Emotions are conscious. They interact. They come through, as we invite them by our thoughts. When we do, emotions appear and start to express themselves. Stronger the thoughts, stronger the emotions and stronger their expressions.

Interacting with Emotions

Think about scarcity enough and I will feel scarce, also physically demonstrate/ manifest scarcity. Even repeating the word a few times will start activating that emotion, readying for manifestation.

Emotions surface to interact because I have called them. Similarly, if I talk and think about calmness enough, repeat/chant the word, I will activate that force from within as well. Emotions comply to our calling. If I am feeling a grudge, I have called in grudge by thoughts such as, others always get more than what I get, thinking unconsciously, though repeatedly.

If I want to feel content, I can deliberately activate that feeling too. I have to shift my focus to those memories that have made me feel contented or I can anticipate them.

So, why this talk of emotion activation; deliberate or unconscious?

This is to point out the transient character of emotions. In addition, to reveal a deeper understanding of life that we are not our emotions. And emotions are transitory, changeable, detachable. It is possible to deliberately change or replace an unhelpful emotion with a brighter one. So, who does that? Not the mind. It is a force greater than the mind, its ones own consciousness, the awareness. As eternal spiritual beings, emotions are only a tool for us to experience life while in body form.

When a negative emotion is transmuted, it brings lightness in the body and mind. The feeling of lightness is the feeling of alignment, clarity, shift. What happens when a negatively charged emotion is kept activated? The identification with that emotion starts to intensify, causing oscillations in the energy balance. Come to think of it, all negative emotions throw us in an imbalanced state. Doubt, anger, fear, loneliness, shame, confusion, there are so many emotions readily available to cause imbalance. Just as there are so many positives to come back in alignment too, which by the way, needs a deliberate focus on. Its an awareness work.

How to do the work? Its an act of practice; practice to detach from negative emotions. Detachment doesnt mean feeling numb. It is a practice of being an observer to the emotions that play up. We feel what we feel. We must feel. Do remember, however, that being a consciousness and not the illusory mind or the detachable emotions, it is possible to separate the bitter elements of a negative experience and transmute it. Awareness is for that purpose.

Experiences evoke emotions. We experience life all the time. A negative emotion surfacing frequently ought to be processed. It is surfacing for a reason. Hence, it is not to be denied, rejected or escaped from. Doing these suppresses the emotions for some time, which only surfaces more strongly at slight triggers. It seeks to prove its utility.

Lets say an experience is causing anxiety or agitation. The first step is to elevate the consciousness from it. See it as an identity that is separate, not mingled with awareness. And acknowledge its presence. Also acknowledge that the body feels it. Allow that emotion to unfold fully in the body-mind. This may be discomforting, but continue to cooperate with it and have a dialogue in understanding, I see you are present, I feel you, what is the reason for your presence at this time? What meaning do you hold for me? What learning are you bringing me that I am still unaware of? How will you brighten my day? Listen back. Be present.

This processing may be painful but it wont kill you/ your spirit, but just an ego structure. The pain is that of letting go of the ego structure. After this, what remains is awareness. Not only does one survive, but goes on to thrive in lightness as the weight of negative emotions gets transmuted.

Visit link:
Meditate With Urmila: Emotionally Speaking - Gulf News

32

Tuition at the University of Indianapolis has risen over $9,000 over the past decade. There are various reasons for tuition increases at colleges and universities. An article written by University of Massachusetts Global said that residency status may have a part in tuition increases at universities. Additionally, UIndys enrollment has been slowly declining since 2019, according to an article written by College Tuition Compare.

According to an article by former Reflector Editor-in-Chief James Figy, for the 2014-2015 academic year, tuition rose 3%, making the total cost $25,155. For this year, room and board also increased 2.5% making the total $9,010, according to the article. The reason for the increase was due to the higher costs for maintenance, heating and cooling and healthcare for the staff and faculty. According to former President Robert Manuel in the article, the tuition needed to rise in order to keep the university competitive. Financial aid was funded by the $2 million generated by the increase.

For the 2015-2016 academic year, tuition rose another 3%, making the total $25,910, according to an article by former Reflector Editorial Assistant Emanuel Cela. For a standard room, the price rose from $4,570 to $4,730 and the 14-meal plan ros from $4,440 to $4,594. The reason for the increase was maintenance, heating and cooling and salary price increases, according to the article. Another $2 million was added to financial aid.

In an article by former Reflector Editor-in-Chief Kylee Crane, tuition for the 2016-2017 academic year increased 3.9%, making the total $26,920. The price of a standard room rose from $4,730 to $4,928 and the 14-meal plan rose from $4,594 to $4,720, the article said. According to former Executive Vice President for Campus Affairs and Enrollment Services Mark Weigand, the main reason for the increase was faculty and staff salaries. UIndy had a 11:1 student-faculty ratio and needed to raise salaries in order to keep faculty, Weigand said.

Tuition for the 2018-2019 academic year had a 3.5% increase, making the total $28,836, according to an article by former Reflector Editor-in-Chief Zo Berg. A standard double room rose from $4,928 to $5,280 and the 14-meal plan rose from $4,720 to $5,008. These funds were meant to be allocated to electricity, heating and cooling, snow removal, bandwidth and insurance price increases, the article said. Additionally, there was a $4 million increase for financial aid. At this time, UIndy was still the third-lowest priced private university in Indiana.

For the 2019-2020 academic year, tuition rose 3.5%, making the total $29,844, according to an article by former Reflector Managing Editor Maia Gibson. The standard room rate rose from $5,280 to $5,464 and the 14-meal plan rose from $5,008 to $5,136, the article said This was due to increased salaries, electricity, heating and cooling and other maintenance costs, according to the article. A $3 million increase was allocated for financial aid. According to the article, UIndy was the sixth-lowest costing private university in Indiana at the time.

In the 2020-21 academic year, UIndy surpassed $30,000 for tuition, making the total $30,888, according to an article by former Reflector Editor-in-Chief Noah Crenshaw. The standard room rate rose from $5,464 to $5,656, and the 14-meal plan rose from $5,136 to $5,316. According to the article, UIndy was ranked 18th in Indiana, second-lowest, right above Huntington University. Many of these funds went to improving technology capabilities for UIndys network and classes, enhancing academic programs, creating a new student recreation center in Schwitzer Student Center and more.

According to an article by former Reflector Editor-in-Chief Jacob Walton, tuition rose to $33,252 for the 2022-2023 academic year, marking the largest tuition increase over the past four years. Manuel said that the conversations for this increase were difficult because of the COVID-19 pandemic but needed to be done in order to provide the desired level of education. The article said that overall student fees, meal plans and room and board increased $600. The reasons for the increase, according to the article, were COVID-19 responses, security expansion and more. Tuition will be $34,416 for the 2023-24 academic year, according to an article written by current Reflector Editor-in-Chief Kassandra Darnell. For a standard room there will be an increase of $304 and for the 14-meal plan there will be an increase of $284, according to the article. Funds from the increase will go toward payroll expenses, utilities, vendors, updates to the Cory Bretz residence hall, initiatives to improve safety on campus and looking into dining experience, the article said. This is the highest tuition has ever been, with an almost $10 thousand increase in less than a decade.

Originally posted here:
Consistent tuition rise at the University of Indianapolis - The Reflector - The Reflector Online

12

Stepping up to the podium at the NCAA DII National Championships, the University of Indianapolis mens swimming and diving team claimed first as champions and the womens team took runner-up, according to UIndy Athletics. UIndy Mens and Womens Swimming and Diving Head Coach Brent Noble said he was pleased with the teams success this season.

Were really happy with the way the season went for both the men and for the women, Noble said. We came into the year knowing that we were capable of a lot; we just had to stay the course. Its definitely a season where we grew and did some things that we hadnt done before. But ultimately, we had built a team with really capable people. And they worked pretty hard to accomplish their goals individually, and got closer and closer to their potential.

Noble said that at the start of the season they knew that both teams had the potential to impress this season. According to UIndy Athletics, the mens national championship win is the first in the programs history. Sophomore diver Julio Osuna said that the moment of holding the trophy was an amazing feeling.

We went to the podiumthey gave the trophies and everything and I was in the middle, and they handed me a trophy, Osuna said. I dont think I [was] the right person to hold this trophy because Im a sophomore and a senior would typically hold the trophy. I do want to have a responsibility to hold the trophy. But at the same time, I dont, but it felt amazing to have it in my hand for a couple of seconds It was just really cool. It was one of the best moments of my life.

In addition to winning the team championship, Osuna won multiple individual championships such as the three-meter dive and the one-meter dive, according to UIndy Athletics. In the 1-meter dive, the Greyhounds finished first, second and third for this event. Additionally, sophomore swimmer Cedric Buessing claimed multiple school records while winning the 1000-meter freestyle national championship. The mens team also had a relay team take home a national championship, according to UIndy Athletics.

I wanted to do my part to help the members of either team experience something like that, obviously being on a team that wins the national championship [along with] winning the first national championship, Noble said. Thats something pretty special to be a part of. And so knowing going into the season that we had the opportunity to do that definitely was a big responsibilityI wanted those men to just have that experience.

The womens team added to their trophy case this season after winning the GLVC they came in as runner-up for the second year in a row in the national championship, according to UIndy Athletics. Fifth-year swimmer Kaitlyn McCoy said that even though the team came up short in nationals, they made improvements from last year.

We knew that Nova Southeastern [University] was going to be a bit of a struggle, but we also knew that we were better than we were last year, McCoy said. We had high hopes. And so even though we just came up short, we did better this year than we did last year. And the gap between the teams was closer.

McCoy was also an individual national champion winning the 100-meter backstroke to add to her other individual national championship, according to UIndy Athletics. Along with McCoys individual championship, graduate student swimmer Johanna Buys broke the DII National record for the 50-meter freestyle, claiming an individual national championship. Noble said the mens and womens teams standards have continued to grow every year they step into the pool.

We have a really big team, and so I think that lends itself to us [that], its really important that everyone plays their role, whether theyre in the pool at nationals or not, Noble said. Its important that everyone on our team has a positive impact towards the greater good. But at the meet, we had the most people scoring points, the most people getting second swims and the most people kind of pushing the needle compared to the rest. That has become our calling card is that were deep. And we have people winning events, but we also have a lot of people in all of the events and so thats a big deal for us.

Osuna said that his teammates played a large role in his success this season, and he said he was pushed when practicing, especially by his teammate senior diver Jason Lenzo.

[Lenzo] is the one that keeps me in my zone the most, Osuna said. He knows how to talk to me and approaches me when Im stressed or not having a good day. And thanks to him I can say I won my two national championships. He was the one that helped me [keep] going through the whole year.

McCoy said that her teammates all played a vital role in their success. She said she wouldnt change anything about the season.

Its been a fantastic ride, and I wouldnt change it for anything, McCoy said. And I am so proud of the people next to me and the rest of my team too.

Excerpt from:
UIndy men's and women's swimming and diving compete at NCAA ... - The Reflector Online

22

University of Indianapolis mens lacrosse senior attacker Drew Billig is now the leader in points for a career in program history as a Greyhound, according to UIndy Athletics. Having the opportunity to break this record, he credits his teammates and support system at UIndy.

Right away when I was a freshman, the older guys were telling me some of the things that they thought I could do. At the time, I was like, Yeah, right. No way I can be an All-American, Billig said. But I think honestly, the seniors my freshman year, some of the older guys, put into my eyes about what I could accomplish. Obviously, my teammates over the years have driven me to be where I am today. A lot of the credit goes to them.

According to Head Coach Greg Stocks, the team had high hopes for Billig from the beginning of his career. Billig can into the team and made an instant impact, Stocks said.

He came in and started immediately as a freshman on the team that went to the [NCAA] Final Four. It was pretty baffling, he was the second leading scorer as a freshman, Stocks said. He scored an overtime winner in the NCAA tournament as a freshman. So, the trajectory of him being able to do this was definitely there.

According to Billig, he was in a game when they announced he had broken the points record, but he knew he was close to breaking it. Billig said the team was looking to mount a comeback when it was announced.

I knew I was close. But then I scored against Lemoine [University], and they said it over the [public address] system. The crowd cheered, and [I] got a couple fist bumps from my teammates, which is really awesome, Billig said. It was kind of bittersweet, because we were down big in the game and we were trying to make a comeback.

According to Stocks, Billig is a quiet leader for his team. Stocks said that up until his senior year he was more of the quiet one of the group, but as captain he took on a more vocal role.

Hes one of those guys that does everything right, Stocks said. He kind of leads by his actions with the effort that he puts in and always doing the right thing. The rest of the guys fall in line and follow his leadership.

Billig said that growing up and throughout his career playing lacrosse, he never thought he would be in the record books in college. He said he was just hoping to see the field.

[Breaking a record] did not really cross my mind growing up, I wanted to go somewhere and play college lacrosse where I thought I had a chance of playing right away, Billig said. My big motivator has just been always hopefully seeing the field and contributing wherever I can whether its on the field or whether Im on the end of the bench rooting on the guys. I did not see this coming at all.

According to UIndy Athletics, Billig has other accomplishments to his name, such as two time All-GLVC first team, three time Academic All-GLVC and 2022 United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association (USILA)/Nike All-America Third Team. According to Billig, this record shows that all the hard work has paid off for him and his teammates.

Over the years doing extra practice outside of just our scheduled time, extra film with the coaches or with the older guys, whatever it may be, its really cool to see it all pay off, Billig said. I dont think I deserve all the credit because a lot of it is my teammates doing the dirty work behind the scenes during games getting ground balls, finishing off goals, setting me up for goals. I get the spotlight, which Im not always comfortable with, but a lot of the credit does go to my teammates and my coaches as well.

According to Stocks, it has been a pleasure to coach Billig, and he expects a successful season and future for him. Stocks said that Billig is a great person on and off-the-field, he works hard and he has earned it. Billig said that what he has most enjoyed during his time here at UIndy is his teammates.

Just being around all the guys, this is cliche, but these guys are my brothers, Billig said. I love these guys to death. I would do anything for them. And they would do anything for me and I know that.

Read more from the original source:
UIndy men's lacrosse player Drew Billig breaks career points record ... - The Reflector Online

Reviewed hereCollective Wisdom: Co-creating Media for Equity and Justice

by Katerina Cizek and William Urrichio (32)

In 1913, Robert Joseph Flaherty was a prospector in northern Canada, searching for iron ore on behalf of his employer, the railroad baron William Mackenzie. Flahertys expeditions to northwest Quebec were made possible by Inuit guides, and, over the course of his voyages, Flaherty became interested in documenting the Inuit way of life, which he saw as rapidly disappearing. He took a three-week camera-operating course from Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York, and set off for the Hudson Bay with an early motion picture camera.

Four years, four expeditions and 30,000 feet of film later, Flaherty was assembling the footage from his journeys into a full-length film when stray cigarette ash ignited and destroyed his footage. No matter, Flaherty noted: The editing print was not burned and was shown several times just long enough to make me realize it was no good. He wanted better. So Flaherty spent more than a year on the Ungava Peninsula in northern Quebec with members of an Inuit community, creating a coherent cinematic narrative centred on a single figure, the brave hunter Nanook.

The resulting film, Nanook of the North, was released to acclaim in 1922, and is widely seen as the primogenitor of the contemporary documentary film. But the story of Nanook is complex, and the controversies it raises around authorship, representation, respect and ownership anticipate a modern set of questions associated with documentary filmand, indeed, with many types of creation.

The featured hunter was not named Nanook, but Allakariallak, which Flaherty feared audiences would not be able to pronounce. The women and children playing Nanooks family were not actually his family, while everyone in the film wears traditional costumes that had long gone out of common usage. Allakariallak was an accomplished hunter, but generally hunted with a rifle, rather than the harpoon he uses in the film. Scenes within the film were clearly staged, particularly a memorable sequence about building an igloo, where Nanook and his family build a structure almost twice as large as usual, so that Flaherty and his camera could fit inside.

The success of Nanook at the box office brought Flaherty to Hollywood, where he and his wife, Frances Hubbard, received a contract from Paramount to produce Moana, a story of a young boys journey into manhood in Samoa. Flaherty ultimately produced six full-length films, all ethnographic studies of geographically isolated people.

Allakariallaks cinematic career was much briefer. Two years after the film was released, he died of tuberculosis. The promoters of the film claimed that Allakariallak had died of starvation during a deer hunt, emphasising the dangers that Nanook and his family routinely braved. The organisation founded in Flahertys memory, the Flaherty Film Seminar, now describes Nanook of the North as a work that history has recognized as the first documentary film, a cornerstone of ethnographic cinema, a modern art masterpiece, a racist fantasy, and an indefensible work of indigenous appropriation.

However, theres another way to tell the story of Allakariallak and Nanook; one that emphasises an important aspect of Flahertys process. During filming, Flaherty brought not only cameras, but also developing equipment and a projector. Each day, he shared the footage with his Inuit cast and crew, who made suggestions to increase the authenticity of film, many of which were included in the finished process. The methods that allowed Flaherty to produce a film in the high Arctic were the same that he used in later worka collaboration with his subjects and his crew to co-create documentary narratives of everyday life, made primarily by an indigenous crew, but with an outside director.

Flaherty and Nanook are mentioned only once in Collective Wisdom, an exploration of co-creation primarily authored by filmmaker Katerina Cizek and media scholar William Uricchio. (In the spirit of co-creation, 11 individuals and the media collective Detroit Narrative Agency are also credited as authors.) But the questions raised by NanookWho has the right to tell someones story? How can we create narratives that are collaborative rather than exploitative?run through this book and prove as challenging to consider in relation to contemporary creations as they are when analysing Flahertys work.

Is co-creation too unwieldy to be practical for most creators? Or is it actually so commonplace that its not worth special notice?

Cizek is an acclaimed documentarian whose best-known works have been created in cooperation with their subjects. Highrise, an examination of vertical living in cities around the world, is credited in part to the residents of the high-rises at 2667 and 2677 Kipling Avenue in Toronto, Canada (who are thanked, along with many others, in the acknowledgements of Collective Wisdom). Uricchio is a media scholar at MIT and Utrecht University, author of books on the history of media technologies and the evolution of cultural figures in cinema and entertainment. Along with MIT scholar Sara Wolozin, Cizek and Uricchio are founders of MITs Co-Creation Studio, which researches and incubates collective creation as alternatives to singular authorship. Wolozins contributions permeate Collective Wisdom to the extent that perhaps the studio itself should be considered the author here.

Co-creation is a conscious rejection of the myth of the author as creative genius. The authors trace that myth back to Romantic-era artists such as Rembrandt, Rubens and Rodin, whose output was the result of teams of unnamed assistants, as well as to businessmen such as Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison, whose genius similarly overshadowed those who did most of the work beneath them. In its place, Collective Wisdom seeks a new set of exemplars, from the collectively produced quilts of Gees Bend, Alabama, to the international collaboration that helped bring about vaccines and other public health solutions in response to Covid-19.

Perhaps the clearest definition of the term co-creation comes near the end of the book, in an interview with Cara Mertes, a funder at the Ford Foundation of co-creation projects: Co-creation is a concept that covers a broad set of practices, which revolve around equity, dignity and justice. If that definition seems broad or vague, it is intentionally so. Co-creation is an emerging practice, and the authors are less concerned with enforcing a strict definition of its boundaries than exploring the possibilities of a co-creative approach in a range of fields.

The book is richif occasionally overfullwith examples, including an index of works that help illustrate the principles of co-creation. Nanook is listed here as an early, influential and problematic example, alongside more than a hundred other entries; from journalistic collaborations such as the Panama Papers to virtual reality installations; from web-based projects of community self-documentation to an MIT hackathon dedicated to reinventing the breast pump. Theres so much here that you, as reader, feel a need for some canonical texts to help anchor the concept of co-creationand a canon of sorts does indeed emerge in Collective Wisdom through the repetition of key examples.

Cizeks filmsnotably, Highrise and Filmmaker-in-Residence, a five-year partnership in which the filmmaker worked with doctors, nurses and other stakeholders at an inner-city Toronto hospitaloffer models for processes that can smooth the rough edges of co-creation. Collaborations between the hospital participants and filmmakers were passed through the hospitals ethics board before being carried out. Participants co-authored a manifesto about the goals of the project and created painstaking contracts recognising the complexities around consent from patients taking part in a documentary.

Films produced by indigenous Canadian communities offer another structure for community partnership. In contrast to Flahertys collaboration almost a century earlier, SGaaway Kunna (The Edge of the Knife), a 2018 feature film shot in the Haida language, was co-created by the Haida Nation, an Inuit film production company and a non-indigenous professor at the University of British Columbia. The intellectual property of the film is owned entirely by the Haida Nation, who had power to hire and fire anyone on the project.

While co-creation has significant roots within the documentary film community, and the issues raised around ownership and authorship in that space, the authors of Collective Wisdom want to extend the principles of co-creation into additional fields and practices. Some of these examples can feel like overreach. While journalism clearly involves telling other peoples stories, the often-confrontational nature of investigation has made co-creative approaches challenging. Worse still, the books ethical investigations into artists collaborating with termites to produce mounds of crystals and coloured sand threaten to stretch its conceptual frame to breaking point.

However, the authors discussions of AI as a process of co-creation are more promising. Conversational AIs, such as ChatGPT, and AI image generators, such as Stable Diffusion, create new works from millions of other works by thousands of unnamed, unknowing collaborators. Stephanie Dinkins, a New York artist, collaborates with a humanoid robot, Bina48, created in 2007 on the template of an African-American woman, Bina Aspen Rothblatt. The resultant Conversations with Bina48, presented as a set of videotaped interviews, intentionally complicate the idea that an AI can be trained on the memories and behaviours of a black woman without incorporating the assumptions of the white, male programmers. The co-creation Dinkins engages in is investigative, critical and adversarial, and suggests ways in which this method can be confrontational, not just kumbaya.

The tensions embodied in Collective Wisdom come to the surface in a series of interviews that are mostly transcribed from events convened by the MIT Co-Creation Studio. A conversation with five media-makers of colour includes pointed questions about whether co-creation isnt merely a traditional form of creativity, repackaged to seek grant funding. Is it simply a way to legitimize a space for dominant culture to continue to be involved in telling our stories, a way of keeping some White control and presence over narratives by and about communities of color? asks Haitian filmmaker Michle Stephenson.

Other debates focus on the practicality of co-creation as a working method. Is it too complex and unwieldy to be practical for most creators? Or is it actually so commonplace a working method that its not worth special notice?

The authors see co-creation as aspirational, a set of processes and principles that can be applied with different levels of intensity in different projects. In that spirit, Collective Wisdom tries to offer several roadmaps for implementing co-creation in your own projects, but these roadmaps can be hard to follow, in part due to the books unusual structure. Chapters are punctuated with case studies, interviews, photo essays, diagrams and illustrations. At best, these turn the book into a hypertext, where you can be drawn into chapters of artistic or activist history by following an intriguing caption. At worst, they lead to confusion, when an apparently straightforward set of lessons is interrupted by a long soliloquy on the founding of a particular media centre.

In the end, theres a strange sort of irony to the book. The case studies and interviews that break up the chapters allow Collective Wisdom to be the creation of a large team of co-authors, yet they also make it clear that a possible compromise in the co-creative process is trading a highly polished narrative for a fragmentary, sometimes confusing assemblage of multiple perspectives.

Where Collective Wisdom shines is in raisingand partially answeringsome of the most challenging questions of authorship, credit and shared creativity in film and other creative fields. Is there an ethical way for a non-indigenous filmmaker to make a documentary about the Inuit, as Flaherty tried in 1922? This book offers some models, from the Haida Nations partnership with Canadian academics to the West Baffin Co-op, which has produced and distributed Inuit art since 1959. More important, though, is the simple hope that it finds within co-creation: the idea that a better way to treat each other as collaborators is not only possible, but essential.

Originally posted here:
A new, old way of making things - Prospect Magazine

We are experiencing an evolution of commerce.

Over the past three years, the pandemic, associated lockdowns, and economic impacts have changed our routines time and again, creating an inflection point for consumers, employees and grocers alike. This disruption resulted in consumers and employees redefining and reconsidering their relationships with companies they once relied on, creating an opening for new brands and an existential need for grocery retailers to reinvigorate current relationships. In addition, the rise of Gen Zs expectations, purchasing power and role in the workforce makes evolving to meet the modern customer a must. Additionally, recent advancements in point-of-sale (POS) solutions and fulfillment systems are providing new ways to address the needs of modern consumers while reducing the strain on front-line workers.

[Read more: "Consumers Weigh In on Most Trustworthy Grocers, Brands"]

To effectively capitalize on this moment, as well as moments to come, grocery retailers need to become learning organizations, expanding their ability to analyze and interpret current experiences while anticipating future trends. To drive ongoing success, youll need a learning agenda at the organization and team levels, a holistic view of operations across existing functional siloes, and insight into existing gaps and opportunities.

While many parts of your business are critical for continued evolution, the following four areas require that you fundamentally disrupt or advance current operations: customer experience, front-line employee engagement, POS technology and supply chain planning.

Consumer buying habits and expectations have fundamentally changed. Consumer loyalty is waning, and what once resulted in delight is now a minimum requirement. Over the past year, 71% of consumers worldwide have switched brands at least once.

Speed and convenience are the top-line demands, but thats just the beginning. While contactless delivery and curbside service gave companies an advantage in winning hearts and minds during the early days of the pandemic, these services quickly became basic expectations, with the average consumer using curbside pickup at least three times per month well after business returned to normal.

Its time to raise the stakes to meet rising expectations. Consumers want engaging, frictionless shopping experiences that meet them where they are and ideally transport them to a better place, all while delivering convenience and sustainability. Nearly half of online adults in the United States agree that they want different delivery options to suit their needs. Methods and avenues for service delivery are evolving, too. More than 70% of consumers surveyed say that they appreciate the convenience of instantly purchasing products while browsing social media.

Consumers are increasingly exerting their buying power to reward companies that address their expectations and desires. Zeroing in on your customers real needs takes communication, information, experimentation and the courage to do things differently. For grocery retailers, this includes everything from the footprint and layout of brick-and-mortar stores to innovative, future-focused technology.

For example, a large regional grocery chain in Texas reimagined its brick-and-mortar model, adding built-in convenience everywhere you look. New stores include large, covered parking areas designated for quick curbside pickup, powered by the stores mobile app. In addition, the chain has added full in-store restaurants, complete with multilane drive-thru service.

While biometric identification, QR-enabled payments and smart carts are still early in their adoption and use, Amazon is primed to sell its Dashcart technology and has successfully piloted it in select Whole Foods Market stores. Meanwhile, Sams Club has doubled down on its mobile experience, allowing shoppers to skip the line by using their smartphones to scan and pay for purchases throughout the store. These frictionless, ultra-convenient models are poised to shape the in-store experience of tomorrow, helping grocers optimize labor while enhancing the customer experience.

The pandemic prompted front-line workers to re-evaluate their relationship with their jobs as they looked for more stability, safety, value and purpose in their day-to-day lives. Grocery workers were particularly affected because of the truly essential nature of their roles and the personal risk they took to continue doing their work. Now that most hazard-pay programs have expired, many grocery employees are looking for more.

As a result, 80% of food retailers say that they face hiring challenges that are negatively affecting their businesses.In 2022, the turnover rate for all hourly in-store positions was 75.8%, up from 68% in 2021. The turnover rate for store managers and assistant store managers was 17.7% and 29.2%, respectively, up from 14.6% and 22% in 2021.

Employees across the board are demanding more and backing their demands with real consequences when employers dont meet their needs. With record low unemployment and a reduced workforce, the best workers are selective and open to switching jobs for stronger compensation or better work-life balance. Recent high-profile unionization efforts have also inspired conversations about collective action. Rather than setting out to fight unionization, retailers should be proactive about meeting the holistic and material needs of their employees well before they reach the point of pushing back.

To retain employees and encourage them to be brand ambassadors, you need to create and sustain a meaningful value equation for your workforce. This means taking a good look at your compensation, culture, expectations and technology.

For example, compensation packages should include material benefits and paid leave in addition to competitive pay. The amount and type of work employees are expected to do should be reasonable, allowing them to produce consistent and impactful results. Modern technology can help your employees see their work becoming more manageable over time. Rather than fearing technology, todays workers are crying out for advancements that can help lighten their loads. All of this needs to happen within a deliberate culture, one of empowerment and mutual respect where employees are valued, have options for professional-learning and growth opportunities, and feel supported by frictionless processes.

One St. Louis-based grocery chain is embracing change by following the ridesharing model, empowering employees to build their own schedules and receive notifications about open shifts through a mobile app. This provides workers with new levels of flexibility and choice, helping the store remain relevant as an employer to an evolving workforce.

Its a well-accepted adage that employee satisfaction and customer experience go hand in hand, especially in service industries like grocery retail. Engaged front-line workers give the best service, create low-friction work environments and foster other happy employees. Whats more, socially conscious consumers have taken a renewed interest in working conditions and workers rights, opting to support brands with a reputation for treating their people well.

The POS system is the lifeblood of the grocery business, connecting customers, employees and management; gathering essential data; and tying in gas rewards, loyalty programs, customer apps, digital coupons, and more. Investing in modern POS technology and other integrated systems is another critical way to empower front-line workers and enhance your customer experience.

Historically, companies have been slow to invest in POS upgrades or replacements, waiting until the pain from antiquated systems is impossible to ignore. Grocery retailers should invest and upgrade proactively, not just to guard against potential failure, but also to enable modern integrations, increase functionality, and create a more robust experience for your consumers and team. This is a trend thats gaining steam, as more than 55% of retailers plan to replace their POS software in the next three years, and about 30% plan to replace it within one year. For POS hardware alone, that number jumps to nearly 60% within the next three years, and 22% within one year.

A seamless and frictionless transaction can make or break a customers experience. Leaders need to get out on the shop floor to gather feedback from employees with direct experience and personally observe the pain points, inefficiencies and missed opportunities created by current systems.

While an efficient and user-friendly POS is essential for brick-and-mortar operations, its no less important in e-commerce. The right systems can capture essential data about customer behavior and satisfaction, parse it to provide valuable insights, and offer an online purchasing experience thats convenient, functional and enjoyable for the customer.

Its an exciting time to explore new POS technologies. The pandemic sparked a surge of innovation, offering more features, streamlined user experiences and a host of data collection tools.

Like POS, supply chain and fulfillment were once considered back-end. When business is running smoothly, customers never even think about the concept of the supply chain. Consumer anxiety has grown, however, after experiencing recent and memorable shortages of items that we used to take for granted. Today, supply chain is a new household buzzword as continued disruptions and shipping delays lead to rising frustrations. While pandemic-era shortages are behind us for now, supply chain issues are a continued reality in grocery stores, with sporadic shortages occurring across categories.

Its essential to meet customers where they are, with the product they want, when they need it. Right now, 46% of consumers will move to a competitor if their usual brand is out of stock. Also, 45% of consumers wish they had more information about their in-transit orders.This starts with supply chain planning, accurately predicting demand and understanding the implications of each decision made to get your product into the consumers hands.

While delivery has flourished, the path to efficient and profitable shipping in the grocery sector has been challenged by cold-chain logistics and variable product sizes and weights. To make shipping more feasible, some grocers are piloting micro-fulfillment centers, often within existing stores, that leverage automation in the last mile of grocery supply chains. This test-and-learn approach allows grocers to make informed decisions on how to scale the channel based on the interplay among operational efficiency, customer experience and overall economics.

Just like POS technologies, supply chain systems have historically been entrenched and slow to change. Many small companies, and even some large ones, still use Excel as their only management tool. In fact, 67% of supply chain managers use Excel. Meanwhile, only 6% of companies have full visibility into their supply chain, and 69% dont have any visibility at all.

This lack of visibility and efficiency reached a breaking point during the pandemic, prompting many executives to consider investing in tech that they had previously dismissed as a nice-to-have. An updated, tech-enabled supply chain environment does more than make customers happy it also provides valuable data and organization that can vastly improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enable mindful adjustments based on real-time and historical data.

Each of these issues is vast, complex and interrelated, which can initially seem overwhelming. While these topics are complex, theres also an element of simplicity in each one. To make meaningful changes, its helpful to start by revisiting and updating your foundational value proposition: What is your brand promise? Who is your customer (now), and what do they want? What do you need to do (differently) to meet them where they are? What do your employees need to thrive? How do you measure and celebrate success?

Developing a learning agenda in regard to these questions will help you capitalize on the evolution of commerce.

As markets find a new normal, we are at an inflection point that presents opportunities for business leaders to adapt and evolve. Ad-hoc, incremental adjustments made to maintain existing operations will no longer carry the day. To grow your business, you must commit to enhancing consumer and employee experiences with your brand. This goes beyond attraction and engagement to focus on serving employees and customers at every stage of their journey.

Read more:
How Grocery Retailers Can Learn to Thrive in the Face of Change - Progressive Grocer

The life of the exceptionally gifted and important Yankton Sioux writer, musician, and activist Zitkala-a proved a bicultural journey that would defy her times and gender.

It would stand to reason, given the deep-rooted bias against her race and her sex, that a Sioux Indian girl born into late-Victorian, predominantly white America might have little to no chance for growth and fame. Nonetheless, against all odds, the woman who called herself Zitkala-a grew to become a teacher, a widely read author, a concert violinist and classical composer, co-founder and president of the National Council of American Indians, and a world-recognized advocate and lobbyist for the rights of both women and Native Americans.

The year of Zitkala-as birth, 1876, was significant, representing as it did the 100-year anniversary of the founding of the United States. It also marked the Native Americans last great victory over the nations military, when the troops of Lt. Col. and presidential hopeful George Armstrong Custer were soundly defeated by a combined force of Sioux, Arapaho, and Northern Cheyenne warriors.

Gertrude Kasebier, 1898

For the American Indians, it was the victory that heralded their imminent subjugation. Isolated instances aside, their resistance that had impeded Anglo-Americas expansive drive to the Pacific Ocean had been neutralized. It now became a time of forced assimilation, in which, under the mantle of civilizing the savage, tribal cultures were being systematically demolished. One way in which this was achieved was through the reeducation of Native American children in government-sponsored, Christian-run boarding schools.

This was the world that the child named Gertrude Simmons inherited. She was born on South Dakotas Yankton Agency, to a Sioux mother and a white father. The Yanktonai had signed a treaty with the federal government in 1858, and although they had avoided the bloody resistance that had resulted in the subjection of other regional tribes, life on the reservation was harsh.

Gertrudes father had earlier abandoned the family, leaving her traditional upbringing in the hands of her mother and the tribe. She learned beadwork at her mothers knee and was weaned on the folktales and origin stories that would later appear in her books. I was as free as the wind that blew my hair, she later wrote, and no less spirited than the bounding deer.

When Gertrude was 8, Quaker missionaries came to the reservation seeking children to enroll in Whites Manual Labor Institute, their federally funded Indian boarding school in Wabash, Indiana. Such schools represented a national program to systematically remove children from their tribal environment, in order to assimilate them into white society. Some of Gertrudes friends had already been given permission to go, and for the child, it was an easy sell. Gertrude begged her reluctant mother, who warned her, Don't believe a word they say! Their words are sweet, but, my child, their deeds are bitter. You will cry for me, but they will not even soothe you. She finally relented, and Gertrude boarded the train that would take her far from her mother, and farther still from her tribal identity.

The school, she later recalled, bound my individuality like a mummy for burial. As did nearly all the other Indian boarding schools, it ran on the principles and objectives of Richard Henry Pratt, a former military man who had founded the Carlisle Industrial Indian School in Pennsylvania five years earlier. Looked upon as the model for all such institutions, the Carlisle School operated on Pratts personal philosophy: Kill the Indian, save the Man. All traces of tribal influence were to be eradicated. Drawn from various tribes and thrown together, the students were forbidden to wear their native garb or speak in their own tongue, which was especially difficult for Gertrude, who spoke no English. They were prohibited from communicating with their families and from maintaining a belief in the Great Spirit.

Conversion to Christianity was mandatory, as was the cutting of the students hair. As she later wrote, Our mothers had taught us that only unskilled warriors who were captured had their hair shingled by the enemy. Among our people, short hair was worn by mourners, and shingled hair by cowards! Although Gertrude tried to hide under a bed, she was dragged out, tied to a chair, and forced to endure the shame of a shearing, her long, flowing hair cut close to the scalp at the nape of her neck.

Anonymous, 1898

The training that the uniformed children received was designed to prepare them for nothing beyond jobs as handymen, laborers, maids, and housekeepers. The treatment was harsh, and corporal punishment was a common recourse for slow or recalcitrant students. The mortality rate among Indian children in the schools was staggering, due to malnutrition, poor living conditions, disease, and often simply despair. Not a soul reasoned quietly with me, Gertrude recalled, as my own mother used to do; for now I was only one of many little animals driven by a herder. In an article for Atlantic Monthly several years later, she wrote, Like a slender tree, I had been uprooted from my mother, nature, and god. Now a cold bare pole, I seemed to be planted in a strange earth, trembling with fear and distrust. Often I wept in secret.

As did tens of thousands of other Native American students, Gertrude became a child who straddled two worlds, belonging in neither. It was an ambivalence that would haunt her throughout her life, eventually destroying her relationship with her mother and distancing her from her tribe. In a 1913 letter to a friend she complained, I seem to be in spiritual unrest. I hate this eternal tug of war between wild and becoming civilized. The transition is an endless evolution, that keeps me in a continual purgatory.

Over the next three years, Gertrude became relatively fluent in spoken and written English. Returning home, she discovered that she no longer felt a visceral connection to her mothers traditional lifestyle. Nor was her mother inclined to tolerate this child of two cultures. During this time, she wrote in a 1900 article for the Atlantic Monthly, I seemed to hang in the heart of chaos . My mother had never gone inside a school house and so she was not capable of comforting her daughter who could read and write. Even nature seemed to have no place for me.

After four years on the reservation, she returned to Whites Institute to complete her education. She then entered the Quaker-run Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, where she excelled as a poet, essayist, and orator. Her debating skills won her several prizes, and a number of her works were published in the college newspaper.

However, her ambivalence toward assimilation was evident in her work. In 1896, as a representative of Earlham College, she delivered an award-winning speech titled Side by Side, at the 22nd Indiana State Oratorical Contest. In it, Gertrude spoke movingly about the Indians right to seek vengeance for the wrongs inflicted on him and his way of life: The white mans bullet decimates his tribe and drives him from his home. What if he fought? ... Do you wonder still that in his breast he should brood revenge? In the same speech, with equal intensity, she stressed her desire to see her people become a part of the American mainstream: We come from mountain fastnesses, from cheerless plains, from far-off low-wooded streams, seeking the White Mans ways seeking the Sovereigns crown that we may stand side by side with you in ascribing royal honor to our nations flag. America, I love thee. Thy people shall be my people and thy God my God.

An extended illness prevented Gertrude from graduating, and she left Earlham following her sixth trimester. Fearing a confrontation with her mother, she chose not to return to the reservation. Instead, Gertrudenow a slender, striking woman of 21decided to teach Indian children and took a job as an instructor at the Carlisle School. This was the institute founded by the same Richard Henry Pratt whose solution to the Indian problem was total acculturation. The schools narrative judged all that was Christian and white as good, and all the attributes that marked indigenous peoples as constituting heathenism, writes Tadeusz Lewandowski in his biography of her, Red Bird, Red Power: The Life and Legacy of Zitkala-a. It was a philosophy that Gertrude would soon come to reject.

During this time I seemed to hang in the heart of chaos, beyond the touch or voice of human aid ... My mother had never gone inside of a school house and so she was not capable of comforting her daughter who could read and write. Even nature seemed to have no place for me. I was neither a wee girl nor a tall one; neither a wild Indian nor a tame one. This deplorable situation was the effect of my brief course in the East.

She had begun to play the violin at Carlisle and showed a true talent for the instrument. On her spring break in 1899, she traveled to New York City to further her studies. It was around this time that she met Gertrude Kasebier, the most noted female photographer of her era. The two became fast friends, and Kasebier and her colleague, Joseph Keileywho was captivated by the young writers delicate beautytook a series of romantically posed photographs, featuring the young author in both modern and tribal dress. The prints sold in 1900 for an impressive $1,000 apiece, a value of over $33,000 today.

Traveling to Boston, Gertrude engaged a highly renowned violin instructor from the New England Conservatory of Music. Something of a prodigy, she attained a proficiency that would one day see her perform at the White House for President and Mrs. McKinley.

Gertrudes writing flourished as well. She had begun to write both autobiographical articles and tales derived from her tribal culture. In 1900, three of her pieces were published in the Atlantic Monthly: Impressions of an Indian Childhood, The School Days of an Indian Girl, and An Indian Teacher Among Indians. In addition to telling her story in beautifully wrought text, each work was a clear-cut, searing indictment of both the Indian boarding school system and the Palefaces treatment of the American Indian in general.

She also created a Lakota nom de plume, for the first time signing her articles Zitkala-a, meaning Red Bird. Her work was widely applauded, and Gertrude found herself the darling of the Boston literary circle. Harpers Bazar praised her beauty and many talents in its Persons Who Interest Us column, and The Outlook featured her as well.

Both magazines, however, missed the point of her writings, tending to focus instead on her progress from barbarism to civilization. Before becoming civilized, wrote Harpers, she was a veritable little savage, running wild over the prairies.

Joseph Turner Keiley, 1898

Not surprisingly, Richard Henry Pratt was furious. Viewing his young teacher as both wrongheaded and ungrateful for the opportunity he had given her, he publicly denounced both her and her writings. Nor was he alone in his criticism. Many of Carlisles teachers looked at her as misguided at best, and libelous at worst. As Zitkala-a, however, Gertrude Simmons had found her voice as the spokesperson for her people. There would be no going back.

Honoring an earlier commitment, Gertrude temporarily returned to Carlisle to participate as solo violinist and orator in the 53-piece school bands tour of the Northeast. The tour was an unqualified success, with Gertrudes violin playing and recitation from Longfellows Song of Hiawatha the featured event. She held every ear, read one newspaper review, and the recourse frequently to handkerchiefs told how great an effect she was exerting over her audience.

Eventually tiring of her life among the Boston literati, Gertrude returned to the Yankton Reservation in the early 1900s, where she met and wed Raymond T. Bonnin, an Indian Bureau employee of mixed Yankton and Anglo ancestry. The two followed his job to the Uinta and Ouray Reservation in Utah, where they spent the next several years. Here, she bore her only child, a son. After the publication of her 1901 book Old Indian Legends and a few pieces for Harpers Magazine and the Atlantic Monthly, including the provocative Why I Am a Pagan, she temporarily shelved her writing to work as a teacher and organizer of womens community programs.

A few years later, Gertrude awakened her muse, resumed her writing, and collaborated with Mormon music teacher William Hanson in the creation of the well-received Sun Dance Opera. Framing the work around Sioux songs, religion, and oral history, she used her violin to transcribe traditional pieces, in a work that was both eerie and hypnotic.

Ironically, despite her long-professed aversion to organized religion, Gertrude converted to Catholicism. She also launched an anti-peyote campaign, in direct opposition to the Utes use of the drug for religious purposes. Citing its degrading qualities, she lectured at temperance and womens rights meetings across the Midwest.

In 1914, the increasingly politicized Gertrude joined the Washington, D.C.-based Society of American Indians, a recently founded organizationthe first national American Indian right organization run by and for American Indiansthat promoted Indian self-determination and assimilation. She and Raymond moved to D.C., and Gertrude became the societys secretary and chronicler. Within a few years, however, lack of public interest and internal dissensionmuch fomented by Gertrude herselffractured the organization. She left the society, and in 1921the same year that saw the publication of her American Indian Storiespartnered with the General Federation of Womens Clubs (GFWC) to found the National Indian Welfare Committee. Shortly thereafter, she embarked on a GFWC-sponsored nationwide speaking tour on behalf of Indian citizenship, which would not be secured until 1924, when President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act.

Since the day I was taken from my mother I had suffered extreme indignities. People had stared at me. I had been tossed about in the air like a wooden puppet. And now my long hair was shingled like a coward's! In my anguish I moaned for my mother; but no one came to comfort me. Not a soul reasoned quietly with me, as my own mother used to do; for now I was only one of many little animals driven by a herder.

By now, the Yankton Sioux writer and activist who had become known as Zitkala-a had found her home in the realm of national politics. Her writings and presentations were becoming increasingly aggressive, as she made the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) her special target, and Indian rights her primary cause.

In 1924, not content with working from behind the pen or the lectern, Gertrudealong with two other activiststraveled to Oklahoma under the dual auspices of the GFWC and the Indian Rights Association, to investigate the outrages being perpetrated against the Osage. The tribe had found oil under the states hardscrabble ground, and many tribal members had become rich overnight. Corrupt white local courts immediately assigned the wealthy Osages guardiansparasites who systematically victimized them. Some whites married into Indian families just to claim their wealth. And what they couldnt steal by guile they acquired through murder.

The result of the investigation was an extensive paper, coauthored by Gertrude and titled Oklahomas Poor Rich Indians: An Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized TribesLegalized Robbery. It was a scathing, gut-wrenching expos, and the trios goal was to use it to force a congressional hearing. It worked, but not in the way they were hoping. The committee whitewashed the whole affair, discounting the treatise and unofficially declaring a vendetta against members of government who had supported the effort.

That same year, however, a bright note helped to lessen her disappointment: Congress finally passed the law granting Indian citizenship. It was a cause for which Gertrude had fought hard, and she was justifiably proud. As she succinctly wrote on a personal list of annual accomplishments, Helped get Act through Congress granting citizenship to all Indians.

In 1926, Gertrude created her own nonprofit pan-Indian organization, the National Council of American Indians, with husband Raymond as secretary-treasurer. The two drove thousands of miles, visiting countless reservations in their effort to unite Americas tribes in common cause. She wrote a regular newsletter and appeared before Congress with well-documented accounts of the abysmal living conditions and historic wrongs suffered by her people.

Unfortunately, over the next several years, political dissension among the leading Indigenous groups played a significant role in lessening their overall impact, and although Congress passed the groundbreaking Indian Reorganization Act in 1934, Gertrude was ultimately disappointed in the results of her decades-long efforts. In a letter to a friend the following year, she wrote, [T]hough it took a lifetime, the achievements are scarcely visible!!!

Gertrude was plagued by a variety of ailments throughout her adult life. On January 25, 1938, she fell into a coma, and unexpectedly died of what were diagnosed as kidney disease and cardiac dilation. The autopsy merely listed her as Gertrude Bonnin from South DakotaHousewife. Raymond died less than four years later; owing to his earlier military service, he and Gertrude share a tombstone in Arlington National Cemetery. Under Raymonds name, the inscription reads:

His Wife / Gertrude Simmons Bonnin / Zitkala-a of the Sioux Indians / 18761938.

Ultimately, Gertrude Simmons Bonninthe half-Sioux poet-activist who renamed herself Zitkala-awas a study in contradictions. She represented her people and fought for Native American rights, while working hard to establish herself in the Paleface society that she often railed against. The author of a heartfelt piece titled Why I Am a Pagan, she embraced various Christian sects during her 61 years, including Catholicism, and was given a Mormon funeral. She fought hard for the preservation of Indigenous customs yet waged a bitter campaign, alongside her former adversary, Richard Henry Pratt, against the traditional tribal use of peyote. She disparaged the Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding-school methods of educating and assimilating Indian children but sent her only child to a strict Catholic school. A lifelong advocate for her people, she nevertheless found it impossible, once she had been exposed to an Anglo education, to live among them. And while touting the need for maintaining the sanctity of Indian traditions, she allowed herself, in the words of editor Dr. P. Jane Hafen, to pander to sentimental, colonial images, at various times falsely claiming to be Sitting Bulls granddaughter.

She spent her life in balance between two worlds, using the language of one to translate the needs of another, author Dexter Fisher asserts. She was in a truly liminal position, always on the threshold of two worlds but never fully entering either.

Considered within the context of her gender- and racially restrictive era, however, Gertrude Simmons Bonnins accomplishments were truly remarkable, and all achieved while straddling a lifelong rail between two cultures that were alternately demanding and unforgiving. She was instrumental in attaining universal suffrage for Americas Indians, andwhile helming a powerful organization that she herself had institutedin exposing corruption and ineptitude at the highest levels of government.

I was not wholly conscious of myself, but was more keenly alive to the fire within. It was as if I were the activity, and my hands and feet were only experiments for my spirit to work upon.

As Zitkala-a, she wrote movingly and lovingly of the history, lore and suffering of her people, soaring, as Red Bird, above the restraints of the times and the two worlds that bound her.

Gertrude Kasebier, c. 1898 / National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institute

Continue reading here:
The Flight Of Red Bird: The Life And Work Of Zitkala-a - Cowboys & Indians Magazine

Dietrich Stephan, PhDNeuBase Peptilogics

Nature is the ultimate inspiration for innovators, including those who would emulate biology to realize applications in the life sciences. Indeed, some of the most intrepid innovators are those who emulate biology to help them design medicines. One such innovator is Dietrich Stephan, PhD, the CEO and founder of NeuBase Therapeutics and the chairman of the board at Peptilogics. He is a big believer in learning from nature to replace lost functions.

The parts of the human machine have evolved over millennia through trial and error, Stephan says. Who are we to deviate from that and create suboptimal solutions? In biomimicry, Im fascinated by the starting point, which must be the natural molecule, [as well as everything that follows and contributes to] a very conscious decision of what to change and why.

Just as the best repair strategy for cars is to use parts from an original equipment manufacturer, the best drug design strategy is to avoid corrupting the evolution that has gone into refining natural molecules. Pursuing this drug design strategy requires an understanding of exactly how all the molecular parts work together. In the absence of such precise insights, drug designers commonly opt for the next best strategy: throwing a random assortment of molecules at the body to find stopgap remedies.

Antibodies that bind to pathogens or malignant cells. Viral envelops that deliver mRNA to specified targets. These are outstanding examples of biomimicry in therapeutic design. Its interesting, Stephan declares, to see where we start and where we end with these new modalities, and whether they all vector toward the natural human machinery or not.

At Peptilogics, we are making short, naturally occurring, synthetic peptides, Stephan points out. We have created a deep learning platform that can quickly make massive scales of peptides to see how we can rescue function with these naturally occurring parts. Were training the machine to learn from nature to predict function, and to help us create a replacement part made of the same substance as the original part.

A different approach is followed at NeuBase. The company intends to drug the human genome by taking inspiration from the double helix itself. Using DNAs inherent self-complementarity as the basis for drug design, NeuBase engineers in accessory properties for therapeutic effect. Stephan says, You need to turn those dials carefully to make sure you dont mess with the core activity you need.

The most common criticism that confronted Peptilogics drugs at the outstart was the natural degradation of synthetic peptides in circulation. We were concerned, Stephan recalls, but empirically we saw that when these peptides are in circulation, they associate with other circulating proteins and peptides and stabilize. We have shown half-lives of seven hours in circulation with short, naturally occurring synthetic peptides. They survive long enough to function.

Classically, the approach adopted to prevent peptidase-mediated degradation has been to replace natural levorotatory building blocks in peptides with dextrorotatory stereoisomers.

We have not had to engineer in any alternative amino acids or other chemical modifications to stabilize peptides, Stephan asserts. Other naturally occurring therapeutic proteins, such as monoclonal antibodies and enzyme replacements, dont use substituted amino acids to stabilize them. There is a world where you can use natural amino acids in therapeutics and take advantage of the bodys own way of processing them.

Nucleic acidbased therapeutics are a different story. RNA and DNA are not meant to exist outside cells, so it raises a red flag if they course through the circulation. As an industry, we have had to go to great lengths to protect mRNAs until they get into the cytoplasm where they can be translated, Stephan points out. As a DNA-mimetic company, one of the properties we had to engineer in is stability against exo- and endonucleases. We had to use a composite chemical structure that is not recognized by nucleases.

Nanoparticle-mediated cross-kingdom intercellular communication is pervasive in nature, including among species that have cohabitated within humans over millions of years. Senda Biosciences, a preclinical company and an offshoot of a Flagship Pioneering enterprise, is the first to access the chemical addressing code of natural nanoparticles to enable programming to the cell (in contrast to within the cell programing that genome editing enables), thereby unlocking the ability to comprehensively program medicines.

Senda has compiled 75,000 molecular components from natural nanoparticles into an atlas that is poised to complement, if not replace, state-of-the-art synthetic lipid nanoparticlemediated drug delivery. We are building on existing technology and bringing a new component to the natural programming language, says Guillaume Pfefer, PhD, CEO at Senda and CEO Partner at Flagship Pioneering.

Utilizing the natural programing language of information molecules like DNA, mRNA, siRNA, gene editors, and coating peptides that act within cells to regulate function, was the first step toward programable medicines. Too few of these abundant information molecules have been translated into medicines, Pfefer observes. We are sitting on part of the equation for programmable medicines, but we have not solved the equation yet.

Whereas understanding the genetic code enabled its reprogramming within cells, a crucial piece of the puzzle is sending information-carrying molecules to their destinations. The problem is, we dont know how to send the right molecule to the right cell, Pfefer admits. We have solved the issue of programming within the cell, but we have not solved programing the message to the cell. If we solve both, we can comprehensively program medicines.

To find a solution to the latter problem, Sendas team probed the natural messengers that allow intercellular communication across species in the six kingdoms of lifeprotists, bacteria, fungi, archaea, animals, and plants. Everywhere in nature, including within us, you see intercellular cross-kingdom communication, which involves nano-sized particles that are coded chemically to direct communication to specific cells, to dose cells safely and repeatedly, Pfefer emphasizes. Doesnt that ring like something we would like to use for medicine?

Natural nanoparticles are composed of lipids, proteins, carbohydrates, and other diverse molecules with species-specific structural and functional features. This rich compositional diversity allows for varied functions of natural nanoparticles, Pfefer elaborates. It acts as a rich reservoir from which we can mine components for our Senda Atlas.

Therapeutic information molecules like mRNA can be stabilized within nanoparticles and activated once the assembly penetrates targeted cells. Combining components in its atlas, Senda is creating nanoparticles to drive specific outcomes such as tissue or cell tropism, increased potency, or the ability to repeat doses.

The ability to program precisely depends on the ability to program comprehensively. You will not expect parts of a sports car to come in pieces that miraculously assemble for a fine performance, Pfefer explains. Similarly, these information molecules act very precisely. They need to be combined in a very comprehensive way with programmable nanoparticles. So, we have created an mRNA engine tapping into the natural programing language of genetic codes.

With the development of SendRNAs that combine RNA and nanoparticle components, Sendas technology already exceeds the performance of mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 in preclinical models. We not only generate protection against the disease in this model, but we also cut viral transmission for the very first time, Pfefer claims. This is because SendRNAs generate both systemic and mucosal immune responses. The technology can optimize and program nanoparticles with an mRNA encoding for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. The technology is also surpassing gene editing efficacies in preclinical models, including the ability to dose repeatedly that has historically limited the safety of gene therapies.

By exploring how plants inject toxic nanoparticles into invasive pathogens and convey solar energy into human cells through diet, and how commensal and pathogenic bacteria transport DNA into human cells to replicate and survive, one appreciates how nature has bridged communication gaps between living kingdoms, and indeed between the living and nonliving worlds.

We can transfect mRNA into circulating immune cells in a nonhuman primate at double-digit levels, Pfefer says. Senda has been able to activate B and T lymphocytes within germinal centers of lymph nodes using SendRNAs at a level that is five-log higher than what other products have achieved in a similar modelwith up to 60% less mRNA. Currently, the company is exploring applications in vaccines, chimeric antigen receptor T cells, and treatments for local gastrointestinal infections via oral administration that limits systemic exposure.

To find the right nanoparticle composition for targeted messaging, Senda is exploiting artificial intelligence. The platform uses 20 different combinations of nanoparticles, at present, to optimize SendRNAs for specific outcomes, such as delivery to the spleen with no liver expression.

Our platform has demonstrated the ability to program SendRNA medicines that can access historically difficult-to-reach organs such as the lung and pancreas, Pfefer declares. We can even program Senda nanoparticles to reach the brain via the intranasal route.

Small-molecule peptidomimetics can at times be a better therapeutic option than a synthetic replica of a natural peptide. Small-molecule anti-infectives that mimic natural antimicrobial peptides are being designed by Maxwell Biosciences. These anti-infectives, which are called Claromers, represent a way to cope with the global rise in resistance against antibiotics and antivirals. Claromers can target specific membrane vulnerabilities in a range of viral, bacterial, and fungal pathogens.

The companys lead candidate, a Claromer that mimics the function of human cathelicidin antimicrobial peptide (LL-37), treats chronic rhinosinusitisa severe and chronic sinus infection caused by combinations of fungi and bacteria. Preclinical in vitro data shows that LL-37 is effective against all chronic rhinosinusitisrelated pathogens reported to date.

LL-37 is expressed everywhere in the body, especially in mucosal tissues, says Joshua McClure, Maxwells founder and CEO. It serves as the first antimicrobial barrier that the innate immune system offers against all pathogens coming in through the air, food, or water. McClure came across this peptide serendipitously when he discovered that members of his family lacked LL-37 and had an increased susceptibility to rare infections.

Although changes in lifestyle can boost LL-37, the adoption of such modifications is extremely difficult. Thats where pharmaceuticals come in, McClure observes. Everyone with a depressed immune system needs anti-infectives. What if we could come up with an armored small molecule that would mimic this peptide, without its weaknesses? Many pathogens release enzymes that break down LL-37.

Fortuitously, Annelise Barron, PhD, a scientist at Stanford University, had already developed and patented a small-molecule mimic of LL-37. McClure brought her on board as scientific co-founder at Maxwell, and they spent the next seven years in pre-IND studies.

Since COVID-19, this LL-37-mimicking small molecule has received abundant attention and funding. Researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases led by Anthony S. Fauci, MD, did a Syrian hamster study and demonstrated the compounds pan-coronavirus and pan-influenza efficacy. Other laboratories have shown that several enveloped viruses are vulnerable to LL-37.

McClure has confidence in the small-molecule mimics of peptides because they can avoid being degraded by proteases. This ability helps keep dosages low, reducing risks and facilitating regulatory approvals. Weve hung the functional side chains from the nitrogen on the backbone instead of the carbon, McClure points out. So, the proteases dont even recognize it.

If we think about the design of medicines in broad terms, we are more likely to accept that all medicinesinorganic small compounds, organic biomolecules, composite agents, and so onmimic nature in some fashion, even if we are unsure of how, exactly, the medicines mechanistic paths should be mapped.

Nonetheless, Peptilogics Stephan suggests, It might be worth thinking about what a biomimic isnt and considering the effects on the biomimics function.

In any case, observes Maxwells McClure, biomimicry is the future for anti-infectives in biotech. Antibiotics are dead, he declares. With machine learning, youll see a lot of peptidomimetics.

Biomimetics requires an ability to observe nature and move beyond awe to integrate natural designs into therapeutic agents. Done well, the approach may be our best shot at circumventing existing roadblocks of biocompatibility, adverse reactions, toxicity, and long-term efficacy in therapeutic design. Ultimately, Sendas Pfefer emphasizes, its all about survival.

Read the rest here:
Biomimetic Technology: A Natural in Therapeutics Design - Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

The first of two Ioniq 6 sedans tested by PerformanceDrive in Australia is the Dynamiq, which is the most basic of specifications available in this part of the world. In addition to being rear-wheel drive, it visually differs from its all-wheel-drive siblings with aero-styled wheels rather than fancy mesh-style wheels.

Priced at 74,000 kangaroo bucks (make that 49,715 bald eagles), the Ioniq 6 Dynamiq is rocking an 800-volt charging system that also supports 400-volt charging without additional components or adapters. Tipping the scales at 1,968 kilograms (4,339 pounds), the plebeian variant offers a driving range of up to 614 kilometers (382 miles) on the WLTP combined testing cycle, which is far more optimistic than the EPAs equivalent cycle.

Equipped with a 77.4-kWh battery, the Ioniq 6 Dynamiq cranks out 168 kW (225 horsepower) and 350 Nm (258 pound-feet), which may seem underwhelming for a car this heavy. Fret not because Hyundais go-faster division will soon take the veils off the Ioniq 5 N, after which the Ioniq 6 N will join the lineup. The 577-horsepower RN22e concept previews the 6s performance version.

The South Korean automaker claims that 100 kilometers per hour (62 miles per hour) are dealt with in 7.4 seconds. In rather damp conditions on an unprepped surface, Brett Davis of PerformanceDrive clocked 6.99 seconds with brake hold and 7.07 seconds otherwise. Not bad, but not thrilling either.

Hyundais aero-conscious fastback sedan recorded 15.17 seconds at 155.5 kilometers per hour (96.6 miles per hour) in the quarter mile, which is alright for the variant designed specifically for maximum driving range. Emergency braking in the dry from 100 kph to zero takes 3.01 seconds at 37.41 meters (122.73 feet).

Equipped with larger wheels and two electric motors, the all-wheel-drive Ioniq 6 Techniq needs 5.1 seconds to reach 100 clicks according to Hyundai. The cited publications managing editor once again exceed the manufacturers claim, recording 4.91 seconds with brake hold and 5.01 seconds without this launch-improving trick. As it wasnt on a private road, this flavor of the Ioniq 6 was not tested in the quarter mile. It wouldnt have impressed, though, because its not a bonafide N.

Similar to the lifted hatchback marketed as being a crossover by the South Korean automaker, the Ioniq 6 is based on the E-GMP vehicle architecture. Shared with the Kia EV6 and luxury-oriented Genesis GV60, the Electric Global Modular Platform also serves as the basis for the EV5, EV9, Ioniq 7, and GV90 utility vehicles.

The China-bound EV5 has been recently unveiled as a concept. North America, on the other hand, is getting the EV9 and Ioniq 7. As for the GV90, think of it as the Genesis-branded alternative to the EV9 and Ioniq 7.

See more here:
Hyundai Ioniq 6 Acceleration Test Shows That an N Performance ... - autoevolution

Picture the scene. Its 350BCE, and Aristotle presumably looking a bit like Sir David Attenborough, except in a toga is collecting creatures from the teeming rock pools around the Greek island of Lesbos. Hes beavering away on his scala naturae a natural ladder that puts everything in the natural world in a hierarchy that has animate things such as minerals at the bottom, then plants above them, followed by animals. And of course, at the top of the ladder, tottering maniacally over everything else: humans.

Beastly is Keggie Carews messy but heartfelt account of the environmental catastrophe unleashed by this barmily Trumpian idea of Aristotles that were somehow superior to the rest of nature. As Carew convincingly argues, the influential scala naturae paved the philosophical way nature was to serve us.

Over 380 or so charmingly meandering pages, Carew attempts to unpick Aristotles folly and fix humanitys big error our interactions with the planets other inhabitants. She does this in part by recounting the story of our intellectual journey from ancient Greece to today as philosophers, theologians and scientists first built on, then started to break away from, Aristotles worldview.

Carew, author of the Costa book award-winning memoir Dadland (2016), does a great job of rattling through centuries of dusty theological thought and the way the likes of Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas fatefully concluded that animals dont have souls so arent worthy of our care, or even our pity. As she observes, pithily: Advocacy for kindness to fellow creatures under the Abrahamic god has never really caught on.

But over the past 20 years or so, scientific research has started to chip away at this human-centric view. In 2012, scientists from around the world signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, announcing that the weight of evidence shows all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses are conscious beings a revolutionary moment, because it proves that animals arent dumb beasts that we can use and abuse, but feel pain and other emotions. Carew, though, isnt especially wowed by this scientific sea change: The extraordinary thing is that it took so long. More extraordinary still, perhaps, is that it needed to be stated at all.

Alongside this potted history of our philosophical understanding of nature, Carew describes, in myriad moving ways, the colossal environmental damage caused by our wrong-headedness. From the destruction of wild habitats (only 2.9% of land on Earth is faunally intact the rest tarnished or ruined) to biodiversity loss everywhere, the book is brimming with examples of irrevocable harm. Wherever we showed up, notes Carew, darkly, extinctions followed. She writes poignantly about the suffering of the beautiful baiji, the Chinese river dolphin that was gradually overwhelmed by pollution, noise and over-fishing: The baiji took more than 20m years of evolution to refine, and 50 years of grand communist-capitalist ideology to rub out.

The books structure is confusing at times, jumping between Carews personal memories, facts about one species or another and wide-ranging summaries of human history. Then again, maybe she is trying to mimic Charles Darwins famous tangled bank metaphor for how everything in nature is connected. Indeed, Carew is especially compelling when it comes to this interrelatedness, where the dying out of one species can cause entire ecosystems to decline and fall.

Sea otters, for instance, were wiped out on Americas coasts, which meant that the urchins they ate multiplied unchecked, which in turn caused entire kelp forests to fail killing off their inhabitants, including the gentle 10-tonne Stellers sea cow. The disappearance of one creature can spell doom on a much larger scale. As Carew warns us: We mess with these interactions at our peril, for theyre so immensely complex we do not understand them.

In place of Aristotles egocentric ladder, Beastly is a clarion call for the humbler notion that every bit of nature matters: Our banners must shout more expansively: Save the whale! Save the krill! Save the phytoplankton! Save everything in between! Time and again, Carew comes back to the psychological impact that losing wild places is having on us sometimes called solastalgia: the sadness we feel as we wander through landscapes unnaturally devoid of insects, birds and animals.

For Carew, as for many of us, this melancholy has given way to something darker: A close cousin of solastalgia is eco-furiosity, an eco-tear-your-hair-out solastalgia on steroids. It is the long loud, desperate cry of the human heart. The only hope for our battered planet is that we come to appreciate the wondrous interconnectedness of living things. As Carew wistfully puts it: When we understand, we begin to care.

Beastly: A New History of Animals and Us by Keggie Carew is published by Canongate (20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

See more here:
Beastly: A New History of Animals and Us by Keggie Carew review ... - The Guardian