Nearly 4,000 companies and 170,000 people will descend on Las Vegas next week for CES, the massive consumer electronics show. For many small technology companies, the event is a big opportunity to raise their profile. VOA’s Michelle Quinn visits one San Francisco company to learn how they prepare for “the Super Bowl of conferences.”
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Month: January 2018
US Economy Ends Year with Modest Job Gains
The U.S. economy ended 2017 by adding 148,000 new jobs in December. Despite the modest gain, hiring was strong enough to suggest the economic momentum will continue. But while the national unemployment rate remained unchanged at a 17-year low of 4.1 percent, analysts say the pace of job growth may be slowing down. Mil Arcega has more.
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Twitter Says Accounts of World Leaders Have Special Status
Social media giant Twitter has reiterated its stance that accounts belonging to world leaders have special status, pushing back against calls from some users for the company to ban U.S. President Donald Trump.
In a blog post Friday, Twitter said it would not block the accounts of world leaders even if their statements were “controversial” because of a need to promote discussions about public policy.
“Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate,” Twitter said.
It said such a move would also not silence a world leader, but it “would certainly hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.”
“Twitter is here to serve and help advance the global, public conversation. Elected world leaders play a critical role in that conversation because of their outsized impact on our society,” the post said.
The company has previously said that it considers whether a post is newsworthy and of public interest before deciding whether to remove it.
Twitter did not specifically mention Trump in its statement. The debate over Trump’s tweets grew on Wednesday, when he tweeted that he had a “much bigger” nuclear button than North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Critics said the tweet violated Twitter’s ban against threats of violence.
Last month, Twitter began enforcing new rules to remove “hateful” content on the network, including posts that promote violence.
The company said Friday that it reviews all tweets, including those of world leaders. “We review tweets by leaders within the political context that defines them, and enforce our rules accordingly,” the statement said.
A White House spokeswoman said she did not expect there to be any White House comment on the Twitter statement.
Pete Heinlein at the White House contributed to this report.
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Businesses Delay Patch, Fear Fix Will Be Worse Than Chip Flaw
Chances that a fix to a major microchip security flaw may slow down or crash some computer systems are leading some businesses to hold off installing software patches, fearing the cure may be worse than the original problem.
Researchers this week revealed security problems with chips from Intel Corp and many of its rivals, sending businesses, governments and consumers scrambling to understand the extent of the threat and the cost of fixes.
Rather than rushing to put on patches, a costly and time-intensive endeavor for major systems, some businesses are testing the fix, leaving their machines vulnerable.
“If you start applying patches across your whole fleet without doing proper testing, you could cause systems to crash, essentially putting all of your employees out of work,” said Ben Johnson, co-founder of cyber-security startup Obsidian.
Flaws not ‘critical’
Banks and other financial institutions spent much of the week studying the vulnerabilities, said Greg Temm, chief information risk officer with the Financial Services Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an industry group that shares data on emerging cyber threats.
The flaws affect virtually all computers and mobile devices, but are not considered “critical” because there is no evidence that hackers have figured out how to exploit them, said Temm, whose group works with many of the world’s largest banks.
“It’s like getting a diagnosis of high blood pressure, but not having a cardiac arrest,” Temm said. “We’re taking it seriously, but it’s not something that is killing us.”
Testing the patches
Banks are testing the patches to see if they slow operations and, if so, what changes need to be made, Temm said. For instance, computers could be added to networks to make up for the lack of processor speed in individual machines, he added.
Some popular antivirus software programs are incompatible with the software updates, causing desktop and laptop computers to freeze up and show a “blue screen of death,” researcher Johnson said.
Antivirus software makers responded by rolling out fixes to make their products compatible with the updated operating systems, he said. In a blog posting Friday, Microsoft Corp said it would only offer security patches to Windows customers whose antivirus software suppliers had confirmed with Microsoft that the patch would not crash the customer’s machine.
“If you have not been offered the security update, you may be running incompatible antivirus software, and you should consult the software vendor,” Microsoft advised in the blog post.
Government agencies also are watching. The Ohio Attorney General’s office is monitoring the situation, a spokesman said by email.
“Intel continues to believe that the performance impact of these updates is highly workload-dependent and, for the average computer user, should not be significant and will be mitigated over time,” the world’s No. 1 chipmaker said on Thursday in a release.
No significant patch impact
It cited Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc, Alphabet Inc’s and Microsoft as saying that most users had seen no significant impact on performance after installing the patches.
The cloud vendors are among a group of firms that quickly patched their technology to mitigate against the threat from one of those vulnerabilities, dubbed Meltdown, which only affects machines running Intel chips.
Major software makers have not issued patches to protect against the second vulnerability, dubbed Spectre, which affects nearly all computer chips made in the last decade, including those from Intel, Advanced Micro Devices Inc, and ARM-architecture manufacturers, including Qualcomm Inc.
However, Google, Firefox and Microsoft have implemented measures in most web browsers to stop hackers from launching remote attacks using Spectre.
Governments and security experts say they have seen no cyber attacks seeking to exploit either vulnerability, though they expect attempts by hackers as they digest technical data about the security flaws.
One key risk is that hackers will develop code that can infect the personal computers of people visiting malicious websites, said Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer of cyber security firm Veracode.
He advised PC owners to install the patches to protect against such potential attacks. Computer servers at large enterprises are less at risk, he said, because those systems are not used to surf the web and can only be infected in a Meltdown attack if a hacker has breached that network.
Operating system protection
Microsoft has issued a patch for its Windows operating system, and Apple desktop users with the most recent operating system are protected. Google has said most of its Chromebook laptops are already protected and that the rest would be soon.
Apple said it planned to release a patch to its Safari web browser within coming days to protect Mac and iOS users from Spectre.
While third-party browsers from Google and others can protect Mac users from Spectre, all major web browsers for Apple’s iOS devices depend on receiving a patch from Apple.
Until then, hundreds of millions of iPhone and iPad users will be exposed to potential Spectre attacks while browsing the web.
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Bluefin Tuna Brings $320,000 at Japanese Market
An 892-pound (405-kilogram) bluefin tuna has sold for 36.5 million yen ($320,000) in what may really be Tsukiji market’s last New Year auction at its current site in downtown Tokyo, local media reports said Friday.
The winning bid for the prized but threatened species at the predawn auction was well below the record 155.4 million yen bid at 2013’s annual New Year auction. It amounted to about 90,000 yen ($798) per kilogram and was paid by a local wholesaler, the reports said.
This year’s top per kilogram price, for a smaller tuna, was $1,419, compared with about $7,930 per kilogram for the 2013 record-setting auction price, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun and other local media reported. That price was paid by Kiyomura Corp., whose owner, Kiyoshi Kimura, runs the Sushi Zanmai chain, the reports said. Kimura has often won the annual auction in the past.
The reports said the top-priced tuna was one of the biggest ever sold at the auction.
Last year’s New Year auction was supposed to be the last at Tsukiji’s current location, as was the New Year auction the year before. The market’s shift to a new facility on a former gas plant site on Tokyo Bay has been repeatedly delayed because of concerns over soil contamination.
Japanese are the biggest consumers of the torpedo-shaped bluefin tuna, and surging consumption here and overseas has led to overfishing of the species. Experts warn it faces possible extinction, with stocks of Pacific bluefin depleted by more than 97 percent from their pre-industrial levels.
There are signs of progress toward protecting the bluefin, though. Japan has begun enforcing laws banning catches that exceed quotas, with violators subject to fines or possible jail time.
Japan and other governments recently agreed on a plan to rebuild Pacific bluefin stocks, with a target of 20 percent of historic levels by 2034.
Tsukiji is one of Tokyo’s most popular tourist destinations as well as the world’s biggest fish market. It was due to move to the new site, at Toyosu, in 2016. Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike postponed the relocation, but after months of political haggling and uncertainty she announced the move would go ahead.
The new market is due to open October 11, 2018.
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Internet Association to Join Expected Net Neutrality Lawsuit
The Internet Association, a trade group representing companies such as Google parent Alphabet Inc and Facebook Inc, said on Friday it intends to join an expected lawsuit against a decision to roll back net neutrality rules.
Several states including New York, and public interest advocacy groups have said they intend to sue to stop the mid-December ruling by the Federal Communications Commission.
The approval of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal in a 3-2 vote marked a victory for internet service providers such as AT&T Inc, Comcast Corp and Verizon Communications Inc, handing them power over what content consumers can access.
Democrats, Hollywood and companies such as Google parent Alphabet and Facebook had urged Pai, a Republican appointed by U.S. President Donald Trump, to keep the Obama-era rules barring service providers from blocking, slowing access to or charging more for certain content.
“The final version of Chairman Pai’s rule, as expected, dismantles popular net neutrality protections for consumers. This rule defies the will of a bipartisan majority of Americans and fails to preserve a free and open internet,” the Internet Association said in a statement.
The new rules give internet service providers sweeping powers to change how consumers access the internet but must have new transparency requirements that will require them to disclose any changes to consumers.
Internet Association members also include Airbnb, Etsy Inc, Amazon.com and several dozen online and social media companies.
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Top 5 Songs for Week Ending Jan 6
We’re celebrating the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart, for the week ending January 6, 2018.
Number 5: G-Eazy, A$AP Rocky & Cardi B “No Limit”
The new year gets off to a flying start in fifth place, where G-Eazy, A$AP Rocky, and Cardi B leap five slots with “No Limit.”
It ties A$AP Rocky’s best previous showing on the Selena Gomez hit “Good For You,” but it’s just another day at the office for Cardi B, who last year ruled the Hot 100 for three weeks with “Bodak Yellow (Money Moves).”
Number 4: Lil Pump “Gucci Gang ”
From here, things get quieter … in fact, they don’t move at all. Lil Pump holds at number four with “Gucci Gang.”
The teenage rapper says he’s giving up Xanax in 2018. He announced his intentions on Instagram on New Year’s Day. Lil Pump’s fondness for the anti-anxiety drug is well-known: After gaining one million Instagram followers, he celebrated with a Xanax-shaped cake.
Number 3: Camila Cabello Featuring Young Thug “Havana”
Camila Cabello and Young Thug tread water in third place with “Havana.” Camila drops her much-anticipated debut solo album on January 12 … and says she’s a bit nervous. Posting January 1 on Twitter, she wrote “It’s January 1. My album comes out in 12 days. Someone hold me!”
She welcomed the new year with a televised performance in New York City’s frigid Times Square.
Number 2: Post Malone Featuring 21 Savage “Rockstar”
Post Malone and 21 Savage remain in second place with their ex-champ “Rockstar.” Last week, a version featuring T-Pain and Joey Bada$$ leaked online … and it turned out to be the original mix. Joey says he co-wrote the song with Post Malone but there are no hard feelings … he’s earning songwriting royalties and promises more ghostwriting in 2018.
Number 1: Ed Sheeran & Beyonce “Perfect”
Ed Sheeran and Beyonce share the Hot 100 title for a third straight week with “Perfect.”
How did these two get together? It was Beyonce’s idea: She saw Ed’s 2014 performance on Jools Holland’s BBC show “Hootenanny”… and that YouTube clip inspired Beyonce to make her move.
Will their collaboration move out of first place next week? Join us in seven days and we’ll find out!
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Obama to Make First Talk Show Appearance Since Leaving Office
Former U.S. President Barack Obama is set to make his first talk show appearance on Jan. 12, on the first episode of a new show featuring longtime late-night host David Letterman.
This will be Obama’s first on-camera talk show interview since he left the presidency Jan. 20, 2017. He has largely stayed out of the media spotlight since then.
Letterman’s show, titled My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, is his first project since he retired from the long-running Late Show with David Letterman in 2015. His new Netflix series is expected, as the title suggests, to feature high-profile guests for in-depth interviews, both in and out of the studio.
Obama is expected to appear on the first episode Jan. 12, and a new, 60-minute episode is expected monthly through the year.
Letterman is known for a dry wit, pointed questions, and attention to current events. In 2011, he became the target of a reported death threat by an Islamist militant after joking about the death of an al-Qaida leader, Ilyas Kashmiri, in a drone strike in Pakistan. Letterman also wisecracked about the death threat, blaming it on his late-night television rival, Jay Leno.
Other guests to appear on the monthly Netflix show include human rights activist Malala Yousafzai, music mogul Jay-Z, and comedy writer Tina Fey.
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WHO: Yemen Children Dying from Rapid Spread of Diphtheria
The World Health Organization warns that children in Yemen are dying as diphtheria, a preventable disease, spreads rapidly throughout the country.
Forty-six of the more than 470 people with clinically diagnosed diphtheria in Yemen — or nearly 10 percent — have died in less than four months, according to WHO.
“Diphtheria is a highly infectious but vaccine-preventable disease,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said. “It can be treated with antitoxins and antibiotics, both of which are in short supply in Yemen. The diphtheria vaccine is normally administered as a part of routine immunization programs for children around the world.
“The rapid spread of diphtheria in Yemen highlights major gaps in routine vaccination and also means the health system is under severe strain.”
Sixty-eight percent of suspected diphtheria cases are children under 15 years old, Jasarevic said.
WHO has deployed Rapid Response Teams throughout affected parts of the country to ensure proper case detection, contact tracing and follow up, as well as health education.
WHO has delivered $200,000 worth of antibiotics and 1,000 vials of diphtheria antitoxins, Jasarevic said. The medication can help stop the spread of the bacterium to vital organs in patients already infected with diphtheria.
However, prevention remains the best way to contain the spread of the disease. In preparation for a nationwide immunization campaign, the U.N. children’s fund imported 5.5 million doses of anti-diphtheria vaccines into the country December 20.
The final decision on when the campaign will kick off rests with Yemeni health authorities, who have not yet given the go-ahead.
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Women in Black Put Gender Inequality in Golden Globes Spotlight
The Golden Globes have always been the less serious stop in route to the Academy Awards — the boozy, bubbly awards show put on by a little-known group with sometimes confounding taste. But this year, a funny thing has happened: The Golden Globes mean something.
The 75th Golden Globes, to be presented in Beverly Hills, California, on Sunday night, will be the most prominent and public display yet for the “MeToo” movement that has swept through Hollywood and left a trail of disgraced men in its wake. What has long been, first and foremost, a star-studded primetime party may this Sunday take on the tenor of a protest rally.
Out of solidarity with the victims of sexual harassment and assault, many women have said they will be dressing in black for the Globes. It’s a plan that, on the red carpet and on the stage, will ensure the spotlight remains on the film industry’s endemic gender imbalances.
“That will be really powerful,” Allison Janney, a supporting actress nominee for the Tonya Harding tale “I, Tonya,” said earlier this week. “I will be in a black dress and be proud to be standing there with the other actresses.”
The Globes have traditionally been a celebration, a good time and, frequently, a punchline. But they have had their political high points as well, like last year’s speech by Meryl Streep, the Cecil B. DeMille recipient for lifetime achievement. She spoke forcefully against then President-elect Donald Trump, who the next morning responded that Streep was “overrated.”
This year’s recipient is Oprah Winfrey, who earlier called the fallout following the allegations against Harvey Weinstein “a watershed moment” for women.
Winfrey is among the hundreds of women in the entertainment industry who have banded together to form Time’s Up, an initiative to advocate for gender equality among studio and talent agency executives. It has also created a $14 million legal fund for victims of sexual harassment.
Time’s Up — whose members include many Globes attendees, including Reese Witherspoon, Gal Gadot and Emma Stone — unveiled itself Monday with full-page newspaper ads. But already there is fresh fodder for its cause.
The University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative released its latest findings Thursday on diversity in directing. By examining the top 100 films of 2017 in box office, researchers found that just 7.3 percent of the movies were directed by women. That’s an increase from 4.2 percent the year before, but still below the decade-ago high point.
“Diversity in the director’s chair is virtually nonexistent and gender in the executive ranks of major companies remains grossly imbalanced,” the study concluded.
That lack of change will be on display Sunday, too, where five men will compete for best director despite several potential nominees in Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird”), Dee Rees (“Mudbound”) and Patty Jenkins (“Wonder Woman”). The category will be much watched when Oscar nominations are announced January 23.
Still, the Globes are starting to see some of the same criticisms on diversity that have trailed the Academy Awards in recent years. But unlike the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, which has revamped its 6,000-plus membership to make its ranks more inclusive, the same pressure hasn’t been applied on the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, an organization of about 90 largely unknown foreign journalists.
But the HFPA’s quirks have drawn increased scrutiny, including this year’s oversight of one of 2017’s most acclaimed comedies, Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon’s interracial rom-com “The Big Sick.” Also snubbed was “Girls Trip” breakout star Tiffany Haddish. Her co-star Jada Pinkett Smith last month took HFPA members to task for not taking “Girls Trip” seriously for its awards.
And then there’s the choice to slot in Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” as a comedy, for the film and star Daniel Kaluuya. That provoked the Globes’ largest backlash, and helped make “Get Out” the most tweeted about nominee in the two weeks after nominations were announced in December, Twitter said Thursday.
“Get Out” is one of the favorites in the mix on Sunday, along with Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water,” which led all films with seven nods. Close behind is Steven Spielberg’s “The Post” and Martin McDonaugh’s “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” both with six nominations. One wildcard is Ridley Scott’s J. Paul Getty drama “All the Money in the World,” which landed three nominations, including one for Christopher Plummer. His performance was inserted at the last minute to replace Kevin Spacey, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by several men.
The top TV contenders are female-led dramas: HBO’s “Big Little Lies,” which Witherspoon stars in and produced, and the FX anthology series “Feud: Bette and Joan.”
More than ever before, though, the Globes seem to be worth arguing about. All of the turmoil could make Seth Meyers’ hosting gig a little trickier. Meyers will follow his late-night partner, Jimmy Fallon, whose Globes broadcast last year was watched by 20 million viewers on NBC, an eight percent increase.
“We don’t want this night to be a session where we’re just scolding everything that happened because it is really important for us to remember that great movies came out of this year,” Meyers said in an interview. “A lot of people, we’re realizing, worked really hard in environments that were not that conducive to working really hard. So the goal is to have people have a wonderful night and an enjoyable party in a year which everyone deserves it.”
But this year, many in Hollywood are wondering if they deserve something more than a party.
AP Entertainment Writers Ryan Pearson and Sandy Cohen contributed to this report.
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Indian Innovators Offer Nose Filters to Counter Heavy Air Pollution
People walking outdoors with masks are an increasingly common sight in the capital of India, where the toxic air, which ranks among the world’s dirtiest, has rung alarm bells. Now a team of innovators from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, is offering another solution: a tiny respiratory filter that can be stuck in the nose to restrict particulate matter from entering the body without hampering breathing.
The project involved creating a thin, flexible membrane which blocks out most dust and air pollutants, including concentrations of the deadly PM 2.5, the tiny particulate matter which doctors say causes maximum damage to lungs.
The innovation, called Nasofilters, won the Indian president’s “National Startups Award” last May and was featured in South Korea’s 2017 list of “Top 50 technical startups in the world.”
The idea of nasal filters is not new, and some are available in Western countries to help reduce exposure to allergens such as pollen. One study conducted in 2016 on a product made in Denmark found it reduced symptoms of allergies and was comfortable to use.
The Indian device, however, focuses on the country’s pressing problem of air pollutants. Working out of one room on the sprawling IIT campus, which has been the home of several innovations, the young team is optimistic it will find acceptance in a city where the toxic cocktail of vehicle fumes, construction dust and burning waste spikes to as much as 30 times the safe limit in winter.
Shaped roughly like a fingernail, the dark brown membrane is made by assembling millions of small-sized pores and resembles a fine, porous cloth.
The costs have been held down to ensure the filter is within the reach of most people: It is priced at approximately 16 cents. Effective for around eight hours, the innovators claim it can filter out 95 percent of the pollutants.
Origins of the invention
Prateek Sharma started working on the idea along with some faculty members and others when he enrolled at IIT for engineering studies. The inspiration: His mother suffered from asthma.
“The initiation of this story was about a decade back. I always noticed my mother is wearing some kind of cloth on her face. That has always annoyed me,” said Sharma, the 25-year-old who now heads the startup which produces the filters, Nanoclean Global Private Ltd.
Noticing she refused to wear a mask when she went outside, he set out to search for another solution.
“The problem is mega, the product is nano,” said Sharma, pointing to the filters. “It’s comfortable to wear, it is aesthetically not bothering them like a face mask which covers half of your face. There is a problem — I can’t even eat, can’t even talk to you while putting on a face mask.”
Growing curiosity
Reports of the product in Indian media have piqued curiosity in the city.
Ashok Joshi, a retired senior army officer who lives in Delhi, made the trip to IIT with his wife to find out more about the filters and pick them up after reading reports about it in newspapers.
“We are outdoor people by and large, being in the army, mostly I am outdoors,” he said. “If something is there, which does not look very ugly and you can wear it comfortably, excellent idea. Why not?”
On days when air pollution is categorized as severe, doctors advise people, especially children and the elderly, against outdoor activities. On New Year’s Day, New Delhi’s air pollution levels bordered on severe.
The nose filter’s real test lies in winning acceptance from people like Joshi as they try it out in the weeks and months ahead.
While the invention, if it proves acceptable to consumers, may help people protect themselves from the dirty air, environmental activists stress that the pressing need is to address the causes of the air pollution: the city’s huge vehicle fleet and smoke from fires.
India’s air pollution crisis is not restricted to New Delhi — nine other Indian cities figure among the WHO’s list of the world’s 20 most polluted cities.
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US Employers Add Modest 148,000 Jobs; Unemployment 4.1 Pct.
U.S. employers added 148,000 jobs in December, a modest gain but still enough to suggest that the economy entered the new year with solid momentum.
The unemployment rate remained 4.1 percent for a third straight month, the lowest level since 2000, the Labor Department said Friday.
For all of 2017, employers added nearly 2.1 million jobs, enough to lower the unemployment rate from 4.7 percent a year ago. Still, average job gains have slowed to 171,000 this year from a peak of 250,000 in 2014. That typically happens when the unemployment falls to ultra-low levels and fewer people are available to be hired.
While modest, the job gains underscore the economy’s continued health in its ninth year of recovery. The unemployment rate for African-Americans dropped to a record low of 6.8 percent.
Solid economic growth in both the United States and major countries overseas is supporting more hiring. Factory managers received the most new orders in December than in any month since 2004. Retailers have reported strong holiday sales. Builders are ramping up home construction to meet growing demand.
Sales of existing homes reached their fastest pace in nearly 11 years in November. Consumer confidence is at nearly a 17-year high. And the Dow Jones industrial average reached 25,000 for the first time on Thursday.
Most economists expect the Trump administration’s tax cuts to help speed the economy’s already decent pace of growth. Some envision the unemployment rate dropping as low as 3.5 percent by the end of 2018. A rate that low would mark the lowest such level in nearly a half-century, and it would likely force businesses to accelerate pay raises to attract and retain employees. Pay raises have remained puzzlingly sluggish for many U.S. workers despite the robust job market.
Some businesses, though, are already howling that they can’t find enough qualified people. There are roughly 6 million available jobs, near a record high, according to government data. Should unemployment fall to 3.5 percent, those complaints will intensify.
For at least two years, economists have been expecting the falling unemployment rate to boost wages. Though average hourly pay growth has picked up a bit, it remains about 1 percentage point below the 3.5 percent annual gain that typically occurs in a healthy economy.
Economists point to several trends that may be keeping a lid on wage gains.
As the vast baby boom generation ages — 10,000 of them are turning 65 every day — they are retiring and are being replaced by younger workers, who typically earn far less money. That is likely suppressing overall wage growth, economists say.
Worker pay also depends on productivity, or how efficient employees are. And productivity has been weak for roughly a decade.
In 2000, the last time the unemployment rate fell this low, wages were growing at a 4 percent annual pace. But productivity, which measures workers’ output per hour, was much higher then. A falling unemployment rate can force up pay, but rising productivity has a much greater effect.
Many businesses, meanwhile, feel they have limited ability to pass on higher wages to consumers in the form of higher prices. Online shopping and cheaper imported goods make it easier for consumers to find bargains. That leaves retailers and other firms reluctant to raise pay.
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Headed to Mountains? Measure Some Snow for Science
America’s space agency wants you to head for the mountains with a smartphone and a measuring stick.
NASA’s earth science arm is funding research that recruits citizen scientists on skis, snowshoes and snowmobiles to measure the depth of snow in backcountry locations in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.
Their measurements will be incorporated into computer models that calculate how much water will end up in the region’s rivers and reservoirs.
Early results promising
“Our initial model runs show that citizen science measurements are doing an amazing job of improving our simulations,” said David Hill, an Oregon State University professor of civil engineering, who is collaborating with Alaska and University of Washington researchers. They received one of 16 NASA citizen science grants for the project.
The snowpack measurements are incorporated into computer models estimating “snow-water equivalent,” the amount of liquid water contained in snow cover, of a watershed.
In Western states, according to NASA, nearly three-fourths of annual stream flow that provides drinking water comes from spring and summer melt.
NASA in February began a multiyear research project to improve the accuracy of its snow measurements with partners in Europe and Canada, trying to solve challenges such as detecting snow through trees.
Several projects
The grant awarded to Hill, Anthony Arendt of the University of Washington and Gabriel Wolken, a research geologist with the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys, is not directly connected to that project but has a mutual interest, said Kevin Murphy, a program executive for science data systems at NASA headquarters.
“We decided about two years ago to start this program, which really looks at how can we harness the creativity and the capabilities of citizens to augment a lot of our satellite or aircraft measurements,” Murphy said.
Cheap, plentiful volunteers
Snow telemetry stations maintained by the U.S. Agriculture Department are another important tool for measuring snow in high-elevation and other hard-to-access places, Hill said. The unmanned stations collect data using a system of automated sensors.
But too few of them exist, Hill said. “They’re expensive to install, they’re expensive to maintain, so there just aren’t that many.”
The citizen snow-measuring program, Community Snow Observations, aims to supplement that with people.
“We want to turn the public into these mobile snow telemetry stations,” he said. “You just need a probe to do it.”
The measuring device can be as rudimentary as a yardstick, Hill said, but most people venturing into mountains already carry an avalanche probe, a 5- to 6-meter stick that folds down like a tent pole. After an avalanche, the probes are used to feel for people buried in the snow. Probes typically carry measurement markings.
“You want to know when you actually find that person how deep they are,” Hill said. “They’re really just a big, long ruler.”
First volunteers in Alaska
For the citizen science program, an online tutorial tells participants to find undisturbed snow, push the probe firmly to the ground, read the depth in centimeters and enter the data onto a smartphone app. Participants are asked to repeat that several times and average the measurements.
The app records the location and time of the measurement and uploads the information. The program accounts for measurements in continental climate locations with light, dry snow or the wet, dense snow of maritime climates.
Initial measurements were made last winter in Alaska’s Thompson Pass north of Valdez, where other snow research was being conducted.
“I recruited some of the folks from Valdez Avalanche Center. They brought friends along,” said Wolken, the Alaska research geologist. “That was our first go at getting sort of a grassroots, citizen science team.”
The hundreds of measurements collected far outpaced what the scientists could gather themselves. When NASA announced grants for citizen scientist projects, the researchers jumped to apply, Wolken said.
Modeling errors plunge
Preliminary calculations have been “striking,” Hill said, and the subject of a paper written by a doctoral student.
“He has results that basically show that the errors in our modeled snow-water equivalent are cut by about 90 percent with this input from public,” Hill said. “We’re thrilled about that.”
Other NASA grants in the program will use citizen scientists to collect data on mosquito populations and their breeding environments around the world, water depths in lakes in North Carolina and elsewhere, moisture in soil at various locations, changes in giant kelp across the globe, and images of clouds from the ground in Colorado.
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Brits Call for ‘Latte Levy’ to Reduce Cup Waste
Britain should charge a 25-pence ($0.34) levy on disposable coffee cups to cut down waste and use the money to improve recycling facilities, a committee of lawmakers said Friday.
Chains Pret A Manger, Costa Coffee, Caffe Nero and Greggs alongside U.S. firm Starbucks are among the biggest coffee-sellers in Britain, rapidly expanding in the last 10 years to meet increasing demand.
Although some outlets give a discount to customers using their own cup, only 1-2 percent of buyers take up the offer, according to parliament’s environmental audit committee, which said a “latte levy” was needed instead.
2.5 billion cups a year
“The UK throws away 2.5 billion disposable coffee cups every year; enough to circle the planet 5½ times,” said chair of the committee, Mary Creagh.
“We’re calling for action to reduce the number of single-use cups, promote reusable cups over disposable cups and to recycle all coffee cups by 2023,” she said.
The committee said that if the recycling target is not met then disposable coffee cups should be banned.
Bag levy success
In October 2015, Britain introduced a charge of 5-pence on all single-use plastic bags provided by large shops, which led to an 83 percent reduction in UK plastic bags used in the first year.
On Friday the environment ministry said the government was working closely with the sector and had made progress in increasing recycling rates.
“We are encouraged by industry action to increase the recycling of paper cups with some major retail chains now offering discounts to customers with reusable cups,” said a spokeswoman.
“We will carefully consider the committee’s recommendations and respond shortly,” she said.
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Kinshasa National Museum Grows to Tell the Story of a Nation
A true treasure overlooks the city of Kinshasa on top of Ngaliema Hill. An exhibition room of a few dozen square meters is too small to contain the 45,000 pieces that have been collected from across the Democratic Republic of Congo. But this is the temporary solution to keep some of this collection open to the public until a new and bigger museum, opens in 2018. Abdourahmane Dia has this report.
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Tech Startups Hope to Impress at CES
The Consumer Electronics show opens this weekend in Las Vegas, Nevada. There are a host of new tech startups descending on the city, hoping to become the next big thing. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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East of the Rockies, North America Shivers
A life threatening cold front swept across North America, bringing piles of snow and icy conditions. The National Weather Service issued wind chill advisories and freeze warnings covering a vast area from South Texas to Canada and from Montana through New England. VOA’s Carol Pearson reports doctors are issuing warnings about injuries from frostbite and ice.
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No Australia Open for Defending Champion Serena Williams
Defending champion Serena Williams has withdrawn from the Australian Open, saying she is not ready to return to tournament tennis.
The season’s first major starts Jan. 15 at Melbourne Park and seven-time Australian Open champion Williams will be missing it for the first time since 2011.
Williams was pregnant with her first child when she won here last year to collect her Open-era record 23rd Grand Slam singles title.
She gave birth to her daughter, Alexis, in September.
Abu Dhabi exhibition
Williams played in an exhibition tournament last week in Abu Dhabi and indicated after her loss to French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko that she might not make it to Melbourne.
“After competing in Abu Dhabi I realized that although I am super close, I’m not where I personally want to be,” Williams said in a statement released Friday by Australian Open organizers.
“My coach and team always said ‘only go to tournaments when you are prepared to go all the way.’ I can compete — but I don’t want to just compete, I want to do far better than that and to do so, I will need a little more time.
“With that being said, and even though I am disappointed about it, I’ve decided not to compete in the Australian Open this year.”
The 36-year-old Williams needs one more Grand Slam singles title to equal the all-time record held by Margaret Court, who won 24 titles before and during the Open era.
Murray out, too
Her withdrawal comes less than 24 hours after fellow former world No.1 Andy Murray withdrew from the men’s event with a chronic hip injury.
Several other stars, including top-ranked Rafael Nadal, six-time champion Novak Djokovic and 2014 winner Stan Wawrinka, also are dealing with injuries.
Williams last year beat sister Venus in the final, and later revealed she played the tournament despite knowing she was pregnant.
Australian Open tournament director Craig Tiley said Williams waited as long as she could before letting organizers know she wouldn’t be able to compete.
“I’ve been in constant contact with Serena and her team and know this is why she has pushed it and pushed it until the 11th hour to make her final decision,” Tiley said.
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Apple to Issue Fix for iPhones, Macs at Risk From Chip Flaw
Apple Inc. will release a patch for the Safari web browser on its iPhones, iPads and Macs within days, it said Thursday, after major chipmakers disclosed flaws that leave nearly every modern computing device vulnerable to hackers.
On Wednesday, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and other security researchers disclosed two major chip flaws, one called Meltdown affecting only Intel Corp. chips and one called Spectre affecting nearly all computer chips made in the last decade. The news sparked a sell-off in Intel’s stock as investors tried to gauge the costs to the chipmaker.
In a statement on its website, Apple said all Mac and iOS devices were affected by both Meltdown and Spectre. But the most recent operating system updates for Mac computers, Apple TVs, iPhones and iPads protect users against the Meltdown attack and do not slow down the devices, it added. Meltdown does not affect the Apple Watch.
Macs and iOS devices are vulnerable to Spectre attacks through code that can run in web browsers. Apple said it would issue a patch to its Safari web browser for those devices “in the coming days.”
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Starfish Eating Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Alarm Scientists
A major outbreak of coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish has been found munching Australia’s world heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef, scientists said Friday, prompting the government to begin culling the spiky marine animals.
The predator starfish feeds on corals by spreading its stomach over them and using digestive enzymes to liquefy tissue, and the outbreak hits as the reef is still reeling from two consecutive years of major coral bleaching.
“Each starfish eats about its body diameter a night, and so over time that mounts up very significantly,” Hugh Sweatman, a senior research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio.
“A lot of coral will be lost,” he said.
That would be a blow for both the ecosystem and the lucrative tourism industry which it supports.
The crown-of-thorns starfish were found in plague proportions last month in the Swains Reefs, at the southern edge of the Great Barrier Reef, by researchers from the reef’s Marine Park Authority, a spokeswoman for the authority told Reuters by phone.
The remote reefs, about 200 km (120 miles) offshore from Yeppoon, a holiday and fishing town some 500 km north of Queensland state capital, Brisbane, are well south of the most-visited sections of the Great Barrier Reef, where most culling efforts are focused.
But the government’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority already killed some starfish at Swains Reefs in December and will mount another mission this month, a director at the authority, Fred Nucifora, told the ABC.
“The complexity with the Swains Reef location is … they are logistically difficult to access and it is actually quite a hostile environment to work in,” Nucifora said.
Previous outbreaks
There have been four major crown-of-thorns outbreaks since the 1960s in the Great Barrier Reef, but it recovered each time because there were always healthy populations of herbivorous fish. The outbreaks are usually triggered by extra nutrients in the water but the reason for the current outbreak was unclear, Sweatman said.
The reef is still recovering from damage wrought by the worst-ever coral bleaching on record, which in 2016 killed two-thirds of a 700 km stretch of reef.
On Friday, a report published in the journal Science found that high ocean temperatures are harming tropical corals much more often than a generation ago, putting reefs under pressure.
The Great Barrier Reef, covering 348,000 square kilometers, was World Heritage listed in 1981 as the most extensive and spectacular coral reef ecosystem on the planet, according to the UNESCO website.
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Who Is Michael Wolff?
Michael Wolff, an American author, essayist and journalist, has written Fire and Fury, a book that portrays a chaotic initial year for the presidency of Donald Trump. What’s his background?
Michael Wolff
Age: 64
Early life: Wolff was born in New Jersey to a father who worked in advertising and a mother who was a newspaper reporter. He attended Columbia University in New York and worked as a copy boy at The New York Times while in school.
The journalist: Wolff published his first book of essays, White Kids, in 1979. He was most recently a media critic and columnist for USA Today, Hollywood Reporter, New York Magazine and, before that, Vanity Fair and Newser.
In 2011, he briefly was at the helm of AdWeek magazine, but left after less than a year.
The author: In 1997, he wrote the bestseller Burn Rate, about his early dotcom company Wolff New Media.
In 2004 he published Autumn of the Moguls, about the decline of mainstream media that would occur later in the decade.
He was perhaps best known for his 2009 biography of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News.
Accolades: Wolff has won two National Magazine Awards, which recognize excellence in the magazine industry in both print and digital mediums.
One of the awards was for a series of columns he wrote from the Middle East at the start of the Iraq War in 2003.
Controversies: Wolff’s work has often drawn criticism from his fellow journalists as well as his subjects. Just before the publication of The Man Who Owns the News, Murdoch took issue with several parts of the book, just as U.S. President Donald Trump has over Wolff’s latest work.
In a 2004 cover story for The New Republic, reporter Michelle Cottle characterized Wolff’s writing by saying that “even Wolff acknowledges that conventional reporting is not his bag.” Rather, she said, “he absorbs the atmosphere and gossip swirling around him at cocktail parties, on the street, and especially during those long lunches.”
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Investors Skittish, but Marijuana Growers, Sellers to Stay the Course
Marijuana-related stocks plummeted, cannabis boosters worried about the industry’s future and defiant growers and sellers vowed to keep operating after U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions signaled a tougher approach Thursday to federal pot enforcement.
The plunging stock prices reversed a weekslong rally driven by optimism for legal recreational sales that started Monday in California. Several marijuana stocks saw double-digit losses in the hours after Sessions’ announcement, including the largest pot-producing company that is publicly traded.
Canopy Growth, a Canada-based company with the ticker symbol WEED, lost $3.58 a share, or 10 percent, to close at $32.32 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Shares of garden-supply company Scotts Miracle-Gro also skidded Thursday, following a steady rise last year after it added fertilizer, lights and other products to serve marijuana growers. The company’s share price fell by as much as 7 percent before closing down 2.3 percent, or $2.49, to $106.17 on the New York Stock Exchange.
Investors spooked
“Jeff Sessions’ decision to rescind the Cole memoranda puts the marijuana industry and marijuana legalization efforts in a precarious position,” said Aaron Herzberg, a California lawyer and founder of the cannabis investment company CalCann Holding, referring to an Obama-era memo that limited U.S. crackdowns on pot in states where it’s legal.
Brent Kenyon, a consultant who helps advise and establish recreational marijuana businesses in Oregon, said his phone had been ringing all Thursday with calls from worried clients. Investors, including some who are involved in his businesses, are spooked, he said.
“I’m just telling people to hold off. We need more information, we need to see what the president is going to say about this,” he said by phone from a cannabis conference in Hawaii.
Andy Williams, CEO of the Medicine Man Denver dispensary, is taking a wait-and-see approach to the new policy but pointed out the economic impact of legal pot.
“This industry around the United States has attracted a lot of investment. Billions of dollars in investment,” he said. “Just talking about what Sessions wants to do today has dropped the market.”
’Business as usual’
Steve DeAngelo, owner of California’s largest marijuana retailer, said it will be “business as usual” at his Harborside dispensary in Oakland.
“I think the main impact of this is really going to be on investors, more than anything else,” he said. “Some investors might get a bit nervous about putting more money into the cannabis industry until the situation resolves itself.”
Another of California’s largest marijuana operators said it also plans no changes in response to Sessions’ announcement.
“For this industry and for this community, we are really based on resilience, going against the tide. This is no different,” said Michael Steinmetz, CEO of Flow Kana, which distributes cannabis products from small, outdoor farmers. “From my perspective, things don’t change.”
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