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The 21st Century Labor Movement with Andy Stern

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Andy Stern

August 2020 – Total Food Service Digital Issue

Click the button above to view fullscreen. Click any advertisement to learn more. Total Food Service’s August 2020 Digital Issue featuring exclusive Q&A Interviews with Metro New York’s hottest new chefs and foodservice operators, as well as the latest foodservice industry news on products, trends, associations, and events.

The highlights of the Total Food Service August 2020 Digital Issue…

CO-CEO, Aurify Brands, New York, NY Navigating the first half of 2020 has been no easy task for Metro New York’s restaurateurs. Total Food Service wanted to find an operator that has a feel and vision for not just the challenges of Manhattan, but an overview of the entire Tri-State area. For Andy Sternand his partner John Rigos of Aurify Brands, they have a unique perspective of what the…

New Post has been published on http://thespeaker.co/nokia-215-29-dollar-cell-phone-will-last-month-charge/

Nokia 215 - $29 dollar cell phone that will last a month on a charge

Microsoft Devices Group and communications and information technology company Nokia are launching a $29 cell phone that will last one month on a single charge.

“With our ultra-affordable mobile phones and digital services, we see an inspiring opportunity to connect the next billion people to the Internet for the first time,” Jo Harlow, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Devices Group, said of the device. “The Nokia 215 is perfect for people looking for their first mobile device, or those wanting to upgrade to enjoy affordable digital and social media services, like Facebook and Messenger.”

The Nokia 215 will be the Finnish company’s “most affordable internet-ready” phone, and will be marketed to buyers in developing markets, particularly in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, in Q1 of this year.

The 215 is enabled with 2G wireless technology, carries a VGA camera, and will be available in both single- and double-SIM models. The 215 will also be equipped with a flashlight–an important selling feature for around 20 percent of the world’s population who live in regions with no regular access to electric power.

The battery life of the 215 allow nearly one month of standby power (21 days for the dual-SIM model) or 21 days (20 hours) of talk time. The battery also allows for 45 hours of FM radio playback.

The 215 also comes equipped with access to social media services like Facebook, Twitter and Messenger.

New Post has been published on http://thespeaker.co/first-website-ever-made-us-brought-light-digital-archaeology-find/

First Website Ever Made in US Brought to Light in Digital Archaeology Find

Digital archaeology that has revealed the earliest signs of web-life in America. Stanford Libraries has brought to light the first websites ever uploaded in the US–genealogically part Euro-descendant, part US original. The pages are now available for browsing, and Stanford Wayback, a customized platform for accessing archived web assets, provides a third dimension for viewing the internet, allowing users to see and navigate the web as it has changed over time and to look back in time at code written by the earliest “WWW Wizards.”

“A handful of staff at SLAC who worked on the early web fortuitously saved the files, along with their timestamps,” said Nicholas Taylor, web archiving service manager for Stanford Libraries.

The earliest site dates back to Dec. 6, 1991–a month in which no-fly zones were being set up in Iraq after the Gulf War, the Ukrainian people voted for independence from the Soviet Union and the Cold War ended, Hezbollite (Shiite Muslim) militants released their last US hostages, and Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston won at the 2nd annual Billboard Music Awards.

The sites were installed on the first server outside of Europe, which was installed by physicist Paul Kunz between Dec. 6 and Dec. 12.

Taylor told The Speaker how in launching the Stanford Web Archive Portal, once they learned of the existence of the earliest US websites, this seemed the most intriguing choice.

“A major focus for Stanford University Libraries’ web archiving effort is preserving Stanford University’s institutional legacy. We thought that the SLAC earliest websites would be the most broadly interesting historical web content related to the University with which to launch the Stanford Web Archive Portal. That is to say, we didn’t explicitly set out to track down the oldest US website, per se, but became quickly interested once we learned about it.”

The lineage of the earliest US sites is a part European descendant-part original strain, Taylor told us.

“They’re necessarily derivative, in some sense; what made the Web was adherence to a common set of conventions (e.g., the syntax for a hyperlink). The SLAC ‘WWW Wizards’ built the first US website based upon the conventions formulated by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the world’s first website at CERN. In another sense, the first U.S. website was entirely home-grown, built foremost to serve the research needs of the SLAC research community.”

Taylor elaborated on this piece of digital archaeology was undertaken.

“You might say that there were two major digital archaeology efforts. One, SLAC’s previous recovery and preservation of the original website files, and two, Stanford University Libraries’ much subsequent restoration of access to the websites in their original temporal context, via the the Stanford Web Archive Portal.

We have the early sites back online today because of SLAC staff foresight.

“Essentially, SLAC staff that were involved with the early websites and, later, staff in the SLAC Archives and History Office had the wherewithal to retrieve, set aside, and document the files constituting the earliest websites,” said Taylor.

The sites were saved with their timesstamps, which are associated with the first version of a website, as well as subsequent versions.

“The original timestamps were preserved as part of the SLAC backup system for those servers and are a critical piece of context in understanding the restored content.

“We’re accustomed to thinking about the Web in two dimensions–i.e., as a flat plane that we navigate spatially. Web archives and the Memento protocol, in particular, offer the prospect of adding a third dimension to the Web–allowing users to see how it has changed over time and seamlessly navigate to archived versions of resources that have since disappeared.”

Taylor commented on the nature of investigating the origins of the digital realm, and noted that we are close enough in time to still touch its ancestry.

“A last note about ‘digital archaeology,'” said Taylor, “unlike much archaeology, our digital archaeology effort had the benefit of being able to confer directly with the individuals who created these artifacts.”

Taylor encouraged everyone to support and celebrate the efforts of this “memory institution,” and take a look at our digital past in the artifacts they have recently preserved.

Stanford Wayback is part of the Libraries’ web archiving initiative, which aims to collect, preserve and provide access to web content that is at risk of being updated, replaced or lost.

New Post has been published on http://thespeaker.co/isolating-ebola-cases-best-chance-eradicating-ebola-report/

Isolating Ebola Cases Best Chance of Eradicating Ebola - Report

A recent study by Yale University has found that isolating Ebola victims within four days of symptom onset could achieve disease elimination in Liberia. Setting out to determine how to best use scare resources to combat the Ebola outbreak overwhelming West Africa, and after analyzing the incidence and case fatality of the outbreak, the team concluded that the best hope for ending the spread of Ebola was isolation of Ebola victims very early in the progression of symptoms–although the time window suggested by the research was smaller than current time to hospital reporting in West Africa.

“The Ebola outbreak in Western Africa is spiraling out of control. The need to determine how to deploy scarce resources to end this crisis is urgent,” the authors framed the study.

The goal of the study was to “evaluate the contribution of disease progression and case fatality to transmission and to examine the potential for targeted interventions to eliminate the disease,” the researchers wrote.

Distribution of secondary cases per infected individual among survivors and nonsurvivors

The team used both clinical and epidemiological data–incidence and case fatality records–from the Liberian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, and found that secondary infections occurred during the infectious period of an Ebola victim at an average rate of 1.73. That is, each infected person passed on Ebola to 1.73 healthy individuals.

Ebola victims who did not survive passed the disease on to 0.66 people, while nonsurvivors passed the disease on to 2.36 people. Survivors of Ebola, the study found, infected at least one healthy person in 32 percent of cases. Nonsurvivors infected at least one healthy person with a 67 percent probability rate.

Average number of secondary cases per day of symptomatic disease

“Consequently, nonsurvivors, who made up 63% (CI, 60% to 64%) of the population, were responsible for 86% (CI, 63% to 98%) of transmissions,” the researchers found.

Left alone, the disease would double every 20 days, the researchers calculated.

The conclusion reached by the team was that isolation of infected individuals offered a chance of eliminating the disease. Isolation of 75 percent of nonsurviving infected individuals within four days after symptoms began created a 74 percent chance of disease elimination, Adding isolation of all infected offered a marginal reduction beyond the 74 percent.

The researchers pointed out, however, that it was impossible to predict survival at the onset of symptoms, so isolation would have to be for all or most infected individuals who are in critical condition within four days of onset.

Further, the researchers noted that the current average period from symptom onset to hospitalization in Liberia was approximately 5 days–significantly beyond the requirements suggested by the study.

“These results underscore the importance of isolating the most severely ill patients with Ebola within the first few days of their symptomatic phase,” the researchers wrote.

The researchers also evaluated the effectiveness of self-quarantine–a pragmatic strategy in areas where there were not sufficient isolation units. Self-quarantine of 75 percent of all infected could eradicate Ebola with 78 percent probability.

Probability of disease elimination for different intervention strategies and coverages

Self-quarantine would require reducing contact by 60 percent, however, and this was found to be beyond the normal occurrence.

The researchers concluded that the assistance offered to address the Ebola outbreak “should be directed towards expanding the capacity of hospitalized case isolation.”

“Targeted isolation may offer the best hope of ending the Ebola epidemic.”

The report, “Effect of Ebola Progression on Transmission and Control in Liberia,” was authored by Dan Yamin, PhD; Shai Gertler; Martial L. Ndeffo-Mbah, PhD; Laura A. Skrip, MPH; Mosoka Fallah, PhD; Tolbert G. Nyenswah, MPH; Frederick L. Altice, MD, MA; and Alison P. Galvani, PhD, was published in Annals of Internal Medicine, and was funded primarily by the National Institute of Health.

By Andrew Stern

New Post has been published on http://thespeaker.co/ebola-family-16-million-years-old/

Ebola "Family" Over 16 Million Years Old

The Ebola Virus and the related Marburgvirus have been diverging for over 16 million years, according to a recent study by the University of Buffalo. Although filoviruses were once thought to date back only 10,000 years, new research using more reliable dating methods has shown that the origins of the virus go much deeper than the beginnings of large-scale human agriculture.

“An understanding of the timescale of evolution is critical for comparative virology but remains elusive for many RNA viruses,” wrote the authors of the report.

Experts had at one time believed that filoviruses came about around 10,000 years ago, and coincided with the rise in human agriculture.

According to the research of Professor Derek Taylor and others at the University of Buffalo, the viruses date back to the Miocene Epoch–16 to 23 million years ago.

“Filoviruses are far more ancient than previously thought,” said Taylor. “These things have been interacting with mammals for a long time–several million years.”

The science of measuring the age of diseases is still developing. Previous dating relied on mutation rates.

“Age estimates based on mutation rates can severely underestimate divergences for ancient viral genes that are evolving under strong purifying selection,” the researchers wrote in their report.

“Paleoviral dating, however, can provide minimum age estimates for ancient divergence, but few orthologous paleoviruses are known within clades of extant viruses.”

“For example, ebolaviruses and marburgviruses are well-studied mammalian pathogens, but their comparative biology is difficult to interpret because the existing estimates of divergence are controversial.”

The researchers looked at the paloviral elements of two genes in the ebolavirus family, and found that ebolavirus diverged from marburgvirus in the early Miocene.

The scientists searched within the viral genes in rodents preserved through fossilization.

“These rodents have billions of base pairs in their genomes, so the odds of a viral gene inserting itself at the same position in different species at different times are very small,” Taylor said. “It’s likely that the insertion was present in the common ancestor of these rodents.”

The knowledge may help scientists create better vaccines for Ebola victims. It could also help create programs that better identify emerging pathogens by providing insight into which host species serve the virus as “reseviors” for related pathogens.

“When they first started looking for reservoirs for Ebola, they were crashing through the rainforest, looking at everything–mammals, insects, other organisms,” said Taylor. The more we know about the evolution of filovirus-host interactions, the more we can learn about who the players might be in the system.”

By Andrew Stern