Schematic diagram of an ancient Iranian windcatcher and qanat, used for evaporative cooling of buildings. Illustration based on concepts as discussed in article by Bahadori, M. N. titled "Passive Cooling Systems in Iranian Architecture" Scientific American, February 1978, pages 144-154, Wikipedia Commons.
Food wastage amounts to US$ 310 billion annually in developing countries, the bulk of it from fruits and vegetables. Could a 4,000-year old idea for food storage help in reducing such wastage?
Food storage, from ‘farm to fork’, requires infrastructure, energy and suitable space, among other factors. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has identified, unsurprisingly, the bulk of the food wasted as fruits, vegetables, roots and tubers. All are highly perishable but all necessary elements for micro-nutrient provision for many who now suffer from undernourishment and malnutrition in the Asia-Pacific.
The use of an ancient cooling technology that uses the effects of evaporative cooling is proposed to address such food wastage.
One-third of all food produced is wasted. But, according to the FAO, we need to increase our food production by around 60 per cent from 2007 levels if we are to feed the nine billion people estimated to inhabit the planet by 2050. Food waste is not only about actual food being wasted. We also waste water and land when producing this wasted food and increase unwanted emissions of greenhouse gases such as methane from the production of meats like beef.
In addition, we compromise the economic security of millions who are either directly or indirectly involved in food production. Reduction in food wastage translates to a reduction in waste in all areas in agriculture and helps to reduce hunger, when food reaches where it is most needed.
Asia accounts for more than half of all food wasted and yet it is also the region that houses the world’s hungriest. Some of the causes for wastage include out-dated or bad agricultural practices, poor roads and infrastructure including the lack of cold storage and refrigerated trucks. In India, up to 40 per cent of fruit and vegetable output is lost because of the lack of proper refrigeration. Setting up proper infrastructure requires financial capital, something not easily available to most farmers in developing countries.
The Global Opportunity Report of 2016 outlines recent advances in mobile refrigeration, for example the use of solar power, which is creating a revolution ‘that harnesses renewable energy to fix the broken cold chains’. By using solar energy we attempt to ‘green’ cold chains. But there is a high cost involved in this set up, which might not be accessible to millions of small-scale farmers, who produce 80 per cent of Asia’s food.
We propose another ‘greening’ mechanism that is low-cost and can be adapted to fit the needs of these farmers. Evaporative cooling is a process that occurs when water evaporates off a surface cooling it in the process. This is the same process that maintains our core body temperatures as we perspire. The Ancient Egyptians, Romans, and early Persian societies have used evaporative cooling not only to cool themselves and their homes but also to store food to prevent it from rotting and going to waste; essential to maintaining household food stocks in scarce times or in regions where food is not readily available.
These societies have used the technology to store food by very simply resting two terracotta pots, one over the other, and filling the space in-between with sand and water. As water evaporates from the sand it removes the heat thus keeping the pot above (where food is kept) at cooler temperatures.
This simple method has been replicated by the creators of the Evaptainer, a storage device that uses evaporative cooling to store food, without the use of electricity. The company ran its first prototype field tests in Morocco involving small-scale farmers. CNN Money describes it as a ‘lightweight, efficient cooling system that can be used in a wide variety of applications’; the model is also low cost and is made from highly durable and easily available materials.
New Mechanism to Prevent Food Wastage?
We propose that a mechanism similar to the Evaptainer be created to prevent food wastage in rural Southeast Asia. Given the challenges in food production, including extreme climate change, it would be timely to set up a strategic regional fund that works towards negotiating for the rights to reproduce the technology in food storage facilities. This fund could also help in supplying rural farmers with Evaptainer-like storage vessels for minimum cost. Evaptainers are currently commercially available at less than US$30 a piece.
In addition, we also suggest the development of cottage industries in rural Southeast Asia to mass-produce these containers, bringing in jobs to supplement agricultural work. If focussed specifically on rural women, this would also help empower them by offering them much needed income as a means of establishing some form of economic security.
The direct benefit of these actions would be the ability to potentially move wasted food to where it is most needed to help reduce hunger. The now non-urgent need to extend electricity supply for food storage in rural areas alleviates political pressure and allows policy makers to secure a sustainable source of energy, while at the same time focussing on rural development and capacity building.
The usage of Evaptainers could be extended in natural disaster situations that regularly inflict the region. In addition to food storage, in post-disaster settings the vessels might also be used to store medical supplies at cooler temperatures without the use of electricity that will most likely be disrupted under such circumstances.
Much of the region’s food supply is dependent on the small-scale farmers of Southeast Asia. Although there has been development in rural areas, much remains to be done especially in terms of setting up good infrastructure for food storage and transport. This is not to say there is no wastage at the consumption end. This is an increasing cause for concern. However, the bulk of food wasted is at post-harvest, storage and transport. The measures proposed will not only positively impact the region but will also have significant global implications vis-à-vis climate change. This is a cost effective and ‘green’ way to help the hungry and help the planet.
*Tamara Nair is Research Fellow at the Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies and Christopher Lim is Senior Fellow at the Office of the Executive Deputy Chairman, both in the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. This is part of a series.


An overview of Tuesday’s realtime forex price action for the major movers shows that the Loonie weakened the most, although the Euro also fell slightly. In addition, the Aussie gained substantial ground, while the Yen was mildly higher.
A more technical EURUSD analysis shows that the rate made another fresh recent high on Tuesday at the 1.4247 level within an impressive rally that commenced at the important 1.2873 reversal point of January 10th. Although the rate ended slightly lower on the day, this rally in EURUSD is still expected to continue near term.
This most recent high continues to support a Euro forecast that targets the key 1.4281 reversal level of November 4th, 2010 in the coming sessions. Above that major resistance point, resistance then shows up at the 1.4579 level for EURUSD.
In addition, the rate’s key 200-day Moving Average is now at 1.3321 and rising. This indicates a bullish medium term outlook for the rate and its level should effectively limit downside price action until a significant trend reversal takes place in EURUSD.
Although EURUSD’s 14-day RSI has come off somewhat from its former almost overbought levels seen during last week’s dramatic rise, the indicator is still reading in the upper part of neutral territory at 66 that could impede upside price action in the near term.
USDJPY spent most of Tuesday’s session trading in a tight range between 80.83 and 81.27, an even tighter range than that seen the previous day. A sustained breach of either side of this range should yield a measuring objective of ~ 60 pips from the breakout point, with the rate needing to overcome resistance at 81.98 to push significantly higher.
Furthermore, the chart for USDJPY is still dominated by the rate having just made a fresh post-war low of 76.41 during last Thursday’s session. That level now remains key support to break in order to see further downside for USDJPY.
Until that support point breaks, look for additional corrective activity to the upside to prevail, with the current consolidation taking on the look of a possible pennant formation that could resolve into another sharp rally of a similar magnitude to that seen from 0.7641 to 81.98.
The Aussie rallied as far as 1.0127 on Tuesday and made a fresh recent high in its most recent sharp rise. The current up move began at 0.9704 on March 17th, and it seems to have brought AUDUSD back into its ascending wedge pattern that it had broken down from on March 15th.
If AUDUSD manages to overcome resistance at 1.0200, look for the rally to accelerate even more, with the next important resistance level showing up at 1.0255.
USDCAD has recently been correcting higher off of its latest long term low at 0.9666 seen on March 9th within its overall downward trend. Tuesday’s price action again pushed correctively higher to 0.9811, after net losses seen since the 0.9973 reaction high of March 15th.
Although another corrective C wave rally remains possible, USDCAD should eventually see selling pressure emerge if the medium term trend is to prevail. Furthermore, any short term corrective rally in USDCAD should meet resistance at the 0.9973 level and at 1.0057 around the key psychological parity point. On the other hand, look for the downtrend to reassert itself if key support at 0.9666 gives way.


ARLINGTON, Texas >> Albert Pujols’ third-inning home run Monday night put the Angels in line for their second straight victory and also moved him further up on baseball’s historic ladder.
With Mike Trout standing on second base after doubling in the previous at-bat, Pujols drove a 92 mph sinker from Texas Rangers left-hander Derek Holland 437 feet into the left-field seats.
It was the 569th career homer for the 36-year-old Pujols, who tied Rafael Palmeiro for 12th on the all-time list, and it was all the offense the Angels needed as they hung on to defeat the Rangers, 2-0, at Globe Life Park.
The veteran first baseman, who has nine home runs through 45 games, is on pace to hit 33 homers, which would put him ninth on the career list by season’s end, potentially passing not only Palmeiro but also Harmon Killebrew, Mark McGwire and Frank Robinson.
Joe Smith, who has filled in as the closer for the injured Huston Street, earned his sixth save. Smith had given up a three-home run in his last appearance, Saturday’s 3-1 loss to Baltimore.
It preserved a strong outing from starter Nick Tropeano (3-2), who went 62/3 scoreless innings. He allowed four hits and one walk while striking out six and has held opponents to two runs or fewer in seven of nine starts and lowered his ERA to 2.86. He had a 4.11 ERA in limited appearances during his first two seasons.
The Angels improved to 21-24 overall and have won eight of their past 11 games since May 13.


Brian Kemp, the Republican candidate for governor, had a problem. As did Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state.
It was Nov. 3, a Saturday, 72 hours to Election Day. Virtually tied in the polls with Democrat Stacey Abrams, Kemp was in danger of becoming the first Georgia Republican to lose a statewide election since 2006. And, now, a new threat. The secretary of state’s office had left its voter-registration system exposed online, opening Kemp to criticism that he couldn’t secure an election that featured him in the dual roles of candidate and overseer.
But by the next day, Kemp and his aides had devised one solution for both problems, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows.
They publicly accused the Democratic Party of Georgia of trying to hack into the voter database in a failed attempt to steal the election. The announcement added last-minute drama to an already contentious campaign. More important, it also pre-empted scrutiny of the secretary of state’s own missteps while initiating a highly unusual criminal investigation into his political rivals.
But no evidence supported the allegations against the Democrats at the time, and none has emerged in the six weeks since, the Journal-Constitution found. It appears unlikely that any crime occurred.
“There was no way a reasonable person would conclude this was an attempted attack,” said Matthew Bernhard, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan who has consulted with plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging Georgia’s use of outdated touch-screen voting machines.
To reconstruct the campaign’s final weekend, the Journal-Constitution interviewed more than 15 people — computer security experts, political operatives, lawyers and others — and reviewed court filings and other public records. That examination suggests Kemp and his aides used his elected office to protect his political campaign from a potentially devastating embarrassment.
Their unsubstantiated claims came at a pivotal moment, as voters were making their final decisions in an election that had attracted intense national attention.
The race seemed to turn on whether rapid demographic changes – coupled with dislike of Kemp’s most prominent supporter, President Donald Trump – would help break the Republicans’ hold on political power in Georgia. Kemp was a typical Georgia Republican standard bearer: conservative, business-oriented, an abortion-rights opponent and a gun-rights advocate. Abrams was different: the first African-American and the first woman nominated for the state’s highest office, an unapologetic progressive appealing to young and minority voters who felt disenfranchised.
Ultimately, Kemp won with 50.2 percent of the nearly 4 million votes cast. In Georgia’s closest race for governor since 1966, any voters swayed by a purported Democratic cyberattack could have tipped the election.
The episode highlighted the inherent conflicts that Kemp straddled throughout this election. He rejected calls to resign as secretary of state or to step away from election-related duties, despite concerns that he could use his elected office to his campaign’s advantage. When he assigned his own staff to investigate his opponents, Democrats say, Kemp proved their point.
In his only public statement on the investigation, Kemp said his office handled the case like any other. “Because I can assure you if I hadn’t done anything and the story came out that something was going on, you’d be going, ‘Why didn’t you act?’” Kemp said on the election’s eve.
The secretary of state’s office declined to release documents concerning its investigation, including more than 80 internal emails from the weekend before Election Day. The agency said that because its lawyers were part of the email chains, the documents were subject to attorney-client privilege.
Candice Broce, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state's office, said the agency gave law enforcement agencies "extensive forensic evidence" of attempted intrusions into its system, inluding "digital fingerprints of these thwarted attempts."
Her agency's "expert cybersecurity vendors" concluded that "someone had spent a great deal of time and effort, utilizing specialized equipment, to attempt to infiltrate the secretary of state’s systems and that this attempt was potentially illegal,” Broce said in an email.
She did not identify the experts. Unlike in earlier statements, she did not allege involvement by the Democrats.
However, Richard DeMillo, the Charlotte B. and Roger C. Warren Chair in Computer Science at Georgia Tech, said accessing unsecured files required no sophisticated skills or knowledge.
That reaction was consistent with how Kemp handled other computer security issues, real and imagined.
In 2015, Kemp’s office accidentally sent political organizations, media outlets and others a trove of confidential information about every Georgia voter. Kemp blamed a single employee, whom he fired.
The following year, Kemp was one of just seven state election directors who rejected the federal government’s help to secure their voting systems. Kemp called the offer an “overreach” by the administration of President Barack Obama after hackers stole emails from the Democratic National Committee.
At that moment, the computer servers that ran Georgia’s election system were wide open to potential intruders. Voters’ personal data, passwords that poll supervisors used on Election Day, the coding for memory cards with which voters cast ballots – all of it was readily accessible.
For months, Lamb said, “anyone could just have downloaded” – or manipulated – all the state’s election files.
During that time, Kemp focused elsewhere, on what he considered a different cyberattack by the Obama administration.
On Dec. 8, 2016, Kemp wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, demanding to know why the federal agency “was attempting to breach our firewall.” Kemp said a computer traced to Homeland Security had executed a “large unblocked scan” of the secretary of state’s website.
The intrusion, Kemp suggested, was in retaliation for his refusing the government’s help before the 2016 election.
Johnson replied four days later. He said a worker at his agency’s Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Brunswick, Georgia, had merely verified the professional licenses of job applicants – “a service, as I understand it, your website provides to the general public,” Johnson wrote.
Through a spokesman at his New York law firm, Johnson recently declined to comment.
Kemp wasn’t satisfied with Johnson’s response. “I will be elevating my concerns to the incoming administration,” he wrote back, and the same day, he asked Trump, then the president-elect, to investigate the Obama administration’s “failed cyberattacks” on Georgia. Republicans in Congress warned Johnson not to destroy evidence of what Rep. Jason Chaffetz, then chairman of the House Oversight Committee, called a possible breach of “state sovereignty” and a violation of state and federal laws.
Finally, in June 2017, a report by Homeland Security’s inspector general said a digital forensic investigation found no evidence of a cyberattack. Instead, the report said, a worker at the law enforcement training center had merely verified the professional licenses of job applicants – precisely what Johnson had told Kemp the previous December.
As this year’s election neared, a Georgia man identified as Richard Wright logged onto the My Voter Page on the secretary of state’s website. Wright wanted to make sure his registration information was up to date. It was. But not everything else appeared to be in order.
Wright, who apparently has a background in software development, discovered two significant security flaws that could jeopardize the election’s integrity. First, downloading a sample ballot also “allows you to download any file on the system,” he later wrote in an email to the Democratic Party. Second, he said, the web address for each individual’s voter registration page included a unique numerical identifier, apparently assigned sequentially. Just by changing the digits, he wrote, “you can download anyone’s data and that includes a lot of PII” – that is, personally identifiable information, such as driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of Social Security numbers.
Computer security experts said both flaws would have enabled a hacker to delete any voter’s registration or to make changes that might render a voter ineligible. The experts also said hackers could have systematically targeted large numbers of voters who belonged to certain minority groups or those who appeared to favor one political party over another.
Efforts to reach Wright have been unsuccessful. He apparently has given no interviews.
Wright has said that when he discovered the vulnerabilities in late October, he stopped short of accessing files in a way that might break the law. A few days later, less than a week before Election Day, he reached out to organizations suing the state over its antiquated voting machines. That led him, on Friday, Nov. 2, to Washington attorney David Cross. After a telephone conversation, Cross asked a computer security firm to check out Wright’s claims.
Just before 11 the next morning, Wright also emailed a volunteer on the voter-protection hotline at the Georgia Democrats’ headquarters near downtown Atlanta, describing how he inadvertently discovered the vulnerabilities.
The volunteer, Rachel Small, forwarded Wright’s email to her supervisor, who in turn sent it to two computer security experts at Georgia Tech, all before noon Saturday.
That appears to have been the extent of the Democrats’ involvement.
DeHart, the party’s executive director, said no one in the organization knew Wright before receiving his email. When she first heard about it, she said, she didn’t even recognize its possible significance.
One of the security experts from Tech, however, notified a national security agency (he declined to say which one) because he worried a hacker could manipulate Georgia’s election. Cross shared Wright’s findings with the FBI, then got in touch with attorneys representing the secretary of state in the voting-machine case.
What the secretary of state’s staff did with the information on Saturday is not clear.
Nor did they consult with Wenke Lee of Georgia Tech, a computer security expert working with the secretary of state’s office on another matter. Lee, the director of Tech’s Information Security Center and a computer science professor, said he would have advised caution.
Kemp’s aides broke their silence early Sunday.
At 4:47 a.m., Candice Broce, the secretary of state’s spokeswoman, received a message from the online news site WhoWhatWhy, which says it practices “forensic journalism.” Its reporters had heard about Wright’s email and were preparing to post a story at 6 a.m. The website said it told Broce its story would describe a security breakdown in the secretary of state’s office, not a failed hack by the Democrats.
Exactly one hour later, a statement appeared on the secretary of state’s website, on the same page where voters search for sample ballots, find their polling place or check their registration.
Pressed for evidence, Kemp’s aides pointed to a single email – the one from Richard Wright that Democratic volunteer Rachel Small forwarded to her supervisor.
Then, on Sunday afternoon, Broce sent a text message to reporters suggesting Small was suspected of criminal activity.
“The FBI is looking for information on ‘Rachel Small,’” Broce wrote. “We welcome any information about this person’s identity or motives to provide to federal authorities.
“These power-hungry radicals should be held accountable for their criminal behavior,” the campaign said.
The two statements shaped the narrative of the final hours before Election Day.
Dozens of stories appeared online, many of them repeating the hacking accusation without skepticism. Some drew no connection between Kemp the candidate and Kemp the secretary of state.
“Georgia Sec. of State Calls for FBI Vote Hacking Investigation,” declared a headline on CNBC’s website.
“Georgia Dems ‘Under Investigation for Possible Cybercrimes’ Ahead of Midterms,” another headline said. This was from the Sputnik News Service, owned by the Russian government.
More than a month later, state Democratic officials say no law enforcement agency has been in touch about the alleged crime. Lawyers and others involved in the episode say they’ve heard nothing, either. The agencies won’t comment on their investigations.
How much the claims of a Democratic-backed cyberattack mattered in the final outcome may never be known.
Abigail Collazo, the director of strategic communications for Abrams’ campaign, said that as Election Day approached, the Democrat’s staff had begun to think she might win outright, with no runoff. Kemp’s advisers may have had the same thought, she said.
“I think they got desperate and felt like they just had to make something up,” Collazo said. Because Kemp could level the allegation through the secretary of state’s office rather than his campaign organization, she said, it may have resonated with more voters.
The episode might have taken a different turn if the Democrats had immediately gone public with Wright’s email three days before the election.


If Novak Djokovic wins the French Open, he'll be the third athlete in four years to dominate on all three grand-slam surfaces—the result of subtle changes that favor long, dramatic matches between superstars.
When Andre Agassi won the French Open in 1999, he earned the distinction of being the first player in the Open Era of men's tennis (1968-2008) to win every grand-slam tournament on the sport's three different playing surfaces: grass, clay, and hard courts. Rod Laver was the first Open Era player to win each title or complete a career grand slam, but the difference between Laver and Agassi's achievements—besides the fact Laver won all four tournaments in the same calendar year—is that Laver did it when every grand slam except the French Open was played on grass, whereas Agassi won the U.S. Open and the Australian Open on the hard-court surfaces those tournaments currently employ.
Agassi's accomplishment stands as a testament to his incredible talent, since tennis used to be a game that catered to different playing styles depending upon the surface on which it was played. Throughout most of the Open Era, those little yellow tennis balls bounced very differently on the lawns of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, the red clay of Roland Garros, and the hard courts at the Australian and U.S. opens, and many great players failed to reach the pinnacle of their sport on every surface. Bjorn Borg, who utterly dominated Wimbledon and the French Open from the mid '70s to the early '80s, was never able to win on the hard courts at the U.S. Open. Pete Sampras won a then-record 14 grand slam titles but famously struggled on the Roland Garros' clay—his best finish at the French Open was a semi-final appearance in 1996.
But failure to master every playing service may be a thing of the past. Since 2008, two more players, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, have joined Agassi's elite company by completing their own career grand slams on three different surfaces. Federer did it by winning the French Open in 2009 and Nadal followed suit by capturing the 2010 U.S. Open, the one grand slam title that had eluded him up to that point. Novak Djokovic, the current No. 1 player, can become the third contender in the last four years to accomplish the feat if he triumphs at this year's French Open, which starts Sunday.
These stats beg the question: What has allowed the world's current top three players to display an all-surface mastery that eluded previous generations of tennis players?
The easy answer is that we are currently witnessing a golden age of tennis: that Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic are three of the most talented players to ever pick up a racket, and they simply stand head-and-shoulders above the rest of the field no matter the playing surface. There is some truth to that argument. Federer has more grand-slam titles than any other player in the history of the sport. Nadal has already won 10 such titles and at age 25 shows no signs of stopping; he will make a run at Federer's record over the next the three seasons. Djokovic only has five grand-slam titles to his name, but his 2011 season, during which he went 70-6 and won three grand slams and five ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title, ranks as one of the single greatest tennis seasons ever. It's safe to say that each of these players possess rare talent.
But there have been previous generations of tennis players with just as much talent as these three, and talent alone cannot explain the mastery of different playing conditions displayed by Federer, Nadal, and now Djokovic. Over the last 10 years, slight changes in the playing surfaces at tennis' major tournaments have changed how the game is played, and these changes have homogenized the game and benefited the top players.
For most of the Open Era, tennis analysts and players considered Wimbledon's grass courts to be the fastest-playing surface of the grand slams, the clay courts at Roland Garros to be the slowest, and the hard courts first used at the U.S. Open and then later at the Australian Open to fall somewhere in between. But in the late 1990s, tennis fans began complaining that tournaments outside of the French Open were boring because they lacked long, suspenseful rallies. A typical point at Wimbledon in the 1990s involved one player serving and then approaching the net, where he would either hit volley for a winner or fall victim to a precisely timed passing shot.
The proprietors of the grand slam events apparently took fans' criticisms to heart because they began tweaking the surfaces. It's been well-publicized that in the early 2000s Wimbledon's organizers changed the composition of the grass courts in an effort to make them more durable, but players said the change resulted in balls bouncing higher and slower off the new grass courts. Wimbledon's lawns began to play more like clay courts. As Patrick Hruby pointed out in a previous Atlantic article about the death of serve-and-volley tennis, British player Tim Henman told reporters in 2002 that the Wimbledon lawns were the slowest non-clay surface he had played upon all season.
What's received less attention is that organizers at the U.S. Open began slowing down the courts at Flushing Meadows in 2002 and 2003 by adding more sand to the paint that covers the DecoTurf courts. And at last year's U.S. Open, Roger Federer said that the courts were noticeably slower than they had been in previous years.
One of the side effects of these slower playing conditions has been the elimination of stylistic diversity. In years past, players like Sampras and John McEnroe favored aggressive, attacking tennis, while others like Borg and Ivan Lendl preferred a defensive game that relied on long rallies and powerful, grand strokes. Some of tennis' most historic matches and storied rivalries involved clashes between offensive- and defensive-oriented players. It used to also be somewhat common for a player to be referred to as a clay-court specialist or grass-court specialist. But as the conditions at major tournaments began to all resemble one another, specialization started to go extinct. Former player and coach Darren Cahill recently told USA Today that the surfaces at the major tournaments are now quite similar and noted that advances in racket technology have also played a role in this homogenization.
Why Have Tennis Players Abandoned Serve and Volley?
All of the top players today employ the power-baseline style that Jimmy Connors and Lendl pioneered and Agassi perfected. It is the most effective style given the slower playing conditions that are now the norm. This new homogeneity benefits top players like Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic, because their skills easily translate to all the major tournaments. If a top player can perfect the power-baseline game, he can put himself in position to compete at every grand slam and does not need to worry about making wild adjustments depending on the surface. For most of the Open Era, top players struggled with the transition from the clay-court season to the grass-court season because the surfaces were so drastically different and specialist players like grass-court maestro Pat Cash and clay-court specialist Sergi Bruguera could challenge them. From 1969 through 2007, Laver and Bjorg were the only two players to win the French Open and Wimbledon in the same year. Federer and Nadal have both accomplished that feat since 2008, and Djokovic could easily do it in the near future.
So while Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic continue their assault on the record books, it's important to note that tennis' evolution to a sport where all tournaments favor the same style has helped these three become so dominant. If the conditions at all the grand slam tournaments had been slower when Andre Agassi played, it's safe to assume that he would have won a lot more majors. It's a testament to his incredible skill that he was the only power-baseline player to win Wimbledon in the 1990s when the playing conditions were very fast and serve-and-volley players like Sampras were dominant.
The good news is that the tweaks in the surfaces of grand slam events have served their primary purpose: They have made men's tennis more exciting than ever. Some sports, like professional football, benefit from parity. Others, like college basketball, are more exciting when underdogs make deep runs in the postseason. Tennis is not one of these sports. Tennis is at its best when the top players regularly play against one another at all of the major events. Few tennis enthusiasts and casual sports fans would get excited at the prospect of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga facing Tomas Berdych in the French Open final. We want to see Nadal-Djokovic or Nadal-Federer at every single major.
There's no indication that the proprietors of tennis' grand slam events intended for surface changes to make it easier for the top players to excel, but this unintended consequence has made the sport more exciting than it's been since the early 1980s. As Brian Philips pointed out in a Grantland article about this year's record-setting Australian Open final, men's tennis currently "feels almost epic." The rallies are long, the matches are competitive, and at every grand slam we are almost guaranteed at least one match-up between two of the top three players. The ATP tour deserves some credit for tinkering with the stages of the top events, a strategy that has given the brightest stars a better chance of being there for the grand finales.


WASHINGTON — Assistant to the Secretary for Rural Development Anne Hazlett announced the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has launched a new toolkit to help support the deployment of high-speed broadband e-Connectivity in rural communities.
The e-Connectivity Toolkit features 27 USDA programs that support broadband deployment. The easy-to-use resource is a simple guide that allows customers to identify their type of e-Connectivity project and locate resources the federal government offers for planning, equipment, construction, research and other e-Connectivity projects. Resources such as grants, loans and technical assistance are available from multiple Mission Areas at USDA, including Rural Development, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Farm Service Agency, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and Forest Service.
The toolkit highlights examples of how e-Connectivity resources are being used to increase access to broadband services in rural communities. It is free and available to the public online, and can be easily printed for offline use.
USDA’s launch of the e-Connectivity Toolkit closely follows Secretary Sonny Perdue’s unveiling of the ReConnect Program, a pilot program authorized by the Consolidated Budget Act of 2018, to facilitate broadband deployment in rural areas that lack sufficient access to broadband.
To view the report in its entirety, please view the Report to the President of the United States from the Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity. In addition, to view the categories of the recommendations, please view the Rural Prosperity infographic.


The Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County will pay Rolling Meadows $300,000 over the next two years for the option to buy 6.7 acres of city-owned land for a new garbage transfer station.
Under the plan, unanimously approved by the City Council on Tuesday, the city will get $70,000 now and the $230,000 balance in a year.
After two years, the waste agency will have to pay an additional $1.1 million if it wishes to exercise its option to buy the land.
The property, at 3851 Berdnick St., already serves as a garbage transfer station for Rolling Meadows. And the city can continue to use the site in that capacity until the sale is final, said City Manager Robert Beezat.
The waste agency, a consortium of 26 north and northwest suburbs, is expected to begin building a new station on the site before the sale is final. The old one, however, will not be torn down until the property changes hands. Earlier this month, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency approved plans for the transfer station to be built in Rolling Meadows.
The waste agency also plans to build a transfer station in Wheeling Township and will announce a third location soon, said Bill Abolt, director of the agency.
The transfer station will serve Rolling Meadows, Palatine, Arlington Heights, Barrington, South Barrington and Inverness. Garbage from the six communities will be compacted into bales and hauled to a balefill site.
No toxic or hazardous waste will be allowed in the balefill, said Beezat. Although the station is planned for an industrial area, businesses won`t have to worry about odor. The facility will be completely enclosed with a charcoal air-filtering system to keep odors from escaping, said Abolt.
The agency chose the Rolling Meadows site because a transfer station already exists close to industrial areas and offers easy access to trucks, said Abolt.
Rolling Meadows, Arlington Heights and Palatine will receive compensation for hosting or being adjacent to the station, said Abolt. He declined to specify the amount discussed.
However, there remains the question of where the trash will be hauled for its final destination. Earlier this year, the Army Corps of Engineers denied the waste agency`s request to build a balefill in a gravel mine near Bartlett to protect rare birds and the habitat.
In its revised proposal, the agency plans to create a $10 million habitat for the birds, although two of the 18 endangered or rare birds in question don`t exist on the site, said Abolt.
Until an agreement is reached on the Bartlett balefill, the agency will use a short-term disposal site in the metropolitan area for the next year or two, said Abolt.
Whether the Bartlett balefill is realized, the agreement between the agency and Rolling Meadows still stands, said Beezat.


The list of candidates for the Health Care Financing Administration's new headquarters has been whittled to four, with Owings Mills having been ruled out by the General Services Administration as a site for the federal agency that runs the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
"Essentially, GSA said it didn't feel the site was appropriate compared to the other ones," said John Chirtea, a partner in Linpro Co. Inc., one of the companies that had been trying to persuade the government to move the agency, which now occupies several buildings in Woodlawn, to a 40-acre site off Lakeside Boulevard northwest of Owings Mills Mall. He said he had received a letter from the GSA dated Thursday.The GSA leases and manages federal offices.
The GSA action, which the agency would not confirm, narrows the search for a headquarters site to Woodlawn or downtown Baltimore. Baltimore and Baltimore County officials have been competing fiercely for the project, coveting the economic benefits that would come from a complex for 3,300 government workers by 1995.
Developers backing two of the four remaining sites said they have been invited to negotiating sessions with GSA officials in Philadelphia next week.
One of the two sites is a 57.4-acre tract in the Rolling Heights Business Center in Woodlawn, backed by a partnership between James F. Knott Development Co. of Towson and Boston Properties Inc.
The second is a site near Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which is backed by the Rouse Co. of Columbia, Whiting-Turner Construction of Baltimore and Daniel P. Henson III.
A third developer, Stephen M. Gorn, president of Questar Properties in Pikesville, said his group plans to meet with the GSA but hasn't set a time. Questar, working with Manekin Corp. of Baltimore, is backing 95 acres at Rolling Wind Center in Woodlawn.
Developers backing the fourth site couldn't be reached yesterday. Foulger-Pratt Development/Construction Inc. of Montgomery County has proposed to buy an 82-acre site in Woodlawn's Windsor Corporate Park from local developer Leroy Merritt and build the headquarters there.
In a related move, Baltimore County zoning officials have scheduled a March 12 hearing on the Knott-Boston Properties plan in the Rolling Heights Business Center.
Kevin Geraghty, a senior development manager for Knott, said he expects the GSA to make up its mind by July or August. "We're going ahead with the county process at this time because we have to submit a best and final proposal to GSA by sometime in April, and we want to be assured that we can build it."


Preliminary data suggest that smart phone apps and wearable sensors are promising for improving cardiovascular health behaviors.
Self-monitoring is a key facet of changing behavior to prevent and manage heart health. Smartphone apps and wearable sensors have the potential to encourage positive change.
DALLAS — Smartphone applications and wearable sensors have the potential to help people make healthier lifestyle choices, but scientific evidence of mobile health technologies’ effectiveness for reducing risk factors for heart disease and stroke is limited, according to a scientific statement from the American Heart Association, published in the association’s journal Circulation.
The new statement reviewed the small body of published, peer-reviewed studies about the effectiveness of mobile health technologies (mHealth) for managing weight, increasing physical activity, quitting smoking and controlling high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes.
“The fact that mobile health technologies haven’t been fully studied doesn’t mean that they are not effective. Self-monitoring is one of the core strategies for changing cardiovascular health behaviors. If a mobile health technology, such as a smartphone app for self-monitoring diet, weight or physical activity, is helping you improve your behavior, then stick with it,” said Lora E. Burke, Ph.D., M.P.H., lead author of the statement and professor of nursing and epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh.
Currently, one in five American adults use some technology to track health data and the most popular health apps downloaded are related to exercise, counting steps, or heart rate.
Managing Weight —People who include mobile technology in a comprehensive lifestyle program for weight loss were more successful in short-term weight loss compared to those who tried to lose weight on their own, but there isn’t any published data on whether the participants maintained their weight loss beyond 12 months. When considering an mHealth weight loss program, healthcare practitioners should look for one that has many of the same elements as successful person-to-person individualized programs administered by healthcare professionals, which emphasize a calorie-controlled diet, physical activity, self-monitoring or recording food intake and physical activity in a paper or digital diary, personalized feedback and social support.
Physical activity —While the majority of studies show that using an online program boosted physical activity more than not using one, there hasn’t been enough research to show whether wearable physical activity monitoring devices actually help you move more.
Smoking cessation —Mobile phone apps using text messaging to help quit smoking can almost double your chances of quitting, but about 90 percent of people using these apps fail to quit smoking after six months. Mobile health apps used in combination with a traditional quit-smoking program may help smokers kick the habit.
Currently, there is little or no U.S.-based mHealth technology research on diabetes, blood pressure or cholesterol management.
Statement authors reviewed mHealth randomized clinical trials and meta-analyses from the last decade. Most mHealth technology studies were short-term and limited in size.
“Nevertheless, don’t dismiss the possibility that these devices and apps can help you be heart healthy,” Burke said.
To choose a mobile health technology that works for you, ask your healthcare provider, fitness instructor, registered dietitian or similar expert, to help find an effective program, she added.
The statement also encouraged researchers to embrace the challenge of producing the needed evidence regarding how effective these new technologies are and how we can best adopt them into clinical practice to promote better patient health.
Co-authors are Jun Ma, M.D, Ph.D.; Kristen Azar, R.N., M.S.N.; Gary Bennett, Ph.D.; Eric Peterson, M.D., M.P.H., Yaguang Zheng, Ph.D., M.S.N., R.N.; William Riley, Ph.D.; Janna Stephens, Ph.D., R.N.; Svati Shah, M.D., M.H.S.; Brian Suffoletto, M.D., M.S.; Tanya Turan, M.D., Bonnie Spring, Ph.D., Julia Steinberger, M.D., M.S. and Charlene Quinn, Ph.D., R.N. Author disclosures are on the manuscript.
After Aug. 13, view the statement online.
The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association receives funding mostly from individuals. Foundations and corporations donate as well, and fund specific programs and events. Strict policies are enforced to prevent these relationships from influencing the association’s science content. Financial information for the American Heart Association, including a list of contributions from pharmaceutical companies and device manufacturers, is available at www.heart.org/corporatefunding.


You can help have a say in the future of Amherst. The Planning Department of the Town of Amherst is beginning a week-long push on September 24th, as part of their plans to formulate recommendations to revise the Comprehensive Plan and Zoning Code for the Town.
Dubbed "ImagineAmherst," the program seems to combine expertise from local volunteer technical and working committee members with public input to help formulate a new vision for the community’s commercial centers.
The Planning Department will take your input directly as a series of workshops called "charette."
The workshops will inform the community vision for six select areas by discovering what's most important to the community. The workshops will also educate the community about possible options for new zoning that could be applies in these areas.
The Charrette schedule in its entirety is as follows. Note, that if one can only attend a single event, the first (Saturday 9/24 at 9am) would be the most foundational; followed in priority by Wednesday 9/28 (7pm).
The design studio will be open to the public for most of the charrette. This is to encourage the public to stop in and see what the team is working on, share their ideas and check out the process. This gives an opportunity to provide input as plans are evolving. ImagineAmherst is meant to be a collaborative effort.


What predictions of failure for the iPhone can teach us about iPad predictions.
A month ago, before any of us knew anything for sure about Apple’s tablet, I looked back at the period before any of us knew anything for sure about Apple’s phone. It turned out that about 95% of the speculation and rumors about the iPhone had nothing to do with the device that Apple actually announced at Macworld Expo in January of 2007.
Now that we know quite a bit about the iPad, a massive rush to judgment is already underway, with pundits predicting everything from historic success to epic failure. Which led me to wonder: How accurate were the first predictions that got made about the iPhone’s fate? So I went back and read scads of stories from the first couple of weeks after the phone’s announcement.
Overall, they weren’t bad. Lots of pundits said it was a landmark product with the potential to transform the phone business. But there were plenty of dissenting opinions, too. This article is devoted to them.
I’m not dredging up these stories to mock anyone. For one thing, some of them make reasonable arguments about the original iPhone’s limitations; it’s just that the phone managed to thrive despite them. For another, I thought that famous flop the G4 Cube would be an influential hit, and am therefore in no position to taunt anyone for making inaccurate forecasts about Apple products. I’m doing this because I think reviewing iPhone predictions is a useful exercise as we think about the future of the iPad.
Price: Many skeptics correctly noted that the iPhone’s starting price of $499 was a lot of money for a phone.
Lack of apps: Naysayers reasonably criticized the phone for its lack of support for third-party applications.
Not businessy enough. A phone that pricey needed stuff like Exchange support, the doubters pointed out.
Cingular: The fact that the iPhone was only available on Cingular–which changed its name to AT&T Wireless before the iPhone shipped–was supposed to be a major problem.
Entrenched competitors: How was Apple going to compete with the Nokias and RIMs and Microsofts of the phone world?
Missing features: No keyboard? No removable battery?
As it turned out, none of these factors killed the iPhone, and some of them eventually went away. The iPhone was too expensive, too limited in apps, and not enough of a business tool to succeed? A year after the first iPhone went on sale, the iPhone 3G arrived–a $199 phone with an App Store and Exchange support.
Other things that doubters complained about didn’t change, but weren’t fatal flaws. Today, people still grumble about AT&T exclusivity, and yet the iPhone 3GS sells like gangbusters. And I’m not sure when I last heard someone gripe about the on-screen keyboard and fixed battery.
Herewith, some representative pieces from January 2007 on why the iPhone was doomed, with thoughts from me–including comments from the authors on the iPad when I’ve been able to find them.
The average person doesn’t even use the WAP browser on their phone, let alone any full blown OSX apps! What people want in a mobile phone is a phone; they don’t need all of these extras. Extra software just makes it more difficult to perform the main function of the phone: to make phone calls.
The price of the iPhone was announced at $499 for the 4GB model and $599 for the 8GB with a 2 year contract. Right now, you can get a T-Mobile MDA smartphonefor $0 after rebate. The mass market is not willing to pay this much for a phone.
There already is an iPhone out. It’s the Linksys Wireless-G Skype iPhone. I hope Apple has a lot of money or lawyers to acquire the rights to the name.
Pair this with the fact that the iPhone doesn’t have FCC approval and we might never see the iPhone get to market. How did Steve make all of those phone calls anyway?
The iPhone runs OSX! This is great for a laptop or a desktop computer, but does a phone really need OSX? The battery life was announced as 5 hours of talk time, browsing, or video. Basically, 5 hours of active use. What happens after that? Your phone is dead and no one can call you.
People are not going to use the iPhone’s features for fear of losing their connectivity when the battery runs out.
Harry says: I was shocked, shocked to learn that Hung Truong now says his iPhone bashing was cynical Diggbait–but now he’s listing reasons why the iPad will fail, and he says really means it this time.
The entry-model is $500, the mega-model is $600. This is not an iPod at $249. Can the average American (you know the ones who own an iPod) afford this? I think not. I am sure there will be some incentives to switch but overall the price will be a barrier to entry. But not to the early adopter crowd. Walk down 43rd street in Manhattan from 5th ave to 6th ave. Ask every person with an iPod if they will get this device. I bet maybe 3% will say yes, and thats a very aggressive figure.
I wrote about this last week with the MySpace deal. The data rate plans will kill this phone. I hope Cingular gets their act together and becomes an industry leader with regards to data pricing but today it is absolute crap. This device will use a lot of data when using the Cingular network (I understand it gets WiFi but that’s not available free everywhere!). Can the average American afford $600 for a device and then another $30ish over their normal rate plan for some data? Nope.
Harry says: Allen Stern is not only not predicting that the iPad will be a bomb, he’s saying it’ll be a hit, and that he wants one.
Apple introduces its first phone today. It is a bit tough to tell from looking at Apple’s Web site, but it appears that this is yet another smartphone that is not a flip-phone. In other words, if it brushes up against something in your pocket it will make or answer unwanted calls. Basically all Japanese phones are flip-phones and it baffles me as to how American consumers are denied the simple interface of “open to make or answer a call; flip closed to hang up”.
Apple gives us an MP3 player, which other brands of smart phones have had for several years. What I want is a phone that won’t make calls from inside my pocket.
Harry says: If Greenspun couldn’t tell from Apple’s site whether the iPhone was a flip phone or not, he wasn’t looking very carefully. (For the record, the iPhone autolocks in a manner that comes close to eliminating the possibility of pocketdialing.) I haven’t seen him say anything about the iPad.
Yes, I want an iPad 🙂 And if you look at my issues with the iPhone when it first was released, look how Jobs listened to me and made significant changes for mass appeal – price dropped and the rate plans dropped big too.
The iPhone was a success because Apple amended most of the highlighted issues.
In fact, the iPhone wouldn’t have been so popular if it hadn’t got almost every missing feature, especially the App Store.
How obvious is this? And for what reason has the feature been excluded?
I am really torn on this. The iPhone succeeded since it fully replaced prior devices that were not nearly as good.
The iPad, it seems, is a little different. It seems to be a new category, but is aimed at the netbook. If you go back and look at criticism of Win7 starter edition, people criticized that you could only run three apps at one time.
From what I understand, the iPad only runs one app at a time. Also, it appears you cannot simply move files on and off the iPad the way you can on netbook. I find I use my netbook (with Win7 starter) as a big flash drive. I can run the programs I want, and run more than one program at a time.
Now, having said that, as a device for consuming media (as opposed to creating it) the iPad seems very impressive.
I was surprised by the price point of $499. I think that alone will sell a lot of these. The problem is if I am going on a trip, what I am going to take with me? If I had a iPhone and a netbook, where does the iPad fit into that?
As an aside, what would be really neat is seeing (I am a high school teacher) is the iPad as a educational tool. Digital textbook, and specific apps that would allow students to use the device within the class, and then they could submit assignments electronically.
Since all students would be doing the same thing, running one app at a time would not be a problem.
1. USB/SDHC – I would like to use an iPad to manage my iPhoto library and have the ability to upload/email photos while on the road. I currently do this with my work laptop (copy pic from camera, upload to Flickr, sync back to iPhoto when I get home), but would prefer to have an easier way. I know there is an adapter, so this isn’t a deal-breaker, just a gripe. Another option would be if the iPad will work with Eye-fi cards.
2. T-Mobile Support – I don’t understand why they are selling the iPad unlocked, but didn’t include support for T-Mobile’s 3G network in the US. Again, not a deal-breaker, but without that I will be sticking with the wifi version.
3. Webcam – My primary use for this type of device would be using Skype/iChat to video chat with my family while I’m on the road. Again, I currently use my work laptop+external webcam for this, but would happily carry a smaller, faster device for this purpose.
If they add a webcam, I’ll buy the wifi device and camera connection kit on release. If rev 2 comes with webcam/usb/T-Mobile frequencies, I’ll pick up the 3G version in an instant.
Pelpa – That’s like saying the automobile wouldn’t have been a success if they hadn’t added seat belts, a roof, air con, etc. Name me lots of successful products which did not evolve or add new features. Arguments from hindsight are easy to make.
Gargravarr-but USB is not a “new feature”, it is an industry standard. Apple is entering a market where people expect certain things on a computing device.
Having to use a connector (and carry that connector around) takes away from the utility of this device. Once you add in the keyboard dock, you’ve moved away from the svelte appeal of this device. How much will I be carrying around in my bag to make this device useful?
The iPad is slick looking device; but as I have thought about it, how would I use it if I had one? It won’t replace my netbook (I can’t really type without the keyboard dock, and the dock does not look like that I could balance it in my lap).
Thanks Drew, but we talking about the iPhone, not the Pad. I was commenting on Pelpa’s Captain Obvious statement that features = interest (and possible sales). My point is that it’s easy to claim to understand the success of something AFTER it becomes a success. To do it beforehand takes more than just blind luck.
As for the iPad, if you think you can’t use it, don’t buy it. Simple.
Alas, that is the problem; everything I see makes me want one! While people will debate practicality, the form factor and usability seems very appealing. I use my netbook mainly for email and web surfing. I don’t type all that much on it, and the extra screen real estate is very appealing. It comes down now to cost beyond the device. I am already paying for the wireless modem for the netbook. To go 3G is $129, plus the service.
This points in many ways to the way I have done computing in the last few years. My last laptop was 6 pounds and duplicated my desktop. The netbook I got last year copies enough of what I need, and weighs a lot less. The form factor of the iPad is lightyears ahead of my netbook-how much typing do I think I will do, vs. how much will I actually do.
And also, as a total aside, is price. I had expect that the iPad would come in just under $1000. Looking at the pricing at Apple, I am (pleasantly) surprised that the most expensive iPad (3G, 64GB) tops out at $829.


Two years ago, a young activist named Marla Ruzicka sat in a Senate hearing room listening to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld testify about the war in Afghanistan. She had come to Washington to try to urge greater U.S. attention to civilian casualties in that war, and Rumsfeld barely touched on the topic.
Ruzicka, then 25, had already forged a reputation in leftist circles. She once had disrupted a speech on AIDS by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Another time, she was hauled off by police after she ripped off a sarong -- which inside had a protest statement -- during a speech by then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush.
Title: Founder and director, Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict.
Education: Bachelor's degree in political science and social work, Long Island University.
Career highlights: Activist work, Afghanistan, 2001-2002; assistant to founder, Global Exchange, 2000-2001; fundraiser, Benjamin for Senate, 2000; fundraiser, Rainforest Action Network, 1999-2000.
Now, she sat wondering: "Should I let him talk or stand up and start screaming at him?"
She kept quiet. When the hearing ended, she rushed up to his table and grabbed his hand and thanked him for testifying. And then she kept talking -- and held his attention -- as he walked out of the Hart Senate Office Building and across the street to his motorcade.
"That was the turning point," Ruzicka said. "I didn't get arrested. I just talked about my issues."
With a shoestring budget, almost no staff and a bundle of energy, Ruzicka has already had more impact on more lives than many seasoned K Street lobbyists.
Last year, she founded a Washington-based organization called Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict. She traveled repeatedly to danger zones in Afghanistan and Iraq to locate people who were killed or injured in the U.S. military campaign, document their travails and then secure compensation for them or their families.
With the help of more than 150 volunteers who went to hospitals and into towns, Ruzicka helped produce the first comprehensive list of people killed or injured in Iraq by U.S. weapons; a name was listed only when a death certificate was obtained or a victim was interviewed. She also acted as an intermediary between the military and families seeking compensation for deaths.
With the assistance of Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), she got language in an appropriations bill that provided $2.5 million to help victims in Afghanistan -- money that has now grown to $7.5 million, said Tim Rieser, a Leahy aide. She also succeeded in getting a $10 million appropriation for Iraqi victims. Rieser said Ruzicka helped focus attention on the problem of collateral victims, and what resulted was a precedent-setting approach that moves beyond the cash payments the military favors. The $10 million is used to rebuild homes and schools, provide medical assistance and make loans.
"Marla is one of those unique people who combines unlimited energy, fearlessness, intellect, a bit of craziness and a determination to help people who have suffered terrible losses half a world away that is rarely matched by someone 27 years old," he said.
Ruzicka, whose parents are Republicans, has long been drawn to the plight of people overseas. She has made four trips to Cuba and earned headlines in 1995 when one of her trips as a high school student ran afoul of Treasury Department rules limiting travel to Cuba. "We had thought that since the adults won't talk, the youth will lead the way," she said.
She received a bachelor's degree from Long Island University's Friends World program, which allowed her to study in Cuba, Palestinian areas, and East and South Africa. "I'm used to being in the field," she said. "I realized that just being in a place, you can make the right contacts and make things happen."
After college, she worked for Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based human rights organization known for its confrontational approach. Through Global Exchange, she ended up in Kabul, Afghanistan, shortly after the Taliban fell. There she began to focus on the plight of war victims.
There were no phones, and she needed to network to draw attention to the problem. So she kept inviting U. N. officials, nongovernmental organization staffers and journalists to her place for parties. This gave her access to policymakers and reporters who could help document the plight of innocent victims.
"I was really changed by my experiences in Afghanistan," Ruzicka said. "It is a luxury for people to say war is bad when they are in San Francisco. You need to make friends with people in the U.S. government in order to get a change in policy. You can't say something is bad unless you come in with ways to fix it."
In Iraq, she learned that military commanders had the freedom -- and often the resources -- to assist victims quickly, so she sought contacts in the military as well as in the occupation administration. This approach has caused tension with some of her old left-wing allies, who she said have accused her of just helping clean up the mess and making it easier for United States to go to war.
Ruzicka's organization operates on an annual budget of about $100,000, funded now in large part by the Open Society Institute, a George Soros organization, with low-cost rental space provided by Human Rights Watch. At first, Ruzicka scrambled for cash from families and friends so she could scrape together $5,000 for living expenses and a plane ticket to Baghdad. In Iraq, she frequently slept on sofas or floors to avoid having to pay for a hotel room.
In the past year, she has alternated spending three weeks in Baghdad and two weeks in Washington, but she said the security situation in Iraq has become so difficult she plans to spend the rest of the year in the United States, focusing on building her organization. She has staff in Iraq and a part-time office manager in Washington who also helps manage her Web site (www.civicworldwide.org). Ruzicka, who has a twin brother who farms in Honduras, said her parents have been very supportive of her dangerous travel, even though they are her political polar opposites. "They have never said to me, 'We don't want you to do this,' " she said.


Tehran (ISNA) - Pakistani Foreign Minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi says Islamabad is prepared to dispatch humanitarian aid to Iran in the wake of the recent floods.
Tehran (ISNA) – Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi called his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif on Sunday to strongly condemn and offer condolences over the recent terrorist attack in south-eastern Iran.
Tehran (ISNA) – Pakistani government expressed its willingness to promote and improve its relations with Iran.
Tehran (ISNA) – Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif received his Pakistani counterpart on Monday.
Tehran (ISNA) – Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Bahram Qassemi announced that Pakistani Foreign Minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi is scheduled to visit Iran on Monday.
Tehran (ISNA) – Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif met with his Pakistani counterpart on Wednesday.


Courtney Kube, national security and military reporter for NBC News, talks with Rachel Maddow about Donald Trump warning Russia that he’s launching missiles at Syria even though the US has not actually decided what kind of action to take Bashar al-Assad.
It was just yesterday morning when Donald Trump rattled much of the world, announcing via Twitter that Russia should “get ready” because the United States was poised to launch missiles in Syria. As Rachel explained on the show last night, the presidential missive caught White House officials and U.S. allies abroad off-guard – because no one knew what Trump was talking about.
The Washington Post had an interesting behind-the-scenes look at developments in the White House, where officials were “proceeding with uncharacteristic deliberation” about the U.S. response to the Syrian government’s latest alleged gas attack, right up until Trump published an odd tweet for the world to see.
The Twitter disruptions were emblematic of a president operating on a tornado of impulses – and with no clear strategy – as he faces some of the most consequential decisions of his presidency,.
The result is a dynamic in where there is no White House in the traditional sense. Sure, there’s a complex filled with officials at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but in practice, what we have is a confused and erratic amateur, barking out periodic nonsense, and White House personnel struggling to keep up.
It led to a head-shaking day yesterday, in which the president announced that missiles were on the way in Syria – a country he very recently announced plans to abandon altogether – only to have Trump’s White House announce soon after that no decisions had been made.
I know a lot of people tend to hate this kind of commentary, and I can appreciate why, but the fact remains that if a Democratic president did this, it would haunt him or her indefinitely. The right would see it as definitive proof of a president whose judgment on matters of national security simply couldn’t be trusted.
But stepping back, it’s also important to appreciate the fact that the only real certainty that comes with this presidency is that those around Trump have no idea what he’ll say or do at any given moment.
Trump’s aides were blindsided when he announced his intention to withdraw from Syria. They were blindsided when he threatened to veto an omnibus spending bill they’d told the public the president supported. They were blindsided by most of his recent personnel decisions.
Trump didn’t tell aides he’d ignore their guidance on what to say to Vladimir Putin. He didn’t tell them in advance about his tariffs policy. He didn’t involve them in his decision to meet with Kim Jong-un.
And those are just some of the most recent examples. As we discussed several weeks ago, this has become a staple of Trump’s presidency. His aides didn’t know that he’d denounce a House Republican surveillance bill that the White House supported. The White House staff was also surprised to learn that he’d announced via Twitter that Christopher Wray was his choice to lead the FBI. They were equally startled to read Trump’s tweets banning transgender Americans from military service.


situation in many countries is unstable and ‘extremely difficult to predict’.
mining, all of which result in the clearance of dense forest.
about the changes in the populations of insects that spread the diseases.
the best method for identifying the mosquitoes that spread malaria in Africa.
This method involves examining the mosquitoes’ chromosomes.
strains of the worms with them.
because of the WHO’s control programmes, the situation is unpredictable.
people worldwide, is caused by four species of the parasite genus Plasmodium.
of these insects is seriously neglected.
that favour Anopheles darlingi, a mosquito that spreads the parasites efficiently.
homes. It also flies much farther than other anopheline species in the area.
and rubber have worsened the situation by providing a new habitat for A.
increased sharply in this population.


A new version 7.1 software update for Tesla lets your Model S or Model X park itself with just the push of a button. It will even close the garage afterwards. Here's a real-life demo of the futuristic technology.
Produced by Chris Snyder. Video courtesy Al van der Beek.


A 65-year-old man is dead after a collision between his mobility scooter and a minivan at an intersection in Saskatoon's Avalon neighbourhood early Friday morning.
The chair of the Saskatchewan Party caucus moved swiftly to contain discussion about a speech given by the province's rural and remote health minister to a pro-life organization amid an ongoing debate over access to abortion medication.
Saskatchewan's rural and remote health minister says he can't recall lobbying hard for a policy change on reproductive rights.


3.33 acre lot with Unbelievable Views of the San Tan Mountains. Wonderful desert vegetation to design your Custom Home around. Quite location and plenty of room to design and build your Dream Home and additional storage buildings. Also, multiple uses are allowed within this zoning district to enhance your use of the property (Code is in 'Docs Tab'). Seller will provide financing. A Must See! Copy of Survey is located in the ''Docs Tab'.


HONG KONG – Gambling revenue in Macau fell 33 percent year-on-year in September, in line with forecasts but still near five-year lows as wealthy gamblers continued to stay away from the Chinese casino hub.
Macau is the only place where casino gambling is legal in China and VIP gamers, which account for about half of revenues, have been staying away, deterred by Beijing’s widespread crackdown on corruption which has also targeted the illicit outflow of money from the country.
September’s decline is the 16th monthly drop in a row. Revenues fell to 17.13 billion patacas (S$3.01 billion) from 25.56 billion patacas a year earlier and down from 18.6 billion patacas in August, according to data released by the Macau government.
Analysts were expecting a decline of around 32-34 percent.


Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon advised Italy’s interior minister Matteo Salvini to attack the pope over the issue of migration, according to sources close to the Italian far right.
During a meeting in Washington in April 2016, Bannon – who would within a few months take up his role as head of Trump’s presidential campaign – suggested the leader of Italy’s anti-immigration League party should start openly targeting Pope Francis, who has made the plight of refugees a cornerstone of his papacy.
“Bannon advised Salvini himself that the actual pope is a sort of enemy. He suggested for sure to attack, frontally,” said a senior League insider with knowledge of the meeting in an interview with the website SourceMaterial.
The claims coincide with suggestions that Bannon’s pan-European populist project, the Movement, has stalled. Meanwhile, Salvini has announced that he wants to bring the far right from across Europe into an alliance. Last Monday in Milan, he unveiled his “vision of Europe for the next 50 years”, billing it as the launch of a new rightwing coalition for the European parliamentary elections on 23 May. Salvini unveiled his alliance only days after meeting Bannon in Rome in March. This led some to believe that Bannon has handpicked Salvini as the informal leader of Eurosceptic, populist forces in Europe.
Bannon, in an interview with NBC and SourceMaterial to be broadcast at 9pm eastern time in the US on Sundayon , also takes issue with the pope’s warnings over resurgent populist movements. “You can go around Europe and it’s [populism] catching fire and the pope is just dead wrong,” said Bannon.
The slogan refers to a Vatican version of the “birther” campaign waged by Trump against Barack Obama, claiming that Francis’s papacy is illegitimate and that his ultra-conservative predecessor Benedict XVI is in fact the true pontiff.
The League source also alleged that Salvini would have attacked the pope harder but was restrained by his own party, predominantly by Giancarlo Giorgetti, the deputy federal secretary of Lega Nord who is close to senior figures in the Vatican.
“[After the Bannon meeting] Salvini moved very tough and said: ‘We have to attack the Vatican, but the other guy said wait.’ Salvini thinks by himself and acts by himself ... so he started to act [for example, by appearing with the ‘Benedict is my Pope’ T-shirt],” said the source.
Bannon has steadily been building opposition to Francis through his Dignitatis Humanae Institute, based in a 13th-century mountaintop monastery not far from Rome.
In January 2017, Bannon became a patron of the institute, whose honorary president is Cardinal Raymond Burke, an ultra-conservative who believes organised networks of homosexuals are spreading a “gay agenda” in the Vatican.
The institute’s chairman is former Italian MP Luca Volontè, on trial for corruption for accepting bribes from Azerbaijan . He has denied all charges.
Among the institute’s trustees is one of the pope’s most outspoken critics, Austin Ruse, a former contributor to rightwing news website Breitbart. Ruse runs C-FAM, an anti-abortion group whose founder was prone to antisemitic rants about population control and which has been termed a hate group by human rights campaigners. Like Volontè, Ruse is an official of the World Congress of Families, a gathering of far-right, anti-gay Christian groups backed by Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin.
Other trustees include Ben Harris-Quinney, chairman of the Conservative thinktank the Bow Group, who met Bannon in London last summer, alongside Raheem Kassam, the former UK editor of Breitbart. Bannon was a founding member of Breitbart’s board.
Bannon was invited by the Observer to respond but at the time of publication had not yet replied.


My bucket list isn't a physical list I have somewhere, but I know an opportunity when I see it.
I competed in a hot dog eating contest, took a Josh Beckett fastball, tried to return Andy Roddick's serve and flown in a blimp over New York City.
This year, I decided I wanted to sing the National Anthem at a baseball stadium. I put the challenge out to Twitter and I had seven teams come back with offers.
I picked the Tampa Bay Rays because they made it more than being about me. They paired it up with their first "Tweet-Up," gave away shirts with Twitter handles and offered discounts to their Twitter followers.
We worked on dates for a while, but ultimately it worked out better for CNBC's strong dayside audience to do it during the day. We settled on August 4th, which meant they were playing the Blue Jays, the only Canadian team in the league.
I agreed to sing both anthems, even though the only words I knew to "Oh Canada" were the first two lines.
Over the last couple weeks, I studied and studied and felt pretty confident this morning for my soundcheck. On Wednesday night, Mark Donnelly, who signs "Oh Canada" at Vancouver Canucks games gave me some great advice in an interview on the Fan 590.
During the soundcheck, I figured out that the slower I went, the less the reverb would be. Slow, Darren, Slow.
At 12:07 p.m. ET, I walked to the mound. I was totally good until the whole crowd stood up at the same time.
My heart skipped a beat. I began singing. I smiled at the end of the "Oh Canada." But my most nerve-racking part was the transition from that to first notes of the Star-Spangled Banner.
Without a pitch pipe, I didn't quite get it right. I meant to drop down an octave. Didn't happen. I knew I had to correct. In order to not be Carl Lewis, I knew I had to hit the high notes in sharp, short bursts. Hit it and get out. It worked.
There's so much talk about people who screw up singing the Star-Spangled Banner. Don't criticize until you try it yourself.
As for stars who sing it at big events, it's clearly not worth it. There's very little upside, other than patriotism of course.
Despite the pressure to get it right, I was glad I did it. Would I do it again? I need a couple weeks to think about it.


The AD Council and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) have launched a series of new Public Service Announcements for its veteran support effort.
The PSAs encourage returning vets to join IAVA's social network which directs them to transition resources like locating the nearest VA hospital or contacts at the American Legion and VFW and information about scholarship, mental health, suicide prevention and coping services through the Wounded Warrior Project.
The campaign, which was launched last Veterans Day, also has its own Web site, to point vets in the right direction.
The campaign was produced pro bono by Saatchi & Saatchi. The Ad Council serves as the coordinator, putting together creative talent with media outlets for public service campaigns on everything from foreclosure and childhood obesity to pet shelters and emergency preparedness.


If you are looking for a new alternative to chips and dips for your next party, serve John W. Macy’s “original Cheddar” CheeseSticks with guacamole. These twisted CheeseSticks are made with wholesome, all-natural ingredients – no artificial dyes, flavorings or preservatives. And they are tasty!
You can serve CheeseSticks right out of the box, warm them in the oven, or try them with your favorite dip or salsa.
Here’s a fabulous guacamole recipe that is perfect to accompany the CheeseSticks.
Place onion, chiles, cilantro and sprinkle of salt in a mortar and pestle.
Place avocado meat into pestle and mash well (leave some chunks).
Bowl the guacamole and serve immediately with a basket of CheeseSticks.
While Original Cheddar CheeseSticks remain the Company’s bestseller, John Wm. Macy’s CheeseSticks has expanded the gourmet product line to include five additional savory CheeseSticks varieties along with two dessert SweetSticks.
John Wm. Macy’s CheeseSticks, CheeseCrisps and SweetSticks are sold in many of the country’s finest gourmet and specialty food stores, such as Whole Foods Market and Cost Plus World Market, and have recently become available in several national supermarket chains, including Safeway and A & P.
The Company’s products are also served in a number of luxury hotels, including selected locations of the Ritz Carlton, Four Seasons and Sofitel hotel chains.
The brand has developed a guide for consumers on preparing quick and delicious hors d’oeuvres whose flavors blend perfectly with their favorite cocktails. Consumers can download all 20 of these delicious recipes by simply visiting cheesesticks.com.


Nazi essay apology: A high school in New York apologized when an English teacher asked students to “think like a Nazi” for an essay.
The teacher wanted the students to use “solid rationale from government propaganda to convince me of your loyalty to the Third Reich” as part of a persuasive writing assignment. The teacher also wanted them to “argue that Jews are evil,” reported the Albany Times-Union.
Albany Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard said the essay was part of exercises that were intended to help students come up with persuasive arguments.
Students were also asked to read and watch Nazi propaganda to come up with their arguments.
Around a third of the students refused to do the essay, according to The Associated Press.
When she heard about it, Vanden Wyngaard said she “thought the assignment was ill-conceived, I thought it was inappropriate, I thought it was an absolute, not only misjudgment just horror I can’t describe it in any other words,” according to HudsonValley.ynn.com.
Vanden Wyngaard on Friday told Reuters that the teacher, who was not named, might be reprimanded or fired over the gaffe.
“This assignment for some of our students at Albany High School was completely unacceptable. It displayed a level of insensitivity that we will not tolerate in our school community,” she said.
She added that the teacher has been removed from the class.
“It can go anywhere from a letter of counsel, to a letter of reprimand, all the way through to termination. There is a broad spectrum,” Vanden Wyngaard said in describing the next steps the school might take.


Richards Bay is joining other coastal cities and building a desalination plant to survive the crippling drought. By converting sea water into fresh, the plant will allow the town to tap into what engineers refer to as an “almost infinite” water resource.
But water and sanitation officials say the option is one of “last resort” and has come about because of slow work by the water department on other projects.
The water department’s own plans show that desalination was seen as a last resort – becaue it is so expensive and uses so much electricity. Research by the Water Research Commission breaks this down: the City of Cape Town can produce water for R1.25 a kilolitre using a mix of water sources, while Rand Water in Gauteng can produce water for R2.50 per kilolitre.
But a large desalination plant along the coast produces water at anywhere between R5.80 and R8.30 per kilolitre.
Big plants, such as the one being built in Lamberts Bay in the Western Cape, use huge amounts of electricity to remove salt from seawater so that it can be drunk safely. A conventional water treatment plant uses 0.3 kilowatt-hours of electricity to treat a cubic metre of water, while a desalination plant uses up to eight kilowatt-hours of electricity.
In its desalination strategy, the water department notes that while the process “could provide an unlimited resource of freshwater”, it would only be considered after all other options. This is because of the escalating cost of electricity and the lack of a local desalination-plant industry and expertise.
Other options would include, for instance, treating sewage water back to drinking water, a much cheaper process in terms of electricity and cost. An attempt to do this in Durban was rejected by the local community, which refused to drink the water on religious grounds. There is also the option of fixing old water infrastructure in municipalities, where up to a quarter of the water is lost through leaks.
But the decision to desalinate seems to be the result of delays to other infrastructure projects. An official at the Trans-Caledon Tunnel Authority says desalination “was always going to be the technology of choice, in the future”. The statement is based on documents such as government’s 2012 National Water Resource Strategy. This master plan looked at how much water each town and city needed, and how much the water department could supply up to 2035.
For most cities, water use was projected to outstrip supply before that date. In Johannesburg and Cape Town, that crunch would come before the end of this decade. For Durban and areas such as Richards Bay, people and industry were already using more water than was available by 2005.
Solving that problem has been the job of the water department, through agencies such as the Tunnel Authority. Mega-projects, such as the second phase of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, fall under its purview. This critical scheme is half a decade behind schedule.
Although there are 4 400 registered dams across South Africa, the country’s water security relies on fewer than 50. Upgrades to these dams, such as that planned for the Tzaneen Dam in Limpopo, have been delayed by years or indefinitely postponed. Upgrades to Hazelmere Dam, which supplies Durban and the North Coast, were delayed by six months last year. De Hoop Dam – opened by the president with much fanfare three years ago – has been similarly delayed by half a decade.
These infrastructure delays mean that when a drought hits, there is not enough water stored to get communities such as Richards Bay through the dry times. Mhlathuze Water, which supplies the area, implemented rolling restrictions last year. Similar restrictions in the 2009 drought saw emergency desalination plants built in Mossel Bay, Sedgefield and Plettenberg Bay. The Hillcrest aluminium smelter in Richards Bay opened its own plant last year, at a cost of R74-million.
Nevertheless, the expense is expected to be high, because the technology is still developing. If other water supply projects had been done on time, South Africa might have been able to avoid the cost for now.
The water affairs department had not responded to requests for comment by the time of publication.


hike in July from the Bank of Canada.
garden supplies, exceeding forecasts for a 0.2 percent gain.
Traders have already priced in a rate hike for 2017           .
lows, but prices remained under pressure from a supply glut.
weakest in nine days at C$1.3348.
line of credit to its Home Trust Co unit.
troubles could hurt the country's red-hot housing market.
falling 9 Canadian cents to yield 1.5 percent.
points, its smallest since Feb. 24.
Canadian inflation data for May is due on Friday         .


vehicle in Harnai resulting into martyrdom of four personnel.
nation’s morale on such an important day.
precious lives and prayed for peace of the departed souls.


As Harvard defends its admissions process in federal court, its officials and legal filings return, again and again, to the importance of diversity.
There are compelling legal reasons for that emphasis. But it has drawn attention to the ways in which Harvard is — and isn't — as diverse as the nation at large. Most notably, Harvard students remain much wealthier than their non-Harvard peers.
Low-income students and their advocates have argued that the school should do more to bring those students to campus and to make them feel welcome after they arrive. But they disagree about how that should be accomplished and about whether a focus on household economics could totally replace the current system of racial preferences.
Back on June 15, Harvard filed its initial legal response to the complaint from Students For Fair Admissions (SFFA), the group that has alleged discrimination against Asian-American applicants.
In it, the university argued that it “has long understood that its students learn as much in their daily interactions with one another as they do in formal classroom settings.” To that end, the filing continues, Harvard has sought to admit students from “broadly diverse backgrounds” — meaning “geographically, socioeconomically, and racially” diverse.
When it comes to racial diversity, Harvard can point to its recent record.
For years, the cohort of American students that Harvard accepts has been growing more diverse for years. The most recent "admitted class" is Harvard's most diverse class yet. More than 15 percent of its members were African-American, nearly 23 percent were Asian-American, and around 12 percent identified as Hispanic or Latino.
That’s a smaller proportion of Latinos and a much larger proportion of Asian-Americans than make up the entire American population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And the school’s growing minority enrollment does, in part, stem from the declining population of white graduates from American high schools.
And some minority groups have unusually low "yields" — meaning the percentage of accepted students who choose to attend. Per Harvard dean of admissions Bill Fitzsimmons, only around two-thirds of admitted African Americans, for example, end up coming to Harvard.
Still, for the past three years, the first-year classes of American students Harvard has enrolled are "majority majority."
SFFA, the group suing Harvard, is not alleging that the school has failed to increase racial diversity: only that it has disadvantaged Asian-American students — who apply in great numbers and with top test scores — toward achieving its desired "racial balance," a practice which courts have deemed discriminatory.
In federal court this week, SFFA's attorneys have sought to further impeach Harvard by pointing to the ways in which — given time and all-but-limitless resources — the school has failed to meet a higher standard of diversity set by American courts over the past four decades.
In his 1978 decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell defended the limited consideration of race in admissions on the grounds that fostering diversity represented a “compelling state interest."
Subsequent Supreme Court decisions, such as Grutter v. Bollinger and Fisher v. University of Texas, have continued to allow for limited racial preferences in admissions. But they have also placed a double onus on universities: both to pursue diversity on the broadest possible understanding and to regularly look for ways to avoid using race toward that end — if it isn't judged to be absolutely necessary.
That broad understanding of diversity has been thought to include the commingling of rich and poor students. And on that score, Richard Kahlenberg says, Harvard's approach to admissions is "sorely lacking."
SFFA has retained Kahlenberg — a prominent expert on education at the left-leaning Century Foundation — as a consultant since at least 2014.
In a report he filed in June, Kahlenberg repurposed the findings of Raj Chetty, an economist who himself recently returned to teach at Harvard.
Reviewing a period around the turn of the millennium, Chetty found that “Harvard had 23 times as many high-income students as low-income students,” Kahlenberg wrote.
When students from America's poorer precincts do attend elite schools, many say it feels like a big adjustment. And if those students are students of color who didn't go to a prep school, they can face what Harvard professor Anthony Jack calls a "double disadvantage."
"You really feel culture shock," Jack said. "You feel that intense sense of alienation from a place ... populated by people and things that you have never encountered before in your life."
Jack has a book forthcoming in February on the students he calls the "privileged poor." He also speaks from experience — not so long ago he was an African-American undergraduate from a disadvantaged background at Amherst College.
But he might also be speaking of Adelson Aguasvivas, a sophomore at Harvard. He was born in the Dominican Republic. When he was 10, he immigrated to a low-income neighborhood in Newburgh, New York.
Having that unusual life experience at Harvard "definitely makes you feel like you stand out in a way," Aguasvivas said. "There are these kids that had all these resources that you don't necessarily have. You don't know how to navigate that. You don't know how to get an internship, join a club, write a decent paper."
That said, Aguasvivas believes his possible "double disadvantage" worked to his benefit. "Being from a poor background — and an immigrant — there has been so much struggle. I've always persevered through that struggle," Aguasvivas said. "I feel like they saw a value in that."
Kahlenberg has long been an advocate for recalibrating admissions standards to give larger advantages to students from disadvantaged backgrounds, even to the point of excluding racial considerations.
On the stand, Kahlenberg said racial preferences are constantly under legal threat and travel with a stigma, whereas the obstacles that tend to hinder students on their path to an elite college tend to be "most strongly associated with socioeconomic status."
By way of an example, Kahlenberg observed that even former President Obama argued in 2008 that his two daughters shouldn't receive an admissions advantage because they "have had a pretty good deal," in his words.
Kahlenberg's analysis, prepared for SFFA and laid out in court on Monday, concluded that Harvard could trade out its existing racial preferences for economic ones and still assemble a racially diverse class that still scored in the 98th percentile on the SAT.
Jack doesn't approve of the prospect, because context matters.
To not try to correct for specific racial biases, Jack said, is "to say that inequality does not exist — because social class is not the only thing that keeps students from applying or attending or excelling at institutions like Harvard. ... That's the opposite of the direction we should go."
Jack says research suggests that low-income students of color who come to elite colleges like Harvard from private preparatory high schools feel much more comfortable, and have a much better handle on the 'hidden curriculum.' They are used to attending office hours and ready to seek out mentors, for example.
In court, Harvard’s lawyers asked Kahlenberg to acknowledge that his models reliably predicted a drop in African-American enrollment if Harvard pivoted away from racial preferences — the kind of drop Harvard could only correct, they implied, by resorting to those preferences.
Kahlenberg, for his part, put that gap down to a lack of more detailed wealth and income information in Harvard's data.
A sample from Richard Kahlenberg's "rebuttal report" from June of this year.
Also this week, attorneys for SFFA grilled Rakesh Khurana, the current dean of Harvard College, about the socioeconomic gap Kahlenberg described.
In heated questioning on Monday, SFFA lead trial attorney Adam Mortara repeatedly asked Khurana why Harvard’s student body didn't reflect the American population in economic terms, as well. Khurana dismissed some of Mortara’s questions as “hypotheticals," and therefore unanswerable.
Then Mortara asked: "What is special about wealthy people that Harvard has to have them overrepresented?"
Khurana, who does not have a direct role in admissions to the college, replied that Harvard is “not trying to mirror the socioeconomic or income [makeup] of the United States. ... We're looking for talent."
Khurana’s remark about "talent" seems to echo something Harvard's new president, Lawrence Bacow, told Radio Boston earlier this year: that Harvard’s admissions officers find that the children of Harvard alumni — themselves disproportionately wealthy and white — tend to appear better-prepared for the school’s rigorous curriculum.
But questions about the effects of “race-neutral” admissions at Harvard aren’t entirely hypothetical.
The body of case law on affirmative action recommends that judges scrutinize colleges’ efforts to perform a “serious, good faith consideration of workable race-neutral alternatives” to considering race in admissions decisions.
Since 2013, Harvard officials have convened two committees to perform just that kind of consideration.
The broader of those two panels — led by James Ryan, former dean of Harvard Graduate School of Education and the new president of the University of Virginia — involved a parade of experts, but was suspended in 2014 in response to SFFA’s suit.
A more focused, and much smaller panel convened in the summer of 2017 — led by Michael Smith, dean of the school’s faculty of arts and sciences, alongside only Khurana and Harvard Dean of Admissions Bill Fitzsimmons.
...no workable race-neutral admissions practices could promote Harvard’s diversity-related educational objectives as well as Harvard’s current whole-person race-conscious admissions program while also maintaining the standards of excellence that Harvard seeks in its student body.
In other words, Harvard and its experts would argue that any system of admissions preference that doesn't rely on race would result either in a class that is markedly less talented, or markedly less diverse. The report's three authors promised to review the question again in 2023.
SFFA dismissed the Smith report, calling it "a dilatory, highly scripted committee of three officials pre-committed to an outcome."
Other schools of Harvard's stature — like the University of California Berkeley and Caltech — have put "race-neutral" admissions schemes into effect. Harvard's lawyers observed, and Kahlenberg concedes, that that change resulted in persistently lower African-American enrollment at those schools.
The question of whether Harvard could foster its ideal educational community, without recourse to applicants' race, will remain a hypothetical one for now — and subject to debate in federal court.
Beginning next week, Judge Allison Burroughs will hear from students and alumni who, like Adelson Aguasvivas, say that they were helped by Harvard's "holistic" approach to admissions.
But this case may well end up before an increasingly conservative Supreme Court in the next few years — meaning Harvard may have to wrestle with these questions more concretely soon.