Month: March 2018

US Muslim Teen Author Writes Strong Female Characters

Posted on by Corts

Maryam Durrani is a typical American teenager with a wild imagination and a knack for telling stories about dungeons, dragons, kingdoms and young girls.

She wrote her first book in longhand at the age of 13. Later, after learning about a website called wattpad, an online community where readers and writers can discover new user-generated content, Durrani uploaded her stories to get feedback from readers.

“On one of my works, I received over a half a million reads. People are still reading it. I can see their votes and reads and comments on my work,” Durrani said.

To date, Durrani’s unpublished novel “Doubled Elements” has received more than 700,000 views on wattpad. Positive reader feedback prompted the young author to self-publish and sell her books.

Now 18, Durrani credits much of her writing success to her parents. Her father, Irfan Durrani, helped get her books published while her mother fostered her passion for literature.

“When she was in kindergarten, I gave her a journal with a pen and asked her to write in it to express her feelings and I think her writing journey began from there,” said Zainab Durrani, Maryam’s mother.

But the teenager soon tired of reading books with traditional storylines, which often revolve around a male hero who saves the day. So she decided to change things a bit, creating characters that would appeal to young girls.

“I wanted to write about someone that I could look up to,” Durrani said. “And that is where I came up with the idea for the main character. She is a warrior, a general…she can do anything she wants. And she is powerful. I wanted to write about a role model for me and other girls.”

Her parents are proud of Durrani’s accomplishments as a writer, but they are especially proud that their daughter, who wears a Muslim headscarf, has become a role model for young girls, including those like her who wear the hijab.

Durrani says she didn’t realize she was viewed as a role model until she visited her sister’s private Muslim school. 

“I had so many fans there,” she said. “Apart from my online readers, I could see my fans in real life there. So, I kind of felt like I was writing for them now. I was giving them a character or a person to look up to. A strong female role model for them.”
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EXCLUSIVE: Kaspersky Lab Plans Swiss Data Center to Combat Spying Allegations: Documents

Posted on by Cobiz

Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab plans to open a data center in Switzerland to address Western government concerns that Russia exploits its anti-virus software to spy on customers, according to internal documents seen by Reuters.

Kaspersky is setting up the center in response to actions in the United States, Britain and Lithuania last year to stop using the company’s products, according to the documents, which were confirmed by a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

The action is the latest effort by Kaspersky, a global leader in anti-virus software, to parry accusations by the U.S. government and others that the company spies on customers at the behest of Russian intelligence. The U.S. last year ordered civilian government agencies to remove the Kaspersky software from their networks.

Kaspersky has strongly rejected the accusations and filed a lawsuit against the U.S. ban.

The U.S. allegations were the “trigger” for setting up the Swiss data center, said the person familiar with Kapersky’s Switzerland plans, but not the only factor.

“The world is changing,” they said, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing internal company business. “There is more balkanisation and protectionism.”

The person declined to provide further details on the new project, but added: “This is not just a PR stunt. We are really changing our R&D infrastructure.”

A Kaspersky spokeswoman declined to comment on the documents reviewed by Reuters.

In a statement, Kaspersky Lab said: “To further deliver on the promises of our Global Transparency Initiative, we are finalizing plans for the opening of the company’s first transparency center this year, which will be located in Europe.”

“We understand that during a time of geopolitical tension, mirrored by an increasingly complex cyber-threat landscape, people may have questions and we want to address them.”

Kaspersky Lab launched a campaign in October to dispel concerns about possible collusion with the Russian government by promising to let independent experts scrutinize its software for security vulnerabilities and “back doors” that governments could exploit to spy on its customers.

The company also said at the time that it would open “transparency centers” in Asia, Europe and the United States but did not provide details. The new Swiss facility is dubbed the Swiss Transparency Centre, according to the documents.

Data review

Work in Switzerland is due to begin “within weeks” and be completed by early 2020, said the person with knowledge of the matter.

The plans have been approved by Kaspersky Lab CEO and founder Eugene Kaspersky, who owns a majority of the privately held company, and will be announced publicly in the coming months, according to the source.

“Eugene is upset. He would rather spend the money elsewhere. But he knows this is necessary,” the person said.

It is possible the move could be derailed by the Russian security services, who might resist moving the data center outside of their jurisdiction, people familiar with Kaspersky and its relations with the government said.

Western security officials said Russia’s FSB Federal Security Service, successor to the Soviet-era KGB, exerts influence over Kaspersky management decisions, though the company has repeatedly denied those allegations.

The Swiss center will collect and analyze files identified as suspicious on the computers of tens of millions of Kaspersky customers in the United States and European Union, according to the documents reviewed by Reuters. Data from other customers will continue to be sent to a Moscow data center for review and analysis.

Files would only be transmitted from Switzerland to Moscow in cases when anomalies are detected that require manual review, the person said, adding that about 99.6 percent of such samples do not currently undergo this process.

A third party will review the center’s operations to make sure that all requests for such files are properly signed, stored and available for review by outsiders including foreign governments, the person said.

Moving operations to Switzerland will address concerns about laws that enable Russian security services to monitor data transmissions inside Russia and force companies to assist law enforcement agencies, according to the documents describing the plan.

The company will also move the department which builds its anti-virus software using code written in Moscow to Switzerland, the documents showed.

Kaspersky has received “solid support” from the Swiss government, said the source, who did not identify specific officials who have endorsed the plan.
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New Technology Being Developed for Pacemakers

Posted on by Cobiz

When you are watching a television show and see someone get their heart shocked back into a rhythm, you will see their entire body rise up in the air. That’s what happens when a defibrillator is used, because the shock is that powerful. As VOA’s Carol Pearson reports, scientists are now working on better, more effective, and less-shocking ways to get a heart to start beating once again.
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In Lab, 3-D Printing Cuts Costs, Manufacturing Time of Heat Exchangers

Posted on by Cobiz

Heat exchangers are some of the most widely used energy-transfer devices, helping cool everything from car engines to power plants.

At the recent ARPA-e conference, organized by the U.S. Department of Energy, scientists from the University of Maryland showcased an advanced 3-D printer that, combined with a wire-laying head, cuts in half the time needed to manufacture heat exchangers.

David Hymas, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland, said that in most cases in a heat exchanger, the heat is transferred by forcing air over pipes or tubes with circulating water, which is often pumped from a nearby river or lake.

Reduce water use

“Currently power plants draw about 40 percent of all the freshwater supply in the United States,” Hymas said. Water consumption, he added, could be cut in half if lightweight air-cooled heat exchangers were created in 3-D printers.

“The water would flow in through one manifold entering these water tubes, right here, and then flow out through the other manifold. Air would blow across it, cooling these fins,” he said.

Printing a heat exchanger

At the school’s Advanced Heat Exchangers and Process Intensification Laboratory, Hymas showed off a heat exchanger manufactured in a lab-size 3-D printer that includes a wire-laying device. The first head in the machine builds up layers of polymer tubes, while another head lays copper or aluminum wire across them.

The printer used for testing the idea took almost 24 hours to create a shoebox-size heat exchanger, but research associate Farah Singer says the industrial-scale prototype machine proved to be much faster.

“It has 10 polymer heads and it is capable of printing, of laying at the same time, 45 fibers, 45 metal fibers, so we are talking about a full layer,” she said. “This machine is capable of printing in eight hours a 1 meter square heat exchanger. We are talking almost 20 kilowatts or 30 kilowatt heat exchanger.”

Reduction in weight and cost for 3-D-printed heat exchangers reaches 50 percent, depending on the application, which can range from power plants to air conditioning to cooling electronic devices.

“For the electronic cooling, for example, so far our experimental results have shown that we could have up to 52 percent reduction in cost while we have 26 percent increase in performance,” Singer said.

An added advantage is that 3-D printers allow creating very complex geometries, with the resolution between the cooling wires as low as 100 microns. The project was partially funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
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Weinstein Co. Tosses Nondisclosure Agreements, Could Bring New Wave of Accusers

Posted on by Corts

Is #MeToo part two on the way?

With its bankruptcy, the Weinstein Co. has tossed out the nondisclosure agreements that officials say its co-founder and former CEO Harvey Weinstein wielded as a weapon in his sexual predation, bringing with it the possibility of a new wave of victims coming forward.

Bankruptcy filings are normally shrouded in the jargon of finance, but on this point the movie and TV studio was clear:

“Since October, it has been reported that Harvey Weinstein used nondisclosure agreements as a secret weapon to silence his accusers,” a Weinstein Co. statement said. “Effective immediately, those ‘agreements’ end. No one should be afraid to speak out or coerced to stay quiet.”

Weinstein has own agreements

The rare move from a major business is likely to send new witnesses and victims to media outlets and investigators, which put out fresh calls Tuesday for their stories.

It’s unlikely, however, to spur a new surge in high-profile actresses coming forward, as Rose McGowan, Ashley Judd, Salma Hayek and many others have in recent months.

That’s because the Weinstein Co. only has the power to end agreements made by the company not Weinstein himself, meaning its effect will be primarily on current and former employees.

Cris Armenta, a lawyer representing accusers in a proposed class-action lawsuit against the Weinstein Co., said she fears that because so many of the agreements are with Weinstein himself and still apply, the impact may not be major.

“What are they actually releasing, and is it just window dressing?” Armenta said Tuesday.

Armenta also worries that as creditors line up in front of those who have sued the company to get paid in bankruptcy, it could be “leaving the plaintiffs with nothing to hold on to.”

Employees may break silence

Still, there is a large pool of people, many of them less powerful, lower-level employees with more to fear, who may now break their silence over what happened to them or what they saw.

They include workers like Zelda Perkins, a former Weinstein assistant who was among the first of his accusers to break a commitment to stay quiet after keeping Weinstein secrets for nearly 20 years. She told The Financial Times in October that Weinstein sexually harassed her “on every occasion I was alone with him” and said she spoke out in part to demonstrate “how egregious these agreements are.”

Perkins is precisely the kind of workplace harassment subject that the Weinstein Co.’s move will free to speak, and who the move’s champions hope will be helped.

Attorney general 

“This is a watershed moment for efforts to address the corrosive effects of sexual misconduct in the workplace,” said New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who fought for the provision in the Weinstein Co.’s bankruptcy. He added in his statement that it “will finally enable voices that have for too long been muzzled to be heard.”

On Tuesday, Schneiderman’s office sent out a tweet urging victims and witnesses to contact his office, which is conducting a civil rights investigation of the Weinstein Co. and of Weinstein himself.

Time’s Up, an initiative started by a powerhouse group of Hollywood industry women to fight systemic sexual harassment, also urged those newly freed by the Weinstein bankruptcy to come to it with their stories, as did The New York Times.

Nondisclosure agreements in spotlight

In addition to bringing unprecedented attention to sexual harassment, the post-Weinstein world has seen a new level of scrutiny of nondisclosure agreements — “NDAs” for short in legal jargon — contractual pledges not to discuss what happened that are common features of financial settlements.

They have since been a central part of news stories including porn actress Stormy Daniels saying she had sex with President Donald Trump, sexual misconduct allegations against casino magnate Steve Wynn, and settlements between USA Gymnastics and gymnasts who were forbidden to speak about their abuse at the hands of team doctor Larry Nassar.

Several states including California and New York have considered legislation stopping or limiting nondisclosure agreements in cases of sexual misconduct.

“Secret settlements serve one primary purpose: To keep sexual predators away from the public eye and continuing to torment and hurt innocent victims,” state Sen. Connie Leyva said in a statement introducing such a bill in California in January.

But while NDAs have become tools of the rich and powerful, they are not without benefits for their victims, who may want to keep their ordeal private or whose silence may be the only leverage they have in getting legal recourse.

Some 80 women, including prominent actresses, have accused Weinstein of misconduct ranging from rape to harassment.

He has denied any allegations of non-consensual sex.
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China Tests Unmanned Tanks in Modernization Push

Posted on by Cobiz

China is testing unmanned tanks that could be equipped with artificial intelligence, a state-run newspaper said Wednesday, as the country continues with its military modernization program.

State television showed images this week of the unmanned tanks undergoing testing, the Global Times newspaper reported.

Footage showed a Type 59 tank being driven by remote control, in what the paper said was the first time a Chinese-made unmanned tank has been shown in a public forum.

The Type 59 tank is based on an old Soviet model first used in China in the 1950s and has been produced in large numbers and has a long service life, it said.

“A large number of due-to-retire Type 59 tanks can be converted into unmanned vehicles if equipped with artificial intelligence,” Liu Qingshan, the chief editor of Tank and Armored Vehicle, told the newspaper.

Unmanned tanks will be able to work on other unmanned equipment, integrate information from satellites, aircraft or submarines, the report added.

China is in the middle of a modernization program for its armed forces, including building stealth fighters and new aircraft carriers, as President Xi Jinping looks to assert the country’s growing power.
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Peter Peterson, Billionaire and Philanthropist, Dies at 91

Posted on by Coeco

Peter G. Peterson, a billionaire and business executive who became one of the most prominent voices to argue for entitlement reform and reducing the U.S. national debt, died of natural causes early Tuesday, his family said. He was 91.

Born in the small town of Kearney, Nebraska, to Greek immigrants, Peterson was CEO of two major U.S. companies and co-founded one of the world’s largest private-equity firms.

He was a national figure in business by the early 1960s, serving as chairman and CEO of Bell and Howell, one of the largest manufacturers of movie cameras at the time.

 

He left Bell and Howell to work for the Nixon administration in the early 1970s, eventually serving as secretary of commerce from 1972 to 1973.

Lehman Brothers 

He took over as chief executive of the investment bank Lehman Brothers in 1973 after leaving the Nixon administration. In 1985, he co-founded the private-equity firm Blackstone Group with Stephen Schwarzman.

“His intelligence, wit and vision made him an inspirational leader who brought people together from the White House to Wall Street,” his family said in a statement.

Blackstone went on to become one of biggest private-equity firms in the world, with $434 billion in assets under management at the end of last year. When the firm went public in 2007, Peterson’s stake in the company made him a billionaire. His wealth was estimated at $2 billion, according to Forbes Magazine.

Fiscal challenges

Peterson dedicated the rest of his life to what he called “key fiscal challenges threatening America’s future,” donating $1 billion to create the Peter G. Peterson Foundation in 2007.

He never publicly endorsed the fiscal ideals of the Tea Party. However, his ideas did give him some common ground with them.

 

He long argued that the United States’ entitlement programs, principally Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, had to be restructured or benefits cut back to avoid bankrupting the government. Through his foundation, he disseminated his ideas among the public and politicians.

“The fact he was able to start a serious debate about the future of Social Security and other entitlement programs was a huge accomplishment,” said Fred Bergsten, founder of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who worked with Peterson in various capacities going back to the 1970s.

Raising taxes

Peterson was not considered ideological when it came to dealing with Social Security and Medicare. A life-long Republican, he still believed that raising taxes should be considered as part of any major restructuring of the U.S. budget, Bergsten said.

The foundation quickly became a major voice on all budget-related matters, repeatedly quoted in national media outlets. In 2008, his organization helped bankroll the documentary “I.O.U.S.A,” with the goal of making the federal government’s ballooning national debt, then around $10 trillion, a central campaign issue.

 

“What is most significant is most of our challenges are not really being discussed,” Peterson told The Associated Press in 2008 when he created his foundation. “I’ve been a very lucky beneficiary of the American dream as the son of immigrants. And, the more I look at some of these problems, the more persuaded I am they will pose a serious threat to this country.”

Peterson is survived by his wife, Joan Ganz Cooney, who co-founded the Children’s Television Workshop, and children John Peterson, Jim Peterson, David Peterson, Holly Peterson and Michael Peterson, and nine grandchildren.
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Can Self-Driving Cars Withstand First Fatality?

Posted on by Cobiz

The deadly collision between an Uber autonomous vehicle and a pedestrian near Phoenix is bringing calls for tougher self-driving regulations, but advocates for a hands-off approach say big changes aren’t needed.

Police in Tempe, Arizona, say the female pedestrian walked in front of the Uber SUV in the dark of night, and neither the automated system nor the human backup driver stopped in time. Local authorities haven’t determined fault, and federal transportation authorities say they won’t release any findings on the crash until their investigation is complete.

Current federal regulations have few requirements specifically for self-driving vehicles, leaving it for states to handle. Many, such as Arizona, Nevada and Michigan, cede key decisions to companies as they compete for investment that will come with the technology.

No matter whether police find Uber or the pedestrian at fault in the Sunday crash, many federal and state officials say their regulations are sufficient to keep people safe while allowing the potentially lifesaving technology to grow. Others, however, argue the regulations don’t go far enough.

“I don’t think we need to jump to conclusions and make changes to our business,” said Michigan state Senator Jim Ananich, the chamber’s minority leader. He and other Democrats joined Republicans to pass a bill last year that doesn’t require human backup drivers and allows companies wide latitude to conduct tests.

Ananich called the death of Elaine Herzberg, 49, a tragedy and said companies need to continue refining their systems. “I want that work to happen here, because we have a 100-year history of making the best cars on the planet,” he said. “It’s not perfect by any means, and we are just going to have to keep working until it is.”

Proponents of light regulations, including the Trump administration’s Transportation Department, say the technology could reduce the 40,000 traffic deaths that happen annually in the U.S. The government says 94 percent of crashes are caused by human error that automated systems can reduce because they don’t get drunk, sleepy or inattentive.

U.S. Representative Bob Latta, an Ohio Republican who chairs a House subcommittee that passed an autonomous vehicle bill, said the measure has sufficient provisions to ensure the cars operate safely. It requires the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to develop safety standards and allows the agency to update outdated regulations. It also prohibits states from regulating autonomous driving systems to avoid a patchwork of rules, Latta said.

The bill has passed the House. The Senate is considering a similar measure.

About 6,000 pedestrians were killed last year in crashes that involved cars driven by humans, he said. “What we want to do is see that stop or try to get it preventable,” he said.

But safety advocates and others say companies are moving too quickly, and they fear others will die as road testing finds gaps that automated systems can’t handle.

Jason Levine, executive director for the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, said without proper regulations, more crashes will happen. “There’s no guardrails on the technology when it’s being tested without any sense of how safe it is before you put it on the road,” he said.

Others say that the laser and radar sensors on the SUV involved in the Tempe accident should have spotted Herzberg in the darkness and braked or swerved to avoid her. Development should be slowed, with standards set for how far sensors must see and how quickly vehicles should react, they said.

Sam Abuelsamid, an analyst for Navigant Research, expects the Arizona crash to slow research. “Responsible companies will take this opportunity to go back and look at their test procedures,” he said.

Toyota already is taking a step back, pausing its fully autonomous testing with human backups for a few days to let drivers process the Arizona crash and “help them do their jobs with less concern,” the company said. The company says it constantly refines its procedures.

Without standards for software coding quality and cybersecurity, there will be more deaths as autonomous vehicles are tested on public roads, said Lee McKnight, associate professor of information studies at Syracuse University.

“We can say eventually they’ll learn not to kill us,” McKnight said. “In the meantime, they will be killing more people.”
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Report: Women Short-Changed on Commercial Land Deals in Africa

Posted on by Coeco

Women are often short-changed compared to men when communities are compensated or resettled during commercial land deals in Africa, and governments should take action to rectify that, researchers said Tuesday.

The World Resources Institute’s (WRI) research showed men had received up to six times as much for their land. And although women usually had smaller land parcels, they also lost access to resources such as rivers, forests and social networks.

Among other measures, the U.S.-based WRI said governments should enact laws ensuring women receive an equitable share of compensation payments made to households.

“There is usually a power asymmetry between the community and the investor. These deals are presented to the community as almost-done deals with women getting the short-end,” said WRI associate researcher Celine Salcedo-La Vina.

“Most of the time the expected benefits are not legally binding,” she told Reuters by Skype.

WRI focused on Tanzania and Mozambique, which are among the places where major commercial deals in agribusiness, tourism and mining have displaced thousands over the last decade, she said.

Land in Africa is often communally held, with fathers assumed to be the rightful owners who usually pass it on to their sons. That makes it hard for women to own land except through their husbands or by buying it, the World Bank has said.

Women are usually not compensated for lost farms because they are not deemed to own the fields they cultivate, and often grow subsistence crops. Men, on the other hand, typically plant cash crops whose value is easy to determine, WRI said.

Changing land laws

Some African governments, including Tanzania and Mozambique, have enacted new laws to address how investors engage communities during land deals to reduce inequality, WRI said.

But these changes have done little to address how women are compensated or resettled during commercial deals, because most of the laws use “gender-neutral language.”

“When applied in patriarchal contexts [these laws] result in women’s marginalization,” the report said.

Tanzania and Mozambique are working to change their land laws to bring in more rights for women during commercial land deals. However, those would first have to tackle the cultural norms of how women come to own land, Salcedo-La Vina said.

“We have seen where we have men and women working together during land deals, it usually strengthens community rights,” she said.

WRI also recommended that women’s land uses and contributions as heads of households be taken into account, that land titles be in both spouses’ names, and that intangible assets be included when determining compensation.
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Breaking Up With Facebook Harder Than It Looks

Posted on by Cobiz

Facebook’s latest privacy scandal, involving Trump campaign consultants who allegedly stole data on tens of millions of users in order to influence elections, has some people reconsidering their relationship status with the social network.

There’s just one problem: There isn’t much of anywhere else to go.

Facebook has weathered many such blow-ups before and is used to apologizing and moving on. But the stakes are bigger this time.

Regulatory authorities are starting to focus on the data misappropriation, triggering a 9 percent decline in Facebook’s normally high-flying stock since Monday. Some of that reflects fear that changes in Facebook’s business will hurt profits or that advertisers and users will sour on the social network.

The furor over Cambridge Analytica, the data mining firm accused of stealing Facebook data, followed a bad year in which Facebook acknowledged helping spread fake news and propaganda from Russian agents. It also came less than three months after CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the world that he would devote the year to fixing Facebook. Instead, things seem to be getting worse.

“It’s more serious economically, politically, financially, and will require a more robust response in order to regain users’ trust,” said Steve Jones, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Not so easy

Yet leaving Facebook isn’t simple for some people.

Arvind Rajan, a tech executive from San Francisco who deactivated his account on Monday, suddenly discovered he needs to create new usernames and passwords for a variety of apps and websites. That’s because he had previously logged in with his Facebook ID.

It’s a pain, he said, “but not the end of the world.” And because he is bothered by Facebook’s “ham-handed” response to recent problems, the inconvenience is worth it.

For other users looking to leave, it can feel as if there are no real alternatives. Twitter? Too flighty, too public. Instagram? Whoops, owned by Facebook. Snapchat? Please, unless you’re under 25 — in which case you’re probably not on Facebook to begin with.

Facebook connects 2.2 billion users and a host of communities that have sprung up on its network. No other company can match the breadth or depth of these connections — thanks in part to Facebook’s proclivity for squashing or swallowing up its competition.

What about your photos? 

But it is precisely in Facebook’s interest to make users feel Facebook is the only place to connect with others. Where else will grandmothers see photos of their far-flung grandkids? How will new mothers connect to other parents also up at 4 a.m. with a newborn?

“My only hesitation is that there are hundreds of pictures posted over 13 years of my life that I do not want to lose access to. If there was a way to recover these photos, I would deactivate immediately,” Daniel Schwartz, who lives in Atlanta, said in an email. 

People eager to delete their profiles may find unexpected problems that point to how integral Facebook is to many activities, said Ifeoma Ajunwa, a professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University.

“It is getting more and more difficult for people to delete Facebook, since it’s not just as a social media platform but also almost like a meeting square,” she said.

Parents could soon realize that their child’s soccer schedule with games and pickup times is only on a Facebook page, for example. Many businesses also schedule meetings via Facebook.

“It’s more and more difficult for people to feel plugged in if you’re not on Facebook,” Ajunwa said.

Exit can take 90 days

Not surprisingly, Facebook doesn’t make it easy to leave. To permanently delete your account, you need to make a request to the company. The process can take several days, and if you log in during this time, your request will be canceled. It can take up to 90 days to delete everything.

There’s a less permanent way to leave — deactivation — which hides your profile from everyone but lets you return if you change your mind.

Lili Orozco, 28, an office manager for her family’s heating and cooling company in Watkinsville, Georgia, deleted her account in December. She was upset that every new app she downloaded would ask for her Facebook contacts.

And while she liked staying in touch with people, she was irritated by the conspiracy stories her high school friends would share.

“Falsehoods spread faster on Facebook than the truth does,” she said. She now gets her news from Twitter and shares pictures with friends through Instagram.
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Hawaii Campus Joins US Trend to Go All Green

Posted on by Cosc

A campus in Hawaii is joining a handful of U.S. colleges and universities aiming to use 100 percent renewable energy, it said Tuesday, part of a growing nationwide trend of schools going green.

The move by the University of Hawaii campus on Maui island is forward-looking and makes economic sense given the cost of fuel on the remote Pacific archipelago of islands and atolls, said Michael Unebasmi, a university spokesman.

With plans to replace oil-based electricity from a utility with solar panels, Maui College joins a handful of U.S. schools such as Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the University of New Hampshire’s main Durham campus.

The decision puts Maui College “at the leading edge,” Unebasmi told Reuters.

“We thought by doing this it would be a great example,” he said.

The network of solar panels will fuel the needs of the 78-acre (32 hectares) grounds by 2019, he said.

With a reliance on fossil fuels, Hawaii has particularly high energy prices of more than twice the national average, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data.

The push by U.S. schools moving away from polluting sources of electricity has picked up pace, said Bronte Payne at the Denver-based nonprofit Environment America.

Growing numbers

About half a dozen colleges and universities have announced commitments over the last two years to use renewable energy sources rather than planet-warming fossil fuel, she said.

Largest among them are Boston University, Colorado State University and Cornell University, she said.

More than 500 other colleges and universities are aiming for carbon neutrality, offsetting the use of fossil fuel with renewable energy or so-called carbon credits from low-level producers of greenhouse gases.

“They will set an example for communities across the country,” she said.

Cornell, in western New York state, aims to replace its on-campus natural gas power plant with a mix of solar and enhanced geothermal energy by 2035, said Sarah Zemanick, director of its campus sustainability office.

The main campus in Ithaca, with some 22,000 students, stretches across 745 acres (301 hectares).

“We’re at the scale of a small city, so it’s a good place for us not only to discover solutions that might work but also try them on our own campus,” Zemanick said.
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Trump Tariffs Set Off Industry Scramble for Exemptions

Posted on by Coeco

When Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross held up a can of Campbell’s soup in a CNBC interview to make the case that the Trump administration’s steel and aluminum tariffs were “no big deal,” the canning industry begged to disagree — and they were hardly alone.

President Donald Trump’s strong-armed trade policies have set off an intense scramble among industry groups, companies and foreign countries seeking exemptions from tariffs of 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on imported aluminum. The push comes ahead of a round of new penalties expected to be slapped on China by week’s end.

The Can Manufacturers Institute, which represents 22,000 workers at manufacturers across the nation, estimates the steel and aluminum tariffs will harm their industry and consumers alike. The institute says there are 119 billion cans made in the U.S., meaning a 1 cent tariff would lead to a $1.1 billion tax on consumers and businesses.

“Secretary Ross has made cans a poster child to dispel concerns about the costs of tariffs,” said Robert Budway, the institute’s president. He said his organization was concerned Ross “is already predisposed to deny our petitions.”

Trump’s one-two punch on trade has set in motion a deluge of requests to the Commerce Department for exclusions for certain steel and aluminum products. Foreign countries, meanwhile, complain the U.S. trade representative’s office has not provided specific guidance on gaining exemptions before the steel and aluminum tariffs are implemented on Friday.

Countries in the dark

“Typically, the countries are determined before tariffs are announced,” said Josh Zive, senior principal at the law firm Bracewell LLP. This time, countries don’t know whether they will end up being targeted or exempted — “that’s weird and no one knows what to make of it.”

The Trump administration, which has said steel and aluminum imports threaten U.S. national security, has already given Mexico and Canada a reprieve — provided they agree to a revamp of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The European Union, South Korea, Australia and Brazil are among the groups and countries seeking the exemptions.

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said tariffs are “sometimes necessary tools” to protect national security or fight unfair trade practices. But he said the administration’s approach is producing “chaos, uncertainty and an alienation of our closest allies.”

Emily Davis, a spokeswoman for U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, said the U.S “is engaged in discussions with several countries to determine if means other than tariffs can be arranged to address our national security concerns.”

Companies that buy imported steel and aluminum can request tariff relief from the Commerce Department, especially if they rely on types of imported steel and aluminum that aren’t available from domestic U.S. producers.

Expect a deluge: Steel and aluminum producers have 30 days to make their exemption requests. Commerce expects 4,500 requests for relief and 1,500 objections — and it is supposed to reach decisions in 90 days.

Commerce has said it intends to reach decisions on a company-by-company basis, not by making across-the-board exemptions for individual steel and aluminum products. That decision has created anxieties that certain companies could get tariff relief while others would be forced to pay tariffs on the same product — perhaps because in the time between the two requests domestic U.S. production has ramped up to fill shortages.

“The big thing is, it’s arbitrary,” said Mary Lovely of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “The government is becoming the matchmaker between the purchaser and the supplier.”

“It’s a real question to me whether they understand the magnitude of the requests they are going to get,” Zive said of Commerce. “How they’re going to get through them in 90 days is difficult to understand.”

Industry officials said other aspects of the exemption process will burden companies. Manufacturers are unclear whether companies will qualify for refunds if they end up getting exemptions after they’ve begun paying the tariffs. And since Trump set no timeline for ending the tariffs, the companies will need to reapply for the exemptions annually.

Stocking up

Companies, meanwhile, have been trying to beat the tariffs by stocking up on imports. Steel imports rose 15 percent last year and another 17 percent in January.

The steel and aluminum tariffs may only be the opening salvo.

Administration officials said Trump is expected to announce $60 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports by Friday on a wide array of consumer goods, from apparel to electronics, and even on imported parts for products made in the U.S.

Ross, appearing before a House budget panel on Tuesday, faced questions about the trade moves, with lawmakers warning the tariffs could lead to retaliation from foreign countries and wreak economic havoc for consumers.

“I worry that now we’re engaged in a trade war which is further going to alienate us from our adversaries,” said Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, a New Jersey Republican who chairs the powerful House Appropriations Committee.

Representative Derek Kilmer, a Washington state Democrat, noted that the decision to exclude aluminum and steel producers on a company-by-company basis — rather than by individual products — could create the possibility that some companies will gain a huge advantage over their competitors if they win exemptions.

Ross vowed that “the process will be open and transparent” and that Commerce was working to “minimize the amount of inconvenience that any of the affected parties will suffer as a result of the process. We’re gearing up to be fast, to be fair and to be practical.”
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UN Agency: Water-Smart Agriculture Could Cut Migration Risk

Posted on by Cosc

Water stress is increasingly driving migration around the world, but efforts to adapt to worsening shortages could help, a new U.N. study suggests.

Water stress — not just shortages, but water-quality issues — is expected to drive more people from their communities permanently and cause rapid growth of cities, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Two-thirds of the world’s people suffer some water scarcity for part of each year, with communities dependent on agriculture affected the most, said FAO director-general Jose Graziano da Silva in a video message for the 8th World Water Forum in Brazil.

Finding ways to adapt to that reality — rather than simply responding to disasters caused by water shortages — is the most effective way to deal with the problem, the FAO said.

Water use has increased six-fold worldwide over the past century, said the study, which drew on a survey of more than 180 research papers on water scarcity and migration issues.

As climate change brings increasingly irregular rainfall, worsening droughts and higher temperatures, water scarcity will likely increase, particularly as demand for agricultural water remains high, the study said.

Investment in preparing for water crises — such as adopting more water-smart agricultural practices — could cut the need for people to migrate, the study said, although drawing a clear link between water scarcity and migration remains complicated.

Experts believe drought played a role in the early stages of the Syrian conflict when 1.5 million farmers headed to cities as the country suffered its worst drought on record, said Charles Iceland of the World Resources Institute, a research body.

Drought was clearly not the major factor, he said, but instead exerted an additional pressure alongside political and social issues.

He said much of the world would face water scarcity by 2040 as populations and temperatures rise. Combating that would require changes including in agriculture, such as adopting water-saving drip irrigation, he said.

About 70 percent of freshwater used each year goes to agriculture, experts have estimated.
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Zuckerberg Asked to Testify in UK; Data Firm’s CEO Suspended

Posted on by Cobiz

A British parliamentary committee on Tuesday summoned Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to answer questions as authorities stepped up efforts to determine if the personal data of social-media users has been used improperly to influence elections.

The request comes amid allegations that a data-mining firm based in the U.K. used information from more than 50 million Facebook accounts to help Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election. The company, Cambridge Analytica, has denied wrongdoing.

However, the firm’s board of directions announced Tuesday evening that it had suspended CEO Alexander Nix pending an independent investigation of his actions. Nix made comments to an undercover reporter for Britain’s Channel 4 News about various unsavory services Cambridge Analytica provided its clients.

“In the view of the board, Mr. Nix’s recent comments secretly recorded by Channel 4 and other allegations do not represent the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation,” the board said in a statement.

Facebook also drew continued criticism for its alleged inaction to protect users’ privacy. Earlier Tuesday, the chairman of the U.K. parliamentary media committee, Damian Collins, said his group has repeatedly asked Facebook how it uses data and that Facebook officials “have been misleading to the committee.”

“It is now time to hear from a senior Facebook executive with the sufficient authority to give an accurate account of this catastrophic failure of process,” Collins wrote in a note addressed directly to Zuckerberg. “Given your commitment at the start of the New Year to ‘fixing’ Facebook, I hope that this representative will be you.”

Facebook sidestepped questions on whether Zuckerberg would appear, saying instead that it’s currently focused on conducting its own reviews.

​Personal data

The request to appear comes as Britain’s information commissioner said she was using all her legal powers to investigate the social-media giant and Cambridge Analytica.

Commissioner Elizabeth Denham is pursuing a warrant to search Cambridge Analytica’s servers. She has also asked Facebook to cease its own audit of Cambridge Analytica’s data use.

“Our advice to Facebook is to back away and let us go in and do our work,” she said.

Cambridge Analytica said it is committed to helping the U.K. investigation. However, Denham’s office said the firm failed to meet a deadline to produce the information requested.

Denham said the prime allegation against Cambridge Analytica is that it acquired personal data in an unauthorized way, adding that the data provisions act requires services like Facebook to have strong safeguards against misuse of data.

Chris Wylie, who once worked for Cambridge Analytica, was quoted as saying the company used the data to build psychological profiles so voters could be targeted with ads and stories.

Undercover investigation

The firm found itself in further allegations of wrongdoing. Britain’s Channel 4 used an undercover investigation to record Nix saying that the company could use unorthodox methods to wage successful political campaigns for clients.

He said the company could “send some girls” around to a rival candidate’s house, suggesting that girls from Ukraine are beautiful and effective in this role.

He also said the company could “offer a large amount of money” to a rival candidate and have the whole exchange recorded so it could be posted on the internet to show that the candidate was corrupt.

Nix says in a statement that he deeply regrets his role in the meeting and has apologized to staff.

“I am aware how this looks, but it is simply not the case,” he said. “I must emphatically state that Cambridge Analytica does not condone or engage in entrapment, bribes or so-called ‘honeytraps,’ and nor does it use untrue material for any purposes.”

Nix told the BBC the Channel 4 sting was “intended to embarrass us.”

“We see this as a coordinated attack by the media that’s been going on for very, very many months in order to damage the company that had some involvement with the election of Donald Trump,” he said.

The data harvesting used by Cambridge Analytica has also triggered calls for further investigation from the European Union, as well as federal and state officials in the United States.
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G-20 Sees Need for ‘Dialogue,’ Fails to Defuse Trade War Threat

Posted on by Coeco

The world’s financial leaders rejected protectionism Tuesday and urged “further dialogue” on trade, but failed to blunt the threat of a trade war days before U.S. metals tariffs take effect and Washington is to announce measures against China.

Finance ministers and central bankers of the world’s 20 biggest economies, which represent 75 percent of world trade and 85 percent of global gross domestic product, discussed trade disruptions as a risk to growth at a two-day meeting.

But after talks described by participants as “polite” and mainly consisting of read-out statements with no debate, the Group of 20 agreed only to stand by an ambiguous declaration on trade from 2017 and “recognize” the need for more “dialogue and actions.”

“We reaffirm the conclusions of our leaders on trade at the Hamburg Summit and recognize the need for further dialogue and actions. We are working to strengthen contribution of trade to our economies,” the G-20 ministers’ final statement said.

But the declaration did little to dispel concern about a global trade war as the U.S. tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum take effect Friday.

Tariffs on Chinese products

Two officials briefed on the matter said U.S. President Donald Trump would also unveil tariffs on up to $60 billion in Chinese technology and telecoms products by Friday, a move stemming from Beijing’s intellectual property practices.

The 2017 Hamburg declaration, which the financial leaders referred to on Tuesday, said G-20 countries would “continue to fight protectionism, including all unfair trade practices.”

But it also said G-20 leaders “recognize the role of legitimate trade defense instruments,” an ambiguity that provides the United States with a way to argue its cause on the tariffs.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin made clear Washington’s tariff action was such a legitimate defense.

“We need to be prepared to act in the U.S. interest, again, to defend free and fair, reciprocal trade,” he said in a news conference after the talks, adding that there was always a risk that others would reciprocate.

“There’s a risk of a trade war. The president has said we’re not afraid of getting into a trade war, given the size of our market, the size of our economy, and the fact that we have a big trade deficit,” Mnuchin said.

“On the steel and aluminum issue, this is a result of unfair trade practices and that’s why we’ve responded that way.”

Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau, comparing this G-20 meeting to the one in Germany last year, when Mnuchin demanded a rewrite of the long=standing communique language on trade, said the rest of the world now has a better sense of the U.S. view on how the rules of trade should be reworked.

“There’s not a consensus. Everyone around the table doesn’t have the same point of view, but there’s a greater understanding of what it is they’re trying to achieve,” Morneau said.

Europe ready to retaliate

The European Union, the biggest U.S. trading partner, wants to be exempt from the metals tariffs like Canada and Mexico, but so far has not had any success in securing an exemption.

As a result, the EU is preparing retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products such as bourbon, jeans and Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

European officials said that a trade war would produce only losers and that the G-20 ministers were united in support of “multilateralism” — G-20 jargon for solving disputes through negotiations in the World Trade Organization.

“We all agreed trade wars are a negative sum game,” Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco told reporters on the sidelines of the meeting. “There hasn’t been any voice against rule-based multilateralism.”

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire stressed Europe expected to get exemptions from the U.S. tariffs without any conditions and warned protectionism would hurt world growth.

Jeopardy to recovery

“It is of the utmost importance to avoid any unilateral choice that might jeopardize our growth. Unfair trade conditions [and] protectionism might jeopardize the economic recovery all over the world,” he said.

Mnuchin said he’d had very direct conversations with his counterparts in China and that he looked forward to working with Liu He, China’s newly installed, Harvard-educated vice premier in charge of financial and industrial policy, on getting better access to the Chinese market.

“I think there’s a general view among the G-20 that it is our desire to see China open their markets so that we can participate in their markets the way they participate in ours in a much more … reciprocal … relationship,” Mnuchin said.

The G-20 also called for continued international monitoring of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and the risks they posed. It said these assets raised issues with consumer and investor protections, market integrity, money laundering and terrorist financing.
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US-Russia Tensions Not Felt in Space

Posted on by Cosc

Despite tensions, sanctions and recriminations between the United States and Russia, two American astronauts will join a Russian cosmonaut blasting off Wednesday from Kazakhstan for the International Space Station.

Even when things get nasty between the two countries, experts say the space program rarely suffers.

The United States has depended entirely on Russia to deliver astronauts to the ISS since the end of the space shuttle program in 2011.

After President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 for annexing Crimea, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin suggested U.S. astronauts could get to the International Space Station by trampoline.

But the launches continued.

“The politicians can be very cute and make their statements. But that doesn’t seem to have had an impact on day-to-day work on the International Space Station,” said Cathleen Lewis, a curator in the Space History Department at the National Air and Space Museum.

Cold War collaborators

U.S.-Russia cooperation in space dates back to the mid-1970s, during the Cold War.

In the race to the moon, both sides suffered losses. Three U.S. astronauts died in the first Apollo mission in a fire on the launchpad in 1967; the Soviet Union lost a cosmonaut in a crash later that year.

The two sides agreed to cooperate on a space project. In 1975, an American Apollo spacecraft and a Russian Soyuz spacecraft met in orbit, where cosmonauts and astronauts shook hands.

In addition to the political achievement, it was a major engineering feat to make the two crafts compatible.

“That created a bond, but also the knowledge that we could do this, even in the height of the Cold War, and probably one of the worst periods of the Cold War,” Lewis said. “Both sides could get together and do this, unperturbed by the politics around them.”

Reaching beyond Earth

Today, the United States, Russia and 13 other countries collaborate on the International Space Station.

Lewis says that kind of cooperation will likely be essential as humans reach beyond Earth.

“It’s going to take a lot of resources to make either the moon or Mars habitable for humans,” she said.

For now, collaboration is the only option for ISS crews. However, SpaceX and Boeing expect to bring human launch capability back to U.S. soil in a year or so.
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Brazil to Vaccinate Entire Country Against Yellow Fever

Posted on by Cosc

Brazil’s health minister says the country is expanding its campaign to vaccinate people against yellow fever to cover the entire country.

 

Ricardo Barros says that by including the final four of Brazil’s 27 states, nearly 78 million people will have been vaccinated by 2019.

 

Barros told a news conference Tuesday that 920 cases of yellow fever have been reported nationwide since July 2017 and 300 people have died from the disease. During the same period last year, 610 cases and 196 deaths were reported.

 

U.S. health officials last week warned travelers to stay away from certain areas of Brazil if they haven’t been vaccinated against yellow fever.

 

The virus can be spread by the same mosquito that transmits other tropical diseases, including Zika and dengue.
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Border Wall, Tunnel Tussle Hold Up Sweeping US Spending Bill

Posted on by Coeco

President Donald Trump will reap a huge budget increase for the military while Democrats cement wins on infrastructure and other domestic programs that they failed to get under President Barack Obama if lawmakers can agree on a $1.3 trillion governmentwide spending bill before a deadline this week. 

Battles over budget priorities in the huge bill were essentially settled Tuesday, but a scaled-back plan for Trump’s border wall and a fight over a tunnel under the Hudson River still held up a final agreement. 

Republican leaders were hopeful a deal could be announced as early as Tuesday evening, allowing for a House vote Thursday. If a bill doesn’t pass Congress by midnight Friday, the government will shut down for a third time this year. 

The measure on the table would provide major funding increases for the Pentagon — $80 billion over current limits — bringing the military budget to $700 billion and giving GOP defense hawks a long-sought victory. 

“We made a promise to the country that we would rebuild our military. Aging equipment, personnel shortages, training lapses, maintenance lapses — all of this has cost us,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican. “With this week’s critical funding bill we will begin to reverse that damage.”

Domestic accounts would get a generous 10 percent increase on average as well, awarding Democrats the sort of spending increases they sought but never secured during the Obama administration.

Opioid problem

Democrats touted billions to fight the nation’s opioid addiction epidemic. More than $2 billion would go to strengthen school safety through grants for training, security measures and treatment for the mentally ill. Medical research at the National Institutes of Health, a long-standing bipartisan priority, would receive a record $3 billion increase to $37 billion.

“We have worked to restore and in many cases increase investments in education, health care, opioids, NIH, child care, college affordability and other domestic and military priorities,” said Senator Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat who has been a key negotiator of the measure.

Agencies historically unpopular with Republicans, such as the Internal Revenue Service, appear likely to get increases, too, in part to prepare for implementation of Trump’s recently passed tax measure. The Environmental Protection Agency, always a GOP target, may get a reprieve this year.

Lawmakers agreed on the broad outlines of the budget plan last month, after a standoff forced an overnight shutdown. The legislation implementing that deal is viewed as possibly one of few bills moving through Congress this year, making it a target for lawmakers and lobbyists seeking to attach their top priorities. 

But efforts to add on unrelated legislation to tackle politically charged issues, such as immigration and rapidly rising health insurance premiums, appeared to be faltering.

Dreamer measure

An effort to extend protections for so-called Dreamer immigrants brought to the country as children appears to have failed. Democrats seemed likely to yield on $1.6 billion in wall funding as outlined in Trump’s official request for the 2018 budget year, but they were digging in against Trump’s plans to hire hundreds of new Border Patrol and immigration enforcement agents.

A dispute over abortion seemed likely to scuttle a Senate GOP plan to provide billions in federal subsidies to insurers to help curb health insurance premium increases.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, was working on Trump’s behalf against funding for a Hudson River tunnel and rail project that’s important to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, and Republicans from New York and New Jersey.

The bill would implement last month’s budget agreement, adding $143 billion over limits set under a 2011 budget and debt pact that forced automatic budget cuts on annual agency appropriations. Coupled with last year’s tax cuts, it heralds the return of trillion-dollar budget deficits as soon as the budget year starting in October.

Republican conservatives are dismayed by the free-spending measure, meaning Democratic votes are required to pass it. That gave Democrats leverage to force GOP negotiators to drop numerous policy riders that Democrats considered poison pills.

Ryan said negotiations were ongoing about adding a widely backed measure that aims to strengthen federal background checks by prodding states to provide all records that disqualify people with severe mental health problems and other issues from buying firearms.

Grain sales subsidies

Republicans continued to press to fix a glitch in the recent tax bill that subsidizes grain sales to cooperatives at the expense of for-profit grain companies, lawmakers said.

“We need to fix that problem,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican. Schumer was demanding a provision of his own — tax subsidies to construct low-income housing — in exchange, lawmakers said.

The president, meanwhile, has privately threatened to veto the whole package if a $900 million payment is made on the Hudson River Gateway Project. Trump’s opposition is alarming Northeastern Republicans such as Representative Peter King of New York, who lobbied Trump on the project at a St. Patrick’s luncheon in the Capitol last week.

The Gateway Project would add an $11 billion rail tunnel under the Hudson River to complement deteriorating, century-old tunnels that are at risk of closing in a few years. The project enjoys bipartisan support among key Appropriations panel negotiators on the omnibus measure who want to get the expensive project on track while their coffers are flush with money.

“I think we ought to get it done and it has good bipartisan support,” Schumer said. “I’m not going to get into a back-and-forth with the president. This is a needed project, and I hope Congress rises to the occasion.”
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Implantable Heart Defibrillators Deliver Shock in More Ways Than One

Posted on by Cosc

A resting heart rate of more than 100 beats per minute can be life-threatening. It means the heart is beating too fast to pump blood to the rest of the body, including the brain and the lungs. This can cause the heart to suddenly stop beating. It can cause a stroke or heart failure.

A implantable cardioverter defibrillator, commonly known as an ICD, can prevent sudden death, but the device has drawbacks. 

One is pain. The other is fear of defibrillation.

John O’Leary got an ICD about a year after having a heart attack.

“I had a couple of episodes where I became dizzy while exercising. I was out biking, and in one instant, actually, I think I lost conscious for a brief second or so,” he said. “I thought it was probably just dehydration, heat, what have you.”

But it wasn’t anything he suspected. Instead, O’Leary had the classic symptoms of a heart rhythm disorder. The lower chambers of his heart were beating too fast and irregularly. The ICD acts instantly when a patient’s heart rhythm goes out of sync.

Medronic, a company that makes ICDs, reports that every month, 10,000 people in the U.S. have one implanted.

Here’s how it works: A doctor inserts a small electronic device under the skin, usually under the collarbone. The ICD is powered by a battery. It’s connected to one or more sensing wires, called leads, that are implanted in the heart. If the heart is out of rhythm, the ICD automatically sends small electrical signals through the leads to correct it. If that doesn’t work, the defibrillator delivers a shock to restore the heart to a normal rate.

“That’s just the basic physics of the process,” said Dr. Mehdi Razavi, an electrophysiologist at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston. “When you deliver a shock, there’s pain involved.”

Like ‘lightning’

O’Leary didn’t experience any pain, but Anne Bunting did.

“It was like being hit by lightning. I actually saw a flash of white light and the sound that lightning makes coming down a tree, and then, boom! And it shocked me five times in a row, and I was screaming. That’s how much it hurt.” 

Bunting got on the floor to keep herself from falling. 

Razavi said that when shocks are delivered, they can happen more than once.

“You can have half a dozen shocks in a row, and that’s typically because the underlying cause has not been immediately reversed,” he said.

O’Leary compares the shock to walking into a lamp post or a wall. It happened while he was walking toward his car in a parking lot.

“There was no lamp post, no wall, there was nothing between me and the car. But that’s exactly what it felt like.” He also saw a flash of light, which he figured to be the electrical discharge. Then he realized what had happened.

More improvements sought

Over the years, ICD designs have improved. The devices are smaller and less invasive than they used to be. But Razavi wants them smaller still. And he doesn’t want patients to even notice that they are being defibrillated. He is working with an electrical engineer at the University of California-Los Angeles to develop small chips that provide small, inconspicuous shocks that return the heart to a normal rhythm, without the patient’s noticing — no flash of light, no pain, no feeling of having walked into a wall.

Razavi and Aydin Babakhani, the UCLA professor of engineering, feel that they are on to something that fills the bill. It’s at least five years away from being available to heart patients, but the men are confident they’ll get there. 
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Twitter: ‘Black Panther’ Most Tweeted-About Movie Ever

Posted on by Corts

The pop culture sensation Black Panther has set another record: most tweeted-about movie ever.

Twitter said Tuesday that Ryan Coogler’s box-office smash has been tweeted about more than 35 million times. That pushes it ahead of the previous record-holder, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The most recent Star Wars installment, The Last Jedi, ranks third.

Over the weekend, Black Panther became the first film since 2009’s Avatar to top the box office in North America five straight weekends. It has grossed more than $607 million domestically and $1.2 billion worldwide. In the next week, it’s expected to pass The Avengers as the highest-grossing superhero film ever, not accounting for inflation.

Twitter said Black Panther had the most tweets in the U.S., followed by the United Kingdom and Thailand.
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‘The Crown’ Producers Apologize to Stars After Pay Dispute

Posted on by Corts

Producers of the Netflix drama The Crown apologized Tuesday to actors Claire Foy and Matt Smith over the revelation that Foy was paid less than her male co-star.

A producer disclosed last week that Foy, who starred as Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, was paid less than Smith, who played Prince Philip, because Smith was better known.

The gender pay gap has become a big issue in Hollywood after revelations that many female stars were paid less than their male counterparts.

Since news of The Crown pay gap broke, a petition has urged Smith to donate part of his salary to the Time’s Up campaign, which is campaigning against sexism and sexual misconduct in the entertainment industry.

Production company Left Bank Pictures said the actors “are not aware of who gets what and cannot be held personally responsible for the pay of their colleagues.”

The production company apologized that Foy and Smith “have found themselves at the center of a media storm this week through no fault of their own.”

The company said it was “absolutely united with the fight for fair pay, free of gender bias” and was keen to speak to Time’s Up.

The Crown traces Elizabeth’s journey from princess to queen, beginning in the 1950s. Foy and Smith are being replaced by older performers in the next season.
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Google Launches News Initiative to Combat Fake News

Posted on by Cobiz

Alphabet’s Google is launching the Google News Initiative to weed out fake news online and during breaking news situations, it said in a blog post Tuesday.

Google said it plans to spend $300 million over the next three years to improve the accuracy and quality of news appearing on its platforms. 

The changes come as Google, Facebook and Twitter face a backlash over their role during the U.S. presidential election by allowing the spread of false and often malicious information that might have swayed voters toward Republican candidate Donald Trump.

In a separate blog post, Google said it was launching a tool to help subscribe to news publications.

Subscribe with Google will let users buy a subscription on participating news sites using their Google account and manage all their subscriptions in one place.

Google said it would launch the news subscription with the Financial Times, The New York Times, Le Figaro and The Telegraph among others. The search engine said it plans to add more news publishers soon.
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