There is a time and place to relax on a cruise ship, but Royal Caribbean’s Utopia of the Seas figures its guests will sleep when they get home.

Leaning into short three- and four-night Bahamas trips, each with a stop at the cruise line’s private Bahamas island Perfect Day at CocoCay, the line is combining its newest ship with its most popular port of call for what it dubs “The World’s Biggest Weekend.”

“You’re going to leave this ship with a couple of days, exhausted. That is our mission — all weekend,” Royal Caribbean International President and CEO Michael Bayley said during a preview cruise ahead of the ship’s debut Friday with paying customers.

Royal Caribbean’s Utopia of the Seas dwarfs the older cruise ship Vision of the Seas as both are seen docked at the cruise line’s private island resort Perfect Day at CocoCay in the Bahamas on Wednesday, July 16, 2024 during a preview sailing from Port Canaveral. (Richard Tribou/Orlando Sentinel)

The behemoth ship is the second largest in the world behind Icon of the Seas that debuted out of Miami in January, but it’s the largest ever to sail from Port Canaveral and the first time Royal has assigned a new ship short itinerary duties.

As such, the line has taken the 18-deck, 236,473-gross-ton ship with room for 5,668 guests based on double occupancy and crammed the days with shorter, punchier live shows and a cavalcade of parties and live music.

The sixth Oasis-class ship takes on all the best aspects of its recent predecessors including the three-slide water park The Perfect Storm, FlowRider surf simulator, rock climbing wall and the 10-deck twisting dry slide The Ultimate Abyss.

A view of The Boardwalk neighborhood on Royal Caribbean’s Utopia of the Seas after the ship made its inaugural arrival at Port Canaveral, Fla., Thursday, July 11, 2024. At 236,860 gross tons – with a passenger capacity of 5,668 – the ship is the second largest in the world and the largest to call Port Canaveral home. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

A sign of amping up things where it can, Royal added rollers and extended the length of the slide for an even faster run with stretches of tube that alternate from pitch black to psychedelic flashing lights to translucent for a brain-thumping ride.

The high energy also flows into all three of its main entertainment venues which lean into song, dance and acrobatic spectacle married with technology for quick-hit performances that run under an hour. That means leaving behind the longer-running Broadway or other original stage productions found on Royal’s longer cruises.

“I don’t think we could sit in a theater for 90 minutes here,” said Christi Coachman, Royal Caribbean’s vice president of entertainment. “Because obviously that’s that’s our key timeframe, 90 minutes, with all of the other things that we want to experience.”

The main Royal Theater show on board Royal Caribbean’s Utopia of the Seas is titled “All In,” seen here during a preview sailing from Port Canaveral on Tuesday, July 16, 2024. (Richard Tribou/Orlando Sentinel)

That said, the Royal Theater hosts a show called “All In” that takes all the technological toys Royal has developed over its last decade of stage productions and combines them into a journey thematically tied as global musical hotspots, running from Studio 54 in New York to a neon-lit Miami to Burning Man in California and a gothic masquerade ball in Venice — all dipping musical toes across different eras.

“In the theater, it was all about hit ’em hard, all about technology. We have drones, we have performers flying, we have incredible video projection, lasers,” Coachman said, while also using a technology that tracks performers’ positions through sensors that trigger interactive video or laser projection.

The AquaTheater show on board Royal Caribbean’s Utopia of the Seas is titled “Aqua80Too,” seen here during a preview sailing from Port Canaveral on Monday, July 15, 2024. (Richard Tribou/Orlando Sentinel)

Unique to Royal Caribbean are both the ice skating show venue and the AquaTheater that combines divers, synchronized swimmers, slackliners, aerialists and dancing amid jets and fountains of water.

For Utopia, the AquaTheater show embraces Gen-X with a show titled “Aqua80Too” that leans into 80s hits with one seamlessly mashing up Phil Collins’ “Sussudio,” Eddy Grant’s “Electric Avenue” and Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.” One number with slackliners gleefully bounce to the beat of a medley from the Beastie Boys, David Bowie, Kool & The Gang, Sugar Hill Gang and Young MC. A more poetic aerobatic performance beautifully mixes U2’s “With Or Without You,” Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush’s “Don’t Give Up” and Thomson Twins’ “Hold Me Now.”

Children of the 80s will approve.

The ice skating show on board Royal Caribbean’s Utopia of the Seas is titled “Youtopia,” seen here during a preview sailing from Port Canaveral on Monday, July 15, 2024. (Richard Tribou/Orlando Sentinel)

The hardest show conceptually to get one’s head around may be one of the most impressive artistically. The ice show titled “Youtopia” features skaters in a series of quick-change outfits with impressive choreography under an intense projection system that interacts with the skaters zipping around the small rink performing jumps, spins and turns.

“This is my definition. When you think about Utopia, what is the definition of Utopia? It’s perfect place. It’s ideal perfection, and what does that mean to you?” Coachman asked. “So why is it ‘Youtopia’ — Y-O-Utopia? So is that the perfect car, the perfect house, the perfect love? And candy, because that’s perfect, because there’s a whole section on candy. So it’s really kind of what Utopia perfection means to you.”

The shows, though, almost play second fiddle to the arsenal of musical options on board.

“We’ve noticed guests on three- or four-day cruises, many times, as incredible as the shows are, they much rather gravitate toward loud music … They’re here to have fun,” said Allison Rider-Davidoiu, director of headliner entertainment, live music and enrichment.

The ship has 29 of more than 200 entertainment staff dedicated to music.

“The energy is definitely, you know, we amp it up,” Rider-Davidoiu said. “So it’s one of our entertainers, still incredibly talented, but maybe a bit more upbeat than what you would experience in a 14-day cruise or a seven-day cruise.”

The French string duo Enchanté perform in Central Park on Royal Caribbean’s Utopia of the Seas on Tuesday, July 16, 2024 during a preview sailing out of Port Canaveral. (Richard Tribou/Orlando Sentinel)

She said there are still moments of more chill music across the ship, such as the French violin and guitar duo Enchanté that migrates to more calm venues such as the greenery found in Central Park.

“There’s a lot of parties. There’s a lot going on. Everything’s super loud everywhere, but sometimes you need that alternative,” she said.

She’s not wrong about the parties. The ship now employs staff called party influencers that can be found among the sundry celebrations such as the Rezolution Dance Party held in the ice skating rink venue so the projection system casts onto those on the dance floor.

There’s also a fraternity-themed party called Royal Kappa-Chi, a silent toga party, poolside plunge party and the sail-away party.

“Utopia is a taste, right, of what possibly you could experience on maybe a longer itinerary,” Coachman said. “It was really important not only to continue to create the family experiences, because that’s very important for our brand, but also to go in a little bit of a different direction and have one party after the other to where you don’t ever stop.”

So amid the parties, live music, comedy shows, game shows and performances are all the other things that Royal Caribbean can shoehorn in into the world’s second largest cruise ship.

A view of Pesky Parrot in the Promenade of Royal Caribbean’s Utopia of the Seas after the ship made its inaugural arrival at Port Canaveral, Fla., Thursday, July 11, 2024. At 236,860-gross-tons –with a passenger capacity of 5,668– the ship is the second largest in the world and the largest to call Port Canaveral home. Utopia of the Seas is scheduled to sail on its first passenger cruise on July 19. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

That includes more than 40 places to eat and drink including what has already become a crowd-inducing new bar concept called the Pesky Parrot on the Promenade deck. It’s what Royal calls a Caribbean-inspired Tiki concept.

Bayley enjoyed telling the story of the Pesky Parrot’s origins.

“Somebody came up with the idea of, well, why don’t we have like a drunken parrot,” he said. “And so the pesky parrot really is this parrot, you know, is getting on in life, likes a few drinks, and as the day progresses, the parrot kind of becomes a little belligerent, rude. … You come on vacation, it doesn’t need to be serious. It’s just meant to be stupid. Some things can just be plain stupid. And you know, you go in a bar and this parrot just starts mouthing off at you.”

The line is bringing a live parrot named Brian on board for the first revenue sailing.

New cruise line dining experiences make you forget you’re on a cruise

Another venue unique to the ship is a themed dining concept called “Royal Railway — Utopia Station.” It builds off the thematic Empire Supper Club introduced on Icon of the Seas, but adds theme park-esque elements to mimic a train trip complete with digital screen projections of passing landscapes, piped in track sounds and vibrating seats.

The first railway trip is themed to the Wild West and has actors playing out a train heist during a 90-minute dinner. Future sailings will tackle other themes, such as the Asian Silk Road, along with shorter offerings tied to things such as wine tastings and holidays.

Bayley said he expects the line to do well offering this size ship in the Central Florida market.

“One of the reasons we put this brand new Oasis class into this market is that we really expect to see a certain amount of demand coming from tourists who are going in for … some kind of combo. They’re doing Disney or Universal or doing something in Orlando, and then they can tag on,” he said. “What kids wouldn’t be happy with that idea. … I wish I was a kid. That’s pretty good.”

Avery Newmark | (TNS) The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The early bird may not always get the worm, at least when it comes to cognitive performance. A study from Imperial College London suggests night owls — those who feel more alert and productive in the evening — tend to outperform their early rising counterparts on brain tests.

Researchers analyzed data from more than 26,000 participants and found evening people scored up to 13.5% higher than morning people on cognitive assessments. Even those without a strong preference for morning or night still performed better than early risers.

“Our study found that adults who are naturally more active in the evening tended to perform better on cognitive tests than those who are ‘morning people.’ Rather than just being personal preferences, these chronotypes could impact our cognitive function,” lead author Dr. Raha West explained.

The study accounted for age, gender, smoking, drinking, health conditions and other factors. Younger people and those without chronic illnesses generally did better on the tests. Healthier lifestyle choices were also linked to better brain performance.

But don’t stay up all night just yet. The study also found that getting the right amount of sleep is crucial for everyone. People who slept between seven and nine hours a night had the best brain function. Those who slept too little or too much showed decreased cognitive performance.

“While understanding and working with your natural sleep tendencies is essential, it’s equally important to remember to get just enough sleep, not too long or too short,” West said. “This is crucial for keeping your brain healthy and functioning at its best.”

Although these findings are interesting, the study notes more research is needed to fully understand how sleep patterns affect brain performance. So whether you’re a night owl or an early bird, focus on getting quality sleep to help keep your brain sharp.

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©2024 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Visit at ajc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Sam Taube | NerdWallet

The investing information provided on this page is for educational purposes only. NerdWallet, Inc. does not offer advisory or brokerage services, nor does it recommend or advise investors to buy or sell particular stocks, securities or other investments.

What do fishing, air pollution and Bitcoin have in common? Maybe just one thing: Until recently, they were all regulated by a powerful legal doctrine known as Chevron deference.

But in late June, a fishing-related Supreme Court case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, brought an end to Chevron deference. Experts say the decision could cause substantial changes to financial rules — especially when it comes to cryptocurrency. Here’s what investors should know.

What was Chevron deference?

The term “Chevron deference” comes from a 1984 Supreme Court case, Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council Inc. That case hinged on whether the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was allowed to modify factory emissions regulations that were derived from a broadly worded air pollution law.

The court upheld the modified regulations, creating a “Chevron doctrine” under which judges had to defer to the expertise of federal agencies such as the EPA when those agencies issued, changed or enforced regulations based on ambiguous laws.

Jeff Sovern, a professor of consumer law at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, summarizes Chevron deference this way:

“Congress writes statutes, and they can’t predict everything. No one can. So they leave gaps; they’re human. Somebody has to fill in those gaps. And under Chevron, if there were gaps, it was largely up to the administrative agencies,” Sovern says.

Over the past 40 years, Chevron deference has been used in over 19,000 federal court cases, and Congress has passed broadly worded laws with the expectation that Chevron deference would allow agencies to interpret them into specific regulations.

But on June 28, the Supreme Court ruled against a federal agency regulation on fishing boats in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, bringing Chevron deference to an end. Federal agencies no longer have the power to enforce regulations based on their interpretations of ambiguous laws. They can only regulate when their rulemaking powers are explicitly defined by law, either by Congress or by a federal judge.

Financial regulations could loosen

Chevron deference was a load-bearing legal principle in many federal regulations, and its disappearance has the potential to roll back a variety of financial rules.

Sovern says that the full impact of Loper Bright on financial regulations is unclear. Some agencies, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), have congressionally defined powers to make “appropriate” rules, and those rules might still hold up in court post-Loper Bright.

But that might not always be the case. For example, a federal judge in Texas has already referenced Loper Bright in an order that could potentially overturn the Federal Trade Commission’s recent ban on noncompete agreements.

According to Alex Alben, a professor at the UCLA School of Law and former chief privacy officer for the state of Washington, cryptocurrency is another area of financial regulation that could see a lot of changes because of Loper Bright.

“In cases such as the regulation of cryptocurrencies, where there are very few laws, and there are even very few agency interpretations — in those fields, we’ve definitely seen a power shift from the agencies to the courts,” Alben says.

Crypto rulemaking is up to Congress now

Congress has passed laws regarding the taxation of cryptocurrency, and it has debated several bills that would explicitly define a regulatory framework for digital assets.

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But most crypto regulation today consists of agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) enforcing rules based on their interpretations of their broad jurisdiction over financial markets. Without Chevron deference, many of those rules may not survive legal challenges.

Some cryptocurrency experts say that crypto can still be regulated post-Loper Bright; Congress just has to pass laws clearly defining those regulations.

“It creates an obligation for Congress to create actual rules that apply to this industry and pass new laws for a new technology. So it makes it more of a political issue than a bureaucratic one,” says Alexander Blume, CEO of Two Prime, a digital asset-focused registered investment advisor.

Blume says that in the short term, Loper Bright may turn the tide in favor of crypto companies in certain regulatory situations. For example, Uniswap, a developer of decentralized crypto exchange software, is facing legal action from the SEC, which regards it as an unregistered securities exchange and broker that may be violating federal securities laws.

The SEC has indicated that it may press charges against Uniswap, which has been the subject of class action lawsuits by investors who have lost money buying scam tokens on its software.

But last week, Uniswap’s legal counsel sent an open letter to the agency questioning its jurisdiction in the matter, in light of Loper Bright and the lack of clear laws that apply securities regulations to cryptocurrency.

For investors, buyer beware could be the new normal

“I see positives and negatives of this ruling, with respect to financial markets. I think we will have more innovation and more creativity in financial markets,” Alben says.

Many crypto investors are anticipating the approval of Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as soon as this month. Blume says Loper Bright could mean that staking (an interest-like reward system by which Ethereum holders earn new Ether coins over time) could be added to crypto ETFs “sooner rather than later,” although the current crop of Ethereum ETF candidates doesn’t have staking features for SEC compliance reasons.

The end of Chevron deference is “an anti-regulation ruling by the court,” Alben says. Less regulation may give investors more choice in what kinds of investments they can buy — but it also may leave investors more vulnerable to losing their money on potentially fraudulent or otherwise inadvisable investments.

“We’re probably going to have riskier environments for investors, who will need to educate themselves about the levels of risk that they’re taking, and do their homework before they make any kind of speculative investment,” Alben says.

The author owned Bitcoin at the time of publication.

Sam Taube writes for NerdWallet. Email: staube@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @samuel_taube.

The article The End of Chevron Deference Is a ‘Power Shift’ for Investors originally appeared on NerdWallet.

Amy Maxmen, Arthur Allen | (TNS) KFF Health News

As bird flu spreads among dairy cattle in the U.S., veterinarians and researchers have taken note of Finland’s move to vaccinate farmworkers at risk of infection. They wonder why their government doesn’t do the same.

“Farmworkers, veterinarians, and producers are handling large volumes of milk that can contain high levels of bird flu virus,” said Kay Russo, a livestock and poultry veterinarian in Fort Collins, Colorado. “If a vaccine seems to provide some immunity, I think it should be offered to them.”

Among a dozen virology and outbreak experts interviewed by KFF Health News, most agree with Russo. They said people who work with dairy cows should be offered vaccination for a disease that has killed roughly half of the people known to have gotten it globally over the past two decades, has killed cats in the U.S. this year, and has pandemic potential.

However, some researchers sided with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in recommending against vaccination for now. There’s no evidence that this year’s bird flu virus spreads between people or causes serious disease in humans. And it’s unclear how well the available vaccine would prevent either scenario.

But the wait-and-see approach “is a gamble,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University. “By the time we see severe outcomes, it means a lot of people have been infected.”

“Now is the time to offer the vaccines to farmworkers in the United States,” said Nahid Bhadelia, director of the Boston University Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases. Even more urgent measures are lagging in the U.S., she added. Testing of farmworkers and cows is sorely needed to detect the H5N1 bird flu virus, study it, and extinguish it before it becomes a fixture on farms — posing an ever-present pandemic threat.

Demetre Daskalakis, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said the agency takes bird flu seriously, and the U.S. is stockpiling 4.8 million doses of the vaccine. But, he said, “there’s no recommendation to launch a vaccine campaign.”

“It’s all about risk-benefit ratios,” Daskalakis said. The benefits are blurry because there hasn’t been enough testing to understand how easily the virus jumps from cows into people, and how sick they become. Just four people in the United States have tested positive this year, with mild cases — too few to draw conclusions.

Other farmworkers and veterinarians working on dairy farms with outbreaks have reported being sick, Russo said, but they haven’t been tested. Public health labs have tested only about 50 people for the bird flu since the outbreak was detected in March.

Still, Daskalakis said the CDC is not concerned that the agency is missing worrisome bird flu infections because of its influenza surveillance system. Hospitals report patients with severe cases of flu, and numbers are normal this year.

Another signal that puts the agency at ease is that the virus doesn’t yet have mutations that allow it to spread rapidly between people as they sneeze and breathe. “If we start to see changes in the virus, that’s another factor that would be part of the decision to move from a planning phase into an operational one,” Daskalakis said.

On July 8, researchers reported that the virus may be closer to spreading between people than previously thought. It still doesn’t appear to do so, but experiments suggest it has the ability to infect human airways. It also spread between two laboratory ferrets through the air.

In considering vaccines, the agency takes a cue from a 1976 outbreak of the swine flu. Officials initially feared a repeat of the 1918 swine flu pandemic that killed roughly half a million people in the United States. So they rapidly vaccinated nearly 43 million people in the country within a year.

But swine flu cases turned out to be mild that year. This made the vaccine seem unnecessarily risky as several reports of a potentially deadly disorder, Guillain-Barré Syndrome, emerged. Roughly one of every million people who get influenza vaccines may acquire the disorder, according to the CDC. That risk is outweighed by the benefits of prevention. Since Oct. 1, as many as 830,000 people have been hospitalized for the seasonal flu and 25,000 to 75,000 people have died.

An after-action report on the 1976 swine flu situation called it a “sobering, cautionary tale” about responding prematurely to an uncertain public health threat. “It’s a story about what happens when you launch a vaccine program where you are accepting risk without any benefit,” Daskalakis said.

Paul Offit, a virologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, sides with the CDC. “I’d wait for more data,” he said.

However, other researchers say this isn’t comparable to 1976 because they aren’t suggesting that the U.S. vaccinate tens of millions of people. Rather they’re talking about a voluntary vaccine for thousands of people in close contact with livestock. This lessens the chance of rare adverse effects.

The bird flu vaccine on hand, made by the flu vaccine company CSL Seqirus, was authorized last year by the European equivalent of the FDA. An older variety has FDA approval, but the newer variety hasn’t gotten the green light yet.

Although the vaccine targets a different bird flu strain than the H5N1 virus now circulating in cows, studies show it triggers an immune response against both varieties. It’s considered safe because it uses the same egg-based vaccine technology deployed every year in seasonal flu vaccines.

For these reasons, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and about a dozen other countries are stockpiling millions of doses. Finland expects to offer them to people who work on fur farms this month as a precaution because its mink and fox farms were hit by the bird flu last year.

In contrast, mRNA vaccines being developed against the bird flu would be a first for influenza. On July 2, the U.S. government announced that it would pay Moderna $176 million for their development, and that the vaccines may enter clinical trials next year. Used widely against covid-19, this newer technology uses mRNA to teach the immune system how to recognize particular viruses.

In the meantime, Florian Krammer, a flu virologist at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, said people who work on dairy farms should have the option to get the egg-based vaccine. It elicits an immune response against a primary component of the H5N1 bird flu virus that should confer a degree of protection against infection and serious sickness, he said.

Still, its protection wouldn’t be 100%. And no one knows how many cases and hospitalizations it would prevent since it hasn’t been used to combat this year’s virus. Such data should be collected in studies that track the outcomes of people who opt to get one, he said.

Krammer isn’t assuaged by the lack of severe bird flu cases spotted in clinics. “If you see a signal in hospitals, the cat is out of the bag. Game over, we have a pandemic,” he said. “That’s what we want to avoid.”

He and others stressed that the United States should be doing everything it can to curb infections before flu season starts in October. The vaccine could provide an additional layer of protection on top of testing, wearing gloves, and goggles, and disinfecting milking equipment. Scientists worry that if people get the bird flu and the seasonal flu simultaneously, bird flu viruses could snag adaptations from seasonal viruses that allow them to spread swiftly among humans.

They also note it could take months to distribute the vaccines after they’re recommended since it requires outreach. People who work beside dairy cows still lack information on the virus, four months into this outbreak, said Bethany Boggess Alcauter, director of research at the National Center for Farmworker Health.

Health officials have talked with dairy farm owners, but Boggess’ interviews with farmworkers suggest those conversations haven’t trickled down to their staff. One farmworker in the Texas Panhandle told her he was directed to disinfect his hands and boots to protect cows from diseases that workers may carry. “They never told us if the cow could infect us with some illness,” the farmworker said in Spanish.

The slow pace of educational outreach is a reminder that everything takes time, including vaccine decisions. When deciding whether to recommend vaccines, the CDC typically seeks guidance from its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or the ACIP. A consultant to the group, infectious disease researcher William Schaffner, has repeatedly asked the agency to present its thinking on Seqirus’ bird flu vaccine.

Rather than fret about the 1976 swine flu situation, Schaffner suggested the CDC consider the 2009-10 swine flu pandemic. It caused more than 274,000 hospitalizations and 12,000 deaths in the U.S. within a year. By the time vaccines were rolled out, he said, much of the damage had been done.

“The time to discuss this with ACIP is now,” said Schaffner, before the bird flu becomes a public health emergency. “We don’t want to discuss this until the cows come home in the middle of a crisis.”

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KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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(KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2024 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.