Tag: role

Posted on by

R&A blocks Greg Norman from Open 150th anniversary events over LIV role

In the latest nod towards the schism within golf caused by the breakaway LIV tour, neither Phil Mickelson nor Greg Norman will feature in the past champion events before the 150th Open Championship. While Mickelson will miss the Celebration of Champions four-hole challenge on Monday and the following evening’s champions’ dinner of his own volition, Norman was informed by the R&A that he would not be welcome at either.

Norman, the figurehead of the Saudi Arabian-backed LIV Series, won the Open in 1986 and 1993 but has now found himself in conflict with golf’s existing ecosystem. In a statement, the R&A confirmed it felt having Norman at St Andrews would be an unwelcome distraction.

“In response to enquiries regarding the R&A Celebration of Champions field and the champions’ dinner, we can confirm that we contacted Greg Norman to advise him that we decided not to invite him to attend on this occasion,” it said.

Quick Guide

How do I sign up for sport breaking news alerts?

Show
  • Download the Guardian app from the iOS App Store on iPhones or the Google Play store on Android phones by searching for ‘The Guardian’.
  • If you already have the Guardian app, make sure you’re on the most recent version.
  • In the Guardian app, tap the yellow button at the bottom right, then go to Settings (the gear icon), then Notifications.
  • Turn on sport notifications.

Thank you for your feedback.

“The 150th Open is an extremely important milestone for golf and we want to ensure that the focus remains on celebrating the championship and its heritage. Unfortunately, we do not believe that would be the case if Greg were to attend. We hope that when circumstances allow Greg will be able to attend again in future.”

Mickelson, who is in this Open field, informed the R&A he did not wish to attend either event. Tensions could have been high at the dinner with Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, who have been firm in their opposition to the LIV project, among the guests. Mickelson is suspended from the PGA Tour and has lost multiple sponsors because of his involvement in LIV competitions and the sentiment regarding human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia.

Norman has made his disquiet over the situation clear. “I’m disappointed,” he told Australian Golf Digest. “I would have thought the R&A would have stayed above it all given their position in world golf. It’s petty, as all I have done is prompt and grow the game of golf globally, on and off the golf course, for more than four decades.”

Posted on by

Climate change role clear in many extreme events but social factors also key, study finds

Climate change is to blame for the majority of the heatwaves being recorded around the planet but the relation to other extreme events impacts on society is less clear, according to a study.

“I think on the one hand we overestimate climate change because it’s now quite common that every time an extreme event happens, there is a big assumption that climate change is playing a big role, which is not always the case,” said Friederike Otto, a climate change and environment professor at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, who was one of the lead authors of the research.

“But on the other hand, we really underestimate those events where climate change does play a role in what the costs are, especially the non-economic costs of extreme weather events to our societies.”

In the study published in the journal IOP Publishing, Otto’s team used “attribution science” to pore over available international data, literature and climate models – as well as the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports – and calculate how human-induced climate change is affecting the impact of five types of extreme weather events: heatwaves, heavy rainfall, drought, wildfires and tropical cyclones.

They say that in the case of heatwaves, the role of climate change is unequivocal, and that the average and extreme heat levels in every continent across the globe are increasing specifically because of human-caused climate change.

A heatwave with a one in 50 chance of happening in pre-industrial times is now almost five times more likely to happen and will be 1.2C hotter, according to an IPCC report. In the past 20 years there have been 157,000 deaths from 34 heatwaves, according to data from the EMDAT disaster database. Yet the impact of human-induced climate change on heatwaves and the repercussions are still largely underestimated.

“One big reason why we underestimate heatwaves so dramatically is because no one’s dropping dead on the street during a heatwave, or at least very few people do,” Otto said.

Most people died from pre-existing conditions suddenly becoming acute, Otto said, and this often did not show up in data. Wildfires were also one of the big climate impacts not talked about enough, Otto said.

For other events such as droughts, floods and tropical cyclones, there is a more nuanced link to climate change. For example, there are some regions of the world where droughts are becoming worse because of human-caused climate change, such as southern Africa, Otto notes, while in other droughts the climate change signal is either not there or very small.

“By focusing too much on climate change, it really takes the responsibility, but also the agency, away to address these local drivers of disasters such as high poverty rates, missing infrastructure, investment, missing healthcare system … all these aspects of exposure and vulnerability that make every drought a catastrophe,” Otto said.

“That will not go away even if we stop burning fossil fuels today. I think that that is why the overestimation of climate change – by basically blaming this all on climate change – is not very helpful for actually dealing [with] and for actually improving resilience to these threats.”

Much of the problem in figuring out exactly to what extent climate change was responsible for the impact of extreme weather events, Otto said, lay in the lack of reliable data around the globe.

Sign up to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every weekday morning at 7am

There is not enough information coming from lower- and middle-income countries, although these are the places more likely to be at risk of the repercussions of human-induced climate change.

Already there’s been substantial scientific progress in the last few years in attributing extreme events and their consequences to human-made climate change, said Frances Moore, a professor of environmental economics at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved in the study.

“But an important caveat is that the consequences of climate change do not only operate through extremes,” said Moore. Changes in “average conditions” can also have large consequences for mortality, agriculture, worker productivity and safety. “It may well be that the aggregate consequences of these changing, ‘non-extreme’ conditions constitute a large fraction of total climate change impacts.”

Otto called for a broader definition of what was considered as “risk” in climate change modelling, rather than simply sticking to hazards and impact. Other factors such as the effects that extreme weather has on individuals, labour productivity, infrastructure, agricultural systems and property should be taken into account, he said.

“We started at ‘no one was ever talking about climate change’ and now we’ve sort of moved over to ‘blaming a lot of things on climate change’,” Otto said. “[This is] a plea towards realising that reality is somewhat messy, in the middle, and that we need to disentangle these drivers better in order to actually prioritise our adaptation and resilience building to really address climate change properly.”

Posted on by

Probe shows prison officials’ role in events leading to youth’s jail death

Probe shows prison officials’ role in events leading to youth’s jail death

A new report by a committee formed to probe into the death of a Dalit youth in a jail in Rolpa has raised serious questions over Nepal’s prison administration.

Sundar Harijan, 20, died in jail on May 18 under suspicious circumstances. He was said to have died by suicide.

The probe committee has found that it was a case of identity swapping—that Harijan was serving time for another criminal. It has also found that there was gross negligence on the part of prison administration.

The executive summary of the report, a copy of which is seen by the Post, says CCTV footage of the time when Harijan ‘committed suicide’ is not available and recommends further detailed investigation by the Nepal Police.

Harijan was jailed on charges of mobile phone theft by Banke District Court judge Dilip Raj Onta.

Harijan was handed down one-year jail and Rs10,000 fine for mobile theft. He was supposed to remain in jail until September 3, 2020. His jail term, however, was extended until October 8 after he could not pay the fine.

Meanwhile, Bijay Bikram Shah was sent to jail for extortion and his involvement in organised crime. He was due to get released on March 6 next year.

But for no apparent reason, both Harijan and Shah were transferred to Rolpa Prison on November 23.

Then came the twist. Shah was released on January 12, 2021 as Harijan. Harijan continued to be in jail as Shah.

Harijan was found dead on May 18 at the Rolpa jail in a suspicious condition.

Earlier on May 20, the government had formed a probe panel led by Jharendra Chapagain, director of the Department of Prison Management, to study the death of Harijan. The panel submitted its report to Basudev Ghimire, director general of the Department of Prison Management, saying there was no involvement of the prison administration in Harijan’s death.

But the Home Ministry formed yet another committee led by Surya Prasad Sedhai, a joint secretary at the ministry, on May 31 to investigate the matter.

The Sedhai committee’s report has pointed out that Shah influenced the then acting jailor of Banke District Prison Dipendra Prasad Poudel and Dinesh Kumar Yadav, who was working as a driver for the prison. The panel found that Poudel and Yadav were pretty close with each other.

“Yadav, the driver, left for India immediately after the incident,” the executive summary of the report states. “He closed all his contacts, including phone and his social media accounts. Both Poudel and Yadav appear to have accomplices in the incident.”

The panel has recommended that the Nepal Police carry out a detailed investigation into the activities of Khadka Bahadur Khatri, also a prisoner, who was seen in CCTV footage talking to other inmates after Harijan’s death.

“From the details mentioned in the report it is clear that the then civil servants related to prison administration made serious mistakes and negligence in accomplishing their responsibilities and following laws, we recommend legal action against them,” the report states. “Likewise, we also recommend immediate implementation of the suggestions of this panel.”

The committee employed different methods for completing its study including field inspection, information collection and analysis, enquiry and the analysis of phone call and incident details.

The Sedhai-led panel included Jhanka Nath Dhakal, director of the Department of Prison Management, Superintendent of Nepal Police Bhupendra Khatri, Deputy Investigation Director of National Investigation Department Bishwamani Acharya and an administrative officer at the District Administration Office, Banke.

Its members also met with Shah, who is currently doing time in Barabanki District of India’s Uttar Pradesh, on drug trafficking charges, through unofficial channels.

Shah had told the investigation team that Harijan could have committed suicide after Khadka Bahadur Khatri, who is also known as Tora Bora, and Prakash Budha tortured him to return their money. The report does not have details of the money Shah is referring to.

The panel has recommended action against those who decided to transfer Shah and Harijan from Banke to Rolpa, saying that they failed to discharge their duties properly.

“I cannot say anything about the report because there are some very sensitive security issues,” said Surya Sedhai, joint secretary of the Home Ministry, who led the probe panel.

The Sedhai panel was asked to submit its report in seven days from the day they started their work. The panel submitted a report to Home Minister Bal Krishna Khand on Tuesday.

After receiving the report, Khand said he would implement the recommendations of the report.

According to another joint secretary of the Home Ministry, who wished not to be named, the recommendations of the probe panel will be implemented gradually.

He said the panel has made many recommendations including the reforms in prison administration and management of physical infrastructure, maintaining proper records of the prisoners with their clear identification so as to ensure that such incidents of identity swapping are not repeated in the future.

The National Human Rights Commission has also formed a separate probe panel. A report is pending.

The National Dalit Commission, however, said despite its wish to conduct a probe on its own, it could not do so because of fund crunch.

“We wanted to send an independent panel to investigate the death of the Dalit youth under suspicious circumstances in the prison. But we could not do so,” said Devraj Bishworkarma, chairperson of the Dalit Commission. “We could not manage funds for the probe.”

Legal experts say the government should come up with a new legal provision to control the crimes related to prisoner swapping as this could happen in the future as well.

“Since this is a new kind of crime in which prison administration officials seem to be involved, a separate law should be brought to curb such new forms of criminal activities,” said Balaram KC, former justice of the Supreme Court.

KC said the government must form another independent enquiry commission led by a sitting High Court judge as this is a serious issue in which all the state mechanism seems to have been involved in taking the life of a youth.

“The state is the custodian of the fundamental rights of its people,” KC told the Post. “The jailor concerned must be punished and the state must issue a public apology to the people and form an independent commission.”

Posted on by

Basolateral amygdala may play a larger, overarching role during naturalistic events

Study provides insights into how early life events can affect brain wiring patterns

The basolateral amygdala (BLA) is a region of the brain that has been almost exclusively studied in the context of fear and emotion. Only recently have researchers begun to question whether the BLA may play a larger, overarching role in memory and behavior. Yet almost nothing is known about the neuronal activity of the BLA during naturalistic behavior.

To address these questions, neuroscientists at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at UCL observed the neuronal activity in this brain region while rats freely engaged with a variety of different ethological stimuli. Interactions with ethological stimuli are relevant to the animal’s survival and to the propagation of its genes, and include food, prey and conspecifics. In a new study, published today in Cell Reports, the researchers demonstrate strong responses to these classes of events in the BLA.

The naturalistic stimuli in this study were important to the animals in their everyday life and the rats were naturally curious to interact with them. They included complex multisensory stimuli like male and female rats, food and a moving toy mouse.

Traditionally, research has focused on studying the BLA in rats during trained tasks. Instead, we wanted to observe neuronal activity while rats were freely behaving to see if we could find an overarching role for the BLA during natural behavior that might tie together the previous lines of research.” 

Cristina Mazuski, Research Fellow in the O’Keefe Lab, Sainsbury Wellcome Centre and lead author on the paper

Using Neuropixels, Mazuski and O’Keefe simultaneously recorded from hundreds of neurons in the rat BLA and correlated single-cell neural activity with complex behavior to identify different classes of cells within the BLA that respond to the ethological stimuli. They identified and described two novel categories of cells in the BLA; event-specific neurons, which responded to only one of the four classes of stimuli, and panresponsive neurons, which responded equally well to most or all of the stimuli.

Strikingly, 1/3 of the cells showed an active memory response: not only did the neural response last throughout the entire event but it continued after the end of the event for many minutes. The authors speculate that these after-responses might be acting as a memory system telling the rest of the brain that an important event had just occurred and perhaps alerting other brain regions to store information about other aspects of the event and the circumstances surrounding it.

Commenting on these aspects of the results, Prof. O’Keefe, the senior author on the paper, said “These findings position the basolateral amygdala at the center of the social/ethological brain and open up a whole research program investigating what other naturally-occurring stimuli the rest of the (normally silent) BLA cells are interested in. They also direct our attention to the memory functions of the amygdala which have not, to date, received sufficient consideration”.

As the researchers were recording from many neurons simultaneously using Neuropixels probes, they were also able to look at the circuit connectivity. By delving into the correlated activity between different single neurons, they could infer the flow of information from more-specific neurons such as those responding to female rats or food to the less-specific panresponsive neurons.

“This initial study opens up a lot of future avenues for research. The next steps are to find out what the responses are sensitive to, how robust they are and confirm whether they play a role in memory,” concluded Cristina.

This research received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie-Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 840562 to Cristina Mazuski, the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre Core Grant from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation and Wellcome Trust (090843/F/09/Z), and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellowship (Wt203020/z/16/z) to John O’Keefe.

Source:

Sainsbury Wellcome Centre

Journal reference:

Mazuski, C & O’Keefe, J., (2022) Representation of Ethological Events by Basolateral Amygdala Neurons. Cell Reports. doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2022.110921.

Posted on by

Exclusive: Gary Neville to ramp up Labour role and do series of events with Starmer

Exclusive: Gary Neville to ramp up Labour role and do series of events with Starmer

Speculation has mounted that Gary Neville is interested in standing for office, after becoming an increasingly vocal opponent of Boris Johnson over the past year.

Gary Neville is set to ramp up his work with the Labour party and make a series of appearances beside Sir Keir Starmer in a move that will fuel further speculation the former Manchester United captain wants to run for parliament.

It is understood that Starmer thinks Neville, who became a Labour member for the first time earlier this year, has the necessary communication abilites to become an MP if he wanted to stand.

The Sky Sports pundit did a fundraising event in Manchester for party members alongside the Labour leader last week, which drew around 700 people.

Sources close to the Labour leader told City A.M. that Neville now wants to extend his involvement further and will be doing more events in the months ahead.

This could also involve appearances with other high-profile Labour figures.

“Keir and Gary did an event together last week and they were very relaxed around each other on stage – they seem to have a really nice relationship,” a source said.

“We’re really pleased he’s a member and that he wants to use his membership … but there have not been any talks with him about standing as an MP.”

Starmer has held several meetings with the ex-footballer and broadcaster, with the Labour leader impressed with Neville’s efforts in rallying against the breakaway Super League proposal last year.

A Starmer ally said “the guy won the treble as United captain – he’ll be a fantastic high-profile spokesperson for the party”.

Speculation has mounted that Neville is interested in standing for office, after becoming an increasingly vocal opponent of Boris Johnson over the past year.

The Sky Sports pundit has launched intermittent broadcast and social media attacks on the Prime Minister, which include labelling him a “liar” and the “worst kind of leader”.

Neville suggested Johnson gave the green light for three England players to be racially abused, after they missed penalties in the Euro 2020 final, in light of Number 10’s initial refusal to condemn the booing of footballers taking the knee pre-game.

“The Prime Minister said that it was okay for the population of this country to boo those players who were trying to promote equality, and defend against racism,” Neville said.

A few days earlier, Neville said: “The standard of leaders in this country the past couple of years has been poor, looking at [England manager Gareth Southgate]. he’s everything a leader should be – respectful, humble, he tells the truth.”

The former United right back was coy when asked on a BBC podcast in January whether he would make a run at Westminster.

 He said: “I say to myself sometimes ‘I’m able to communicate. I know what I want. I have got a business mind, I can manage people.’ But I just think I’d get eaten alive.”

Labour shadow culture secretary and Manchester Central MP Lucy Powell organised Neville’s first event with Starmer, after she had spoken to him on numerous occasions over the past year about joining the party.

“It’s a powerful endorsement by Gary that he has chosen to join the Labour Party. He hasn’t done so lightly but out of a strong belief that we need a change of government in the country,” she said.

Neville is not the first high-profile Manchester United figure to have a public role supporting the Labour party.

Former manager Sir Alex Ferguson campaigned for Labour during Tony Blair’s leadership, especially in the lead-up to the 1997 election, and even consulted the former Prime Minister about his difficult relationship with Gordon Brown.

Neville’s representatives were contacted for comment.

Similarly tagged content:

Posted on by

Research sheds light on important events that may play a role in infertility

Research sheds light on important events that may play a role in infertility

Everyone considers sperm to be made exclusively by males. But did you know that females also make sperm? Well, it turns out that females also contribute to what makes a sperm a sperm.

Nearly 20 percent of couples in the United States fail to conceive naturally after one year of trying, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In species with internal fertilization, such as humans, the ability for a female to become pregnant and carry a pregnancy to term is dependent upon effective interactions between sperm and the female reproductive tract (FRT). When those interactions are defective, the result can be a failed pregnancy. Therefore, understanding the factors that contribute to sperm viability between copulation and fertilization is crucial.

A research team from the Syracuse University College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Biology and Cornell University, led by Steve Dorus, associate professor of biology at Syracuse University, have been studying the life history of fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) sperm to better understand molecular continuity between male and female reproductive tracts. In other words, how the male and female reproductive tracts provide support to keep the sperm viable before fertilization. Their results, published on March 7, 2022 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS), shed light on important events that may play a role in infertility that up until now have been poorly understood.

The team, which includes members from Syracuse University’s Center for Reproductive Evolution, explored the compositional changes in fruit fly sperm, beginning shortly after they leave the testis, following insemination and finally after protracted storage within the FRT. Fruit flies are powerful model organisms for investigations such as this one because they are easy to culture in the laboratory, have a short generation time and their genetics are richly understood. In their study, the group uncovered that the proteome, or protein makeup, of the sperm undergoes substantial changes after being transferred to the FRT.

For species with internal fertilization, a sperm’s developmental ‘journey’ – on the way to its final destination of fertilizing an egg and beginning a new life – transcends both male and female reproductive tracts. After leaving the testis, sperm travel through the male’s seminal vesicles and descend through the ejaculatory duct, where they mix with seminal fluid proteins. The team found that many of these seminal proteins are progressively lost after sperm migrate beyond the site of insemination within the FRT. Conversely, female-derived proteins that may help the sperm with functions such as energy metabolism, begin to associate with the sperm immediately after mating, signifying a changing of the guard of proteins.

After several days of storage within the FRT, the research team was surprised to discover that nearly 20% of the sperm’s proteins had been replaced by female-derived proteins. The female contributions support sperm viability during the prolonged period between copulation and fertilization. This “hand-off” in the maintenance of sperm viability from males to females means that sperm are materially the product of both sexes, and this may be a crucial aspect of reproduction in all internally-fertilizing species, including humans.

By studying the intimate ways in which sperm interact with the FRT during the final stages of functional maturation, the team’s research advances understanding of animal fertility and the contributions of each sex to reproductive success.

In addition to Dorus and Pitnick, other co-authors from Syracuse University included former postdoctoral researcher Erin McCullough and doctoral graduate Emma Whittington. Co-authors from Cornell University were Professor Mariana Wolfner and postdoctoral researcher Akanksha Singh. The team’s research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and a gift from Mike and Jane Weeden to Syracuse University.

Source:

Journal reference:

McCullough, E.L., et al. (2022) The life history of Drosophila sperm involves molecular continuity between male and female reproductive tracts. PNAS. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2119899119.