Rich dinosaur history makes Coates Conservation Lands a find in the Edmonton area

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'An exciting place for paleontologists and it's a cool place to

go walking,' says dino hunter Philip Currie

Adrienne Lamb, Rick Bremness · CBC News · Posted: Mar 19, 2022 

Edmonton and Area Land Trust staffer Nikki Paskar spends time at Coates Conservation Lands southwest of Edmonton. (Adrienne Lamb/CBC)

Nikki Paskar carefully navigates the hiking trail at Coates Conservation Lands, one hour southwest of Edmonton.

"This place is so special to me," says Paskar, conservation coordinator with the Edmonton and Area Land Trust. "You can sit in the serenity of the forest and just relax and think." 

This 32-hectare space features a 1.3-kilometre trail, which meanders through the forest to the bottom of Willow Creek connecting with the North Saskatchewan River a few kilometres away. 

This land is a wildlife corridor for fox, coyote, moose, snowshoe hare and is also home to a variety of birds, Paskar says. 

Tag along on a tour of Coates Conservation Lands, a natural area with a rich dinosaur history, an hour southwest of Edmonton. 1:39

You can see more from Coates Conservation Lands and 55 other green space gems in the capital region on this map.

Open to the public in 2016, the land was donated to the land trust by Ethel Coates who wanted to see the spot "conserved in perpetuity." 

A natural legacy

Born in 1922 to a farming family in Carbon, Alta., Coates spent 45 years working for Imperial Oil and traveled the world. 

Her niece Cheryl Bissell says Coates taught her family about birds, how to ski and canoe.

"She made you pay attention to nature and all of its offerings, all the while relishing in it herself," Bissell says.

Adventure and nature lover Ethel Coates donated the land to the trust. (Submitted by Edmonton and Area Land Trust)

 

Coates decided to retire in the Calmar area and found "her little piece of heaven" in Willow Creek.

For close to 30 years she gardened, kept bees, walked the hills and valleys and skated on the creek. 

"She loved her land with a passion and never ever wanted to leave it," Bissell says.

Coates died in 2014 at the age of 92. 

In addition to her zeal for nature there was another reason to protect the space — dinosaurs.

A dinosaur bone identified in Willow Creek in the summer of 2015 at Coates Conservation Lands. (Submitted by Edmonton and Area Land Trust)

Dinosaur discoveries

"In the early 1990s Hadrosaur footprints were extracted from the area via helicopter and brought to the Royal Tyrrell Museum," Paskar says.

"Shortly after that they found Albertosaurus skin impressions as well as a number of dinosaur bones."

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Philip Currie remembers it well.

"It's a pretty cool story," says the paleontology professor at the University of Alberta.

The world-renowned dinosaur hunter was called to the area in 1994 to investigate a find by 12-year-old Tess Owen and her father Tom Owen. 

The skin impression of an Albertosaurus, a type of tyrannosaur, was found at the bottom of the creek. The fossil may have fallen from the cliff above although, Currie says, they weren't able to pinpoint the exact spot. 

It's now in the back collections of the Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller, where researchers are still studying it.

"In fact, it has attracted a lot of attention over the years because skin impressions of tyrannosaurs are pretty rare," Currie says.

Philip Currie leads a team of University of Alberta students unearthing dinosaur bones at a quarry in south Edmonton in 2017. (Jane Robertson/CBC)

Alberta is rich with specimens and the Edmonton area is no exception. 

"Even people who dig sewers hit dinosaur bones periodically," Currie says.

Protected areas like Coates, where people can wander and observe, are fantastic.

"I think it's an exciting place for paleontologists and it's a cool place to go walking."

Coates and 10 other natural areas are open to the public under the stewardship of the Edmonton and Area Land Trust.

The day-use area has interpretive signs along the trail and a small parking lot at the intersection of Township Road 502A and Range Road 280.

A view of Willow Creek running through Coates Conservation Lands. (David Bajer/CBC)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adrienne Lamb

Adrienne Lamb is an award-winning journalist based in Edmonton. She's the host and producer of Our Edmonton featured weekly on CBC TV. Adrienne has spent the last couple of decades telling stories across Canada.

Ancient handprints on cave walls in Spain found to include children's hands

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

A trio of researchers from Universidad de Cantabria and the University of Cambridge has found evidence suggesting that up to a quarter of all ancient handprints found on cave walls in Spain were made using children's hands. In their paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Verónica Fernández-Navarro, Edgard Camarós and Diego Garate describe their study of ancient hand prints found in five Spanish caves and what they believe their findings suggest about ancient hand prints on cave walls in general.

Over the past several decades, hand prints on cave walls have come to represent ancient cave art as much as drawings of animals. Scientists studying the handprints have generally agreed that they, along with the animal drawings, were all likely done by males in a given group. In this new effort, the researchers have found evidence suggesting that up to a quarter of all cave hand prints were made using children's hands.

The researchers began their work by noting that there is very little mention of the impact or activities of children in ancient societies. That led them to wonder about some of the art on the walls of caves across Europe and in Spain in particular—and that led them to take a closer look at the hand prints.

In studying the hand prints, the researchers noted that most of them appeared to have been made using stencils, rather than applying ink to the hand and pressing it against the wall. They also found that most of the stenciled hands had been created using a common technique of the time—placing a hand near a wall and blowing pigments at it using a hollow bone or reed. They further noted that rather than placing their hands on the wall, most of the prints had been done by holding the hand a little distance from the wall—a means for generating a stencil with a slightly 3D look. In replicating the technique with their own hands, they found that such an approach led to a stenciled hand that was slightly larger than the hand used to create it. They then closely studied hundreds of the hand prints, taking careful measurements of each while using 3D photogrammetric models as references.

In looking at their data, they found that up to 25% of the hand prints on the walls in five caves in Spain were of children's hands, some of which could have come from toddlers or even infants. They suggest their findings indicate that doing cave art was a group activity shared among all members, including children. They also suggest their findings hint that some other ancient forms of art, left behind as artifacts, may have been done by children.

Hand and footprint art dates to mid-Ice Age

More information: Verónica Fernández-Navarro et al, Visualizing childhood in Upper Palaeolithic societies: Experimental and archaeological approach to artists' age estimation through cave art hand stencils, Journal of Archaeological Science (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2022.105574

Journal information: Journal of Archaeological Science 

© 2022 Science X Network

Ancient ancestors evolved to be strong and snappy, study finds

by University of Bristol

Dunkleosteus – one of the animals involved in the research. Credit: Nobu Tamura

Researchers led by the University of Bristol show that the earliest jaws in the fossil record were caught in a trade-off between maximizing their strength and their speed

Almost all vertebrates are jawed vertebrates, including humans, first evolving more than 400 million years ago and distinguished by their teeth-bearing jaws. Humans owe their evolutionary success to the evolution of jaws, which allowed animals to process a wider variety of foods.

Jaws evolved from the gill arches, a series of structures in fish that support their gills. A new study, published in the journal Science Advances today, explores how a breathing structure came to be a biting structure. To do this, researchers based at Bristol's School of Earth Sciences collected data on the shapes of fossil jaws during their early evolution and mathematical models to characterize them. These models allowed the team to extrapolate a wide range of theoretical jaw shapes that could have been explored by the first evolving jaws. These theoretical jaws were tested for their strength—how likely they were to break during a bite, and their speed—how efficiently they could be opened and closed. These two functions are in a trade-off—meaning that increasing the strength usually means decreasing the speed or vice versa.

Comparing the real and theoretical jaw shapes revealed that jaw evolution has been constrained to shapes that have the highest possible speed and strength. Specifically, the earliest jaws in the dataset were extremely optimal, and some groups evolved away from this optimum over time. These results suggest that the evolution of biting was very quick.

William Deakin, Ph.D. student at the University of Bristol and lead author, said: "Jaws are an extremely important feature to gnathostomes—or jaw-mouths. They are not only extremely widespread, but almost all creatures that have them, use them in the same way—to grab food and process it. That's more than can be said for an arm or a foot or a tail, which can be used for all sorts of things.

"This makes jaws extremely useful to anyone studying the evolution of function. Very different jaws from very different animals can be tested in similar ways. Here we have shown that studies on a large variety of jaws, using theoretical morphology and adaptive landscapes to capture their variety in function, can help shed some light on evolutionary questions."

Philip Donoghue, Professor of Palaeobiology at Bristol and co-author of the study, said: "The earliest jawed vertebrates have jaws in all shapes and sizes, long thought to reflect adaptation to different functions. Our study shows that most of this variation was equally optimal for strength and speed, making for fearsome predators."

Emily Rayfield, also a Professor of Palaeobiology at Bristol and co-author of the study, added: "The new software that Will developed to analyze the evolution of jawed vertebrates, is unique. It allows us to map the design space of key anatomical innovations, like jaws, and determine their functional properties. We plan to use it uncover many more of the secrets of evolutionary history."Jaws: How an African ray-finned fish is helping us to rethink the fundamentals of evolution

More information: William J. Deakin et al, Increasing morphological disparity and decreasing optimality for jaw speed and strength during the radiation of jawed vertebrates, Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abl3644. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abl3644

Journal information: Science Advances 

Provided by University of Bristol 

Albertans could lose power, heat as disconnection moratorium lifts next month

In Alberta, residents cannot be disconnected from their utilities during winter months, defined as Oct. 15 to April 15 each year.

Author of the article: Dylan Short
Publishing date: Mar 19, 2022 • 

 

Albertans who have fallen behind on their energy bills could see services limited or disconnected starting in mid-April. 

PHOTO BY DARREN MAKOWICHUK /Postmedia

More than 1,000 Albertans could be at risk of being disconnected from their utilities next month when the provincial restriction on stopping services is lifted.

In Alberta, residents cannot be disconnected from their utilities during winter months, defined as Oct. 15 to April 15 each year. This year’s winter has seen bills across the province skyrocket, leading the Opposition NDP to raise concerns over next month’s deadline.

Energy critic Kathleen Ganley attempted to continue to the freeze of disconnections through the summer until next year’s moratorium becomes active. However, that proposal was defeated in the legislative assembly.

NDP Leader Rachel Notley said Friday that she believes there are “tens of thousands” of Albertans who are behind on their bills.

“We don’t know the exact details, but we do know that the government has the opportunity to protect those families,” said Notley while presenting a proposal to combat rising inflation. “That is what we are asking them to do.”

When the NDP was in power, it implemented a rate cap in 2016 that limited costs to 6.8 cents per kilowatt for regulated rate option contracts. That price cap was scrapped by the current United Conservative government in 2019.

Associate Minister of Natural Gas and Electricity Dale Nally said in a statement that data on potential disconnects is not yet available but that last year, there were 1,485 disconnections reported to the provincial Utility Consumer Advocate as part of the reconnection program. In 2017-18 there were more than 3,000 reported disconnects.

Those reports do not include all stoppages of services, but rather outline how many people did not have access to their utilities throughout the summer months up until Oct. 15 of last year.

“We regularly keep in contact with retailers about market conditions and issues like disconnections. This week, there was not an above-average number of disconnections disclosed to us compared to what has been seen in past years on April 15,” said Nally in a statement. “We will stay in close contact with these retailers and take action if these numbers rise to concerning levels. The true impact of accounts in arrears from the January to February billing cycles will not be known until about May or June.”

Albertans have been hit hard by rising utility bills as demand driven by extreme weather has been coupled with market factors driving up prices with some Calgarians reporting nearly a doubling on their bills compared to last year. In response, the government implemented a natural gas rebate that will kick in next winter if prices exceed $6.50 per gigajoule. The UCP’s projections in its latest budget do not expect prices to reach those prices but Finance Minister Travis Toews said Albertans will be protected if prices continue to rise.

The government has also created a $150 retroactive rebate for electricity prices over the past three months and has reduced provincial taxes on gasoline to help ease record inflation rates brought on in part by soaring gas prices and unprecedented demand in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Enmax, the company that supplies power to a large number of Calgarians, cited privacy reasons as it said it could not provide numbers on how many residents are at risk of losing power. Spokesperson Chinta Puxley said Enmax will reach out to customers on load limiters — devices that restrict power to a few essential items in the home — to help find manageable payment options.

Epcor, which provides power to Edmontonians, said it expects the same number of people to be on load limiters as in previous years when April 15 arrives. It, too, said the company would work with customers who are behind on their payments.

Nally said the most important thing Albertans can do if they fear they are facing a loss in utilities is to stay in contact with their providers. He also said they can contact the Utility Consumer Advocate for more information on specialized programs or contract support.

“Retailers have committed to exploring every option possible to help their customers stay connected with payment plans or other solutions, and they will proactively reach out if a customer is nearing disconnection,” said Nally.

Nally said accepting the NDP’s proposal to extend the moratorium on removing services would cost Albertans in the long run as other consumers would have to pick up the bill.

THOSE OTHER CONSUMERS ARE BUSINESSES

dshort@Postmedia.com

ANTI-VAXXERS RALLY

Vancouver plaza flooded with protesters and counter-protesters on Saturday (PHOTOS)

Aly Laube
DAILY HIVE
Mar 19 2022, 

Community Over Convoys/Twitter

If you heard a commotion downtown on Saturday afternoon, it was probably the protesters at Jack Poole Plaza.

Vancouver Police said they had to shut down several roads in the area near Coal Harbour because of the congestion.

Protestors took over the plaza on March 19, with convoy supporters on one side and counter-protestors on the other.

“There were people protesting for freedom and then people counter-protesting the freedom protesters,” the VPD said in an email to Daily Hive Vancouver.

There were around 1,500 people by 3 pm.

Mask mandates have already been lifted in the province, but these protests might keep happening until all laws related to COVID-19 are dropped.

Recently, BC Premier John Horgan told convoy protestors to “give their head a shake,” which also agitated some people who support them.

Counter-protestors spotted Canadian conspiracy theorist Chris Sky at Jack Poole Plaza with a camera crew.

The Community Over Convoys group, which organizes against “Freedom Convoy” supporters in Vancouver, tweeted they were “kicked out” of the space by VPD after being told they needed a permit.

They also tweeted about several arguments between the two groups, with convoy supporters allegedly getting confrontational and following them even after VPD told them to leave.


Daily Hive Vancouver reached out to Community Over Convoys for comment and will update this story.

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UCP KENNEY leaked confidential poll data despite refused permission, Alberta pollster says

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UCP 'really did cherry pick' numbers that it leaked, says

 pollster Janet Brown

Dominika Lirette · CBC News · Posted: Mar 19, 2022

Pollster Janet Brown says the United Conservative Party leaked data from a poll she did that was favourable to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, but did not provide the full context of those results. (Todd Korol/The Canadian Press)

An Alberta pollster is calling out the United Conservative Party for leaking private data from a poll she did, which shows the party has moved ahead in popular support.

Janet Brown believes the party leaked some of the more favourable results from her poll, because Premier Jason Kenney's leadership review is coming up on April 9, and memberships need to be bought by Saturday.

However, she said that the leaked information is missing context and doesn't include some of the less flattering data. 

"They had asked me if I would be willing to put this data out, because they thought it would work to their advantage," said Brown. "I had said 'no' to them on a couple of occasions, but they leaked the numbers anyway."

Brown runs Opinion Research, which does polling for clients across the political spectrum, as well as unions and other businesses. She also sends a syndicated report, called The Wild Ride Update, to subscribers, one of which is the UCP.

The subscription agreement, however, states that subscribers must keep the data in her reports confidential, she explained while on CBC's Daybreak Alberta.

"My business model just doesn't work if the data the client has paid for is out there in the media."

Janet Brown, shown here, knows it was the UCP who leaked the poll because of the unique footer marked at the bottom of every page of the report. (CBC)

Brown says she knows it was the UCP who leaked the poll because each report she gives to clients has a unique footer at the bottom of every page.

"The reporters who have received the document have confirmed to me that the document they receive is the one that I prepared for the initial party," she said while on CBC's West of Centre.

The UCP has not responded to CBC's requests for comment. 

UCP 'really did cherry pick' results, says Brown

Earlier this week, Alberta government political staffers received emails asking them to take Friday off work and volunteer to call supporters ahead of the leadership vote.

The latest Angus Reid Institute poll suggests Kenney has a 30 per cent approval rating — second-lowest among the provincial premiers. Kenney is also combatting critics within his party, namely Brian Jean.

Jean, who recently won the Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche byelection as the UCP candidate, has been outspoken about Kenney needing to step down as party leader, and will be gunning for that role on April 9.

"They very much wanted to have some good news out there, because so many other polls were not reflecting very positive on the UCP," said Brown. 

Brian Jean, right, just won the Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche byelection as the UCP candidate. He has previously said replacing Jason Kenney, left, is his first priority. (Chris Schwarz/Government of Alberta, submitted by Brian Jean)

Lori Williams, an associate professor of policy studies at Mount Royal University, says this leak shows there is a lot of nerves at the premier's office.

"This and a number of other things indicate that there is a great deal of concern, almost panic, it seems," she said.

"They are very worried about the vote on April 9th and they are pulling out all the stops to try to manage a win."

Brown says the party "really did cherry pick" the data, explaining that what was leaked is missing context.

For example, Brown's poll suggests the UCP is ahead by four points and that the premier's approval rating has climbed from an "abysmally low" 19 per cent to the current level of 36 per cent.

Yet, the reporting so far doesn't focus on the fact that 60 per cent of Albertans disapprove of the job that Kenney has done as premier.

• Alberta government staffers told to take day off to campaign in advance of leadership vote

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  For Jason Kenney, there are plenty of political potholes on the road to Red Deer

Also, 55 per cent of the poll's respondents said they find what Kenney says about the economy and Alberta's future as not very, or not at all, trustworthy, she said. 

"So, yes, things have definitely improved for the UCP, things have improved for the Premier," Brown said.

"But there's a lot of data in here that would suggest that this is probably not the celebration that the UCP want it to be." 

 

Brown added that her polls also track what she calls "soft" or "orphaned" voters — people that didn't give an opinion. Without factoring them in, someone cannot accurately comprehend the results.

In the poll that was leaked, soft voters made up about 14 per cent of respondents. This suggests that there are still many voters who are "sitting on the sidelines," not really knowing what happens next, she said.

They are undecided, in part, because they don't know who the premier will be as of April 10.

'Unethical,' says political scientist

Williams says the UCP leaking this data is "unethical," because the data was supposed to be confidential and they didn't include all of the information when they leaked it.

"This is the bread and butter for Janet Brown and her polling organization. So they're basically jeopardizing her business for the sake of what they thought might be a good news story at a time when the news is otherwise very bad," she said.

"But then there's the dishonesty involved in releasing information that looks like it's saying one thing, when if all the information were released, it would be clear that it's saying something quite different."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

Dominika Lirette

Reporter/Editor

Dominika Lirette is a reporter at CBC Calgary. Twitter: @LiretteDominika

With files from Daybreak Alberta and West of Centre podcast

Braid: Pollster says she was pressured by UCP and the premier's office

Janet Brown accuses the UCP of 'spinning' her numbers and releasing private commercial information

Author of the article: Don Braid • Calgary Herald
Publishing date:Mar 18, 2022 • 

The Alberta Legislature is seen at sunset in Edmonton. 

Pollster Janet Brown regularly produces an Alberta opinion survey called Wild Ride Update. The latest took her on a wilder ride than she ever expected.

She accuses the UCP of “spinning” her numbers and releasing private commercial information.

Brown came under intense political pressure when her poll for paying clients showed a strong government comeback, with even the prospect of a majority in next year’s election.

Calls urging her to release the poll came from senior levels of both the party and the premier’s office.

“They were desperate for some good news ahead of the leadership vote, and they thought they could spin these numbers in a positive light. I repeatedly told them ‘No,’ but they leaked them to the media anyway.”

Journalists began getting summaries or the poll itself, sometimes from roundabout routes.

The poll, which I received, is certainly dramatic.

Brown says that in current conditions the UCP could win 40 per cent of the popular vote and 47 legislature seats, compared to 36 per cent and 40 seats for the NDP.

Other pollsters show much lower popularity and vote percentage for Premier Jason Kenney and his party.

Brown’s work was exactly what they’ve been praying for — a positive, reputable poll with the leadership review looming on April 9, and new party membership sales for that vote cutting off at midnight Saturday.

But there was a problem. The information is confidential. Brown agrees with all her paying clients — everyone from unions to parties and companies — not to make results public.

“The United Conservative Party is a subscriber, and earlier this week, they asked me repeatedly if I would release some of the data,” Brown said.

“I explained to the UCP that a leak would cause issues for me with the other subscribers. But they still leaked some of the numbers.”

When her data goes public, she says, her whole business is threatened.

“Who will want to pay for the information? My polling methods are very expensive. I can’t do this without the support of my clients.”

With the most dramatic numbers out of the bag, Brown says the leaks “stripped out the context” of her findings.

“For instance, the survey also showed that 60 per cent of Albertans disapprove of the job Jason Kenney is doing as premier,” she said.

“And 55 per cent find the things Jason Kenney says about Alberta’s economy and future to be not very or not at all trustworthy.

“I’ve been pulled into this unwillingly, but now that it’s out there I feel I should provide that context.”

The original source of the leak seems obvious.

Brown marks each client’s copy with their name, “partly so I’ll know who leaked it if that happens,” she says.

Every page of the copy I received says “UCP.”

Independent pollster Janet Brown accuses the UCP of “spinning” her numbers and releasing private commercial information. 

PHOTO BY HANDOUT /Postmedia

Brown stresses that the party did not order this poll. All clients receive her regular syndicated survey and she decides on the issues.

The other question, of course, is the credibility of the poll itself. Brown is out of sync with others who now find only a modest UCP comeback

But she has a long record of producing results that seem eccentric at first and then prove to be correct.

In 2008, when everybody thought then-premier Ed Stelmach was in difficulty, she predicted he would win between 70 and 72 legislature seats. He got 72.

In the 2012 provincial election, Brown was as wrong as everyone else, expecting a Wildrose victory that turned out to be another big PC win.

That’s when she became convinced there was a “structural problem” in Alberta polling and revised her methods, especially the handling of undecided voters.

As a result, she often finds higher conservative support than other pollsters do.

“It’s been a challenge my whole career, trying to convince people that when I have results they’re not the results I want, they’re what I find and believe to be going on in Alberta.”

Governments and parties love her or hate her depending on her results.

“The UCP caucus cancelled my subscription a year ago because they were so appalled by my numbers.

“I did some work on Alberta’s reputation outside the province, and Jason Kenney stood in front of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce and basically called my work un-Albertan.”

Now her findings are suddenly correct because they’re useful.

“I’m just a girl in a bathrobe trying to do good work in an industry of giants,” Brown says.

“Being accurate has always been a lot more important to me than being popular. I treasure my independence.”

Her new findings have been sucked into Alberta’s frantic political whirlwind and spun out again for purely partisan reasons.

Given her record, however, her take on the UCP comeback might just turn out to be right.

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Calgary Herald.
Twitter: Don Braid
Facebook: Don Braid Politics

 

Groundbreaking earthquake discovery: Risk models overlook an important element

by University of Copenhagen

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Earthquakes themselves affect the movement of Earth's tectonic plates, which in turn could impact on future earthquakes, according to new research from the University of Copenhagen. This new knowledge should be incorporated in computer models used to gauge earthquake risk, according to the researchers behind the study.

Like a gigantic puzzle, Earth's tectonic plates divide the surface of our planet into larger and smaller pieces. These pieces are in constant motion due to the fluid-like part of Earth's mantle, upon which they slowly sail. These movements regularly trigger earthquakes, some of which can devastate cities and cost thousands of lives. In 1999, the strongest European earthquake in recent years struck the town of İzmit, Turkey—taking the lives of 17,000 of its residents.

Among researchers and earthquake experts, it is well accepted that earthquakes are caused by a one-way mechanism: as plates move against one another, energy is slowly accrued along plate margins, and then suddenly released via earthquakes. This happens time and again over decades- or century-long intervals, in a constant stick-slip motion.

But in a new study, published in Geophysical Journal International, researchers from the Geology Section at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management demonstrate that the behavior of tectonic plates can change following an earthquake.

Using extensive GPS data and analysis of the 1999 İzmit earthquake, the researchers have been able to conclude that the Anatolian continental plate that Turkey sits upon has changed direction since the earthquake. Data also show that this influenced the frequency of quakes around Turkey after 1999.

"It appears that the link between plate motion—earthquake occurrence is not a one-way street. Earthquakes themselves feed back, as they can cause plates to move differently afterwards," explains the study's lead author, postdoc Juan Martin De Blas, who adds:

"As the plate movements change, it somewhat affects the pattern of the later earthquakes. If a tectonic plate shifts direction or moves at a different rate than before, this potentially impacts onto the seismicity of its margins with neighboring plates."

Quake models can be improved

According to the researchers, the new findings provide a clear basis for reevaluating the risk models that interpret data gathered from the monitoring of tectonic plate movements. This data is used to assess the risk of future earthquakes in terms of probability, somehow like the nice/bad weather forecast.

"An important aspect of these models is that they operate under the assumption that plate movements remain constant. With this study, we can see that this isn't the case. Therefore, the models can now be further evolved so they take the feedback mechanism that occurs following an earthquake into account, where plates shift direction and speed," says Associate Professor Giampiero Iaffaldano, the study's co-author.

The assumption that plate movements are constant has largely been a "necessary" assumption according to the researchers, because monitoring plate motions over period of few years was once impossible. But with the advent of geodesy in Geosciences, and the extensive and ever-growing use of GPS devices over the last 20 years, we can track plate motion changes over year-long periods.

Could make us better at assessing risk

How tectonic plates are monitored varies greatly from place to place. Often GPS transmitters are positioned preferentially near the edges of a tectonic plate. This allows public agencies and researchers to track the movement of plate boundaries. But according to the researchers, we can also benefit from even more GPS devices continuously monitoring plate interiors, away from their margins.

"Plate boundaries undergo constant deformation and poorly represent the movement of plates as a whole. Therefore, GPS data from monitors positioned farther away from the plate boundaries should be used to a much greater degree. This can better inform us weather plates are changing motion and how, and provide information useful for assessing the risk of future events somewhere other than the known hot-spots," says Giampiero Iaffaldano.

The researchers point out that their study is limited to the Anatolian continental plate, as the İzmit earthquake is one of the few event for which a combination of sufficient seismic and GPS data is available. However, they expect that the picture is the same for other tectonic plates around the planet.Caribbean-South American plate boundary primed for major earthquake

More information: J Martin de Blas et al, Have the 1999 Izmit–Düzce earthquakes influenced the motion and seismicity of the Anatolian microplate?, Geophysical Journal International (2022). DOI: 10.1093/gji/ggac020

Journal information: Geophysical Journal International 

Provided by University of Copenhagen 

Toronto data scientist takes sabbatical to pursue his chess ambition
CECIL ROSNER
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

PUBLISHED YESTERDAY

Shiyam Thavandiran is putting his career as a data scientist with RBC on hold as he tries to win the coveted grandmaster title in chess.

“Life is short,” says the 29-year-old, who is currently one of Canada’s top international masters. “I realized having a full year to focus on it would be good.”

Born and raised in Toronto, Thavandiran had phenomenal success as a youth, placing fourth in the world under-10 championships alongside players who today are among the best in the world. He was also the youngest Canadian junior champion ever at the age of 12. He continued playing competitively even as he got his master’s degree in mathematics and experience in the artificial intelligence field.

Though he hasn’t played an over-the-board event in two years, he isn’t going to rush back into competition until he’s ready. He likes quoting Abraham Lincoln to describe how he is approaching his sabbatical.

“If you have six hours to cut down a tree, spend the first four sharpening the axe,” he says. For him, that includes extensive study of chess openings, as well as physical preparation.

As the pandemic eases in many parts of the world, he is hoping his first serious in-person tournament will happen soon.

Shiyam Thavandiran v Tatev Abrahamyan, St. Louis, 2019

THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Black has just captured on d4 to re-establish material equality. What is White’s best move?
REVEAL ANSWER
32.Qf6! Threatening mate if Black moves the Rook. … Rcd8 33.Ra4 Rd1+ 34.Kh2 Kf8 35.Rf4 and White won.

Chess: Rapport closes in on Candidates as six-year-old steals show at Blackpool

Richard Rapport is near to becoming one of the eight candidates to challenge for Magnus Carlsen’s crown, while six-year-old Kushal Jakhria tied for first at the Blackpool U1850 Intermediate despite being the lowest ranked player

Six-year-old Kushal Jakhria in action at the ChessFest rapid play day.

 Photograph: Andrew Moss

Leonard Barden

THE GUARDIAN

Fri 18 Mar 2022

Richard Rapport is near to claiming one of the two remaining places in the 2022 Candidates after the Hungarian defeated Russia’s Dmitry Andreikin 1.5-0.5 in Belgrade in the second-leg final of the Fide Grand Prix. The action now moves to the third and final leg in Berlin from 21 March to 4 April, which Rapport will sit out while his rivals battle.

The decisive game had a remarkable climax. Rapport had the chance for an immediate draw by repetition, but instead allowed his clock to run down to two minutes before opting for unfathomable complications which turned out in his favour.

Berlin in March-April will have 16 players, four preliminary groups, and one group of death which contains Andreikin as well as the two Americans, Hikaru Nakamura and Levon Aronian, who were first and second at Berlin in February. The arithmetic shows that two of this trio will be eliminated, while the fourth player, Grigoriy Oparin, is potentially the kingmaker.

3807: Qi Chen v Kalyan Arjun, Asian Universities championship 2021. White to move and win. Just a slightly disguised standard tactic which every serious player should know.

Depending on what happens in the group of death, the other significant contenders – Anish Giri, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Leinier Domínguez – may still be in the running. However, a scenario where Oparin plays harder against the US duo than against his compatriot looks likely, and that could prove significant in a sprint distance of six rounds.

The elite action moves back online this Saturday when Magnus Carlsen is top seeded in the Charity Cup, the second event in the Meltwater Champions Tour. Rapport is taking part, as are China’s world, No 3 Ding Liren, the world woman champion, Ju Wenjun, and England’s Gawain Jones. Games start at 5pm. Months further on, the 44th chess Olympiad, removed from Moscow, has been confirmed for Chennai, India, in July-August.

Last weekend’s Blackpool Conference at the Imperial Hotel was England’s first major over-the-board weekend congress of 2022. Its entry of 281 was down on pre-pandemic levels, but still a healthy number as 143 took part in an overlapping rapid at Golders Green.

GM Danny Gormally, rated nearly 100 points or more higher than the rest of the field at 2520, was the clear favourite for the £700 first prize, but the England No 12 misfired somewhat, conceded two draws, and had to settle for 4/5 and a seven-way tie for top honours. In this file of games from the Open, Gormally’s entertaining round-three win is recommended.

Blackpool’s most significant result was away from the Open, in the Under 1850 Intermediate (ECF 150 in old money). Six-year-old Kushal Jakhria, 70th and lowest ranked at the start, took a half-point bye on Friday evening, then defeated all his four adult opponents on Saturday and Sunday for 4.5/5 and a third share of the £500 first prize.

His victims were no pushovers, either. Michael Connor (round three) had won the 2018 Blackpool Inter, while Bob Kane (round four) had won the Scarborough 2021 Major.

Quick Guide

Kushal Jakhria v Bob Kane, Dutch Defence

Jakhria already made an appearance in this column when he became London under-8 champion at age five. Like England’s best-known teen player Shreyas Royal, he is a pupil of the Pointer School, Blackheath, and learnt further chess skills at his local Charlton club, which has a fine reputation for junior talent.

Jakhria’s coach, Fide Master Alexis Harakis, has helped his pupil become a specialist in the Sveshnikov Sicilian and on the white side of a classical King’s Indian. His Lichess online rating is already above 2200.

The English Chess Federation currently runs an Accelerator Programme for 10 of its most promising players, for which one selection criterion is to be in at least the top five in their UK age group. None of the programme’s current members is younger than 11, and Royal is the only one to have achieved a high world ranking and to have medalled in a world or European championship.

In the golden years of English chess, some of the most gifted talents emerged at eight or younger, like Nigel Short, Michael Adams, Luke McShane, David Howell, Jovanka Houska and others. They were given special opportunities, mentored and coached with a view to becoming GMs early in their careers, and achieved their targets.


Garry Kasparov: ‘The thing about jail is the sound when they lock the door’

The current Fide list for players born in 2015, who all count as under-7s, shows Jakhria as world No 4, poised to reach No 2 in the April list which will include Blackpool, and within reach of No 1.

The Charlton boy is not alone as a very young English talent. Harrow’s 2015-born Bodhana Sivanandan, who won silver medals in both the rapid and blitz European under-8 girls, is world No 1 girl in blitz in her age group by a whopping margin of 322 Fide points. Bodhana learned the moves only 15 months ago, attends a local state primary school, St John Fisher, and has no chess coach, although Harrow CC and its president, Nevil Chan, have provided guidance and support.

It is early days, but these two children already stand out as exceptional. Jakhria’s Blackpool result is probably the best ever performance by an English six-year-old, while Sivanandan’s medals in Serbia match Houska’s fifth place on her debut in the 1988 world girls U10. Their situation calls for a sponsor …

3807 1 Nf6+! gxf6 2 Rxe7! Qxe7 3 Qg4+! Kh8 4 Qf5 and wins.

German military: Big budget, little efficiency

The German military has just been given a massive defense budget boost — but it is dogged by allegations of inefficiency. The parliamentary Bundeswehr commissioner's report was not comforting.



The Bundeswehr has long lacked even basic gear for the troops

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's announcement in late February that his government was about to give the defense budget a massive boost had commentators reaching into history to explain its significance. Decades of over-cautious defense policy, some said, were being overturned in the space of a single speech on a bright Sunday morning in the German parliament. Just a few hundred meters away at the same time, over 100,000 Berliners were protesting against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Scholz made a long-term pledge to increase defense spending to 2% of GDP, which would potentially increase the annual defense budget to around €70 billion ($77 billion). More eye-catching, however, was Scholz's surprising one-off windfall of €100 billion to spend on the armed forces.

Though it is below the 2% marker, Germany's defense budget is not exactly small: According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Germany has the 7th-best-funded military in the world, with a higher budget than that of France. Not only that: German military expenditure has risen over the last 10 years, from around €32.5 billion in 2011 to over €50.3 billion this year.

An army in need of repair

But despite the extra money, the German military does not seem to be in a good state. Eva Högl, the German parliament's defense commissioner, painted a sorry picture on March 15 when she presented her annual report on the military.

"I was very shocked by the reports from soldiers about the material shortcomings in all three armed services," she wrote in the report's introduction. "Not a single visit to the troops and not a single conversation with soldiers in which I was not told about some deficits."

Only 50% of some major hardware was operational, she said, before adding that "everyday equipment" like armored vests and winter jackets often had to be delivered later while soldiers were already in the field. "This is unacceptable and has to be improved," she wrote.

Despite all this, she contradicted the alarming verdict delivered by Army Inspector Lieutenant General Alfons Mais on his LinkedIn page in late February, when he said that the army he led was "more or less bare."

That's going a bit far, insisted Högl: "I would say that that was, of course, a very emotional statement," she told reporters on Tuesday. "General Mais pointed out certain problems, but the Bundeswehr is ready for action … The 'cold start' capability of the Bundeswehr needs to be significantly improved, but the Bundeswehr is ready."


Defense commissioner Högl has long been deploring the lack of suitable equipment

Accusations of inefficiency

But there is evidence that money alone cannot solve the Bundeswehr's problems. On top of all the documented shortfalls with the readiness of tanks and helicopters, the Defense Ministry has been dogged by accusations of inefficiency for years: One former minister, the current EU President Ursula von der Leyen, had to face a parliamentary inquiry in 2019 over what became known as the "consultancy affair," when it emerged that her ministry was, in the words of one witness, "burning so much money it made you dizzy."

The witness in question was Norbert Dippel, who until 2017 was the head lawyer at the government-owned company Heeresinstandsetzungslogistik (HIL), which repairs the German army's tanks. The "money-burning" comment related to the German government's efforts to privatize his company at high speed, giving out lucrative consultancy contracts with no recourse to necessary procedures.

According to a Transparency International (TI) report from 2020, entitled "Defense Industry Influence in Germany," the privatization of such companies would mean the government risked losing the technical expertise necessary for making procurement decisions.

Dippel also told the parliamentary committee about contracts for consultancy and legal firms — including one contract that was to run for 30 years — at a cost of €1.6 billion.

In a statement to DW, the Defense Ministry said that since the parliament's report was released it had "quickly introduced a series of measures to ensure that comparable failings cannot be repeated in future." These included strengthening specialist expertise in the ministry, new central regulations for taking on external consultants, and centralizing the awarding of contracts.

On Tuesday, Högl made clear that she said the new €100 billion windfall needed to be spent "sensibly." When asked what that meant exactly, she said: "What is not sensible is if we start developing something new now that the Bundeswehr can only profit from in 2050," she said. The problem, she said, was that the procurement process was "too ponderous."

That kind of talk sets off alarm bells for Dippel, because to him it sounds like politicians are keen to speed up the process at the expense of procurement law — ensuring fair competition and making economic assessments and price comparisons. "The rapidity of the intended procurements, which has received a great deal of media attention, harbors the risk that the regulations, which exist for good reason, will be disregarded, at least in part," he told DW. "The structured procurement process is meant to ensure that the most economically viable and qualitatively best product is procured."

The question is: What will happen to this new windfall? "Of course, consulting firms will sense business opportunities when there's a €100-billion pot to distribute. I don't think it's unlikely that the political pressure to quickly demonstrate success will again open the floodgates for the consulting firms


Compliance procedures undermined

Accelerating procedures always increase the risk of corruption, and bribery is not unheard-of in the German military: In January this year, Osnabrück prosecutors announced that, after a three-year investigation, it was pressing charges against several individuals, including bribery charges against a cost-checker in the German Navy arsenal. The charges related to the restoration of the Gorch Fock training ship, which ballooned from around €10 million to €135 million. Nearly €30 million of public money is believed to have been lost, prosecutors said.

That might be an isolated case, but there is evidence that the German military is becoming more vulnerable to inefficiency and corruption. The 2020 Transparency International report suggested that compliance procedures had been hollowed out in the Bundeswehr. "Lack of capacity and expertise are manifest at several key points along the procurement process," the report said. "Government staff are in a poor position to determine whether costs are proportionate."

TI found that the government, by transferring expertise to the private sector, was becoming more reliant on manufacturers to tell them what is the best equipment to buy. Staff capacity to make independent assessments has been compromised. Citing one example, TI noted that in 2012, an independent review team in the Defense Ministry that was supposed to be a "safeguard against ill-advised procurement decisions" was folded into the ministry's political department, "effectively dissolving it."

Peter Conze, TI co-founder and senior adviser for defense and security policy for Transparency Germany, doesn't think that corruption is anything like endemic in the German military procurement process, but he recognized the problems uncovered by the "consultancy affair."

"Clearly too many private contracts were handed out, instead of competitive tenders with price comparisons," he told DW. "They were too careless with contracts, they hired consultants too quickly, and they used networks — they often brought their own acquaintances on board with contracts."

Should such problems persist, it is possible that throwing money at the Bundeswehr may not automatically make it more effective.

Edited by: Rina Goldenberg

This article was expanded after its initial publication on March 15, which was when Eva Högl made her remarks in parliament.

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