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It was just one short week but in that fleeting maiden appearance, the Ferrari Roma made a huge impression as customers and the media had their first look at Maranello’s latest offering in Singapore.
Between July 8-15, the elegant grand tourer, in Roma Blu colour, was displayed at Ital Auto, the official importer for Ferrari. More than 100 customers and guests attended viewing sessions with the proper safe distancing protocols in place.
A car lift for Prancing Horses was especially given a makeover, with a red carpet welcome and imagery of the Eternal City prominent in the short walk to the lounge area, where the Roma was proudly displayed. Dieter Knechtel, the President of Ferrari Far East and Middle East, also met selected journalists during the media preview session.
Ferrari Chief Design Officer Flavio Manzoni’s work of art, which blended elegant and refined lines with delightful details such as the minimalist tail lights that look like gems set into the bodywork, fascinated all who saw this V8 GT in the flesh. The Italian is also responsible for some of the most beautiful Prancing Horses, such as the LaFerrari, the Monza SP1 and SP2 and the rare J50 made in limited numbers for the Japanese market.
Before the viewing sessions started, the Roma was also out about town for a photoshoot at iconic and historic locations such as the Padang, Victoria Theatre and Raffles Place. The scenic spots all befit the grace and understated aesthetics of the Ferrari Roma, which will return to Singapore again at the beginning of next year when the first deliveries commence.
This Sunday, take advantage of the last days of summer and grill up this sweet and spicy orange flank steak from Mother Rimmy. The steak is marinated in a sauce composed of soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic and ginger. You’ll want to marinate the steak for at least four hours to let the flavors merry and penetrate the meat. Serve the flank steak with a fresh and crunchy cabbage salad.
Salad: 6 cups cabbage, finely sliced 1/2 cup chives, finely chopped 1 cup carrot, shredded
Directions:
Combine sauce ingredients in a large bowl. Reserve half for the cabbage salad, and pour the rest into a zip lock bag with the flank steak. Marinade the steak for 4 hours, up to overnight.
Combine cabbage with remaining sauce and refrigerate to blend flavors for one at least one hour, however, you can make this salad the night before and marinade the chicken at the same time. This salad is even better the next day.
Grill flank steak over medium heat for 4 — 5 minutes per side until desired doneness, 4 — 5 minutes, dependent on how thick the steak is will be medium to medium rare.
Moral panics emerge when people perceive an existential threat to themselves, society or the environment. When in the grip of a moral panic, the ability to think clearly and act responsibly is compromised. While the moral panic over cats arises from valid concerns over threats to native species, it obscures the real driver: humanity’s exploitative treatment of the natural world. Crucially, errors of scientific reasoning also underwrite this false crisis.
The (shaky) case against cats
Conservationists and the media often claim that cats are a main contributor to a mass extinction, a catastrophic loss of species due to human activities, like habitat degradation and the killing of wildlife.
As an interdisciplinary team of scientists and ethicists studying animals in conservation, we examined this claim and found it wanting. It is true that like any other predator, cats can suppress the populations of their prey. Yet the extent of this effect is ecologically complex.
In our most recent publication in the journal Conservation Biology, we examine an error of reasoning that props up the moral panic over cats.
Scientists do not simply collect data and analyze the results. They also establish a logical argument to explain what they observe. Thus, the reasoning behind a factual claim is equally important to the observations used to make that claim. And it is this reasoning about cats where claims about their threat to global biodiversity founder. In our analysis, we found it happens because many scientists take specific, local studies and overgeneralize those findings to the world at large.
Even when specific studies are good overall, projecting the combined “results” onto the world at large can cause unscientific overgeneralizations, particularly when ecological context is ignored. It is akin to pulling a quote out of context and then assuming you understand its meaning.
Ways forward
So how might citizens and scientists chart a way forward to a more nuanced understanding of cat ecology and conservation?
First, those examining this issue on all sides can acknowledge that both the well-being of cats and the survival of threatened species are legitimate concerns.
Second, cats, like any other predator, affect their ecological communities. Whether that impact is good or bad is a complex value judgment, not a scientific fact.
Third, there is a need for a more rigorous approach to the study of cats. Such an approach must be mindful of the importance of ecological context and avoid the pitfalls of faulty reasoning. It also means resisting the siren call of a silver (lethal) bullet.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Yet there are many options to consider. Protecting apex predators and their habitat is fundamental to enabling threatened species to coexist with cats. In some cases, people may choose to segregate domestic cats from vulnerable wildlife: for instance, with catios where cats can enjoy the outdoors while being kept apart from wildlife. In other cases, unhomed cats may be managed with trap-neuter-return programs and sanctuaries.
Finally, contrary to the framing of some scientists and journalists, the dispute over cats is not primarily about the science. Rather, it evokes an ongoing debate over the ethics that ought to guide humanity’s relationship with other animals and nature.
This is the root of the moral panic over cats: the struggle to move beyond treating other beings with domination and control, toward fostering a relationship rooted in compassion and justice.
Joann Lindenmayer, DVM, MPH is an associate professor in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University and contributed to this article.
William S. Lynn, Research Scientist, Clark University; Arian Wallach, Lecturer, Centre for Compassionate Conservation, University of Technology Sydney, and Francisco J. Santiago-Ãvila, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Wisconsin-Madison
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
Shares of Tesla (TSLA) keep reaching new highs. Tesla Inc.’s chief executive officer Elon Musk fortune is now worth rose $6.1 billion as of July 10,2020 according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The stock also surged 11%. Musk is now the world’s seventh-richest person, rising above Larry Ellison and Sergey Brin.
Tesla shares reached new highs Thursday, July 2nd, 2020 when they announced the delivery for 90,650 vehicles in the second quarter, beating Wall Street expectations. Shares drove up 9% to $1,219.02
Tesla Inc. (TSLA) Nasdaq Elon Musk is a South African-born American entrepreneur and businessman who founded X.com in 1999 (which later became PayPal), SpaceX in 2002 and Tesla Motors in 2003.
As lead designer at SpaceX, Elon oversees the development of rockets and spacecraft for missions to Earth orbit and ultimately to other planets. In 2008, the SpaceX Falcon 1 was the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to reach orbit, and SpaceX made further history in 2017 by re-flying both a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft for the first time.Source:Tesla
Elon is also CEO of Neuralink, which is developing ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect the human brain to computers. He also launched The Boring Company, which combines fast, affordable tunneling technology with an all-electric public transportation system in order to alleviate soul-crushing urban congestion and enable high-speed, long-distance travel. The Boring Company built a 1.15-mile R&D tunnel in Hawthorne. Previously, Elon co-founded and sold PayPal, the world’s leading Internet payment system, and Zip2, one of the first internet maps and directions services.Source:Tesla
Institutional Ownership stands at 54.8%
Major Holders
20.51% % of Shares Held by All Insider
57.93% % of Shares Held by Institutions
72.87% % of Float Held by Institutions
1,319 Number of Institutions Holding Share
Top Institutional Holders
Holder Shares Date Reported % Out Value
Baillie Gifford and Company 12,076,416 Mar 30, 2020 6.51% 6,328,041,984
Capital World Investors 10,714,131 Mar 30, 2020 5.78% 5,614,204,644
Vanguard Group, Inc. (The) 8,662,781 Mar 30, 2020 4.67% 4,539,297,244
Blackrock Inc. 7,213,587 Mar 30, 2020 3.89% 3,779,919,588
FMR, LLC 4,615,556 Mar 30, 2020 2.49% 2,418,551,344
Jennison Associates LLC 4,320,630 Mar 30, 2020 2.33% 2,264,010,120
State Street Corporation 3,095,851 Mar 30, 2020 1.67% 1,622,225,924
JP Morgan Chase & Company 2,816,285 Mar 30, 2020 1.52% 1,475,733,340
Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. 2,702,701 Mar 30, 2020 1.46% 1,416,215,324
BAMCO Inc. 1,615,174 Mar 30, 2020 0.87% 846,351,176
CWEB Analysts see (TSLA) Nasdaq as a potential for long term growth and a great addition to one’s portfolio and upward of $2000 by 20121
Like most young kids I loved & played baseball and I was lucky enough to attend lots of Los Angeles Dodgers games as a child. Even though I was never a New York Yankee fan as a kid, I was always in awe of guys like Thurman Munson. The Yankees during the ‘70’s were like cool hip rock stars. They had swagger & style and since there were only a handful of TV networks televising Major League Baseball games once or twice a week, the Yankees had a certain mystique about them.
They were so popular within our culture, there were several shaving cream, after shave, deodorant, shampoo commercials flooding our TV sets and who could forget all those hilarious Miller Lite Beer commercials. The Yankees were even frequently talked about on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, which broadcasted from New York City.
There’s was one member of the Yankees who always stood out to me and it was their big burly catcher, Thurman Munson. He was their leader and he was their team captain. He was an All Star. He had World Series Championship rings. He had a big thick mustache, curly hair sprouting out from his baseball cap & helmet, and he had a million-dollar smile.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nQfTD6a6zk
Back in those days, the Yankees didn’t have the “no facial hair & long hair rule” as they do today, but I’m sure glad they didn’t, because that’s what mostly drew my attention to the Yankees from those commercials – their style & sense of humor. If you didn’t live in New York, you probably hated the Yankees because they were so good & flamboyant, but it was very difficult not to like or love their team captain.
Munson was considered one of the best & well-known backstops in MLB. He was respected by all his teammates and peers and they called him “Tugboat”. He could hit a baseball with the best of them. He was one of the best catchers in MLB and a gun for an arm. He was tough as nails on the field. He was a big ole teddy bear off the field.
He won the Rookie of the Year Award in 1970. He was a 7-time All Star during his 11-year career. He won 3 consecutive Gold Gloves in 1973-1975. He was the AL MVP in 1976. He won back-to-back World Series Championships in 1977 & 1978 beating my beloved Dodgers.
He is the first player in MLB history to be named a College Baseball All-American and then in MLB win the Rookie of the Year Award, MVP Award, Gold Glove Award, and World Series Championship.
Unfortunately, we lost Thurman Munson to an untimely death when his small airplane crashed and killed him on August 2, 1979 at the tender age of 32.
During an off day in the summer of 1979, Munson died while practicing landing his Cessna Citation aircraft at Akron-Canton Airport. He suffered a broken neck as a result of the crash, and his cause of death was asphyxiation. The Yankees honored him by immediately retiring his Uniform number 15 and dedicated a plaque to him in Monument Park inside Yankee Stadium.
Thurman Munson’s untimely death is one of those that I’ll never forget where I was and what I was doing when I found out – on a summer day riding bikes outside with friends from the hood and my best friend’s Mom yelled the horrific news to us from her kitchen window, “Thurman Munson died in a plane crash!”
This can’t be I thought. I just saw him play recently. I just read his daily stats in the newspaper. I didn’t even know he flew airplanes. I cried. I wept and all I could think about was how unfair this is, and all I could see through the blur & stream of tears falling down my cheeks, was the image of his smiling face in that famous black & white New York Yankees baseball cap & helmet.
Thurman Munson was & is everything we teach young baseball players how to play the game today. He was a living icon and the world lost a true baseball warrior & hero. He was the king of the Yankees and one of a kind, and there will never been anyone like him.
NASA is broadcasting the return of the agency’s SpaceX Demo-2 test flight with NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley from the International Space Station — the first splashdown of an American crew spacecraft in 45 years. Ongoing live coverage is airing on NASA Television and the agency’s website.
Their return began at 7:35 p.m. EDT Saturday, Aug. 1, when the Crew Dragon spacecraft autonomously undocked from the International Space Station’s Harmony module for a splashdown at 2:48 p.m. in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Pensacola, Florida (1:48 p.m. local time).
Return coverage is as follows (all times Eastern):
Sunday, Aug. 2
2:48 p.m. — Splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico
4:30 p.m. — Administrator post-splashdown news conference at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, with:
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine
Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program
Joel Montalbano, manager of NASA’s International Space Station Program
Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer at SpaceX
4:30 p.m. — Demo-2 crew news conference from Johnson, with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. A media phone bridge will be available for this event, details of which are forthcoming
Behnken and Hurley arrived at the orbiting laboratory May 31, following a successful launch May 30 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Their return completes the test flight for the first commercially owned and operated crewed spacecraft under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
The Commercial Crew Program works with the U.S. aerospace industry to develop safe, reliable, and cost-effective crew transportation systems that will carry astronauts on American rockets and spacecraft from American soil to the International Space Station, and back.
This is SpaceX’s final test flight and is providing data on the performance of the Falcon 9 rocket, Crew Dragon spacecraft and ground systems, as well as in-orbit, docking, splashdown, and recovery operations. The data will inform NASA’s certification of the SpaceX crew transportation system for regular flights carrying astronauts to and from the space station. SpaceX is readying the hardware for the first rotational mission, which would occur following NASA certification.
A successful Commercial Crew Program could allow for additional research time and increase the opportunity for discovery aboard humanity’s testbed for exploration, including helping us prepare for human exploration of the Moon and Mars.
Credit Photo : NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley boarded the International Space Station shortly after arriving in the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on May 31, 2020. The two departed the station aboard the Crew Dragon Aug. 1 for a scheduled splashdown of 2:38 p.m. EDT Aug. 2 in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida.Credits: NASA
Healthy Breakfast that is easy to cook and delicious to eat that will make kids and mommies happy.
Ingredients
1 cups baby spinach (chopped)1 cup Almond flour*1 cup Amaranth (cooked)*1 tsp baking powder ½ tsp salt ½ tsp black pepper (crushed)-4 eggs 1tbsp flax oil*
Preparation
1 Preheat oven at 350 degree Fahrenheit. Prepare the muffin tray by greasing it with cooking spray.
2 In a bowl combine all the dry ingredients including spinach.
3 In another bowl whip the eggs and mix oil in it.
4 Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix well so that the batter is well coated.
5 With an ice cream scoop spoon the batter into the muffin tray and put it in the oven.
6 Bake it for 25-30 minutes or until the fork comes out clean.
Two and a half years ago, a study published in Science Advances detailed how the gene editing tool CRISPR/Cas-9 repaired genetic mutations related to Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). The study was a proof of concept, and used induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).
But now a similar treatment has not only been administered to real people, it has worked and made a difference in their quality of life and the progression of their disorder. Nine boys aged 6 to 12 who have been living with DMD since birth received a gene therapy treatment from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, and a year later, 7 of the boys show significant improvement in muscle strength and function.
Though the treatment’s positive results are limited to a small group, they’re an important breakthrough for gene therapy, and encouraging not just for muscular dystrophy but for many other genetic diseases that could soon see similar treatments developed.
About DMD
DMD is a genetic disorder that causes muscles to progressively degenerate and weaken. It’s caused by mutations in the gene that makes dystrophin, a protein that serves to rebuild and strengthen muscle fibers in skeletal and cardiac muscles. As the gene is carried on the X chromosome, the disorder primarily affects boys. Many people with DMD end up in wheelchairs, on respirators, or both, and while advances in cardiac and respiratory care have increased life expectancy into the early 30s, there’s no cure for the condition.
The Treatment
The gene therapy given to the nine boys by Pfizer was actually developed by a research team at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Medicine–and it took over 30 years.
The team was led by Jude Samulski, a longtime gene therapy researcher and professor of pharmacology at UNC. As a grad student in 1984, Samulski was part of the first team to clone an adeno-associated virus, which ended up becoming a leading method of gene delivery and thus crucial to gene therapy.
Adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) are small viruses whose genome is made up of single-stranded DNA. Like other viruses, AAVs can break through cells’ outer membranes–especially eye and muscle cells–get inside, and “infect” them (and their human hosts). But AAVs are non-pathogenic, meaning they don’t cause disease or harm; the bodies of most people treated with AAVs don’t launch an immune response, because their systems detect that the virus is harmless.
Samulski’s gene therapy treatment for DMD used an adeno-associated virus to carry a healthy copy of the dystrophin gene; the virus was injected into boys with DMD, broke into their muscle cells, and replaced their non-working gene.
Samulski said of the adeno-associated virus, “It’s a molecular FedEx truck. It carries a genetic payload and it’s delivering it to its target.” The company Samulski founded sold the DMD treatment to Pfizer in 2016 so as to scale it and make it accessible to more boys suffering from the condition.
It’s Working
A year after receiving the gene therapy, seven of nine boys are showing positive results. As reported by NPR, the first boy to be treated, a nine-year old from Connecticut, saw results that were not only dramatic, but fast. Before treatment he couldn’t walk up more than four stairs without needing to stop, but within three weeks of treatment he was able to run up the full flight of stairs. “I can run faster. I stand better. And I can walk […] more than two miles and I couldn’t do that before,” he said.
The muscle cells already lost to DMD won’t “grow back,” but the treatment appears to have restored normal function of the protein that fixes muscle fibers and helps them grow, meaning no further degeneration should take place.
It’s only been a year, we don’t yet know whether these treatments may have some sort of detrimental effect in the longer term, and the treatment itself can still be improved. But all of that considered, signs point to the DMD treatment being a big win for gene therapy.
Before it can be hailed as a resounding success, though, scientists feel that a more extensive trial of the therapy is needed, and are working to launch such a trial later this year.
Los Angeles Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager warms up as cutouts of fans ‘look on.’ AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
Mark Otten, California State University, Northridge
Baseball and basketball might be returning, but the boo birds and thunder sticks will have to wait ‘til next year.
Save for the Toronto Blue Jays, baseball teams have begun playing in their regular stadiums without fans. Meanwhile, all NBA games will be played inside the Orlando bubble before empty crowds.
For sport psychology researchers like me, this is an extremely rare opportunity: We can see what happens when fans disappear for an extended period of time. Almost like a controlled experiment, it will be possible to compare the outcomes of games with and without fans, with all other things being approximately equal. We’ll even be able to compare fan-less home stadium games, like those starting up in baseball, to fan-less neutral site games, like in the NBA.
For these reasons, it might be possible to see the extent to which fans and stadiums play a role in an oft-debated aspect of sport psychology: home field advantage.
In college sports, the advantage for the home team can be even more stark. SEC conference football games were won by home teams 61% of the time in 2019. For the ACC conference in men’s basketball in 2020, it was 63%.
Psychology researchers have also puzzled over the cause of home field advantage.
Psychologist Robert Zajonc proposed a theory called social facilitation, whereby a performer’s “arousal” increases in the presence of others. In this context, arousal means that you care more about what you’re doing when you’re being watched. For athletes, it implies that they’ll be more motivated when there’s a crowd. And if the crowd is supportive, this might “facilitate” a better performance from the athlete.
We’ll have to see what happens over the course of the baseball and basketball seasons. But the Bundesliga, Germany’s top soccer league, began playing without fans back in the middle of May, and players have noted that something seems to be missing during these games.
“The stadium is always full at Bayern, and it’s really amazing,” Bayern Munich midfielder Joshua Kimmich said. “You feel more when you score a goal. It’s more emotional when there are fans.”
I know from my own research that heightened emotions aren’t necessarily helpful. They can cause you to overthink a situation or become nervous. But they can also improve performance if you’re feeling particularly in control and confident. The latter feelings can, in fact, lead to better-than-usual, clutch performance.
So what happens if we remove the fans in the stands, but everything else stays about the same?
Before the pandemic, Bundesliga home teams had won 107 games, lost 100 and tied 63 times. Excluding the ties, this win-loss percentage for home teams — 52% — was comparable to those in other leagues, translating to a modest home-field advantage.
When play resumed without fans, Bundesliga home teams fell apart for the first six weeks: Their win-loss percentage was an embarrassing 29%. Outlets like The New York Times and ESPN noticed, and ran articles wondering if, without fans, home-field advantage had vanished.
But then the results started to shift in mid-June. Over the final three weeks of the season, Bundesliga home teams’ winning percentage surged to 63%.
Right around then, the other European leagues began play.
England’s Premier League home team winning percentage before the pandemic was 60%; since restarting, their success rate has been identical. Before the break and with fans, Spain’s La Liga home teams’ win-loss rate was 66%; afterward, it’s been a respectable 56%. Home teams in Italy’s Serie A have actually been more successful so far without fans — 58% — as compared with before, when they won 52% of home games before packed stadiums.
It seems the early struggles of home teams in the Bundesliga were more of an outlier.
It’s all a matter of perception
So maybe outlets were too quick to attribute home-field advantage solely to the presence of the fans. Based on this preliminary data out of Europe, the advantage seems to be preserved, even in empty stadiums.
Could it be that even without fans, players still believe they have an edge at home?
Sport psychologists have studied how athletes’ perceptions of their environment can influence performance.
A June soccer match between FC Cologne and Eintracht Frankfurt during the German Bundesliga. Rolf Vennenbernd/Pool via AP
So it’s entirely possible that players interpret their home stadium environment as more comfortable, regardless of whether or not there’s a crowd. This perception leads to more confidence among the players at home, which may be the root cause of the home advantage.
In other words, the advantage might not necessarily come from the cheers or the refs. It’s simply the belief that playing at home makes you play better that gives you an edge.
Back when the Premier League was considering a plan to restart the league at neutral sites instead of home stadiums, Watford CEO Scott Duxbury objected to the proposal. “We are now told we cannot play our remaining home games at Vicarage Road and the familiarity and advantage that brings,” he complained.
Maybe Duxbury was right about the advantage of familiarity, after all — even when there are no fans in the seats.
Mark Otten, Professor of Psychology, California State University, Northridge
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
