This is what Trump and Sanders get wrong about free trade

of Akron and the SUNY-Polytechnic Institute have become hubs, creating advanced research programs and serving as centers for collaboration with existing corporations and new start-ups. State and local governments have made key investments in dedicated research facilities (such as SUNY-Poly’s NanoTech Complex) and in start-up grants for new companies (such as Ohio’s Third Frontier program). The results have been striking. Van Agtmael and Bakker report that Akron’s many small companies in the polymer industry now employ more people than the tire companies did at their peak. This is not a return to traditional manufacturing. The companies and universities involved work on a collaborative, open-knowledge model. This means that because each has a very specific competitive focus, they are able to share broad insight and work together on innovations from research and new scientific developments (the universities act as coordinators for such projects, which exempts corporate collaboration from anti-trust concerns). The closed, secretive and insular research and development model is a thing of the past. Another critical difference from traditional manufacturing is that these new industries require workers with advanced training. This is another key role for government, particularly in supporting community colleges that are re-tooling to provide technical training that equips workers for these kinds of positions. Work-study models at universities are also becoming more common in these regions. Van Agtmael and Bakker describe these regions as new and emerging “brainbelts” that compete not on cheap labor but on the advanced skills and knowledge of companies and workers and the resulting uniqueness and high value of the area’s products. They are competitive by being smarter rather than cheaper — and, it’s hoped, more sustainable because they offer advantages that outweigh cheaper labor. Attacks on free trade, especially when linked to the closing of a specific factory, may be crowd-pleasers on the campaign trail. Some people win and others lose when international agreements make it easier to move jobs and goods across borders — and the United States has done a poor job of compensating those who lose out. We should do much better for such workers. But if politicians are truly interested in putting Americans back to work, they might be more successful by learning from, and building on, the policies that are revitalizing deindustrialized cities and regions. Guian McKee is an associate professor of public policy at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. He is the author of “


IOC says 31 athletes could face Rio Olympics ban after retesting samples from Beijing Games

for 10 years at a laboratory in Switzerland. The IOC also announced Tuesday that it has asked the World Anti-Doping Agency to conduct an investigation into an alleged state-run doping scheme initiated by the Russian government at the 2014 Sochi Games. Last week, the New York Times revealed that the head of Russia’s anti-doping agency — who has since fled to the United States for fears of his safety — initiated an elaborate plan to subvert anti-doping measures, first by concocting a steroid-liquor cocktail that sped up absorption of the performance-enhancing drugs, then by swapping out Russian athletes’ dirty urine with clean urine at the Sochi Olympics. Russian athletes led the Sochi medal table with 33, 13 of them gold, after finishing a disappointing sixth in the medal chase four years earlier in Vancouver. “All these measures are a powerful strike against the cheats we do not allow to win. They show once again that dopers have no place to hide. The retests from Beijing and London and the measures we are taking following the worrying allegations against the Laboratory in Sochi are another major step to protect the clean athletes irrespective of any sport or any nation. We keep samples for ten years so that the cheats know that they can never rest,” IOC President Thomas Bach said in the release. “By stopping so many doped athletes from participating in Rio we are showing once more our determination to protect the integrity of the Olympic competitions, including the Rio anti-doping laboratory, so that the Olympic magic can unfold in Rio de Janeiro.” In non-doping news, the IOC said it will not take any action against Tokyo 2020 organizers until France’s justice department completes its investigation into alleged improprieties concerning the bidding process for those Olympics. French investigators are looking into whether two high-ranking world track and field officials had funneled bribes from the cities that bid for the 2016 and 2020 Olympics to a group of International Olympic Committee members. They have uncovered nearly $1.5 million in payments sent from Tokyo’s 2020 Olympic bidding team to an account linked to Lamine Diack, the former president of the International Association of Athletics Federations and a former International Olympic Committee member, contending that Diack acted as a middleman between the bid team and the IOC members. Tokyo 2020 organizers have since said the $1.5 million payment was for legitimate consulting work.


Are GMO crops safe? Focus on the plant, not the process, scientists say.

corporate agriculture, the ownership of GE seed supplies and the struggles of small farmers around the world. The debate has social and economic elements that can’t be solved by science alone, according to the report. On the issue of whether the government should require that products sold at grocery stores be labeled if they contain genetically modified organisms, for example, the panel declined to take a firm position. It instead detailed pro and con arguments. Michael Hansen, a senior scientist with Consumers Union, praised that element of the report: "When it comes to GMO labels, the NAS report points out that there are value choices that consumers want to make when they shop for food. We're pleased to see that the report cites the wealth of polling data showing consumers want GMO labeling." In an email to The Post, Hansen pointed out that the committee acknowledged that genetic engineering could introduce allergens into a plant that would be hard to detect in tests prior to the food hitting the open market. That's another reason for labeling, Hansen said. The new report stressed that very few GE crops are currently in heavy cultivation. Only two types of laboratory-derived genetic enhancements have been widely used so far – one that confers tolerance to herbicides, and another that reduces vulnerability to insect pests. Badly managed GE crops can lead to herbicide resistance in weeds and pesticide resistance among insects. “We wanted to be transparent, we wanted to be inclusive, we wanted to include all the voices that have expressed concern about this technology or have expressed support," said Dominique Brossard, a University of Wisconsin professor who studies risk communication in emerging technologies. “We have heard all the sides of the argument," she said. "Potentially, we may displease both sides of the issue that is extremely polarized.” Humans have been genetically manipulating fruits and vegetables for thousands of years through selective cultivation. Once we started cultivating wild plants, fruits and vegetables got a lot more colorful. Read More: Why this genetically modified mushroom gets to skip USDA oversight Proof he’s the Science Guy: Bill Nye is changing his mind about GMOs Genetically engineered pig hearts survive a record-breaking two years inside baboons Scientists double life expectancy for embryos in petri dishes, raising ethical concerns Why science is so hard to believe Pondering 'what it means to be human' on the frontier of gene editing


How cameras in the wild have transformed what we know about animals

frequently stolen by other rodents, then stolen back by agoutis. “A picture tells a thousand words,” said Kays, who shared some of the images from the book. “Maybe a picture is worth a thousand data points, in this case.” Camera trap images have also helped tiger researchers, who can tell individual animals apart by their different stripe patterns, know more about the big cats’ small population and how much prey they need to survive, Kays said. “That’s been critical to tiger conservation,” he said. A tiger emerges from cooling off in mud at Manas National Park in India. (WWF-India) Camera trap images confirmed that the giant sable antelope of Angola had survived that country’s long civil war. “That’s the most basic thing: Something is there, they’re still around,” Kays said. A female giant sable antelope passes close to the camera as her herd mates kneel to eat clay from a salt lick in Cangandala National Park, Angola. (Pedro Vaz Pinto) Using camera traps, Kays and colleagues concluded that feral cats are rare in 32 protected areas, from South Carolina to Maryland. “That’s probably because there’s so many coyotes,” Kays said. “We’d get lots of pictures of coyotes, and probably one photo of a cat.” Rock Creek Park sits in the middle of residential areas of Washington, D.C., where lots of cats reside. But a camera trap survey of the park turned up only this one photo of a cat — and 126 of coyotes. (eMammal) “We definitely get predators with prey in their mouths, and I think that’s pretty cool,” Kays said. A coyote carries a domestic cat it has caught to a highway underpass in Southern California. (Kevin Crooks) Here are a few more photos from Kays’s book: Long-tailed macaques are a common species in Southeast Asia, where they mostly feed on fruit, but also on insects, lizards and handouts from tourists. (Benoit Goossens) A young giant anteater rides on its mother in the Brazilian Pantanal. Females carry their young for six to nine months, or until they are about half her size. (LFB Oliveira, GS Hofmann & IP Coelho) A cow elephant and its calf cross a swollen river in Gabon.(Xavier Hubert-Brierre) Read more: Seriously, people, stay away from the bison Baby bison dies after Yellowstone tourists put it in their car because it looked cold Here’s what seeing bears at national parks looked like 90 years ago


New mom: My doctor dumped me after I didn’t see him for a year because I was too busy caring for my family

same response: It would be several months before I could be seen by any doctor. Tired, sick and in the company of all three of my children, I was forced to wait in line at a walk-in clinic or face hours in the emergency room for a simple sinus infection that should have been treated in five minutes by my primary-care doctor. I was lucky. My illness was within the scope of the convenient clinics, but I could have easily been forced to choose between seeking medical attention and subjecting my young, vulnerable children to hours in an ER waiting room. Young mothers, in particular, are unfairly punished by policies requiring them to take unnecessary time away from their children just to be eligible for appropriate health care. Moms spend hours each year accompanying their kids to checkups and vaccination appointments, and many do not seek medical attention for themselves until it is absolutely necessary. I conducted an informal survey on my blog and through social media of more than 250 women from across the country with children under 18. Only 25 percent said they visited their primary-care doctors every year, many of whom did so because of chronic health conditions or the need for prescription refills, and only 50 percent visited one in the past five years. This means over half of the women I questioned could also have been denied an appointment with their doctor for anything from the seasonal flu to postpartum depression, a condition which, according to the American Psychological Association, affects approximately 1 in 7 new moms. Women are often too busy caring for their families to seek medical attention until the symptoms become so severe that they can no longer be ignored, making them even more likely to end up in the emergency room paying for tests and treatments that could have been easily avoided by a timely visit to their doctor. Emergency rooms across the country are increasingly overused and overcrowded, according to recent reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which isn’t surprising considering the potential number of patients who could find themselves without access to primary medical care. These departments are designed and staffed to treat patients with life-threatening illnesses and injuries, and yet statistics show that in 2010, the most common condition treated in the emergency room was high blood pressure, a chronic condition that could easily be


‘Climate change is going to drive a lot of change in the national parks.’

of the American people that are not participating in this extraordinary resource that is theirs. It belongs to them. Am I doing something that’s causing that? Or am I not doing something? WP: JJ: We’ve been bringing to the president specific, new national monuments that represent the contributions of minorities and women. We’ve brought Cesar Chavez [National Monument], Harriet Tubman [Underground Railroad National Monument], Col. Charles Young [Buffalo Soldiers National Monument], Fort Monroe [National Monument], Pullman [National Monument], Belmont-Paul [Women’s Equality National Monument], Stonewall [Inn]. Do you see a pattern here? We’re filling in the gaps in the system to be more representative of the minorities in the nation. Not only in the places we manage, but also the places we designate under the National Historic Landmarks program. WP: JJ: You could probably walk down the street in Washington, D.C., and ask someone if they’ve been in a national park recently, and they’ll say no. Then you can say, “Have you been to the Lincoln [Memorial]”? WP: JJ: These are the places that we’re already seeing the effects of climate change, and they’re going to be accelerated in these environments, with sea level rise, storm surge, thermokarsting in the Arctic, fires in the Sierra, drought all over. It’s going to upset the paradigm upon which we’ve been managing for 100 years. That’s going to be a big challenge, and frankly, we haven’t figured it out. We’re still working on it. WP: JJ: We’re beginning to talk about, if the ocean rises a meter in the next 100 years or so, what’s the next thing that’s inland? We’re starting to plan for that, to think about what are the natural features that could be utilized to provide some protection. We’re beginning to incorporate planning for climate change into all of the park plans … [and accept] that some species we may lose, and new species may arrive because they are driven by climate change. We’re still going to take a very precautionary approach to this kind of stuff. But we really have to start to incorporate that into what we’re doing. WP: JJ: We also tend to put judgment calls on a photograph. You show a photograph of a mountain lake in the middle of the wilderness, with nobody in it, that’s actually a negative to certain people. They are like, “Why on earth would I go there? There’s nobody there.”


Fruits and vegetables used to look so different you might not even recognize them

deemed provocative.” Politics continues to influence the choices that we make about what produce is acceptable or unacceptable, particularly as we take cultivation out of the field and into the lab. Genetically engineered crops have been under suspicion since the first genetically modified tomato, the “Flavr savr," hit grocery stores in 1994. But humans have been genetically modifying foods for about 12,000 years, since farming began, by selectively planting crops that were more desirable or resilient. Gregor Mendel’s experiments with breeding pea plants in the mid-1860s showed how dominant and recessive traits in plants influence selective breeding, and paved the way for our modern understanding of genetics. Today, corn is the most widely grown crop in the United States, and about 90 percent of corn acres grown are genetically modified. The majority of U.S. corn yield goes to livestock feed while the rest makes its way to our plates on the cob or in even more subtle ways such as corn syrup and cornstarch. Genetically modified foods have been grown and eaten in larger and larger quantities since the first genetically modified foods were introduced to consumers in the 1990s, and respected scientific bodies such as the American Medical Association and the National Academies of Science have found no scientific reason to not eat them. Still, a 2015 Pew Research Center poll found that more than half of consumers (57 percent) consider GMOs potentially dangerous. This is in part because genetically engineered crops often rely on "monoculture" — or the growing of one specific variety of crop at once. That raises fears because monoculture's reliance on a single crop can increase the likelihood of disease. The unusual story of the banana As it turns out, the banana is perhaps the best example of a fruit grown through monoculture. The cheery yellow Cavendish banana we see in our grocery stores was named after William Cavendish, devoted horticulturalist and sixth duke of Devonshire. The duke’s gardeners were the first to grow the fruit in the extraordinary greenhouses at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, England, in the 1830s. The banana was shipped to Samoa and the Canary Islands and brought into large-scale cultivation soon after. Although fruits — including wild bananas — have seeds that can be grown to make new fruits, these cultivated bananas lack them. Cavendish bananas are cultivated from clones, or genetically identical plants grown asexually on the roots of a


Main Street Morning: The Lending Club says it is under FBI investigation

door on former employees. - Allstate raises its minimum pay to $15 an hour. - These are the most common, and expensive, injuries at work. Management - The Lending Club’s woes grow as the Department of Justice launches a probe of its operations. - Google and Uber go head-to-head on carpooling. - The founder of TED shares what it takes to build the world’s most popular conference. - Home Depot raises forecasts after a strong start to the year. Restaurants - Taco Bell to test four restaurant designs ahead of a major expansion. - There are way too many rats in this restaurant. Sales Marketing - Ad blockers will slash $12 billion in annual revenues by 2020, according to a report. Travel - How you can save money on summer travel by booking a business hotel. - Airports across the U.S. are using a range of tactics during TSA waits. Finance - How small business owners can save on taxes by buying a heavy SUV or pickup. Start-ups - A long haul truck start-up wants drivers to keep on reading. - An eyewear start-up gets turned away by 10 factories and two years later its frames will be in 500 stores. - Why you shouldn’t expect the new crowdfunding rules to create a start-up boom. Technology - Ex-Googlers are now making self-driving trucks a reality. - The Apple Car is deemed a non-starter. - A 3D printer uses lasers to create metallic objects in midair. - Students develop bacteria that eats plastic pollution. - A brain testing app will help diagnose mental health issues. - These are nine business-worthy Chrome for Work devices. - Windows 10’s next update will double the number of Start menu ads. Online - SAP rolls out a cloud platform for small businesses. - A cyber study shows that 90 percent of businesses experienced hacking incidents in the past year. - A hacker is busted after making $30 million stealing press releases. Social Media - Eighty-five percent of Facebook video is watched without sound. - Twitter may remove photos and links from its 140-character limit. Ideas Opportunities - A study finds that modified crops are not seen adding to human health risks. - Scientists discover a weird new type of light. - IBM has reportedly developed a chemical compound that kills viral infections, including Ebola, Zika, herpes, influenza and more. On This Day in 2012 -


The rumors of this panda’s death were greatly exaggerated

In this photo made available by the Taipei Zoo on May 18, Tuan Tuan is seen sitting in his cage behind Monday newspapers. The photo was accompanied by a statement from the zoo director, who said that Tuan Tuan, his partner and their cub are all fine, despite rumors to the contrary. (Taipei Zoo via AP) In case you hadn’t noticed, people get pretty emotional about pandas. So when Chinese media reported Monday that the beloved patriarch of a three-member panda family at the Taipei Zoo had died, mourning ensued — and so did political speculation. That’s because, in addition to being cuddly-looking crowd pleasers, pandas are a key tool of Chinese diplomacy. It sends them to other countries as goodwill ambassadors, which is how Tuan Tuan, the 11-year-old panda, who was reported to have succumbed to canine distemper, and his partner ended up in Taiwan in 2008. Relations were pretty warm at the time between Taiwan and China, which claims the island as its territory. But things might soon change. Taiwan’s China-friendly president, Ma Ying-jeou, will step down Friday. His successor, Tsai Ing-wen, has said she wants to “maintain the status quo,” but China views her with skepticism, and her party formally supports independence, the AP noted. Against that uncertain backdrop, Tuan Tuan’s alleged death was considered an ominous omen. According to the Taipei Times, rumors swirled online that it meant Taiwan-China unification would never happen, or that it “could only mean that the bilateral relationship is bound to change.” The Taipei Zoo quickly stepped in to rebut the rumors, and it did so in an amusingly media-friendly fashion: by staging a panda proof-of-life photo. In it, Tuan Tuan grasps the bars of his enclosure, and in front of him are Monday’s newspapers. The zoo assured the public that the panda and his brood are alive and thriving, and the Global Times, the Chinese website that had reported Tuan Tuan’s demise, retracted its story. “We welcome everyone to visit them at the zoo,” Chin Shih-chien, the zoo’s director, said of the panda family. Presumably, that invitation extends to Chinese visitors as well. Read more: Seriously, people, stay away from the bison Baby bison dies after Yellowstone tourists put it in their car because it looked cold Poachers destroyed this rhino’s face. Veterinarians are trying to fix it.


New Horizons studies its first mysterious, distant space object after Pluto

The first two of the 20 observations that New Horizons made of 1994 JR1 in April 2016. (NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI) The dwarf planet Pluto may have been New Horizons' main focus, but NASA's speedy little spacecraft didn't clock out after it flew by the Pluto system in July. New Horizons is already zipping toward its second target, far out in the distant region of our solar system known as the Kuiper Belt. It's going to take several years to reach that mysterious world, but that doesn't mean it can't do some stellar sightseeing along the way. In April, New Horizons spied 1994 JR1, a 90-mile-wide object orbiting 3 billion miles from the sun. New Horizons first detected the object in November, when the spacecraft was 170 million miles away from it. When it came within 69 million miles of the small Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) on April 7 and 8, it was able to snap a picture, marking the first scientific findings of its post-Pluto career. The images allowed scientists to pinpoint JR1's location with an accuracy unprecedented for such a small KBO, which means they'll be able to figure out its orbit. They've already used the data to determine that JR1 is not a satellite of Pluto, a theory that was floated a few years ago when the tiny world was discovered. They've also used the images to determine how quickly the planetoid rotates. By tracking the way it reflects sunlight over time, they calculated a rotation period (in other words, a day) of just 5.4 hours – which is faster than most of the KBOs that have been observed in the past. “This is all part of the excitement of exploring new places and seeing things never seen before," New Horizons team member John Spencer said in a statement. The photos also feature a delightful Easter egg for true New Horizons fans: That ghostly shape in the upper left corner is New Horizons herself. A very bright star just outside of the camera's field of view caused an internal camera reflection, and the result is an unexpected robot selfie – it shows the three arms that hold up the second mirror of the spacecraft's imaging system. For now, this object is the closest thing New Horizons has observed outside the Pluto system. But the spacecraft is expected to encounter another 20 or so objects worth examining en route to its


‘Fundamentally unstable’: Scientists confirm their fears about East Antarctica’s biggest glacier

plunge down into the extremely deep Aurora Subglacial Basin, and total sea level rise could reach 4 meters, or over 13 feet (on top of major contributions from other parts of Antarctica, which would also surely have retreated at this point). In light of this research, the key questions become: How rapidly Totten can pull off these various retreats? And how much warming of the atmosphere, and the ocean, would be required to push it into a motion even greater than what it has seen so far? That’s not easy to answer — different models retreat the Totten system at different speeds, in response to more and less warming. The current study uses an ice sheet model that the authors admit is conservative, and it takes thousands of years for the most extensive changes to happen — and warming well over the 2 degree threshold that the world has set for itself in international climate negotiations. However, recent research has sped up estimates for ice loss from Antarctica by adding new melt and collapse processes to ice sheet models and is capable of producing a faster retreat of the Totten region. In a study published two months ago in Nature by Rob DeConto of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and his colleague David Pollard of Penn State University, the Totten region does retreat under moderate and especially high emissions scenarios, and it does so in the next 500 years. In a high emissions scenario, ice flows out of the deep Aurora basin in this study, and contributes to catastrophic global sea level rise. “In recent years we have been very focused on the vulnerability of the marine-based West Antarctic Ice Sheet, but this is a good reminder that marine-based sectors of the much larger East Antarctic Ice Sheet could also be highly sensitive to a warming ocean and atmosphere,” DeConto says of the new study. So the big question about Antarctica remains just how fast it can change — but the new research suggests we are slowly awakening a process that, in the past, has utterly transformed one of the biggest ice sources on Earth. According to a new study, high levels of greenhouse gas emissions could cause oceans to rise by close to two meters in total (over six feet) by the end of the century, and more than 13 meters (42 feet) from Antarctica alone by 2500.


China: No, we are not sending cans of human flesh to Africa

A meat stall at a market in Beijing. (How Hwee Young/European Pressphoto Agency) China's ambassador to Zambia released a stern statement on Tuesday, seeking to battle misinformation that he said was harming China's reputation in Africa. "This is completely a malicious slandering and vilification, which is absolutely unacceptable to us," according to Yang Youming's statement, which was widely reported in Chinese state media. The misinformation in question? That China was taking dead bodies, marinating them, putting them in cans and then selling them in African supermarkets. Chinese state media accused tabloids in Zambia of spreading the rumors, stating that "people with ulterior motives were attempting to destroy the long-standing partnership between Zambia and China." A number of blogs and other publications appeared to have picked up the stories from Facebook. SHOCKING: The Chinese are sending canned human meat to Africa. read and share https://t.co/ZiMWJRXGiZ https://t.co/H662y9gqhp Some reports quoted people who allegedly worked in Chinese meat factories as saying that the practice had begun because China had run out of space to bury their dead or that Beijing reserved its good, nonhuman meat for more powerful countries. Such rumors are, of course, untrue. As the hoax-busting website Snopes.com notes, the photographs shared online that purport to show "human flesh" were from a 2012 marketing stunt for the video-game Resident Evil 6. However, the widespread coverage of the story in Chinese state media would suggest that the rumor had touched a nerve. Yang demanded an investigation by Zambia, prompting an apology from Zambian Deputy Defense Minister Christopher Mulenga. "The government of Zambia regrets the incident in view of the warm relations that exist between Zambia and China," Mulenga was quoted as saying by China's official Xinhua News Agency. "We shall make sure that relevant government authorities will take up the investigations and give a comprehensive statement." China has long had deep business ties with Zambia, with Beijing funding important infrastructure projects in the country and seeking Zambia's natural resources to help sustain its own growing economy. However, China's spreading influence in Zambia has bred resentment among many locals, who accuse China of providing low wages and dangerous working conditions at its projects. There have been a number of scandals involving Chinese projects in Zambia, including an explosion at a factory in 2005 that killed more than 50 Zambian workers. More on WorldViews Why China keeps a giant stockpile of frozen pork


How the Middle East was invented

this division. The Near East was, well, nearer than the Middle East, and the Middle East was in the middle of the Near and Far Easts. For British colonial administrators, the Middle East was the region that was crucial to the defense of India, while the Near East was largely under the control of the Ottoman Empire. This all changed after the Ottoman Empire’s collapse a century ago. The Balkans and then modern Turkey began to seem more Western, while other parts of the Near East came under British control and fell victim to that empire’s bureaucratic reorganization. Winston Churchill, as secretary of state for the colonies, created a “Middle Eastern Department” covering the newly acquired territories of Palestine, Jordan and Iraq. Now this region, too, became part of Britain’s plans for defending its colonial holdings everywhere east of the Suez Canal. In the dramatic words of the historian Roderic Davison, “In this fashion the Middle East burst onto the Mediterranean Coast.” [Embedded Google Ngram] For several decades, the new usage remained confined to obscure branches of the British government. But, as this chart shows, it spread to the broader English-speaking public during World War II, when people suddenly started reading daily news reports about military developments in the area. Then, when Americans took a newfound interest in the region with the advent of the Cold War, they adopted the then-prevalent British term for it. Does any of this matter? Some have suggested that the term “Middle East” is problematic because it is, undeniably, a Western term reflecting a Western perspective. India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, once observed that the region should really be called West Asia, and there have been occasional efforts to adopt terms like “Southwest Asia” in academic circles. Yet there are plenty of countries whose names imply a relative geography that we hardly notice — Norway (north) and Austria (east), for example. And Arabic speakers have long referred to North Africa as the Maghreb — from a word meaning west — because it is on the western side of the Arabic-speaking world. Anti-imperialist critics of the concept might also take comfort from knowing that no less an imperialist than Churchill never much liked the term he helped create. In 1950, he lamented: “I had always felt that the name ‘Middle East’ for Egypt, the Levant, Syria, and Turkey was ill-chosen. This was the Near East.”


D.C. area forecast: Dry with some sun today and tomorrow, before Saturday washout

Clouds will clear up on Thursday, giving way to a good deal of sun Friday. But it won't last. TODAY’S DAILY DIGIT 6/10: EXPRESS FORECAST Today: FORECAST IN DETAIL The next two days of dry weather are cause for celebration alone. Throw in the chance for more sun than clouds this afternoon and tomorrow morning, and I am borderline giddy. Live it up because the weekend is back to the old soggy slog with cooler temps and potentially substantial rain Saturday. Ah well, at least it is not Memorial Day weekend . . . which looks more summery. Today (Thursday): Tonight: Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest updates. For related traffic news, check out Dr. Gridlock. Keep reading for the forecast through the weekend. Tomorrow (Friday): Tomorrow night: Jefferson Memorial, May 16, 2016. (xmeeksx via Flickr) A LOOK AHEAD Saturday Some sun is likely to peek through the clouds Sunday and winds calm down. However, shower chances are still on the table, albeit widely scattered and mainly into the afternoon. Highs reach the upper 60s to lower 70s. A cloudy night is likely with lows ranging through the 50s. Confidence: Medium-High Monday


Eat your way through 3 of D.C.’s most popular bike trails

Pedaling up all those steep hills and winding roads is sure to get your appetite revving. (Or is that the sound of the cars whizzing by?) Whether you’re in the mood for a quick bike ride or a day’s long adventure, you’re going to want to eat. With that in mind, we put together three biking itineraries with stops for grub along the way. Anacostia Riverwalk Trail Parts of this 28-mile trail are under construction, though there are 18 miles of (nearly) consecutive paths ready for riding. A majority of the trail borders — you guessed it — the Anacostia River, so prepare for views. Maine Avenue Fish Market Cantina Marina Ice Cream Jubilee Rock Creek Park trail At more than 1,700 acres, Rock Creek Park is full of treasures, including a horse center, an amphitheater and tennis courts. Though stretches of Beach Drive are closed to car traffic on weekends, if it’s food you seek, the better bike route is south of the National Zoo. Bar Civita Stachowski Market Jaco Juice Taco Bar Washington and Old Dominion Trail This 40-plus-mile trail in northern Virginia begins in Alexandria and passes through Vienna, Reston, Herndon and Leesburg before spilling you out into Purcellville. It’s relatively flat, so we recommend going the distance. Maple Ave Restaurant Barcelona Market Burger Fries and Shakes Read more about biking in D.C.: Forget bike lanes. In the inaugural DC Bike Ride, cyclists can take over the streets. 3 popular D.C.-area bike trails you should ride now 5 major advances we can thank bikes for New Belgium’s annual Tour de Fat is a free celebration of beer, bikes and silliness at Yards Park Biking to work is great. If you can put up with the cars. And the weather. Take an edifying spin past bike stuff of yore at the American History Museum


The Daily 202: 10 takeaways from Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist

New DC Street Signs Read “No Trump Anytime” https://t.co/2rRZM4aaCs https://t.co/dqwnp45vee Republican operative Michael Steel's stolen Boston terrier puppy was returned home yesterday, after a high-school senior said she found the dog in its carrier near Petworth Metro station. Steel and his wife had offered $10,000 for its return. (Arelis R. Hernández has the story.) Thanks to all our friends, especially folks in the DC media who spread the word - MAGGIE IS HOME. Gabrielle Giffords marked Trauma Survivors Day: Today, on #TraumaSurvivorsDay, my message to fellow survivors is simple: “Fight, fight, fight!” https://t.co/g00X11P2ys Bill Nye was on Capitol Hill: Gr8 mtg @BillNye! We talked about the Planetary Society, funding space/science exploration & climate change. #selfie https://t.co/3cN1kSpXT1 Tom Cotton and his staff are very into running: Proud of #TeamCotton for winning the team challenge in the #ACLICapChallenge this morning! https://t.co/FXftyqO2Pg Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) lost a game of Jenga: Watch @Jim_Jordan finish a game of Jenga https://t.co/bN1ViuN3sQ GOOD READS FROM ELSEWHERE: -- The Daily Beast, “Dying GOP Senator Apologizes to Muslims for Donald Trump,” by Tim Mak: -- GQ, “Bill Clinton’s Big Moment: His Health, His Battle Plan for Trump, and What He’ll Do if Hillary Wins,” by Jason Zengerle: -- Huffington Post, “Robin Wright Demanded The Same Pay As Kevin Spacey For ‘House of Cards,’” by -- Los Angeles Times, “ HOT ON THE LEFT: “D.C. security guard arrested for blocking trans woman from using womens’ restroom,” from Raw Story: “A security guard was arrested on Wednesday after harassing a trans woman trying to use the womens’ restroom inside a Washington D.C. grocery store … The unidentified guard was charged with simple assault after allegedly pushing the woman out of the bathroom inside the store, which is part of the Giant grocery chain. While WRC reported that the guard in question is a man, WJLA-TV described them as a woman, saying that the guard is also being investigated for allegedly uttering a homophobic slur during the incident." HOT ON THE RIGHT “Steve King Calls For “Civil Disobedience” On Obama Restroom Guidance,” from Buzzfeed: "We should call for civil disobedience here," the Republican representative from Iowa told radio host Simon Conway. "And there’s no reason for us to follow an unconstitutional edict from the president, who is on his way out the door." King also said that he plans to hold hearings on the topic, adding that he believed that the


A clever tweak to how apples are sold is making everyone eat more of them

while McDonald's might have helped popularize the packaged apples, schools are now contributing to their sustained rise, according to Seetin. School lunches, he says, have also been "a very significant contributor to the growth." The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees the NSLP, couldn't say how many schools are serving sliced apples instead of whole ones. That decision is made by local school food authorities, not the federal government. The USDA does, however, make recommendations, among which is that fruit be served in "age-appropriate pieces." Less food waste, more plastic waste Despite the promise of apple slices, both for the apple industry and for child nutrition advocates, there is concern it speaks to the implacable, and sometimes harmful, desire for convenience. In this case, some fear, the demand for a more convenient fruit serving comes at the expense of the environment. Serving apples slices might decrease food waste, but when they're served in a plastic wrap, as all of the commercially available ones are, it also means a good deal more plastic waste. McDonald's, for its part, says that it's aware of the problem, and currently working to make sure the apple packaging it uses is as sustainable as possible. "That's why our apple slice packing is recyclable," Tyler, the company spokesperson, said. But recyclable packaging, promising as it might sound, is not the same as recycled packaging. Just because consumers can recycle a plastic wrap doesn't mean they will. And while there is no way to estimate the percentage of the packing that ends up being recycled, there's reason to believe it's probably fairly low. Coffee pods, another product of our collective demand for convenience, after all, have become a contentious subject among environmental groups. Nespresso, which dominates the market in Europe, boasts that the vast majority of its pods are recyclable, but many still end up in the trash. The problem is so pronounced that a German city even decided to ban them earlier this year. The future of apples slices In some ways, the potential of sliced apples recalls the success of baby carrots, which essentially saved the carrot industry, allowing it to make use of "ugly" carrots that were unfit for sale. But then again, that set a pretty tough benchmark: Today, thirty years after they were first introduced, baby carrots account for some 70 percent of all carrot sales, and have significantly reduced waste


Sean Hannity and Donald Trump just leveled a pretty big accusation at Bill Clinton

We're losing our jobs. They're moving to Mexico. Listen, our jobs -- you look at Carrier, you look at Ford, you look at all these companies, Nabisco, they're moving plants to Mexico. We're losing our jobs. We're losing our money. We have -- we're not making things. Pretty soon we're not going to make anything anymore. I just felt I had an obligation to do this. You look at our trade deals, I will make those deals so good so fast. And you know what? We'll have great relationships with these countries. We don't have a good relationship with China. China's building a massive fortress in the middle of the South China Sea, OK? And yet they're ripping money from us left and right. We rebuilt China single-handedly. What they've taken out of our country, we have rebuilt China. They have -- they have railroads and trains that go 250 miles an hour. We have the Long Island Railroad that chugs out to Long Island and chug, chug, chug. HANNITY: (INAUDIBLE) many times. TRUMP: We don't have anything. We're like -- we've become a Third World country. I'll tell you what... HANNITY: (INAUDIBLE). TRUMP: -- and a lot of the technology is our technology. I mean we're selling technology to the world and we don't have it ourselves, because we've spent $4 trillion plus in the Middle East. We're in worse shape now than we were 15 years ago. Fifteen years ago, if we wouldn't have done anything, we would have been much better. You wouldn't have had the migration. You would have had a couple of dictators, killers. They call them strongmen. They can call them whatever they want. And they were good at one thing -- killing terrorists. And right now, you look at Iraq, that's like Harvard for terrorism. HANNITY: I want to stay on this focus, because you made a promise to release the names so people would know your judicial philosophy. TRUMP: That's right. HANNITY: You're making a promise to balance the budget. You're making a promise to build the wall. You made a promise, you're going to repeal ObamaCare. TRUMP: A hundred percent. (CROSSTALK) TRUMP: Look, we have no choice. HANNITY: Replace it. TRUMP: By the way, you don't even have to repeal it. We were going to do it before it happens. In '17, it's going to implode. And, in fact, on November


America’s trendiest new bar is your living room

report last year from Nielsen outlined some of the factors behind this — the rise of "fast casual" restaurants that also serve alcohol is a big one. Many people don't just want to drink; they want a variety of food options beyond standard bar fare. But people aren't just doing more drinking at restaurants. They're drinking more at home, too. If staying in really is the new going out, that booze is gonna have to come from somewhere. Enter the rise in liquor stores. The census data show that as bars have declined, liquor stores have become more common. And these numbers likely understate the phenomena: After all, there are plenty of places now to buy booze for off-premises consumption: grocery stores, convenience stores and the like. The beverage industry is trying to get ahead of these changes, figuring out how to make the most of what some are calling the "hometainment" trend. The shift seems to have little impact on the total amount of alcohol Americans are consuming — federal survey data show that the percentage of Americans who drink regularly has changed little over the past decade. But from a public health standpoint, drinking at home is a different beast than drinking at the bar. There are some benefits to having more people drink in private — some studies have shown that drinking at the bar is more closely linked to violent crime than drinking at home. This makes sense: Get a bunch of people drunk and rowdy and then set them all loose on the streets at 2 a.m. and problems are bound to occur. On the other hand, at-home drinking is linked to a whole host of problems of its own. Some studies have linked domestic violence to drinking at home. And research has shown that the density of liquor stores is linked to increased rates of suicide, particularly for men. So it's a little too early to tell whether this trend is a net positive or negative from a public health standpoint. But it is becoming clear that when it comes to drinking, people really do want to go where everybody knows your name. For an increasing number of us, that place is home. More from Wonkblog: Americans are drinking themselves to death at record rates One-fifth of this occupation has a serious drinking problem Where teenagers can legally drink in the U.S. (yes, really)


Mars reaches opposition this weekend next to the blue moon — no telescope needed!

the ringed planet Saturn form a triangle in the early evening. On Sunday night, opposition night, Mars rises at 8:12 p.m. and the bright moon moves close to Saturn, a zero-magnitude object (bright) object. (Sky & Telescope) Here’s where it gets even more interesting: the full moon on Saturday is a “blue moon” by its second, lesser-known definition. A blue moon is usually defined as the second full moon in a calendar month — there’s usually only one. But Saturday’s blue moon is even more uncommon. Typically, there are only three full moons in a season, but sometimes we get four. When this happens, the third full moon of the season is the blue moon. It happens about every three years; the last occurrence was in August 2013, and the next will be in May 2019. Geoff Chester, an astronomer at the U.S. Naval Observatory, discusses Mars, named for the Roman god of war. “You shouldn’t have too much trouble spotting him as he is now almost as bright as Jupiter and has a very distinctive ruddy tint,” Chester wrote. “This is the best time to give him a look in the telescope. Even though his disc is only half as large as Jupiter’s you should try to give him a look. The faint dusky features you see are actual surface features, not the tops of clouds in an atmosphere.” Alan MacRobert, an editor at Sky & Telescope magazine, reminds us that Mars has been closer, such as when the centers of Earth and Mars were only 34,646,418 miles apart on Aug. 27, 2003 – making the amicable planets as close as they’ve been in thousands of years. That’s why Congress gave NASA enough money to send two Mars rovers – Spirit and Opportunity – to explore the planet in 2004. Mars will pass nearly that close again in July 2018. Curiosity Rover Report (May 11, 2016): Mars Weather Report The sky-gazing web network Slooh.com will have a special Mars opposition show Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, featuring astronomers Paul Cox, Bob Berman, and the editors from Astronomy magazine. Slooh rocks the red planet again on May 30 at 9 p.m. to show how close Mars can be. Beyond Mars and Saturn in the southeast early in the evening, spy the large, gaseous Jupiter high in the south-southwest at about negative 2.1 magnitude, which is bright and conspicuous.


Twice before, Egypt was the last to acknowledge the real cause of its plane crashes

— vociferously denied any links to terrorism or foul play, even when other investigations found definitive evidence to the contrary. Metrojet Flight 9268 On Oct. 31, 2015, a chartered plan carrying Russian tourists from the resort city of Sharm el-Sheik was bombed, apparently by the Islamic State, over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. Within two days of the crash, which killed all 224 people onboard, Russian teams had established that a mid-air explosion could have been responsible for the wide debris field, and an American intelligence official said infrared satellite had picked up on a heat-flash in the vicinity of the crash, which could indicate an explosion. On Nov. 17, Russia officially concluded that the disaster was an act of terrorism. A day later, the Islamic State published photos in its magazine, Dabiq, of what it said was the bomb used in the attack. Still, almost a full month later, the head of the Egyptian investigative committee said that there was "no evidence that there is an act of terror or illegal intervention." For months, Sisi dismissed claims of terrorism as Islamic State propaganda, until in late February this year he acknowledged publicly that the plane was brought down intentionally. EgyptAir Flight 990 The case of EgyptAir Flight 990 has proved more intractable, and the Egyptian government still disputes an investigation by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB says the plane's reserve first officer intentionally crashed the jet in international waters 60 miles south of Nantucket as the plane traveled from New York to Cairo on Oct. 31, 1999. This flight fell out of the sky on a calm night while rising to cruising altitude. Since it fell in international waters, Egypt was initially given jurisdiction over the investigation, but the Egyptians requested that the NTSB handle it. The NTSB report details, second by second, the interactions between the plane's captain and the reserve first officer in the cockpit. At one point, the captain leaves to use the bathroom. Softly, his colleague says, "I rely on God," before dipping the nose of the plane slightly. By the time the captain returns, the first officer has essentially shut off the plane's engines and has repeated "I rely on God" at least nine more times. The plane dove to a lower altitude before leveling off, and then dove again until it crashed into the ocean. The NTSB concluded that actions of Gameel


The simple labeling update that could prevent millions of tons of food from going in the trash

Your cheese says “best by.” Your milk says “use by.” Those cookies? “Enjoy before.” It’s “sell by” for the salsa, and “best before” for the butter. “Born on” for beer and “guaranteed fresh” for bread. These imprecise directives, which are designed to tell consumers by when they should finish their foodstuffs, could soon be nearing their expiration date. (Colin Anderson/Getty Images/Blend Images) Legislation announced Wednesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) aims to put an end to consumer uncertainty about whether or not their food is safe to eat. With the Food Date Labeling Act, they have proposed standardized language for retail packaging: “Best if used by” to indicate peak quality for shelf-stable foods, and “expires on” for riskier foods like raw meat, fish and eggs. According to food policy advocates, the changes will save millions of tons of food from going needlessly into the garbage. “For a while, we’ve been really focused on food safety. There was a sense of, ‘When in doubt, throw it out,'” said Emily Broad Lieb, director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic. “I think now we’ve woken up to this landscape of 40 percent of the food we produce in the U.S. gets thrown away.” So how did we get to here, where a consumer needs a linguistics degree to parse the minuscule differences between “Best by” and “Best before?” Consumers didn’t need expiration dates at the beginning of the 20th century, when they were more likely to live near farms and buy everything fresh. As the distance from our food sources has grown wider, there was a greater concern about food safety. In the ’70s, each grocery store had a complicated system of symbols and codes to tell employees when a product would go bad. “Even the store clerks couldn’t read their codes,” said Gale Prince, a food safety consultant and former director of corporate regulatory affairs for Kroger. So the industry voluntarily moved towards “open” dating, which made that information visible on the package in plain language. Except that language wasn’t specified on a national level, leaving states to develop their own regulations. And thanks to some fanciful brand copy on product packaging, it ended up not being so plain after all. Some labels were meant to indicate the date after which food could no longer be safely eaten, while others displayed the date after which


NFL will return taxpayer money used for military tributes

Military color guards stand at attention during the national anthem before the 2016 NFL draft. (Jeff Haynes/AP Images for Panini) NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell pledged in a letter to two U.S. senators Thursday that the National Football League would “promptly” return more than $700,000 teams had been paid to perform military tributes during games. The NFL received harsh backlash last year when Sens. Jeff Flake and John McCain (both R-Ariz.) revealed how the Department of Defense paid professional sports teams to host in-game ceremonies as a form of recruitment. The New York Jets, as one example, received $115,000 from the New Jersey branch of the National Guard for a variety of ceremonies, including honoring a “Hometown Hero” during halftime of a game. In his letter to Flake and McCain, a copy of which the league provided to The Washington Post, Goodell outlined the NFL’s various relationships with the military and wrote that the league had used an independent firm to audit to how much money NFL teams had received from the Defense Department to pay for ceremonies. Goodell vowed the NFL would pay back all $723,734. Goodell also said the NFL would review future contracts to ensure military advertisements do not mix with tributes. “In all the years I’ve spent trying to root out egregious federal spending, the NFL is the first organization to perform due diligence, take responsibility, and return funds to the taxpayers,” Flake said in a statement. “The NFL’s response to this investigation sets a new standard and only strengthens its reputation as a supporter of our nation’s military service members and veterans.” Initial reports last year suggested the NFL had received more than $5 million from the Pentagon, which included straightforward advertisements. The NFL’s audit, according to Goodell, identified only the money used to buy tributes. Flake and McCain have no issue with leagues accepting advertising money from the Defense Department, so long as it’s clearly an advertisement. Goodell told Flake and McCain that the NFL would continue to accept military advertising money. “Our relationship with the military includes the advancement of recruitment efforts,” Goodell wrote in the letter. “The NFL’s platform enables the National Guard and various branches of the military to maximize the reach and effectiveness of their recruitment funding. These recruitment efforts are intended to be separate and apart from the NFL’s longstanding support of the service members and families who have dedicated


New Hubble photo captures Mars in all its glory

A look at the best photos of space. Mars may have an ugly history – giant tsunamis, blistering solar wind, robot invasions – but it's looking pretty good in this new photo from the Hubble. This month, the planet comes closer to our own than it has for over a decade, and on May 12 the Hubble took full advantage and captured a shot from just 50 million miles away. The resulting image – shown in natural color – reveals details as small as 20 miles across. It's not just the close proximity that makes this image so sharp. If you've ever tried your hand at photography, you know that the best way to light a photo is to stand with the Sun behind you. This month, Mars is approaching something called "opposition." When it reaches opposition on May 22, our planets will be perfectly aligned with the Sun, because their orbits will catch up with one another: The Sun and Mars will be on exact opposite sides of Earth. Since Hubble is basically on Earth, cosmically speaking (it's in a low orbit), that means our "photographer" is perfectly positioned with the Sun behind her and her subject (Mars) straight ahead. Everything is illuminated. (NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), J. Bell (ASU), and M. Wolff (Space Science Institute)) That giant orange splotch is called Arabia Terra, and it stretches over 2,800 miles of the planet. Scientists believe that it might be one of the oldest areas on the planet, because it's densely cratered. Geologic activity like volcanic explosions smooth out planetary surfaces, so an abundance of craters says as much about how "dead" a planet is as it does about the world's role as a cosmic punching bag. Dark features running along the planet's equator are colored by the bedrock and sand of ancient lava flows. To the far right, you can spot Syrtis Major – an ancient, inactive shield volcano – surrounded by clouds. Just south of that is an oval crater called the Hellas Planitia basin – the largest crater on the planet, more than 1,000 miles across – which was formed by an asteroid 3.5 billion years ago. The crater is nearly five miles deep. My favorite thing about this photo is that we get to see some wispy Martian clouds. You can also see the planet's northern ice cap, though it's very tiny –


We’re really good at forgetting all the terrible things we’ve done

cheaters didn’t seem to have an impaired memory overall; they seemed to be selectively forgetting the situation in which they behaved unethically. Still, a weakness of this first experiment is that the researchers couldn’t control who cheated and who didn’t. So in a follow-up experiment conducted online, the researchers tried randomly making it impossible to cheat. They assigned people to play one of two versions of a betting game. One version of the game was set up to make cheating easy — the subjects could change their bets after the event and no one would know. The other version of the game did not give people the opportunity to cheat — subjects had to report their bets before the event happened. Two days later, people who played the game that allowed cheating reported fuzzier memories of the game than people who played the strictly honest version of the game. These results suggest, again, that it’s something about the act of cheating that makes people forgetful, not that habitual cheaters tend to be more forgetful. When it’s impossible to cheat during a game, people tend to remember it better. Immediately after the game, the researchers also asked the subjects about their self-image. Did people think of themselves as moral and trustworthy? Did they feel ashamed of themselves? Two days later, the people who were more ashamed were more likely to say that they couldn’t clearly remember the event. “The more dissonance they experience after cheating, the fuzzier the memory of their unethical actions become,” the researchers say in the study. What’s going on here? Unfortunately, the study can’t tell us if people’s memories actually faded, or if people were suppressing the memories, or even if they were lying to the experimenters. That’s because the main tool the researchers used to measure people’s memories was a survey. People were asked to report how clear their memories felt, and how confident they were in their memories. This kind of subjective exercise doesn’t give us much insight into what is actually happening in people’s brains. Does shame interfere with memory formation? Does shame interfere with memory retrieval? Further experiments using brain scanning or drugs that affect people’s memories might untangle some of those questions. For now, we have an interesting observation that squares with a lot of our own intuitions. The instinct to preserve our dignity and our sense of self-worth is surprisingly strong.


The poor are paying more and more for everyday purchases, a new study warns

with it at the grocery store, given the differences in inflation and in both consumers' preferences. Jaravel's research is preliminary, and his data includes only information on prices in one sector of the economy, excluding major household expenses outside of retail trade. All the same, the numbers are striking. "If you’re one of the consumers who is stuck at the bottom of the distribution, then you suffer more than you would think," Jaravel said. He used data from Nielsen on retail prices and household incomes from 2004 to 2013 to determine how quickly prices increased for the rich and the poor. First, he measured the change in price for identical products -- identical models from the same manufacturer -- from one year to the next. The products purchased mainly by the poor, he found, increased in price much more quickly than those purchased by the wealthy. This difference wasn't a result of the fact that the poor spend proportionally more on certain broad categories of goods, such as produce or paper towels. The differences in inflation between these categories weren't all that large for different groups of consumers. Rather, Jaravel found that the difference resulted from the fact that within specific kinds of products -- beef jerky, say, or tortilla chips -- more affluent consumers were buying premium brands, and those brands' prices were more stable over time. "It’s not that some buy wine and others buy beer," Jaravel said. "Some are going to buy craft beer, and others will buy Budweiser or Bud Lite." Jaravel next examined the products that manufacturers introduced in each year, and he found that relatively few new products made it into stores that weren't premium goods. In other words, poorer consumers were more likely to be buying the same products from year to the next. When a new product arrives on shelves, retailers typically have to discount the price of older products somewhat. Using data on markups from a large national grocer with a few hundred stores, Jaravel found that the absence of new products for poorer consumers allowed grocers to increase the prices on the old products more from year to year. The fact that prices in the retail sector seem to be increasing more quickly for one group of consumers than another is worrisome, but Jaravel's explanation for the trend is even more disconcerting. He argues that as society becomes wealthier in


Inspired by bees, flying robots use static to stick their landing

energy. Flying robots can conserve energy by perching In a study published Thursday in Science, researchers from Harvard University revealed a robot with perching prowess: the RoboBee. The tiny flier was actually designed in 2013, but the addition of a clingy patch could help make it more efficient. "A lot of different animals use perching to conserve energy," co-author Kevin Ma, a post-doc at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute, said in a statement. "But the methods they use to perch, like sticky adhesives or latching with talons, are inappropriate for a paperclip-size microrobot, as they either require intricate systems with moving parts or high forces for detachment." Adhesives would keep the robot stuck to its perch instead of allowing it to take off again, and any kind of grasping mechanism would use up more energy than the perching saved. So instead of using glue or graspers, they created a tiny patch that can conduct electricity. When it's turned on, it gives the robot a negative charge — a surplus of electrons. Those electrons will push the electrons on other surfaces out of the way, not unlike the way two magnets will repel one another if you try to push their northern poles together. And with those electrons pushed out of the way, the surface the robot comes up against will be positively charged — and the robot will cling to it like a balloon clings to your hair after a good rub against your sweater. Opposites always attract. The patch has to be turned on to maintain the static cling, but it uses 1,000 times less power in perch mode than it does while flying. The mechanism weighs just 13.4 mg, bringing the robot's total weight to 100 mg. It can stick to virtually any surface, but for now it has to hang from ceilings or overhangs — the patch sits on top of the tiny drone. The team hopes to design more versatile placements for the patch in the future. Read More: Video reveals the incredible acrobatic feats (and occasional face plants) of a pouncing praying mantis Touching robots can turn humans on, study finds This incredible ‘liquid wire’ is inspired by spider silk Robots are doing animal surgery all on their own. Will they soon be operating on you? This tiny dragonfly makes record-breaking flights around the globe


Banning Russia from Rio Olympics for doping isn’t quite that simple

II, Germany and Japan were not invited to the 1948 Summer Olympics in London, and South Africa was banned from the Games between 1960 and 1992 because of apartheid. More recently, Afghanistan was banned from the 2000 Olympics because of discrimination against women under the Taliban regime. Kicking a country out of the Olympics for widespread doping violations would set a different kind of precedent, though. “ IOC officials did not respond to a request to comment. Rumors have circulated in Olympic circles for years about state-supported doping regimes in several countries, and both Kenya and Ethiopia are in the midst of their own doping scandals that have garnered much less worldwide attention. WADA decided to investigate some of those rumors in Russia last year only after a documentary by German broadcaster ARD entitled “Top Secret Doping: How Russia Makes Its Winners.” Last November, WADA released a report that concluded doping was endemic in Russia’s track and field program, and the drug cheating was most likely supported by the Russian government. Then earlier this month, reports from “ In response to those reports, the IOC began retesting urine samples from prior Olympics, and announced this week that new tests of samples from the 2008 Olympics in Beijing found 31 suspicious results, implicating athletes from 12 countries. The IOC did not identify the athletes or the countries, but Russia is most likely one of them, as the nation’s weightlifting federation also announced this week that four athletes had been banned for doping violations. The International Association of Athletics Federations, which oversees global track and field, suspended Russia after last year’s WADA report, and is expected to decide in June whether or not to end the suspension before the games in Rio. Imposing a ban on all Russian athletes for the Rio Games would require political willpower on behalf of the IOC and any officials involved with the decision. “Russia is an important country for a lot of geopolitical reasons, and unnecessarily provoking or angering Vladimir Putin probably isn’t high on the to-do list for governments around the world,” Pielke said. Still, if WADA uncovers more evidence of state-supported doping in Russia, the IOC will find itself in a unique situation: being aware of state-sanctioned cheating while the state still exists. The only historic parallel to the doping regime alleged in Russia is the East German program in the 1970s and ’80s


that forced athletes, including prepubescent girls, to take steroids including male hormones. That cheating was long rumored — opponents of East Germany’s famed women’s swimming teams remarked about their masculine builds and deep voices — but hard evidence didn’t come out until after the Berlin Wall fell, and researchers accessed files from the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police. To John Hoberman, a University of Texas historian who has studied sports doping for years, if WADA investigators conclude doping in Russia is widespread and state-sponsored, the IOC has no choice but to ban the country from Rio. But doing so would not end the questions. “So, fine, you get through Rio, Putin sulks, and now you’re faced with a question of what to do now? Do you accept Russia’s claims that they can reform themselves?” Hoberman said. “Sending WADA emissaries to Putin’s sports commission to negotiate reform, it’s just not tenable. … This is tantamount to sending social workers to reform the Mafia.” Historically, the IOC has drawn criticism for a laissez-faire attitude toward doping. For decades, the organization’s anti-doping testing efforts rarely uncovered cheaters. Testing at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow found zero instances of athletes using banned substances. Since the creation of WADA in 1999 — after doping scandals roiled the 1998 Tour de France — testing protocols have become significantly more rigorous, but the numbers of athletes caught at each Olympics has increased only moderately. The high-water mark, according to “They’ve looked the other way for decades,” said Charles Yesalis, a retired health policy professor from Penn State University who studied anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. “It was always the one bad apple. … They’ll always go after the one guy or the one team. They don’t ever want to talk systemically.” After announcing the results of retested samples from Beijing, the IOC said a similar wave of retesting is taking place with 250 samples from the 2012 London Games. After those results, the IOC will await word from WADA investigators who are trying to confirm Rodchenkov’s claims. Rodchenkov, who declined to comment through his attorney, has indicated a willingness to assist WADA investigators. Until recently, Russian officials have denied reports of systemic doping with comments that have evoked Cold War disputes. That tone has changed recently, though. On Friday, the Russian sports ministry released a statement pledging to cooperate with WADA’s investigation. “We have acknowledged


These bugs have a startling strategy for keeping predators away

Pretend you’re a bird. You’ve got the wind beneath your wings, the rustling of trees in your ears and a craving for insect flesh. How do these bugs look to you? Just some ordinary spotted lanternflies, no big deal. (C.K.Kang) If you answered, “Like dinner,” then you are 100 percent correct. Grab yourself a spotted lanternfly entree and proceed to the next level. But wait! When you approach the bug and attempt to attack it with your beak, it suddenly opens its wings to reveal this: JK! I'm totally poisonous. (C.K.Kang) If you’re a smart and savvy bird, you’ll know that flash of red is a warning sign. It says, in no uncertain terms, “You don't want to eat me.” But let’s say you’re a dumb bird. You’re young and inexperienced. You go ahead and nibble the little lanternfly. And it tastes awful. Still, life is all about learning from your mistakes. You swallow the bug and your pride and set off in search of your next meal. What happens next is of great interest to behavioral ecologist Changku Kang, who studies the strategies animals adapt to avoid becoming prey. He has long wondered why some creatures, such as the lanternfly, hide the bright flashes of color that signal they’re distasteful or straight up poisonous. After all, isn’t the point of a signal that it can be seen from far off? Saving the signal until after a bird has already swooped in for the kill seems unnecessarily risky. Why would a bug live so close to the edge? As a graduate student at Seoul National University in South Korea, Kang developed an experiment to find out. He found that sudden flashes of color, known as “startle display,” were impressively effective at teaching birds to stay away: By the last day of the experiment, almost all of the birds avoided the model “lanternflies” (paper lanternflies, as it so happens) during their foraging. A control group of bitter bugs that kept their ostentatious warnings on constant display fared just as well. Meanwhile, a second control group of bugs that also tasted bad but had a duller appearance were significantly more likely to be eaten. The results, which were published recently in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, suggest that hidden coloration can be just as potent a deterrent as a more obvious warning signal. When you, the hopefully slightly-less-dumb-than-in-your-last-encounter bird, next


Longtime Petworth restaurant Domku is closing next month

After more than a decade in business, Domku is closing at the end of June. (Joseph Victor Stefanchik for The Washington Post) Petworth only seems to be growing these days, but there's now one big loss to report: Domku is closing next month. The Slavic and Scandinavian restaurant opened in 2005. In making the call to shutter at the end of June, owner Kera Carpenter cited increasing rent as the major factor. "When deciding where I wanted to open a business, making a contribution to my own neighborhood was a big factor," she said in a press release about the Northwest enclave where she had bought a house a few years before debuting Domku. She said she was willing to take a risk on a place that, at the time, had yet to evolve into the destination it is today. "I don't regret that decision, but now there is only so much I can do." The restaurant, whose name means "little house" in Polish, became a local favorite and a darling of Post Food critic Tom Sietsema as well. He gave it 2 stars in his 2014 Spring Dining Guide and just this week in his live chat called it "my pet restaurant in Petworth" and "incredibly charming." Carpenter will host a farewell neighborhood party on June 25, in addition to an "indoor yard sale" during Domku's final brunch on June 26. She has no plans to reopen elsewhere in the District. Domku, 821 Upshur St. NW. 202-722-7475. domkucafe.com. Related items: The month of April in restaurant openings and closings Posto says arrivederci to 14th Street after 8 years Sona Creamery in Capitol Hill is no more The Melt Shop has grilled its last cheese sandwich on L Street


10 things you should know about sea level rise and how bad it could be

water level as the ice melts — it will not rise or fall. However, if you add more ice to the glass, the water level will rise. (Loss of Arctic ice does directly impact climate change because dark blue ocean absorbs more energy than white ice does, so it adds a bit to global warming). 10. The cost of sea level rise will go up faster than sea level itself In other words, the damage caused by going from 1 foot of sea level rise to 2 feet will be much greater than the damage from the first foot of sea level rise. In addition, the cost of conventional berms or levees to protect the shoreline also increases much faster than the height. For example, doubling the height of a levee makes the cost goes up by a factor of almost 4. ### Sea level is already rising fast, but nobody knows exactly how much this could speed up if we continue to warm the earth at the rate we are doing now. One thing we do know is the more greenhouse gases and heat we put in, the faster sea level will rise. That is why tackling climate change is so important. We have to ask ourselves how much of a chance we want to take. The difference between an aggressive stance on climate change and a slower path could mean the difference between an orderly approach to sea level rise and a chaotic retreat from the coasts. To read more about how New York and Miami are handling these issues, read our article: A Tale of Two Cities: Miami, New York & Life on the Edge at climatecentral.org. Motta has worked in the energy and environment field as a program manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He is currently an affiliate at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research working on the communication of sea level rise risks and impacts. White is professor of geological sciences, professor in the environmental studies program, and fellow and director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He is a Web of Science most highly cited scientist (one of the top 1 percent most highly cited authors in his field). Nerem is a professor of aerospace engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and leader of NASA’s sea level change team.


Spider Kelly’s takes happy hour outside in Clarendon

The beer garden at Spider Kelly's has room for 300 people. (Photo by Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post) It's Friday. The sun is shining for the first time in ages. On a day like today, you want to leave work a little early and enjoy happy hour outdoors. If you're in Clarendon, you should head to Spider Kelly's and check out the bar's new beer garden, which opened Thursday evening. The rear patio can hold 300 people at bar stools, picnic tables and benches shaded by 11-foot umbrellas. There are also chairs surrounding blazing fire pits, which seems more appropriate for October than May. The space, formerly home to a parking lot, is decorated in cool silver and and blues, with color from trees and hanging plants. Washington artist Andrew Funk provided graffiti in the bar area. Co-owners Nick Freshman and Nick Langman came up with the idea of converting the area into a patio in the fall of 2014, but had to fight county regulations before they could open. "It's to stay relevant," Freshman says. "Since we opened six years ago, there's a lot of competition in Clarendon with patios and rooftops." They've added a new drink menu more suited for outdoor relaxing and lingering, with house-made sangria; rosés and other wines by the bottle; and 20 beers in cans, including radler and gose. An solid beer list is improved with summery pilsners and light IPAs from DC Brau, 3 Stars, Old Ox and Lost Rhino. A bucket of domestic cans is $10 from 4 to 8 p.m. on weekdays; there's more time to save on on Saturdays and Sundays, when a bucket of imported cans is $10 from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. The regular happy hour runs from 4 to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday and includes $4 draft beers, sangria and wines by the glass. Wine is half-price on Monday nights, and sangria is half-price on Tuesday. Brunch begins at 11 a.m. on weekends, when $12 draft pitchers and mimosa buckets are featured. The patio took the place of the bar's beer cooler and a rear parking lot. (Photo by Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post) Spider Kelly's, 3181 Wilson Blvd., Arlington. spiderkellys.com. Open at 4 p.m. on weekdays. Artist Andrew Funk provided the graffiti designs in the outdoor bar area. (Photo by Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post)


A first look at the FDA’s new nutrition label — and 10 reasons it’s different from the old one

(Food and Drug Administration) First lady Michelle Obama on Friday unveiled the much-anticipated overhaul of the nutrition labels you see on every packaged product at the grocery store, and it looks a lot like the old one — at least superficially. The new label still retains the minimalist black-and-white, two-column look that designers have praised over the years, and it highlights many of the same categories, such as cholesterol and sodium. But this is where it might get confusing: Even though it doesn’t look all that different, some categories are now emphasized more than others, and the way some numbers are calculated has changed. These are critical updates that highlight the breakthroughs in nutrition science and upheavals in our country’s disease burden over the years. Many of the changes represent losses for the food industry, which fought hard against updates because they essentially put some of the blame for our poor health on added sugars, eating overly large quantities of servings and consuming too many calories. So it’s important that you read on to learn more about how it all works. “The intention is not to tell consumers what to eat, but rather to make sure they have the tools and accurate information they need to choose foods that are right for themselves and their families,” Susan Mayne, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said in a conference call with reporters. The first lady joked while announcing the changes at a health summit early Friday that “very soon you will no longer need a microscope, a calculator or a degree in nutrition to figure out whether the food you’re buying is actually good for our kids.” Experts predict that the new labeling guidelines may lead to major reformulations of some of the 800,000 products that currently carry the labels. More than 77 percent of Americans have said in surveys that they use the nutrition facts label when shopping, and companies worry that some of their products may appear less appealing under the new rules. Those changes could end up costing the industry many millions. While reducing things like added sugars may sound simple, it actually requires a time-consuming and complex science. Your morning cereal, for example, could turn to dust in your bowl if the mix of ingredients isn’t just right. Or if you want to increase the amount of whole grains


Why the sugar industry hates the FDA’s new Nutrition Facts label

The food industry met its match — in first lady Michelle Obama. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) In early 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that it was going to consider making a few changes to the nutrition facts label found on just about every food item sitting on grocery store shelves around the nation. And the food industry freaked out. For more than two decades, the label had gone unchanged, which, for the most part, food manufacturers seemed to like. Specifically, the industry was content that the label did not reveal the amount of "added sugars" in a product -- the sugar content not present before the food was produced and packaged -- or how much of these added sugars people should consume daily. But suddenly, these things (as well as others) were being reconsidered. And the industries these changes were likely to affect weren't about to just sit around and watch. The nutrition labels on your food are getting an overhaul for the first time in 20 years as the FDA plans to make them easier to read. Here's what you need to know. Several major food associations, including (but not limited to) the American Bakers Association, American Beverage Association, American Frozen Foods Institute, Corn Refiners Association, International Dairy Foods Association and National Confectioners Association, fought vehemently to preserve the existing label. They waged a long, drawn-out battle against the new "added sugars" components, which lasted more than two years. In the end, they lost. On Friday, first lady Michelle Obama unveiled the new label, which represents major victories both for her legacy and the efforts of advocacy groups and prominent scientists who have argued that the previous version made it difficult for consumers to assess the nutritional quality of any given food item. "This is going to make a real difference in providing families across the country the information they need to make healthy choices," Obama said in a statement. The new label, which can be seen below, might not look all that different, but it most certainly is. Among the many changes, which include larger type for the number of calories and servings per container, is a new line located just beneath "total sugars." It tells consumers exactly how much of the sugar was added by the manufacturer, and what percentage of the daily recommended intake that added sugar comprises. The change addresses some of the


Our skies are full of art, just look at these pictures

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly photographed the sunrise on March 1, 2016 as he prepared to depart the International Space Station to return to Earth. (NASA) Scientists employ cameras to document facts in a quest for truth. Sometimes fact resembles art, or is art. Other times a fact can be just plain cool. Recently, NASA scientists announced they had discovered 1,200 new planets in the galaxy thanks to a Kepler space telescope they were using to find another planet like Earth. Until photographs become available of these strange new worlds, there is still a lot to see on www.nasa.gov including a picture commissioned by a school science class. The landscape of Mars resembles the emptiness of the West photographed by Carleton Watkins during the building of the transcontinental railroad during the 1800s. A sunrise by astronaut Scott Kelly evokes a Mark Rothko study. Time lapses capture meteors at night. Ever hear of a Von Karman vortices? Is it art, or is it just fact? You decide. An overhead picture of South Africa on Feb. 9, 2016 was created by the remotely-controlled EarthKam aboard the International Space Station. The EarthKAM program allows students to request photographs of specific Earth features.(NASA) In this one minute exposure, a meteor streaks across the sky as the Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft is rolled out by train to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. (NASA) A view from the “Kimberley” formation on Mars taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover. (NASA) Three of Saturn’s moons — Tethys, Enceladus and Mimas — are captured in this group photo from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. (NASA) Chicago on the night of April 5, 2016 from the International Space Station. (NASA) On Mars, gently-sloping wedges of sediments known as alluvial fans are created by deposits left by flowing water. (NASA) This processed image is the highest-resolution color look yet at the haze layers in Pluto’s atmosphere. (NASA) The swirls are known as von Karman vortices, named after a Hungarian-American physicist, who discovered the patterns that form anywhere that fluid (in this case, clouds) are disturbed by an object. The object in the lower left of this picture is Mawson Peak, a volcano located on Heard Island in the southwestern Indian Ocean. (NASA)


Air and water problems are worsening on a global scale, U.N. says

latter naturally goes hand in hand with increasing urbanization, which pushes more polluting vehicles into cities even as it also increases energy demand — both of which feed the air pollution problem. The United Nations Environment Programme says the six reports, each one consisting of well over 100 pages, were compiled by no less than 1,203 scientists, as well as 160 different governments. For North America, there was an anomaly in that air quality is not getting worse — it’s getting better. However, the same can’t be said for water scarcity, or for the effects of climate change. The UNEP report for the region suggests that a changing climate worsened both the California drought and also the impact of Superstorm Sandy, by raising the level of the sea upon which the storm traveled. For Latin America and the Caribbean, a booming agricultural industry is driving up emissions of methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere dramatically, UNEP found, even as most major cities are suffering from excessive air pollution, and water availability problems are also mounting. This region is also perhaps the world’s top biodiversity hub, but deforestation for agriculture is continually imperiling that — along with urbanization and increasing pollution inputs from cities and farms into the environment, for instance in the form of nitrogen runoff. West Asia — which includes the Middle East — is suffering from desertification and major water supply concerns. “Only four out of 12 countries in West Asia are above the water scarcity limit of 1000 cubic metres per person per year,” noted UNEP. Africa is beset by similar concerns, as well as 600,000 deaths per year from indoor air pollution because of the burning of biomass, major threats to forests, and rampant poaching and illegal wildlife commerce, UNEP reported. And then there’s Asia and the Pacific, where air pollution is again worsening, even as booming populations and prosperity are driving more waste accumulation, which is polluting water supplies. “Water-related diseases and unsafe water contribute to 1.8 million deaths annually and 24.8 million disability-adjusted life years in the region,” the UNEP said. (The report on Europe has not yet been released.) Surveying all this, UNEP’s McGlade said that policymakers have to begin to respond much faster to environmental problems — they’re simply falling behind. “These are well understood patterns of failure, and ultimately, we have been treating just the symptoms,” she said. “These reports


Where people drink the most booze and do the most drugs

A man smokes a marijuana joint at a party celebrating weed. (Elaine Thompson/AP) Americans in different parts of the country are known to vary significantly in their consumption of particular foods — be it spicy chili, cream-cheese covered bagels or collard greens. Recent federal government data shows that the country is equally diverse in its consumption of intoxicating substances. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration annually surveys Americans age 12 and older about whether they use opioid painkillers for non-medical reasons or consume any marijuana, alcohol or cocaine. States are ranked into quintiles based on what proportion of their population uses each substance, thereby creating a “top 10 list” for all four. Colorado stands out as the only state which is a top consumer of all four substances. The state’s heavy consumption of marijuana is predictable given that the drug is legal there. The other three legalization states are heavy consumers of pot, too (Washington, Alaska and Oregon; the latter is also a leader in non-medical use of prescription opioids). But residents of the mile-high state are also heavy consumers of all non-marijuana intoxicants as well. Northern New England is another notable concentration of heavy use, with a cluster of states that are top consumers of multiple substances. Although the opioid overdose crisis in that part of the country has attracted extensive attention, none of the New England states is among the nation’s highest for non-medical consumption of prescription painkillers. Instead, Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire are leading consumers of alcohol, marijuana and cocaine, with Maine and Connecticut also being leaders in two of those three. New York, in contrast, is a top consumer of only cocaine. Like Colorado, Washington, D.C., is a center of extensive substance use despite not being in a particularly heavy-consuming part of the country. Despite being different from northern New England in almost every respect, the District has similar substance consumption patterns, ranking among the nation’s leaders for cocaine, alcohol and marijuana use. As the most religious region of the country, the Southeast and Bible Belt have long tended to have lower consumption of intoxicating substances — particularly alcohol — than the rest of the country. Yet non-medical painkiller use is an exception to this general rule, with most of its top consumers being in or near this region: Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Virginia, Maryland and Ohio. The Midwest and Plains states are


A violent sun and a sky full of laughing gas could have led to life on Earth

processes are needed to do so. Before life, Earth had no mechanism for convincing the relatively inert gas to interact with other molecules, but life couldn't exist unless nitrogen teamed up with other elements. Thus the paradox. All of this was on the mind of Vladimir Airapetian, lead author of the Nature Geoscience study and an astronomer at NASA, when he was assigned to a task force analyzing how coronal mass ejections (CMEs) could wreak havoc on Earth today. As he examined the effects of an intense solar storm on Earth's atmosphere, he found himself thinking about the infant suns he studied as a graduate student in Armenia decades ago. Those new, small stars, he knew, tend to behave like "big babies." "When [stars] are young, they explode much much more frequently," Airapetian said, much as newborns throw tantrums. Modeling this behavior, he found that those early, frequent storms would have been powerful enough to cut through the magnetic field and surge into the lower atmosphere. There, they would have provided the energy needed to blast apart molecular nitrogen and persuade it to interact with other gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, producing nitrous oxide. Real-world observations seem to bear out those calculations. Studies have shown that the level of nitrous oxide in the upper atmosphere surges in the wake of summer lightning storms. Airapetian thinks that frequent, powerful CMEs could have had an even more lasting effect. And that's just the beginning. Airapetian's chemist colleagues pointed out that, in addition to producing nitrous oxide, these interactions would have created hydrogen cyanide. Like CMEs, this chemical is usually thought of as dangerous — even lethal. But in the right doses on early Earth (when there was nothing around for it to kill) hydrogen cyanide would have helped give rise to amino acids — the building blocks for proteins that life desperately needs. "And now it becomes really, really interesting," Airapetian said. With the right temperatures and the right ingredients, "life can start the process of cooking." Sasselov, the Harvard astronomer, said that this study complements what is already known about how greenhouse gases may have helped warm the Earth. Other studies have suggested that micrometeorites provided the spark that turned nitrogen into nitrous oxide, but "this might be a case where having two possibilities is better than one," he said. Neither mechanism would have produced very many nitrous oxide


PM Update: Thunderstorms taper this evening; vastly improved weather Tuesday

Two hour radar loop of rain and storm movement through the area. Refresh page to update. 7:10 p.m. update: 5:10 p.m. update: Taking a broader look, a heavy thunderstorm east of Baltimore is moving southwest and is likely to impact the immediate D.C. area between about 6 and 7 p.m. This could impact the start of the Nationals game if it holds together and extends that far south. Showers/storms continue in DC area. Heavy batch E of Baltimore could impact #Nats Park after 6p https://t.co/3T4S3K9nwO 4:10 p.m. update: South of the Beltway, the most intense storm is located near Woodbridge, headed for Triangle and Dumfries. It has a history of producing of some small hail. What the hail!? Fort Belvoir. Alexandria, VA @ABC7EileenW @capitalweather @ABC7News https://t.co/7nXYrVn8sl 3:30 p.m. update: Strong storm in NW DC to around McLean may have small hail. Moving SW. More storms to NE headed DOWN i95. https://t.co/w2buXXjG42 Original post from 3:15 p.m. The better part of the mid-morning to mid-afternoon hours today was pretty nice. But, in the worst May ever for weather, dry and pleasant conditions never last. Numerous showers and thunderstorms developing this afternoon continue into this evening. Tuesday, however, marks the beginning of a new, much less gloomy regime. It’s pretty fantastic to start but may generate its own set of complaints later this week when heat and humidity build. Through Tonight: Between 10 p.m. and midnight the shower activity should collapse pretty quickly. Then, slow, partial clearing begins overnight. Lows range from the low 50s in our cooler suburbs to the upper 50s downtown. Tomorrow (Tuesday): See my forecast through the weekend. And if you haven’t already, join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram. For related traffic news, check out Dr. Gridlock. Want our 5 a.m. forecast delivered to your email in-box? Subscribe here. Finding the clues in the rain, among the umbrellas at the Post Hunt, May 22. (Victoria Pickering via Flickr)


A meatless burger that bleeds vegetable juices just debuted at Whole Foods

It was the steak dinners, Ethan Brown says, that changed his life. He had embarked on a career in the clean-energy industry, a path befitting an environmentalist out to save the world. But the incongruity he perceived among his colleagues, who would lament environmental problems while eating beef, pushed Brown — a vegetarian since age 18 — in a different direction. “We would go to conferences and sit there wringing our hands over all these [energy] issues, and then we’d go to dinner and people would order huge steaks,” Brown told Popular Science in 2013. Brown left the energy industry and founded a start-up called Beyond Meat in 2009, building on the work of University of Missouri food scientist Fu-hung Hsieh, a pioneer in “high moisture extrusion of fibrous meat analog” — making fake meat taste more like flesh, in other words. Beyond Meat achieved early hype with its Beyond Chicken strips, designed to obliterate memories of limp tofu dogs or crumbly veggie burgers. Observing the strips shred into ligament-like strands at Beyond Meat’s factory in Columbus, Mo., Food Network star and author Alton Brown remarked to Wired in 2013, “It’s more like meat than anything I’ve ever seen that wasn’t meat.” Beyond Meat bills its latest creation, the Beyond Burger, as the most meat-like non-meat feat yet. It has been on sale for a single day — on Monday, in a Whole Foods in Boulder, Colo. — and is already being compared to, as the New York Times puts it, the “holy grail” of ersatz animal protein: A plant burger upon which a human carnivore would happily snack. A Beyond Burger patty contains 20 grams of vegetable protein, mostly from peas, while lacking gluten and soy. If you prick a Beyond Burger, does it bleed? Yes, the company says, though its blood is pulverized beet juice. Beyond Meat took a completionist approach to its hamburger doppelganger: The Beyond Burger had to look, smell and feel like meat. Humans have been genetically manipulating fruits and vegetables for thousands of years through selective cultivation. Once we started cultivating wild plants, fruits and vegetables got a lot more colorful. This was no easy task. Animal meat is not a uniform product, but plants, on the other hand, don’t come marbled with fat or sprout gristly connective tissues. (Even lab-grown beef patties, a different beast from Beyond Meat’s burger, have struggled to mirror