Metro on Thursday said it will significantly boost train frequencies next month during peak hours as it recovers from low ridership during the pandemic and a rail car shortage that began in fall 2021.
A trio of anthropologists from Touro University, the University of Arkansas and Stony Brook University analyzed current methods available to scientists looking to identify the food that a particular early hominin had eaten shortly before dying. In their Perspective piece published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Mark Teaford, Peter Ungar and Frederick Grine outline what they found and how they see such research impacting the study of early hominin development moving forward.
When studying a recovered fossil, the traditional means for attempting to determine what a given hominin ate is to focus on the teeth, if present. By noting their condition, coloration and how they were worn down from chewing, scientists can infer what the individual might have eaten. But identifying the exact food has remained difficult—at least until recently. New tools now allow researchers to study the calculus that forms on teeth.
Calculus on the teeth forms due to calcification of bacteria in the plaque that adheres to teeth. Study of calculus can reveal food particles, which can be analyzed to isolate the plant or animal eaten by a given individual. In this new effort, the researchers outline recent work by other teams using calculus found on early hominins to determine their diet.
One such study they highlight involved studying the type and features of scratches in the calculus, noting that such work is generally subject to the "last supper effect," whereby evidence is representative of only the last few days of a subject's life. Another study involved comparing isotopes found in the calculus, allowing for broadly determining which class of plants a given individual had been eating over a period of time prior to death.
Teaford, Ungar and Grine conclude their review by noting that as technology improves, techniques used by paleoanthropologists will evolve, allowing for a more clear picture of the environment in which early hominins lived—and that may help clear up their evolutionary history.
More information: Mark F. Teaford et al, Changing perspectives on early hominin diets, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2201421120
© 2023 Science X Network
Citation: Anthropologists outline techniques for identifying food eaten by early hominins (2023, February 7) retrieved 19 February 2023 from https://phys.org/news/2023-02-anthropologists-outline-techniques-food-eaten.html
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Ukraine's Ministry of Defense on Friday outlined three priorities for its meeting with allied ministers in Ramstein, Germany regarding the war with Russia.
United States Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark A. Milley, as well as military chiefs and defense ministers from 50 other countries, met with the Ukrainian Defense Contact Group on Friday at Ramstein Air Base. The leaders will discuss Russia's war in Ukraine, and how Kyiv can defend itself against its neighbor. It was the eighth such meeting at the German base between Ukrainian and other defense officials.
In a tweet on Friday morning ahead of the talks, Ukraine's defense ministry tweeted: "There are three priorities of Ukraine at #Ramstein 8: More air defence systems; Weapons for the offensive operations (tanks, howitzers, ammo); Systematic ammo supplies +service&repair for armament and machinery."
Kyiv has made repeated calls for Western allies to provide heavy artillery to use against Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also addressed the defense leaders via video call on Friday, making an impassioned plea for more military aid, including battle tanks.
"The war started by Russia does not allow delays and I can thank you hundreds of times for all that you have already done, but, hundreds of thank yous are not hundreds of tanks," Zelensky said.
"I am truly grateful to all of you for all the weapons you have provided. Every unit helps to save our people from terror but time, time remains a Russian weapon. You and I have to speed up. We have to do it."
Last week, the United Kingdom said it would provide a small number of Challenger 2 tanks to help deter Russia's invasion, making Britain the first Western power to supply the Ukrainians with main battle tanks. Germany has deferred a decision on sending armed tanks to support Ukraine's war efforts, despite increasing pressure from Kyiv and other Western allies. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said his ministry would check stocks of the Leopard 2 tank for possible delivery.
"There are good reasons for the delivery, there are good reasons against it," Pistorius said.
Last week, Poland said it would send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine and Finland also indicated that it was prepared to supply Kyiv with the tanks.
This chart, provided by Statista, shows the number of Leopard 2 battle tanks exported from Germany between 2002 and 2021.
Austin said in opening remarks before the talks that Russian President Vladimir Putin did not count on the "courage" of the Ukrainian people when he launched the unprovoked attack on the country last February.
He said that the West would continue to support Ukraine's military "for as long as it takes." Austin added that there will not be a monthly meeting of "nations of goodwill" to focus on "winning today's fight and the struggles to come".
At the start of the conflict, which began on February 24, 2022, Putin believed he would take the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in just a matter of days, but the Russian Army was met with tough opposition. Russia has captured parts of southern and eastern Ukraine, but Kyiv has since won back some of those areas in counteroffensives.
Newsweek reached out to the Pentagon for comment.
A former U.S. military official has outlined a road map for Ukraine to pursue efforts to "lease out" a mercenary air force from the U.S. government as the country struggles to maintain air superiority in its war with Russia.
Writing for the Kyiv Post this week, Jeffrey Fischer, a former U.S. Air Force colonel and onetime defense official at the U.S. Embassy in Kosovo, suggested the Ukrainian Defense Ministry consider taking advantage of recent Pentagon initiatives to shore up its supply of aircraft against Russia's poorly trained but well-equipped aerial offensive.
In particular, Fischer suggested Kyiv could take advantage of a 2019 Defense Department program to outsource its aggressor air training squadrons to a handful of private companies that not only provide training for pilots but own the aircraft that would likely be deployed in combat.
While this is unprecedented, Fischer suggested that the pipeline could be used to lease out U.S.-owned aircraft to Ukraine's defense forces, all while solving the learning curve that would likely come with training those forces on technologically advanced equipment.
Not only would "leasing out" the equipment eliminate the need to "find" jets, he wrote, but the private companies involved would likely provide their own, well-qualified aircrew at a manageable cost.
All it would take is for the U.S. government to sign on the dotted line, which could be a realistic option at this point in the war, Fischer said.
Some on Capitol Hill have already broached the concept behind closed doors, he wrote. And while there are occasions in which the U.S. government denies equipment transfer requests from industry giants like Boeing and Lockheed Martin because of various concerns—diplomatic or logistical—he believes a similar proposal to "lease out" an air force is "likely to be an attractive option to many in D.C."
"The concept allows for a rapid, well-trained and cost-effective air force to confront Russia in the skies over Ukraine," Fischer wrote. "More importantly, it provides a 'degree of separation' from direct U.S. military involvement and is steps shorter than the U.S. entering the war."
Both facets of the discussion are worth exploring. The United States has been wary of escalating its involvement in the conflict, relying on transfers of cash and military supplies—amid a souring environment in the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives—to support the Ukrainian forces. A lease option is likely to save the U.S. government some money while allowing the U.S. to maintain the appearance of helping Ukraine in its defensive war.
The argument that the supply of planes would be for defensive purposes is there as well. For all its success on the ground, the Ukrainian military has so far been unable to enforce the integrity of its own airspace, heavily relying on low-flying aircraft and surface-to-air missile systems to police the skies over Ukraine and continue resisting what British intelligence has suggested is a poorly trained force on the Russian side, which has been unable to recuperate mounting losses in the field.
However, Ukraine, while it does have pilots, lacks the technology necessary to overcome even the relatively inferior aerial assault mounted by the Russians. That lack of airpower has resulted in what the Royal United Services Institute, an English think tank, described in November as serious casualties on the Ukrainian side primarily due to "being totally technologically outmatched and badly outnumbered."
The need for additional airpower, the institute suggested, was critical to helping defend Ukrainian airspace and, potentially, to shorten the duration of the war.
"The West must avoid complacency about the need to urgently bolster Ukrainian air-defence capacity," the institute wrote. "It is purely thanks to its failure to destroy Ukraine's mobile [surface-to-air missile] systems that Russia remains unable to effectively employ the potentially heavy and efficient aerial firepower of its fixed-wing bomber and multi-role fighter fleets to bombard Ukrainian strategic targets and frontline positions from medium altitude, as it did in Syria."
The institute went on: "The Ukrainian Air Force fighter force needs modern Western fighters and missiles to sustainably counter the [Russian air force]. Russian pilots have been cautious throughout the war, so even a small number of Western fighters could have a major deterrent effect."
Newsweek has contacted the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense for comment.
Wastewater surveillance provided valuable public health information during the Covid-19 pandemic and merits “further development and continued investment,” according to a new report released by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine on Thursday.
Although the pandemic spurred the rapid expansion of wastewater surveillance, the current system sprung up in an ad hoc way, fueled by volunteerism and emergency pandemic-related funding, according to the report. It is also concentrated in major metropolitan areas, leaving many communities behind.
“The current system is not fully equitable,” Dr. Guy Palmer, a professor of pathology and infectious diseases at Washington State University and chair of the committee that wrote the report, said at a webinar on Thursday.
The challenge now, he said, was to move from this kind of grass roots system to a more standardized, “representative” national system.
The report was created by a committee of experts appointed by the National Academies at the request of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The report outlined what such a system might look like, noting that it should be able to track a variety of potential threats, which could include future coronavirus variants, flu viruses, antibiotic resistant bacteria and entirely new pathogens.
Some wastewater surveillance sites have already begun tracking additional pathogens, including the mpox virus and poliovirus, but a national system would require sustained federal funding and would need to be implemented equitably across regions and demographic groups, the report notes.
Ideally, the system would combine data collected from communities across the nation with monitoring of sewage at certain “sentinel sites,” such as large international airports and zoos, where new pathogens or variants might be spotted early.
People who are infected with the coronavirus shed the virus in their stool. Tracking levels of the virus in sewage provides health officials with a way to keep tabs on how prevalent the virus is in a community, even if people never seek testing or health care. It has become an especially valuable tool as coronavirus testing has shifted to the home, making official case counts less reliable.
Wastewater surveillance is not a novel idea; it has been used for decades to track polio, for instance. But it was not a widely used public health tool in the United States until the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Over the last few years, many localities and institutions created their own wastewater surveillance systems.
In the fall of 2020, the C.D.C., in partnership with the D.H.H.S., established the National Wastewater Surveillance System to coordinate and centralize some of these efforts.
As of October, the N.W.S.S. included more than 1,250 sampling sites across the country, covering more than one-third of the U.S. population. But those sites were primarily near major cities — and they were especially sparse in parts of the South and West.
Still, these systems paid real dividends during the pandemic, according to the report. Wastewater data helped local health officials determine whether infection rates were rising or falling in a particular community. In some instances, especially when testing was limited, wastewater proved to be a useful early indicator of a surge, with levels of the virus in wastewater beginning to rise days before the official case numbers did.
Wastewater surveillance also helped experts track the arrival and spread of new coronavirus variants. In the Bay Area, for instance, scientists found the Omicron variant in local wastewater before clinicians detected Omicron infections in patients.
The data informed policy decisions as well. Universities used wastewater results to strategically test certain student populations, while state health officials used them to determine where to send more resources. Clinicians used data about the spread of new variants to decide when to use or to stop using certain monoclonal antibodies, some of which were only effective against certain versions of the virus.
The report lays out recommendations for developing a more comprehensive national system. For example, it advises the C.D.C. to conduct outreach to public health officials in areas that are currently underserved by wastewater surveillance and to help reduce the financial barriers of joining the national system, perhaps by providing funding. The agency should also educate the public about how the information is used and establish an ethics committee to develop guidelines about data sharing and access, according to the report.
“It needs to be very clear on how that data is shared,” Dr. Palmer said, “to clearly communicate how the data are used and not used with the public and to maintain a strong firewall that precludes use by law enforcement.”
Wastewater surveillance is not a panacea and may be most useful when combined with other kinds of public health data, the committee said. Moreover, there are still a number of scientific unknowns, including whether some pathogens can be reliably detected in wastewater and how changing population immunity, through vaccination or infection, might affect the patterns in the wastewater.
And not all public officials are interested in making use of the data, sometimes for political reasons, the committee noted. “There are some pretty entrenched positions at this point about pandemic response that may be difficult to overcome,” Michelle Mello, a professor of law and of health policy at Stanford University, said at the webinar on Thursday.
She added, “There’s more political will in some places than others.”
The announcement is the latest sign that Metro is hoping to leave three years of crises behind it while concentrating on rebuilding its customer base, finding money to replace fares lost to telework and creating service plans to meet new pandemic-era demands.
Metro’s decision to increase service during the middle part of the workweek came after transit officials saw the greatest ridership demand on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Those days have become the most popular for workers headed to offices under flexible work arrangements that many companies and agencies have adopted as employees split time between workplaces and home. It also mirrors the busiest commuting days for drivers headed downtown.
“I hope that customers will see that these are tangible and real increases that will make their lives better,” Metro General Manager Randy Clarke said. “But I want to also really commit: The job is not done. We are 100 percent committed to get back to full budgeted service and run this network the way it was designed.”
The change also marks the latest evolution in Metro’s service plans after the safety commission suspended the agency’s 7000-series fleet in October 2021. A federal investigation into a derailment found a defect in several of the model’s cars that causes wheels to widen apart, creating instability.
The series, Metro’s most advanced cars, makes up about 60 percent of the transit agency’s fleet. Their absence created a train shortage that pushed average wait times on some lines to 20 minutes, though delays have shortened as Metro pulled older cars from storage.
Metro officials said Thursday that shorter waits will begin Feb. 7 on the Blue and Orange lines, with average wait times falling from 15 minutes to 12 minutes during the hours of 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday. On Feb. 21, average waits on the Red Line will drop from 10 minutes to eight minutes all day until 9 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday. The Green Line’s eight-minute average and the Silver Line’s 15-minute average will not change.
Stations served by multiple lines will see more frequent trains. Metro did not announce service levels for the Yellow Line, which remains shut down until May during a bridge and tunnel reconstruction project.
Clarke said future wait time decreases will be announced as more trains are returned to service.
“We look forward to coming back to the board and communicating additional frequency changes as well,” he said. “We said from the start: Crawl, walk, run.”
Clarke said the changes also will include servicing the Orange Line solely with eight-car trains, rather than a mix of those with six and eight cars. The number of eight-car trains will increase systemwide, he said, which is expected to reduce crowding during afternoon peak hours.
The service changes came after a dispute in recent days between Metro and the safety commission over the interval of wheel inspections for 7000-series trains being restored to service. The commission said Friday it would allow Metro to reduce the time-consuming inspections from every four days to seven days, which paved the way for Metro to ramp up service.
As service increases, friction between Metro and its regulator is not ebbing. Two days after safety commissioners called into question Metro’s commitment to building a “safety culture,” Clarke — a former chief safety officer for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority — struck back during a Thursday meeting of Metro’s board to defend his employees. He said the term “safety culture” is “used a lot by some people that don’t have a lot of expertise on safety.”
“We have, and I would argue, a really strong commitment to safety,” he said. “This is a safe organization. So when someone says we don’t have a safety culture, we need to be really honest and say that is not accurate.”
In providing an update on another recent safety-related concern, transit leaders noted progress on training and certification programs, which have been cited in recent months for multiple problems by the safety commission and Metro’s own safety department.
In May, a training lapse prompted Metro to pull nearly half of its train operators from service for recertification training and testing, causing longer train waits.
Then earlier this month, the safety commission found Metro was training track workers using outdated safety standards the transit agency had updated in November. Investigators also cited Metro for reducing the number of hours some trainees spent operating with an instructor. Metro has disputed that trainees are any less prepared, saying such workers spend the same number of hours training under supervision.
The transit agency has told safety commission investigators that Metro simply overlooked recording the training change in its written policies. But Thursday, Clarke said Metro would scrap the change because the safety commission’s assertion raised an unfair public perception that it had cut corners.
Metro leaders told board members that 510 out of 514 train operators were up to date on training and accreditations, while the remaining four wouldn’t operate trains until they were certified. On the Metrobus system, 29 of the agency’s 2,507 drivers lacked updated certifications and also are not allowed to drive buses. All rail supervisors and other workers who require certifications were up to date.
Board members also voted unanimously to move a spending plan for the fiscal year that begins in July to public hearings during the second week of March. The board will vote to finalize a budget in April.
More than half of the proposed $2.3 billion budget is funded by subsidies from the District, Maryland and Northern Virginia jurisdictions. The transit agency is also being aided by its remaining $561 million in federal coronavirus relief, which has kept the agency afloat during the pandemic.
The budget also includes federal infrastructure money that Metro plans to shift for one year from its capital budget to its operating budget to help fill a roughly $180 million gap, rather than reduce service.
The pressure to make up for lost fares will increase in subsequent years. Metro’s budget gap is expected to surpass $500 million in the 2025 fiscal year and increase in subsequent years. Board members have called on elected leaders to help the agency come up with another permanent source of funding.
The proposed budget includes a complex Metrorail fare increase that primarily targets suburban commuters and others who ride long distances.
Transit officials have said fares, on average, would rise by a modest 5 percent. But for those who travel the farthest, the increase could add more than $2.50 to a ride, depending on the time of day. Part of the proposal includes half-price fares for low-income riders.
Metro board member Michael Goldman called the increase on long-distance riders “pernicious” and said he hoped the public would weigh in at hearings.
“Let’s hear from the public and then go get the board to fix these inequities and excessive fare increases in the [general manager’s] proposed budget before we finalize the budget,” Goldman said.
Rides during weeknights after 9:30 p.m. and on weekends would remain a flat $2 under the proposal, while Metrobus fares wouldn’t change.
345 Park Ave.
On the heels of Blackstone’s Wednesday announcement that the University of California system would invest an additional $500M in Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust on top of the $4B it committed to earlier this month, Blackstone pulled back the curtain on its plans for the coming year.
Life sciences, real estate debt and green energy funds are expected to lead Blackstone’s capital raising efforts in 2023, executives shared on a fourth-quarter earnings call.
“We had a $150B target that we've been talking about now for more than a year,” Blackstone President and Chief Operating Officer Jon Gray said on the call. The company has raised about $100B so far.
Blackstone is considering a fifth debt fund, “which will be a meaningful chunk” of that $50B gap, Gray said. The firm also plans to raise both credit and equity for green energy and launch the next “vintage” of its life sciences business.
The call also provided a snapshot of what kind of real estate Blackstone had its money in as 2022 came to a close.
Concerned about rising interest rates and inflation, it concentrated more than 80% of its real estate portfolio in logistics, life sciences offices, rental housing, hotels and data centers — sectors with strong cash flow growth. Forty percent of its real estate portfolio is logistics. The rise of logistics has come alongside a significant pullback from office.
“We've written down the equity value of traditional U.S. office assets dramatically since 2018,” Gray said. “And fortunately, such assets represent only 2% of our global real estate portfolio versus approximately 50% 15 years ago.”
Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman defended BREIT's performance throughout the call, referring to media coverage of the fact that redemption requests reached a level that triggered a cap on withdrawals.
“I've been in finance for over 50 years and I'm frankly quite surprised by the intense external focus on the flows for BREIT at a time of cyclical lows in stock and bond markets,” Schwarzman said.
“For those of us that build and create businesses, what's going on is highly predictable. It should be expected that flows from high net worth individuals would decline to nearly all types of new investments in this environment,” he said.
Executives said they did think, from an investor perspective, the massive investment from the UC system “was really important in terms of psychological confidence,” Gray said, but that only time would tell whether the $4.5B commitment would calm investor requests to take out their money.
CORRECTION, JAN. 27, 1:30 P.M. PT: A previous version of this story inaccurately connected Blackstone's nontraded REIT and the firm's fifth debt fund. The story has been updated.
Americans may be offered a single dose of a Covid vaccine each fall, much as they are given flu shots, the Food and Drug Administration announced on Monday.
To simplify the makeup and timing of the shots, the agency also is proposing to retire the original vaccines and to offer only bivalent doses for primary and booster shots, according to briefing documents published on Monday.
The proposal took some scientists by surprise, including a few of the F.D.A.’s own advisers. They are scheduled to meet on Thursday to discuss the country’s vaccine strategy, including which doses should be offered and on what schedule.
“I’m choosing to believe that they are open to advice, and that they haven’t already made up their minds as to exactly what they’re going to do,” Dr. Paul Offit, one of the advisers and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said of F.D.A. officials.
There was little research to support the suggested plan, some advisers said.
“I’d like to see some data on the effect of dosing interval, at least observational data,” said Dr. Eric Rubin, one of the advisers and editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. “And going forward, I’d like to see data collected to try to tell if we’re doing the right thing.”
Still, Dr. Rubin added, “I’d definitely be in favor of something simpler, as it would make it more likely that people might take it.”
Only about 40 percent of adults aged 65 and older, and only 16 percent of those 5 and older, have received the latest Covid booster shot. Many experts, including federal officials, have said that the doses are most important for Americans at high risk of severe disease and death from Covid: older adults, immunocompromised people, pregnant women and those with multiple underlying conditions.
In its briefing documents, the F.D.A. addressed the varying risks to people of different ages and health status.
“Most individuals may only need to receive one dose of an approved or authorized Covid-19 vaccine to restore protective immunity for a period of time,” the agency said. Very young children who may not already have been infected with the virus, as well as older adults and immunocompromised people, may need two shots, the documents said.
But some scientists said there was little to suggest that Americans at low risk needed even a single annual shot. The original vaccines continue to protect young and healthy people from severe disease, and the benefit of annual boosters is unclear.
Most people are “well protected against severe Covid disease with a primary series and without yearly boosters,” said Dr. Céline Gounder, an infectious disease physician and senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The F.D.A. advisers said they would like to see detailed information regarding who is most vulnerable to the virus and to make decisions about future vaccination strategy based on those data.
“How old are they? What are their comorbidities? When was the last dose of vaccine they got? Did they take antiviral medicines?” Dr. Offit said. At the moment, the national strategy seems to be, “‘OK, well, let’s just dose everybody all the time,’” he said. “And that’s just not a good reason.”
According to the F.D.A.’s suggested plan, officials would choose the annual vaccine’s composition each June, targeted to fight whatever variant is circulating.
But this year, the booster was quickly outpaced by newly evolved variants. It might make more sense to develop vaccines that target parts of the coronavirus other than the so-called spike protein, which changes less frequently, some researchers said.
They also criticized the agency’s proposal to use the current “bivalent” vaccine, which was designed to counter both the original Wuhan variant and the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron variants that were circulating last summer, when the agency decided on the makeup of the booster doses.
Some studies have suggested that combining both variants in the booster dose has undermined their effectiveness. Because of a biological phenomenon called imprinting, preliminary research suggests the bivalent vaccine elicits a stronger immune response to the ancestral variant than to the newer variants.
A monovalent vaccine targeted only to the newer variants might have been more powerful, experts said.
“This makes no sense, based on what we’ve learned from the current bivalent vaccine and imprinting,” Dr. Gounder said of the F.D.A.’s proposal. “Why not switch to a monovalent Omicron vaccine?”
The F.D.A. advisers said they hoped the meeting on Thursday would allow for robust discussion of those questions. But others were more skeptical.
The voting questions “are framed in such a way as to force a certain outcome,” Dr. Gounder said.
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - January 27, 2023) - Galleon Gold Corp. (TSXV: GGO) (the "Company") is pleased to outline its plans for 2023 as the Company develops its flagship West Cache Gold Project in the prolific Timmins Gold Belt in Timmins, Ontario.
Comment from CEO
David Russell, President and CEO of Galleon Gold commented, "We enter 2023 with an ambitious agenda; our permit application work is in full swing and we are well into the detailed engineering of the portal and decline for the underground bulk sample. This progression to the test mining stage is an important step for West Cache as we continue to de-risk the project. Not only should the gold produced from the bulk sample cover the development costs; but the data collected from the stope development, milling and gold recoveries will support pre-feasibility work."
Looking Into 2023
The Company anticipates 2023 to be a watershed year as it transitions from exploration and resource development to test mining and pre-development.
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The geotechnical overburden drill program is close to completion and information from this program, along with third-party detailed engineering work, will be included in the permit application.
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The updated mine plan for the bulk sample details Single Panel Transverse Longhole Open Stoping based on a two-production level and a four-stope plan. The bulk sample is estimated at 86,500 tonnes of sulphide mineralization grading 8.13 g/t gold and containing an estimated 22,600 ounces of gold. Figure 1 provides a broad overview of the bulk sample location in relation to currently recognized mineral envelopes at West Cache.
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Public consultation meetings will be announced in the next few months and pending approval of the permit(s) the Company plans to start construction. Detailed progress reports will be provided as work advances, including power line drop and connections, infrastructure builds, and the progress of the portal and decline.
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From an exploration perspective, there is still much work to do as the project is less than 10% drill tested and mineralization is open in all directions and at depth. In addition to infill drilling the resource, new targets to the north and south of the known mineralization are starting to emerge with new interpretation of soil sampling programs.
2022 Laid the Groundwork (Milestones & Highlights)
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Published the first Preliminary Economic Assessment ("PEA") for the West Cache project, prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 by P&E Mining Consultants of Brampton, Ontario, Canada, with an effective date of January 10, 2022. The PEA highlighted strong project economics with a pre-tax NPV at a 5% discount rate ("NPV5%") of $378 million and IRR of 33.7%. Cash costs of US$814 per ounce and all-in sustaining costs of US$987 per ounce for 940,200 ounces of gold mined over Life of Mine ("LOM") of 11 years with average annual production of 85,500 ounces. Recovered gold is estimated at 893,200 ounces over the LOM. See press release dated February 23, 2022.
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Provided an updated Mineral Resource Estimate significantly increasing the grade and total ounces in the Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resource classification.
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Acquired additional mining claims adjacent to the West Cache project, expanding the total claim package to 10,370 hectares.
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Commenced an exploration drilling program and announced one of the best Zone #9 intercepts to date (determined by grade x thickness) of 15.6 g/t Au over 7.6 m within broader zone of 7.41 g/t Au over 18.1 meters. Also discovered additional ounces of gold in the South Area with intercepts of 13.29 g/t Au over 4.5 m (incl. 79.2 g/t Au over 0.7 m) and 5.23 g/t Au over 5.7 m.
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Received a new 21- year mining lease - an important milestone for the West Cache project. Lease status is required before mining activities such as infrastructure development and ore extraction can be conducted on the property.
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Progressed the underground bulk sample permitting and baselines studies; initiated geomechanical and geotechnical drill programs in support of the detailed design of the 1) box cut and portal design, 2) ground support recommendations, 3) stope size and dilution estimates.
Figure 1: West Cache Bulk sample Location
To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:
https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/1014/152644_b75f720bc413b864_001full.jpg
Option Grants
The Company also announces, pursuant to the Company's stock option plan, a total of 815,000 stock options have been granted to directors, officers, employees and consultants of the Company. The options are exercisable into one common share of the Company at a price of $0.23, vest immediately and expire on January 27, 2028. The Board of Directors of Galleon Gold is solely compensated via stock options that are typically granted once a year.
Technical Content and Qualified Persons
The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved by West Cache Gold Chief Operating Officer, Tim Smith, P. Eng. and Project Manager Leah Page, P. Geo. (APGNS #217) both "Qualified Persons" as defined in National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects.
About the West Cache Gold Project
The West Cache Gold Project is an advanced-stage gold exploration project covering approximately 10,370 ha located 13 km west of Timmins Ontario on Provincial Highway 101. It is situated in the Western Porcupine Gold Camp along the Destor-Porcupine Fault Zone within the Abitibi greenstone belt, approximately 7 km northeast of Pan American Silver's Timmins West Mine. The mining lease area hosts the current mineral resource estimate near the center, with additional exploration targets to the north and south. The mineral resource estimate is contained within the Porcupine Sedimentary Basin, a favourable litho-structural corridor with over 5 km of strike-length on the Property. Mineralization is open in all directions and at depth.
About Galleon Gold
Galleon Gold is an exploration and development company focused on advancing the West Cache Gold Project in Timmins, Ontario. The West Cache Gold Project is located 7 km northeast of Pan American Silver's Timmins West Mine and 14 km southwest of Newmont's Hollinger Mine. A 2022 Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) for the project demonstrates strong economics. Detail engineering design and baseline studies in support of a permit application for an underground bulk sample are underway.
For further information:
Galleon Gold
R. David Russell
Chairman and CEO
T. (416) 644-0066
info@galleongold.com
www.galleongold.com
Investor Relations
Harbor Access
Graham Farrell
T. (416) 842-9003
Graham.Farrell@harbor-access.com
Forward-Looking Statements
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The public launch of ChatGPT has led to considerable dismay at schools and universities. However, a position paper authored by more than 20 scientists at TUM and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) working in educational, social, computer and data sciences shows that the so-called language models also present many opportunities for education. The work is published on the EdArXiv preprint server.
In this interview, the coordinator Prof. Enkelejda Kasneci explains how the new technology could benefit learners and make teachers' work easier.
The New York School District has banned the use of ChatGPT. It that the right way forward?
We think it's the wrong way. It's also the easy way out. The development of language models like ChatGPT is a technological milestone. There is no going back. The tools are in the world. They will get better and we have to learn how to use them constructively. We're convinced that they offer big opportunities for the empowerment of previously disadvantaged people. ChatGPT and similar programs can lead to greater educational equity.
Who could benefit from ChatGPT applications?
First, this is a tool that makes it possible for everyone in the world with internet access to learn—regardless of the quality of the education system in their own country. Second, it can help people to express themselves better in writing who otherwise have difficulty doing so, for example due to a disability. That can offer them new opportunities to participate in society.
And how about at school?
Here we see major potential for the personalized use of such tools to overcome the individual weaknesses of each child, to bring out strengths and contribute to constructive learning successes. We're talking about an AI-based tool that can recognize and produce various forms of text. Pupils could get suggestions for alternative wordings or better text compositions. That can help them Excellerate their ability to express themselves.
My research chair team has just developed a tool that can analyze an essay using large language models and provide feedback such as: "It would be better to use a consistent verb tense" or "You could pay more attention to the subjunctive." This feedback could be adjusted to the age and skill levels of the individual children.
At present, people seem to be thinking that language learning will deteriorate.
We don't see it like that. On the contrary, applications like this can promote the understanding of language. But they can also be helpful in other subjects, for example by creating questions on a certain topic. Students preparing for exams at home could use it as a study partner that would focus on points where more work is needed. That is a level of individualized learning that would be difficult to achieve in the classroom.
So AI could make teachers' work easier, too?
We think so. Artificial intelligence could also support them in correcting schoolwork.
… that are generated with ChatGPT for pupils who want better grades.
Of course nobody can be certain that written homework is done without outside help. But these discussions remind me very much of the debates when Wikipedia was launched. Back then, people were thinking that most homework would be copied from the internet. Then, as now, we have to start teaching children from the elementary school level the importance of not relying on the information of just one internet portal and that they need to check information and back it up with sources.
If a text automation program can write the answers for an exam, this also says something about the quality of the test itself. We have to ask ourselves what teaching methods we are using and to what extent we are helping learners to acquire competencies such as critical thinking and problem solving skills.
What is needed to ensure that ChatGPT and similar models are actually used in beneficial ways in the classroom?
Researchers must deliver more robust conclusions on the effects of the language models on learning, how they can be used in a certain learning context and when they will be ready for use. Holistic teaching concepts and continuing education opportunities will also be needed for teachers. All of us need to work together and bring about a rapid response. And the providers must take issues surrounding data protection, security, bias and distortions in machine learning, intellectual property and transparency very seriously.
It will take some time before these goals are achieved. How can teachers deal with ChatGPT in the meantime?
We advise all teachers: try out these tools! Discover them together with your students. There are no limits on creativity as long as you maintain a critical perspective.
More information: Enkelejda Kasneci et al, ChatGPT for Good? On Opportunities and Challenges of Large Language Models for Education, EdArXiv (2023). DOI: 10.35542/osf.io/5er8f
Citation: Position paper on ChatGPT outlines opportunities for schools and universities (2023, February 7) retrieved 19 February 2023 from https://phys.org/news/2023-02-position-paper-chatgpt-outlines-opportunities.html
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Aptiv (NYSE:APTV) shares rose sharply on Tuesday after outlining ambitious long-term targets during an investor day presentation.
During an investor event in Boston, the company said it sees a path to $40B in revenue and an operating margin over 17% by 2030. Those figures represent significant increases from $17.5B in revenue and 9.1% margin reported in 2022.
Management expects the company to capitalize on “megatrends” in EVs, automation, and “increasingly-connected, software-driven vehicles” to reach these goals. Revenue is expected to accelerate sharply by 2025 to a range of $23B to $24B as operating margins expand to a range between 14% and 14.5%.
The company expects further momentum from that point as vehicles shift from “hardware-defined” to “software defined” by 2026 to “cloud defined” in 2030 and beyond. New tech requirements in vehicles are expected to result in a $75B total addressable market by the close of the decade.
“Increasing consumer expectations for software-defined features combined with the need for a “clean sheet” approach to electric vehicle architecture, creates a natural catalyst for the transition to [Smart Vehicle Architecture],” the company said.
Shares of the Irish-American automotive tech provider rose 8.25% in afternoon trading on Tuesday.
Read more on the company’s recent earnings results.
