Cody C. Platt, Author at Adoption Links

Trump says he met with families of victims of recent police violence

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks prior to signing an executive order on police reform at a ceremony in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, U.S., June 16, 2020. REUTERS/Leah Millis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he met with the relatives of victims of recent police and other violence, including the family of Ahmaud Arbery, the unarmed black Georgia man who was killed while jogging in February.

Trump, speaking at a White House event on policing, offered his condolences to the families and vowed to pursue justice before preparing to sign an executive order, reiterating his emphasis on “law and order” amid protests against racism and police brutality.

Reporting by Jeff Mason; writing by Susan Heavey

Nova Scotia researchers to study potential treatments for COVID-19

Led by Dr. Lisa Barrett, the CO-VIC study tests potential therapies and monitors impact on COVID-19 symptoms

NEWS RELEASE

NOVA SCOTIA HEALTH AUTHORITY

CO-VIC, the COVID-19 treatment and immunity study, will evaluate effectiveness of treatments for hospitalized patients suffering moderate to severe COVID-19 symptoms, while helping researchers discover more about immunity to the virus.

CO-VIC is a Nova Scotia-designed study combining both treatment and laboratory science. It is led by Dr. Lisa Barrett, Clinician Scientist, Infectious Diseases, Nova Scotia Health Authority and Dalhousie University. The study is partially funded by the Nova Scotia COVID-19 Health Research Coalition.

The CO-VIC study tests potential therapies, and monitors impact on COVID-19 symptoms. When additional cutting-edge therapies become available, they will also be assessed. Personalized measurements of immune response will help develop future therapies and predict when and how severe COVID-19 happens. While the global race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine is well underway, the discovery science component of the study will advance our understanding of how the immune system responds to the disease and inform development of future treatments and second-wave vaccines.

“As COVID-19 related deaths increase in the older population, in the young who didn’t ever expect to be ill, and in health care workers, our research community feels the overwhelming urgency to protect Nova Scotians with research that tests treatments, predicts disease, and promotes understanding of immunity,” said Dr. Barrett. “We need the best knowledge of treatments and immunity, to save lives now and in the future as we continue to fight COVID-19.”

The treatment study is an integral part of Nova Scotia’s pandemic response. Compared with other provinces, Nova Scotia’s population includes a high proportion of vulnerable individuals who are older, have underlying respiratory conditions, or are immune suppressed. These are all people at higher risk of severe COVID-19 disease and this work may aid in protecting our population.

Approximately 600 patients located at NSHA sites across the province will participate. Most Nova Scotians will be eligible to take part at hospitals outside traditional research facilities to ensure fair access to research and potential therapies. While data will be gathered from Nova Scotians, for Nova Scotians, the study is designed to mirror larger international trials to promote the comparison of global data. This will allow the research team to leverage international information so it can be applied here in Nova Scotia.

For more information on the study, please visit https://co-vic.ca

Nova Scotia court ruling orders province to better protect endangered species

Justice Christa Brothers says in a ruling issued Friday there has been a ‘chronic and systemic failure’ to take action required under the Endangered Species Act

HALIFAX — The Nova Scotia Supreme Court says the province failed to meet its duty to protect species at risk, and it is ordering the minister of lands and forestry to fulfil his obligations.

Justice Christa Brothers says in a ruling issued Friday there has been a “chronic and systemic failure” to take action required under the Endangered Species Act.

Brothers cites a 2016 report by the provincial auditor general, a followup report by the department on the auditor’s recommendations in 2018 and the 2018 Lahey Report on forestry practices to back her conclusion.

The ruling is the result of a judicial review application by the Federation of Nova Scotia Naturalists, the Blomidon Naturalists Society, the Halifax Field Naturalists and wildlife biologist Bob Bancroft that was heard last fall.

The groups argued that Lands and Forestry Minister Iain Rankin has failed to meet requirements under the act, including requirements to devise and implement recovery plans for species at risk, create recovery teams and identify core habitats.

They cited six animal and plant species as examples — the mainland moose, Canada warbler, eastern wood pewee, wood turtle, ram’s head lady’s slipper and black ash.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 1, 2020.

The Canadian Press

Dropbox announces family plan, password manager, and other security tools

Dropbox has announced a handful of new features for consumers and business users as the cloud storage and productivity platform seeks to capitalize on the remote working boom. The company also announced that a new family plan is in the works that will cover up to six members of a household and allocate individual accounts and logins under a single subscription.

With work and home life blurring for millions of people during lockdown, Dropbox is targeting users across the spectrum with today’s updates. The company is also doubling down on efforts to lure free users onto its paid plans.

First up, the San Francisco-based company is launching a new password management service called Dropbox Passwords, the result of an acquisition it made last year with little fanfare. Last November, Dropbox snapped up Massachusetts-based Valt, which sunsetted its apps ahead of integration with Dropbox.

Similar to other password managers, Dropbox Passwords stores and encrypts users’ online passwords, and it syncs them across all devices to make it easier to log into websites and apps. This requires a separate Dropbox Passwords app, which was quietly launched a couple of weeks back, but it will be available to paid subscribers who log in with their Dropbox credentials.

Above: Dropbox Passwords

A new feature called Dropbox Vault promises to help users securely share access to specific files. The Vault folder sits alongside other files and folders on Dropbox, but it can be protected behind a dedicated PIN code and can only be opened from Dropbox.com and the Dropbox mobile app — the files contained within Dropbox Vault are not stored locally on a user’s desktop.

Above: Dropbox Vault

Finally, Dropbox is also rolling out a new computer backup feature that automatically creates backups of PC or Mac files stored on the desktop, as downloads, or in document folders. These are continuously synced, so if you lose your laptop you will always have a backup stored in the cloud.

Above: Dropbox computer backup tool

All three of these consumer-focused features are available in beta for new Dropbox Plus users on mobile today, and they will be coming to all Dropbox Plus subscribers “in the coming weeks.” The computer backup feature is also available to Dropbox Basic and Professional users from today.

Arguably, one of the most long-awaited Dropbox features for consumers is the Family Plan — this will be made available to Dropbox Plus users in the coming weeks before coming to all Dropbox users later in the year. Essentially, it allows families to share 2 terabytes of storage between individual profiles, with all members able to create “shared spaces” for content such as photos, videos, and documents.

Dropbox confirmed that its Family Plan will cost $17 per month when billed annually or $20 when billed on a month-to-month basis.

Above: Dropbox Family

In the enterprise realm, Dropbox announced it would also embed HelloSign’s e-signature technology as a native feature within Dropbox, more than year after acquiring the company for $230 million. In effect, this makes HelloSign the default e-signature tool for Dropbox.

Finally, Dropbox is introducing a new Dropbox App Center, which serves as a centralized hub for all the tools and integrations from partner organizations, including Slack, Google, and Zoom. The App Center is currently available to a “subset of users” in beta, with more than 40 app partners featured for the inaugural rollout.

It’s Official: The Mac Is Transitioning to Apple-Made Silicon

Apple officially announced that it will move away using Intel processors in its computers and to its own custom-designed chips, and it says those processors will be faster than Intel’s and consume less power. The company is designing a family of SoCs for their Mac product line, so there will now be a common architecture across all product lines, from iOS to Mac.

All of Apple’s apps on Big Sur will run natively on Apple’s custom chips, too. Microsoft will make Office work natively on Apple’s custom ARM processors, and Adobe Photoshop and Final Cut Pro will also run natively on Apple silicon. “Most apps will just work with no changes from developers,” said Craig Federighi, SVP of Software Engineering at Apple Inc.

Big Sur will also include Rosetta 2, which will automatically translate existing Mac apps that haven’t been updated for Apple’s ARM chip. It will also be able to translate games, like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, to run on MacOS Big Sur. It won’t look as nice as on a dedicated GPU, but the demo showcased still looked pretty nice on an integrated GPU at 1080p—certainly better than a similar Windows machine with integrated Intel graphics. The demo Apple showed during the keynote was running on Apple’s Metal API, so technically it was already optimized to work on macOS. However, it would have to still be coded with Intel’s x86 architecture in mind, and that’s where Rosetta 2 comes in: it needs to translate that x86 code to ARM code.

Besides Shadow of the Tomb Raider Apple also showed off three 4K clips running side by side in Final Cut Pro—an impressive feat. However, beyond those two examples, the performance showcases amounted to little more than “it just looks and feels snappier.” Apple will be sending development kits to lucky developers, so hopefully we’ll have a better sense of just how fast these A12Z chips are in the coming months. Which is good because Apple expects to ship its first ARM-powered devices later this year and complete the transition to ARM by 2022.

If you’re a recent adopted of the MacPro that’s definitely a cause for concern—though Apple says it will support Intel-based computers for “years to come.”

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