To save elephants, scare them — with chili powder-filled condoms

2014. (Mosa’ab Elshamy/AP) This is, unsurprisingly, not as simple as bug spray. Bittner’s work focuses on using noises to scare the animals away from sugar cane and other crops, which he and colleagues recently described in the journal Wildlife Society Bulletin. They tested all kinds of noises that they imagined elephants, which have a superior sense of hearing, would avoid. Previous research in Africa had showed that putting beehives on posts around crops can keep the massive animals away. So Bittner used a speaker system connected to a laptop to play the buzz of Sri Lankan hornets, directed at elephants about 45 feet away. They also tried the sound of chain saws. But when it came to repelling male elephants, which do almost all the crop-raiding, the most effective sounds were the trumpeting and calls of other elephants — females, in particular. Once Asian male elephants reach maturity, females often cast them out of herds due to their aggressiveness, Bittner said. Matriarchs do this by bullying and preventing them from accessing food and water. Bittner found that broadcasting females’ calls kept 65 percent of males away from crops. Only the biggest, baddest elephants didn’t react, he said. “We think that the noise of a big group of females is effective,” he said. “They just go, ‘It’s not worth it.’ ” In Africa, ordinary deterrent efforts often amount to a spear in the elephants and deaths for some farmers, according to Damian Bell. Bell, the executive director of Honeyguide, a nonprofit company that works to find affordable solutions for farmers on the front line of human-wildlife conflicts, said farmers who risk losing so much to a raid also sometimes turn a blind eye to illegal poaching. “If elephants carry on raiding crops,” he said, farmers often “either retaliate by killing the elephants or keeping very quiet when poachers go in to kill an elephant.” Researchers in Sri Lanka played various noises over speakers to determine what sound was most repellent to elephants such as this one, which is separated from the scientists by an electric fence. (Evan Bittner) To prevent crop-raiding, Bell’s team in northern Tanzania has been developing a four-stage process that, improbably, involves condoms. It starts with a high-powered flashlight, which often scares elephants attempting a night raid. If that doesn’t work, Bell and community volunteers wield a loud foghorn that seems to confuse the elephants. Step three: filling


Despair and death in small-town America: Your comments

I do while doing less productive work. This enormous disparity in distribution of resources is really quite new in our society. Here’s an excerpt of another: Four decades ago my wife and I escaped the rust belt for Silicon Valley. When I return I am appalled at the physical condition of family, friends and neighbors. Even the healthiest of those with college educations look 10-15 years older than my neighbors here. Most look much worse. It seems nearly all are carrying an extra 100+ pounds, eating too much sugar, processed snack foods and useless calories. People there still smoke, and smoke heavily. Their kids, now adults, smoke. Curiously, those who mostly smoke marijuana look healthier than those who are heavy drinkers. The overriding impression is one of hopelessness masked by consumerism. The 7% GDP shift in incomes from 40 million working people to the top 1/100th of 1% literally has taken its toll on those in the lower middle. They borrowed on credit cards to buy more stuff at Walmart, and then couldn’t pay the bills, lost the house and filed bankruptcy. I saw two in-laws, mother and daughter, who worked at Walmart for a period that literally accelerated their decline into near-poverty. Even with both parents and both teens working they barely could keep the very used cars running and the rent paid. Here’s one from Oregon: I moved to a rural area in Oregon 3 years ago. This area has many challenges related to isolation and lack of infrastructure. Our economy is having difficulty transitioning from forestry and milling to a more tourism based economy. We still have fishing, but closures and variable harvests create challenges for the folks in the fishing industry. We do have some local farmers adding revenue by selling more finished products locally. State mandated zoning restrictions and lack of adequate commercial zoning limit business opportunity. Basic health care is generally available, but if you need a specialist, you will need transportation and time to drive 100 miles or so to the nearest cities. No dialysis, dermatologists or oncologists here. Our area also lacks resources for treatment of addiction and psychiatric conditions. We seem to have a high rate of methamphetamine use and a growing problem with heroin to accompany the lack of resources to treat addiction. As I think about it, we do seem to have more deaths of middle aged residents from


Trump can’t deny climate change without a fight

Rex Tillerson, chief executive of ExxonMobil, the largest non-government oil company in the world — as secretary of state. Trump may renounce the historic Paris agreement, in which the world’s biggest carbon emitters — China, the United States and India — all pledged curbs. He can also eliminate regulations limiting carbon emissions by power plants, encourage more drilling for oil and natural gas, and try his best to revive the moribund coal mining industry, though its decline is due more to market forces than to anything the government has done. These threatened actions come near the end of what will almost surely be the warmest year on record. Continuing what scientists see as an indisputable trend, 2016 was an absolute scorcher. And yes, I realize that right now it’s cold in much of the country; some scientists believe that rapid warming at the North Pole has destabilized air flow patterns and perhaps made these “polar vortex” cold snaps more common. In any event, the key measurement is the global temperature average, not the local wind chill. Trump is being advised by a number of vocal climate-change deniers. The data that scientists are rushing to preserve clearly refutes those who say there is no warming — hence the urgency to protect the information. Some deniers acknowledge the fact of warming but say that it is due to some unfathomable natural cycle. But Occam’s razor argues persuasively for the simpler explanation: Since the Industrial Revolution, we have increased the atmosphere’s concentration of carbon dioxide — known to trap heat — by an incredible 40 percent. Much of the rest of the world understands the need to move toward clean energy. The technology isn’t quite there yet, so some breakthroughs will be required. Smart government policy would be to invest in research to make it more likely that these advances are made in Berkeley rather than Bangalore or Beijing. Dumb policy would be to fire up the smokestacks, stop collecting all that annoying climate data and marginalize federal employees who best understand global warming. This is the direction Trump appears to be headed. The president-elect threatens to make the United States a second-rate player in the coming clean-energy economy. I guess that’s his idea of greatness, but it’s not mine. Read more from Eugene Robinson’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays


Sometimes the dream job doesn’t start out that way

the combat support logistics equipment for the U.S. Marine Corps and improvised explosive device equipment and many other valuable assets. They are fighting for my freedom, and every day I am fighting to get them what they need as quickly as I can. The older I get, the wiser I get, and realize what the fight is all about. God bless our troops, their families and the sacrifices they make every day for America. Andrea Harlow Marine Corps Systems Command My dream job was the one I had since grad school, for almost 20 years, as a scientist at a national laboratory working on hard problems that matter, like national security. Seeking more challenge, I came to Washington on an assignment, and ended up liking this area. Since I could not be “on assignment” forever, I quit my dream job and took a job with the government. This government job is definitely not my dream job. It pays less in the grand scheme of things, has less benefit, and at times it makes me feel like an over-educated paper-pusher. On the other hand, it has gradually grown into a different sort of challenge, one that I didn’t expect, but is getting more and more interesting every day. On good days, I think it has the potential of becoming a dream job when I look back 20 years from now. On bad days I want to vote them all out, every one of the 535 members of Congress. Karen Pao Energy Department Absolutely. Prior to (reluctantly) joining the federal government, I worked in the private sector. I did not see much difference, except in federal government we spend taxpayers’ money. That said, I got more opportunities in federal government than in private sector. I am proud to say that I made a big difference in a positive way. Nuru Parkar Census Bureau I didn’t really have a dream job in mind when I graduated. I went into public service because the Army offered me a job and I was very proud of the fact that I was continuing a long family tradition of service to my community — my father, uncles and grandfather were all in the military; my grandfather became a doctor and my mom was a teacher. I never envisioned the level of enmity that the public, Congress and presidential candidates have for public servants. I never thought that


The DEA will decide whether to change course on marijuana by July

(Jose Luis Magana/AP) In a lengthy memo to lawmakers, the Drug Enforcement Administration said it hopes to decide whether to change the federal status of marijuana "in the first half of 2016." Marijuana is currently listed under the Controlled Substances Act as a Schedule 1 drug, meaning that for the purposes of federal law, the drug has "no medical use and a high potential for abuse" and is one of "the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules with potentially severe psychological or physical dependence." Marijuana shares Schedule 1 status with heroin, and it is more strictly regulated than the powerful prescription painkillers that have killed more than 165,000 people since 1999. Police surround marijuana activists holding a massive fake joint outside the White House on Saturday, April 2. First set in 1970, marijuana's classification under the Controlled Substances Act has become increasingly out of step with scientific research, public opinion, medical use and state law. Citing marijuana's potentially significant therapeutic potential for a number of serious ailments, including chronic pain and epilepsy, organizations such as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have called on the DEA to change the drug's scheduling status. But the DEA has rebuffed numerous previous attempts at rescheduling, sometimes after decades of stonewalling, and in at least one case overrode the recommendation of its own administrative judge. The current petition before the DEA was initiated by then-governors Christine Gregoire of Washington and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island in 2011. In a previous letter to lawmakers, the DEA indicated it had all the information it needed to make the decision as of last September. The current memo, written in conjunction with the heads of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of National Drug Control Policy, also provides a detailed look at how the federal government provides marijuana to researchers. Currently, the government grants a monopoly on marijuana production for research purposes to one program at the University of Mississippi. "Because of this monopoly, research-grade drugs that meet researchers’ specifications often take years to acquire, if they are produced at all," a Brookings Institution report argued last year. According to the memo, in the years between 2010 and 2015, the government provided marijuana for research purposes to an average of nine researchers per


Marijuana advocates start their 2016 legalization fight in California today

Marijuana plants on display for sale at the medical marijuana farmers market at the California Heritage Market in Los Angeles, California. (David McNew/Reuters) The fate of marijuana legalization in two states and the nation’s capital won’t be decided until November, but advocates are proceeding with their 2016 campaigns in a handful of other states. The Marijuana Policy Project, the advocacy group that played a vital role in helping to pass legalization in Colorado, has formally announced committees to push legalization in 2016 in Arizona, Massachusetts and Nevada, and plans to file paperwork Wednesday with the California secretary of state to form a campaign committee there. The new committee, the Marijuana Policy Project of California, will begin raising funds immediately to get a measure on the November 2016 ballot, the group said. “A diverse coalition of activists, organizations, businesses and community leaders will be joining together in coming months to draft the most effective and viable proposal possible,” Marijuana Policy Project Executive Director Rob Kampia said in a statement. “Public opinion has been evolving nationwide when it comes to marijuana policy, and Californians have always been ahead of the curve.” In 1996, the state became the first in the nation to legalize medical marijuana. The Field Poll, which specializes in public opinion research in the state, found last December that 55 percent of California voters support the legalization of the drug, the first time a clear majority supported such a policy since it began asking about the issue in 1969. The legalization movement has largely been focused in the West so far. Colorado and Washington were the first to legalize the drug, with sales in both states having begun this year. Oregon and Alaska — as well as D.C. — will pose the question to voters this fall. An early August Public Policy Polling survey found that 49 percent of Alaska voters oppose the measure while 44 percent support it. Support in Oregon was pegged at 51 percent in a June poll by Survey USA. If approved there and, subsequently, in California, the entire West Coast would be legalized. But the Marijuana Policy Project has its sights on other regions, too. In addition to the 2016 committees formed in Arizona this month and Massachusetts and Nevada earlier in the year, the project plans to focus on legalizing marijuana legislatively in Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont in the


Sad the shutdown has killed the panda cam? Here are some alternatives.

We miss Mei Xiang and her cub — but there are other pandas out there. (China Daily via Reuters) As we warned you yesterday, Congress's inability to keep the government open has forced the National Zoo to take away our beloved panda cub cam — along with all of their other animal cams and real-life access to the zoo. But fear not, Internet. There are still plenty of places to watch adorable animals. We've helpfully cataloged a few of them for you below. Pandas Stream featuring pandas from the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. (en.ipanda.com) Nothing can ever replace Mei Xiang and her as-yet-unnamed female cub in our hearts, but there are still a lot of places you can watch other pandas online. If you want domestic baby pandas, the Atlanta Zoo has not one but two baby pandas, also not named yet, that make appearances on its panda cam. (Fun fact: Pandas are typically not named until 100 days after birth.) For adult pandas, the San Diego Zoo runs a panda cam, as does the Memphis Zoo. If you're willing to watch pandas overseas, there's a site with streams from the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in the Sichuan province in Southwest China featuring an awful lot of pandas ranging from cubs to adults. Unfortunately, as of posting time, it is night there. Other exotic animals Giraffe cam at the Houston Zoo. Where they also apparently keep zebras in the same enclosure! (HoustonZoo.org) But if you just want exotic animals and don't care if they're pandas, your options open up even more. The Houston Zoo runs giraffe, chimpanzee and elephant cams among others. The Toledo Zoo can help you out with elephants too, as well as primates, seals and polar bears. If you want to be freed from the confines of zoos, Explore.org offers several cams of animals in the wild — like this one of bears in Alaska. Unfortunately, some of their cams (including most of the bear ones) appear to be run by the National Park Service, and it's not clear if they will remain up throughout a shutdown since most of their staff is being furloughed. But luckily, their bison cam is from Canada, so it will probably stay intact. Puppies! It's sleeping! (The Pet Collective Youtube channel) Let's be honest, finding these is about as easy as Googling "puppy cam." And


The $20 Diner’s 10 favorite Chinese restaurants in the D.C. area

Shaanxi cold steamed noodles are on the menu at Panda Gourmet in the District. (Amanda Voisard/For The Washington Post) From the moment my review was published in August 2013, I started hearing complaints about Panda Gourmet. It’s on the ground floor of a dumpy motel! It’s hard to reach when traveling east on New York Avenue NE! The staff has all the warmth of test dummies! I’ve heard these criticisms, and, sometimes, I’ve experienced them personally. But even when my server seemed to enter a witness protection program after dropping off our dishes, I could never find room in my heart to hold that against Panda Gourmet. Maybe it’s because my heart — and my tongue and brain — were always in a fevered state from the Sichuan chili oil. Panda Gourmet has become a semi-frequent haunt for a group of my friends that goes by a nickname that’s unprintable in these modest pages. We earned our handle for believing in the value of loud, boisterous living, even in public spaces. We get a lot of dirty looks. One member of our merry band of miscreants is quick to recommend a return trip to the Panda, which usually inspires a small sigh from the critic in me, who doesn’t want to revisit a proven restaurant when so many are yet to be discovered. Chefs Chao Lee, Goyux Young and Lin Du prepare food at Panda Gourmet. (Amanda Voisard/For The Washington Post) But then my friends and I will sit around a giant table, the lazy Susan groaning under the weight of our Sichuan and Shaanxi dishes, and I’ll remember all over again why I love the place. Panda Gourmet sweats the important details — the depth and quality of its chili oil, the texture of its house-made noodles, the potency of its spices — without losing track of other essential Chinese elements, such as saltiness, bitterness and sweetness. The place may have its faults, but rarely do they appear on the table, which is why Panda Gourmet tops my list of favorite Chinese restaurants in the area. To be frank, this list was trickier to compile than I imagined. Our region is rich with the cooking of Chinese immigrants, whether they’re from Sichuan, Hunan, Shanghai or some other province in a country that has had a huge influence on the world’s pantry. The list forced me to boot some restaurants


Here’s what ‘Gravity’ gets right and wrong about space

Kevin Grazier, the science adviser for Alfonso Cuaron’s new film "Gravity," has a bone to pick with Twitter-famous astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson. (Warner Bros.) “I have never seen people nitpick such a good film to death,” complained the former NASA engineer and UCLA professor, who has also consulted on series like "Battlestar Galactica." Tyson made headlines last week with a series of tweets that claimed, in unusually curmudgeonly fashion, that the film mucked up more or less every scientific phenomena it set out to capture — including the one for which it’s named. He made several very good points. It’s a movie, after all. (“No one said it was a documentary,” notes Grazier.) But as Tyson clarified in a later follow-up on Facebook, “Gravity” also got lots of things right. And, perhaps more importantly, it got millions of viewers interested in topics they’d usually groan through in high school physics. With that said, we decided to try fact-checking the film’s science ourselves, with the help of Grazier and NASA engineer Robert Frost, a man well-known to Q&A site Quora for his lucid explanations of everything from orbital mechanics to airplane design. Warning: Many, many spoilers (and a lot of physics sorcery) follows. Read this after you’ve seen the movie. 1. The Hubble Space Telescope, the International Space Station and China’s Tiangong-1 are close enough to travel between them. False. In fact, when Cuaron asked Grazier about that particular issue, Grazier told him the closest the two would ever possibly get was “the distance between here and Mexico.” They were in Hollywood at the time. 2. You can point at an object in space and head toward it, as George Clooney and Sandra Bullock do more or less throughout the whole movie. False. When a satellite — let’s say the Hubble — circles Earth, two carefully balanced forces are making that happen: gravity, which pulls the satellite toward Earth, and centripetal force, a product of gravity that keeps the satellite swinging in an ellipse around it. As you get closer to Earth, gravity’s pull gets stronger — which means that centripetal force must also get stronger to balance it. Translation: A lower altitude means a higher orbital speed, and vice versa. That makes sense, right? But it also makes travel between, say, a destroyed satellite and the ISS extremely difficult. Every time you speed up or slow down, your altitude changes


If we imagine the parachute cords are a rubber band, what would happen? The band would stretch and the energy needed to stretch it would be taken from Ryan. She has a kinetic energy equal to half her mass times her velocity squared. Her mass can't change, so her velocity would go down. Now, what affect does Kowalski have on the situation? There is no force acting on him. But he too has a kinetic energy equal to half his mass times his velocity squared. So, if the rubber band is to slow Ryan to a stop it also has to slow Kowalski. So now it has to absorb her energy and his energy. Kowalski's interpretation of the situation is that the parachute cords can't absorb that much energy. So, he figures that if he lets go of her hand, the parachute cords, instead of absorbing Ryan's kinetic energy AND his kinetic energy, will only have to absorb Ryan's kinetic energy. 4. Bullock could jet around on a fire extinguisher. In order for the fire extinguisher trick to work, the extinguisher would have needed to sit right at her “center of mass.” Imagine that kind of like the center of a seesaw with equal weights on both seats — it’s the point where, if a pivot were placed there, the object would stay balanced and in place. Spraying a fire extinguisher from this point would push a balanced, upright Bullock in whatever direction she wanted to go. But spraying from any other point would throw her off balance and spin her around — kind of like pushing someone on an ice rink in the shoulder, Frost says. This spinning would be faster and more disorienting than on Earth, though, because there’s no resistance in space. (For what it's worth, other NASA alums have also complained that American spacecraft don't carry this style of extinguisher.) 5. A satellite, once destroyed, can form a catastrophic cloud of space debris. In fact, it’s happened before. In January 2007, the Chinese unleashed more than 1,600 pieces of debris into the atmosphere when they destroyed one of their own satellites with a missile. The impact of that missile strike sent the debris into orbits much different from the original satellite’s, creating, in Frost’s words, a cloud of debris “enveloping the Earth and [continuing] to threaten any spacecraft between those two altitudes.” Here’s one very scary


Why many veterans are sticking with Trump, even after he insulted a Gold Star family

police officer. “He’s like our own dad almost.” Delrossi admits that his affection for Trump is not entirely rational. “It’s almost one of those things where it’s like where your heart says Donald Trump and your brain says Hillary Clinton,” he said. Trump’s frequent calls to fix the Department of Veterans Affairs have resonated with veterans, although several said they are waiting to hear more specifics. The candidate in July released a 10-point plan to improve the department, calling for changes that include firing “corrupt and incompetent VA executives who let our veterans down,” boosting funding for job-placement services and improving mental health-care services, but details are slim. “Vets aren’t being taken care of like they should be no matter which way you try to twist it,” said Kaylea Schneider, a former Marine staff sergeant, who said she does not agree with everything Trump says but appreciates his views on the military and foreign policy. Trump’s perceived patriotism and calls for a fiercer response to the Islamic State and other insurgent groups have drawn support from veterans frustrated with the rules of engagement under which the U.S. military operates, several veterans said. The specifics of those rules are classified but are broadly understood to outline circumstances under which U.S. troops can attack enemy fighters in an effort to prevent civilian casualties. “When you send our guys — my brothers-in-arms, my sisters-in-arms — into a combat zone, we need to go to win, not to play nice with the populace,” said former Army Pfc. Chris Richardson, who drove convoys in Iraq’s Diyala province in 2008 and 2009 and attended Trump’s recent rally in Fayetteville, N.C., in a leather vest adorned with an Iraq War veteran patch. “If they shoot at us, we need to be able to shoot back and trust that we’re not going to be charged with a crime when we get back stateside.” But Trump’s rhetoric has not won over everyone. Brandon Friedman, a former Army captain who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and later served in the Obama administration, pointed to a litany of remarks made by the Republican presidential candidate that disparaged the military and veterans. He also pointed to Trump’s lack of support for the post-9/11 GI Bill, a piece of legislation that has helped thousands of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan receive a higher education, and Trump’s claims that the U.S. military “doesn’t


How and why convicted Atlanta teachers cheated on standardized tests

APS principals and teachers were frequently told by Beverly Hall and her subordinates that excuses for not meeting targets would not be tolerated. When principals and teachers could not reach their targets, their performance was criticized, their jobs were threatened and some were terminated. Over time, the unnreasonable pressure to meet annual APS targets led some employees to cheat on the CRCT. The refusal of Beverly Hall and her top administrators to accept anything other than satisfying targets created an environment where achieving the desired end result was more important than the students’ education. To satisfy annual targets and AYP, test answer sheets were altered, fabricated, and falsely certified. Test scores that were inflated as a result of cheating were purported to be the actual achievement of targets through legitimately obtained improvements in students’ performance when, in fact, the conspirators knew those results had been obtained through cheating and did not reflect students’ actual academic performance. As part of the conspiracy, employees of APS who failed to satisfy targets were terminated or threatened with termination, while others who achieved targets through cheating were publicly praised and financially rewarded. For example, teachers who reported other teachers who cheated were terminated, while teachers who were caught cheating were only suspended. The message from Beverly Hall was clear: there were to be no exceptions and no excuses for failure to meet targets. Beverly Hall placed unreasonable emphasis on achieving targets; protected and rewarded those who achieved targets through cheating; terminated principals who failed to achieve targets; and ignored suspicions CRCT score gains at schools within APS. As a result, cheating became more and more prevalent within APS, until by the time the 2009 CRCT was administered, cheating was taking place in a majority of APS’s 83 elementary and middle schools. This was substantiated by GOSA’s erasure analysis, which identified 43 APS elementary and middle schools with at least one out of four classrooms within those schools having a statistically improbable number of erasures changing wrong answers to right answers. GOSA’s erasure analysis identified an additional 9 APS elementary and middle schools as having at least one out of five classrooms with a statistically improbable number of erasures changing wrong answers to right answers. Confessions by dozens of APS employees subsequently confirmed what GOSA’s statistical analysis indicated; widespread cheating occurred on the 2009 CRCT. It was further a part of the conspiracy and endeavor


Lifeline for elephants: Ivory price halves in China after Xi pledges ban

Knights. “Though there is much work to be done, this is good news for Africa’s elephants, and the Chinese government should be credited for this progress. There’s light at the end of the tunnel for elephants, instead of extinction.” In October, a senior U.S. government wildlife official said China’s ban on the ivory trade could be in place within a year or so, describing it as a “huge deal.” But IFAW’s Asia regional director Grace Gabriel said there was still some resistance within the Chinese government to the idea of buying back existing stockpiles of legal ivory, with some officials preferring to let stocks run out more gradually. That gradualist approach, she warned, could spark a “buying frenzy” as traders look to shift as much ivory as possible before a ban is put in place. “Any delay in implementing a trade ban is a very dangerous prospect,” she said. China retains a small stock of legal ivory purchased in 2008, which it has been gradually supplying to carving workshops. But this legal trade, experts say, has provided cover for a vast underground illegal trade. Even if a ban is implemented in China, some experts warn that trade could shift across the border into neighboring Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar, where large numbers of outlets already exist supplying endangered wildlife products to Chinese consumers. Some traders may also be preparing to pass off elephant ivory as legal mammoth ivory. "The biggest challenge is enforcement," said Aili Kang, director of the Asia Program at the Wildlife Conservation Society, who is helping to lead a multi-expert study into the illegal ivory trade in China, with a view to advising the Chinese government on how best to implement a ban. Douglas-Hamilton is co-author of a study that found that 100,000 elephants had been killed for their tusks in Africa between 2010 and 2012. He said the latest research showed that “the rates of killing right up to the end of 2014 have not changed significantly for the better,” although there had been a reduction in poaching in Kenya. “It’s a long fight,” he said. “We’ve been through this before, back in the eighties. We beat it then, so we’ve got to try and beat it again.” Watch this video of leading Chinese actress Li Bingbing visiting Africa and learning about the poaching crisis for herself. Li BingBing's new mini-documentary on Elephants and Ivory Poaching-Short Version


The African Ebola outbreak that shows no sign of slowing

142 people have been killed — and 242 infected — in an outbreak that began months ago in the forested villages of southeast Guinea and shot to the capital city. It has dominated headlines in Africa since. The World Health Organization, which says it may spread for months, cautions that more deaths could be on the way. “As the incubation period for [Ebola] can be up to three weeks, it is likely that the Guinean health authorities will report new cases in the coming weeks and additional suspected cases may also be identified in neighboring countries,” the WHO reported on Tuesday. The disease, for which there is no cure, is terrifying in part because of the gruesome way it kills. It predominantly spreads through blood, secretions and other bodily fluids. At first, the WHO says, symptoms include intense weakness and fever, but then the sickness deepens with bouts of diarrhea, vomiting, and internal and external bleeding. There are several theories explaining the outbreak, Africa’s worst in seven years and the first to kill in the continent’s west. One was published last week in the New England Journal that established “the emergence of a new EBOV strain in Guinea,” which had “evolved in parallel” to other disease veins. It said the sickness first appeared in December — substantially earlier than other estimates. “The [virus] introduction seems to have happened in early December 2013 or even before,” the researchers said. “It is suspected that the virus was transmitted for months before the outbreak became apparent because of clusters of cases in the [Guinea] hospitals of Guéckédou and Macenta. This length of exposure appears to have allowed many transmission chains and thus increased the number of cases of Ebola virus disease.” The scientists said data suggests “a single introduction of the virus into the human population. … Further investigation is ongoing to identify the presumed animal source of the outbreak.” The animal that’s most likely behind the outbreak is the fruit bat, which pervades large swaths of west Africa. Officials suspect someone handled the meat of a contaminated bat, fell ill, and then spread the infection. The fatality rate, the study concluded, was 86 percent “among the early confirmed and 71 percent among the clinically suspected cases,” a rate consistent with previous Ebola outbreaks. “The emergence of the virus in Guinea highlights the risk of [Ebola] outbreaks in the whole West African sub-region.”


China, Malaysia and the weird world of panda diplomacy

accepted Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan. The bears predictably became instant celebrities, prompting reports of "pandamania" in the press. But generally it's seen as a success, and few people raise eyebrows about it any more. China is quite open in its intentions with the bears: As Chinese ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai explained in an op-ed for The Post late last year, "there are actually two Chinese ambassadors in Washington: me and the panda cub at the National Zoo. " An airport worker lifts a cage housing one of China's two pandas, eight-year-old Fu Wa (male) into a vehicle to be transported to the National Zoo upon their arrival at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, in Sepang, outside Kuala Lumpur, 21 May 2014. EPA/SHAMSHAHRIN SHAMSUDIN China had agreed to the loan of Feng and Fu back in 2012, in a bid to mark 40 years of diplomatic relations between China and Malaysia and cement the two country's burgeoning economic relationship. But after flight 370 disappeared, that relationship suddenly looked fraught. Some 30,000 Chinese tourists cancelled vacation plans to Malaysia after the incident, and Chinese Ambassador Huang Huikang publicly rebuked Malaysian authorities for being too “inexperienced and lacking the capacity” to carry out the investigation properly. Flight 370 remains missing, but China has recently dialed back its criticism of Malaysia, perhaps realizing it overstepped a boundary. And while the arrival of the pandas was delayed for a month out of respect to those missing and their families, the final handover does appear to have been a success so far. Whether the pandas can help to smooth things over further only remains to be seen. But what's so great about pandas anyway? The animals are also notoriously expensive to keep and breed, with Malaysia having reportedly allocated 60 million ringgit ($18.6 million) for Feng and Fu. As my colleague Ishaan Tharoor once wrote, the animals' cute reputation isn't always reflected in reality. "Mean-spirited, mate-abusing, progeny-mauling, deviant monsters," is the way he described them. There's also the far murkier issue of the so-called "panda curse." A 1973 BBC documentary once pointed out that a number of world leaders who received pandas were soon forced out of office, with Nixon, Britain's Edward Heath, and Japan's Kakuei Tanaka among them. Consider these points together and the bears don't sound like much of a prize. This picture taken on May 13, 2014 shows a


How Brexit could hurt British education

Europe, and gain access to other EU markets as foreign providers. EU membership also opens up additional funding streams (e.g. Horizon 2020) and opportunities for faculty and students to gain international experience through such programmes as Erasmus. Our ability to collaborate with experts and institutions from other European states is also assisted by being at the heart of the EU and the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Whilst the likes of Switzerland and Norway have strong business school communities without EU membership, there are material advantages arising from being at the core of the Union. Steve Spriggs, managing director of William Clarence Education (a leading tutoring and college placement firm in London), wrote on the British Huffington Post: Many schools employ foreigners and around 14% of university staff are from Europe. No one knows what Brexit would mean but it can offer no guarantee of immigration status. If EU nationals working in Britain lose certain rights, such as free NHS care, will they up sticks and go home? Schools claim they will lose 400,000 teachers if the Brexiteers win. We already have a shortage of quality teachers — this would only exacerbate the problem. If the quality of teaching dips, parents who pay for education will start to look elsewhere. And what of the pupils? Some 5,000 children from EU countries are currently at British boarding schools. Brexit would add bureaucracy and complexity to their travel arrangements and make parents reconsider. Around 5.5% of higher education students are from EU countries. An exodus of international students would mean a vast net outflow of money from the UK from associated industries: student accommodation, cultural tourist events to name but a few. Yet voting leave would probably have some benefits. No doubt, the pound would weaken, which could make private education more affordable to international parents. There is an argument that this would cause an increase in the level of international applications as a result of this new found competitivenes; and a knock on effect to all the associated trades. However, the more likely outcome is, the schools in question will see an opportunity to increase fees to take the slack in currency weakness — and to bolster profits. After all, they are running a business too. This would lead to an even higher fee level for domestic families and even less affordability for domestic children to attend the very best institutions.


This new weather satellite is a game changer — if it can survive the journey to launch

dividing rope between us. We’re both wearing white clean suits, but Kindblad’s is more technical and it covers her face. That’s why she’s sitting on the satellite side of the divider and I’m not. “I love our launches, even though you’re far away from home for a while,” she tells me. “It’s like a little family. I see these guys more than my own family.” It’s Kindblad’s third launch campaign. Until now, she has mainly worked on commercial military communications and satellites. She has an airframe and power plant license, which the FAA requires for anyone performing aircraft maintenance. Hired right out of college, she has been with Lockheed for eight years. (Angela Fritz/The Washington Post) “I’m what’s known as a blanket lady,” Kindblad says casually. “There’s only two of us.” She points to the upright satellite, which is covered in a protective material that looks a lot like tinfoil. “You see how everything on the outside is covered?” she asks. “That’s one of my specialties. They call them ‘garbage bags,’ but it’s MLI — multi-layer insulation.” It’s the last but possibly the most important thing that goes on the satellite. It protects the instruments from the harmful radiation of space. “That’s the reason they wanted me on this project, for that work,” Kindblad tells me. She loves her job. Behind her, I watch white figures crawl all around the spacecraft to check and double-check every bolt before moving on to the next step. My imagination runs away with visions of a slip or a dropped wrench. After all, these white figures are only human. “Everyone has to be very close to the spacecraft for the things that we’re doing,” Jeffrey Coyne says. He’s the assembly, test and launch operations manager for GOES-R. “You have to make sure that you know where every part of you is.” He chuckles at the mildly irritated rumblings among our non-Lockheed group about the progress speed. “Yeah, it doesn’t move fast here,” Coyne says, smiling. “But that’s intentional.” The strict, step-by-step, checked and rechecked process exists for a good reason — enormously expensive mishaps can occur without it. Lockheed faced this reality in 2003 when a NOAA satellite slid off its mount and fell to the floor as engineers attempted to move it into the vertical position. A NASA investigation concluded that the accident happened because a technician removed the 24 bolts that secured


‘Back-up husbands,’ ’emotional affairs’ and the rise of digital infidelity

sex researchers have recently begun to treat “remote infidelity” — emotional cheating, via social media or smartphone — as a valid topic of research. And it’s on the rise, the noted relationship scholar and anthropology professor Helen Fisher told Salon. “If you’re rushing away from the dinner table with your family to check your e-mail,” Fisher said, “it’s affecting your relationship.” … and these days, who doesn’t check their e-mail at dinner? At some level, this idea of “digital cheating” or “remote infidelity” is just a very old concept in new, trendy clothes. People in relationships have always had back-burners, the Indiana researchers point out — and emotional infidelity, a sort of destructive, unconsummated affair, went down in bars and over cubicle walls long before we had Gchat records of it. To some extent, the Internet has only made these things more visible, better-documented: There are finally texts and emails to back up our suspicions. But there are other things going on here, as well. Conversing by text or direct message is so inherently one-to-one, and so impossibly easy, that the technology lends a kind of intimacy to its contents — a text can be sent from anywhere, with anyone around, and no one else will know what it says. (Pew) And then, of course, there’s that much-discussed specter of the online dating industry: the dual blessing and curse of choice. Multiple studies have demonstrated that people who use social media and cellphones have much larger personal networks than people who do not — about a third larger, on average, Pew found in 2011. And on top of those existing connections, the Internet represents a previously unavailable, untapped source of endless new connections, endless choices. That’s critical, because the strength of a relationship relies on three things, broadly speaking: satisfaction, emotional investment, and the availability of alternative partners. And that is, this new research suggests, exactly what social media promises — not constant temptation, exactly, but the constant, casual reminder that alternatives exist. Several years ago, when I first met my boyfriend, I remember being wildly offended by a particularly cynical, loud-mouthed acquaintance who mansplained relationships as a kind of mutual settling: “He’s the best you can get, and you’re the best he can get.” “That’s a really grim take on humanity,” I assured him. But in terms of social science, there’s actually some truth to that take (… even


As it fights for its life, the A-10 will face off against the F-35 in close-air support test

said they remain committed to providing support from the air at especially close ranges to those troops on the ground. “Delivering fires to troops engaged in close proximity to the enemy is a contact sport and we are committed to the F-35 as a critical component of this joint and combined team,” Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, the Air Force’s Chief of Staff. The United States Air Force Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., receives its first F-35A Lightning II in January 2015. A band of powerful—and vocal— members of Congress has been pushing back on the Air Force’s attempts to retire the plane for more than a year. Led by Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and John McCain (R-Ariz), the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, these lawmakers have said the A-10 is a vital part of the Pentagon’s arsenal and that getting rid of it could endanger lives. In a statement to The Post Thursday, Ayotte said the country has “an obligation to provide our ground troops the best possible close air support, and I will not support the divestment of the A-10 until an equally or more capable close air support aircraft achieves full operational capability.” Designed to take out Russian tanks during the Cold War, the Warthog earned its reputation as a pugnacious brawler during the 1991 Persian Gulf War when it took out much of Iraq’s tanks artillery and missile sites. It also was called into action in Iraq and Afghanistan, where many troops equated the staccato sound of its gunfire with salvation. Gilmore said that since the F-35 is supposed to “replace the A-10 across the board” his office has long planned to evaluate how the planes compare at performing CAS. “This is not something that has just popped up” in light of the controversy, Gilmore said. “Comparison testing is nothing new,” he said, adding that the Pentagon did comparison tests with the F-22 and other weapons systems. And he said it would also test the F-35 against other aircraft as well, likely including the F/A-18, which the F-35 would also replace. If the testing reveals a deficiency in the F-35’s ability to support troops at close range, the Air Force “will utilize all of the resources we have to be able to meet that CAS requirement if we find out that the F-35 is unable to do that at that point,” said


What a deadly typhoon in the Philippines can tell us about climate adaptation

of those who did receive warnings before Haiyan hit simply had nowhere to go, thanks to the nation's far-flung island geography. What's more, hours before Haiyan hit, Philippine authorities managed to move 800,000 people to sturdier evacuation centers — churches or schools. Yet many of those structures couldn't withstand the storm's ferocity. “Sometimes, no matter how much and how carefully you prepare, the disaster is just too big,” Zhang Qiang, an expert on disaster mitigation at Beijing Normal University, told the AP. 4) Where will the money come from for adaptation? Consider, again, the Philippines. The country's officials estimate that each typhoon season already knocks about 2 percent off GDP each year — basic reconstruction is already a struggle, let alone building infrastructure to prepare for worse disasters in the future. The Philippines' stated position is that wealthy countries should pitch in to help with the latter. This is always a contentious issue in global talks. Developing countries like the Philippines argue that the big emitters should help pay for climate adaptation — after all, nations such as the United States and Europe and China were the ones who put all that carbon in the atmosphere. (The United States is already sending emergency aid in the wake of Haiyan, $20 million so far, as is Britain and Australia, but this is usually considered a separate conversation.) Wealthier nations, for their part, often argue that it's difficult to disentangle how much, exactly, they owe here. After all, as we've seen above, the devastation from Haiyan is only partly due to climate change. Things like poor construction and shoddy infrastructure played a major role here. How do you separate out all those responsibilities? How do you assess blame for climate change specifically? Those debates have often bogged down climate talks — and even when differences do get resolved, the money isn't always forthcoming. Back in 2009, the world's developed countries pledged $30 billion in climate aid, which would rise over time. But a recent report from Oxfam found that most developed countries have yet to make any concrete plans to follow through. "We have received no climate finance to adapt or to prepare ourselves for typhoons and other extreme weather we are now experiencing," Saño told the Guardian. "It cannot be a way of life that we end up running always from storms." Related: Everything you need to know about "super typhoons."


Software patent reform just died in the House, thanks to IBM and Microsoft

inevitably face patent threats is itself a significant disincentive for innovation. So it's far from clear that subjecting software patents to greater scrutiny would be bad for innovation. Last week, IBM escalated its campaign against expanding the CBM program. An IBM spokesman told Politico, "While we support what Mr. Goodlatte’s trying to do on trolls, if the CBM is included, we’d be forced to oppose the bill." Sources close to the negotiations say the campaign against the CBM provisions of the Goodlatte bill has succeeded. The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a markup of the legislation Wednesday, and Goodlatte will introduce a "manager's amendment" to remove the CBM language from his own bill. IBM hailed that change in a Monday letter to Goodlatte. The revised legislation would still take significant steps to curb abusive litigation tactics favored by trolls. But troll tactics are merely a symptom of the patent system's dysfunction. The more fundamental issue is the large number of low-quality patents, and the Goodlatte bill no longer has a provision to deal with that problem. But the fight against bad software patents isn't over. After Goodlatte's about-face, the House of Representatives is unlikely to pass legislation expanding the CBM program. But CBM expansion has a powerful supporter in the Senate. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who was the driving force behind the original CBM program in 2011, remains determined to expand the CBM program in the Senate's patent reform legislation. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has signaled his willingness to work with Schumer on the proposal. "Creating a low-cost alternative to litigation in order to address the poor-quality patents that are currently plaguing startups and small businesses is a cornerstone of effective reform," Schumer said in a statement Tuesday night. "I am continuing to have productive conversations with my colleagues and stakeholders in the Senate, and fully expect the critical issue of patent quality to be addressed in the Senate legislation." Schumer will have powerful allies. The White House endorsed CBM expansion in June. A broad coalition of brick-and-mortar industries, including casinos, supermarkets, chain restaurants, airlines, the printing industry, real estate agents, hotels and retailers, endorsed the concept in a letter last month. Still, companies with large software patent portfolios have a lot to lose if their patents are subjected to serious scrutiny. So, Schumer won't get his way without a fight.


That SpaceX explosion blew up one of Facebook’s most ambitious projects

An explosion at a SpaceX launch site in Florida occurred during a static test fire. The explosion destroyed a satellite that Facebook help fund which was designed to provide Internet access to areas in Africa. SpaceX is reeling after an early-morning explosion took out its rocket on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral. The incident is a major setback for chief executive Elon Musk. But odds are the tragic news is disappointing another U.S. tech billionaire, too. You see, the rocket destroyed Thursday was bearing a satellite that Facebook intended to use to beam Internet access to developing nations. When the rocket went up in smoke, so did the cargo inside, according to SpaceX. "SpaceX can confirm that in preparation for today's static fire, there was an anomaly on the pad resulting in the loss of the vehicle and its payload,” the company said in a statement. “Per standard procedure, the pad was clear and there were no injuries." Last year, Facebook's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said he was eager to use the AMOS-6 satellite to deliver broadband connectivity to hard-to-reach parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Facebook has some 84 million users in the region. "To connect people living in remote regions, traditional connectivity infrastructure is often difficult and inefficient, so we need to invent new technologies," he wrote in a Facebook post in October. Zuckerberg has spoken proudly of the initiative to connect the world's next billion people to the Web. On Monday, Zuckerberg met with Pope Francis and presented him with a model of the Aquila drone that Facebook expects to help beam Internet down to the Earth. The drones are meant to work together with Facebook's satellite plans by essentially creating a single wireless network in the atmosphere. The company has also developed terrestrial equipment that can either act as standalone mobile data hotspots or as a hub for a local data network. A Falcon 9 rocket set to take a satellite into space on Labor Day weekend exploded during testing days before. Courtesy of http://www.uslaunchreport.com/. "As I'm here in Africa, I'm deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX's launch failure destroyed our satellite that would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent," Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post Thursday. "Fortunately, we have developed other technologies like Aquila that will connect people as well." It's unclear what Facebook plans to do next to compensate


How the Hyperloop could get you from LA to San Francisco in 30 minutes for $20

Artist's rendering of the Hyperloop (Elon Musk) The details of the most hyped transportation technology since the Segway have finally been revealed: Elon Musk's Hyperloop Alpha. It is (surprise!) a series of tubes. Specifically, low-pressure tubes suspended by pylons. Here's how Bloomberg Businessweek explains the action inside the tubes: [P]ods would be mounted on thin skis made out of inconel, a trusted alloy of SpaceX that can withstand high pressure and heat. Air gets pumped through little holes in the skis to make an air cushion, Musk says. The front of the pod would have a pair of air jet inlets—sort of like the Concorde. An electric turbo compressor would compress the air from the nose and route it to the skis and to the cabin. Magnets on the skis, plus an electromagnetic pulse, would give the pod its initial thrust; reboosting motors along the route would keep the pod moving. In theory, the pods would be propelled at high speeds just below the sound barrier, and the set-up would be powered by solar panels running along the top of the system. Musk's plans outline an initial route between Los Angeles and San Francisco with an estimated travel time of 30 minutes. His analysis suggests it could be built for under $6 billion, paying for itself in 20 years with a ticket price of $20 in today's prices. Of course, Musk's plans are no more than that. Musk isn't planning to develop any of the technology he describes in his white paper; nor does he have any plans to tackle the difficult political and logistical problems of actually getting the system built. So while it's a nice idea, there's no way to know if it's practical without a lot more work.


Confused about the NSA’s quantum computing project? This MIT computer scientist can explain.

D-Wave sells what it describes as a quantum computer, but Aaronson is skeptical about the device's capabilities. (Steve Jurvetson) My Washington Post colleagues have reported on an National Security Agency program to to build a quantum computer. In principle, the unique capabilities of a quantum computer could allow it to easily crack cryptographic codes that cannot be cracked by even the most powerful conventional computers. But right now, quantum computing is more a theoretical research topic than a practical technology. To understand how quantum computers could work and what the implications would be if they did, I talked to Scott Aaronson. Aaronson is a Computer Science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has written extensively about quantum computation and its implications. We spoke by phone on Wednesday. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity. Timothy B. Lee: Let's start at the beginning, how does a quantum computer differ from a conventional computer? Scott Aaronson: The easiest way to say it is that a quantum computer would exploit quantum mechanics, laws of physics that are not familiar in everyday life but have been familiar to physics for [almost] 100 years. It's hard to get across with newspaper-friendly analogies. Quantum mechanics is a framework for subatomic physics which is probabilistic. You can only calculate the probability that an electron or proton will be in a certain place when you make a measurement. That's not the most important part of it. We use probability all the time in everyday life. But quantum mechanics has a completely different way to find probability. People talk about a 20 percent chance of rain tomorrow. But nobody talks about a negative 20 percent chance of rain. That would be nonsense. [But in quantum mechanics], to find the probability that a photon will be found on the screen or the probability that a computer will come up with a particular number, you have to add up [a bunch of numbers called amplitudes]. Amplitudes can be positive or negative, or even complex numbers. What's important is there are different ways that something can happen, and some of those ways have positive amplitude and some have negative amplitude. They can cancel each other out. That's the thing that's totally unfamiliar to us. [In a famous physics experiment called the double-slit experiment], the two slits that the light can travel through can interfere with each other


Improving the reliability of medical imaging technology

Dr. Kyle Myers helps develop standards for the medical imaging devices that doctors use to diagnose illnesses, to ensure the equipment provides the most accurate information possible. The pictures of the human body taken by magnetic resonance imaging technology, ultrasound machines and CT scans are used to identify a wide range of ailments, from cancer and heart problems to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. “It’s really important that we can precisely measure image quality to ensure better patient treatment,” said Myers, director of the Division of Imaging and Applied Mathematics at Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Devices and Radiological Health. “We are making sure imaging devices work better and that the people who read the images are able to do so more accurately,” she added. The reliability of the information gleaned from these devices depends on a number of factors—the quality of the images, the diagnostic methods used to assess those images and the skill of the radiologists who interpret the information. (Sam Kittner/kittner.com) “The impact of her work is absolutely on all of us. Every one of us has medical images, and we want to be sure that the instruments taking the measures are up to snuff and that the images are presented to the patient and radiologist in the best way possible,” said Dr. Harrison Barrett, professor of optical sciences, mathematics and radiology at the University of Arizona. In the past three years, Myers has made major advances in the setting of assessment standards for the radiological image quality of new state-of-the-art technology, including 3D breast imaging systems, computer-assisted diagnosis algorithms for detecting lung, breast and colon cancers and for images sent remotely via smart phone applications. “Her work is cutting-edge and critical,” said Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health. “Her research is helping to bring new technologies to market.” Shuren said that in developing assessment standards for medical imaging technologies, Myers is helping to better detect medical problems and reduce the possibility of missed diagnoses. “Traditionally, the diagnosis only has been as good as the skill of the person reading the film. People are great pattern recognizers, but they are fallible,” said Shuren. “Her work has improved the ability to diagnose disease. She’s improved the accuracy of radiological diagnostic tests, thereby helping to get the right people life-saving treatment.” In addition to helping ensure quality and accuracy, Myers heads


People in Silicon Valley yawned at the shutdown. They shouldn’t have.

The Capitol is seen as a partial government shutdown enters its third week, in Washington, Monday, Oct. 14, 2013. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) "If companies shut down, the stock market would collapse," venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya said in a recent podcast with Jason Calacanis. "If the government shuts down, nothing happens and we all move on, because it just doesn't matter. Stasis in the government is actually good for all of us." This view is surprisingly common, especially in Silicon Valley. But it's wrong: Washington's growing dysfunction is a big problem for everyone, even high-flying technology companies. It's true, of course, that Washington, D.C. isn't a major source of new innovations the way the San Francisco Bay Area is. It never has been and probably never will be. But what governments provide are stable, predictable platforms on which innovative companies can build. Take roads, for example. America's transportation system hasn't changed significantly in decades, and no one looks to the Department of Transportation for major breakthroughs. But that doesn't mean the government role in transportation is unimportant. If the government stopped fixing potholes and maintaining bridges, eventually the nation's transportation system would collapse, taking much of the economy with it. The same point applies to many other government functions. The federal government manages the air-traffic control system, oversees the allocation of wireless spectrum, and polices fraud and hacking online. The courts adjudicate contract disputes and determine the scope of copyright and patent protections. None of these functions directly create wealth. But when the feds stop performing them well, it has big effects for the rest of the economy, including in Silicon Valley. Perhaps the most important example is the financial system. The federal government controls the money supply and regulates the nation's banks. When the government performs those roles poorly, the result can be economic chaos that's bad for every company in America. Up to a point, gridlock in Congress can be beneficial. As Mark Zuckerberg put the point last month, "the system is set up to avoid making catastrophic mistakes." If gridlock forces policymakers to move deliberately and seek input from many stakeholders before making major changes, that can be helpful. But we've now gone way beyond that point. Gridlock isn't just preventing the government from making disruptive changes, it's actually becoming a source of disruption in its own right. Shutdowns, poorly-targeted spending cuts, and filibusters are preventing the


Zika causes a unique syndrome of devastating birth defects

late first and early second trimester, although third-trimester infections were also reported among infants with birth defects. The five features described in the report are an initial list of clinical findings. It’s becoming increasingly clear, however, that the full spectrum of health problems caused by a Zika infection won’t be known for months and even years after birth. At a conference in September on Zika’s effect on children, sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, researchers described an array of problems associated with Zika exposure beyond microcephaly, mostly stemming from the virus’s harm to the nervous system. Children born to Zika-infected mothers will need to be regularly monitored because some problems don't show up until months later, said Catherine Spong, an obstetrician-gynecologist and the institute’s acting director. “Although the severe cases are teaching us a lot, the impact is likely much more broad, and these impacts, although less striking, may be much more widespread and may need more monitoring and interventions,” she said. These images show the different types of damage caused by congenital Zika infection. (JAMA Pediatrics/Cynthia A. Moore, J. Erin Staples, et. al) Researchers say the purpose of the latest report is to describe what is known about the congenital syndrome. The description is intended to help health-care providers “better recognize the pattern of birth defects associated with congenital Zika virus infection,” said Cynthia Moore, a clinical geneticist and birth-defects expert for the CDC and lead author of the report. Doing that will help providers evaluate and coordinate care for affected babies and their families, she said. At least 1,005 pregnant women have Zika infections in the 50 states and the District of Columbia; 25 U.S. infants have been born with Zika-related birth defects and an additional five pregnancies are known to have resulted in miscarriage, stillbirths or terminations with evidence of birth defects. The mosquito-borne disease suspected of causing serious birth defects is expected to spread to all countries in the Americas except Canada and Chile and remains a global health emergency, according to the World Health Organization. Read more: Lifelong care, heartaches ahead for babies born with Zika Mystery Zika case in Utah was likely spread through sweat or tears New data show a deadly measles complication is more common than thought What you need to know about those new, deadly heart-surgery infections STI rates hit record high as screening clinics close


Eulogizing Mandela, Obama celebrates and scolds

year into his second term, Obama is in a political trough at home after a series of legislative defeats and self-inflicted setbacks. His approval ratings have dipped to near record lows for his administration, with partisanship stuck at stubborn heights. His campaign promise to help guide the nation past its historic divisions -- over race and party and class -- appears as elusive today as when he took office. Mandela, imprisoned for decades for leading the opposition to South Africa's white minority rule, faced far longer odds personally and politically than Obama has. As a student at Occidental College awaking to the political life around him, Obama found inspiration in Mandela, imprisoned and uncompromising. He joined the student-led divestment movement, calling it recently his first political act. The euphoric audience inside First National Bank Stadium in Soweto, a former black township, provided a venue for Obama to regain some of that inspiration at a time when his administration appears largely out of new ideas for dealing with political opposition at home. Just as Mandela's life has come to stand for tolerance and forgiveness, the theme of the occasion was reconciliation, political and personal, captured in microcosm by Obama's handshake with Cuban President Raul Castro, who also was invited to deliver a eulogy. Obama then sought out Frederik W. de Klerk, the last white president of South Africa, who shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with Mandela. Obama, cheered warmly by the large crowd, cast himself as a beneficiary of Mandela's movement for racial equality, even though it took place an ocean away from the continent where he began his political life. And in highlighting Mandela's qualities, Obama emphasized ones that he has said mark his own priorities, as a person and politician. "He was practical," a pragmatic president told the audience. "On core principles, he was unyielding," Obama said, echoing the explanations he has given supporters in the past for the sometimes-unpopular deals he has made with congressional Republicans. He added that Mandela "was not afraid to compromise for the sake of a larger goal." "He changed laws but also hearts," the president continued, capturing what has been his own strategy for how to prepare the country, through a mix of legislation and rhetorical persuasion, to accept gay Americans in all aspects of public life. But it was Mandela's imperfections that Obama appeared to find most relevant and resonant, and


‘Battlefield of memory’: Asphalt where a black cemetery is said to have stood

purchased the River Road land, White’s Tabernacle sold a cemetery it owned in the Fort Reno section of Tenleytown. A 1914 Washington Post article mentioned a bill pending before the House of Representatives to allow disinterment of the Tenleytown graves. A later article said the site contained 192 bodies. In a 2015 report marked “confidential,” county senior planner Sandra Youla said the River Road site “likely contained remains disinterred” from the Tenleytown cemetery. The society sold the cemetery in 1959, around the time that the African American families of Westbard began to sell their land and scatter. Historians have been unable to document what happened to the graves. Laszlo Tauber in 1999. (Lois Raimondo/ TWP) River Road, meanwhile, started to boom. One of the most active builders was Laszlo Tauber, a Hungarian Jewish surgeon and Holocaust survivor who made much of his fortune constructing office space to lease to the federal government. He headed a syndicate of other physician-investors that bought land in Westbard. In 1966, Tauber developed plans for the high-rise, designed by prominent D.C. architect John d’Epagnier. The upper floors would be apartments, the lower levels the offices of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. D’Epagnier died in 1977. In 2015, county parks department researchers borrowed documents about the Westwood Tower project from his son Arnold, as part of their work on the land-use plan. On the day senior historian Jamie Kuhns and cultural resources manager Joey Lampl returned the materials, Arnold D’Epagnier offered them his own memories of when the high-rise was built. According to notes written by Kuhns and Lampl after the conversation, d’Epagnier recalled riding a pickup truck with his father and a family priest, “taking burlap bags with bones” from the construction site to Howard Chapel, a historically black cemetery in rural northern Montgomery. The priest and young Arnold fished in a nearby creek while his father dug a makeshift grave, according to the notes, which are on file at the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission. The architect buried the remains, and the priest blessed them. D’Epagnier recanted his story a year later, as Macedonia reviewed the county’s historical findings and began pushing to memorialize the cemetery. “I cannot say with any certainty that my vague recollections . . . are in any way accurate,” he said in an email to Lampl. “I recommend that you not consider any of those details as


7 places where you can have a drink by the fire in the D.C. area

The patio at Proof in Penn Quarter has fire pits and blankets for outdoor dining and drinking. (Photo courtesy of Proof) The blustery wind and frigid temperatures can be awful, but enjoying a drink next to flickering flames is always delightful. As the cold sinks in, try one of these fresh options for fireplaces and fire pits. Bar a Vin The bar at Georgetown's Chez Billy Sud has a wood-burning fireplace and plenty of soul-warming French red wine. 1039 31st St. NW. Hazel Rob Rubba's Shaw restaurant has added fire pits to its attractive patio. Cold-weather menu options have included skewers of Korean barbecue beef or black barbecue chicken for cooking over a tabletop grill, and a hot chocolate prepared with both green and yellow Chartreuse. 808 V St. NW. Proof Fire pits and blankets will help keep guests warm on Proof's revamped patio, but if that's not enough, cocktail guru Adam Bernbach has concocted a new hot buttered cider cocktail, which is served in a thermos. 775 G St. NW. Radiator There are fire pits on the patio of this Logan Circle hotel bar, perfect for sitting around with a glass of wine or a well-crafted cocktail. 1430 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Spider Kelly's Clarendon hotspot Spider Kelly's opened a new back patio over the summer, complete with two large gas fire pits and several overhead heaters. 3181 Wilson Blvd., Arlington. Ten Tigers Parlour The space formerly occupied by Chez Billy in Petworth, which now serves soup dumplings and Asian street food under the direction of chef Tim Ma, has two wood-burning fireplaces: one in the second-floor dining room, and another on the yet-to-open back patio. 3813 Georgia Ave. NW. [Want soup dumplings and $10 cocktails? Try Ten Tigers Parlour in Petworth.] Wunder Garten While the NoMa beer garden has added a tented heated “pavilion” for year-round drinking, hearty drinkers can sip their beers or wine outside by the wood-burning fire pit, weather-permitting. 1101 First St. NE. This post has been updated. It was originally published on Dec 16, 2016. Read more: - Where to find snow day food and drink specials - Where to find pizza and dessert specials for Pi Day - This restaurant serves modern Ethiopian food that you don’t eat with your hands


A university is eliminating its science collection — to expand a running track

adding that the university will try to make sure that remains in Louisiana or at least in the southeastern U.S. The museum itself will remain on campus and open to the public, Pani said, but its planned expansion has been postponed for two years. The situation has sparked anger from the scientific community, which has seen this sort of thing happen before. This is awful. Museum collections are an invaluable and irreplaceable resource to study life on our planet. Shame o… https://t.co/3TyzyqNKjF Not to mention the 3.3 million specimens who were sacrificed for science. These were meant to be studied in perpetuity, not to be thrown out Most of the 1,800 or so natural history collections in the United States are smaller, highly specific collections like the one at ULM. Faced with budget cuts and competing priorities, institutions have been forced to pare back. “The great majority of these are hanging by a thread,” Michael Mares, director of the Sam Noble Museum at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, told Nature in 2015. “They have nobody to care for them.” Last year, the National Science Foundation temporarily suspended its Collections in Support of Biological Research program, which helps pay to organize, maintain and catalogue biological collections. The program has since restarted and is accepting new funding applications. But the NSF's future is unclear — the $7.7 billion agency wasn't even mentioned in the fiscal 2018 budget proposal that the White House released this month. When budgets are cut, research specimens and staff are often the hardest hit. These collections are not on display, and much of the public wouldn't notice their disappearance. But they house about 99 percent of natural history specimens nationwide. They are where most museum science happens. More than 100 North American herbaria — research collections of dried and labeled plants — have been lost since 1997, according to a 2015 report in Nature. The number of curators at several major museums has declined significantly in the same period. When the Field Museum in Chicago fell into debt several years ago, it slashed millions of dollars from its research budget. In 2013, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden laid off several researchers, suspended its science program and donated its 330,000-specimen herbarium elsewhere. These research specimens — and the curators who study them — have immense scientific value, said Larry Page, a curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History.


Robotics are helping paralyzed people walk again, but the price tag is huge

some entrepreneurs are working on cheaper solutions. Silicon Valley start-up SuitX created a lightweight model called the Phoenix. While most exoskeletons have motors powering each joint, the Phoenix simply uses two hip motors. Even so, if approved by the FDA, the device would cost $40,000, according to SuitX. “The rehabilitation marketplace is limited by the number of people who have these conditions,” Kara said. The exoskeletons are “basically handcrafted, which is expensive. If you could up the volume, you could lower the price.” The key would be expanding the user base. One way to do that, he noted, is to sell the devices for purposes other than rehabilitation. Warehouse workers might wear them to assist with lifting heavy loads. Some companies are already testing this idea: Lowe’s, for example, recently outfitted several of employees with exoskeletons as part of a pilot program. The worldwide market for exoskeletons — $97 million now — is expected to grow to $1.9 billion by 2025, according to ABI Research. Kara compared the prospects for exoskeletons to the growth of LiDAR, which uses pulsed lasers to record topographic features. For years, researchers used LiDAR to create 3-D maps of the Earth, but it was expensive. However, the rise of self-driving cars, which use the technology to navigate roadways, fostered improvements in the technology. As a result, Kara said, the price of LiDAR systems has begun to fall and is “expected to drop dramatically, from tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of dollars or less.” Waiting for exoskeleton prices to drop is tremendously frustrating, Barnes said. “We take so much for granted when we don’t have physical problems,” she said. “Like just being able to reach up and grab something in my laundry cabinet without having to break my neck to get it.” She isn’t ready to just accept that she — and others who will face these issues — might never get a sense of greater normalcy. “My biggest reason for standing up tall to them is I want to do it for all those behind me,” she said. “The more it gets approved, the more it can’t get denied.” More from Morning Mix A 10-year-old Virginia girl without a hand wanted to play violin. Now she can. How tech sleuths cracked the mysterious code that turns your printer into a spying tool Fitness trackers are largely inaccurate when counting calories, Stanford researchers say


Inside the stunning fall and war-crimes investigation of an Army Green Beret war hero

Then-Army Capt. Mathew L. Golsteyn is shown here in Afghanistan in 2010. (Photo released by the office of Rep. Duncan Hunter) When President Obama draped the nation’s highest award for combat valor around the neck of an Afghan war hero at the White House in October 2013, a highly decorated Green Beret officer who sat nearby faced an ugly reality: The Army was investigating him on charges of murder and conspiracy. Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn was invited to the ceremony by William D. Swenson, who received the Medal of Honor for his actions in Afghanistan four years earlier. Like Swenson, Golsteyn had braved enemy fire repeatedly, seen fellow soldiers die and voiced deep frustration with the ways he saw U.S. troops restricted in combat. But Golsteyn, a friend of Swenson’s, also may have had a darker chapter to his service. According to Army documents, the young officer disclosed to CIA personnel during a 2011 job interview that he had killed an unarmed Taliban fighter he suspected of being a bombmaker. The documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, also suggest an elaborate cover-up that, if true, could amount to serious war crimes involving not only Golsteyn but fellow Green Beret soldiers. [See document excerpts in the Army’s war-crimes case against Maj. Mathew Golsteyn] However, the service closed a lengthy criminal investigation into the case last year without finding any evidence to charge Golsteyn. His lawyer and other supporters say that the service has exaggerated the claims and selectively released details from the case. The case underscores a stunning fall for a highly regarded officer who has been lauded for his leadership and graduated from the prestigious U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., in 2006. It has also pitted the Army against a war hero. The Army has defended its actions, saying it had conducted its investigation without bias or outside influence. Phillip Stackhouse, Golsteyn’s lawyer, said the narratives laid out in documents from the Army’s Criminal Investigations Command “are taken out of context and are biased.” “It’s fantasy to say he confessed to shooting an unarmed detainee,” he said. Army Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn is shown here in Afghanistan as a captain in 2010. (Photo courtesy the office of Rep. Duncan Hunter) The alleged killing of the Taliban fighter in question took place during the iconic Battle of Marja, during which more than 15,000 coalition troops assaulted a


CDC confirms first U.S. case of MERS virus in Indiana man who traveled to Saudi Arabia

Health officials have confirmed the first case in the United States of the deadly Middle East respiratory syndrome, a virulent and relatively new condition first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012. The unnamed health-care worker is a U.S. citizen who was living in Saudi Arabia, according to an Indiana state health department spokeswoman. He arrived in Chicago about a week ago from Riyadh, the Saudi capital, where he may have picked up the virus while working at a health-care facility, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The man is in insolation and in stable condition at Community Hospital in Munster, Ind., but requires oxygen to help with the symptoms. Federal, state and local officials are working to minimize the risk of the virus spreading. They are monitoring health-care workers and others who may have had close contact with the patient. The patient, identified as male by a person familiar with the investigation, was returning to Indiana and flew on April 24 from Riyadh to London and then Chicago. He took a bus from Chicago to Indiana. Three days later, he began to have shortness of breath, coughing and fever. He went to the hospital’s emergency department April 28, according to the Indiana State Department of Health, and was admitted. Infectious disease experts have been monitoring the virus closely because of the high mortality rate among people with symptoms. The virus has been confirmed in 401 people in 12 countries, and 93 of them died. The cases originated in six countries in the Arabian Peninsula. Most of these people developed severe acute respiratory illness, with fever, cough and shortness of breath. Saudi Arabia reported 26 infections Tuesday and Wednesday. On April 24, the Saudi health ministry confirmed that 13 people contracted the disease and that there had been two more deaths. Experts said seasonal factors may be at work. The largest reported outbreak to date occurred in April and May 2013 in eastern Saudi Arabia and involved 23 confirmed cases. Officials do not know the origin of the virus or how it spreads. The MERS virus has been found in camels, but officials don’t know how it is spreading to humans. There is no vaccine or recommended treatment. “MERS is now in our heartland,” said Anne Schuchat, assistant surgeon general and director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases, during a briefing Friday. But she


Why students are throwing tons of money at a program that won’t give them a college degree

alums as teaching assistants and eventually teachers to keep their hire rates looking good. That’s one advantage of these bootcamps affiliating themselves with different universities -- they’re getting paired with a trustworthy name and, hopefully for incoming students, they’ll be held to stricter standards. Joshi is less concerned with bootcampers finding that initial job -- he says demand is high enough that they probably will -- than where those bootcampers will wind up in a few years. “How far can these people go in their careers, or will they have problems when two, three years from now, the specific set of tools and technology they learned at bootcamp will change? They don’t have the fundamentals to pick up a new set of tools and technologies. Will they be bootcamping every 3 years? That’s an open question right now.” Tech recruiter Fecak echos this sentiment. “I think there is a possibility that the market will get flooded with applicants who have a false expectation of their qualifications,” he said. “You can have thousands of thousands of people graduating these programs with the thought that they’re going to be able to pass these advanced technical interviews, and they might not be able to. What is that gonna do? It’s gonna create a deeper stigma around the bootcamps that will make it difficult even for the qualified people to graduate.” O’Neill of Monetate also added that the bootcampers are at risk of their marketable skills becoming increasingly cheapened. “The same skillset that a lot of people are picking up out of bootcamps are the same skillset that can easily be outsourced or offshored,” he said. “The people who are gonna be developing intellectual property, platforms itself, the ones you want to be at the core to your company. The kind of skillsets that are developing on the peripheral are the sort of stuff you can easily outsource or you’re at least looking for the cheapest labor you can to accomplish that task.” He’s worried that bootcampers are being sold a vision where they are filling the need for highly skilled developers that is just not true. He brings the oil changer versus car designer metaphor one more time. “Unfortunately, many companies are also trying to outsource and/or offshore their oil changes. And regardless, the industry will always need people capable of designing cars, or better yet figuring out the next mode of transportation.”


Why Earth’s future will depend on how we build our cities

gigaton budget will then be consumed by non-urban buildings and infrastructure, pushing the planet past the “locked in” carbon threshold by 2020. “Based on a business as usual trajectory, and based on current rates of urbanization, the infrastructure and policy decisions made in the next five years will exceed a cumulative emissions threshold of 1000 gigatons at some point in the future,” says Schultz. But the new report also finds that a crucial 45 gigatons of emissions could be averted if growing cities and megacities deploy much more energy-efficient buildings, urban structures that don’t encourage as much driving, and more. Still more could be accomplished if major industrialized cities — the New Yorks and Londons of the world — extensively retrofit their infrastructure to make it greener. Doing so would subtract from the 800 gigatons of emissions that are already committed to. Therefore, how cities develop — and how they retrofit to become more sustainable — could greatly shape our planet’s future climate. Granted, how non-urban infrastructure, in all of its forms, develops matters even more based on these statistics. But cities are special for the following reason. Along with other “sub-nationals” like states and territories, they have been major pioneers and drivers of change lately, and the new figures are, in that sense, empowering. But here’s what’s more troubling — the problem doesn’t end at 2020. Even if we save the 45 gigatons, we could give them back in just a few years of additional urban (or non-urban) expansion, unless sustainability’s advance across all parts of the world is extremely rapid. And there’s another problem. The foregoing discussion is based on a carbon budget that keeps the world below 2 degrees Celsius of warming. But if the real danger zone is entered at 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming — as many scientists, and many countries, contend — then the math becomes tougher. The bottom line is that with a rapidly warming and urbanizing planet, we may still be able to find a way to grow that doesn’t lock in the worst impacts of climate change. Also in Energy Environment: Wind and solar keep getting cheaper and cheaper Scientists say a dramatic worldwide coral bleaching event is now underway The U.S. needs a solar energy revolution. But it’s laying off solar energy researchers For more, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter here, and follow us on Twitter here.


Everything you need to know about how a government shutdown works

come from a recent Congressional Research Service report, and they're only meant to be illustrative — a shutdown in 2013 could well differ in the details : Health Law enforcement. Parks and museums. Regulatory agencies. (Small parts of) Social Security. Visas and passports. Veterans Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) has a list of other possible effects of a shutdown. Funds to help states administer unemployment benefits could get disrupted, IRS tax-refund processing for certain returns would be suspended, new home-loan guarantees could cease, farm loans and payments would stop, and Small Business Administration approval of business loan guarantees and direct loans would likely cease. Would the city of Washington D.C. be affected? DC's garbage collection stops during a shutdown. (The Washington Post) Possibly. The District of Columbia is the only city barred from spending local funds during a federal government shutdown, save for a few select services: The city will be able to keep police, firefighters and EMS units on duty. Public schools will also remain open. But a variety of other city agencies might, in theory, have to close, including the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Department of Public Works and the D.C. Public Libraries. Trash collection and street sweeping would come to a stop during the impasse. These activities all ceased for eight days during the 1995 shutdown, although Congress explicitly gave the city a reprieve during the 1996 impasse. Update: How many federal employees would be affected by a government shutdown? Half of you go home. (Jeffrey MacMillan/For The Washington Post) Roughly half. Back in 2011, the government estimated that 1.2 million federal employees (out of 2 million or so) would likely get furloughed and sent home without pay in the event of a shutdown. Note that this is actually a higher number than in 1995-1996 shutdowns, when only 800,000 (out of 2 million or so) were sent home. That's because the earlier shutdown was actually less widespread: At the time, Congress had already funded a few select parts of government, including the Department of Defense and the FDA. That hasn't happened this time around, at least not yet. So more employees will be affected. Do "non-essential employees" who get sent home ever get paid? That's unclear, as my colleague Lisa Rein reports. On the first day of the shutdown, these employees do have to come to their offices to secure various files and make preparations necessary to


With Bill Cosby acting as MC, U Street eatery Ben’s Chili Bowl celebrated its 55th anniversary. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post) This post has been updated and corrected. Passengers traveling through Reagan National Airport will be able to get their half-smoke fix. The D.C. institution – a favorite of Bill Cosby and President Barack Obama, will open its sixth outlet in the region in Terminal B, airport officials are expected to announce Wednesday. Just a few weeks ago, the family of Ben Ali announced plans to open their first outlet outside of the District in Rosslyn, in the space formerly occupied by Ray’s Hell Burger. The addition of Ben’s is part of an aggressive push by airport officials to revamp concession offerings at both Reagan National and Washington Dulles International airports. Along with passenger and airline fees, concessions are a major source of income for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which oversees operations at both airports. Ben’s will be joined by Legal Seafood and Pinkberry, purveyors of frozen yogurt. Spanx is also planning to open an outlet at Reagan National. Those looking for a polo shirt fix will be please to hear that Reagan National will soon be home to Lacoste, Spanx and Brighton Collectables and Vineyard Vines. New tenants at Dulles include Tumi, Swarovski and ice cream shop Luv’n Berry. The first wave of new offerings is expected to open Spring 2014. Some social media thoughts on the announcement: Chili before sitting in a confined space with strangers! RT @postlocal Ben’s Chili Bowl to land at Reagan National http://t.co/xxRWJQ3lJF Some good DC news today RT @loriara Soon-to-be-arriving at Reagan National -- Ben's Chili Bowl. #DCA http://t.co/9Y8iSdqHcM


The Supreme Court could abolish software patents next year. Here’s why it should.

software. That triggered a wave of patenting that has drowned the technology industry in litigation. In principle, the Supreme Court's old precedents ruling out patents on mathematical algorithms are still good law. And today, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear an appeal that, for the first time in 30 years, will directly address the patentability of software. The case focuses on four financial software patents. The patents claim a method of "mitigating settlement risk" using electronic "shadow credit records." The trial court judge ruled that this "invention" isn't patentable because it is "directed to an abstract idea of employing an intermediary to facilitate simultaneous exchange of obligations in order to minimize risk." When the case was appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the court with jurisdiction over all patent appeals, the court deadlocked 5 to 5. That left the lower court's ruling in place. Now the Supreme Court will have an opportunity to weigh in on the case. And while the high court could issue a narrow ruling based on the details of the patents in this case, it could also take the opportunity to fix the software patent mess more broadly. All it would need to do is to reiterate its earlier position that patents claiming mathematical processes — a.k.a. computer software — isn't eligible for patent protection unless it's tied to a specific machine or physical process. The high court will be reluctant to do this because it would be disruptive. Reiterating that mathematical algorithms can't be patented would call into question thousands of patents held by major software companies. And these companies could complain, with some justification, that the Supreme Court's failure to rule on the issue for more than 30 years was a tacit acceptance of rulings by the Federal Circuit. Still, the federal circuit cannot overrule Supreme Court precedents. And the federal circuit's experiment with software patents has been a disaster. As the patent scholar James Bessen has argued, the patent troll crisis is really a software patent crisis. Software patents are far more likely to be involved in litigation than other types of patent. The result: According to Bessen's calculations, troll-related litigation cost the U.S. economy $29 billion in 2011 alone. Reiterating that "pure" software can't be patented wouldn't just be good law — it would also save the nation billions of dollars in litigation costs.


Amazon’s drones and the rise of ostentatious R&D

Amazon's splashy "60 Minutes" announcement of its plan to revolutionize package delivery -- via drone, naturally -- has already started running into skepticism. Despite Amazon's familiarity with the Federal Aviation Administration, it'll be a long time before such vehicles will be cleared for commercial use, Wired points out. Drone opponents are threatening to shoot them out of the sky. And is it really worth the cost of acquiring a big enough fleet of flying machines to deliver something in 20 minutes rather than 20 hours? Imagine that. (@quantumpirate) Delivery-by-robot It's a tactic more and more companies are using these days: research and development as image-making. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, innovation was part of the image of iconic American companies. Think Bell Labs, which took advantage of the comfort of its regulated monopoly to fund research projects that could go on for years, and spun off all kinds of ideas that became useful for society writ large. These days, however, U.S. firms aren't investing in coming up with new ideas as much as they used to, as the Bureau of Economic Analysis' intellectual property index has tracked. Countries like Finland, Israel, Sweden and South Korea now spend more on R&D than the United States does, as a percentage of their GDP. That's led some to fret that America's innovative juices have stopped flowing, which bodes ill for the economy of tomorrow. Meanwhile, the federal government has been spending less on research and development, as well: In terms of R&D PR, however, American firms are leading the world. Companies that want to position themselves as part of that new economy are much louder about what they're doing to bring it about. Take eBay's Paypal, for example, which recently tackled the challenge of interplanetary commerce. Yes, commerce between planets. Or Google, which has proposed a grand plan to bring WiFi to the world with Internet balloons and also has a plan to solve death. It's by no means clear that any of these projects will come to fruition, but in the mean time, the companies get a nice publicity bump for thinking way, way outside the box -- taking moonshots, as the Googlers like to call them. Not all moonshots are futile, of course. Google's self-driving car project is well on its way to implementation. But Google has also harnessed the power of perception: Other car companies have been working on