Eat healthy, live healthy, enjoy life to its fullest.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-61558119
BMI, which is calculated by taking an individual’s height and weight into account, is the most accepted measure globally to classify people into “normal”, “overweight”, “obese” and “morbidly obese”. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a BMI of 25 or above is considered overweight.
https://www.androidcentral.com/wearables/garmin-body-battery
Garmin Body Battery is the fitness brand’s proprietary metric for measuring your current energy level based on past workouts, heart rate variability, sleep and stress tracking, diet and hydration, and other information. Most Garmin watches support it, so you can judge how hard to work out on a given day.
Garmin watches collect an intense amount of data from your body, and not just during workouts. Trends in your heart rate, breathing, stress, and sleep, coupled with metrics like VO2 Max, can tell Garmin exactly what kind of bodily signals you should be giving off in ideal conditions — and what your actual health data signals about your current energy level.
Your Garmin Body Battery score is calculated after about a week of wearing your watch. At that point, it’ll have a baseline of your body’s health conditions, so it can estimate your average battery gains and losses even if you take your watch off for a while. Garmin will then need a full day to recalculate your Body Battery score to current accuracy.
Scores are measured between 0 and 100, along with a “Charged” and “Drained” score every day. While you obviously want a high Garmin Body Battery level, it will naturally drain during the day and quickly drain during workouts, especially those with a high training load. Garmin says that ideally, your charge and drain will be the same on a given day; a higher drain is obviously hard on your body, but a higher charge signals you could be working out harder.
In other words, Garmin Body Battery is a fairly common-sense tool; if you’re tired, you don’t need Garmin’s battery score to tell you that. But it will warn you if stress, bad sleep, or overexercising is taking a toll when you might not realize it.
Garmin acquired well-respected physiological data company Firstbeat Analytics in 2020, and uses their algorithms to convert heart rate data into a complete profile of your current health and energy level. It mostly relies on your heart rate variability (HRV) and stress index.
When you’re relaxed and healthy, the gap between heartbeats naturally rises while exhaling and falls while inhaling. Calm, deep breathing will correspond with a varied heart rate. But stress or exercise stimulates hormone production that decreases HRV, giving you a more consistent (and elevated) heart rate that will burn through your body battery more quickly.
First, your body battery will recharge overnight, with Garmin sleep tracking determining how much. Aside from how long and restfully you sleep, the level of recharge will be negatively impacted by certain factors: caffeine or alcohol consumption, extreme temperatures, sickness, and indigestion, for example.
Then, your body battery will naturally drain during the day even if you’re sedentary, though it’ll obviously drop faster during a workout. Most Garmin watches will also calculate training load, and a workout that’s too difficult for your current fitness level will burn through your battery and make your sleep recharge less effective for some time.
If you have a low VO2 Max, for instance, it’ll lead to higher Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC) that, while good for increasing your fitness level, ensures you need more recovery time in the short term.
Ultimately, a higher body battery score means your body can handle a tougher workout; a lower body battery rating means you should prioritize getting a good night’s sleep or find a way to decrease the stressors in your life.
As mentioned above, bad habits will lead to increased drain and reduced charge, while overly taxing workouts will lower your rating and ensure that even a full night’s sleep won’t recharge it as much as it normally would.
Alcohol consumption or energy drinks will ensure your quality of sleep is lower, hurting your body’s ability to regain energy the following day. And if you’re constantly stressed due to work during the day, your reduced heart rate variance will ensure you burn through energy at a disproportionate rate.
Aside from making healthier choices, building up your fitness will improve your maximum capacity so that a simple workout won’t be as taxing and stressful on your body. Plus, according to the National Library of Medicine, “cardiorespiratory fitness protects against stress-related symptoms of burnout and depression,” while another study (via Garmin) found that fitness leads to “less stress during working hours and better nighttime recovery.”
Use your Garmin watch to get more fit, and your body battery will naturally recharge faster and better withstand the negative effects of stress.
Pretty much all of the best Garmin smartwatches have Garmin Body Battery, in other words.
Just keep in mind that the newest models may give you a more accurate score. 2022 releases like the Instinct 2 Solar and Venu 2 Plus have the Elevate Gen 4 sensor with more accurate heart rate tracking than older watches, for instance. Since Body Battery hinges on HRV to calculate stress, you want the best HRM you can get.
Ideally, Garmin Body Battery will spur you on to build better habits and avoid injuring yourself. However, it’s only really useful if you wear your watch all day, every day, to get accurate readings. If you only wear your watch during workouts, you’ll have to rely on Garmin’s other metrics to measure your health.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/power-trumps-endorsements-faces-test-12-key-2022-elections-2022-05-01/
May 18 (Reuters) – Former U.S. President Donald Trump seeks to demonstrate his power over the Republican Party with more than 150 endorsements of candidates ahead of a midterm election on Nov. 8 that will determine control of Congress for 2023 and 2024.
Twelve picks in primary elections taking place stand out among the many. Some are Republicans opposing incumbent members of his party.
Ted Budd
* Seeks U.S. Senate seat for North Carolina vacated by retiring Republican Senator Richard Burr
A rank-and-file member of the House of Representatives, Budd had little statewide name recognition before he sought the Republican nomination for what is expected to be a tight race in November. But following Trump’s endorsement, he surged in public opinion polls and easily defeated former North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory in the May 17 primary.
In November, Budd will face Democrat Cheri Beasley, a Black woman who formerly served as the state’s chief justice.
J.D. Vance
* Seeks U.S. Senate seat for Ohio vacated by retiring Republican Senator Rob Portman
Trump-backed Vance triumphed in a crowded May 3 Republican primary and is favored to win in November against Democrat Tim Ryan, currently a U.S. Representative for Ohio, although some political observers expect a stiff challenge from Ryan.
Vance is best known as the author of best-seller “Hillbilly Elegy” which documented the descent of factory towns in states like Ohio into poverty and drug abuse. He has styled himself as an angry populist in the Trump mold, seeking to shed his prior reputation as a Trump critic.
Mehmet Oz
* Seeks U.S. Senate seat for Pennsylvania vacated by retiring Republican Senator Pat Toomey
Oz, a celebrity doctor whose endorsement by Trump divided Republican leaders in Pennsylvania, remained locked on Wednesday in a race with former hedge fund CEO David McCormick that is so tight it might automatically trigger an official recount.
Votes were still being counted in the May 17 Republican primary. The eventual winner will face Democrat John Fetterman in what is expected to be among the tightest races of the November election.
Herschel Walker
* Seeks to defeat incumbent Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia
* May 24 Republican primary
A retired football star, Walker is favored to win the Republican nomination contest and public opinion polls already point to a close race in November against Warnock, a pastor. But Trump-endorsed Walker, who has never held elected office, has vulnerabilities including past allegations of domestic abuse. Groups backing Walker’s Republican primary opponents are planning ad campaigns that argue Walker cannot beat Warnock because of his baggage.
David Perdue
* Seeks to defeat Georgia incumbent Republican Governor Brian Kemp
* May 24 Republican primary
In 2021, Perdue conceded that he lost his U.S. Senate seat to Democrat Jon Ossoff, but in March 2022 reversed himself, voicing false claims that the election was stolen, although the evidence of fraud that he cited was part of a case that was ultimately dismissed by a judge. Kemp angered Trump by dismissing the former president’s false statements about election fraud but holds a double-digit lead over Perdue in opinion polls.
Katie Arrington
* Seeks to defeat incumbent U.S. Republican Representative Nancy Mace
* June 14 Republican primary for South Carolina’s 1st congressional district
The South Carolina state representative is challenging a sitting Republican lawmaker who voted against Trump’s impeachment. Mace irked the former president shortly after taking office in January 2021 when she said Congress should consider censuring Trump for his role in his supporters’ assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Arrington has trailed Mace in public opinion polls.
Russell Fry
* Seeks to defeat incumbent U.S. Republican Representative Tom Rice
* June 14 Republican primary for South Carolina’s 7th congressional district
Trump’s pick to unseat Rice, one of a handful of Republicans who voted to impeach the former leader, is a state representative whose campaign had nearly a half million dollars in the bank on March 31, pointing to a potentially competitive race with Rice.
Loren Culp
* Seeks to defeat incumbent U.S. Republican Representative Dan Newhouse
* Aug. 2 Republican primary for Washington’s 4th congressional district
Trump’s pick to challenge Newhouse is former small-town police chief Loren Culp, who in March called for the execution of a Black man accused of badly injuring a woman by throwing her down the stairs of a train station. Trump had endorsed Culp in February, angered by Newhouse’s 2021 impeachment vote.
John Gibbs
* Seeks to defeat incumbent U.S. Republican Representative Peter Meijer
* Aug. 2 Republican primary for Michigan’s 3rd congressional district
A former housing official under Trump, Gibbs’ nomination to head the U.S. Office of Personnel Management floundered after lawmakers from both parties questioned his history of inflammatory tweets, including references to baseless conspiracy theories about Democrats and Satanism. His opponent Meijer, who voted to impeach Trump, is far ahead in fundraising. The winner of the nomination contest will face a Democrat in what is expected to be among the tightest House races in November.
Joe Kent
* Seeks to defeat incumbent U.S. Republican Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler
* Aug. 2 Republican primary for Washington’s 3rd congressional district
Former special forces officer Kent has campaigned with far right U.S. representative Matt Gaetz of Florida and told Oregon Public Broadcasting he held a social media strategy call with white nationalist Nicholas Fuentes, though he said he disagreed with Fuentes’ “ethno-nationalism.” Kent’s campaign had more than $1 million in the bank on March 31, setting up a strong challenge to incumbent Herrera Beutler, who voted to impeach Trump.
Kelly Tshibaka
* Seeks to defeat incumbent U.S. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska
* Aug. 16 open primary contest
Trump is backing Tshibaka, a former Alaska state administration commissioner, to unseat Murkowski, who was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump in 2021 on charges he incited insurrection. The Alaska contest has taken on the shade of a proxy war between Trump and Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, who vowed to do everything possible to help the campaign of Murkowski, one of the Senate’s few Republican moderates.
Harriet Hageman
* Seeks to defeat incumbent U.S. Republican Representative Liz Cheney
* Aug. 16 Wyoming at-large-district Republican primary
Trump threw his backing behind Hageman, a land-use lawyer, in September 2021, looking to punish Cheney, who was stripped of her role as the No. 3 House Republican for voting to impeach the former president on a charge of inciting insurrection. Hageman led Cheney by 20 percentage points in a December poll.
Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Scott Malone and Howard Goller
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
https://www.reuters.com/business/warren-buffetts-woodstock-capitalists-smaller-affair-after-pandemic-2022-04-28/
OMAHA, Neb., April 28 (Reuters) – Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N) will hold its annual shareholder meeting in person on Saturday for the first time since before the pandemic, but the extravaganza dubbed “Woodstock for Capitalists” is likely to see fewer people and pared-back events.
Buffett, 91, chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire, and Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, 98, will answer shareholder questions for roughly five hours when the meeting convenes in Omaha, Nebraska.
Shareholders likely will address issues such as recent investments, a still-swollen cash pile, share buybacks, rising inflation and supply chain disruptions, and even whether someone other than Buffett should chair the company. read more
Joining them will be Vice Chairmen Greg Abel, Buffett’s designated successor as CEO, and Ajit Jain.
Many shareholders, however, go for more than just the meeting.
Events around the city over three days include a 5-km run(3.11 miles), shareholder shopping from dozens of Berkshire-owned businesses at the downtown CHI Health Center arena where the meeting takes place, and several private investing conferences.
“You’re selling as fast as the cash register will ring,” said Phillip Black, co-owner of the Bookworm, the only non-Berkshire business selling at the arena. He said weekend sales have topped $100,000 in past years. “You’re kind of glad when it’s over so you can get a little rest.”
Still, shareholders will notice changes, beyond needing proof of COVID-19 vaccination to attend events.
Berkshire expects attendance to be “considerably less” than the 40,000, many from overseas, common to recent meetings. The 2019 meeting, the last in-person meeting before the pandemic, added $21.3 million to Omaha’s economy.
“I attended for 25 years in a row before COVID,” said James Armstrong, a principal at Henry H. Armstrong Associates in Pittsburgh. “But I’m just not going to make the trip. I’m not doing much flying yet.”
Occupancy rates in the Omaha area’s 15,608 hotel rooms, as measured by data firm STR Inc, may fall short of the usual 90% to 95%, with more rooms at lower rates beckoning late travelers.
Borsheims won’t pitch its familiar outdoor tent with live entertainment and a buffet smorgasbord at the mall housing the Berkshire-owned jeweler, though cocktails will be available.
And a shareholder favorite–the newspaper toss where Buffett displayed skills he once used as a paperboy–has been scrapped.
Armstrong, like many others, plans to watch the meeting online at cnbc.com. Berkshire first webcast meetings in 2016.
Still, the weekend nonetheless should add many millions of dollars to Berkshire’s coffers.
Shareholders can buy a pontoon boat from Berkshire’s Forest River unit and designed by “Margaritaville” singer Jimmy Buffett (no relation).
Frugal shoppers can again spend $5 at Oriental Trading for cherubic Buffett and Munger rubber ducks. And those not on a diet can scarf up the 21,085 pounds (9,564 kg) of peanut brittle and other treats that See’s Candies is bringing.
Deborah Ward, executive director of Visit Omaha, said “the energy in the city was lost” when Berkshire moved its 2020 and 2021 shareholder meetings online.
“It will be nice to have that energy back,” she said. “Being associated with Berkshire helps Omaha’s brand a great deal. Warren Buffett could live anywhere in the world. He chooses to live here.”
David Brown, who retires next week after 19 years leading the Greater Omaha Chamber, said many businesses not affiliated with Berkshire schedule events around the weekend.
“Berkshire has for us been the annual Super Bowl of business,” he said. “That means they’re filling up bars, restaurants and stores. You can feel the lift it gives.”
Marta Keller, general manager of the downtown M’s Pub, said some Berkshire customers book a year in advance. M’s creates a special menu for them.
“There will be a rib eye, a beef tenderloin. Everybody talks about Nebraska being about beef,” Keller said. “We keep it simple, but we’re trying to be creative because food has gotten so expensive.”
At the Bookworm, all books have Buffett’s seal of approval.
New this year are Nancy Rips’ updated “My New Berkshire ABC” for children (A is for Apple, a big Berkshire investment), and a book on Berkshire’s evolution from a failing textile mill that Buffett finally closed in 1985, twenty years after taking over.
“Mr. Buffett likes to educate shareholders,” Black said. “It will show how he put his capital into something that really wasn’t good and reallocated it in a more productive way.”
Borsheims Chief Executive Karen Goracke said the jeweler sells as much during the week as in the Christmas season. She and other CEOs of Berkshire businesses will again dine together this weekend.
“I saw Warren about a week ago,” Goracke said this week. “He’s in great spirits, and just happy to have the meeting in person again. He loves to do it. He’s energized by it.”
Reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Carolina Mandl in Omaha, Nebraska; editing by Megan Davies and Diane Craft
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/sanofis-dupixent-wins-us-approval-bigger-use-2022-05-20/
Sanofi logo at the company’s headquarters during the annual results news conference in Paris, France, February 4, 2022. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier
May 20 (Reuters) – Sanofi (SASY.PA) on Friday won expanded U.S. approval for its best-selling Dupixent injection to treat an allergic inflammation of the esophagus, the Food and Drug Administration said.
There are more than 160,000 patients in the United States living with eosinophilic esophagitis, according to Sanofi.
The chronic condition typically requires repeated treatments such as corticosterioids and diet change to ease the symptoms and Dupixent is the first treatment that targets the underlying cause.
Anti-inflammation drug Dupixent, jointly developed with Regeneron (REGN.O), is already approved for a range of other uses including atopic dermatitis, also known as eczema, and severe asthma.
Sanofi said in March it expected peak annual sales of more than 13 billion euros ($13.77 billion) for the drug, up from a previous target of over 10 billion euros. read more
That excluded the potential use in COPD, sometimes called smoker’s lung, where trial results are expected next year.
Dupixent, with 2021 sales of 5.25 billion euros, accounted for 13.9% of group revenue, by far Sanofi’s best-selling product.
Sanofi’s first-quarter adjusted earnings gained 16.2% on sales growth of the blockbuster drug and a rebound in demand for prescription-free drugs. read more
First-quarter revenue from Dupixent jumped over 45% to 1.61 billion euros, beating an analyst consensus, on prescriptions in dermatitis, asthma and certain nasal infections.
Reporting by Ludwig Burger; Additional reporting by Eva Mathews; Editing by Maju Samuel
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/chiles-atacama-lithium-mining-stirs-fight-over-flamingos-2022-05-19/
ATACAMA DESERT, May 19 (Reuters) – On the white plains of Chile’s lithium-rich Atacama desert, bright pink flamingos enliven the sprawling salt flats where sporadic blue pools provide much needed hydration.
But flamingo numbers are falling, with a new study linking this to the water extracted by mining firms to pump up brine filled with lithium, the metal used to make batteries for mobile phones, laptop computers and electric vehicles.
Miners contend their operations do not affect flamingo herds and say the studies are based on unreliable data.
The stand-off underscores growing tensions in the Andean nation over water use and mining’s impact on local communities and the environment. Tougher regulation is a risk for firms in the world’s No. 2 lithium producer and No. 1 for copper.
“You can explain the effects specifically from lithium extraction,” said Cristina Dorador, co-author of the study in the Royal Society’s Proceedings B journal, referring to findings that flamingo numbers dropped as more water was used up.
The scientists examined salt flats throughout Chile to measure the effects of other variables on water levels. Satellite imagery of mining ponds on the Atacama, home to most of Chile’s lithium, was used to calculate how much water was extracted.
Flamingos reproduce less with less water, which over time could impact herd numbers, said co-author Nathan Senner, a researcher of ecosystems and environmental change.
“It’s not like they all die at once, but if you’re not reproducing all of a sudden, even things that live as long as flamingos start to die. And that’s where numbers really start to tumble quite rapidly.”
In other salt flats without mining, flamingo populations remained steady over the last decade despite natural water variations linked to rainfall and climate shifts. In the Atacama, though, James and Andean flamingos declined 10-12%.
Chile’s National Mining Society declined to comment. Albemarle Corp (ALB.N), one of the main two lithium miners in Chile, did not respond to a request for comment.
SQM (SQMA.SN), the other main lithium miner, disagreed with key parts of the study, saying in a statement that its own monitoring indicated that “flamingo populations have remained stable.”
SQM said satellite analysis could considerably over- or under-estimate water use, and called for more research on the ground.
Dorador, a scientist from the region and an elected official working on Chile’s new constitution, said locals have noticed a decline in flamingos in the salt flats affected by mining for years.
“They are incredibly important because they’re one of big tourist attractions of San Pedro de Atacama,” said Dorador.
Dorador said indigenous elders collect flamingo eggs on the flats for their regular diet, while the birds regulate the ecosystem eating plankton, crustaceans and microorganisms, helping avoid damaging bacterial blooms on the water.
Chile’s flamingo numbers overall have held up, thanks to herds on other flats not affected by mining. But the consequences could be severe as demand spikes for lithium batteries powering electric vehicles, Dorador warned.
“We have to think where these materials come from, because we’re not always aware. We buy all these things but we often don’t know what had to happen to make that product.”
Reporting by Alexander Villegas and Cristian Rudolffi; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Richard Chang
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/golf/61484092
| Venue: Southern Hills Country Club, Tulsa, Oklahoma Date: 19-22 May |
| Coverage: Live text updates of all four rounds on BBC Sport website. Radio 5 Live updates of rounds one and two. Saturday’s round three live on Radio 5 Sports Extra from 20:00 BST. Sunday’s final round on 5 Live from 21:00 |
The second major of the 2022 will begin on Thursday as Southern Hills Country Club hosts the US PGA Championship.
Phil Mickelson, who became the oldest major champion by winning the event in 2021, has not played since February and will not defend the Wanamaker Trophy.
The American, 51, has not featured since criticism of his comments about the Saudi-backed LIV Golf series.
Tiger Woods, winner here in 2007, will head out in a marquee group including Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth.
The world number 818 made his return at last month’s Masters, 14 months after a career-threatening car crash that left him unable to walk for three months, and insists he can win a 16th major title at the Oklahoma venue.
“I feel like I can, yeah, definitely,” said the American. “I just have to go out there and do it, do my work. It starts on Thursday and I will be ready.”
World number one Scottie Scheffler won the Green Jacket at Augusta National to claim his first major, and fourth victory of 2022, and is having to get used to being in the limelight.
“When I show up to tournaments, it’s a little bit different,” said the 25-year-old. “There’s more people hollering at me when I’m playing a practice round wanting to get signatures or whatever it is.
“At home, I’ve been recognised a few more times than I did in the past. But Istay in my own little bubble. Not much has changed the way I practice. When I show up to tournaments, I don’t feel any different.
“Golf is really chancy. It’s not consistent like other sports. We play outside, there’s bad waves, bad bounces, all kinds of stuff that can happen – (I’m) just trying to keep my head down and play good golf.”
Alongside Mickelson’s absence, one the main talking points in the build-up has been the cost of food and drinks for spectators, with Justin Thomas among those to express his surprise.
“I just saw it and I was blown away,” said the American world number nine. “You want people to come to the tournament.
“I was just blown away because I’ve never seen a beer $18 or $19 in my life. Guys have been talking about it, so I had to stand up for the fans. Felt like it was right.”
Southern Hills Country Club was not initially due to host this year’s championship. It was chosen at short notice after the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, was stripped of the event days after supporters of former US President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol in January last year.
The par-70 Tulsa venue is hosting its eighth major and first since staging the PGA in 2007. It has undergone some reconstructive work since then and now plays at 7,556 yards, more than 300 yards longer than when Woods won on the site 15 years ago.
Built by Perry Maxwell during the Great Depression in 1936, the course was restored in 2018 by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, who set about discovering its former glory by removing trees, adding bunkers, widening fairways and taking away patches of rough for the reopening in 2019.
“One of the things I loved is the way they’ve cut the run-offs, it’s very hard to putt from off the greens,” said Rory McIlroy after his practice round on Monday.
“They’re trying to get wedges in guys’ hands, which I really like. It’s forcing you to chip instead of, like whenever Pinehurst was, 2014, you could putt from sort of everywhere.”
It boasts only two par-fives but both stretch to more than 630 yards, while the par-four 18th is notoriously tricky – in seven men’s majors, only Woods in 2007 and Tommy Bolt at the 1958 US Open have managed to close out their victories with a par.
“It’s a major championship golf course,” said Spaniard Jon Rahm. “You can’t hide. You have to do everything well.”
It will however be the first time the PGA Championship has been staged at the venue in May, rather than later in the summer, though sweltering temperatures could still have an impact, with temperatures forecast to reach 33C on Thursday before cooling a little over the weekend with the threat of thunderstorms on Friday and Saturday afternoon.
“It was obviously a very different golf course,” said Woods about his 2007 victory.
“It was not cold that week. I remember playing behind JD (John Daly) the first day, which was awesome.
“It was, what, 109 (Fahrenheit – 42C) I think that first day? And I asked JD how many waters he drank out there, he said, ‘No, I had 13 Diet Cokes’.”
https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/prehistoric-fossil-peru-sheds-light-marine-origin-crocodiles-2022-05-17/
LIMA, May 17 (Reuters) – The discovery of a prehistoric crocodile fossil in Peru from around 7 million years ago has given paleontologists more clues as to how modern crocodiles, all freshwater creatures in the Andean country, first came to land from the sea.
According to a Peruvian research team that analyzed jaw and skull remains of the species, the animal likely would have probably crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the coast of South America, eventually populating what is now southern Peru.
Researcher Rodolfo Salas said his team had collected partial skeletons from the species in recent years, and that after finding a jawbone in Peru’s Sacaco desert in 2020, they understood how these animals evolved after living in saltwater.
“The new species of crocodile that we are presenting to the world lived in Sacaco 7 million years ago,” Salas said of the species, which he dubbed Sacacosuchus cordovai. The crocodilian ancestor would have been 4 meters (13 feet) long, he added.
Sacaco is a site where skeletons of prehistoric animals have been found before. Experts say that millions of years ago the desert was a deep seabed inhabited by whales, giant sharks and crocodiles, among other marine species.
“We have concluded … that all marine crocodiles were animals with long and thin faces, and that there were two morphotypes,” Salas said. “One that fed almost exclusively on fish and another that had a much more general diet.”
The studies were published last week in British scientific journal The Royal Society.
Southern Peru is a rich source of prehistoric remains.
In March, a team of paleontologists led by Salas presented the skull fossil of a 12-meter-long (39-foot-long) “sea monster,” a predator that lived 36 million years ago in an ancient ocean along the central coast of Peru. read more
Reporting by Carlos Valdez of Reuters TV; writing by Marco Aquino and Kylie Madry; editing by Jonathan Oatis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/inca-priests-plied-child-sacrificial-victims-with-drugs/
By Nilsf – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23446041
A recent toxicology analysis of the 500-year-old remains of two small children sacrificed in a ritual atop southern Peru’s Ampato volcano showed that the children’s hair and fingernails contained traces of cocaine, as well as two chemical compounds from a flowering vine that’s a key ingredient in the psychedelic beverage ayahuasca.
The compounds in question, harmine and harmaline, are both part of a group of antidepressants called MAOIs (monoamine oxidase inhibitors). The only possible place the Inca could have found these compounds is the flowering vine known to modern science as Banisteriopsis caapi—and to the Indigenous Quechua people as “liana of the dead.” Famously, the liana is one of the two main ingredients in a ritual drink called ayahuasca, which can induce hallucinations or an altered state of mind.
But the analysis found no trace of the compound DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine), which makes ayahuasca such a powerful hallucinogenic. That compound comes from the other main ingredient in ayahuasca, a shrub called chacruna (which, incidentally, is a relative of the plant that gives us coffee).
Its absence could just be a quirk of chemistry. Toxicology studies of at least one sacrifice victim from another site also found no DMT but did find a chemical compound that’s produced when the body metabolizes DMT. That supports the idea that DMT may not be one of the chemicals preserved in keratin, which means University of Warsaw archaeologist Dagmara Socha and her colleagues can’t rule out ayahuasca being given to the kids at Ampato.
Still, the lack of DMT in the Ampato victims’ hair and nails could mean that they drank something that contained the liana of the dead but not chacruna. And if that’s the case, it seems very likely that the goal wasn’t to give them religious hallucinations but to keep the children calm on the long procession toward their deaths.
“If so, this would be the first example of the conscious use of the antidepression properties of ayahuasca beverage consisting primarily, if not totally, of Banisteriopsis caapi,” wrote Socha and her colleagues in a recent paper.
The two children, both between 6 and 7 years old, died as victims in an Inca ritual called capacocha. Throughout the Inca Empire, priests sacrificed young women and children as young as 3 years old to local deities called huacas.
For weeks before the sacrifice, the victims knew exactly what was going to happen to them. Victims chosen from the far-flung corners of the Inca Empire had to gather in the capital, Cusco, before setting out on long processions to the places where they would die. Sometimes that meant a long journey back home, and sometimes it meant traveling to some other province of the empire.
That experience must have been overwhelming for young children, even without the terror of the sacrifice hanging over their heads. And it simply wouldn’t do to have the intended victim, who was meant to be pure and beautiful, crying about it. Spanish colonizers, who described the rituals they witnessed, wrote that the victim’s mood was as important as their appearance; sacrifices were supposed to go happily to the huacas.
The solution? Sedate the victims with drugs and booze. According to the Spaniards, Inca priests kept their doomed victims happy and calm with a steady diet of an alcoholic drink called chicha.
Toxicology studies on the mummified remains of several capacocha victims from around Peru found evidence that they had also chewed coca leaves for weeks before their deaths, and some died with their last dose still in their mouths. Often, it seems that the children were chewing more and more coca as the ritual drew closer. In the hair of one victim at another site, archaeologists found a compound called cocaethylene, which forms when cocaine combines with alcohol in a person’s body.
In other words, Inca priests spent several weeks drugging small children into cheerful compliance until it was time to ritually murder them. The horror of that scenario isn’t offset by the fact that there was evidently a fairly advanced level of pharmacological knowledge behind the choice of drugs.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exxon-challenges-california-countys-denial-oil-trucking-permit-2022-05-13/
Signage is seen at an Exxon gas station in Brooklyn, New York City, U.S., November 23, 2021. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
LOS ANGELES, May 13 (Reuters) – Exxon Mobil Corp has gone to court seeking to force local California government officials to allow shipment of crude oil from coastal facilities to inland refineries by dozens of tanker trucks a day until replacement of a pipeline that burst in 2015, causing a major spill.
In a federal lawsuit filed on Wednesday, the energy giant challenged the denial of its trucking permit application by the Santa County Barbara County Board of Supervisors, calling the panel’s 3-2 vote against the plan in March a “prejudicial abuse of discretion.”
Exxon (XOM.N) claimed the board’s majority had essentially made up its mind to reject the application rather than deciding the issue on its merits, resulting in a “de facto ban on crude oil production and transportation.”
Exxon asserts that the board’s action effectively prevents the company from restarting three offshore drilling platforms and refinery operations shut down after a badly corroded pipeline ruptured along the Pacific shoreline near Santa Barbara on May 19, 2015.
As much as 3,400 barrels of crude oil escaped from the line, owned by Plains All American Pipeline (PAA.O). It marked the worst oil spill to hit the energy-rich but ecologically sensitive coastline northwest of Los Angeles since a 100,000-barrel blowout in the Santa Barbara Channel in 1969.
Plains was convicted in 2018 on criminal charges of fouling the environment and harming wildlife. The Houston-based company later agreed to pay some $60 million to settle civil charges of violating federal pipeline safety laws.
Plains has since applied for approval to replace the pipeline, a proposal subject to extensive regulatory and environmental review.
In the meantime, Exxon has proposed hauling its offshore crude to one of two refineries under a plan to allow as many as 70 tanker trucks a day to run along California’s coastal Highway 101 and a smaller two-lane highway. Santa Barbara County has previously rejected alternative plans to transport Exxon’s oil via rail or marine tanker, the company said.
“It’s disturbing to see Exxon’s lawyers try to force through this dangerous plan to put hundreds of trucks carrying highly flammable oil on county highways,” Julie Teel Simmonds, a senior attorney with the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement on Friday.
Jennifer Richardson, an attorney in the Santa Barbara County counsel’s office, declined to comment on pending litigation.
In its lawsuit, Exxon claims the county’s denials amount to an unconstitutional “taking” of its property rights, a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s commerce clause and an illegal exercise of police powers.
When Exxon first halted offshore production from its three Santa Barbara-area platforms, output from those rigs was estimated at 30,000 barrels a day, a fraction of California’s daily crude diet of some 1.7 million bpd at the time.
Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by David Gregorio
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