Feather | Jotup

Native raspberries, limes and geraniums: how did these curious plants end up in Australia?

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Friday, June 2, 2023

Rubus, DNA, Travel, Banksia, Seed, Tamarind, Tree, Flower, Feather, Duck, Plant, Medicine, Fruit, Biodiversity, Rhododendron, Name, Climate change, Animal, Love, Citrus, Confusion, Bird, Proteaceae, News, Food, Tea, Hunting, Sulfur, Aquaculture, Truffle, Floral industry, Macadamia, Himalayas, Antarctica

Some species have travelled vast distances over millennia, moving by different and varied modes.

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Some species have travelled vast distances over millennia, moving by different and varied modes.
Some found new habitats when the continent they were riding on slowly crashed into another.
Others went on perilous ocean going journeys – think of coconuts washing up on new island shores.

Native nuts – how macadamia trees began

Here, many Australians tasted macadamia nuts for the first time and probably assumed they were a local delicacy.
Hawaii’s macadamia industry began when a few nuts were sent from Australia in the 1880s.
Of course, this was not news to Australia’s First Nations people, many of whom had enjoyed macadamia nuts for millennia.

Oranges, lemons – and native citrus?

Many of us are fond of tart and tasty citrus – oranges from southern China, lemons probably from northern India.
All the world’s citrus trees stem from an ancestor species which grew in the foothills of the Himalayas, according to DNA evidence.
But there are others, like the Australian lime, Citrus australis and the desert lime C. glauca.

Native raspberries

In recent years, the native raspberry, Rubus probus, has achieved celebrity status as a prickly, quick growing bramble with a good fruit.
This will make a big difference to the cultivation of our native raspberry.
So how did Australia come to have raspberries?

Native geraniums? It’s true

Family folklore had it they were cuttings from a prize winner at a major horticultural exhibition – and I believe it.
While we associate garden geraniums with Europe, they’re actually African and only arrived in Europe in the 17th century.
Most of the Australian native plants commonly called geraniums are in fact pelargoniums.

Native orchids: from flying ducks to the Queen of Sheba

In the 19th century, so many Europeans went mad for their flowers that the name “orchidelirium” was coined.
We have some of the most iconic orchids as natives, such as the remarkable flying duck orchid and the stunning Queen of Sheba.
But curiously, we also have tropical species which must have island hopped from Papua New Guinea and Indonesia more recently.
We have native tamarinds, native rivermint, and a native rhododendron.

Hearts On Fire Launches VELA

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Tuesday, May 30, 2023

Heart, VELA, Jewellery, Collection, Light, Motion, UGC, Feather, Hearts on Fire, Hearts on Fire (company), Love, Atmosphere, Gemstone

BOSTON, May 30, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Hearts On Fire, the internationally recognized jewelry brand known for the unparalleled sparkle of its signature cut diamonds, announces the global launch of its new VELA collection.

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BOSTON, May 30, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Hearts On Fire, the internationally recognized jewelry brand known for the unparalleled sparkle of its signature cut diamonds, announces the global launch of its new VELA collection.
This intricate faceting, paired with the Hearts On Fire signature cut, allows for maximum refraction of light within the diamonds, for an intense and unparalleled sparkle.
The VELA Collection print and digital advertising campaign debuts in all major markets on May 31, 2023 followed by a global UGC activation, #ShowYourLove, on June 15.
The new VELA Collection will launch globally at select retailers, boutiques and via heartsonfire.com on May 30, 2023.

Tina Turner: an immense talent with a voice and back catalogue that unites disparate music lovers

Retrieved on:

Saturday, May 27, 2023

Born in 1939, Tina was older than my mother and nearly 40 years older than me.

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Born in 1939, Tina was older than my mother and nearly 40 years older than me.
But to me, she was a complete goddess from the moment I first encountered her.
She remains the only Black woman to have been inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
It was also a sound that enabled her to move beyond soul and blues in her solo career.

A genre-fluid singer

The very next year, she performed the role of the Acid Queen in film of The Who’s psychedelic operetta fantasy, Tommy.
The role gave its name to an album featuring several notable rock covers by Turner, such as Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love.
From the early 1980s, Turner made what has repeatedly been described as one of the most remarkable career comebacks of the century.
Even 40 years on, the idea of a woman in her mid-40s singing a pop song about sex work is somewhat surprising.

A musical uniter

Turner’s musical agility allowed her to inhabit contradictory musical spaces simultaneously.
There is an exuberance here that crosses times and identities to bring a crowd together in the ritual of “rolling on the river”.
There alongside them is Turner with songs like The Best, We Don’t Need Another Hero and Nutbush City Limits.

Clothes moths: Why I admire these persistent, destructive, difficult-to-eradicate and dull-looking pests

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Tuesday, May 9, 2023

The jar, which previously housed a liter of honey, now contains a multitude of small golden moths and their wriggly caterpillar offspring.

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The jar, which previously housed a liter of honey, now contains a multitude of small golden moths and their wriggly caterpillar offspring.
The founding population came from within my house – pests that fervently fed on my sweaters, rugs and horsehair plaster.
When they emerge from my walls in the evenings, I chase them with zeal and catch them in jam jars.

Resourceful, vigorous, tanklike eating machines

If you’re unlucky, you are already aware of the destruction they can wreak on sweaters, rugs and upholstery.
These moths can eat hair, skin and feathers, all of which comprise a protein called keratin.
Biologists still aren’t sure how clothes moths can metabolize keratin, and this is something I aim to address in my research.
One study posits that they harbor a microorganism in their gut that uses digestive enzymes to break down keratin for them.
This kind of nutritional flexibility is common to other well-known synanthropic species – is there anything a raccoon won’t eat?

Moth genes from around the world

This data tells researchers like me how distantly related the clothes moths in, say, Australia are to clothes moths in Hawaii.
To that end, I’ve spent the past two years internationally shipping pheromone-baited moth traps to interested volunteers.
People generally want to help because they hope my research will yield better methods of moth eradication.
I spend a lot of my time in the lab extracting moth DNA and a lot of time on my computer analyzing it.

Appreciation for a pest

They are not intentionally pests; they are innovative, cunning and endlessly capable.
Their ability to capitalize on unfilled niches has allowed them to spread far and wide throughout homes everywhere.
Of course, that doesn’t mean their damage can’t be devastating, or that battling these moths doesn’t stink.

AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton says AI is a new form of intelligence unlike our own. Have we been getting it wrong this whole time?

Retrieved on:

Thursday, May 4, 2023

Indeed, one of the most widely pronounced fears is that AI may achieve human-like intelligence and render humans obsolete in the process.

Key Points:

Indeed, one of the most widely pronounced fears is that AI may achieve human-like intelligence and render humans obsolete in the process.
However, one of the world’s top AI scientists is now describing AI as a new form of intelligence – one that poses unique risks, and will therefore require unique solutions.
Geoffrey Hinton, a leading AI scientist and winner of the 2018 Turing Award, just stepped down from his role at Google to warn the world about the dangers of AI.

Why Hinton’s ideas matter

Dubbed the “godfather of AI”, he has helped pioneer many of the methods underlying the modern AI systems we see today.
His early work on neural networks led to him being one of three individuals awarded the 2018 Turing Award.

The false equivalence trap

ChatGPT even makes stuff up, or “hallucinates”, which Hinton points out is something humans do as well.
But we risk being reductive when we consider such similarities a basis for comparing AI intelligence with human intelligence.
For thousands of years, humans tried to fly by imitating birds: flapping their arms with some contraption mimicking feathers.
Eventually, we realised fixed wings create uplift, using a different principle, and this heralded the invention of flight.

How is AI intelligence unique?

Both AI experts and non-experts have long drawn a link between AI and human intelligence – not to mention the tendency to anthropomorphise AI.
But AI is fundamentally different to us in several ways.
AI outperforms humans on many tasks, including any task that relies on assembling patterns and information gleaned from large datasets.
Humans are also very energy-efficient, whereas AI requires powerful computers (especially for learning) that use orders of magnitude more energy than us.

Okay, so what if AI is different to us?

If AI is fundamentally a different intelligence to ours, then it follows that we can’t (or shouldn’t) compare it to ourselves.
A new intelligence presents new dangers to society and will require a paradigm shift in the way we talk about and manage AI systems.
In particular, we may need to reassess the way we think about guarding against the risks of AI.

What risks are we facing?

We’ll need to adapt how we manage AI as it becomes increasingly deployed for tasks once completed by humans.
More worryingly, AI’s ability to generate fake text, images and video is leading us into a new age of information manipulation.
Olivier Salvado works for CSIRO and lead AI for CSIRO Missions, which receives funding from The Australian Commonwealth and funding bodies.

Here's why pharmacists are angry at script changes – and why the government is making them anyway

Retrieved on:

Tuesday, May 2, 2023

This change is expected to halve the cost of prescriptions for six million Australians.

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This change is expected to halve the cost of prescriptions for six million Australians.
take advice around medicine supply and medicine shortages from our medicines authorities rather than the pharmacy lobby group.
This government is using its political capital to push health reform forward and doesn’t seem afraid to ruffle a few feathers.

What is the Pharmacy Guild of Australia?

It acts like a union for community pharmacy (also known as chemists) owners.
It provides resources to help pharmacists improve their small businesses, but most of its membership value comes from advocating for community pharmacy owners.
Known as Community Pharmacy Agreements, the first was signed in 1990, while the most recent seventh Community Pharmacy Agreement was signed in 2020.

How does the guild wield its power?

It has a reputation for shaping government health policy envied by many a health care peak body.
The guild also takes a more direct approach to influencing government policy.
The Australian Electoral Commission reported the guild was the 13th largest political donor in 2021–22, donating $578,000 to political parties across 88 separate donations.

What policies has the guild influenced?

The guild convinced the government to provide community pharmacies and pharmaceutical wholesalers with an extra $225 million in the 2017–18 budget because prescription volumes were lower than expected within the sixth Community Pharmacy Agreement.
Read more:
What is the Pharmacy Guild of Australia and why does it wield so much power?

What are the Pharmacy Location Rules?

The Pharmacy Location Rules are an agreement between the Australian government and the Pharmacy Guild of Australia.
The Pharmacy Location Rules do not allow new pharmacies to open within 1.5 kilometres or 10 kilometres of an existing pharmacy depending on the location, distance to the nearest pharmacy, and the number of supermarkets and medical practitioners in the area.
The Pharmacy Location Rules were introduced in the first Community Pharmacy Agreement to help larger pharmacies generate efficiencies and profit through scale.
Upon further lobbying, the Pharmacy Location Rules sunset clause was removed after the guild formed a Pharmacy Compact with the government in 2017.

Pharmacy policies that benefit consumers

Community pharmacists are increasingly providing services traditionally delivered by GPs.
This push towards greater scope of practice is embedded in the current and prior Community Pharmacy Agreements.
It outlined ways to improve pharmacy competition in a government submission, which included removing Pharmacy Location Rules and getting pharmacies to compete on medicine prices through discounting.

What does this all mean for patients?

Savings will be used to further expand the scope of practice for pharmacists, potentially informed by a National Scope of Practice Review to start in 2023.
It has already canvassed 2,500 “voters” across Australia on the budget proposal.
In the coming whirlwind of power struggles, wouldn’t it be nice if the government and providers worked together to put the patient first?

Autistic people often feel they’re ‘doing love wrong’ – but there’s another side of the story

Retrieved on:

Sunday, April 23, 2023

In her third book, Love and Autism, she returns to her journalist foundations to explore how love and autism shape each other.

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In her third book, Love and Autism, she returns to her journalist foundations to explore how love and autism shape each other.
The book is supported by a significant amount of research, but its heft is in the life stories of five autistic Australians: Jess, Chloe, Noor, Tim and Michael.
Through interviews with Kerr, each narrates their experience of the many types of love that have inflected their daily lives, from childhood through to adulthood.

Exploding myths

It is thrilling because it is even more thoughtful, practical and delightful than I imagined it could be.
It is saddening because, as far as I’m aware, such a book has not been written before.
Read more:
Real-life autism disclosures are complex – and reactions can range from dismissal to celebration

‘Refrigerator mothers’ and other misinterpretations

(He finally retracted his theory in 1969, but by then Bruno Bettelheim’s redeveloped version of it was already more popular.)
By the 1980s, as parents strengthened their advocacy against these untrue portrayals of their parenting skills, researchers shifted their attention from them to their autistic children.
If autism wasn’t a “normal” mind destroyed by outside influences, perhaps there was no mind, or awareness of mind, to destroy, they speculated.
Research groups have since been unable to replicate the 1985 study (or other theory of mind studies) on humans.
Read more:
Disabled people were Holocaust victims, too: they were excluded from German society and murdered by Nazi programs

The double empathy problem

Yet it’s equally true that non-autistic people sometimes struggle to understand autistic communication.
In 2012, autistic researcher Damien Milton published his own theory of autistic and non-autistic communication differences (one that has been replicated): the “double empathy problem”, which explains these differences as cultural.
Milton’s model emphasises that neither group – autistic or non-autistic – lacks the ability to communicate.
The solution to the double empathy problem is for both cultures to be accommodated, rather than autistic people being expected to conform to non-autistic culture.

A ‘proudly autistic’ book

Structurally, too, this book is proudly autistic.
It is divided into five sections, which feature experiences from the same period of life of all five subjects.
Yet although the sections are in chronological order, the order of the subjects within each section is different each time.
In this way, the book as a whole charts a leisurely, meandering path, with additional digressions into research – and stories from Kerr and others – as it goes.
The five subjects of the book each describe their own versions of discovering and affirming their autistic needs.

Authentically loving ourselves and others

The five autistic people profiled share a range of ideas for how to authentically – which for them, means autistically – love themselves and others.
Chloe explains about her relationship with her partner Jacob, who is also autistic:
We have a lot of fun that maybe neurotypical couples don’t, really.
You know, there’s this stereotype of the childish joy autistic people can still hold on to, and I think we can find that.
We also echo each other, like whatever echolalia we have picked up for the day we will bounce back and forth.
You know, there’s this stereotype of the childish joy autistic people can still hold on to, and I think we can find that.

Navigating discrimination

Even if the wider world or people who are not very kind say that [it is], don’t ever believe it.
Basically, all the things I wish I had heard from my parents when I was growing up.
I will definitely say to her that it’s the way Allah created you and me.
Even if the wider world or people who are not very kind say that [it is], don’t ever believe it.
Her observation highlights the reality that disclosing an autism diagnosis carries real risks of discrimination, particularly when you belong to other minority groups.

Shakespeare's environmentalism: how his plays explore the same ecological issues we face today

Retrieved on:

Friday, April 21, 2023

In fact, the common but misleading phrase “industrial revolution” masks the long history of resource extraction and ecological degradation in the British Isles stretching back at least to the arrival of the tin-hungry Romans.

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In fact, the common but misleading phrase “industrial revolution” masks the long history of resource extraction and ecological degradation in the British Isles stretching back at least to the arrival of the tin-hungry Romans.
Renaissance England was reeling from the effects of all these problems.

King and countryside

When King James became his patron in 1603, Shakespeare was tasked with writing plays to entertain a keen outdoorsman and hunter who was as much preoccupied with the material state of the British countryside as with matters of state.
No wonder, then, the Shakespearean stage encompasses a remarkable variety of landscapes and features an abundance of animal imagery to rival the royal menagerie – basically King James’s private zoo – and compensate for England’s dwindling numbers of wild game.
These articles mark the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio, the first collected edition of William Shakespeare’s plays.

Enduring environmental issues

Shakespeare adapted the story from a writer whose father had proposed the existence of a flooded land-bridge linking Britain to the continent (now known as Doggerland.
While the shipwrecked king refutes claims to rule the unruly seas, the costumes donned by Shakespeare’s actors would have told a different story.
Hermione acts like her namesake when she exclaims she too would rather die than stain her name as an adulteress.
In inserting these environmental issues into his plays, Shakespeare forced his audience to reflect on the political, moral, and spiritual implications of early modern England’s growing power to transform the natural world.

Dillard’s Launches The Nat Note for Antonio Melani

Retrieved on:

Monday, April 17, 2023

Dillard’s, Inc. (“Dillard’s”) (NYSE: DDS) is pleased to present The Nat Note for Antonio Melani - launching today in all Dillard’s locations and online at dillards.com.

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Dillard’s, Inc. (“Dillard’s”) (NYSE: DDS) is pleased to present The Nat Note for Antonio Melani - launching today in all Dillard’s locations and online at dillards.com.
View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230417005718/en/
The Nat Note x Antonio Melani Nell Striped Jacquard Short Puffed Sleeve Dress is available exclusively at Dillard's.
(Photo: Business Wire)
The Nat Note for Antonio Melani is a celebration of Natalie’s signature vibrant and punchy style.
They'll be a part of ours too!”
Natalie Steen named the clothing pieces of The Nat Note for Antonio Melani in honor of her daughter, nieces and goddaughters noting her support of them in reaching their dreams and in gratefulness of her own experience.

Internet's Favorite Creators Take on the Challenge to Destroy the Internet's Favorite Sofa

Retrieved on:

Wednesday, April 5, 2023

Cloud, Internet, ANTM, Feather, Pet, LOS, Social media, Wine, Furniture, Paint

LOS ANGELES, April 5, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The internet is abuzz with excitement as Valyou Furniture invited the internet's favorite creators to destroy the Cloud Couch Sofa Dupe, the internet's most talked about sofa. The challenge was set to put the Washable & Stain-Proof Feathers Cloud Sofa to the ultimate test.

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LOS ANGELES, April 5, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The internet is abuzz with excitement as Valyou Furniture invited the internet's favorite creators to destroy the Cloud Couch Sofa Dupe , the internet's most talked about sofa.
The challenge was set to put the Washable & Stain-Proof Feathers Cloud Sofa to the ultimate test.
The team of top creators accepted the challenge and put the sofa through its paces with various household substances, including ketchup, mustard, dirt, wine, crayons, and more.
Produced by Combina Key, finding 8 strong socialites to destroy a sofa was ultimately a testament to the durability of the Feathers Sofa.