Category Archives: Deep Mind
Fish don’t seem to mind the snowy weather – Plumas County Newspapers
Compiled by Mari Erin Roth
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Lake Almanor
This past weeks series of storms dropped more than three feet of snow at lake level. Water temps fell a couple of degrees and ice is beginning to form in and around coves. Another storm landed this week, Monday and Tuesday, which brought more rain than snow.
Water clarity is down to five feet and temps were ranging between 36-39 degrees. Hamilton Branch is depositing dirty water and visibility at the branch is a foot at best. If we receive a significant amount of rain, shore fishing will be wiped out for at least a couple of days with muddy water deposited into Almanor from all our tributaries, said John Crotty reporting in from Almanor Fishing Association. Fishing conditions change daily for both bank and boat fishermen. Geritol was unfishable yesterday due to ice and Hamilton Branch was barely fishable, said Crotty on Sunday, Jan. 31.
A change in weather conditions is expected to begin Wednesday, Feb. 3, through at least next weekend. Trollers, as conditions improve, I would recommend concentrating your efforts on the south end of the lake and branching out to other areas as conditions permit, suggests Crotty. Keep it simple, find bait/fish and stay on them, they will eat eventually. I target fish in the top 15 feet early in the day and rarely fish deeper than 30 feet this time of year. While you will mark bait and fish deeper I have found the biters 25 feet and shallower.
The Canyon Dam ramp is clear and open. Lake level is increasing daily and fishermen will need rubber boats to get onto the dock when launching. Be safe and call ahead for current weather and fishing conditions, said Crotty.
Lake Davis
Jeanne Graham at J&J Grizzly Store reports that, Yes the lake is frozen. Since the second week of January there has no open water left at Mallard. Ice is reported to be from 6 to 8 inches from Mallard down to the dam. Remember the ice is not officially monitored and the information above is as reported by fishermen. It is up to you to decide if it is safe or not for you to go out on, said Jeanne.
Over 1.5 feet of snow built up at the lake Jan. 27 and 28. Could not get to my normal measuring spot unless I wanted to wade through hip deep snow, snow amount is probably higher, said Jeanne. Snowed at least 95 percent of the day yesterday (Jan. 27). Currently snowing now. Had a very loud wakeup call around 5 a.m. when the snow started sliding off the roof!
The annual February Davis Lake derby is not a sure thing. If I were a betting person, I would say its not going to happen as a derby, said Jeanne. The Maybe Ice Derby is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 13. The Fathers Day Weekend Derby is still planned for June 19.
Send your fishing stories and pictures to [emailprotected] for inclusion in this regular article.
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Fish don't seem to mind the snowy weather - Plumas County Newspapers
Lets build on the innovation shown by UK tech during pandemic – ComputerWeekly.com
The past year has been hugely challenging as the Covid-19 pandemic caused lives to be lost and put the UKs economy under massive strain. The governments response has been significant, even if it has been frequently criticised. But whatever the debates, we mustnt lose sight of the incredible innovation rooted in technology that the UK has shown and it is vital that we find ways to maintain and build on this as we move forward post-Brexit.
There were many ways that technology proved its essential value through the pandemic remote working, Zoom and Teams, shared collaboration platforms. One other key area where tech really came of age in 2020 and in which the UK has really led the way has been in medical and scientific research, harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and big data to drive innovation and discovery in the real world.
The use of AI has been crucial to the development of the vaccines against Covid-19, such as the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine upon which all our immediate futures now depend. Machine learning systems and computational analyses helped researchers understand the virus and its structure, and predict which components will provoke an immune response. They will also help scientists track the virus genetic mutations over time. From all the huge datasets collected, AI is enabling scientists to perform analyses they simply wouldnt have been able to in the past.
Another key area is to use AI to track and analyse all the inevitable reports of adverse reactions to the vaccines over time. The UKs Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is reportedly planning to use an AI tool to do that. The MHRA expects there could be between 50,000 and 100,000 reports of suspected side-effects for every 100 million doses over a six to 12-month period. Only AI could handle a task of that size.
Meanwhile, tech companies are also collaborating to use tech to create digital Covid vaccination passports the Vaccination Credential Initiative.
Separately, AI has been behind another UK breakthrough that has caused huge excitement amongst scientists DeepMind was used to determine a proteins 3D shape from its amino acid sequence. The DeepMind program, called Alpha Fold, achieved something that many scientists did not expect to see in their lifetime. It could hugely accelerate efforts to understand the building blocks of cells and enable quicker and more advanced drug discovery, heralding a revolution in biology.
These are all truly exciting developments. Through the Oxford vaccine in particular, the eyes of the world are on the UK and this is something we need to build on to be a leading player on the global stage.
Brexit has now taken place. It was a great boost that, as part of the deal, the UK will continue to take part in Europes flagship 85bn scientific/medical research programme, Horizon Europe, as our relationship and collaboration with Europe will obviously remain critically important.
At the same time, we need to raise our eyes and look beyond European borders. The USs new Biden presidency, for example, holds new opportunities. There are trade deals around the world to be done. We need to look for new avenues to scale and commercialise all the superb technological and scientific innovation going on right here in the UK.
To keep up the momentum, the government has a key role to play in creating positive ecosystems for investment in technology, science and research. Much of this comes down to public policy levers, such as access to the right levels of public and commercial funding, incentives and reliefs for R&D, regulation that encourages innovation rather than blocks it, and regional investment to make good on the levelling up promise to stimulate thriving activity beyond the golden triangle of London-Oxford-Cambridge.
It also comes down to the message that we project about UK plc and the primacy that we place on technology and research. We need to train and develop our own talent but also continue to attract the best from around the world. To do this, brilliant individuals need to have confidence that they are truly welcome, that there is long-term backing for projects here and that these projects have the profile and recognition they deserve. Getting the messaging right will be a key ingredient for future success.
We are only at the beginning of what emerging technology is capable of there is so much more to come. The UK has put itself in a leading position and we must do everything possible to sustain it.
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Lets build on the innovation shown by UK tech during pandemic - ComputerWeekly.com
How to heal the ‘mass trauma’ of Covid-19 – BBC News
National commemoration is more important still. In offering meaning-making and a channel for grief, it processes mass trauma on its own scale. A top-down commemoration is only enhanced when combined with bottom-up approaches art, local memorials, digital archives, and simply people's personal memories now more shareable than ever with the second-by-second of social media.
Covid-19 commemoration efforts are underway and already appear promising. In the UK, amid the complexity and muddied character of the pandemic, the national narrative looks set to centre on the role of the NHS and key workers: a meaning-making framework both cross-partisan, deeply symbolic, and rich with social lessons. As well as the real-time commemoration of the "Clap For Carers", a moment of silence was declared for the evening of 4 July, prior to the NHS's birthday the following day. There have been calls for a "999" monument in central London, a monument to NHS workers at the National Arboretum, and a memorial to deceased transport workers at Victoria Station.
Together with Katharine Millar and Yuna Han at LSE, though, Bayly is keen for Covid-19's "common dead", the greater mass of national trauma, to be explicitly recognised, too. They've recommended a national Covid-19 remembrance day for the UK next year as a "key area for government policy".
"We're really keen that it would be a day people are not expected to work," says Millar. The government hitting the national pause button "would be an effective way to formally hold base in the public conversation and collective experience to recognise loss and trauma and suffering". Plus, the pandemic has been so sustained, so long-tailed, that it badly needs a "bookend", Millar suggests. It would be a deadline to mark a horizon, and balance the past and future.
A turning point?
Covid-19 is a mass trauma the likes of which we've never seen before. Our most complex social extensions, and the building-blocks of our personal realities, have been coloured indelibly. The ways we live and work together, and view each other as common citizens: everything means something different in the viral era, and with potentially traumatic effect.
All pandemics end, however. And this one will. But to forget the trauma, move on, and pay it no mind, won't help. It'd be a disservice to history and our own minds. Maybe to the future, too.
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How to heal the 'mass trauma' of Covid-19 - BBC News
Short afternoon naps may aid cognitive function as we age – Medical News Today
Sleep patterns often change as we age, with many older people adding an afternoon snooze to their daily schedule. The meaning of such naps has been unclear: Do they help keep the mind agile, or do they signify incipient dementia? A new study may have the answer.
Older people who take afternoon naps score more highly on cognitive tests than their non-snoozing contemporaries. These nappers exhibit stronger cognitive function, including memory, orientation, and language.
This study, which appears in General Psychiatry, is the first to explore the relationship of napping to cognitive function and biochemistry in older populations.
People are living longer, and as the authors mention in their study with dementia affecting 57% of adults aged over 65 years worldwide, its diagnosis is a common occurrence. In Western countries, the rate of dementia is slightly higher at 810%.
Since there is currently no cure for dementia, there is clear value in identifying lifestyle changes that can help reduce the chances of developing the condition.
With disturbed sleep patterns having known associations with dementia, the role of napping in older cognitive health is an obvious area of interest. Unfortunately, previous findings have been inconsistent, say the authors of the current study.
For example, they cite 2012 research that found afternoon naps delay the onset of dementia, and yet another study concluding afternoon sleepiness may increase the risk of dementia or cognitive decline.
The researchers studied 2,214 healthy people from several large Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Xian. All were at least 60 years old.
The average night-time sleep interval of study participants was 6.5 hours.
To evaluate existing dementia, the researchers tested participants using the Beijing version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment and the Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE).
The team evaluated participants cognitive ability and higher function through 30 measurements of visual space, memory, naming, attention, calculation, abstract, orientation, and language function.
The researchers used the Chinese Neuropsychological Test Battery to measure digit span, auditory verbal learning, associative learning, visual retention, language fluency, mapping, and a test with blocks.
The researchers assessed all participants health while profiling their blood for cholesterol levels and triglyceride fatty acids, or TG.
For the purposes of the study, the team defined a nap as anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 hours of sleep after lunch.
Of the group, 1,534 reported regularly taking an afternoon nap, with the frequency of their snoozes ranging from once a week to every day.
The study reports three main results:
The higher TG levels were within a normal range, and therefore may not have impaired cognitive function in the studys participants.
However, the authors note that not all naps are alike.
The study found that longer and more frequent naps tended to be associated with poor cognitive function.
Short and less frequent naps lasting less than 30 minutes and occurring four times a week appear to be the most helpful.
These naps lead to an 84% decrease in the chances of developing Alzheimers.
In addition, people who deliberately nap, instead of simply dozing off in place, are more likely to acquire cognitive benefits.
The researchers suggest that their conclusions may differ from previous contrary research due to the differences in the napping styles studied. The current study is unique in investigating nap frequency.
Also, while some other studies looked primarily into different nap durations, the current research caps it at 2 hours. In addition, they bring unintentional or intentional napping into analysis while we only assessed afternoon napping (i.e., post-lunch).
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Short afternoon naps may aid cognitive function as we age - Medical News Today
Kathleen Murphy column: Stopping to think of things that run deep – Duluth News Tribune
Its almost startling to think about how often I forget about this particular stop sign. Usually I catch myself just in the nick of time, slamming on the brakes and lurching to a stop. But every so often, when my mind is on the day ahead, or Im just flat-out daydreaming, I find that this stop sign comes to my attention only when I am halfway through the intersection.
This is not a universal problem for me. Id be hard-pressed to think of any other time I missed a stop sign. Ever. Im an attentive driver. I may have a slight case of lead foot, but I am cautious and aware of my surroundings.
The problem lies in this particular stop sign. You see, I grew up in this neighborhood. The streets where I drive today are the very streets on which I learned to drive a car in the first place.
Where I discovered the art of quickly judging the distance between myself and the front bumper of my 79 Chevy Impala (about half a football field length, if I remember correctly).
Where I misjudged many, many times how long it would take to stop a car that was roughly the size and weight of a barge.
Where I realized that growing up on a one-way street and watching cars drive down it in one direction for over a decade did not guarantee I would remember this same fact once behind the wheel.
Where a certain stop sign was not yet in existence, and I drove down the street with nary a tap on the brake. Which, of course, might have led to the addition of the stop sign. Regardless, the stop sign wasnt a part of my childhood experiences, whereas the road itself is. Including, I might add, the stop sign farther down the road, which was already in place during my childhood, and which I have never once ran.
This doesnt end at traffic signs. Unconscious thoughts and habits from my childhood filter their way into my everyday life with regularity. My childhood home had a sink where the hot and cold faucets were on opposite sides of the standard. It was just one single, rogue sink, but it was one I used often, so it wormed its way into my subconscious habits. I was an adult buying my second home before I realized there even was a standard side for the hot and cold. To this day, if a sink isnt labelled in red and blue or H and C, I have to think about it longer than Im comfortable admitting. Sometimes, I still guess wrong.
Because I was an 80s girl, I still use the term arena for any large convention center/stadium complex; still call the middle school years junior high. Both have been incorrect for so long now that I often meet people who have to ask me to clarify what the heck Im talking about. (The DECC was originally called The Arena, for anyone left wondering.)
I am still, to this day, surprised when a package is delivered to my home on a Sunday.
An audio book will always be called a book-on-tape, a stream is a crik, and an ATM, a TYME Machine. That last one has earned me a lot of concerned looks from people who didnt grow up in the Midwest. The most memorable was an elderly East Coast transplant who asked me Are you feeling alright, Dearie? then didnt seem to believe me when I told her it was what we called ATM machines back in the 80s.
Our childhood experiences shape us, for better or for worse. They can create bonds and habits that are not so easily broken, as evidenced by the stop sign I think of as new because it wasnt there 30 years ago. Just give me a few more decades to get used to it, and
Who am I kidding? Ill still occasionally forget about it.
Kathleen Murphy is a freelance writer who lives and works in Duluth. Write to her at kmurphywrites@gmail.com.
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Kathleen Murphy column: Stopping to think of things that run deep - Duluth News Tribune
Meditation Software Market 2021 Global Insights and Business Scenario Deep Relax, Insights Network, Inc., Smiling Mind, Committee for Children, Stop,…
The Meditation Software Market report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides an in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies and analyses the posts COVID-19 (Corona Virus) impact on the product industry chain based on the upstream and downstream markets, on various regions and major countries and on the future development of the industry are pointed out.
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The 137 pages report presents the market competitive landscape and a corresponding detailed analysis of the major vendor/key players in the market. Top Companies in the Global Meditation Software Market: Deep Relax, Insights Network, Inc., Smiling Mind, Committee for Children, Stop, Breathe, & Think PBC, Inner Explorer, Inc., Ten Percent Happier, The Mindfulness App, Breethe, Mindfulness Everywhere Ltd., Simple Habit, Inc., Headspace, Inc., Meditation Moments B.V., Calm.com, Inc. and others.
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This report segments the global Meditation Software market on the basis of Types is:
IOS
Android
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The research study evaluates the overall size of the market, by making use of a bottom-up approach, wherein data for different industry verticals, and end-user industries and its applications across various product types have been recorded and predicted during the forecast period. These segments and sub-segments have been documented from the industry specialists and professionals, as well as company representatives, and are outwardly validated by analyzing previous years data of these segments and sub-segments for getting an accurate and complete market size.
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The report has 150 tables and figures browse the report description and TOC:
What Are The Market Factors That Are Explained In The Report?
Key Strategic Developments:The study also includes the key strategic developments of the market, comprising R&D, new product launch, M&A, agreements, collaborations, partnerships, joint ventures, and regional growth of the leading competitors operating in the market on a global and regional scale.
Analytical Tools:The Global Meditation Software Market Report includes the accurately studied and assessed data of the key industry players and their scope in the market by means of a number of analytical tools. The analytical tools such as Porters five forces analysis, SWOT analysis, feasibility study, and investment return analysis have been used to analyze the growth of the key players operating in the market.
Key Market Features:The report evaluated key market features, including revenue, price, capacity, capacity utilization rate, gross, production, production rate, consumption, import/export, supply/demand, cost, market share, CAGR, and gross margin. In addition, the study offers a comprehensive study of the key market dynamics and their latest trends, along with pertinent market segments and sub-segments.
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KEEPING THE FAITH | You must start each day with a positive mind and a grateful heart – Mahoning Matters
Just as we should periodically detox our bodies, we must do the same for our minds. Mental cleansing of negative pollutants will help you to develop a better focus and balance in your life.
Gods Morning/Afternoon!
Read that again, thats not a typo. We should welcome and greet the start of each day with a positive mind and a grateful heart. Whatever you do, do not let anything or anyone including yourself steal your joy! If you are not intentionally guarded, negative thoughts can become the agents of self-sabotaging or defeatism behaviors.
Imagine the countless missed opportunities and relationships because you were simply afraid to fail or look foolish.
I challenge you to eliminate stinking thinking which is foul and unproductive mental chatter. Its a self-destructive thought process that grips you with a litany of negative What if? scenarios that never seems to suggest a favorable outcome.
Apostle Paul penned a message to the Philippian Church while he was imprisoned. Despite his own circumstances, the frequent theme of his writing was of joy and rejoicing. To make his point, he repetitively used expressions such as "Rejoice, and again I say rejoice; rejoice in your sufferings, rejoice in your difficulties.
Paul instructed the Church in Philippians 4:6-7, Dont worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all he has done. Then you will experience Gods peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds.
While this was written centuries ago, it is still relevant today. A songwriter once said, If youre going to pray dont worry. These behaviors of praying and worrying are incongruent with each other. You must make a choice, so choose wisely!
Negative thinking can zap the joy out of life and can even take a toll on your physical well-being. I challenge you to exercise your spiritual memory muscle reflect and think of Gods goodness, grace and mercy.
I once shared that you have survived 100 percent of your worst days! Use those past experiences as a framework of reference when presented with current dilemmas.
Negative thinking actually contributes to anxiety. Just as we should periodically detox our bodies, we should do the same for our minds. Mental cleansing of negative pollutants will help you to develop a better focus and balance in your life. Pandemic or otherwise, you need to take a break from the daily stressors, anxieties and distractions.
These activities can include tasks such as leisure walking, deep breathing, stretching exercises and powering down your electronic devices.
Watch what your mind is consuming. Whatever you are watching or hearing is food for your mind. Take note: Whatever you feed and nourish your mind today will have an effect later. I recommend you keep yourself occupied with something productive and positive. What types of nutrients are you feeding your mind?
Personally, I love linguistics so I have a goal of learning the meaning of a new word and use it in my vocabulary daily. Make small manageable, yet meaningful steps. What types of nutrients are you feeding your mind? Personally, I love linguistics so I have a goal of learning the meaning of a new word and use it in my vocabulary daily.
I also advise that you avoid knee-jerk reactions. Take a break, think, and then respond. No matter how much we filter the information we are getting into our minds, we can easily seize upon something negative and run with it.
In fact, Paul continued in Philippians 4:8, And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.
When you think about God it should produce thanks from your heart. Growing up in the era of congregational devotion services before worship, I marveled hearing the senior saints give testimony of just thinking of Gods goodness and all that Hes done for them. These spiritual flashbacks would have them proclaiming, My soul cries out Hallelujah! Thank God for saving me!"
When you think about the doors God has opened in your life, then you ought to thank Him for provision. When you think about how He made your enemies behave, then you ought tothank Him for protection. When you think of the times God healed your mind or body, thank Him for restoration. When you think of where God brought you from, then you ought to thank God for being by your side. When you think of the abiding peace while in the valley of the shadow of death then you just ought to thank Him for being a deliverer.
I approach these weekly installments similar to preparing my Sunday messages which is not solely to deliver a good message but rather to share a message that will do some good. It is my hope that you will set your thoughts on a plane that pleases God that elevates your dreams and visions. David declares this truth in Psalms 139:1-2, O Lord, You have examined my heart and know everything about me. You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even when Im far away.
It is my hope that you will set your thoughts on a plane that pleases God that elevates your dreams and visions.
Dear Lord,
I am yours and I am grateful that I belong to YOU. All that I am, all that I have, all that I hope to be, is simply because of Your grace and mercy.Thankfully, despite at times the frustrating journey, I now stand at the borders of destiny.I thank You for accepting me just as I am imperfections and all. I come with arms open wide, trusting You with my life which has been gracefully broken.
Lord, I invite and welcome Your power, purpose and presence in my life. Chase back my ego, thwart any selfish ambitions and allow me to give myself fully to You. While some may trust in chariots and others trust in horses, but I trust in Your strong Name.
As I welcome the dawn of a new day, fill me with Your POWER, fill me with Your GRACE, fill me with Your PEACE. Empower me with Your Spirit and embolden me with Your Word so that even when I become battle-worn and fatigued by the rigors of life I will continue to keep the faith.It is so.
The Rev. Lewis W. Macklin II serves as the lead pastor of Holy Trinity Missionary Baptist Church, chaplain for the Youngstown Police Department and local coordinator for the African American Male Wellness Walk of the Mahoning Valley. He resides in Youngstown with Dorothy, his partner in marriage and ministry. They share the love and joy of six children and seven grandchildren.
All biblical citations are New Living Translation unless noted otherwise.
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KEEPING THE FAITH | You must start each day with a positive mind and a grateful heart - Mahoning Matters
Freud’s muse ignored? Row breaks out over sale of June Furlong’s art collection – The Guardian
She was a Liverpudlian life model who posed for thousands of artists, including Lucian Freud, who described her as an exotic creature with a deep penetrating mind, and John Lennon who, as an art student in his pre-Beatles days, asked if it would be all right to draw her.
June Furlong befriended many of those artists and, just months before her death last year, she was understood to have donated artworks that she acquired over the years to a public museum in the Wirral.
Now a row has erupted over the legal ownership of her collection. Artists who knew her are outraged that many of the paintings, prints and drawings that she had earmarked for the Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Birkenhead, were instead sold by Hansons Auctioneers in Staffordshire in December last year.
Artist Charles Thomson spoke of his fury as he had helped to organise her charitable donation: It is absolutely outrageous that June Furlong gave her art collection to a museum and now important work has been sold off The work was [consigned to] auction, even before she had been buried on 8 December. There were 55 works. One lot of five [Frank] Auerbach prints of female nudes raised 26,000 hammer price. The total for the auction exceeded 42,000.
Furlong died in November last year, aged 90. Over six decades, she had posed for artists, going to the studios of Francis Bacon and Auerbach, among others. She had been a longtime model for the Liverpool School of Art, where she knew Lennon, who was fascinated that I knew all the big names in English art, she once recalled. She also modelled in London, at the Slade, Central St Martins College and the Royal College of Art.
But she disliked being described as a nude model, once saying: Nudity has such sleazy connotations It gives completely the wrong impression of the art world I was involved in.
Furlong was a long-term companion of the artist George Wallace Jardine, the surrealist painter who tutored Lennon on occasion, and her donation included many of his pictures.
Thomson said that Furlong had not just signed a gift document, but had written a message, confirming her wishes for the Williamson. On 7 December, he had enclosed that document - whose original is held by the Williamson - in an email to the auctioneer, Charles Hanson, known from his appearances on the BBCs Bargain Hunt, among other programmes.
He wrote: I have spoken to the Williamson who have confirmed that the work entered into your auction this week from June Furlongs house is their property and has been since June this year, when she gifted it to them with the proviso that she could keep in her house during her lifetime such works as she wished. This was effectively a loan from the Williamson to her.
Thomson is calling for legal action to be taken by Wirral Council, which funds the Williamson, either to retrieve the auctioned works or to ensure all proceeds go to the gallery.
But whether that document is legally binding remains to be seen. Furlongs cousin, Roy Corlett, confirmed he was aware of the pictures transfer to Hansons and that he was the next of kin, among other family members.
He said: There isnt an executor at the moment because theres no will I think this matter will be sorted out between two lots of solicitors, those representing Junes estate and those who represent the council.
Asked whether Furlong had signed the gift document, he said: Thats a matter for solicitors to decide.
Colin Simpson, curator of the Williamson and principal museums officer for Wirral council, said: The council and the executors are taking legal advice in relation to the ownership of the collection.
On the Williamsons website, he pays tribute to Furlong as an iconic figure in the Liverpool art scene.
Thomson said: I tried to stop the auction in order to save the work for the Williamson collection, but could not do so. Only Wirral council could have done this and they didnt.
Once the auction was going ahead anyway, I bid successfully for several paintings by Jardine for my own collection, which is scheduled for a charitable art foundation and museum I am planning I would support any action to retrieve for the Williamson all the work from Junes collection sold at the auction or else all the money raised from the sale.
Bob Williams, a retired Liverpool gallery owner who was a contemporary of Furlong, Jardine and Lennon at the Liverpool School, said: The wishes of June Furlong should be carried out for her art collection to be in the Williamson. Sir Nicholas Serota, chairman of Arts Council England, confirmed to the Observer that his team was looking into the questions that [Thomson] has raised.
Hanson declined to comment.
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Freud's muse ignored? Row breaks out over sale of June Furlong's art collection - The Guardian
Autistic Teen’s Memoir Explores the Natural Terrain of the Mind – Sierra Magazine
In his acclaimed memoir Diary of a Young Naturalist (published last year in the UK and forthcoming in the US from Milkweed Editions), Dara McAnulty, an autistic teenager and environmental advocate from Northern Ireland, inspires questions around what it truly means to be in love with the Earth. The answer readers learn along the way: a lifetime of heartbreak. But also, delight on a scale many of us have forgottenor never discovered in the first place.
To be led among the UKs flora and fauna by a neurodivergent guide is to consider what is normal and why those things bear that label. We follow McAnultys inquisitive mind as it alights upon this and that and peeks under rocks and hedges. He shares with us the simple beauty of birds, plants, and butterflies, but also helps us realize how we treat and categorize those creaturesand one another.
Reading Diary, Temple Grandin and Greta Thunberg come to mindautistic activists who not only help lead the crusade for animal rights and climate action, but also normalize the neurodiversity spectrum. McAnulty joins the ranks of those whose work seeks acceptance of non-neurotypical thought, and demonstrates that people with autism contribute singularly authentic, and essential, human perspectives. In the case of McAnulty, it is a perspective of unfettered adoration for plants and animals that rebuts a status quo of marginalization and suppression.
McAnulty joins the ranks of those whose work seeks acceptance of non-neurotypical thought, and demonstrates that people with autism indeed contribute singularly authentic, and essential, human perspectives. In his case, it is a perspective of unfettered adoration for plants and animals that rebuts a status quo of marginalization and suppression.
Much of the book involves McAnultys familyfour of five of whom are neurodivergentprobing suburbia for its final scraps of wildlands and native habitat. The book takes place during a year in which they move from their home in County Fermanagh to the far side of Northern Ireland in County Down. They observe ospreys, woodlice, and garden spiders, and yearn keenly to see a rare hen harrier by the lake in Big Dog Forest. McAnulty writes of his unfailingly supportive family in prose nuanced and tendersincere, jubilant, and loving. Describing the act of peering into a bucket of rainwater theyve left in their garden, he writes, We added a cupful of murkiness from the pond at Dads work, some native oxygenators, and the magic brew grew life. Water fleas first. Within a week, snails. Water beetles followed. Then dragonfly nymph and the holy grail: tadpoles...Squiggly squirming teardrops, eating algae from the sides of our potion pot.
McAnultys candor about his autismin particular, his struggle to manage emotions and bend his mind to societal expectations, especially at school, where hes been bulliedoffers a powerful companion to his observations about the natural world. It highlights the monochrome state weve created, both in our physical surroundings and the way we perceive them. I stand outside and cock my head to the sky and there it is. A screech. A swift! The first of their hundred-day residency. Theyre here! All the way from Africa, McAnulty writes of some birds harrowing, annual migration. But then he goes on, tempering the euphoria with another reality: People like my neighbours sterilise their gardens and put plastic or metal spears down the middle of their eaves. This attitude prevails everywhere. Its the norm to stop wildlife thriving in the gaps of our homes and office buildings.
McAnulty, too, feels imperiled and rejected by todays conventional world. Exhausted from conforming, he turns to our increasingly crowded and spare natural spaces to regulate his mood and process his experiences. These moments in the book poignantly illustrate that the depletion of these natural places leaves humans just as fragmented and diminished as so many other species.
The narrativeMcAnultys yearholds the collection together like a seed husk or nutshell. You can read the diary entries all at once, in order, or dip in and out, hop around, and enjoy each one for what it is. The big-picture rewards are McAnultys arc from bullied to embraced, his journey to amplify his voice, and the lesson that change is hard but necessary. Just as rewarding are the smaller moments on every page when he finds joy, amazement, and serenity in nature and lets us share those moments with him.
Therein lies one of the books pleasant dichotomies. McAnulty seeks isolation in nature to process the noise of civilization, but in so doing, connects with a deep universality. The chiffchaffs, the whirligig beetles, the bats. Him, me, you. Were all of the same earthling community. We all lose home places. We are all sometimes anxious, doubtful, and embattled against emotions. There is so much we know and dont know about what it is to be normal, but in wishing nature could wash over him and flow around him unencumbered, McAnulty cuts through our stock perceptions of what is acceptable or typical with intense, intimate clarity.
McAnulty seeks isolation in nature to process the noise of civilization, but in so doing, connects with a deep universality. The chiffchaffs, the whirligig beetles, the bats. Him, me, you. Were all of the same earthling community.
Of his time working with scientists satellite-tagging goshawks in Scotland, he writes, As I bring [the goshawk] close to my chest its body heat illuminates me. I start to fill with something visceral. This is who I am. This is who we all could be. I am not like these birds but neither am I separate from them. Perhaps its a feeling of love, or a longing. I dont know for certain. It is a rare feeling, a sensation that most of my life (full of school and homework) doesnt have the space for.
Over and over again, McAnulty reminds us that our most immediate environment lies within our own mindsand that between each one of us is the same cherished diversity we can also find by leaving a bucket of murky water in the yard and seeing what arrives.
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Autistic Teen's Memoir Explores the Natural Terrain of the Mind - Sierra Magazine
JADES will go deeper than the Hubble Deep Fields – EarthSky
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field (in its eXtreme version) is the deepest view of the universe yet obtained and will be, until JADES takes over. It stretches approximately 13 billion light-years and includes approximately 10,000 galaxies. It took 11.3 days for the Hubble Space Telescope to collect these ancient photons. Try downloading the largest version and zoom in on different sections. Were seeing these galaxies as they were billions of years ago. How might they look today? Image via NASA/ ESA/ S. Beckwith (STSci)/ HUDF team.
Astronomers announced a new deeper-than-ever sky survey this month (January 15, 2021), to be conducted with the James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble telescopes successor, scheduled for launch in October of this year. The new survey is abbreviated JADES, which is short for James Webb Space Telescope Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey. The survey will be like the Hubble Deep Fields, but deeper still. Its main goal is to see far away in space and thus far back into the very young universe and image it just at the end of the so-called Cosmic Dark Ages, that is, at the time when gas in the universe went from being opaque to transparent. This is also the time when the very first stars were forming very large, massive and bright stars in a veritable firestorm of star birth when the young universe was less than 5% of its current age.
The 2021 lunar calendars are here. Order yours before theyre gone!
The Webb telescope will be located near the second Lagrange point a relatively stable region of space, gravitationally speaking, known as L2 some 930,000 miles (1.5 million km) from Earth. To conduct the new survey, the Webb telescope will be staring at a small point of space for nearly 800 hours (approximately 33 days) to be able to see fainter objects than those ever seen before and thus to find the first generation of galaxies. Astronomers want to know, among other things, how fast did these galaxies form, and how fast did their stars form? They also want to look for the very first supermassive black holes, which are thought to lie at the hearts of nearly all large galaxies, including our Milky Way.
The long-anticipated launch of the James Webb Space Telescope has been postponed a number of times for a variety of reasons, most recently because of effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is the formal successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, but is equipped with instrumentation able to image further into the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum than Hubble could.
This capability also makes it a worthy successor to the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope which recently went into retirement.
What makes the infrared part of the spectrum so important for surveys like JADES? If you look really deep, you will also look back in time, and the farther back in time you look, the more redshifted the galaxies are (the farther away they are, the faster they move away from us, and the more their light has been shifted towards the red part of the spectrum). This means that the light we want to observe, originally in the optical (visible) part of the electromagnetic spectrum, might not even show much in the optical part anymore. Instead, its been shifted to longer wavelengths, into the infrared regime.
In other words, the use of infrared cameras is necessary to be able to see the light from the first generation of galaxies. Daniel Eisenstein, a professor of astronomy at Harvard University, said:
Galaxies, we think, begin building up in the first billion years after the Big Bang, and sort of reach adolescence at 1 to 2 billion years. Were trying to investigate those early periods. We must do this with an infrared-optimized telescope because the expansion of the universe causes light to increase in wavelength as it traverses the vast distance to reach us. So even though the stars are emitting light primarily in optical and ultraviolet wavelengths, that light is shifted quite relentlessly out into the infrared. Only Webb can get to the depth and sensitivity thats needed to study these early galaxies.
In fact, the James Webb Space Telescope was built specifically for this purpose. Up to now, infrared images are much less resolved less clear than optical images, because of their longer wavelength. With its much larger collecting area, the Webb will be able to image, in infrared, at the same resolution detail that Hubble could obtain in the optical part of the spectrum.
Get ready for a whole new set of mind-blowing images of the universe, this time in the infrared, from Webb!
After having successfully deployed its solar panels precisely as its supposed to do once its in space the Webb telescope is shown here ready for the final tests on December 17, 2020, at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center. Then it will be packed up and transported to French Guyana, to be launched on October 31, 2021, via an Ariane V rocket. Image via NASA/ Chris Gunn.
The use of deep field surveys is a young science, for two reasons. First, astronomers didnt have the right instrumentation before Hubble to do them. Second, its also because no one initially knew the result of staring into a piece of empty space for a long time. Such a long stare into the unknown would require valuable observation time, and if this long observation didnt produce any results, it would be considered a waste.
But in 1995, Robert Williams, then the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STSci), which administrates the Hubble telescope, decided to use his directors discretionary time to point the Hubble toward a very small and absolutely empty-looking part of the sky in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major the Great Bear. There were no stars visible from our Milky Way (or extremely few), no nearby galaxies visible in the field, and no visible gas clouds. Hubble collected photons for 10 consecutive days, and the result, the Hubble Deep Field, was a success and a paradigm changer: A patch of sky about as small as the eye of George Washington on an American quarter (25-cent coin) held out at arms length, showed a 10 billion-light-years-long tunnel back in time with a plethora of galaxies around 3,000 of them at different evolutionary stages along the way. The field of observational cosmology was born.
This was done again in 1998 with the Hubble telescope pointed to the southern sky (Hubble Deep Field South), and the result was the same. Thus we learned that the universe is uniform over large scales.
Next was the installation of a new, powerful camera on Hubble (the Advanced Camera for Surveys) in 2002. The incredible Hubble Ultra Deep Field was acquired in 2004, in a similarly small patch of sky near the constellation Orion, about 1/10 of a full moon diameter (2.4 x 3.4 arc minutes, in contrast to the original Hubble Deep Fields north and south, which were 2.6 x 2.6 arc minutes). And so our reach was extended even deeper into space, and even further back in time, showing light from 10 thousand galaxies along a 13-billion-light-years-long tunnel of space. If youll remember that the universe is about 13.77 billion years old, youll see this is getting us really close to the beginning!
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field was the most sensitive astronomical image ever made at wavelengths of visible (optical) light until 2012, when an even more refined version was released, called the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field, which reached even farther: 13.2 billion years back in time.
The JADES survey will be observed in two batches, one on the northern sky and one on the southern in two famous fields called GOODS North and South (abbreviated from Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey).
Marcia Rieke, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona who co-leads the JADES Team with Pierre Ferruit of the European Space Agency (ESA), explained:
We chose these fields because they have such a great wealth of supporting information. Theyve been studied at many other wavelengths, so they were the logical ones to do.
View larger. | Look closely. Every single speck of light in this image is a distant galaxy (except for the very few ones with spikes which are foreground stars). This telescopic field of view is part of the GOODS South field. Its one of the directions in space thatll be observed in JADES, a new survey that aims to study the very first galaxies to appear in the infancy of the universe. Image via NASA/ Hubble Space Telescope/ James Webb Space Telescope site.
The GOODS fields have been observed with several of the most famous telescopes, covering a great wavelength range from infrared through optical to X-ray. They are not fully as deep (the observations dont reach as far back) as the Ultra Deep Field, but cover a larger area of the sky (4-5 times larger) and are the most data-rich areas of the sky in terms of depth combined with wavelength coverage. By the way, the first deep field, HDF-N, is located in the GOODS north image, and the Ultra deep field/eXtreme (dont you love these names?) is located in the GOODS south field.
There are a large number of ambitious science goals for the JADES program pertaining to the composition of the first galaxies, including the first generation of supermassive black holes. How these came about at such an early time is a mystery. As well, the transition of gas from neutral and opaque to transparent and ionized, something astronomers call the epoch of reionization, is not well understood. JADES team member Andrew Bunker, professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, who is also part of the ESA team behind the Webb telescope, said:
This transition is a fundamental phase change in the nature of the universe. We want to understand what caused it. It could be that its the light from very early galaxies and the first burst of star formation It is kind of one of the Holy Grails, to find the so-called Population III stars that formed from the hydrogen and helium of the Big Bang.
People have been trying to do this for many decades and results have been inconclusive so far.
But, hopefully, not for much longer!
Bottom line: JADES is an ambitious new deep sky survey to be observed with the James Webb Space Telescope, once launched. It will reach further back in time and space than any survey before, to study the very first generation of galaxies after the universe transitioned from opaque to transparent.
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JADES will go deeper than the Hubble Deep Fields - EarthSky