to turn around, men come back into leadership roles.”
Glass cliffs are not universal, she added, but further research has found evidence in other areas. For example, in 2010 researchers established that women standing for the Conservatives were more likely to contest seats held by other parties by a greater margin.
There are currently nine women who are chief executives of FTSE 100 companies. Denise Wilson, the chief executive of FTSE Women Leaders, which is seeking to increase the number of women on boards of companies in the FTSE 350 and 50 of the UK’s largest private companies, said that the gender tenure gap study was “an important piece of research”.
“From a UK perspective, we have made significant progress for women in almost every metric and measure,” she said. “But the CEO has been the stumbling block where we are struggling to make progress.”
Chief executive roles have a very low turnover, she said, which makes progress harder.
“I think men can enjoy a greater followership – support within the organisation. They can suffer big setbacks and rise again. Women who have been CEOs tend to go off to an alternative career.
“People tend to line up very quickly under the boss, but when that person is no longer as secure as people thought, that can gather momentum.”
However, she said that there was cause for optimism. The number of women on FTSE 350 boards is now 41%, up from 9.5% in 2011, and appointing women is “now the norm”. Russell Reynolds also found in a survey of 1,500 leaders worldwide that there were no significant differences in how women and men were perceived by the people who worked for them, showing that they were equally effective as leaders, although women were seen as being better at coaching and development.
Sanderson said that more women had moved into CEO roles having been a non-executive director on the company’s board.
“It happens often with men,” she said. “It shows that getting more women on boards generally has been working in terms of also getting more women into the CEO succession. One of the things I say to clients is that if you can have a non-exec on your board who could be a potential successor, that’s just good succession planning.”
Remember the austerity of 2010s? Early 2020s are expected to be far worse
LETS NOT FORGET 1999-2000,OR 1993-1997
Richard Partington Sun, 5 November 2023 at 4:00 am GMT-7·4-min read Photograph: PA
The prospects are bleak. For more than 70 years the British economy has grown steadily, if not always spectacularly. There have been setbacks – not least the 1970s energy shock, 1990s property crash, and 2008 financial crisis – before eventual recoveries took hold. This time is different.
Should last week’s forecasts from the Bank of England come to pass, Britain is heading for the weakest sustained period of economic growth of the postwar age, and quite possibly of the past century or more.
If the austerity-ridden 2010s were considered a lost decade, the early 2020s are expected to be far worse, with flatlining progress and heightened inequality. It could not come at a worse moment, as the country tries to recover from the Covid pandemic, meet the existential challenge of global heating, and ensure that the proceeds of growth are spread more evenly.
On the Bank’s reckoning, gross domestic product will post zero growth in 2024, with a 50-50 chance of a recession as Rishi Sunak prepares for the next general election. Growth thereafter will average less than 1% in each of the next two years, which is less than half the annual average rate between 1998 and 2007.
If the Bank is right, another of the prime minister’s five priorities – to grow the economy – is in serious jeopardy. Steering Britain to prosperity, without veering into a ditch in a reckless dash for growth like his predecessor, was the entire point of Sunak’s premiership. Instead we’re on a road to nowhere.
This week Sunak will attempt to change course with the King’s speech on Tuesday. Last week he hinted that his legislative focus for the next parliamentary session will be to “grow the economy, strengthen society and keep people safe”.
Yet it’s a difficult sell. No parliamentary term has been worse for living standards since the last King’s speech, seven decades ago, when George VI was on the throne.
Ahead of the state opening of parliament, business leaders are pushing for legislation to promote investment in the economy. The British Chambers of Commerce list of wants includes a “skills bill” to boost workforce training, a planning bill to ease new developments, trade policy reform to overcome Brexit headaches, and a legal framework to enable the transformation of the National Grid.
The last thing bosses want, however, is policymaking to score political goals rather than economic ones. Yet most of the ideas the government is reportedly considering seem designed to appeal to Tory voters and save the prime minister from rebellious rightwing MPs who might otherwise depose him.
Sunak is expected to promote expansion of North Sea oil and gas exploration, as well as pro-car policies, to create a dividing line with Labour. It’s a gamble, given the failure of his Tory party conference speech to revitalise his performance in opinion polls. It is also exactly the wrong kind of change required to kickstart the economy.
The prime minister will get a reality check just days after the pomp and ceremony in Westminster, with the Office for National Statistics due to issue its first growth estimate for the third quarter on Friday. After a near flatlining performance this year, the Bank thinks growth will have, at best, stagnated. City economists aren’t much more upbeat.
There are several reasons why Britain is trapped in a low-growth bind.
In a consumption-led economy, the worst hit to household finances in modern history – caused by a combination of the inflation shock that followed the pandemic and the war in Ukraine – was always bound to affect growth. Today the spending power of households is depressed by not only stubborn inflation and higher interest rates but sharply rising taxes.
Over the next three years, these headwinds are expected to remain as the central bank aims to squeeze inflation out of the system by keeping borrowing costs high for an extended period of time. Much of the pain is still to come, as households prepare to refinance cheaper mortgage deals on to higher rates. Half of the impact of the Bank’s 14 rate increase has yet to be felt.
There are offsetting factors. Nominal pay growth has been stronger than expected, supporting households’ spending power, while it is hoped that inflation will cool further next year. The Bank could be wrong in its assumptions. It has been before. Yet even then, pay growth has remained significantly below inflation, and not everyone has benefited equally.
An underfunded public sector is holding the economy back, seen most visibly in record NHS waiting lists contributing to record long-term sickness among working-age adults, limiting workforce participation. Taken together with other overwhelmed services, crumbling schools and infrastructure, austerity is coming home to roost.
Following on from the King’s speech, Jeremy Hunt is expected to use the autumn statement on 22 November to bang the drum for growth by unlocking private investment, getting more people back to work, and delivering a more productive British state.
However, the chancellor is expected to steer clear of announcing transformative changes for two reasons: concerns the health of the public finances and a desire to hold back giveaways until the spring budget, which will be closer to the election. Time for the government, though, is rapidly running out.
