Catch up with all the latest news from the second exciting event of F1 Esports Challengers 2022!

The post F1 Esports Series Challengers 2022: Event 2 Round-up! appeared first on F1Esports News.

South Africa had been in the midst of social unrest since the start of 2021, with protests peaking in July at the Gauteng province, which includes the city of Johannesburg. The continuous unrest in the country brought the threat to the supply chain in focus, as MHCV sales declined by more than 8% on a y-o-y basis, halting the good recovery progress made in the industry. But another less obvious threat looming in the country for a past few years, is the lack of qualified truck drivers. Aspects of South Africa's truck-driver problems are unique; others are part of the broader driver shortage visible elsewhere, even in some of the largest truck markets.

July's unrest depicted how a pause in the movement of vital goods can lead to devastating situations in the country. The fact that road freight is increasingly surpassing rail as the medium of choice highlights even more the need for a reliable and efficient truck logistics sector. According to latest data, South Africa has a shortage of approximately 3,000 truck drivers, with the shortage continuously growing since the past few years.

However, the more significant concern is that employees sometimes have to work longer hours than usual to counter such shortages, which creates dangerous on road situations and increases the likelihood of accidents. With these supply chain concerns, delays in transport of essential goods and higher chances of accidents, it is vital to look at the factors causing these driver shortages in the country.

So, what exactly is the reason for vacancies in the medium and heavy commercial-vehicle (MHCV) driving jobs in a country where unemployment rate peaked to an all-time high of 34.9% in 2021? The answer isn't a straightforward one, as a myriad of factors is in play resulting in these shortages. Firstly, lack of skill and experience is the biggest hinderance in finding drivers. Drivers handling heavy freight need a range of skills such as driving in wet conditions; economical driving; heavy goods vehicle braking; straight reverse and ally docking, to name a few. It takes between 3-5 years to be experienced enough making it very difficult for entrants to get hired in the first place. Consequently, employers have difficulty finding apt drivers to carry the freight.

A second reason is the emigration of the already small driver pool to foreign developed countries in the search of better wages and much better working conditions and lifestyles. The trucking industry's turnover and emigration rates are very high as job conditions are challenging. Longer working hours are not just a consequence but also a reason for the shortage as more and more experienced drivers quit in search of better pastures in foreign lands. All these challenges have created a vicious cycle of low-skilled drivers and higher turnover rates in the industry. The income disparity between drivers in Africa and other developed countries such as the United Kingdom & the United States also attracts skilled drivers to emigrate and earn more in those foreign lands.

Lastly, unscrupulous players are sometimes alleged to dodge regulations related to safety or staffing costs, which may contribute to unsafe conditions and tensions in the labor environment. Such tensions recently culminated in acts of violence and protest in the country. The native drivers violently protested the increasing hiring of foreign nationals from poorer countries and blocked a major highway in the Eastern Cape—instances like these further increase the turnover rates for drivers willing for better working conditions.

All in all, factors such as lack of relevant experience in the market, emigration of skilled drivers for better wages & working conditions and higher turnover rates due to an unsafe, rigorous, and sometimes a violent industry have created a shortage for the most important freight mode of transport in the country. On the positive side, the government, as well as private bodies, are taking steps to try and improve the situation. To solve the issue of lack of skills, a few private organizations have started training academies and courses in the country imparting drivers with the necessary skillset to be hired in the market. The government has also announced its plans on implementing stricter border access controls and will be introducing new regulations to prevent undocumented drivers from operating in the country. In October, authorities also deployed a task team to check credentials of drivers passing by Middelburg in the Eastern Cape. Hopefully, such prompt measures will help prevent further damage to the already struggling South African economy.

The South African truck sales market remained strong even in the face of social unrests and recurring level 3-4 restrictions in the country, recovering by more than 22% post the 2020 covid slump to reach the previous 22k levels. However, we believe it has the potential to develop more and a functional and peaceful driver pool will not only improve the efficiency of trucking companies but also create a healthy work environment for drivers & operators alike, further growing the truck sales in the country.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m considering making a significant purchase, the first thing I do is head to the review section.Whether it’s novelty curtains or writing software, I always want to know what my peers think about a product first. Their opinions are the ones I place the most weight in - […]

The post Testimonials and Case Studies: How to Use Customer Satisfaction as Your Greatest Marketing Asset appeared first on Baremetrics.

As the demand for agile development grows, so does the demand for digital threads. But what are digital threads, and what is their value? Digital threads enable a product’s development through its lifecycle domains to be digitally traced. The tracing can be in either direction, upstream or downstream in the product development lifecycle. “Digital” means […]

The post Boosting engineering efficiencies with digital threads appeared first on IBM Business Operations Blog.

Linode’s Channel Partner Program Focuses on Adding Value to Small and Midsize Resellers of Cloud Infrastructure Services

(PRWeb January 31, 2022)

Read the full story at https://www.prweb.com/releases/crn_recognizes_alternative_cloud_provider_linode_as_a_cloud_100_company_for_2022/prweb18467084.htm

Moles and gophers are animals that run underground. They often go unseen and tend to surface in dark spaces. They can be harmful to your marijuana plants. In this article we will discuss: Moles vs gophers How to solve gopher problems Gophers in your marijuana garden There are some things that vary slightly about these two, but ...

Continue Reading

The post Gophers And Moles On Marijuana Plants appeared first on I Love Growing Marijuana.

Just like all the fine things in life: wine, cigars, and diamonds: cannabis can also be measured in terms of quality. The sight, touch, taste, size, aroma, and sensation of a marijuana bud is all determined by the cleanliness of the air in which the plant grew, the composition of the soil, and the temperature shifts that it endured.

Knowing Quality Bud from Shwag

It's important to know the good quality stuff from the shwag. Whether you're a connoisseur or simply a novice; knowing how to assess the quality of a cannabis bud is necessary to have the best experience. If you want to know the telltale signs of top-shelf bud then read on.

Visually Inspect the Bud

Sometimes the only way to get an idea of the quality of a bud is by the way it looks. It is important to know the clues that will tell you how awesome the weed you're assessing is. One of the best visual ways to assess cannabis is by the trichome content. If the bud has loads of trichomes then you are sure to get a good buzz. Trichomes are the small crystal-looking resin glands that make the bud look frosty. These trichomes contain cannabinoids like THC and CBD.

Another visual way to assess a cannabis bud is by its color. Healthy buds are usually nice and green, purple, or may even look orange depending on the pistils on the bud and the strain. When you smoke the bud, the ashes should burn white-grey ash.

Look For a Tight Trim

The trim of the flower should be done well. Look for a tight trim; extra leaf matter should have been removed so that the bud is fully revealed. Excess stems should also be removed and the only part of the stem that should be left is at the base of the flower where it was cut from the plant. Over-trimmed flowers should be avoided as this usually results in a lower trichome content.

How to Spot Mildew or Mold

When assessing a bud be sure to check for red flags. Powdery mildew can look like trichomes if you don't look closely. A bud should glisten in the light, but if it has mildew on it will not. If you see something like baby powder on it or a cottony appearance it's probably powdery mildew.

Another red flag and type of mold is botrytis (also known as bud rot). This mold is more difficult to see as it is inside the flower. It may not be until after you purchase the bud, go home, and start breaking it up that you notice that the bud has brown or grey mold inside. You mustn't smoke it.

Gently Squeeze the Bud

Touching the bud is another good way to assess its quality. When you gently squeeze the bud, it should bounce back to its original form. Squeezing the bud can also tell you if it has properly been cured. It should have a bit of a stickiness to it, but if it hasn't been cured correctly then it will feel too wet. The stem is another indicator of how well the bud has been cured. A properly cured stem will have a definite snap when you bend it.

Smell the Bud for Quality

One of my favorite ways to check the quality of a bud is by smelling it. It's an instinctive thing we all seem to do when you open a new bag of buds: you hold it up to your nose and inhale the sweet aroma. This can also tell you if a bud has mold on it, or if it smells wet then it hasn't been cured properly. Good quality marijuana will often smell skunky, pine, fruity, cheese, or earthy.

Taste the Bud

Lastly, you can taste if a bud is of high quality. Oftentimes, the aroma of bud will match the flavor. Just like a good liquor, the taste should be smooth. When you inhale the smoke, it shouldn't burn your throat; neither should it leave a harsh taste in the back of your throat.

In Conclusion

After reading this article you can easily be on your way to becoming a cannabis connoisseur. Next time you find yourself buying marijuana don't just settle for anything. Take the time to study the bud instead of choosing one based on whatever name sounds good to you. You will be impressed by the difference that quality bud makes.

This nonprofit organization, the Soil Carbon Coalition, was inspired in part by Allan Yeomans's 2005 book, Priority One: Together we can beat global warming, which Abe Collins and I had been reading. Yeomans suggested that increased soil carbon could make a difference for climate. In 2007 Joel Brown of the NRCS gave a talk in Albuquerque in which he said that according to the published literature, good management by land stewards did not result in soil carbon increase, and that it was too difficult to measure anyhow. With that, I resolved to begin measuring soil carbon change on ranches and farms that were consciously aiming at greater soil health.

I had done plenty of reporting on land stewardship and plenty of rangeland monitoring. I studied research-grade, repeatable soil sampling and analysis methods and combined them with some rangeland transect methods I had learned from Charley Orchard of Land EKG. In 2011 I bought an old schoolbus, made it into living quarters, and for most of the next decade I traveled North America slowly, putting in hundreds of baseline transects and carbon measuring sites mainly on ranching operations that had some association with holistic planned grazing. I resampled over a hundred at intervals of 3-8 years. The question I was asking was: Where, when, and with whose management, was soil carbon changing over intervals of several years? I called this project the Soil Carbon Challenge.

A lot of data accumulated. What did it show, what did it mean?

In order for there to be meaning or learning, there needs to be a context, a purpose. My purpose in embarking on this project, the question behind the question, was 1) to see if measuring soil carbon change over time could provide relevant feedback or guidance to land stewards who were interested in soil health, and 2) to see what soil carbon change, if it were significant and widespread, might imply for climate policy that was narrowly focused on more technical rather than biological solutions. Everywhere I traveled, water was the main issue for people, whether it was floods or drought. I measured soil carbon because it was central to the flow of sunlight energy through soils, critically influential for soil function, and easier to measure change than measuring soil water. At no point did I advocate for the commodification of soil carbon into credit or offset schemes.

The soil carbon change data that I got on resampling baseline plots was noisy and variable, especially in the top layers (0-10 cm depth). There were some pockets of consistent change, such as a group of graziers in southeast Saskatchewan showing substantial increases, even down to the 40 cm depth that I often sampled to. But the majority of change data that I collected did not offer solid support to the hypothesis that holistic planned grazing or no-till, for example, in a few years would increase soil carbon in every circumstance or locale, or that soil carbon would faithfully reflect changes in forage production, soil cover, or diversity.

Many of the people on whose ranches I sampled did not know what to do with the data or results, or simply interpreted the data as a judgment: a high or increasing level of soil carbon indicated good management, and low or decreasing was bad. Measured soil carbon change, especially at one or two points, was not meaningful, useful, or in some cases timely feedback, and may not have contributed much to their learning and decision making as I had hoped it might. For the most part the ranches I sampled on were widely scattered, and there was little interaction between them or mutual support, little opportunity for discussion or the development of a shared intelligence or a community of practice. The "competition" framing or context that I suggested in 2010 did not help. The effort tended toward an information pipeline rather than a platform that enabled people to take responsibility for their own learning. For a while I posted the data on this website, but that did little to foster discussion or interpretation, or encourage people to add learning to judgment.

Nor did the noisiness and variability of the data I collected offer solid support for soil carbon increase as a strategy for reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide and easing climate change--a strategy that was growing increasingly popular, with many people and organizations advocating for it, and which has resulted in new programs, policies, and markets to try and reward ranchers and farmers for increases (usually modeled rather than measured) in soil carbon.

So the Soil Carbon Challenge was at least a partial failure, in that it took aim at the problems and technical issues at the tip of the iceberg, and fostered judgment more than learning and new questions. I did take some lessons from this decade of travel, conversations, workshops, transects and soil sampling, sample processing and analysis, data entry, and associated reading and research into the history of the discovery of the carbon cycle, water cycle, and climate issues. Some of these lessons resonated with what I had learned, and then forgotten, in the trainings I took in holistic management and consensus building in the 1990s.

Like many attempts at "solutioneering" the problems of soil health and climate, the Soil Carbon Challenge focused on the tip or immediately visible portion of the "iceberg," and was not designed around the center of gravity: human or people issues, paradigms and power, relationships and trust.

What I learned (or saw from a new perspective, or rediscovered):

1. Energy is a context for all life

and energy flow, from sunlight, is a pattern that connects all knowledge and activity. However, energy is an abstraction: we can only know it, sense it, or measure it by its results, the work it does, the changes it creates. Our planet is an open system largely run by sunlight energy. As I wrote here, "We are riding an enormous, incredibly complex, fractal eddying flow of sunlight energy used in many ways by interrelated communities of self-motivated living organisms whose metabolisms, behaviors, and relationships are increasingly influenced by our own." And, as Selman Waksman, Aldo Leopold, and others realized, soil is a major hub for sunlight energy flow.

2. Learning networks

are a context for the emergence of a community of practice, of a shared intelligence. These are social groupings where people share what they are learning, and are able to witness or share in the learning of others, and so gain an enriched perspective, with dialogue. It helps if these are participatory, ongoing, local, and include evidence as well as new questions. Some degree if trust is needed in order for judgments to ripen into learning, and listening is a key ingredient. Over the past year or so I have developed soilhealth.app as a way of supporting learning networks around soil health and sunlight energy flow, and am seeking partnerships on that project.

It's not that measuring soil carbon is a bad or useless thing, but a good context or purpose is needed. We learn from differences. Here are 4 suggestions for learning, about different kinds of differences, all of which may surprise and spark your curiosity:

1. To learn more about flows of sunlight energy, get an infrared heat gun ($15 and up) that measures or estimates radiant heat, and begin playing with it, pointing it at various stages of sky, soil, plants, and other surfaces and objects.
2. Use infiltration rings to gauge how well water infiltrates into various soil surfaces. Remember that soil moisture held in soil pores represents a huge capture of free sunlight energy.
3. Record change over time in some kind of indicator, quantity, or measurement you are interested in or curious about. Precipitation or infiltration for example. For ranchers, animal days of grazing on a particular pasture for example, or pounds of gain. Repeatable observations need some kind of recording system.
4. Share your observations and learning with others in a learning network. As two eyes helps you see depth, so do multiple perspectives enrich and deepen your learning.

Over the past year, NASA has made valuable contributions to Biden-Harris Administration’s goals – leading on the global stage, addressing the urgent issue of climate change, creating high paying jobs, and inspiring future generations.

Practical Ways to Improve Your Sleep as an Esports Athlete Introduction In my last blog we discussed three reasons why sleep is important for your esports performance. If you haven’t read that yet I’d definitely recommend giving it a read at some point to help you understand why sleep is important. (Click here) In this […]

Companies are under mounting pressure from regulators, investors, and consumers to progress toward more sustainable and socially responsible business operations — and to demonstrate these measures in a robust and verifiable way. In fact, corporate responsibility and environmental sustainability risks tied as the third highest concerns for organizations, as ranked by large corporations in a […]

The post Harnessing the power of data and AI to operationalize sustainability appeared first on IBM Business Operations Blog.

Tips to Banks for Optimizing Security Level in their Mobile Banking Apps The popularity of mobile banking services is on top of in-branch banking systems. Nearly 75% of bank account holders are installing banking apps...