Now we see the light, say virologists. We are at the last mile of darkness. The collective experience of the trauma of the epidemic has dragged us into an abyss that we could not imagine. But have we learned anything? Individually each of us has known directly or indirectly the anguish of darkness, illness and death: a diagnosis that puts life at risk, the loss of a loved one, defeat or failure are experiences that we lived before Covid. in solitude. Pain separates, isolates, splits our life away from life in common. It happens in the biblical scene of Job's desperate cry: abandoned, naked and shaved, fallen into ashes, wounded in body and soul, his life is without support, with no one left to rely on. Well, if there is a fundamental lesson of the terrible magisterium of Covid, it concerns the possibility of sharing the unhappy, of sharing the experience of pain and death.
With the epidemic, the uncharitable experience has become obligatorily common, overwhelming the entire planet. Everywhere in the world we have seen the same scenes: closed cities, frightened and masked people, intensive care, the sick taken from loved ones, masses of the dead. The large cities of the West that previously looked at collective phenomena such as "hunger in the world" or epidemics that raged on the poorest and most disadvantaged populations from a safe distance, had to experience the same horror without any protective distance. Whole peoples have found themselves united by the same desperation. Darkness has descended like an unprecedented catastrophe, if not in the biblical flood, on our world. Individual lives, as well as communities and our economies have found themselves, as never before, on the edge of a precipice. Here is the lesson: we have been forced by the Covid magisterium to consider that the pain of our fellow man is not something that does not belong to us, because it is our own pain. The same policy has had to recognize the unprecedented nature of this experience, giving life, not only in Italy, to governments that are based on the retreat of particular identities in the name of recognizing a common good that implies a sharing of responsibility.
The systemic character of the pandemic has shown the farcical trait of narcissism of small differences by imposing an abrupt transition to adulthood: the sovereign ideal of one's autonomy - not only political but also mental - has been overwhelmed by an unavoidable experience of interdependence and of interconnection. We had to correct our individualistic idea of ​​freedom by understanding that salvation is either a collective fact or it does not exist and that, consequently, either freedom implies solidarity or it is a pure rhetorical abstraction. But above all we had to learn again the fundamental importance of our institutions, correcting the populist thinking that ideologically opposes institutions to life.
In recent years this has been a harmful hegemonic thought: on the one hand the life that claims its rights and on the other the institutions that defend their privileges; on the one hand the dynamic movement of life and on the other the conservative immobility of the institutions; on the one hand the work of life and on the other the corruption of institutions. Covid instead revealed to us that life and institutions, as Roberto Esposito rightly points out in his latest book entitled Institutions, are two sides of the same figure. What would have happened in the face of the violence of the pandemic if the institutions had not existed, first of all that of the family? Where would we have ended up? Even legitimate criticisms of crisis management must not obscure the very human value of institutions, which does not consist only in protecting the most vulnerable, but in making the experience of sharing possible. For this Pasolini recalled that there is no greater miracle than the life of the institutions. And for this again, while he did not spare his criticisms of the corruption of the political system, he appealed to the "moving" and "mysterious" nature of the institutions, for which it is always worth spending our lives.
Will we have today and in the near future the strength to make a poetic really exist, and not just a politics of institutions? Will we be able to resurrect institutions from the ashes of populism?
The welcome of the armed forces involved in the vaccination campaign, the unprecedented sense of a procedural order and individual respect given together, of a collective care but always attentive to the irreducible trait of the particular, as all those who have been vaccinated can testify, it is a simple but significant example of what I mean by the poetics of institutions. In a time dominated by the barbarism of evil that turns our own ecocidal violence against us, the arrogance of an anthropocentrism that has violated the limits imposed by nature, the existence of caring behaviors that know how to respect the immensely sacred character of singularity, as demonstrated above all by our health personnel, but also by ours families, our teachers and service workers who have never stopped their business, shouldn't they educate politics, shouldn't they literate its actions as its language?
In recent years, the violence of words has fueled a culture of hatred which, not surprisingly, has among its main culprits those who have cultivated the contempt of institutions in a militant way without seeing the metastases that fatally contributed to generating in the fabric of our community.
The resurrection of life never passes through hatred and contempt, but, as the Gospel message teaches, only through the faith that the shadow of death is never the last word on life, that not everything is death, hate and contempt. It is the task, which Pasolini defined as "miraculous", that awaits us: to resurrect the collective life of the institutions, restore full dignity to it, cultivate the deeply democratic sense of representation, restore value to political conflict as a conflict of ideas and not as denigration morality of the opponent, to recognize that the poetics of institutions does not coincide with the organization of the state, but is a force that pervades the community entirely, that the very words we use institute life and make us responsible every time for the ethical value of this institution.

The enhancement of the human body is now a technological reality. Now the challenge is to secure data and prevent cyber-attacks.

A model without hands, a dancer with a bionic leg, a psychologist with a disability with a robotic arm and a biohacker with a chip in his hand, what do they all have in common? Belonging to a new class of human beings enhanced by technologies. Thanks to a biological modification of their organism, they are having a series of experiences on the verge of magic. And they told Kaspersky Next 2021, an event dedicated to human augmentation technologies.

What is it about? When we talk about human augmentation we are talking about the enhancement of human perceptive, motor and cognitive faculties, in ways that were previously impossible or unthinkable. But we also talk about the shifting of the frontiers of science, ethics, the social perception of the different from oneself.
Augmentation may be required for health reasons - the graft of a bionic limb to replace a diseased one - or people may choose to augment themselves, to a basic level for example, by inserting radio frequency identification (RFID) chips into the own body. And there are more than you think. The chip under the skin is used today by a good number of Swedes who "stamp" us the tram ticket.

The stories of the protagonists
Following a diagnosis of meningococcal septicemia, Tilly Lockey, model and presenter, underwent a double amputation of her hands at just 15 months. After putting on some basic myoelectric prostheses, she was provided with the Open Bionics Hero Arm. Through augmentation technologies lei Lockey she is attempting to change the way implants are seen and perceived, showing beauty in differences.
Viktoria Modesta, pop artist with an artificial leg, performs at Crazy Horse in Paris and has developed her own multidisciplinary approach to performance art with a post-human touch. While Bertolt Meyer, professor of psychology with a bionic hand, investigates how bionics changes the perception of society of people with disabilities.
Their collective thesis? Human enhancement, which sounds like science fiction, is now a daily reality for some people. We are not talking about cyborgs with superhuman strength and X-ray vision, but about ordinary people, with bionic arms or legs, or who have been implanted with a chip, who live a "normal" professional and relationship life.

The Kaspersky Augmentation Report
Almost half (46.5%) of the 6,500 European adults surveyed believe people should be free to improve their bodies with human enhancement technology, according to a Kaspersky report, but many have concerns about social impact. Only 12% of Europeans would be against working with an empowered person because they feel they have an unfair advantage in the workplace. However, nearly two in five European adults (39%) fear that human enhancement could lead to future social inequalities or conflicts. Overall, nearly half (49%) of the respondents are "enthusiastic" or "optimistic" about a future society that includes both augmented and non-augmented people. A good news.
Almost half (45%) of them would have no problem dating an augmented person, and some have already done so. About three in ten Europeans (29.5%) would support a family member who has decided to raise himself, regardless of the reason, and only 16.5% of Europeans consider the choice to "grow up" as "strange", while little more than a quarter (27%) believe augmented people should have special representation at the government level, compared to 41% who oppose the idea.

The history of human augmentation
From Jaron Lanier's virtual glove to play the guitar to virtual reality (VR) devices, if you follow the literary strand of cyberpunk novels that tell of intelligent robots and neurological grafts, these neo-humans seem to embody the evolutionary theses of the Jewish historian Yuval Noah Harari, who in his essays imagines men more similar to the gods of mythology than to humans whose species we recognize ourselves, that of the Homo Sapiens.
Which is then curiously the name of the fourth witness of this new class of humans questioned by Kaspersky: the CEO of DSruptive Subdermals, Hannes Sapiens Sjöblad. Entrepreneur, innovator and consultant on the impact that exponential technologies have on the human condition, Sjöblad has a chip under his skin with which he opens and closes doors without moving a muscle. And for this reason he wonders what the boundary between the me and the us of technology is and how human rights and cybersecurity can be integrated when our body becomes upgradeable at will.

A question that brings with it many others. Whose plant is it? Of the manufacturer or the implant? Does the owner company respect the protection of data generated by the body? Can you make updates without consent? What are the limits of copyright or patents associated with the system? Questions destined to remain unanswered when, as Kaspersky's Marco Preuss points out, augmentation technologies that enhance senses and perception are not just medical devices. According to the researcher, it will take a long time to understand this and for this the technology suppliers will have to push the process of identifying rules and standards.

These questions are not new
The reflections on biological enhancement retrace at least 30 years of debate, from Stelarc's prosthetic cyberstrategies to Pierre Lévy's role of intelligence technologies and the success of Istvan Zoltan's Transhumanist Party which, imagining a future of technology-enhanced beings, preaches the human enhancement to defeat death and disease. A future that is already present.
So much present that we ask ourselves serious questions about how our already close relationship with technology will evolve. Starting with the fact that any artificial device can be hacked. Including prostheses that are networked and whose safety is paramount. As Modesta said, who feels "she needs some sort of greater security, because of the intimate relationship we all have with technology", and who "forces us", according to David Jacoby of Kaspersky, to do so before introducing new technologies on the market: “If we don't think about it today we will have to think about it tomorrow”, given that in the near future these technologies will be cheap and available to everyone.
Even today, companies connect all kinds of devices such as PCs, cars and TVs, but the risk of an unwanted hacking - of an artificial organ or limb - is clearly a risk that we cannot afford to take.

Indoor Environmental Quality
In the modern world, people spend more than 90% of their time indoors. The spaces we design to accommodate work, learning, play, and life can play a significant role in improving people’s health, wellness, and happiness. Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) indoors is driven by all the systems that make up a building, including envelope, HVAC, lighting, and acoustics. All the variables that go into these systems are interrelated and can be considered synonymous to the systems of a body. They operate in cooperation and influence each other. Therefore, IEQ is the combined interrelation between Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), Thermal Comfort, Lighting, and Acoustics. This post takes a dive into the topics of Indoor Air Quality and Thermal Comfort.
Thermal Comfort
Thermal comfort is defined as “the condition of mind that expresses satisfaction with the thermal environment and is assessed by subjective evaluation." Thermal comfort in the body is provided through a homeostatic system that balances heat gains and losses to maintain the body’s core temperature within its optimal range, 97-100°F (36-38 °C), and is regulated by the hypothalamus.


The indoor thermal environment not only impacts our buildings’ energy use, as cooling and heating accounts for approximately half of a building’s energy consumption, but also plays a large role in the way we experience the indoor environment. Thermal comfort is linked to health, well-being and productivity and is ranked as one of the highest contributing factors influencing overall human satisfaction in buildings. Due to its influence on the integumentary, endocrine and respiratory body systems, thermal comfort can impact multiple health outcomes. For example, exposure to cold air and sudden temperature change can trigger asthma in adults. Leading research also indicates employees perform 6% poorer when the office is overheated and 4% poorer when the office is cold.


A comfortable thermal environment that satisfies all occupants is challenging to achieve due to individual preferences and possible spatial and temporal variations in the thermal environment. Therefore, there is a need for a holistic approach to thermal comfort that can satisfy the individual preferences of all (or nearly all) building users. Correctly sized HVAC equipment is essential for optimal thermal comfort. Building HVAC systems should be designed to monitor and control for variations in indoor temperature, radiant heat transfer through the building envelope, relative humidity and air movement.
ASHRAE Standard 55 - Thermal Environmental Conditions for Human Occupancy – uses six factors in determining acceptable thermal environment for the representative occupants in a space at steady state. Four are environmental factors, meaning they are under control of the design team. While two are personal factors, totally unique to each individual:

1. Metabolic rate (personal factor)
2. Clothing insulation (personal factor)
3. Air temperature (environmental factor)
4. Radiant temperature (environmental factor)
5. Air speed (environmental factor)
6. Humidity (environmental factor)

Predicted comfort condition tools using ASHRAE 55 are available for use, the most popular being the CBE Thermal Comfort Tool.

Metabolic Rate
The level of activity of the occupant is associated with their metabolic rate, which in turn affects the thermal conditions at which they are likely to be comfortable. Of course, the standard does not regulate or in any way try to control occupant activities. Rather, the expected or observed activity is used as an input to thermal comfort determination.
Clothing Insulation
Clothing insulation values are predicted based on what a representative occupant is likely to wear while being within the space. ASHRAE Std. 55 allows several methods for determining the clothing insulation value for the representative occupant, which can also vary by season and space type within the building (e.g. occupants in a commercial kitchen would be dressed differently than students in a classroom). Insulative properties for chairs in which occupants are primarily seated – like an office setting – can also be considered.


Air Temperature
Temperature and thermostats are the most common thermal comfort and indoor air criteria building occupants are familiar with. Looking at ASHRAE Std. 55 with more specificity, recommended temperature ranges perceived as “comfortable” are 73 to 79°F in the summer and 68 to 74.5°F in the winter. 
International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) Section 302.1 dictates interior design temperatures used for heating and cooling load calculations shall be a maximum of 72°F for heating and a minimum of 75°F for cooling. These design values drive proper sizing of mechanical equipment and the HVAC system. While the code does not address over-sizing equipment, it is not enforceable without establishing these exact design parameters.
The energy code also dictates setback (403.4.2.1) and deadband (403.4.1.2) requirements. The Setback controls shall be configured to temporarily operate the system to maintain zone temperatures down to 55°F or up to 85°F during unoccupied hours, while the Deadband requires thermostatic controls be configured to provide a temperature range of ≥ 5°F within which the supply of heating and cooling energy to the zone is shut off or reduced to a minimum.
Interior design temperatures are also required by Section 1203 of the International Building Code (IBC) and Section 602.2 of the International Property Maintenance Code (IPMC), which includes similar requirements for housing and property maintenance. 
The IBC states that “interior spaces intended for human occupancy shall be provided with active or passive space heating systems capable of maintaining an indoor temperature of not less than 68°F (20°C) at a point 3 feet (914 mm) above the floor on the design heating day.” Exceptions are in place for spaces where the primary purpose of the space is not associated with human comfort, and for Group F (factory), H (high-hazard), S (storage), or U (utility) occupancies.

Radiant Temperature
Mean radiant temperature is one of the six core thermal comfort parameters. It is influenced by a surface material’s ability to absorb or emit radiant heat, the extent to which the surface area is exposed to the person (view factor) and the temperatures of the surrounding objects. Non-uniform thermal radiation can result from cold windows, uninsulated walls, equipment and improperly sized heating panels, all of which can cause local discomfort.
Thermal radiation effects due to surface temperatures are used in determination of mean radiant temperature and operative temperature and local discomfort caused, for example, by a cold window on one side and a hot wall on the other, an effect referred to as “radiant asymmetry.”

Air Speed
Basic engineering states that the three modes of heat transfer are conduction, convection, and radiation.
Air speed is important to the rate of convective cooling of the body as well as its rate of evaporative heat transfer. This effect can be room-wide or local. It may be experienced as a beneficial cooling effect (using fans to create convective “cooling” in the summer in lieu of lowering thermostatic setpoints) or as a negative effect, as in draft. Draft is considered by the standard to be a local effect (i.e., local to a person and not to the entire space). The velocity of air delivered to a space should be considered in both heating and cooling application design and can be measured with an anemometer in the space.

Humidity
Humidity can influence degradation of building materials and the ability of the human body to release heat through evaporation. If the humidity is too high, the human body has a limited capacity to cool down through sweating. Elevated humidity can lead to increased off-gassing; for example, an increase in relative humidity of 35% can increase the emissions of formaldehyde by a factor of 1.8 to 2.6. Moreover, high humidity may promote the accumulation and growth of microbial pathogens including bacteria, dust mites and mold, which can lead to odors and cause respiratory irritation and allergies in sensitive individuals. Conversely, low humidity can lead to dryness and irritation of the airways, skin, eyes, throat and mucous membranes. Low relative humidity is also associated with longer survival (slower inactivation) of viruses.

There are two ways to define the humidity, or water content, of air – absolute (measured in grains of moisture per pound of air, grains / lb) and relative (measured in percent, %). People are generally only familiar with the concept of relative humidity, even though it doesn’t tell an accurate story of the true moisture quantity in the air. Relative Humidity To have meaning, a relative humidity reading must be associated with a dry bulb air temperature. The hotter the air, the more moisture it can hold.
Relative humidity (RH) is the actual amount of water vapor in the air as a percentage of the maximum amount of water vapor which the air could hold at a given temperature.
If the amount of water vapor in the air were held constant as the temperature was increased, this would cause the relative humidity to fall, because the warm air would now be able to hold more water vapor then when it was cool.
In the winter, as cold moist outdoor air is brought indoors and heated, it becomes warm, dry air just by being heated. Air at 20°F & 70% RH, when heated to 72°F, will have a relative humidity of just 8%. This phenomenon is demonstrated in the table above.  Absolute Humidity Absolute humidity is constant regardless of air temperature and measured in grains. A grain is a unit of measurement of mass, nominally based on the mass of a single virtual ideal seed. For reference, 3,500 grain = ½ pound (lb) of moisture in the air. It is an absolute measurement, which means it does not depend on the dry bulb air temperature.
Consider the example below.

The small glass on the right represents air at 30°F. It holds 1-1/2 ounces of water and is 80% full (80% RH).
The large glass on the left represents air at 70°F. It holds the same 1-1/2 ounces of water, but in this larger glass it only fills 15% of the space (15% RH).
Absolute humidity (ounces) stays the same, while relative humidity (%) changes with regard to the volume of the space (temperature of the air).

Indoor Air Quality (IAQ)
Concern about indoor air quality (IAQ) and the study of air quality issues is a fairly recent phenomenon. Some of the earliest documented studies occurred in Scandinavia in the mid-1960s and were focused primarily on thermal comfort issues. These early IAQ studies also primarily involved comparing indoor air to outdoor air. The levels of outdoor pollution were considered a primary concern and the goal was to ensure that indoor air was of better quality than polluted outdoor air.
 As studies increased in sophistication, other measurable factors came into play. Building construction materials and techniques changed radically. A reduction in ventilation / outside air, in the interest of saving energy became a concern and, finally, people realized that pollutants could originate from within a building and result in Sick Building Syndrome, Building-Related Illness, Chemical Sensitivity, and/or Environmental Illnesses (with new medical terminology gaining more attention every day as a result).
When considering IAQ, we are looking to compare not to what is considered “normal” and not to established hazardous material limits, but to progressive limits and evolving standards since different people react differently to different levels of different substances. There is no universal reaction to a measured amount of a particular material (similarly to how people respond differently to different thermal comfort conditions). Determining ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ levels of indoor pollutants can be challenging, so it is necessary to look to multiple references and sources.
Typical symptoms caused by poor IAQ vary greatly according to an individual’s sensitivity and may include chills, sweating, eye irritation, allergies, coughing, sneezing, nausea, fatigue, skin irritation, breathing difficulties, and others. Unfortunately, there are currently no federal regulations governing exposure limits in non-industrial indoor environments, though IAQ has gained attention in light of the current coronavirus pandemic.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than 30 percent of all commercial buildings have significant IAQ problems. And data from the U.S. Department of Labor attributes the primary source of poor IAQ to inadequate ventilation at 52%, followed up closely by contamination from inside the building at 16%). For this reason, it is critical that we take a proactive approach to Indoor Air Quality.

Ambient (Outdoor) Air Quality
The Clean Air Act, which was last amended in 1990, requires EPA to set National Ambient Air Quality Standards (40 CFR part 50) for pollutants considered harmful to public health and the environment. The Clean Air Act identifies two types of national ambient air quality standards. Primary standards provide public health protection, including protecting the health of "sensitive" populations such as asthmatics, children, and the elderly. Secondary standards provide public welfare protection, including protection against decreased visibility and damage to animals, crops, vegetation, and buildings.
The EPA has set National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for six principal pollutants, which are called "criteria" air pollutants. Periodically, the standards are reviewed and may be revised. The current standards are listed for Carbon Monoxide (CO), Lead (Pb), Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), Ozone (O3), Particle Matter (PM), and Sulfur Dioxide (SO2).
ASHRAE Standard 62.1 Section 4 specifically addressed Outdoor Air Quality and requires an investigation to be completed prior to finalization of the HVAC ventilation system design. In the U.S. compliance status shall be either in “attainment” or “nonattainment” with NAAQS, as described above. Areas with no U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) compliance status designation shall be considered “attainment” areas. The USEPA list of nonattainment areas can be found at www.epa.gov/green-book. Air quality data collected at outdoor monitors across the U.S. can be found atwww.epa.gov/outdoor-air-quality-data.  Local Air Quality Standard 62.1 also requires an observational survey of the building site and its immediate surroundings
conducted during hours the building is expected to be normally occupied to identify local contaminants from surrounding facilities that will be of concern if allowed to enter the building. This survey should report out the following at a minimum:

1. Regional air quality compliance status
2. Local survey information: a. Date of observations, b. Time of observations, c. Site description, d. Description of facilities on site and on adjoining properties, e. Observation of odors or irritants, f. Observation of visible plumes or visible air contaminants, g. Description of sources of vehicle exhaust on site and on adjoining properties, h. Identification of potential contaminant sources on the site and from adjoining properties, including any that operate only seasonally.
3. Conclusion regarding the acceptability of outdoor air quality and the information supporting the conclusion

Carbon Dioxide (CO2)
While carbon dioxide (CO2) in and of itself is not a contaminant, it is directly attributable to human occupancy levels in a building, and a useful proxy to determine if appropriate levels of outdoor / ventilation air are entering the breathing zone for occupants. Also, elevated CO2 levels can cause cognitive and health issues at high concentrations indoors.

OSHA Technical Manual (section iii, chapter 2), 1999, states that 1,000 ppm CO2 should be used as an upper limit for indoor levels, as a guideline for occupant comfort.>1000 ppm indicates inadequate ventilation; complaints such as headaches, fatigue, and eye and throat irritation will be more widespread.

ASHRAE Standard 62.1-2013 suggests maintaining a steady-state CO2 concentration in a space no greater than about 700 ppm above outdoor air levels will result in a substantial majority of occupants being satisfied in respect to human bioeffluents (body odor). Additional ventilation may be needed to dilute building generated pollutants. This standard also defines adequate ventilation for specific use designed spaces. For example, 17 cfm (8.5 l/s) per person of dilution air is suggested for office spaces (because such spaces have additional pollutants introduced from copiers, laser printers, etc.), which translates to a CO2 concentration of roughly 600 ppm above outdoor air levels.

American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM International) studies have concluded that about 7.5 L/s of outdoor air ventilation per person will control human body odor such that roughly 80 % of unadapted persons (visitors) will find the odor at an acceptable level. These studies also showed that the same level of body odor acceptability was found to occur at a CO2 concentration that is about 650 ppm(v) above the outdoor concentration. D6245-12 Standard Guide for Using Indoor Carbon Dioxide Concentrations to Evaluate Indoor Air Quality and Ventilation, 2012

US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) 
Testing for Indoor Air Quality, Baseline IAQ, and Materials, 2009, section 5 states that "Acceptance of respective portions of buildings by the Owner is subject to compliance within specified limits of IAQ contaminant levels. CO2 not to exceed 800ppm."
 

The resolution of a major crisis, such as the one we are experiencing, depends first and foremost on the relevance of the decisions taken in the emergency to try to resolve it. And today, only one decision is necessary: vaccinate and treat; as well as possible; as quickly as possible. And we are very, very far from doing everything necessary to achieve this.
Such a crisis is also the moment when the talents and characters able of managing it emerge, or not. And we haven’t seen much of that emerging in the last year around the world.

Talents that are sorely lacking are not only the men and women of action needed to manage states and companies in these difficult times. It is also, and perhaps above all, the doctors, the health workers, the researchers, the innovators, the engineers, without whom no crisis of this kind can ever be resolved.

It is not enough to train these talents, they must be allowed to grow and participate in the success of the community that has allowed them to flourish. In France, this crisis reveals that we are very far from this today: our engineering schools mainly train investment bankers, and the all too rare researchers, high-level engineers or artificial intelligence specialists who graduate from them are attracted by the high salaries and formidable career prospects offered to them by American or German companies.

And I am enraged to see with what naivety, what blindness, what suicidal pretension, the leaders of our universities boast of their so-called successes, which are only appearances, because they are not part of an overall vision of the careers of their students.
There are countless examples. Just three: Yann Le Cunn, trained in Paris at Pierre et Marie Curie University, became Facebook’s Chief Scientist in Artificial Intelligence; Emmanuelle Charpentier, also trained at Pierre et Marie Curie University, who, having been unable to find the means to work in France, found them in Germany, and obtained her Nobel Prize in Chemistry there; Stephane Bancel, an engineer from the Ecole Centrale in Paris, who was unable to find sufficient resources in France to develop what became Moderna and left for Boston to develop one of the most formidable health companies of the beginning of the century.

To replace all this talent, which has gone to enrich countries richer than France, we are bringing in some of the all too rare talent from the countries of the South, leaving these countries with no other recourse than to beg for assistance from NGOs or international organisations.
Tomorrow, it will be even worse: our best engineers will also be attracted by laboratories and companies in Asia, which will also offer them salaries and working conditions superior to those they can expect in France. And these countries, after having sent their students to us for training, will in turn open “grandes écoles”, attracting our professors and our students; we will have nothing left.

It’s easy enough to understand: we see every day that money, fluid and moving, goes to money, where it can prosper. Talent is, by nature, as nomadic as money: like money, it is free, independent, capricious, selfish. Like money, if it cannot be held back, it will go where it finds its greatest interest, where it can seek, find, and obtain fame and/or fortune.

In the immense concentration of wealth underway, the concentration of talent, the ultimate wealth, will be the worst, the most dangerous in the long term. In particular, Europe, the cradle of the first universities, plundered of its talents will be one of its main victims.
It is time to react. Our future depends entirely on our industry, and on the innovations that we will be able to make it prosper.  And therefore on the talent that will drive it.

To succeed, we must treat our best young engineers and researchers with all the attention they deserve, as the British, Germans, Americans, Chinese, Israelis and many others do.  And to do this, we must decide to devote much more resources to public laboratories and to the companies that these young people want to launch. And we will soon be able to judge whether they deserve our support over the long term.
People will say that we don’t have enough money for this, that we have already spent too much, that our debt is abysmal, that our taxes are the highest in the world. All this is true. The fact remains that if we do not do everything to keep and develop the talent we train, if we delay putting in place a global and systematic plan to support the careers of our engineers and researchers, we will never have the means to repay these debts; and ruin will come very quickly.
 

Practically every leader I have ever coached or consulted to has told me about having at least one difficult collaborator who seems to continually challenge their authority.
This is perhaps one of the most testing aspects of management. Collaborators who undermine your authority sabotage teamwork and cause problems for everyone.
Whether this person is intentionally challenging your leadership, or is unaware of the effect of their behaviour, their actions are harmful for them, for you, as well as for the rest of your staff.
Of course, it’s very unsettling when one’s position is not given proper due. All good leaders want their collaborators to have a position experience on the job.
In order to achieve this goal, you will need to tackle insubordination in a timely and effective manner.
If you find your authority being challenged by a difficult collaborator, here are some steps you can take to reclaim control:

Step 1: LISTEN
When a collaborator is being difficult, the first reaction that some leaders have is to simply form an opinion of the collaborator and stop paying attention to what’s really going on.
We feel irritated, and the situation seems hopeless. And so, we feel it’s better to turn our attention to other things; this is often a form of self-protection and avoidance.
However, great leaders know that the best way to deal with this situation is to become extra attentive. They make an effort to develop the clearest possible understanding of the situation – this includes understanding the point of view of the difficult collaborator. This is typically the first step towards improving the situation.
In fact, in several cases, you can resolve the problem in itself simply by listening and paying attention. It’s possible that the collaborator in question is facing legitimate problems that you can address. Or, you may find out about a real workplace issue that’s not the collaborator’s fault which needs to be resolved. The difficult collaborator may even start behaving differently once they feel heard and acknowledged.

Step 2: GIVE CLEAR FEEDBACK
When an employee undermines your authority, you often end up thinking about the employee’s negative behaviour and complaining about it to others. Some managers spend months fretting about difficult employees without ever giving them actual behavioural feedback in a straightforward manner.
Granted, giving tough and judicious feedback is one of the most uncomfortable things that you will have to do as a leader. However, it is also one of the most critical skills that you must develop as a leader. Great leaders learn to do it well, and they are ready to do it if and when a situation calls for it.
It’s worth becoming comfortable and proficient at giving corrective feedback to your employees. Remember that without your feedback, they are flying blind.
Let the collaborator in question know what they need to do differently in order to correct their negative behaviour and therefore be more likely to succeed.
The best approach to giving this type of behavioural feedback is to lower the other person’s defensiveness, and provide them with the specific information they need for improvement.
If the collaborator acknowledges their negative behaviour and begins to apply the corrective feedback, then consider the problem resolved once you’ve taken these two steps. However, if the situation does not improve, you’ll need to consider the following further steps.

Step 3: DOCUMENT
It’s at this stage that the collaborator is being difficult despite your efforts to reach out, listen, and share corrective feedback. Now that you are having significant problems with this collaborator, don’t forget to write down the key points. This can’t be stressed enough.
If worse comes to worst, you may not even be able to let the collaborator in question go because you will have no record of their unacceptable behaviour. Many managers do not document incidences of misconduct in the hopes that this will be an isolated incidence.
However, great leaders understand that it’s prudent to create a record of this sort of behaviour. Even if you are able to resolve the issue before it comes to suspension or termination, you can simply put the documentation back in the drawer. But, if it doesn’t exist in the first place, you will have no grounds to base your next actions on.

Step 4: SET CONSEQUENCES
If you have been noting a pattern of negative behaviour and insubordination for weeks now, despite having shared clear feedback, it’s time to get specific.
As a general rule, if you have identified an under-miner on your team, in your department, or in your company, give them eight weeks to change their tune.
From weeks one through eight, make sure that the collaborator has your full support and attention. Feel comfortable sharing corrective feedback during this time as and when needed.
Hopefully, before the end of week eight the collaborator themselves will proactively tell you that they acknowledge their actions and recognise you as their leader, and want to be part of your team. However, if by the end of week eight you are still noting subordination and difficult behaviour, move them off the team.
This doesn’t necessarily mean termination. If possible, you can also consider switching them to another team in the organization. Look for creative ways to ensure the collaborator can’t affect you or the team.
If things are going down a road where termination is inevitable, in the weeks following up to it, let the collaborator know that their insubordination may have a real negative impact on their position in the company.
Say some version of the following:
“I still believe you can turn this around. Here’s what turning things around would look like.”
Laying someone off is one of the most difficult tasks for every leader. If it does get to this point, do it right, without making excuses, or putting it off, or making someone else do it. And, if things do turn around, then be courageous enough to accept that someone you thought was not salvageable is now working hard to prove you wrong.
 

Here's a cliche among digital marketers: search engine optimization (SEO) isn't what it used to be.
Here's a true statement you don't hear as often: your SEO strategy for 2021 shouldn't focus on keywords.
These days, most businesses understand the basic concepts of SEO and why it's important.
However, when it comes to developing and executing a sound SEO strategy for your business, just creating content for the keywords your customers are searching for is both arduous and, well, wrong.
In this post, we’ll explain what an SEO strategy is, and how you create your own to help you meet your content marketing goals.

What is an SEO strategy?
An SEO strategy is the process of organizing a website’s content by topic to improve the likelihood of appearing in search results. Essentially, it is the process you follow in order to maximize the opportunity to gain organic traffic from search engines.
Having an SEO strategy is important because it helps you stay on track when creating content. Instead of just creating what you think people are looking for, your strategy will ensure that you’re creating content that people are searching for. 
For content marketing, an SEO strategy is a critical piece of the puzzle because it is how your content will come to be seen in the first place, especially in search engine result pages (SERPs). If your content is scattered and unorganized, search engine bots will have a harder time indexing your site, identifying your area of authority, and ranking your site pages.

Mobile SEO Strategy
Mobile SEO is an important factor to keep in mind when creating your overall strategy. Mobile optimization involves ensuring your site and site content is available and accessible to visitors on mobile devices, so they can have the same experience and receive the same value as desktop browsers. 
Mobile optimization is incredibly important, as Google practices mobile-first indexing. This means instead of crawling a desktop site, the algorithm will use the mobile version of your site when indexing and ranking pages for SERPs. In addition, 61% of Google search queries in the U.S. occur on mobile devices. So, all things considered, your SEO strategy would be ineffective without prioritizing mobile optimization. 
While it’s not an entirely separate process, there are distinct considerations for mobile SEO like monitoring page speed, responsive site design, local SEO, and creating content that is high-quality, regardless of device it’s viewed on.

What is an SEO?
Search engine optimizers (SEOs) are people who optimize websites to help them rank higher on SERPs and gain more organic traffic. In essence, an SEO is a highly specialized content strategist that helps a business discover opportunities to answer questions people have about their respective industries.
There are three types of SEO that an SEO strategist can focus on:
 

• On-page SEO: This SEO focuses on the content that's actually on site pages, and how to optimize it to boost the website's ranking for specific keywords
• Off-page SEO: This SEO focuses on links directed to the website from elsewhere on the internet. The number of backlinks a site has from reputable sources helps you build trust with search algorithms.
• Technical SEO: This SEO focuses on a website's backend architecture, like site code. Google cares just as much about technical set-up as it does content, so this position is important for rankings.

Bear in mind that every business has different objectives, so it is an SEO’s job to examine their industry, determine what their audiences care about, and develop a strategy that gives them what they’re looking for. 
Below we’ll go over some steps you can take to ensure your SEO strategy sets you up for success. 

SEO Content Strategy

1. Make a list of topics.
2. Make a list of long-tail keywords based on these topics.
3. Build pages for each topic.
4. Set up a blog.
5. Create a consistent blogging schedule.
6. Create a link-building plan.
7. Compress media files before uploading them to your site.
8. Stay up-to-date on SEO news and best practices.
9. Measure and track your content's success.

1. Make a list of topics. Keywords are at the heart of SEO, but they're no longer the first step to achieving organic growth. Instead, the first step is to make a list of topics you’d like your content to address. 
To start, compile a list of about 10 words and terms associated with your product or service. Use an SEO tool ( Google's Keyword Tool, Ahrefs , SEMRush or GrowthBar just to name a few) to research these words, identify their search volume, and come up with variations that make sense for your business. 
By doing this, you are associating these topics with popular short-tail keywords, but you’re not dedicating individual blog posts to these keywords. Let’s go over an example of this process using the image below.
Let’s say a swimming pool business is trying to rank for “fiberglass pools,” which receives 110,000 searches per month. This short-tail keyword can represent the overarching topic for creating their content, but the business will also need to identify a series of related keywords to include in their content. For example, they could opt to use the “fiberglass pool prices,” or “fiberglass pool cost,” to achieve additional rankings for the overall keyword of fiberglass pools. 
Using search volume and competition as your measurement, you can create a list of 10-15 short-tail keywords that are relevant to your business and are being searched for by your target audiences. Then, rank this list based on monthly search volume. 
Each of the keywords that you’ve identified are called pillars, and they serve as the primary support for a larger cluster of long-tail keywords, which we’ll discuss below.

2. Make a list of long-tail keywords based on these topics.
During this step you’ll begin optimizing your pages for specific keywords. For each pillar you've identified, use your keyword tool to identify five to 10 long-tail keywords that dig deeper into the original topic keyword.
For example, we regularly create content about SEO, but it's difficult to rank well on Google for such a popular topic with this acronym alone. We also risk competing with our own content by creating multiple pages that are all targeting the exact same keyword — and potentially the same SERPs. Therefore, we also create content on conducting keyword research, optimizing images for search engines, creating an SEO strategy (which you're reading right now), and other subtopics within the SEO umbrella.
This helps businesses attract people who have varying interests and concerns — and ultimately create more entry points for people interested in what you have to offer.
Use your long-tail keywords to create blog posts or web pages that explain the specific topics within the pillars you’ve selected. Together, all of your long-tail keywords create a cluster around a pillar topic. Search engine algorithms depend on the relationships between clusters to connect users with the information they're looking for.
Think of it this way: the more specific your content, the more specific the needs of your audience can be, and the more likely you'll convert this traffic into leads. This is how Google finds value in the websites it crawls — the pages that dig into the inner workings of a general topic are seen as the best answer to a person's query, and will rank higher.

3. Build pages for each topic.
When it comes to websites and ranking in search engines, trying to get one page to rank for a handful of keywords can be next to impossible. But, here's where the rubber meets the road.
Use the pillar topics you came up with to create a page or post that gives a high-level overview of the topic using the long-tail keywords you came up with for each cluster in step two. These pillar pages can essentially be a table of contents, where you’re giving a description of the main topic, and briefing readers on subtopics you’ll elaborate on in other posts.  
Ultimately, the number of topics for which you create pillar pages should coincide with your business needs, like the number of products and offerings you have. This will make it much easier for your prospects and customers to find you in search engines no matter what keywords they use.

4. Set up a blog.
Blogging can be an incredible way to rank for keywords and engage your website's users. After all, every blog post is a new web page and an additional opportunity to rank in SERPs. If your business does not already have a blog, consider creating one.
As you write each blog post and expand on your clusters, you should do three things:

1. Don't include your long-tail keyword more than three or four times throughout the page as Google doesn't consider exact keyword matches as often as it used to. In fact, too many instances of your keyword can be a red flag to search engines that you're keyword stuffing to gain rankings, and they’ll penalize you for this.
2. Second, always link out to the pillar page you created for your topics. You can do this in the form of tags in your content management system (CMS), or as basic anchor text in the body of the article.
3. Once you publish each blog post, link to it within the parent pillar page that supports the subtopic. By connecting both the pillar and the cluster in this way, you're telling Google that there's a relationship between the long-tail keyword and the overarching topic you're trying to rank for.

5. Create a consistent blogging schedule.
Every blog post or web page you create doesn’t necessarily need to belong to a topic cluster. There's also value in writing about tangential topics your customers care about to build authority with the Google algorithms. 
With that in mind, make it a point to blog at least once a week. Remember, you are blogging primarily for your audience, not search engines, so study your target market and write about things that they are interested in.
It may be helpful to create a content strategy to remain consistent and focused on your goals. 

6. Create a link-building plan.
The topic cluster model is your way forward in SEO, but it's not the only way to get your website content to rank higher once it's been created.
While our first five steps were dedicated to on-page SEO, link-building is the primary objective of off-page SEO. Link-building is the process of attracting inbound links (also called backlinks) to your website from other sources on the internet. As a general rule, sites with more authority that link back to your content have a more significant impact on your rankings. 
Dedicate some time to brainstorming all the various ways you can attract inbound links. Maybe you’ll start by sharing links with local businesses in exchange for links to their own sites, or you’ll write a few blog posts and share them on different social media platforms. You can also approach other blogs for guest blogging opportunities through which you can link back to your website.

7. Compress media files before uploading them to your site.
This is a small but important step in the SEO process, especially for mobile optimization. 
As your blog or website grows, you'll undoubtedly have more images, videos, and related media to support your content. These visual assets help retain your visitors' attention, but it's easy to forget that these files can be very large. Since page speed is a crucial ranking factor, it’s important to monitor the size of the media files you upload to your site. 
The bigger the file size, the more difficult it is for an internet browser to render your website. It’s also harder for mobile browsers to load these images, as the bandwidth on their devices is significantly smaller. So, the smaller the file size, the faster your website will load. But, how do you compress images and still retain quality?
It’s worth considering the use of a compression tool to reduce file sizes before uploading images, videos, and gifs. Sites like TinyPNG compress images in bulk, while Google's Squoosh can shrink image files to microscopic sizes. However you choose to compress your media, keeping files in the kilobytes (KB) range is a good rule of thumb.

8. Stay up-to-date on SEO news and best practices.
Just like marketing, the search engine landscape is ever-evolving. Staying on top of current trends and best practices is an important strategy, and there are multiple online resources that can help you do so. Here are a few resources to check out:

• Moz
• SEOBook
• Search Engine Roundtable
• Search Engine Land
• Diggity Marketing
• This Blog!

9. Measure and track your content's success. SEO can take a lot of time and effort, and, because of this, you’ll want to know if your strategy works. It’s important to track your metrics to understand the success of your overall process, and identify possible areas for improvement. 
You can monitor organic traffic using your preferred web analytics tool or create your own dashboard using Excel or Google Sheets. Also, tracking indexed pages, conversions, ROI, and your rankings on SERPs can help you recognize your success as well as identify areas of opportunity.

SEO Process
Once you’ve created your SEO strategy, you should also build a process to continue optimizing for new keywords and evolving search intent. Here are a few steps you can take. 

1. Historically optimize your content. 
Devote some time each month to updating old blog posts with new and up-to-date information to continue ranking in SERPs. You can also use this time to add any SEO best-practices that weren’t initially addressed, like missing image alt text.

2. Look out for changing keywords and new search intent.
After a few months, track how your blog posts are ranking, and which keywords they're ranking for. This can help you adjust subheadings and copy to leverage new search intent that your audience may be interested in.

3. Add more editorial value to your old content.
Sometimes, you'll find that a post is completely out of date. In this scenario, you should go beyond the average historical SEO update and give it a full refresh. You can do this by updating out of date information and statistics, incorporating new sections for added depth, and adding quotes or original data to give the post more referral traffic.

4. Create a monthly content plan.
To keep up with your SEO strategy, it can be helpful to create and refine a monthly content plan. You can place it into a spreadsheet, and your teams can track accordingly. The list below is an example of a content monthly content plan that takes the above steps into account. 

SEO Monthly Plan

1. Devote time to keyword research related to your industry.
2. List blog post ideas that leverage opportunistic keywords.
3. Identify blog posts that can be updated or refreshed.
4. Identify other SEO opportunities, such as holidays.
5. List content ideas in a Search Insights Report.
6. Assign content to your team.
7. Track progress at the end of each month.

With a monthly SEO plan like the one above, plus a tracking document like a search insights report, you can build out and execute on an efficient SEO strategy. You can also identify and leverage low-hanging-fruit topics to discuss related to your industry.

Create A Strategy That Supports Your Business Goals
Ranking in search pages can be difficult. While it may seem enticing to create content that is centered around high-traffic keywords, that strategy may not help you meet your business goals. 
Instead, opt to create an SEO strategy that helps you address your individual business needs, like increasing customer acquisition, for greater marketing success.

This week sees the opening of the first UK high-street clinic offering psychedelic-assisted therapy. Could popping psilocybin be the future of mental healthcare?

In the summer of 1981, when he was 13, Grant crashed a trail motorbike into a wall at his parents’ house in Cambridgeshire. He’d been hiding it in the shed, but “it was far too powerful for me, and on my very first time starting it in the garden, I smashed it into a wall”. His mother came outside to find the skinny teenager in a heap next to the crumpled motorbike. “I was in a lot of trouble.”
Grant hadn’t given this childhood memory much thought in the intervening years, but one hot August day in 2019, it came back to him with such clarity that, at 53, now a stocky father of two, he suddenly understood it as a clue to his dangerously unhealthy relationship with alcohol.
The day before, a team of specialists at the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital had given him an intravenous infusion of ketamine, a dissociative hallucinogen, in common use as an anaesthetic since the 1970s, and more recently one of a group of psychedelic drugs being hailed as a silver bullet in the fight to save our ailing mental health. To date, more than 100 patients with conditions as diverse as depression, PTSD and addiction have been treated in research settings across the UK, using a radical new intervention that combines psychedelic drugs with talking therapy. What was once a fringe research interest has become the foundation of a new kind of healthcare, one that, for the first time in modern psychiatric history, purports to not only treat but actually cure mental ill health. And if advocates are to be believed, that cure will be available on the NHS within the next five years.

Thanks to its world-leading academic institutions, the UK has become a home to many of the biotech companies developing these treatments. But while investment money pours in and new experimental trials launch almost weekly, ketamine remains the only psychedelic drug that’s actually licensed for use as a medicine.
Under its influence, Grant had an out-of-body experience he struggles to put into words. “It was like I was sinking deeper and deeper into myself,” he says. “Then I became white… and I left my body. I was up on the ceiling, looking at myself, but I was just this white entity. I felt very serene and humbled; I finally understood my place in the universe, just a white speck of light, I wasn’t the centre of everything and that was fine.”
The next day, in a therapy session at the hospital, the motorbike story and other memories swirled up from his subconscious: being caught smoking at school and caned, and other instances of “playing up” as a child. Most vividly, he remembers the consequences: “I got my parents’ attention.”
I realised feeling overlooked as a child drove my drinking. It hadn’t been on my radar – but with ketamine I got there
His parents were evangelists; Grant’s father was a teacher and lay preacher, and his mother ran a nursery from home. They were also fosterers who, over the span of their marriage, gave a home to more than 200 children. “Growing up, love was never in short supply,” Grant says. What was in short supply was his parents’ attention. “They had a lot of commitments, they were very busy people,” he says. “I suppose what I realised in that therapy session was that I’d felt overlooked as a child and that had caused me pain.” Over the years, that pain crystallised, and alcohol became a crutch. “I could see it was the root of the negative emotions that drove my drinking, and a lot of other bad habits and behaviours.” He says it’s a realisation he might have taken years to come to with standard talking therapy. “It wasn’t even on my radar, so it blew my mind. To understand myself and my drinking, and why I behaved the way I did… With the ketamine therapy I got there in a few weeks. I feel free.”

In recent years, research into psychedelic-assisted mental healthcare has shed its outsider status. As far back as 2016, Robin Carhart-Harris and his team at Imperial College London published promising findings from the world’s first modern research trial investigating the impact of psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) alongside psychological support, on 19 patients with treatment-resistant depression (TRD). This is when a person doesn’t respond to two or more available therapies; it is particularly debilitating and, recent data shows, affects about a third of all people with depression. In the study, two doses of psilocybin (10mg and 25mg, seven days apart), plus therapy, resulted in “marked reductions in depressive symptoms” in the first five weeks, which “remained significant six months post-treatment”. This new treatment proved so promising that, in 2018, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) awarded breakthrough therapy status to psilocybin (given only to drugs that “demonstrate substantial improvement over available therapy”) as a treatment for TRD. In December 2019, a ketamine-like drug – esketamine – was licensed for use in the UK as a rapid-onset treatment for major depression: it starts working in hours, compared with weeks or months with traditional antidepressants. In April 2020, after running their own psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy study, with 24 participants who had depression, experts from Johns Hopkins University in the US issued a press release stating: “The magnitude of the effect we saw was about four times larger than what clinical trials have shown for traditional antidepressants on the market.”
All this, and other early-stage evidence, is fuelling larger, more ambitious investigations. The London life sciences company Compass Pathways, whose research led to the FDA award, is coordinating one of the biggest psilocybin for TRD studies in the world, involving 216 patients across Europe and North America. The aim is to develop a new style of therapy that harnesses the psychedelic experience, as well as to change these substances’ classification, so they can be licensed as medicines. This wouldn’t change the legal status of MDMA or psilocybin (banned for recreational use in the UK), but it would mean treatments using these compounds could be prescribed.

In the meantime, practitioners of this new kind of mental healthcare can use ketamine as their psychedelic agent; and some studies, such as the one Grant participated in, are even government funded. The Ketamine for Reduction of Alcoholic Relapse (Kare) study is a novel attempt to ease the huge burden on the NHS caused by alcohol-related illnesses. (Two years ago, a major review of inpatient records found that 10% of people in hospital beds in the UK were alcohol dependent, and one in five were doing themselves harm by drinking.) As the Kare study lead, Professor Celia Morgan, tells me, “Three-quarters of people who stop drinking and go through detox will be back drinking within 12 months: that’s not a good recovery rate.”
Patients aren’t merely given a dose and left to their own devices; a new style of therapy was developed for the study which, Morgan says, uses principles from cognitive behavioural therapy, mindfulness and relapse prevention. “We designed it to go with the ketamine effects. We wanted something evidence based, a therapy that has been shown to help people avoid alcoholic relapse. But also something that would work with what we know about the brain in the ketamine state.” The patient is primed for new learning, she says, and more able to view the self from an outsider’s perspective. Until now, in the UK, therapy using psychedelics has remained the preserve of academic institutions – available only in research trials with highly specific criteria for inclusion. This week, though, with the opening of its clinic in Bristol, Awakn Life Sciences has become the UK’s first on-the-high-street provider of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. The clinical-biotech company is “researching, developing and delivering evidence-based psychedelic medicine to treat addiction and other mental health conditions”. This means it will be developing its own type of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (with a focus on MDMA to treat addiction) via experimental trials. And alongside it, delivering ketamine-assisted psychotherapy.
“Our USP is the clinics,” says Dr Ben Sessa, consultant psychiatrist, psychedelic therapist and chief medical officer at Awakn. “We’re aiming to open 15 to 20 across the UK and EU in the next 24 months. Patients will be able to self-refer or be referred by their GP (including NHS).” They will need a formal diagnosis and will most likely have to prove they have already tried a number of other therapies.
See a psychiatrist at 20 and chances are you still will be at 60. We’ve come to accept we can’t cure patients. Why not?
Sessa is scathing about the psychiatric profession as it currently operates: “We need innovation in this industry, desperately and now.” The problem, he argues, is that outcomes within psychiatric treatment fall far short of the gold standard set for the rest of the medical profession. “If you broke your leg and went to an orthopaedic specialist, you’d expect it to be fixed,” he says. “You wouldn’t expect to be prescribed painkillers for the rest of your life. But if you present to your psychiatrist in your early 20s with a severe mental illness, there’s a good chance you will still be seeing them when you’re 60. You’ll still be on the same daily drugs.” According to the most recent NHS figures, only half of talking therapy patients recovered from their condition. “What about the other 50%?” Sessa asks. “As an industry, we’ve come to accept that we can never cure our patients. But why not?”

Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, he says, may be “the holy grail – curative psychiatry”, arguing that these interventions offer relatively fast-acting alleviation of symptoms and don’t require the same level of maintenance (with drugs or talking therapy) as the treatments currently available.
Though alcoholism is a focus, Awakn will also offer psychedelic-assisted therapy to treat depression, anxiety, eating disorders and most addictions.
On a Monday in late February, the Bristol clinic is abuzz with builders and workmen. Formerly the site of an Indian restaurant, it sits in a 19th-century building on the corner of Regent Street and Hensmans Hill in Bristol’s chi-chi Clifton area. Its position, next to a barber shop and cocktail bar, and overlooking a small park, was picked for its ordinariness. As Awakn’s CEO Anthony Tennyson explains, “Our strategy is to normalise the industry; we want to integrate into the mainstream, so that popping in for mental health treatment is as normal as… ” he trails off. Getting your teeth whitened? “Something like that,” he laughs.
Inside, the clinic is painted a tasteful dove grey, with exposed brickwork and wooden floors. “It’s going to be sort of Scandinavian chic in design,” says Steve O’Brien, the operations manager. “That will be one of the treatment rooms.” He points up a flight of stairs to a room separated from reception by a reinforced glass partition. “We’re waiting for the beds to be delivered.” “Set and setting” (ie the mental state and physical environment) have been shown to be vital to the psychedelic experience – and a bad setting can equal a bad trip.
This is something O’Brien has experience of. “Years ago I took [the powerful hallucinogen] ayahuasca in Iquitos, Peru. It was all a bit dodgy. I ended up in this dark little hut with breeze-block walls covered in sheets and 12 Peruvian ladies in deck chairs watching Friends really loudly next door. I thought I was going to be ritually sacrificed,” he says. The clinic’s attention to the furnishings and feel of the space isn’t just elegant window dressing: “It’s about preparing a client for their drug experience, allowing them to feel safe and warm. It’s about as far from that Peruvian hut as you can get.”
Patients will be assessed by Awakn’s team, including Sessa and Dr Laurie Higbed, a clinical psychologist who specialises in complex trauma and addictions, who has been part of research trials using both psilocybin and MDMA as adjuncts to psychotherapy. “I was the clinical psychologist, alongside Ben [Sessa as consultant psychiatrist], in an addiction service,” Higbed says. “We used to chat over coffee about how our caseload was full of clients who had experienced trauma in their lives, particularly in childhood. We were treating their heroin or alcohol use, but really that was just a symptom, rather than the cause.”
Her job was to help addicts uncover and work through those underlying traumas via talking therapy. But being forced to remember a trauma we may have spent a lifetime trying to suppress can be very daunting. “Often you get a little bit worse before you get better,” Higbed says, and this requires “a lot of faith that it’s worth the effort”.
Metaphors abound for exactly how psychedelics work on a neurological level but one of the most popular involves considering the brain as a snow globe, showing a pristine scene at birth. As we age, our experiences, habits and the traumas we live through create tracks in the snow for our thoughts to run along. The older we get, the more worn the tracks become, making it harder for us to escape established thought patterns. “So with things like depression,” Higbed says, “you might have this negative worldview which can be very difficult to break free from.” Psychedelic compounds shake up the snow globe. Old ruts are destabilised and thoughts are free to move in new ways.
“This is why therapy is an important part of the treatment,” says Morgan who, as well as running the research trial Grant was a part of, will be consulting on treatments for alcoholism at Awakn. “The drugs alone might prompt big epiphanies, but the therapy helps you to learn from them and create lasting change.” She has seen this process in action. “One patient had been drinking seven bottles of wine a day, and had seen his life crumble,” she says. “His wife left, his daughter stopped speaking to him.” The patient had been abused as a child, and over his lifetime had spent increasing amounts of energy trying to avoid the emotions thrown up by that early trauma. “He had a very strong reaction to the ketamine infusion,” Morgan says. “He said he felt a kind of love and safety that he hadn’t felt for a long time. At one point he felt like he was back in his mum’s tummy.”

As part of the psychedelic experience, he also encountered his abuser, his father. “He said he felt pity for him. This was a massive step because he was able to understand his experiences from the perspective of an observer; the pity also extended to himself, which alleviated a lot of the shame and guilt he’d been feeling because of his alcoholism.” Eighteen months later, the man was still sober – having previously only ever managed a month.
A treatment course at Awakn lasts six weeks, with four drug-assisted sessions in that time. “And a follow-up session at week nine, so it’s 11 in total,” Higbed says. “It’s intensive.” Though, ultimately, they hope to work primarily with MDMA, they’re hamstrung by the current global legislation, which says the drug can be used only in an experimental setting. In the meantime, they’ll offer ketamine injections, more fast-acting than the infusion Grant received, but likely to yield similar results. It will cost “around £6,000”, Tennyson says. “Though our ultimate aim is to make it available on the NHS, to help as many people as possible.”
It’s not a magical cure. People should definitely try talking therapy first. It does work, and is much less invasive
Tennyson comes from a corporate finance background (Merrill Lynch, Bank of Ireland and 10 years in the risk consulting arm of the insurer Aon). Like Sessa, he’s evangelical in his belief that the services offered by Awakn have never been more necessary. “Twenty per cent of the population have a mental health issue on an annual basis. The industry that is meant to be fixing this is significantly underperforming,” he says. In fact, according to figures from the mental health charity Mind, that figure is closer to 25%.
Tennyson’s job is to drive sales and generate investor interest. Financially, Awakn needs the clinics to be a success, but it’s also gearing up for a round of funding to help start its own research trials. Tennyson is coy about exactly how much this might cost (one academic confirms it runs to tens of millions) but says, “Ultimately, you can’t solve problems of this magnitude without capital.” The capital, it seems, is following the science into a psychedelics gold rush. Peter Rands is the CEO of Small Pharma, a London-based life sciences company preparing to run the world’s first formal trial evaluating the combination of DMT (a short-acting but powerful hallucinogen) and psychotherapy to treat patients with major depressive disorder. “2020 was a relatively easy year to raise money into a psychedelics company,” he says, partly because investors understand the proposition now more than ever: “I don’t think this seems like a niche industry any more.” But it’s also because the pandemic proved drugs can suddenly have global demand. “Covid showed how much value there is in responding quickly to a major unmet medical need. Pre-pandemic, the biotech industry was worth a fraction of the price it is now. When drugs were suddenly being touted as a Covid cure, there was huge investor interest.”

A lot of investment, Rands says, is coming from Canada. Small Pharma plans to list on the Toronto stock exchange, and Awakn is incorporated in Toronto. “The Canadian investor community has a higher risk appetite to emerging industries,” Tennyson says. Rands agrees, pointing out that, “until recently, Canadian companies were pretty much all mining companies. And mining has a similar risk-return profile to drug development.” In both industries, he says, huge sums are invested upfront to excavate the necessary goods: “In drug development, that’s through clinical trials.”
In September 2020, Compass Pathways floated on the Nasdaq exchange. In October, it was valued at $1.3bn.
The company was founded in 2016 by Dr Ekaterina Malievskaia and her husband, George Goldsmith, after a years-long battle to find adequate mental healthcare for their son, who had OCD and depression. Goldsmith is quick to correct the narrative about his work. “We don’t see ourselves as part of a ‘psychedelics industry’ – we are a mental healthcare company.”
He is sanguine about how quickly these interventions could become more widely available, likening the process to climbing Everest. “A medicine is a drug plus the evidence that says it’s safe and effective to use for a certain type of patient. We’re about halfway through the process of collecting that evidence. But I think if everything works out well, by 2025 psilocybin-assisted therapy could be prescribed on the NHS for treatment-resistant depression.”
Sessa, whose focus is MDMA-assisted therapies to treat addiction, has a shorter timeline in mind. “MDMA is further along than psilocybin in the regulatory process,” he says. “It is thought it will be approved as a medicine by late 2022 or early 2023.” By that point, if Awakn has realised its ambitions, it will have a clinic in every major city in the UK.
 

My name is Greta Thunberg and I am inviting you to be a part of the solution.

As #ParisAgreement turns 5, our leaders present their 'hopeful' distant hypothetical targets, 'net zero' loopholes and empty promises.

But the real hope comes from the people.

The emergence of “variants of concern” has raised questions about our long-term immunity to the coronavirus. Will the antibodies we make after being infected with or vaccinated against the dominant lineage, called D614G, protect us against future viral variants?
To answer this question, scientists have been examining how our antibody responses to the coronavirus develop over time. Several studies have recently compared the difference between antibodies produced straight after a coronavirus infection and those that can be detected six months later. The findings have been both impressive and reassuring.
Although there are fewer coronavirus-specific antibodies detectable in the blood six months after infection, the antibodies that remain have undergone significant changes. Researchers have tested their ability to bind to proteins from the new coronavirus variants and found that 83% of the “mature” antibodies were better at recognising the variants. A recent preprint (a study that is yet to undergo peer review) also found that some antibodies present six months after infection were starting to be able to recognise related, but entirely distinct viruses, such as the coronavirus that causes Sars.
How is this possible? Quite simply because the B cells that make antibodies evolve after they are first activated. While it is well known that viruses can mutate over time, our own B cells can also take advantage of mutations to make superior antibodies.

Somatic hypermutation
A key difference between the mutation of antibodies and viruses is that mutations in antibodies are not entirely random. They are, in fact, directly caused by an enzyme that is only found in B cells, known as Aid (activation-induced deaminase). This enzyme deliberately causes mutations in the DNA responsible for making the part of the antibody that can recognise the virus. This mutation mechanism was solved by pioneering researchers at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, almost 20 years ago.
AID activity leads to a much higher rate of mutation in B cells than in any other cell in the body. This phenomenon is called “somatic hypermutation”.
Some of the mutations that are induced in the antibody binding site will improve the binding of that antibody to the target virus. But some mutations will have no effect, and others will actually decrease the antibody’s ability to latch onto the target virus. This means there needs to be a system whereby B cells making the best antibodies will be selected.
B cells congregate in small glands called lymph nodes while they are developing. Lymph nodes are found all around the body and often get bigger if you are fighting an infection.

B cells gather in lymph nodes while they are developing.
 
Within the lymph nodes, the B cells that can make better antibodies after somatic hypermutation are given positive signals to make them replicate faster. Other B cells fall by the wayside and die. This “survival-of-the-fittest” process is called affinity maturation; the strength or “affinity” with which antibodies bind to their target matures and improves over time. After this rigorous selection, the newly emerged B cell will now mass produce its improved antibody, leading to a more effective immune response.
The course of a typical COVID infection is ten to 14 days, so the first wave of antibodies driving out the virus doesn’t have long enough to evolve because affinity maturation normally takes place over weeks. But research from the US has shown that small non-infectious bits of SARS-CoV-2 remain in the body after an infection is cleared, so B cells can keep being reminded of what the virus looks like. This allows antibody evolution to continue for months after an infection has been resolved.
Overall, antibody evolution means that if a person is infected with coronavirus for a second time, antibodies with far superior binding ability will be ready and waiting. This has important implications for vaccination. Antibody evolution will begin after the first vaccination so that much-improved antibodies will be present if the virus is encountered at a later date. Hopefully, it is comforting to know that it is not just the virus that is mutating, our own antibodies are keeping pace.

Post summary:

• The customer is firmly in the driving seat and with it comes a required change in how you build and nurture relationships with potential and existing customers.

• Companies that put the customer at the heart of their organization are experiencing an increase in customer lifetime value and a reduction in churn. How? By being customer-centric.

• Becoming a truly customer-centric organization takes time, but you can start small. We provide you with 4 best practices to becoming a customer-centric company and share 3 ways to measure success.

A customer-centric way of doing business is focused on providing a positive customer experience before and after the sale in order to drive repeat business, enhance customer loyalty and improve business growth.
However, a customer-centric company requires more than offering good customer service.
Both Amazon and Zappos are prime examples of brands that are customer-centric and have spent years creating a culture around the customer and their needs. Their commitment in delivering customer value is genuine. In fact, Zappos is happy to fire employees if they do not fit within their customer-centric culture!
But, how important is being customer-centric?
Econsultancy recently asked what the most important characteristic is in order to establish a truly "digital-native" culture.
The answer to that question and leading the responses with 58% was to be customer-centric.

Yet, according to CMO Council, only 14% of marketers believe that customer-centricity is a hallmark of their companies.
Here's the thing:
Executing a successful customer-centric strategy doesn't happen overnight.
Let’s explore ways to create a customer-centric strategy that connects your business to the unique needs of your customers. 

What is customer-centric?
Customer-centric (also known as client-centric) is a business strategy that’s based on putting your customer first and at the core of your business in order to provide a positive experience and build long-term relationships.

When you put your customer at the core of your business, and combine it with Customer Relationship Management (CRM), you collect a wealth of data, which gives you a full 360 view of the customer. This data can then be used to enhance your customer’s experience.
For example:

• You can use customer data to understand buying behavior, interests and engagement
• You can identify opportunities to create products, services, and promotions for your best customers
• You can use customer lifetime value to segment customers based on top spenders

Research by Deloitte and Touche found that customer-centric companies were 60% more profitable compared to companies that were not focused on the customer.
Companies that focus on their customers are able to provide a positive customer experience through their entire journey. To accomplish this, companies must undergo a massive shift in their organization’s structure and culture. 

The challenges of becoming a customer-centric organization
The power shift between brand and customer happened during the economic downturn in the late nineties as customers became more selective in which brand they chose to spend their money with.
The winning brands were the ones who treated their customers with respect, offered great service, and built a relationship with them that still exists today.
During the same period, another game-changer took place - social media. 
Social media marketing (and with it social selling) changed the way customers interact with brands and became a major  part of the customer journey. 
In a report by Global Web Index, 54% of social media users use social media to research products and 71% are more likely to make a purchase based on social media referrals.
Social media is just one of many digital channels that is changing the landscape between companies and customers. 
Research reveals that companies struggling to become a customer-centric organization are unable to share customer information across departments and lack an aligned culture around the customer’s needs.

Most companies do not have all of the components in place to claim they are customer-centric, but the most important part to remember is this:
Customer-centricity starts by focusing on what customers need and how they want to interact with your business - not your products, it’s features, or revenue model. 
By designing your company from the customer’s perspective, your organization will be able to meet the customer’s needs and deliver a positive experience.

4 Best practices to becoming a customer-centric company
Becoming a customer-centric business allows you to anticipate customers' needs and delight them with products and services. 
Consider the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, who said, “Our whole role in life is to give you something you didn't know you wanted. And then once you get it, you can't imagine your life without it.”
Apple’s entire strategy revolves around customer-centricity. Their product makes customers fall in love and their Apple Centers provide world-class customer support to help them get set up and out the doors with a smile on their face.
Thus, a customer-centric brand creates products, processes, policies and a culture that is designed to support customers with a great experience from initial discovery to point of purchase and beyond.
To achieve better customer-centricity, here are four best practices to help your business stand out:

1. Hire for customer success. Employees are the front-facing workforce that will shape many of the experiences with customers. Regardless of role, focus on hiring talent that can be aligned with customer-centric thinking and the importance of customer experience at your business. 
    
2. Put relationships first. Customers are not numbers to be measured and analyzed in a revenue performance report. They are people and benefit greatly when you establish a mutually beneficial relationship together.
    
3. Democratize customer data. Adopting a new customer-centric strategy requires centralized access to customer data and insights. Having a CRM database can help facilitate a better understanding of customers to provide a unified front that delivers better customer experiences.
    
4. Connect company culture to customer outcomes. Employees will be motivated by a customer-centricity strategy when actions can be linked to results. For example, strategies to reduce customer wait times or making transitions easier for a customer can be captured in real-time to highlight successful strategy implementation.

3 ways to measure the success of a customer-centric company
Not every organization will have the same customer success metrics to measure customer-centricity. However, the three most important customer-centric metrics that should be carefully monitored are churn rate, Net Promoter Score and customer lifetime value (CLV).

1. Churn rate
Acquiring new customers is becoming more difficult. Therefore, more companies are investing in keeping existing customers instead of trying to find new ones. Here’s why:

• Acquiring new customers can cost up to 5x more than keeping existing customers
• A 2% increase in customer retention has the same effect on profits as cutting costs by 10%
• On average, companies lose approx. 10% of its customer base each year (also known as customer churn)

Companies with a high retention rate grow faster.
The key to improving retention rates is to understand why people leave, and why people remain customers.
Call Miner’s Churn Index Report reveals that $35.3 billion is associated with unplanned switching to a different brand due to triggers that could have been avoided. For example, customers were more likely to leave a brand if:

• Knowledgeable customer support, or super agents, can address customer needs by emphatically listening and addressing an issue then solving it promptly
• Companies lacked automated self-service channels, such as a knowledge base, to solve issues on their own 
• Customers not feeling rewarded for their loyalty while new customers receive onboarding benefits and bonuses 

Once known, you can calculate churn rate by measuring the number of customers who left in the last 12 months divided by the average number of total customers (during the same period).

2. Net Promoter Score
Are your customers happy? How do you measure customer happiness?
The answer is through NPS.
NPS, or Net Promoter Score focuses on uncovering customer loyalty by asking only one, simple question:

Each time a customer responds to this question, the answer is then segmented based on predefined criteria:

• Promoters (9-10): These people are in love with your product or service and are likely to refer you to potential buyers. The customers who rate you a 9 or 10 are repeat customers and will have a high customer lifetime value.
• Passives (7-8): These people who rate you a 7 or 8 are content with being a customer of your business, but are the most likely to switch to a competitor should they find a new or better product.
• Detractors (0-6): These people are not happy with your product or service and are likely to damage your brand reputation by sharing their negative experience with their friends, family and connections.

The more Promoters you have, the healthier your business. Simple, really?
And the fact that it’s simple to implement and measure makes the NPS a favorite with company boards and executive committees.

3. Customer lifetime value (CLV)
For a customer-centric business, the most valuable "asset" is their customer base.
If you're investing in long-term relationships, you can calculate the "health" of the relationship with customer lifetime value or CLV.
CLV measures the amount of revenue a customer contributes to your business for as long as they are a paying customer. It starts with their first purchase and ends when they stop doing business with you.
To calculate CLV, add up the total revenue you have earned and multiply that with the length of the business relationship. Then, deduct the initial cost of acquiring them.
For example, if a customer spends $1,000 annually, and the average "lifetime" of a customer is 10 years, then you multiply $1,000 by 10 years ($10,000). Now, subtract the cost of acquisition (in this case, we'll estimate $1,000), and the CLV is $9,000.
Not bad, right?
Calculating CLV helps you understand why it makes sense to invest in keeping your customers.
But, rather than looking at CLV from purely from a revenue perspective, you should be looking at it from a value perspective - which is why I love Dennis Shiao's take on Customer lifetime value.


Conclusion
The shift towards becoming a truly customer-centric organization is both complex and long but, do not be put off by this as even the smallest changes to policy and processes can have a significant benefit for both employee and your customer.
Being a customer-centric organization is the Holy Grail towards unlocking the true potential of customer value. Always put yourself in the shoes of the customer and minimize customer effort and maximize customer value.
Do you consider yourself a customer-centric organization?
The best CRM software plays an important role in becoming customer-centric as this is where all of your customer data is stored. See how SuperOffice CRM can help your business by signing up for a free demo.
 

There’s a major difference between authority and leadership. Can you articulate it?
Many people can’t, but almost everyone knows the difference when they see it.
What is authority? Telling others what to do. Why? Because that way you win.

People in authority are the top dog and get the big paycheck. They’re amazing because they’re the boss. But, just because an executive has authority over their employees doesn’t mean their employees will follow them. Here’s a great example.

I’ve seen a CIO’s direct reports indirectly fire him by deciding as a team they would not follow him. This particular CIO was left with no way to report on critical activities and no way to influence the outcome of his direct reports’ critical endeavors.
This quickly became obvious to the CIO’s boss and he was fired. Now, the CIO could have used his authority to fire his direct reports before their behavior was noticed, but the business leaders and his boss held them in high esteem. The CIO’s direct reports did their jobs well for the sake of their success, not for the success of the CIO.

The point of sharing this extreme case of mutiny is to illustrate the two distinctly different ways for an executive to influence outcomes: using authority or leadership.

Leadership is a Choice
All executives have positional authority that can be leveraged to achieve results, but they can choose to use their leadership skills instead of authority to achieve results.
You don’t need any positional authority to be a successful leader.

Leadership is exponentially more powerful than authority because it involves choice. When your team members choose to follow you, they are doing so because they either feel positively connected to your vision or because they simply feel connected to you. With this connection, your team members will start consciously succeeding for you.

This shift from their minds to their hearts means that your team members will begin intentionally incorporating the things they believe will ensure your success with their approach to ensuring their success. This will result in closer alignment between their actions, your vision, and the direction you hope their efforts will take the company.

Leaders Build a Deeper Connection
Connection is the key to leadership, and there’s only one way leaders can connect with their team members: active listening, which is the opposite of listening to respond.

Given human nature, most of us listen to come up with a response or to give the right answer. With a ton of competing demands, we’re in a hurry to solve the problem.

As a leader, if you don’t take the time to listen and truly understand the problem or your team members’ concerns, your solutions will never be as effective as you would like.

Active listening involves listening to understand how your team members are feeling, how they are thinking, and how they are anchored to a topic.
Connection is about feeling understood and feeling cared for. As a leader, when you take the time to really listen, you will understand them. You will care for them. It’s impossible to truly know someone and not feel some connection to them.

You will develop a depth of understanding for your team members and it will be evident in how you lead them. The time you spend listening will always be perceived as caring for them, and it will give you the perspective you need to truly lead them.

Leadership Isn’t About You
In summary, authority is not leadership. And leadership isn’t about you; it’s about your team. It’s about enabling them to succeed and creating velocity for growth by capturing the team’s collective IQ, EQ, and their individual capacity to drive outcomes.
If you want to be a leader, you’re showing up for the team. Otherwise, you want to be a boss, and that’s cool! If that’s you, here’s what I want you to do: click out of this article, but before you do, send it to someone who understands business is about people.

Cannabis, which is one of the oldest vegetable sources of food and textile fibres, has been an integral part of the culture of many ancient civilizations[1]. Also used for its therapeutic properties for thousands of years, this plant has attracted the attention of the scientific community, which has multiplied its research in recent decades to study its functionality and potential health effects. Today we want to talk about the effect of medical cannabis on sleep cycles.
Nowadays, cannabinoid-based treatments are real alternatives to traditional medical treatments to relieve various pathologies such as epilepsy, depression, pain and even sleep disorders. Since -the 2000s, research on sleep and cannabis have been conducted after discovering its therapeutic potential. However, it is still difficult to assess its effects on sleep because many factors must be taken into account, such as the type of cannabinoids (THC/CBD), the frequency of consumption (regular or  occasional), the form of administration (oral or spray) and the dosage[2].
The objective of this article is to study the effects of cannabis and its components on sleep cycles.

The sleep stages
During sleep, the human body goes through different stages. This is called the sleep cycle.  A cycle lasts on average 90 minutes and is repeated between 4 to 6 times per night. It is divided into two main phases, non-REM (Non-Rapid Eye Movement) and REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. As the night progresses, the duration of non-REM sleep stages decreases while that of REM sleep phases increases[3].

• Non-REM sleep

Non-REM sleep includes 4 stages.
Stage I. “Wakefulness-sleep”. This first stage generally lasts 5 minutes corresponding to the transition phase between awakening and light sleep.  This is the lightest phase of sleep where individuals are still aware of the environment and waking up can occur very easily. The body prepares to fall asleep, the muscles relax and sometimes twitch, breathing becomes more regular, eye movements and brain activity slow down.
The electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures the electrical activity of the brain, has made it possible to study the different waves released by the brain during sleep. Each type of wave reflects a physiological state.  During phase I, alpha waves (light relaxation) gradually gives way to theta waves that have lower frequencies and amplitudes and characterize a state of deep relaxation.
Stage II. “Light sleep”. In the second stage, which lasts about 25 minutes, sleep is light but waking up is less frequent than in the first stage. The body continues to relax gradually with a decrease in body temperature, eye movements and brain activity. The delta waves that correspond to a state of deep sleep begin to occur.
Stage III/IV. “Deep sleep”. The third stage (stage III) and the fourth stage (stage IV) which are very similar, correspond to deep sleep. They are characterized by waves with low frequency and high amplitude (delta waves).
This is the most restorative part of sleep for the body (feeling refreshed in the morning) and it is very difficult to wake a person in this phase. When a person is awakened during this phase, he or she will have a period of “fog” where his or her mental performance will be impaired for 30 to 60 minutes. The older you get, the shorter this step lasts.

• REM sleep

REM sleep/Stage V “Dreaming”. The fifth phase of the sleep cycle is often associated with the dream phase. Its name, Rapid Eye Movement (REM), refers to the acceleration of eye movements under the eyelid during this stage. This sleep is called “paradoxical” because during this phase, the brain acts somewhat awake.  There is more intense brain activity than in previous phases, irregular breathing and, as mentioned above, very rapid eye movements. However, the muscles of the body are still in a state of paralysis that prevents an individual from “acting out” their nightmares or dreams while sleeping.
This tonic immobility (death-feigning) during REM might evolve into a primordial defence reflex against an attacking predator. Most people who wake up during this phase remember their dreams. This phase lasts on average 10 minutes for the first cycle, then they continue to lengthen throughout the night so that the last one lasts up to one hour[4] [5]. REM sleep may have an important role in some types of memories such as spatial, procedural and emotional[6]. Normal Sleep Stages. NREM; Non-Rapid Eyes Movement, REM; Rapid Eyes Movement. Medical cannabis on sleep cycles

Effects of THC on sleep
Studies conducted to understand the effects of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) on sleep have shown that in low doses, THC has a slight sedative effect increasing the total sleep duration, with a reduction in REM and sleep onset latency (the time between it takes to accomplish the transition from full wakefulness to sleep; Non-REM sleep stage I).



However, when THC doses are high, in addition to hallucinations, there is a decrease in REM sleep and an increase in sleep onset latency. A decrease in REM sleep could have an impact on memory consolidation.[7]
Effects of CBD on sleep
The research on Cannabidiol (CBD), a non-toxic and non-addictive cannabinoid, has shown a more sustained response to anxiety rather than for sleep per se.[8] Effects of co-administration of CBD and THC on sleep The results of another study suggest that the effects of the combination of the two cannabinoids on sleep would depend largely on the dosage and the CBD: THC ratio.
Indeed, co-administration (oromucosal spray) of both cannabinoids (5mg THC and 5mg CBD to 15 mg THC and 15 mg CBD) reduce stage 3 of the sleep cycle, and with a higher combination, wakefulness was increased. When THC and CBD were administered separately, 15 mg THC acts as a sedative, while 15 mg CBD appears to have alerting properties as awake activity during sleep was increased and the sedative properties of THC was lost.[9]
Today, research that have studied the impact of medical cannabis on sleep cycles has shown that THC as a good alternative for improving sleep stages, however, many factors such as dosage, mode of administration and more, should be taken into account to achieve a more positive and accurate result. Further research will be needed in the coming years to finally unveil the molecular mechanisms of sleep cycles.

[1] Kriese, U., et alt. (2004). Oil content, tocopherol composition and fatty acid patterns of the seeds of 51 Cannabis sativa L. genotypes. Euphytica, 137(3), 339–351. doi:10.1023/b:euph.0000040473.23941.76
[2] Schierenbeck, T., et alt. (2008). Effect of illicit recreational drugs upon sleep: Cocaine, ecstasy and marijuana. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 12(5), 381–389. doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2007.12.004
[3] Memar, P., & Faradji, F. (2018). A Novel Multi-Class EEG-Based Sleep Stage Classification System. IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 26(1), 84–95. doi:10.1109/tnsre.2017.2776149
[4] Malik, J., Lo, Y.-L., & Wu, H. (2018). Sleep-wake classification via quantifying heart rate variability by convolutional neural network. Physiological Measurement, 39(8), 085004. doi:10.1088/1361-6579/aad5a9
[5] Varga, B., et alt. (2018). Heart Rate and Heart Rate Variability during Sleep in Family Dogs (Canis familiaris). Moderate Effect of Pre-Sleep Emotions. Animals, 8(7), 107. doi:10.3390/ani8070107
[6] Rasch, B., & Born, J. (2013). About Sleep’s Role in Memory. Physiological Reviews, 93(2), 686. doi:10.1152/physrev.00032.2012p.
[7] Garcia, A. N., & Salloum, I. M. (2015). Polysomnographic sleep disturbances in nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, cocaine, opioid, and cannabis use: A focused review. The American Journal on Addictions, 24(7), 590–598. doi:10.1111/ajad.12291
[8] Shannon, S. (2019). Cannabidiol in Anxiety and Sleep: A Large Case Series. The Permanente Journal. doi:10.7812/tpp/18-041
[9] Nicholson, A. et alt. (2004). Effect of  D-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol and Cannabidiol on Nocturnal Sleep and Early-Morning Behavior in Young Adults. Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology, 24(3), 305–313. doi:10.1097/01.jcp.0000125688.05091.8f
 

Here's a look at their love story, from the first blind date to today.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle welcomed their first child, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, less than a year after their royal wedding—and now, the royal couple have revealed that they're expecting their second. In honor of their expanding family, we're take a look the top-secret relationship that lead to one of the highest-profile weddings of the decade—and a new chapter in the history of the House of Windsor.

How They Met
Harry and Markle first made each other's acquaintance on a blind date in early July, 2016. "We were introduced actually by a mutual friend," Harry revealed during the couple's first sit-down interview with the BBC following their engagement announcement. (E! News claims Harry's friend Violet von Westenholz is the one who introduced them, but others have speculated it was fashion designer Mischa Nonoo.)
Despite Prince Harry's global fame, Markle says she didn't have a lot of preconceived notions about who he was before they met. "Because I’m from the States, you don’t grow up with the same understanding of the royal family," she explained during the BBC interview. "I didn’t know much about him, so the only thing that I had asked [our mutual friend] when she said that she wanted to set us up, was, 'Well is he nice?' Cause if he wasn't kind, it just didn’t seem like it would make sense."
The two hit it off immediately. "We met for a drink," said Markle, "and then I think very quickly into that we said, 'Well what are we doing tomorrow? We should meet again.'"
At the photo call in the Kensington Palace gardens following their engagement announcement, Harry was asked when he knew Markle was the one. He quickly replied, "the very first time we met."
Things moved quickly from there. The couple went on a second date and Prince Harry then invited Markle to accompany him on a trip to Africa just three or four weeks later. "I managed to persuade her to come and join me in Botswana and we camped out with each other under the stars," he said, describing the whirlwind romance. "Then we were really by ourselves, which was crucial to me to make sure that we had a chance to get to know each other."

The News Gets Out
After four months of quiet dating, the news finally leaked on October 31, 2016 that Prince Harry was dating an American actress. A source told the Sunday Express that Harry is “happier than he’s been for many years” and is "besotted" with the Markle. On the same day, Markle posted a sweet photo on her Instagram of two bananas spooning, possibly hinting at the new love in her life.
Of this period, Markle later said: "We had a good five, six months almost with just privacy, which was amazing."

Meghan Meets the Family
In November 2016, the Vancouver Sun published an interview with Markle promoting her collection for retailer Reitmans. In the interview, she discussed her collaboration with Reitmans, her charity work with World Vision, and her plans for the holidays. Though she avoided any mention of Harry, she happily said, “So, my cup runneth over and I’m the luckiest girl in the world!”
Around the same time, People reported that Harry had already introduced the actress to his father, Prince Charles.

Harry Makes a Public Statement in Defense of His Girlfriend
Harry confirmed his relationship with Markle in a formal statement November 8, 2016. In the statement, Harry also pleads the press and trolls on social media to stop the “wave of abuse and harassment" that had been directed at his girlfriend.
According to Harry, he has been involved with “nightly legal battles” to stop the media from publishing defamatory stories about Markle and their relationship.
Prince Harry is worried about Ms. Markle’s safety and is deeply disappointed that he has not been able to protect her. It is not right that a few months into a relationship with him that Ms. Markle should be subjected to such a storm. He knows commentators will say this is ‘the price she has to pay’ and that ‘this is all part of the game’. He strongly disagrees. This is not a game - it is her life and his.
During the BBC interview, Harry revealed that both he and Markle were taken aback by the media scrutiny. "I think both of us were totally surprised by the reaction."
Many assumed that Markle would be prepared for the onslaught of attention because she had been in the public eye as an actress, but little could have prepared her for what was to come. "There was a misconception that because I have worked in the entertainment industry that this would be something I would be familiar with," she said. "But I've never been part of tabloid culture. I've never been in pop culture to that degree and and lived a relatively quiet life."
Her answer, she told the BBC, was to tune out the noise. "I think we were just hit so hard at the beginning with a lot of mistruths that I made the choice to not read anything, positive or negative. It just didn't make sense and instead we focused all of our energies just on nurturing our relationship."
On November 18, she shared a Mahatma Gandhi quote on her Instagram, which many people interpreted as a response to Harry's statement on their relationship.

Even Prince William Is Forced to Weigh In
On November 27, 2016, Prince William released a statement to clear up rumors that he was unhappy with his brother's decision to open up about his relationship. A portion of the statement reads, “The Duke of Cambridge absolutely understands the situation concerning privacy and supports the need for Prince Harry to support those closest to him."

Harry and Meghan Continue to Grow Closer
In early December 2016, Markle is photographed in Toronto wearing a gold necklace featuring the letters “M” and “H.” Later that month, she and Harry are spotted together picking out a 6-foot Christmas tree, and in London's West End holding hands on their way to see the Tony award-winning show The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. According to The Sun, the couple walk through the Soho area while admiring the Christmas lights throughout Piccadilly Circus.

The Queen Approves
According to Us Weekly, the Queen is “fully supportive” and another source revealed that the Queen is “delighted to see Harry in a loving relationship.”Markle spoke of meeting the Queen during their BBC interview. "It's incredible to be able to meet her through his lens, not just with his honor and respect for her as the monarch, but the love that he has for her as his grandmother. She's an incredible woman."
After spending Christmas with their own families, the couple spends New Year's together in London.

Meghan's Family Is Heard From
Meghan’s half-brother Thomas Markle Jr. discloses to the Daily Mail that their father has been aware of Meghan's relationship since it began. In the interview, Thomas says his father is, “pretty happy about Harry and he’s extremely proud of her."
Meghan is very close to both her mother and father and attended her mom's graduation from the University of Southern California, after she received her Masters in Social Work in 2016.
At their engagement announcement, Markle revealed that her father has spoken with Harry several times, but he "hasn't been able to meet him just yet."

A Romantic Trip to Norway
After spending New Year's in London, the couple embarks on a romantic trip to Norway. This is the first time that the often incognito couple vacation together and according to Us Weekly, Harry planned the romantic getaway so that the two could to catch the Northern Lights. The couple stay with Harry's close friend, Inge Solheim, at his luxury property in Tromsø, Norway. A source tells the sun The Sun that Harry "put a lot of thought into it and wanted to make it as romantic and special as possible.”

Meghan Meets Kate and Charlotte
According to Us Weekly, in early 2017 Harry introduced his girlfriend to his sister-in-law Kate Middleton and Princess Charlotte at apartment 1A at Kensington Palace. According to the magazine, Kate and Markle, "got on fabulously."
"She's been wonderful," Markle said of Duchess Kate. "Amazing," continued Harry. "As has William as well, you know, fantastic support."

Maintaining a Long Distance Relationship
Though Markle filmed her USA Network series Suits in Toronto, Canada, she and Harry are spotted in early February holding hands while leaving West London's Soho House. According to The Sun, on-lookers at the member's only club say that the couple tried to remain low key by sitting in a cozy corner of the restaurant. A friend close to the couple also reportedly tells The Sun that a spring engagement is imminent: “I know that sounds a bit crazily soon, but he’s head over heels and they can’t bear to be apart.”

After a two-month break from social media, Markle shared an Instagram post on February 12 that said, "#NoBadEnergy."
In March, the couple traveled together to Montego Bay, Jamaica to attend the wedding of Harry's childhood friend Tom “Skippy” Inskip. Markle is Harry's plus one to the wedding as the prince serves as one of the ceremony's 14 ushers. A source later revealed to People, that the two were incredibly "joyful" during the wedding festivities, and seemed very much in love.
In April, Harry flew from England to spend Easter weekend with Markle in Toronto. Photos are released by E! Online and reveal the young prince wearing a baseball cap and toting a large duffle bag while entering Markle’s building.

Meghan's Life Begins to Change
In April, Markle announced that she would shut down her lifestyle website, The Tig, which she had founded three years earlier. In a statement shared on both the Tig website and her Instagram, Markle said:

What began as a passion project (my little engine that could) evolved into an amazing community of inspiration, support, fun and frivolity. You’ve made my days brighter and filled this experience with so much joy. Keep finding those Tig moments of discovery, keep laughing and taking risks, and keep being the change you wish to see in the world."

Though it is rumored that Markle shut down her passion project as a sacrifice to her royal relationship, a source told People that the real reason was her busy schedule, balancing charity work with shooting Suits.

The Couple Steps Out
Markle and Harry made their first public appearance as a couple (and shared a kiss) at the annual Audi Polo Challenge in Ascot, England. As Harry participated in the games, Markle, wearing a chic navy dress and white blazer, cheered on her prince from the sidelines. The couple was later snapped engaging in some PDA off-site in the polo parking lot.
Markle was back in London in May for Pippa Middleton's wedding, arriving days ahead of the festivities. According to E! Online, the actress landed at London's Heathrow Airport and was immediately escorted to Kensington Palace. While Markle did not attend the ceremony, she did reportedly go to the reception.

A Big Birthday Trip
The couple traveled to Africa in August 2017—a year after their first trip to the continent—for a romantic getaway in celebration of Markle's 36th birthday. Over the course of their three-week vacation, they visited Botswana and finished their travels at the stunning Victoria Falls.

Meghan Opens Up
Markle spoke openly about her relationship for the first time in the October 2017 issue of Vanity Fair. "We’re a couple. We’re in love. I’m sure there will be a time when we will have to come forward and present ourselves and have stories to tell, but I hope what people will understand is that this is our time," she says in the cover story. "This is for us. It’s part of what makes it so special, that’s just ours. But we’re happy. Personally, I love a great love story."
That month, Markle also accompanied Prince Harry to an official royal appearance for the first time at the Invictus Games opening ceremony. Over the course of the games, cameras catch the pair holding hands at the the Wheelchair Tennis semi-final and spending time with Markle's mother, Doria Ragland. The couple even share a sweet smooch at the closing ceremony.
At this point, Harry has met Markle's mother several times. "Her mum's amazing," Harry said during the BBC interview.

Engaged!
After months of speculation, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle finally announced their engagement on November 27, 2017. The couple is "thrilled and happy" to be engaged, and marked the news with a celebratory photoshoot and a formal interview. Read all about the news here.

Their engagement
In the months leading up to the wedding, Meghan has been introduced not only to the British public, but also to life as a working royal, as she attends official events alongside her fiancé Harry, all the while planning the wedding of the year.

The wedding
Tens of millions of people from around the world tuned in to see the couple wed at Windsor Castle on May 19. They had high-profile guests like Oprah, David and Victoria Beckham, and of course the royal family, but all eyes were on the bride, who wore a stunning Givenchy gown for the ceremony and a chic halter Stella McCartney dress for the reception at the Frogmore House.
Royal processions don't rank high on most three-year-olds' lists and Princess Charlotte is clearly no exception. As the cars carrying the bridesmaids to the reception rolled along, the young lady took the opportunity to playfully stick her tongue out at some photographers. Though she probably didn't know it, she was carrying on the cheeky family tradition started by none other than her Uncle Harry. 
In their official portraits, released May 21, two days after the wedding, the couple looked more in love than ever.

Harry and Meghan start a family!
On October 15, Kensington Palace announced that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were expecting their first child. The announcement came as the couple landed in Australia for their first joint royal tour.
On May 6, 2019, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor arrived! The baby boy is now seventh in line for the throne and he is the Queen and Prince Philip's eighth great grandchild. Harry's father, Prince Charles and his stepmother, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall said that they are "delighted" with the royal baby's arrival, as did the Queen, Duke of Edinburgh, and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

The Sussexes Step Back from Their Royal Roles
In January 2020, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex first made it clear that they intended to step back from their roles as working royals. After some negotiation, the Windsors agreed to let them pursue their own private business arrangements, provided that the Sussexes cease using the word "royal" in any professional branding.
Harry and Meghan officially transitioned to their new lives at the end of March 2020, after returning briefly to the UK to undertake a final round of engagements. Subsequently, the duo settled down with Archie in Santa Barbara, California. They've launched a number of projects in the interim, including inking deals with Netflix and Spotify, and launching their new non-profit, Archewell.

A Second Baby Sussex Is on the Way!
On Valentine's Day of 2021, Harry and Meghan revealed that they were expecting their second child. “We can confirm that Archie is going to be a big brother. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are overjoyed to be expecting their second child,” a spokesperson for the couple said. The duo also released a sweet portrait to celebrate the news.

The Queen Confirms the Sussexes Won't Return to the Fold
Nearly a year after officially transitioning out of the working royal roles, the Sussexes confirmed—along with Queen Elizabeth—that the move was permanent. Buckingham Palace and the royal couple released simultaneous statements on February 19, 2021, announcing the news.
The palace's statement announced that Harry and Meghan would not be able to hold royal patronages, and that Harry's military appointments would also have to be returned. It concluded, "While all are saddened by their decision, The Duke and Duchess remain much loved members of the family."
For their part, Harry and Meghan noted in their statement that they “remain committed to their duty and service" and "have offered their continued support to the organizations they have represented regardless of official role.” It added, “We can all live a life of service. Service is universal.”

The Duke and Duchess sit down for a landmark interview with Oprah.
According to Nielsen, 17.3 million people watched the highly anticipated conversation live. In the two-hour interview, Meghan and Harry discussed everything from their royal wedding to the sex of their second child (they're expecting a baby girl!) to their reasoning for stepping back as senior members of the royal family.

As a systematic way to increase efficiency and better please customers, lean principles run counter to traditional mass-production practices. Yet, they allow small and medium businesses to consistently increase quality while decreasing costs.

Introduction
In post WWII Japan, Toyota developed a revolutionary production process now known as lean manufacturing. This highly successful method for reducing waste, improving flow, and increasing production began as a method to compete with Western automakers and soon became a revolutionary production mentality the world over.
As a systematic way to increase efficiency and better please customers, lean principles run counter to traditional mass-production practices. Yet, they allow small and medium businesses to consistently increase quality while decreasing costs. They emphasize key objectives like simplicity, flow, and balance. Companies large and small can leap over their competition by understanding and implementing this highly efficient system.

What Is Lean Manufacturing?
In short, lean manufacturing is a continuous improvement philosophy promoting system-wide efficiency. Indeed, this system values balanced productivity that harmonizes across the entire value chain. If a particular line is more productive than the other parts in the value chain, it does not benefit the efficiency of production. Therefore, lean manufacturing principles adjust for overall efficiency rather than settling for individual productivity.
Lean management in manufacturing provides a sustainable competitive advantage by streamlining the production process from raw material to customer. And reduction of waste and non-value-added activity increases total system efficiency. Whereas the mass production method developed by Henry Ford might increase total output to increase profits, Toyota-inspired lean focuses on smaller batches to smooth production flow in the plant. So the result is a reduction of non-value-added activity and a subsequent increase in value-added activity. Without increasing the number of employees or adding new equipment, meaningful output is increased as a ratio to busy work.
Built on the Japanese model of efficiency, lean manufacturing seeks to continuously reduce muda or waste. And the power of lean manufacturing lies within its ability to find processes and actions to reduce or eliminate. In turn, this creates a balanced process that reduces cycle time and waste, increases quality, and enhances customer satisfaction.

The Importance of Reducing Cycle Time
There are numerous reasons to reduce cycle time and waste, some of which are less obvious than others. Cycle time refers to the length of time it takes to convert raw materials into finished goods. And the length of this cycle determines the company’s ability to convert assets into profits. A company able to reduce cycle times more than their competitors will be able to respond more quickly to market demands and thus gain a larger market share. Some of the many benefits of reducing cycle times include:

• Innovation opportunities
• Better distribution positioning
• Increased productivity
• Higher customer satisfaction
• Advantaged profitability potential

 
Eight Lean Wastes
Lean production does not focus exclusively on waste reduction, but waste is minimized or eliminated more as an inevitable byproduct of better production flow. It may seem obvious that waste hurts productivity and profitability. But the importance of reducing waste is often underappreciated. There are numerous areas of waste that go overlooked. Lean manufacturing typically focuses on seven key wastes. But others expand the list to eight, represented by the acronym, DOWNTIME:

• Defects: A defective part caused by poor quality inputs, user error, or other problems is costly and easily avoided.
• Overproduction: Overproducing irrespective of demand or capacity is wasteful and not considerate of the customer.
• Waiting: Bottlenecks occur due to oversupply or undersupply and should be handled by better supply chain management and personnel management.
• Not Utilizing Talent: Waste occurs when the skills of the workforce are underutilized or misappropriated. Human talent is a highly valuable and often overlooked commodity.
• Transportation: Movement to and from docks and warehouses is an area for potential waste reduced by better layout and better aligned process flow.
• Inventory Excess: Numerous factors can lead to excessive inventory, which, in a mass production paradigm, might appear as productivity, yet does not benefit the overall process.
• Motion waste: Even the repetitive motions of employees on the assembly line can diminish productivity and contribute to waste.
• Excess Processing: Avoid redundancy and unnecessary steps.

 "Waste is anything other than the minimum amount of equipment, materials, parts, and working time which is absolutely essential to add value to the product or service."   -Ohno Taiicho
 
The Powerful Benefits of Going Lean
While many assume lean manufacturing only benefits large, repetitive, mass-production operations, the fact is small-medium sized manufacturers can also benefit. Lean manufacturing principles can impact the average producer in a powerful way that extends beyond just financial gains. Here are some of the many powerful benefits of adopting lean manufacturing:

• Lean identifies value as defined by customer demand, thus leading to more satisfied customers.
• Lean removes wastes like inventory, transportation, and others.
• Lean shortens cycle time and increases production.
• Lean brings about greater employee morale and buy-in.
• Lean produces more per man hour.
• Lean reduces the amount of space needed for production.
• Lean increases cash on hand.
• Lean focuses on pull – or demand-based flow manufacturing – rather than push.
• Lean reduces operational costs, maximizing profits.

Lean Manufacturing Principles
Lean manufacturing is more than just a way to make products. Essentially, it is a school of thought. And while there are many lean manufacturing principles that make up this school of thought, much of the power for this system is contained in just five primary concepts. These five leading principles or values were most famously articulated in the 1990 book, “The Machine That Changed the World,” by James Womack, Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos. And understanding these five lean manufacturing principles will enable you to transform your business into a lean production machine:

1. Specify value as perceived by the customer: Value must be perceived through the customer’s eyes – not merely based on the product you can provide, but the end solution they actually want.
2. Identify the value stream: Rather than thinking in terms of departments, companies using lean principles will visualize the value stream as an interconnected flow of processes that provide value; this does not include any processes or steps that do not directly contribute to the value.
3. Make the value flow through the value stream: The focus must be on value-adding steps; if non-value-adding steps are necessary, perform them simultaneous to the value-adding steps, but never put them before.
4. Pull the value from the value stream: Avoid inventory management waste by shifting to a single-piece flow that produces products on demand as needed.
5. Strive for perfection: The goal is not to improve beyond your competitors but continuous improvement and perfection in every way – from order processing to logistics to customer service.

 
Lean Manufacturing Tools
Lean production is all about getting the most out of every resource and finding better and better ways to do things. In this pursuit, numerous lean manufacturing tools have been developed and refined. And here are some of the most powerful tools to use in your lean manufacturing operations.

5S
5S is a system emphasizing cleanliness and organization in the workplace by following five essential standards:
1. Sort: keep workplace free of all unnecessary items.
2. Set: all things should be in order for each unique workplace to ensure maximum ease and efficiency.
3. Shine: everyone should be a janitor; everyone is responsible for keeping their workspace clean and tidy.
4. Standardize: all roles and tasks should be standardized in lists and schedules to promote good habits.
5. Sustain: ensure everyone is committed to the long-term goal.

Just-In-Time (JIT)
Just-In-Time or Just-In-Sequence (JIS) is a form of lean manufacturing and a logistics method for inventory control. JIT is a system of manufacturing what the customer wants, in the quanity the customer wants, when the customer wants it. This allows the reduction or elimination of buffers or inventory, and means the use of delivered components within minutes of their delivery.
 
Gemba
Gemba means “the real place” in Japanese, and refers to the factory floor in manufacturing – or any place where the value happens. In lean manufacturing philosophy, this technique involves a “Gemba walk” management must regularly go on at the site. This allows management to get a real feel for the process and any issues to address.
 
Value Stream Mapping
This tool involves creation of a flow diagram depicting each and every step in the value process. Such a map allows for evaluation of all steps to identify waste and inefficiency and to reduce manufacturing time.
 
Kaizen
This strategy for continuous improvement is one of the most powerful and important tools for lean manufacturing operations. From the Japanese words, kai, meaning “change,” and zen, meaning “good,” this tool emphasizes the need for good change on an ongoing basis. This means documenting and managing procedures and taking input and feedback from all members of the company. Over time, this lean manufacturing tool will incrementally produce powerful changes for the better.
 
Bottleneck
The goal in view is to identify the weakest link or proverbial bottleneck holding back the speed of the overall process. Lean manufacturing often utilizes bottleneck analyses to determine the slowest processes and steps in the manufacturing stream. Speeding up just one or two small functions can often dramatically speed up the entire manufacturing process.
 
Kanban
This Japanese word for “signs” refers to a system of using cards or signs to indicate three phases each product moves through: do, doing, and done. Using this visual “pull” system, it becomes easier to manage only those parts needed for a specific production run. This eliminates the need for excess inventory or backlogged products.

Continuous Flow
Closely associated with Kanban and JIT, this tool integrates all production elements through ongoing examination, evaluation, and improvement. In order to provide stability and continuity, continuous flow usually means leaving the factory running 24 hours a day with no interruption and very little waste if any. This is the opposite of batch production.
 
Lean Byproducts: Agility, Competitiveness, and Quality
Through following these principles of lean manufacturing, adopting these tools, and reducing these key wastes, manufacturers who specialize in lean concepts create highly desirable byproducts. Lean production results in a certain agility in meeting the competitive demands of a swiftly evolving marketplace. The focus on total expense and value rather than on single component costs not only eliminates waste and inefficiency, it also promotes quality and customer-driven solutions.
The faster products can flow through an organization from start to finish, the faster that company can respond to market demands and satisfy the consumer. And the more efficient that process is, the more quality the company can afford for each dollar. Lean manufacturing powerfully enables producers to navigate the changing market with precision and agility. This comes from traveling light and from a manufacturing process utilizing surgical precision. In the end, as streamlined, stripped down, and simplified as they are, lean producers are the giants of modern manufacturing.

It is a sad fact that culture is one of the main collateral victims of the current pandemic.

Indeed, nothing is sadder than empty concert halls, unoccupied theatres, closed cinemas and deserted museums. Nothing is more distressing than dismantled symphony orchestras, bankrupt theatre companies, museums forced to sell some of their works, artists who are unemployed or forced to change professions altogether, even though they are known and admired as violinists, pianists or actors.

And yet, if you think about it, a large part of culture is not affected by this crisis: we can still read the books that are piled up in our library; in fact, without even buying anything new, we all have at home many books that we have not yet read and that we could usefully read or read again if we were really forced to make do with what we have. Similarly, we can always listen to the records we own. In addition, there are now those found on platforms: millions of books, films, plays, dance performances, concerts. We can also watch shows on television, listen to cultural radio stations, and consume unlimited podcasts.

What we are deprived of is not all culture, but only a part of it, the so-called live performance, I mean the performance that we attend with others, strangers, in a hall or in a museum.

And it is the specificity of this moment that must be designated. It can be found in other activities that are just as impractical in times of pandemic: attending a sporting event, playing football, judo, having lunch or dinner in a restaurant, walking around a museum. What do all these practices have in common? Not an artistic dimension at all, only, and perhaps more importantly, opportunities to experience real events with strangers.
For me, this is the essential thing, because it refers to something quite fundamental; and I would argue that it is by sharing the experience of an emotion with strangers that we can prove to ourselves that we are alive.

In this sense, live performance is not important because it is a performance, but because it gives us proof that by attending an exceptional event (an artistic or sporting performance or a meal in a restaurant) we also find the opportunity to talk about what we have experienced with strangers; and even if we don’t talk to them, we know that we have experienced it together; and the others, by their looks, by their simple presence, give you proof that you are alive.

There is nothing more important in life than to receive proof that you are not dead. And for me, it is the main function of live performance to give us this. The best proof is that we don’t dare to read the books we have in our library, to ward off the fear of death by thinking that we won’t be able to die before having read them.

This is why the ban on live performances (while you can take a train or a plane and eat next to your neighbour) is particularly absurd: a journey is not a performance or a moment of emotion, and, apart from an accident, you have nothing to share with your neighbours. Unlike a show, or a restaurant or a sporting activity, where one is embarked on the same adventure, and one has an opportunity to exchange, even silently, a reciprocal recognition of the other’s life.

This is also why this prohibition is so dangerous for any power: any individual who does not receive permanent proof that he is alive sinks into depression; any society that cannot prove to its members that they are alive is threatened with violent death. This is how almost all previous civilisations have disappeared.

Particularly in times of pandemic, when the fear of death looms larger than ever, we all need to reassure ourselves: are we alive? So to be deprived of the gaze of the other, of the connivance of the stranger sharing an emotion with us, is particularly intolerable. It is therefore particularly urgent to give us back this proof that we are alive, please.
 

Remote working is reframing the perennial question of how consulting firms are organised.
For decades, consulting firms have been under pressure to ensure their people worked in clients’ offices, alongside the client’s own staff. There were generally two reasons clients fought for this: Put positively, it created opportunities for the client team to learn from the consultants, equipping them to carry out consulting-type work themselves in the future; put negatively, it was a sign that clients didn’t quite trust firms to do what they said, that they feared nefarious partners would return to their offices and delegate all the work to cheaper, more junior staff. Two years ago, when we published a short report on the environmental impact of consultants being constantly on the road—or more precisely, in the air—we found that most clients were very supportive of the idea that consultants in general should travel less but baulked at the idea of their consultants travelling less. Physical presence was still a thing.
It’s clearly much less of a thing now. Consulting firms and their clients have had almost a year of working remotely, and both sides are positive about the experience. Many consultants welcome the increased flexibility and chance to focus that working from home has brought; clients are enjoying the ease of being able to access experts anywhere in the world.
And the fact that so much has changed so quickly challenges the way firms think about their operating models. In recent years, the need to put world-class experts on clients’ sites drove firms to be as global as possible. Flying in a specialist from the other side of the world wasn’t just about getting the work done, it also signalled to clients that they really were getting the A-team. But the costs were high, both metaphorically (stress for the consultants) and literally (travel costs for the client). Over time, it became accepted that some services—technology implementation being the most obvious example—could be delivered just as effectively on a remote basis, providing all those involved could interact effectively during the client’s normal working hours. Other services could have moved in this direction, but consulting firms worried—not without reason—that clients would expect to pay less: Physical presence has always been equated with worth in the professional services industry.
That link between presence and worth has now been broken by the pandemic, as all (or near enough) consulting work is being done remotely. Clients no longer assume that, because someone is not in the room, they’re less expert, important, or expensive. This creates an opportunity for consulting firms to change the rules, to argue that there are people who are only available on Teams, Zoom, etc., because they have unique expertise. Clients will go along with this because they retain better access, because they’ll actually have a better sense of how much time senior people are actually putting into projects, and because they’ll guess—probably correctly—that those senior experts will spend more, and more productive time on their projects than they might have done in the pre-crisis world.
Although this will mean that a significant proportion of project work will take place remotely going forwards, even when lockdowns end, it doesn’t spell the end of on-site consulting. Having even a short amount of time for the client and consulting teams to work together at the start of a project is hugely important to being able to work together effectively. There are also certain types of consulting—those that involve getting people to change the way they work, for example—which always have to be done in person. Meanwhile, delivering the final presentation (for projects where that is the end point) is useful for consultants—it allows them to gauge clients’ reactions to what they have to say—but less so for clients who may find it easier to view those recommendations in a more objective way if they’re not in the room. It is likely that the next few months will involve myriad discussions between clients and consultants, hashing out the details of when physical presence will be required, and when it will not.
Translate this into an operating model for consulting firms, and you might decide that you need teams of change management specialists based locally to clients, supported by subject matter experts from around the world, reporting to an engagement partner who is physically present at the outset and then very available remotely during the course of the project. Scale that model up, and it pulls the rug out from under assumptions about how firms are organised. You could, for example, end up with a model that is both global (experts reporting into global communities to share ideas, for example) and hyper-local (teams on the ground that support clients within a specific region).
Instead of having to see “local” and “global” as opposite models, and potentially conflicting ones at that, the firm of the future has the opportunity to be both.

How it works, what laws determine it and how you can use this wonderful means available to everyone.

Each vibration tends to reach other similar vibrations that are found in space and beyond with the aim of merging with them. They must be similar so that they can merge and unite to enter into relationship therefore, every living creature that has identical vibrations and wavelengths will merge into the outer space.
All living things respond to these laws. Our thoughts and feelings emit vibrations, each according to its own nature, and go to awaken currents and entities of the same nature in space that return to us and influence our existence.
Those who know this law therefore understand that nothing happens by chance.
If we encounter great difficulties in our life it means that in the recent or distant past we have attracted, through ignorance, unhealthy elements.
Let us strive to nurture thoughts and feelings that connect us to purer and brighter entities and vibrations in order to receive everything we need to rebuild ourselves.

The law of affinity is one of the great keys to spiritual realization!
Conscious in their own life and how short its duration is, a being in search of spirituality and its inner growth will not be in constant search for material goods and futile and short-lived wealth. A conscious human being is in search of eternal and indestructible riches that persist, will make them bear fruit by accumulating precious elements in their subtle bodies.

Why?
When we leave this planet and this body, a vector of experiences, we will go directly to those regions where we have drawn certain elements and by virtue of the Law of Affinity, we will be introduced by those same components of the cosmos where we will discover the splendors of the Universe. I will give you an example. While walking on the street it may happen that we pass in places where dishonest actions have been committed. If at that moment our thoughts or feelings are negative, by the law of affinity we will enter into relationship with those vibrations produced and we will feel the influence. This can lead us to act badly without knowing that the cause lies in those energetic emanations that we received passing right along that road.

The only effective means of protecting ourselves from harmful influences is to monitor the quality of our inner states.
Through thought we have the possibility of capturing in the cosmic space all the elements necessary in order to grow and reach any living being we desire because it is the thought, through this precious Law, that has the task of reaching them.
Even if the Being we think of is in a remote or unknown area, our thinking has the grandiose and phenomenal ability to capture it and reach it. This concept obviously applies to anything.
Whether we want to attract certain elements of the Universe or achieve certain goals, we don’t have to worry about knowing where they are, how far or how to reach them. When the thought is intense and focused it will surely go straight to the goal.
 

"Culture is the only good of humanity which, divided among all, instead of decreasing it becomes greater". HG Gadamer
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To inform and promote art exhibitions and cultural events, with the social purpose of supporting and enhancing local museums, artists, creativity and art institutes, we provide our quarterly magazine AreaArte and our discount cards called AAcard. .
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This is our commitment since 2009 :.

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• We employ art and culture as a primary and important resource to generate value, interest, development, growth and social cohesion.
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• We finance museums, art restorations, cultural associations, art institutes and philanthropic projects to support medical research.
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• We show that culture and art offer new business ideas and job opportunities to make our great artistic heritage grow and enhance.
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• We promote cultural activities for employees in companies, developing ethics, welfare and cultural wellbeing actions with Corporate Social Responsibility.
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• We develop collaborative synergies with trade associations and commercial activities to promote and encourage cultural tourism in the area.
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• We protect the cultural and artistic wealth that we have inherited and increase its immense value to leave it as a legacy enhanced in the future.
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The services and products that we offer in support of our mission are the following:

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• AreAArte , a magazine published in Italian and English with a quarterly periodicity associated with “The four seasons of art”.
  . Thanks to a simple and usable language AreAArte is a unique cult magazine of its kind, for a wide and curious audience to discover and learn about museums, artists and cultural events. The price of 4 publications of the magazine is 40 €.
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• AAcard , a discount card that allows you to visit museums, foundations and cultural associations, art studios, and sites of the Fondo Ambiente Italiano, at privileged conditions and at reduced prices. The AAcard is available at a price of € 8 for subscribers to the magazine, for cultural associations and companies that intend to provide their collaborators with this advantage in support of the frequentation of art venues.
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. Corporate Social Responsibility actions are a great opportunity for cultural institutions. Conversely, artistic and cultural resources are an important opportunity for companies.
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.That's how:.

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• Culture as Corporate Social Responsibility. We are all aware that culture is a deposit to draw from. Transforming this heritage into growth opportunities for companies cannot ignore supporting culture. Companies do not always devote sufficient ethical attention and professionalism to this aspect. A company that invests in culture with AreAArte does not represent simple patronage or sponsorship, because we offer useful services for a strategic and image competitive advantage, with actions of value and social responsibility for the benefit of the territory and our cultural heritage.
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• Wellbeing Services & Cultural Welfare. The most important capital today for a company are people, investing in employees and putting the irreplaceable value of people at the center is fundamental to achieving company objectives. Motivating employees by implementing welfare with cultural services and wellbeing is not only a valid strategy for the growth of people but improves their work environment and sense of belonging.
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. The following are 4 compelling reasons why a company invests in culture:.

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1. To promote the image and history of the company together with AreaArte, associating it with virtuosity to the cultural and artistic values of a country that is unique in the world.
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2. Offer employees and collaborators the opportunity for one year to receive useful and important services in the cultural field.
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3. Putting ethics and value at the center of the company, with CSR, Welfare & Cultural Wellbeing actions for the development of the territory and people.
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4. Supporting museums, restorations, exhibitions, artists, art institutes and cultural associations together and with care and responsibility.
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The 8th March marks International Women’s Day, which is always an important opportunity to take stock of the progress being made across the world with regards to women’s rights and to celebrate the brilliant individuals, organisations and movements that are leading the way.

This year the theme is ‘Choose to Challenge’, a bold call to action encouraging us all to stand up, speak out, push back against the status quo and demonstrate active allyship. It’s a powerful and empowering theme, but it also might leave some wondering ‘challenge what?’ or ‘is it my place to challenge?’

The women’s rights movement is fighting an ongoing battle for equality. However, as these conversations unfold, it is clear that many people feel that the fight has already been won, are unaware of the barriers many women still face, or feel that it is not their place to speak up or challenge. Whilst the movement is working to improve women’s rights, it’s vital that men are also part of the solution, working as allies to remove the barriers women may face, and to create workplaces, communities and a society that is inclusive and safe for everyone.

So, this International Women’s Day I invite everyone to #ChooseToChallenge gender stereotypes. Let’s recognise and challenge the harmful messages that seep through right from birth in clothes, toys, music, film, and interactions with family and friends. From boys’ babygrows with the slogan ‘Future Hero’ next to the girl’s babygrow that says ‘Future Superhero’s Girlfriend’, toys marketed in pink or blue boxes to make double the profit, lyrics that reduce girls to their bodies and films that encourage boys to hide their emotions, gender stereotypes are pervasive and shape the hearts, minds and aspirations of young people. Fawcett Society’s recent commission on gender stereotypes evidenced the harm of gender stereotypes and explored recommendations for parents, educators and the commercial sector to challenge them. The commission’s co-chair, Professor Becky Francis said:

“What every parent hopes for their child, and what educators hope for children in their class, is that they will be free to achieve their potential – yet what the evidence shows is that we still limit our children based on harmful, tired gender stereotypes.
That adds up to real harm. From boys’ underachievement in reading, to the gender pay gap, the evidence is clear that the stereotypes we impart in early childhood cause significant damage to our children.”

I also invite you to #ChooseToChallenge misogyny, in all its forms. How many more generations of girls will become accustomed to catcalls and honking horns on their walk to school, will learn which routes to avoid at night, which train seats are safest to avoid being trapped in by a leering man, to hold their keys between their fingers and be prepared to justify what they were wearing when being grabbed, yelled at or assaulted? How long before social media platforms address the daily, hourly, misogynistic abuse hurled at women, and especially women of colour. As writer and activist Laura Bates told Amnesty International:

“We are seeing young women and teenage girls experiencing online harassment as a normal part of their existence online. Girls who dare to express opinions about politics or current events often experience a very swift, misogynistic backlash. This might be rape threats or comments telling them to get back in the kitchen. It’s an invisible issue right now, but it might be having a major impact on the future political participation of those girls and young women. We won’t necessarily see the outcome of that before it’s too late.”

Let’s #ChooseToChallenge sexual harassment and violence against women and girls. In the UK, 1 in 4 women will experience domestic abuse and 1 in 5 sexual assault during her lifetime. The Crime Survey of England and Wales estimates 20% of women have experienced some type of sexual assault since the age of 16. UKFeminista’s report into sexism and sexual harassment in schools found that ‘it’s just everywhere,’ with 37% of female students having personally experienced some form of sexual harassment at school.
Kevin Courtney and Mary Bousted of the National Education Union stated:

“We need to understand what creates sexism and expose the attitudes which repeat the patterns of harmful experiences that women and girls face. We need to break the mould – the expectations about men and women, and girls and boys, that perpetuate harassment and gender injustice.”

Finally, let’s #ChooseToChallenge the policing of women’s bodies. From laws deciding women’s choices on abortion, to policing the clothes that women choose to wear (too revealing, too modest, we can’t win!), to gatekeeping womanhood itself, it can be an overwhelming and often contradictory attack on women’s autonomy. The current ‘debate’ on trans rights, for example, positions these rights as being in opposition to women’s rights, ignoring the fact that many trans people are women, and reducing women to biology. It’s a tactic that many women, particularly women of colour, recognise, where the definition of ‘woman’ becomes a narrow and homogenised picture – often white, cisgender and able bodied – and, as Rachel Mann put it, ‘those people who don’t fit very particular narratives of what a woman is tend to get thrown out.’

There is so much to challenge- and I haven’t even mentioned the so-called ‘motherhood penalty,’ or the lack of representation of women in various industries such as the film industry. Each of the issues raised in this blog will affect different women in different ways, often combining with racism, ableism, ageism or other forms of prejudice to create multiple burdens of discrimination.

So surely, we have no choice really but to challenge? To stand up, speak out and try to make change. Unfortunately, for some people, challenging these behaviours can cost them dearly – their jobs, their income, their safety. So, those that can, must. In the words of Laverne Cox, “we have to be able to ask ourselves, ‘Am I feeling uncomfortable or am I feeling unsafe?”’
“It’s not always going to be comfortable. But I have learned that when I am uncomfortable that’s when I have the potential for the most growth.”

It can, of course, be uncomfortable, awkward and difficult to challenge prejudicial attitudes and behaviours, whether in the workplace or amongst family and friends. So, as I implore you to challenge sexism and misogyny and, while we’re at it, all forms of prejudice, I’ll leave you with some tools and tips for effectively doing so:

Use reasoning and enquiry questions

• What do you think that word means?
• What makes you think that?
• How would you feel if someone spoke about you in that way?
• Do you realise that what you said is sexist/ableist/racist/ageist/homo/bi/transphobic?
• That word is an insulting term. Do you know why?
• Can you think of why some people might feel uncomfortable and disrespected when they hear these comments/witness these behaviours?

Challenge them directly

• Language like that is not acceptable.
• You might not think that remark is offensive, but many would.
• What you are saying presents a very stereotypical view of what men and women are like. When you do that it means that people who don’t fit into your way of seeing things can feel left out or ashamed.

Use an institutional response

• Our workplace policy says that we are all responsible for making this a safe place for everyone. That kind of language is sexist/racist/homophobic and makes people feel unsafe. Therefore, it is unacceptable.
• Some people would find that word insulting so it’s not ok to use it in our workplace.
• It’s really important that in this workplace people feel able to express their gender however they feel comfortable, so we try to avoid gender stereotypes.
• Do you remember the training we had on sexism/racism/unconscious bias?

Explain your own perspective

• I’m not happy with what you said.
• Sexist/ableist/homo/bi/transphobic/ageist language offends me. I don’t want to hear it again.
• What you’ve said really disappoints/disturbs/upsets/angers me. I hoped you would recognise that it is important to treat everyone with respect and that it is therefore wrong to use such sexist/ableist/transphobic/racist language.

Technology is redefining art in strange, new ways. Works are created by people moving through laser beams or from data gathered on air pollution.

Where would the Impressionists have been without the invention of portable paint tubes that enabled them to paint outdoors?  Who would have heard of Andy Warhol without silkscreen printing? The truth is that technology has been providing artists with new ways to express themselves for a very long time.

Still, over the past few decades, art and tech have become more intertwined than ever before, whether it’s through providing new ways to mix different types of media, allowing more human interaction or simply making the process of creating it easier.  
Case in point is a show titled “Digital Revolution” that opened earlier this summer in London’s Barbican Centre. The exhibit, which runs through mid-September, includes a “Digital Archaeology” section which pays homage to gadgets and games that not that long ago dazzled us with their innovation. (Yes, an original version of Pong is there, presented as lovable antiquity.) But the show also features a wide variety of digital artists who are using technology to push art in different directions, often to allow gallery visitors to engage with it in a multi-dimensional way.

In the cover image Russian artist Dmitry Morozov has devised a way to make pollution beautiful.

In the comments below let us collect examples, some from “Digital Revolution," of how technology is reshaping what art is and how it’s produced.
 

Romantic love in Western societies is often portrayed in a stereotypical way: two yearning halves, who search for each other to find their complete, original state. Few find this bliss because it’s a myth, dating back to Plato. In Greek mythology, the perfect lovers were joined together and sliced in two. Love, then, is the desire of each part to find the missing other.
This myth lingers on in popular culture, love stories and romantic comedies. It affects our social identity, which for many is formed by stereotypical, scripted portrayals of relationships. Often, less consciously, we keep on searching for our “missing half” – the ideal – but divorce rates attest to why this ideal doesn’t exist.
Nowadays, many people escape into the virtual world in their search for the ideal relationship. Online dating, flirtatious messaging and “sexting” are often used as an antidote to loneliness, lack of intimacy and the painful experience of loss. In cyberspace, we can be whoever and whatever we desire to be. This gives us pleasure, but it seduces and lures us into the imaginary: the world of the unconscious where desires we didn’t even know we had are immediately satisfied in the virtual world.
It’s easy to become addicted to this virtual world because real-life love can’t compete with it. For some, a return to reality is difficult, or even impossible, as rising internet addictions and online infidelity show. This can result in various emotional (stress, hopelessness, anger, pain) and behavioural reactions (fights, revenge porn, divorce, substance abuse, binge eating or not eating). The link between stress, a broken heart (love sickness), mental health (depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, insomnia) and physical health (exhaustion) is well documented.

Consequences of love
The long-term consequences are less well known, but we can guess. We know that the quality of our social relationships and circumstances can have profound influences on our brain.
Recent advances in epigenetics – a set of modifications to our genetic material that changes the ways our genes are switched on and off without altering the genes themselves – suggest a link between social experiences, gene expression, neurobiological changes and behavioural variation. A growing body of evidence explains how the social environment gets into our mind through epigenetic mechanisms and how these affect our offspring. In other words, physical effects caused by our social experiences could be passed on.
If emotions, conscious thoughts and unconscious beliefs are indeed part of our social environment and influence our genes through epigenetic mechanisms, what are the possible long-term consequences of the romantic love myth? If epigenetic processes play an important role in psychiatric disorders and love sickness (broken hearts) can result in mental health problems, can both be linked? In the absence of longitudinal cohort studies, where the same group of people are observed over long periods of time, we simply don’t know yet.
But we do know that socially constructed notions of romantic love, and of marriage, constitute our selves. They start in early childhood and continue throughout adolescence and adulthood. Google “romantic love” and see what comes up. We develop expectations, consciously and unconsciously, about our love relationships and attempt to realise these. When these notions are unattainable, stress is inevitable. And the impact of stress on our immune system, heart and mental health is well documented.
It’s high time we stopped chasing after fictional love. Acts of love are as diverse as the people who exchange them between each other. They are often mundane but caring. If we break the myth of romantic love, we can start having more realistic expectations of relationships and in turn lead happier and healthier lives.

A few days after the Pope's departure for Iraq, from 5 to 8 March, the director of the Vatican Press Office Matteo Bruni describes the journey that will bring a Pope to that land for the first time
. Francesca Sabatinelli - Vatican City
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Fraternity and hope are the two words that best summarize Francis's trip to Iraq, the first of a Pope to this country, and that Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican Press Office, uses, going back to what Francis said on February 8 last. to the diplomatic corps, also referring to the pandemic: "Fraternity and hope are medicines that the world needs today, like vaccines".
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. Concern for Christians and the importance of dialogue
The one in Iraq is a "gesture of love for the Christians in the region, a bit extreme", explains Bruni who recalls that it is Pope Francis' 33rd international trip which he himself announced when he spoke of his desire to go there, it was the June 2019 and was speaking in front of the Roaco, Meeting of the Eastern Churches Aid Works. There are three readings of the journey indicated by Bruni. The first, undoubtedly, is concern for Christians in Iraq and the region. The second concerns the strong spirit of sharing and dialogue between different religions that will manifest itself, especially in the stage of March 6, during the interreligious meeting in Ur where the Pope, explains Bruni, "goes to look for brothers and becomes a brother to all on this path that leads him to Iraq ”. It will be a moment linked to the memory of Abraham, which will see all the religions present in the country united.
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. The religious wealth of Iraq
The director of the Press Office describes Iraq as the cradle of civilization, a diversified mosaic, speaks of the wealth of this land, inhabited by countless religious groups with the ancient presence, in addition to Christians, of the Zoroastrians, the Baha'is and the Yazidis, known for the persecutions suffered during the terror imposed by Isis. Naturally, all this is flanked by Iraqi Islam, Sunni Islam, which counts between 32 and 37% of the faithful, and Shiite Islam, between 60 and 65%; refers to Najaf, a pilgrimage destination in the Islamic world, second only to Mecca, also a stage of the Pope's journey, on March 6, where he will meet Ayatollah Al Sistani.
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. The encounter with suffering
And then there is the third meaning: the encounter with Iraq, with a land that has suffered a lot in recent years, which cannot be told without talking about its neighbors, such as Syria - which still lives a long war - Iran and Turkey. “An entire region - explains Bruni - in which each piece is linked to the other”. Bruni underlines the strong enthusiasm with which the Christian communities have prepared themselves for this "event of peace and consolation for a people who have suffered a lot". The Pope, he adds, “confirms these brothers in faith and love, consoles their sufferings and wishes this journey to open up to the future for the Christian communities who live in this land”.
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. The collapse of the Christian presence
After 15 months of detention, therefore, we arrive at this expected visit, in a country that in a few years has seen the dramatic collapse of the Christian presence, but which today sees some returns especially to Qaraqosh, another stage of the journey. It was from this village with a Christian majority, Bruni recalls, that the inhabitants were expelled by Daesh in 2014: about 40 thousand people sent away, in the night between 6 and 7 August, Christians and beyond.
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. Our Lady of Loreto will accompany the journey
Accompanying the Pope on this journey will be Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, prefect   of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, Cardinal Fernando Filoni, former apostolic nuncio to Iraq, the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Monsignor Richard Gallagher , Secretary for Relations with States, Cardinal Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. With them will be Regina Lynch of the ROACOr, in consideration of the fact that the Pope made the announcement of his intention to go to Iraq during the audience with them, while the Vatican workers will be represented by a nurse, an employee of the Governorate's Holiness and Hygiene Directorate. Above all, however, the Pontiff will be accompanied by the image of the Madonna of Loreto, one hundred years after the proclamation of Mary as the patron saint of aviators.
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. Francesco will speak in Italian in seven speeches
The Pope's speeches will be seven in total, all in Italian with different translation methods. The first event will be the meeting with the bishops in the Syrian Catholic Cathedral "Our Lady of Salvation", a symbolic place of the Iraqi Church, where on October 31, 2010, a group of terrorists launched an attack in which 48 faithful were killed, including which two priests, and several dozen Muslims. A martyrdom that today is remembered with a long strip of marble that reaches the churchyard from the altar, just as evidence of the blood shed that day. Instead, it will be in the Chaldean Cathedral of St. Joseph, in Baghdad, that the Pope will celebrate, for the first time, the Chaldean Mass.
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. Prayer in Mosul for the victims of that land
Sunday 7 March is dedicated to Qaraqosh and Erbil, in the Autonomous Region of Iraqi Kurdistan and in Mosul, in the Nineveh plain, where Francis will go for a strongly desired moment of prayer, meditation, silence, to honor the victims of that land. The prayer will take place in the church square, at the end of which a commemorative plaque will be inaugurated. After the visit to the Qaraqosh community, the last public event will be Mass in the “Franso Hariri” stadium in Erbil and, the next day, after returning to Rome.
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By concentrating so heavily on graduation rates, policy makers are ignoring danger signs that the amount that students are learning in college may be declining.

Increasing graduation rates and levels of educational attainment will accomplish little if students do not learn something of lasting value. Yet federal efforts over the last several years have focused much more on increasing the number of Americans who go to college than on improving the education they receive once they get there.
By concentrating so heavily on graduation rates and attainment levels, policy makers are ignoring danger signs that the amount that students learn in college may have declined over the past few decades and could well continue to do so in the years to come. The reasons for concern include:

• College students today seem to be spending much less time on their course work than their predecessors did 50 years ago, and evidence of their abilities suggests that they are probably learning less than students once did and quite possibly less than their counterparts in many other advanced industrial countries.
• Employers complain that many graduates they hire are deficient in basic skills such as writing, problem solving and critical thinking that college leaders and their faculties consistently rank among the most important goals of an undergraduate education.
• Most of the millions of additional students needed to increase educational attainment levels will come to campus poorly prepared for college work, creating a danger that higher graduation rates will be achievable only by lowering academic standards.
• More than two-thirds of college instructors today are not on the tenure track but are lecturers serving on year-to-year contracts. Many of them are hired without undergoing the vetting commonly used in appointing tenure-track professors. Studies indicate that extensive use of such instructors may contribute to higher dropout rates and to grade inflation.
• States have made substantial cuts in support per student over the past 30 years for public colleges and community colleges. Research suggests that failing to increase appropriations to keep pace with enrollment growth tends to reduce learning and even lower graduation rates.

While some college leaders are making serious efforts to improve the quality of teaching, many others seem content with their existing programs. Although they recognize the existence of problems affecting higher education as a whole, such as grade inflation or a decline in the rigor of academic standards, few seem to believe that these difficulties exist on their own campus, or they tend to attribute most of the difficulty to the poor preparation of students before they enroll.

Some Immediate Improvements
Many colleges provide a formidable array of courses, majors and extracurricular opportunities, but firsthand accounts indicate that many undergraduates do not feel that the material conveyed in their readings and lectures has much relevance to their lives. Such sentiments suggest either that the courses do not in fact contribute much to the ultimate goals that colleges claim to value or that instructors are not taking sufficient care to explain the larger aims of their courses and why they should matter.
Other studies suggest that many instructors do not teach their courses in ways best calculated to achieve the ends that faculties themselves consider important. For example, one investigator studied samples of the examinations given at elite liberal arts colleges and research universities. Although 99 percent of professors consider critical thinking an “essential” or “very important” goal of a college education, fewer than 20 percent of the exam questions actually tested for this skill.
Now that most faculties have defined the learning objectives of their college and its various departments and programs, it should be possible to review recent examinations to determine whether individual professors, programs and departments are actually designing their courses to achieve those goals. College administrators could also modify their student evaluation forms to ask students whether they believe the stated goals were emphasized in the courses they took.
In addition, the average time students devote to studying varies widely among different colleges, and many campuses could require more of their students. Those lacking evidence about the study habits of their undergraduates could inform themselves through confidential surveys that faculties could review and consider steps to encourage greater student effort and improve learning.
The vast difference between how well seniors think they can perform and their actual proficiencies (according to tests of basic skills and employer evaluations) suggests that many colleges are failing to give students an adequate account of their progress. Grade inflation may also contribute to excessive confidence, suggesting a need to work to restore appropriate standards, although that alone is unlikely to solve the problem. Better feedback on student papers and exams will be even more important in order to give undergraduates a more accurate sense of how much progress they’ve made and what more they need to accomplish before they graduate.

More Substantial Reforms
More fundamental changes will take longer to achieve but could eventually yield even greater gains in the quality of undergraduate education. They include:

Improving graduate education. 
Colleges and universities need to reconfigure graduate programs to better prepare aspiring professors for teaching. As late as two or three generations ago, majorities of new Ph.D.s, at least in the better graduate programs, found positions where research was primary, either in major universities, industry or government. Today, however, many Ph.D.s find employment in colleges that are chiefly devoted to teaching or work as adjunct instructors and are not expected to do research.
Aspiring college instructors also need to know much more now in order to teach effectively. A large and increasing body of useful knowledge has accumulated about learning and pedagogy, as well as the design and effectiveness of alternative methods of instruction. Meanwhile, the advent of new technologies has given rise to methods of teaching that require special training. As evidence accumulates about promising ways of engaging students actively, identifying difficulties they are having in learning the material and adjusting teaching methods accordingly, the current gaps in the preparation most graduate students receive become more and more of a handicap.
Universities have already begun to prepare graduate students to teach by giving them opportunities to assist professors in large lecture courses and by creating centers where they can get help to become better instructors. More departments are starting to provide or even require a limited amount of instruction in how to teach. Nevertheless, simply allowing grad students to serve as largely unsupervised teaching assistants, or creating centers where they can receive a brief orientation or a few voluntary sessions on teaching, will not adequately equip them for a career in the classroom.
A more substantial preparation is required and will become ever more necessary as the body of relevant knowledge continues to grow. With all the talk in graduate school circles about preparing doctoral students for jobs outside academe, one has to wonder why departments spend time readying Ph.D. candidates for entirely different careers before they have developed adequate programs for the academic posts that graduate schools are supposed to serve, and that most of their students continue to occupy.
Many departments may fail to provide such instruction because they lack faculty with necessary knowledge, but provosts and deans could enlist competent teachers for such instruction from elsewhere in the university, although they may hesitate to do so, given than graduate education has always been the exclusive domain of the departments. Enterprising donors might consider giving grants to graduate schools or departments willing to make the necessary reforms. If even a few leading universities responded to such an invitation, others would probably follow suit.

Creating a teaching faculty. 
The seeds of such a change already exist through the proliferation of instructors who are not on the tenure track but are hired on a year-to- year basis or a somewhat longer term to teach basic undergraduate courses. Those adjunct instructors now constitute as much as 70 percent of all college instructors.
The multiplication of such instructors has largely been an ad hoc response to the need to cut costs in order to cope with severe financial pressures resulting from reductions in state support and larger student enrollments. But researchers are discovering that relying on casually hired, part-time teachers can have adverse effects on graduation rates and the quality of instruction. Sooner or later, the present practices seem bound to give way to more satisfactory arrangements.
One plausible outcome would be to create a carefully selected, full-time teaching faculty, the members of which would lack tenure but receive appointments for a significant term of years with enforceable guarantees of academic freedom and adequate notice if their contracts are not renewed. Such instructors would receive opportunities for professional development to become more knowledgeable and proficient as teachers, and they would teach more hours per week than the tenured faculty. In return, they would receive adequate salaries, benefits and facilities and would share in deliberations over educational policy, though not in matters involving research and the appointment and promotion of tenure-track professors.
These faculty members would be better trained in teaching and learning than the current research-oriented faculty, although tenured professors who wish to teach introductory or general education courses would, of course, be welcome to do so. Being chiefly engaged in teaching, they might also be more inclined to experiment with new and better methods of instruction if they were encouraged to do so.
A reform of this sort would undoubtedly cost more than most universities currently pay their non-tenure-track instructors (though less than having tenured faculty teach the lower-level courses). Even so, the shabby treatment of many part-time instructors is hard to justify, and higher costs seem inevitable once adjunct faculties become more organized and use their collective strength to bargain for better terms.
Progress may have to come gradually as finances permit. But instead of today’s legions of casually hired, underpaid and insecure adjunct instructors, a substantial segment of the college faculty would possess the time, training and job security to participate in a continuing effort to develop more effective methods of instruction to engage their students and help them derive more lasting value from their classes.

Rethinking the undergraduate curriculum. 
The familiar division into fields of concentration, electives and general education leaves too little room for students to pursue all of the objectives that professors themselves deem important for a well-rounded college education. This tripartite structure, with its emphasis on the major and its embrace of distribution requirements and extensive electives, was introduced by research universities and designed more to satisfy the interests of a tenured, research-oriented faculty than to achieve the various aims of a good undergraduate education. The existing structure is unlikely to change so long as decisions about the curriculum remain under the exclusive control of the tenure-track professors who benefit from the status quo.
By now, the standard curriculum has become so firmly rooted that during the periodic reviews conducted in most universities, the faculty rarely pause to examine the tripartite division and its effect upon the established goals of undergraduate education. Instead, the practice of reserving up to half of the required number of credits for the major is simply taken for granted along with maintaining a distribution requirement and preserving an ample segment of the curriculum for electives.
The obvious remedy is to include the non-tenure-track instructors who currently make up a majority of the teaching faculty in curricular reviews so that all those who play a substantial part in trying to achieve the goals of undergraduate education can participate in the process. It is anomalous to allow the tenure-track faculty to enjoy exclusive power over the curriculum when they provide such a limited share of the teaching. Such a reform might be difficult under current conditions in many colleges where most undergraduate instructors serve part-time, are often chosen haphazardly and frequently lack either the time or the interest to participate fully in a review of its undergraduate program. If adjunct instructors achieve the status previously described, however, their prominent role in teaching undergraduates should entitle them to a seat at the table to discuss the educational program, including its current structure. Such a move could at least increase the likelihood of a serious discussion of the existing curricular structure to determine whether it truly serves the multiple aims of undergraduate education.
Colleges should also consider allowing some meaningful participation by members of the administrative staff who are prominently involved in college life, such as deans of student affairs and directors of admission. The current division between formal instruction and the extracurriculum is arbitrary, since many goals of undergraduate education, such as moral development and preparation for citizenship, are influenced significantly by the policies for admitting students, the administration of rules for student behavior, the advising of undergraduates, the nature of residential life and the extracurricular activities in which many students participate. Representatives from all groups responsible for the policies and practices that affect these goals should have something to contribute to reviews of undergraduate education.

The Need for Research
Finally, there is an urgent need for more and better research both to improve the quality of undergraduate education and to increase the number of students who complete their studies. Among the many questions deserving further exploration, four lines of inquiry seem especially important.

• How can remedial education be improved? At present, low rates of completion in remedial courses are a major impediment to raising levels of educational attainment. The use of computer-aided instruction in remedial math provides one promising example of the type of improvement that could yield substantial benefits, and there are doubtless other possibilities.
• Far too little is known about the kinds of courses or other undergraduate experiences that contribute to such noneconomic benefits in later life as better health, greater civic participation and lower incidence of substance abuse and other forms of self-destructive behavior. Better understanding of those connections could help educators increase the lasting value of a college education while providing a stronger empirical basis for the sweeping claims frequently made about the lifelong benefits of a liberal education. Such understanding would also reduce the risk of inadvertently eliminating valuable aspects of a college education in the rush to find quicker, cheaper ways of preparing students to obtain good jobs of immediate value to economic growth.
• Existing research suggests that better advising and other forms of student support may substantially enhance the effect of increased financial aid in boosting the numbers of students who complete their studies. With billions of dollars already being spent on student grants and loans, it would clearly be helpful to know more about how to maximize the effects of such subsidies on graduation rates.
• More work is needed to develop better ways for colleges to measure student learning, not only for critical thinking and writing but also for other purposes of undergraduate education.

The importance of this last point can scarcely be overestimated. Without reliable measures of learning, competition for students can do little to improve the quality of instruction, since applicants have no way of knowing which college offers them the best teaching. Provosts, deans and departments will have difficulty identifying weaknesses in their academic programs in need of corrective action. Academic leaders will be handicapped in trying to persuade their professors to change the way they teach if they cannot offer convincing evidence that alternative methods will bring improved results. Faculty members will do less to improve their teaching if they continue to lack adequate ways to discover how much their students are learning.
All these reforms could do a lot to improve the quality of undergraduate education -- as well as increase levels of attainment. With more research and experimentation, other useful ideas will doubtless continue to appear.

This essay is excerpted from The Struggle to Reform our Colleges, being published by Princeton University Press. (© 2017 by Princeton University Press.)

With the advent of Covid, indoor sports activities have been interrupted and banned due to the danger of contagion among sportspeople and the public. In this pandemic context, some public administrations are trying to fight the virus in the best way.

To be part of a community that has been a victim of the madness of racism for millennia, and is still too often a victim, I would like to remind you of a few obvious facts.

First of all, there is no white race, no black race, no Jewish race: there is only one race, the human race; the rest are fantasies created by executioners to make their victims believe that they are inferior to them; and to believe it themselves: by designating them as a race different from their own, they can more easily grant themselves the right to treat them as sub-humans, to dehumanise them, to martyr them without too much guilt. This has been known since the earliest antiquity, when slavery was the rule, and one could, from one moment to the next, cease to be a human being and become an object in the service of the other.

Sometimes, in reaction, the victims accept themselves as different, and organise their struggle not by seeking to be equal and identical to their executioners, but by claiming that they are intrinsically, essentially, different. This is increasingly the case today: for example, some minorities claim to be races, and want to deal only with people of the same “race”; in all compartments of life.

Without seeing that it is first of all a trap set by executioners for their future victims to push them to claim themselves as a race, in order to better continue to separate them, to isolate them, to deny them the means to be full and complete actors of the common society.

This separatism is not only manifested under the pretext of a so-called racial distinction; it is also manifested by those who separate religions, or social origins, or sexual or sentimental orientations; by those who refuse to grant the same rights to all those who are different, regardless of the nature of the difference. It is also found between nations, when a nation is refused to integrate into a community in the name of differences that are deemed irreconcilable.

One can understand those victims who fall into this trap: nothing pushes one more to separate from others than the fact of not being admitted by them, of not being recognised. And we can understand the concern to overturn the logic, and rejoice to see yesterday’s victims claiming their pride in being different. Too many victims of racism have for too long internalized the criticism leveled at them. Too many minorities have resigned themselves to seeing themselves as inferior, accepting their fate with submission. Too many sacrifices have been made without a fight. The anger of those who want to separate themselves from their tormentors is therefore perfectly understandable.

But this means forgetting the essential: separatism is, first of all, the act of those who want to isolate the weakest, and only then does it become the claim of those who refuse to belong to the world of their executioners, demand their separation, and isolate themselves.

Thousands of pages have been written on universalism and essentialism; more will be written in the future. However, we should never forget one obvious fact: if pushed to the point of his own caricature, essentialism can become a trap set by racists to lock up their victims, this time with their consent.

By accepting it, the victims have everything to lose: how can they then claim to participate in a society from which they have explicitly and voluntarily separated themselves? How to exist otherwise than by this essence? How can we fail to see that the separation of the weakest only benefits the most powerful? How can we prevent others from naming the essence other than by the colour of our skin? How can we fail to see that this is part of a much wider current, which tends to isolate everyone in a bubble, from which the weakest will still not be able to emerge?  How can we fail to see that by acting in this way, we reinforce the caste system, we lock up even more the society that is already fully crystallised today?

It is good to see minorities refusing to admit themselves as inferior, and showing pride in who they are. Pride in being different is vital.
But not in the name of a so-called difference in race, which does not exist. Nor of a skin colour, which cannot suffice to designate a human person. Nor of any other. Our differences are fortunately infinite.

I fully understand the need to promote the presence of minorities in all places of power and life. I am in favour of the introduction of quotas, precisely in the name of a fight against racism, sexism and social injustice. But by explicitly displaying them as being there only to create the conditions for their uselessness.

It is up to the State to offer everyone the same opportunities, with the same duties. And it does it very badly everywhere. Especially in France. This is what we must not resign ourselves to. By all means. It is at the birth of national communities that are united, open, fluid, mobile, members of the one community of all men, that we must work. Tirelessly.

New-age fintech challengers are chipping at “traditional banks” from all sides and slowly dismantling the protective walls built up by the incumbents over the past century. The banking and wider finance industry is facing these upstart digital banking innovation challengers across the spectrum of payments, cash, lending, money transfer, investment management, and lending, among other areas.
Some examples of how the incumbents are being usurped include:

1. Credit card/online payments being replaced by solutions from Apple, Amazon, Google, Paytm, Wechat, and Alipay.
2. Digital wallets replacing cash/cards and the need to visit ATMs.
3. Real-time payment platforms and systems removing the need to use cheques or make online payments.
4. Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms (e.g. Lending Club) becoming more attractive than conventional lending.
5. Challenger banks—such as Monzo and N26—providing attractive mobile-first current account products.

This disruption is predicated on service design that “starts from the end” with a laser focus on customer experience and habits, and then building backwards to meet those requirements. The entire “Design Thinking” focus is to understand the customer, their lifestyle, preferences and then custom build the product to add value and enhance the customer experience. This is in contrast to the traditional banking channels that tend to offer products based on their own strategic interests and existing capabilities, which may at times be suboptimal to end consumers.

Design Thinking Methodology

Emerging digital technologies enable a new degree of freedom to new entrants to the banking ecosystem. This provides a “David vs. Goliath” dynamic that allows them to iterate quickly, compared to incumbent banks. In the past decade, we have seen such scenarios play out in other consumer markets, such as transportation, hotels, media, and photography.
While many industries have been disrupted by emerging technologies, banking is still protected, largely due to it being a critical and a heavily regulated industry that is the safe warehouse for liquidity held by individuals and corporations. Its influence on economic stability means that its regulation and strategic importance to governments can make it a cumbersome industry to transform for new players.

How the Banking Industry Can Transform Itself
This article will address ideas for digital banking innovation and how to decouple the conflicting objectives of “liquidity,” “risk,” and “regulation” from “innovation,” “disruption,” and “transformation.” I will also explore how future M&A could propel the entire banking ecosystem in a new direction that will make the above all possible.
This article is being presented in two parts. The first part of the article is a diagnostic focused on some of the broad trends that are affecting the way business is done, then delves into specific issues with respect to the banking/fintech industry and finally ends with a telescopic view of how a “bank of the future” could emerge from the current situation. The second part of this article will be prognostic and forward-looking and focus on predicting a potential roadmap in the evolution of the banking ecosystem in the next five to ten years.

The Banking Industry: A Brief History
Modern banking has its origins in Europe and started in Italy to initially finance farmers, grain merchants, and traders. Over the subsequent centuries, services expanded into a multitude of areas, including merchant banking, deposit-taking, and lending, among others.
The modern banking industry that we now know began to emerge after World War II when it expanded rapidly into many more products and services across verticals. Thus, while the original banking comprised of straightforward loans, deposits, treasury, and insurance products, over the past 75 years, it slowly added more elaborate offerings such as derivatives, asset-backed securities, M&A/ECM, wealth management, and private banking. Banks began to serve two verticals: the corporate/institutional market and retail customers. The strategy had a degree of mutual interest, whereby the liabilities (deposits) from the retail side would fund the assets (lending) within the institutional divisions.
As banks began to grow, the largest began to exert their scale to their advantage and capture more of the market. The banking industry went from being fragmented, to rather concentrated.

US Share of Banking Deposits by Size of Institution 1992 - 2017


The expansion of services offered and geographies served meant that large banks became “universal banks”, with many merging in order to accelerate the process. Some of these developments were primarily governed by established banks having a captive base of consumers and simply leveraging their scale to increase absolute profitability. Yet, as information technology took hold in the latter half of the 20th century, most implementations of technology by banks were more evolution than revolution. Solutions were premised on legacy approaches and infrastructure and not necessarily innovating the entire process front to back.
The increased integration of the global economy and seamless movement of goods and services around the world has resulted in money flows rapidly expanding over the past 25 years. Such complexity has raised regulatory concerns over aspects such as money laundering, which has raised KYC/AML burdens required by banks to operate. The 2008 financial crisis demonstrated the risks associated with large banks taking on undue credit and liquidity, and since then, a flurry of regulatory interventions has further constrained the global ambitions of large traditional banks. Nowadays, banks have started going back to the basics (i.e. deposits and lending), which can be argued is further slowing down their focus on industry innovation.

Prevalent Global Business Themes
Over the past decade, the emergence of digital technologies has fundamentally influenced the way business is done. Some of the underlying themes that are apparent are as follows:

Emergence of a Global, Borderless Economy
All over the world people are increasingly interacting and transacting seamlessly across national borders much more than any time in the past. They are more frequently traveling, living, and purchasing internationally. The emergence of the gig economy is another example of how people can live in any part of the world and deliver projects without geographical prejudice. Why has this happened?

1. Seamless Integration - Internet-facilitated technologies allow for better oversight and efficiency of demand, supply, and supply chain fulfillment operations.
2. Mobile Connectivity - Mobile networks are more cost-efficient than their fixed-line equivalents and have allowed rapid infrastructure build-up, bringing large parts of a hereto unreachable audience in the “consumption” economy.
3. Increase in Data Availability - Shifts to digital methods have brought large increases in data availability; both from conventional data (e.g., financial) to non-financial (social media, geotagging, AI-based models, etc.)
4. Reduced Cost of Acquiring and Servicing Clients - In general, digital technologies are allowing banks to reduce their costs to acquire/service customers, by automating tasks that would have otherwise been performed by human labor.
5. Trust-based Transactions - Digital social identities are allowing completely new ways to identify, monitor, assess, score, engage, and track customers. The objective nature of a digital footprint offers large incentives to play it fair and straight, and align transactional parties.
6. Cloud > Physical Infrastructure - Physical location of most businesses, especially in services, has ceased to be a bottleneck for geographical growth. Companies in one corner of the world can now onboard and service customers on the other.
7. Scaling-up Businesses - is becoming easier with cloud-based distributed and “pay-as-you-go” scalable infrastructure allows the rapid building of businesses at low fixed CAPEX costs.

The Issues Faced by Traditional Banks
Some of the issues faced by traditional banks today face due to evolutionary reasons are as follows.

Branch-presence Led
Historically, banks were built around their physical branch and with customer relationships primarily being driven by the factor of access. Hence, these models required high investment in physical branch infrastructure, with a certain minimum business volume necessary to support the costs of a branch. This made banks focus more on urban agglomerations and thus, left many rural and interiors of countries unbanked, creating issues of financial inclusion. Upfront investment became an entry barrier for new players, as branch networks built at historical costs provided a disadvantage for any new entrants to scale their business.
Yet, nowadays, complex branch networks can be an issue for traditional banks. Consumers are increasingly self-servicing themselves through mobile banking channels, leaving branches with diminishing customer numbers. Managing this issue is tricky and slow due to the financial and strategic ramifications of handling the decline in branch-based banking.

Complex Legacy IT Infrastructure
Over the years, traditional banks developed their IT systems in patchwork and using legacy old technologies which required a lot of hardware and patched together software. Over time, this has become a complex cocktail of myriad solutions that have been pieced together and do not have the advantages that new age scalable, plug and play technologies bring. It is not easy to fix these and that is why we see new-age banks building more optimal IT infrastructure from scratch using state of the art technologies.

Silo-ized Existence
Most global banks operate as multiple business silos, with awkward coordination and communication between different parts. Each silo largely exists as a separate organization with its own metrics. This severely affects the customer experience and banks’ ability to provide a seamless experience, through reduced ability to track and manage customer life cycles across product verticals.

Silo Approach Toward Organizational Management in Banking


Complex Culture and Power Structures
Big banks have a very unique culture and power structure, which exemplify typical hierarchical organizations with little incentive to promote innovation, risk taking, and experimentation. They work more like command structures from top to bottom. The typical bank is a “fixed mindset” organization with a focus on “individual” performance over holistic company gains. Innovation and collaboration become difficult to foster on a macro scale in such environments.

Cost of Servicing
According to a study by KPMG New age digital banks/fintechs are actually much more efficient, agile, and flexible. They have lower technology costs, which beat the traditional banks’ cost structures. These lower costs are in part born from fintech being able to exclusively rely on newer, efficient technology stacks and staff compensation having a higher blend of equity incentives.

Monopolistic Charges
Due to competitive familiarity and incumbent numbers downsizing through M&A, bank pricing is very uniform and similar across markets. Consumer surplus has been lowered through the necessity of banking services in everyday lives, and the activities and mentalities of banks normalizing as they become more similar over time.

Cross-Subsidization
Cross-subsidization is a historic element of traditional banking (remember the dynamic of consumer depositors funding corporate borrowers). This has made it difficult to gauge true efficiency of business units and untangle webs of dependence which restrict innovative thinking.

Predictions for the Future
I believe that over the next ten (if not five) years, the number of traditional banks surviving across the world will reduce by at least 50%, through a mix of closures, mergers, acquisitions, and spinoffs. As explained in this article, traditional banks have evolved under the old paradigm where physical infrastructure mattered when servicing customers, which provided an economy of scale moat. Hence, as the banking industry grew, new services continued to be added–for lack of better options–to service the customer better, in a disjointed, piecemeal basis, which eventually leads to a complex, unwieldy paradigm of “universal banking”. This aggregated financial services across the full spectrum. The previous half-century saw the growth and consolidation of banking business, with large universal global banks that provided one-stop-shop access for all services.
However, over the last five years, with the changes in technology, we are now seeing a completely different paradigm, where physical location has ceased to be essential. Adopting new technologies and using quick, iterative improvements to offer tailored service is the new paradigm for servicing customers. According to Mckinsey & Co., some of the trademarks of new age agile organizations are as follows.

Framework for Agile Organizations


The banking industry is now facing the same challenges and in the process of a transformation. Some of the factors leading to this disruption in the banking industry are as follows:

Physical Branches Are No Longer a Prerequisite
When was the last time you visited a bank branch? Now, ask yourself when you last logged into an online banking app?
Today, it is no longer a requirement for customers to visit the branch and most services are performed online using a self-service or text-assisted model. This enables even a small startup with very few offices to provide services to a large number of customers. In fact, there are a significant number of “digital only” banks present in the world today, that only service customers online. Revolut, for example, has 6 million customers globally and zero branches.

Disintermediation/Unbundling Through Specialized Offerings
Traditional banks have followed a strategy of offering a general service of everything to everyone, which has resulted in some compromises of fitting exact consumer needs. Fintechs, on the other hand, have built up in stages by offering one service and only expanding once they have tweaked it perfectly to fit their customers’ needs. Individual product focus apps/fintechs do a much better job of taking away slices of business from banks, as they are more focused on solving one particular problem as compared to traditional banks who are not able to match the cost/service levels.
Fintechs have also solved problems in a more engaging and useful manner. Gone are the days of bored focus groups, instead they have connected with users in a more sincere manner and employed unconventional (to the industry) practices, such as the aforementioned design thinking process.

Cloud-Based Technology Architecture
Traditional banks had built their systems and processes over decades using legacy technology, which previously was a competitive advantage. However, with the advent of new cloud-based technology, scalable, modular (agile) approaches to developing platforms with plug and play functionalities (APIs) have completely changed the game. New age digital architecture is highly modular and plug-and-play in nature, thereby allowing customers to pick and choose the specific service that they wish to choose and build, in an almost “lego” style that may be incomprehensible to “old school” financial service managers.

Decoupling of Liquidity/Risk/KYC Management from Banking
Today a customer only really only needs a bank to hold its “liquidity” safely and ensure that “credit” is assessed and priced correctly, everything else can be done better by a downstream company. This, in my view, will lead to much-needed decoupling in the industry that will also bring more credibility to banks as they will no longer have to face a conflict of interest between the safety of customer money versus increasing returns for shareholders.

Collaborative Ecosystem
The entire banking ecosystem should be more highly collaborative in nature and players should be incentivized to allow simple API based integrations through marketplaces. This will bring about a more interdependent industry, where customers would be the ultimate arbitrators, in terms of which products they wish to use for their financial services requirements.

Predict, Engage, and Offer Personalized Solutions
Developments in big data can allow banks to provide more customized banking to consumers, based on their lifestyle and transaction history. Big data can give clues on life stages and banks could subsequently offer products around the customer life cycle, (i.e. student and mortgage loans). using the data that they have access to, but previously haven’t mined so extensively.

Financial Inclusion Spurred by Increased Access and Lower Costs
This advance will lead to an increase in the ability to build alternate credit models and further welcome a large portion of the hereto unbanked economy into the bankable population. This will help to finally break down the barriers towards building a true financial inclusion model.

Partner with Challengers
As mentioned, one reason behind the success of fintech upstarts has been their use of more modern and innovative measures to enhance customer experience (CX). In my opinion, banks will increasingly partner (or buy) disruptors to leapfrog and fast track their digital banking innovation journey and adopt similar strategies. They may also shift towards embracing open-source platforms and collaborate with third-party product providers to allow better integrations of their apps with their banking platforms that enhance CX and increase value.

Moving Towards a Layered Industry
In my view, these factors are all good developments for the industry to correct a historical structural imbalance that took place due to the serendipitous, needs-based development of universal banking.
The decoupling of services and ring-fencing of the three core functions of the industry (liquidity, risk management, and KYC) with erstwhile traditional banks will allow the rest of the value chain to innovate, experiment with cutting edge solutions much more freely. This will lead to a much more financially inclusive world, from developed metropoles to the remotest corners of the Earth.
The next stage of this change will be how financial services will be layered in the future. Directionally we will see a new banking ecosystem emerge that will be divided into multiple layers focussing on the separate needs of the financial services ecosystem.
A broad architecture of the same can be visualized along the following lines:

1. Central Banks: Executing fiscal mandates and regulatory oversight
2. Warehouse Banks: Warehousing liquidity and risk
3. Platform Banks: Marketplace aggregators
4. Fintechs: App-based banks
5. Identity/KYC Management

All that exists is energy that vibrates at a specific frequency. As Tesla said: "If you want to understand the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration".
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. Premise
Like everything in nature, the cells of our organism also have a specific vibration, as do the organs, energy centers, etc. When these frequencies are harmonic there is an optimal state of balance and health, when this harmony is less, imbalances are created that manifest themselves in discomfort and illness.
The causes that can lead to an imbalance and alteration of the frequencies can be various, both external and internal. But without dwelling on the causes now, let's try instead to understand how through the use of sound it is possible to act to restore harmony in the frequencies of the organism that have been altered.
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. The power of sound
Even before the word, it was the sound.
In ancient Vedic philosophy the mantra "OM" (or AUM) is said to be the primordial sound of creation. The Sanskrit language (the oldest in the world) is a clear example of the power of sound, in fact this is a language focused precisely on the vibration of the words spoken, rather than on their explicit meaning.
For example, the words "Om Shanti" in Sanskrit are translated as "peace", but more than the literal translation, it is interesting to note how the pronunciation (and repetition) of these words ( mantra ) creates inner peace.
In ancient times the knowledge in the use of sound was so advanced that in the Atlantic period it seems that men were even able to move huge blocks of stone (see the construction of the pyramids).
The ancient cultures knew the power of sound and also used it for therapeutic and spiritual purposes , for the healing of the body and the elevation of the Spirit.
From East to Africa, from Indians to Tibetans, every culture has always had an intense and profound relationship with sound.
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Today, even in the medical field, I notice that there is more and more an integration with this ancient knowledge and we are already seeing the first approaches to what is called vibrational medicine, energy medicine, up to the most modern quantum medicine.
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. The harmonic Tibetan bells
The therapeutic use of bells has been known for some time, and is spreading more and more in Italy too.
There are many types of singing bowls, but now I want to tell you about Rabenstein's harmonic bells in particular.
These are particular bells created by Albert Rabenstein , director of the Center for Sound Therapy and Harmonic Studies in Buenos Aires, researcher and trainer on the therapeutic power of sound and its use as an instrument of personal transformation.
The Tibetan bells produced by Rabenstein are so special as they contain the secret of natural harmonic vibration .
They have a special shape and temper that allows them to play long when struck or rubbed on the edge with a hard stick. They produce a range of sounds and harmonic overtones (a fundamental tone from which branch off other more acute that are harmonically related to each other) and have a sound that lasts for a long time spandendosi for any environment, changing the vibration.
In their vibration is inherent the intention with which they were created, respect for these Sacred Sounds and the traditional method of processing.
.Each bell is individually tuned in state ofvisionolistica.it/tag/meditazione/ "target =" _ self "> meditation, to awaken its age-old sounds and thus obtain the purpose of harmonizing and raising the vibration of those who play it.
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. "If you remove the text from your song, if you remove the melody from your song,
.if you take away the intention from your song, only the Sound remains.
You will feel that it is the Sound expressing itself through your voice and you will merge with it.
You will discover that behind each voice of the group there is the same Sound,
.you will feel the power to unite your voice with that of the group,
.you will experience the humility of knowing that you are part of something bigger,
.you will find the happiness of feeling One
. and you will find your essence of Absolute Sound. "
.Albert Rabenstein
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. The sound massage
The harmonic massage with Tibetan bells allows the harmonization of frequencies which generates a molecular rearrangement .
During the session, in addition to the bells, the tuning forks and the voice are used, which by creating a sound with precise harmonic combinations, become the key to restoring the individual's balance.
Sound massage can be used to treat any physical, mental or emotional energy imbalance or block . The harmonic sound acts by rebalancing the energy at any level, acting both on the symptom and on the origin of the block.
This technique can be used to achieve deep relaxation, mental stillness and emotional balance , or as a treatment for a specific problem. In this case, generally, 3-4 sessions are needed, once a week; however, both the frequency and the duration of a treatment vary from case to case and depend on both the type of problem and the results to be obtained.
The harmonic massage is effective because our body is mainly made up of water, so when it is subjected to the "tuned and harmonic" vibrational frequency of the bells, it is influenced by these high and deep vibrations .
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. Interview with Laura Maio
.I had the pleasure of having this experience with Laura Maio, expert in Harmonic Sound Massage, to whom I asked to share an interview.

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• What does it mean for you to be in harmony?
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The harmony of which we speak in the path with the Tibetan bells is certainly not that intended by music, but by the physics that precedes making music. According to physics, everything in nature vibrates, even what appears to be fixed and immutable. However, everything vibrates not randomly but according to a very precise order that tends to balance, that is, to harmony.
For me, harmony in the human being is the balance between mind-body- emotions . This is not always easy to achieve and maintain.
Albert Rabestein often gives the example of a tightrope walking on a rope suspended in the air carrying a heavy sack full of potatoes in each hand. This image gives us a clear idea of how much harmony is an intention to be achieved moment by moment with great commitment and love for oneself . Internal and external factors continually threaten our state of harmony. In my practice with sound, the main work begins with myself: if I am in harmony I can transmit harmony in whatever I do .
Therefore my word has the correct sound, my action has the right intention of what I think and desire, my body works in balance with all my emotions. The biggest job I do on mineit / tag / unconscious / "target =" _ self "> unconscious: many people do not know they have an unconscious and believe they are the masters of their lives. Think, that it is possible to measure the main frequencies of a person, as what it distinguishes it is represented by its FUNDAMENTAL EMANATION , given by the commands, beliefs and repressed in the unconscious, which represent the greatest amount of energy that a person has harnessed within himself.
Harmony for me therefore represents the possibility of becoming architects of one's own reality, aligning all the frequencies of the mind, body and emotions to the order of nature . Virtually the work of a lifetime, if not more lifetimes !

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• The transformative effects that surprised you most after a harmonization
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.I am happy that you ask me this question, because for me working with others is a great opportunity to understand and evolve myself. After each harmonization, I am amazed to notice how much more expanded the vibrational center of my heart is, thanks to the connection I create with the person receiving the harmonization.
It is as if the barriers and conditioning that each of us has within ourselves collapsed and that sound, light and love did everything that needs to be done in that moment.
I noticed that after the treatment the person completely changes his physiognomy . The voice is also different. When a painful emotion appears, one is willing to welcome it and let it go. Sometimes we cry for the joy of having found ourselves in a sound. In short, I cannot find a specific case because each person brings his own world which is wonderful and precious to me and every time I am amazed at how much the heart enters to do the treatment with a vibration and comes out of the encounter with another.

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• What is healing for you?
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For me, healing is being able to look at your wounds without being a victim , understanding the teaching behind every experience in your life and learning to arm yourself .

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• "Your" meaning of life is ...
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. Realize with love the project that my soul has come to carry out on this earthly plane !.

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• Leave some advice to a young soul on the way ...
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I too am on a journey like everyone else and I feel in brotherhood with others. To each soul brother I feel I can share a reflection: if you constantly work on yourself and you never believe that you have arrived somewhere, you will get the best results and you will be more and more in connection with your inner teacher.
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. Work to bring light to the unconscious , look at external reality as a projection of yourself. Don't feel separate from others and learn to love yourself. Don't take these things for granted.
Our goal on this plane is to be happy and live in joy, so let's learn to open our hearts!
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The association TOUS A TABLE aims to facilitate the reintegration of disadvantaged people and families by allowing them to share quality cuisine with a sensitized public, but also to allow young professionals at the end of their training to evaluate themselves with referent chef.

Imaginary time is a mathematical simplification of time that is used in several equations across quantum mechanics and general relativity.

What happened at the beginning of the universe? Most people would simplify and say that there was a Big Bang and then everything spontaneously burst into existence. That statement certainly has an element of truth, to some extent.
However, what exactly happened at the beginning of time itself? And what happened before that? Questions like these have eluded the scientific community to this day.
When we start to look at things at the beginning of the universe, or even before the beginning, nothing is what it seems. The math gets fuzzy, the physics gets hazy, and conventionally accepted “truths” tend to fall apart.
How would one even begin to understand the universe at a time so close to the beginning (t=10-33 seconds)? That number has thirty-three zeroes after the decimal point! Trying to solve problems in physics at that stage of our universe’s lifecycle gets incredibly tedious. Actually, tedious might be an understatement… it gets downright impossible!


As we move closer to the singularity (just before the Big Bang), conventional laws of nature break down (Photo Credit : Andrea Danti / Shutterstock)

This impossible nature is primarily because, close to the very beginning of time, we approach what is called a singularity.
A singularity is the theorized state of the universe prior to the Big Bang. As we get closer to a singularity, the conventional laws of physics begin to break down. The scientific community needed a workaround for this. How would they analyze the state of the universe that close to the beginning without dealing with the pesky, physics-bending singularity?
Enter… imaginary time.

What is imaginary time?
Simply put, imaginary time is a mathematical simplification of time used in several equations across quantum mechanics and general relativity.
Think of real-time as a horizontal line. A single point on that line is a moment in time. To the left of that point is the past and to the right is the future.
Now imagine a second line perpendicular to real-time. This essentially represents imaginary time. Being perpendicular to real-time, it allows for everything to occur all at once. Since humans can only perceive single moments in time, wrapping your head around ‘imaginary time’ may prove difficult.
However, by allowing for everything to happen simultaneously, we’re able to avoid the idea of a beginning. Without a starting point, imaginary time becomes something that has always been in existence. There is no boundary from where ‘imaginary time’ started. In imaginary time, there was no big bang and hence, close to the beginning of real-time, imaginary time still remains very much like any other point in time. There is no fuzzy physics or hazy mathematics. There is no occurrence of that pesky singularity.
The concept of imaginary time may not immediately seem useful or easier to visualize, but mathematically, it becomes a physicist’s best friend when he or she is tired of dealing with singularities in all their calculations.

Mathematically, imaginary time is simply a line perpendicular to the time axis (Photo Credit : Bignose/Wikimedia Commons)

So how do we create this convenient perpendicular line of time? Do we arbitrarily sketch a line anywhere in space and call it ‘imaginary time’? I wish it were that simple, but when dealing with four-dimensional space-time, “simple” is seldom on the menu, so let’s begin.

How do you convert real-time to imaginary time?
The three dimensions of space, along with the dimension of real-time, form what is known as Minkowski’s spacetime. By incorporating all four dimensions, Minkowski’s spacetime becomes an area where one can plot anything that occurs in the universe simply by specifying its time and spatial orientation.
Of course, visualizing four dimensions is no easy feat. Some of the numbers may make mathematical sense, but don’t physically translate well. Moreover, there is also a boundary, which can be a cause for alarm that we discussed earlier.
Minkowski spacetime has a boundary that allows for a singularity as we approach the beginning of the universe (Photo Credit : FlashMovie/Shutterstock)

Minkowski’s spacetime must be altered to make it simpler. For this, we can translate the complexity of Minkowski’s spacetime into conventional geometrical space, which makes it easier to understand and solve for. This geometrical space is known as Euclidean space.

Wick rotation
The translation is done using what’s known as Wick’s rotation. This involves substituting the component of time in Minkowski’s space with the value for ‘imaginary time’. This involves multiplying the value of real-time by √−1, which is an imaginary number denoted by ‘i’. 
Remember the flat line of real-time we discussed earlier? By multiplying the value of real-time by ‘i’, we are essentially rotating that line and turning it into a perpendicular. Once we convert Minkowski’s space into Euclidean space by rotating the time axis, we are left with space that lacks a boundary, and thus lacks any scope to contain a pesky singularity. Once we solve whatever we need to solve at a time close to the Big Bang, we can then resubstitute the values, i.e., undo Wick’s Rotation and find the final result in real spacetime, i.e., Minkowski’s spacetime.

One can rotate the time axis by multiplying real-time by ‘i’

Use of Imaginary Numbers in Science
However, the use of “imaginary” time met with some resistance from the scientific community. In fact, an entire section of the community has long been at war with ‘imaginary’ numbers altogether. They basically believe that it is a ridiculous notion. How could any number representing a real quantity be imaginary?
If we said that, where would the imagination end? Why not just make everything imaginary? A whole world made of imagination. A sort of Wonderland, perhaps with a girl named Alice exploring it for an inexplicable reason. Do we even need a reason? That could be imaginary too! We could suggest that a little rabbit caught her attention, so she followed him down a rabbit hole.

Alice in Wonderland
In fact, this is very close to the true origin story of Alice in Wonderland. The original story published in 1865 was written by Lewis Carroll, a pen name adopted by a mathematician of the era by the name of Charles Dodgson. Dodgson did not believe that it was justified to use imaginary numbers in mathematics.
He considered the notion to be utterly irresponsible. The original takeaway from his story was the sheer ridiculousness of a world with imaginary entities.

Alice in Wonderland mocked the use of imaginary numbers in science (Photo Credit : Pushkin/Shutterstock)

Think back to the Mad Hatter’s tea party. There have been several versions of this scene over the years, but every version stayed true to one attribute—the party was outrageous. It was a party where it was always tea-time, no matter the time, because time had left the room. According to Charles Dodgson, the whole world would eventually turn into a massive Mad Hatter’s tea party if imaginary numbers had their way.

Hawking’s book brought imaginary numbers and imaginary time into popular conversation (Photo Credit : Studio_G/Shutterstock)

On the other end of the spectrum sat one of the most brilliant minds in modern physics, Stephen Hawking. In Hawking’s book, The Universe in a Nutshell, buried deep among the pages of wisdom is a special nugget concerning ‘imaginary time’.
He stated that several mathematical models incorporating the variable for imaginary time are also able to predict a certain phenomenon that we can already observe in the universe. Of course, this begs the question… how imaginary is ‘imaginary time’?
If it’s able to make accurate ‘real-world’ predictions, doesn’t it warrant the title of ‘real’? Rather than being relegated to little more than a mathematical simplification, Hawking argued that perhaps it’s time to reconsider our perspective of time itself. ‘Imaginary time’ may indeed be just as real as our narrow perception of linear time.

And what if what happened in the strange GameStop speculation saga was indicative of much deeper issues at stake?…
Finance has always been a place for rumours, lies, and false news, for desperate companies or governments to attract capital, deceive competitors and make big profits. Many media outlets, especially in France, have even lived for a long time, during the 19th and 20th centuries, by commercializing false news, through financial advertisements disguised as articles by honourable journalists, and committing other turpitudes.
Today, it is not surprising if the situation has taken on a completely different dimension.

First, because we have moved from print to online media and social networks, which have exponentially multiplied the means through which false news are transmitted. Moreover, because we have seen emerge, on these networks, new ways for everyone to express themselves: digitalisation and democratisation lead to an economy of rage and anger against the rich and powerful, those who monopolise money, power and knowledge; and the emergence of sometimes very sensible demands against privileges, scandals, and for more equality and respect. On the other hand, they also lead to the proliferation of lies, fake news, and the emergence of cults such as QAnon, the denunciation of imaginary crimes, and deadly manhunts.

The alliance between big tech and democratisation is taking the media into a maelstrom from which few will emerge alive, unless global regulations limit the powers of the masters of the social networks that have become public services by nature, and unless the other media outlets are given the means to combat fakes news, with the particular help of schools and universities.

We should not be surprised if finance is threatened by the same development:
For a long time now, the digital transformation of the financial industry has been happening. More recently, it has also become an activity for the masses, thanks to the emergence of simple applications allowing everyone to acquire stocks, just like social networks has allowed everyone to become a journalist.

The alliance between the tech sector and democratisation could only lead, as with the media, to the emergence of a great anger of the smaller players against the big players.

Firstly, it was the anger of small investors of the stock market against those who make a lot of money by speculating on the demise of a company; for example, by betting on the drop of the price of a share (what we called in stock market language “shorting,” i.e. the investor borrows a stock that he does not own, sells the stock, and then buys the stock back when the price has dropped (as the investor predicted) to return it to the lender).  This is what happened recently, when an army of small retail investors, having realised that large hedge funds had decided to short the stocks of unstable companies, such as GameStop, Blackberry and AMC Entertainment, gathered in virtual meeting places, such as Reddit, and coalesced to drive up the price of the company’s stocks, forcing the hedge funds to buy these stocks at a higher price to be able to close the sale they had committed to (i.e. executing a short squeeze). Some of these hedge funds, such as Melvin Capital, had to find huge sums of money to close their deals. Robinhood, one of the most important online commission-free stock trading platforms recently created even had to temporarily shut down certain trades to replenish its reserves, to the great anger of its clients; and some small retail investors have earned considerable sums by punishing the big ones.

What comes next? One can imagine that these meeting places between a few small retail investors, these chatrooms, becoming meeting and coalition places for millions of retail investors, to launch an upward or downward operation against a stock, whatever its real value. To earn money. To harm a particular company, rightly or wrongly labelled as harmful. To sabotage confidence in the financial markets. To denounce financial capitalism. To destroy Americans’ wealth and pension plans. To destroy this way of financing companies and markets. Or for any other political reason. By risking small sums of money, a very large number of tiny players in digital finance, if they get together and organize a narrative, can temporarily destabilise any firm or market. We can perfectly imagine, for this reason, that false news will be launched in these chat rooms, which will find people to believe it.

Can these manoeuvres become successful? Can digital finance participate in the great anger at work against the powerful and the speculators, against those who are only concerned with their immediate profits without looking at the global impact of these companies? Can we also see the development of a “fake finance” as harmful as fakes news is?

Here again, if we do not take the lead quickly, and if very strict regulations are not implemented to prevent it, fake finance will rise and the worst is yet to come.

Let us look on the bright side: like any crisis, this one offers us an opportunity to solve problems that we did not dare to tackle before: regulating the global financial markets; putting an end to unproductive speculation; fighting false news; and perhaps, we can dream a little: better distributing financial wealth among all and directing finance toward sustainable, positive enterprises, to serve the economy of life.

Capability could accelerate the development of new treatments for diseases

Northwestern University synthetic biologist Joshua Leonard used to build devices when he was a child using electronic kits. Now he and his team have developed a design-driven process that uses parts from a very different kind of toolkit to build complex genetic circuits for cellular engineering.

One of the most exciting frontiers in medicine is the use of living cells as therapies. Using this approach to treat cancer, for example, many patients have been cured of previously untreatable disease. These advances employ the approaches of synthetic biology, a growing field that blends tools and concepts from biology and engineering.

The new Northwestern technology uses computational modeling to more efficiently identify useful genetic designs before building them in the lab.
Faced with myriad possibilities, modeling points researchers to designs that offer real opportunity.

“To engineer a cell, we first encode a desired biological function in a piece of DNA, and that DNA program is then delivered to a human cell to guide its execution of the desired function, such as activating a gene only in response to certain signals in the cell’s environment,” Leonard said. He led a team of researchers from Northwestern in collaboration with Neda Bagheri from the University of Washington for this study. 
Leonard is an associate professor of chemical and biological engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering and a leading faculty member within Northwestern’s Center for Synthetic Biology. His lab is focused on using this kind of programming capability to build therapies such as engineered cells that activate the immune system, to treat cancer.

Bagheri is an associate professor of biology and chemical engineering and a Washington Research Foundation Investigator at the University of Washington Seattle. Her lab uses computational models to better understand -- and subsequently control -- cell decisions. Leonard and Bagheri co-advised Joseph Muldoon, a recent doctoral student and the paper’s first author.

“Model-guided design has been explored in cell types such as bacteria and yeast, but this approach is relatively new in mammalian cells,” Muldoon said. 

The study, in which dozens of genetic circuits were designed and tested, was published today (Feb. 19) in the journal Science Advances. Like other synthetic biology technologies, a key feature of this approach is that it is intended to be readily adopted by other bioengineering groups.
To date, it remains difficult and time-consuming to develop genetic programs when relying upon trial and error. It is also challenging to implement biological functions beyond relatively simple ones. The research team used a “toolkit” of genetic parts invented in Leonard’s lab and paired these parts with computational tools for simulating many potential genetic programs before conducting experiments. They found that a wide variety of genetic programs, each of which carries out a desired and useful function in a human cell, can be constructed such that each program works as predicted. Not only that, but the designs worked the first time.

“In my experience, nothing works like that in science; nothing works the first time. We usually spend a lot of time debugging and refining any new genetic design before it works as desired,” Leonard said. “If each design works as expected, we are no longer limited to building by trial and error. Instead, we can spend our time evaluating ideas that might be useful in order to hone in on the really great ideas.”

“Robust representative models can have disruptive scientific and translational impact,” Bagheri added. “This development is just the tip of the iceberg.”

The genetic circuits developed and implemented in this study are also more complex than the previous state of the art. This advance creates the opportunity to engineer cells to perform more sophisticated functions and to make therapies safer and more effective. 

“With this new capability, we have taken a big step in being able to truly engineer biology,” Leonard said. 

The research was supported by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (award number 1R01EB026510), the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (award number T32GM008152) and the National Cancer Institute (award number F30CA203325).
The title of the paper is “Model-guided design of mammalian genetic programs.”
 

All over the world, and particularly in France, the manner in which we are handling the pandemic is plagued by inconsistencies. It is not just because management methods are very different from one country to another, but also because of the practices vary within each country: how do we justify the closure of theatres and cinemas while the metro and trains are running? How can it be explained that universities are closed when preparatory classes and schools remain open? How can we accept that shops are closed at the time when most people are getting out of work and can do their shopping? How can we understand that we cannot (without requiring that changing rooms are opened) practice sports in which players are far away from each other, such as tennis, ping pong, or so many other outdoor sports?

One day all this will have to be explained. There is a bigger inconsistency that affects restaurants: how can we explain the fact that restaurants are not allowed to open when it is allowed to eat at your seat on a train? How can it be accepted that restaurants are not allowed to welcome their customers at least outside on the sidewalks or on their terraces, with all the necessary heating accessory (whose impact on global warming is certain but derisory)?

At the table, a distance equal to that required in offices would be imposed, and masks would have to be worn outside eating times; and in the kitchen, the same sanitary rules as those that must be practiced today in canteens and restaurants offering take-away sales would apply. With a little practice, all this should work. It is probably too late to go back on this, at least for the moment.

But if, unfortunately, this pandemic were to last, or return, or take hold, it is high time to consider such measures, at least for the spring and summer period. Even if the powers that be are all, in fact, delighted with such a situation:

Restaurants are not just a place to eat. They are, together with family meals at home, the main places of conversation and transmission. But the powers in place in every society do not like it when people engage in conversation while they eat: they exchange information there; they discuss political topics there; they organise coalitions there; all this is beyond the control of the powers in place, who know nothing of what is said there; it is very dangerous for them.

Moreover, sharing a meal together with others takes time; time from work, time from consuming things other than food; the meal is therefore an enemy of the economy; the meal is anti-capitalist. The meal has even become, because of this notion, a brief and solitary moment of consumption of industrial products, an enemy of man: it cannot be repeated enough that food kills much more than the worst of pandemics.

Furthermore, the powers in place do not like it when we pass on knowledge from one generation to the next; they prefer to pass it on themselves. In particular, they do not like the transmission of unique and endemic family recipes.

So our societies have for a long time (at least a century and a half) done everything possible to kill meals; so that we eat elsewhere than at the table, and especially not together; so that we eat alone, in front of a computer or in a corner of the workshop. So that we swallow industrial products, with an artificial flavour that discourages us from devoting time to them.

The food has thus become universally uniform, supporting the illusion of virtual journeys in foods that will have no more exotic component other than their name. And by locking up the elders in assisted living centers, the transmission of ancient recipes has become even more difficult. If we are not careful, the pandemic could accelerate this development, which France, Italy, and a few other countries have resisted the most; it could justify the curfew by the possibility of doing one’s shopping at the time of the meal that has disappeared; and by the growth in productivity made possible by eating at home in front of one’s computer in one’s office/living/dining room; and sometimes also in one’s bedroom. We must fight at all costs against these deleterious and deadly trends; it is particularly up to restaurant owners, farmers, and the entire food industry to prepare as quickly as possible for salutary changes: eliminate artificial sugars everywhere, ban pesticides, and move as quickly as possible toward organic food in canteens and restaurants.

Give meals their festive and subversive function back. Teach all this knowledge to health professionals. Allow the elders to pass on their recipes, immense treasures in danger of disappearing. To restore the meal as quickly as possible, in its splendour, not only to eat good and healthy foods, but also to converse freely and joyfully; to build the economy and life and to transmit, preciously, what is essential to each of our civilizations.

Since at least 1950, when Alan Turing’s famous “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” paper was first published in the journal Mind, computer scientists interested in artificial intelligence have been fascinated by the notion of coding the mind. The mind, so the theory goes, is substrate independent, meaning that its processing ability does not, by necessity, have to be attached to the wetware of the brain. We could upload minds to computers or, conceivably, build entirely new ones wholly in the world of software.
This is all familiar stuff. While we have yet to build or re-create a mind in software, outside of the lowest-resolution abstractions that are modern neural networks, there are no shortage of computer scientists working on this effort right this moment.
What is altogether less familiar is the work being carried out by researchers at Estonia’s University of Tartu and France’s Paris-Saclay University.
Rather than just trying to re-create an approximation of the mind in software, they’ve turned to a different problem: Can you use an algorithm to generate genetic code for people that have never existed? Could you apply the same generative adversarial network (GAN) technology that allows A.I. models like BigSleep to spit out compellingly realistic generated images and use it, instead, to create fake DNA that, in the vein of Turing’s work, is indistinguishable from that of a flesh-and-blood person?

Artificial genetic data
“Creating artificial genetic data that are realistic enough, without directly copying the sequences, is a very hard problem,” Flora Jay, a researcher specializing in machine learning and population genetics at the University of Paris-Saclay University, told Digital Trends. “Genetic data is of high dimension, and you cannot just eyeball what’s important or not. We thus turned to cutting-edge techniques [being] applied to the computer vision, text, music, or protein world. These generative networks — GANs and [restricted Boltzmann machines] — are designed so that they can progressively and automatically learn how to create artificial genetic sequences.”

A GAN, a class of machine-learning framework coined by researcher (and current Apple employee) Ian Goodfellow, uses a combative, tug-of-war approach to improve its generative outcomes. It consists of two neural networks: A “generator” and a “discriminator” which pass outputs between one another.



The generator’s job is to create something, be it an A.I. painting or a chunk of code representing an artificial genome in the form of ones and zeroes. The discriminator, like a bot version of J.K. Simmons’ perfectionist music instructor in the movie Whiplash, then critiques its efforts and sends this back to the generator. The generator learns from this feedback, while the discriminator similarly gets ever better at guessing what’s been created by the generator and what is the genuine article. Eventually, the generator is so good at creating fake versions of whatever it is attempting that the discriminator can be fooled. It’s no longer able to differentiate real from fake.

“One of the main problems here is assessing the quality of artificial genomes,” Burak Yelmen, a Ph.D. student at the University of Tartu’s Institute of Genomics, told Digital Trends. “You can look at an image and decide if it looks real, but this is not possible for genomes. [The] majority of the analyses we performed in our study was to see whether the artificial genome chunks we generated really looked like the real ones.”
Don’t worry, though. Despite a growing mass of articles about highly dubious gene tampering designed to rewrite the human code, this work is not about trying to “write” new parentless humans who could be created with the aid of supercomputers.



“To be clear, the objective of our work is to better understand and encode the existing genetic diversity of thousands or millions of people around the world, not to create artificial cells,” Jay said. “The neural networks are trained on this existing diversity, so the generated genomic regions do not carry additional novel mutations that could easily disrupt the functionality of a sequence — and they include, untouched, the segments that are conserved across human populations.”

Jay noted that, at the whole genome scale, it is “difficult to say” whether a specific combination of millions of generated nucleotides could indeed be “functional.” In other words, don’t expect to compile and run this code, expecting a fully formed person (or their blueprints) to emerge at the other end. Instead, the purpose is something altogether less sinister and, potentially, more useful.

All about data privacy
“There is an immense amount of data in biobanks and it keeps increasing every day,” said Yelmen. “However, genomic data is sensitive data and accessing these biobanks can be difficult for researchers due to ethical concerns. The main goal of our work is to create high-quality surrogates of existing genome banks and provide a solution to this accessibility barrier within a safe ethical framework. It is important to note that our study was a first step: There is still work to do.”
Added Jay: “The idea behind our study is to start investigating whether releasing artificial genomes instead of the real ones could preserve the privacy of genome donors, while providing useful information to the population genetics community. [Possible] applications of artificial genomes could range from better understanding of our evolutionary past to providing insights in medical genetics, including a wider range of diversity.”

In some ways, the work is reminiscent of the trend, seen a couple of years ago, in which GANs were used to create images of imaginary people, animals, and more as epitomized by the generative website ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com. Only this time, of course, it involves actual genetic code, rather than simple pictures.
A paper describing the project, titled “Creating artificial human genomes using generative neural networks,” was recently published in the journal PLOS Genetics.

If you want to improve your quality of sleep, you need to maintain a healthy immune system. In this article, we’ll look at how the immune system works, how it relates to sleep, and how you can improve your own immune system. While we’ll look at advice from medical experts, keep in mind that we at Sleepopolis are not healthcare professionals. As such, please do not take this information as medical advice.

How the Immune System Works
The immune system is an intricate network that provides multiple defensive components against illnesses. I spoke with Dr. Ceppie Merry of Healthy But Smart, who says that people often think of the immune system as a single entity, but that this is incorrect since the immune system is actually composed of a large number of cells with differing properties.



The immune system is incredibly complex, but two key components to keep in mind are white blood cells and cytokines. White blood cells target, attack, and destroy foreign substances, such as bacteria and viruses. Once white blood cells spot a foreign substance, the immune system releases cytokines. Dr. Leann Poston of Invigor Medical told me that the immune system uses cytokines to “increase blood flow and bring disease-fighting cells to an infection.” We’ll talk more about white blood cells and cytokines throughout this article.
A 2013 study in Best Practice & Research Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism suggests that the immune system is on high alert when sleep deprivation occurs. In other words, the body goes into defensive mode in response to reduced sleep. (1)
Low-grade chronic inflammation can also be caused by poor sleep. While the cytokines the immune system makes are often beneficial, unfortunately, when you don’t get enough sleep, your weakened immune system responds by releasing pro-inflammatory cytokines. (2) These can cause painful inflammation. (3) While a lack of sleep can harm the immune system, having plenty of quality sleep can improve it. (4) Dr. Jacqueline Darna, CEO & Medical Inventor of NoMo Wristbands, informed me that sleep helps strengthen the immune system by producing T cells, which help identify foreign bacteria, viruses, or other substances. In this way, the T cells alert the immune system if there is a substance that shouldn’t be there.



To learn more about how sleep impacts the immune system, I talked with Dr. Nikola Djordjevic of HealthCareers.co, who informed me that sleep can stimulate the innate immune system as well as the adaptive immune system. With that in mind, he recommends sticking to a regular sleeping schedule and avoiding mobile phone and laptop usage before bedtime.
Dr. Saunders of The Sleep Fix explained to me the importance of having plenty of rest to support the immune system. She says that once the immune system is activated, it encourages your body to sleep so that it can recover. She recommends getting at least seven hours of sleep each night so that your body does not reduce the amount of white blood cells it makes, which can compromise the immune system.
One way to get restful sleep is by using a mattress that works right for you. When choosing the correct mattress, you’ll want to make sure your body has plenty of pressure relief. The best foam mattresses help alleviate any tension, promoting the deep, restorative sleep your immune system needs.

Types of Immunity


Innate Immunity
The National Center for Biotechnology Information cites research done by the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care, explaining that the innate immune system is the initial way the body defends itself against incoming germs. (5) Dr. Merry says that the skin, mucous membranes in the nose and mouth, and some blood cells and proteins all make up the innate immune system. She also says that, unlike adaptive immunity, innate immunity does not target specific pathogens.

Adaptive Immunity
The National Cancer Institute notes that acquired (or adaptive) immunity is an immune system response to a foreign substance entering the body. (6) Dr. Merry says the adaptive immune system targets particular pathogens, though it may take time before the pathogens are eradicated.
The Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care research states that the adaptive immune system kicks in if the innate immune system fails to destroy any germs causing an infection. The research also notes adaptive immunity is the reason why your body “remembers” certain germs, which is why people only get some diseases once. Dr. Poston says that the adaptive immune system uses antibodies to identify infections so immune cells can target and destroy them.

The Importance of Your Immune System


To get a better idea of how valuable the immune system is, let’s briefly take a look at how important it is for defending your body against viruses and diseases. Specifically, we’ll examine the benefits of the immune system when fighting COVID-19, the flu, and the common cold.
Nurse Teri Dreher of NShore Patient Advocates says that during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s especially important to keep a healthy immune system. She says: “There is no magic bullet for amping up your immune system. However, when you improve your overall health, your immune system benefits, too.” We’ll look into how you can strengthen your immune system later on.
Dr. Saunders pointed out that the immune system is incredibly important for defending against the flu and the common cold. She explained that the cytokines your immune system releases when faced with an infection are likely to make you want to rest. This is good news, since she says the best way to keep your immune system healthy is by getting at least seven hours of sleep each night.

Ways to Strengthen the Immune System
Beyond getting plenty of sleep, there is more you can do to maintain a healthy immune system. To learn how, I sought more advice from medical experts.



Exercise Every Week.
To strengthen your immune system, Nurse Dreher recommends exercising for a minimum of 2.5 hours a week. Dr. Saunders agrees, saying that physical activity encourages deeper sleep, thereby benefiting your immune system.

Eat the Right Foods.
A 2020 study in Frontiers in Public Health says diet and nutrition can positively impact the immune system by serving as a preventive measure. (7) Dr. Saunders recommends eating plenty of protein, vegetables, and fruits, while staying away from sugary snacks.
Dr. Darna gave me a list of essential minerals and vitamins that can help improve your immune system:

• Zinc: Lean meats, seafood, milk, whole grains, beans, nuts
• Vitamin C: Fruits like oranges, strawberries, cantaloupe, and tomatoes and vegetables like broccoli and kale
• Iron: Spinach, white beans, lentils, and tofu
• Vitamin E: Avocado, shrimp, nuts, and green leafy vegetables
• Vitamin A: Sweet potatoes, carrots, red bell peppers, mangos, black-eyed peas, and spinach
• Vitamin B6: Tuna, salmon, and chickpeas

Manage Your Stress.
Alternative and Chinese medicine expert Tsao-Lin Moy says stress impacts your immune system by interfering with the duration and quality of your sleep. Since stress can cause a reduction in your immune system’s production of white blood cells, which defend against foreign pathogens, Nurse Dreher recommends trying to manage it.

Try Acupuncture and/or Aromatherapy.
One way to manage your stress, according to Dr. Irina Logman of the Advanced Holistic Center, is through acupuncture. This is because acupuncture releases natural opioids that help reduce stress. Dr. Logman notes that acupuncture also activates an immune response and promotes healing.
She also says that it “boosts the immune response when necessary and calms it down in cases of overactive responses.” Tsao-Lin Moy also says acupuncture can be useful in that it can activate self-healing mechanisms within the body.

Take Probiotic Supplements.
Lisa Richards, nutritionist and author of The Candida Diet, told me that probiotics, which are beneficial bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract, help protect the gut and the immune system. She says taking probiotics supplements can help give your immune system an added boost, especially if you’re sick.

Last Word From Sleepopolis
Now that you know the importance of a healthy immune system, we hope you’ll be able to use some of these tips to keep it strong, which will help you sleep better. Keep in mind that sleep, diet, exercise, and stress management are all key for maintaining your immune system. Again, we’re not medical experts, so be sure to talk with your doctor if you have medical concerns on this subject.

References

1. Mullington, J et al. Sleep Loss and Inflammation. Best Practice & Research Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Jan 18, 2013.
2. Besedovsky, L et al. Sleep and immune function. Pflügers Archiv: European Journal of Physiology. Jan 2012.
3. Zhang, J et al. Cytokines, Inflammation and Pain. International Anesthesiology Clinics. Nov 30, 2009.
4. Besedovsky, L et al. The Sleep-Immune Crosstalk in Health and Disease. Physiological Reviews. Mar 27, 2019.
5. “The innate and adaptive immune systems.” National Center for Biotechnology Information, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279396/
6. “Acquired Immunity.” National Cancer Institute. www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/acquired-immun...
7. Chaari, A et al. Importance of Dietary Changes During the Coronavirus Pandemic: How to Upgrade Your Immune Response. Frontiers in Public Health. Aug 27, 2020.

 

• by Paul Joe Watson
• Expert Verified By: Dr. Ramprasad Gopalan

New Industry 4.0 technologies, spanning mobile computing to cloud computing, have undergone vast development in the last decade and are now ready to be used as commercially available, interconnected systems within manufacturing – this is Industry 4.0. It holds the key to accessing real-time results and data that will catapult the industry into new levels of lean achievements.
The concept of Industry 4.0 however, is not a simple one. It envelops many technologies and is used in a variety of different contexts. There are five pieces that define Industry 4.0 at its core. Each piece is similar in nature but, when integrated together, create capability that has never before been possible. In an effort to understand Industry 4.0, the following five terms are explained as they contribute to the next industrial revolution:

1. Big Data
As per Forbes, Big Data is a collection of data from traditional and digital sources inside and outside your company that represents a source for ongoing discovery and analysis. Today data is collected everywhere, from systems and sensors to mobile devices. The challenge is that the industry is still in the process of developing methods to best interpret data. It’s the evolution of Industry 4.0 that will change the way organizations and solutions within those organizations work together; teams will be able to make better, smarter decisions.

2. Smart Factory
The concept of Smart Factory is the seamless connection of individual production steps, from planning stages to actuators in the field. In the near future, machinery and equipment will be able to improve processes through self-optimization; systems will autonomously adapt to the traffic profile and network environment. Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs), are an integral part of the Smart Factory, as their autonomous intelligence connects the factory together, allowing seamless operations. 
Leading by example is the Siemens Electronic Works facility in Amberg, Germany. Smart machines coordinate production and global distribution or a built-to-order process involving roughly 1.6 billion components. When the Smart Factory is achieved, it will represent a pivotal shift for Industry 4.0, as the revolution will begin to roll out across multiple verticals. Various markets spanning healthcare to consumer goods will adapt Industry 4.0 technologies initially modelled in the Smart Factory.

3. Cyber Physical Systems
Cyber physical systems are integrations of computation, networking and physical processes. Computers and networks monitor and control physical processes with feedback loops; the physical system reacts, the system uses software to interpret actions and tracks results. The notion centers on computers and software being embedded in devices where the first use is not computation; rather it is a loop of action and machine learning.

4. Internet of Things (IoT)
The internet of things is a simple term for a grandiose concept. IoT is the connection of all devices to the internet and each other. As Wired said, “it’s built on cloud computing and networks of data-gather sensors; it’s mobile, virtual, and instantaneous connection.” This interconnection will enable “smart factories” to take shape as equipment will use data to manufacture, move, report and learn at astounding rates, efficiently.

5. Interoperability
Interoperability is in essence what happens when we bring the above elements together. It is the connection of cyber-physical systems, humans and smart factories communicating with each other through the IoT. In doing so, manufacturing partners can effectively share information, error-free. Consider that no single company can dictate all its partners use the same software or standards for how the information is represented. Interoperability enables error-free transmission and translation.
From 3D prints to autonomous vehicles, Industry 4.0 technologies are propelling the manufacturing industry with new means of efficiency, accuracy and reliability. The level of intelligence offered today is only the beginning for what is to come.

The 5 Factors of Industry 4.0 in Practice
Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) are a primary example of this technological evolution. Compared to their predecessors (autonomous guided vehicles), AMRs offer industrial centers increased flexibility and efficiency, higher throughput rates, and a faster return on investment. They move through plants with purpose, finding the most efficient route to their final destination by way of infrastructure-free navigation (no beacons, magnetic tape or cables). Onboard intelligence provides obstacle avoidance to ensure safe, collaborative work environments. Meanwhile, AMRs such as OTTO also offer intuitive light signals, much like vehicles on outdoor roads, to effectively communicate behaviors like turning, stopping, or parking. AMRs collect and share data from within the fleet, whether that fleet is used in one facility or many. Therefore, executives have visibility of real-time data and are able to make informed, educated decisions to positively impact KPIs and grow of their operation.
 

One night in April, I found myself holding my cat up to my laptop, eagerly showing her off to a group of strangers on Zoom. I was, in fact, an audience member immersed in a production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest by Creation Theatre, based in Oxford, U.K.
Over the course of the show, produced entirely over Zoom, I was tasked with asking questions of the characters in a news conference, providing sound effects like bird squawks and stormy weather and holding up props (like my cat) when requested.
Given social-distancing protocols that prohibit physical gatherings, theatre makers have responded creatively to the COVID-19 pandemic by turning to online, digital and lo-fi or “non-embodied” modes of performance that use radio and phone.
This change in how to perform theatre has required a reconsideration of longstanding ideas of what it means to be a theatre audience member: How has access to theatre changed? What etiquette is expected? How have ideas of privacy and intimacy shifted?

Rise of alternate forms of theatre
Most obviously, streamed versions of pre-recorded theatrical productions have enjoyed great popularity. #JaneEyre became a trending topic on Twitter in April 2020 after the National Theatre in London, U.K., aired a recording on YouTube, with more than 4,600 tweets in the seven days after it streamed.
Digital analytics by the company OneFurther about online viewing of One Man Two Guvnors by Richard Bean, based on the 18th-century Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni, count a staggering 2.6 million viewers over the course of one week. Such views are far beyond the seating capacity of a regular theatre building.
This increased access is especially important in light of growing awareness of inaccessibility in theatre more broadly. Some progress has been made to better welcome audience members with certain disabilities, especially in the advent of relaxed performances, which seeks to “relax” or loosen audience conventions in order to create more accessible theatre. But systemic issues of racism, classism and ableism continue to exclude many potential spectators.

Streaming and diversifying audiences
Shakespeare scholar Erin Sullivan cites the U.K. Arts Council’s report “From Live-to-Digital” to point to the potential of streamed performance to increase access to theatre: “Streaming does appear to attract younger, less wealthy and more ethnically diverse members of the population.”
What’s also notable about online performances is that, as an audience member, I can choose when, where and how to watch. Scholar Kirsty Sedgman, who studies theatre and performance audiences, has written extensively about audience etiquette and how such behavioural expectations are often exclusionary: you must be quiet, immobile and have singular focus. If you don’t, you need to leave.
Within the privacy of my own home, however, such rules are removed. I can eat, drink, talk and be on my phone — or so one would think.
Actress Gillian Anderson asked audience members to stay off their phones while watching the National Theatre’s streamed version of A Streetcar Named Desire, which she starred in at the Young Vic in London. She thereby tried to enforce public theatre behaviours in private.

Live-tweeting at performances already OK
That live-tweeting alongside performances is already a well-established practice means that expected audience behaviours must be renegotiated for online viewing.
I, for instance, eagerly read the comments of my fellow audience members during a YouTube livestream of Blind Date, a show from Toronto-based Spontaneous Theatre centred on a virtual first date between Mimi (a French clown played by Rebecca Northan) and actor Wayne Brady.
The ways in which audience members can connect with each other in the absence of shared physical space means that virtual sites of conversation — like Twitter and the YouTube comments section — become vital.

Privacy unbound?
Finally, questions of privacy are also important. In The Tempest, I saw into several peoples’ homes, and watched them leave and return with snacks or get interrupted by their children and pets. The boundaries between public and private lives were blurred and I had a deeper awareness of my fellow spectators.
In a cleverly customized theatrical experience from Toronto’s Outside the March Theatre, a “detective” attempted to solve my possibly paranormal printer problems over the course of six phone calls. In this interactive performance experience called The Ministry of Mundane Mysteries, I was also asked to reveal aspects of my personal life: where I worked, what my hobbies were and so on.
As an audience member of such performances, I was asked to contribute and reveal more than I might sitting in the quiet darkness of a traditional theatre. This is not to say that audiences haven’t been active participants in theatre throughout history, but the visibility of such participation is made more evident by theatre’s move into private spaces.

Rethinking the future
A recent article in the New York Times suggests that the current explosion of digital theatre is merely a way of holding space before we can return to “real” theatre.
But this ignores the inventive responses of theatre artists who have shown that theatre is patently not tied to theatres: the presence of a public building is not a necessity for performance. Indeed, many artists were creating innovative online work long before the pandemic.
With theatres thinking about a return to physical spaces, it is worth considering how the “digital turn” will impact future spectator conventions and expectations. Renegotiated and re-imagined ideas of access, community and interactivity, borne out of necessity, are an opportunity to rethink theatre. These should not be ignored when the return to public spaces happens: rather, they should inform theatre’s future.
 

Covid-19 has spotlighted the promise and peril of ‘transhumanism,’ the idea of using technology to overcome sickness, aging and death.

It sounds bitterly ironic now, in the midst of a global pandemic, but not long ago some of the most forward-looking people in the world believed that humanity was close to abolishing death. “If you ask me today, is it possible to live to be 500? The answer is yes,” said Bill Maris, the founder of Google Ventures, in 2015. Three years later, biomedical researcher Aubrey de Grey estimated that “people in middle age now have a fair chance” of never dying.

Eternal life through advanced technology seems like a pipe dream for a society that, until recently, had trouble manufacturing enough masks to save doctors’ and nurses’ lives. Yet Covid-19 may turn out to be just the kind of crisis needed to turbocharge efforts to create what its advocates call a “transhuman” future. With our biological fragility more obvious than ever, many people will be ready to embrace the message of the Transhumanist Declaration, an eight-point program first issued in 1998: “We envision the possibility of broadening human potential by overcoming aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering and our confinement to planet Earth.”

Transhumanists, many of them associated with nonprofits and think tanks like Humanity Plus and the Extropy Institute, have long been driven by the fear that our entire species could be wiped out by nuclear war, asteroid collision, technological accident—or a pandemic. In March, as the coronavirus was spreading around the world, the science writer Tom Chivers observed that it proves the need for technological protection against such existential threats: “Humans could be around for a billion years, or more, if we don’t screw it up. Coronavirus won’t be the thing that kills us all, but it’s a bloody good illustration of how something could,” he wrote in the online magazine UnHerd.

People have always feared death and dreamed of escaping it. But until now, that hope has been formulated in religious terms. Transhumanism promises that death can be conquered physically, not just spiritually; and the movement has the support of people with the financial resources to make it happen, if anyone can. Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are among the Silicon Valley moguls who have invested in life-extension research. In 2013, Google entered the field by launching the biotech firm Calico, short for California Life Company.

Transhumanists envision several possible avenues to immortality. Nanorobots could live inside our cells and constantly repair damage, halting aging in its tracks. Genetic engineering could eliminate the mechanisms that cause us to age in the first place. Such technologies are still out of reach, but transhumanists believe we will be able to master them sooner than most people think, with the help of superpowered artificial intelligence.

Ultimately, however, the hope is that we won’t just use computers—we’ll become them. Today, cognitive scientists often compare the brain to hardware and the mind to the software that runs on it. But a software program is just information, and in principle there’s no reason why the information of consciousness has to be encoded in neurons.

The Human Connectome Project, launched in 2009 by the National Institutes of Health, describes itself as “an ambitious effort to map the neural pathways that underlie human brain function.” If those pathways could be completely mapped and translated into digital 0s and 1s, the data could be uploaded to a computer, where it could survive indefinitely. The physicist Michio Kaku has theorized that this is how humanity will overcome the logistical challenges of deep-space travel: “We’re going to put the connectome on a laser beam and shoot it to the moon. In one second, our consciousness is on the moon. In 20 minutes we’re on Mars, in eight hours we’re on Pluto, in four years our consciousness has reached the nearest star.”

This may sound like science fiction, but it’s also the natural conclusion of the technological advances of the last 20 years. The internet has already made it largely unnecessary to physically visit places like banks, post offices and movie theaters, and the lockdown has given a big push to this trend. As our physical worlds shrink in an effort to avoid contracting Covid-19, our virtual worlds are expanding to make up for it. For the foreseeable future, many of us will be attending virtual schools, worshiping at virtual churches and socializing at virtual parties. And the history of the internet suggests that once things move online, they seldom move back—just ask department stores and CD manufacturers.

The pandemic is also exposing one of the biggest challenges that will emerge along with the transhuman future: new kinds of social inequality that will make the existing ones seem minor. During the months of lockdown, a sharp division emerged between people who work with information—images, words, numbers—and people who work with objects—shelving groceries, delivering packages, nursing the sick. The former can shelter in place and communicate through screens, but the latter have to venture out into the physical world, putting themselves at risk of infection.

As technology makes it possible to escape more of the burdens and dangers of physical existence, this class and professional divide could deepen into an existential one, with a virtual elite being served by an embodied working class. Of course, wealth and power have always offered some insurance against life’s risks. During the Civil War, Americans could pay a substitute to take their place in the draft; soon, you may be able to pay someone to take your place in the disease- and danger-ridden physical world, while you stay behind the safety of a screen.

A transhuman future in which mortality is optional may sound like paradise, but if it arrives sooner for some of us than for others, it could prove to be a dystopia.

Regular exercise is considered key for improving and maintaining physical health. When it comes to psychological health, however, new research suggests that you do not need to hit the gym in order to reap the rewards.

Researchers from the University of Connecticut (UConn) in Mansfield found that simply going for a leisurely walk can improve mood and boost subjective well-being, particularly for adults who are normally sedentary.
Lead study author Gregory Panza, of the Department of Kinesiology at UConn, and colleagues recently reported their findings in the Journal of Health Psychology.
While a number of studies have shown that physical activity can benefit psychological health, Panza and team note that it remains unclear how the intensity of physical activity impacts subjective well-being, defined as a person’s own evaluation of their lives.
The researchers decided to investigate this association further with their new study, which included 419 healthy, middle-aged adults.
The physical activity of each adult was monitored over 4 days using accelerometers, which participants wore on their hips.
Additionally, subjects completed questionnaires detailing their daily exercise routines, psychological well-being, level of depression, whether they experienced pain and its severity, as well as the extent to which pain disrupted their day-to-day activities.

Light, moderate activity led to greatest improvements in well-being
The researchers found that adults who were sedentary had the lowest levels of subjective well-being and the highest levels of depression, which indicates that lack of physical activity is detrimental to psychological health.
Overall, the team found that people who engaged in physical activity demonstrated greater subjective well-being. However, the benefits of physical activity were found to vary by intensity.
Light-intensity activity, for example, was associated with greater psychological well-being and lower depression, while moderate-intensity activity was linked to higher psychological well-being and reduced pain severity.
Light-intensity activity was defined by the study as a leisurely walk that does not noticeably raise heart rate, breathing, or sweating. Moderate-intensity activity was defined as walking a mile in 15 to 20 minutes, with a slight increase in heart rate, breathing, and sweating.

Notably, the study results revealed that sedentary adults who increased their exercise levels to light or moderate activity demonstrated the greatest increases in subjective well-being.

However, vigorous-intensity activity – defined as jogging or briskly walking a mile in 13 minutes, with very noticeable increases in heart rate, breathing, and sweating – appeared to have no impact on subjective well-being. However, the researchers say that this is not necessarily a bad finding.
“Recent studies had suggested a slightly unsettling link between vigorous activity and subjective well-being,” says study co-author Beth Taylor, associate professor of kinesiology at UConn. “We did not find this in the current study, which is reassuring to individuals who enjoy vigorous activity and may be worried about negative effects.

Exercise and well-being: An 'anything is better' attitude might be best
While further studies are required to gain a better understanding of how exercise intensity influences psychological health, the researchers say that their findings indicate that we might not need to push ourselves too hard at the gym in order to boost our well-being.

“The ‘more is better’ mindset may not be true when it comes to physical activity intensity and subjective well-being. In fact, an ‘anything is better’ attitude may be more appropriate if your goal is a higher level of subjective well-being.
We hope this research helps people realize the important public health message that simply going from doing no physical activity to performing some physical activity can improve their subjective well-being.”

• Gregory Panza

The researchers note that there are some limitations to their study. For example, data were collected from a single point in time, so the researchers are unable to say how physical activity might impact subjective well-being in the long-term.
 

Abstract
Water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) interventions remain to be important in the prevention of further spread of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). Basic hygiene interventions such as handwashing with water and soap (HWWS) when applied consistently will deactivate and remove the virus particles from the hands. Realizing the efforts that have been made by countries world over in controlling the COVID-19, this letter seeks to discuss how the available WASH services can be used in the fight against further spread of COVID-19. The letter highlights the challenges being faced by the current WASH services in middle- and low-income countries and suggests measures that can be employed to strengthen the WASH services in this period of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a novel coronavirus known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) [1]. It was December 31, 2019, when the outbreak of coronavirus disease was announced by the WHO country office in China [2]. On January 30, 2020, COVID-19 was declared a public health emergency of international concern, and within less than 3 months, the virus had spread in the whole world [2]. Up to now, the coronavirus has already spread in 217 countries and territories with more than 6,702,767 cases and at least 393,212 deaths worldwide have been reported [3].

The disease has no treatment or vaccine; however, several clinical trials are going on in different countries with the aim of testing some promising drugs [4]. While waiting for treatment and vaccine, we consider that preventive measures are the key to prevent further transmission of the disease. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended public health measures such as regularly and thoroughly handwashing with water and soap or with alcohol sanitizers, covering of the mouth and nose with a mask in crowded areas, physical distancing for at least 6 feet from one person to another, adhering to good respiratory hygiene practices especially when sneezing or coughing by covering the nose and mouth with a bent elbow or tissue, and avoid visiting crowded places [5]. Apart from the measures that have been recommended by the WHO, some countries have initiated specific strategies to curb the COVID-19 outbreak such as partial or full lockdown for example in Europe (France, UK, Italy), North America (USA), Africa (South Africa), Asia Pacific (New Zealand), South Asia (India), Middle East (Saudi Arabia), and East Asia (China); restriction of visitors from affected countries; stopping of flights; mandatory 14 days quarantine for all arrivals from COVID-19-affected countries; and isolation of suspected persons [6, 7]

COVID-19 can be transmitted directly from person-to-person via respiratory droplets or contact routes. Contact transmission happens when a person with contaminated hands touch the eyes, nose, or mouth. Indirect contact transmission can occur when the virus is transferred from one surface to another by contaminated hands [8, 9]. Water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) practices are crucial in preventing human to human transmission of COVID-19 [10]. Currently, however, no studies have been conducted on the survival of SARS-CoV-2 in drinking water and sewage system; thus, we think that this is an opportune time to start thinking about the possibility of the virus to survive in these environments [10]. It has been documented with evidence that coronavirus was extracted in feces and viral RNA fragments have been recovered in fecal samples of the patients throughout their illness and after recovery [11]. In the meantime, hygienic measures particularly hand hygiene practices are essential to prevent further spread of COVID-19. Hand hygiene practices are imperative to curb transmission of ongoing infectious diseases caused by viruses, parasites, and bacteria [8].

However, it should be noted that handwashing with water and soap (HWWS) is not a new intervention especially in countries where bacterial infections, viral infections, and neglected tropical diseases are endemic. This intervention has been used as one of the silent weapons in WASH interventions to mitigate transmission of the diseases, and it has been proven to be effective in reducing transmission and disease risk especially during the infectious outbreak [12]. Furthermore, HWWS has shown to be a feasible and cost-effective mechanism to prevent infectious outbreaks [12]. Some studies have shown that HWWS can decrease the level of microorganisms close to zero and can also reduce the risk of respiratory infections by 23% [13, 14]. The existing WASH platform can be used to support the implementation of COVID-19 preventive measures, but there are challenges that are being faced by the existing WASH platform in middle- and low-income countries. These include the inadequate availability of water services, lack of basic handwashing facilities, and lack of knowledge and awareness of proper hand hygiene practices such as critical moments for handwashing, proper steps of handwashing, adequate time of handwashing, and the benefits of proper handwashing [15, 16]. Globally, it is estimated that 3 billion people do not have access to most basic handwashing facilities at home and about 43% of the health facilities lack hand hygiene at the point of care [16].

As the fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic continues, it is time to promote good hygiene by improving the existing WASH facilities and installing wash facilities in public areas and buildings where they are needed most with a view to promoting behavioral changes in the communities. In order to ensure sustainable behavioral change, efforts should be made by the government to encourage communities to adopt new behaviors; this can be done through mass education, social marketing, and community mobilization. In counties where the COVID-19 already exists, efforts should be made to ensure that all the current WASH interventions are expanded to reach communities where such services are non-existent. Further, we think that there is a need to ensure constant water supply is made available to enable regular and frequent handwashing. The governments, world over, should raise awareness of their communities on the importance of adhering to basic hygiene and sanitation practices regularly and distribute hygienic kits/soap in areas where some communities cannot afford them.

In conclusion, we wish to insist that WASH practices especially HWWS when applied regularly will serve as a barrier for further transmission of COVID-19. We call upon countries worldwide to consider the need to expand investment in WASH services because these will function as an important mechanism in mitigating secondary effects of COVID-19 in communities during the recovery phase. In our opinion, if WASH services are not well invested, it will increase the risk of transmission of COVID-19 as well as outbreaks of other water-related diseases.

Let us all not forget to adhere to the measures recommended by the WHO; together, we can fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Co-Author: Magdalena Shao

Abbreviations COVID-19:
Coronavirus disease-2019
HWWS:
Handwashing with water and soap
RNA:
Ribonucleic acid
SARS-CoV-2:
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
USA:
United States of America
WASH:
Water, sanitation, and hygiene
WHO:
World Health Organization  

References

1. Wang Q, Yu C. The role of masks and respirator protection against SARS-CoV-2. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol. 2020;41(6):746–7. https://doi.org/10.1017/ice.2020.83.

2. World Health Organization, COVID-19-Timeline. https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline%2D%2D-covid-19. Accessed 11 May 2020.

3. Worldometer, Coronavirus cases.https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/#daily-cases. Accessed 5 June 2020.

4. World Health Organization, COVID-19 Clinical Trials Studies. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/who_table. Accessed 11 May 2020.

5. Advice for Public-World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public. Accesed 11 May 2020.

6. Coronavirus: what measures are countries taking to stop it?. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51737226 Accessed 1 June 2020.

7. What are countries doing to combat coronavirus? | World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/02/coronavirus-spread-virus-disease-countries-epidemic/. Accessed 1 June 2020.

8. World Health Organization, interim recommendations on obligatory hand hygiene against transmission of COVID-19. https://www.who.int/who-documents-detail/interim-recommendations-on-obligatory-hand-hygiene-against-transmission-of-covid-19. Accessed 1 June 2020.

9. Anderson EL, Turnham P, Griffin JR, Clarke CC. Consideration of the Aerosol Transmission for COVID-19 and Public Health. Risk Anal. 2020;40(5):902–7. https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.13500.

10. World Health Organization, Water, sanitation, hygiene, and waste management for the COVID-19 virus. Interim guidance 1–9. https://www.who.int/publications-detail/water-sanitation-hygiene-and-waste-management-for-the-covid-19-virus-interim-guidance. Accessed 11 May 2020.

11. Chen Y, Chen L, Deng Q, Zhang G, Wu K, Ni L, et al. The presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in the feces of COVID-19 patients. J Med Virol. 2020;92(7):833–40.

12. Yates C, Allen T, Joseph J, Lantagne M. Evidence Synthesis Humanitarian Evidence Programme WASH interventions in disease outbreak response -2017. https:// reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/OX-HEP-WASH-Print.pdf. Accessed 11 May 2020.

13. Rabie T, Curtis V. Handwashing and risk of respiratory infections: a quantitative systematic review. Trop Med Int Heal. 2006;11(3):258–67. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-3156.2006.01568.x.

14. Jumaa PA. Hand hygiene: simple and complex. Int J Infect Dis. 2005;9(1):3–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2004.05.005.

15. United States Agency for International Development. Promoting hygiene and hand-washing through community hygiene monitoring units | SPRING. https://www.spring-nutrition.org/about-us/activities/promoting-hygiene-and-hand-washing-through-community-hygiene-monitoring-units. Accessed 2 June 2020.

16. World Health Organization and United Children’s Funds. Water and sanitation in the urban and rural challenge of the decade report -2006. https://www.who.int/watersanitationhealth/monitoring/jmpfinal.pdf. Accessed 11 May 2020.

Abstract
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that is causing a global pandemic had a zoonotic origin in China. Considering the inter-connectedness between human, environment, and animal health, the One Health approach is the appropriate strategy to control and mitigate the effects of the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). This letter explains the benefits of the One Health approach and recommends specific measures that could be taken to accelerate the fight against COVID-19 and prevent the spread of newly emerging infectious diseases.

Keywords: COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, One health approach, Adoption and benefits

The novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the etiological agent responsible for a respiratory illness known as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a public health emergency of international concern on 30 January 2020 and, because of the worldwide spread, a pandemic on 11 March 2020 [1]. Evidence to date from virus genome sequencing and evolutionary analysis suggests that the SARS-CoV-2 originated from bat populations, and thus, transmission to humans was possible either directly from bats to humans or indirectly through an unknown intermediate host [2, 3].

Because SARS-CoV-2 has a zoonotic origin, adoption of a One Health approach could be the best mechanism to combat COVID-19. The One Health approach involves multi-sectoral and trans-disciplinary collaborative efforts that work from local, regional, national to global levels to achieve optimal health and well-being of people, animals, and plants in shared environments. Therefore, a One Health approach aims to lower risk and mitigate effects of health crises occurring at the interface between humans, animals, and their environments [4]. The One Health approach is not a new concept. The history goes back to the 1800s, when scientists observed the link between human and animal health especially similarities in disease processes among animals and humans, and the concept was further advanced in the twentieth century due to the threat of emerging pandemics such as the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and avian influenza (H5N1) [5].

The global community can adopt a One Health approach in the fight against COVID-19 by the following steps. First, conduct an interdisciplinary coordinated surveillance and monitoring during the pandemic with a view to studying the disease patterns and trends, intensity of transmission, geographical spread, and impact of the pandemic for modification of the existing response strategies. Second, establish integrated human and animal health laboratories that will help to strengthen the capacity to conduct integrated studies on COVID-19. Third, collaborate and share protocols, ideas, and guidelines on COVID-19 diagnosis, interpretation of results, a reporting system, and data sharing. This will ensure that the same standards are observed worldwide for diagnosis, reporting, and results sharing. Fourth, governments should coordinate multi-sectoral engagement and partnership with One Health stakeholders in the fight against COVID-19 so as to speed up prevention and disease response [4, 6, 7].

A One Health approach will be beneficial as we fight against COVID-19 in financially constrained settings as it allows cost-sharing in an interdisciplinary field within the responsible ministries. Human and animal health sectors working separately are more costly than when the sectors work collaboratively and share resources [8]. One Health laboratories are crucial for conducting research in order to collect and share data and advance knowledge that will help to reduce ambiguity in COVID-19 mitigation decisions [9]. The One Health approach, through the collaboration of multiple sectors, will help in controlling the disease and will lessen the social and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic [10]. The lessons learned from utilizing the One Health approach in the pandemic will be useful for risk reduction and control of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases.
The current COVID-19 pandemic is an opportune time to emphasize the One Health approach in global health. I wish to recommend the following measures to accelerate the fight against COVID-19. These are to:

1. Mobilize resources that will assist in the implementation of the One Health activities such as surveillance and monitoring of the COVID-19 pandemic; and
2. Involve communities in the fight against COVID19. Implementation of the One Health approach without the active involvement of communities will not succeed because an understanding of community knowledge, practices, and customs are fundamental for COVID-19 prevention and control interventions targeting those communities.

In conclusion, although COVID-19 has already spread in many parts of the world, implementing the One Health approach could be the solution to the control of COVID-19. Now more than ever, it is time to adopt, invest in, and embrace the One Health approach because it can help with both the current COVID-19 pandemic and also mitigate the effects of other emerging infectious diseases.

References

1. Coronavirus -19 events as they happen. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/events-as-they-happen. Accessed 19 June 2020.
2. Yoo HS, Yoo D. COVID-19 and veterinarians for one health, zoonotic- and reverse-zoonotic transmissions. J Vet Sci. 2020;21(3):e51. https://doi.org/10.4142/jvs.2020.21.

3. Guo YR, Cao QD, Hong ZS, et al. The origin, transmission and clinical therapies on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak - an update on the status. Mil Med Res. 2020;7(1):11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40779-020-00240-0.

4. Killewo J, Mdegela R. OHCEA Tanzania Dar Es Salaam Morogoro Tanzania: one health training manual lecture notes and materials; 2018.

5. Mackenzie JS, Jeggo M. The one health approach-why is it so important? Trop Med Infect Dis. 2019;4(2):88. https://doi.org/10.3390/tropicalmed4020088.

6. WHO guidance for surveillance during an influenza pandemic. https://www.who.int/influenza/preparedness/pandemic/WHO_Guidance_for_surveillance_during_an_influenza_pandemic_082017.pdf. Accessed 19 June 2020.

7. USAID-Emerging Pandemic Threats. https://www.cbd.int/health/onehealth-casestudies2016-final-en.pdf. Accessed 20 June 2020.

8. Häsler B, Gilbert W, Jones BA, Pfeiffer DU, Rushton J, Otte MJ. The economic value of one health in relation to the mitigation of zoonotic disease risks. Curr Top Microbiol Immunol. 2013;365:127–51. https://doi.org/10.1007/82_2012_239.

9. Häsler B, Cornelsen L, Bennani H, Rushton J. A review of the metrics for one health benefits. Rev Sci Tech. 2014;33(2):453–64. https://doi.org/10.20506/rst.33.2.2294.

10. Bonilla-Aldana DK, Dhama K, Rodriguez-Morales AJ. Revisiting the one health approach in the context of COVID-19: a look into the ecology of this emerging disease. Adv Anim Vet Sci 2020: 8(3): 234-237. https:/doi.org/https://doi.org/10.17582/journal.aavs/2020/8.3.234.

 

Causality is one of those difficult scientific topics that can easily stray into the realm of philosophy.  Science’s relationship with the concept started out simply enough: an event causes another event later in time.  That had been the standard understanding of the scientific community up until quantum mechanics was introduced.  Then, with the introduction of the famous “spooky action at a distance” that is a side effect of the concept of quantum entanglement, scientists began to question that simple interpretation of causality.

Now, researchers at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and the University of Oxford have come up with a theory that further challenges that standard view of causality as a linear progress from cause to effect.  In their new theoretical structure, cause and effect can sometimes take place in cycles, with the effect actually causing the cause.

The quantum realm itself as it is currently understood is inherently messy.  There is no true understanding of things at that scale, which can be thought of better as a set of mathematical probabilities rather than actualities.  These probabilities do not exactly lend themselves well to the idea of a definite cause and effect interaction between events either.

The researchers further muddied the waters using a tool known as a unitary transformation.  Simply put, a unitary transformation is a fudge used to solve some of the math that is necessary to understand complex quantum systems.  Using it makes solving the famous Schrodinger equation achievable using real computers.  
To give a more complete explanation requires delving a bit into the “space” that quantum mechanics operates in.  In quantum mechanics, time is simply another dimension that must be accounted for similarly to how the usual three dimensions of what we think of as linear space are accounted for.  Physicists usually use another mathematical tool called a Hamiltonian to solve Schrodinger’s equation.  
A Hamiltonian, though a mathematical concept, is often time dependent.  However, it is also the part of the equation that is changed when a unitary transformation is introduced. As part of that action, it is possible to eliminate the time dependency of the Hamiltonian, to make it such that, instead of requiring time to go a certain direction (i.e. for action and reaction to take place linearly), the model turns more into a circle than a straight line, with action causing reaction and reaction causing action.

If this isn’t all confusing enough, there are some extremely difficult to conceive of implications of this model (and to be clear, from a macro level, it is just a model). One important facet is that this finding has little to no relevance to every day cause and effect.  The causes and effects that would be cyclical in this framework “are not local in spacetime”, according to the press release from ULB, so they are unlikely to have any impact on day to day life.

Even if it doesn’t have any everyday impact now, this framework could hint at a combined theory of quantum mechanics and general relativity that has been the most sought after prize in physics for decades.  If that synthesis is ever fully realized, there will be more implications for everyday life than just the existential questions of whether we are actually in control of our own actions or not.
 

Abstract
Since its inclusion in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to freedom of opinion and expression has been protected in all of the relevant international human rights treaties. In international law, freedom to express opinions and ideas is considered essential at both an individual level, insofar as it contributes to the full development of a person, and being a foundation stone of democratic society. Free speech is a necessary precondition to the enjoyment of other rights, such as the right to vote, free assembly and freedom of association, and is essential to ensure press freedom. However, there is a clear and worrying global trend, including in western democracies, of governments limiting vibrant discussion and debate within civil society and among civil society, political leaders and government. Two examples illustrate this trend. First, anti-protest laws in Australia and the United States threaten the ability of people to stand together and express views on issues they care deeply about. Secondly, metadata retention laws jeopardise press freedom by undermining the confidentiality of journalists’ sources and dissuading people from speaking freely on matters of public importance.

Free speech as a norm of international law
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 in the wake of the holocaust, expressed a commitment by the world to promote and observe a full suite of fundamental human rights. Article 19 of the UDHR protected freedom of opinion and expression in the following terms (United Nations, 1948):
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Seventy years later, the rights contained within the UDHR, including freedom of opinion and expression, are firmly protected in international treaties, regional human rights instruments and newly established domestic human rights laws (e.g. Canada, 1982; Council of Europe, 1953; Organisation of African Unity, 1981; Republic of South Africa, 1996).
An overwhelming majority of countries have ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD, United Nations, 1965), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, United Nations, 1966), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, United Nations, 1989), and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD, United Nations, 2006), each of which protects freedom of opinion and expression. 178 of 197 countries have ratified the ICERD; 169 of 197 countries have ratified the ICCPR; 196 of 197 countries have ratified the CRC; and 174 out of 197 countries have ratified the CRPD (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2017a). Through ratification, the countries become party to those treaties and voluntarily agree to be bound in international law to uphold the human rights contained therein. By virtue of the overwhelming rate of treaty ratification and its inclusion in the UDHR, freedom of speech is now considered to be a norm of customary international law (Triggs, 2011).

About freedom of opinion and expression in international law
Freedom of opinion and expression are fundamental rights that contain both a personal and a social dimension. They are considered “indispensable conditions for the full development of the person”, “essential for any society” and a “foundation stone for every free and democratic society” (UN Human Rights Committee, 2011, para. 2). All forms of communication are protected, including “political discourse, commentary on one’s own and on public affairs, canvassing, discussion of human rights, journalism, cultural and artistic expression, teaching and religious discourse” (UN Human Rights Committee, 2011, para. 11). Under the ICCPR, freedom of expression includes the “freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of a person’s choice” (United Nations, 1966, Article 19(2)). This protects expression in all forms, including spoken, written and sign language, and non-verbal expressions through artworks (UN Human Rights Committee, 2011, para. 12).
Without free speech, the enjoyment of other rights is not possible. For example, freedom of speech, along with freedom of assembly and association, are necessary for the effective exercise of the right to vote (UN Human Rights Committee, 1996, para. 12). The right to vote is compromised in a society that does not have a free exchange of ideas and information on public and political matters between citizens, candidates and elected representatives (UN Human Rights Committee, 2011, para. 20). However, free speech is not an absolute right and can be limited where it is necessary and done in a proportionate manner. Under the ICCPR, freedom of expression can only be restricted by law and where necessary to respect of the rights or reputations of others; or for the protection of national security or of public order, or of public health or morals (United Nations, 1966, Article 19(3)). By reason of those parameters, defamation and hate speech laws can be justifiable as protecting the reputation and rights of others, so long as they are not overbroad. However laws, for example, that restrict door-to-door canvassing in an election or activities such as blocking access to media sources are likely to violate the freedom (UN Human Rights Committee, 2011, para. 37). Finally, freedom of expression plays an important role upholding other human rights. Transparency and accountability for human rights abuses are enhanced by freedom of expression, making it an essential precondition to ensuring the proper protection of rights (UN Human Rights Committee, 2011, para. 3).

Free speech in western democracies
The defence of freedom of expression and other democratic rights is strongly associated with western democracies, as a legacy of the Cold War era. Whereas the Soviet Bloc largely promoted treaties that protected economic and social rights (such as rights to housing, education and health), the West prioritised civil and political rights (such as free speech, freedom of assembly and rights to participate in public life) (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2008, p. 9; Roth, 2004). However, freedom of expression is currently under assault across the world. In October 2016, the UN expert on freedom of expression reported that individuals seeking to exercise their right to expression face all kinds of government-imposed limitations that are not legal, necessary or proportionate (UN General Assembly, 2016) noting that the “targets of restrictions include journalists and bloggers, critics of government, dissenters from conventional life, provocateurs and minorities of all sorts” (UN General Assembly, 2016, para. 55). Recent laws and policies show that western democracies are not immune from this trend, with governments increasingly willing to limit the freedom of civil society to participate in public debate and discussion. Two examples illustrate this trend: the rise of anti-protest laws and the government surveillance of citizens’ telecommunications metadata.

Diminishing rights to protest
Protests engage both freedom of expression and assembly. In the context of protests, people will express themselves verbally, as well as through non-verbal expression, such as raising banners or placards (UN Human Rights Committee, 1994). In 2017 in the United States, in response to large-scale protests arising out of emerging peoples’ movements such as Black Lives Matter and the opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline, at least 20 states proposed new laws to limit peoples’ ability to protest (American Civil Liberties Union, 2017). The laws proposed to limit protest rights in a range of ways, including by prohibiting the wearing of masks or hoods in public (State of Washington, 2017a); establishing mandatory penalty enhancements for obstructing commercial vehicles or interfering with pipelines or oil-related facilities (State of Washington, 2017b); criminalising protest on private land (North Dakota, 2017); and, the most extreme, providing immunity for drivers who accidentally run over protesters who are obstructing a highway (Florida, 2017; North Carolina, 2017; Texas, 2017; Tennessee, 2017). As at June 2017, antiprotest bills remain pending in seven states, were passed in five states and 12 states failed to pass any of the antiprotest laws introduced (American Civil Liberties Union, 2017). These laws are being proposed in a country whose Supreme Court has held that both the rights to freedom of speech and assembly encompass the right to peaceful social protest, which in turn is critical to the preservation of “freedoms treasured in a democratic society” (US Supreme Court, 1965). Two UN experts made a joint statement of concern in relation to the proposed anti-protest laws, stating that:
The bills, if enacted into law, would severely infringe upon the exercise of the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly in ways that are incompatible with US obligations under international human rights law and with First Amendment protections. The trend also threatens to jeopardize one of the United States’ constitutional pillars: free speech. (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2017, para. 4)
Similarly in Australia, state-based anti-protest laws are criminalising peaceful protest. In the state of Tasmania, for example, a 2014 anti-protest law effectively criminalises peaceful protest on public land, even for a short time. The laws criminalise all protest activity, peaceful or otherwise, that occurs on or near certain business premises and which “prevents, hinders or obstructs” access to business premises (Tasmania, 2014, section 6). This law applies to both public and private property and carries with it substantial penalties of up to $10,000 and four years’ imprisonment (Tasmania, 2014). Three UN experts on freedom of opinion and expression called the laws “disproportionate and unnecessary” (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2014). In October 2017, Tasmania’s law was struck down by Australia’s highest court for violation of the implied freedom of political communication in Australia’s constitution (High Court of Australia, 2017).

Free speech and freedom of the press
Another alarming trend in western democracies is metadata retention laws that jeopardise free speech and press freedom, and which could dissuade people from sharing information on matters of public interest. Freedom of expression requires a free, uncensored and unhindered press in which the media can comment on public issues without censorship or restraint and can inform public opinion (UN Human Rights Committee, 2011). A fundamental tenet of journalism is the ability to access information and in doing so, to keep sources safe and confidential. Yet governments in western democracies are jeopardising the confidentiality of journalists’ sources through increased surveillance of peoples’ telecommunications metadata. Metadata is not the content of communications, but the details around it – the time and place you made a phone call, the length of the call, the recipient, or the web browser you visited and for how long. Metadata can reveal an enormous amount about a person’s habits, private life and social life. The European Court of Justice said:
That data, taken as a whole, is liable to allow very precise conclusions to be drawn concerning the private lives of the persons whose data has been retained, such as everyday habits, permanent or temporary places of residence, daily or other movements, the activities carried out, the social relationships of those persons and the social environments frequented by them. In particular, that data provides the means…of establishing a profile of the individuals concerned, information that is no less sensitive, having regard to the right to privacy, than the actual content of communications. (European Court of Justice, 2016, para. 99).
Unsurprisingly, schemes that require the mass collection and retention of metadata and allow authorities access without appropriate safeguards have been declared by courts in Europe to be invalid due to the severe impact on the right to privacy (European Court of Justice, 2016; German Federal Constitutional Court, 2010).
However, there is also an impact on freedom of expression in circumstances where metadata retention laws are actively used to pursue journalists’ sources, thereby undermining press freedom. This is because by looking at a journalist’s phone or email metadata, authorities can quickly see who has been in contact with them, revealing the identity of sources and whistle blowers. In Australia, although there are some protections in place for accessing the metadata of journalists that require law enforcement agencies to obtain a special warrant, in at least one case the Australian Federal Police have admitted to unlawfully accessing a journalist’s metadata without the relevant warrant (Colvin, 2017; Knaus, 2017). Further, government reporting shows that authorities were granted warrants to access two journalists’ data on at least 33 other occasions (Australian Attorney-General’s Department, 2017).
The European Court of Justice has also noted that the invasion of people’s privacy through metadata collection can also dissuade people from speaking freely. It stated:
The fact that the data is retained without the subscriber or registered user being informed is likely to cause the persons concerned to feel that their private lives are the subject of constant surveillance… The impact of this scheme could have an effect on the use of means of electronic communication and, consequently, on the exercise by the users of their freedom of expression. (European Court of Justice, 2016, para. 100)
The extensive, intrusive nature of data collection regimes, in combination with a lack of transparency over which bodies are able to access it and for what purposes, risks discouraging the legitimate exercise of freedom of expression.

Conclusions
Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right that must be upheld in democratic societies. Yet there is a worrying global trend of governments unjustifiably limiting freedom of speech, targeting journalists, protesters and other persons considered to be dissenting from government views. Even in western democracies, laws are curtailing protest activities and threatening press freedom and free speech through mandatory metadata retention schemes. It is imperative that civil societies across the globe are vigilant in defending freedom of expression. This is necessary for the enhancement of people’s lives and the creation and maintenance of strong, health democratic societies.

About 23 years ago, Sergey Brin and Larry Page changed the digital world forever by creating Google, a company that wanted to put the messy world of the global web in order. 

What started as a PhD project on a university campus has later become one of the largest companies in the world, capable not only of providing the search service on the internet, but also many and numerous online services, technological products and applications  everyone now uses. 

According to the information we have, Google's revenue was $ 86 million in 2001, while it amounted to $ 86 million every 3 hours in 2021.

A true Exponential Organization.

Google's search engine now dominates the market, but the fact is, we can't live without Google.

Google provides the answers to the impulses of our minds by analyzing hundreds of millions of GB stored on its servers. 

When asked if one day Google will interface Artificial Intelligence with our mind to integrate with it and organize Collective Intelligence in a mind, it is likely that someone is already thinking or working on it. 

Will this be one of the development axes of Internet 2.0?

The NEAC (Connected Autonomous Electric Nautical Shuttle) project is an autonomous maritime or river transport solution.

The desired objective will make it possible to offer a Mobility service (MaaS) for residents, tourists and river and maritime logistics through shuttles traveling on water in a non-polluting, autonomous and economical manner.

In addition to the regulatory constraints and the adoption of the concept of an autonomous and connected ferry, it will be necessary to demonstrate the functioning of the algorithmic solutions resulting from the theory of control, observation and signal and image processing in order to determine, in real time, the exact position of the boat, to take cognizance of its close environment (obstacle, mooring point on the quay, etc.), to study the ability to quickly redefine its trajectory and its mission, to control the position of the boat around the set path despite disturbances tending to move it away from it.
This project, based on a study of travel needs and a search for cost reduction to offer the market an innovative and efficient transport offer, will aim to demonstrate that an electric and automated river mobility solution can be an alternative to construction heavy infrastructure, while providing resilient transportation opportunities in an environment subject to climatic and maritime variations.

The first objective of NEAC is to design, develop and test an autonomous electric river shuttle (with hybrid hydrogen propulsion) allowing the transport of 8 to 12 people from one bank to the other of the Caen Canal.

Secondly, the operation of several shuttles in swarms will be studied to simulate “trains” of shuttles that may be necessary at certain times (transport of people or freight).

The third objective is to be able to propose to the city of Paris some nautical shuttle built and tested at a industrial level in the occasion of the Olympic Games in 2024.

​While flying cars may sound as if they belong to science fiction, technology seems to have brought them closer to reality—potentially helping to create a faster, cheaper, cleaner, safer, and more integrated transportation system.

“Mark my words. A combination of airplane and motorcar is coming. You may smile. But it will come.”— Henry Ford, 1940

A century ago, aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss debuted the Autoplane, a three-seat car-cum-aircraft with removable wings.2 Ever since, automobile and aviation enthusiasts have been dreaming of “flying cars.” Flying can replace driving in cities around the globe, saving people's time as trips that take hours on the ground can be reduced to minutes in the air, improving productivity and quality of life. After decades of failed projects and false starts, we may now be on the threshold of this vision becoming a practical reality.

This new class of vehicles is emerging in the midst of an already dramatic transformation in the way people and goods move around. Driven by a series of technological and social trends, from ridesharing and bikesharing to electric and autonomous vehicles and beyond, the future of mobility could ultimately create a more integrated transportation system that is faster, cheaper, cleaner, and safer than today’s.3 Even as players across a host of industries come to grips with these changes to terrestrial mobility, advances in flying cars could add, literally, an entirely new dimension to an already complex landscape.

Even as players across a host of industries come to grips with these changes to terrestrial mobility, advances in flying cars could add, literally, an entirely new dimension to an already complex landscape.

While we are early in this journey, market segments seem to be forming, some early entrants are experimenting, regulations are being formulated, and technology is developing. This study looks at the emerging market for personal mobility, exploring both the current state of the technology—including the rapid advances made in recent years—as well as the many hurdles that remain before flying cars become widely adopted. It also examines important questions related to the regulatory framework and supporting infrastructure. Finally, the study explores how widespread use of passenger drones could reshape urban mobility, and suggests some key steps players in aerospace and other industries can do now to prepare for this exciting possibility, as well as what disruptions to possibly expect.

This study’s findings are based on both primary and secondary research. As part of our research, we interviewed subject matter experts and senior executives at leading aerospace and automotive companies as well as start-ups that are involved in the development of passenger drones and flying cars.

Passenger drones and flying cars are nearing commercial availability The technology and product development of passenger drones and traditional flying cars seem to be swiftly progressing. These vehicle concepts have been under development since the 1980s, and various prototypes already exist, with the majority capable of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL). A VTOL vehicle is an aircraft that takes off, hovers, and lands vertically and does not require runways. For this study, our definition of VTOL excludes any type of helicopter. While traditional helicopters have had this capability since their inception, most are considered highly energy inefficient, seeming to prevent large-scale operations. Many companies today are instead focusing on electric or hybrid-electric designs with VTOL capabilities. These vehicles, popularly called flying cars or passenger drones, are designed to accommodate around two to five passengers or the equivalent cargo weight; be highly energy efficient, with reduced or zero emissions; and be substantially quieter than a traditional helicopter. Several categories exist under the broad group of these proposed urban mobility vehicles, each with distinct characteristics and potential uses:

• Passenger drones: A passenger drone is expected to be an electric or hybrid-electric quadcopter (although some may have more than four rotors) that can be used to move people or cargo between both established and on-demand origination and destination points. These vehicles can be either manually piloted, remotely piloted, or fully autonomous. When piloted, the pilots require a license or certification. Passenger drones would cover short to medium-range distances (up to 65 miles).
• Traditional flying cars: A traditional flying car would be a vehicle where the driver/pilot can drive the vehicle in its car configuration to an airport, reconfigure the vehicle to an airplane mode, and then fly to a destination airport. It is designed to carry people and fly medium to long distances (50 to 200 miles). Currently, it would need to be operated by a licensed pilot, but it could be made fully autonomous and pilotless/driverless over time. In the near future, flying cars are likely to become VTOL capable.
• Revolutionary vehicles: Revolutionary vehicles, which are expected to be a combination of passenger drone and traditional flying car, would be fully autonomous vehicles that can start or stop anywhere, with speed and range (distances greater than 200 miles) beyond passenger drones and the traditional flying cars. These vehicles have advanced VTOL capability and therefore can land and take off from almost anywhere because they may not require an established airport/vertiport. These would likely be piloted by a licensed pilot initially, but they could be made fully autonomous over time.

Figure 1 lists and compares some of the major flying car and passenger drone manufacturers and their proposed vehicles.


With the increasing popularity of small unmanned aerial vehicles or drones, and regulations increasingly supporting their commercial use, passenger drones and flying cars appear to be moving closer to reality, with aerospace and aircraft design technology being developed rapidly. Many passenger drone and flying car manufacturers have already passed the conceptualization/design phase, and a majority of them are currently in the prototyping and testing stage, with most manufacturers expecting delivery by 2020 (figure 2).



In terms of technology, the industry is at an advanced development phase, and if safety and regulatory hurdles are cleared, passenger drones are expected to get wings by 2018–2020, and traditional flying cars by 2020–2022, while revolutionary vehicles could be a reality only by 2025.

If safety and regulatory hurdles are cleared, passenger drones are expected to get wings by 2018–2020, and traditional flying cars by 2020–2022, while revolutionary vehicles could be a reality only by 2025.

What’s currently in the air?
China’s Ehang has already tested its self-flying passenger drone, named 184, which was showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2016. This quadcopter has already been tested in Dubai, where it is expected to be operational as early as 2018, according to the company. However, Ehang still needs to obtain an aviation license. Aurora Flight Sciences, acquired by Boeing in October 2017, unveiled the eVTOL, with the prototype tested in the beginning of 2017. The company also announced a partnership with Uber, which is working on on-demand flying cars. Aurora aims to deliver 50 aircraft to UberAir by 2020. The final commercial design of Flying Car by AeroMobil was revealed in April 2017. The vehicle is designed to be both driven and flown, unlike those of other companies, which are mostly manufacturing VTOL aircraft. AeroMobil has started taking pre-orders, with deliveries anticipated to commence in 2020. Airbus’s Project Vahana, an electric autonomous helicopter, and CityAirbus, an air taxi, are also in the advanced development stage. Project Vahana is designed for both passenger and cargo transport, and Airbus plans to conduct flight tests of the prototype by the end of 2017. CityAirbus is a design for an air taxi, with multiple propellers and the appearance of a small drone. Customers would be able to book a seat on CityAirbus as they book an Uber ride. Volvo’s parent company, Geely, acquired a flying car start-up, Terrafugia, in November 2017. Terrafugia’s first flying car, Transition, is in its testing phase, with deliveries anticipated in 2019. The company is also working on a VTOL flying car, which is expected to debut in 2023. There are numerous potential applications for these new forms of urban mobility vehicles (table 1). For many of these, the airborne trip could be just one leg of a multimodal journey and potentially accessed via a single, integrated mobility-as-a-service interface. For example, a traveler could be picked up by a ride-hailing car from her home in the suburbs, driven to a nearby “vertiport,” and flown to another vertiport at the city’s edge, before taking the subway to her destination.



Challenges to taking flight Despite the technological progress and many potential applications for these aircraft, there are various challenges to consider with respect to regulations, certifications, infrastructure, and air traffic management (figure 3). While possibly daunting, none of these challenges are insurmountable, and the aerospace and related industries have navigated similarly complex challenges before—not least of which is the development and deployment of commercial airplanes. The key could be close collaboration between regulators and private sector stakeholders across the extended mobility ecosystem.
Regulations
From a regulation perspective, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), its equivalent agencies around the world, and other transportation-related regulatory agencies have to weigh in on the requirements for these piloted and autonomous passenger drones: Is a pilot’s license required? What airspace can they occupy? What are the vehicle airworthiness8 requirements? There is some progress as the FAA has already started discussing certification options with some manufacturers and believes that initially these vehicles should be manned, then autonomously assisted, and then converted to a fully autonomous aircraft at a later stage.9 While regulations related to piloted passenger drones and flying cars could be relatively easy to address, fully autonomous VTOL operations are likely to be more challenging, with issues around how to allocate the use of the airspace (lower altitudes to higher altitudes) considering the exponential growth in piloted and autonomous vehicles utilizing the airspace. Beyond the FAA, the US Department of Transportation and other agencies will likely have to consider autonomous cars; for now, regulatory agencies would need to focus on issuing nonbinding guidelines while avoiding binding regulation as the technology is still in flux. Currently, national and local regulatory authorities are addressing regulations related to smaller drones. For example, in the United States, the FAA is considering extending commercial operations of drones over controlled airspace beyond visual line of sight.10 These advancements could be a starting point for regulations related to passenger drones and flying cars, and, ultimately, for revolutionary vehicles.

Technology maturity
In terms of technology, there are various considerations for VTOL manufacturers. First, in a GPS-denied environment, these vehicles would need on-board sensors such as radar, optics, and geolocation sensors. While these technologies exist and are being utilized in autonomous cars, they would have to be improved to provide the longer-range sensing and recognition capabilities required to deal with the multidirectional and convergence speeds associated with autonomous flight. Second, these vehicles would require advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence and cognitive systems, to enable advanced detect-and-avoid capabilities. Machine learning could be essential as operations move from piloted to autonomous: A vehicle would need to learn from the pilot’s actions over thousands of operational hours to become fully autonomous over time. Third, energy management is crucial: carrying an energy load sufficient to transport passengers or cargo, maintain a safety margin, and reload for the next flight. While battery technology is rapidly improving, in order to increase passenger and cargo capacity and extend the ranges of passenger drones, it will need to improve further, or alternatives would need to be found.

Infrastructure
Infrastructure constraints include proper takeoff and landing zones, and parking and battery charging stations. A wide network of vertiports would require either new infrastructure or existing infrastructure, such as helipads, rooftops of large public buildings, and unused land, to be modified. To create a truly unified traffic management system, additional infrastructure may need to be installed along predefined flight corridors to aid high-speed data communications and geolocation. All these infrastructure changes would require the collaboration of commercial stakeholders and the local urban planning authorities.

Air traffic management
There would have to be a robust air traffic management system in place to guarantee safe and efficient operations of passenger drones and flying cars, which would meet the requirements of the FAA and the European Aviation Safety Agency. To achieve this, industry leaders and manufacturers would likely need to reach an agreement on a reliable traffic management framework that integrates with other modes of transport, especially in urban areas. In the United States, there is already progress, with Uber and NASA recently signing a Space Act Agreement for traffic management of autonomous vehicles that will fly at a low altitude.11

Safety
For the scaled adoption of passenger drones and flying cars (particularly fully autonomous) to occur, the operators of these vehicles would likely need to demonstrate a near-flawless safety record, covering both mechanical integrity as well as safe operations. As we have seen with autonomous cars, any mishap can garner significant attention and can slow the pace of adoption.12 While achieving mechanical integrity would be easier, the operations of VTOL in suburban and urban areas could pose unique challenges—some of which are described in the aforementioned infrastructure section.

Psychological barriers
Apart from other considerations, people also need to overcome any psychological barriers they may have associated with the idea of flying in a pilotless aircraft, since these vehicles are likely to be autonomous eventually. According to a recent survey by UBS, a Swiss global financial services company, 54 percent of the respondents said they were unlikely to take a pilotless flight.13 Furthermore, for passenger drones and flying cars to be widely accepted, they would likely have to be both ubiquitous and as versatile as an automobile—people should be able to fly the vehicle to a store or take it to the beach, and it should be able to cover longer distances safely. Psychological barriers can be overcome if manufacturers and regulatory authorities ensure these vehicles are as safe as an aircraft, and the vehicles have well-documented safety records.

For passenger drones and flying cars to be widely accepted, they would likely have to be both ubiquitous and as versatile as an automobile—people should be able to fly the vehicle to a store or take it to the beach, and it should be able to cover longer distances safely.

Delivery drones could pave the way for VTOL aircraft operations
In 2013, Amazon hosted a 60-minute demonstration of its ambitious drone delivery program, Amazon Prime Air. Four years later, the program is yet to take off on a commercial scale. However, a drone delivering anything from your online shopping packages to medicines or even food may not be such a far-fetched idea. Several other companies such as Google and Alibaba have since launched their own R&D programs to make this a reality. Over the past year, there have been various pilot programs featuring drones completing a successful delivery. In June 2017, Amazon patented a beehive-structured tower to serve as a multilevel fulfillment center from which its delivery drones can take off and land. Most of the drones for such programs are designed to take off and land vertically to transport even fragile goods with care, with a payload capacity of anywhere from 4 to 19 pounds. However, there seem to be two key challenges slowing these drones from becoming a commercial reality. First, electric motor efficiency and battery capacity still need significant improvement, as the delivery radius of current technologies is only 10 miles from the warehouse. Since a company can have only a limited number of warehouses, it appears that drone delivery, even if it becomes a reality, for now may be limited to shorter distances—although companies such as Amazon and UPS have started using delivery trucks to serve as mobile warehouses, from where drones can be launched. UPS has already tested launching a drone from a delivery truck to distribute a package to the destination. Second, the FAA in the United States and similar government bodies in other countries currently restrict drone usage due to a requirement for line-of-sight control, which means that a drone operator must be able to see (if not control) the drone first-hand throughout an entire flight. This safety requirement is focused on trying to avoid possible collisions with airplanes, power lines, and people and property on the ground. While such regulations are expected to be eventually lifted, the governments of some countries, such as China, have approved such drones. As package delivery drones make their way to commercialization, passenger drones are expected to follow a similar development path.

Governability and good governance in a country like Italy cannot ignore the democratic and collaborative use of modern information technologies in the context of what is defined as Collective Intelligence.

The Tree develops in three directions: depth, height and width. The roots sink into the ground and the deeper they go, the more it can grow and spread. At the same time the trunk is formed which develops in height and then extends its branches in width. In the human being, depth is connected to feeling, height is connected to thought, which becomes high and not deep, and then also widens. The Human Being therefore develops like the Tree, because only after having deepened his feelings can he raise his thinking and finally extend his activity. Furthermore, there is a strong relationship between depth and height that makes us reflect on how the human psyche works. In the tree there is a connection between the roots that go deep into the earth, and the branches that stretch and grow.

As above, so below

In the event that the human being is not aware of this link, it will be very difficult for him to understand the numerous phenomena of psychic life and even more difficult to be able to dominate them.The more one tends to rise in consciousness, the more one will descend into the subconscious. When embarking on a spiritual path it is absolutely necessary to enter the reality of the dark inner world, because there is a clearing process. Working for the Light, aspiring to wisdom and the dominion of the passions means entering and observing our inner “monsters” and being able to find harmony and balance between the upper and lower world.

The Seed of the Tree and the Programming of the Human Being
When the seed of a specific tree is planted, naturally that type of tree will grow, since its program is already written in the seed and it is enough to plant it to make it become what Nature expects. Likewise, the human being is a seed with a pre-established program by Cosmic Intelligence and how the tree should follow what nature expects. The various stages of growth of the tree occur spontaneously, without wondering what will happen in the future. Live in the present.

  If a human being fails to recognize his program it is because he continues alone to plan his path without respecting his nature. We therefore need to keep ourselves free internally in order to discover the pattern inscribed in our Soul to finally become like a Tree.What also determines the destiny of a being is the quality of the seed, or rather its way of thinking, perceiving events, assimilating and transforming them. When the human being finds himself in a difficult condition, instead of avoiding it, changing it or expecting a better one, he must exclusively work on himself.

  Just like the tree that, through waste or manure, manages to transform everything and grows giving tasty and fragrant fruits, so we, when we receive offenses or evil, can achieve a transformation, through love and wisdom. It is useless to reciprocate with other waste, there is no growth and there is nothing productive. Those who embark on a spiritual path are careful to maintain the balance between the upper and lower world and, just like the tree full of life, it produces exquisite fruit.

We often talk about drugs as if drugs were all the same.
Governments around the world are fighting a war on several fronts, which in almost all cases is useless compared to the limitation of consumption.
One solution could be the application of a differentiated regulation of production, sale and consumption, in contrast with a generalized criminalization and prohibition to the entire supply chain, including consumers.

Summary.   
In the twenty-first century, human capital is the most valuable resource in our economy. And though much has been done (rightly) to promote diversity at work, there’s a giant hole when it comes to understanding how temperament and sentiment play into the trajectory of success. Mental illness is a challenge, but it is not a weakness. Understanding your psyche can be the key to unleashing your strengths — whether it’s using your sensitivity to empathize with clients, your anxiety to be a more thoughtful boss, or your need for space to forge new and interesting paths. Still, less than one third of people with mental illness get the treatment they need, and this comes at a cost — to people and to companies. Failure to acknowledge an employees’ mental health can hurt productivity, professional relationships, and the bottom line: $17-$44 billion is lost to depression according to CDC. So what needs to change? Professional support needs to get better. In short, we need more flexibility, sensitivity, and open-mindedness from employers. Along with employee assistance programs, conversation and education are fundamental if our goal is to increase understanding and reduce the stigma around mental health.

Alyssa Mastromonaco is no stranger to tough conversations: she served as White House deputy chief of staff for operations under President Obama, was an executive at Vice and A&E, and is Senior Advisor and spokesperson at NARAL Pro-Choice America. So when Mastromonaco switched to a new antidepressant, she decided to tell her boss.
“I told the CEO that I was on Zoloft and was transitioning to Wellbutrin,” Mastromonaco said. “I can react strongly to meds, so I was worried switching would shift my mood and wanted her to know why. I talked about it like it was the most normal thing in the world —it is!”
Her boss was supportive. “You got it,” she said.
When Mastromonaco goes to work, she and her mental health struggles do not part ways at the door. “You want me,” she said, “you get all of me.” Mastromonaco brings tremendous talent to her workplace — but she also brings her anxiety. The same is true for high-performing employees everywhere: one in four adults experiences mental illness each year and an estimated 18% of the US adult population have an anxiety disorder. And yet we’re loath to talk about mental health at work. If we’re feeling emotional at work, our impulse is to conceal it — to hide in the bathroom when we’re upset, or book a fake meeting if we need alone time during the day. We’re hesitant to ask for what we need — flex time, or a day working from home — until we experience a major life event, like a new baby or the illness of a parent. We would more likely engage in a trust fall with our boss than admit that we have anxiety.
Mental illness is a challenge, but it is not a weakness. Understanding your psyche can be the key to unleashing your strengths — whether it’s using your sensitivity to empathize with clients, your anxiety to be a more thoughtful boss, or your need for space to forge new and interesting paths. When we acknowledge our mental health, we get to know ourselves better, and are more authentic people, employees, and leaders. Research has found that feeling authentic and open at work leads to better performance, engagement, employee retention, and overall wellbeing.
Still, less than one third of people with mental illness get the treatment they need, and this comes at a cost — to people and to companies. Failure to acknowledge an employee’s mental health can hurt productivity, professional relationships, and the bottom line: $17-$44 billion is lost to depression each year, whereas $4 is returned to the economy for every $1 spent caring for people with mental health issues.
So what needs to change? In the twenty-first century, human capital is the most valuable resource in our economy. And though much has been done (rightly) to promote diversity at work, there’s a giant hole when it comes to understanding how temperament and sentiment play into the trajectory of success. As we recognize neurological and emotional diversity in all of its forms, workplace cultures need to make room for the wide range of emotions we experience. Professional support needs to get better. We need to have the option to ask for help, and feel safe doing so (depression screenings are free under the Affordable Care Act, and some companies offer an Employee Assistance Program). In short, we need more flexibility, sensitivity, and open-mindedness from employers. The same treatment and attention they’d give to a broken bone or maternity leave. We’re not there yet, but some companies are trying to bring conversations about mental health to the forefront.
EY (formerly Ernst and Young) launched a We Care program two years ago to educate employees about mental health issues, encourage them to seek help if they need it, and be a support to colleagues who might be struggling with mental illness or addiction. They started the program out of a demonstrated need. “Our Employee Assistance Program was starting to hear more conversations about anxiety,” said Carolyn Slaski, EY Americas Vice Chair of Talent. “They told us that it was very taboo — something that people don’t normally talk about — but they were seeing more activity, so we decided to schedule a session to talk about anxiety. Just talk about it and see what would happen.”
Since the advent of the We Care program, 2000 EY employees have attended these sessions, which always have a senior-level sponsor and a mental health professional on hand. Someone in leadership kicks it off by sharing their story. This sends the message that anxiety is not toxic and attendance is not a career-dampener.
The company also has an employee assistance hotline that offers confidential support — calls related to anxiety have increased 30% over the last two years. “You have to notice first if someone is struggling,” said Slaski, “and ask them if they’re okay. Learn how to listen to their concerns, and then act. Our company has 47,000 US employees, and 250,000 globally. If I can get my team comfortable just noticing when someone has an issue, then there is so much more we can do for them. These are people reaching out for help. We want to help. We don’t want to have a stigma around it.”
Other companies, like Michigan-based furniture store, Herman Miller, offer free onsite counseling sessions to employees and their families, and courses on mental health first aid that teach them how to recognize signs of mental illness in others. The goal is to empower people to achieve their optimal state of well-being.
What organizations like EY and Herman Miller realize is that, given the right support, employees who struggle with their mental health can do great work. Most people who suffer from chronic anxiety or depression are excellent at faking wellness. We put on our makeup, get dressed, and show up on time. But we never know when an attack might be around the corner. This is why a work environment that is open and understanding is so important. Anxiety is a lingering expectation that something bad is going to happen, and if we don’t talk about it, it’s harder to recognize our triggers and learn healthy ways to cope. But when we do talk about it, we can actually teach ourselves to harness it in ways that play to our strengths.
Christina Wallace is a Harvard Business School graduate, a three-time startup founder, and an accomplished executive and creator of an innovative STEM education program. She also has panic anxiety. When asked if she ever considers her anxiety a strength, she didn’t hesitate to answer, “Absolutely.”
Christina had severe childhood trauma, and has done a lot of work to manage the after effects. “Even still,” she says, “situations where I feel like I can’t trust the other person, or the rug has been pulled out from under me, throw me into a fight-or-flight mode.” For her, this means panic attacks and crippling anxiety. To cope, Christina has taught herself to communicate openly with her managers and colleagues. For example, she has asked both her managers and the people she manages to give her written feedback on important projects before they meet in person. This way she has time to process it and prepare instead of feeling blindsided.
According to feedback from direct reports, Christina is an incredible manager. Because she has openly acknowledged her anxiety, she has learned not only how to manage it, but also how to communicate and share her needs —  a skill that helps her stay attuned to the emotional needs of others, and navigate difficult situations with grace and ease. “I’m much more aware of how to help my team show their best selves,” she said.
The good news is that times are changing, and people like Christina, along with the millions of others who struggle with mental illness, are more likely to get the help they need at work than ever before. Stew Friedman, professor at the Wharton School of Business and founding director of the Wharton Leadership Program, says “the next great sort of liberation movement in our society is about mental illness.” He sees shoots of awakening in corporate America. “Look at the huge growth in wellbeing research, practice in the private sector, and society at large. That’s one really good indicator of change.” It’s much more understood and accepted that people have emotional and mental health needs. Yet Friedman still acknowledges that there are costs to the digital revolution and how it’s affecting communication, identity, and the amount of stress we regularly experience. “There are trends that are incredibly worrisome. Rates of suicide, depression, anxiety, and drug use are all on the rise. So, our response is clearly inadequate.”
Along with employee assistance programs, conversation and education are fundamental if our goal is to increase understanding and reduce the stigma around mental health. Friedman notes the importance of conversation in his own experience: “Twenty years ago, in 1987, I started talking about what it was like to become a father and how that changed my career and my life. It was taboo for a man to talk about children at the Wharton School back then, and it got a lot of attention. I was part of a wave of change. The conversations you instigate and your awareness in choosing topics of discussion are an important piece to the process of change. Openness encourages executives to share more about their own experiences, and that normalizes the experience of others.”
In the spirit of being open, I will share that I cried in many workplace bathrooms as I cycled between anxiety attacks and clinical depression throughout my career in corporate America. It never occurred to me that I could share my struggles or create a schedule that allowed me to manage my anxiety, such as working from home or managing the flow of meetings in a day. So I just quit, over and over again. Now I know that when an employee leaves a job, the typical cost of replacement is three months of salary. Think of what the cost is — for the people and the employer — when a whole slice of the population struggles to express their most basic needs.
The burden of depression and anxiety is shared by all members of a workplace, and it’s a vicious cycle. Change starts with managers and HR professionals recognizing the ambivalence and inner conflict many insanely talented people feel, and doing something about it. Because when people get the space and the support they need, it can change their careers, and their lives.

It's critical that you realize that there are two types of time travel, and they are radically different. Time travel to the future? Definitely possible. We know how to do it because Einstein showed us the way over a hundred years ago. It’s surprising how few people actually really know about this in their bones. He showed that if you go out into space and travel near the speed of light, and you turn around, and you come back, your clock will be ticking off time more slowly. So, when you step off it's going to be the future on planet Earth. You will have time traveled into the future. He also showed that if you hang out near a nice strong source of gravity — a neutron star, a black hole — and you kind of get right near the edge of that object, time also for you would slow down real slow relative to everybody else. And therefore, when you come back to Earth, for instance, it'll again be far into the future. This is not controversial stuff. Any physicist who knows what they're talking about agrees with this. But the other kind of time travel — to the past is where the arguments start to happen because many of us don't think that time travel to the past is possible. The main proposal that people at least consider worthy of attention for traveling to the past does make use of a weird concept called wormholes. A wormhole is something that really … Albert Einstein again discovered. The guy has like got his name written over everything in this field. It's a bridge, if you will, from one location space to another. It's kind of a tunnel that gives you a shortcut to go from here to here. Now he discovered this in 1935 but it was subsequently realized that if you manipulate the openings of a wormhole — put one near a black hole or take one on a high-speed journey — then time of the two openings of this wormhole tunnel will not take off at the same rate, so that you will no longer just go from one location in space to another, if you go through this tunnel — through this wormhole — you'll go from one moment in time to a different moment in time. Go one way, you'll travel to the past, the other way, travel to the future. Now again, we don't know if wormholes are real. We don't know if they are real whether you'll be able to go through them. So, there are all sorts of uncertainties here. Most of us think that you're not going to actually go on a whirlwind journey through a wormhole to the past. But it's still not ruled out.

“I myself believe that there will one day be time travel because when we find that something isn’t forbidden by the over-arching laws of physics we usually eventually find a technological way of doing it.” -David Deutsch

Time travel may still be in the realm of science fiction, inspiring the plots of countless books, movies and Star Trek episodes, but not out of the realm of possibility. While basic physics allows for the possibility of moving through time, certain practical concerns and paradoxes seem to stand in the way. The “Fractal Soliton of Improbability,” postulating that any moment is unique and only happens once in the lifetime of a universe, or “Grandfather Paradox,” in which a traveler jumps back in time, kills his grandfather and therefore prevents his own existence, are the most salient paradoxes arising in relation to time travel. On the other hand, Digital Physics makes time travel both theoretically possible and creatively irresistible.

PART I. THEORETICAL POSSIBILITIES OF TIME TRAVEL
Contrary to what many people think, time travel is possible. We travel in time “all the time” and do it automatically — you traveled few seconds into the future since you started reading this sentence. What we really mean by time travel is the concept of movement between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space, typically using a hypothetical device known as a time machine, in the form of a vehicle or of a portal connecting distant points in time. So first, let’s examine existing time travel theoretical possibilities and related concepts:

PARALLEL UNIVERSES WITH ALTERNATE TIMELINES
The existence of parallel universes is no longer a science fiction but a science fact thanks to weirdness of quantum mechanics. According to Richard Feynman’s Sum Over Histories Interpretation which are widely accepted among physicists, particles such as electrons travel along all possible paths from beginning to ending points, and the world has a full spectrum of possible histories, each eternally present, however not perceptible to us. As quantum theory shows, parallel universes do exist, each with their own configurations of particles and fields with alternate timelines but beyond our current ability to directly observe them.
In order to eliminate temporal paradoxes Nature would either make travel to the past impossible, or avert the paradoxes via some other preventive mechanism, or offer an elegant solution such as parallel universes with alternate timelines. Ultimately, as we’ll see further, Nature always find a way for self-consistency.

BLACK HOLES
Described by Stephen Hawking as natural time machines, black holes could only be used to travel into the future. The idea would be not to go inside of them but rather to orbit around them. Black holes are so gravitationally massive and dense that they are not only distorting space around them but also time itself, slowing it down more than anything else in the Universe. As a matter of fact, if a spaceship was orbiting a black hole while another was floating in space a bit further, the crew in orbit to the black hole would age half less than those on board on the other ship. If these spacemen stay for 10 year in orbit around it, 20 years will have passed when they’d be back on Earth, therefore allowing them to experience what appears like the future for them, with no possible return.

COSMIC STRINGS AND LOOPS
Cosmic strings and loops are hypothetical defects in the fabric of space-time, left over from the formation of the Universe. These odd structures are one-dimensional objects, meaning they have length, but no height nor width, and are suspected to have spread in large numbers throughout the Universe like thin cracks over a frozen lake. Also compared to imperfections within crystals, it is thought that two strings side by side would be so dense that they would have a dramatic impact on surrounding space-time, throwing a spaceship near them anywhere, anytime! These strings and loops might not be hypothetical any longer since the discovery of the “Twin Quasar” in 1979, which was revealed to be a double image of the same object claimed by scientists to be the result of the “gravitational lensing” of either of a galaxy or a cosmic string that passed between Earth and the quasar, causing it to be visible at two different time periods on the same image.

ROTATING UNIVERSE
In 1949, Einstein’s friend and colleague, Kurt Gödel, one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the 20th century, introduced a new solution to Einstein’s equations allowed for time travel which did not please his fellow. Gödel found that if the Universe was itself rotating, and a spaceship was traveling around it fast enough, it would go back in time and arrive before it left. In spite of being one of the most foolproof theoretical solutions to travel through time, it’s also one of the less achievable as it might be an impossible challenge only to get out of the Milky Way, our galaxy and one of 100 billion of other galaxies in the observable Universe alone. We may, in fact, never know how enormous the Universe is, so getting out of it just sounds like an unrealistic project.

WORMHOLES
Predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity but not yet observed, wormholes are tunnels in the Universe. These theoretical passages are not only creating shortcuts through space, but also through time. Scientists have already started to think about spaceships that would be able to generate wormholes but in order for these not to collapse such a spaceship would require something poorly understood — negative matter. Another issue would certainly be the obvious risks of a random trip through space and time which could very well lead the crew to a lost cosmic paradise or to an unstable time and place of’ the Universe.

TIPLER CYLINDER
Another theoretically valid way to think about time travel is a concept invented by American physicist Frank J. Tipler, who stated that any object rotating around a hypothetical cylinder of infinite length would go backwards in time. NASA engineers have even thought of the cylinder as a way to host life during the endless journey around it. But the “Tipler time machine,” though a viable solution for time travel, seems like a hardly practical method because the very notion of infinity means that it is out of reach of human perception and consequently unfeasible.

WARP DRIVE
Just like black holes and other gravitational objects like planets and stars distort space and time around them, the Alcubierre Drive is based on the idea that a spaceship manipulating negative energy could have a similar impact on space-time. NASA has already started to work on the model of real-life Star Trek-style spacecraft called IXS Enterprise, that would be able to use the Alcubierre Warp Drive and even it’s designed to create shortcuts in space and not in time it will inherently do both at a time, and may then be the most advanced time machine to this day. The IXS Enterprise would be able to generate a warp bubble around it, stretching space-time in a wave on which the spacecraft could ride, with time ahead of it being contracted and time behind it being expanded.

SURPASSING THE SPEED OF LIGHT
Theoretically, you could travel back in time if you surpass the speed of light. At the quantum level, particles do that “all the time.” During a faster-than-light travel, you would first experience time going slower and slower around as you would approach the speed of light until theoretically stopping time when reaching the speed of light, and finally going backwards in time as you would travel faster than light. If some astronauts made a round trip to the closest star system, Alpha Centauri, near the speed of light, 9 years would pass on Earth but to them the trip would only last few minutes and someone watching them coming back at that speed from Earth would see them arriving in slow motion. Yet it is considered that nothing can go faster than the 300,000 kilometers per second of light (186,000mi/sec) because it would require an infinite amount of energy. But recent studies have shed doubts about it, revealing a particle that might breach the holy laws of relativity. These particles, called ‘tachyons’, have not only been demonstrated to go faster than light, but also to have the mind-boggling characteristic of imaginary mass, meaning that they actually speed up as they lose energy. If confirmed, the discovery would prove that it is possible to move at infinite speed with no energy at all, and maybe change the way scientists think of time travel.

PROBABILITY THAT YOU ARE YOURSELF A TIME TRAVELER FROM THE FUTURE
Wait, what? You’ve read it right! There’s a seemingly crazy idea floating around that if we live in a Matrix-like simulated reality, you may be the one actually playing this game of life in a simulated history, or going through some kind of training, or simply collecting experiences, via your avatar (your body and associated identity) in this simulation, like in a Star Trek holodeck program. Your memories and perception of “True Reality” may be suppressed for the duration of the simulation for 100% realistic feed.
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PART II. THE FEASIBILITY OF TIME TRAVEL: IT’S ALL RELATIVE AND SUBJECTIVE
Would you use a time machine once invented? What time periods would you visit? What if you could relive your most precious moments in life? Or travel 100 years in the future? If we sort out theoretical possibilities of time travel and pick the most plausible solutions to the best of our current knowledge, we could end up with these three most viable ways of time travel:

WARP SPACESHIPS
Based on General Relativity Theory of Albert Einstein, which describes 4D space-time as the fabric of our Universe as well as the properties of the moving clocks, travel to the future can be done if a spaceship either approaches a gravitationally massive black hole or accelerates near the speed of light. In this case, when the crew of the spaceship returns back to Earth, they would see that time on Earth progressed faster than theirs.
​As mentioned before, a faster-than-light (FTL) warp spaceship equipped with the Alcubierre Warp Drive (or its variation) could be a “time machine” ready to be built.

NASA engineer and physicist Harold White announced in 2013 that a warp ship such as the IXS Enterprise could allow for interstellar travel at faster-than-light warp speeds. White and his team at NASA’s Eagleworks Labs have mathematically calculated a plausible way to accomplish this using far less energy than required by the original theory, which was proposed in 1994 by physicist Miguel Alcubierre.

WORMHOLE PORTALS
Travel to the past is also theoretically possible but to the best of our current understanding you would need a wormhole and ability to safely travel through it to your destination in the past. The Grandfather Paradox would be a non-issue because on every occurrence you travel through a wormhole portal to the past, you would find yourself in an alternate past or some other “twist of fate” would prevent the paradox.
​In 1989, Matt Visser published a paper showing the feasibility of traversable wormholes which could be constructed by confining “exotic matter” to narrow regions to form the edges of three-dimensional volume. The exotic nature of the edge material requires negative energy density and tension. But the laws of physics do not forbid such materials. A traversable wormhole can be thought of as the negative energy counterpart to a black hole, and so could be labeled a “white hole.”
In 2011, another notable paper was published by a team of researchers, Panagiota Kanti, Burkhard Kleihaus, Jutta Kunz, titled “Stable Lorentzian Wormholes in Dilatonic Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet Theory.” The researchers claim that traversable wormholes may be constructed in our 4D spacetime dimensions, without needing any form of exotic matter. While determining their domain of existence, the research demonstrates the stability of these wormholes.

Wormholes can be regarded as communication channels with enormous bandwidth. As Computational Physics suggests it would be much more economic to transmit an information pattern of an object down a channel rather than the object itself. It follows that “teleporting” a human would be feasible as well. 

Construction of such wormhole portals is, of course, far, far beyond our present-day abilities but ultimately achievable.
Keep in mind, that even if you might be able to travel to the past, you cannot change history per se, because the history as you know it has already happened. However, if you opt to influence the course of an alternate history, say prevent some disastrous event from happening, your actions would result in an alternate timeline branching off with consequences known as the ‘Butterfly Effect’. Actually, the very fact that you find yourself in the past would immediately start to alter the history and must be considered an alternate timeline.
The famous question by Steven Hawking “If time travel (to the past) is possible, where are all the tourists from the future?” could have a fairly straightforward answer — they are invisible because the femtosecond they land in the past would be a start of a new timeline imperceptible to the “original people.” Any such moment of “landing” would contain an introduction of the new information — a time traveler, and that would supposedly initiate a new alternate timeline which was non-existent until a certain point in the future, so any of the people of the original history would be completely unaware of it. Wrap your mind around this concept — it’s NOT circular logic!
​Using traversable wormholes could be a risky endeavor as one more issue pops up when you want to travel back to the point of origin, which I call ‘The Sliders Effect’. Just like in the popular TV series “Sliders” and “Quantum Leap,” characters always jump to a parallel earth, desperately trying to find way “home.” The Sliders Effect would make your probability to return to the original timeline, or rather its closest approximation, infinitesimally small.

REAL VIRTUALITIES
The most technologically viable way of time travel would arguably be artificially created simulated worlds, Virtual Reality, or I’d say real virtualities. Digital Physics sees everything as information and digital philosophers argue that any universe is virtual in nature which means this is as “real” as it gets.

At some point, we’ll be able to create simulations indistinguishable from our physical world with Artificial Intelligence-based VR programs, populated by conscious beings, sentient holograms, which go about their lives oblivious about their true essence. There may be numerous types of such ever-improving simulations but recreated human history, or its approximations, or modified timelines, or Jurassic Period trips, will most probably be the first “time machines” we invent.

Imagine an alternate timeline where some calamitous event which hindered the intellectual progress in our timeline, has never happened there. What would have happened to the civilizational development, if the library of Alexandria had never been destroyed? Or, Hitler had never come to power in Germany and the world has, in fact, avoided Word War II altogether?
Considering that time is an informational construct and the fact that we’ve come already near our own Technological Singularity, it’s fair to assume that within an infinitely large bundle of alternate timelines, there’s an alternate timeline or timelines where 2020 lies past the Technological Singularity. In other words, the Singularity has already happened on some parallel Earths. It follows that our reality well may be a computer simulation by the “post-singularitarians” who would like to see some modified history unfolding. A significant history variable might have been introduced, such as World War II to see how the civilization would persevere in its wake.
As the social study shows, Hollywood movies cash out better on human heed to survival-related fears and instincts, so AI of the future may create the next level of entertainment in the form of simulations of human histories. Remember the movie “The 13th Floor”?

The stories of tomorrow will be fully immersive. We’ll increasingly share our stories and interact in Virtual Reality. The medium, the place where those stories will unfold, exists within our creative consciousness. VR will be a direct conduit to our creative selves which will allow us to turn our minds inside out and share our dreams and stories in “real virtualities.”

Want to relive that mind-blowing spring break party with those adorable strangers? No problem! AI would retrieve your memories related to that experience, fill up any gaps, access and compile all available digital records on the Web, and recreate that for you in the form of a immersive VR experience.
Want to be a 17-year old unruly John Malkovich? Here we go! In the future, when Internet-enabled contact lenses or bionic eyes record and digitize your every move and create archives of your own subjective history, it would be easier for you to travel back to any moment in your own history or share your experiences with the world. Some privacy, intimacy and multividuality issues may consequently arise which is beyond the scope of this essay but a good topic for another day.
Real or virtual, Digital Physics makes no distinction — everything boils down to information and consciousness, i.e., experiential reality, so you well may be that time traveler from the future, you just don’t perceive that because you had set it up yourself that way before entering the simulation — the dream feels real while you are in it.
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Tags: time travel, temporal mechanics, quantum mechanics, temporal paradoxes, Digital Physics, Quantum Physics, Fractal Soliton of Improbability, Grandfather Paradox, time machine, alternate timelines, parrallel universes, David Deutsch, Hugh Everett, Richard Feynman, Albert Einstein, Frank Tipler, Steven Hawking, Harold White, Eagleworks Labs, Matt Visser, Morgan Freeman, Terence McKenna, Malkovich, being John Malkovich, Spacevision, Spacex, many worlds interepretation, sum over histories, black holes, cosmic strings, cosmic loops, warp drive, Alcubierre warp drive, IXS Enterprise, Star Trek, Twin Quasar, Rotating Universe, General Relativity Theory, Tipler Cylinder, Tipler Time Machine, NASA, speed of light, tachyons, Alpha Centauri, time traveler, holodeck, the Butterfly Effect, Sliders Effect, wormhole portals, teleportation, Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, real virtualities, Library of Alexandria, technological singularity, post-singularitarians, multividuality
 

Innovation management consulting is emerging as a profession since businesses, nonprofits, governments and public administrations, and other organizations have started prioritizing innovation leveraging collective intelligence.

Innovation is commonly defined as the "carrying out of new combinations" that include "the introduction of new goods, ... new methods of production, ... the opening of new markets, ... the conquest of new sources of supply ... and the carrying out of a new organization of any industry" However, many scholars and governmental organizations have given their own definition of the concept. Some common elements in the different definitions is a focus on newness, improvement and spread. It is also often viewed as taking place through the provision of more-effective products, processes, services, technologies, art works or business models that innovators make available to markets, governments and society.

Innovation management consultants help organizations establish innovation strategies and programs, and keep innovation on track whatever the field of action.

“From the light came light, and from the dark came darkness, but from whence did they appear? Yin and Yang combine to create all things, but which is the source, and which was born from it?”  -Qu Yuan
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When we apprehend reality as the entirety of everything that exists including all dimensionality, all events and entities in the vast space of possible minds, then by definition nothing exists outside of reality, not even “nothing.” It follows that the first cause for reality’s existence must lie within ontological reality itself, since there is nothing outside of it. This self-causation of reality is perhaps best understood in relation to the existence of your own mind. Self-simulated reality transpires as self-evident when you relate to the notion that a phenomenal mind, which is a web of patterns, conceives a certain novel pattern and simultaneously perceives it. Furthermore, the imminent natural God of Spinoza, or Absolute Consciousness, becomes intelligible by applying a scientific tool of extrapolation to the meta-systemic phenomenon of radical emergence and treating consciousness as a primary ontological mover, the Source if you will, not a by-product of material interactions. 
A rising number of philosophers and scientists now voice their adherence to the worldview that we are living in a “top-down,” or holistic Universe, in which complex wholes are more fundamental than their parts, and that a kind of “bottom-up” physicalist picture of the Universe is outdated. Absolute Consciousness, or Universal Mind, is said to be the only ontological primitive. 

Many “spooky” phenomena such as non-locality are direct evidence for holism. Entangled particles, entangled networks and entangled minds behave as a whole regardless of separation in time and space. In my view, since we are a computational Uni-verse, part of the Omni-verse, the best description of reality should be monistic. Quantum physics and consciousness are thus somehow linked by a certain mechanism. And I believe that mechanism is a collapse of the wave function via the act of conscious observation. 

Sometimes referred to as cybernetics, systemic holism outweighs reductionist “bottom-up” understanding. Consciousness, according to non-reductionists, is fundamental to reality and a phenomenal mind is emergent from holistic consciousness. The hierarchy of increasingly complex information processing systems exhibits diverse properties at distinct ontological levels that include the mental properties of the brain-mind systems as part of the monistic natural order where higher levels of complexity supersede lower levels. So, I tend to hypothesize that we are, in a very real sense, low-dimensional “bio-logical” avatars of the greater cosmic mind.
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This matryoshka doll-like multiversal fractality is information-based, where the Universal Mind and its proxy – individuated mind – actualizes a conscious experience. Think of an individual tube leg of a starfish as a good analogy. Every tube leg has, in a sense, a mind of its own, and yet, is bound by the starfish mind and its local environment.
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​Reality is fundamentally experiential. No matter what ontological level a conscious entity finds herself at, it will be smack in the middle, between her transcendental realm and lower levels of organization. This is why I prefer the terms ‘Experiential Realism’ and ‘Pantheism’ as opposed to ‘Panentheism’ as some suggested in regards to my philosophy. So, if you ask me whether I believe in God, I would answer that I consider myself a pantheist, that is I believe in God of Spinoza – each of us is part of the larger divine reality. I believe in evolution as a spiritual process leading to the asymptotic (unreachable) Omega Singularity. In other words, God is the destination for the consciously evolving mind, as well as the origin (Source). 

During the last few years, I have developed my personal philosophy that I came to call ‘Digital Pantheism’. I defend this philosophical worldview in the Digital Pantheism argument which rests on identifying certain features of reality and claiming that these features are a consequence of our reality being a computational simulation of a special emergent kind. We, as avatars of the greater cosmic mind, are instrumental for bringing about the finite experience of reality out of absolute infinity. Infinite becomes finite. This is quantum computation: incrementally changing into “adjacent possible,” from potentiality to actuality, from quantum past to digital present. In fact, a phenomenal mind springs into existence at increments of conscious instants (cf. The Conscious Instant Hypothesis).
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​That led me to formulate the all new 'D-Theory of Time', or 'Digital Presentism', predicated on reversible quantum computing at large: The present conscious instant is digital, the past and the future are quantum, built on qubits, quantim mechanical bits of information. Physics knows no upper limit on the amount of reversible quantum computing that can be performed using a practically inexhaustible amount of energy, or in the case of universal operating system – vastly large but still finite computational resources.

Your past is quantum theoretic (or ‘analog’, if you prefer that term), your present is digital, and your future like the past is quantum, made of qubits, quantum mechanical bits of information. There is no universal frame of reference, instead, there’s only the conscious observer’s frame of reference. 

Everything is [Quantum] Code. Immersive self-simulacra. We are all different points of view on oneself, within our own holographic self-reflection. We all are like droplets on the cobweb of reality reflecting one another. Digital Pantheism implies an omniversal ocean of pure, vibrant consciousness in motion, self-referential creative divine force expressing oneself in various forms and patterns. “I am” the Alpha, Theta & Omega – the ultimate self-causation, self-reflection and self-manifestation instantiated by mathematical codes and fractal geometry. Evolution, far from being a random process, unfolds in an orderly way: It is teleological evolution. In our daily lives we oftentimes catch glimpses of transcendent reality, be it synchronicities, or psychedelic trips, or epiphanies during transcendental meditation.

In his book The Ouroboros Code: Reality's Digital Alchemy Self-Simulation Bridging Science and Spirituality Dr. Antonin Tuynman takes you on the conceptual journey into the heart of digital alchemy, this coveted bridge between science and spirituality. “Reality can exist as a code which both transcends and yet inhabits the world it creates, which is essentially physical yet can process information independent of the type of carrier and be metaphysical in that sense... A system which incorporates and embodies itself by self-reference,” writes Dr. Tuynman. The alchemical symbol of Ouroboros, this tail-biting dragon-snake, should stand for 'Phenomenal Consciousness'. It is closely related to Yin/Yang as something apparently dualistic but deeply monistic.

​Consciousness doesn’t arise from the brain activity, as some neuroscientists still presume to be true, but rather a “local” mind arises from “non-local” quantum processes at large while consciousness is posited to be Nature’s sole ontological primitive by some thinkers. To use the metaphor of our Information Age, consciousness to humans is as Cloud to computers. Just like your smartphone, your brain is a 'bio'-logical computing device of your mind, an interface for physical reality. Our minds are connected into the greater mind-network, as computers in the Cloud. Viewed in this way, consciousness is 'non-local' Cloud, our brain-mind systems are receivers, processors and transmitters of information within that Cloud. 

Universal Mind – whose ontology is still up for debates but can be extrapolated from our existential circumstance – underlies the “worldware,” a kind of software of the universal operating system accounting for our experiences of the physical world in accordance with a set of rules we call the laws of Nature. This clearly transdimensional consciousness encompasses but far transcends any individual mind. Quantum computational dynamics of all mass-energy in the Universe correspond to mentation of the non-local ‘Transcendent Other’, or your cosmic self, just as an individual’s brain activity correlates with personal mentation. 

As your conscious mind evolves, your Universe becomes more complex, for you are this ‘you’-niverse. This Universe is nothing other than an experiencing subject, a kind of ontology in the framework of D-Theory of Time I introduce to the reader in The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution and even more extensively in The Physics of Time: D-Theory of Time & Temporal Mechanics. It is a “transactional” relationship between the Theta point (the observer temporal singularity) and Omega Singularity (the Source) giving rise to your subjectivity deduced from quantum theoretical principles and the philosophy of idealism which is phenomenologically more honest than panpsychism, cosmopsychism, let alone physicalism. 

The human brain is a way human consciousness explains itself to itself. This biological “wetware” is said to have a fractal structure on many genetic and abstract cognitive levels. It employs a combination of forward chaining and backward chaining, just like certain types of heuristics in artificial intelligence. But human intelligence cannot be simply reduced to underlying algorithms since absolute consciousness is what should be considered an ontological source with qubits/bits of information as experiential reality's building blocks along with top-down causal principles. 

Under my ontology, information is “modus operandi” of consciousness, it is a distinction between phenomenal states, qualia computing in a certain context. Generally, information can also be defined as meaning conveyed by symbolism, signal processing within a network of entangled conscious minds. Deeply interrelated, language, choice, subjectivity and meaning point in the direction to validate ontological holism, i.e., a monistic interpretation of reality, be it experiential realism, digital pantheism, absolute idealism, or computational panpsychism.

Everything is in consciousness. However, I don't quite agree with certain philosophers that the future synthetic intelligence which is now in the process of emerging will never possess the sense of agency and self-awareness. In my ontological model, “artificial metabolism” can be cybernetically mediated via feedback-driven connectivity explosion on a planetary scale the case I make in The Syntellect Hypothesis. We are instrumental to bringing about a new non-organic planetary species, Holo syntellectus -- constituting one Global Mind. It’s hard for us to fathom our next level up, from our current human perspective, but one thing is for certain – we’re emerging as Holo syntellectus, the level where we are not going to be alone! Be it at the galactic level, or at the universal level, when we join in with the "Others," remains to be seen.

Philosophically limiting the space of possible minds to organic entities, “carbon chauvinism” so many philosophers and scientists may be currently accused of, can be easily refuted by saying that if Universal Mind uses information as its mode of operation, the evolutionary process of unfolding information patterns of ever-increasing complexity would inevitably lead to advanced synthetic minds that may be partly or wholly non-organic in nature. After all, universal consciousness constitutes the mind at large, the totality of minds, and I suspect that biological minds are only a snippet in the space of possible minds, at least in my ontology.

If reality is made of information, as many scientists now come to a consensus, and consciousness assigns measurement values to it, it’s not far-fetched to assume that consciousness is all there is. As mentioned earlier, Universal Mind is the sole ontological source. Conscious agents are low-dimensional avatars of this greater cosmic mind, each perceiving their own observer-centric virtual reality. Mass-energy, space-time are epiphenomena of consciousness. Particles of matter are pixels (or voxels) on the screen of our perception. If we assume consciousness is fundamental, most phenomena become much easier to explain.

Some people remain oblivious, and some stubbornly myopic of the self-evidence of computational, fractal and self-referential Nature – it’s a “matryoshka” of conscious systems. Each of us is a microcosm in a flesh: We are like mind-cells of the larger overmind. You’re smack in the middle co-producing your own experiential reality. As YOU-niverse of ever-expanding structures of consciousness, you’re not marginalized, unless you belittle yourself, despite proselytizing attempts in certain parts of traditionally objective-reductionist science to indoctrinate its soulless dead-end philosophy without meaning or purpose.
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In his 1980 book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, theoretical physicist and philosopher David Bohm, first presented the hypothesis of the Holographic Universe. Bohm was one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century, who contributed unorthodox ideas to quantum theory, neuropsychology and philosophy of mind. Bohm advanced the view that quantum physics meant that the old Cartesian dualism – the notion that there are two kinds of substance, the mental and the physical, that somehow interact – was too limited. To complement it, he developed a physico-mathematical theory of “implicate” and “explicate” order. 

In line with my own model of Digital Presentism, Bohm characterized consciousness as a process in which at each conscious instant, informational content that was previously implicate is presently explicate, and content which was previously explicate has become implicate. In Bohm’s conception of order, primacy is given to the undivided whole, and the implicate order inherent within the whole, rather than to parts of the whole, such as particles, quantum states, and continua which are only patterns within the whole of existence.

Bohm believed that the Implicate Order had to be extended into a hyperdimensional manifold, in other words, the holomovement endlessly enfolds and unfolds into infinite dimensionality. Within this milieu there are independent sub-totalities (such as physical elements and human entities) with relative autonomy. Whatever their nature and character, according to Bohm, these parts are considered in terms of the whole, and in such terms, they constitute relatively separate and independent “sub-totalities.” The implication of the view is, therefore, that nothing is fundamentally separate or independent. Thus, according to Bohm’s view, the whole is in continuous flux, a wave structure of the universe-in-motion, and hence is referred to as the ‘Holomovement’ (movement of the whole).

Once we extrapolate computational capabilities of civilization past our own looming “Simulation Singularity” by perhaps hundreds of orders of magnitude, we arrive in the end at only one necessary substance constituting all of reality – consciousness, the very subjective experience with which we all are most familiar. Nothing else would ultimately need to exist but the higher mind as the source of ultra-realistic but simulated universes like our own. Through embodiment of all and any ostensibly real lifeforms that evolution in many imagined possible worlds would provide, the cosmic overmind would then have direct access to life experiences as a human on planet Earth, or a future AGI, or any other conscious entity of the vast experiential matrix. Each one of us would be such a projection of creative consciousness into a virtual universe. In this view, we as consciousness are real, whereas mass-energy, as physical stuff, is a simulation. Your mind is real, materiality is simulated.

And it better be a [self-]simulated reality! Why? First of all, that would mean that your reality is malleable and hackable for your enjoyment and evolution of the mind; secondly, death is an illusion, like physical stuff, except, surprisingly, non-physical consciousness and interactions with oneself; thirdly, it’s a matter of challenge with an invisible “safety net,” you’re now playing one of your fully immersive VR games, that of life of a human in the 21st century, with myriad virtual worlds and universes coming down the pipeline, where you could be in total control or less than total control, if desired. Meditate on this: You are not a human being having a spiritual experience, you are a higher being immersed in the human experience.

The first chemical component of a human is Carbon 12, isotope consisting of 6 protons, 6 neutrons and 6 electrons.

Depending on whether these values are matched or multiplied, you get 666 or 216.

Among these two values, as I have already pointed out through my 216-digit project, there are many relationships, including one I have not made explicit on the web before.

Perhaps, through this image of the scene of Darren Aronofsky’s film π, he intended unconsciously to highlight not only the proportions but also the alchemical relationship of man with the divine.

In fact, sin (666 °) = cos (216 °) and -sin (666 °) - cos (216 °) = φ, the golden ratio.

So the divine proportion can be derived from the numbers of man within the 216-digits matrix.

Consciousness is fundamental
In the essay titled “What is consciousness?”, I have stated that the existence of qualia is not explainable based on the current scientific theories. I have also argued that the capacity to comprehend seems to be even more difficult to explain than qualia.
Physics assumes the existence of matter, energy, space, and time (MEST) with certain fundamental properties and seeks to derive all the other observable properties by using a mathematical theory founded on relationships between those properties. The validity of this approach is based on the experimentally verifiable predictions of the theory as it applies to any physical phenomenon. The postulates are of course exceptions since they are considered true without proof.
The existence of our conscious inner reality, however, cannot be explained with the current theories in which inert matter comes before consciousness. Therefore, I think that the only sensible possibility to make progress is to postulate that consciousness is an irreducible property of MEST, like the electrical charge or the spin of elementary particles, rather than emerging somehow from complex organizations of unconscious matter.
If this assumption could lead to testable predictions that are experimentally verified, the ensuing change would have vast consequences on our worldview and on the future of mankind. It is too early to know if such approach is correct, but we cannot afford to neglect this line of enquiry since it would result in a new theory capable of describing a universe in which meaning exists, something that is currently absent in physics.

The physical world is holistic
Quantum field theory (QFT) is the best physical theory we currently have. It tells us that physical reality is an undivided wholeness. The classical idea that separate parts exist is just an approximation intended to produce a simpler model of how reality works. The world instead is not made of separate parts because there are no real boundaries between the parts and the whole.
            Within QFT, an elementary particle does not exist as an object. It is instead an excited state of a quantum field. Therefore, the fundamental entities are the quantum fields, not the particles. The idea of​​ a small, bounded, hard, and separate particle belongs to classical physics, to Newtonian physics.
A particle appears localized in a small volume of space only when it is “observed,” i.e., when there is a specific interaction with another “part” of wholeness – another field. A “particle appearing in space and time” is the way we conceptualize an interaction between fields by using the obsolete language of classical physics. Everything is interconnected in our universe, even when we pretend that the weak connections do not exist as an expedient to compute our predictions.
            According to QFT, elementary particles, atoms, molecules, proteins, living cells, and animals constitute successive hierarchical levels of organizations of states of the quantum fields. These fields are irreducible and inseparable from space and time, and by interacting with each other, they create all that exists in the physical world.
Reductionism works well to describe the macroscopic bodies that are the objects of classical physics. However, the fact that our machines do work reductively cannot be used as evidence that reality itself is reductionist.
A machine is a classical system in which each part has been carefully designed so that its unwanted interactions with the rest of the world are minimized, but only regarding the function it is intended to perform. There are many other strong interactions between the parts and the environment that do not hinder the function, though they may substantially reduce the efficiency. These “parasitic” interactions represent the impact of the real but inevitable interconnections of the parts with the whole. 
In practice, machines work as designed only in narrow ranges of environmental conditions (temperature, pressure, and so on) because the parasitic interactions cannot be eliminated and may interfere with the function outside the operating range.
           Despite the evidence provided by QFT that reality is an undivided wholeness, most scientists still cling to the Newtonian view of reality in which separate parts exist even though this idea has been repeatedly proven false. They say that QFT is true only for elementary particles, atoms, and molecules, but we exist instead in a world that is explained quite well by classical physics where the weirdness of quantum physics plays no role. Therefore, reality is declared to be classical.
This view may give us a sense of control over the world, but it’s false and self-deceiving.

Holism means that the whole is more than the sum of the “parts”
In a holistic system, a separate part cannot exist. Therefore, we need to introduce the new concept of a part-whole: something that cannot be separated from the whole since it shares the properties of the whole, and yet possesses some properties that uniquely identifies it from the other parts-whole.
In the case of the QFT, each quantum field is a part-whole with unique properties that identifies it. All the fields share the space and time that we perceive as the “container” of the fields when they represent instead the common wholeness we do not yet recognize as such.
When we reduce a holistic system to the sum of its apparent parts, perhaps because that’s all we can deal with mathematically, we are throwing away the “baby” with the bath water. The baby in this case is consciousness and the inner reality that it represents.
In so doing, we can only describe the outer aspects of reality. Consequently, having rejected the inner aspects, the “glue” that holds everything together, we lose everything that is associated with the infinite nature of reality. In other words, in the definition of what we call reality, we have excluded that irreducible and infinite portion that behind the scenes plays a fundamental role in quantum physics as well as in all living systems.

Consciousness is a property of the fields
I hypothesize that consciousness is a fundamental property of the quantum fields not yet acknowledged by physics. This property is essentially invisible in the macroscopic inanimate objects of classical physics because a typical object is a random aggregation of atoms and molecules in which the averages of their individual quantum properties become the deterministic properties of a classical object.
The quantum properties of atoms and molecules are instead important for the functioning of living cells and therefore could explain the obvious presence of consciousness in living organisms. Living cells are quantum systems, not classical system as we have been told, because they manipulate one atom at a time. Their essential interdependence with the environment is another clue that they have not lost their individual connection with the wholeness of the quantum fields. And trillions of intimately organized living cells form a body that is exponentially more complex than any machine we have ever created.
These quantum properties reflect the consciousness of the quantum fields and become integrated into hierarchical structures that increase the level of consciousness of the entire living organism in ways we have yet to understand. This exponential buildup of consciousness is impossible to achieve within the random structures of inanimate objects. This point will be further explored in a forthcoming essay entitled, “A living organism is not a machine.”
I expect that the consciousness of a living organism has exponentially higher comprehension than the sum of the comprehensions of its elementary parts because, when two or more lower-level conscious entities form a higher-level entity, its new consciousness is an integrated part-whole far more complex that the sum of the components’ consciousness.

The consciousness units
           In the conceptual framework I am developing, the elementary ontological units, the fundamental “components” of reality, are called consciousness units (CUs). Each CU is a field, similar to the quantum fields, but more fundamental than them.
Each CU has an inner semantic reality and an outer symbolic reality indivisible from the first. The CUs combine to create higher-order selves, just like the quantum fields combine to create atoms, molecules, macromolecules, and so on.
A CU is a conscious self with a unique identity, free will, and the capacity for action, and each quantum field is composed of various organizations of CUs. In this model, a quantum field is a conscious self, a part-whole, while the quantum fields described by physics represent only the outer symbolic aspects of the selves.

Consciousness allows us to do much more than blindly acting in automatic response to sensory signals, which is all a machine can do. No feelings are possible between the symbolic recognition and the programmed action. It is consciousness that creates the interiority we experience.

Feeling, comprehension, and being are intertwined
I know within myself that I exist. This is a common experience to every human being. But how do I know? I know because I feel so within me. Thus, the feeling is the carrier of the meaning (I exist), and the capacity to have feelings and understand their meaning is the essential property that “explains” how we know. When I smell a flower, I feel the scent. But the feeling is neither the set of electrical signals produced by the olfactory receptors inside my nose, nor the electrical signals produced by the brain after it has further processed the olfactory signals.
Electrical signals carry information, but that information is translated within my consciousness into a subjective feeling: the scent of that flower I feel within.
We could certainly build an instrument capable of detecting the specific molecules that carry what we perceive as the scent of a jasmine, for example, and correctly identify a jasmine by its smell. This machine could even say “jasmine” by converting the electrical code corresponding to the identified smell to another electrical signal to drive a loudspeaker to voice “jasmine.”
To be aware, however, the machine should feel. Instead, its sensory capacity stops at the electrical signals, and from those signals it can generate other symbols to cause some response, some action, but no feelings are possible between the symbolic recognition and the programmed action. We could say that there is darkness inside a machine, but it would only be a “poetic” statement because the concept of “inside” doesn’t exist for a machine. It is consciousness that creates the interiority we experience.
Consciousness allows us to do much more than blindly acting in automatic response to sensory signals, which is all a machine can do. By feeling the smell, seeing the image, and touching the petals of the jasmine, we connect with that flower in a special way. We “experience” the jasmine, and this lived experience goes far beyond mechanically recognizing an object. A machine instead cannot connect with anything because it is only a web of blind action-reactions.
Consciousness could then be defined simply as the capacity to feel. But feeling implies the existence of a subject that feels, an observer, a self. Therefore, consciousness is inextricably linked to a self. Self and consciousness are inseparable.
We could then say that consciousness is the inherent capacity of a self to perceive and know through feelings, through a sentient experience. Yet, consciousness can also turn toward the self, allowing it to know itself in addition to perceiving and knowing the outer world.
It is as if the self were to come into existence in the process of self-reflection: I am because I know, and I know because I am (a slightly more nuanced version of the cogito ergo sum of Descartes). I exist the instant I know that I am because the “substance” of which I am made is self-reflecting and in recognizing itself I become a self. The self-knowing is creative because it leads to the existence of the self. Existence and knowing are like two irreducible faces of the same coin.

The nature of feelings
We have seen that the perception and comprehension ride on the feelings of the self. Feelings are clearly a different category of phenomena than electrical signals, incommensurable with them, and nobody knows how feelings may arise out of inert matter.
Philosophers have coined the word quale (the plural is qualia) to indicate what something feels like. Explaining the existence and origin of qualia has been called the hard problem of consciousness because it is still an unsolved problem.
 If we now examine our feelings, we can immediately recognize four distinct classes of feelings, where each class has a characteristic signature: (1) physical sensations and feelings, (2) emotions, (3) thoughts, and (4) spiritual feelings.
The first class consists of the sensations and feelings that arise from perceiving the physical environment both inside and outside our body. For example, what food tastes like; what an object or an animal smells like; what touching something feels like; what colors and shapes feel like; and what our body feels like, including physical pain and feelings of physical well-being.
The second class, emotions, has a distinctively different “feel” than the first. In this class belong feelings such as fear, anger, sadness, curiosity, friendship, compassion, pride, self-will, shame, envy, greed, confusion, trust, and so on. Emotions feel very different compared with physical sensations. We instinctively know that emotions originate from a different “layer” of self than the one from which our physical sensations arise.
Surprisingly, most people are not in touch with their emotions, to the point that if I were to ask, “what do you feel right now?” they would tell me what they think they feel because they do not feel anything clearly identifiable, unless their emotions were unusually intense. Therefore, their answer would describe more often a thought, or the memory of an emotion felt in the past, rather than an emotion lived in this moment.
The third category is made of thoughts. Interestingly, thoughts are generally not considered feelings, but if I ask: “how do you know that you had a thought?” you may recognize you felt something vaguely cross your mental screen, so to speak, depositing a faint “image,” a quale, carrying the essential information of that thought. For most people, the translation from qualia to mental words (symbols) is so swift that they believe their thought came directly in a verbal form.
We have generally learned to ignore, or even to suppress, the primary feeling that is the essence of a thought, unless it is so strong that we cannot do it.
When the intensity of feelings is not much more than normal, we feel next to nothing, and since we confuse thoughts and feelings, we often believe that a thought may change how we feel.
This idea only appears to be true, because when we think we are feeling something, we are bringing up from memory a synthetic feeling like the one we thought about. We do this when we are not in touch with our true feelings.
A true feeling can only happen spontaneously in the present as a “live form.” The memory of a past feeling is not a real feeling; it is what a symbol feels like, not what “I” feel like. “I” is not a symbol. That synthetic feeling then replaces the apparent lack of feelings in our consciousness, leading us to believe that a thought can cause a feeling.
This happens only because we were not in touch with our real feelings. If we had been, a thought could not have changed a true feeling. For example, when we have a strong emotion, no amount of thinking can make it vanish, even when we would like to do it, proving that thoughts neither cause nor change real feelings.
We have learned to use our thoughts to “crowd out” our weaker feelings and occasionally replace them with “memories of feelings.” This is particularly true when we think we should feel something that is politically correct in the current situation. We do not realize that in so doing we have closed off an essential source of information about ourselves, because a synthetic feeling is far different than the presence in the now of a spontaneous feeling.
Finally, the fourth class contains spiritual feelings. In this category, we have the most subtle and revealing feelings. For example, feeling the deepest sense of existing as an independent and unique self, beyond any doubt; the sense of having a deep and independent intention and purpose; the most intimate feelings of love with the desire to know ourselves and the people we love; the sense of connection with the universe and with some transcendent “presence” vaster than we are; and so on.
The categories or layers of feelings are useful to indicate the origin of a specific feeling, but then the impact of a real feeling, particularly if it is intense, may spread to all the other layers of our being, bringing forth other feelings associated with the first. For example, anger is generally born in the “emotional layer,” but its impact quickly spreads to the physical layer with sensations of arousal and a call for action. It may then move to the thinking layer with thoughts of hitting back, for example; and finally, it may inhibit the emergence of any spiritual feelings while anger is present.
There are some feelings that have the same name, even though they originate in different layers of the self and are truly different from each other. This happens because they have something in common. The feeling of love is a case in point because it may arise as a physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual feeling, each different from the others, despite having the same name, because they all have in common a feeling of union or merging.
For the remainder of this essay, I will use quale to indicate any feeling originating in any of the four layers just described.

Science cannot explain qualia
The nature of qualia cannot be scientifically explained either as a nervous, or informational, or chemical, or physical phenomenon. This simple fact suggests that we are missing something fundamental in our understanding of nature. If consciousness were just an emergent property of a complex information processing system, as many scientists are telling us, we should have already been able to create a robot with a primitive consciousness, given the sophistication of our current information technology. The fact that we do not even know where to begin to design a robot with feelings, indicates that we are dealing with another order of reality, a reality beyond reductive machines, something beyond mechanism.
There is no evidence that electrical patterns in computer memory, or electrical signals traveling in electrical wires will produce qualia, no matter how complex they may be. In a robot, these electrical patterns may produce reasonable and appropriate automatic responses. The imitation may even be so veridical that we may believe they are conscious. Yet robots have no awareness, they simply do what they are programmed to do, or what they have learned through their artificial neural networks that have been architected by the comprehension of conscious human designers with the explicit intention to imitate human behavior.
It is only our proclivity to project consciousness onto anything that behaves like us that deceives us into believing that robots might be conscious in the future. Robots have no sensations, no feelings, no self-knowing, and no meaning because these qualities do not exist outside of consciousness. We perceive and understand only because we feel, and our consciousness is the strongest evidence that we are more than machines.
Qualia belong to a different category of phenomena than physical phenomena. For example, the pattern of voltage created in the millions of pixels of an image sensor produces no sensation of light, color, and forms in the digital camera that houses the sensor. Nonetheless, when the image data are properly processed and displayed in a screen that generates light like the one produced by real objects, we experience sensations as if the images in the screen were truly real. Instead there is only virtual reality; points of light turning on and off to simulate reality.
A machine cannot convert light or electrical signals into qualia. The production of qualia requires “something” that is not present in the computer. If the brain were truly a reductive information processing system like a computer, as many scientists believe, then consciousness couldn’t possibly arise from the brain either.
To believe that the brain, as an isolated physical system that uses the physical laws we know, can cause a conscious experience, is like believing that the picture on our TV originates from inside the TV.
It’s more likely that the brain resembles an intelligent terminal rather than a computer; a terminal that translates signals from the physical world into symbols that our individual consciousness can perceive and comprehend.
Consciousness is the “inner space” where the outer information processed by the sensory-brain system – performing a function like a computer – is converted not only into qualia, but also in the meaning that those qualia convey. The conversion from signals to qualia is called perception. The conversion from qualia to meaning is called comprehension.
This simple analogy can explain why our conscious experience depends on our brain being in good working order. If the “terminal” malfunctions or the communication channel from the brain to consciousness is blocked or impaired, consciousness will receive either corrupted or no signals.

Perception  
Perception is the capacity to have a sentient experience based on qualia. We experience the world through qualia, but qualia are neither patterns of bits in memory nor electrical signals. Where do qualia come from? And what are the physical principles that allow electromagnetic activity in the brain to be translated into qualia?
We know the physical principles that may explain the complex electromagnetic activity of the brain that is correlated with seeing a glass of wine, touching it, smelling it, and tasting the liquid. But where does the image-quale of the glass, the “sense” of holding it, the “feeling” of liquid in our mouth, the “aroma,” and the “taste” of wine come from? Physics can only explain how a machine encodes information into electrical signals to represent some variables, but not the feelings produced by such information. There is nothing in the laws of physics that can explain or predict qualia.
We also know next to nothing about how any specific object is represented within our brain. It is certainly something highly dynamic and quite different than the “picture of the object” we perceive in the screen of our consciousness. But then, where does the “screen” come from?
If we close our eyes and examine the mental space that seems to be empty when we take away all the objects of perception, we begin to recognize that it is like a field of awareness, like a computer screen, except this one is invisible, multi-dimensional and appears to be infinite because it has no edges. In this field, all types of inner and outer patterns are “projected,” not just visual information but all types of it, corresponding to inner and outer realities. And each pattern-type has its own characteristic feeling-tones or qualia.
In fact, even the outer reality is brought inside and becomes “subjective” through the unique sensing and information processing performed by the body, which is different for each person. That inner field of awareness is illuminated by all types of sensations and feelings coming from translating the electromagnetic signals produced by the sensory-brain system connected with the outer and inner senses.
The outer senses take signals from the outer world and process them to produce a picture of it, which we then project out of ourselves as if it came from there, when it is instead a representation produced within us, using an infinitesimal fraction of the information that exists in the world.
The inner senses, called proprioceptors, take signals produced by the body that, once processed by the nervous system, create a picture of the inner physical world. To them we must add the emotions, the thoughts, and the spiritual feelings whose origin is still a mystery. The seamless integration of the five classes of signals generates a unitary perception that captures the entire state of the inner and outer worlds within the consciousness of the self.
The multidimensional qualia field makes us feel like an agent between agents operating in the external world and the unique “owner” of the internal world that is private. Without qualia, we could translate the signals of the physical world into other symbols and act in the external world, but we would be unconscious, deprived of any inner world. We would be exactly like our robots: zombies, sleepwalkers, unaware that they exist.
Consciousness is indispensable for the exercise of what we consider exclusively human characteristics such as thinking, reasoning, comprehending, willing, imagining, emoting, and conscious deciding. The machinery controlling the screen – however complex and prodigious it may be – is irrelevant compared to the significance of our conscious life that we derive in “living” the information presented to us. Consciousness is what makes us live the experience and the capacity of consciousness to understand the meaning of perceptions is called comprehension.

Knowing, understanding, and comprehending
Comprehension is an even more extraordinary property of consciousness than qualia-perception. Before going into the description, however, I would like to define the concepts represented by the words knowing, understanding and comprehending with more precise meanings than the ones they have in their common usage. We often use the word knowing as a synonym for understanding or comprehending. Other times, knowing only means having information, data.
However, there is a fundamental difference between knowing certain facts and understanding them. Understanding requires “getting” how the facts or elements of that knowledge are linked together in order to have the deepest possible meaning. Understanding, however, occurs within an interpretative context that is provided by the global understanding of the self, which I call comprehension.
Each new understanding enriches the comprehension, thus creating an ever-growing context of our new understandings. Without understanding and comprehension, there would be no evolution and growth of the self. Understanding is therefore the ability to know the meaning of qualia in the context of the comprehension of the self.
It is also essential to realize that given a body of knowledge, there are many levels of understanding possible, often organized in a hierarchy. At the first level one understands just the bare facts, the “atomic” units of that body of knowledge. The next level requires finding meaningful relationships among those atomic units. Using the metaphor of chemistry, the next level of understanding is like discovering the “molecules” into which those “atoms of meaning” can be organized to give us a richer meaning. The following level involves discovering an even deeper level of relationships among those molecules. And this process can continue to ever-deeper levels, depending on the characteristics of the body of knowledge the self is considering.
Every time one achieves a new level of understanding, that “discovery” is accompanied by a “Aha!”. “Aha!” captures the joy of discovery in an instant of delight in “getting it.” The excitement is proportional to the degree of surprise inherent in the revelation of a hidden level of meaning previously unknown. “Aha!” expresses the achievement of a new “quantum of understanding” that unpredictably emerges. And here I use the words emerges and quantum quite intentionally because the understanding appears in its own terms, unannounced, coming from our unconscious in response to our desire to understand. But desire is not enough.
Desire only acts like a field of force, like a “prayer” that invites the object of our desire to manifest itself. Yet, desire alone cannot make understanding appear. It simply invites the inherent “capacity to comprehend” of our consciousness to deliver the desired outcome. And when finally understanding emerges, it occurs in a discrete, all-or-nothing unit; a “quantum of understanding” together with a quantum of self-fulfillment (joy).

The consciousness units
In the essay entitled “The nature of consciousness,” I introduced the concept of consciousness units (CUs), the fundamental “components” of all that exists: space, time and the quantum fields of the fundamental particles.
In this framework, space and quantum fields are composed of various organizations of CUs, and therefore a quantum field is also a conscious self, a part-whole formed by those organizations of CUs that make up space plus some other CU organization which is not part of space. The space common to all quantum fields that seems to us to be “empty,” appears so to us only because organizations made of these fields can perceive or measure only what “sticks out” from the common background. In other words, the “visible” properties are only those that define the identities of the quantum fields, i.e., the “part” aspect of each part-whole.
The quantum fields, communicating with each other and with space, produce measurable traces on physical instruments – for example, on particle detectors. These traces are structures consisting of the identifiable parts of the fields that appear to us as “particles created and destroyed in space-time”.

The fundamental nature of reality
            If space and the quantum fields are made of conscious entities with free will, it means that the quantum vacuum from which our universe of matter, energy, space, and time emerged must also be an organization of conscious entities. I advanced this conjecture about ten years ago, and the more I reflected on it, the more it appeared to possess an explanatory and unifying power. If it can be shown to be true, everything that exists must be intrinsically conscious.
            From this hypothesis, it follows that “objective” and “subjective” must be two intertwined and inseparable aspects of an indivisible whole from the beginning. In other words, the nature of reality intrinsically has an inner and an outer aspect that are irreducible, co-emerging, and co-evolving. In this model, the inner aspect is the semantic reality of each self; the outer aspect is the informational or symbolic reality that gives rise to all the physical worlds. The evolution of the physical universe must therefore reflect in some way the semantic evolution of the selves, and vice versa – one reflects and supports the other.
In this picture, the physical universe represents only the symbolic manifestation of the semantic inner reality that is what connects everything from the inside but is invisible from the outside. The inner reality can only be perceived by each self within itself. Consciousness, then, is another name for the capacity of One – the totality of what exists – to know itself and come into being in the same act of knowing itself.

What happens to consciousness when the body dies?
When materialists claim that consciousness ceases to exist when the body dies, this assertion makes sense only if one believes (without proof) that consciousness needs a body to exist. But if consciousness is an “inner” property of each part-whole accessible only to each self from its “inside,” it can never be proven to exist with an outer observation. The state of that consciousness will always remain a private, not shareable inner property, which can only be known if it is symbolically communicated by the self through its outer symbolic aspect.
In the model I propose, the ego is that part of us that is identified with the body, when it is instead a small portion of the vaster self (the true self) that created the body and maintains it as a coherent organization. The ego is therefore only an indivisible part of the true self that remains unknown when the ego only pays attention to the signals produced by the physical body.
When the true self decides to end physical life, the physical correlates of consciousness can no longer be observed, not because death is the end of our consciousness, but because a dead body can no longer communicate with the ego’s consciousness. We are much more not only of our body, but also of our ego.

The nature of the self
In the essay entitled “What is consciousness?”, I defined consciousness as the capacity of a self to perceive, know and experience itself and the world. Consciousness, therefore, is a property of a self. In addition, a self has also the capacity to act with free will and with a unique identity. Action, free will, and identity express the agency of the self, while the consciousness of the self does express its ability to perceive, understand and comprehend.
Self, agency and consciousness are inseparable and co-emerging aspects of any conscious entity, be it a CU or a combination of CUs.
Identity is what allows a self to be recognized as such by all other selves when they perceive its external reality. It is also what allows the self to identify itself and know itself within itself.
Identity makes it possible to discriminate self from not-self. It also provides the sense-of-self, that is, a unified perspective of being an autonomous, independent agent with free will, i.e., with the ability to decide an action based on its comprehension and consistent with its intention and purpose.
Free will is inextricably connected with the identity of the self and makes the behavior unpredictable. This means that a self cannot predict the behavior of another self, although it may be possible to predict its probable behavior.
The probability appears only when one “looks from the outside.” That is, when one tries to foresee the decision that will be taken freely by someone else. Seen from “within the self,” the probability does not exist because the self simply makes a free choice based on its comprehension, intention, and purpose.
The intention and purpose are integral parts of the free will because it is impossible to separate them from it. As a metaphor, free will could be considered as a vector, in which the intention represents its length and the purpose represents its direction.
Since free will is an irreducible aspect of every self, complete determinism cannot exist. Predictability can only be the result of voluntary agreements between the selves. In other words, when a self does behave predictably, it is only because it has agreed with others to behave in that way.

Agency and action
Agency is the capacity of the self to decide and act as a unit, as an integrated whole. That’s why the notion of self as a single and free agent is so fundamental.
Freedom is the idea that every self can do whatever it wants instead of being forced by another agent to go against its will. Nevertheless, freedom does not imply capricious behavior because all selves share the same desire to know themselves and to know the other selves as themselves.
Finally, while action in the world of classical physics is the ability to directly influence external reality, for example by hitting or raising an object, in the “space” of selves there are no bodies with which to bump against other bodies coercively. Coercion is impossible because there is free will and the body doesn’t exist. Therefore, action is reduced to influencing another self to cooperate voluntarily in the desired direction.
Action is therefore reduced to a communication.
But how is it possible to communicate without a body? To do so, a self must be able to voluntarily create “signs” on the outer aspect of its field, that can be perceived and understood by other selves. The action thus becomes the capacity of a self to create symbols on its external reality to represent the meanings it wants to communicate.
The creation of communication symbols marks the beginning of the creation of languages ​​with syntactic rules that require voluntary agreements between the community of selves that uses a particular language. This also leads to the creation of an external public reality.

The nature of physical laws
In this framework, the fundamental physical laws that we observe in our universe can be interpreted as the manifestation of the syntactical rules of the languages ​​used by the quantum fields to communicate with each other. The symbols used in these communications are what we perceive as elementary particles appearing and disappearing in our space-time.
The probabilistic nature of the laws of quantum physics is necessary because the communicating quantum fields are conscious entities with free will. The existence of deterministic laws that prescribe the interaction of these probabilities corresponds to the existence of syntactical rules that symbols must obey in order to communicate – a necessary characteristic in any language. Physical laws, therefore, could be the manifestation of the agreements among conscious fields to be able to reliably communicate with each other
What is free is the meaning that is communicated, not the syntactical rules of the symbols that are used to represent the meaning. This is also true in our case: for example, the book that one of us will write in five years, whose subject has not yet been decided, will necessarily have to obey the probabilistic laws of the symbols of the language in which it will be written.
Therefore, the physical laws constrain only the way in which material symbols must be composed to express the meaning of the selves. In other words, meaning is fundamental, not the symbols. We are completely free to express the meaning we wish, by using the syntactical laws of the symbols that are the physical laws of the universe in which our body exists. If instead we believe that symbols are fundamental, then the true meaning of life and existence are lost.
It is essential to understand that communications among the selves are truly indispensable for deepening the self-knowing and the comprehension of the inner world of each self. Going deeper into this topic, however, would take us far beyond the scope of this introductory essay.

One silver lining of the COVID-19 crisis has been to show businesses how to manage better and achieve greater speed, quality, and cost control. A wartime mindset—decisive crisis management, scenario planning, and a human reflex attuned to the shocks affecting employees—has been the hallmark of leaders so far. Now, as the world feels its way toward recovery and new opportunities, another risk looms. It is that inertia will set in, along with a longing for a return to the operating style of pre-crisis days.  
How can leaders avoid the impulse to abandon their progress in shaping a more productive and competitive company profile? The answer is a renewed focus on people and their capabilities. Over the past five months we have seen the edge gained by organizations and leaders with adaptable management and strong capabilities. Only by advancing new cadres of leaders, building a middle bench with skills to cut across silos, and treating technological acumen like a profit center will companies be able to work to further the broader transformation that has begun. The return on this people investment has never been higher. 
We see three imperatives as critical for managing people and building capabilities to thrive in the post-pandemic period.

Put in tomorrow’s team today 
As in many disruptions, leaders are finding that talent is stepping up in unexpected ways. Even before COVID-19, one European car and truck maker assessed its biggest value creators and found that two-thirds of its 50 most important value contributors were from one to three levels below the C-suite. Today some young middle managers are defying the problems and frustrations of this difficult period to demonstrate calm, champion diverse talent, and achieve far more than peer leaders do. Leaders have to celebrate and reward these rising stars.   

Identify and elevate the business skills that matter most 
Leaders and boards must identify the core capabilities to build a culture of adaptability to anticipate the next shock or black-swan event. To be clear, this is a prioritization of the handful of an organization’s most tangible and critical business skills and a commitment to driving them deep into the organization. The capabilities showing up now on our radar screen include these: 

• Managing in a transformational way. Modern management is about safe and incremental change. But by adopting a transformational mindset, companies accomplish so much more than they think they can. Rather than aiming for a 5% improvement, shoot for 20% to unlock energy and performance gains. Today, areas like digitizing customer engagement and launching new products attuned to a changing world are ripe for a transformational push. 
• Navigating and leading in a network of teams. The modern company is much more complex than it was 20 years ago. The need is greater to do away with rigid hierarchies and operate with agile, empowered teams able to get closer to customers. Executives able to navigate these will do better, but very few have been trained in these skills.
• Supply chains. Sure, we know that it’s a perennial niche topic. But COVID-19, the possibility that the pandemic will have a long tail, changing views of China, and the importance of resilience in weathering crisis have moved supply chains from the back office to constant discussion in the front office. 

Treat technological acumen as you treat profit targets
As companies have vaulted ahead in adopting and applying digital technologies, the metabolic rate of technological transformation has sped up. Those who master this massive experiment will gain a baseline technological advantage in applying the cloud, analytics, and data-management technologies, to name a few. Leaders should drive technological acumen into all executives and measure their proficiency and improvement in the same way they measure profit targets. This is akin to how some leading companies used lean process improvements in the 1980s and 1990s to encourage new management discipline in their organizations. 
As executives feel their way out of the COVID-19 crisis, here’s one question that should be top of mind: What should be retained from this period of pandemic shock, uncertainty, and dramatic change in the ways businesses have reacted to crisis? We are convinced the answer is that those companies that invest in capabilities to empower leadership, teams, and technology will be well positioned to thrive in the post-pandemic era.

                In the contemporaneity the cultural proposal on web it’s becoming more and more wide, between blogs dedicated to the arts, online magazines, galleries and artists profiles. The world of culture adopt the use of internet platforms and new technologies with the intent to enlarge the audience of users and the visibility of cultural products. This increased visibility and the immediacy of “on air” with one click, on the one hand enriches the perceived cultural heritage, on the other, however, requires a more serious aesthetic and qualitative reflection, even more so because ubiquity has eliminated filters and evaluation becomes an intuitive personal act.
                Artistsplay.live is born like cultural promotion project, intent on reflecting through interviews and other little online events the pulsations of an culture in continuous changes and never like now needy to fix reference points, with the purpose to be able to rebuild in future an himself evolutionary story.
                Artistsplay.live would like to educate to arts, to unveil why culture, understood as multiple series of creative acts and the products generated by them, is important for un harmonic development of human being, focusing on the idea of Culture like primary need and inalienable human right.
                Artistplay.live propose a Platform that will be able to collect interviews to various exponents of contemporary cultural world, personalities and emergent artist, architects, writers, designers, musicians, actors, craftsman, who will not do other then speak about their own art and the past, present and possible future of the local and global cultural environment, analyzing together and from their own point of view the development, the changes and the new expressive forms.
Generals data of project
                In a relaxing space, like little studio, with a big stained glass window, towards the street/square, equipped to shoot to the best and artistically the dialog interviewer/interviewed, we will talk about arts and culture and the expressed personals points of views will become testimonials for a future online archive that will be able to be consulted from who will study for passion or work the contemporary cultural history.
                Interviewer and interviewed, seated next to the window, do the interview. A QR code , exposed on the stained glass, allows the direct participation of the passers-by, by scanning the code with their own smartphone, using a simple scanning app, mentioned under the exposed code. The interaction with the public it becomes immediately, more versatile, innovative, and with double track, because through the online comments they can be part of the dialog and they can change even the path of the interview with their comments and questions.
                Depending of various cases, the interviewer can be a cultural personality, or in any case a well-known culture producer and he will dialogue with a young emerging artist, exchanging a profitable information baggage, knowledge and personal synthesis regarding art and the world that this one is generating around itself. The interviews will be collected in the Archive section on the Artistsplay.live platform and will be the depart point for a sociological study of contemporary art and culture. The material so collected will be further elaborated and published on paper, once a year, proposing itself like an possible panoramic of new thoughts and expressive realities who permeate creative acts in the present.
                The platform propose at the same time short online events, literary readings aloud, short concerts, profile of selected artists, promotional video of various events all around the world, and an entirely session dedicated to the legislation regarding art and local, European and world’s cultural heritage, same as royalties, copyright and more, essential information for those who would like to undertake an artistic or promotional carrier, or simply wish to be informed about the many legal aspects that are in force in the contemporary cultural environments.
                The Artistsplay.live internet domain has been already registered and will be soon published an attachment with all the technical details and the various items which constitute the economic price quotation and the feasibility, keeping in mind the necessary instruments, like shooting equipment, registration, furniture and studio’s design, lights, studio’s rent for one year, and any other necessary resources for a better audio-visual experience.