The popular notion that dog vision is only black and white is dead wrong. Our four-legged friends’ eyes are much more complex and although they see differently than we do, they can see a combination of colors that clearly differentiate yellow and blue. Technicolor is certainly beyond their comprehension, but there’s more to it than sad, fuzzy grays.

A yellow and blue world
Over the past few decades, studies of the structure of the dog’s eye have revealed some differences in basic design between humans and dogs. Canids evolved their senses as nocturnal hunters, tracking and catching their food at night. Therefore, their eyes have adapted to see well in the dark and to detect movement. “They have a larger lens and corneal surface area and a reflective membrane known as the tapetum that improves night vision,” explains vet Jerry Klein. “They also have more rods in their retinas, which improves vision in low light.” According to research conducted by the University of Washington Department of Ophthalmology, a dog’s color vision is more similar to that of a person with color blindness, but with the difference that it can distinguish yellow and blue and all combinations of these colors. This turns much of their world drab. A lush green lawn will look like a hayfield to them, while a red velvet cushion might be a cozy patch of brown. It’s not for nothing that dogs are crazy about tennis balls and are definitely more interested in yellow and blue games than in other colored ones.

Photo credit: Dog Vision // American Kennel Club

look at the movement
But how does the dog mind reconstruct what it sees? Scientists from Emory University attempted to answer this question using a machine learning algorithm capable of analyzing the information gleaned from the magnetic resonances of two “volunteers”. The protagonists of The Dog Project study, published in the Journal of Visualized Experiments, were Daisy and Bhubo: two mestizos who watched video for a total of 90 minutes over three sessions while their neural data was recorded. From the analyses, the researchers found that dogs “are more in tune with what’s happening in their environment than with the subjects responsible for the actions.” This underscores the major differences in how the human and canine brains work. “We’re very object-oriented,” explains author Gregory Berns, “while dogs seem to be more attentive to the plot than the subject at hand. Dogs only see in blues and yellows, but have a slightly higher density of visual receptors designed to detect movement. On closer inspection, these results make sense: Our four-legged friends are evolutionarily and instinctively inclined to pay attention to what’s happening in the environment in order to know what to do or where to go. Action and movement are fundamental”.

Unknown colors
There is also evidence that dogs can see colors that humans cannot. A study from City University London, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society, explains that a dog’s eyes are more sensitive to ultraviolet light than humans, making it possible to see colors unknown to us. The only drawback is the sharpness: In the study published in Plos by the University of Linköping, Sweden, the visual acuity of dogs was subjected to tests similar to those that ophthalmologists carry out on humans. And the result was that the dogs — or at least the pugs and Scottish Shetland Sheepdog that took part in the experiments — were downright short-sighted, with around 20/50 vision. That means they have to be 6 meters away from something to see it the way a human sees it 15 meters away.

subjects

“Cuba is better than the Maldives. It has a unique nature, crystal clear water, the best brands of rum and the famous Cuban cigars and above all a sea of ​​impressions. said Cuban Tourism Council for Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Georgia Juan Carlos Escalonaduring a meeting with businessmen from the industry in Kazakhstan.

At the meeting, held at the Cuban embassy in Astana on Wednesday, Escalona told EFE that he had traveled to Kazakhstan “to promote Cuba’s tourist destination”.

The meeting will take place on the same day that the arrival of Russian tourists on the island resumedafter seven months direct flights between Russia and Cuba were suspended due to Western sanctions against Moscow following its invasion of Ukraine.

“Kazakhstan and Cuba are linked by very old ties and we want to take this opportunity for Kazakh tourists to visit our country.”added the Havana official.

“Tourists from Kazakhstan can reach Cuba via European countries like Germany, France, Spain. The airlines of these countries have regular flights to Cuba. You can also do this via Turkey, Istanbul as Turkish airlines offer three weekly flights. ‘ Escalona explained.

This does not exclude routes such as Moscow, which take advantage of the resumption of charter flights to Varadero and Cayo Coco.

“Before the Covid pandemic, more than 10,000 Kazakh tourists visited Cuba. Then the pandemic came and stopped everything, but we were convinced that the number would increase,” he said.

According to the EFE report, Kazakhstan is one of the largest countries in Central Asia and in its northern and central regions winters are usually long and harsh, which is why many Kazakhs travel to tropical countries where it is hot all year round.

“Travel has been restored and we expect the number of tourists to gradually increase”assured Escalona.

Havana is seeking unusual markets to attract vacationers while the island’s hotels remain at just 14% occupancyaccording to official figures, in the first half of 2022.

For this reason even The exhibiting division in Spain of the major TUI group announced a price reduction for their winter bookings to Cuba. The tour operator offers eight offers with discounts of up to 200 euros per person and package tours of nine days and seven nights with prices between 1,230 and 2,020 euros.

According to official information Cuba touched one million foreign tourists in August, numbers much lower than the same period in 2019 and well below the government’s aspirationsforecasting 2.5 million vacationers by 2022.

Against this background is paradoxical The government does not stop the construction of new hotels and devotes the largest items of the annual budget to the real estate and tourism sectors.

Likewise, In July 2022, Cuba was excluded from the Traveller’s Choice Awards, which are given out every year by the very important world travel website Tripadvisor. Nor was it among the “50 most beautiful countries in the world” selected by a study by the money.co.uk website and published by Forbes magazine.

The study was based on the characteristics that make countries “beautiful”, namely not only their landscapes but also their telecommunications services, gastronomy, health, electricity, transport, shops, entertainment and the hospitality and characteristics of their people. , Arts and Culture.

According to an analysis published in DIARIO DE CUBA, “The majority of tourists who travel to Cuba do not repeat. Disgusted with the terrible infrastructure, the problems with land and air transport and even the lack of hot water in the hotels, they leave the country. There is no point in prioritizing the number of visitors and trying to fill the hotels if the central goal in any tourism industry is not taken into account: that the visitor spends as much money as possible.”

She has been nominated as a candidate for years: Ernaux, born in Normandy in 1940, coined the term autofictionality with her project of measuring her origins and her life in a series of novels, which she has been pursuing for decades.

The Swedish Academy, responsible for the prestigious award, announced the choice on Thursday in Stockholm’s old town. Ernaux received the award “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the collective roots, alienations and limitations of personal memory,” Academy Permanent Secretary Mats Malm said in the award announcement. It has not yet been possible to reach her by phone, says Malm.

Decision for innovation in literature

The decision was taken in favor of an author whose position and innovative power for contemporary literature are indisputable. Autobiographical writing, especially by women, has long faced difficulties both in academia and with critics, regardless of the number of copies printed.

APA/AFP/Pierre Guillaud Ernaux at the launch of “La Place”, 1983

Ernaux eliminated this arrogance on his own, albeit silently at first. When he started writing in the shadows of Alain Robbe-Grillet, Michel Butor and Claude Simon, he craved clarity, directness and minimalism. With “Der Platz” (“La Place”), she delivered a work in mid-1983 that is second to none.

In it, starting from the memory of her father’s death, she dissects her petty-bourgeois origins, retrospectively longs for the social “place” assigned to her by birth, and what opportunities were opened to her as a result or remained closed to her. . “The principle of fiction has always remained alien to me,” said Ernaux, looking back at “Der Platz” and added, “Reality is such an extraordinary field and life as lived is, ultimately, an enormous size.”

“Anthropologist of Herself”

In narrating, Ernaux also reflects on the limits of memory – and therefore the part of narration that is necessarily filled with fiction. It is precisely this duplication that is new and influential in his writing – and separates his autofiction from classical autobiographical approaches. Because of this approach, Ernaux also describes herself as “an ethnologist in her own right” – and reading her works did provide impetus. Didier Eribon, who also became famous in German-speaking countries with his sociological description of his childhood, “Return to Reims”, often refers to Ernaux as an inspiration.

Katja Gasser (ORF) at the Nobel Prize for Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Annie Ernaux. Katja Gasser analyzes the significance of this decision.

Ernaux has consistently expanded his approach since the 1970s: in novels such as “The Shame”, “Memoirs of a Girl” and “The Years” – which was explicitly recognized as the “first collective biography” when the Nobel Prize was announced and at the technical level of Marcel Proust – she processes aspects of her life and the lives of her family members.

With “A woman” (“Une femme”, 1987) Ernaux wrote a requiem for his mother, which allowed him to study literature, in “The shame” (“La honete”, 1997) she reconstructed the sometimes violent mother using a photo Her parents’ relationship and youth, in The Other Girl (L’autre fille, 2011) she related how in a conversation between her mother in 1950 she discovered that she had a sister who had died before she was born.

“Memoirs of a Girl” (“Memoire de fille”, 2016) accurately traced their first sexual encounter – and spoke of power, powerlessness and submission. “The Years” (“Les annees”, 2008) reads as the sum of her oeuvre – an exploration of her life from her post-war childhood, through her studies, her turbulent marriage and motherhood, to aging in the 1990s. , which at the same time opens up a wide panorama that the French company has delivered. Ernaux’s novels are a deep dive into a single life, opening general conclusions.

Increasingly translated around the world, her precise and poetic analyzes of gender and class relations reach the present, as does the Golden Lion for the film adaptation of her abortion novel “L’evenement” by director Audrey Diwan at the festival of cinema proved in Venice last year.

turmoil in previous years

In previous years, there has been great turmoil regarding the award: in 2019, the Peter Handke award was discussed in a highly controversial manner, and in 2018, the committee suspended the award following a major scandal over the sexual assault of a member of the jury. . The 2018 prize was only awarded in 2019 and awarded to Olga Tokarczuk.

The prize, worth 10 million Swedish kronor (about 920,000 euros), will be presented together with the other Nobel laureates on December 10th. The date is fixed as the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. Due to the pandemic, the award will again be presented in the recipients’ countries of origin and not at a ceremony in Stockholm.

A man guilty of repeatedly sexually assaulting a trans woman who gave him half of her earnings from prostitution got away with a very light sentence of 90 days in prison because of his “very convincing” rehabilitation.

Posted at 5:00 am

Louis Samuel Perron The Press

Giving Jacob Laporte a long prison sentence would be ‘completely counterproductive'[f] for the Society, Judge Érick Vanchestein concluded September 28 at the Montreal Courthouse. The fact that the victim was a trans woman was never taken into account when the verdict was pronounced.

This case is not a “classic case” in the sense of the commercialization of sexual services, the judge argues, since the victim prostituted herself “voluntarily” and was “free” of her choice.

The victim met Jacob Laporte on a dating site in May 2018. During their first sexual relationship, the 32-year-old felt “discomfort” at the sight of the victim’s penis. He then clarified with her: “To be his girlfriend, you have to be an escort. A sine qua non condition. In court, he claimed that this “arrangement” would allow the victim to “satisfy his sexual needs,” which he could not do.

The victim eventually quit her job to pursue prostitution for months. She would then hand over half of her earnings to the accused. The Granby resident was found guilty of multiple charges related to the commodification of sexual services last December.

However, he was acquitted of the more serious charges of pimping and trafficking in human beings, despite making “unbelievable” and not very credible statements.

The victim, on the other hand, made a “spontaneous, transparent and honest statement,” according to Judge Vanchestein.

However, the judge concluded that the victim “voluntarily” invested in prostitution for a “quick profit” to pay for the surgeries necessary for his “physical transformation”. In short, the defendant and she entered into an “agreement,” even if the defendant made a profit from it, the judge said.

The victim claims to have clearly said no

Jacob Laporte also forced the victim to perform oral sex on him on at least two occasions. On these occasions, the victim claims to have clearly said no to a sexual relationship. This did not stop the defendant from pulling her “strongly by the hair” into the bedroom to sexually abuse her. In another episode, the defendant elbowed the victim out of the car, causing physical injury. Jealously, he also broke the victim’s phone.

Crown prosecutor Me Luc Pagé asked for three and a half years in prison, a sentence far from exceptional for such crimes. However, Judge Vanchestein deviated significantly from the usual judgments in an “extraordinary way”.

The judge sentenced Jacob Laporte to 15 months house arrest on the prostitution-related charges and a 90-day sentence on the sexual assault charges, to be served over the weekend during the three-year probationary period.

The judge took into account the defendant’s six months of therapy and seven months of pre-trial detention in his calculation.

“serious effort”

Judge Vanchestein based such a judgment on Jacob Laporte’s “serious efforts” to integrate into society for three years. The 30-year-old actually quit doing drugs, dropped out of college at 15, found a good job in electrical engineering, and broke from his bad relationships.

“The court is satisfied that the defendant has demonstrated his rehabilitation particularly convincingly since his arrest,” concludes Judge Vanchestein.

According to the judge, a long prison sentence would therefore be “counterproductive” for the accused and for society. However, two evaluation reports stress that the risk of recidivism “cannot be ruled out”.

In order for his social reintegration to succeed, Jacob Laporte must be able to stay sober, hold his job and take care of his family, the judge concluded. He also believes the verdict was also “dissuasive and denouncing.”

Me Justine Levasseur defended the accused.

The world’s largest aircraft carrier was sent on its first mission: the USS Gerald Ford departed Norfolk, Virginia, Tuesday for the Atlantic.

The ship’s deployment comes after years of delays that have cost billions of dollars — $13 billion in total.

This particular aircraft carrier features a number of new technologies, such as “electromagnetic catapults that can launch planes and advanced weapons elevators that deliver bombs and missiles to the flight deck,” according to the insider.

Washington Post reporters Robert Costa and Bob Woodward wrote in their new book, Peril, that former President Donald Trump often ranted about this very ship, arguing that the cost was too high and the flight command center placement was wrong.

“It just doesn’t look right,” he said.

In this file photo dated April 14, 2017, while crew members stand on the deck, the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford steers toward the naval station in Norfolk, Virginia

(AP)

In this file handout image courtesy of the US Navy taken June 18, 2021, the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) completes the first scheduled explosive event of Full Ship Shock Trials while underway in the Atlantic is

(US NAVY/AFP via Getty Images)

Virginia Representative Elaine Luria also criticized the airline, calling it a “$13 billion nuclear-powered floating barge.”

The ship will take part in military exercises, which will be attended by about 9,000 people from nine countries, 20 ships and 60 aircraft, the Navy said in a press release.

This handout photo provided by the U.S. Navy shows the USS Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) departing Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, Oct. 4, 2022

(US NAVY/AFP via Getty Images)

The Navy said the ship is the first new carrier to be designed in more than four decades. Construction of the ship began in 2009 and was commissioned by Mr Trump in 2017.

The construction of the next two carriers in the Ford category – the USS Kennedy and the USS Enterprise – has already begun.

Administration officials and family members of former U.S. President Gerald Ford greet a model of a new aircraft carrier named USS Gerald R. Ford during a naming ceremony at the Pentagon in Washington January 16, 2007

(AFP via Getty Images)

The carrier has “nearly three times the electrical power” of the previous Nimitz class of carriers, the Navy said.

The EMALS electromagnetic launch system uses electrical energy to launch aircraft from the carrier. Previously, a steam catapult system was used. The new system means there is less stress on the wearer and the time between launches has been reduced.

Donald Trump (3rd R) salutes as he exits the USS Gerald R. Ford July 22, 2017 in Norfolk, Virginia

(AFP via Getty Images)

According to CNN, an official said the USS Gerald Ford was the only forward-class carrier to have dual-band radar.

The airline will operate in the Atlantic and Mediterranean with a deployment that will be shorter than the typical six-month timeframe.

Carrier Strike Group 12 commander Rear Admiral Gregory Huffman said in a statement, “This deployment is an opportunity to drive the ball further down and demonstrate the advantage Ford and Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 8 have going forward bring to Naval Aviation, to the region, and to our allies and partners.”

Other countries participating in the exercise include Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.