Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, June 25, 2013.
OND is a regular
community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
Creation and early water-bearing of the OND concept came from our very own Magnifico - proper respect is due.
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This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: Unity by Afrika Bambaataa
News below Aunt Flossie's hairdo . . .
Please feel free to browse and add your own links, content or thoughts in the Comments section.
Any timestamps shown are relative to each publication.
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Top News |
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President's promises fail to calm Brazil
By (Al Jazeera)
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Protesters in Brazil have returned to the streets in low-income suburbs of Sao Paulo to demand better education, transport and health services, one day after President Dilma Rousseff proposed a wide range of actions to reform the country's political system.
Police said at least 500 people blocked streets for several hours on Tuesday in a peaceful protest in the districts of Capao Redondo and Campo Limpo on the outskirts of Brazil's largest city.
The protesters did not appear appeased by Rousseff's proposals, which shifted some of the burden for progress onto Brazil's unpopular Congress by calling for a referendum on reform politicians will have to approve.
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Protesters have filled cities to air a number of grievances including poor public services and the high cost of hosting next year's World Cup soccer tournament and the 2016 Olympics.
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Flu Shot Effective Regardless of Circulating Flu Strain, Research Finds
By (SCienceDaily)
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New research out of St. Michael's Hospital has found that despite popular belief, the flu shot is effective in preventing the flu, even if the virus going around does not match the vaccine.
"It's quite common for people to say they are not going to get the flu shot this year because they've heard it does not match the strain of flu going around," said Dr. Andrea Tricco, the lead author of the paper and a scientist at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael's Hospital. "However, we've found that individuals will be protected regardless of whether the flu strain is a match or not."
. . .
Vaccines work by giving the body an inactive, or non-infective, form of the flu virus so that the body can produce antibodies. When an individual comes into contact with the virus in the future, the body can use the natural antibodies it has created to fight it off.
The study looked at the two most popular vaccine formulations in Canada -- Trivalent inactive vaccine for adults and live-attenuated influenza vaccine for children. They found that both vaccines provided significant protection against matched (ranging from 65 per cent to 83 per cent effectiveness) and mismatched (ranging from 52 per cent to 54 per cent effectiveness) flu strains.
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Ed Markey, climate hawk, headed for the Senate
By Claire Thompson
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Rep. Ed Markey, who pushed climate action and clean energy during 37 years in the U.S. House, is now on his way to the U.S. Senate. As expected, he handily beat Republican businessman Gabriel Gomez in the Massachusetts special election to replace now-Secretary of State John Kerry. With more than 90 percent of the vote counted on Tuesday night, Markey was up 54 to 46 percent.
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This time, even with Markey consistently polling as much as 10 points ahead of Gomez over the course of the two-month campaign, Democrats didn’t assume an easy win. President Obama, Vice President Biden, Michelle Obama, and Bill Clinton all campaigned with Markey in recent weeks, and Markey’s campaign released a flood of ads close to the election, spending $2.6 million total on advertising compared to Gomez’s $1.4 million.
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Markey received direct contributions from clean energy, environmental, and utility PACs, like the Environmental Defense Action Fund and the American Wind Energy Association PAC, as well as clean-energy companies like SolarCity and NextEra. Markey also got some cash through GiveGreen, a campaign run by the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, which helps folks donate to lawmakers considered to be environmentally friendly.
Gomez received some contributions from fossil-fuel companies, including ExxonMobil, but Markey led his opponent in energy-money contributions by a factor of 76 to 1. Many of the energy-industry PACs known for supporting Republican candidates neglected Gomez’s campaign, perhaps seeing it as a losing battle.
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UN copyright body passes treaty on rights of people with disabilities
By Cory Doctorow
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The World Intellectual Property Organization's Treaty to Faciiitate Access to Published Works by Visually Impaired. Persons and Persons with Print Disabilities (the "Treaty for the Blind") has finally passed, after many years of hard work by copyright activists and activists for the rights of people with disabilities.
They were fought, tooth and nail, by the big copyright groups, who were shameless in their willingness to use people with disabilities as pawns in their ideological war on the idea that anyone should be able to do anything with a copyrighted work without explicit permission. The Motion Picture Association was especially terrible here -- a new low for an industry that has made a lobbying career out of plumbing the depths of depravity.
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To the shameless lobbyists at the MPA, remember: if you live long enough, the odds are good that you, yourself, will become print disabled. We are all only temporarily sighted. The treaty you tried to wreck was aimed at some of the most vulnerable, information-impoverished people in the world -- and someday, you will join them. For shame. When you see your old parents next, think of them, and what you tried to do to them, and the people of their generation, for the sake of a few extra pennies and some macho gamesmanship.
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International |
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GAO slams USAID’s Haiti rebuilding efforts
By Ali Watkins
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U.S. efforts to help rebuild Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake have been plagued by poor planning, delays and mistaken cost estimates that have forced many projects to be scaled back, the Government Accountability Office has concluded in a report released this month.
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The GAO also said that USAID underestimated how much it would cost to build permanent housing for some of the estimated 2 million people made homeless by the quake, which killed an estimated 225,000 people. That means the agency has had to cut the number of homes it planned to produce by 85 percent and increase funding for such construction by 65 percent.
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The GAO recommended that Congress consider requiring regular reports from the State Department on USAID’s progress. It also recommended that USAID hire an engineer to oversee construction of the port and suggested the organization put community support programs in place for housing development projects.
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China's Shenzhou-10 astronauts return to Earth
By (BBC)
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A capsule carrying three Chinese astronauts has landed safely after a 15-day mission in space.
The astronauts travelled on the Shenzhou-10 craft to China's space laboratory, the Tiangong-1.
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The Shenzhou-10 is China's fifth manned space mission and came 10 years after China first sent an astronaut into space.
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China plans to eventually put a permanently manned space station above the Earth.
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US commits to Afghan Taliban talks despite Kabul attack
By (BBC)
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The US and Afghan presidents have "reaffirmed" their support for holding talks with the Taliban, despite an attack in central Kabul on Tuesday.
Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai agreed in a video conference that a peace process was the surest way to end the violence, the White House said.
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The two leaders also discussed the handover of responsibility for security from Nato to Afghan forces last week, the importance of Afghan-led reconciliation efforts, preparations for Afghanistan's 2014 elections, and negotiations on the bilateral security agreement.
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Setback for Hollande's transparency drive
By (Al Jazeera)
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French politicians have diluted President Francois Hollande's plans to make politicians declare their wealth in a transparency drive. They have also backed harsh penalties for journalists who publish the information.
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The original legislation planned by Hollande was aimed at making the French political system one of the most transparent among Western countries and restoring voter confidence after the scandal over Jerome Cahuzac's undeclared Swiss account.
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The legislation also grants legal protection for whistleblowers on economic and financial crimes. Previously only those exposing organised crime had enjoyed such protection.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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Compare and Contrast: Laws That Protect White Voting vs. Laws That Protect Black Voting
By Kevin Drum
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In 2008, the Supreme Court decided Crawford vs. Marion County Election Board. Previously, the state of Indiana had passed a statute requiring voters to show photo ID at polling places, something that was likely to disproportionately hurt black turnout. Indiana's justification for the law was its interest in preventing voter fraud, something that they were unable to demonstrate even a single case of. Nonetheless, the court upheld the law under this reasoning:
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Note the difference. In Crawford, where the target is a law that's likely to disenfranchise black voters, the bar for constitutionality is almost absurdly low. Regardless of what the real motives of the lawmakers are, or what the likely effect of the law is, it's valid if the state merely asserts a "neutral justification." That's it.
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So here's your nickel summary. If a law is passed on a party-line vote, has no justification in the historical record, and is highly likely to harm black voting, that's OK as long as the legislature in question can whomp up some kind of neutral-sounding justification. Judicial restraint is the order of the day. But if a law is passed by unanimous vote, is based on a power given to Congress with no strings attached, and is likely to protect black voting, that's prohibited unless the Supreme Court can be persuaded that Congress's approach is one they approve of. Judicial restraint is out the window. Welcome to the 21st century.
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NSA: Responding to this FOIA Would Help “Our Adversaries.”
By Jeff Larson
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Shortly after the Guardian and Washington Post published their Verizon and PRISM stories, I filed a freedom of information request with the NSA seeking any personal data the agency has about me. I didn't expect an answer, but yesterday I received a letter signed by Pamela Phillips, the Chief FOIA Officer at the agency (which really freaked out my wife when she picked up our mail).
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Any positive or negative response on a request-by-request basis would allow our adversaries to accumulate information and draw conclusions about the NSA's technical capabilities, sources, and methods.
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It also contains a paragraph about the ways in which the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has authorized the NSA to "acquire telephone metadata, such as the telephone numbers dialed and length of calls, but not the content of [sic] call or the names of the communicants." The court was created in 1978, as we recently laid out in our surveillance timeline.
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So where does this leave me? According to Aaron Mackey, a staff attorney at the Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press, "If you wanted to see those records you would have to file a lawsuit."
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Welcome to the "Hump Point" of this OND.
News can be sobering and engrossing - at this point in the diary, an offering of brief escapism:
Random notes related to this video:
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As a youth growing up in the Bronx, I first noticed the emergence of hip hop culture in 1975. What was the climate like back then that inspired people to move in that direction?
It was motivating. It was something new and people were tired of disco at the time. The hip hop at that time came on strong because at that time they [music industry] were trying to shove disco down our throats. Everybody was into it for the first year or two and then they got tired of it. Also New York itself was losing the funk. Back in the early 70s there existed a heavy funk sound. Parliament would come to town and pack Madison Square Garden. Sly & the Family Stone would come in and pack the Garden as did James Brown. Some of the NY radio stations weren't into Sly and James anymore. You stop hearing those hard beats on those records coming through the radio. You stop hearing the soul music of James Brown. All you heard was disco, disco and disco. Hip hop was a rebellious answer to disco.
Also at that time with rock music and heavy metal came the punk rock and new wave which was a rebellious answer to what was supposed to be pop. With both musical styles starting to come up they played a significant role. That's how come so many whites started getting into hip hop. Everybody thinks this is a new thing with Vanilla Ice and the Beastie Boys. It was the punk rockers and new wavers that were the first of all white people to accept this music. They were bringing me down to the punk rock clubs to mix. You used to see punk rockers come up to jam at the hardcore black and Hispanic neighborhoods.
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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Calgary floods trigger an oil spill and a mass evacuation
By John Upton
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Epic floods forced more than 100,000 people to flee their homes last week in Calgary, Alberta, the tar-sands mining capital of Canada. More than seven inches of rain fell on the city over the course of 60 hours.
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The heavy rains also appear to have shifted the earth beneath a pipeline near the city of Fort McMurray, triggering a leak of synthetic crude oil. On Monday, energy company Enbridge said a cleanup operation was underway in a wetlands area; initial estimates placed the size of the spill at 500 to 750 barrels.
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The researchers didn’t study North America, but in a statement to Climate Central they said, “if the warming unfortunately proceeds, the flood risk on a global scale becomes larger.”
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Obama's Climate Strategy Doesn't Require Congressional Approval
By Richard Harris
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President Obama unveiled a sweeping plan Tuesday designed to deal with climate change. For the first time, carbon emissions from power plants would be regulated. The policy, which can be implemented by the administration without congressional approval, calls for a broad range of actions, including steps to deal with extreme weather events that are already occurring.
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His plan would encourage more efficient use of energy, and also lead to a transition toward cleaner sources of power. Obama noted that wind and solar energy supplies doubled during his first term in office.
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The final element of the plan is to step up international efforts, including a new climate treaty. Scientists project that carbon dioxide will continue to build up in the atmosphere even as the United States and Europe constrain their emissions. That's because China and India are rapidly pulling hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and they're burning a lot of fossil fuels in the process.
Obama anticipated resistance to his ideas. Many Republicans in Congress don't even acknowledge climate change as a serious issue. But all the particulars of his program can be implemented without involving Congress. Obama said he also would welcome measures from Capitol Hill if attitudes there were to shift back to the days when the concern about climate change was truly a bipartisan issue.
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Supreme court Florida permit ruling seen as victory for property owners
By (Reuters via guardian.co.uk)
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In a victory for advocates of private property rights, the US supreme court on Tuesday said a Florida property owner may be owed compensation from a government agency that declined to award him a development permit for his land.
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After Florida designated much of the parcel as protected wetlands, Koontz proposed to develop about a quarter of it and dedicate the rest for conservation, only to have local officials insist that he pay money to protect wetlands elsewhere.
Koontz said no, and a trial court awarded him $327,500 for being unable to use his property. Florida's supreme court then threw this award out, saying that because St Johns never issued a permit and Koontz never spent money, "nothing was ever taken."
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Kagan said the majority "threatens to subject a vast array of land-use regulations, applied daily in states and localities throughout the country, to heightened constitutional scrutiny. I would not embark on so unwise an adventure."
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Science and Health |
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Researchers Strike Gold With Nanotech Vaccine
By (ScienceDaily)
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Scientists in the US have developed a novel vaccination method that uses tiny gold particles to mimic a virus and carry specific proteins to the body's specialist immune cells.
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Not only did this prove that the coated-nanorods were capable of mimicking the virus and stimulating an immune response, it also showed that they were not toxic to human cells, offering significant safety advantages and increasing their potential as a real-life human vaccine.
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"This platform could be used to develop experimental vaccines for virtually any virus, and in fact other larger microbes such as bacteria and fungi.
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Memory Improves for Older Adults Using Computerized Brain-Fitness Program
By (ScienceDaily)
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UCLA researchers have found that older adults who regularly used a brain-fitness program on a computer demonstrated significantly improved memory and language skills.
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Age-related memory decline affects approximately 40 percent of older adults. And while previous studies have shown that engaging in stimulating mental activities can help older adults improve their memory, little research had been done to determine whether the numerous computerized brain-fitness games and memory training programs on the market are effective in improving memory. This is one of the first studies to assess the cognitive effects of a computerized memory-training program.
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Overweight Causes Heart Failure: Large Study With New Method Clarifies the Association
By (ScienceDaily)
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An international research team led by Swedish scientists has used a new method to investigate obesity and overweight as a cause of cardiovascular disease. Strong association have been found previously, but it has not been clear whether it was overweight as such that was the cause, or if the overweight was just a marker of another underlying cause, as clinical trials with long-term follow-ups are difficult to implement.
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These scientists studied whether a gene variant in the FTO gene, which regulates the appetite and thereby increases the individual's BMI, is also linked to a series of cardiovascular diseases and metabolism. The risk variant is common in the population, and each copy of the risk variant increases BMI by an average of 0.3-0.4 units. Since an individual's genome is not affected by lifestyle and social factors, but rather is established at conception, when the embryo randomly receives half of each parent's genome, the method is thus called "Mendelian randomization." To achieve reliable results a large study material was needed, and nearly 200,000 individuals from Europe and Australia participated.
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The results show that an increase of one unit of BMI increases the risk of developing heart failure by an average of 20 per cent. Further, the study also confirms that obesity leads to higher insulin values, higher blood pressure, worse cholesterol values, increased inflammation markers, and increased risk of diabetes.
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Adult dogs behave towards caregivers like human children do
By (UPI)
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The relationship between owners and dogs is similar to the deep connection between young children and their parents, researchers in Vienna said.
Scientists at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna said human infants use their caregivers as a secure base when it comes to interacting with the environment -- a toddler stands by a parent and gingerly takes a few steps to investigate his or her environment knowing a parent is nearby.
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The study, published in the journal Plos One, found the dogs seemed much less interested in working for the food, when their caregivers were not present. However, an owner encouraging the dog during the task appeared to have little influence on the animal's level of motivation, Horn said.
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Why You Can't Get Stoned from Smoking Hemp
By Andrew Tarantola
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When it did land in Europe, hemp became a very valuable crop as its fibers could be processed into rope and sailcloth, as Christopher Columbus did. What's more, hemp fibers have proven themselves longer, stronger, more absorbent and insular than cotton, which is why George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew it. The plant has even shown promise as both a biogas precursor, thanks to the long hydrocarbons in its oil, and as a soybean replacement, as it contains more fatty acids and dietary fiber than soy.
Today, hemp is big business. China is the single largest grower and exporter of industrial hemp, though more than 30 countries produce the crop. It goes into everything from foodstuffs to cosmetics to textiles. Hemp is legal to import into the United States; however, due to our draconian prohibition of cannabis, hemp is illegal to grow, at least on the federal level. Nineteen states have enacted legislation to promote the use of hemp while another nine—Colorado, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia—have legalized its production outright.
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The certified low-THC varieties used in Europe and Canada contain maybe 0.2 to 0.3 percent THC when fully matured, and even the lesser-used varieties bred as biofuel precursors top out at 1 percent THC by volume. Trying to get high smoking a one percent THC concentration would be akin to getting hammered on O'Douls, as studies have shown that a sub-one percent concentration produces the same effects as placebo. What's more, the large amounts of the non-psychotropic antagonistic CBD compound further overwhelms the effects of the THC.
As Test Pledge, an arm of the Hemp Industries Association, suggested in a 2000 study, industrial hemp doesn't even contain enough THC to set off a common pre-employment urine test . . .
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Nerve cells 're-grown' in rats after spinal injury
By Helen Briggs
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US scientists carried out complex surgery to transplant nerves from the rodents' ribs into the gap in the middle of their spinal cord.
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They said that while the rats did not regain the ability to walk, they did recover some bladder function.
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"There are a number of challenges before this therapy can be brought to the clinic," she said.
"Nevertheless this is a remarkable advance which offers great hope for the future of restoring bladder function to spinal injured patients and if these challenges can be met we could be reaching clinical trials within three to five years."
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Do we know whether pornography harms people?
By Jo Fidgen
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Forensic psychologist Miranda Horvath and her colleagues were shocked by the quality of the research and by "how many very strongly worded, opinion-led articles there are out there which purport to be producing research, producing new findings when actually it's really based on opinion".
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Most of the recent studies in this field have been correlational. That means you ask a sample of young people whether they've seen pornography, or how often, and then ask them what they think of sex or gender role attitudes, for example.
But it is not possible to establish causation from correlational studies, and to say whether pornography is changing or reinforcing attitudes.
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Horvath believes it is time to give up looking for cause and effect and instead "focus on identifying young people's characteristics, vulnerabilities and strengths and how and why they might be related to their experiences of pornography".
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Technology |
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Lensless Camera Takes Multiple-View Pictures
By The Physics arXiv Blog
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Earlier this month, we looked at a new kind of camera built at Bell Labs that creates pictures using no lenses and only a single pixel. This lensless design is simple and easy to construct and suffers none of the aberrations usually associated with lenses—indeed none of the scene is out of focus. So it’s easy to imagine that lensless cameras are threatening to change the way we think about imaging.
Today Hong Jiang and pals from Bell Labs show off another capability of their new design. The original camera makes an ordinary image with a single pixel. Jiang and co show how, with two pixels, it’s possible to create two different images of the scene.
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And there is yet another use for this second pixel. Since it views the scene through the apertures from a slightly different angle, Jiang and co use the data to reconstruct a higher resolution image than is possible from a single aperture array. The measurements, they say, “may be used to reconstruct an image of the higher resolution than the number of aperture elements.”
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New "Leakage-Free" Nanotube, Quantum Dot Transistor Uses No Semiconductors
By Jason Mick
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Michigan Technological University (Michigan Tech/MTU) physics professor Yoke Khin Yap is concerned that the current route of semiconductor development is untenable for extending Moore's Law. He comments [press release], "At the rate the current technology is progressing, in 10 or 20 years, they won’t be able to get any smaller. Also, semiconductors have another disadvantage: they waste a lot of energy in the form of heat."
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Testing the design in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), they hooked an electrode up to each end of the construct and tested it at room temperature. They observed quantum tunneling -- the hallmark phenomena necessary to construct a transistor. Electrons "jump" (or tunnel) from one gold QD to the next, as current is applied.
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The best feature of the transistors is that there's no electrons (according to the authors) lost between gold nanodot and no gold nanodot -- a heat generating phenomena known as "leakage". By contrast, leakage is a massive problem for nanoscale silicon-based transistors, limiting clock speeds and circuit density.
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Sprint Nextel shareholders approve SoftBank bid
By (BBC)
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Japan's SoftBank will become one of the world's largest mobile operators after shareholders in Sprint Nextel backed its revised bid for a 78% stake in the business.
SoftBank will pay $21.6bn (£13.9bn) for the stake in Sprint, which is the US's third-largest phone carrier.
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The deal is the largest overseas acquisition by a Japanese firm.
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Cultural |
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Syria's oilfields create surreal battle lines amid chaos and tribal loyalties
By Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
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The hard edges of Syria's frontlines – dogmatic, revolutionary, Islamist or pure murderously sectarian – almost melt away outside the oilfields. New lines emerge pitting tribesmen against battalions, Islamists against everyone else, and creating sometimes surreal lines of engagement, where rebels help maintain government oil supplies in return for their villages being spared from bombardment and being allowed to siphon oil for themselves.
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Hassan said the oil was dividing the tribes. "An oilfield belongs to the ancestral land of a tribe, but which clan? Which family? Which brothers? This is why everyone is arming and this is why there are daily clashes over oilfields and why a 23mm anti-aircraft gun has become a weapon of necessity."
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Later, on the frontline in Deir el-Zour, Ahmad told me how the new oil barons were draining the revolution of its strength in the east.
"Those oil lords, our version of warlords, they are the reason why we haven't won yet. They don't care if we all die here, they care about how much money they will make.
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Africa's anti-gay attacks reach 'dangerous' levels
By Erin Conway-Smith
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"Homosexual acts" are increasingly being criminalized across the continent, with governments seeking to impose harsh penalties, including capital punishment, according to the report.
“These attacks — sometimes deadly — must be stopped. No one should be beaten or killed because of who they are attracted to or intimately involved with,” Widney Brown, Amnesty International’s director of law and policy, said in a statement.
. . .
In South Africa, gay rights are formally recognized and protected under the country's progressive post-apartheid constitution. But despite this, lesbians and gays in townships and rural communities are often the target of violent acts, including rape and murder.
“The very existence of laws criminalizing same-sex relations — whether they are enforced or not — sends a toxic message that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are criminals and have no rights,” Brown said.
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The death of Daniel Somers and the importance of nuance
By Sophie Heawood
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. . . this weekend I read the suicide note of Daniel Somers. The American soldier who served in Iraq took his own life back home in the suburbs of Arizona this month, unable to live with what he had done. His family have published the letter – I read it on the website Gawker. "How can I possibly go around like everyone else while the widows and orphans I created continue to struggle?" he writes. "If they could see me sitting here in suburbia, in my comfortable home working on some music project, they would be outraged, and rightfully so."
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Yet when I shared this letter online, beyond a lot of sympathy, there was one view that came through again and again in response: "But he was a soldier! He signed up to the army to fight in stupid wars! What did you expect if you join the killing machine?" A sentiment about as helpful as saying, well you said you were going to climb a mountain, so don't stop now that a boulder's fallen on your head.
But then, this is what the internet does to us. It goads us into pretending not to have nuance; to taking a stand on one side or the other of things. Ticking a box in an online poll to say whether we agree or disagree, the choice to hit "like" or not to like. Pretending not to have a graded paint chart of thoughts, those 50 emotional shades of grey.
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There's a bit in Game of Thrones when the Khaleesi needs a new army so she can go and conquer the world. Now this is one fantasy war I could actually get behind, led by an incredible queen who gives birth to dragons, while also being nice to her staff. Until she is taken to meet the Unsullied, a slave army so obedient that it has lost any vestige of self. The slave trader displays their obedience by slicing off a soldier's nipple. The soldier does not flinch, merely steps back into line and says he is glad to serve. It transpires that, as boys, these soldiers are given a puppy to care for. At the end of the year, they must strangle their puppy. After more years of such training, they will do anything they are commanded to do because – as the slave trader explains – "all of their questions have been taken from them".
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Meteor Blades is known to offer an enlightening Evening Open Diary - you might consider checking that out tonight if you haven't already. |