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meloncubedradpops · 4 years

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Repo! The Corona Opera

For every rotation that Earth has completed around the sun since the dawn of humanity, humans have created art to cope with the realities surrounding our everyday life. We weave stories in songs, movies, plays, books, paintings, and so forth, that help digest the world around us and provide an entertaining escape from the cruelties we endure. Some stories take place in abstract universes or in the future, and we rely on what we know in our present reality to build upon these fantasy societies. My favorite movie, Repo! the Genetic Opera, certainly makes this list. We are currently experiencing perhaps the most surreal year of our collective lives, and with each passing day I argue that we find ourselves closer to the world crafted in Repo. I have seen this movie, at least 20 times. If you haven't watched Repo! the Genetic Opera or you haven't seen it in a while, I recommend giving it a view. The movie is unique in that it falls under three distinct genres: musical, horror, and sci-fi. And while the jury is out on whether our future society is going to go full on gothic aesthetic, I can say that the Repo! movie experience offers a glimpse into a dystopian fascist post-plague world wrapped in unapologetically hilarity with a heaping side of camp. It doesn't offer any spiritual cleansing that our souls collectively need, but it does show us what a new normal could look like if we really go off the rails.

As things stand, right now, so much of our daily lives and culture are impacted by the coronavirus. All of our institutions have been impacted, from school, to work, to family, to the way we interact with strangers, and especially our economy. We have all felt the effects in one way or another, and honestly? Most the impacts are of our own undoing, for better or for worse. I am going to write three pieces analyzing Repo! the Genetic Opera. First I will create the foundations that bridge our contemporary life and the world of Repo! Second I will explain how the Repo! universe operates under the definitions of fascism. And third I will weave together parts one and two into our contemporary world (particularly in the context of the United States) to highlight the dark path we heading towards. My viewpoints are of mine, and my own alone. Let's dive into part one.

Part I Repo! the Genetic Opera takes place in the year 2056. Humanity was on the brink of collapse as a result of a medical crisis that caused massive organ failure.

I never gave the premise much thought, at least not until recently. We aren't given much detail beyond the fact that entrepreneur Rottissimo "Rotti" Largo solved this crisis through his company GeneCo. GeneCo provides organ transplants that can be repaid through a payment plan. Witnessing the coronavirus unfold in real time and seeing its wrath, particularly on severe cases, honestly makes me wonder if the writers had some sort of "super plague" in mind when creating this universe. For the purpose of this analysis, I will assume that humanity suffered at least one infectious disease crisis. And just to reiterate covid-19 particularly, we really *don't* know what it's going to do to us long-term. Let the parallels begin.

The world in Repo! the Genetic Opera, operates as normally as the citizens possibly can, which appears to be quite limited. I have noted how dated some the technologies look.

For a world 30 years in the future, it lacks cell phones and easy access to internet. When we enter Shilo's world (aka her bedroom!) she watched Blind Mag sing on a busted up tiny ass TV and the program itself looks like an ad on Home Shopping Network.

The Graverobber is shown reading headlines on a newspaper. The news reporters shown in the ribbon cutting ceremony during the 1st Italian Post-Plague Renaissance have old school cameras with flashbulbs.

The most contemporary technology appears to be a Wish.com version of an Apple watch, and even that looks like a leftover prop from Spy Kids.

Obviously the people who made this movie intentionally inserted these anachronisms, but why? This is a science fiction movie after all. I speculate that they reverted back because the impact from humanity's crisis resulted in an overall professional "brain drain" from the sheer volume of professionals that dropped dead. In fact every scene depicting medical procedures looks dimly lit and lacking in sanitation. We will see this as we struggle to contain the coronavirus, at least in America. Healthcare workers have already died from this thing, and I am sure many prospective college students will have second thoughts about a career in healthcare. I mean hell, look at no other than GeneCo itself. That company employs workers called "Genterns" who are most definitely not in full PPE. I don't doubt their medical expertise, but they appear to be disposable (please see: that time Luigi killed one for NO REASON in "Mark it Up").

On that note, it really was quite incredible how China built the pop-up hospital in Wuhan in under 4 days, but it was also not the most safe or structurally sound building by far (it collapsed, people were hurt!). Maybe at this point, the people in Repo! don't have much of a choice. I am sure there were likely legit hospitals, but the fact that the Renaissance had gross surgery tents is a bit unsettling.

This is a world that is completely built upon the social more of valuing your health above all else. There had to be a turning point in the GeneCo business model where they really played on up-selling organs for the benefit of "genetic perfection". "I needed a kidney transplant desperately. GeneCo showed this single mom sympathy. This makeover came for a small added fee. Now I look smashing on live TV!" Imagine signing the documents for your power of attorney while actively going into renal failure, when your doctor chimes in with an up-sell for breast implants. When all is said an done, your body is now not only functioning again, but you're hot! Even in a post-plague dystopia we are still holding value to having a nice rack. What's not to love about GeneCo? Obviously we know right away that GeneCo has a dirty side. Rotti Largo personally lobbied to make organ repossessions legal, and he does not hesitate to recollect his property. The concept itself is, of course, wild. In America, our healthcare system is incredibly broken and expensive. You would wonder how it could get worse without us backpedaling many steps on the industrialization timeline. And in a lot of ways, I could see a company like GeneCo thrive here. We already hate the poor, and we have political think tanks that salivate over the idea of cutting social programs that keep people alive. Our president has wanted to repeal the Affordable Care Act while many people are unemployed during a pandemic. In Repo! we hear about those who don't pay, but obviously there are plenty of people who do. Those who can will happily pay, either for vanity reasons or to stay alive.

And while society cites Rotti as being a "hero" for humanity, we see more and more evidence that the crisis is both not under control and life is cheap.

His son murders multiple people, in front of others, with seemingly no repercussions. In the scene where Shilo meets the Graverobber for the first time, adjacent to the graveyard and tombs owned by wealthy families who could afford grave markers, lies a poorly constructed wall hiding thousands of corpses piled on top of one another. We even get a glimpse of a truckload pouring more onto the pile. I would not be surprised if there is a disinformation campaign there keeping the public in the dark (although you'd think the smell would be unbearable at this point).

There are multiple indications that propaganda works in society (still), and no one is getting the full picture of how much of a raw deal the people in Repo! have. We see poster after poster about GeneCo, in the literal absence of other corporations.

And a lot of them bear resemblance to 20th century Russian propaganda. It would be a real shame if the goals outlined The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia were actually realized. Imagine going to visit your mother's grave and hearing commercials for hardcore analgesics play through the cemetery. Also, there's a police presence too. Apparently the police are called Genecops and have authority to execute any assumed graverobbers on site.

Imagine the hellscape it would be to live in a world where your loved ones may have died from a terrible pandemic, and you face a non-zero chance of an over zealous cop murdering you thereafter, and because their qualified immunity bypasses the judicial system entirely...oh wait. Anyways let's circle back to the Graverobber character.

Graverobber's role in Repo! appears to be minor on the surface. Rotti's daughter, Amber Sweet, appears to almost despise her relationship with him. And that relationship involves him supplying Amber with what he describes as the "21st Century cure". This cure you ask? A super effective painkiller with the clinical use to accompany GeneCo surgeries. This drug is called Zydrate, and it has a street version that he acquires and sells, with clients including Amber Sweet.

Graverobber makes his living sucking the glowy blue brain corpse goo and injecting them into people on the streets. Yum!

Not everyone who needs an organ transplant can pay for it all upfront. Luckily for them, GeneCo provides payment plan options! The caveat to this is if you fail to make those payments, legally GeneCo can come and repossess your newly acquired organs. If you find yourself past due, you will soon see the last face before your doom, the Repo Man. He will harvest GeneCo's property, and it won't matter where you are or what you are doing. There is no anesthetic, and you will likely die! This was all made legal through Rotti's lobbying efforts.

Society, as it's set up today, allows for property repossessions. This can be as straightforward as a repossession of your vehicle to as heartbreaking as a foreclosure on your home. At the end of the day, the impacts of that are difficult and life changing. Currently millions of people in America are out of work, and the threat of losing everything is at stake for many. We could lose our homes, our vehicles, and our sense of purpose. And while many government bodies have created temporary moratoriums, they have not provided any substantial financial relief to keep the proverbial repo man at bay. What went wrong in this dystopia to normalize the concept of death due to nonpayment? Fascism! Ah yes, the dreaded f-word. In my next essay, I will outline the 14 characteristics of fascism and how it relates to the universe in Repo! After I will relate that to our modern world so that we can try and stop this from becoming our reality.

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Changed by pandemic, many workers won’t return to old jobs (AP) There’s a wild card in the push to return to post-pandemic life: Many workers don’t want to go back to the jobs they once had. Layoffs and lockdowns, combined with enhanced unemployment benefits and stimulus checks, gave many Americans the time and the financial cushion to rethink their careers. Their former employers are hiring again — and some, like Uber and McDonald’s, are offering higher pay—but workers remain hesitant. Employers and business groups argue that the $300-per-week federal unemployment supplement gives recipients less incentive to look for work. But Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist who researches low- and middle-income workers with the Economic Policy Institute, said health concerns and child care responsibilities seem to be the main reasons holding workers back. In April, she said, at least 25% of U.S. schools weren’t offering in-person learning, forcing many parents to stay home. And health concerns could gain new urgency for some workers now that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said fully vaccinated people can stop wearing masks in most settings. Some workers say the pandemic helped them prioritize their mental and physical health. And in a tight labor market, some workers are also finding that if they hold out, they might get a better job than the one they left.

Unhealthy Dose of Litigation (CNN) It’s not personal, it’s just business. Tell that to tens of thousands of individuals sued by hospitals for ‘medical debt’ they have no way of ever paying. Community Health Systems, Inc. (CHS) is one of America’s largest hospital chains. A CNN investigation found that since March 2020, company-owned hospitals filed at least 19,000 lawsuits against their patients over allegedly unpaid medical bills, even as other hospitals around the country have curtailed similar lawsuits during the pandemic. CHS’s 84 hospitals are concentrated in the South, but stretch across 16 states from Alaska to Key West, Florida. The hospitals have sued patients for as little as $201 and as much as $162,000. Most defendants didn’t hire a lawyer or fight the lawsuits, and judges often rendered a default judgment in the hospital’s favor. Attorney’s fees and interest are often tacked on. Once a court rules against a defendant, a hospital can proceed to put a lien on the defendant’s house or garnish part of their wages. Many garnishments were against people working for low-wage employers like Walmart. A researcher who has studied hospital lawsuits said that it’s typical for hospitals that sue patients to only make a tiny fraction of their revenue from those lawsuits. “It’s not keeping the lights on for the hospitals—they don’t need to be doing this,” she said. “But for the patients... They’re choosing between medical care and food.”

Argentina Halts Beef Exports for 30 Days to Contain Prices (Bloomberg) Argentina’s government is limiting exports of beef, a staple in the country, in the latest unorthodox move to try to contain runaway inflation that’s approaching 50% annually. President Alberto Fernandez told a key beef export association that they won’t be allowed to sell the product abroad for 30 days, according to a Production Ministry statement released late Monday. “The president expressed his concern over the sustained growth in domestic beef prices over the last few months,” according to the statement. The country’s beef exports in 2020 amounted to roughly $3 billion, but the government may be more focused on the political cost of falling domestic consumption.

Spain Turns to Corruption Rehab for Officials Who Can’t Stop Stealing (NYT) Carlos Alburquerque isn’t your typical rehab candidate. He’s a 75-year-old grandfather living in Córdoba, a city in southern Spain. He was a town notary before he retired in 2015. He hasn’t touched drugs or alcohol in years. But his isn’t your typical rehab program: It’s an 11-month boot camp to reform corrupt Spanish officials and “reinsert” them into mainstream society. “Repairing the damage is what is left for me in this life,” said Mr. Alburquerque, who is serving a four-year prison sentence for stealing around 400,000 euros, nearly a half a million dollars, in his work drawing up contracts and deeds. That such a program exists in Spain may say much about the country’s belief in second chances as it does about how corruption has captured the public imagination here. Flip open a newspaper or turn on the radio: You will hear of schemes, scandals and skulduggery which almost always lead back to the public purse. According to Ángel Luis Ortiz, a former judge who now runs Spain’s prisons, the boom-bust cycles of Spain’s economy had led it to a long history of fraudsters and betrayals of public trust, he said. But at least, corruption rates in Spain were no worse than in other European nations, Mr. Ortiz said, just 5 percent of all crimes.

Russia’s northernmost base projects its power across Arctic (AP) During the Cold War, Russia’s Nagurskoye airbase was little more than a runway, a weather station and a communications outpost in the Franz Josef Land archipelago. It was a remote and desolate home mostly for polar bears, where temperatures plunge in winter to minus-42 Celsius (43 degrees below zero Fahrenheit) and the snow only disappears from August to mid-September. Now, Russia’s northernmost military base is bristling with missiles and radar and its extended runway can handle all types of aircraft, including nuclear-capable strategic bombers, projecting Moscow’s power and influence across the Arctic amid intensifying international competition for the region’s vast resources. Russia has sought to assert its influence over wide areas of the Arctic in competition with the United States, Canada, Denmark and Norway as shrinking polar ice from the warming planet offers new opportunities for resources and shipping routes. China also has shown an increasing interest in the region, believed to hold up to one-fourth of the Earth’s undiscovered oil and gas.

Cyclone kills 19 in India, heavy rains lash parts of Gujarat state (Reuters) A cyclone on India’s west coast has killed at least 19 people and damaged infrastructure and agriculture, while heavy rains continued to lash some regions even as weather officials said on Tuesday that the storm’s intensity had weakened. The cyclone Tauktae, which made landfall in the western state of Gujarat late on Monday, has hit power supply in 2,400 villages in the state as a thousand electricity pylons were damaged, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said in a media address. Nearly 160 roads have been destroyed, 40,000 trees uprooted and several houses damaged, Rupani added.

India reports record day of virus deaths as cases level off (AP) India’s total virus cases since the pandemic began swept past 25 million on Tuesday as the country registered more than 260,000 new cases and a record 4,329 fatalities in the past 24 hours. The numbers continue a trend of falling cases after infections dipped below 300,000 for the first time in weeks on Monday. Active cases in the country also decreased by more than 165,000 on Tuesday—the biggest dip in weeks. But deaths have continued to rise and hospitals are still swamped by patients. Infections in India have surged since February in a disastrous turn blamed on more contagious variants as well as government decisions to allow massive crowds to gather for religious festivals and political rallies.

In Gaza, grief and destruction (Washington Post) In a conflict already marked by harrowing scenes of tragedy, one image stood out. Rescuers in Gaza City on Sunday pulled out Suzy Eshkuntana, a 6-year-old, from the rubble of a building that had once been her home, but which was flattened by Israeli airstrikes. She was covered in dust but alive. Her mother and all four of her siblings were dead. It’s not clear why the Eshkuntanas’ home was brought crashing down. Israeli authorities told reporters that they had targeted a network of tunnels used by Hamas militants that may have run beneath the area where the family lived. “The collapse of the tunnel system,” Reuters reported, “caused the houses above to collapse and led to unintended civilian casualties, the military said.” In Israel’s telling, there are many more “unintended” casualties in Gaza. According to local Health Ministry officials, the death toll in Gaza climbed to 212 people, including 61 children and 36 women, as fighting entered its second week. Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, home to some 2.1 million people, the majority of whom are classified as refugees by the United Nations. That’s a legacy of the displacements that followed Israel’s creation in 1948 and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Children make up about half of Gaza’s population. The territory has been under Israeli blockade since 2007, after Hamas took power following a rift within the Palestinian Authority. “Living conditions in Gaza are bleak: 95 percent of the population does not have access to clean water, according to [the United Nations], and electricity shortages periodically bring life to a halt,” my colleagues reported. “The territory has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, World Bank statistics show, and the United Nations estimates that roughly 80 percent of the population relies on international aid to survive and access basic services.”

The New Arab Street: Online, Global and Growing (NYT) The video traveled at 4G speed, leapfrogging across international borders, social media platforms and social justice movements: a young Palestinian woman in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, shouting in furious English at a Jewish man, “You are stealing my house!” “If I don’t steal it, someone else will steal it,” he retorts. Within days—as Israel bombed the coastal territory of Gaza, Palestinian militants there launched rockets at Israel, and Arab and Jewish mobs faced off in Israeli cities—the video had rocketed from young Palestinians’ social media feeds into the Arab diaspora, then lit up the internet, kindling outrage around the world. It used to be that when Palestinians were under fire, protests would follow in the streets of Arab cities. That potential for combustion forced Middle Eastern and Western leaders to keep a wary eye on the temperature of what was called the “Arab street.” This time, a week into an Israeli bombing campaign that has killed 212 Palestinians in Gaza, the reaction from Arab capitals has been muted and protests small and scattered. Instead, solidarity with the Palestinians has shifted online and gone global, a virtual Arab street that has the potential to have a wider impact than the ones in Middle Eastern cities. The online protesters have linked arms with popular movements for minority rights such as Black Lives Matter, seeking to reclaim the narrative from the mainstream media and picking up support in Western countries that have reflexively supported Israel.

Ransomware hits AXA units in Asia, Irish healthcare (AP) The Thai affiliate of Paris-based insurance company AXA said Tuesday it is investigating a ransomware attack by Russian-speaking cybercriminals that has affected operations in Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong and the Philippines. Meanwhile, a cyberattack on a public health provider in New Zealand took down information systems across five hospitals, forcing staff to cancel some elective surgeries and creating all sorts of other problems. It was unclear if the event was linked to a cyberattack that has nearly paralyzed Ireland’s national healthcare IT systems. The Irish government’s decision not to pay the criminals means hospitals won’t have access to patient records—and must resort mostly to handwritten notes—until painstaking efforts are complete to restore thousands of computer servers from backups.

The Places Ranked Best for Expats in 2021 (Bloomberg) Taiwan, Mexico and Costa Rica have been ranked as the top spots to live and work abroad in 2021, based on their cost of living, ease of settling in and overall quality of life. The U.S. was ranked only 34th out of 59 places, largely because of how expats viewed quality of life in America, according to a new survey published Tuesday. Taiwan topped the charts for the third year in a row in the survey of 12,420 expats conducted by InterNations, a Munich-based expat network with about 4 million members. The top 10: Taiwan, Mexico, Costa Rica, Malaysia, Portugal, New Zealand, Australia, Ecuador, Canada, Vietnam.

#headlines #news

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microsoftenterpriselibrary4 · 4 years

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Microsoft Teams covers 75M daily active customers, as Zoom readjusts its very own user numbers

Personalized histories for Teams video calls are now generally available, as is a capability for meeting coordinators to immediately "finish conference" by clicking a switch in the control bar, Microsoft announced last week. By the end of April, Microsoft is guaranteeing that Groups will certainly support up to 9 noticeable participants at once on video clip phone calls. A photo shared by Microsoft suggests Groups will certainly have a 3 x 3 grid for viewing 9 participants all at once. Digital meeting devices make it possible for individuals to interact socially, function, as well as team up in powerful as well as new means. The University of Denver uses 2 video clip partnership sources to its community.

Do you have concerns regarding Zoom or do you want to experience Zoom Meetings as well as Zoom Room yourself? Contact our video professionals totally free advice and a presentation. A boosting variety of organizations utilize Zoom as their interaction and partnership solution. Microsoft clients utilizing Skype for Organisation are compelled to reconsider this selection as Microsoft introduced to terminate Skype for Organisation in favour of Teams in 2020.

Guests have the ability to see what they appear like as well as can turn off their microphone and also transform their cam on or off prior to telephoning. Google's user-friendly control can scroll through video streams of speaking individuals, as well as advise you that you are mute if you talk without switching on your microphone. Beneficial attributes consist of presenting the 10 most active participants along with the ability to send out text messages by means of the interface. Zoom Fulfilling offers you information concerning the connection of all participants in the call.

Nevertheless, the business has responded quickly by adding waiting space functionality so participants can be screened plus added verification and also security actions. Microsoft Teams is an all-in-one workstream partnership service which incorporates with Office365. With numerous organizations already using O365, Groups becomes an appealing option as it enables durable interior cooperation, back-ups, and documents share. On the various other hand, Zoom is an attractive choice for external partnerships.

For instance, during a current tiny group telephone call, among my individuals linked from a mobile device using 4G. When his link was secure, I saw a collection of white bars suggesting the toughness of his connection in the reduced left edge of his video. Zoom Satisfying has an one-of-a-kind participant reporting function that checks all participants that reported throughout the conference. Google recently revealed that it will certainly enable free access to numerous video conferencing and communication tools for schools and also companies till September 30, 2020, which relates to all G Suite consumers worldwide. Microsoft lately facilitated the screening of Groups and also their different functions during the pandemic.

It is fascinating to note the convenience with which the workers have used the system and browsed via it on their own," states B. Ghosh, CIO, enterprise as well as corp functions, Mahindra Team, which has been making use of Microsoft Teams because the lockdown started in March. Ms. Jenelle says there's a performative element to videoconferencing, which includes in her very own exhaustion. She really feels as though she always needs to be "on" while joining a virtual meetings, given that she understands other people are watching her.

While there is some function overlap between the solutions, every one has its own specialized. This file will certainly aid assist you to the best device for your needs. Teams aids organisations to interact more effectively through team chat, on the internet meetings, calling, and also web conferencing.

The VP doesn't mention Zoom by name, but this seems an initiative by Microsoft to promote Teams as a safer, much more protected alternative to Zoom. The Redmond firm says it logged 200 million meeting participants in someday this month. Teams is consisted of with Microsoft 365 memberships for companies, and firms need to upgrade to greater versions of those strategies to unlock advanced functions of the program, such as video telephone calls.

It's likewise protection against Zoom-crashing harassers, as well as it's good that the firm is moving in this direction. Zoom claimed it's now concentrating a lot more on its safety as well as re-evaluating the balance in between protection as well as simplicity of usage. While Skype's Meet Now supplies a grid sight, Zoom lets you see approximately 49 people simultaneously, in sets of huge 5x5 grids (attempting to figure it out? Right here's just how to see everyone on Zoom).

The business states you can call your local Microsoft companion or sales agent as well as secure free access to Office 365 E1 prepare for a duration of 6 months. For institutions and establishments, the Workplace 365 will stay complimentary to all.

We provide reducing edge, tailored IT options as well as IT support and maintenance to ensure your organisation IT set-up is as efficient, reliable, and fast as possible. Connect with us to learn more regarding our solutions or to arrange a consultation with among our knowledgeable IT experts. Group video, screen sharing, and also telephone calls are still limited to teams of 20 or fewer. So go on, begin planning that shock workplace party with the new, larger team conversation. Whether in the space or across a sea, Groups as well as the Microsoft Surface area Hub interact to improve conferences for neighborhood and remote attendees.

Is Microsoft Team free?

The free version of Microsoft Teams only allows you to have up to 300 members (users) per organization. Paid plans, meanwhile, up that up to a potentially unlimited amount of members, with an enterprise license.

A guide to requirements as well as functions of the leading three video clip conferencing apps. To date, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and also Cisco Webex have outweighed Google Meet and its predecessor brands, amongst businesses and companies. Introduced in 2017 as Hangouts Meet, it included a videoconferencing extension of the Google Hangouts conversation and also voice communications device. It has actually preserved a solid following among pupils and also for customers.

They can simply develop a web link and send it to loved ones as an invitation to join the video clip telephone call. The participants open the web link in Microsoft Side or Google Chrome, and also they are "in" the call. In this Vlog we take a look at Zoom vs Microsoft Teams to identify the most effective alternative for video conferencing. K2 Technologies is aMicrosoft Workplace 365 Partnerwith almost twenty years of experience assisting businesses make use of modern technology to its fullest potential.

Microsoft assumes individuals who prepare trips with friends or organize book clubs and also social gatherings will be interested in Teams. Alexa ranking https://mnetworks.dk/om-os-2/social-ansvarlighed-csr/ 21 (As of 22 April 2020 [update] Zoom Video Clip Communications, Inc. (Zoom) is an American communications modern technology company headquartered in San Jose, The Golden State. It provides videotelephony and also online chat solutions via a cloud-based peer-to-peer software application system as well as is utilized for teleconferencing, telecommuting, correspondence course, and social relationships. If your video clip gets on during a conference with several participants, it instantly presents to all individuals, including on your own. If you hide on your own, your own video clip screen disappears from your display, leaving even more room to see other participants.

Among the best features of this is that it sustains as much as 250 participants in a telephone call, that makes it useful for big conferences. You can additionally live-stream conferences to up to 100,000 people, helpful for bigger ventures attempting to reach huge groups. The base prepare for Zoom consists of a host limitation of 100 individual, endless 1 to 1 conferences and team conferences yet a 40-minute limit on conferences with 3 or even more individuals in them. Shutterstock is another popular graphics web site giving free backgrounds to personalize Zoom and also Skype telephone calls.

It's additionally worth noting that cloud storage space is limited, so be careful how many conferences you document while utilizing the mobile app. The business has made several moves to counter these problems and also assure users about the value of protection and also privacy. This includes basic points like removing the conference ID from the title bar of the phone call so if customers share screenshots on-line the meeting isn't revealed to future misuse. If your system manager has a Pro, Business, or Venture account, you can authorize up and download Zoom onto your computer system using your work email.

Furthermore, it has to be stated that Groups takes rather a great deal of time to set up, so bear that in mind. Microsoft Teams allows you share Workplace documents and service them immediately from the work area. Slack doesn't included the option of modifying papers from the work area, so you need to download documents as well as open them in certain applications to edit them. The most important thing to recognize is that Slack's dimension restriction for submitting is 1GB, while Microsoft Teams is covered at 15GB. We really did not bother to inspect these numbers and upload gigantic files-- we were extra interested in exactly how you can collaborate in these apps.

How do you see everyone on Zoom?

Now, a report by Bleeping Computer claims that half a million Zoom accounts have been hacked and the data from these accounts have been sold on the dark web. These Zoom account credentials reportedly included email address, meeting URLs, passwords, and HostKeys.

Google has claimed it will certainly offer Hangouts components as separate customer services, such as Chat, Messages and also Duo. " Due to the fact that video conferences have never ever been more vital, we've been fast-tracking one of the most requested features for Meet, and also are currently making them offered to all," composed G Suite VP and also GM Javier Soltero in a blog. Google Meet now has a tiled gallery view with a format that currently supports 16 participants, up from just four. They can likewise now pick better video clip by switching to the 30 frameworks per-second video mode choice.

Just like in a routine Teams meetings, you can now include your system audio when offering in an online occasion. Presently, this attribute is only available for producers and presenters signing up with from the Teams desktop computer application for Windows.

No Wire Necessary-- Security & Safety And Security In A Wireless World.

allows individuals to satisfy in person from a desktop, laptop, mobile device or video clip conferencing endpoint. It utilizes the trusted Cisco infrastructure and incorporates with Webex Teams as well as with various other famous suppliers such as Microsoft. Meanwhile, in Italy, service applications like Google's Hangouts Meet and also Classroom were one of the most downloaded and install of any classification of apps this week. Do you know when this feature for Microsoft Teams Room Equipments to join Webex and Zoom conferences will be released? Older Cisco rooms will certainly have the ability to join Microsoft Teams Meetings by means of Cisco's forthcoming CVI service.

To try it out in your next meeting, press Ctrl+ to zoom in as well as Ctrl- to zoom out. Create a welcome web link to invite people to join your org on Teams free by means of the app of your selection. When they click on the web link they'll be sent out to a webpage to demand to join your org-- so you know specifically that's utilizing the web link to join.

Microsoft is additionally coming out with versions of Teams for personal and also family usage. Microsoft has seen a 775 percent rise in cloud solutions across areas that have implemented social distancing because of COVID-19.

Is Zoom owned by Google?

Microsoft originally acquired Skype for $8.5 billion back in 2011. It was the same year that Zoom and Snapchat were founded, and Apple launched its iPhone 4S.

IT specialists can likewise access Microsoft Teams also if their firm is not certified for Groups. They can call their Microsoft companion or sales representatives for free access to the Workplace 365 E1 plan for 6 months.

So, we decided to submit an 800MB video clip documents in Microsoft Teams to give it a shot. To our surprise, the documents not just opened promptly yet likewise played within Microsoft Teams-- very impressive. It's even more budget-friendly than Slack or Microsoft Teams while providing advanced attributes such as endless message history and also sound and also video clip calls. To cut the story short, the least expensive Workplace 365 Strategy that has Teams in it is called Service Basics. It costs $5 per user per month and you need to buy a yearly strategy to get going.

Within this contrast, I want to look closer at both what these tools supply, however how the tools and also their organization result in an inevitably various platform emphasis. As an example, Microsoft Teams appears to master Office 365 based cooperation, meanwhile, Webex Teams is an incredible virtual conference system with digital whiteboarding, in addition to a concentrate on equipment. But it is essential to acknowledge what solutions as well as Office applications your service get to based upon the strategy selected. As an example, even the Free offering of Microsoft Teams provides access to shadow variations of preferred Workplace Apps, however none other services or downloadable versions of the software application. With more individuals, even more files, more conferences, more cooperation, a lot more video clip meetings, more whatever; larger companies merely need the tools to deal with and also facilitate this higher degree of cooperation and emphasis.

What is the difference between zoom and teams?

Through the Microsoft Teams Zoom Meetings tab, you will be able to start, schedule, join meetings, or share your screen. Meetings created in Teams will automatically appear on your Zoom account. This article covers installing, configuring and using the Zoom integration for Microsoft Teams.

It's a little on the expensive side but they just recently expanded their product to currently supply display sharing and also video conferencing. Google Hangouts is our pick for best video conferencing software application for small teams. The web video clip variation is called Google Hangouts as well as is what our group makes use of at We Rock Your Internet. When it comes to on the internet conference solutions, we contrast the ideal video conferencing software application and also review why some of the most identifiable companies might not be your finest option.

This is in fact cheaper than Slack's most affordable strategy (Conventional), which costs $6.67 per individual per month when billed every year. It makes the price much extra eye-catching when you take into consideration the truth that $5 invested on Microsoft Teams additionally provides you access to Workplace 365. Nonetheless, if you intend to get the most out of Microsoft Teams and also Slack, you'll need to obtain a paid strategy. In Microsoft Tools, that suggests that you require to have an account that is either Business Premium or Essentials.

As preferred and as useful Zoom has been for many organisations, the safety and personal privacy elements are still not there. Microsoft Teams transcends in the feeling that due to it's association with Office 365, there are added methods to increase your standard protection. Password freshens, credibility symbols and 2 element verification process-- Zoom just can not compete with these extra levels of safety.

According to Microsoft, people in Norway and also the Netherlands turn on video clip as well as use it the most, with about 60% of conferences in the country including video clip. Right here in the United States, the number is about 38%, and in the UK, it has to do with 47%. Microsoft Teams currently has attributes that assist make video talking easier, and extra get on the means. That currently includes history blur, which helps conceal your background during a telephone call.

You can manage whether to hide or reveal yourself in your own video clip display screen for each conference. As an existing Skype for Organisation client, the full shift to Groups may take a little time. Thankfully, the overlapping capabilities of both apps imply you do not need to do it at one time-- there are a couple of different conjunction as well as upgrade settings to consider when selecting your personal course to migration. Although Groups takes much of its DNA from Skype for Business, both are really various solutions. When you placed them side-by-side-- Microsoft Teams vs Skype for Service-- you'll see that Teams provides a lot more, bringing together files, talks, and also applications in one area for a much more full, integrated cooperation remedy.

Why is teams better than Skype?

According to a recent Forrester study, shared workspaces like Teams can save users timeâ€”from one to eight hours per user per week, depending on their role. The wins from making the Skype for Business upgrade to Teams are clear: faster, more efficient working and collaboration.

Though Microsoft Teams as well as Skype for Organisation does differ, there is some considerable overlap. Both Skype for Company as well as Microsoft Teams include team chats, straight messaging, and voice calling. Though Microsoft Teams initially really did not have the calling capability that Skype did, it still had both voice chat and video clip calling functionality.

After that you ought to leave the conference, if you're not using Skype to meet with a person. Then it won't utilize a lot information and also you don't need to bother with the video/audio quality while you're not in a conference. Webex has unrestricted free meetings for up to 3 individuals and offers the premium includes complimentary for 2 week.

Still, it's improving all the time, and is certainly something to try if you are taking a look at an alternative to Zoom. Jitsiis a extremely cool and safe open resource app that's recently launched to the marketplace.

As several churches relied on Zoom for live-streaming, Sunday morning ended up being prime-time show for a vital group of Zoom individuals. The largest customer of teleconferencing is India Inc, which began its fiscal and also established targets with a flurry of web conferences. " We have done greater than 350,000 conferences, greater than 60 events with hundreds of individuals in each.

For large range company meetings with coworkers or calls with numerous good friends, Zoom for desktop is the only sensible choice. Free Zoom supplies video conferencing for approximately 100 individuals, supplied the conference competes no more than 40 mins, at which point guests are ejected from the meeting. If you don't mind the headache of dialling back in, though, the host can merely begin another telephone

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rayonwash4-blog · 4 years

Text

Top 5 Abilities Employers Search For

What Guard Can As Well As Can Not Do

#toc background: #f9f9f9;border: 1px solid #aaa;display: table;margin-bottom: 1em;padding: 1em;width: 350px; .toctitle font-weight: 700;text-align: center;

Content

Professional Driving Capacity

Whizrt: Simulated Intelligent Cybersecurity Red Team

Add Your Call Information Properly

Objectsecurity. The Security Plan Automation Company.

The Kind Of Security Guards

Every one of these courses supply a declarative-based strategy to reviewing ACL information at runtime, releasing you from requiring to compose any type of code. Please refer to the example applications to discover just how to make use of these courses. Spring Security does not offer any type of special integration to immediately create, update or delete ACLs as component of your DAO or repository operations. Rather, you will require to compose code like revealed above for your private domain name objects. It deserves taking into consideration using AOP on your solutions layer to instantly integrate the ACL details with your services layer procedures.

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cmdlet that can be made use of to listing techniques and buildings on an object quickly. Figure 3 shows a PowerShell manuscript to mention this details. Where feasible in this research, typical customer benefits were used to supply insight into readily available COM things under the worst-case situation of having no administrative advantages.

Whizrt: Simulated Intelligent Cybersecurity Red Group

Users that are members of several teams within a duty map will constantly be approved their greatest consent. For instance, if John Smith is a member of both Team An and Group B, and Team A has Manager opportunities to an object while Team B just has Audience civil liberties, Appian will treat John Smith as an Administrator. OpenPMF's support for advanced access control versions consisting of proximity-based accessibility control, PBAC was likewise even more prolonged. To fix numerous challenges around applying safe and secure distributed systems, ObjectSecurity released OpenPMF variation 1, during that time among the first Attribute Based Gain access to Control (ABAC) items in the market.

The picked users and functions are now listed in the table on the General tab. Opportunities on dices allow customers to accessibility service actions and execute analysis.

Object-Oriented Security is the technique of making use of usual object-oriented style patterns as a system for accessibility control. Such mechanisms are commonly both simpler to utilize and also more effective than conventional security designs based upon globally-accessible resources safeguarded by accessibility control lists. Object-oriented security is closely pertaining to object-oriented testability as well as various other advantages of object-oriented style. When a state-based Accessibility Control Checklist (ACL) is as well as exists integrated with object-based security, state-based security-- is offered. You do not have consent to view this object's security homes, also as a management individual.

You might write your ownAccessDecisionVoter or AfterInvocationProviderthat respectively fires before or after an approach invocation. Such classes would certainly useAclService to obtain the relevant ACL and after that callAcl.isGranted( Permission [] permission, Sid [] sids, boolean administrativeMode) to determine whether permission is granted or denied. At the same time, you could utilize our AclEntryVoter, AclEntryAfterInvocationProvider orAclEntryAfterInvocationCollectionFilteringProvider courses.

What are the key skills of safety officer?

Whether you are a young single woman or nurturing a family, Lady Guard is designed specifically for women to cover against female-related illnesses. Lady Guard gives you the option to continue taking care of your family living even when you are ill.

Include Your Contact Information Properly

It permitted the central authoring of accessibility policies, as well as the automated enforcement throughout all middleware nodes making use of neighborhood decision/enforcement factors. Thanks to the assistance of several EU funded study jobs, ObjectSecurity discovered that a main ABAC strategy alone was not a convenient means to execute security plans. Visitors will get a comprehensive consider each element of computer system security and exactly how the CORBAsecurity requirements fulfills each of these security requires.

Understanding facilities It is a best practice to provide specific teams Visitor civil liberties to understanding centers as opposed to setting 'Default (All Other Customers)' to customers.

This suggests that no fundamental user will certainly have the ability to start this process design.

Appian recommends giving customer accessibility to specific teams instead.

Appian has detected that this process version might be utilized as an action or related action.

Doing so makes sure that record folders as well as records embedded within understanding facilities have actually specific visitors set.

You have to also provide benefits on each of the measurements of the dice. Nonetheless, you can establish fine-grained gain access to on a measurement to restrict the advantages, as defined in "Creating Data Security Plans on Cubes and dimensions". You can withdraw as well as set object privileges on dimensional objects using the SQL GIVE and REVOKE commands. You provide security on views and also emerged sights for dimensional objects similarly as for any kind of other views and also emerged sights in the database. You can provide both data security and object security in Analytic Work area Manager.

What is a security objective?

General career objective examples Secure a responsible career opportunity to fully utilize my training and skills, while making a significant contribution to the success of the company. Seeking an entry-level position to begin my career in a high-level professional environment.

Since their security is acquired by all objects embedded within them by default, expertise facilities and also regulation folders are taken into consideration high-level objects. For example, security set on expertise facilities is inherited by all embedded record folders and papers by default. Also, security established on regulation folders is inherited by all embedded policy folders and also rule things including user interfaces, constants, expression rules, choices, and assimilations by default.

Objectsecurity. The Security Policy Automation Company.

In the instance above, we're obtaining the ACL connected with the "Foo" domain object with identifier number 44. We're after that including an ACE to make sure that a principal named "Samantha" can "administer" the object.

youtube

The Types Of Security Guards

Topics covered include verification, recognition, and advantage; accessibility control; message security; delegation as well as proxy issues; auditing; and, non-repudiation. The author additionally provides many real-world examples of how protected object systems can be utilized to impose useful security plans. after that pick both of the worth from drop down, right here both worth are, one you appointed to app1 and also various other you designated to app2 and also maintain adhering to the step 1 to 9 meticulously. Right here, you are defining which individual will see which app and by following this remark, you specified you problem user will see both application.

What is a good objective for a security resume?

Career Objective: Seeking the position of 'Safety Officer' in your organization, where I can deliver my attentive skills to ensure the safety and security of the organization and its workers.

Security Vs. Presence

For object security, you also have the option of using SQL GIVE and REVOKE. provides fine-grained control of the data on a cellular degree. When you want to limit accessibility to particular areas of a cube, you just require to specify information security plans. Data security is carried out using the XML DB security of Oracle Data source. The next step is to really make use of the ACL details as component of permission decision logic as soon as you have actually used the above strategies to store some ACL details in the data source.

#objectbeveiliging #wat is objectbeveiliging #object beveiliging #object beveiliger #werkzaamheden beveiliger

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siriusist · 4 years

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Hi! I’ve been following you for a lil lil bit, but already you seem super smart and knowledgeable so.. what are some books or other pieces of writing you think everyone should read? Have a lovely day!

B’aww, thank you! <3 You too nonnie! <3

Just off the top of my head at three o’clock in the morning, and the qualification that you provided that its something that ‘everyone should read,’ I’m going to go for more books that I found changed me fundamentally, as a person, after reading them. That may be a self-help book; that might be a societal critique, that might be a work of classic literature. I tried to give a bit of everything. <3

I’ll put a little copy-and-paste synopsis here for you for each book, and will elaborate if necessary in brackets.

BEHOLD: LAUREN’S LIST OF LITERARY RECOMMENDATIONS:

From My (Non-Law) Bookcase (But still are about political issues):

Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger by Soraya Chemaly:

‘As women, we’ve been urged for so long to bottle up our anger, letting it corrode our bodies and minds in ways we don’t even realize. Yet there are so, so many legitimate reasons for us to feel angry, ranging from blatant, horrifying acts of misogyny to the subtle drip, drip drip of daily sexism that reinforces the absurdly damaging gender norms of our society. In Rage Becomes Her, Soraya Chemaly argues that our anger is not only justified, it is also an active part of the solution. We are so often encouraged to resist our rage or punished for justifiably expressing it, yet how many remarkable achievements would never have gotten off the ground without the kernel of anger that fueled them? Approached with conscious intention, anger is a vital instrument, a radar for injustice and a catalyst for change. On the flip side, the societal and cultural belittlement of our anger is a cunning way of limiting and controlling our power—one we can no longer abide.’

Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education by Jay T. Dolmage:

‘Academic Ableism brings together disability studies and institutional critique to recognize the ways that disability is composed in and by higher education, and rewrites the spaces, times, and economies of disability in higher education to place disability front and center. For too long, argues Jay Timothy Dolmage, disability has been constructed as the antithesis of higher education, often positioned as a distraction, a drain, a problem to be solved. The ethic of higher education encourages students and teachers alike to accentuate ability, valorize perfection, and stigmatize anything that hints at intellectual, mental, or physical weakness, even as we gesture toward the value of diversity and innovation. Examining everything from campus accommodation processes, to architecture, to popular films about college life, Dolmage argues that disability is central to higher education, and that building more inclusive schools allows better education for all.’

(This book strays into more academic categories, but it’s still really great that this sort of book is being written. I personally recognise its value as someone with mental health struggles and who has had to fight ironically in the legal sphere for myself in terms of finding support within my own career moving forward as a lawyer/legal academic. I think the fact that the narrative that disabilities are seen as the antithesis of secondary education despite claims of diversity is something that all university students need to guard themselves against, or at least educate themselves on, in order to work against some systems that even though they espouse equality, might not have their best interests at heart.

I’ve ironically found this especially terrible in law, where my first term of law school I was told ‘girls like you don’t go to law school,’ followed by constant questioning by the community at large after graduate that any hint of mental weakness equates to being unfit to practice law. This is despite the majority of lawyers having mental health problems, if not full blown addictions. It’s honestly why I’m pivoting back to academia (law prof), or moving to practice for the government (which enforces union restrictions on how long a lawyer can actually work, where firms just actually work them to death without union protections ironically; ugh. My whole point is, I’m not ashamed of having mental health problems in a field largely categorised by achievements in secondary education. I feel no reason to hide it, even though people tell me to. If someone is ashamed of me over something I had no control over developing, then I probably don’t want to be involved with them, do I? (A good method I recommend; it may cut off some superficial ‘friends’/’opportunities,’ but it leads to those who truly understand what a mental health disability may entail, and how strong you are for overcoming it).

White Fragility: Why It’s so Hard to for White People to Talk about Racism by Robin DiAngelo:

The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality.

In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people’ (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.

Two Mental Health-Related Books:

Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving by Celeste Headlee:

‘We work feverishly to make ourselves happy. So why are we so miserable?

Despite our constant search for new ways to optimize our bodies and minds for peak performance, human beings are working more instead of less, living harder not smarter, and becoming more lonely and anxious. We strive for the absolute best in every aspect of our lives, ignoring what we do well naturally and reaching for a bar that keeps rising higher and higher. Why do we measure our time in terms of efficiency instead of meaning? Why can’t we just take a break?

In Do Nothing, award-winning journalist Celeste Headlee illuminates a new path ahead, seeking to institute a global shift in our thinking so we can stop sabotaging our well-being, put work aside, and start living instead of doing. As it turns out, we’re searching for external solutions to an internal problem. We won’t find what we’re searching for in punishing diets, productivity apps, or the latest self-improvement schemes. Yet all is not lost - we just need to learn how to take time for ourselves, without agenda or profit, and redefine what is truly worthwhile.

Pulling together threads from history, neuroscience, social science, and even paleontology, Headlee examines long-held assumptions about time use, idleness, hard work, and even our ultimate goals. Her research reveals that the habits we cling to are doing us harm; they developed recently in human history, which means they are habits that can, and must, be broken. It’s time to reverse the trend that’s making us all sadder, sicker, and less productive, and return to a way of life that allows us to thrive.’

(I just read this book lately and I love it; it’s really follows the history of how we’ve come to this point where we can’t shut off our brains, and we see ourselves in this really puritanical, commercialist manner: How we define ourselves by how much we produce, and if we fall short of this goal by being (ironically) human, we berate ourselves for it. This really has let me shift my mentality towards a much healthier, less ‘workaholic’ mode in my COVID downtime, and really helped me move towards a healthier lifestyle in the jobs I’m searching for now that I’ve left school. Recommended for anyone taking the big leap into the full time work world).

Chained to the Desk by Bryan Robinson:

‘Americans love a hard worker. The worker who toils eighteen-hour days and eats meals on the run between appointments is usually viewed with a combination of respect and awe. But for many, this lifestyle leads to family problems, a decline in work productivity, and ultimately to physical and mental collapse. Intended for anyone touched by what Robinson calls “the best-dressed problem of the twenty-first century,” Chained to the Desk provides an inside look at workaholism’s impact on those who live and work with work addicts—partners, spouses, children, and colleagues—as well as the appropriate techniques for clinicians who treat them. Originally published in 1998, this groundbreaking book from best-selling author and widely respected family therapist Bryan E. Robinson was the first comprehensive portrait of the workaholic. In this new and fully updated third edition, Robinson draws on hundreds of case reports from his own original research and years of clinical practice. The agonies of workaholism have grown all the more challenging in a world where the computer, cell phone, and iPhone allow twenty-four-hour access to the office, even on weekends and from vacation spots. Adult children of workaholics describe their childhood pain and the lifelong legacies they still carry, and the spouses or partners of workaholics reveal the isolation and loneliness of their vacant relationships. Employers and business colleagues discuss the cost to the company when workaholism dominates the workplace. Chained to the Desk both counsels and consoles. It provides a step-by-step guide to help readers spot workaholism, understand it, and recover.’

(I also just read this one, and it’s an older book edited to a third edition, and it shows. However, it also does the important work of demonstrating how workaholics should be treated in the same category as anyone else who gets any sort of ‘high’ from something, like drugs or alcoholism. It opens with the quote (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Workaholicism is the best dressed addiction.” It’s the one we’re rewarded for constantly, not matter what mental toll it takes on us. While I’m not exactly ready to sign up for a twelve-step plan (and some of the chapters are specifically for spouses and children), it still dishes out some really good advice about feeding other areas of our lives and how to not simply focus on work.)

From My Undergraduate Degree (Classics and Double Minor in English and German Literature, with a little World Literature thrown in for good measure):

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe:

THINGS FALL APART tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society. The second story, which is as modern as the first is ancient, and which elevates the book to a tragic plane, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world through the arrival of aggressive, proselytizing European missionaries. These twin dramas are perfectly harmonized, and they are modulated by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul. THINGS FALL APART is the most illuminating and permanent monument we have to the modern African experience as seen from within.

(This is a classic of African Literature, and what I wrote my world literature paper on in first year. It really is a story about the affect of a fall of one culture, where Okonkwo is the prime example of what a ‘man’ may be in this society, to how this society (and African societies as a whole) are affected by European colonialism. How one man can be seen as a paradigm of perfection at one point in time, and the scourge of the earth at another, when he stubbornly holds to his ideals, no matter how flawed they may be. It’s a book I remember reading the ending of, and it’s a theme for all three of these books, and just looking down and literally letting out an, “Ooooooooh~~~~” xD That’s really my ‘tell’ of a good book. I haven’t reread it since then, but it’s always stuck with me).

Animal Farm by George Orwell:

‘Perhaps one of the most influential allegories of the 20th century, George Orwell's Animal Farm has made its way into countless schoolrooms and libraries, and has been the inspiration of several films. Written in 1945, before Orwell's conceptually similar 1984, Animal Farm's world consists of anthropomorphized farm animals as they attempt to create an ideal society--it becomes dystopian as the flaws of the ideology seep out. Like 1984, Orwell meant for Animal Farm to represent a Communist state, and to depict its downfalls. With a message that is not soon to be forgotten, Animal Farm reminds us that "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."’

(It’s stereotypical and you’ve probably read it, but I still love this book to pieces and literally have an Animal Farm pin on my bag xD If you haven’t read it, read it: It also has the OhhhOOohhh~ effect xD)

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury:

‘Ray Bradbury's internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 is a masterwork of 20th-century literature set in a bleak, dystopian future.

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family". But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television. When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.’

(What do I have to say by this point? Another Ooooh~ effect book xD)

#oh my god it's 4:21am #but I enjoyed this way too much as well xD #hope this was along the lines of what you were looking for! <#personal #anonymoose #literature #recommendations #future reference

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cactusnotes · 4 years

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Cultural Globalisation

Cultures and traditions, through globalisation, have been intermingling, creasing a whole array of good and bad impacts, the base for striking debates, and for me importantly: a chunk of what my exams are probably going to be on. Well, here are my notes and case studies:

In 1959, Fidel Castro declared Cuba to be a communist country, separated from Western capitalism. It remained isolated for 50 years, relying on subsidies from communist USSR until 1991, when it collapsed. Cuba seemed to have no other option but to allow in tourism to develop its economy, resulting in increasing awareness of other cultures.

In 2008, Fidel Castro resigned, and his brother took over, and decided to weaken communism. Free enterprise businesses were allowed to set up, in a relaxed communism that somewhat reflected China’s. Since 2012, Cubans could buy and sell houses, take out loans and start businesses, at the loss of state-employment guarantees and state-owned farmland was sold. This allowed USA-Cuban relations to improve. However, it has increased divisions, with some wealthy Cuban entrepreneurs living in luxury, while some live in tumble-down houses, with no variety in their simple diet--bread, eggs and plantain and state rations. This is as differences in wealth, and person leads to different chances of success. From then, it’s positive feedback, as the poor cannot help their kids do better. Capitalists too, don’t have such incentive to help their workers.

Today, Cuba is in a state of change. Tourists, TV and the internet have allowed Cubans to broaden their knowledge of the wider world, and learn about the challenges to their values and traditions, so globalisation is diluting Cuban culture. This cultural erosion has also led to a detriment in the environment, with the coral reefs at risk as beach-side tourist resorts are erupted. This process is called cultural diffusion: Western attitudes and values have spread to Cuba, and also to around the world. Maintaining a strong Cuban identity is very difficult.

The economy changes, ways of life changes, attitudes and values change. Global changes are impacting how people view the world, and these global changes can be seen on a local level: called glocal cultures. British cities have been transformed by inwards migration to hubs of cultural diversity, with its own new character, new identity, compared to just a mix of others. These areas are called ethnic enclaves, with some examples being Indian populations in London, South East, and East of England.

There are several key ideas surrounding this concept of globalisation of society: culture is the ideas, customs and social practices of a particular people or society; cultural diffusion is the spread of cultural beliefs and activities from one group (ethnicities, religions, nationalities) to another through communication, transport and technology; cultural erosion is when cultural diversity is reduced through popularisation; cultural imperialism is when one culture of a nation is promoted over another, otherwise known as westernisation.

The main culprits of cultural imperialism, westernisation and americanisation are, of course, Europe and North America, turning western culture into a global culture. The factors amplifying this today include TNCs, tourism, global media and migration. The main protector of individual cultures is language: things don’t translate straight into each other, something is lost in translation. But as the same groups control global media, which impacts language, there is increasingly common vocabulary. Global homogenisation is the process of culture everywhere becoming one.

News Corp, owned by Rupert Murdoch, impacts political and cultural thinking worldwide. They have 101 newspapers in Australia (national and suburban); four in the Uk including The Times and The Sun; over 25 papers in the USA including The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal and a 33% share in Russia’s leading financial times paper. Television wise: Fox is theirs; My Network TV; channels in Eastern Europe, Israel, Indonesia and NZ. Their satellites are: BSkyB in the UK, Foxtel in Aus, SKY in NZ/Ita/Ger and StarTV in Asia. Politically, Fox TV in the USA openly supports the Republican Party, while every winning party in the UK since 1979 has been promoted by the Sun (EW, WHY UK?).

IT and digital communication means that the rate and desire of consumption has changed, and the products themselves have changed, as hybrid products are on the rise, where global TNCs create a cultural mix. What we consume generally is based on the work of small groups of big TNCs. 90% of the music market is owned by five companies: EMI, Universal, AOL, Time Warner, SonyBMG. They’ve focused on cutting the range of successful artists: it’s easier to promote one than promote several. This one becomes universal, rather than having different, local artists, contributing to homogenisation in the music world. Globalisation is the new term for cultural imperialism, and helps this musical homogenisation as it promotes the spread of TNCs due to easier connections to promote one thing worldwide, and distribute one product rather than just producing local music.

Some may consider the change of value as a good thing (the fact that the textbook author portrays this as good literally demonstrates this westernisation, as he proposes that these values are right. Don’t get me wrong, I 100% agree that these values are good, but the fact that he’s portraying them positively is literally proof of what he’s saying and it’s funny. Or is that just me? Just me, sorry, ignore this). One of these is the attitude to disability. In China, 2011, official data reported that only 25% of disabled people could find employment. They were stigmatised, marginalised, abused. Yet, in 2012, they won the paralympics. This helps to destigmatize disability (but boy, have we got far to go!) as described by disabled Australian TV presenter Adam Hills: “Sydney was the first Paralympics to treat Paralympians as equals. London was the first to treat them as heros”. The West is adopting more liberal ideas on ethical issues, such as gay rights (gay rights!), and we can see that homogenisation is far off from total control, with how this contrasts with attitudes in places like Russia and the Middle East.

There is obviously resistance to globalisation. I personally feel like these notes do portray it as negative until the last few paragraphs. It’s perceived to be exploitation of people and the environment. The general criticisms link to: the environment, third world debt, animal rights, child-labour, anarchism, and mostly anti-capitalism and opposition to TNCs. There are many anti-globalisation and environmental pressure groups rejecting globalised culture and TNCs especially (like tax avoidance). The Occupy is one such group, and held demonstrations in cities like London and New York (now that is ironic). The main targets for anti-globalisation movements are the WTO, IMF and World Bank, as well as large US TNCs like McDonald and Starbucks, on the exploitation of the workers, and environment, making it easier for the rich to get away with wrong, and erasing cultures (Americanisation).

Anti-globalisation and rejection of cultural diffusion can even occur on a governmental level. Iran confiscated Barbie Dolls for being un-islamic in the 2000s, but ended up liberalised due to a need for international assistance in dealing with radicalism, and the youth still accessing banned social media, like Twitter and Facebook. Until the 2000s, France led the anti-globalisation movement, limiting broadcasting of foreign material--40% of broadcasts had to be French and no more than 55% American film imports--but has had to liberalise this due to internet downloading of media and due to successful TNCs from France, like EDF energy.

In Norway, for hundreds of years, local fishermen have hunted whales and the food source was considered part of their tradition and culture. The Norwegian representatives claimed that their northern coastal villages depended on hunting and fishing for their livelihoods. Although whaling is not a big part of the Norwegian national budget, it is still considered a crucial source of income for those fishermen who need it. They also argued that the global effort to prohibit the hunting of whales amounted to an imposition of other countries' cultural values that contradicted their own, since it cannot be environmental concerns, for the whales they hunted were not endangered--it’s all based on values. The US Department of Commerce has even suggested that trade restrictions be imposed upon Norway, because it was violating the International Whaling Commission's ban on these kinds of whaling activities. Here, the environment, different values and nationalism clash.

Papua New Guinea has over 7000 cultural groups, with different languages, diets, etc. living in different villages or hamlets, and generally sustained by subsidence farming, fishing and collection. People who are skilled and also generous in getting food are well respected. Then, colonisation meant tribal tensions were crushed, and people were used on plantations and integrated into a new economic and political system. Christianity and western ideals have come forth, with value being placed in well-educated and successful workers, and intermarriage between tribes has lead to losses of languages and direct cultural conflict. Mining took place in one tribal area, meant to benefit all, but the local tribe was doubtful, and resented those on the mainland for allowing the Aussies and Brits to come in and mine. They developed into a revolutionary army, causing conflict in the 1990s, fighting between citizens, youth gangs, riots, looting, returning tribal warfare and huge law and order problems.

The USA and UK have faced increasing nationalisation as a political movement. These are potentially seen in things like the Brexit vote, and election of Trump. Some follow it due to the dilution of their native culture and loss of sovereignty, others due to the low-income and low-level education people in HICs feel as though they have been left out of the benefits of globalisation. While it has the same benefits of protectionism, nationalism can lead to negative impacts, most notably through marginalisation/persecution of ethnic minority groups, ironically emphasising the whole trope and reason for cultural imperialism in the first place.

#Geography / Cactus #Human Geography / Cactus #Globalisation / Cactus #Globalisation #Culture #Capitalism #Cultural erosion #Cultural diffusion #TNCs

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vulturesandhawks · 2 years

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Eight Benefits Of Hiring A Security Company In Los Angeles

Companies are susceptible to all kinds of risks such as technological, financial and political risks, as well as social natural, and so on. Some risks cannot be prevented and must be managed. However, certain risks can be mitigated in some ways, such as your security business.

Los Angeles security companies can be contracted out or hired to protect your business from attacks like robbery, fire, terrorist attacks, and other threats to your security.

Here are some benefits of hiring a security company in Los Angeles

Around the Clock Security

The hiring or contracting of an expert in security allows you to be protected 24/7, or as requested regardless of your usual working hours. So, whether your facility is open all day or night, or your business operates from early morning until late at night the security company home security will be able to continue providing the services to ensure your security. They will even work during weekends and holidays, so your workers, facilities as well as your valuables will be secured at all times.

Comprehensive Protection Providers Los Angeles

Outsourcing security companies based in Los Angeles usually have large inventories of security devices and systems that they can provide their customers. They also usually have security guards. These services typically include but are not limited to alarm systems such as fire alarm monitoring security guards with video surveillance and more. An integrated security system could help in emergencies and provide recorded evidence.

Expertise

For security firms, safeguarding the property and people of valuables is the core of what they do. Therefore, all of their efforts and budget go toward enhancing their security processes. They stay up-to-date with security technology and use background checks when hiring their employees.

Security officers are well-trained, equipped, and uniformed or not, depending on your particular requirements to assist with professional access control, dispute resolution, quality control checks, First Aid emergency response, and more as needed.

Furthermore, security officers as well as managers and supervisors typically have years of experience in a variety of security fields; you are able to consult them to determine the most effective security solutions for your needs.

Urgent Emergency Response

Los Angeles security companies offer alarm monitoring services that automatically start emergency procedures when an incident is detected. This could include fires or access that is not authorized. Furthermore, their officers on site are equipped with a variety of abilities to deal with most threats, without waiting for directions.

They are trained for handling emergencies such as fires, and are able to swiftly take actions such as alerting everyone living in the area of the threat and ensuring safe evacuation procedures of the building. They also have been trained to deal with different emergencies such as providing First Aid as well as CPR to save lives.

Flexible Scalability

Security companies in Los Angeles have easier access to more security equipment as well as trained security guards should you require temporary extra requirements, such as at functions, VIP events, or for short-term security threats. Security companies offer convenience and flexibility that is hard to measure against the additional costs and hassle in training, outfitting, and putting on uniforms for new security guards.

Consistency in Performance

Security officers, just like other occupation may have to be absent from work due to personal reasons or quit the job to pursue better opportunities. In either case, you will likely be left with a gap in your overall security. Working with a home security companies Los Angeles will ensure that you have the right amount of trained security guards throughout the day. They are able to replace security guards if required.

Spreading Risk and Liability

You may choose to employ your own security staff to supervise access points and perform surveillance. But, you'll be accountable for selecting, training and carrying out security measures in emergency situations. You can also outsource your security needs to a trusted security company located in Los Angeles for a fraction of the risk and protection they provide.

Greater Accountability

Security companies that contract with them are held accountable to the terms of their contract. Security personnel are accountable to the managers of their clients and must report to their employers (security management of the company).

Final Note

Be aware that inadequacy or inadequate security measures can be as damaging to your business's security as not having any security. To prevent and reduce the security risks for your company, you have to find the right security company in Los Angeles that is competent and accountable.

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Tuesday, March 30, 2021

‘Vaccine passports’ are on the way (Washington Post) The Biden administration and private companies are working to develop a standard way of handling credentials—often referred to as “vaccine passports”—that would allow Americans to prove they have been vaccinated against the novel coronavirus as businesses try to reopen. The effort has gained momentum amid President Biden’s pledge that the nation will start to regain normalcy this summer and with a growing number of companies—from cruise lines to sports teams—saying they will require proof of vaccination before opening their doors again. The passports are expected to be free and available through applications for smartphones, which could display a scannable code similar to an airline boarding pass. Americans without smartphone access should be able to print out the passports, developers have said. U.S. officials say they are grappling with an array of challenges, including data privacy and health-care equity. They want to make sure all Americans will be able to get credentials that prove they have been vaccinated, but also want to set up systems that are not easily hacked or passports that cannot be counterfeited, given that forgeries are already starting to appear. Other countries are racing ahead with their own passport plans, with the European Union pledging to release digital certificates that would allow for summer travel.

Remote Work Is Here to Stay. Manhattan May Never Be the Same. (NYT) A year after the coronavirus sparked an extraordinary exodus of workers from office buildings, what had seemed like a short-term inconvenience is now clearly becoming a permanent and tectonic shift in how and where people work. Employers and employees have both embraced the advantages of remote work, including lower office costs and greater flexibility for employees, especially those with families. Beyond New York, some of the country’s largest cities have yet to see a substantial return of employees, even where there have been less stringent government-imposed lockdowns, and some companies have announced that they are not going to have all workers come back all the time. In recent weeks, major corporations, including Ford in Michigan and Target in Minnesota, have said they are giving up significant office space because of their changing workplace practices, while Salesforce, whose headquarters occupies the tallest building in San Francisco, said only a small fraction of its employees will be in the office full time. But no city in the United States, and perhaps the world, must reckon with this transformation more than New York, and in particular Manhattan, an island whose economy has been sustained, from the corner hot dog vendor to Broadway theaters, by more than 1.6 million commuters every day.

Billions of Cicadas Soon to Emerge From Underground (NYT) A few months of quarantine during the coronavirus pandemic? That’s nothing for a swarm of cicadas that have been underground since 2004. In the time that the United States has seen the Boston Red Sox break an 86-year World Series drought, five presidential elections, a deadly pandemic and an insurrection, these creatures have been minding their own business, burrowed in the soil. Now billions of cicadas, from a group known as Brood X, are expected to emerge in the next few weeks, just in time to help orchestrate the soundtrack of summer. Brood X is expected to emerge in about 18 states, scientists say.

Against the odds, Cuba could become a coronavirus vaccine powerhouse (Washington Post) Cuban leader Fidel Castro vowed to build a biotech juggernaut in the Caribbean, advancing the idea in the early 1980s with six researchers in a tiny Havana lab. Forty years later, the communist island nation could be on the cusp of a singular breakthrough: Becoming the world’s smallest country to develop not just one, but multiple coronavirus vaccines. Five vaccine candidates are in development, two in late-stage trials with the goal of a broader rollout by May. Should they prove successful, the vaccines would be an against-the-odds feat of medical prowess — as well as a public relations coup — for an isolated country of 11 million that was added back to the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism in the final days of the Trump administration. Cuban officials say they’re developing cheap and easy-to-store serums. They are able to last at room temperature for weeks, and in long-term storage as high as 46.4 degrees, potentially making them a viable option for low-income, tropical countries that have been pushed aside by bigger, wealthier nations in the international scrum for coronavirus vaccines. If Phase 3 trials are positive, Cuban authorities said this week, they would move to a vast “intervention study” that would inoculate almost all the residents of Havana, or 1.7 million people, by May. By August, they would aim to reach 60 percent of the national population, with the rest getting doses by year’s end.

Ukraine wants to show Biden it’s serious about ending ‘oligarch era.’ That’s not so easy. (Washington Post) The word of the moment in Ukrainian politics is “de-oliharkhizatsia” or de-oligarchization: a renewal of the long-held goal—and sometimes only faint hope—to free the country’s political system of domination by the ultrarich. Whether President Volodymyr Zelensky can deliver may set the tone for relations with the Biden administration. “The threat from within [Ukraine] is corruption . . . a lack of institutions that can effectively manage the country,” said Antony Blinken, now secretary of state, during his confirmation hearing in January. “If that threat continues, [it’s] going to be very difficult for them to build a viable democracy.” But Zelensky, a 43-year-old former comedian, has made only limited headway against the oligarchs’ grip since his election two years ago. The oligarchs’ power in Ukraine reaches deep into areas such energy, mining and media—giving a clique of billionaires the clout to shape political and policy decisions. Ukraine is on notice that greater Western aid and international loans are contingent on trimming back their influence. A $5 billion loan deal from the International Monetary Fund is on hold as the Ukrainians try to convince IMF officials that they are serious about tackling corruption.

Inside Myanmar’s Army: ‘They See Protesters as Criminals’ (NYT) Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, which says it has a standing force of up to half a million men, is often portrayed as a robotic rank of warriors bred to kill. Since ousting Myanmar’s civilian leadership last month, setting off nationwide protests, it has only sharpened its savage reputation, killing more than 420 people and assaulting, detaining or torturing thousands of others, according to a monitoring group. On Saturday, the deadliest day since the Feb. 1 coup, security forces killed more than 100 people, according to the United Nations. Among them were seven children, including two 13-year-old boys and a 5-year-old boy. In-depth interviews with four officers, two of whom have deserted since the coup, paint a complex picture of an institution that has thoroughly dominated Myanmar for six decades. From the moment they enter boot camp, Tatmadaw troops are taught that they are guardians of a country that will crumble without them. They occupy a privileged state within a state, in which soldiers live, work and socialize apart from the rest of society, imbibing an ideology that puts them far above the civilian population. The officers described being constantly monitored by their superiors, in barracks and on Facebook. A steady diet of propaganda feeds them notions of enemies at every corner, even on city streets. The cumulative effect is a bunkered worldview, in which orders to kill unarmed civilians are to be followed without question. “They see protesters as criminals because if someone disobeys or protests the military, they are criminal,” said Captain Tun Myat Aung, an officer who defected to the ranks of the anti-coup demonstrators

Thai police vow more protest arrests after nearly 100 detained (Reuters) Thai police on Monday vowed to arrest more people participating in anti-government protests after detaining nearly 100 at a demonstration a day earlier, citing a law restricting gatherings to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Another protest demanding the release of jailed activists is planned for late Monday afternoon, raising prospects for another confrontation with activists calling for an end to military dominance of politics and reform of the powerful monarchy. Dozens of people have been detained at protests in recent months under disease control and public order laws, but Sunday’s protest represented one of the largest number of arrests at a single rally.

Metro Manila, outlying provinces go on lockdown (AP) Philippine officials placed Metropolitan Manila and four outlying provinces, a region of more than 25 million people, back to a lockdown Monday at the height of the Lenten and Easter holiday travel season as they scrambled to control an alarming surge in coronavirus infections. Only workers, government security and health personnel and residents on urgent errands would be allowed out of homes during the weeklong restrictions, which prohibited leisure trips and religious gatherings that forced the dominant Roman Catholic church to shift all its Holy Week and Easter activities online. The renewed lockdown brought President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration under fire for what critics say was its failed handling of the pandemic.

Lebanon could sink like Titanic, parliament speaker says (Reuters) Influential parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri said on Monday that Lebanon would sink like the Titanic if it could not form a government. Prime minister-designate Saad al-Hariri and President Michel Aoun have been at loggerheads over a new cabinet for months, dashing hopes of a reversal of Lebanon’s deepening financial meltdown. Parliament was due to discuss a $200 million emergency fund to pay for fuel for Lebanon’s electricity company. The energy ministry has said there are no funds to pay for imports beyond March. The Zahrani power plant, one of Lebanon’s four main electricity producers, has shut down after its fuel ran out.

Pleas for more aid to Syria (AP) At age 19, Fatima al-Omar is at her wits’ end. In the last year alone, she lost her home to fighting in Syria’s last rebel-held enclave and her mother was diagnosed with cancer. She became the sole breadwinner for her mother, three siblings and grandmother as they moved around between shelters. Then the coronavirus struck, aggravating conditions in northwest Syria just as new fighting had uprooted 1 million people—the biggest wave of displacement in the country’s 10-year war. By late 2020, al-Omar contracted COVID-19, costing her the last job she had picking olives. She hasn’t been able to find work since and is now at risk of another eviction. Despite the worsening humanitarian situation across war-ravaged Syria, it’s been getting tougher every year to raise money from global donors to help people like al-Omar. The aid community is bracing for significant shortfalls ahead of a donor conference that starts Monday in Brussels and is being co-hosted by the United Nations and the European Union. Pledges were already dropping off before the coronavirus pandemic mainly due to donor fatigue. Officials fear that with the global economic downturn spurred by the pandemic, international assistance for Syria is about to take a new hit just when it is needed most. Earlier this month, a U.N. appeal for aid to Yemen, the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, was less than 50% funded, in what U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres called a disappointment. According to the U.N., 13.4 million people in Syria, more than half the country’s pre-war population, need assistance. That’s a 20% increase from last year.

Whatever Floats the Boat (Foreign Policy) The Ever Given, the super container vessel that ran aground in the Suez Canal last Tuesday was successfully refloated in the early hours of Monday morning following days of excavation attempts. A team of high-powered tugboats appeared to have ultimately made the difference, after days of work from excavators and dredgers to free the ship after it became wedged in the Egyptian sand. The boat will now head north for further inspection. Meanwhile, navigation is to resume “immediately” afterward, according to the Suez Canal Authority. Mohab Mamish, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s adviser for the Suez Canal, said it will take roughly a week to clear the remaining ships out of the canal once the Ever Given is under way. Dealing with the backlog that has accumulated north and south of the canal will likely take more than twice as long. The refloating heads off more economic damage for Egypt, which was losing roughly $15 million in fees for each day the canal was not operational.

While the world tore its hair out over the Suez, Russia saw an opportunity (Washington Post) Russian officials are seizing on the Suez Canal blockage saga to promote its Northern Sea Route, an ambitious infrastructure plan being pushed by President Vladimir Putin that aims to capitalize on the polar ice melt from global warming by opening up Arctic shipping and development. Russia’s Energy Ministry said Monday that the days-long blockage of the canal by Rotterdam-bound Ever Given showed that its Northern Sea Route (NSR) and gas and oil pipelines were reliable, secure and competitive “in comparison to alternative routes.” Russia last year released a sweeping plan to open up the Arctic shipping route, which includes building a fleet of dozens of nuclear icebreakers and other ships, mapping natural resources in the region and developing airports, ports and railways in northern Russia. In 2020, Russia’s meteorological agency said the ice cover in the Arctic sea route had reached a record low.

As Militants Seize Mozambique Gas Hub, a Dash for Safety Turns Deadly (NYT) As gunshots rang out across a port town in northeastern Mozambique on Friday afternoon, nearly 200 people sheltering inside the Amarula Palma hotel confronted a devastating reality: The armed insurgents outside the hotel’s doors had all but taken control of the town and there was no one coming to save them any time soon. For two days, hundreds of insurgents in the gas-rich region had been laying siege to the coastal town of Palma, firing indiscriminately at civilians, hunting down government officials and setting buildings ablaze as security forces tried in vain to repel them. The violence sent thousands of people fleeing, with some rushing to the beach, where a ragtag fleet of cargo ships, tugboats and fishing vessels was ferrying people to safety. But at the hotel, with daylight hours dwindling, the local residents and foreign gas workers who remained faced an impossible choice: Either wait inside, defenseless, for a promised evacuation in the morning, or try to make it to the beach. In a desperate dash, dozens of people crammed into a 17-vehicle convoy and left the hotel for the oceanfront. Only seven vehicles completed the trip. Militants ambushed the convoy after it left the hotel grounds, setting on the occupants of the cars. Many arrived at the beach bloodied. Many never made it at all. American officials said 40 to 50 foreigners alone were feared dead in the attack. By Saturday night the insurgents had completely overrun the town, leaving scores of people unaccounted for and feared dead.

Tree mortality (The Guardian) Since 2010, 129 million trees are estimated to have died in California’s national forests alone. Around the globe, research has suggested that the tree mortality rate in some temperate and tropical forests has doubled or more in recent decades. While normally the life cycle of forests dictates that the ecosystem regrows after forest fires, this is no longer the case. Across the globe, researchers have found that large areas of trees and other plant life have stopped regrowing following wildfires. Forest mortality researchers say while this does not mark the end of the forests, it may well be the end of many forests as we’ve known them. Iconic species such as Giant Sequoias and Joshua trees are succumbing to the effects of climate change in remarkable numbers, while massive ecosystems such as the Amazon rainforest and Siberia’s boreal forests are also suffering. The main factors for increased forest mortality include a hotter climate and increased vulnerability to insects and disease. Researchers have acknowledged ambiguity in their tree mortality predictions, but widespread health problems in forests are prompting a broad and looming sense of disquiet.

#headlines #news

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igotapps · 3 years

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N10-006 Exam Questions

Question: 1

A technician needs to limit the amount of broadcast traffic on a network and allow different segments to communicate with each other. Which of the following options would satisfy these requirements?

A. Add a router and enable OSPF. B. Add a layer 3 switch and create a VLAN. C. Add a bridge between two switches. D. Add a firewalland implement proper ACL.

Answer: B

Question: 2

The network install is failing redundancy testing at the MDF. The traffic being transported is a mixture of multicast and unicast signals. Which of the following would BEST handle the rerouting caused by the disruption of service?

A. Layer 3 switch B. Proxy server C. Layer 2 switch D. Smart hub

Answer: A

Question: 3

Which of the following network devices use ACLs to prevent unauthorized access into company systems?

A. IDS B. Firewall C. Content filter D. Load balancer

Answer: B

Question: 4

Which of the following is used to define how much bandwidth can be used by various protocols on the network?

A. Traffic shaping B. High availability C. Load balancing D. Fault tolerance

Answer: A

Question: 5

Which of the following is used to authenticate remote workers who connect from offsite? (Select TWO).

A. OSPF B. VTP trunking C. Virtual PBX D. RADIUS E. 802.1x

Answer: D,E

Question: 6

Which of the following provides accounting, authorization, and authentication via a centralized privileged database, as well as, challenge/response and password encryption?

A. Multifactor authentication B. ISAKMP C. TACACS+ D. Network access control

Answer: C

Question: 7

A technician needs to set aside addresses in a DHCP pool so that certain servers always receive the same address. Which of the following should be configured?

A. Leases B. Helper addresses C. Scopes D. Reservations

Answer: D

Question: 8

Joe, a network technician, is setting up a DHCP server on a LAN segment. Which of the following options should Joe configure in the DHCP scope, in order to allow hosts on that LAN segment using dynamic IP addresses, to be able to access the Internet and internal company servers? (Select THREE).

A. Default gateway B. Subnet mask C. Reservations D. TFTP server E. Lease expiration time of 1 day F. DNS servers G. Bootp

Answer: A,B,F

Question: 9

A technician just completed a new external website and setup access rules in the firewall. After some testing, only users outside the internal network can reach the site. The website responds to a ping from the internal network and resolves the proper public address. Which of the following could the technician do to fix this issue while causing internal users to route to the website using an internal address?

A. Configure NAT on the firewall B. Implement a split horizon DNS C. Place the server in the DMZ D. Adjust the proper internal ACL

Answer: B

Question: 10

When configuring a new server, a technician requests that an MX record be created in DNS for the new server, but the record was not entered properly. Which of the following was MOST likely installed that required an MX record to function properly?

A. Load balancer B. FTP server C. Firewall DMZ D. Mail server

Answer: D

Question: 11

Which of the following protocols uses label-switching routers and label-edge routers to forward traffic?

A. BGP B. OSPF C. IS-IS D. MPLS

Answer: D

Question: 12

Which of the following is MOST likely to use an RJ-11 connector to connect a computer to an ISP using a POTS line?

A. Multilayer switch B. Access point C. Analog modem D. DOCSIS modem

Answer: C

Question: 13

An administrator notices an unused cable behind a cabinet that is terminated with a DB-9 connector. Which of the following protocols was MOST likely used on this cable?

A. RS-232 B. 802.3 C. ATM D. Tokenring

Answer: A

Question: 14

Which of the following connection types is used to terminate DS3 connections in a telecommunications facility?

A. 66 block B. BNC C. F-connector D. RJ-11

Answer: B

Question: 15

An F-connector is used on which of the following types of cabling?

A. CAT3 B. Single mode fiber C. CAT5 D. RG6

Answer: D

Question: 16

A network technician must utilize multimode fiber to uplink a new networking device. Which of the following Ethernet standards could the technician utilize? (Select TWO).

A. 1000Base-LR B. 1000Base-SR C. 1000Base-T D. 10GBase-LR E. 10GBase-SR F. 10GBase-T

Answer: B,E

Question: 17

CORRECT TEXT You have been tasked with testing a CAT5e cable. A summary of the test results can be found on the screen.

Step 1: Select the tool that was used to create the cable test results. Step 2: Interpret the test results and select the option that explains the results. After you are done with your analysis, click the ‘Submit Cable Test Analysis’ button.

Question: 18

A network engineer needs to set up a topology that will not fail if there is an outage on a single piece of the topology. However, the computers need to wait to talk on the network to avoid congestions. Which of the following topologies would the engineer implement?

A. Star B. Bus C. Ring D. Mesh

Answer: C

Question: 19

A network topology that utilizes a central device with point-to-point connections to all other devices is which of the following?

A. Star B. Ring C. Mesh D. Bus

Answer: A

Question: 20

Which of the following network topologies has a central, single point of failure?

A. Ring B. Star C. Hybrid D. Mesh

Answer: B

Question: 21

Which of the following refers to a network that spans several buildings that are within walking distance of each other?

A. CAN B. WAN C. PAN D. MAN

Answer: A

Question: 22

Which of the following network infrastructure implementations would be used to support files being transferred between Bluetooth-enabled smartphones?

A. PAN B. LAN C. WLAN D. MAN

Answer: A

Source by Monika Bergmann

The post N10-006 Exam Questions appeared first on Development of application specific interactive software.

from Igot Apps https://igotapps.com/n10-006-exam-questions/

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martflows · 3 years

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Benefits of cloud computing that you should know

Cloud Computing Benefits:

Cloud computing has existed for nearly two decades. Despite the fact that it offers many benefits, including cost-benefits and competitive advantages, large numbers of businesses continue to use it without realizing them. A study by International Data Group found that 69% of businesses already use cloud technology in some capacity, while 18% plan to adopt cloud computing solutions at some point. According to Dell, companies that invest heavily in big data, cloud, and mobility enjoy a 53% higher rate of revenue growth than their competition. This data shows that a growing number of tech-savvy companies and industry leaders are recognizing the many benefits of cloud computing. They are also using the technology to improve their businesses, serve customers better, and increase their overall profit margins.

94% of businesses reported an increase in security following the switch to cloud computing.

This all seems to suggest that, given the direction the industry is heading in, it's never been more important to get your head in the cloud.

Cloud computing has been gaining popularity in recent years. It is becoming increasingly difficult for organizations and individuals to keep their critical information, programs, and systems running on their own computers, due to the rapid increase in data usage that has accompanied the transition into the digital 21st Century. This problem has been solved for almost as long as the internet. Cloud computing play important role in problem-solving on the internet. However, it has just recently become widely used by businesses.

Cloud computing works on the same principle as a web-based email client. Users can access all the features and files without needing to store the majority of that system on their computers. Many people use cloud computing services, even though they don't know it. Gmail, Google Drive, and TurboTax are all cloud-based apps. Users send their personal data to the cloud-hosted server, which stores it for later access. These applications are useful for personal use but even more so for businesses who need to access large quantities of data via an online connection.

Employees can, for example, access customer information via cloud CRM software like Salesforce using their smartphones or tablets at home or abroad. It's a huge benefit of cloud computing. They can also share this information quickly with authorized parties around the globe.

There are still leaders who are hesitant to commit to cloud computing solutions for their organizations. We'd like to share the 12 benefits of cloud computing with you in a few moments.

Cost Savings

You are not the only one who is concerned about the cost of cloud computing. 20% of organizations are also worried about the initial costs of cloud computing. However, those trying to evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of cloud computing need to look beyond the initial cost. They also need to consider the ROI.

Cloud computing will allow you to save time and money on project startup by allowing you easy access to your company's data. Cloud-computing services can be paid as you go, so it's not a concern that you'll have to pay for features that you don’t need or want. If you don't use the cloud's features, you won't be spending money.

Pay-as-you-go also applies to the data storage space required to service your clients and stakeholders. This means you will get the exact amount you need and you won't be charged extra for space you don't use. These factors combine to bring lower costs and better returns. Bitglass surveyed half of the CIOs and IT leaders who reported that cloud-based applications resulted in cost savings for 2015.

Quality Control

Poor quality reporting is one of the biggest hindrances to a company's success. All documents can be stored in one location and in one format in a cloud-based platform. You can keep data consistent, avoid human error, and keep track of revisions and updates by having everyone access the same information. However, if the information is managed in silos, employees may accidentally save different versions of documents. This can lead to confusion and diluted data.

Security

Cloud computing is a popular option for many organizations. How can you be sure that files, programs, and other data are protected if they're not kept on-site? What's to stop a cybercriminal from accessing your data remotely?

One, the cloud host's primary job is to monitor security. This is significantly more efficient than an in-house system where organizations must split their efforts among a multitude of IT issues. While most businesses aren't open to the possibility of data theft within their organization, a shockingly large percentage of data thefts happen internally and are committed by employees. It can be safer to keep sensitive information offsite when this is true. This is obviously abstract. Let's look at some solid statistics.

RapidScale claims 94% of businesses experienced an increase in security when switching to the cloud. 91% also claimed that the cloud made it easier for them to comply with government regulations. This increased security can be attributed to the encryption of data that is transmitted over networks and stored on databases. Encryption makes your information less accessible to hackers and anyone else who is not authorized to see it. Cloud-based services can have different security settings depending on who is using them. Only 9% of cloud users can claim disaster recovery within four hours, while 20% of cloud users are capable of doing so in less than four hours.

According to Dell, companies that invest heavily in big data, cloud, and mobility see up to 53% higher revenue growth than their competition.

Mobility

Cloud computing provides mobile access to corporate data via smartphones or devices. This is an excellent way to make sure that everyone is included, especially considering there are over 2.6 billion smartphones worldwide. This feature is available to staff with hectic schedules or those who live far from the corporate office to stay in touch with clients and colleagues.

The cloud allows you to provide easily accessible information to remote sales employees, freelance workers, and other employees who are traveling for a better work/life balance. It's no surprise that companies with employee satisfaction as a priority are 24% more likely than others to increase cloud usage.

Insight

As we continue to move into the digital age, it becomes clearer that "knowledge is strength" is no longer the best adage. Data is money. There are valuable, actionable nuggets hidden within the millions of data about your customers and business processes. It can be difficult to sort through all that data and find the kernels if you don't have the right cloud computing solution.

Cloud-based storage solutions often offer cloud analytics, which allows you to see your data from a bird's eye view. You can track your data and create customized reports to analyze information across the organization. These insights can help you increase efficiency and create action plans to achieve your organizational goals. Sunny Delight, a beverage company, was able to increase profits and reduce staff costs by using cloud-based business insight.

Increased collaboration

Collaboration should be a priority for any business with more than two employees. It is not worth having a team that isn't able to work together. Collaboration is made easy by cloud computing. Cloud computing makes collaboration easy for team members. They can securely view and share information across the platform. Cloud-based services can even offer collaborative social spaces that allow employees to interact with each other, increasing engagement and interest. Although collaboration is possible with or without cloud computing, it won't be as efficient nor easy as with a cloud-computing solution.

Flexibility

Your company has a limited amount of resources to allocate between its various responsibilities. Your current IT solutions will make it difficult for you to focus on customer satisfaction and business goals. Relying on an outside company to manage your IT infrastructure and hosting will allow you to spend more time on the areas of your business that directly impact your bottom line.

Cloud hosting offers more flexibility than hosting on a local server. Cloud-based services can provide extra bandwidth instantly and without the need for a costly (and complex) upgrade to your IT infrastructure. This increased freedom and flexibility can significantly improve the efficiency of your company. According to InformationWeek, 65% of respondents said that "the ability to respond quickly to business needs" was the main reason a company should migrate to the cloud.

Disaster recovery assistance

Control is a key factor in determining the success of any business. No matter how well-informed your company is about its processes, there are always things out of your hands. In today's market, even small amounts of downtime can have a devastating effect. Your services' downtime can lead to loss of productivity, revenue, or a bad reputation.

While there are no ways to avoid or anticipate disasters that could harm your organization, there are things you can do to speed up your recovery. Cloud-based services offer fast data recovery in all types of emergency situations, including natural disasters and power outages. Only 9% of noncloud users can claim disaster recovery within four hours, while 20% of cloud users can claim it in less than four hours. Recent surveys revealed that 43% of IT executives plan to invest in cloud-based disaster recovery systems.

Only 9% could claim the same, whereas 20% of cloud users can claim disaster recovery within 4 hours or less.

Loss Prevention

Your valuable data will be tied to your office computers if your company doesn't invest in cloud computing. Although this may seem like a problem it could lead to permanent data loss if the hardware fails. Computer malfunctions can be a common issue. This could be due to viruses, hardware damage, user error, or simply human error. They can also be lost or stolen, even though they are often misplaced.

You could lose all your information if you don't have access to the cloud. A cloud-based server means that all information uploaded to it is safe and accessible from any computer connected to the internet.

Automatic Software Updates

There is nothing more frustrating than waiting for system updates to be applied to those with a lot of work. Cloud-based apps automatically update and refresh themselves. This saves IT departments from having to do a manual update across the entire organisation. This saves IT staff valuable time and money on consulting outside IT. PCWorld reports that half of the cloud users cite the cloud's ability to use fewer IT resources internally as a benefit.

Competitive Edge

Cloud computing is becoming more popular, but there are still people who prefer to keep everything local. While they have the option to do so, it puts them at a disadvantage when compared with others who can access the cloud. You'll learn more quickly if you adopt a cloud-based solution than your competitors. According to a Verizon survey, 77% of businesses believe cloud technology gives them an advantage. 16% also think this advantage is important.

Sustainability

It's not enough for organizations to simply place a recycle bin in their breakroom to claim they are doing their bit to save the environment. Sustainable business requires solutions that reduce waste at all levels of the company. Cloud hosting is more eco-friendly and leaves less carbon footprint.

Cloud infrastructures promote environmental proactivity by powering virtual services instead of physical products and hardware. This reduces paper waste and improves energy efficiency. It also allows employees to access the internet from anywhere. Based on cloud computing and other virtual data options, a Pike Research report forecasts that data center energy consumption will decrease by 31% between 2010 and 2020.

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healthbetold · 3 years

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SA vaccination call as lockdown hits another state

South Australian health officials urge more people to get COVID-19 vaccinations after a record week of vaccinations at state clinics as parts of Queensland are subject to a snapdown lockdown.

Photo: Tony Lewis / InDaily

Prime Minister Steven Marshall told reporters this morning that South Australia has a “good rate, an increasing rate” of vaccinations, but some people are having trouble booking appointments.

He said SA Health has set up pop-up supermarket stations in areas with lower vaccination rates where people can get help making appointments.

“We want to avoid a lockdown in South Australia,” he said.

“We put in some constraints that we think will help provide extra layers of protection, but the best people can do is take a test when they get sick or develop systems to make sure they use QR codes wherever they go so that they check in and thirdly – if they are authorized – go in and get vaccinated. “

Australia has the lowest vaccination rate of any advanced economy in the OECD, with only about five percent of the population fully vaccinated.

Shadow SA Health Secretary Chris Picton this morning accused Marshall of being dishonest in his comments on the introduction of the vaccine.

“Across the country we’ve had premieres talking about the really bad efforts we’ve seen on the vaccine program that puts us at the bottom of the OECD and, in the 120s, countries around the world for fully vaccinated people.” said.

“Still, here in South Australia, our Prime Minister Steven Marshall went out yesterday and said the introduction of the vaccine had been excellent.

“Of course it’s a race and other countries around the world are doing a lot better than us.”

Commonwealth government data released yesterday shows South Australia has so far administered 217,379 doses of vaccine in state clinics.

The data places South Australia behind NSW, Victoria, Queensland and WA.

“We currently have about 67,000 doses in the state government’s supplies, according to data released by the Commonwealth government yesterday,” said Picton.

“A vaccine left in a state government refrigerator does not protect the community.”

But the chief public health officer, Professor Nicola Spurrier, said last week SA Health vaccinated more than 33,000 people – the largest intake since the pandemic began.

She said the sites would increase their range of Pfizer vaccines and bookings.

“If we look at adults (in South Australia) – that’s 1.1 million – and our vaccination goal is 80 percent, well over a third of those people got their first dose,” she said.

“On average, around 25 percent of the population is eligible for vaccination.”

Spurrier said new evidence showed that the vaccines not only reduce disease severity and hospitalization rates, but also prevent people from becoming infected.

“When you become infected, it (the vaccine) stops transmission between you and another person,” she said.

“That is why we are so keen that everyone is vaccinated.”

It comes after the National Cabinet agreed yesterday to put in place a flawless compensation system that will allow GPs to administer AstraZeneca to all adults regardless of age.

Anyone willing to speak to their doctor about it can now get AstraZeneca vaccination, while Pfizer remains the vaccine of choice for those under 60.

Spurrier said she supported the decision.

“We need to make sure that the vaccine is available and accessible to everyone,” she said.

“Ultimately, with any drug, it is the patient’s choice and as long as they have had a solid discussion and understood the risks and once they have done this with their GP, it is really up to the individual to make that decision.

“I have no particular problem with this announcement.”

Two new coronavirus cases have been discovered in South Australia in the past 24 hours – a woman in their forties and a man in their fifties who have entered from overseas and are currently quarantined at a Medi-Hotel.

The couple are not related to each other.

There are currently eight active cases in South Australia.

“This means that while we are in a good position in South Australia, there is always a risk of transmission in a hotel. For this reason I will support the prime minister who says that vaccination is the best form of protection, ”said Spurrier.

It comes when the Queensland government announced this morning that the state’s southeastern, Townsville, and two islands would initiate a three-day lockdown after two new COVID-19 cases in the community.

The lockdown begins on Tuesday at 6 p.m. and will be lifted on Friday at 6 p.m. unless the situation worsens.

It includes residents of Brisbane, Ipswich, Logan City, Moreton Bay, Redlands, Sunshine Coast, Noosa, Somerset, Lockyer Valley, the Scenic Rim, Gold Coast, Townsville, Magnetic Island, and Palm Island.

Spurrier said she doesn’t want South Australia to be forced into the same situation.

“It’s so damaging, it’s damaging to our economy, it’s awful for us citizens of our state to have these lockdown orders,” she said.

SA enforces local restrictions

State Emergency Coordinator and Police Commissioner Grant Stevens signed a series of new local restrictions last night, which are expected to last for a week.

Masks:

Mask requirement in “high-risk situations” such as in hospitals and care homes for the elderly and the disabled

Mask requirement for people who offer personal care services such as hairdressers

Mask requirement in indoor areas with seating such as cinemas and theaters if their capacity is over 50%

Strongly recommended wearing a mask on public transport, including Ubers and taxis, or any other place where it is not possible to keep the required distance of one person per two square meters

Sealing caps:

A distance requirement of one person per two square meters in all locations

Licensed venues with 50 percent capacity (up from the previous 75 percent cap)

A cap for 150 people at private gatherings, including weddings and funerals

Maximum capacity of 75% in venues with seats

In inpatient elderly care facilities, where less than 70 percent of residents have received an initial dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, a resident is limited to two visitors per day

Food and alcohol consumption:

Food and alcohol consumed indoors must be consumed in licensed locations

Common areas with food and drinks (e.g. buffets) are not permitted

It is not allowed to prepare food in a bar

Activities:

Dancing is not permitted in licensed venues

Singing is not permitted indoors unless the singers are playing or rehearsing or singing in an educational establishment

Shisha / Shisha is not allowed

A COVID Safe Plan is required for fitness, recreational and sports activities

Spurrier said the visitor limit on elderly care facilities was imposed in response to the introduction of the vaccine.

She said 89 percent of the state’s elderly care facilities were unaffected by the restriction as 70 percent of their residents were vaccinated.

“This is just one example of where we are moving nationally and also in South Australia,” she said.

“When we know we have high vaccination rates, we can easily make different decisions about such restrictions.”

Stevens told ABC Radio Adelaide this morning that limiting pubs, clubs, restaurants and cafes to 50 percent of capacity would have the “greatest effect”.

“In the last few months we have worked with three employees per four square meters, which corresponds to about 75 percent of the capacity. So this is a reasonable step backwards for these companies and that will obviously have an impact, ”he said.

“The harsh reality is that we have a worrying situation in New South Wales, Queensland is of particular concern to Professor Spurrier and we are also seeing that the Northern Territory and Western Australia are also taking steps to control a possible outbreak there .

“I think it would be naive to expect that we avoided it completely.”

Stevens said authorities could not give an “absolute guarantee” that the restrictions would only last for seven days, but they were “hopeful” that the week-long deadline would give them enough time to see how other states are doing with theirs Circumvented COVID outbreaks.

“It’s a seven-day goal at this point and hopefully after that seven-day period we can go back to where we were 24 hours ago,” he said.

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Australian Hotels Association SA general manager Ian Horne told InDaily that he “estimated” the impact of the restrictions on the state’s economy would be on the order of $ 30 million.

He said the estimate is based on data from the Center of Economic Studies collected after the three-day lockdown last November.

“The cancellations were the same – we got calls from five-star hotels to caravan parks saying the bookings are just falling off,” he said.

“The immediate impact is on workers whose shifts are being cut or reduced, and this time they have no JobKeeper to fall back on.”

Meanwhile, Colin Shearing, CEO of South Australian Independent Retailers, said some supermarkets are already facing the depletion of toilet paper supplies caused by the return of panic buying.

He told InDaily that supermarkets currently have no shopping restrictions, but “that could change in a moment.”

“It’s just moronic behavior,” he said.

“At the moment there is no problem with the supply, but the problem is that the other states are blocked and we are only a small part of the market, of course South Australia will feel the effects as well.

“It’s not as bad as it was last year when we had a full lockdown, but it’s definitely noticeable.”

SA Pathology tested nearly 7,000 people yesterday.

– with AAP

Local news affairs

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industrialrobots12 · 3 years

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Newbie's Information To Industrial Robots

These robots are used for handling of machine tools, spot welding, die casting, fettling machines, and fuel and arc welding. A cylindrical robot has at least one rotary joint on the base and at least one prismatic joint to connect the links. Along the joint axis, the rotary joint makes use of a rotational movement; alongside the prismatic joint, it moves in a linear movement https://columbiaokura.com/products/industrial-robots/.

They are used primarily within the food, pharmaceutical, and electronic industries. The robot itself is capable of precise motion, making it best for pick-and-place operations. The major concept past consists in using the mechanics of chosen "old" industrial robots and a very reengineering of the controller exhausting and software based on the latest requests from manufacturing automation. As the manufacturing and robotics industries proceed to develop side-by-side, a slew of new job alternatives are being created. Not solely are these kind of jobs extra fascinating, however in addition they take human workers out of probably harmful situations. Industrial robots can accomplish highly repetitive tasks with out the danger of accidents like carpal tunnel syndrome, or be employed for harmful tasks where staff can be uncovered to harmful fumes or environments.

The explanation why firms contemplate investing in a robot system differ widely. All the examples given up to now have centered on one category of producing robotics, which can be classified underneath the umbrella time period manipulation. Manipulation includes using robotic arms, the bases of which are stationary, but which have freedom to maneuver into any position and orientation within reach of the bottom, giving them precision and flexibility. Processes that require hard-to-find expert labor are frequent targets for startups constructing autonomous robotics choices as they give the impression of being to deal with probably the most acute ache points of producers. Painting, sanding, and welding fall into this class, and startups pursuing automation of those processes embody Graymatter Robotics, Omnirobotic, Path Robotics, and Scalable Robotics.

Others in addition, machine operators often use user interface units, usually touchscreen items, which function the operator control panel. The operator can switch from program to program, make adjustments inside a program and also function a host of peripheral gadgets that may be integrated inside the similar robotic system. Much of the bottleneck to reaching automation in manufacturing relates to limitations in the current programming model of commercial robotics.

If profitable, these endeavors will dramatically broaden industrial automation’s accessibility and applicability. The demand for industrial robots has accelerated significantly in current years because of continued technological developments in automation methods and synthetic intelligence. Since 2010, industrial robots have elevated by 9 per cent 12 months and on the finish of 2015 some 1.6 million robots had been deployed by industries worldwide. At their core, robots still do the mundane, monotonous and time-consuming tasks workers don't get pleasure from while providing invaluable data to enhance operations. Without sensors and different recent advancements, none of this is in a position to be potential. AI will reshape the capabilities of robotic tecnhology, but that is still at least a decade sooner or later.

Robotics start-ups are releasing solutions designed to help manufacturers address labor challenges, confront world competition and provide lasting business worth. Examples include merchandise and technologies that enhance the ease and speed of robotics software development, in addition to help sensor-driven autonomy and mobility. In the previous, robots had been asked to do very specific tasks, usually in a fixed location. But at present, the collaborative utility of industrial robots is evolving dramatically, because of environmentally conscious sensors that influence their kind issue and functionality.

The joints assist stabilize the platform over troublesome terrain, ensuring that it is in a position to climb steps with out flipping over. It can be used in uneven terrain, in addition to to transport equipment in a warehouse or workplace constructing. The robot is customizable, that means users can add sensors, robotic arms, or completely different payloads to complete a task. Try our free online training, our on-line software builder, or book your individual on-site collaborative robot demo right now. Find out how Cost-effective, protected, and flexible collaborative robots - or cobots - are making automation easier than ever for companies of each dimension. Products Overview Our household of collaborative robots presents 4 totally different payload options - 3, 5, 12.5 and sixteen kg.

Mature markets just like the US, Japan, and Europe face a manufacturing labor shortage. The scarcity is a structural one, meaning it is not resolved by cyclical occasions like the present financial downturn. As a consequence of these occasions, provide chain resiliency has turn into a entrance burner problem among manufacturing CEOs within the US and elsewhere.

While these could traditionally have been the most typical purposes and kinds of industrial robots, at present's robots are less about their mechanical construction. Earlier generations of robots had to be separated into their very own world, whereas right now they can be integrated into the workforce. Sealer robots are built with numerous robotic arm configurations that allow the robotic to apply adhesives to any type of product. The major profit on this software is elevated high quality, velocity and consistency of the final product.

In industrial robots settings, these advances are letting firms switch some of the most troublesome, harmful, and time-consuming duties from employees to robots. As this trend accelerates, each investors and robotic-component manufacturers are in sturdy positions to entry profit pools. Of course, main technologic advances may disrupt the robotic-component trade, as they've carried out in different sectors, and shift demand in surprising instructions.

Read our case studies and study our companies by visiting our Automotive Robotics and Integration part. Pouring molten metallic, transferring metallic stamps, and loading and unloading CNC machines are all best completed by a robot as they are harmful. When completed constantly with little downtime they can also be a source of main productivity. High consistency and repeatability make robots good for material elimination processes like trimming and chopping. This could probably be in the form of slicing materials, trimming plastic moldings and die castings and even polishing molds.

A report from a Swiss assume tank predicts that while robots will displace seventy five million jobs globally by 2022, they may create 133 million new ones - a web optimistic of 58 million jobs. Automation in manufacturing is extremely cost-effective for companies of all sizes. Rather than outsourcing jobs overseas, smaller firms can use robots to carry out chosen tasks at a lower cost and with greater high quality results than with outsourced employees. Industrial robots offer producers higher consistency and better quality when performing repetitive tasks. This means they're ready to produce high-quality merchandise with little variation and higher consistency than their human counterparts. As China builds its robotic installed base, it'll see a 25 % annual improve in demand for end effectors from 2018 via 2023.

Persistent identifiers are assigned to datasets by digital archives, such as institutional repositories and partners within the Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences (Data-PASS). Please take a couple of moments to learn our guide to publishing permissionsto guarantee you've met all the requirements, so that we are able to process your submission at once. Non-exclusive rights to breed the material within the article or e-book chapter. If you haven’t already learn these, we urge you to take action – they'll help you keep away from the most common publishing ethics points.

We have over 25 years experience integrating robotic methods for a large variety of applications. We are an official FANUC Authorized System Integrator, Yaskawa Motoman Solution Provider, ABB Robotics Integrator, KUKA Robotics System Partner, an Integrator of Universal Robots. In the context of basic robotics, most kinds of industrial robots would fall into the class of robotic arms. The automotive manufacturing business has long been one of the quickest and largest adopters of industrial robotic technology, and that continues to this day. Robots are used in nearly every a half of automotive manufacturing in one way or another, and it stays as some of the extremely automated provide chains in the world. Mobile robots are key to enabling versatile manufacturing, during which manufacturing is break up into discrete processes and production cells working in parallel.

Now, these collaborative industrial robots, or co-bots, work alongside manufacturing facility operators, doing a fraction of all of the stuff human employees do. The proliferation of sensors has made it possible for them to function in an environment with folks and record information about their setting. As a result, we will gather knowledge on each step of the manufacturing course of for full traceability and detailed information evaluation to make better selections for the long run. Cartesian, or gantry, robots have three linear joints that use the Cartesian coordinate system.

Combines AI with the aforementioned approach of demonstration techniques, permitting humans to “show” a robot tips on how to deal with variance. leverage AI algorithms to unravel difficult problems corresponding to grasping unfamiliar objects in random orientations or adapting to different conveyor belt speeds. These companies are addressing the things that have historically precluded automation, like unstructured environments and large SKU counts. and Wandelbots, rely on enter from handheld gadgets that “teach” the robotic what to do as they're guided by a human instructor. A human demonstrates the motions concerned in, for example, picking up items and placing them in a box, and the demonstration system translates those motions into the robot’s native code. Epsilon Pi Tau is the Leading International Honor Society for Technology.

They usually feature the execution of simulations to gauge the feasibility and offline programming in combination. If the system is able to compile and upload native robot code to the robotic controller, the user no longer has to study every producer's proprietary language. Therefore, this approach may be an essential step to standardize programming methods. The setup or programming of motions and sequences for an industrial robotic is typically taught by linking the robot controller to a laptop, desktop pc or network. Reshoring (‘onshoring’ or ‘insourcing’) comes with challenges, key among them is the price of labor.

A Cartesian robotic operates in the X-, Y-, and Z-axes to reach its end place. The chart above lists the entire several varieties of robots out there at present. If nothing else, a yr of COVID-19 has taught us to anticipate the unexpected. Of course, producers have always been extremely attuned to change, however the COVID-19 pandemic hit the manufacturing trade seemingly overnight, inflicting deep and long-lasting impacts. A 12 months later, we are ready to look back and see what manufacturers have learned about how to adapt and succeed in the face of adversity. UR+ Overview UR+ offers access to peripherals and software kits designed on your success.

Many initiatives are underway to deliver manufacturing again to nations just like the United States from the place it has been closely outsourced. As their name suggests, AMRs have the power to navigate autonomously using know-how much like a self-driving automobile. Sensing applied sciences including LiDAR and vision present AMRs with details about their working surroundings. In some sense, the pursuit of autonomy is much like the brain-eye-hand coordination that allows humans to do dynamic duties. The eye and the hand are mimicked by collecting sensor information, specifically 2D and 3D imaginative and prescient knowledge and haptic knowledge . Yet most manufacturing contexts feature some component of unpredictability.

Moreover, the repeatability is different in numerous components of the working envelope and also changes with speed and payload. ISO 9283 specifies that accuracy and repeatability ought to be measured at maximum speed and at maximum payload. But this ends in pessimistic values whereas the robotic might be far more accurate and repeatable at gentle hundreds and speeds. Repeatability in an industrial process can additionally be topic to the accuracy of the end effector, for instance a gripper, and even to the design of the 'fingers' that match the gripper to the object being grasped. For example, if a robot picks a screw by its head, the screw might be at a random angle.

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Thursday, April 29, 2021

Biden to propose free preschool, as speech details emerge (AP) President Joe Biden will call for free preschool for all three- and four-year-old children, a $200 billion investment to be rolled out as part of his sweeping American Families Plan being unveiled Wednesday in an address to Congress. The administration said the historic investment would benefit 5 million children and save the average family $13,000. It calls for providing federal funds to help the states offer preschool, with teachers and other employees earning $15 an hour. The new details are part of Biden’s $1 trillion-plus package, an ambitious next phase of his massive infrastructure investment program, this one focused on so-called human infrastructure—child care, health care, education and other core aspects of the household architecture that undergird everyday life for countless Americans. Together with Biden’s American Jobs Plan, a $2.3 trillion infrastructure investment to be funded by a corporate tax hike, they add up a whopping $4 trillion effort to fulfill his campaign vow to Build Back Better.

Navy SEALs to shift from counterterrorism to global threats (AP) Ten years after they found and killed Osama bin Laden, U.S. Navy SEALs are undergoing a major transition to improve leadership and expand their commando capabilities to better battle threats from global powers like China and Russia. The new plan cuts the number of SEAL platoons by as much as 30% and increases their size to make the teams more lethal and able to counter sophisticated maritime and undersea adversaries. That decision reflects the broader Pentagon strategy to prioritize China and Russia, which are rapidly growing their militaries and trying to expand their influence around the globe. U.S. defense leaders believe that two decades of war against militants and extremists have drained resources, causing America to lose ground against Moscow and Beijing.

Scientist: Extent of DDT dumping in Pacific is ‘staggering’ (AP) Marine scientists say they have found what they believe to be more than 25,000 barrels that possibly contain DDT dumped off the Southern California coast near Catalina Island, where a massive underwater toxic waste site dating back to World War II has long been suspected. The 27,345 “barrel-like” objects were captured in high-resolution images as part of a study by researchers at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. They mapped more than 56 square miles (145 square kilometers) of seafloor between Santa Catalina Island and the Los Angeles coast in a region previously found to contain high levels of the toxic chemical in sediments and in the ecosystem. Historical shipping logs show that industrial companies in Southern California used the basin as a dumping ground until 1972, when the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act, also known as the Ocean Dumping Act, was enacted. Disposing of industrial, military, nuclear and other hazardous waste was a pervasive global practice in the 20th century, according to researchers. The long-term impact on marine life and humans is still unknown, said Scripps chemical oceanographer and professor of geosciences Lihini Aluwihare, who in 2015 co-authored a study that found high amounts of DDT and other man-made chemicals in the blubber of bottlenose dolphins that died of natural causes.

Electric Vehicle Appeal Loses Steam (Nature.com/ArsTechnica) California is the largest market in the US for plug-in vehicles. But a new study in Nature Energy has found that about 20% of those early electric vehicle adopters have given up their EVs to return to fossil fuel-powered transport. Survey responders said what they liked most about their plug-ins were recharging costs, reliability, and safety. What they liked least were the driving range and convenience of charging. Not surprisingly, those who decided to keep their EVS had more access to level 2 charging (240 V AC) at home, as well as more access to charging generally.

The real crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border (Washington Post) There’s a crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border, but it isn’t the crisis that the media has been covering and that the Republican governors of Arizona and Texas recently blamed on President Biden. The crisis I’m talking about is the one that is eroding the livelihoods of U.S. citizens on the borderlands. Just ask Blanca Gallardo, 45, or her colleague Ivan Caballero, 39, two of the three workers left at La Familia, a mega-discount store in the border city of Nogales, Ariz. The store once employed 24 people. La Familia occupies a prime piece of real estate on Morley Avenue, Nogales’s Main Street. Like other retail businesses on and around this thoroughfare, La Familia depends almost entirely on shoppers who live on the other side of the border fence a short walk away—Mexicans who have not been allowed to enter the United States since March last year, when land ports of entry were closed to visa-carrying nonessential travelers in an effort to contain the coronavirus pandemic. The result has been devastating. Sheriff David Hathaway, a lifelong Nogales resident and the top law enforcement official in Santa Cruz County, one of four border counties in Arizona, said that 90 percent of local businesses have shut their doors and may never reopen. “There is no migrant crisis,” Hathaway told me. “What we have is a big economic crisis.” That’s not just a Nogales problem, though. One downtown merchant in the border city of El Paso told Border Report in November that his store had lost as much as 90 percent of its customers since last March.

López Obrador’s bid to alter Mexican Supreme Court seen as threat to judicial independence (Washington Post) He won the presidency in a landslide. His party dominates Congress. Now, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is in a battle over the country’s judiciary, as opponents and legal analysts accuse him of making an unconstitutional power grab. Lawmakers from López Obrador’s party have triggered outrage by voting to add two years to the four-year term of the Supreme Court chief justice, Arturo Zaldívar. Zaldívar is generally regarded as sympathetic to the president. As in the United States, where some Democrats want to expand the U.S. Supreme Court, there are fears that the judiciary is becoming increasingly politicized. But the Mexican measure carries especially grave implications, analysts say, because it appears to violate a constitutional limit on the chief justice’s term. López Obrador is increasingly challenging institutions created as part of Mexico’s transition to democracy, including the national elections board and the freedom-of-information institute. Critics worry that the president, who came to power as a leftist political outsider, could use his popularity to reestablish elements of the one-party system that reigned here for seven decades.

With pools closed, Peruvians turn to open-water swimming (AP) The swimmers began gathering even before dawn glimmers on Pescadores beach, plunging into the Pacific surf for one of the few athletic endeavors permitted under Peru’s strict pandemic restrictions. Swimming pools have been closed for more than a year, but government has since Oct. 30 allowed open-water swimming, even if relaxing on the beach is banned to prevent mass gatherings. Forty-three-year-old Lorena Choy said swimming “relaxes me, unstresses me. ... It helps a lot psychologically.” Swimming coach Víctor Solís, 47, said he estimated that the number of swimmers out each morning has multiplied fivefold recently.

UK to come under scrutiny in Italy’s largest mafia trial in decades (The Guardian) In a high-security, 1,000-capacity courtroom converted from a call centre, Italy’s largest mafia trial in three decades is under way in Lamezia Terme, Calabria. About 900 witnesses are set to testify against more than 350 defendants, including politicians and officials charged with being members of the ‘Ndrangheta, Italy’s most powerful criminal group. Several of the defendants will be asked to respond to charges of money laundering over establishing companies in the UK with the alleged purpose of simulating legitimate economic activity. The ‘Ndrangheta—based in the southern region of Calabria, the toe of the Italian boot—is reputed to be one of the richest and most feared criminal organisations in the world. A study by the Demoskopita Research Institute in 2013 estimated its financial strength as more than that of Deutsche Bank and McDonald’s combined, with an annual turnover of €53bn (£44bn). Investigators say the secret of its success lies in its ability to connect the underworld with the upper world, where often the “upper world” stands for London. In the last decade, hundreds of investigations have asserted how the ‘Ndrangheta has laundered billions of euros in the City.

The U.S. Built the Afghan Military Over 20 Years. Will It Last One More? (NYT) President Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that first propelled the United States into conflict, has prompted deep fears about the Afghan security forces’ ability to defend what territory remains under government control. For nearly two decades, the United States and NATO have engaged in the nation-building pursuit of training, expanding and equipping Afghanistan’s police, army and air forces, spending tens of billions of dollars in an attempt to build government security forces that can safeguard their own country. But despite this enormous effort, the undertaking has only produced a troubled set of forces that are woefully unprepared for facing the Taliban, or any other threat, on their own. What comes next is anything but certain. The Taliban already control vast amounts of the country, even with American military power present. Afghan units are rife with corruption, have lost track of the weapons once showered on them by the Pentagon, and in many areas are under constant attack. Some soldiers have not been home in years because their villages have been overtaken by the Taliban. Prospects for improvement are slim, given slumping recruitment, high casualty rates and a Taliban insurgency that is savvy, experienced and well equipped—including with weapons originally provided to the Afghan government by the United States.

In India, Illness Is Everywhere (NYT) Crematories are so full of bodies, it’s as if a war just happened. Sickness and death are everywhere. Dozens of houses in my neighborhood have sick people. One of my son’s teachers is sick. The neighbor two doors down, to the right of us: sick. Two doors to the left: sick. I’m sitting in my apartment waiting to catch the disease. That’s what it feels like right now in New Delhi with the world’s worst coronavirus crisis advancing around us. India is now recording more infections per day—as many as 350,000—than any other country has since the pandemic began, and that’s just the official number, which most experts think is a vast underestimation. New Delhi, India’s sprawling capital of 20 million, is suffering a calamitous surge. A few days ago, the positivity rate hit a staggering 36 percent—meaning more than one out of three people tested were infected. A month ago, it was less than 3 percent. The infections have spread so fast that hospitals have been completely swamped. Although New Delhi is locked down, the disease is still rampaging.

US Navy fires warning shots in new tense encounter with Iran (AP) An American warship fired warning shots when vessels of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard came too close to a patrol in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Navy said Wednesday. The Navy said the USS Firebolt fired the warning shots after three fast-attack Guard vessels came within 68 yards (62 meters) of it and the U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat USCGC Baranoff. The incident Monday marked the second time the Navy accused the Guard of operating in an “unsafe and unprofessional” manner this month alone after tense encounters between the forces had dropped in recent years.

Hong Kong passes immigration bill, raising alarm over ‘exit bans’ (Reuters) Hong Kong’s legislature passed on Wednesday a controversial immigration bill, which lawyers, diplomats and right groups fear will give authorities unlimited powers to prevent residents and others from entering or leaving the Chinese-ruled city. The government has dismissed those fears as “complete nonsense,” saying the legislation, which will come into effect on Aug. 1, merely aims to screen illegal immigrants. The assurances, however, come in a climate of mistrust after the increasingly authoritarian path officials have taken the imposition of a sweeping national security law by Beijing last year. Lawyers say the new law will empower authorities to bar anyone, without a court order, from entering or leaving Hong Kong—essentially opening the door for mainland China-style exit bans—and fails to prevent indefinite detention for refugees. The Hong Kong Bar Association (HKBA) said in February the bill failed to explain why such powers were necessary, how they would be used and provided no limit on the duration of any travel ban, nor any safeguards against abuse.

#headlines #news

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stephenmccull · 4 years

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After Billions of Dollars and Dozens of Wartime Declarations, Why Are Vaccines Still in Short Supply?

This story also ran on Fortune. It can be republished for free.

The U.S. government has invested billions of dollars in manufacturing, used a wartime act dozens of times to boost supplies and yet there’s still not enough covid vaccine on the way to meet demand — or even the government’s own goals for national immunization.

President Joe Biden, in remarks at the National Institutes of Health this month, said the nation is “now on track to have enough supply for 300 million Americans by the end of July.” But at the current rate of production, Pfizer and Moderna will miss their targets of providing at least 100 million doses each by the end of March, let alone 200 million more doses each has promised by July.

Moderna would need to more than double its vaccine production rate from January — when it made roughly 19 million doses — to meet its contractual obligations. Pfizer supplied 40 million vaccine doses by Feb. 17. It has roughly six weeks left to deliver the first 120 million doses it has promised.

Biden and officials from the two companies say they are rapidly expanding production capacity. But critics are lining up. They want to know whether the government did enough, fast enough, to guarantee that companies would meet the urgent challenges of the pandemic. As for the manufacturers bolstered by extraordinary sums of taxpayer money, why did they not share technology and know-how sooner, or move more quickly into strategic production partnerships?

Experts say it’s complicated, noting that the output of raw materials and assembly lines can’t be ratcheted up 10,000-fold at the push of a button — and that the effort thus far has been close to miraculous. They cite bottlenecks in at least three areas: the production of specialty lipids, fatty materials that are a primary component of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines; the hundreds of millions of glass vials that hold the vaccine; and the sterile automated assembly lines where vaccine moves from bulk containers into vials before shipment.

U.S. officials have run headlong into the limits of the Defense Production Act, a Korean War-era law that allows the federal government to ramp up supplies of critical materials in times of national emergency. The vaccine manufacturing process relies on a complex supply chain, from sourcing raw materials and equipment to designing chemical processes, building production lines and hiring and training workers.

Also, experts note, no one knew which vaccines would prove effective.

“A year ago there was no commercial market for mRNA product. There was scientific research and pharma making small-volume clinical lots. Now we need billions of doses, in the space of a year. That’s overloading the supply infrastructure,” said Kevin Gilligan, a senior consultant with Biologics Consulting and a former official with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, a federal agency created in 2006 to deal with pandemics and bioterrorism.

As of December, the Trump administration through its Operation Warp Speed initiative had obligated nearly $14 billion for vaccine development and manufacturing, including investments to expand U.S. capacity, according to a Government Accountability Office report in January. The administration invoked the Defense Production Act on at least 23 vaccine-related contracts, in part to prioritize the government’s contracts over others, according to a KHN review of the federal contracts database, contracts obtained by the nonprofit group Knowledge Ecology International, GAO and government news releases.

They include the December contract that the Department of Health and Human Services signed with Pfizer for another 100 million doses, on top of the initial 100 million it committed to last summer. That contract, worth $1.95 billion, included DPA provisions to give the company priority access to raw materials and spare parts for factories, according to a former administration official.

The DPA has also been used in vaccine contracts with Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and other drug companies for hundreds of millions of doses. On top of that, the law has been invoked for at least 10 contracts with companies making needles or syringes. It’s been used to require glass makers Corning and SiO2 Materials Science to prioritize vial production for vaccine production, and in contracts for aspects of manufacturing with companies like Emergent BioSolutions, Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies and Grand River Aseptic Manufacturing.

Operation Warp Speed awarded Emergent BioSolutions $648 million last year to boost the manufacturing capacity it needed to enter agreements with Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca — worth at least $615 million and $261 million, respectively — to help make their vaccines. Grand River Aseptic Manufacturing won a $160 million award from BARDA and has contracted with Johnson & Johnson to fill vials and finish packaging of its single-shot covid vaccine, which is expected to get emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration as soon as this month but will only have a few million doses available initially.

The Biden administration has expanded its use of the wartime act to prioritize equipment like filling pumps and filtration systems for Pfizer. “We told you that when we heard of a bottleneck on needed equipment, supplies or technology related to vaccine supply, that we would step in and help,” Tim Manning, the White House official leading the administration’s covid supply efforts, said during a February press briefing.

Yet it can do only so much, according to medical supply chain experts. Prashant Yadav, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development at Harvard University, said it could take months for the impact of that DPA action to be felt because of the time it takes to procure equipment and get it installed, with each step tightly regulated.

The U.S. is unlikely to get a meaningful bump in capacity “unless we think about co-production deals,” in which a drug company agrees to manufacture a competitor’s vaccine, said Tinglong Dai, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Carey Business School.

So far, such arrangements have proliferated in Europe — which has less capacity to produce drugs than the United States does. Deals with other major vaccine manufacturers have been less common on the U.S. side of the pond.

“Though we have not partnered with, say, another large pharma for production, we have built strategic partnerships with a number of organizations that have been instrumental to our scaling up and meeting supply and commercialization plans,” Moderna spokesperson Ray Jordan said in an email.

Moderna this month said that its manufacturing process would scale up rapidly in the coming weeks, that it would provide the U.S. between 30 million and 35 million doses in February and March and between 40 million and 50 million doses monthly from April to July. The company declined to elaborate on what made the boost possible.

Vaccine manufacturers long ago should have been sharing technology and expertise to boost production in the U.S. and Europe, and especially in developing countries, said James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International, a nonprofit focused on patent rights.

“We’ve wasted about a year by not doing some of the obvious things,” he said. “The rhetoric is that it’s an emergency. But on the scale-up of manufacturing, you just don’t see it.”

It’s not that simple, others say. “There wasn’t any excess capacity available in the United States a year ago. Zero,” Paul Mango, a former HHS official heavily involved in Operation Warp Speed, said regarding vaccines. “It’s getting the equipment. It’s quality control. It’s getting the employees. People make it sound like this is easy. You can’t just push 400 workers and say, go at it.”

Each Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna shot contains billions of lipid nanoparticles, each particle containing four lipids and a strand of the nucleic acid RNA, the five pieces assembled in a way that allows the RNA to enter our cells and create a particle that stimulates the immune system to defend against the covid virus.

The lipids, which are made only in a handful of factories, have been a major supply problem. “No one has ever thought of a scenario where we would use lipid nanoparticle formulation for [billions of] doses,” Yadav said. “We have not invented a process for doing lipid nanoparticles at scale.”

Two of the lipids in the vaccine, cholesterol and DSCP, have long been used in industry to shape and buffer chemical formulations. A third lipid prevents the particles from clumping together. A fourth enables the lipid shell of the vaccine to fuse with human cells and, once inside the cell, to crack open so the RNA can move to a structure called a ribosome and make proteins that stimulate immunity.

All of these raw materials are produced under regulated conditions — in Massachusetts, Missouri, Colorado and Alabama by companies under license with Moderna, Pfizer or Acuitas Therapeutics, which was co-founded by Pieter Cullis, a University of British Columbia professor who is considered the grandfather of lipid nanoparticle technology.

Before the pandemic, these companies produced meager amounts for use in small clinical trials, laboratory experiments or in one licensed drug, patisiran, which is used to treat a rare genetic disease in about a thousand people worldwide. Now they are producing thousands of kilograms of the stuff, said Stefan Randl, a vice president at Evonik, a lipid maker. Evonik recently announced it would scale up production at two German sites, possibly in the second half of the year, to be used in the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The company last year bought a U.S. lipid manufacturer in Alabama.

“All of a sudden the quantities had to be ramped up a thousand-fold or more,” Randl said. “This is the biggest bottleneck.”

Several elements of the vaccine, including lipids and enzymes used in making the mRNA, until recently were produced using animal products such as sheep’s wool, said Andrew Geall, chief scientific officer at Precision NanoSystems, which designs equipment for mixing the mRNA and lipids. Animal products could cause contamination or disease, even in minute quantities, so manufacturers now use synthetic chemicals.

Luckily, the cosmetic industry — a major user of some of the same lipids used in the vaccines — has been switching from animal products in recent decades, noted Julia Born, an Evonik spokesperson.

Still, only a limited number of companies globally have expertise and facilities to make the lipids, said Thomas Madden, CEO and a co-founder of Acuitas, and they’ve all struggled to move from quantities produced in a laboratory to industrial-scale production. For instance, he said, hazardous solvents and chemicals used in laboratory procedures need to be avoided in industrial processes, where they could give rise to workplace safety issues.

“This is a hugely complex supply chain,” Madden said. “Once you address a bottleneck at one point, you identify the next bottleneck in the process. It’s a bit of a game of whack-a-mole.”

Although it’s not particularly difficult to make the lipids used in vaccines, it takes time to get FDA authorization of a facility that can make them in high quantities, said Cullis, the UBC professor. It would take two to three years to start such a factory from scratch, so instead, Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech have been hooking up with existing manufacturers and getting them to convert to lipid production, he said.

Another bottleneck is “fill/finish” — getting the finished vaccine into vials or syringes so the shots can be shipped to customers. Vaccine filling lines require extremely high levels of efficiency and sterility, and few companies in the world have this capacity, said Mike Watson, former president of Valera, a Moderna subsidiary. Moderna has hired Catalent, a contract manufacturer that recently experienced delays that slowed the release of some doses, to fill and finish U.S. doses at its facility in Bloomington, Indiana. At least two other companies will do the same for Moderna’s vaccine supply abroad.

In January, the French multinational Sanofi — whose own covid vaccine has been delayed by poor performance in producing immunity — agreed to offer its fill/finish line in Germany for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. That line isn’t expected to be running until July.

In the U.S., the number of vaccine doses shipped to states has ticked up in recent weeks, partly because Pfizer said its five-dose vials actually provide six shots. Moderna is seeking FDA permission to add up to five doses to its 10-dose vials.

Pfizer has said it is manufacturing raw materials in St. Louis, the active ingredients for the vaccine in Andover, Massachusetts, and filling vials in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

CEO Albert Bourla, with Biden at his side in Kalamazoo on Friday, said the company added lipid production capabilities at plants in Michigan and Connecticut, as well as fill/finish lines in Kansas. He said it has significantly cut the average time it takes to make doses — from 110 days to 60 days.

“Today, during this meeting, the president challenged us to identify additional ways in which his administration could help us potentially accelerate even further the delivery of the full 300 million doses earlier than July,” Bourla said. “The challenge is accepted, and we will try to do our best.”

This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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gordonwilliamsweb · 4 years

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After Billions of Dollars and Dozens of Wartime Declarations, Why Are Vaccines Still in Short Supply?