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Best forex investments: will interest hikes lift USD in 2022?
Interest rate hikes to curb inflation are widely anticipated in 2022. It could have a major impact on the foreign exchange market.
The US Federal Reserve (Fed) said on 15 December that it will "reduce the monthly pace of its net asset purchases by $20bn for Treasury securities and $10bn for agency mortgage-backed securities". The increase in tapering signalled sharper interest rate hikes in the next two years.
"The Committee also signalled a significantly steeper path of rate hikes in the coming two years than appeared in the September projections, with three rate hikes each in 2022 and 2023, and a further two hikes in 2024," said Dutch bank ABN AMRO on 17 December.
The Fed is aiming to keep the inflation rate at 2% over the longer term. It's currently at 6.8% – the highest since 1982.
With much of the world experiencing an accelerating rate of inflation this year, curbing it by raising interest rates has become a key focus for many central banks.
Interest rates and inflation are two key drivers in currency exchange rates. Low interest rates can weigh on the value of a country's currency. Currency depreciates in an inflationary environment. As a result, interest rates and inflation could remain trending topics in the forex market over the next two years.
Ahead of 2022, let's look at the most traded forex pairs in 2021 and explore what could potentially be the best foreign currency to invest in.
Most traded forex pair
Currencies are traded against each other as exchange rate pairs – a trader will need to buy or sell one currency against another.
According to the 2019 triennial survey by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the most traded forex pair by volume is the euro and US dollar.
The US dollar is the world's reserve currency. Up to 90% of all forex transactions were made in US dollars, BIS data showed.
According to the BIS survey, the EUR/USD is the most traded currency pair in the global market, accounting for 24% of daily over-the-counter foreign exchange turnover volume in 2019.
"The popularity of the EUR/USD pair comes from the fact that it is representative of the world's two biggest economies: the European single market and the US," wrote online broker IG.
With the Fed set to hike interest rates next year, the USD is widely expected to appreciate in 2022. The US dollar index hit a 17-month high at 96.88 on 24 November. Although the index has since fallen to 96.36 at the time of writing (22 December), it remained around its one-year high – up 7.5% from the beginning of the year.
The USD has been one of the best performing currencies in 2021.
Meanwhile, the European Central Bank (ECB) has adopted a more dovish stance. The market is not expecting an interest rate hike in the next 12 to 18 months, said Dutch bank ABN AMRO.
The ECB's Governing Council expects "key ECB interest rates to remain at their present or lower levels until it sees inflation reaching 2% well ahead of the end of its projection horizon and durably for the rest of the projection horizon," reported ABN AMRO.
The ECB forecast the inflation rate to rise to 3.2% in 2022, up from 1.9% in September this year. The rate is expected to decline to 1.8% in 2023, remaining at that level until the end of 2024.
As a result of the divergence in policy between the ECB and the Fed, the euro is expected to come under pressure in 2022.
"Aside from temporary US-dollar strength, another reason for the euro's recent weakness is the ECB's differing approach to monetary policy compared with central banks in the US and Canada. While the Fed has started a discussion on reducing bond purchases, the ECB is likely to continue with asset purchases for the foreseeable future," said RBC Global Asset Management in its October report.
Consequently, RBC said in its October report that it has cut its EUR/USD forecast to $1.27 for the next 12 months, compared to the previous projection of $1.30.
The euro index has been falling this year. On 21 December, down 7.8% compared to 122.25 at the beginning of the year.
Given the diverging performance of the US dollar and euro, this could be one of the most profitable forex pairs in 2021.
According to forex trading tools and data provider FXSSI, the Japanese yen could be one of the safest currencies to invest in.
"The country's inflation rates have been low for extended periods of time. This currency is not pegged to the US dollar or the euro and therefore retains its purchasing power even in times of a crisis," said FXSSI.
The currency pair is known for its high liquidity – the yen is the most heavily traded currency in Asia.
Following the UK's withdrawal from the EU, uncertainty over the country's future trading relation with the bloc has weighed on the British pound (GBP).
"The British pound has not been among our favourite currencies over the past few years due to Brexit uncertainty, a sizable current-account deficit and a lack of competitiveness relative to its largest trading partners," said RBC.
With political tension over the post-Brexit trading arrangement, Northern Ireland and a potential referendum on Scottish independence, RBC believes "the macroeconomic landscape continues to suggest that the pound will underperform versus the euro, the yen and cyclical currencies".
RBC expects the pound will appreciate against the US dollar to $1.40 in 2022, up from the existing rate of $1.33 (22 December).
Highest volatility forex pairs – USD/TRY
US/TRY is the most volatile forex pair. To boost exports, investment and create jobs, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has implemented a series of interest rate cuts in recent months amid double-digit inflation. This has caused the lira exchange rate against the dollar to plummet.
The USD/TRY started the year at 7.44 and hit 16.66 on 19 December.
Earlier this week, the Turkish government offered compensation for exchange rate losses for savers if they hold their money in lira, instead of converting the money into the US dollar or gold.
Following the announcement of this new saving scheme, the lira rebounded. It's gained nearly 23% over the last two days, making it the most volatile currency this year. The USD/TRY exchange rate was at 12.52 on 22 December.
Keep in mind that price performance is no guarantee of future returns. And never invest more money than you can afford to lose
Read more: USD/TRY forecast: will the lira's rollercoaster ride continue?
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The difference between trading assets and CFDs
The main difference between CFD trading and trading assets, such as commodities and stocks, is that you don't own the underlying asset when you trade on a CFD.
You can still benefit if the market moves in your favour, or make a loss if it moves against you. However, with traditional trading you enter a contract to exchange the legal ownership of the individual shares or the commodities for money, and you own this until you sell it again.
CFDs are leveraged products, which means that you only need to deposit a percentage of the full value of the CFD trade in order to open a position. But with traditional trading, you buy the assets for the full amount. In the UK, there is no stamp duty on CFD trading, but there is when you buy stocks, for example.
CFDs attract overnight costs to hold the trades (unless you use 1-1 leverage), which makes them more suited to short-term trading opportunities. Stocks and commodities are more normally bought and held for longer. You might also pay a broker commission or fees when buying and selling assets direct and you'd need somewhere to store them safely.
Capital Com is an execution-only service provider. The material provided on this website is for information purposes only and should not be understood as an investment advice. Any opinion that may be provided on this page does not constitute a recommendation by Capital Com or its agents. We do not make any representations or warranty on the accuracy or completeness of the information that is provided on this page. If you rely on the information on this page then you do so entirely on your own risk.
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I was plenty stunned the other week, listening to one of the last Democratic presidential debates. Peter Jennings, who I met when he filmed one of our Jesus Seminar meetings a few years ago, had just asked John Edwards what he knew about Islam. He was, needless to say, badly putting him on the spot, like that time some other reporter got George W. Bush sputtering when he didn't know off hand the name of the president of Slobbovia. But this wasn't just a cheap shot. Given the current state of things in the world, wouldn't you kind of expect that someone who feels qualified to lead this country might take the trouble to know something about the major ideology that promotes warfare and terrorism against us? Those guys who kamikazied the World Trade Center towers weren't Communists, you know!
Edwards's answer? A mass of verbiage that, if you ran it through my new invention, the Gist-o-Meter, comes out sounding like a lot of Porky Pig stammering. He admitted that he didn't know a darned thing. Or a blessed thing. I'd have been encouraged at either. How could he not know anything? In my World Religion courses, I fill my students in on the traditional account of Islamic origins, and then I take a swing at new scholarly theories which give a radically different version of the story. But Edwards hadn't got around to the first one yet, the one that's been readily available for over a thousand years. And I'm not picking on Edwards in particular. I am quite sure none of his competitors knew any better. That's what is so frightening.
I wouldn't blame a guy for not knowing the difference between Hinduism and Buddhism, though to me that is a living issue that dwarfs the minor nuances separating Democrats from Republicans. Can't look down your nose at somebody for not knowing that Jainism or Zoroastrianism even exist, though they are important religions. But then again it is not militant Hindus, Buddhists, Jains or Zoroastrians who are our sworn, bomb-throwing enemies, are they?
But the Muslims who do hate us and try to eradicate our civilization hate us because of a type of Islam, "Jihadism," that they and about 10 % of world Muslims embrace. We have very, very many good, patriotic Muslims of all colors in America who must never be blamed for what their crazy Jihadist black sheep cousins do. But to avoid confusing them, it would help if our leaders—and we ourselves—understood about their religion.
Another irony: I cringe every time Louis Farrakhan makes some sort of crazy statement because I know most hearers will blame Islam for what he says. Now Farrakhan happens to be a "Muslim" only in a very loose manner of speaking. His religion, coined in the 1920s by one Minister Farad, an avowed incarnation of Allah, and then carried on by the Reverend Elijah Muhammad has almost nothing at all to do with historic Islam. And this is why Malcolm X abandoned it after a visit to Mecca showed him what traditional Islam was all about: namely peace and brotherhood between all races. And that, in turn, is why Farrakhan had Malcolm X killed, as he pretty much admitted a few years ago!
More irony: the other day I heard some pundit eager to find some reason to object to Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ saying that it might inflame anti-Semitic hatred. Oh, granted Jews and Christians get along too well in America for that to happen (which, thank God, is true!), but what about Muslims who might see the film and be reminded of the supposed guilt of Jews for Jesus' death? Well, kimosabe, as it happens, it would be hard to find such Muslims—since Muslims don't believe anybody crucified Jesus, neither the Jews nor the Romans! In the Muslim version Jesus doesn't even get crucified! God rescues him beforehand!
Too bad this isn't common knowledge. But given the signs of the times, it would be a good thing for all of us to learn what we can about Islam, the third sister with Judaism and Christianity. You don't have to a presidential candidate for your ignorance to be dangerous.


Running Man has become one of my favorite Korean variety shows!! kk And people would say, who wants to watch celebrities running?? I would! It's fun to watch trust me!
So what got me excited is the episode with Super Junior's Heechul as a guest!
Though the episode was aired last Sunday (12/05) I can't wait for iSubs to sub it! kk!!


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Fox Orders Pilot For 24 Spinoff
© FOX
Trending News: We're Getting A New 24 Show - Without Jack Bauer
Ian Lang
Because 24 was too good of a show to let it just fade away.
Fox has ordered a pilot for a 24 reboot/spinoff titled 24: Legacy. The kicker? Not a single cast member from the original series will be featured in the show.
Fox's 24 was a beloved show, and a product of a different time (or at least, what should be a different time). The U.S. had just suffered from the most devastating attack to ever occur on American soil, and terrorism paranoia was running high. But Americans at least had the comfort of tuning in every week to watch CTU agent Jack Bauer drunkenly torture-fight terrorists in the nick of time. The show's real-time format was also unique, leading to questions like "when does Jack Bauer poop?" Fox just announced that it's yet again reviving the series, but sadly we'll never learn the truth about Jack Bauer's bathroom habits — the new series will feature an entirely new cast.
The series is called 24: Legacy, and much will be the same. Original producers Howard Gordon, Manny Coto and Evan Katz will return as executive producers, and each episode will still represent a real-time hour in a day. Everything else, though, will be different. The plot centers around a war hero who's had trouble follow him home from overseas, and he'll need CTU's help if he wants to stay alive. Fox is reportedly searching for an African American actor to take the lead role over from Kiefer Sutherland.
It's probably for the best, anyway. No one wants to watch an ageing (and even drunker) Jack Bauer scowl his way around the country. Fans of the original should still love the format, and new viewers get a chance to see a 24 that reflects current events and attitudes. Even money says that we'll see a President Donald Trump analog at some point.
Own The Conversation
Ask The Big Question: Is the format what made the show so good, or was it the actors?
Disrupt Your Feed: A cameo featuring Kiefer Sutherland sitting on a toilet would be the best thing ever.
Drop This Fact: The cast of the original 24 had to have their hair trimmed every 5 days so it could look like the whole season took place in a single day.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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The Evolution of H.E.R.
H.E.R. is a Grammy Award-winning American singer and songwriter who's been in the business since she was 14 years old. Her catalog consists mostly of contemporary R&B ballads and her songs have been described as "downcast post-breakup material that sounded vulnerable and assured at once." On this episode of The Carlos Watson Show, she talks evolution, success and other random bits of goodness you won't find anywhere else. Excerpts are below, or listen to the full interview on the show's podcast feed.
Carlos Watson: So how did you get into music? Were you one of those kids, Michael Jackson style, who was singing at 3, 4, or 5?
H.E.R.: Yeah, I definitely was one of those kids. I used to perform a lot when I was young. Music was just a given for me. My dad, he had a cover band in the Bay Area and they used to rehearse in our living room. I was there and soaked it all in and went to the mic during the breaks and was sitting on his lap when he was playing piano. He showed me how to play the blues on guitar. And when he played "Musicology" by Prince, I wanted to get up on the drums and I learned that very young.
Watson: And when did you realize you were good?
H.E.R.: I got signed to MBK RCA when I was 14 years old. So it was like, "Oh, well, maybe I could really do this." But I was just a regular kid.
Watson: So how did you end up with H.E.R.? What made you move your name to that?
H.E.R.: I actually wrote a song called "Her" when I was in high school, but, basically I wanted my project to be called H.E.R. and I wanted to just have a silhouette as the cover for people to not know my name and not know anything about me. I really wanted the music to shine. I felt like with social media, it just felt like we were getting caught up in focusing on the wrong things and I think we started listening with our eyes instead of our ears.
H.E.R.: So me and my team, we got together and it was like, "Oh, you know what? I should just be H.E.R. I'm going to just be her. I think the music is the message. I thought it should be an acronym for "having everything revealed" just because I have everything revealed in the music without really knowing anything about me at all.
What Made Her H.E.R.
Watson: And what do you just listen to? When you're just sitting back and enjoying.
H.E.R.: Oh, everything, everything. It can go from the Migos to Donny Hathaway, to Led Zeppelin, to Coldplay, to Rihanna, to Alicia Keys. There's really no boundaries. I love jazz. I love African music. I love all kinds of things. My playlists are a melting pot.
Watson: And what about performers?
H.E.R.: Prince is probably one of my biggest influences, as far as a performer. To me, he's the greatest.
Watson: Any of your contemporaries impress you, or do you learn stuff from?
H.E.R.: Bruno Mars. Silk Sonic. I think Anderson .Paak is probably number one, as far as live performers. He's incredible.
Watson: Now, were you an introvert growing up or were extrovert?
H.E.R.: I think I've kind of been an introverted extrovert. I've always been really different. I've never really been shy, but I always kind of was low-key and just the person who doesn't need the most attention in the room, but you know, you feel my presence.
Watson: When did people start in school knowing that you were starting to break? Because I assume at that point people started treating you maybe a little bit differently?
H.E.R.: When I dropped Volume One, it was after I graduated high school. So it was 2016. I graduated high school in 2015. But you know, people always knew that I was a musician. They always knew I was going to do big things. They always believed in me.
Watson: were you doing talent shows or anything like that?
H.E.R.: I was actually like the musical director for my middle school talent show, and I was like playing piano behind everybody. And I just saw a Tweet recently. Somebody was like, "I'll never forget when H.E.R. played piano for me and sang backgrounds for me at the talent show in middle school".
Watson: Did RCA believe in you from the beginning? Have they been with you all the way through?
H.E.R.: Absolutely. Everybody around me, they're all my day-ones. They're like my family.
Watson: Hey, what did you think of last year and everything that happened in terms of Black Lives Matter? Did you come out of that feeling like real change is going to happen?
H.E.R.: I felt hopeful. I already knew we had a lot of work to do. I think last year opened the conversation and made it even more uncomfortable. And we dug a little bit deeper because we had no choice and people felt guilty that they weren't part of the conversation, which I think is an important part of change is that accountability.
I know I'm doing my part and I know I'm holding people around me accountable to do their part, but at the end of the day, we have to look inward. They say the revolution will not be televised. People really think that was literal, it's on TV. But I think what he was really saying was the revolution will not be televised because it starts in the mind and I think that's what we all need to think.
'Judas and the Black Messiah'
Watson: How did you get involved in the movie? I was so happy for you when I saw that you won. And so, congratulations on that.
H.E.R.: Judas and the Black Messiah, Archie was working on the soundtrack, was working with Shaka King and everybody at the movie. And they called me and said, "We really want you to make the theme song for this movie." And I was like, "Oh, I would love to." I didn't know much about Fred Hampton. I knew the name, I knew of course of the Panthers being from the Bay Area. But I didn't really, really know. So then I watched the movie, I learned so much. I was like, "Oh my gosh, the fact that I didn't know this," and the fact that it's not even taught in schools was just so sad to me. So I was really excited to be part of it. I felt like it was such an important film and when they called me, I literally said, "I feel like I can make a masterpiece."
I went in the studio, watched the movie and created the song and just thought about all the themes of it. I was listening to Marvin Gaye. I was listening to Curtis Mayfield, all my favorites and Sly Stone or "There's A Riot Goin' On" and all those songs and really got into the vibe and melody, and just thought about how what was happening then is so similar to what's happening today and yeah, "Fight For You" is just the theme. I felt like continuing to fight for those that came before us.
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Pieris Pharmaceuticals Reports 2018 Year-End Cash Position and Provides Corporate Update
Download as PDF March 12, 2019 7:00am EDT
10-K Filing
ZIP XLS HTML
Conference Call Replay
Company to Host an Investor Conference Call on Tuesday, March 12, 2019 at 8:00 am EDT
BOSTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / March 12, 2019 / Pieris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: PIRS), a clinical-stage biotechnology company advancing novel biotherapeutics through its proprietary Anticalin® technology platform for respiratory diseases, cancer and other indications, today reported its cash position for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2018 and provided an update on the Company's recent and future developments.
''2018 was an important year for the development of our two core franchises: respiratory diseases and immuno-oncology. On the respiratory front, we announced that PRS-060, an inhaled IL-4 receptor alpha antagonist for moderate-to-severe asthma that we are developing with AstraZeneca and our first respiratory program to enter the clinic, was safe and well-tolerated in healthy volunteers in a single ascending dose phase 1 study. We also initiated a multiple ascending dose phase 1 study of PRS-060 in mild asthmatics, in addition to launching discovery efforts for two proprietary respiratory programs and two additional respiratory programs as part of the AstraZeneca collaboration. On the immuno-oncology front, we continue to enroll and dose patients in the phase 1 dose-escalation study of PRS-343, a 4-1BB/HER2 bispecific for HER2-positive solid tumors, and the phase 1 combination study of PRS-343 with atezolizumab. We also advanced PRS-344, a PD-L1/4-1BB bispecific drug candidate we are developing with Servier, into IND-enabling studies and plan to file an IND application for that program later this year,'' said Stephen S. Yoder, President and CEO of Pieris. ''We believe that the tireless effort of our team and partners across our clinical and preclinical pipeline last year has created an opportunity for many catalysts this year.''
PRS-060: Pieris continues to enroll subjects with mild asthma and elevated levels of fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) in a multiple ascending dose phase 1 study of PRS-060, an inhaled IL-4 receptor alpha antagonist for moderate-to-severe asthma. This study is evaluating the safety, tolerability and FeNO-reducing potential of PRS-060 versus placebo. The data from the PRS-060 phase 1 studies will be presented at upcoming medical meetings, including detailed data from the PRS-060 phase 1 single-ascending dose study, for which the Company reported topline data last year. PRS-060 is the lead candidate in Pieris' respiratory collaboration with AstraZeneca. Pieris is sponsoring the phase 1 studies and AstraZeneca is funding the costs. Assuming successful completion of the ongoing phase 1 study, AstraZeneca would sponsor and fund the phase 2a study, after which Pieris will have options to co-develop and, subsequently, to co-commercialize the drug candidate.
Respiratory Pipeline: Pieris initiated an additional discovery-stage program in its alliance with AstraZeneca in the fourth quarter, bringing the total number of active programs to three; AstraZeneca may initiate up to two additional programs within the alliance. The Company also continues to advance the two proprietary discovery-stage respiratory programs initiated last year and intends to initiate additional proprietary respiratory programs in 2019.
PRS-343: Pieris continues to enroll and treat patients in a phase 1 dose-escalation study of PRS-343, a 4-1BB/HER2 bispecific for HER2-positive solid tumors, and intends to report comprehensive data from the study later this year. The Company also continues to enroll the dose-escalation phase 1 study of PRS-343 in combination with atezolizumab and intends to report data from this trial later this year.
PRS-344: Pieris has exercised its opt-in right to co-develop and retain U.S. rights for PRS-344, a PD-L1/4-1BB antibody-Anticalin bispecific molecule, and achieved two preclinical milestones as part of the development of the drug candidate, receiving milestone payments totaling €2.0 million from Servier. In collaboration with Servier, Pieris plans to file an IND application for the candidate this year. PRS-344 is one of five bispecific programs that Pieris is developing as part of its immuno-oncology alliance with Servier and is the first program within the alliance scheduled to enter clinical development.
Seattle Genetics Collaboration: Pieris has generated and characterized the first tumor-targeting bispecific for further evaluation and development by Seattle Genetics as part of the companies' three-program immuno-oncology collaboration.
PRS-080: Pieris has completed dosing all patients in the phase 2a multiple ascending dose study of PRS-080, a half-life-optimized hepcidin antagonist for anemia. This study is intended to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and pharmacological activity of 5 once-weekly doses of PRS-080 as well as the effect of repeated dosing on hemoglobin levels in this patient population. Pieris intends to present the full data set from this study in the first half of 2019. In addition, following delivery of a final study report, ASKA will decide whether to exercise its option to develop and commercialize PRS-080 in Japan and other Asian territories.
Cash Position: Cash, cash equivalents and investments totaled $128.1 million as of December 31, 2018, compared to a cash, cash equivalents and investments balance of $82.6 million as of December 31, 2017. The increase was driven primarily by the $47.2 million in net proceeds from the Company's February 2018 equity financing, the $30.0 million in upfront payments received as part of the Seattle Genetics immuno-oncology collaboration, and the $12.5 million milestone payment from AstraZeneca that was triggered during the fourth quarter of 2017 and received during the first quarter of 2018.
Additional Financials: Our 2018 full-year audited financials will be released with our Annual Report on Form 10-K, expected to be filed by Monday, March 18, 2019.
Pieris management will host a conference call beginning at 8:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time on Tuesday, March 12, 2019, to provide a corporate update. Individuals can join the call by dialing +1-877-407-8920 (US & Canada) or +1-412-902-1010 (International). An archived replay of the call will be available by dialing +1-877-660-6853 (US & Canada) or +1-201-612-7415 (International) and providing the Conference ID #: 13661472.
About Pieris Pharmaceuticals:
Pieris is a clinical-stage biotechnology company that discovers and develops Anticalin protein-based drugs to target validated disease pathways in a unique and transformative way. Our pipeline includes inhalable Anticalin proteins to treat respiratory diseases, immuno-oncology multi-specifics tailored for the tumor microenvironment, and a half-life-optimized Anticalin protein to treat anemia. Proprietary to Pieris, Anticalin proteins are a novel class of therapeutics validated in the clinic and by partnerships with leading pharmaceutical companies. Anticalin® is a registered trademark of Pieris. For more information, visit www.pieris.com.
Forward Looking Statement:
This press release contains forward-looking statements as that term is defined in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Statements in this press release that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements include, among other things, the expected timing of the filing of our Annual Report on Form 10-K including our audited financials, references to novel technologies and methods and our business and product development plans, including the advancement of our proprietary and co-development programs into and through the clinic and the expected timing for reporting data or making IND filings related to our programs, and partnering prospects for any such programs. Actual results could differ from those projected in any forward-looking statements due to numerous factors. Such factors include, among others, our ability to raise the additional funding we will need to continue to pursue our business and product development plans; the inherent uncertainties associated with developing new products or technologies and operating as a development stage company; our ability to develop, complete clinical trials for, obtain approvals for and commercialize any of our product candidates, including our ability to recruit and enroll patients in our studies; our ability to address the requests of the FDA; competition in the industry in which we operate and market conditions. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release, and we assume no obligation to update the forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected in the forward-looking statements, except as required by law. Investors should consult all of the information set forth herein and should also refer to the risk factor disclosure set forth in the reports and other documents we file with the SEC available at www.sec.gov, including without limitation the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2017 and the Company's Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q.
Dr. Allan Reine
SVP & Chief Financial Officer
reine@pieris.com
Maria Kelman
Director of Investor Relations
kelman@pieris.com
SOURCE: Pieris Pharmaceuticals, Inc.


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The Ocean Race 2022-23: What is the route? Which teams are involved? What are the boats? How to watch, stream
The Ocean Race 2022-23, formerly known as the Volvo Ocean Race, will start in January. Here's all you need to know about the iconic race, including the route, how to watch, and how to follow the action…
What is the Ocean Race?
The Ocean Race is a yacht race which takes place around the world and was first held in 1973.
Since 1988, it has been run every three years.
The 2022-23 race will see sailors compete in either the IMOCA 60 class or the VO65 class boat. Both classes are capable of high speeds, and in the right conditions, can cover 600 nautical miles or more in 24 hours.
There are currently five teams signed up for the IMOCA 60 class and six for the VO65 class.
The Ocean Race is one of the sport's Big Three events, alongside the Olympic Games and America's Cup.
The winner is the team that finishes in the shortest time. The last edition of the race was the closest in history, with Charles Caudrelier's Dongfeng Race Team winning by only 16 minutes after 126 days of racing spread across 11 legs.
What's the route for the Ocean Race?
The Ocean Race 2022-23 will visit nine cities over a six-month period, starting from Alicante, Spain, on January 15, 2023.
The race will finish in Genova, Italy.
Ocean Race route:
Leg 1: Alicante, Spain to Cabo Verde, leg start on January 15, 1,900 nautical miles
Leg 2: Cabo Verde to Cape Town, South Africa leg start on January 23, 4,600 nautical miles
Leg 3: Cape Town to Itajai, Brazil, leg start on February 26, 12,750 nautical miles
Leg 4: Itajai to Newport, Rhode Island, leg start on April 23, 5,500 nautical miles
Leg 5: Newport to Aarhus, Denmark, leg start on May 21, 3,500 nautical miles
Leg 6: Aarhus to The Hague, Netherlands, leg start on June 8, 800 nautical miles
Leg 7: The Hague to Genova, Italy, leg start on June 15, 2,200 nautical miles
How to watch and stream the Ocean Race
You will be able to watch live coverage from every leg of the Ocean Race 2022-23 with Eurosport and discovery+
Viewers can enjoy streaming coverage of every leg live and on-demand on discovery+ and via the Eurosport app.
How to follow the Ocean Race tracker
You can track the progress of the yachts via the Ocean Race website.
What are the teams competing in the Ocean Race?
The teams competing in the IMOCA 60 class are:
11th Hour Racing Team
GUYOT environnement – Team Europe
Team Malizia
Biotherm Racing
Holcim – PRB
The teams competing in the VO65 class are:
Ocean Racing GMBH
Team Poland
Team Jajo
Team Baltic
Mirpuri Foundation Racing Team
Team Mexico
What are the boats at the Ocean Race 2022-23?
The IMOCA 60 allows more customisation than the VO65, which are identical in every way, so extremely evenly matched.
With the IMOCA 60, designers can experiment with hull and sail shapes within set parameters. However, masts, booms and standing rigging are one design.
The IMOCA is raced by mixed-sex crews of four or five sailors, while the VO65 is raced by mixed-sex crews of at least seven sailors.
'Live, engaging, immersive, and entertaining'
Scott Young, senior vice president, Content and Production, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports Europe: "The story of The Ocean Race will be live, engaging, immersive, and entertaining.
"We see a great opportunity in our partnership around production to elevate its recognised world-class live coverage alongside new formats that unearth the stories, people and relationships that are at the heart of this epic race.
"By striving for greater storytelling around the event, we can help audiences better understand the race and everything that goes into competing in the greatest round-the-world sailing challenge."
Patrick Reed '100% confident' amid fresh controversy after ball gets stuck in tree
Makayla Timpson records double-double as FSU dominates Duke


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Review: Two weeks with a 16-in. MacBook Pro
Thunderbolt MacBook Pro: The last notebook you'll ever need
MacBook Pros (Early 2011)
MacBook Pro with Retina Display redefines 'pro' laptop
Apple Holic
By Jonny Evans, Computerworld |
Appleholic, (noun), æp·əl-hɑl·ɪk: An imaginative person who thinks about what Apple is doing, why and where it is going. Delivering popular Apple-related news, advice and entertainment since 1999.
About that MacBook Pro Core i9 throttling story (updated)
Is that software optimized yet? It wasn't, but Apple just fixed it with a patch.
Dan Masaoka/IDG
You won't have missed the hysterical reporting around recent claims that Apple is throttling its all new high-end MacBook Pro, but it seems possible these alarms are blaring a little too loudly -- and Apple just fixed the problem with a software patch.
I saw it on YouTube...
The claims are that Apple's new high-end i9 MacBook Pro has been designed in such a way as to throttle processor speeds to be slower than the i7 in order to reduce the heat created when in use.
The claims start with a video report from YouTuber, Dave Lee. He claims Apple throttles performance of the highest-end MacBook Pro chip to prevent the system over-heating.
[ Get certified as an Apple Technical Coordinator with this seven-part online course from PluralSight. ]
To support these claims, he shared tests he said showed that a Core i9 MacBook Pro 2018 actually took longer to render a video file in Adobe Premiere Pro than a Core i7-equipped 2017 MacBook Pro.
He argues that Apple needs to increase fan speed to cool Macs faster, and improve the thermal design of its MacBook Pros. Others may counter his criticism with the suggestion that Adobe may need to improve the way it handles multicore processors.
Apple's response
Update 7/25/2018: Apple has issued a software patch and a statement in which it says it identified a system bug that could cause such throttling in certain circumstances. Apologising, the company stressed that Mac performance should now match those claimed on its site.
What about the tests?
While Lee has gained attention with his claims, it seems possible they may be overblown. Not only does it seem possible Adobe has yet to upgrade Premiere to get best results from Apple's new Macs, but even the Cinebench test Lee used to clock the speeds may be inaccurate.
[ Related: 10 ways to get more from Spotlight Search on the Mac ]
Perhaps the software used in the test is to blame?
YouTuber, Jonathan Morrison is running his own series of tests on one of the latest MacBook Pros running a Core i9 chip.
His tests show Final Cut Pro X delivers astonishingly better performance when running a series of relatively common pro workflows on one of the new Macs than you can expect when using Adobe Premiere Pro for the same tasks.
That performance difference is immense, which suggests the performance limitations may not reflect Apple's hardware, but the software chosen for the test. These 2017 tests of Premiere running on i9 PCs also seem interesting.
Perhaps the test suite needs a patch?
It is possible there's a problem in the test software used in Lee's tests.
Dieter Bohn took a moment to ask Cinebench if the test software was accurate on the new Mac.
The response?
Cinebench said its application: "Has not been upgraded to measure the performance in a meaningful way," adding that, "the development team is aware and will be addressing this in the future."
Once again, then, it looks possible that the benchmark tests generated may be a little inaccurate, given the need for the test suite to be upgraded before meaningful results can be ascertained.
Do the claims add-up?
Moor Insights & Strategy analyst, Patrick Moorhead is one of the world's top tech analysts, and he's been examining Lee's claims.
"'MacBook Core i9 big throttle on Premiere Pro' story isn't adding up for me yet," he wrote. "Can't correlate the eleven apps, benchmarks on Apple's website with the YouTube conclusions," he added.
Moorhead notes that many of the apps used in this test were "very highly threaded" and also observed Apple's good reputation when publishing benchmark figures.
Apple claims up to a 70 percent performance improvement with its new Macs, which rather refutes Lee's criticisms.
Where does this leave us?
On the one hand, we have a widely repeated claim that Apple's high-end MacBook Pros may not deliver all they promise; while on the other we have numerous reputable sources casting doubt on that claim.
Ultimately, of course, data concerning speeds and feeds doesn't provide the complete picture when attempting to assess the capabilities of any machine.
Processor benchmarks are significant, of course they are, but represent just one component of overall system performance. Performance is also defined by what you are trying to do, the software you use to get that task done, and how efficiently the hardware, software and operating system all work together.
Software -- even test software -- that is poorly optimized for the hardware or the hardware operating system will impose its own performance tax, which seems to be the root of the Premiere problem.
That's not something you'll fix by putting your Mac in the freezer.
Why would anyone do that, unless they wanted the clicks?
What do users say?
It really comes down to what you want to do. On that metric, I can tell you that the dozen or so professional Mac users I spoke with this week universally praised the power and performance of their new MacBook Pros.
I can also observe that pro Mac users in the video space will almost certainly use an external GPU (up to four are supported) to help accelerate some tasks, rather than remaining reliant on the core system for everything.
Hangman Studios senior colorist, Byron Wijayawardena works for a company that (among other things) films live performances from some of the world's biggest musical acts. They film the gig, edit overnight, and create professional video footage for use online, on social media and in full movies on the road and overnight.
To meet these punishing overnight schedules, they are using MacBook Pros to ingest and edit vast amounts of content in extraordinarily ad hoc situations overnight for next day release.
He's a professional in the field of high-end video, and he's convinced the new Macs are faster and better performing. He even told me that some of the tasks his company does "would not have been possible" five years ago.
I look forward to seeing future performance tests of Apple's new Macs achieving the same kind of attention as Lee's, once the people who make the benchmark software used say it can provide "meaningful" performance measures.
Meanwhile, I know which Mac I want to edit video on.
Google+? If you use social media and happen to be a Google+ user, why not join AppleHolic's Kool Aid Corner community and get involved with the conversation as we pursue the spirit of the New Model Apple?
Got a story? Please drop me a line via Twitter and let me know. I'd like it if you chose to follow me on Twitter so I can let you know about new articles I publish and reports I find.
Jonny is a freelance writer who has been writing (mainly about Apple and technology) since 1999.


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"We covered the inscribed circle theorem, how the angle is 1/2 of arc angle. This concept is more difficult for the student, but it is very important. I hope she thinks of this more in her mind, and we will practice this again tomorrow. She is very bright and learns quite quickly. I utilized thinking of this concept as an elongated pizza slice, and I think this helped her identify what arc she needs to utilize. I will see how she progresses tomorrow. "
"Yesterday, I had a longer session with the student because he was preparing for his class final on Friday. We started reviewing his study guide during our last session so during this one, we first finished that. The student marked the problems he had particular problems with, and I went through each of these with him a few times. The area he had the most difficulty with was his most recent section -- finding the area of polygons. These problems involved portioning the polygons into smaller right triangles, using trig functions to determine the angle measures of that triangle and then finding the perimeter of the figure after that. They involved a lot of steps, and the student had a difficult time keeping them all in order so we went through the same problems a few times each in order for the student to understand them more. In addition to this, we went over a few of the more difficult sections in the book together. For these, the student mainly just needs to make sure he remembers the right formulas. I told him to keep going through the problems on his study guide the same way we had done them together, and I think repeating those problems will make him even more prepared for his final tomorrow. I wish him the best of luck!"
"The student is reviewing for his geometry final, so we've been working on the thick review packet that he's received. We started out with reviewing similar triangles and using similarity to solve triangles. After working through his allotted work for geometry, we then started to do some review for his physics test on Friday. We went through some wave characteristics, properties of light and sound waves, and light colors. "
"The student received an 85 on the last quiz and 100 on his latest homework. We conducted a review of chords, secant, tangent, inscribed angles, arcs, and central angle theorems of a circle. We completed practice problems for an upcoming standardized test. We focused on formulas and assessment of problem solving with each special case of given information."
"We tackled word problems that required us to use ratios and cross-multiplication to solve them. Initially the solutions to the questions proved elusive for the student, but once she got comfortable with the structure of the questions and simple fractions on either side of an equation, she was able to answer them all."


Lazio footballer Keita Baldé Diao on Monday morning crashed his Lamborghini sports car into a bridge in central Rome.
The Spanish player was driving through Rome at around 4.20am when he crashed into Ponte Flaminio. Tests proved that he was below the legal alcohol limit at the time, Corriere della Sera reported.
Although Daio walked away unhurt, his €200,000 Lamborghini Gallardo was damaged beyond repair.
The accident saw the area closed to traffic until around 7.00am on Monday, Corriere said.
Daio's crash comes days after speculation that the Lazio player could soon be on his way to the Premier League.
English side Liverpool is set to offer £15 million (€19 million) for Daio, just months after signing Italian Mario Balotelli, British media reported.


It is well researched and documented that exercise performance can be affected by your choice of diet. In order to maintain optimal training and results, the body needs to be properly fueled leading up to a training session or competition and refueled after training sessions or competitions with appropriate nutrition. The pre-competition meal is no different and is a vital part of a complete training plan. Obviously, a single pre-competition meal will not compensate for a poor nutrition plan or training plan leading up to a competition. An active person should have a sound nutrition and training plan in place well before the day of their competition. A sound nutrition plan should ensure enough calories to cover an athlete's energy needs throughout the day, provide adequate vitamins and minerals, as well as necessary proteins and fats. Meal plans for athletes in training should also be relatively high in carbohydrates to fuel an athlete's body during training and help with their recovery.
For any athlete to perform at a high level during tough training sessions or during competitions, they need to have adequate stored energy to get them through the tough competition and meet the energy demands put on their body. The key is to have energy (glycogen) available to fuel their working muscles. Without properly loading glycogen stores, we're not taking full advantage of our stored energy potential. Because of this the pre-competition or pre-training meal should have a focus on carbohydrate intake.
Carbohydrates (glycogen) in the liver and muscles can be metabolized to provide energy for the working muscles more quickly than fat, allowing an athlete to sustain a higher intensity level of exercise. Depletion of stored energy (glycogen) would result in a need to reduce exercise intensity or stop exercising altogether. That is why for an athlete to perform at their best, it is vital to properly load glycogen stores in the muscles, liver and bloodstream before a heavy training session or competition.
The pre-competition or training meal has three main goals, which can be summarized as 1) prevent weakness and fatigue during training or competition, 2) ward off feelings of hunger yet minimize gastrointestinal distress from eating, 3) guarantee optimal hydration. With that said, the body is able to store 400 to 500 calories of glycogen at a time. If an athlete takes the time to properly, fill their glycogen stores they will have a steady flow of energy to perform at a higher peak for a much longer time period. The key is to load an athlete's glycogen store at the right time and with the right kind of carbohydrates.
A proper pre-competition meal or pre-training meal should consist of mostly carbohydrates and fluids, as they are easily digested and will help to load glycogen stores best. If the meal is within the 400 to 500 calorie range, it can be consumed 2 to 3 hours before the competition or training session to allow enough time for digestion and absorption.
With an athlete's pre-competition meal or training meal, you want it to consist of easily digested but high complex carbohydrates with minimal fiber, simple sugars and saturated fats. High fiber foods won't serve any real value right before a training session or competition and could increase the need for a bathroom break. Fats slows down digestion and have no positive influence on energy during competition or workout sessions. Too many simple sugars can spike your insulin levels, causing rapid removal of blood sugar and actually leaving you feeling more tired than before.
For those who are competing or training for 60 minutes to 90 minutes or more, they should include a light amount of protein with your pre-workout or competition meal. Protein helps with muscle repair and helps prevent cannibalization of muscles. Protein can also be converted for energy use, but is done at a slower rate than carbohydrates, which can provide an energy source later in your competition event or workout.
So, with this information, the question becomes, "What makes a good pre-competition or pre-training meal?" Next we'll take a look at what could be some meal options depending if you're competing in the morning, afternoon or evening.
The pre-competition meal is especially important if you are competing in the morning. As much as 12 hours may have passed since your last meal and liver glycogen levels could be running below optimal levels. Since early morning pre-competition meals may need to be limited in size, a carbohydrate-rich dinner the night before, would be optimal to help keep glycogen stores full.
The morning of competition, eat a light breakfast or snack. Some options are Old Fashion Quaker Oatmeal, whole-wheat toast, bagel, English muffin. Whatever you choose, make sure it comes from a good source of complex carbohydrates and is low in sugar and saturated fats. If it is hard to stomach food this early in the morning, another option can be a carbohydrate-rich drink, like Glyco-Muscle Fueler. Although nothing beats food, getting in a carbohydrate drink will help a lot and will top off your glycogen stores before starting your competition or training session. For protein sources, egg whites or a good protein shake work well in the morning.
You will want to eat a carbohydrate-rich meal, both the night before and for breakfast. Be sure to choose high starch food, such as skinless potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, beans, rice or pasta. Depending of your timetable, you will want to keep your meals lighter and/or easier to digest. The heavier and bigger your meal the more time you will need between eating your last meal and the time until your competition.
If you're competing after 6:00pm, be sure to eat a high carbohydrate breakfast and lunch, followed by a lighter snack with more carbohydrates. Many of your options for lunch will serve for your dinner options. Keep in mind your 2 to 3 hour window between your pre-competition meal and actually competing.
With any event time, if stomaching an actual meal, is hard to do, a carbohydrate-rich drink can be used as well. One example is to have a lighter meal 2 to 3 hours before competition time, then consume two scoops of Glyco-Muscle Fueler about 45 to 30 minutes before your competition to top off glycogen stores. By the time you start, you should be all set and ready to go!
Don't forget to stay well hydrated throughout the day as well!


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Govt 'strategy' worked, Kashmir talks being held from 'position of strength': Army chief
Indian Army chief General Bipin Rawat on Wednesday said that the government's "strategy" on Kashmir had worked and it was "talking from a position of strength."
He was reacting to the appointment of former intelligence bureau chief Dineshwar Sharma as the "representative" of Government of India for a "sustained dialogue" in Jammu and Kashmir.
"The appointment will not affect Army operations. The government's strategy on Kashmir has worked. The government is talking from a position of strength," Gen. Rawat was quoted as saying on the sidelines of a joint seminar by the Army and industry body FICCI.
He stated that the situation in Kashmir has improved and "infiltration has come down."
Earlier, in the day, the Government of India formally notified the appointment of Sharma as its "representative" for Jammu and Kashmir.
Sharma, an old Kashmir hand in the country's internal intelligence agency, will, as the "representative" of the government of India, "initiate and carry forward a dialogue with elected representatives, various organisations and concerned individuals in the state of Jammu and Kashmir."
On Monday, Home Minister Rajnath Singh had announced the appointment of Sharma as the government's representative for carrying forward a "sustained dialogue" with all stakeholders in Jammu and Kashmir, in order to understand the "legitimate aspirations" of people.


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Covid-19 News: Delays continue. Limited Office Hours. Click HERE for more info.
Covid-19 News: Covid-19 News: Delays continue. Limited Office Hours. Click HERE for more info.
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Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) has seen solid growth in the recent quarters, primarily led by its Data Center Group, which is benefiting from cloud computing. The company is seeing strong demand for Xeon Scalable, and it has aided the pricing growth. This trend will likely continue in the near term, and drive the earnings growth for Intel. We have created an interactive dashboard ~ What Is The Outlook For Intel ~ on the company's expected performance in 2018. You can adjust the revenue and margin drivers to see the impact on the company's overall revenues, earnings, and price estimate.
We forecast Intel's Data Center Group revenues to grow around 20% to a little under $23 billion in 2018. The segment is benefiting from its cloud business, as well as high performance products, such as Xeon Scalable. Growth in cloud computing will result in greater sales of bigger, faster, and higher-end servers at the expense of cheaper ones, and the company will benefit from server virtualization. The segment revenues have grown by over 25% in H1 2018. Higher demand for Xeon Scalable has aided the pricing growth, and this has resulted in better margins. We forecast the segment adjusted EBITDA margin of 51% for the full year.
Looking at Client Computing, the segment has seen low single digit revenue growth over the last few years. However, we forecast a mid-single digit growth in 2018, primarily due to an expected modest increase in PC TAM (total available market) after 6 years of decline. Note that Intel still dominates the PC market, despite strong growth in AMD's Ryzen products, and any growth in TAM will bode well for the company (Also See – AMD's Near Term Growth Can Be Linked To Its Radeon And Ryzen Products). While we forecast segment revenues to trend higher, the segment EBITDA margin may see a slight decline for the full year, due to a higher costs associated with the 10nm products. Among other segments, the Internet of Things has been doing well of late, and this trend will likely continue in the near term, and beyond, primarily due to an overall increase in the market size.
Overall, we expect the Data Center Group to drive the company's near term growth, led by Xeon Scalable. We currently forecast earnings of $4.15 per share in 2018, and a price to earnings multiple of 14x by the end of 2018, to arrive at our price estimate of $59 for Intel, which is at a premium of around 20% to the current market price.


This beautiful alphabet set can be used on pillows, towels, handkerchief or clothing. The set consists of 26 letters. Each letter measures approximately 3.15" tall. See photos for exact sizes. Single letters are available below.


The menu at the RecordBuck Ranch in Utopia, Texas caters to a wide variety of tastes. Novice hunters can try their hand at a javelina for $500. Trophy racks of exotic antelope will cost the discerning hunter quite a bit more. And for the hunter who's had it all, there's the white buffalo, at $30,000 a kill.
On a spring day in 2013, I stood on a rock ledge at the Seco's lip, experiencing that dread unique to subway platforms and canyon walls: what if for an instant some perverse impulse overtook me, and I were to fling myself over the edge? One of my companions—a hunting guide who was glad not to be spending a slow afternoon in his trailer—stood easily on a neighboring ledge. He had walked the Seco when it was flowing fast, when a clumsy step or a loose rock could mean a descent into the maelstrom and being forever laid to rest in the depths of the Edwards Aquifer.
I had come to the Seco to see where it was that water entered underground, something that at the time I mistook as being a phenomenon as uncommon as the sinkhole itself.
What I learned in two years of exploring water in Texas is that the Seco is just a dramatic and violent example of something commonplace in Texas: rainfall disappears underground on private land, where it becomes a critical resource for millions of people, most of whom live hundreds of miles from where that water first landed on Texas soil.
The behavior of water on and beneath private land is the key to preserving water for Texans in the 21st century and into the 22nd, a grand challenge that is uniquely Texan. Other western states have urban populations far removed from their water sources, but that's where the similarities end. In California, Colorado, New Mexico and their western neighbors, water starts as snow in mountain ranges on federal lands, and is piped to distant cities through massive infrastructure managed by federal or state governments. Not so in Texas, where more than 95% of land is privately owned. Here, most of the storage and distribution of water happens on private land—not in manmade pipes or reservoirs, but beneath the earth, in the ancient rock and sand that lie beneath the houses and farms and ranchlands of Texas.
The aquifers of Texas store 500 times more water than all of our rivers and lakes combined.
The water that we see above ground here in Texas is a mere 0.2 percent of the water in the state. The aquifers of Texas—the rocks and sand deposited by millions of years of glacial formation and melt water, volcanic eruptions, the advance and retreat of ancient seas, that geologic history that underlies the world as we experience it on the surface—store 500 times more water than all of our rivers and lakes combined.
Ever since this land was settled, Texans have relied on this underground water to get them through dry spells. As a half-decade drought shriveled our water supplies on the surface, and the new subdivisions and fracking sites demanded more water, Texans have come to rely ever more on these hidden caches of water. In 2012, the Texas Water Development Board estimated that 60% of the water used in the state came from groundwater aquifers. Alongside open carry legislation and other bills that garnered media attention, the 2015 Legislature quietly passed several bills designed to further amplify groundwater production.
So in an era of epic drought and unending growth, the question is: how much should we pump, and how fast? The answer to this question will affect the 40 million Texans who will one day call this place home. And not just because it will determine how much water we take out of the ground, but also how much water is left of the water above ground.
In times of drought, as much as 80% of the water in some of Texas' rivers can come from water below ground.
That's because in Texas, rivers are born from the water below ground. There is no river in Texas that gets less than 15 percent of its flow from the water seeping in from below. For rivers in Central Texas, that number swells to 40 percent. In times of drought, this dependence amplifies, and as much as 80% of the water in some of Texas' rivers can come from water below ground. In places like the Seco Sinkhole, this happens quickly, a spring rainstorm pumping millions of gallons of water into the Edwards Aquifer. In other places, the water that today is flowing through a river may have spent hundreds or even thousands of years below ground before finally making its way to the surface.
As I stood at the Edward's mouth that day on the edge of the Seco, I realized that to understand the connection between the water above and below the ground, I would have to go further than just staring into a hole in the ground. I would need to look into an aquifer. Fortunately, I knew who to ask.
Earlier the same spring, I'd met Gregg Tatum while swimming at Jacob's Well, a smaller-scale version of what Seco Sinkhole used to be—an opening in the earth where the water below ground rises to the surface. The Spanish called these ojos: eyes into the earth. Jacob's Well, a nearly perfect cylinder cut into the limestone face of the Hill Country, is an eye into the Trinity Aquifer.
On that day, Tatum's arrival had been announced by a stream of tiny bubbles rising from the depths of the well. A few minutes later, Tatum rose to the surface, an amphibious creature in black neoprene.
Tatum heads the Jacob's Well Exploration Project, a band of cave divers who can claim the rare distinction of swimming through aquifers. On any given Sunday, Tatum and his dive partner, David Moore, are suiting up to force themselves through subterranean currents wherever the earth offers a space large enough for a human body to pass.
When it comes to cave divers, you realize that "large enough" is a state of mind. To move from Jacob's Well into the tunnels that feed it water, Tatum and Moore have to squeeze through a restriction in the rock only 14" across. They do this while 55' underwater, with two tanks of air strapped to their bodies, hauling Diver Propulsion Vehicles, personal engines that pull them through the water.
Eleven people have died while diving Jacob's Well, not all of them novices. As a result, recreational diving is strictly prohibited. The Jacob's Well Exploration Project is permitted to dive in the name of science. When the team isn't repairing guidelines or caching air tanks for future divers, they are collecting data on the Trinity Aquifer, Hays County's primary water source. The team has charted over 6,000 feet of tunnels leading from the well opening, and have donated their survey maps and data to Hays County, universities, community advocates, and the Hays-Trinity Groundwater Conservation District.
The question of where the water in Jacob's Well comes from was once just a curiosity. Now the ability to answer that question determines whether there any water will remain in Jacob's Well.
Groundwater pumping in Hays County has quadrupled since the nineties, as the county has grown at breakneck pace. The effects can be seen at Jacob's Well, though it may only be old timers who notice the difference. In the middle part of last century, when not much existed in Hays County beyond goat ranches and summer camps, the water streaming out of Jacob's Well flowed so fast and strong, swimmers would be pushed aside by its force.
It has been more than a decade since there has been a steady current in Jacob's Well. The new housing subdivisions that have sprung up in the area draw their water from wells in the Trinity Aquifer. With each new well there is less water in the tunnels feeding Jacob's. It is such a responsive system, you can see the effect of groundwater pumping in real time in the flow instrument readings outfitted at the base of Jacob's Well. Says Tatum, "there's a municipal public water system just adjacent here and you can actually see when they energize their wells" by the drop in flow at Jacob's. As subdivisions continued to pump during the recent drought, the flow at Jacob's Well slowed, and in 2010, completely stopped. It was the first time in recorded history that the well ceased its flow.
Less flow in Jacob's Well means less flow in the Blanco, which also means less flow in the springs of the Edwards Aquifer.
The clear connection between groundwater pumping and flow in Jacob's Well hasn't stemmed demand for more groundwater permits. One such permitted project is "a golf course which [is] directly over the aquifer," says Tatum. Using data collected by the Exploration Project, local advocates have pushed back on the golf course water permit, arguing, as Tatum puts it is "not a wise use of the resource. If every project that has been proposed is built, zero flow conditions in Jacob's Well may one day be the norm.
On the surface, it would seem that what happens to Jacob's Well is a matter of concern only to the locals. But the value of Jacob's Well ripples far beyond the town of Wimberley and its cypress-lined swimming holes. Just beyond this weekend Mecca's rope swings and antique shops, the creek formed by Jacob's Well merges into the Blanco River, which cuts southward near San Marcos and keeps flowing all the way to the Gulf, somewhere near Victoria. Less flow in Jacob's Well means less flow in the Blanco, which--in a strange twist that captures the complexities of Texas hydrology--also means less flow in the springs of the Edwards Aquifer.
Researchers were surprised to discover a few years ago that some of the water in the Blanco River downstream of Jacob's Well did something greatly unexpected: it went underground. Not all of it - Some of it kept flowing aboveground just as we would expect a river would - but quite a bit of it was disappearing down a formation called the Johnson Swallet and entering into the Edwards Aquifer. At that point, it did something even more surprising: some of that water flowed north about 40 miles, emerging a few months later in Austin's Barton Springs, which flows into the Colorado River. And some of it took a southward course and was detected later 40 miles southeast at San Marcos Springs, merging eventually with the Blanco River.
This is the story of water in Texas: water aboveground escapes below, and water below ground springs up above, making for a much more complicated world than any map would lead you to believe.
Understanding that subterranean landscape, and what it means for our world above ground, is what brings the members of the Jacob's Well Exploration Project back, says David Moore: "what's surprising to us is, we normally come into it with the idea of exploration but we come out with the idea of helping everyday people and what does water mean to everyone else."
Last summer on a dive trip to West Texas, Moore suffered a rattlesnake bite to the leg. Surgeons in Midland removed part of the muscle in his right leg; he narrowly avoided amputation. For a cave diver—whose ability to execute tightly controlled kicks in extreme conditions can mean the difference between life and death—this is a very serious injury.
In the physical world, water may be weaving its way through the landscape, moving back and forth from the world aboveground to the world below several times in the span of days. But the complexity of the actual world collapses in its translation to our human laws. In the legal world that Texans have constructed, water is either "groundwater" or "surface water," and the laws that determine how much of each can be used have so little to do with each other, they may as well be oil and water.
In Texas, the waters above and below ground are regulated by different entities. The water above ground is owned by the state of Texas, and regulated by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The water below ground is owned by the landowner and regulated by local groundwater districts--if it is regulated at all (about 20% of the state are so-called "white areas," free of any groundwater regulation).
Despite a century of science illuminating the interdependence of surface water and groundwater supplies, the state's water plan does not recognize that a withdrawal from resources below ground may result in less water above ground. In the physical world, as the earth below ground is drained of water, the signs are visible on the surface in the form of dry holes, gravel beds, and grass-choked boulder fields where water once flowed. In the artificial world of state water planning, when we pump water from below the ground, the amount of water above ground stays the same.
Yet when you look for the signs of where the hydrological connections between the water below and above ground have been severed, you realize they are everywhere, hiding in plain sight.
From turn-of-the-century settlement to the farming boom of the postwar years, the water table of Texas was slowly bled off in the name of cotton, winter wheat, spinach and melon. At the turn of the last century, wells tapping the Trinity Aquifer east of Waco would flow to the surface of their own accord, no pump required. By the 1950s, so much water had been allowed to flow freely out of the Trinity, the pressure of the aquifer began to drop. Wells were lowered, and they kept on lowering them as groundwater pumping further depressurized the aquifer. In 1900, a successful well in the northeastern Trinity could be placed barely below the land's surface. Now in 2015, you will probably have to drill 1,000 feet down to find water. The mineral wells and healing baths of the Trinity Aquifer are now mostly lost to memory, though you can find the grand hotels that once accompanied them.
The Ogallala, among the great American groundwater aquifers—and also likely to be the first to falter under the pressure of irrigated agriculture—was once the headwaters of the Brazos River. The roaring falls and big springs of its many creeks hardly lasted a generation after heavy pumping began; the cotton and corn economy it sustained in the Texas Panhandle is not expected to last for more than another generation.
It is the same story in the southwestern Carrizo. Visit the Winter Garden of South Texas today, and it is nearly impossible to imagine that springs and marshes ever could have lived where mesquite now rules. But not far from Laredo, alligators once patrolled marshlands watered from the springs of the Carrizo Aquifer—until the water demands of spinach, melons and cabbage bled them dry as well.
Silver Falls, Mineral Wells, San Antonio Springs, Carrizo Springs, Big Spring. These are just a few of the names given to waters that no longer flow. How many springs have disappeared, how many creeks have run dry—most of that is lost to human memory. But some people remember.
David Langford, for one, remembers the creeks of Hillingdon Ranch.
Since his great-grandfather imported his first cows in 1890, the ranch has produced Angus cattle according to his ethos, which Langford sums up as: "if you have to feed the cows, you have too many cows." In other words, you should never produce more than the land can sustain.
That water was a sure thing for the first 111 years of the ranch's operation, assured by the constant flow of the spring-fed creeks fed by the Trinity Aquifer. "The creeks provide all the water for the livestock, and they did all through my teen years," says Langford. But in 2001, Langford says, the water in his wells began to drop: "From then to 2013, the water level in our well has dropped 60 or so feet." As the water in the well declined, the perennial springs began to falter. They had dried temporarily in the 1950s drought, but this is the first time in Langford's life that nearly a full decade has passed without recovery.
What changed isn't water use on the ranch, but thousands of groundwater wells that have been drilled in the 50-mile radius around it. This part of the Hill Country is one of the fastest growing parts of the state, and most of that growth has been enabled by groundwater pumping. Newcomers to the area have no idea what the limits of the Trinity Aquifer are, or how the exponential increase in groundwater production has already reshaped the landscape that had otherwise remained unchanged for generations. Langford can see these changes, not only through the eyes of someone who has worked the land for 70 years, but through the eyes of his great-grandfather and the four generations in between who knew the land before the tie between the aquifer and its streams was severed.
Langford had driven us to the top of a hill overlooking the ranch. Cattle ranged under clusters of live oak, and the late afternoon breeze worked the golden grasses below. This was the big sky Texas vision drawing Baby Boomers by the thousands to this part of Central Texas, one of the fastest-growing retirement destinations in the country. Langford could see that vision too, but he could also see the fantasy in it: "Those people that come here, they're living their vision of the American Dream and I don't want to spoil that for them, but I don't think they realize where the water comes from when they turn their tap on or what a green St. Augustine yard means for those of us that are trying to maintain our heritage."
For a six-generation ranching family, this lack of self-determination is an unwelcome visitor. When the fields can no longer support the herd, the herd can be thinned until the land restores itself. Yet no matter how conservative a landowner is with his water, his well will depend on his neighbor's use.
In 1949, the Texas Legislature realized that landowners needed a way to protect their water from being pumped by someone else. So the state permitted the people of Texas to create Groundwater Conservation Districts, which are allowed to limit pumping on private property. Roughly 100 such districts have been created in Texas. The creation of groundwater districts allows local users like Langford to decide how they will collectively manage their groundwater.
Even with this regulation in place, it turns out that the depletion of aquifers isn't by accident--it's by design.
Every five years, Texas groundwater districts are required to report to the state their targets for how much groundwater will be left in the aquifers they manage in fifty years' time—targets called "Desired Future Conditions." Almost without exception, the groundwater districts that have been created to protect landowners from the imprudent actions of their neighbors are managing their aquifers to be drawn down over time. You can think of it like a bank account—in 50 years, do I want to have more, less or the same amount of money? In most places in Texas, the goal is for the planned depletion of the local water account. The reason why is that in most places, the goal of how much water will be left is just the inevitable outcome of how much we want to pump today.
No matter how conservative a landowner is with his water, his well will depend on his neighbor's use.
In most places in Texas, the goal is for the planned depletion of the local water account.
It is not only the ranching families of the Hill Country who are being asked to give more water to satisfy limitless demand. The reliability of homeowners' wells is also at stake—a risky proposition in a region with few alternatives for water supply. But regulation is powerless to slow the astronomical growth of groundwater production in this part of the state.
Only 4 out of the state's 99 groundwater districts have set Desired Future Conditions to reflect how much groundwater can be pumped before springs and creeks start to fail.
The more ranchettes that are built, the more groundwater wells mining the Trinity, the lower the water table falls. Ironically, the streams and swimming holes that bring most newcomers to the Hill Country are the first casualty.
When the State Legislature voted on the Groundwater Management Act in 1949, its only chance of passage was in putting groundwater management in the hands of local government. For 65 years, local control has been the state's mantra of groundwater regulation, the wisdom being that the local groundwater users who will be most affected by water pumping are the best positioned to decide how to regulate themselves. What this conventional wisdom ignores is that in many places in Texas, water is anything but local.
The effects of the decisions of how much groundwater to pump in the Hill Country don't stay in the Hill Country. This region is the point of origin for 7 rivers that water roughly a quarter of the state, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico—rivers that get most of their flow from groundwater.
In a typical year, rivers in Texas get anywhere from 15-40% of their flow from the water below ground. During drought, this dependence on groundwater inflows increases dramatically. As our ongoing drought wore on in 2014, 80% of the water flowing past the chemical refineries in the Gulf city of Victoria came from springs in Central Texas. During drought years, the Colorado River—Austin's only water source—receives as much as 60% of its inflow from springs in its tributaries. (source) Yet despite the strong interdependence of water above and below ground, only 4 out of the state's 99 groundwater districts have set Desired Future Conditions to reflect how much groundwater can be pumped before springs and creeks start to fail. Perhaps, then, it should be no surprise that they are failing.
Virtually all of the surface water in Texas - some 80% - originates within the state.
From Langford's perspective, the statewide drumbeat to lower groundwater tables is driven not by apathy, but by ignorance. "The folks who make all the decisions about this," Langford says, "don't realize that when they turn the tap on in the Capitol of Texas building that the water that comes out of that tap comes from 200 miles away. And how does it get there? It gets there from private land that feeds groundwater that nourishes springs." Drill more wells to pump water out, pave more land to block the recharge of water into the soil, and the inevitable result will be less water for everyone.
Virtually all of the surface water in Texas—some 80%--originates within the state. (source) How private lands are managed and how much water they withdraw matters as much as how much rain we receive.
If what were happening on private land within Texas were happening across a state or international border, the State of Texas would intervene on behalf of the Texans who hold claims to its rivers. It is in just such a battle now in Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado, a federal case whose merits rest on the claim that Texas' share of the Rio Grande is being taken by New Mexico's farmers' groundwater wells.
As of now, there has been no assertion of state authority to protect Texas' surface waters from the groundwater pumping of private landowners. Yet as groundwater tables fall, so will the base flow of Texas' rivers. Like most of the American West, there are more water rights entitling people to water in Texas' rivers than there is water. How many more water rights will have to be retired once our Desired Future Conditions have been met? So far, no one is asking. To ask would be to admit that we have a problem.
From this vantage, the Pecos—a salty, muddy backwater that the U.S. Army decided was too poor even for the Navajos to drink - cuts a much more imposing figure than the Rio Grande, a river that connects 3 states, 2 nations and 5 million people.
Although it is still called by a single name, the Rio Grande hasn't been a single river for more than fifty years, ever since the federal government built the Elephant Butte reservoir to conserve water for New Mexican and Texas farmers. Back in those days, when any water that was left to the fish of the stream was considered a waste, water conservation meant a very different thing than it does today. The river at Elephant Butte, the nexus of the dispute between Texas and New Mexico, wasn't anything then like what it is today, either. When it was built, the dam's designers added hydroelectric turbines, meant to produce energy 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Today, water only flows over the dam during growing season, which itself has been shrinking with each passing decade. In 2014, there was enough water for 8 weeks of flow, in 2013, only 6 weeks.
El Paso claims the water delivered downstream from Elephant Butte. Then there is no river, not for 300 miles. This forgotten stretch of river was the most surreal for Colin McDonald, who last year traversed the Rio Grande along its entire 1,900 miles in his Disappearing Rio Grande Expedition. "From Elephant Butte to Presidio, the river is completely gone," says McDonald; in El Paso, every drop of water is diverted, the river straightened and channeled, "everything short of putting it into a pipe, which El Paso has proposed several times." Not even the city's wastewater effluent makes it back to the river—that goes to farms too.
Human engineering has permanently changed the natural plumbing of the river. Farmers once pumped groundwater to dispose of it in the river, saving their crops' roots from the salt of the soil. As the groundwater table fell, so did the land itself; now the riverbed is like a reverse levee, higher in many points than the farmland around it.
The relationship between the Rio Grande and the Hueco Bolson Aquifer below it has inverted. Where the aquifer once created baseflow in the Rio Grande, the river has now become a losing stream, pouring its water into the earth. Six times as much water from the Rio Grande now escapes underground as the aquifer ever gave to it.
On the 300-mile Forgotten Reach from Ft Quitman to Presidio, McDonald walked the riverbed more than he paddled. An occasional trickle of water—an old oil and gas well that had hit a hot spring vein near Candelaria—would merit blowing up his inflatable kayak, but for the most part, the river was as much a memory as the ancient riverbeds you see flying over the Mojave. The earth remembers them, but hardly anyone else.
The Rio Grande known to Texans outside of El Paso is no longer connected to the river that flows from Colorado; we have created two distinct rivers through our pumping, damming and diversions. The Lower Rio Grande is formed by the inflows of Mexico's Rio Conchos, more than 300 miles downstream of El Paso. This is the iconic Rio Grande that lives in the minds of most Texans, the river that passes by the whiskey-soaked ghost mine of Terlingua and under the red bluffs of Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend National Park.
After the Rio Grande is revived by the Rio Conchos, it receives its last infusion of life another two hundred miles downstream, in a desert oasis called Val Verde County. A third of the inflows to the Lower Rio Grande come from Val Verde, which--despite its location on the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert--has an abundance of water, most of it provided by the Edwards-Trinity Aquifer.
Now that last injection of freshwater into the Lower Rio Grande has found yet another source of competition: groundwater marketers. Val Verde is a so-called "white area" on the map of groundwater regulation, a place with no regulatory limits on pumping. If someone were to sign a contract for the more than 50 billion gallons a year that groundwater marketers say can be produced from Val Verde County, that water would no longer make it to the Rio Grande.
Val Verde's abundance depends on the ready import of rainfall from counties on the Edwards Plateau to the northeast, and the steady export of groundwater in the consistent flow of Val Verde's springs, some of which count among the largest in Texas. While much of the county's 2 million acres are dry scrubland, the places where the Edwards-Trinity springs to the surface are lush, the Caribbean blue water as perfect as you can imagine.
One of these is the near-mythic Devils River, which until a decade ago was braved only by the truly intrepid paddler willing to endure (and sometimes exchange) gunfire with protective landowners. Today, the Devils is more accessible than ever before, with one 20,000-acre State Natural Area near Dolan Falls and another planned to open further downriver. Theoretically, the river is more protected than ever before as well: alongside the state's investment, The Nature Conservancy holds conservation easement or title to another 160,000 acres.
But, says McDonald, it is not so easy to protect the Devils. "Everybody recognizes it's an amazing place. Dolan Falls is pretty, so you put a fence around it. Okay, that's protecting the physical surface, but if we want the Devils River to continue flowing, we have to figure out what's happening to this place that is bigger than most states." Without inflows from the Edwards-Trinity Aquifer, there is no Devils River. Without the Devils River, there is 260,000 acre-feet less water flowing into the Rio Grande's reservoirs for delivery to the Lower Rio Grande Valley.
The Valley needs all the water it can get. For the better part of a decade, this agricultural economy—the seat of Texas' citrus production, the third largest in the United States—has been in a water deficit, as drought in Mexico has reduced inflows on the Rio Conchos.
In the Lower Rio Grande Valley, the water deficit is obvious. Irrigation canals channel the Rio Grande's water across the farms that grow Texas' grapefruit, lemon and orange crops to the border cities whose populations have exploded in recent decades. Demand for water in the Valley is already exceeding supply on the Rio Grande, an imbalance driven to a head by the drought that started in 2009. By spring of 2013, cities panicked as they realized there might not be enough "push water" to move their allocation of the Rio Grande through the irrigation canals to their water treatment plants.
Plans are in the works to develop desalination plants to water the growing cities of Cameron, Hidalgo and Willacy Counties at a cost of nearly $500 million. While desal may work for drinking water, it is far too expensive for farmers, whose profits rely on cheap water that is fast disappearing. For these border counties, once called the "Magic Valley of the Rio Grande," the loss of agriculture is not just a matter of cultural heritage, but one of economic vitality. Irrigation by the Rio Grande creates about $400 million in annual revenue across the Valley.
The 1944 Treaty entitles Texas to all the water its tributaries contribute to the Rio Grande--tributaries like those in Val Verde County. But while it continues to fight its neighbors for the water to which it is entitled, under the banner of local control, it has done nothing to protect its share of water from the aspirations of groundwater producers in Texas.
Under the laws of the State of Texas, the people of the Valley may hold rights to the Rio Grande, but they have no right to the source of a third of that water: the Edwards-Trinity Aquifer. The right to that groundwater rests exclusively with the landowners above the aquifer, who can pump, pipe and sell as much as they wish to whomever they choose.
I had the chance to join McDonald on the last day of his 6-month voyage down the Rio Grande. It was a bitter January day, even in the temperate Valley. Neither my tentmates nor I slept much the night before, listening to the wind tear at the trees and cables, and hoping it would die down by morning. At launch, wind gusts of 40 miles per hour churned up the water. It was the first time McDonald had seen whitecaps on the Rio Grande, and he assured us these were the worst paddling conditions of his 1,900-mile trip.
Some strange mercy visited us on the river that day. The wind hardly let up. But somehow, whatever direction we turned, it remained mostly at our backs.
Few people greeted us on the 13-mile paddle. Bales of snarled monofilament line marked a Mexican fishing camp, and the fishermen setting their lines waved to us in their seafoam green Mackintoshes. The landscape changed in subtle increments as we approached the Gulf, first from grasses to mangroves sheltering blue herons and snowy egrets, and, finally, to dunes. Waves crashed over the thin spit of sand sheltering the river's mouth from the Gulf.
On our last mile, the winds shifted to our face, and the group fell silent. Our boat, which had swung wildly in the shifting winds, now barely moved ahead at all. This was, I realized, just a taste of what McDonald had tolerated for six months on his forgotten river. Six months of solitary beauty; six months of sodden feet and lonely nights with only the real or imagined sounds of human coyotes for company. I couldn't understand how he did it, but when we reached that sandy spit, I understood why.
Barely onshore, McDonald abandoned his canoe for an ocean kayak, paddling into the breakers. There, the wind and the water buffeting him, McDonald uncorked the vial of snowmelt he had collected on the Colorado mountain where the river began its journey, and reunited it with the Gulf. It was the first time in nearly a hundred years that the Rio Grande had completed its course from snow to sea.
Over the next 50 years the state's population is projected to double—a daunting proposition in light of the water shortages we're already experiencing. All over the state, people are looking for more water. Can we produce as much water as we need without draining the land dry?
Few things are more complex than managing water. Yet the solution is, at its heart, elegant in its simplicity. Texans can rely only on each other to keep water flowing. We must collaborate, and we must do it in ways that sometimes may feel incredibly risky.
Our problems in Texas aren't impossible to solve. But if we're going to solve them, we have to connect the thread between the waters that move below ground and those that wind above. We have to give Texans legal footing to work together to preserve the waters they share. And we have to build trust among the ranchers and orange growers, the cities and shrimpers whose destinies are bound together by water.


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I've recently started working on a new series of art skateboards inspired by skateboarding becoming an Olympic event in the 2020 Olympic games in Tokyo. The boards are created with oil paint and colored pencil - the same way I create my more traditional paintings. The big difference with painting on skateboards or panels as compared to canvas or linen has to do with the interaction of the medium and glazes on the substrate. Panels tend to allow me to incorporate the black gesso underpainting layer through the use of a more shallow paint layering whereas canvas tends to make the underpainting layers more opaque.
Another thing I started to look at with this series was specific color combinations. In the past I used complimentary and secondary colors and the combinations were very customized. This time around I thought it would be a good idea to restrict myself to only a few colors and let the compositions and qualities of the paint and application of paint be more of the focus of the attention.