software publisher denies license to countries open to immigrants

TREEFINDER | computes phylogenetic trees from molecular sequences.
License change in October 2015:
Starting from 1st October 2015, I do no longer permit the usage of my TREEFINDER software in the following EU countries: Germany, Austria, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, Sweden, Denmark - the countries that together host most of the non-european immigrants. For all other countries, the old license agreement remains valid. USA has already been excluded from using Treefinder in February 2015. This is all in accordance with the license agreement stated in the TREEFINDER manual since the earliest versions, which reserves me the right to change the license agreement at any time. I can do this because Treefinder is my own property.
The reason: I am no longer willing to support with my work the political system in Europe and Germany, of which the science system is part. There is no genuine democracy, and I disagree with almost all of the policies. In particular, I disagree with immigration policy. Immigration to my country harms me, it harms my family, it harms my people. Whoever invites or welcomes immigrants to Europe and Germany is my enemy. Immigration is the huge corporations' interest, not peoples' interest. I am not against helping refugees, but they would have to be kept strictly separated from us Europeans, for some limited time only until they return home, and not being integrated here as cheap workers and additional consumers. Immigration unnecessarily defers the collapse of capitalism, its final crisis. The earlier the system crashes, the more damage can be avoided. Possibly a civil war in Europe. Not to mention the loss of our European genetic and cultural heritage.
I have collected many links to background information, including some in English language, here.
License change in February 2015:
Starting from 1st February 2015, I do no longer permit the usage of my TREEFINDER software in the USA. For all other countries, the old license agreement remains valid.
This is in accordance with the license agreement stated in the TREEFINDER manual since the earliest versions, which reserves me the right to change the license agreement at any time.
My reasons:
(1) I want to protest against American imperialism, which I regard as the cause of most of all evil in the world: wars, tyranny, poverty, migration.
(2) I want to protest against EU tyranny, which is mostly the result of US imperialism.
(3) I want to demonstrate my sovereignty, something I would welcome to see much more often in science and politics.
In particular, I dislike that the USA and the EU aggressively promote a way of life that conflicts with my own way of life. I dislike the flood of immigrants they caused to come here - come here to replace unprofitable Europeans like me.
After so many years of hard work on TREEFINDER, I have still not been paid any reward.
I want to stress that this license change is not against my colleagues in the USA, but against a small rich elite there that misuses the country's power to rule the world.
The USA is our worst enemy. I have collected many links to background information, including some in English language, here.

crowdsourced package delivery

TechCrunch | Amazon looked at buying Postmates earlier this year, but in the end it built a service that will go head to head in competing with it. The e-commerce giant today took the wraps off Flex, a new on-demand delivery service that relies not on traditional couriers, but ordinary people to bring the packages to you.

The online retailer is offering workers the ability to make between $18 and $25 per hour by delivering packages for Amazon using their own vehicle and a smartphone app that helps them route their deliveries.

The service, which is now live in Seattle, is initially focused on hiring couriers for Amazon’s one-hour delivery service Amazon Prime Now, though the company says that in the future, other types of packages may be delivered, as well.

However, for the time being, it appears the rollout of Amazon Flex is focused on augmenting the labor pool for managing the speedier Prime Now deliveries.

Seattle is actually one of the more recent markets to support Prime Now, and using “gig economy” workers isn’t the only new thing Amazon is testing in the company’s hometown. The Seattle region is also the first location where Amazon added the option to deliver beer, wine and liquor on-demand through its Prime Now application.

In addition, Amazon says that the Flex program will soon arrive to other Prime Now markets, including New York, Baltimore, Miami, Dallas, Austin, Chicago, Indianapolis, Atlanta and Portland.

il papa and... polyhedrons?

Esquire | Even given the unique context of his current job, the pope on this visit has proven to be moved by a truly democratic sense of the spirit, and a love for the idea of the commons, which he takes to include the survival of the planet. That democratic spirit is wide and ranging in him. It brings him to interesting places. I am willing to bet something substantial that no pope ever has said anything like this: 

If globalization seeks to bring all of us together, but to do so respecting each person, each individual person's peculiarity, that globalization is good and makes us good and grow and leads to peace. I like to use geometry here. If globalization is a sphere, where each point is equidistant from the centre, then it isn't good because it annuls each of us. But if globalization joins us as a polyhedron where we're all together but conserves the dignity of each ... that's good.

Polyhedrons are something of a thing with Papa Francesco who, as Jeb! Bush reminded us, is not a scientist.

St. Corbinian's Bear | Everything You Need to Know About the Franciscan Polyhedron

The Bear does not want his friends to be confused the next time the Pope talks about how the Church is not a boring old sphere, but a fascinating polyhedron. The Bear has scoured the internet for an easy-to-understand and remember explanation for those of us not quite up on our sacred geometry. It all goes back to Plato, who made the modern role-playing industry possible by inventing polyhedrons.

NASA - Mars mystery solved

Chron | NASA on Monday will announce "a major scientific finding" from Mars, the agency said Thursday in a vague press release.

"Mars mystery solved," the headline said.

No further details are available on the nature of the mystery. However, the lineup for the Monday press conference sports top agency authorities, including NASA director of planetary science Jim Green and lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program Michael Meyer.

Chinese manufacturing collapsing

ZeroHedge |

• *CHINA CAIXIN FLASH MANUFACTURING PMI AT LOWEST SINCE MARCH 2009
• *CHINA SEPT. CAIXIN FLASH MANUFACTURING PMI AT 47; EST. 47.5

With across the board weakness...

Commenting on the Flash China General Manufacturing PMI™ data, Dr. He Fan, Chief Economist at Caixin Insight Group said:

“The Caixin Flash China General Manufacturing PMI for September is 47.0, down from 47.3 in August. The decline indicates the nation’s manufacturing industry has reached a crucial stage in the structural transformation process. Overall, the fundamentals are good. The principle reason for the weakening of manufacturing is tied to previous changes in factors related to external demand and prices. Fiscal expenditures surged in August, pointing to stronger government efforts on the fiscal policy front. Patience may be needed for policies designed to promote stabilization to demonstrate their effectiveness.”

DNA can be parasitic? WTF...

Science | Long-terminal-repeat (LTR) retrotransposons are a form of parasitic DNA that can jump around within the host's genome. To avoid damaging resident genes, they have been selected to integrate away from protein-coding sequences. For instance, the fission yeast LTR retrotransposon Tf1 inserts at nucleosome-free regions in gene promoters. Jacobs et al. show that Tf1 is directed to these insertion sites by a specific DNA binding protein, Sap1, which forms DNA replication–fork barriers.

DNA damage and aging result of nearby cell senescence increasing inflammatory response and lowering autophagy

Science | INTRODUCTION

Cellular senescence is a program of arrested proliferation and altered gene expression triggered by many stresses. Although it is a potent tumor-suppressive mechanism, senescence has been implicated in several pathological processes including aging, age-associated diseases, and (counterintuitively) tumorigenesis. One potential mechanism through which senescent cells exert such pleiotropic effects is the secretion of proinflammatory cytokines, chemokines, growth factors, and proteases, termed the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP), which affects senescent cells and their microenvironment. The mechanism by which the SASP is initiated and maintained is not well characterized beyond the classical regulators of inflammation, including the transcription factors NF-κB and C/EBPβ.

[...]

CONCLUSION

Our results indicate that GATA4 connects autophagy and the DDR to senescence and inflammation through TRAF3IP2 and IL1A activation of NF-κB. These findings establish GATA4 as a key switch activated by the DDR to regulate senescence, independently of p53 and p16^INK4a.

Our in vivo data indicate a potential role of GATA4 during aging and its associated inflammation. Because accumulation of senescent cells is thought to promote aging and aging-associated diseases through the resulting inflammatory response, inhibiting the GATA4 pathway may provide an avenue for therapeutic intervention.

Apple store infected with CIA malware?

The Intercept | Last week, Chinese app developers disclosed that an Apple programming tool had been hijacked to trick developers into embedding malicious software into apps for Apple devices.

The malware, called XcodeGhost, works by corrupting Apple’s Xcode software, which runs on Mac computers and compiles source code into apps that can run on iPhones, iPads, and other devices, before submitting them to the App Store. If a developer has XcodeGhost installed on their computer, apps that they compile include malware without the developer realizing it.

Although XcodeGhost is the first malware to spread this way in the wild, the techniques it uses were previously developed and demonstrated by Central Intelligence Agency researchers at the CIA’s annual top-secret Jamboree conference in 2012. Using documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, The Intercept‘s Jeremy Scahill and Josh Begley described the CIA’s Xcode project in a story published in March.

Boehner resigning

New York Times | Speaker John A. Boehner, under intense pressure from conservatives in his party, will resign one of the most powerful positions in government and give up his House seat at the end of October, throwing Congress into chaos as it tries to avert a government shutdown.

Mr. Boehner, who was first elected to Congress in 1990, made the announcement in an emotional meeting with his fellow Republicans on Friday morning. The Ohio representative struggled from almost the moment he took the speaker’s gavel in 2011 to manage the challenges of divided government and to hold together his fractious and increasingly conservative Republican members.

Most recently, Mr. Boehner, 65, was trying to craft a solution to keep the government open through the rest of the year, but was under pressure from a growing base of conservatives who told him that they would not vote for a bill that did not defund Planned Parenthood. Several of those members were on a path to remove Mr. Boehner as speaker, though their ability to do so was far from certain.

I am very much impressed with this Pope

​Esquire | Poor Mr. Madison. He didn't even want to pay for congressional chaplains. And, in the greatest defense of secular government ever written, he made sure to remind his fellow citizens of the following:​

During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.

​Well, OK, then.

And here was the Pope of Rome, standing at the Speaker's rostrum in the United States House of Representatives, the legislative body in which Madison ultimately served, and talking with quiet modesty—​and quiet quiet, occasionally edging on inaudibility—about the great issues of the day, and about what the responsibility of elected officials are. God only knows, you should pardon the expression, what Mr. Madison would have thought of the event itself, but it's hard to believe he would argue with Papa Francesco's assertion that:

Your own responsibility as members of Congress is to enable this country, by your legislative activity, to grow as a nation. You are the face of its people, their representatives. You are called to defend and preserve the dignity of your fellow citizens in the tireless and demanding pursuit of the common good, for this is the chief aim of all politics. A political society endures when it seeks, as a vocation, to satisfy common needs by stimulating the growth of all its members, especially those in situations of greater vulnerability or risk. Legislative activity is always based on care for the people. To this you have been invited, called and convened by those who elected you.

Contrary farmer wonders if Syrian crisis is Malthusian

The Contrary Farmer | Recently I heard on the news that a widespread sandstorm was blanketing a large part of Syria. The farmer in me immediately perked up but there was no commentary, no details, and I did not hear the news repeated. I admit, ashamedly, that I know nothing much about Syria, but a widespread sandstorm indicated a situation that deserved a little more attention, it seemed to me.

I started doing a little digging into Syrian agriculture, and just as I suspected, the farm news there is not good, and is connected directly to the terrible upheaval and conflict going on there. Syria’s population is estimated at around 17,000,000 and is about the size of Iowa  whose population is right around 3,000,000. That should tell us something right away. About 20% of the land in Syria is barren desert and 50%  is pasture of very limited productivity, so it seems obvious that most of that population is concentrated in a relatively small part of the country. Then in 2007 and 2008, the worst drought in 40 years hit the most agriculturally productive part of the country. Some 800,000 rural people, including 60,000 herders, were forced to abandon their land and migrate to city slums (I am reading this from the Carnegie Endowment For International Peace website, a post titled “Drought, Corruption, and War: Syria’s Agricultural Crisis,” but you can find the same information from many sources). The tragedy was enhanced because the government under the Assads, father and son, has been following a policy of shifting farm laborers into the cities to increase the growth of the urban service sector. Earlier there had been a vigorous attempt on the part of big business to get into farming since increasing demand for food suggested that it was a good way to make some fancy profits with the help of advanced technology. This move to industrialize Syrian agriculture proved disastrous. Officialdom did a turnaround and made valiant attempts to encourage small farmers, even enacting laws to limit the size of farms in some areas. But the old rural society was broken and that didn’t work either. That was when the Assad regime started shifting farm labor into city jobs. Then the great drought came along. And the weather has only improved a little since then. Irrigation that seemed so promising in the days of big business farming has lagged. In some places ground water simply dried up.

I need not point out that a lot of this sounds very familiar to other parts of the world too. What makes the Syrian example so horrendous is that all these farm problems have been occurring against a background of almost constant warfare. Going back at least to when Europe started getting involved in the Middle East, there has been, in Syria alone, an uprising against government or between ethnic groups literally every decade. How can any agriculture endure when both nature and human society seem out to destroy it.

...and you should smell mine

PeerJ | Dispersal of microbes between humans and the built environment can occur through direct contact with surfaces or through airborne release; the latter mechanism remains poorly understood. Humans emit upwards of 106biological particles per hour, and have long been known to transmit pathogens to other individuals and to indoor surfaces. However it has not previously been demonstrated that humans emit a detectible microbial cloud into surrounding indoor air, nor whether such clouds are sufficiently differentiated to allow the identification of individual occupants. We used high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA genes to characterize the airborne bacterial contribution of a single person sitting in a sanitized custom experimental climate chamber. We compared that to air sampled in an adjacent, identical, unoccupied chamber, as well as to supply and exhaust air sources. Additionally, we assessed microbial communities in settled particles surrounding each occupant, to investigate the potential long-term fate of airborne microbial emissions. Most occupants could be clearly detected by their airborne bacterial emissions, as well as their contribution to settled particles, within 1.5–4 h. Bacterial clouds from the occupants were statistically distinct, allowing the identification of some individual occupants. Our results confirm that an occupied space is microbially distinct from an unoccupied one, and demonstrate for the first time that individuals release their own personalized microbial cloud.

give your children fewer toys

The Guardian | My five siblings and I grew up in a cruel wasteland of deprivation that included whole-wheat cereals, secondhand clothing and shared rooms. To add insult to injury, we didn’t even have a TV to distract us from our hardship.

My parents weren’t poor, so as a child I simply assumed they had a sadistic streak. Looking back now, as a wise old 31-year-old, I get it. And not only do I get it, I’ve come to realize that depriving your children is wildly underrated.

The road to this realization was long. In my mid-20s, I realized that, although reusing and recycling had become popular, the concept of reducing was being left in the dust, largely because no one could figure out how to make money off of it. I began buying less, making more, and taking a critical look at how much I consumed. As I delved further and further into the bizarre world of bamboo-fibers and up-cycling, my austere childhood took on an entirely different slant. I realized with a shock that my parents were cool: they had been mindful about our planet and its resources since the 1970s.

It wasn’t a great surprise then, that when I became pregnant with my daughter Olive, I vowed to carry on this family tradition of neglect.

growing human sperm cells in a lab -- what about some CRISPR editing first?

Independent | Human sperm cells have been made in the laboratory for the first time by culturing immature cells taken from the testes of infertile men. The breakthrough promises to help young boys made sterile by cancer treatments and adult men who cannot make their own sperm, scientists have claimed.

The sperm cells made in an artificial “bioreactor” look identical to those produced naturally. The technology could be used in two to four years to help infertile men have their own biological children, according to researchers based at a French national research institute in Lyon.

Scientists have been trying for two decades to find a way of producing human sperm in the test tube (in vitro). But no one has been able to complete the complicated cycles of cell division and development that lead the immature “germ cells” in the male testes to become fully mature sperm cells capable of successfully fertilising eggs.

3-D printed guide helps regrow nerves

Science Daily | A national team of researchers has developed a first-of-its-kind, 3D-printed guide that helps regrow both the sensory and motor functions of complex nerves after injury. The groundbreaking research has the potential to help more than 200,000 people annually who experience nerve injuries or disease.

Collaborators on the project are from the University of Minnesota, Virginia Tech, University of Maryland, Princeton University, and Johns Hopkins University.

Nerve regeneration is a complex process. Because of this complexity, regrowth of nerves after injury or disease is very rare, according to the Mayo Clinic. Nerve damage is often permanent. Advanced 3D printing methods may now be the solution.

In a new study, published today in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, researchers used a combination of 3D imaging and 3D printing techniques to create a custom silicone guide implanted with biochemical cues to help nerve regeneration. The guide's effectiveness was tested in the lab using rats.

To achieve their results, researchers used a 3D scanner to reverse engineer the structure of a rat's sciatic nerve. They then used a specialized, custom-built 3D printer to print a guide for regeneration. Incorporated into the guide were 3D-printed chemical cues to promote both motor and sensory nerve regeneration. The guide was then implanted into the rat by surgically grafting it to the cut ends of the nerve. Within about 10 to 12 weeks, the rat's ability to walk again was improved.

genetic omni determinism - U.K. researcher applies for permission to edit embryo genomes

Science | A researcher in London has applied to the United Kingdom’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) for a license to edit the genes of human embryos. Several techniques developed in recent years allow researchers to easily and accurately add, delete, or modify genes in cells. This has stirred debate about using genome editing in ways that would pass the changes on to future generations. The application filed with HFEA would involve only embryos in the lab, however, not any intended to lead to a birth. Many scientists say such lab experiments are crucial to understanding more about early human development, which could lead to new approaches to help infertile couples.

The applicant, Kathy Niakan, a developmental biologist at the Francis Crick Institute in London, investigates the genes that are active at the earliest stages of human development, before it implants in the womb. Work with embryonic stem cells from mice and humans has suggested that some of the key genes active in this preimplantation period are different in humans and in mice. Niakan hopes to use genome editing to tweak some of the key genes thought to be involved and study the effects they have on human development.

Judge calls B.S.: "Working STEM students may be forced to leave U.S."

Computerworld | A federal judge made a ruling this week that could force tens of thousands of foreign workers, many of whom are employed at tech companies on student visas, to return to their home countries early next year.

This ruling, released Wednesday by U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle in Washington, found that the government erred by not seeking public comment when it extended the 12-month Optional Practical Training (OPT) program to 29 months for STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) students. The OPT program allows someone to work on a student visa.

Huvelle could have invalidated the OPT extension immediately but instead gave the government six months, or until Feb. 12, 2016, to submit the OPT extension rule "for proper notice and comment."

Ian Macdonald, an immigration attorney at Greenberg Traurig, said that if the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which overseas immigration, doesn't act to fix the problem before the court's Feb. 12 expiration, the OPT extensions "will be terminated with immediate effect and (the visa holders) will have 60 days to pack up their belongings."

DHS officials did not respond by deadline to a request for comment.

The U.S. extended the OPT program in 2008 to give STEM students more time to secure H-1B visas. The government's argument was that demand for the H-1B visa was so high that it was forced to distribute the visa by way of a lottery. This meant that if someone on a student visa failed to win a temporary work visa in the lottery, the student could be forced to leave the U.S. By extending the OPT program, student visa holders could remain in the U.S. while they tried again to gain an H-1B visa or some other means to remain in the U.S.

Critics, meanwhile, assailed the OPT extension as "a back-door H-1B increase."

Teachers call B.S.: "tech titans turn to schools"

Politico | President Barack Obama sat down Monday to write a few lines of computer code with middle school students from Newark, New Jersey, for a PR campaign that has earned bipartisan endorsements from around the Capitol.

The $30 million campaign to promote computer science education has been financed by the tech industry, led by Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, with corporate contributions from Microsoft, Google, Amazon and other giants. It’s been a smash success: So many students opened up a free coding tutorial on Monday that the host website crashed.

But the campaign has also stirred unease from some educators concerned about the growing influence of corporations in public schools.

And it’s raised questions about the motives of tech companies, which are sounding an alarm about the lack of computer training in American schools even as they lobby Congress for more H-1B visas to bring in foreign programmers. Much of the marketing for the campaign, run by the nonprofit Code.org, explicitly touts the need to train more employees for the industry.

“Nowhere else in education do we start by saying ‘We have a need for this in the K-5 curriculum because there are good industry jobs at Google,’” said Joanna Goode, an associate professor at the University of Oregon who works on computer science education. “I’m not doing this work to train Google employees.”

Nonsense: "The shortage of computer science graduates is one of the most pressing issues facing the industry"

USA Today | SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft will invest $75 million over the next three years in initiatives to increase access to computer science education for youth.

Microsoft's Satya Nadella made the announcement during his keynote speech at Dreamforce, Salesforce's annual gathering in San Francisco for its customers and partners.

This marks a major expansion of Microsoft's YouthSpark program, the company's effort to get young people hooked on computer science and build a larger, more diverse talent pool for the technology industry.

The shortage of computer science graduates is one of the most pressing issues facing the industry, as is the underrepresentation of women and minorities.

With the new investment, nonprofit organizations around the world will receive donations and resources from Microsoft. And Microsoft will expand its outreach into high schools through TEALS, which stands for Technology Education and Literacy in Schools. The program pairs engineers from Microsoft and other high-tech companies with teachers to team-teach computer science in high schools.

genetic omni determinism in parasite and host

Science | Wasps have injected new genes into butterflies

If you’re a caterpillar, you do not want to meet a parasitic wasp. The winged insect will inject you full of eggs, which will grow inside your body, develop into larvae, and hatch from your corpse. But a new study reveals that wasps have given caterpillars something beneficial during these attacks as well: pieces of viral DNA that become part of the caterpillar genome, protecting them against an entirely different lethal virus. In essence, the wasps have turned caterpillars into genetically modified organisms.

“The key strength of the study is it clearly demonstrates that [viruses] have been a source of horizontal gene transfer for some insects,” says parasitic wasp expert Michael Strand of the University of Georgia, Athens, who was not involved in the study.

Study author and biologist Jean-Michel Drezen of François Rabelais University in Tours, France, has been studying the parasitic relationship between the wasps and their lepidopteran (butterflies and moths) victims for decades. He specializes in bracoviruses, which are injected by the wasps along with their eggs. Once inside the caterpillar, the bracovirus prevents a normal immune response by disrupting the cell’s cytoskeleton—a network of filamentlike proteins responsible for moving components and machinery around the cell. Without an immune response, the wasp eggs are free to grow unchecked.

But the discovery that the caterpillars have taken up and repurposed bits of the wasp virus for their own means came as a surprise. "I couldn’t believe it,” Drezen says. “We did not expect this at all.”

elites are selfish and ruthlessly efficient

Science | Distributional preferences shape individual opinions and public policy concerning economic inequality and redistribution. We measured the distributional preferences of an elite cadre of Juris Doctor (J.D.) students at Yale Law School (YLS), a group that holds particular interest because they are likely to assume future positions of power and influence in American society. We compared the preferences of this highly elite group of students to those of a sample drawn from the American Life Panel (ALP), a broad cross-section of Americans, and to the preferences of an intermediate elite drawn from the student body at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB).

farm land rentiers

Contrary Farmer | I saw some statistics recently that startled me. In Pennsylvania, some 85% of the farmland is owned by non-farmers and that number is increasing. A little over half the landlords never ever farmed. I presume this is generally true of many other states but haven’t had time to check it out (National Agricultural Statistics Service). The non-farming landlords I know aren’t about to sell either. They know farmland is a very good investment for them. As more and more big corporations get into farming for the same reason, it means in my opinion that oligarchy is on the rise and democracy is waning.

fiber optic cables near LLNL cut

USA Today | Someone deliberately severed two AT&T fiber optic cables in the Livermore, Calif., Monday night, the latest in a string of attacks against the Internet's privately run backbone.

embrace and extend? banks form blockchain partnership

re/code | Nine of the world’s biggest banks, including Goldman Sachs and Barclays, have joined forces with New York-based financial tech firm R3 to create a framework for using blockchain technology in the markets, the firm said on Tuesday.

It is the first time banks have come together to work on a shared way in which the technology that underpins bitcoin — a controversial, Web-based “cryptocurrency” — can be used in finance.

Over the past year, interest in blockchain technology has grown rapidly. It has already attracted significant investment from many major banks, which reckon it could save them money by making their operations faster, more efficient and more transparent.

The new project, the result of more than a year’s worth of consultations between R3, the banks and other members of the financial industry, will be led by R3 CEO David Rutter, formerly CEO of electronic trading at ICAP Electronic Trading, one of the world’s largest interdealer brokers.

“We held several roundtables … to deeply consider what the possible implications of the blockchain were, and what it could possibly do to save money and time, and to create a better paradigm for the world of Wall Street and finance,” Rutter told Reuters on Tuesday.

Those that have signed up for the initiative so far are JP Morgan, State Street, UBS, Royal Bank of Scotland, Credit Suisse, BBVA and Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

The blockchain works as a huge, decentralized ledger of every bitcoin transaction ever made that is verified and shared by a global network of computers and therefore is virtually tamper-proof. The Bank of England has a team dedicated to it and calls it a “key technological innovation.”

The data that can be secured using the technology is not restricted to bitcoin transactions. Two parties could use it to exchange any other information, within minutes and with no need for a third party to verify it.

why donald trump? "the unspeakable issue is..."

The Archdruid Report | ...the de facto policy, supported by both parties, of encouraging illegal immigration to the United States in order to drive down wages for the working classes and maintain a facade of prosperity for the privileged.

A great many Americans are concerned about that, and not unreasonably so. Whether allowing mass immigration to the United States is a good idea or not, it’s fair to say that sharply limiting the number of legal immigrants and then turning a blind eye to illegal immigration lands us in the worst of both worlds.  The only people who benefit from it are the employers who get to pay substandard wages to illegal immigrants, and the privileged classes whose lifestyles are propped up thereby. Since the voices of the privileged are the only ones that have been let into our collective conversation about politics for the last three and a half decades, the concerns of the broader public haven’t been addressed; now Trump is addressing them, and he just might end up in the White House as a result.

going outside reduces myopia

JAMA | Importance  Myopia has reached epidemic levels in parts of East and Southeast Asia. However, there is no effective intervention to prevent the development of myopia.

Objective  To assess the efficacy of increasing time spent outdoors at school in preventing incident myopia.

Design, Setting, and Participants  Cluster randomized trial of children in grade 1 from 12 primary schools in Guangzhou, China, conducted between October 2010 and October 2013.

Interventions  For 6 intervention schools (n = 952 students), 1 additional 40-minute class of outdoor activities was added to each school day, and parents were encouraged to engage their children in outdoor activities after school hours, especially during weekends and holidays. Children and parents in the 6 control schools (n = 951 students) continued their usual pattern of activity.

Main Outcomes and Measures  The primary outcome measure was the 3-year cumulative incidence rate of myopia (defined using the Refractive Error Study in Children spherical equivalent refractive error standard of ≤−0.5 diopters [D]) among the students without established myopia at baseline. Secondary outcome measures were changes in spherical equivalent refraction and axial length among all students, analyzed using mixed linear models and intention-to-treat principles. Data from the right eyes were used for the analysis.

Results  There were 952 children in the intervention group and 951 in the control group with a mean (SD) age of 6.6 (0.34) years. The cumulative incidence rate of myopia was 30.4% in the intervention group (259 incident cases among 853 eligible participants) and 39.5% (287 incident cases among 726 eligible participants) in the control group (difference of −9.1% [95% CI, −14.1% to −4.1%]; P < .001). There was also a significant difference in the 3-year change in spherical equivalent refraction for the intervention group (−1.42 D) compared with the control group (−1.59 D) (difference of 0.17 D [95% CI, 0.01 to 0.33 D]; P = .04). Elongation of axial length was not significantly different between the intervention group (0.95 mm) and the control group (0.98 mm) (difference of −0.03 mm [95% CI, −0.07 to 0.003 mm]; P = .07).

Conclusions and Relevance  Among 6-year-old children in Guangzhou, China, the addition of 40 minutes of outdoor activity at school compared with usual activity resulted in a reduced incidence rate of myopia over the next 3 years. Further studies are needed to assess long-term follow-up of these children and the generalizability of these findings.

anticholinergics (such as Benadryl) lead to dementia

Harvard Health | Common anticholinergic drugs like Benadryl linked to increased dementia risk

One long-ago summer, I joined the legion of teens helping harvest our valley’s peach crop in western Colorado. My job was to select the best peaches from a bin, wrap each one in tissue, and pack it into a shipping crate. The peach fuzz that coated every surface of the packing shed made my nose stream and my eyelids swell. When I came home after my first day on the job, my mother was so alarmed she called the family doctor. Soon the druggist was at the door with a vial of Benadryl (diphenhydramine) tablets. The next morning I was back to normal and back on the job. Weeks later, when I collected my pay (including the ½-cent-per-crate bonus for staying until the end of the harvest), I thanked Benadryl.

Today, I’m thankful my need for that drug lasted only a few weeks. In a report published in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers offers compelling evidence of a link between long-term use of anticholinergic medications like Benadryl and dementia.

Anticholinergic drugs block the action of acetylcholine. This substance transmits messages in the nervous system. In the brain, acetylcholine is involved in learning and memory. In the rest of the body, it stimulates muscle contractions. Anticholinergic drugs include some antihistamines, tricyclic antidepressants, medications to control overactive bladder, and drugs to relieve the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.

What the study found

A team led by Shelley Gray, a pharmacist at the University of Washington’s School of Pharmacy, tracked nearly 3,500 men and women ages 65 and older who took part in Adult Changes in Thought (ACT), a long-term study conducted by the University of Washington and Group Health, a Seattle healthcare system. They used Group Health’s pharmacy records to determine all the drugs, both prescription and over-the-counter, that each participant took the 10 years before starting the study. Participants’ health was tracked for an average of seven years. During that time, 800 of the volunteers developed dementia. When the researchers examined the use of anticholinergic drugs, they found that people who used these drugs were more likely to have developed dementia as those who didn’t use them. Moreover, dementia risk increased along with the cumulative dose. Taking an anticholinergic for the equivalent of three years or more was associated with a 54% higher dementia risk than taking the same dose for three months or less.

first-hand perspective of the new Valley Fire

austria deploying troops on it's eastern border

france24 | Austria announced on Monday it would dispatch the armed forces to guard its eastern frontier, following Germany’s lead in reimposing Europe’s internal border controls after thousands of migrants streamed across its frontier from Hungary on foot.

Austrian officials said they were left with no choice after Germany’s decision on Sunday, which effectively suspends Europe’s two-decade old Schengen regime allowing border-free travel across the continent.

“If Germany carries out border controls, Austria must put strengthened border controls in place,” Vice Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner told a joint news conference with Chancellor Werner Faymann. “We are doing that now.”

He and Faymann said the army would be deployed in a supporting role.

“The focus of the support is on humanitarian help,” Faymann said. “But it is also, and I would like to emphasise this, on supporting border controls where it is necessary.”

Before the announcement, migrants were walking across the border from Hungary at the fastest rate yet. Police said they were running out of emergency accommodation, including tented camps near the border and the car parks of railway stations.

An Austrian police spokesman said that by mid-morning, 6,000 to 7,000 people had arrived since midnight, after 14,000 on Sunday.

The European Union has been struggling to cope with the unprecedented arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants, many refugees fleeing war in the Middle East. Nearly all arrive at the bloc’s southern and eastern edges and head over land to seek asylum in richer states further north and west.

The Schengen system, established in 1995, removes all border checks between 26 European states, but the rules still bar undocumented migrants from travelling. Countries are permitted to reimpose border checks temporarily in emergencies.

"the two major parties of our time are now perfectly poised to enter the Temple Grandin cattle chute of death"

Quoted from Kunstler.com

For those not familiar with Temple Grandin: 

Livestock Behaviour, Design of Facilities
and Humane Slaughter

"lungs are the primary excretory organ for weight loss"

BBC | Fat can be breathed out as well as burned off as you lose weight, biochemists who have studied metabolism at a microscopic level say.

But they warn that people still need to huff and puff with exercise to keep slim - hyperventilating on its own will not do the trick.

The Australian team traced the route of fat out of the body as atoms.

Their findings are published in the Christmas edition of the British Medical Journal.

These results show that the lungs are the primary excretory organ for weight loss

The study authors

When fat is broken down to its constituent parts, a couple of things happen.

Chemical bonds are broken, a process which releases heat and fuel to power muscles.

But the atoms - the stuff fat is made of - remain, and much of these leave the body via the lungs as carbon dioxide, say the scientists.

hacking brainwaves

Fast Company | I’m wearing a piece of 3-D-printed plastic headgear that looks like a bicycle helmet designed by Buckminster Fuller. Tiny metal pins inside it poke lightly into my scalp. On a screen in front of me are the electroencephalogram (EEG) readouts of signals picked up by the metal pins. And beyond the monitor is a wall of windows giving this dilapidated Brooklyn office building the sweetest view of a Manhattan sunset I have ever seen.

That lovely view makes it easier when Conor Russomanno, a self-described neurohacker, asks me to close my eyes and relax. After a few seconds, he tells me later, the screen showed a slight spike at around 10 Hz—a rise in the alpha waves that indicates a restful state. Russomanno seems as pleased with the electrical feedback as he is with my verbal feedback (when I tell him the headgear doesn't hurt). This was his latest, but still not final, version of the Ultracortex—a low-cost, research-grade EEG headset set to hit Kickstarter in the fall. It will allow fellow hackers to start peering inside the workings of their own brains.

It's also one of the tools for crowdsourcing EEG data to a repository calledCloudbrain, where artificial intelligence machine-learning algorithms will scour the raw data for patterns that might help explain how we speak or perceive color or allow our minds to directly control machinery like motorized prosthetics. They might even expand understanding of mental illness and cognitive impairments.

These DIY brain scientists, or neurohackers, aren't sure how deep they will be able to go; but they are excited that they finally have cheap tools to start looking. That's what brought about half a dozen of them to this Brooklyn lab for the NeuroTechNYC meetup. Together with groups in San Francisco, Montreal, and Toronto, they formNeuroTechX, a new international collaboration of researchers and inventors (some still in grad school) building an open-source project to investigate the mysteries of the mind. Since it was formed two months ago, NeuroTechX has already drawn about 1,000 members.

App detects emotional state from walking style

The Stack | Scientists propose app that detects emotions based on walking style

Chinese scientists are developing a methodology to identify and report a person’s emotional state based on the way they are walking, with the intention of incorporating a practical application of the research into a mobile app and a smart bracelet.

Identifying Emotion from Natural Walking [PDF] outlines a study in which 59 young people from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) at Beijing were fitted with two specially outfitted Samsung Galaxy S2 smartphones, with one Samsung Tab functioning as the Android-based platform, recording accelerometer data at a 5hz sample frequency from a Galaxy attached to both the wrist and the ankle.

make every foetus count

BBC | It is "essential" that the genetic modification of human embryos is allowed, says a group of scientists, ethicists and policy experts.

A Hinxton Group report says editing the genetic code of early stage embryos is of "tremendous value" to research.

It adds although GM babies should not be allowed to be born at the moment, it may be "morally acceptable" under some circumstances in the future.

The US refuses to fund research involving the gene editing of embryos.

The global Hinxton Group met in response to the phenomenal advances taking place in the field of genetics.

A range of novel techniques combine a "molecular sat-nav" that travels to a precise location in our DNA with a pair of "molecular scissors" that cut it.

It has transformed research in a wide range of fields, but the progress means genetically modified babies are ceasing to be a prospect and fast becoming a possibility.

Earlier this year, a team at Sun Yat-sen University, in China, showed that errors in the DNA that led to a blood disorder could be corrected in early stage embryos.

In the future, the technologies could be used to prevent children being born with cystic fibrosis or genes that increase the risk of cancer.