Page 3«..2345..1020..»

Archive for the ‘Life Extension’ Category

Tessara’s Berrisys Fast is quick to unlock the potential of raspberries and blackberries – FreshPlaza.com

In response to requests from raspberry and blackberry growers, Tessara has developed Berrisys Fast, a fully recyclable sulphur dioxide-generating sheet, with only a fast release layer, activated at high relative humidity in order to protect these most delicate of fruit.

Blueberries are climacteric fruit and will continue to ripen after harvest and can be stored and transported for long periods, while non-climacteric fruit such as raspberries and blackberries will not ripen and need to be harvested at full or close to full maturity.

Elton Williams, research scientist and custodian of berries at Tessara, explains that with the successful development of Berrisys and Berrisys LITE for blueberries, Tessara has invested in various experiments since 2018 and has until now started working closely with local raspberries and blackberries growers in South Africa.

"Storage and transport periods on raspberries and blackberries are very short and this is due to the rapid deterioration, from fruit senescence and postharvest diseases," he says.

Major losses can be experienced and an entire pallet of fruit can be unfit for consumption and can therefore be rejected.

We are in the process of releasing Berrisys Fast into the market that contains the same active ingredient, as our popular Berrisys and Berrisys LITE for blueberries, but it differs from these products in terms of the time frame."

The idea is to develop a product for short term protection against postharvest diseases during storage and transport, without negatively affecting other quality parameters such as the natural flavours and colour, he adds.

Whereas Berrisys and Berrisys LITE are dual-release laminated sheets which release an initial higher amount of SO2 over 24 to 48 hours, followed by a lower dosage offering 30 to 42 days of protection, Berrisys Fast only releases SO2 during the first 24 to 48 hours.

Precise concentrations and particle sizes of the active ingredient control the gas concentration and active period of the fast release layer. The fast release layer disinfect the surface of the berries, by releasing a large enough dose of sulphur dioxide to kill and eliminate any actively growing Botrytis (grey mould) fungal spores and to offer immediate protection over the three to four days of airfreight transit or during the storage period.

A blackberry orchard

Shelf life extension of a day and a halfElton points out that raspberries and blackberries have an exceedingly short shelf life and postharvest losses due to Botrytiscan be devastating. Sulphurous acid is formed when SO2 gas reacts with water. Sulphurous acid reacts with the cell membrane and block enzymes of microorganisms and therefore inhibits the multiplication of micro-organisms present on the surface of fruit. While other packaging solutions may delay fruit respiration while the packaging remains intact, the moment conditions change, any spores present will inevitably continue its life cycle.

Moreover, given logistical uncertainties for example temperature fluctuations which are at times an unavoidable reality and can thus lead to condensation within packaging, inviting the development of mould on fruit. The only certain way to protect fruits is by destroying the viability of spores in the first place.

Gerhard Slabbert, Berrisys global product manager, observes that in the current challenging trading environment, it is imperative that berry growers investigate all possible avenues to safeguard the quality of ephemeral products like raspberries and blackberries. Weve had great success in our trials of the Berrisys Fast, while an independent trial in Australia has replicated our results: with Berrisys Fast it is possible to obtain an extension of a day and a half in shelf life, he says.

Tessaras initial focus will be on South African-grown raspberries and blackberries, two categories that have been more under the radar than blueberries, but which have witnessed a steady growth in exports, mostly to the United Kingdom, followed by the Middle East.

For the moment, regulations in the EU governing the use of sulphur dioxide hold back its introduction to raspberry and blackberry growers, but Lionel George, head of regulatory and compliance at Tessara, notes that the company has approached the relevant authorities for amendments to the regulatory framework which they expect could take up to two years.

The argument in favour of sulphur dioxides salient ability to preserve fruit quality and thus reduce food waste is incontrovertible, the company maintains, and it is pursuing regulatory registration trials of Berrisys and Berrisys LITE for blueberries in the USA and Australia.

The Berrisys Fast sheet for raspberries and blackberries (photo supplied by Tessara)

The past season offered a trial by fire for Berrisys on blueberries: it was clear that berries sent under a Berrisys regime handled the huge delays much better than those without. Elton observes that one of their clients had blueberries in transit for an extended period due to delays and nevertheless still managed to sell most of that fruit. He remarks that none of their trials had ever run for such a long period of time.

Realistically, we have to plan for the impact of longer storage periods with the holdups at harbours, both here and on the receiving end, he says.

For more information:Gerhard SlabbertTessara BerrisysTel: +27 82 094 1875Email: gerhards@tessara.co.zahttps://www.tessara.co.za/products/berrisys-2/

Read this article:
Tessara's Berrisys Fast is quick to unlock the potential of raspberries and blackberries - FreshPlaza.com

Gene therapy showcases technique to extend life in mice – Chemistry World

Mice receiving a gene for a telomere-building enzyme have had their lifespan extended by 41%. Treatment with another gene, this time for follistatin (FST), extended their lives by 36%. Both treatments significantly boosted glucose tolerance, physical performance and stalled body mass decline and fur loss.

The life extension came as a surprise to the researchers. We wanted to see what the effects were [of the gene therapy], explains Hua Zhu at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. In the meantime, we saw that the [24] control mice died, whereas all [36]experimental mice were still alive, so the treatment clearly was significantly increasing the lifespan of the mice.

Telomeres are repetitive DNA sequences that cap chromosomes and tend to shorten with ageing. Efforts to extend the healthy lifespan of people is an active area of research, and features a range of techniques such as caloric restriction and small molecules that target metabolic pathways linked to ageing.

The researchers delivered the gene for telomerase reverse transcriptase, which activates and encourages telomere lengthening, and FST, a secretory protein with an important role in muscle development and maintenance, using a herpes virus.

Monthly treatment began in mice aged 18 months. After two months, the treated mice looked stronger and had shinier, healthier fur than controls, which started to lose their fur and suffered declining body weight, notes Zhu. Injections were repeated monthly to sustain high levels of the protein. All mice in control groups died by 29 months, while the mice in the experimental groups died between 38 and 42 months.

Liz Parrish, chief executive of the biotech firm BioViva that provided funding for the research, notes that the next step will be to test the safety and efficacy of the gene therapy in monkeys using weakened strains of a rhesus virus. Based on the result of the monkey studies, we will submit our report to the [US Food and Drug Administration] to give us permission to start clinical trials in humans, she explains.

There are major hurdles for anyone wishing to treat ageing with a gene therapy approach, says Ilaria Bellantuono, a professor of muscular ageing at the University of Sheffield, UK. We find difficulties proposing a drug approach, which is far less expensive and risky, so a gene therapy approach would encounter [a] higher level of resistance.

Bellantuono says that it is still hard for any treatment for ageing to compete with diet and exercise. Therefore, the best approach would be to target an age-related condition such as muscle loss or dementia, she says. This would require a clinical trial to test whether the intervention prevents such conditions.

A preventive trial is very complex. You need to give the treatment. Then wait for the disease to manifest, says Bellantuono. You would need biomarkers, which would tell us within three to six months whether an intervention gene therapy or drug is working.

Peter Lansdorp, a molecular biologist at the University of British Columbia in Canada, notes that ageing is multi-factorial and it seems unlikely that a single protein could have such a large impact on lifespan. He notes also that side effects from repeated activation of the immune system by viral vector infection are of concern in humans, but not so much in mice. First, possible effects of the transgene on viral virulence need to be excluded, Lansdorp says. Next this study needs to be reproduced in mice by other, independent groups.

Read the original post:
Gene therapy showcases technique to extend life in mice - Chemistry World

Space Safety: How to Solve the Problem of Orbital Debris? – DirectIndustry News – DirectIndustry e-Magazine

Space junk sounds like a cyberpunk problem but is very much a real-world issue today. A couple of months ago, the European Space Agency had to take emergency debris collision avoidance action for its Sentinel-1A satellite, part of the Copernicus radar observatory program.

Japanese space technology company Astroscale is working to solve the problem of orbital space objects in conjunction with Ansys Government Initiatives (AGI). We spoke with Cody Short, AGIs principal astrodynamicist, to learn more about this space safety project.

According to NASA, there are more than 27,000 pieces of space debris being tracked, but that is only a small amount of what is really out there. Space debris orbits around the Earth at about 15,700 mph in low Earth orbit. It could cause significant damage to a satellite or a spacecraft in case of a collision.

Some measures have been taken to attempt to resolve the issue, including coating for satellites, but a coordinated approach is needed and fast.

According to Short,

Space is big, but particular orbital slots, especially those of high value, are crowded and becoming increasingly so. As a result, satellite operators must burn expensive fuel meant to sustain the delivery of services and profits to instead move their satellites to safer or more advantageous orbits. Up until now, the way we have operated in space has been bad for the space environment, and bad for space business. But its on this unsustainable foundation that we are trying to build a trillion-dollar space economy.

Astroscale and Ansys are working together to increase space safety and solve the problem of space debris. Their collaboration includes improving situational awareness, enabling life extension and other on-orbit servicing, and offering end-of-life options with active debris removal. The project is called ELSA (The End-of-Life Services by Astroscale).

Short explains:

By focusing on developing the technologies, informing the international policies, and building the economics for orbital sustainability, Astroscale is reorienting governments and businesses long-term decisions. In the end, it is building a sustainable space infrastructure in the process.

Astroscale is taking two key approaches to the space debris problem.

The first approach is about mitigation and preparation. The idea is to stack a common docking plate so that servicer satellites can remove them at the end of their useful life or in the event of a launch failure.

The second approach is to coordinate removals, in partnership with national governments and space agencies. The idea is to find and target larger pieces of debris that pose some of the highest risks. This might include upper-stage rocket bodies, for example.

A great part of this work depends on a digital mission engineering application, Ansys Systems Tool Kit, or STK, by engineering company Ansys. According to Short, this digital tool is

an indispensable digital mission engineering application for the aerospace, defense, telecommunications, and other industries. It features an accurate, physics-based modeling environment to analyze platforms and payloads in a realistic mission context.

Short adds that Ansys Systems Tool Kit enables the simulation of

multidomain scenarios that extend simulation beyond systems to an interactive model of the operational environment.

Fundamentally, this means that four-dimensional three-dimensional, plus time models can be built up to include terrain, imagery, RF environments, and other elements of the environment.

Short told us more about this digital mission:

STK extends digital engineering to the mission the operational environment in which your systems and systems of systems must succeed. While it feels like something that comes at the end of your projects life cycle once your system is designed its more than that. Digital mission engineering should be applied early and often, from design through development, test, operations, and sustainment. Uncover problems sooner rather than later and youll have a design that excels against your adversaries, ready to deploy far quicker than your competition.

See the original post here:
Space Safety: How to Solve the Problem of Orbital Debris? - DirectIndustry News - DirectIndustry e-Magazine

MSM Malaysia Berhad : IS FOCUSED ON TURNAROUND PLAN AMIDST THE RISING MAIN PRODUCTION COST – Marketscreener.com

MSM IS FOCUSED ON TURNAROUND PLAN AMIDST THE

RISING MAIN PRODUCTION COST

KUALA LUMPUR, JUNE 8, 2022 - MSM Malaysia Holdings Berhad (MSM) remains focused on sustaining its turnaround plan amidst the rising main production cost elements namely raw sugar, freight, natural gas and foreign exchange. The producer of the national refined sugar brand "Gula Prai" has turnaround with improved financial performance since 2020 despite market challenges.

Relatively, MSM recorded an improved profit before tax (PBT) of RM81 million for FY2021, against RM36 million in FY2020. The Group also recorded 3% increase in revenue of RM2.26 billion for 12 months FY2021 compared to RM2.18 billion in the last financial year. During FY2021, gain from disposal of MSM Perlis Sdn Bhd amounting to RM91.8 million has contributed to the Group recording a total consolidated PBT of RM170 million.

Within a continually challenging environment, MSM key focus for 2021 was on the execution of the turnaround plan through reorganisation and asset optimisation, staying resilient with strengthened income streams and building integration for sustainable performance.

"For financial year 2021 (FY2021), MSM recorded a revenue of RM2.3 billion with a profit before tax (PBT) of RM81 million on the back of total assets of RM2.87 billion. This is an encouraging improvement from 2020 despite challenges faced throughout the year. MSM also has returned to a dividend-paying stock where we declared a dividend of 3 sen per share for FY2021," said MSM Group Chief Executive Officer, Syed Feizal Syed Mohammad during the 11th Annual General Meeting that was held virtually today attended by 1,057 shareholders online.

MSM produced close to 900,000 tonnes of refined sugar that is sold under "Gula Prai" brand amidst slower domestic and competitive international markets in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the movement control order. MSM was challenged by many different factors in 2021 but appropriate mitigation measures were taken to address them.

MSM has a dynamic 3-year strategic blueprint with 2021 being Turnaround, 2022 Resilient and 2023 Integration. MSM Johor remains a key focus of MSM Group on the ramp-up programme and achieving profitability while MSM Prai will be undergoing a rejuvenation process with a 30-year life extension in sweating the assets.

"We will work to increase our domestic market share while opening up new market channels through Last Mile general trades, HORECA and small SKU packaging suited for convenient chains. MSM shall continue to gain greater market share within Asia Pacific and penetrate Singapore retail segment viewed from a domestic lens and logistics strategy. We shall also increase more volumes of value-added products such as liquid sugar and premix which has higher margins and great demand in markets like China. As part of strengthening Johor, MSM remains open to have a right fit partner with strong export market and operational experience," Syed Feizal said.

As for financial year 2022 (FY2022), MSM foresees greater challenges with rising main production cost. For first quarter (1Q) FY2022, MSM posted an expected loss after tax (LAT) of RM28 million as compared to profit after tax (PAT) of RM31 million for 1Q2021. This was largely due to higher production cost largely 29% higher NY11, 57% increase in freight cost and weaker Ringgit. The Group's refining cost also recorded an increase of 28%, largely driven by 86% increase in gas cost. In response to cost pressures, MSM as a joint industry has engaged the government on the need to revise the controlled ceiling prices for the retail segment. The sugar refining price has had a net increase of only 1 sen/kg since 2011.

"We strived to reinforce our brand positioning, stayed on track for current and long-term targets maximising our capabilities through market expansion and greater outreach. Critically, we continued to strengthen our balance sheet and enhanced liquidity. MSM has a healthy gearing ratio of 26% in FY2021 versus 33% in FY2020. In initiatives, we stepped-up with acceleration our ESG journey and kicked-off digitalisation towards IR 4.0 during the year," Syed Feizal added.

Moving forward, MSM will further exploring strategic partnership to strengthen export segment and to further unlock synergistic value in 2022 in ensuring consistent returns and greater shareholder value as the nation's leading premium sugar refiner.

-ENDS-

2

About MSM Malaysia Holdings Berhad (MSM)

MSM Malaysia Holdings Berhad (MSM) is Malaysia's leading refined sugar producer and one of the biggest sugar refiners in Asia. MSM is involved in producing, marketing and selling refined sugar products under the "Gula Prai" brand. The company conducts its business principally through two operating subsidiaries, MSM Prai Berhad and MSM Sugar Refinery (Johor) Sdn Bhd. In addition, MSM also operates a logistics company - MSM Logistics Sdn Bhd.

At present, MSM's annual production capacity is up to 2.05 million tonnes of refined sugar. In 2021, MSM produced 895,222 tonnes of refined sugar, of which 246,101 tonnes are catered for the export market. Currently, MSM corroborates up to 60% of the domestic market share. MSM has been listed on the Main Market of Bursa Malaysia since 2011 and has a market capitalisation of RM900 million as at 31 December 2021. MSM combines economic success with environmental protection and social responsibility for a sustainable future.

MSM offers a variety of products ranging from white refined sugar of various grain sizes to soft brown sugar. These are marketed and sold in a variety of packaging options under its flagship brand - Gula Prai. MSM also sells molasses, a by-product of the refining process, to distilleries and producers of ethanol, animal feed and yeast, among other products. Aside from household consumers, MSM sells to a wide range of customers in Malaysia and in other countries directly and indirectly through traders, wholesalers and distributors. Its customers include major companies in the beverage and confectionery industries, hotels, restaurants and food outlets.

For more information, please visit http://www.msmsugar.com

Forward Looking Statements

Certain statements in this media release regarding MSM's operations may constitute forward-looking statements. These statements can be identified by key words such as "believes", "estimates", "anticipates", "expects", "intends", "may", "will", "plans", "outlook" and other words of similar meaning in connection with a discussion of future operating or financial performance. These statements relate to the plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future operations and performance of MSM. Actual results and outcomes may differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statements due to various events, risks, uncertainties and other factors. We neither intend to nor assume any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

For media enquiries, please contact:

Siti Noorbaya Mohd Yunus

Syahidah Ismail

+603 2181 5018 ext. 158

+603 2181 5018 ext. 154

+6016 677 6118

+6019 225 9705

noorbaya.my@msmsugar.com

syahidah.i@msmsugar.com

3

Disclaimer

MSM Malaysia Holdings Bhd published this content on 08 June 2022 and is solely responsible for the information contained therein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 08 June 2022 08:31:07 UTC.

Publicnow 2022

Technical analysis trends MSM MALAYSIA HOLDINGS BERHAD

Income Statement Evolution

Follow this link:
MSM Malaysia Berhad : IS FOCUSED ON TURNAROUND PLAN AMIDST THE RISING MAIN PRODUCTION COST - Marketscreener.com

P-3 Orion: The Plane Built to Hunt and Kill Russia’s Submarines – 19FortyFive

Anti-submarine warfare capability, or ASW, is one of the U.S. Navys top priorities. After all, adversary submarines such as the Russian Typhoon class and Red Chinas Type-093A Shang-II Class pose arguably the deadliest threat to American carriers. To counter the threat of silent submersible stalkers, the Navy continues to use an aerial platform that has served faithfully for over 50 years: the Lockheed Martin P-3 Orion.

Still Going Strong

Though the P-3 Orion is slowly but surely being replaced by the Boeing P-8 Poseidon for ASW work, the transition is far from complete. The older Orion unlike other famous Cold War-era Navy warplanes such as the F-14 Tomcat, A-6 Intruder, and A-7 Corsair IIhas definitely not been retired yet. The P-3 is currently being used by two Navy Reserve patrol squadrons, VP-62 and VP-69. It also lives on as a land-based multi-intelligence reconnaissance variant, the EP-3E Aries II.

And thats without even counting the 16 foreign countries that still fly the Orion.

The P-3 was based on a commercial airliner, the Lockheed L-188 Electra, that was first flown in 1957. This is somewhat akin to how the E-3 Sentry AWACS plane was based on the commercial Boeing 707. The militarized Orion variant made her maiden flight in November 1959 and officially entered service in August 1962a mere two months before the Cuban Missile Crisis. Thus, in 2012, the P-3 joined the pantheon of military aircraft that the U.S. has used for 50-plus years, joining the B-52, the KC-135, the C-130, and the U-2.

The keydistinguishing feature of the P-3 that you wont see on the civilian L-188 is the Magnetic Anomaly Detection boom at the tail end of the fuselage. This feature makes the P-3s submarine-hunting mission feasible in the first place. Needless to say, the Cold War never went hot, so the Orion never got to put its sub-killing potential to the test in the real world. But that doesnt mean the Orion didnt get battle-tested.

P-3 Orions over Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Balkans

Indeed, it was during 2002s Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan that the P-3 pulled off what is arguably its most remarkable wartime feat. As noted by the official Lockheed Martin website, During a key battle in the Shah-e-Kot Valley, P-3 crews scouted the rugged valleys below and radioed in movement of enemy vehicles, allowing Special Operations Forces soldiers on the ground to set up strategic ambushes and save countless lives. Not bad for a fifty-year-old sea-searching aircraft design on duty in the middle of the desert.

Rewind 11 years to 1991s Operation Desert Storm: It was here that the P-3 first showed its potential as a land surveillance aircraft, monitoring Iraqi troop activities and providing battle-damage assessments on the ground. The introduction of new long-range video cameras for use over the skies of Bosnia allowed these planes to provide real-time combat intelligence for NATO commanders, a tactical advantage that proved equally useful during Operation Deliberate Force in 1995.

The P-3 Orion: A Versatile Plane

One characteristic shared by all the planes that have reached a half-century of service is versatility, and the P-3 Orion is no exception in this regard. Beside the military applications weve already covered, this old warbird has also proven adaptable for civilian law enforcement, namely anti-narcotics smuggling and anti-illegal immigration missions. It is flown by the intrepid aircrews of the Air and Marine Operations component of one of my former employers, the U.S. Customs & Border Protection. The CBP dubs its P-3 variant the Long Range Tracker.

Like its fellow 50-somethings, the P-3 hasnt failed to keep up with technological advances. To quote the Lockheed Martin folks one more time, The P-3 MLU [Mid-Liffe Upgrade] Program is the answer to maintaining effectiveness and reliability in a critical global economy. It consists of a life extension kit replacing the aircraft outer wings, center wing lower section and horizontal stabilizer with new production components.

MLU removes all current P-3 airframe flight restrictions and provides 15,000 additional flight hours, greatly enhancing capability leveraged with cost-effectiveness. The design replaces all fatigue-life-limiting structures on the aircraft with enhanced-design components and new improved corrosion-resistant materials that will greatly reduce the cost of ownership over the aircrafts remaining service life. This is an affordable solution that Lockheed Martin has proven can be installed in 11 months.

Specifications/General Characteristics

Primary Function:Anti-Submarine warfare and Anti-Surface Warfare

Contractor:Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems Company

Propulsion:Four Allison T-56-A-14 turboprop engines (4,600 hp each)

Length:116.7 feet (35.57 meters)

Height:33.7 feet (10.27 meters)

Wingspan:99.6 feet (30.38 meters)

Weight:Maximum takeoff, 139,760 pounds (63,394 kilograms)

Airspeed:411 knots; Cruise, 328 knots

Ceiling:28,300 feet (8,626 meters)

Range:2,380 nautical mile radius; for three hours on station at 1,500 feet, 1,346 nautical miles

Crew:Three pilots, two naval flight officers (NFOs), two flight engineers, three sensor operators and one in-flight technician

Armament:AGM-84 Harpoon, AGM-84K SLAM-ER, AGM-65F Maverick missiles, Mk46/50/54 torpedoes, rockets, mines and depth bombs

Christian D. Orr is a former Air Force officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch and The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security.

Go here to see the original:
P-3 Orion: The Plane Built to Hunt and Kill Russia's Submarines - 19FortyFive

House panel aims to save five ships from retirement, rejecting Navy’s plan to decommission them – Stars and Stripes

USS Vicksburg, a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser, passes through the Strait of Gibraltar on March 31, 2015. The House Armed Services Committees subpanel on seapower and projection forces plans to prohibit the Navy from cutting the Vicksburg as well as four landing dock ships from its fleet, according to committee aides. (Anthony Hilkowski/U.S. Navy)

WASHINGTON House lawmakers will push to save five ships that the Navy is slating for retirement, rejecting the service branchs proposal to decommission 24 ships in its fiscal 2023 budget.

The House Armed Services Committees subpanel on seapower and projection forces plans to prohibit the Navy from cutting the cruiser USS Vicksburg as well as four landing dock ships from its fleet, according to committee aides. Lawmakers will recommend the changes to the full House committee this week as it drafts the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual sweeping military policy and funding bill.

Theres consensus that USS Vicksburg should be retained, an aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity. With respect to [landing dock ships], theres strong support for the commandant of the Marine Corps assessment that he needs no fewer than 31 amphibious ships so prohibiting the retirement of the [landing dock ships] certainly gets after that.

The USS Vicksburg, a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser that launched in 1991, is nearing the end of a nearly $500 million modernization overhaul in Virginia that began in 2020. Rep. Kay Granger, the ranking Republican of the House Appropriations Committee, admonished Navy officials at a hearing last month for seeking to decommission the cruiser.

At a time when the ship is still in its maintenance period, the Navy is proposing to scrap it, the Texas congresswoman said. If the Navy experts expect Congress to support its vision for this fleet, it must do a much better job of managing the inventory it has. We will not stand idly by as valuable taxpayer funds are wasted.

Other cruisers on the Navys chopping block include USS Bunker Hill, USS Mobile Bay, USS San Jacinto and USS Lake Champlain.

Retirements are also planned for two Los Angeles-class submarines, two oilers, two expeditionary transfer docks and all nine of the Navys Freedom-class littoral combat ships, some of which have been in service less than five years. One of the four landing dock ships that lawmakers are hoping to keep the Whidbey Island-class USS Tortuga is undergoing the same service-life extension repairs as the USS Vicksburg.

Navy officials said decommissioning will save about $3.6 billion in the next five years, allowing the Navy to get rid of aging ships and systems that are expensive to maintain and instead invest in unmanned platforms and other technology. The divest to invest strategy has repeatedly frustrated lawmakers who are warily eyeing Chinas rapidly growing fleet.

Congress last year reversed the Navys plan to retire seven cruisers, forcing the service to hang on to two, and ordered the Navy to build 13 ships instead of a requested eight. Next years proposed $180 billion Navy budget also calls for building eight ships a plan that Rep. Elaine Luria, a retired Navy commander, described as anemic.

The Navy has no strategy, Luria, D-Va., tweeted in March. Stop saying you do, because if you did you would be able to explain how this fleet size will allow us to defend Taiwan.

Rep. Rob Wittman, the ranking Republican on the seapower subcommittee, noted last month that the Navy is congressionally mandated to have 355 ships. The Navys proposed cuts would immediately shrink the current 298-ship fleet to 285 ships, he said.

We dont expand our naval capacity and capabilities by subtracting more than we add, the Virginia congressman said. The budget request definitely does not support [Defense] Secretary [Lloyd] Austins stated intent of pacing the Chinese naval capabilities whose force is expected to exceed 460 ships by the turn of this decade, at which point our fleet will be only two-thirds the size of the Peoples Liberation Army Navy.

Despite the criticism, the subcommittee will recommend sticking to the Navys shipbuilding plan, committee aides said. The Navy is aiming to acquire two Virginia-class attack submarines, two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, one frigate, one amphibious transport dock, one oiler and one towing, salvage and rescue ship.

House lawmakers will also seek to set a statutory floor of 31 amphibious ships and require the Navy secretary to consult with the Marine Corps commandant on all major decisions concerning amphibious force structure and capability, committee aides said.

Other recommendations by the subcommittee include allowing the Air Force to retire eight of its C-130 transport aircraft and 13 of its air-refueling tanker aircraft and authorizing the Navy secretary to enter into procurement contracts for up to 15 guided-missile destroyers and up to 25 Ship-to-Shore connector crafts, according to aides.

The House Armed Services Committee will announce parts of its legislative agenda for the 2023 NDAA during six subcommittee markups this week, with a full committee markup scheduled for June 22. The Senate Armed Services Committee will begin unveiling its version of the bill next week.

See original here:
House panel aims to save five ships from retirement, rejecting Navy's plan to decommission them - Stars and Stripes

MiG-31 Foxhound Is One Really Fast Russian Jet – 19FortyFive

When the MiG-25 Foxbat entered service with the Soviet Union in 1970, it gave NATO airpower planners plenty to worry about. The Foxbat was the fastest interceptor in the world at the time, and the ever-pervasive fear of the unknown flew alongside it. However, much of that fear dissipated after the defection of MiG-25 pilot Lt. Viktor Belenko in 1976. Belenko helped to eliminate the aura of mystery that had surrounded this high-speed aircraft.

But the Soviet war machine didnt let Belenkos defection deter them from improving on the concept. Thus the MiG-31 Foxhound was born.

From Foxbat to Foxhound

The Foxhound made her maiden flight in September 1975 and officially entered into service with the Soviet PVO (voyska protivovozdushnoy oborony, or Anti-Air Defense Troops) in 1981.

The MiG-31 bears a striking cosmetic resemblance to the MiG-25, which probably explains at least in part why NATO retained the Fox portion when assigning its codename to the successor aircraft. However, look beneath the surface and you will find the Foxhound equipped with state-of-the-art digital avionics that its older foxy sibling lacked.

For one thing, the MiG-31 was the first Soviet fighter aircraft to have true look-down/shoot-down capability, thanks to its phased array radar. Earlier USSR fighter radars had a tendency to run afoul of ground clutter. In addition, the Foxhound can work efficiently in all weather conditions while fulfilling visual flight rules and instrument flight rules, day and night.

Yet another improvement was the newer planes extended range, which increased to 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) upon initial takeoff, and further bolstered to 3,400 miles (5,400 kilometers) with one aerial refueling. By contrast, the gas-guzzling Foxbat bore the curse of a relatively short range: 1,160 miles (1,860 kilometers) at Mach 0.9 and 1,013 miles (1,630 kilometers) when zipping along at Mach 2.35. This underscored how lucky the aforementioned Belenko was to make his initial escape from Vladivostok to Hokkaido, Japan. (In retrospect, perhaps NATO shouldve codenamed the MiG-25 the Cheetah. It can pursue its prey at tremendous speeds, but only for short distances.)

The Foxhounds pilots also enjoyed a reduced likelihood of failure to communicate. As my 1945 colleague Caleb Larson explains,MiG-31s can network with other airplanes in their sortie, relaying information on enemy aircraft locations and thus covering a much wider area than unnetworked groups of airplanes.

Foxhound Flies On

Five hundred and nineteen Foxhounds have been produced so far, out of which 370 were delivered to the Russian Air Force and 30 are in service with Kazakh air force. In July 2020, Russias Defense Ministry announced its intention to invest in modernization and life extension programs for its MiG-31 fleet.

MiG-31 customers outside of the former Soviet republics have been few and far between. In 1992, right on the heels of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the cash-starved post-Soviet Russian arms industry offered the Mig-31 to Finland, but the Finns turned it down. Meanwhile, Syria ordered eight MiG-31E airframes for its own air force in 2007, but the order was suspended in May 2007. Six of these MiGs may or not have been delivered to Syria as of August 2015, depending on whether you choose to believe the Turkish or the Russian media.

What is not in dispute is that the Russians themselves have deployed the MiG-31 in missions over Syria. In addition, the Foxhound has been blooded in Vladimir Putins so-called special military operation in Ukraine. On March 18, a MiG-31K variant launched a strike on a Ukrainian arms depot near the Polish border, evidently using a Kh-47M2 Kinzhal hypersonic missile. In turn, on April 26, the Ukrainians managed to shoot down a Foxhound with a British-made Starstreak missile.

Specifications

General Characteristics

Crew: Two (pilot and weapons system officer)

Length: 22.69 m (74 ft 5 in)

Wingspan: 13.46 m (44 ft 2 in)

Height: 6.15 m (20 ft 2 in)

Wing area: 61.6 m (663 ft)

Empty weight: 21,820 kg (48,100 lb)

Armament

1 GSh-6-23 23 mm cannon with 260 rounds.

Fuselage recesses for 4 R-33 (AA-9 Amos) (or for MiG-31M/BM only 6 R-37 (AA-X-13 Arrow) long-range air-to-air missiles)

4 underwing pylons for a combination of:

Christian D. Orr is a former Air Force officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch and The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security.

Continue reading here:
MiG-31 Foxhound Is One Really Fast Russian Jet - 19FortyFive

Bengaluru: NAL marks 55 years of 1.2m trisonic wind tunnel – The Indian Express

The National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) in Bengaluru on Sunday marked 55 years of the 1.2mm trisonic wind tunnel, the only industrial wind tunnel providing the high-speed aerodynamic data for national aerospace programmes, both in the civil and military sectors.

Wind tunnels are used for simulating flight conditions in the laboratory. The NAL stated that the facility will continue to meet the experimental aerodynamic data requirement of future programmes.

Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)-NAL is currently working towards setting up a continuous wind tunnel facility to meet the increased demand for high speed experimental aerodynamic data. Practically each and every indigenously developed aerospace vehicle in the country has graduated out of this facility. To cater to the emerging requirements of the country, continual upgrades of the facility have been implemented in CSIR-NAL, leading to many state-of-the-art techniques related to high-speed wind tunnel testing mainly to improve the data quality, productivity and life extension of various components of the wind tunnel, a statement from CSIR-NAL read.

The 1.2m trisonic wind tunnel was built by the CSIR between 1963 and 1967. The first blow-down (test) was conducted on May 29, 1967. The vision of the late Dr P Neelakantan, the first Director of CSIR-NAL, enabled the realisation of this facility, which is the major workhorse for all the national aerospace programmes. The highest speed of this tunnel is Mach 4.0 which is four times the speed of sound, the release said.

The mission of this facility is to provide advanced technology solutions to national aerospace programs, fighter aircraft, defence systems, launch vehicles and satellites and space systems.

This wind tunnel was primarily conceived for research and development in experimental aerodynamics. Subsequently, as the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) started the development of launch vehicles, missiles and aircraft, the need for high-speed wind tunnel tests in the 1.2m wind tunnel increased. To name a few, DRDOs missiles such as Agni, Akaash, Prithvi, Pralay, SRSAM, LRSAM, ASTRA, NAG, LRAShM, BrahMos, Nirbhay, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, etc. were characterized in this facility.

Similarly, aerodynamic characterisation of the ISROs launch vehicles such as ASLV, PSLV, SLV, SSLV, GSLV, RLV and GAGANYAAN programmes were carried out extensively. The nations first Light Combat Aircraft (LCA-TEJAS) was conceived at this facility and now it is flying in the sky. Many weapon integration programmes on LCA, Mirage-2000, Sukhoi-30, Jaguar, MiG aircraft etc., were successfully carried out in this facility.

More here:
Bengaluru: NAL marks 55 years of 1.2m trisonic wind tunnel - The Indian Express

So you want to live forever? – Hindustan Times

Most people don't want to live forever. "It would be too boring. I would have explored everything," said Shekhar Biswas, a data scientist from Berlin. He speaks for most people I quizzed one afternoon in Berlin's Alexanderplatz no one said they'd be interested in eternal life. (Also read: Loss of neurons makes Alzheimer's patients drowsy: Study)

But what Biswas and many others would be interested in, I learned, is a long life maybe to the age of 100. Biswas said when he must die, he wants it to happen without the burden of any painful disease and sickness in his final years.

Nothing's going to stop death, most researchers conclude. But there could be ways to make life last longer, and the process of death shorter.

The gerontologists vs. the quacks

There are two horizons in the world of aging science, according to Dr. Nir Barzilai, who heads the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

"One is people who are anti-aging," he said, like the people who sell multivitamins promising life extension through cellular renewal. "They're usually charlatans. They tell you to take this drug and you'll live forever. If you die, nobody sues them. Then there's geroscience. Those are scientists who are working on the biology of aging, who know which things to target, and they are very legitimate."

Barzilai, of course, is a geroscientist. He's been following a cohort of 750 centenarians (people who have lived to the age of 100) for years. He recently announced plans to expand his study to 10,000 people.

The new study isn't being backed by government grants but rather by a 26-year-old Bitcoin millionaire named James Fickel. This non-traditional funding stream may sound unusual. But when you start making sense of the logic behind aging research, the puzzle starts to fit together.

Healthspan, not lifespan

First things first: Geroscientists will tell you they aren't interested in prolonging lifespan the number of years you live but rather "healthspan," the number of years you are healthy and capable of living a normal life without complications or setbacks due to illness or disease.

Scientists estimate that more than 50% of deaths worldwide are due to diseases caused by aging like Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes and hypertension. That number increases in industrialized countries where access to modern medicine and healthcare means that people live long enough to contract age-related diseases and not die of diseases like malaria and dengue at a younger age.

If scientists like Barzailai can find a medication to help prolong people's healthspans, death will be quicker and less painful, they say.

James Kirkland, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic and president of the American Federation for Aging Research, said they're looking to find a way to prevent something called "multimortality at the end of life.

If you've watched an elderly family member pass away, you probably know what that is. It starts with a cancer or dementia diagnosis and is then followed by a range of other issues. Problems like arthritis, cataracts, forgetfulness and osteoporosis all come together during the person's final years, making life feel like a daily fight.

Kirkland says it doesn't have to be like this. Instead, he said, death could look more like "going out and having a five-mile run and then just not waking up the next morning."

This concept is called compressed mortality decreasing the number of years or months in which a person goes through the process of dying.

Nature vs. nurture

Barzilai has been following centenarians for over 20 years now, looking to see if they can provide some clues on how to live to reach our 100s. Along with living long healthy lives, these people, he observed, often experienced "compressed mortality," dying over the course of a few weeks rather than years.

Is it something they eat, somewhere they live? Are they non-smokers or vegetarians? Are there certain things these elderly people are doing or have done during their lives that have allowed them to live so long?

The answer is no, Barzilai found.

"60% of the men are smokers, 30% of the women. More than 50% of them are overweight or obese and do not exercise. Only 2% were vegetarian. They're not special," he said.

A healthy lifestyle plays a role in longevity, so don't stop eating your vegetables. But Barzailai's research means that the elixir to youth will likely come in the form of a drug capable of targeting specific "longevity genes."

"It's 80% genetics and 20% the environment," he said. The question, then, is what do they have that people who die at 80 don't?

Centenarians don't have perfect genes or even obvious gene mutations protecting them from diseases like Alzheimer's, Barzailai said they just develop those diseases much later than non-centenarians.

Some of them had genes that prevented the functioning of growth hormones, Barzilai said. Through his research on centenarians, he's looking to identify genes or gene mutations that appear to influence aging. Once those pathways are identified, medications can be developed and tested to target them.

Drugs to halt aging processes

Barzilai is already in the process of testing how the medication Metformin, a diabetes drug, works to halt some effects of aging in the body. That's just one of many drugs that are being tested to see whether they're able to counteract aging; Matt Kaeberline, a University of Washington biologist, is running a trial to see if the drug Rapamycin impacts aging in dogs, with the hope to later test it in humans.

Aging can't be attributed to a single process that happens in the body. It's a combination of many different processes, and each of the medications is looking to address different variations of them.

One thing that causes the body to age is something called cell senescence. The cells in our body are constantly going through a process called cell division. But scientists have found that this process gets disrupted over time, causing some cells to stop dividing. Although these cells are dead, they don't leave the body and instead accumulate, causing health problems like inflammation.

Kirkland's work centers around developing drugs that would kill the unnecessary senescent cells in our bodies. Barzilai and Kaeberline's drugs try blocking the senescent cells from causing problems like inflammation, but don't extinguish the cells altogether.

Kirkland said it will probably be at least a decade before we know whether these drugs work to halt negative aging processes. But once they find the right solution, he's convinced it will be transformative.

"If some of these things actually work, it would be like the discovery of antibiotics," said Kirkland. "It would be that big, because these fundamental aging processes are root-cause contributors to everything."

The billionaires want in

Fickel, the backer of Barzailai's study, isn't the only uberwealthy interested in aging research. Russian-Israeli billionaire Yuri Milner-backed Altos Labs, a California-based biotechnology startup interested in aging research that's paying its scientists million-dollar salaries, launched early this year on a mission to "reverse disease to transform medicine."

It's not the first billionaire-backed attempt to unlock the secret to eternal youth. Google parent Alphabet's unit Calico Labs launched in 2013, but the company has so far been tight-lipped about its research and development.

Altos Labs is looking into many different solutions to a long life, some of which involve the processes being trialed by teams like Barzilai's, Kirkland's and Kaeberlein's. But they're also looking into more experimental science the kind that may not be able to receive support through traditional academic grants because it's so new.

Barzilai said that although Altos is a corporation, they aren't the textbook anti-aging charlatans. They've recruited some of the best scientists in the field of anti-aging research including Nobel Prize winners to look into another potential solution to increasing healthspan, called cell reprogramming.

The idea behind cell reprogramming, which is also sometimes called cell rejuvenation, is relatively simple to understand. Old cells would be transformed into the fresh, unblemished cells you were born with, cells that haven't been impacted by things like smoking or beer consumption, for example.

The science behind this is based on discoveries made through the cloning of Dolly the sheep. One of the biggest scientific developments to come based on that research was Shinya Yamanaka's discovery that four proteins can bring cells back to their original state. He won a Nobel Prize in 2012 for the research, which has been applied to several disciplines.

The scientists at Altos are looking to see if they can apply it to aging processes.

Scientists cautious but optimistic

There are a lot of obstacles to this research, one of the main ones being the cell's loss of identity once it's replicated. And we likely won't see any results for a long time even once researchers find a method that works, it will take years to test it on animals and people, and even longer for any potential medication to pass clinical trials to make it to the market for general use.

The medications being investigated by Barzilai, Kirkland, Kaeberlein and others will also need some time, but could hit the market in the coming decades if they pass clinical trials, Kirkland says.

That's a big if. The scientists are cautious about stoking any kind of excitement about the medications. Lots can fall apart in clinical trials; Kirkland said that of the dozens currently underway, most will fail. But they're optimistic that when the right treatment comes, it could have a great impact.

"I think most of us do believe that this is coming," said Kaeberlein. "I don't know if it's going to be 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, but it is happening and it is going to change things."

Edited by: Ashutosh Pandey

Read the rest here:
So you want to live forever? - Hindustan Times

Inspiration and innovation at Festival of Fresh 2022 – Fruitnet

Festival of Fresh 2022 is promising a rich mix of fantastic speakers across two tents as it throws the spotlight on the present and future of the UK fresh produce industry.

Hosted outdoors at Berry Gardens new packing and distribution site near Maidstone on 8 June, the event features a packed programme of interactive content focused on both Inspiration and Innovation.

Inspirational thinking

In the Inspiration Tent, following an introduction by Berry Gardens CEO Nick Allen, the day begins with an industry leaders panel discussion, where attendees will have the chance to put their questions to new NFU Horticulture Board chair Martin Emmett, British Growers CEO Jack Ward, British Apples & Pears executive chair Ali Capper and British Summer Fruits chief Nick Marston.

Talks and interviews follow on the subject of Production & Trade, with speakers including co-MDs of fast-growing fresh produce giant Jupiter Group, Mark and Yvonne Tweddle, as well as NCGM tenants association chair Gary Marshall and Tropical Directs Nigel West.

Looking at the major issues facing modern business, APS Groups Phil Pearson will address the topic of producing and innovating at a time of intense cost pressure, while MDS operations director Sapphira Waterson will explain how the graduate scheme is both expanding, and helping recruit ex-army personnel into industry jobs.

After a delicious lunch and opportunity to see displays of sumptuous fresh produce in the FOF22 Market Street, the focus of the Inspiration Tent switches to Retail & Marketing, with expert analysis of the sector from grocery commentator Steve Dresser, and inspirational branding with Barfoots Kim Barfoot-Brace and Berry Gardens Rob Harrison. Retailer participation is expected to be confirmed shortly.

Innovating for the future

Over in the Innovation Tent, meanwhile, the morning programme focuses on the road to net-zero production. NFU Energy director Jon Swain will discuss some of the new technologies helping the horticultural sector, while former AHDB Horticulture Board chair and sustainability consultant Hayley Campbell-Gibbons will look at how producers can navigate the tricky world of carbon-neutral products. Oli Kaberry, head of business operations at The Jones Food Company, will also outline some of the companys industry-leading work in vertical farming.

In the afternoon, science is under the microscope with the University of Lincolns Simon Pearson outlining the work of the Agricultural Universities Council, ItsFreshs Rob Ward talking shelf-life extension, robotics demonstrations and a series of quickfire presentations revealing groundbreaking PhD research that could solve a raft of industry problems.

Lively and interactive

The programme follows Fruitnet events trademark quick-fire format, with short and punchy presentations combined with a mixture of panel discussions, one-to-one interviews and lighthearted elements. There will be opportunity to ask questions and make comments, as well as relax and network throughout at the various social stations and stands across the festival. Further speakers will also be announced in the coming weeks.

Tours of Berry Gardens brand new packhouse will also give delegates a chance to see an industry-leading, environmentally friendly production facility up close.

Tickets will go on sale shortly atwww.fpjlive.com.

Read more:
Inspiration and innovation at Festival of Fresh 2022 - Fruitnet

Great Panther increases Tucano open-pit resources by 65%, reserves by 24% – MINING.COM – MINING.com

Total measured and indicated mineral resources, which are inclusive of mineral reserves, now total1.3 million gold ounces, of which928,000gold ounces are open pit, a 65% increase sincethe 2020 resource estimate.

We have successfully replaced 2021 mining depletion and added another 1.5 years to the open-pit mine life at Tucano, Great Panther chairman and interim CEOAlan Hairsaid in a news release.

The Tucano tenement portfolio covers over 197,000 hectares over land along the Vila Nova greenstone belt, centred around the Tucano mining licence. The mine operation currently comprises eight open pits, the Urucum North underground project, a processing plant and tailings dam. Production to date has been sourced from all pits except Urucum East.

The company noted that it hascompleted a 19,000-metre drilling campaign on the Urucum North underground project, with engineering studies currently underway.

Going forward, a major objective is to progress the Urucum North underground project, with development scheduled for Q4 2022, while aggressively advancing opportunities for additional resource growth and mine life extension on multiple fronts, Hair added.

In the second half of the year, Great Panther is expected to actively pursue drilling to increase resources within the mine sequence and on near mine (20-kilometre radius) priority targets in the regional land package.

Read the rest here:
Great Panther increases Tucano open-pit resources by 65%, reserves by 24% - MINING.COM - MINING.com

Pronovias Unveils 2023 Bridal Collection With First Runway Show In 2 Years – Forbes

Pronovias Atelier Unveils 2023 Bridal Collection In First Runway Show In 2 Years

After a long pause of 2 years, Pronovias makes its return to physical runway on April 22, marking the official start of a booming season for the bridal giant.

The new 2023 Versailles Collection by Pronovias Atelier, the high end couture brand of Pronovias Group, showcased a series of stunning bridal gowns in front of 1,800 guests on the final day of Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week. The event was broadcasted on a number of social media channels including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitch. Each and every dress that carries the Pronovias Atelier label is handmade by expert seamstresses in Barcelona using the finest fabrics and laces imported from France and Italy.

Alessandra Rinaudo, Artistic Director of Pronovias, says: Versailles has come to define luxury and beauty, which to me fits perfectly with Haute Couture bridal. This collection stands out for attention to detail and head-to-to exquisiteness. Its a modern, innovative interpretation of one of the most lavish periods in fashion history.

Rosa Crespo (left) and Sarah Mikaela (right), attending as UK VIPs wearing Vera Wang Bride ... [+] collection for Pronovias

Comprising 44 exquisite and opulent designs, the new Versailles Collection emanates a sense of royal luxury whilst staying true to the feminine beauty the brand is known for. Inspired by the glittering character of Versailles, the collections intricate embellishments and plush fabrics are complimented by extravagant veils, elegant elbow-length gloves, bustle-up capes and detachable, oversized sleeves. The casting is decidedly inclusive, with models of all age, body shape, ethnicity and gender diversity walking the runway and iconic supermodel Esther Canadas closing the show.

Marking Pronovias Groups commitment to cutting edge digital innovation in product design and technology and the first of its kind in the bridal industry Rinaudo has also helped create three NFTs, each reproducing the patterns, textures, beading of three dresses from the Versailles Collection. The three NFTs are uploaded to the OpenSea platform and can be viewed on the Pronovias website.

Pronovias Atelier debuts "Versailles Collection" at Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week

Speaking to Amandine Ohayon, the CEO of Pronovias Group, it is clear that the international bridal maison is looking into the future with Metaverse, sustainability as well as social responsibility on its mind.

My aim hasnt changed, says Ohayon in Barcelona a few days ahead of the show, referring to her goal of significantly accelerating the Groups international development when she first joined in 2018. And with the opening of the our Shanghai and New York flagship stores, we will continue with the expansion. The focus for the next 2-3 years will also be servicing the rising demand due to cancelled weddings over the pandemic.

Pronovias Atelier debuts "Versailles Collection" at Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week

Despite the difficulties posed by the closed shop floors and restrictions in personal contact during the past two years, Ohayon made sure each clients wishes were catered to, even if it meant shipping a gown across from Malaga to Houston for final alteration before sending it to the happy bride.

People want to party like they never partied before, Ohayon says with a smile as we discuss the trends for weddings. I see two major trends one being people wanting to have two or more dresses, as an increasing number of weddings consist of not just the big day itself, but also an event for the day before and another for the day after.

Pronovias Atelier debuts "Versailles Collection" at Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week

The second trend is the increasing appetite for more couture dresses. Ohayon tells me, Brides want things that are more dramatic and special, and we are seeing double digit growth in sales of the bridal accessories veil, cape, gloves, with lots of styling.

Coming from a background of beauty where the focus on sustainability is a lot more advanced than other areas of fashion and retail, especially the bridal industry, Ohayon was keen to identify and incorporate eco-friendly fabrics in the brands designs, as well as establish a sustainable practice within the Group. She and Rinaudo has since launched the EDEN collection, featuring a selection of sustainable #WeDoEco gowns.

Pronovias after party guests

In January this year, Ohayon furthered her sustainability initiative by launching Second Life at Pronovias, the wardrobe life extension initiative, releasing dresses designed specifically to be altered after the wedding and thus encouraging more wears and the longevity of wardrobe items. Rinaudo has designed a collection which can be transformed free of charge into a new style after the wedding, with the first launch consists of over 50 carefully selected bridal gowns that can be converted by altering the length, eliminating sleeves, or by adding belts, straps, sashes and other details to create a totally new look. The number of dresses that can be given a Second Life will increase with each new bridal collection launched by the brand.

The pandemic was the reason we did all these, Ohayon says, stating that the uncertain and at times dark experience in fact brought some great things and taught her, and the brand, to be agile and adaptive. We signed the deal with Vera Wang in 2020 over Zoom calls we now do business and develop relationships in a whole new way.

The Pronovias Atelier Versailles Collection will be available in store in September 2022.

Read more here:
Pronovias Unveils 2023 Bridal Collection With First Runway Show In 2 Years - Forbes

Yamana Gold : MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF OPERATIONS AND FINANCIAL CONDITION – Form 6-K – Marketscreener.com

MANAGEMENT'S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF OPERATIONS AND FINANCIAL CONDITION

This Management's Discussion and Analysis of Operations and Financial Condition ("MD&A") should be read in conjunction with Yamana Gold Inc.'s (the "Company" or "Yamana") condensed consolidated interim financial statements for the three months ended March 31, 2022, and the most recently issued annual Consolidated Financial Statements for the year ended December 31, 2021 ("Consolidated Financial Statements"). All figures are in United States Dollars ("US Dollars") unless otherwise specified and are in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards as issued by the International Accounting Standards Board ("IFRS").

The Company has included certain non-GAAP financial performance measures, which the Company believes, that together with measures determined in accordance with IFRS, provide investors with an improved ability to evaluate the underlying performance of the Company. Non-GAAP financial performance measures do not have any standardized meaning prescribed under IFRS, and therefore they may not be comparable to similar non-GAAP financial performance measures employed by other companies. The data is intended to provide additional information and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. The non-GAAP financial performance measures included in this MD&A include:

Cash costs per gold equivalent ounce ("GEO") sold;

All-in sustaining costs ("AISC") per GEO sold;

Net free cash flow;

Free cash flow before dividends and debt repayment; and

Average realized price per ounce of gold/silver sold

Reconciliations and descriptions associated with the above financial performance measures can be found in Section 11: Non-GAAP Financial Performance Measures in this MD&A. In addition, each non-GAAP financial performance measure in this MD&A has been annotated with a reference to endnote (1).

Cautionary statements regarding forward-looking information and mineral reserves and mineral resources can be found in Section 12: Disclosure Controls and Procedures in this MD&A.

Endnotes can be found on the final page of this MD&A.

1. HIGHLIGHTS AND RELEVANT UPDATES

For the three months ended March 31, 2022 unless otherwise noted

Operational, Earnings and Cash Flow Highlights:

Gold production of 210,533 ounces exceeded plan, following standout performances from Jacobina with 47,124 ounces, El Pen with 41,330 ounces and Cerro Moro with 25,254 ounces, and with gold production at other mines in line with plan, including at Minera Florida, where production was modestly impacted early in the quarter as a result of a previously disclosed labour action which has been resolved and resulted in a new long term collective bargaining agreement. Within the quarter, March was a standout month for Jacobina, with the mine achieving record monthly production and throughput. Quarterly gold production also exceeded the prior year comparative quarter.

Silver production of 2,198,669 ounces exceeded plan, following an exceptional performance from Cerro Moro. Quarterly silver production also exceeded the prior year comparative quarter.

GEO(2) production from Yamana mines(4) of 238,617 GEO(2) was in line with plan, despite a lower gold to silver ratio than anticipated in the plan and guidance. With the budget gold equivalent ratio, GEO(2) production would have exceeded plan as well. Quarterly GEO(2) production also exceeded the prior year comparative quarter production of 231,988 GEO(2), on the back of strong gold production. Cerro Moro in particular exceeded the prior year comparative period GEO production by 27%.

Quarterly total cost of sales, cash costs(1) and AISC(1) on a per GEO(2) basis of $1,212, $734, and $1,084 respectively. Costs were lower than plan, despite the first quarter being the lowest planned production quarter of the year, and the lower than plan and guidance gold to silver ratio which also impacted GEO(2) production. The Company continues to monitor the impact of inflationary pressures on its cost structure and notes that in the first quarter, the price of certain consumables, primarily diesel and mill balls, increased while certain others have remained relatively constant. Furthermore, higher base metal prices have had a positive impact on by-product credits allocated to GEO(2) costs. The impact of inflation on costs remains uncertain mostly because it is unclear if the geopolitical events that have occurred since the Company provided its guidance earlier in the year, which have driven price increases on certain items, will continue, or whether the events will continue to impact the price of those items. Equally, in the first quarter, the Company successfully mitigated inflationary trends through productivity improvements and overall, as aforementioned, costs in the first quarter were lower than plan and in line with guidance. While the Company plans to increase capital

| 1

spending in each of the following quarters, as compared to the first quarter, this will coincide with increases in production and generation of cash flows and free cash flows. Further, the Company notes that cash flows in the second half of the year will also increase as higher income tax installments will have been paid, as normal, in the first half of the year.

Cash flows from operating activities before net change in working capital for the three months ended March 31, 2022 were $197.3 million, an increase of 7.6% compared to $183.4 million in the comparative period in 2021.

As at March 31, 2022, the Company had cash and cash equivalents of $516.4 million, including $218.3 million available for utilization by the MARA Project. Further, the Company has available credit of $750.0 million from its undrawn revolving credit facility. The Company notes that while production for the year is expected to be consistent quarter-over-quarter, except for a modestly lower first quarter as compared to other quarters, free cash flow is expected to steadily increase quarter-over-quarter, with the strongest free cash flow generation expected in the second half of the year, and in particular during the fourth quarter. The Company expects cash balances to increase steadily throughout the year with the strongest contribution in the latter half of the year.

Net earnings(3) for the three months ended March 31, 2022 were $57.8 million or $0.06 per share basic and diluted, compared to net earnings(3) of $54.7 million or $0.06 per share basic and diluted for the three months ended March 31, 2021. Adjusting items of $25.8 million(3), that management believes may not be reflective of current and ongoing operations, and which may be used to adjust or reconcile input models in consensus estimates, decreased net earnings(3) for the current period. For a complete list of adjustments attributable to Yamana Gold Inc. equity holders, refer to the Financial highlights section below.

The Company employs a balanced approach to capital allocation, which is expected to generate significant and growing cash balances during the guidance period. The cash balances are expected to be more than sufficient to finance and support the Company's planned growth campaign, while maintaining financial strength, and strengthening and increasing returns of capital to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. To achieve this, the Company employs a disciplined capital spend framework during the guidance period with a target of $150 per GEO(2) of sustaining capital and net expansionary capital to not exceed $175.0 million per year on average. The Company expects to be in a position to further consider its cash return level later this year.

Please refer to Section 2: Core Business, Strategy and Outlook of this MD&A for further details on the capital allocation strategy of the Company, the ten-year production outlook and Yamana's investment and exploration strategy.

Strategic Developments, Construction Developments and Advanced Stage Projects:

Positive Development Decision on the Wasamac Project, Quebec

During 2021, the Company made a positive development decision on its wholly owned Wasamac project in the Abitibi-Tmiscamingue region of Quebec, Canada. Wasamac, a top-tier gold project in a region where Yamana has deep operational and technical expertise and experience, solidifies the Company's long-term growth profile with Yamana's average annual gold production in Quebec, including production from Wasamac and the Odyssey underground at Canadian Malartic, has the potential to increase to approximately 500,000 ounces by 2028, and continue at this level through 2041.

Yamana expects to receive all permits and certificates of authorization required for project construction by the third quarter of 2024. Construction time to processing plant commissioning is estimated at two and a half years, with the underground crusher and conveyor system scheduled for commissioning six months later and first gold production scheduled for 2026. Initial capital cost is expected to be relatively modest for a 7,000 tpd underground operation, at approximately $416 million.

During the first quarter, the Company continued to advance the bulk sample permitting process for Wasamac and expects to obtain the required approvals in the first quarter of 2023. The bulk sample permit would allow construction to commence on the ramps, enabling earlier access to the deposit to increase the level of confidence in metallurgical and geotechnical assumptions and optimize the processing flow sheet and mining sequence. Construction on surface facilities to support the ramp development activity and associated environmental requirements would also advance. The Company anticipates that a detailed update will be provided mid-year.

Exploration activities progressed as planned during the first quarter, with a focus on infill drilling on the Wasamac resource. Work on the Francoeur property during the quarter included ongoing modelling and compilation of drilling and other historic data. Field work is planned to start at Francoeur in the second quarter, including mapping and surface sampling and target definition in preparation for exploration drilling. For additional information on the planned Wasamac exploration initiatives, please refer to Section 6: Exploration.

| 2

Canadian Malartic Underground Construction

The Company and its partner made a positive construction decision for the Odyssey project at Canadian Malartic in 2021. A National Instrument ("NI") 43-101 technical report completed in March 2021 included a full summary of the Odyssey underground project and demonstrated robust economics, a significant increase in mineral resources, first production from the Odyssey South deposit expected in 2023, and a mine life extension to at least 2039. As Canadian Malartic transitions from open pit to underground mining, underground production will offset a significant portion of the corresponding decline in open pit production. On a 100% basis, production from open pit mining from 2021 through 2028 is expected to be approximately 3.9 million ounces; the Odyssey underground mine plan supports annual gold production of 500,000 to 600,000 ounces when fully ramped up on a 100% basis. Furthermore, the Odyssey underground mine plan currently only includes about half of the project's 2.4 million ounces of Indicated Mineral Resources and 13.2 million ounces of Inferred Mineral Resources (on a 100% basis). Further upside from grade improvements and underground mine life extensions are expected to be realized through infill drilling to improve geological confidence, exploration drilling to extend known deposits and make new discoveries and engineering efforts, especially close to historical underground excavations and at depth at East Malartic.

Following significant advancement of the project in 2021, the Odyssey team is focusing on two key milestones:

Initiation of shaft sinking by the fourth quarter of 2022

First gold production from Odyssey South in the first quarter of 2023

The project continues to be on budget, and on schedule, and the Company shares the following updates:

The concrete pour to construct the 93-metre-tall headframe was completed on schedule in the fourth quarter of 2021, in preparation for shaft sinking slated to begin in the fourth quarter of 2022. Structural steel installation inside the headframe is ongoing. The production shaft will be 6.5 metres in diameter and 1,800 metres deep, with the first of two loading stations at 1,135 metres below surface. Construction of the temporary hoist building and waste silo is on schedule.

Ventilation is now provided directly through a fresh air raise to surface and two bays in the maintenance garage are now available.

As an employer of choice in the Abitibi, the Odyssey project is successfully building a highly skilled team and development rates are planned to continue increasing throughout the year.

Priority continues to be placed on the main ramp and also the level 16 exploration drift for infill drilling of the Odyssey South and Internal zones. The compressor building is expected to be completed in the second quarter and construction of the paste fill plant and 120 KV power distribution line are on schedule to support the Odyssey South stoping sequence.

Decree amendment and the mining lease process continue to be on target and all required permits to commence production from Odyssey South are expected by the end of 2022.

With a significant production platform, material cash flow generation and a prominent position within Quebec's Abitibi District, Canadian Malartic will remain one of the Company's cornerstone assets and one of the more prolific and generational mines in the world, particularly as the Odyssey mine is developed and comes into production. The Company is taking a disciplined approach to the development of Odyssey with a conservative outlook for initial throughput and production. While the Odyssey mine is expected to initially process 20,000 tonnes per day and produce 500,000 to 600,000 ounces per year, based on the current mine plan, the Company recognizes that there is a large inventory of ounces that is not currently in the mine plan.Odyssey ores will be processed through a plant with an original design capacity of over 55,000 tonnes per day, processing closer to 60,000 tonnes per day, which far exceeds the initial expected throughput of Odyssey. The plant was designed for the larger open pit operations that will end later this decade, and while the Company will scale the plant to the level required for the underground operation, that plant capacity will always be there. The Company's approach at its other mines has been to conduct extensive exploration which provides flexibility to maximize and increase throughput, and a similar approach will be taken with Odyssey, where delineation of extensions of underground mineralized zones and new zones of mineralization is already occurring. The extension of East Gouldie and discovery of Titan are examples of these underground exploration successes and opportunities. The Company's efforts at Camflo, East Amphi and Rand provide potential to add tonnage and production. The Company firmly believes that in its 10-year outlook period, these efforts will lead to more mining areas that will allow the Company to take advantage of available plant capacity, resulting in ore processing that will exceed 20,000 tonnes per day, and sustainable production will then significantly exceed the initial production plan of 500,000 to 600,000 ounces per year.

Jacobina Expansion Strategy

The Company's expansion strategy at Jacobina is well advanced and the Company anticipates that the low-cost operation will have a mine life that exceeds several decades, taking reserves and high conviction mineral resources into consideration. Production is expected to materially increase with phased expansions providing a

| 3

pathway to sustainable production of 350,000 ounces per annum. This will increase the already excellent cash flow generation of the mine and deliver meaningful value. With well-below average costs at Jacobina, cash flows exceed those from mines that produce significantly, and as much as fifty per cent, more ounces. The mine currently has a reserve life of over 15 years plus a pipeline of resources and exploration targets that we believe will further extend mine life. Work performed since 2019 has allowed for the systematic exploration of the Company's large land package in the Jacobina district, which covers 155 kilometres of exploration potential, allowing for the definition of a fourteen-kilometre long belt of gold-bearing conglomerate located north of the mine complex and also extending the known mineralized reefs south of Joo Belo in a continuous area extending 2,200 metres. Further areas have been identified during reconnaissance exploration programs. Work will continue to define mineralized reefs exposed on surface and follow up with drill testing targeting both extensions of the mine complex and new standalone mine targets. Consequently, the Company sees significant opportunities to grow its regional presence and continue to build the world-class Jacobina Complex.

The Phase 2 expansion is progressing ahead of schedule and the mine is now expected to achieve the Phase 2 throughput objective approximately one year ahead of schedule, by the middle of 2022. Throughput in the first quarter averaged 7,850 tpd, a 3% increase over the previous quarter. During the fourth quarter of 2021, Jacobina received the expansion permit, allowing throughput to increase to 10,000 tpd, as announced in the December 6, 2021 press release "Yamana Gold Receives Permit at Jacobina, Initiating Ramp Up of Phase 2 Expansion, Expects Fourth Quarter Company Wide Production to Exceed 270,000 GEO With Costs Tracking to Be the Lowest of the Year". Receipt of the permit not only marks a significant milestone in the Phase 2 ramp up to 230,000 ounces of gold per year, but also facilitates the future Phase 3 expansion to increase production up to 270,000 ounces per year.

With the Phase 2 expansion advancing ahead of schedule, the Company is now pursuing the Phase 3 expansion to 10,000 tpd through continued incremental debottlenecking. With the permit to 10,000 tpd already in hand, Phase 3 is expected to increase gold production to approximately 270,000 ounces per year by 2025 with a modest capital expenditure of $20 million to $30 million.

The Phase 4 expansion, of up to 15,000 tpd, would increase gold production in excess of 350,000 ounces per year. To achieve the target throughput rates, a third grinding line would be added as well as an expansion of the leaching and CIP circuits. As the third ball mill was originally planned as part of the Phase 2 Feasibility Study, engineering for Phase 4 is well advanced. A comprehensive plan, aligning the processing plant, underground mine, and tailings management strategy, while managing capital expenditures and cash flow, is underway.

The Company is further evaluating the strategic options and direction related to Jacobina and the significant exploration that is available along the greenstone belt which hosts the mine. Jacobina is being envisioned as a complex of multiple mines, and more emphasis is being placed on regional and generative exploration.

Cerro Moro Scalable Plant and Heap Leaching Upside Opportunities

The objective at Cerro Moro is to create a sustainable ten-years of production of at least 160,000 GEO(2) per year, and up to 200,000 GEO(2) per year. If the Company successfully develops both the plant expansion and heap leach projects, which represent significant upside opportunities, along with conversion of the exploration targets to mineral resources, Cerro Moro could produce at least 200,000 GEO(2) per year.

During the first quarter, Yamana advanced the plant expansion, envisaged as a low-risk, phased expansion for Cerro Moro with quick payback from the initial phase used to fund subsequent phases. The Company is considering using fine screens instead of cyclones for classification to improve the efficiency of the existing ball mill which, combined with a slightly coarser grind size, is expected to increase throughput to at least 1,500 tpd, a 40% to 50% increase in capacity, without impacting gold and silver recoveries. The incremental capacity could be used for processing of lower grade mineralization, which is expected to increase annual gold and silver production, and in turn reduce fixed costs per unit at the mine, as those costs would be distributed over additional ounces. Preliminary analysis based on current operating data indicates that the existing crushing and flotation circuits are adequate for the higher throughput rate and reconfiguration of the leaching circuit could achieve the target throughput without requiring additional leach tanks. Upgrades to the concentrate thickener, clarifying filters, flocculant make-up system, and pumping would likely be required. The capital cost of this initial phase is estimated at a modest $15 million to $20 million. Many of the upgrades in phase 1 expansion would be sufficient for a second expansion phase to increase plant throughput to approximately 2,200 tpd, double the existing capacity, further increasing production and reducing operating unit costs. Capital estimates for the Phase 2 expansion are also $15 million to $20 million, for a total capital investment over the two expansion phases estimated at $30 million to $40 million. The Company is currently evaluating two options for phase 2 expansion,

| 4

the addition of a high pressure grinding rolls ("HPGR") unit before the existing ball mill or the addition of a regrind unit. An expansion of the flotation circuit would also be required.

In parallel, a technical study on the potential heap leach project is underway following promising results from metallurgical testing conducted in 2021. Conceptual capital and operating cost estimation is expected to be completed in the second quarter, and an initial mineral inventory estimate, based on results from 2021 drilling, is planned for mid-2022. The results of testing indicate good potential for leaching of both oxidized near-surface vein material, zones with hypogene oxides (hematite) and some low sulphide gold-bearing veins, with extractions from column leaching averaging 68.6%. Gold recoveries at the Domos La Union and Michelle zones were particularly impressive, averaging 85.6% and as a result, exploration is focusing on these zones, with an objective of defining a heap leachable inventory of 5 to 8 million tonnes. Conceptual engineering for a 5,000 tpd heap leach operation commenced in the fourth quarter. A conventional heap leach configuration is envisaged with three stages of crushing. The leach pad, solution storage ponds, and Merrill-Crowe plant are conceptually planned to be located approximately 2 kilometres east of the current tailings storage facility. Average feed grade is estimated at approximately 1.0 to 1.4 g/t of gold, adding 45,000 to 65,000 ounces of gold production per year in addition to gold and silver production from the existing processing plant.

As Cerro Moro's mineral inventory increases, the Company will evaluate its options for alternative sources of power, which include a connection to the grid and wind power. Both options are expected to improve costs and further reduce greenhouse gas emissions, thereby accelerating the achievement of the Company's 1.5C science-based carbon emissions reduction target. The transition of Cerro Moro from high-cost diesel-generated electricity to wind power is the most attractive and compelling of several viable greenhouse gas reduction options. The conversion of approximately 50% of Cerro Moro's electricity requirements from diesel to wind power would meet the greenhouse gas emission reductions required between now and 2030 to achieve the Company's 1.5C science-based target. Further, it is expected that the transition to wind power would reduce operating costs, expand mineral reserves and mine life. A detailed evaluation, including a third-party feasibility study of this opportunity is underway. The third-party study to finalize the Company's evaluation of wind power indicates there should be a sufficient and sustainable supply of power as the Cerro Moro area of southern Argentina is considered one of the best on-shore locations in the world for wind energy. The results of the alternative power analysis will be considered in the plant expansion pre-feasibility and heap leach studies to explore synergies between the projects.

MARA Project Advances

The MARA Project represents a significant strategic value opportunity and a solid development and growth project. The Company intends to pursue all available avenues to continue to advance and unlock its value through its controlling interest while also considering strategic alternatives that could unlock significant value along the way. During the last year, several proposals were presented to the Company for its interest in MARA and, after consideration, the board determined that any strategic initiatives will be considered closer to the completion of the feasibility study and application for permitting as the certainty of the project from these events is expected to create more value for the project. The MARA Joint Venture is held by the Company (56.25%), Glencore International AG (25%) and Newmont Corporation (18.75%). The pending feasibility study, which is being overseen by the Technical Committee comprised of members of the three Companies, will provide updated mineral reserves, production and project capital cost estimates. The engineering effort for the feasibility study is expected to be completed by the end of 2022 and the finalized report in early 2023, however a considerable amount of information in the pre-feasibility study is already at feasibility study level as a result of the Integration. MARA is conducting field campaigns to complement the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment ("ESIA") baseline data. Preliminary results and advancement of the project are being shared with the Intergovernmental Commission of Catamarca, prior to filing the full ESIA. The Company plans to complete the ESIA definition for MARA by the end of 2022.

Work during the first quarter of 2022 focused on continuing the progress in 2021: advancing the feasibility study engineering, mine design and planning, metallurgical and geotechnical drilling campaigns, field work at site, baseline social and environmental studies, as well as permitting and working with local stakeholders. The field work plan continues, with the drilling campaign now covering the Agua Rica infrastructure and is expected to be completed by the third quarter of 2022.

MARA is the combined project comprised of the Agua Rica site, Alumbrera site as well as the Alumbrera plant and ancillary buildings and facilities, and will rely on processing ore from the Agua Rica mine at the Alumbrera plant. The project design minimizes the environmental footprint of the project incorporating the input of local stakeholders. MARA will be a multi-decade, low cost copper-gold operation with annual production of 556 million pounds of copper equivalent during the first ten years of production, and life-of-mine annual production of 469 million pounds of copper equivalent on a 100% basis. MARA will be among the top 25 copper producers in the world when in production, and is one of the lowest capital intensity copper projects globally.

| 5

For full details on the aforementioned updates, please refer to Section 5: Construction, Development and Other Initiatives.

OPERATING

First quarter GEO(2) production of 238,617 ounces was in line with plan and exceeded prior year first quarter production of 231,988 GEO. Standout GEO production performances were delivered by Jacobina and Cerro Moro. First quarter total cost of sales, cash costs(1), and AISC(1) on a per GEO(2) basis were $1,212, $734, and $1,084 respectively. Costs were lower than plan, despite the first quarter being the lowest planned production quarter of the year, and the lower than plan and guidance gold to silver ratio which also impacted GEO(2) production. The Company continues to monitor the impact of inflationary pressures on its cost structure and notes that in the first quarter, the price of certain consumables, primarily diesel and mill balls, increased while certain others have remained relatively constant. Furthermore, higher base metal prices have had a positive impact on by-product credits allocated to GEO(2) costs. The impact of inflation on costs remains uncertain mostly because it is unclear if the geopolitical events that have occurred since the Company provided its guidance earlier in the year, which have driven price increases on certain items, will continue, or whether the events will continue to impact the price of those items. Equally, in the first quarter, the Company successfully mitigated inflationary trends through productivity improvements and overall, as aforementioned, costs in the first quarter were lower than plan and in line with guidance. While the Company plans to increase capital spending in each of the following quarters, as compared to the first quarter, this will coincide with increases in production and generation of cash flows and free cash flows. Further, the Company notes that cash flows in the second half of the year will also increase as higher income tax installments will have been paid, as normal, in the first half of the year.

GEO is calculated as the sum of gold ounces and the gold equivalent of silver ounces using a ratio of 78.29 for the three months ended March 31, 2022, and 68.84 for the three months ended March 31, 2021. GEO calculations are based on an average market gold to silver price ratio for the relevant period.

GEO(2)

Production

Sales

Per GEO sold data

Total cost of sales(6)

Cash costs(1)

AISC(1)

Production (ounces)

Sales (ounces)

Average realized price per ounce(1)

Average market price per ounce*

Production (ounces)

Sales (ounces)**

Average realized price per ounce(1)

Average market price per ounce*

* Source of information: Bloomberg.

** Included in three months ended March 31, 2022 silver sales ounces are 378,088 ounces, delivered under the silver streaming arrangement (2021: 335,699 ounces).

HEALTH, SAFETY, AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Yamana's health, safety and sustainable development ("HSSD") approach is guided by the Company's corporate-level standards and programs; these are integrated into all operations, development projects, and exploration activities. Yamana recognizes the importance of striving to meet and exceed its HSSD responsibilities and objectives, and the role these efforts have in delivering on the overall objective of creating value for all stakeholders. Since early 2020, one of the most important considerations, in addition to the on-going priorities of safeguarding worker health and safety, protecting the environment and building privilege to operate with host communities has been the Company's response to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

| 6

Through the Company's active responses to COVID-19, the Company has demonstrated its commitment to environmental, social and governance ("ESG") excellence in action and resilience. Consistent with the mission to mine precious metals profitably and responsibly, the Company is prepared to forego production to safeguard its efforts to promote health, safety and well-being of its workforce and host communities.

High vaccination rates amongst the Company's employees and contractors at all locations continue to protect people, host communities and our business. In the first quarter of 2022 host countries began to experience increases in the number of reported COVID-19 cases, although the rapid rise in caseloads that occurred in North American and Europe has yet to appear in our operating jurisdictions. The Company continues to actively monitor Omicron-related caseloads and healthcare system capacity in South America, government responses, and vaccination availability. Yamana also works closely with local and regional governments to ensure prevention procedures are followed.

As the pandemic transitions to an endemic situation, we continue to have low numbers of worker COVID-19 cases at sites. The Company's continued implementation of its highly successful prevention, monitoring, testing, quarantine and contact tracing protocols has limited their spread. Infected people are being isolated successfully with no operational impact. The number of active cases at the end of the first quarter 2022 was in the single digits, rates of third booster vaccine doses are climbing and fourth doses are currently being administered in Chile.

The Company continues to manage its business in a way that respects, and is mindful of, the impact that COVID-19 has had and could have on host communities.

As part of the continuing implementation of its Climate Action Strategy, the Company completed its inaugural Climate Action Report disclosing information on the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures ("TCFD"), which was published on the Company's website at http://www.yamana.com on April 11, 2022. The report builds on the Company's 2021 climate action work and includes information on the Company's approaches to climate governance, strategy, risk management, and targets, metrics and performance. The report also describes how the Company will achieve its 1.5C science-based target compared to pre-industrial levels by 2030. The Company is well positioned to achieve its 2030 climate action target with only modest expenditures. The transition of Cerro Moro from high-cost diesel-generated electricity to wind power is the most attractive and compelling of several viable greenhouse gas reduction options. The conversion of approximately 50% of Cerro Moro's electricity requirements from diesel to wind power would meet the greenhouse gas emission reductions required between now and 2030 to achieve the Company's 1.5C science-based target. Further, it is expected that the transition to wind power would reduce operating costs, expand mineral reserves and mine life. A detailed evaluation, including a third-party feasibility study of this opportunity is underway. The third-party study to finalize the Company's evaluation of wind power indicates there should be a sufficient and sustainable supply of power as the Cerro Moro area of southern Argentina is considered one of the best on-shore locations in the world for wind energy. The results of the alternative power analysis will be considered in the plant expansion pre-feasibility and heap leach studies to explore synergies between the projects. Work will continue during 2022 to progress other climate action objectives, including advancing the evaluation of other operational projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and estimation of our Scope 3 emissions.

Other recent highlights relating to HSSD are as follows:

The Company's Total Recordable Injury Rate ("TRIR") for the first quarter 2022 was 0.75*. We have modified our TRIR reporting to align with our financial reporting standards which include our wholly-owned operations, exploration projects, development projects (Wasamac and MARA), proportional consolidation of Canadian Malartic (50%), and closed projects. For comparison, the corresponding full-year 2021 result was 1.07*.

As of April 5, 2022 more than 99%** of the Company's employees and contractors at its wholly-owned operations and exploration projects have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and more than 96%** have received two doses. Approximately 76%** of workers have received a third dose booster shot.

The Wasamac project opened a dedicated community relations office in Evain, QC to further enhance and bring focus to its commitment to open and transparent dialogue with host communities and the broader group of stakeholders.

* Calculated on a 200,000 exposure hours basis including employees and contractors.

** Vaccination rates are exclusive of Canadian Malartic, in which we hold a 50% interest. Vaccination rates at Canadian Malartic are in line with the high Abitibi-Tmiscamingue regional rates.

FINANCIAL

Here is the original post:
Yamana Gold : MANAGEMENT'S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF OPERATIONS AND FINANCIAL CONDITION - Form 6-K - Marketscreener.com

South32 sticks to its production outlook – Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly

PERTH (miningweekly.com) Diversified miner South32 has maintained its production guidance for 2022 following a strong March quarter, while operating cost expectations for its Australian and South African operations have increasedon the back of stronger producer currencies, higher raw material costs and an increase in commodity priceswhich has resulted in higher price-lined royalties.

We achieved a number of significant milestones in the quarter, making further progress to reshape our portfolio for a low carbon future, said CEO Graham Kerr on Tuesday.

We reported copper production for the first time, having completed our acquisition of a 45% interest in the Sierra Gorda copper mine. We moved a step closer to doubling our share of green aluminium production, delivering first metal from our Brazil Aluminium smelter following the end of the period. We also reported the prefeasibility results for our Taylor deposit, underlining its potential to add further growth in the metals critical to a low carbon future.

We achieved another excellent operating result, delivering to plan, capitalising on historically strong end markets for many of our commodities. Our strong financial position allowed us to close the acquisition of Sierra Gorda and return our balance sheet to a net cash position by the end of the March quarter, said Kerr.

Alumina production for the March quarter was down 1% on the previous quarter, to 1.3-million tonnes, while aluminium production in the same period also declined by 1%, to 243000 t.

During its first quarter of copper production, South32 delivered 8400 t of copper, following the completion of the 45% interest in the Sierra Gorda project.

Manganese ore production for the March quarter was down 4% on the previous quarter, to 1.2-million tonnes, while metallurgical coal production was up by 31% in the same period, to 1.5-million tonnes. South32 in December completed an extended longwall move at the Dendrobium mine, in New South Wales, with the December quarter also impacted by Covid-19 workforce restrictions impacted by labour availability.

Meanwhile, nickel production for the March quarter was up 1%, to 10600 t, payable zinc production was down by 5% on the previous quarter, to 16400 t, and payable lead production was up by 22%, to 34600 t.

In the nine months to date, both alumina and aluminium production remained stable at 3.9-million tonnes and 737000 t respectively, while manganese ore production declined by 5% on the previous corresponding period, to 3.9-million tonnes.

Metallurgical coal production in the nine months to March declined by 10% on the previous corresponding period, to 4.3-million tonnes, while nickel production was up by 33% in the same period, to 30900 t. Zinc production for the year-to-date was up 2%, to 49100 t, while lead production was up 5%, to 94800 t and silver production was up by 9%, to 10.3-million ounces.

South32 told shareholders that the Worsley Alumina operation, in Australia, remains on track to creep production beyond nameplate capacity in 2022, with the refinery benefitting from historical investment and ongoing improvement initiatives.

South32s Brazil Aluminium operation delivered first metal from the restart of the renewable-powered Alumar smelter following the end of the period, while the Hillside Aluminium and Mozal Aluminium continued to test their maximum technical capacity, taking advantage of record aluminium prices.

The Cannington operation delivered a 6% increase in year-to-date zinc equivalent production, benefitting from higher planned silver grades and a drawdown in run-of-mine inventory.

South32 also reported that the Cerro Matoso operation achieved a 33% increase in year-to-date nickel production, owing to higher grades from the Q&P pit and the prior periods successful furnace refurbishment.

Meanwhile, South32 on Tuesday also told shareholders that the company had been awarded a A$15-million grant from the New South Wales government in April to construct a commercial pilot ventilation air methane abatement facility at its Illawarra Metallurgical Coal operations.

The new facility, featuring cutting-edge technology to tackle fugitive methane emissions will be established with the support of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and its own co-funding of A$4.5-million.

The project will make up part of South32s use of innovative technologies to reduce emissions, in line with its goal to halve operational carbon emissions by 2035 as part of its pathway to achieve net-zero operational carbon emissions by 2050.

The miner has, meanwhile, also downwardly revised its capital expenditure guidance for 2022, by $36-million, to $702-million, reflecting a deferral of capital spend at Worsley Alumina until 2023, reducing the 2022 improvement and life extension capital expenditure estimate by$11-million to $91-million, while also accounting for slower-than-expected contractor mobilisation at the Hermosa project, which has reduced the growth capital expenditure estimate for 2022 by $25-million to $90-million.

The company has also revised its operating cost guidance for the full-year, at the majority of its operations, to reflect the impact of stronger producer currencies, higher prices for raw materials and an increase in price-linked royalties.

See original here:
South32 sticks to its production outlook - Creamer Media's Mining Weekly

Life Extension and Anti-Aging Have a Branding Problem – Lifespan.io News

It seems bizarre that in 2022, some biotech companies interested in doing something about aging are still saying that they are not. Cellular rejuvenation seems to be the latest buzzword and an attempt to rebrand and escape the stigma of anti-aging.

Recently, researchers at the Salk Institute, in collaboration with Genentech, showed that they can safely and effectively reverse aging in old mice by resetting their cells to a more youthful state using Yamanaka factors.

Genentech, a large Roche subsidiary biotech company, is focusing on cellular rejuvenation using partial cellular reprogramming. It could be set to become a future rival of Altos Labs.

Earlier this year, Altos Labs made its debut, bringing $3 billion in funds and an impressive roster of researchers to focus on cellular reprogramming. Despite media suggestions that it is a longevity or anti-aging company, Altos is adamant that it is not.

Instead, Altos has positioned itself as a cellular rejuvenation reprogramming company. Genentech also looks like it might follow a similar path and double down on the cellular rejuvenation angle, avoiding coming out and saying that it is an anti-aging or longevity company. Given that both companies are working on cellular rejuvenation, which is very much relevant to aging, it might seem somewhat strange for them to claim to be uninvolved in it.

Why are they doing this? Its because life extension and anti-aging have a branding problem. There are a few reasons why.

Some companies are sidestepping the whole issue by simply going after diseases without drawing focus on the age reversal aspect of what they are doing. The FDA is not going to approve a trial to reverse aging, so the logical step for a number of companies is to instead focus on a particular disease and aim to demonstrate disease modification. The FDA is unlikely to take issue with age reversal or rejuvenation technology if it is demonstrably effective against a specific age-related disease. This is why an increasing number of companies are taking this route to get through clinical trials. Once approved the idea would be that off label use would occur.

The life extension community unfortunately does have a reputation for being long on promises and short on delivery. With what is now decades of research, there are still no effective therapies against aging.

Of course, science takes time, and a lot of progress is being made in our fundamental understanding of aging as well as the steady slog to translate the research from animals to humans. However, public perception is based on results, and so far, nothing has turned back aging enough in people to grab public attention.

This is also not helped by otherwise earnest researchers in our community sometimes fueling hype and exaggerating the impact of their current research. While it is perfectly understandable to be excited about ones own research, some researchers do sometimes make claims that go beyond the data.

This is likely due to their hopes of attracting funding and grants, but it can be harmful to the image of the field when the hype does not meet the reality.

Another factor that is likely playing a part in this rebranding is the sad fact that our field is filled with snake oil salesmen out to make a quick buck.

Alongside the legitimate researchers doing fine scientific work in the lab, there are also plenty of hucksters hiding in the community. These people prey on people who lack the knowledge to discern credible science from pseudoscience and peddle worthless products, much like the snake oil salesmen of the Old West.

One example is a biotech company evading the FDA by setting up shop in a country with few or no regulations. This sort of company makes bold claims yet never delivers on those claims in practice, using poorly designed experiments and tiny cohorts that are statistically irrelevant.

Worse, such a company might not even attempt to publish data in credible scientific journals, instead choosing to make bold claims on personal websites and publishing dubious data that has not gone through peer review. This sort of company sometimes offers treatments in areas with little or nonexistent regulations. Its customers are gambling with their lives in the hope that whatever the company is offering is as described and actually works as intended; they could be receiving a fake, saline injection or something worse.

Another example is a supplement peddler who sells expensive supplement blends with flashy names, which, on inspection, turn out to be commonly available herbs and minerals that are mixed and sold at a high mark-up with questionable or no supporting data. These sorts of people have plagued our community and given the field a reputation for snake oil. Therefore, it is no surprise that these new, well-funded companies working on cellular rejuvenation want nothing to do with it.

It will take a group effort to clean up the perception of our field to hopefully make these new companies more comfortable in associating with it. There are a few things that each of us can do to help.

While it will be some years yet before a comprehensive suite of therapies to end age-related diseases is here and available, and the hucksters are peddling their wares right now, you can arm yourself with knowledge and protect yourself and our community from these people. Learn to evaluate science rather than taking things at face value, and avoid expensive scams and bad science.

Here are some useful questions to consider when reading an article, looking at claims made by supplement makers, or evaluating any science in general.

Legitimate claims will undergo peer review first. Shady companies not backing up their claims with published data are a dime a dozen; do not be fooled by them. Also, pay attention to the source of the news; press releases, associated companies, and obscure websites are poor sources. The bottom line is that any company making claims about its product should be able to back those claims up with published research in a respected journal.

Credible research is generally published in credible, peer-reviewed journals with transparent and clear details of experiments so that others may attempt to replicate their results. When evaluating a claim, always see if it is published and if anyone else has successfully, independently replicated the results. Also, ensure that any independent results are indeed independent and that there is no link between the original group and the study replicating the results.

Similar to the above; a company or research team worth its salt will have a trail of evidence documenting research and development efforts that likely go back for years or even decades. If a company appeared from nowhere and has no historical record of its research, this is a huge red flag.

Learn to evaluate how statistically significant results are. Did a test involve a single mouse or a person, or did it involve hundreds or even thousands of test subjects to reach its conclusion? The smaller the study, the higher the statistical noise and the greater the effect that outliers can have on the average. Large test groups offer the most stable and accurate data, and small, single-patient studies are, for the most part, not useful.

Beware a company that tests on a single candidate and claims that a supplement or therapy works. A credible company may start with a small pilot study but ultimately expands into larger-scale studies in order to prove safety and efficacy.

Investigate and check their academic pedigrees. Having a Ph.D. is not required to conduct great science, but, in general, a researcher of any worth will have peer-reviewed publications with lots of citations and a good reputation in academia.

Even when there is published data, make sure you find out where the funding comes from. Studies on a patented supplement that are funded by the patent holder are a serious red flag and should be viewed with extreme caution.

Claims of being suppressed or somehow blocked by the government or other entities is a common tactic used by scammers. A scammer might claim to be a misunderstood researcher who just wants to help, and a supplement maker in trouble with the FDA for making false claims might say that it is simply being misinterpreted. This is base trickery; dont fall for it.

If it sounds too good to be true, then the chances are that it probably is. Credible science is always appropriately cautious and never overly affirmative; if someone is way too positive, this is a red flag.

The appeal to the ancients logical fallacy is commonly used to convince and part people from their money. The ancients used certain supplements, so they must work is a common tactic used to sell things. The truth is that while our ancestors were indeed clever and creative in many ways, not all their ideas were wise; indeed, many of the things they believed were dead wrong and even dangerous. This is a commonly used tactic in the supplement and diet industries.

This is the appeal to nature fallacy, another common sales tactic that takes advantage of the biases we as humans have and our inclination to think that everything natural is good. A quick review shows us that what is natural is not always a good thing: tidal waves, earthquakes, venomous snakes, diseases, and aging are all natural, but they are most certainly not desirable.

This is, of course, only a short checklist of things to watch out for; if a claim raises these flags, then its a good idea to be highly dubious about its credibility.

The snake oilers will be with us for quite a while, but by working together as a community and thinking critically about claims, we can help filter these people out and ultimately clean up the field for the benefit of legitimate scientists working on the real solutions to aging that will benefit us all.

Another consideration is that as more therapies enter clinical trials and high-quality data arrives, the hucksters will be steadily ousted. Ultimately, once therapies that have passed through the proper trial process arrive, most people will not wish to risk their health and money on hucksters.

The reputation of the field has improved massively in the last decade, but there is much that we can all do to improve it further.

Continue reading here:
Life Extension and Anti-Aging Have a Branding Problem - Lifespan.io News

Raiany Romanni on the Ethical Aspects of Life Extension – Lifespan.io News

Raiany Romanni is a Harvard Kennedy Fellow in Effective Altruism, an A360 Scholar, a Stanford Existential Risk Fellow, and a bioethicist. She is currently working on a non-fiction book aimed at catalyzing the ethics of longevity research while suggesting that aging is the costliest of all human diseases. Raiany says that of particular interest to her works is the human proclivity towards death-embracing narratives and its harmful effects on economies and societies.

The easy answer would be to point at my degree in bioethics from Harvard Medical School. The more accurate answer, however, would be to say that I became a bioethicist because Ive always been obsessed with life. What does it mean to be alive or dead? How have the meanings we ascribe to life evolved over the centuries? My training in philosophy seemed insufficient to address these questions. Theory is only useful if we can translate it to the suffering of real persons and to the emerging world of converging technologies which will transfigure the meaning of life.

We need bioethicists around because what is right isnt always intuitive, and it takes rigorous work to understand how best to augment human flourishing. As a bioethicist, I try to occupy myself with what is quantifiably good for human societies. I recently became a Harvard Kennedy Fellow in Effective Altruism (EA) and believe EA supplements the work of bioethics by encouraging counterintuitive questions like What if we treated the fundamental processes of aging, instead of Alzheimers? Would that objectively be a better use of our limited resources towards our existing goal of extending human healthspan?

We currently spend a little over 1% of all National Institutes of Health funding on the fundamental processes of aging. Meanwhile, some 80% of an average individuals medical expenses occur past the age of forty. Theres a significant mismatch here.

For all our medical breakthroughs, two things have remained rather constant throughout history: human lifespan and human healthspan. For every human life, we have consistently recorded one death, at a maximum age of 122. At around 25, we begin to decay. These two facts often overshadow the remarkable fact that weve engineered a doubling in average life expectancy over the past century.

The eradication of smallpox and polio and the relative control of nearly all infectious diseases was hardly insignificant. But the fact that we havent doubled the number of years a human can live let alone in good health legitimately contributes to the publics disbelief that scientists may be able to achieve this.

Were wired to appreciate the world through an availability heuristic: the examples we can most readily recall often guide our moral reasoning. So, its not altogether irrational that people should question our ability to reverse aging. Only a small fraction of the worlds population devotes their time to reading dense, scientific papers, which indeed prove that several mechanisms of aging can be quite easily manipulated. And only a small fraction of the worlds population wants to deal with the ethical challenges that accompany this fast-arriving revolution.

Weve built so much of our infrastructure around the idea of death and gradual decay that most of us would rather just reject the messy possibility of a longer, healthy life. It seems like too much work. With radical health extension, what do we do about incarceration or monogamy? These are difficult questionsbut certainly worth answering.

As a myth, the notion that death is a progress-furthering entity, and aging a necessary parcel of life, made sense. For millennia, it was a helpful narrative, needed to cope with the gruesomeness of bodily decay, when we could do nothing about it. We certainly didnt have the converging technologies, when the Black Plague killed a good half of the European population, to hope otherwise. In that context, religion, too, was a rational choice.

Responding from a place of recognition of the publics rationality, rather than the (misguided) assumption that people reject longevity research because they are irrational, is helpful, I think. People rely on heuristics to do their own scanning of the world, and those can be misleading at times, but I like to believe that if offered a full picture of the problem of aging, a good portion of us would be convinced it must be solved.

The ethics, in my view, cant be considered without consideration of the economic, downstream effects. If you think ethics ought to be addressed without regard to economic impact, then you cant talk about equitable distribution, affordability, or even the creation of these therapies in the first place (which, whether theorists like it or not, requires money).

We cant reduce the ethics to just economics: a mistake often made when bioethicists assume that biotechnologies should only be pursued if they can be made immediately affordable. But we also cant undermine the fact that increased capital can translate directly into increased human flourishing.

To be relevant (i.e., not constantly outpaced by the science), I think bioethicists must learn to consider technologies in principle: to assume that they could work, could be quite equitably distributed (not in ideal, Rawlsian worlds, but in the flawed societies weve got), and could go through all phases of a clinical trial. Then, we get to truly interesting questions.

If we could engineer ourselves out of aging, would we risk engineering ourselves, too, out of the meaning of human life? The answer, I think, is yes: but only as much as we engineered ourselves out of the meaning of life in the Stone Age, when to be human meant to hunt and gather for ones every mealuntil it didnt.

First, I think the wealthy should be rewarded for funding these life-saving technologies towards clinical safety, and eventually towards governmental adoption. If there is no reward, there are no therapies, no trickle-down effect, no decreased human suffering.

The sad part, for me, is that venture capital alone, absent governmental funding, is going to take decades, if not centuries, longer to deliver commercial-grade aging therapies. Imagine for a minute that for some odd reason governments decided during the COVID-19 pandemic that they would leave it all to private capital. Wed probably get to a vaccine, and to some level of social relief, but not within the span of several months.

Again, only about 1% of all National Institutes of Health funding goes to fundamental aging research. So, at least we have people like Bezos and Thiel and Zuckerberg interested in disrupting the healthcare system. I hope they do: wed all benefit from it.

Im interested in increased human flourishing, and diminished suffering. Whether a civilization that could repeatedly reset its biological clock could achieve both is a question at least worth pursuing.

Weve built our entire infrastructure to sustain rather than solve the problem of aging. Nick Bostroms The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant is a brilliant caricature of this problem. If we could always return to a more youthful state say, like Turritopsis dohrnii I think wed be incredibly productive. The US currently spends nearly half its federal budget every year on the effects of aging. Imagine the problems we could solve if that funding were freed up, and there will be no shortage of problems.

But then, would innovation take place at a similar rate? Some studies show that people are most productive in their fortieswhen theyve lived enough years to know what they are doing, but not enough that their cells cant remember what they used to be. If the same person were in charge of innovation, say, through a two-hundred-year health-span, would they be prone to founding startups, and coming up with fresh solutions to old problems? I think wed need to actively train this new civilization on the importance of remaining nimble, and not carrying biases. This may not be so easily achieved, but if the alternative is murdering these people, or burdening our healthcare systems, I think we all agree it would be well worth the effort.

So, yes, if we engineer ourselves out of aging, we will most likely engineer ourselves, too, out of the meaning of life. This would be neither the first nor the last time in history this happened. Were the storytellers. The difference, in this century, is that the story is going to evolve at an unprecedented pace.

The cause isnt ours: its humanitys. Health extension is a more effective way of doing what weve been doing all along: namely, extending life and health, and delaying death and decay.

Soon, our populations will begin to shrinkJapan, for example, is set to lose 21 million people by 2050. And, as Peter Diamandis writes, in technologically advanced societies, where misdistribution and not scarcity of resources is the issue, large populations are an asset. The more minds working towards human and planetary flourishing, the better.

Link:
Raiany Romanni on the Ethical Aspects of Life Extension - Lifespan.io News

Essex National Heritage Area Gets Life Extension with Approval of Federal Spending Law – WHAV News

Essex National Heritage Area Chief Executive Officer Annie C. Harris.

The Essex National Heritage Area, created in 1996 as an unusual national park, will continue to receive federal financial support this year as legislators recently approved a spending bill continuing the designation until 2023.

Federal law authorizing the secretary of the interior to provide money to the Essex National Heritage Area expired last Sept. 30. The countywide park emphasizes the historical significance of the 500-square-mile region, covering 34 cities and towns.

Two and a half decades after its creation, the Essex National Heritage Area continues to serve as a cultural and economic driver for working families throughout the region and for communities like Lawrence, Haverhill and Andover, said Congresswoman Lori Trahan in a joint legislative statement.

Sen. Edward J. Markey said he is glad the spending bill heeded our call to extend the Essex National Heritage Areas authorization, enabling it to receive the federal funds it needs to continue to support partnerships between Massachusetts communities and the National Park Service to preserve our regional treasures. He added he will continue fighting in the Senate to lift the funding cap for the Essex National Heritage Area and extend its authorization even further until 2036.

U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton added, The Essex National Heritage Area brings hundreds of thousands of people to northeast Massachusetts, where they spend millions of dollars and create thousands of jobs in our community.

Last year, Sens. Markey and Elizabeth Warren and Reps. Moulton and Trahan introduced legislation to eliminate the total funding cap for the Essex National Heritage Area and extend its authorization by 15 years to 2036. In November 2021, the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee passed a version of the bill that would raise the heritage areas funding cap to $22 million and extend its authorization to 2036.

Like Loading...

Related

Continue reading here:
Essex National Heritage Area Gets Life Extension with Approval of Federal Spending Law - WHAV News

14 Easy Ways to Extend and Enhance Your Life, Starting Now – Men’s Health

The average guy lives to be 75 years old. Thats up about five years from what our life expectancy was two decades ago. The even better news: There are also fairly easy ways to make the most of the time you've already gainedand probably earn even more of it. We're talking about small lifestyle or outlook changes with big impacts. Because your real goal shouldn't be just to live longer, but to feel more vital.

To prove it, Mens Health asked a fleet expertseveryone from longevity and healthy aging researchers, to top athletes and cultural iconsto share their own practical advice for carpe deiming. Here are 14 easy ways to help you extend and enhance your life. Starting right now.

Exercising random acts of kindness and donating time to good causes enhance social integration while improving self-gratification. Those factors, plus the stress relief those things create, can have profound longevity benefits.

James Muruthi, Ph.D., Director of the Healthy Aging Lab at University of Oregon.

Feed on Fiber

Eating fibrous foods like yams and asparagus and polyphenol rich foods like olive oil, coffee, tea, and dark colored fruits and vegetables produces a hugely beneficial phenomenon called mitochondrial uncoupling in our cells. Healthy old people have the most uncoupled mitochondria. This mitochondrial energy processing trick is the golden ticket to increasing energy levels, losing weight and yes, extending your lifespan.

Steven Gundry, M.D., former cardiac surgeon and author of The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at Ripe Old Age and Unlocking the Keto Code.

Respond Instead of React

"Slowing aging starts with slowing down. Cultivate a space between a stimulus (stress, unhealthy food cravings) and your response by going for a walk or taking ten deep breaths through your nose and out of your mouth. These activities will activate the vagus nerve and parasympathetic nervous system, which will allow you to make choices from a place of clarity and certainty, helping you make healthier choices for your body in the long run.

Kien Vuu, M.D., clinical professor at UCLA Health and author of Thrive State: Your Blueprint for Optimal Health, Longevity, and Peak Performance.

People with severe mental health disorders tend to die earlier than the general population, and taking charge of your mental wellbeing can do wonders for life extension. One way to start: Answer these questions right now: 1) How is my mood? (Answer with an emotion. Am I happy? Sad? Angry? Upset? Irritable? Euphoric? 2) Is this your baseline or normal mood? (Answer yes or no, because we all have off days. If its an off day, reevaluate later in the week or the following week.) 3) Am I content with feeling this way? If no, reach out to someone you trust to talk about it.

Kalisha Bonds Johnson, Ph.D., R.N., professor at Emory Universitys School of Nursing, director of special programs at Black in Gerontology & Geriatrics.

Cold exposure releases noradrenaline, a hormone that boosts cell performance. Due to the disappearance of thermal stress thanks to air conditioning and central heating, our bodys thermoregulatory system isnt getting enough of the exercise or stimulation needed to feel invigorated and perform better. Through daily cold water immersion, you can boost your bodys natural repair and recovery response thats central to slowing aging.

Rose Anne Kenny, M.D., geriatrician and author of Age Proof: The New Science of Living a Longer and Healthier Life.

I come from an Indian background where we were taught Sanskrit chanting at a very young age. It requires a lot of memorization and involves rituals and practices. We chant a lot of verses, which can be like longform poems. It seems to have a meditative effect and its a form of memory rehearsal, which can keep the brain healthy as you age. Reading complicated fiction or non-fiction books can have a similar benefit because it challenges your brain to track the characters and the plot over time.

P. Murali Doraiswamy, M.D., director of the Neurocognitive Disorders Program at Duke University School of Medicine.

I eat fruits and treat myself to an ice cream once per month. But make no mistake about itexcess sugar in all its forms is poison. It is always one of the first things I recommend eliminating for those interested in longevity. To lessen your intake of sugar, I recommend avoiding all processed foods and sugary drinks.

Sergey Young, longevity investor and author of The Science and Technology of Growing Young.

Tooth decay and gum disease are chronic infections which our immune systems can never quite get on top of. Thorough brushing and daily flossing will help prevent these, and therefore prevent chronic inflammation, one of the key drivers of aging.

Andrew Steele, Ph.D., physicist and author of Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old.

Words of affirmation are crucial to my wellbeing, its important to start my day off with positivity. Each day I am also intentional about taking personal time for myself. That could be listening to an old vinyl record or simply embracing silence in an effort to calm my mind and give peace to my thoughts."

Matt Horn, Pitmaster of Horn BBQ in Oakland, CA, and author of the Horn Barbecue cookbook, out April 12.

My dad told me early on: Control what you can control and what you cant control? You cant let it bother you. One area I can just about control: raising my children, who motivate me every day. To be a better man, better dad, better human."

Trent Williams, NFL offensive tackle, cancer survivor, and subject of the new documentary, Silverback: The Trent Williams Story, out now.

I work so hard, and over time I'd developed strange guilt around resting. But there's nothing better than an hour on the couch. Everything and everyone will still be waiting for you when you get up. It's fine."

Jason Reynolds, bestselling author of more than a dozen young adult books, including his latest, Aint Burned All the Bright.

I grew up with the Gurkha and Special Forces heritage, so its all about discipline, being respectful to others, never give up on the mission you are going for, stay humble, and keep training. I always try and stay fit. That might be in the form of climbing mountains or when Im not on the mountains, I do regular work outs. One of my secrets is burpeesbut a lot of themabout 300 in one go.

Nimsdai Purja, star of the documentary 14 Peaks (Netflix), and author of Beyond Possible: One Man, Fourteen Peaks and the Mountaineering Achievement of a Lifetime.

Waiting for something wonderful can be painful if you look at it that wayWhy dont I have that promotion yet? Why cant I afford the house I want? Or it can be anticipatory joy, like waiting for Santa as a child, reveling in the hope that you will receive wonderful gifts. And when things have passed out of existence, you still get to enjoy them in the presentRemember how wonderful that vacation was? What it felt like to sail, or to ride a roller coaster? But you only can enjoy them if you are okay with the present.

Mary-Frances OConnor, Ph.D., psychology professor, director of the University of Arizonas Grief, Loss and Social Stress Lab, and author of The Grieving Brain.

Ethics is just the examination of how we make decisions that affect other people and the world we live in. By deciding to give a crap, you are acknowledging a few basic but important truths: We are not the only people who matter. We rely on others for certain things, and they rely on us. The big and small choices we make fall on a spectrum from "Excellent" to "Extremely obnoxious and bad," and where they fall is (at least in part) up to us. The only possible advice is (1) Decide to care. (2) Understand that it's a lifelong job. (3) Accept that you make progress by being a little bit better today than you were yesterday. (4) Know for a fact that from time to time, even trying your best, you're going to fail in your quest to do the right thing. And that it's okay.

Michael Schur, creator of The Good Place, co-creator of Parks and Recreation, and author of How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question, out now.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io

Link:
14 Easy Ways to Extend and Enhance Your Life, Starting Now - Men's Health

The Steam Deck battery life guide: games tested and how to extend it – Rock Paper Shotgun

The Steam Decks battery life isnt one of its best qualities. While this weakness is outweighed by the pleasures of playing PC games in bed or on the bus, most such games will drain the Deck quickly, requiring a degree of foresight if you want to entertain yourself on a long trip away from mains power. At the same time, different games will drain at different speeds, with some allowing Valves handheld to last hours longer than others.

Ultimately, I think the only truly accurate way to measure and judge the Steam Decks battery life is to test a bunch of different games to see how long it lasts with each. So I have! Here youll find a list of games with how long they took to empty the Decks battery from full. Ill be coming back and adding more to the list as I test them, so you can see for yourself what uptimes to expect from your favourites.

Ive also thrown in some tips on how to extend the Steam Decks battery life, which is possible even when running the thirstiest AAA games. Also, if you want to know how long a certain game will last and it isnt yet on the list, let me know in the comments it doesnt have to be one of the Steam Deck Verified games, but as long as its compatible enough to run, I may well be able to test it and add it.

Valve say the Steam Deck should last between two and eight hours, but depending on the game as well as certain hardware settings on the Deck itself battery life can vary even more. The absolute most Ive wrung out is 9h 17m (in Super Meat Boy, with Airplane mode and minimum screen brightness), while the shortest Ive seen is a scant 1h 17m (Horizon Zero Dawn with everything running at max). For this list, Ive stuck with more normal usage conditions, like setting screen brightness to 50% but leaving Wi-Fi on; you can see the full test settings on the right.

For now this is a hodgepodge of some of the most popular games on Steam by player count, and a few that I happened to have installed already, but the plan is for it to grow. Like a beautiful tall sunflower, made of numbers. Ill therefore be adding games (both new and old) on a regular basis, so again, do shout if theres one in particular youd like to see.

As rapidly as most games guzzle charge, the Steam Deck is flexible enough to give you a few different options for making that battery juice go further. In fact, almost all of these can be found in one place: the Performance tab of the Quick Settings menu. To find this, press the Quick Settings button (the three-dottted one just below the right trackpad) and select the battery icon. Lowering brightness can also help theres a slider for this in Quick Settings too, accessible via the gear icon. Here's what you can try:

Lower the display brightness A classic battery life extension trick dating back as long as adjustable backlighting has existed. Dropping the screen brightness might leave you at the mercy of reflections, especially on the 64GB and 256GB Steam Deck models (which dont have the 512GB model's matte display finish), but it can definitely help net you a few more minutes of play. Be sure to turn of dynamic brightness while youre at it, to make sure you have full control.

Limit the frame rate The Deck has a universal frame rate limiter built right in, and lowering it from 60fps to 30fps will reduce system strain to grant a modest battery life boost. I slapped a 30fps cap on Forza Horizon 5 and got 2h 03m out of it, adding an extra 26 minutes (or a 27% improvement).

Manually set the TDP limit This requires a bit of trial and error, but can prevent the Steam Deck from using more power than it needs. While in game, open the Performance tab and turn on the performance overlay so you can see your current FPS. Then, toggle the TDP limiter, set the slider all the way to the right, then lower it one step at a time until your FPS starts to drop. Slide it back up one step, and the Decks APU wont draw more power than it needs to maintain that performance level.

Manually set the GPU clock speed Similarly to the TDP limiter, you can downclock the graphics processor until its only just fast enough to deliver the performance you need and no more. Again, youre best off doing this on a per-game basis, using the FPS counter as a guide, as some games need a faster GPU than others.

Disable wireless connectivity The Decks setting menu provides am easy toggle for Airplane mode, which disables Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and thus helps stretch out battery life a little. There are also individual toggles for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in the same place, so you can for instance shut off Wi-Fi but keep using a pair of wireless headphones.

I also tried the Decks baked-in AMD FSR upscaling, on the grounds that rendering games at a lower resolution might reduce system load and therefore power usage. It didnt really help, though: Fallout 4 with FSR emptied the battery in 1h 51m, just three minutes more than without it. Stick with the five steps above.

See original here:
The Steam Deck battery life guide: games tested and how to extend it - Rock Paper Shotgun

Fungus being tested at state park in Weslaco to control invasive species of ants – KRGV

Estero Llano Grande State Park in Weslaco have been testing the use of a fungus to control an invasive species of ants attacking small animals.

The tawny crazy ants have been spreading in the Valley and the Gulf Coast. They're an invasive species from South America.

The ants have attacked small animals and even make colonies inside electric equipment, causing thousands of dollars in damage.

"There's lots of birds that when they nested, the eggs hatched, and the ants would just cover the newborn chicks," said Javier De Leon, superintendent of Estero Llano Grande State Park. "So, the newborn birds had no chance. So, we saw lots of nest failures, especially chachalacas that are born on the ground and run within minutes, just like chickens. We saw several baby chachalacas that didn't make it.

Deleon says the fungus all but eliminated the ants from the park, but warns they can also affect your home.

Look for light brown ants that don't burrow or dig like other ants.

Then, take a picture and contact the Texas A&M Agri-life Extension for help identifying them and advice on what to do.

Originally posted here:
Fungus being tested at state park in Weslaco to control invasive species of ants - KRGV

Industry Inspection Overview of Black Cumin Seed Oil Machine Market 2022-29 | Earthoil Plantations, Life Extension, Nuverus, Omega Pharma FortBendNow…

This practical and detailed Black Cumin Seed Oil market report provides a clear picture of trade regulation, Black Cumin Seed Oil market expansion, new product launches and innovations. It identifies Black Cumin Seed Oil market trends and future market growth in the year 2022-2029. It also introduces the Black Cumin Seed Oil market competition among the major industry players in the market. Market research analysis is a useful tool for the growth of many businesses, as this Black Cumin Seed Oil market report provides a basic knowledge of market movements and Black Cumin Seed Oil idustry trends. It tries to meet the demand for products to help central players make big profits when bringing new items to Black Cumin Seed Oil market.

Collect free Sample copy of the Black Cumin Seed Oil market report 2022: https://calibreresearch.com/report/global-black-cumin-seed-oil-market-244518#request-sample

Global Black Cumin Seed Oil Market intelligence report is a comprehensive overview of the Black Cumin Seed Oil Market position. Full information provided of past progress, current market conditions, and a future prospect is provided in the Black Cumin Seed Oil report. It also gives accurate overview of the key strategy, Black Cumin Seed Oil market size, and products of leading companies in this market segment. Complete report from Materials, Applications, and Black Cumin Seed Oil industry forecasts for 2022 are expert and in-depth research information on the global regional Black Cumin Seed Oil market situation, focusing on every region.

Henry Lamotte OILS GmbHFLAVEX Naturextrakte GmbHHenry Lamotte Oils GmbHKerfoot GroupEarthoil PlantationsLife ExtensionNuverusOmega PharmaBioPraep

Have Any Query Of Black Cumin Seed Oil Industry Report 2022: https://calibreresearch.com/report/global-black-cumin-seed-oil-market-244518#inquiry-for-buying

Food GradeCosmetic Grade

SoapHealth FoodPersonal Care Products (Massage Oils, Skin Care Products)

This Market will be significant in the Black Cumin Seed Oil growth during the forecast period. Moreover, there will be an increase in new product launches and continuous innovations due to the rise in the Black Cumin Seed Oil popularity of resulting in boosting the market in the coming years. The Black Cumin Seed Oil report provides the past, present and future Black Cumin Seed Oil industry Size, trends and the forecast information related to the expected Black Cumin Seed Oil sales revenue, growth, Black Cumin Seed Oil demand and supply scenario. Furthermore, the opportunities and the threats to the development of Black Cumin Seed Oil market forecast period from 2022 to 2029.

Get Complete Report for Better Understanding : https://calibreresearch.com/report/global-black-cumin-seed-oil-market-244518

North America Black Cumin Seed Oil Market(United States, North American country and Mexico),Europe Market(Germany, Black Cumin Seed Oil France Market, UK, Russia and Italy),Asia-Pacific market (China, Black Cumin Seed Oil Japan and Korea market, Asian nation and Southeast Asia),South America Black Cumin Seed Oil Regions inludes(Brazil, Argentina, Republic of Colombia etc.),Black Cumin Seed Oil Africa (Saudi Arabian Peninsula, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)

Lastly, Black Cumin Seed Oil report provides Market intelligence in the most comprehensive way. The report structure has been kept such that it offers maximum business value. Black Cumin Seed Oil report provides critical insights on the Market dynamics and will enable strategic decision making for the existing Market players as well as those willing to enter the Black Cumin Seed Oil Market .

Read more:
Industry Inspection Overview of Black Cumin Seed Oil Machine Market 2022-29 | Earthoil Plantations, Life Extension, Nuverus, Omega Pharma FortBendNow...

Marines will have to wait at least until 2025 for light amphibious warship – Marine Corps Times

Marine leaders have been pushing since for the first light amphibious warship to be procured by 2023.

But in the services recent combined budget request with the Navy, the Corps isnt expecting to get the ship for at least another two years. And the Corps only is likely to get four of them in inventory by 2027 if the current plan holds.

The light amphibious warship is the Corps answer to moving a lot of Marines in small teams from deep water to the close-to-shore littoral zones and even conducting beach landings.

Far cheaper than the larger amphibious ships that Marines usually take to combat, the light amphibious warship is expected to fill a gap between big-deck ships and small landing craft. Without it, Marines face serious obstacles in getting on land. Thats critical as the Corps has billed itself as the Navys ship-killing, adversary-harassing force.

Each light amphibious warship is expected to carry up to 75 Marines. The Corps wants to use a host of them to move its newest formation creation, the Marine littoral regiment, around the littoral battlespace.

Thats going to be hard when even by 2027 it will only have enough space aboard potentially four new vessels for fewer than three reduced-strength, unsupported infantry companies.

To meet Marine war planning expectations, theyll likely eventually need enough light amphibious warships to transport at least three Marine littoral regiments.

But the Marine Corps will have to wait at least until fiscal year 2025, according to the militarys proposed fiscal year 2023 budget released on Monday. The Navy expects to start funding builds of the light amphibious warship with one in 2025, another in 2026 and two in 2027.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger said at the National Defense Industrial Associations annual Expeditionary Warfare Conference in February that the traditional amphib ships and the new light amphibious warship concept complement each other. They will work in tandem to bring Marines to the fight.

More details on budget specifics will be available in the coming weeks. But the Pentagons initial budget request gives glimpses as to what will happen with Marines and ships in the near- to mid-term.

At a briefing with media on Monday, Navy Rear Adm. John Gumbleton, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget, said that both the Navy and Marine Corps were working to get the requirements tight for the light amphibious warship.

He pointed to funding in research and development rather than procurement in the near term.

While still in the design phase, the Marines are asking to build a 200- to 400-foot ship with a maximum draft of 12 feet. The ship must be able to carry between 3,000 and 4,000 tons and 75 Marines with a Navy crew of about 40 sailors.

That program saw $20 million in funding in fiscal 2021, $13 million in fiscal 2022 and hovers around $12 million for the pending 2023 budget.

Thats behind the timeline in the Corps goal of having a light amphibious warship funded by 2023 and deployable soon after.

The Navys $27.9 billion shipbuilding proposal expects to fund nine new ship builds. More than half of that money is taken up by incremental funding for the Ford-class aircraft carrier, the Columbia-class and the Virginia-class nuclear submarines.

Of what remains in the purse, a handful of Marine-focused priorities look to get funding, though not at quite at the level or pace Corps leadership has pushed for in recent years.

Two of those the America class amphibious assault ship-LHA 6 and the San Antonio class amphibious transport dock or LPD 17 Flight II are on deck for funding.

In existing construction or serve life extension, the Navy looks to pay for two landing craft air cushion and two ship-to-shore connectors in 2023, also key to Marine gear and troop movement in the littorals.

The Marines F-35C Joint Strike Fighter purchases dropped to nine for the 2023 budget, but would resume at 15 each year until fiscal 2027. The Corps purchased 16 in fiscal 2021 and 15 in fiscal 2022.

Purchases of the F-35B are consistent with 15 planned in the fiscal 2023 budget and 16 each year until 2026, with 17 in fiscal 2027. In the 2022 budget, Marines bought 17 of the B variant, having purchased 10 in fiscal 2021.

Both Navy and Marine Corps aviators are getting a new trainer, the Corps will see four such aircraft in this 2023 budget and 22 total over the next two years.

KC-130J buys are steady at five and another two planned for fiscal 2024. The Corps bought 11 over the previous two fiscal years.

Marine aviators are likely to see many more CH-53K King Stallion helicopters in the coming years.

The proposal lays out a plan to buy 10, with another 78 spread out over the next four years.

Research and development spending on the King Stallion continues, though lower than in years past. Current figures in the budget call for $220 million, down from $257 million in fiscal 2022.

It appears the Marines are done buying MV-22 Ospreys for the foreseeable future.

Two years ago, the Corps purchased three, and in 2022, it was given funding for nine. But no future purchases are planned within this budget through fiscal 2027.

Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.

Read the original:
Marines will have to wait at least until 2025 for light amphibious warship - Marine Corps Times

US will buy additional doses of Covid-19 preventive drug Evusheld. What about Korea? – Korea Biomedical Review

AstraZeneca said the U.S. government agreed to purchase additional 500,000 doses of its Covid-19 preventive medicine Evusheld (tixagevimab/cilgavimab).

AZ had said that it would initially supply 1 million doses of Evusheld. However, if most of the doses go to the U.S., other countries will have limited access to AZs preventive therapy.

AZ welcomed the U.S. governments plan to buy 500,000 doses of Evusheld on Wednesday.

Evusheld is a combination drug mixing long-acting antibodies, tixagevimab and cilgavimab, derived from B cells donated by convalescent patients after Covid-19 infection.

The antibody treatment was discovered by Vanderbilt University Medical Center and licensed to AZ, which optimized the drug with half-life extension.

The medicine aims to prevent Covid-19 infection in immunocompromised people.

According to AZ, the half-life extension more than triples the durability of its action compared to conventional antibodies. In addition, the company said that the consecutive two doses of tixagevimab 150mg and cilgavimab 150 mg could afford up to 12 months of protection from Covid-19.

On Dec. 8, Evusheld received FDA approval for the pre-exposure prophylaxis of Covid-19 in people who experienced serious adverse reactions of Covid-19 vaccines or those with immune compromise. Earlier, the U.S. government signed a deal with AZ to purchase 700,000 doses of Evusheld.

The U.S. has confirmed the purchase of 1.2 million doses of Evusheld so far, and the additional 500,000 doses will be shipped to the U.S. within the first half of this year.

As the U.S. secured most of the initial supply of Evusheld, other countries will face a limited chance to purchase the preventive therapy.

Our headquarters basic stance is that we will apply for marketing license in countries that confirmed the pre-purchase of Evusheld, an official at AstraZeneca Korea said. As the quantity of Evusheld is insufficient, we are distributing the remaining stock of Evusheld, excluding those going to the U.S., to several developed countries in Europe.

This means that if the Korean government does not discuss a pre-purchase of Evusheld, AZ will not seek marketing approval pre-emptively.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety is doing a preliminary review on Covid-19 vaccines and treatments. But this happens only when a company submits related data.

The regulator is not reviewing Evusheld now.

However, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) plans to discuss Evusheld purchase with AZ soon. The drug is expected to become an option for Korean immunocompromised people to prevent Covid-19.

View original post here:
US will buy additional doses of Covid-19 preventive drug Evusheld. What about Korea? - Korea Biomedical Review

Interview With Rory Moore, CEO Of Arctic Canadian Diamond Co. – JCK

Rory Moore (pictured) has worked at Ekati, the first diamond mine in Canadas Northwest Territories, on and off for years. He was part of the original crew that first developed the mine in the 1990s. In 2018, he rejoined what was then called Dominion Diamond. He then became its interim president in January 2020, and in November, he was appointed the full-time CEO of what is now called the Arctic Canadian Diamond Co.

Here, he talks with JCK about his view on the diamond market, how Arctic looks at Canadian cutting and Canadian-origin stones, and why Ekati might confound expectations and stay around for a while.

Can you bring us up to date on whats happening with Ekati and its current ownership structure?

With the onset of COVID, the diamond market closed. We had a partnership with Rio Tinto in the Diavik mine, which is a neighboring mine. After COVID, we [initially] elected to put Ekati on care and maintenance, because we had $200 million worth of diamonds in inventory, but we couldnt sell them. We didnt want to burn through our cash reserves quickly. However, when Diavik did continue to operate, we were obliged to pay our 40% interest in the operating costs, and that would have very quickly have chewed up our cash reserves. So, we [filed] for CCAA [insolvency protection].

That triggered its sale process and the former owners, Washington, participated in that and ultimately withdrew their bid to buy the assets, and then the debt holders stepped in, represented by the three principal organizations: DDJ Capital, Brigade Capital, and Western Asset Management. The three of them stepped in and bought the assets and [provided us] with some additional cash to reopen the mine and get going again.

We restarted the mine in January last year, which is in the dead of the Arctic winter, so that was challenging. We had lots of startup problems, but ultimately now we have got the mine running at a steady state. Fortunately, we had some nice tailwinds from a strong rough diamond market last year, so prices were very robust and that really helped us with our restart. We met our revenue targets last year despite all the challenges.

You have said you want to extend the mine life. How do you plan to do that?

The best days of Ekati are behind us in terms of quality of ore bodies. During the early years, when BHP owned the mine, the ore bodies were very rich and very close to the central infrastructure at the mine, which is the process plant. So operating costs were very low, and revenue was very high. It was a highly profitable mine.

As time has gone on, those bodies have been mined out, and we are now mining lower-value ore bodies further away from the plant. Our main open pit, Sable, is 17 kilometers north of the process plant. Its a lower-revenue ore body and theres additional transportation and logistics involved in getting the ore from the open pit to the process plant. Then, to the south, weve got our Misery underground mine, which is a high-revenue ore body that has now gone underground, so its mining at a lower production rate. And thats 25 kilometers south of the processing plant, so again, weve got to transport the ore to the plant.

What we faced going forward is, as these ore bodies come to their natural end, Stable in particular, they were not valuable enough to support conventional underground mining. And, so, what weve done is over the past four yearsand this is what Ive been working onis looking at alternative, more creative ways to mine these ore bodies so we can still mine them profitably.

Weve come up with a system, its called underwater remote mining. Essentially, we flood the pit, and after the open pit mining is completed, and we continue to mine it underwater, using specialized underwater surface mining machines that weve developed in conjunction with a company out of Holland called Royal IHC. We are very confident that its going to work, and the beauty of this method is that you only mine ore and not waste. So, with conventional mining, you have to mine a lot of waste. In fact, at Sable, theres seven times more waste [being mined] than ore. If you remove all that waste mining, suddenly your costs are dramatically lower, and youve got a profitable mining operation again. Thats the way we are going into the future.

We have designed all the equipment, and we are going to construct the first of that equipment this year. Then, were going to do a big production trial in 2024. Were building equipment this year, and then over 2023 and 2024, were gonna test that equipment and then implement it in 2024 for future mining at Sable, and then extend that to other ore bodies. The future of Ekati is underwater remote mining, which has not been done in this sort of setting at all in the past. We are spearheading some new innovative mining techniques.

Assuming that all comes to fruition, how long will that extend the mine life?

Initially, the first phase will take us to 2029. The other thing that were doing at the moment is developing a new conventional open-pit mine at the same time. That will take us to 2028. We also have the opportunity to extend mine life through underwater remote mining at Point Lake. That ore body has 50 million tons of kimberlite in it. So, if the underwater remote mining works, well get an additional 10 years of mining out of Point Lake. Then, we have another ore body that was mined by BHP called Fox, and that has 40 million tons of kimberlite left in it. Weve done studies to potentially develop it with underground conventional mining, and it doesnt make the grade. So, we would look to mine that underwater as well, which would add another 10 years of mine life. So, essentially, we have decades of mine life extension, but we have to prove the system first.

You said youre confident that will work.

Yes. Im very confident. Components of the technology have been routinely used in other applications, in conventional dredging operations throughout the world. We are putting it all together in a system that hasnt been used in this application. None of it is rocket science. Its all proven technology.

The owners have been very supportive, and they have been very open to funding our development of [the underwater remote mining] method. Weve got a stable operation now, and our immediate focus is to pay down the debt that we have, and weve already started that process this year. We had a good revenue year, and weve already paid down the debt very substantially.

There have been concerns raised about underwater mining from an environmental point of view. How do you respond to that?

In fact, this method is significantly more environmentally friendly than open-pit mining. Thats because, firstly, you dont have any big waste dumps. So, all that footprint of the waste dumps interfering with caribou migration or changing the landscape, that goes away. You have a closed water system, so all the water thats in the mine [goes to] a pond next door to the open-pit mine, where well settle out the sedimentary material. It will be a closed system. So, no water thats been disturbed or polluted in any way will get out into the secondary environment. Its very much contained and has an incredibly small footprint.

The machine has been devised so that all the hydraulic fluids in the machine are biodegradable. Id be lying to you if I said were not going to burst hydraulic hoses once in a while. We will have hydraulic oil spills, but [they will be] biodegradable hydraulic oils by design that will not contaminate the water in any meaningful way. So, the environmental impact is much lower, and thats a positive for the project as well.

What has been the reaction from the local community to Ekati restarting?

Our northern partners are very relieved that we are back in production. We have a lot of training and career opportunities for people of the north. There was big relief that we did come through the CCAA process, that weve hired a whole lot of new people, and our training programs, apprenticeship programs, leadership programs are back in place. Weve got partnerships with the local indigenous groups and communities. Theyve supported us very well, as has the government of Northwest Territories. Its all pretty positive, after a tough period of 10 months not being in production

You no longer have 40% ownership in the Diavik mine, as Rio Tinto took it over. How does that affect you?

On a practical basis, it doesnt impact us much, because we were essentially a passive partner in that. Rio Tinto operated that mine and we just participated in quarterly management committee meetings. It doesnt impact our workforce in any way, as we had nobody working at Diavik.

What it does impact is the product mix that we take to the market. We used to have a big production out of Ekati, supplemented by a fairly significant production out of Diavik, which gave us higher carats and higher volumes to sell into the rough market and gave us more options for product mix for our clients. Weve lost a bit of flexibility in accommodating our clients exact needs when it comes to the product mixes.

But the productions are fairly similar between Ekati and Diavik. So, the impact of that hasnt been too significant. Its more that weve just got a lower volume of diamonds to sell.

Your company has been renamed Arctic, which is probably a more potent name from a marketing point of view, in that it symbolizes Canada. Do you expect to get more involved in marketing your product?

We recognize that we are diamond producers, and thats what weve got to focus on. We are an active member of the Natural Diamond Council, and so we actively participate in that and contribute to that initiative through our membership fees. We think that the Natural Diamond Council is doing a great job of promoting natural diamonds. We recognize that if you wanted to do a good job of marketing a luxury product like diamonds, youve got to have a big budget for that, and thats just not where we fit in. All of us producers together are much more powerful than individuals trying to do that separately.

A lot of producers are looking into origin certification? Will you do that?

A percentage of our diamonds are sold through the Canadamark program. They tend to be the higher-quality goods. We think its an important consideration, given that the new generations of customers are much more concerned about the origin of the products that they buy and that the products have been produced a sustainable way. I think Canadian-origin diamonds are highly prized by millennials because they know that Canada has high environmental guidelines and social economic guidelines and the way we run our mines in Canada is of the highest standard. Thats not to say that a diamond produced in Africa has not been ethically produced, because the big mines in Africa are run according to the highest international standards. There may be a perception that all these African [stones] are still blood diamonds, but the reality is that the absolute majority of diamonds coming out of Africa are produced in a very ethical way. But Canada does have brand appeal.

Theres been talk of new factories in Canada. Thats been tried before, and it didnt work. Do you think Canadian cutting has a future?

I think its always going to be a challenge to manufacture diamonds in Canada, particularly in the north. You are competing against India, and India has really done an incredible job of capturing that part of the supply chain of diamonds. You cant compete on costs, and they actually have become incredibly skilled at polishing diamonds.

Its admirable to see people try, because the more we can capture business opportunities in Canada, the better. But I think its a struggle.

Do you expect rough diamond prices to continue to remain strong?

At the moment, everybody in the business expects that rough diamond prices will remain strong in the short- to medium-term. Obviously, its very difficult to predict longer term. Supply has been impacted by COVID, so supply of rough diamonds is lower than it was forecast to be. Demand is incredibly strong, fueled mostly by the U.S. and China. Theres been very strong demand for our product, and the commentary over the holiday season was that sales were very strong on the retail side. In the short-term, I think the macro factors for our industry, and for rough diamond prices, are very good.

(Photos courtesy of Arctic Canadian Diamond Co.)

Read more:
Interview With Rory Moore, CEO Of Arctic Canadian Diamond Co. - JCK

Isoflavones Market Research Report by Product, by Source, by Component, by Application, by Region – Global Forecast to 2026 – Cumulative Impact of…

Isoflavones Market Research Report by Product (Capsule, Liquid, and Powder), by Source (Chickpea, Red Clover, and Soybeans), by Component, by Application, by Region (Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, Middle East & Africa) - Global Forecast to 2026 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19

New York, Jan. 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Isoflavones Market Research Report by Product, by Source, by Component, by Application, by Region - Global Forecast to 2026 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06202161/?utm_source=GNW

The Global Isoflavones Market size was estimated at USD 1,333.21 million in 2020 and expected to reach USD 1,412.48 million in 2021, at a CAGR 6.05% to reach USD 1,896.77 million by 2026.

Market Statistics:The report provides market sizing and forecast across five major currencies - USD, EUR GBP, JPY, and AUD. It helps organization leaders make better decisions when currency exchange data is readily available. In this report, the years 2018 and 2019 are considered historical years, 2020 as the base year, 2021 as the estimated year, and years from 2022 to 2026 are considered the forecast period.

Market Segmentation & Coverage:This research report categorizes the Isoflavones to forecast the revenues and analyze the trends in each of the following sub-markets:

Based on Product, the market was studied across Capsule, Liquid, Powder, and Tablet.

Based on Source, the market was studied across Chickpea, Red Clover, and Soybeans.

Based on Component, the market was studied across Daidzein, Formononetin, and Genistein.

Based on Application, the market was studied across Cosmetics & Personal Care, Food & Beverages, and Nutraceutical.

Based on Region, the market was studied across Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, Middle East & Africa. The Americas is further studied across Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and United States. The United States is further studied across California, Florida, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. The Asia-Pacific is further studied across Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. The Europe, Middle East & Africa is further studied across France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom.

Cumulative Impact of COVID-19:COVID-19 is an incomparable global public health emergency that has affected almost every industry, and the long-term effects are projected to impact the industry growth during the forecast period. Our ongoing research amplifies our research framework to ensure the inclusion of underlying COVID-19 issues and potential paths forward. The report delivers insights on COVID-19 considering the changes in consumer behavior and demand, purchasing patterns, re-routing of the supply chain, dynamics of current market forces, and the significant interventions of governments. The updated study provides insights, analysis, estimations, and forecasts, considering the COVID-19 impact on the market.

Competitive Strategic Window:The Competitive Strategic Window analyses the competitive landscape in terms of markets, applications, and geographies to help the vendor define an alignment or fit between their capabilities and opportunities for future growth prospects. It describes the optimal or favorable fit for the vendors to adopt successive merger and acquisition strategies, geography expansion, research & development, and new product introduction strategies to execute further business expansion and growth during a forecast period.

FPNV Positioning Matrix:The FPNV Positioning Matrix evaluates and categorizes the vendors in the Isoflavones Market based on Business Strategy (Business Growth, Industry Coverage, Financial Viability, and Channel Support) and Product Satisfaction (Value for Money, Ease of Use, Product Features, and Customer Support) that aids businesses in better decision making and understanding the competitive landscape.

Market Share Analysis:The Market Share Analysis offers the analysis of vendors considering their contribution to the overall market. It provides the idea of its revenue generation into the overall market compared to other vendors in the space. It provides insights into how vendors are performing in terms of revenue generation and customer base compared to others. Knowing market share offers an idea of the size and competitiveness of the vendors for the base year. It reveals the market characteristics in terms of accumulation, fragmentation, dominance, and amalgamation traits.

Competitive Scenario:The Competitive Scenario provides an outlook analysis of the various business growth strategies adopted by the vendors. The news covered in this section deliver valuable thoughts at the different stage while keeping up-to-date with the business and engage stakeholders in the economic debate. The competitive scenario represents press releases or news of the companies categorized into Merger & Acquisition, Agreement, Collaboration, & Partnership, New Product Launch & Enhancement, Investment & Funding, and Award, Recognition, & Expansion. All the news collected help vendor to understand the gaps in the marketplace and competitors strength and weakness thereby, providing insights to enhance product and service.

Company Usability Profiles:The report profoundly explores the recent significant developments by the leading vendors and innovation profiles in the Global Isoflavones Market, including Archer Daniels Midland Company, BASF SE, Bio-Gen Extracts Pvt. Ltd., Cargill, Incorporated, Fujicco Co., Ltd., Futureceuticals Inc., GNC Holdings Inc., International Flavors & Fragrances, Inc., InVite Health, Inc., Koninklijke DSM N.V., Lactonova Nutripharm Pvt Ltd, Life Extension Foundation, Nexira Inc., NOW Foods, Nutra Green Biotechnology Co. Ltd., NutraScience Labs, Shaanxi Hongda Phytochemistry Co., Ltd., Shanghai Freemen, SK Bioland, and Xena Bio Herbals Pvt Ltd..

The report provides insights on the following pointers:1. Market Penetration: Provides comprehensive information on the market offered by the key players2. Market Development: Provides in-depth information about lucrative emerging markets and analyze penetration across mature segments of the markets3. Market Diversification: Provides detailed information about new product launches, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments4. Competitive Assessment & Intelligence: Provides an exhaustive assessment of market shares, strategies, products, certification, regulatory approvals, patent landscape, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players5. Product Development & Innovation: Provides intelligent insights on future technologies, R&D activities, and breakthrough product developments

The report answers questions such as:1. What is the market size and forecast of the Global Isoflavones Market?2. What are the inhibiting factors and impact of COVID-19 shaping the Global Isoflavones Market during the forecast period?3. Which are the products/segments/applications/areas to invest in over the forecast period in the Global Isoflavones Market?4. What is the competitive strategic window for opportunities in the Global Isoflavones Market?5. What are the technology trends and regulatory frameworks in the Global Isoflavones Market?6. What is the market share of the leading vendors in the Global Isoflavones Market?7. What modes and strategic moves are considered suitable for entering the Global Isoflavones Market?Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p06202161/?utm_source=GNW

About ReportlinkerReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.

__________________________

Story continues

See the rest here:
Isoflavones Market Research Report by Product, by Source, by Component, by Application, by Region - Global Forecast to 2026 - Cumulative Impact of...

Archives