Something Big Just Hit Jupiter!

By Matt Williams for Universe Today

September 17, 2021 -- In 1994, the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9) impacted Jupiter, which had captured the comet shortly before (and broken apart by its gravity). The event became a media circus as it was the first direct observation of an extraterrestrial collision of Solar System objects. The impact was so powerful that it left scars that endured for months and were more discernible than Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.

Since then, astronomers have observed multiple objects impacting Jupiter, and it is expected that such impacts happen all the time (though unobserved). On September 13^th, 2021, at 22:39:30 UTC (06:39:30 PM EDT; 03:39 PM:30 PDT), another impact was observed by multiple astronomers across the world. Images and a video of the impact (shown below) were captured by members of Société Lorraine d’Astronomie (SLA) in France.

The impact was reported by Brazilian amateur astronomer Jose Luis Pereira and confirmed a day later by Harald Paleske from Langendorf, Germany. At the time, Paleske had been taking a video of the transit of Io’s shadow when the event occurred, which appeared as a two-second flash. Upon reviewing the footage, he ruled out the possibility that the event happened closer to Earth (with Jupiter merely being the backdrop).

After a thorough examination, Paleske determined that the impact happened at Jovian latitude 106.9° (CM1), longitude +3.8°, and timed it to 22:39:27 UTC on Sept. 13^th. The impact was independently observed by two teams of French amateur astronomers with the SLA. According to a statement issued by the SLA, the two teams consisted of:

“Jean-Paul Arnould from his observatory in Villey-le-sec with the C11 telescope of the SLA [and] a team made up of Thibaut Humbert, Stéphane Barré, Alexis Desmougin, and Didier Walliang at the Astroqueyras observatory in Saint-Véran, with the 62 cm diameter telescope Other people around the world have observed the same phenomenon. This is the first time that so many people (currently 9) have captured this type of event.”

Thanks to the DeTeCt software/project, the amateur and professional astronomical community was issued a wide alert that allowed for rapid responses. All across the world, instruments that were aimed at Jupiter were consulted to see if they also recorded the light flash on the Jovian gas giant. The SLA also sent the data to Marc Delcroix, a Senior Research Scientist at the NTT Communication Science Laboratories‘ Media Information Laboratory in Kyoto, Japan.

Based on the images and video provided observers, the object’s diameter is estimated at 20 meters (ft). Similar to what happened with SL-9, this object is believed to be the remnant of a larger comet or asteroid that was captured by Jupiter’s gravity that broke up shortly before the impact took place. This information and any updates on the event can be found at Delcroix’s website, who indicated that this impact could be the brightest ever observed by amateur astronomers (save for the SL-9 impact).

“Aside Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts in 1994, never an impact was so well covered!” he wrote. Over the coming days and weeks, Delcroix and the astronomical community will examine the amateur videos to learn more about the lightcurves the impact generated. From this, they hope to obtain information on the amount of energy released, the dynamics of the impact, the physical characteristics of the impactor itself.

“Many thanks to every amateur who was implied in this event, whether discovering it, observing it, looking for it in his capture without finding it, or spreading the alert (there were hundreds of shares). Special thanks to the amateurs of the French astrosurf forums who helped me a lot to find out information on discoveries or new observations. We amateurs demonstrated our force as a community, showed our motivation, dedication and experience through this great event!”

This event beautifully illustrates how far astronomy has come in recent years. Whereas impacts with Jupiter were once thought to be rare, they are now understood to be a regular occurrence. With modern opportunities for data-sharing, networking, and collaboration between amateurs and professionals, events that would have otherwise gone unnoticed are being detected with regular frequency. That’s how vital research and discoveries happen!

Link [with pictures] at:  https://www.universetoday.com/152583/something-big-just-hit-jupiter/ 

How Can We Ensure That A.I. Is Responsible?

Third party private testing of A.I. and its source data may be essential to fair evaluation

By Wilson Miles, published by RealClear Science

September 17, 2021 -- C-level executives often have access to overwhelming amounts of data, yet struggle to effectively both analyze and pull actionable insights from it. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies seek to address this problem by enabling computer systems—trained on large data sets—to model human problem-solving, including finding patterns, performing object recognition, and making predictions.

However, there are risks associated with AI: from inaccurate facial detection causing false arrests to an AI Chatbot—designed by the American company, OpenAI—refusing to talk about topics deemed sensitive by the Chinese Communist Party. Perhaps the defining characteristic of AI-enabled systems is that their decisions reflect all biases—known and unknown—in the data with which they are trained.

This makes greater validation and governance of automated systems, or ‘responsible AI’, critical to avoiding AI-related accidents. Responsible AI includes striving for the maximum possible degree of explainability and accountability. The term also refers to a disciplined AI governance structure, in which there is active supervision in the training and deployment of AI systems.

Responsible AI, now at the forefront of many AI-related discussions, needs to move away from theory into practice. To facilitate responsible AI, adopters of AI ought to pursue a certification from an independent third party to ensure—through outside review—that the systems they are fielding have been audited for bias which may be counter to their operational goals.

AI systems are becoming integrated into the real-world at an accelerating rate despite a lack of universal guidelines on implementation and validation. As our economy, health, and security become more dependent on these systems, their limitations create risk for companies and customers alike. Ultimately, AI technology can put real lives at stake.

Many business leaders don’t have a clear view into what their organization is doing to govern AI, or what new government regulations might lie ahead. While there is effort by the European Union to create guidelines for companies’ usage of AI, the US is lagging behind in establishing a legal and regulatory framework to guide AI’s use, amplifying the potential for accidental AI disasters.

As states, international organizations, and private companies attempt to come to a consensus on regulating AI, companies are left to navigate multiple competing viewpoints and to regulate themselves. The question then becomes: can we trust organizations to create and operationalize guidelines that are interpretable, fair, safe and respectful of a user’s privacy? Even if there is a clear international understanding of ethical AI standards, is there a mechanism for holding companies accountable to those standards?

The best way to ensure adopters of AI use their software responsibly is for an independent third party—from the private sector—to certify the clients’ AI system. The certification process entails providing best practices, which can include details on which data can be collected and used, how models should be evaluated, and how to best deploy and monitor models. This self-accrediting framework can also define who is accountable for any negative outcomes of AI.

If a company's AI fails, it can likely be attributed to the failure of either: 1) a person or people, 2) a process, or 3) the AI technology itself. An AI certification provides validation of a company’s risk profile, inclusive of process, technology, data, people, and culture.

A certification does pose unique challenges. A recent GAO report stated independent audits are complicated because an AI system can be a “black box” in which an organizations’ software is difficult to understand, or because “vendors [will] not reveal them for proprietary reasons.”

An AI certification should be designed to be a self-accrediting process to avoid being a barrier to innovation, yet simultaneously provide concrete, actionable steps—similar to the Failure Mode and Effect Analyses approach—to identify possible issues, like unintentional bias, and mitigate them before they cause harm to the organization.

The AI future runs on data. Both the private and public sector need confidence in the future of AI technology if it is to succeed en masse. Until all parties understand the benefits of AI, as well as the ethical and national security risks posed by insufficiently validated machine learning models, an AI certification is the only way to achieve such assurance.

Wilson Miles is a masters candidate in U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security at American University.

https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2021/09/17/how_can_we_ensure_that_ai_is_responsible_794856.html

This Vaccine Goes In Through the Nose

COVID-19 Nasal Vaccine Candidate Effective at Preventing Disease Transmission

By Laurie Fickman, University of Houston

September 15, 2021 - Breathe in, breathe out. That’s how easy it is for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, to enter your nose. And though remarkable progress has been made in developing intramuscular vaccines against SARS-CoV- 2, such as the readily available Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, nothing yet – like a nasal vaccine – has been approved to provide mucosal immunity in the nose, the first barrier against the virus before it travels down to the lungs.

But now, we’re one step closer.

Navin Varadarajan, University of Houston M.D. Anderson Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and his colleagues, are reporting in iScience the development of an intranasal subunit vaccine that provides durable local immunity against inhaled pathogens.

“Mucosal vaccination can stimulate both systemic and mucosal immunity and has the advantage of being a non-invasive procedure suitable for immunization of large populations,” said Varadarajan. “However, mucosal vaccination has been hampered by the lack of efficient delivery of the antigen and the need for appropriate adjuvants that can stimulate a robust immune response without toxicity.”

To solve those problems, Varadarajan collaborated with Xinli Liu, associate professor of pharmaceutics at the UH College of Pharmacy, and an expert in nanoparticle delivery. Liu’s team was able to encapsulate the agonist of the stimulator of interferon genes (STING) within liposomal particles to yield the adjuvant named NanoSTING. The function of the adjuvant is to promote the body's immune response.

“NanoSTING has a small particle size around 100 nanometers which exhibits significantly different physical and chemical properties to the conventional adjuvant,” said Liu.

“We used NanoSTING as the adjuvant for intranasal vaccination and single-cell RNA-sequencing to confirm the nasal-associated lymphoid tissue as an inductive site upon vaccination. Our results show that the candidate vaccine formulation is safe, produces rapid immune responses - within seven days - and elicits comprehensive immunity against SARS-CoV-2," said Varadarajan.

A fundamental limitation of intramuscular vaccines is that they are not designed to elicit mucosal immunity. As prior work with other respiratory pathogens like influenza has shown, sterilizing immunity to virus re-infection requires adaptive immune responses in the respiratory tract and the lung.

The nasal vaccine will also serve to equitably distribute vaccines worldwide, according to the researchers. It is estimated that first world countries have already secured and vaccinated multiple intramuscular doses for each citizen while billions of people in countries like India, South Africa, and Brazil with large outbreaks are currently not immunized. These outbreaks and viral spread are known to facilitate viral evolution leading to decreased efficacy of all vaccines.

“Equitable distribution requires vaccines that are stable and that can be shipped easily. As we have shown, each of our components, the protein (lyophilized) and the adjuvant (NanoSTING) are stable for over 11 months and can be stored and shipped without the need for freezing,” said Varadarajan.

Varadarajan is co-founder of AuraVax Therapeutics Inc., a pioneering biotech company developing novel intranasal vaccines and therapies to help patients defeat debilitating diseases, including COVID-19. The company has an exclusive license agreement with UH with respect to the intellectual property covering intranasal vaccines and STING agonist technologies. They have initiated the manufacturing process and plan to engage the FDA later this year.

Along with Liu, Varadarajan’s team includes postdoctoral researchers Xingyue An, Melisa Martinez-Paniagua; research assistants Ali Rezvan, Mohsen Fathi and Sujit Biswas; doctoral student Samiur Rahman Sefat, all from the University of Houston; and Shailbala Sing, postdoctoral researcher at University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center; Melissa Pourpak, BD; and Cassian Yee, M.D., University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

https://stories.uh.edu/2021-intranasal-covid-vaccine/index.html

Modern Snakes Evolved From a Few Survivors

Research from the Milner Centre for Evolution suggests modern snakes evolved from a handful of ancestors that survived the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.

By Vicky Just at the University of Bath

September 14, 2021 -- A new study suggests that all living snakes evolved from a handful of species that survived the giant asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs and most other living things at the end of the Cretaceous. The authors say that this devastating extinction event was a form of ‘creative destruction’ that allowed snakes to diversify into new niches, previously filled by their competitors.

The research, published in Nature Communications, shows that snakes, today including almost 4000 living species, started to diversify around the time that an extra-terrestrial impact wiped out the dinosaurs and most other species on the planet.

The study, led by scientists at the University of Bath and including collaborators from Bristol, Cambridge and Germany, used fossils and analysed genetic differences between modern snakes to reconstruct snake evolution. The analyses helped to pinpoint the time that modern snakes evolved.

Their results show that all living snakes trace back to just a handful of species that survived the asteroid impact 66 million years ago, the same extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs.

The authors argue that the ability of snakes to shelter underground and go for long periods without food helped them survive the destructive effects of the impact. In the aftermath, the extinction of their competitors - including Cretaceous snakes and the dinosaurs themselves - allowed snakes to move into new niches, new habitats and new continents.

Snakes then began to diversify, producing lineages like vipers, cobras, garter snakes, pythons, and boas, exploiting new habitats, and new prey. Modern snake diversity - including tree snakes, sea snakes, venomous vipers and cobras, and huge constrictors like boas and pythons - emerged only after the dinosaur extinction.

Fossils also show a change in the shape of snake vertebrae in the aftermath, resulting from the extinction of Cretaceous lineages and the appearance of new groups, including giant sea snakes up to 10 metres long.

"It's remarkable, because not only are they surviving an extinction that wipes out so many other animals, but within a few million years they are innovating, using their habitats in new ways," said lead author and recent Bath graduate Dr Catherine Klein, who now works at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) in Germany.

The study also suggests that snakes began to spread across the globe around this time. Although the ancestor of living snakes probably lived somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, snakes first appear to have spread to Asia after the extinction.

Dr Nick Longrich, from the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath and the corresponding author, said: “Our research suggests that extinction acted as a form of ‘creative destruction’- by wiping out old species, it allowed survivors to exploit the gaps in the ecosystem, experimenting with new lifestyles and habitats.

“This seems to be a general feature of evolution - it’s the periods immediately after major extinctions where we see evolution at its most wildly experimental and innovative.

“The destruction of biodiversity makes room for new things to emerge and colonize new landmasses. Ultimately life becomes even more diverse than before.”

The study also found evidence for a second major diversification event around the time that the world shifted from a warm ‘Greenhouse Earth’ into a cold ‘Icehouse’ climate, which saw the formation of polar icecaps and the start of the Ice Ages.

The patterns seen in snakes hint at a key role for catastrophes - severe, rapid, and global environmental disruptions - in driving evolutionary change.

Catherine G. Klein, Davide Pisani, Daniel J. Field, Rebecca Lakin, Matthew A. Wills & Nicholas R. Longrich (2021) “Evolution and dispersal of snakes across the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction” is published in Nature Communications DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-25136-y

Read more about this research on Dr Longrich's blog: How the end-Cretaceous mass extinction drove the evolution of modern snakes.

https://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/modern-snakes-evolved-from-a-few-survivors-of-dino-killing-asteroid/

Largest Virtual Universe Has Been Created

It is free for anyone to explore it on the cloud as well

From:  National Institutes of Natural Sciences

September 10, 2021 -- Uchuu (meaning "Outer Space" in Japanese) is the largest and most realistic simulation of the Universe to date. The Uchuu simulation consists of 2.1 trillion particles in a computational cube an unprecedented 9.63 billion light-years to a side. For comparison, that's about three-quarters the distance between Earth and the most distant observed galaxies. Uchuu will allow us to study the evolution of the Universe on a level of both size and detail inconceivable until now.

Uchuu focuses on the large-scale structure of the Universe: mysterious halos of dark matter which control not only the formation of galaxies, but also the fate of the entire Universe itself. The scale of these structures ranges from the largest galaxy clusters down to the smallest galaxies. Individual stars and planets aren't resolved, so don't expect to find any alien civilizations in Uchuu. But one way that Uchuu wins big in comparison to other virtual worlds is the time domain; Uchuu simulates the evolution of matter over almost the entire 13.8 billion year history of the Universe from the Big Bang to the present. That is over 30 times longer than the time since animal life first crawled out of the seas on Earth.

Julia F. Ereza, a Ph.D. student at IAA-CSIC who uses Uchuu to study the large-scale structure of the Universe explains the importance of the time domain, "Uchuu is like a time machine: we can go forward, backward and stop in time, we can 'zoom in' on a single galaxy or 'zoom out' to visualize a whole cluster, we can see what is really happening at every instant and in every place of the Universe from its earliest days to the present, being an essential tool to study the Cosmos."

An international team of researchers from Japan, Spain, U.S.A., Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, and Italy created Uchuu using ATERUI II, the world's most powerful supercomputer dedicated to astronomy. Even with all this power, it still took a year to produce Uchuu. Tomoaki Ishiyama, an associate professor at Chiba University who developed the code used to generate Uchuu, explains, "To produce Uchuu we have used ... all 40,200 processors (CPU cores) available exclusively for 48 hours each month. Twenty million supercomputer hours were consumed, and 3 Petabytes of data were generated, the equivalent of 894,784,853 pictures from a 12-megapixel cell phone."

Before you start worrying about download time, the research team used high-performance computational techniques to compress information on the formation and evolution of dark matter haloes in the Uchuu simulation into a 100-terabyte catalog. This catalog is now available to everyone on the cloud in an easy to use format thanks to the computational infrastructure skun6 located at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC), the RedIRIS group, and the Galician Supercomputing Center (CESGA). Future data releases will include catalogues of virtual galaxies and gravitational lensing maps.

Big Data science products from Uchuu will help astronomers learn how to interpret Big Data galaxy surveys expected in coming years from facilities like the Subaru Telescope and the ESA Euclid space mission.

        https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/09/210910121651.htm 

Vaccines Are Effective Against Delta Variant

Reports and Proceedings from Regenstrief Institute

September 10, 2021 -- INDIANAPOLIS -- COVID-19 vaccines are effective at preventing hospitalizations and emergency department visits caused by the Delta variant, according to data from a national study. That data also indicate that Moderna’s vaccine is significantly more effective against Delta than Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson. 

“These real-world data show that vaccines remain highly effective at reducing COVID-19 related hospitalizations and emergency department visits, even in the presence of the new COVID-19 variant,” said study author Shaun Grannis, M.D., M.S., Regenstrief Institute vice president for data and analytics and professor of medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine. “We strongly recommend vaccinations for all who are eligible to reduce serious illness and ease the burden on our healthcare system.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s VISION Network analyzed more than 32,000 medical encounters from nine states during June, July and August 2021, when the Delta variant became the predominant strain. The results showed that unvaccinated individuals with COVID-19 are 5-7 times more likely to need emergency department care or hospitalization, similar to the overall effectiveness prior to the variant.

The study in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report is also the first analysis from the VISION Network to show a marked difference between the effectiveness of the mRNA vaccines (Moderna and Pfizer). In the study’s time period:

• Moderna was 95 percent effective at preventing hospitalizations among adults ages 18 and older.  
• Pfizer was 80 percent effective at preventing hospitalizations among adults ages 18 and older. 
• Johnson & Johnson was 60 percent effective at preventing hospitalizations among adults ages 18 and older. 

The study also found that vaccine effectiveness is lower for people 75 years and older, which has not been shown in previous research. This could be due to a range of factors, including the increased time since vaccination. 

When it came to preventing emergency department and urgent care visits, analysis showed that:

• Moderna was 92 percent effective.
• Pfizer was 77 percent effective.
• Johnson & Johnson was 65 percent effective.

Scientists say these findings need further monitoring and evaluation.

“Despite the differences in effectiveness, vaccines continue to offer much more protection than not getting one at all,” said Dr. Grannis. “While breakthrough cases do happen, data shows the symptoms are less severe. The vast majority of COVID hospitalizations and deaths continue to be among unvaccinated individuals. COVID-19 vaccines are powerful tools for combating the pandemic.”

The VISION network, funded by the CDC, includes seven organizations that contribute and analyze data from U.S. healthcare systems to learn more about the COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness. In addition to Regenstrief Institute, other members are Columbia University Irving Medical Center, HealthPartners, Intermountain Healthcare, Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Kaiser Permanente Northwest and University of Colorado.

“Interim Estimates of COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness Against COVID-19–Associated Emergency Department or Urgent Care Clinic Encounters and Hospitalizations Among Adults During SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617.2 (Delta) Variant Predominance — Nine States, June–August 2021” is published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. In addition to Dr. Grannis, other authors on the paper are Elizabeth A. Rowley, DrPH, M.S. of IU School of Medicine; Toan C. Ong, PhD of Kaiser Permanente Northwest; Edward Stenehjem, M.D., MSc of InterMountain Healthcare; Nicola P. Klein, M.D., PhD of Columbia University; Malini DeSilva, M.D. of HealthPartners; Allison Naleway, PhD of  Kaiser Permanente Northwest; Karthik Natarajan, PhD of Columbia University and Mark G. Thompson of the CDC COVID-19 Response Team. 

               https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/928139

Standard American and "Standard American Yellow Card" Bridge Bidding Systems Explained

Standard American is a bidding system for the game of bridge widely used in North America and elsewhere. Owing to the popularization of the game by Charles Goren in the 1940s and 1950s, its early versions were sometimes referred to simply as 'Goren'. With the addition and evolution of various treatments and conventions, it is now more generally referred to as Standard American. It is a bidding system based on five-card majors and a strong notrump; players may add conventions and refine the meanings of bids through partnership agreements summarized in their convention card. One standardised version, SAYC (Standard American Yellow Card), is widely used by casual partnerships and in online bridge.

Role of Bidding Systems

The purpose of bidding during the auction phase of each deal is to disclose information which one's partner may employ in order to arrive at an optimal contract while concurrently contending with the opponents' attempts to do likewise. A bidding system is a set of agreements about the meanings of the different bids that the players use. Each bid provides information about the hand's high-card strength and suit distribution based on hand evaluation techniques.

History

"Standard American" was the label given to the bridge bidding system developed by Charles Goren and his contemporaries in the 1940s. This system employed the 1915 point-count method to evaluate the strength of a bridge hand. Most bids had fairly specific requirements regarding hand strength and suit distribution. This point-count system became so popular that most bridge players, social and tournament players alike, used it. American bridge teams in the late 1930s and 1940s won world championships using Standard American.

Modifications began to appear from the 1950s forward. Before the year 2000, new bidding systems evolved, including "2/1 Game Forcing" which are otherwise substantial departures from early Standard American methods. Most tournament pairs now assemble their own system from a variety of new treatments and conventions that have evolved. The nearest thing to a common system in tournament play is the "Standard American Yellow Card" (SAYC) promulgated by the American Contract Bridge League.  SAYC is widely used in internet bridge play, but only rarely in on-site tournament play.

Most Common Elements

The essential common elements of modern Standard American systems are:

• Hand evaluation based on the 4-3-2-1 point count system (Ace = 4, King = 3, Queen = 2 and Jack = 1) with adjustments for the location of honors and suit distribution.
• A hand-strength requirement of at least 12-13 points to open 1-of-a-suit.
• Five-card majors: opening a major suit promises at least a five-card holding in that suit.
• Weak two bids: Two diamond, heart or spade openers are made with a sound six-card suit in a hand without enough overall strength to open 1 of the suit.
• Strong two clubs: All unbalanced hands too strong to open at the one-level are opened with an artificial 2♣ call, as well as balanced hands stronger than 21 HCP.
• Pre-emptive opening bids: Suit openings above the two level are pre-emptive, promising a long and strong suit.
• Limit Raises: A jump-raise of the opener's suit by responder, in the absence of opponent interference, is invitational to game. In Goren's system, this was a strong game-forcing raise.
• Notrump openers show a balanced hand, with the following common high card point (HCP) ranges:
• 1NT = 15-17 HCP
• 2NT = 20-21 HCP
• 3NT = 25-27 HCP
• Common notrump follow-up conventions include Stayman, Jacoby transfers and Gerber.

SAYC

The Standard American Yellow Card (SAYC) is a set of partnership agreements summarized in a convention card created by the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) to be used as the required bidding system in specified events or as a base for a casual or online partnerships. Some of the specific agreements in Standard American Yellow Card (SAYC) that elaborate on or depart from more current Standard American bidding are:

• A 2♣ response to a 1NT opening is specified as the "non-forcing" version of the Stayman convention.
• A 2♠ response to a 1NT is a relay to the minors when responder holds a long (at least six card length) minor suit and a weak hand; opener bids 3♣ and responder either passes or corrects to 3♦ which opener is expected to pass.
• Straight Blackwood is used and not the Roman Key Card Blackwood or other variation.
• In response to a 2♣ opening, the 2♦ response is the "waiting" version of that response.
• In response to a weak-two opening, RONF ("Raise Only Non-Force") is used.
• The Jacoby 2NT is used to show a game-forcing raise of a major suit with four-card support.
• Negative doubles are used through the level of 2♠.
• Fourth suit forcing is used.
• Michaels cuebid and Unusual notrump are used.
• Conventions are specified as being "off" in response to a 1NT overcall, except that 2♣ is still Stayman.

                    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_American#SAYC

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Footnote from the Blog Editor

Standard American Yellow Card is often attributed to an effort by the American Contract Bridge League to maintain interest in bridge by offering a locked bidding system to players, including Internet players who have never met but play on line as a team.  SAYC has thus had a role in saving the game of Bridge from rarity or slow extinction.

It is worth noting that chess has been conquered by artificial intelligence.  So has Go.  Both are games of complete information.  A game of incomplete information, such as Texas Hold’em Poker, has also been taken over by artificial intelligence.  Contract bridge has not been surrendered to artificial intelligence yet.  Such a revolution would likely force a new version of SAYC into existence for human players.