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Famed T. rex ‘Sue’ Will Get New Look at Chicago’s Field Museum

The world’s biggest T. rex is getting ready for a cutting-edge makeover.

The Field Museum in Chicago said Wednesday that it would take down and remount the 40½-foot-long (12.3-meter) Tyrannosaurus nicknamed Sue, perhaps the world’s most famous dinosaur fossil, in a way that embodies the latest understanding of this ferocious Cretaceous Period predator.

The big T. rex will move to a new exhibition space in the museum, while a cast of the skeleton of the largest-known dinosaur, Patagotitan mayorum, will take the spot Sue now occupies in the museum’s Stanley Field Hall.

Patagotitan, a long-necked, four-legged plant-eater that was 122 feet (37.2 meters) long and weighed 70 tons, lived in Argentina 100 million years ago, more than 30 million years before T. rex stalked western North America. The biggest land animal on record, it was a member of a dinosaur group called titanosaurs.

The museum next spring will unveil the fiberglass Patagotitan skeleton, which is being cast from fossils of seven Patagotitan individuals, and for two years will display some of the genuine fossils, including an 8-foot (2.4-meter) thighbone.

Named for the woman who discovered the fossils in South Dakota in 1990, Sue is the largest, most complete and best-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex ever unearthed. The museum bought the fossils at auction for $8.4 million.

Sue will be taken down in February and put up again with noteworthy changes in anatomy and stance in its new exhibition hall in spring 2019, museum scientists said.

“We are making several adjustments to the skeleton to reflect new and improved knowledge,” said paleontologist Pete Makovicky, the museum’s associate curator of dinosaurs.

The most striking change, Makovicky said, will be the addition of gastralia, bones resembling an additional set of ribs spanning the belly that may have provided structural support to help the dinosaur breathe. Adding these bones will illustrate just how massive Sue was and that it boasted a bulging belly, he added.

The scientists concluded that the bone mounted as Sue’s wishbone was misidentified in 2000, and they will replace it with the dinosaur’s actual wishbone, or furcula, the fused collarbones typical of meat-eating dinosaurs and their evolutionary descendants, the birds.

They also will adjust the ribs to produce a slimmer, less barrel-shaped chest and arrange the right leg so Sue is not crouching as much.

“Often when you do something as expensive as mounting a vertebrate fossil skeleton for display, you only get one shot at it. I’m happy we’re going to fix and update this incredible fossil,” said paleontologist Bill Simpson, who heads the museum’s geological collections.

Lifespan and bite force

Makovicky noted the accumulation of knowledge about T. rex and its cousins since 2000.

“We now know more about tyrannosaur lifespans — around 30 years; how they grew — very fast as teenagers; and using computer models of Sue, we revised their body mass upward to 9 or more tons, from 5 to 7 tons,” Makovicky said.

Ongoing research is examining the molecular composition of cartilage preserved in T. rex bones, and recent studies have shown it possessed the most powerful bite of any land animal ever, Makovicky added.

When the Patagotitan skeleton is mounted, visitors will be able to walk underneath it and touch it. Its head will reach the museum’s second-floor balcony nearly 30 feet (9 meters) up.

Another Patagotitan skeleton is displayed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

The museum said a $16.5 million gift from the Kenneth C. Griffin Charitable Fund, established by the founder and chief executive of hedge fund firm Citadel LLC, enabled it to carry out Sue’s makeover and add the Patagotitan. The changes coincide with the museum’s 125th anniversary in 2018.

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Silicon Valley & Technology
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Alexa, Cortana Talk to Each Other in Amazon-Microsoft Deal

Microsoft and Amazon are pairing their voice assistants together in a collaboration announced Wednesday.

Both companies say later this fall, users will be able to access Alexa using Cortana on Windows 10 computers and on Android and Apple devices. They’ll also be able to access Cortana on Alexa-enabled devices such as the Amazon Echo.

Microsoft says the tie-up will allow Alexa customers to get access to Cortana features such as for booking meetings or accessing work calendars. Cortana users, in turn, can ask Alexa to switch on smart home devices or shop on Amazon’s website.

The use of voice assistants is growing. Google and Amazon already have smart speakers on the market. Apple has HomePod coming with its Siri assistant, while Samsung plans one with Microsoft’s Cortana.

Amazon has little to lose from the partnership, and Microsoft’s Cortana — which has been largely limited to laptops — might get discovered by more users because of it, said Carolina Milanesi, a mobile technology analyst at Creative Strategies.

“Cortana might get a little bit more out of it because it gets Cortana out of the PC,” she said. “For Cortana to really get to be more important, it needs to be consistently used every day for different tasks.”

Milanesi said that for Amazon especially, which wants more people to consider Alexa as their first choice, the partnership also might be designed to send a message to customers and rivals.

“They both get something out of it, which is mainly showing Apple and Google that they’re willing to work together to get stronger,” Milanesi said.

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Arts & Entertainment
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US Hosts World Cup Qualifier in New York Area for 1st Time

The U.S. is playing a World Cup qualifier in the New York metropolitan area for the first time, a critical match against Costa Rica on Friday night at Red Bull Arena in Harrison, New Jersey.

The Americans have played plenty of matches in and near the Big Apple, mostly in the CONCACAF Gold Cup and exhibition games. Until now, the closest to New York a qualifier has been played was in 1989, a 2-1 win over Guatemala at Veterans Stadium in New Britain, Connecticut.

“This was a pipe dream, this stadium in Harrison,” said goalkeeper Tim Howard, who played for the New York/New Jersey MetroStars when the team was based at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford. “For it to be there and to actually be playing games, you know, there’s no crowd like playing in front of your home crowd for me.”

Howard spoke Tuesday during a news conference in Manhattan, joined by coach Bruce Arena, captain Michael Bradley and teenage star midfielder Christian Pulisic.

After the U.S. opened the final round of the North and Central American and Caribbean region with losses to Mexico and Costa Rica, the U.S. Soccer Federation brought back Arena to replace coach Jurgen Klinsmann. The U.S. has recovered and is in third place with eight points, trailing Mexico (14) and Costa Rica (11). Panama (seven), Honduras (five) and Trinidad and Tobago (three) follow.

The top three nations qualify, and the fourth-place team advances to a playoff against Asia’s No. 5 nation.

Perhaps no one understands the role fan support can play in an outcome more than Arena, a member of the U.S. National Soccer Hall of Fame. The U.S. had a 16-year home unbeaten streak in qualifying going into a match against Honduras at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 1, 2001. The majority of the sellout crowd of 54,282 backed Honduras, which won 3-2.

“Only in America, I guess, we’re fighting for a home-field advantage,” Arena, who was born in Brooklyn and raised in Long Island, said at the time.

Costa Rica played a Gold Cup match at Harrison in July, but Arena expects a different crowd.

“We’re playing at home and I don’t care what anyone says. We have a home-field advantage,” Arena said. “My experiences in the short time that I’ve been here back with the U.S. team is that we have great support and I really believe that we’ll have great support on Friday, and hopefully the fact that Costa Rica played here in the Gold Cup is not going be a factor.”

At a venue with a 25,000 capacity that was built for Major League Soccer, the USSF and Red Bulls can control ticket allocation with pre-sales to Red Bulls season-ticket holders and national team regulars.

“We understand the challenges of playing at home versus going on the road in CONCACAF and we’re willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that in five or six weeks’ time we’ve punched our ticket to Russia,” Bradley said. “It’s on us to make sure that we can finish the job and allow ourselves the chance to look forward to playing at a World Cup next summer.”

The U.S. plays Honduras at San Pedro Sula on Sept. 5, and then closes the hexagonal against Panama on Oct. 6 at Orlando, Florida, and at Trinidad four days later.

“All the work that we’ve put in this year was for these next four games, to make sure that we can find the right ways in the biggest moments when the lights come on brightest to make sure that we get the job done,” Bradley said.

Reality check

U.S. players also have their minds on teammates and their families affected by Hurricane Harvey.

“I’ve heard DaMarcus (Beasley) speak of it. I haven’t yet had the chance yet to talk with Clint (Dempsey),” Arena said. “Hopefully his family’s safe. I know they’re in east Texas. I know it’s a tough week for them. I know for DaMarcus in particular it’s been very challenging. For him personally, for his friends and family ties to the Houston area. It’s difficult but all we can do is hope that the conditions improve in the Houston area and that everyone is safe.”

Added Bradley: “Some of the images and videos that have come out of Texas have been heartbreaking, and for all of us now as human beings, as fellow Americans, to find the right ways to show support and help that part of the country as they find the right ways to move on from this. That’s very important and obviously in our own very little way playing and representing the country in a really strong and proud way on Friday night is a little part of that.”

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Science & Health
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Study: Cities and Companies Team Up to Tackle Urban Water Crises

With rising urban populations and ever scarcer water supplies, cities and companies are teaming up to invest billions of dollars in water management projects, a report said on Tuesday.

Around two thirds of cities from London to Los Angeles are working with the private sector to address water and climate change stresses with 80 cities seeking $9.5 billion of investment for water projects, according to a report by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a non-profit environmental research group.

Water investment opportunities are greatest in Latin America, with Quito in Ecuador seeking $800 million to manage its water supply, including building three hydropower stations and cleaning up its contaminated rivers and streams.

City in India prepares for future

The cities most concerned about their water supply lie in Asia and the Pacific, the report found, with serious risks also identified in Africa and Latin America.

The key issues for cities include declining water quality, water shortages and flooding.

The Indian city of Chennai faced extreme floods in 2015 which killed hundreds and left survivors without access to clean water, while businesses were also severely disrupted.

The city is now investing in boosting its resilience to future water crises, with water conservation education, building a storm water management system and new infrastructure.

“We are seeing critical shifts in leadership from cities and companies in response to the very real threat of flooding, for example, to local economies,” said Morgan Gillespy, head of CDP’s Water Program.

Climate change is another underlying threat to all cities with an increase in extreme weather events from droughts to floods, with cities in North America more concerned than those in Europe, the report found.

Tropical Storm Harvey, pounding the U.S. Gulf Coast, has killed at least eight people, led to mass evacuations and paralyzed Houston, the fourth most-populous U.S. city.

The storm is most likely linked to climate change, said the U.N. weather agency.

Companies are also concerned about the effects of climate change on water supplies, with $14 billion of water impacts such as loss of production reported by companies last year, the report found.

WATCH: Worrying About Water

UN predicts global water shortfall

The United Nations predicts a 40 percent shortfall in global water supply by 2030, while global demand is set to increase by 55 percent due to growing domestic use, manufacturing and electricity generation.

“From our work with cities around the world, water has consistently come up as a key resilience challenge,” said Claire Bonham-Carter, Principal and City Resilience Lead at AECOM, a global infrastructure firm and partner on the report.

“Many of them, regardless of size, from Mexico City, Mexico to Berkeley, California, are addressing both long-term water supply issues as well as chronic urban flooding.”

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Economy & business
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Peru Opposition Leader Investigated in Connection With Odebrecht

The Peruvian attorney general’s office has opened a criminal probe into opposition leader Keiko Fujimori for allegedly laundering money for scandal-plagued Brazilian builder Odebrecht, Fujimori’s attorney said on Tuesday.

The twice-defeated right-wing presidential candidate and eldest daughter of Peru’s imprisoned former leader Alberto Fujimori denied that she or her political party ever took money from Odebrecht.

“I’m certain the investigation will confirm that Odebrecht did not give us any money,” Fujimori said on Twitter. “I’ve always collaborated with all investigations and this will not be an exception.”

Fujimori’s lawyer, Edward Garcia, told Reuters the preliminary probe was opened in connection with notes that mention Fujimori by name that were taken by Odebrecht’s jailed former chief executive, Marcelo Odebrecht.

The attorney general’s office, which declined to comment, said on Monday it had received the contents of notes made on the cellphone of Odebrecht, but did not detail them.

Fujimori is already the subject of a money-laundering investigation related to 2016 campaign donations, but a probe in connection with Odebrecht might do more to hurt support for her and her Popular Force party, which controls a majority of seats in Congress.

Odebrecht is at the center of Latin America’s biggest corruption scandal and is reviled by many in Peru since admitting late last year to having bribed local officials over a decade-long period.

News website IDL Reporteros has published what it says are  notes taken by Odebrecht and confiscated by Brazilian authorities that include the phrase: “Raise Keiko to 500 and pay her a visit.”

Prosecutor German Juarez will lead the investigation into Fujimori, Garcia said.

Juarez recently persuaded local courts to jail former President Ollanta Humala for up to 18 months before trial while he is investigated for accusations of taking undeclared campaign donations from Odebrecht.

Humala narrowly defeated Fujimori during her first presidential bid in 2011. He is now sharing a prison with her father, who is serving a 25-year sentence for human rights violations and graft.

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Harvey’s Floods Scatter Cattle in Texas, Swamp Cotton Fields

South Texas ranchers are scrambling to relocate cattle from massive flooding spawned by Tropical Storm Harvey, with many hauling livestock up to the north of the state while others rush to move the animals to higher ground nearby.

About 1.2 million cattle are located in a 54-county disaster area drenched by Harvey, which made landfall as a hurricane last weekend. With more torrential rain in the forecast, ranchers are expressing worry that some animals could perish despite efforts to save them.

State is top producer of cattle, cotton   

Texas leads U.S. states in cattle and cotton production. An estimated $150 million worth of cotton has been lost as the storms ripped the bolls off plants and left white fiber strewn across fields.

Texas Gulf Coast export terminals that handle about a quarter of U.S. wheat exports also remained shuttered.

Of immediate concern to ranchers were cattle stranded by high water infested with venomous snakes, fire ants and alligators, said Hollis “Peanut” Gilfillian, a cattle rancher in Winnie, Texas, about 60 miles (96 km) east of hard-hit Houston.

“We’re in gator country … period,” said Gilfillian, adding that nearly every pond on the ranches in his area contain alligators.

“It’s not unusual to see an alligator in my backyard or road ditch,” he said, but added, “There’s plenty other animals that they (alligators) would much rather eat, such as fish, as opposed to trying to go after cattle.”

Ranchers had tried to prepare for the storm last week by moving cattle to the nearest hills or trucking them to safety in the north of the state, cattle industry groups said.

Chuck Kiker, who raises cattle on his farm near Beaumont, about 60 miles (96 km) northeast of Houston, opted to leave his animals in place but was caught off guard by the storm’s severity.

“You can’t move animals at this point, so you’re kind of stuck because of high water everywhere. There’s really no place to move them,” he said.

Disaster area declared

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has declared 54 counties a disaster area. About 27 percent of the state’s 4.46 million-head beef cow herd is in those 54 counties, according to Texas A&M University livestock economist David Anderson.

“Given that it’s August, I’m not sure that we would’ve seen a lot of the calves already sold. So you’ve a lot of young calves out there too that are in that disaster area,” Anderson said.

Grain terminals closed

Longer-term concerns for the cattle include foot rot from standing in water or muddy fields for long periods and the risk of disease from mosquitoes.

Heavy rains and flooding closed bulk grain terminals along the Texas Gulf Coast owned by major exporters including Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill, although the companies say the facilities were not severely damaged.

BNSF Railway and Union Pacific suspended service to the flood-ravaged region, depriving exporters of a fresh supply of grain. The U.S. Coast Guard closed Texas Gulf ports including Houston, Galveston and Corpus Christi.

“With additional flooding likely during the next few days, normal train flows in the area may not resume for an extended period,” BNSF said in a customer service advisory.

Cotton blown away

On cotton farms, more than 300,000 bales have likely been lost, between cotton yet to be harvested and bales sitting on fields awaiting ginning, according to John Robinson, an agricultural economist at Texas A&M University.

The loss, though a small part of the total U.S. cotton crop of about 20 million bales a year, was devastating for individual farmers.

“The cotton that was where the hurricane hit was affected by the winds, it was blown right off the plant. Some of those fields are obliterated,” Robinson said.

“Some of the cotton will still be on the plant but strung out like someone papered your field with toilet paper,” he said.

Record crop lost

South Texas and Coastal Bend cotton farmers were expecting a record crop this year. Thirteen of the counties in the disaster area are major cotton producers.

“The South Texas Cotton and Grain Association has preliminary crop losses projected at $150 million. That’s just devastating to all of farmers down there,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a statement.

Monday’s Intercontinental Commodity Exchange benchmark cotton price spiked 2.5 percent as a portion of the unharvested crop in Texas was destroyed or damaged by rain and high winds, traders said.

“The cooperative’s growers still have a lot of cotton in the field, maybe like 50 percent still out there. A lot of that will be lost because of the wind and rain,” said Jimmy Roppolo, general manager of United Agricultural Cooperative Inc in El Campo, Texas.

“It was the best cotton crop we ever raised. We really needed it this year to make up for other years,” Roppolo said.

 

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World’s Biggest Drone Drug Deliveries Take Off in Tanzania

Tanzania is set to launch the world’s largest drone delivery network in January, with drones parachuting blood and medicines out of the skies to save lives.

California’s Zipline will make 2,000 deliveries a day to more than 1,000 health facilities across the east African country, including blood, vaccines and malaria and AIDS drugs, following the success of a smaller project in nearby Rwanda.

“It’s the right move,” Lilian Mvule, 51, said by phone, recalling how her granddaughter died from malaria two years ago.

“She needed urgent blood transfusion from a group O, which was not available,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Malaria is a major killer in Tanzania, and children under age 5 often need blood transfusions when they develop malaria-induced anemia. If supplies are out of stock, as is often the case with rare blood types, they can die.

Tanzania is larger than Nigeria and four times the size of the United Kingdom, making it hard for the cash-strapped government to ensure all of its 5,000-plus clinics are fully stocked, particularly in remote rural areas.

The drones fly at 100 kph (62 mph), much faster than traveling by road. Small packages are dropped from the sky using a biodegradable parachute.

The government also hopes to save the lives of thousands of women who die from profuse bleeding after giving birth.

Tanzania has one of the world’s worst maternal mortality rates, with 556 deaths per 100,000 deliveries, government data show.

“It’s a problem we can help solve with on-demand drone delivery,” Zipline’s chief executive, Keller Rinaudo, said in a statement. “African nations are showing the world how it’s done.”

Companies in the United States and elsewhere are keen to use drones to cut delivery times and costs, but there are hurdles ranging from the risk of collisions with airplanes to ensuring battery safety and longevity.

The drones will cut the drug delivery bill for Tanzania’s capital, Dodoma, one of two regions where the project will first roll out, by $58,000 a year, according to Britain’s Department for International Development, one of the project’s backers.

The initiative could also ease tensions between frustrated patients and health workers.

“We always accuse nurses of stealing drugs,” said Angela Kitebi, who lives 40 kilometers east of Dodoma. “We don’t realize that the drugs are not getting here on time due to bad roads.”

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