today is there's no confidence in Washington, D.C. There needs to be more than one meeting, there needs to complete dialogue with the large technology companies. They understand that there's a national security risk. We ought to give them a little bit of a liability release so that they share data amongst themselves and share data with the federal government, they're not fearful of a lawsuit. We need to make sure that we keep the country safe. This is the first priority. The cybersecurity challenges that we face, this administration failed us completely, completely. Not just the hacking of OPM, but that is -- that is just shameful. 23 million files in the hands of the Chinese? So it's not just the government -- the private sector companies, it's also our own government that needs to raise the level of our game. We should put the NSA in charge of the civilian side of this as well. That expertise needs to spread all across the government and there needs to be much more cooperation with our private sector. CAVUTO: But if Tim cook is telling you no, Mr. President. BUSH: You've got to keep asking. You've got to keep asking because this is a hugely important issue. If you can encrypt messages, ISIS can, over these platforms, and we have no ability to have a cooperative relationship -- CAVUTO: Do you ask or do you order? BUSH: Well, if the law would change, yeah. But I think there has to be recognition that if we -- if we are too punitive, then you'll go to other -- other technology companies outside the United States. And what we want to do is to control this. We also want to dominate this from a commercial side. So there's a lot of balanced interests. But the president leads in this regard. That's what we need. We need leadership, someone who has a backbone and sticks with things, rather than just talks about them as though anything matters when you're talking about amendments that don't even actually are part of a bill that ever passed. CAVUTO: Governor, thank you. (APPLAUSE) BARTIROMO: When we come right back, closing statements. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) BARTIROMO: Welcome back. Candidates, it is time for your closing statements. You get 60 seconds each. Governor John Kasich, we begin with you. KASICH: You know, in our country, there are


Crazy good: What it was like leading the Mars Curiosity rover landing team

usual than I would hope it would be. This place is pretty tolerant and not many folks are struggling with how I look. You describe in the book some mistakes you made early in terms of your leadership style, such as showing up at Thursday night happy hours with your team. I love contributing and being a member of the team. This was my first real experience with leading and I wanted to experience all of it. I wanted to drink deep of the cup. I was out there every Thursday night. It’s only really in hindsight that I realize that doesn’t make the space for some team members to commiserate with themselves about my inadequacies. I know that looking back, and I could feel it at the time, but honestly I wasn’t capable of acting on it at the time. I was in some sense too engaged. A real hard part of leading is letting go. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve gotten about leadership from someone you’ve worked with? I have two. One is advice from [project chief engineer] Rob Manning: Remember the quiet voices. 'Listen for the quiet voices on the team.' I happen to have a large, bright, loud personality, and so I have to really consciously work to not dominate or blow out team members. When you’re operating at the edge of what is possible, you need everything you can get from everyone. I don’t know a priori whether the quietest, most sheepish member of my team hasn't got the absolutely best solution. You never know that. The other is from my good friend and mentor [and deputy project manager] Richard Cook: 'Give it away.' What he meant by that was if you’re an inventive person who has a lot of ideas, don’t hold onto them. If somebody thinks an idea that was yours was theirs, give it away. It starts being a tremendous vote of self confidence for yourself. Use my ideas all you want, I will make more. In some fields, anxieties over intellectual property can cripple the work of a team looking to innovate. All of us want to be seen for our contribution. And when you’re leading, I think you have to understand that you’re probably doing the right thing if you don’t get the credit. I was reminded the other day -- when the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket landed,


A major new finding about the impact of having a dad who was drafted to Vietnam

sons of conscripted veteran fathers are probably earning $2,000 less. That's assuming the entire effect of the draft is contained to those compelled by the draft to serve in the war. To repeat: A man who enlisted because of the Vietnam draft probably caused his sons to earn $2,000 less a year in 2013. That’s a difference of 5 percent of average incomes. That’s a big deal. These sons were also about 25 percent more likely to join the military. Daughters were affected too, to a much lesser extent. Those are the facts. Now here come the theories. What about having an veteran father was holding these children back? The economists went through the possible reasons. First they wondered if there was something to do with the mothers. Maybe the men who were draft-eligible married different kinds of women. But the data showed that these mothers were basically the same in terms of their careers and their disability rates. Next, the researchers wondered if the differences in earnings had to do with military service. The children of draft-eligible dads were more likely to enlist themselves — and maybe they could be earning more in the private-sector. But that’s not a plausible explanation either, because the military pays fairly well. And only a gigantic difference in salaries would cause the differences that Goodman and Isen found in the data. The only remaining explanations have to do with how these children of the Vietnam war were raised, and in what kinds of environments. Psychological studies have shown that PTSD, which many Vietnam combat veterans suffered from, affects the whole family and can cause behavioral problems in children. Men returned from Vietnam at a disadvantage. What the draft represented was the government taking away their time — time they could have spent in school or training for a job. Of course, people learn skills in the military too, and there were other benefits of enlistment: money to go to college, preferential hiring for veterans, and the VA healthcare system. But on balance, economists have found that men who enlisted because of the Vietnam draft started from behind, and took decades to catch up to their peers in terms of wages. During that time, not only were they were earning less, but they also tended to settle in neighborhoods that were less nice. These factors affected how their children were brought up. That, at


National Weather Service triples computing power to generate more accurate forecasts

The computer upgrade brought on by the poor forecasts of Hurricane Sandy has finally been completed. (NOAA) Every year, the nation’s meteorologists convene to discuss the weather and the status of weather science at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society. The meeting is also a time for big announcements, and in New Orleans this week the National Weather Service was able to announce to the meteorological community that it had successfully completed a long-awaited computing upgrade. The system comprises two supercomputers — one of which will serve as backup — from IBM and Cray, located in Reston, Va., and Orlando. “They are now running at 2.89 petaflops each for a new total of 5.78 petaflops of operational computing capacity, up from 776 teraflops of processing power last year,” the Weather Service said in a press release. The National Weather Service’s new Cray, Inc., supercomputer. (NOAA) In other words, it triples the computing power available for forecast generation, which in the end will lead to higher resolution and more accurate forecasts of everything from day-to-day weather to severe thunderstorms and hurricanes. [What the European model ‘win’ in Joaquin means for weather forecasting] The computers were a $44.5 million project motivated by a call for forecast improvement after Hurricane Sandy. The skill of the most reliable and trusted U.S. weather model, the GFS, was vaulted into the national media spotlight after the European model, or the ECMWF, correctly predicted Sandy’s devastating track toward the East Coast. The European model excels at storm track prediction because of its advanced data assimilation and high spatial resolution, which can only be run on the most powerful computers. The European model’s success was no surprise to the meteorological community, but Louis Uccellini, director of the National Weather Service, said Sandy served as a very tangible wake-up call for the leaders who control the Weather Service’s bottom line. The completion of the project, though over a year behind the initial schedule, advances NOAA’s computing capacity beyond that of the ECMWF. “We had tremendous support from the administration to deal with the deficiencies that were well-known and very obvious to a lot of people,” Uccellini told The Washington Post. “We’ve had tremendous support on the hill both the House and the Senate — Democrat, Republican — they really wanted to support the Weather Service, the emergency management community and other users that have been very vocal.”


Every Chipotle in the country will close briefly next month

(AP Photo/Don Ryan) In the wake of a nightmare year for Chipotle, in which hundreds of people were sickened after eating at the popular Mexican-inspired fast food chain, the company says it is taking another step to clean up its act. All of the roughly 2,000 Chipotle restaurants in the country will close for an unspecified period of time on Feb. 8 while the company holds an all-staff meeting to address food safety issues that caused successive food poisoning outbreaks in recent months. "We are still working on details," said Chris Arnold, the company's director of communications. "[O]ur restaurants will be closed part of the day Feb. 8. We are hosting a national team meeting to thank our employees for their hard work through this difficult time, discuss some of the food safety changes we are implementing, and answer questions from employees. " On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported the news inside a story on Chipotle's marketing efforts, but few noted it then. It gained steam Friday morning after Arnold was quoted in the Oregonian talking about the closure. Recent food safety issues at Chipotle have put its reputation at stake. Here's a look back at which restaurants have survived food scandals in the past. The string of food scares has taken its toll on Chipotle's bottom line. Last week, the company announced that its business was suffering more than it had anticipated. The chain had expected comparable restaurant sales (those at restaurants which have been open for at least 13 months) to fall by as much as 11 percent for the quarter ending Dec. 31, but revised the outlook, saying they are now slated to tumble by almost 15 percent. In December alone the metric fell by 30 percent. The company's stock was down slightly Friday morning in reaction to the news, adding to an already precipitous, months-long decline. Chipotle shares have fallen by 40 percent since September, when they reached an all time high. The announcement follows what has been a difficult time for Chipotle. After years of sustained growth, and a seemingly flawless business, America's darling fast-food company has fallen on hard times. The crisis began Then in December, more than 100 students at Boston College fell ill after eating at a Chipotle, leading the company to close another restaurant. Boston health officials said the cause was norovirus, a common virus, while citing the restaurant for


Army tables decision on Bowe Bergdahl’s POW Medal and Purple Heart until after court-martial

Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, second from right, leaves the courthouse with his defense attorney Lt. Col. Franklin Rosenblatt, left, on Tuesday following a pre-trial hearing at Fort Bragg, N.C. (REUTERS/Jonathan Drake) The Army will not decide whether alleged deserter Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will receive two significant medals that could be associated with his five years of captivity until after he is court-martialed for deliberately walking away from his infantry platoon’s base in 2009, an Army official said. The awards are the Prisoner of War Medal and the Purple Heart. The POW Medal goes to service members who are granted “creditable U.S. military service” and who were held captive while involved in a conflict with an opposing force, while the Purple Heart goes to troops who are killed or wounded by an enemy force. Bergdahl, who had been based in Afghanistan, was held hostage by the Haqqani network, a group affiliated with the Taliban, and tortured while held captive, according to Army officials who have testified in the soldier’s criminal case. The Army also will not decide whether Bergdahl is eligible to receive the Afghanistan Campaign Medal and the NATO Medal until after the trial. The campaign medal goes to service members who served in Afghanistan for 30 days consecutively or 60 days non-consecutively, while the NATO Medal goes to service members who serve in a variety of international commands in which NATO is involved. “To ensure compliance with governing statutes and regulations, the Army cannot determine Sgt. Bergdahl’s eligibility for any award until the conclusion of his court-martial,” said Lt. Col. Jerry Pionk, an Army spokesman, in an email to The Washington Post. [Does Bowe Bergdahl deserve a POW Medal and Purple Heart? His lawyers think so.] Bergdahl, 29, faces charges of desertion and misbehavior for the enemy in connection with his disappearance and could be sentenced to up to life in prison. His disappearance spawned a massive manhunt by the U.S. military in Afghanistan that endangered U.S. troops and altered operations across the country for months, U.S. military officials have said. Bergdahl was recovered in May 2014 by a U.S. Special Forces team in Afghanistan following a controversial prisoner swap approved by the White House in which five Taliban officials were released to the Qatari government. Obama said at the time that the United States has an “ironclad commitment to bring our prisoners of war home.” The decision to


Republican warnings about an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) attack, explained

the tennis balls are the radio pulses. The dog's doing alright at first, and then he isn't. Dog's dream comes true! There are different types of pulses, we'll note. What's described above is an E1 pulse. It happens almost instantly after the explosion; it's what happened to Oahu's streetlights. There's also an E3 pulse, which arrives substantially later and does damage to electrical infrastructure like transformers. And, as you might expect, there's E2, which is slower than an E1 and essentially acts like lightning -- making it less risky, since many electronic systems are capable of handling lightning surges. What's important about how it works is that it dictates where the explosion needs to happen. Too high, and the process of dislodging electrons can't work. Too low, and the area that's affected is smaller. In this illustration from a 1989 assessment of the Oahu incident, you can see how the Johnston Atoll test, named "Starfish Prime," affected the Hawaiian Islands hundreds of miles away. Had it been lower, the energy would have hit the ground before reaching Hawaii. So Iran or a terrorist would need a missile capable of delivering a large bomb to a precise point in the sky. As Butt wrote for Space Review in 2010, that's just not feasible. Rogue nations don't have nuclear capabilities of that kind or, according to Butt, the means of delivering them. If such a strike were to happen tomorrow, with a newly-built hydrogen bomb on a new type of missile, whoever launched it would be relying on an awful lot of luck that everything would go right. And it wouldn't take us long to figure out who did it. Anyway, if you want to damage the United States, it's far easier to drop a nuclear bomb in the middle of Manhattan than to detonate it in the atmosphere. "Putting yourself in the mindframe of a terrorist that just wants to cause harm," Butt said, "it doesn't make much sense." He agrees with Santorum, though, that we should indeed harden our infrastructural systems. But not because of a nuclear threat. Because of the Sun. A coronal mass ejection from the Sun could send a magnetic field toward Earth that could cause an E3-like effect on the transformers that make up our electrical grid. Butt repeatedly noted that while the threat of a nuclear EMP was small, the threat of a solar one


Quiz: Do you know too much about pandas?

Bei Bei is photographed at the Smithsonian National Zoo on Dec. 15, 2015. (Photo by Matt McClain/ The Washington Post) It seems as if the last few months in Washington have been leading up to this moment. Bei Bei, the National Zoo’s newest celebrity panda cub, makes his public debut on Saturday. If you are planning to go, take this quiz so you know as much as possible about the cub before you meet him. Remember, first impressions are important!


Walmart is ending its Express concept and closing 269 stores

Walmart in the District. (AFP/Getty Images) Walmart said Friday it plans to shutter 269 stores this year, including all 102 of its small-format Express stores. The move reflects a shift in tactics in which the retailing giant will focus more on building up its e-commerce firepower and improving its massive supercenters and grocery-centric Neighborhood Market stores. As part of this strategy, the company said it will not move forward with plans to build two new supercenters in the District — one that was planned for Skyland Town Center in Southeast Washington and the other at Capitol Gateway Marketplace in Northeast Washington. “Our experience over the last three years operating our current stores in DC has given us a fuller view on building and operating stores in the District,” the company said in a statement. “This decision will not affect our three existing stores and we look forward to continue serving these customers in the future.” The store closures are to affect 16,000 jobs internationally, some 10,000 of those positions in the United States. Even as Walmart plans to close hundreds of locations, it also intends to open more than 300 stores in the next year, including 50 to 60 supercenters in the United States and 85 to 95 Neighborhood Markets. The stores that are to be shuttered are ones that the retailer says account for less than 1 percent of global revenue. Walmart had been testing the Express concept since 2011 as a way to reach a different kind of shopper and capture dollars from a different kind of shopping trip. Walmart Express stores were something of mashup between a dollar store and a small grocery, offering convenience-oriented food products but not a wide array of fresh produce or meats. The idea was that it could help Walmart win a greater share of so-called “fill-in trips,” when customers aren’t necessarily aiming to restock their pantry. Plus, the store’s smaller footprint meant it could be a vehicle to allow Walmart to muscle its way into shopping centers and neighborhoods where a sprawling supercenter wouldn’t make sense. Back when they unveiled the Express format, executives said it would allow the chain to play “urban offense and rural defense.” The retreat from this concept suggests the retailer did not see it getting the kind of traction in had initially hoped. “We believe Walmart’s announcement of store closings this morning is just a ‘pruning’


CDC: Pregnant women should avoid travel to Brazil, neighboring countries

emergency after 2,400 babies are born with brain damage, possibly due to mosquito-borne virus] Global health officials are closely monitoring the spread of the virus, which is suspected of causing brain damage in thousands of babies born in Brazil. Canadian infectious disease specialists have already warned that the Summer Olympics, which will draw thousands to Rio this August, could be a catalyst for spreading the virus globally. There is no vaccine to prevent or medicine to treat Zika. Individuals can only protect themselves by taking steps to avoid mosquito bites. The most common symptoms of infection are fever, rash, joint pain and red eyes. Most people experience mild illness, with symptoms lasting from several days to a week. Researchers in Brazil found evidence of the virus in amniotic fluid taken from two pregnant women who were carrying fetuses diagnosed in utero as having microcephaly, a rare condition of an abnormally small head. It is associated with incomplete brain development. Brazil's health ministry said Tuesday that 3,530 babies have been born with that condition since October. The number there was less than 150 in 2014. Zika virus was confirmed in Brazil last May. Earlier this week, CDC scientists found evidence of the virus in the brain tissue of two Brazilian infants with microcephaly who died 24 hours after birth and in the placentas of two Brazilian women who miscarried fetuses with the condition. Earlier in their pregnancies, all four women had exhibited the fever and rash symptoms associated with the illness, Petersen said. In an interview Thursday, Petersen noted that the latest test results show "increasingly strong evidence of a link" between the virus and this congenital condition. Of special concern, he said, is the high infection rate in previous outbreaks of the disease. After a Zika outbreak on the island of Yap in Micronesia, officials found that over 75 percent of the population became infected. "So one of our concerns is this virus spreading to large numbers of people," he said. "And the potential association between Zika and microcephaly is of extreme concern." Major outbreaks have been relatively rare, although French Polynesia experienced a large outbreak in 2013-2014 that caused an estimated 30,000 infections. Authorities didn't notice cases of microcephaly at the time, but when they later reviewed the records, they found 12 instances of birth defects resembling it. The disease's typical occurrence in a population would be zero to


Bill O’Reilly will flee to Ireland if Sanders is elected. He’s in for a shock.

(sports pistols; shotguns; some kinds of rifles) are okay, but handguns of the kind that O’Reilly could use for “self-defense” are not, let alone automatic weapons. Gun rights are not a topic of political debate in Ireland — Ireland’s most conservative party, which is now the majority party in the government, has just introduced new restrictions, without any significant public opposition. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton challenged Bernie Sanders's stance on gun control during a campaign event in Amers, Iowa on Jan. 12. Ireland has socialized medicine O’Reilly denounces Obamacare as “socialism” because it uses taxpayers’ money to subsidize the poor. The Irish health-care system does the same thing, on a much larger scale, with a hospital system that is directly run by the government. In Ireland, hospital doctors are government employees (although many senior doctors earn substantial incomes on the side from private practice). Everyone in Ireland is entitled to free basic health care in hospitals, and low income people get medical cards entitling them to free doctors’ visits and many other services. This system is far from perfect, which means that many middle-class and upper-middle-class people supplement it with private health insurance (so that, for example, that they do not have to wait long times for some surgical procedures). Even so, it’s socialized medicine on a scale which would be politically unthinkable in America. Ireland also has welfare benefits for the unemployed that are not notably generous by European standards, but are wildly permissive in comparison to their U.S. equivalents. Just hours before the third Democratic presidential primary debate, candidate Bernie Sanders released details about his proposed single-payer health-care plan. There are other ways in which Ireland is more congenial to conservatives like O’Reilly. Most obviously, abortion is far more heavily curtailed in Ireland than the United States (although the conservative party leading government has promised to liberalize Ireland’s abortion laws this year). Even though Ireland is a conservative country by West European standards, it’s far, far to the left of U.S. conservative preferences on many key issues. If O’Reilly really thinks that Ireland is a good alternative to a Sanders-led America, it’s probably because he’s unfamiliar with what Ireland is really like as a country. If a putative Sanders administration were somehow able successfully to introduce Irish-style health care, an Irish-style welfare state and Irish-style gun control, it would be viewed by conservatives as a socialist revolution.


Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully launches rocket but falls short on landing at sea

that the tight and moving landing spot wasn't the problem. "Touchdown speed was ok," he tweeted, "but a leg lockout didn't latch, so it tipped over after landing." Musk, like others, is working to recover the rockets in an attempt to lower the cost of space travel, so that it can become more accessible to the masses. Typically, the rocket first stages, the most expensive part of the rocket, are discarded into the ocean after each flight. Being able to land and reuse them could, Musk and others think, make space flight much more affordable. SpaceX took a significant step in that direction when it landed its rocket last month. On Friday evening, it successfully re-fired the engines of that rocket, which showed that they could perform again — though Musk has said that he intends to preserve the first stage as a historic artifact instead of flying it again. “Conducted hold-down firing of returned Falcon rocket,” Musk tweeted Friday. “Data looks good overall, but engine 9 showed thrust fluctuations.” Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com and owner of a space company, tweeted a congratulations to SpaceX in what appeared to be a peace offering between the two billionaires-turned-space-rivals. After Bezos's Blue Origin landed its suborbital rocket in November, Musk played down the achievement and said it wasn't nearly as audacious as what SpaceX was attempting: the landing of a much bigger and powerful booster designed to send its payload to orbit — and not just past the edge of space. Then, when Musk pulled off the landing at Cape Canaveral last month, Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, appeared to needle him, saying on Twitter that Blue Origin was first: "Congrats @SpaceX on landing Falcon's suborbital booster stage. Welcome to the club!" But on Sunday, he tweeted: Impressive launch and @SpaceX will soon make Falcon 9 landings routine – so good for space! Kudos SpaceX! While SpaceX has built a massive landing pad at Cape Canaveral, it would still need to land at sea for “high velocity missions,” Musk said on Twitter. The company is developing a Falcon Heavy rocket, which would be bigger and more powerful than the Falcon 9. Company officials also said that while it is building a landing site at Vandenberg, it had not yet secured the environmental approvals to attempt landings there. Last year, SpaceX tried twice to land on the drone ship. In both


Hong Kong bookseller’s televised ‘confession’ was absurd and incoherent — and that’s the point

This screen grab taken from Chinese state broadcaster CCTV footage in Beijing shows Gui Minhai, a Swedish national and co-owner of publisher Mighty Current in Hong Kong, speaking in an interview broadcast on Jan. 17, 2016. Gui, a missing Hong Kong publisher of books critical of Beijing, appeared weeping on state television, saying he had returned to China to surrender to police 11 years after fleeing a fatal drunken driving incident. (Getty Images) It makes no sense. Imagine: You are a Hong Kong-based publisher. You are a Swedish citizen. You are in Thailand, in the sun, safe. Would you suddenly and secretly ship yourself to China to stand trial for a decade-old drunk driving case? Ask the Swedish embassy not to help you? Tell the press to pipe down? That's exactly what happened on Chinese television Sunday night. Months after disappearing from a 17th-floor condominium overlooking the Gulf of Thailand, one of five missing Hong Kong booksellers reappeared Sunday evening to issue a "confession." Footage aired on China's state broadcaster, CCTV, showed Gui Minhai, 51, describing how he made the "choice" to leave Thailand and return to China to face charges related to a—genuinely awful—2003 crash. #BREAKING HK bookstore owner Gui Minhai, reportedly missing, turns himself in for hit-and-run 11 years ago (Xinhua) https://t.co/IGA4zpDJ2C In the broadcast, Gui, whose exact whereabouts are unknown, says that he does not want help from the Swedish embassy. "Even though I am a Swedish national, I truly feel that I am still Chinese and my roots are still in China," he said, "So I hope that the Swedish side would respect my personal choice, rights and privacy and let me solve my own problems." Nor does the publisher of books about China's elite want attention from the press: "I do not want anyone or any institution to get involved or get in the way of my returning, nor do I want any malicious media hype," he told the cameras. Not mentioned: The four other men—his colleagues—who have disappeared from Thailand and Hong Kong in the run-up to the publication of a book about President Xi Jinping, making headlines around the world and raising questions about how China's vast security apparatus operates across borders. In case there was any doubt that the scene was scripted, then edited, Gui switched shirts minutes in to barring his soul: T-shirt inconsistent in Gui Minhai interview. In film we


Main Street Morning: U.S. faces an ethanol glut

paid time off for today’s holiday. - A new survey explains one big reason there are so few women in technology. Management - This is a guide on how to properly calculate budget variances. - The CEO of Insightly offers three ways to scale your business when you don’t have a ton of resources. Entrepreneurs - How two long-time friends built a successful logistics company. Sales Marketing - How these famously unhealthy companies are taking extreme measures to get their customers back. - Medical device makers are heating up an ethics debate with their advertising strategies. Finance - A Bitcoin developer said the cryptocurrency has “failed” and announces an end to his involvement with bitcoin. Retail - Attention to detail keeps has kept this clothing store in business for 133 years. - A business owner is forced to close after four decades after a Walmart opens nearby…and then the Walmart closes after being open for less than a year. Start-ups - Fifty unusual pet businesses to start. Technology - Apple is studying an issue with two versions of the iPhone not updating its battery percentage. Ideas - How beards have become big money. - Seventy two percent of people get their best ideas in the shower – and here’s why. Around the Country - Before a proposed ballot measure to alter the city’s business tax moves forward, two San Jose, California City Council members are calling for giving it a much closer look. - An Iowa native returns to his home state with a drone business. - Business has replaced blight around Martin Luther King’s street in Atlanta. - Why would a 52-year-old businessman quit a well-paid management job to help fix up blighted urban houses, with no guarantee of getting paid? - A big road work project in downtown Las Vegas angers small-business owners. Around the World - China’s economy grew by around 7 percent in 2015, with services accounting for half. - How the lifting of Iranian sanctions will impact U.S. companies. - Thieves steal 4,800 pounds of lobster from a Canadian lobsterman. - A British pub offers breastfeeding mothers free tea after a nearby cafe bans them for their “unsightly” practice. Small Business, Big Impact - The leader of an Indianapolis entrepreneur group dies at 28. Gene Marks owns the Marks Group, a Bala Cynwyd PA consulting firm that helps clients with customer relationship management. Follow Gene


How the world is proving Martin Luther King right about nonviolence

retribution. In other words, we found that nonviolent resistance is effective not necessarily because of its conversion potential but rather because of its creative, co-optive and coercive potential — a theory that Albert Einstein Institution founder Gene Sharp has articulated for decades. Naturally, not all nonviolent campaigns succeed. But in cases where they failed, there was no good systematic evidence to suggest that violent uprisings would have performed any better. That was 2011. Now it’s 2016. What have we learned about nonviolent resistance in the past five years? Below we sketch some of the key empirical takeaways from political science, some of which have rather surprising implications for skeptics of nonviolent action. - Nonviolent campaigns have become increasingly common. If you feel as though we live in a particularly disruptive time in history, you’re right. But it’s the kind of disruption that is unique to our time. The Major Episodes of Contention project (a data project run by Professor Erica Chenoweth at the University of Denver) suggests that nonviolent resistance campaigns have become the modal category of contentious action worldwide. The NAVCO Data Project, a separate data collection project using different source material and inclusion criteria, shows similar patterns, as do a variety of other protest data sets. Whereas the frequency of violent insurgencies — defined with a 1,000-battle death threshold — has declined since the 1970s, campaigns relying primarily on nonviolent resistance have skyrocketed. Note that these figures refer specifically to maximalist campaigns, meaning their goals are to remove the incumbent national leadership from power or to create territorial independence through secession or expulsion of a foreign military occupation or colonial power. In the first five years of the current decade alone, we have seen more onsets of new nonviolent campaigns than during the entire 1990s, and almost as many as were observed during the 2000s. Our current decade is on track to be the most contentious decade on record. - Although they are more common, the absolute success rates of nonviolent resistance campaigns have declined. With this precipitous rise of nonviolent campaigns, we also have seen a steep learning curve. The success rates of nonviolent resistance peaked in the 1990s, but the current decade has seen a sharp decline in the success rates of nonviolent resistance. There may be a few reasons for this. First, state opponents may be learning and adapting to challenges from below. Although several


This star probably isn’t surrounded by ‘alien megastructures.’ But what’s making it act so strangely?

An August 2009 NASA Spitzer space telescope image shows a cloud, known as DR22, bursting with new stars in the Cygnus region of the sky, where the mysterious KIC 8462852 is located. (NASA/AFP via Getty Images) Remember KIC 8462852, the F-type star in the constellation Cygnus with the odd flickering habit? You know, the one that had some scientists talking about the incredibly remote possibility of a “swarm of alien megastructures?” Bet that jogged your memory. Well, scientists are still pretty much absolutely certain that a vast system of solar panels is not orbiting around this far-off sun, harnessing its energy to power a super-advanced extraterrestrial civilization and blocking the progress of light on its way toward Earth (thus the flickering). Researchers at the Seti (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) Institute have turned their radio telescopes toward the star in hopes of picking up a few alien signals, but so far none have come our way. “The hypothesis of an alien megastructure around KIC 8462852 is rapidly crumbling apart,” Douglas Vakoch, president of Seti International, said in a statement. “We found no evidence of an advanced civilization beaming intentional laser signals toward Earth.” [Why NASA’s top scientist is sure that we’ll find signs of alien life in the next decade] Meanwhile, other far-more-probable explanations for the strange appearance of the star — informally named “Tabby’s Star” after Tabetha Boyajian, who led the team that first reported on it — have been posited. The most popular one was that Tabby’s Star is surrounded by a cluster of comets that blocked the star’s light and caused various levels of dimming as they transited across. At least two studies, including the one from Boyajian’s team, have suggested this as the most likely cause. But now Louisiana State University astrophysicist Bradley Schaefer says that the comet explanation also falls flat, according to Slate. Which brings us back to the conundrum that got Penn State astronomer Jason Wright talking about the possibility of aliens in the first place: If none of the normal, natural explanations for the odd behavior of Tabby’s Star seem to make sense, what could the abnormal explanation possibly be? Scientists still aren’t sure. And Schaefer’s study, which he posted on the research-sharing project arXiv, only deepens the mystery. Remember, Tabby’s Star first came to public attention because of the way observations from the Kepler Telescope showed dramatic dips in its brightness at


How many types of bugs live in your house right this minute? Science weighs in.

the homes studied. Though a majority of the homes (78 percent) did contain large cockroaches, the variety that’s considered a true pest was only found in three homes overall. No bed bugs were found during the study, either. If you don’t fancy the idea of living alongside up to 750 different types of arthropods, consider downsizing: Though a few large houses contained relatively small bug populations, the vast majority of houses with fewer than 400 morphospecies were below 2,000 square feet in size. And don’t bother changing rooms to escape: Every type of room surveyed contained bugs, and only five rooms (four bathrooms and a bedroom) of the 554 studied contained no critters at all. The camel cricket is an expert at navigating dark basements. (Matt Bertone) Bertone admitted that a superficial look at the arthropod populations of homes in one region only shows the tip of the bug iceberg. But, he said, a sense of what’s normal gives researchers a future basis with which to compare arthropod populations among different regions. Now that the cast of characters within homes has been identified, scientists can try to figure out why they are able to live in homes to begin with. How do arthropods adapt to human environments? Do they depend on specific microorganisms to help them survive? How do homes themselves filter or trap bugs? There’s an upside for home dwellers, too. Bertone hopes that with a better sense of the arthropod population in the average American home, people can spot outliers — like rare flesh flies or strange beetles — more easily. “If you know a little bit about what’s in the home, it can give you clues,” he said. Despite the fact that our homes are apparently anything but bug-free, said Bertone, shining the spotlight on the arthropods that cohabitate with us might be able to help humans relax about the bugs they share space with. Erin Blakemore (@heroinebook) is a freelance journalist from Boulder, Colo. She is the author of "The Heroine’s Bookshelf" (Harper). Read More: How filthy is the International Space Station? An astrobiologist weighs in. This beetle’s butt is basically a machine gun You’re surrounded by a cloud of bacteria as unique as a fingerprint Why you can, should, and probably will eat bugs This rare butterfly is half male, half female This scientist rates and describes insect stings as if they were fine wines


Friends Reunited, one of the Internet’s oldest social networks, dies at 16

DC Thomson, for a lot less money. Eventually, the publisher asked Pankhurst if he and co-founder Jason Porter wanted their old site back. They took it on for a trial period to see if they could find some way to revamp the site so that it could cover its own costs, but that didn’t work out, Pankhurst wrote. “Of the 10m+ users registered, a lot had done so over a decade ago and hence their contact details were out of date,” he explained. “So even if you were coming to the site to find someone and wanted to contact them, how frustrating it must be to see them listed there and try to contact and then get no response.” Friends Reunited went through a number of iterations over the years as it changed hands, increasingly focusing on becoming a nostalgia and genealogy brand, according to Pankhurst’s assessment. But before that, as the Guardian’s autopsy notes, Friends Reunited was also an early pioneer in online infidelity concern trolling. A 2005 article in the Mirror with the headline “IF YOU VALUE MARRIAGE DO NOT VISIT FRIENDS REUNITED” featured dire warnings from a divorce lawyer about “Friends Reunited divorces,” and a marriage guidance group explicitly connected a rise in divorces to Friends Reunited in a Guardian interview in 2004: Christine Northam, a spokeswoman for Relate, said: “A lot of people have a rosy impression of the first relationship they had at school or college. If they are feeling unhappy with their partner, they begin wondering what it would have been like if they’d stayed with the old flame. Friends Reunited makes it possible to get back in contact with old classmates. It doesn’t cause breakdowns, but for those who were scanning for another relationship, it’s a nice way of doing it. You make contact, you meet and Bob’s your uncle.” Like many social networks that aren’t Facebook, Friends Reunited’s decline was almost certainly triggered by the success of Mark Zuckerberg’s online empire, which leaves little need for other reunion-type sites. However, Pankhurst – who said on Medium that he had to sign a pretty “harsh” contract promising not to create competing products for five years after the site’s original 2005 sale – has announced that he’s going to have another go at creating a social networking site this year. It’s called Liife, and it looks quite a bit like a stripped-down Facebook timeline.


Three things we learned from last week’s al-Shabaab attack in Somalia

ongoing propaganda war waged by both al-Shabaab and AMISOM and its partners. Each side usually presents very different versions of events. AMISOM and its contributing governments usually release few details about battles if they’ve lost many troops; its international partners usually offer stock condemnations of al-Shabaab “terrorism.” Al-Shabaab, in contrast, often quickly releases verbose and usually hyperbolic statements and photographs about its victories, sometimes even while still attacking. During the two most recent attacks on the AMISOM bases at Leego and Janaale, al-Shabaab later released detailed propaganda videos depicting the battles and their aftermath. These have revealed far more information about these episodes than the information provided by the African Union — and have emboldened al-Shabaab’s supporters. Unlike some other African Union peace operations, AMISOM’s policy is to not release information about its fatalities; it leaves that decision to the respective contributing country. But these countries usually refuse to issue full details, fueling estimates of AMISOM’s fatalities that vary wildly. As a result, the subject of AMISOM’s fatalities has become very controversial for both the families of the dead soldiers and for its international partners. For the families, information about their relatives in uniform is not always forthcoming. Meanwhile international partners are asked to foot the bill for death and disability compensation payments without accurate information about those deaths. The Memorandums of Understanding signed between the African Union and the AMISOM contributing countries stipulate that families of deceased soldiers should receive compensation of US$50,000. These payments are made with money donated to the African Union by the European Union, through its African Peace Facility. That makes it important for the families of the deceased, the international partners who pay the compensation, and the African Union to publicly recognize all AMISOM’s fallen peacekeepers. Having accurate information would also help counteract al-Shabaab’s propaganda. What should Somalia and its allies do now? The El Adde attack leaves AMISOM and its international partners with some difficult choices. How can they best reduce the threat posed by al-Shabaab? How can the African Union and SNA forces on the front lines be better protected? Finally, if AMISOM’s contributing countries do not reveal the facts about these attacks, al-Shabaab’s propaganda will continue unchecked. Paul D. Williams is associate professor in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. He is the author of War and Conflict in Africa and can be found on Twitter @PDWilliamsGWU.


Democrats’ counterproductive fixation on raising the minimum wage

as well. Stagnation today robs the next generation of opportunity. So, as conservatives argue, do hikes in the minimum wage aggravate the problem? There is growing evidence it does. Mark J. Perry looks at the effect of the District’s hike in the minimum wage on food worker jobs, the prototypical minimum-wage positions: Looking at the city’s monthly restaurant employment over the last decade and comparing DC food jobs to the surrounding suburbs in Virginia and Maryland, I concluded that: a) the city’s restaurants survived the Great Recession pretty well without any major job losses, especially compared to the loss of nearly 6,000 food jobs in the surrounding suburban areas, and b) the city’s restaurants are now facing a much bigger struggle following the city’s passage of a minimum wage law in January 2014 that will raise the District’s minimum wage to $11.50 an hour in less than six months. At the same time, the DC suburban restaurants are booming with strong hiring last year of nearly 5,000 new food jobs that brought the area’s restaurant employment to an all-time high in November . . . . In the five-year period between January 2010 and December 2014, DC restaurants were hiring an average of 187 new food workers every month. Last year though, restaurant hiring stalled out, likely due to rising labor costs, and the city’s food jobs fell by an average 21 every month in 2015 (through November). If jobs had continued to be added at the 2010-2014 rate of 187 per month, there would now be nearly 50,000 jobs instead of the current level below 48,000, which is a gap of more than 2,000 DC food jobs that weren’t created last year due most likely to the current $10.50 minimum wage along with the pending increase to $11.50 on July 1. (Emphasis in original.) If that pattern continues in major cities that have adopted higher minimum wages, the impact on employment and on the poor, specifically, may be profound. So why do Democrats keep proposing something so counterproductive? One explanation is economic illiteracy. “Whether it’s a small local diner or a large retailer like Wal-Mart, restaurateurs and retailers operate in extremely competitive, ‘cutthroat’ industries with razor-thin margins of 1-6%, leaving very little, if any, room for absorbing labor cost increases of 50-100% that many businesses who hire minimum wage workers are now facing,” says Perry. “The economic reality is


Is Hillary Clinton getting passed on the left once again?

primary is not national. In Iowa, she still clings to a narrow lead, 4 points in the RealClearPolitics average. Provided she can hang on to her lead no matter how narrow, a New Hampshire loss is sustainable. South Carolina, ironically her undoing in 2008 (she lost by 28 percent to Obama), then becomes her firewall. Two clouds hang over Clinton. First, the Iowa caucuses depend not only on support, but also depth of devotion. If you aren’t willing to go out for a night in February to argue with your neighbors, you are of little use to a candidate who you tell a pollster is getting your support. Second, there is the FBI to worry about. It is interesting that suddenly news is breaking that the military “is considering retroactively demoting retired Gen. David Petraeus after he admitted to giving classified information to his biographer and mistress while he was still in uniform.” Perhaps this has nothing to do with Clinton, or perhaps the military is making a statement: If you go after one of ours, why does Hillary Clinton, who potentially mishandled reams of classified documents, get a pass? Even without the military underscoring the seriousness of rules regarding classified materials, the FBI is, by all accounts, continuing its methodical investigation. It is the one entity Clinton cannot spin or muscle. And today things took a more ominous turn according to a Fox News report: Hillary Clinton’s emails on her unsecured, homebrew server contained intelligence from the U.S. government’s most secretive and highly classified programs, according to an unclassified letter from a top inspector general to senior lawmakers. . . . [The letter] laid out the findings of a recent comprehensive review by intelligence agencies that identified “several dozen” additional classified emails — including specific intelligence known as “special access programs’ (SAP).” That indicates a level of classification beyond even ‘top secret,’ the label previously given to two emails found on her server, and brings even more scrutiny to the presidential candidate’s handling of the government’s closely held secrets. If true, Clinton may not slip the noose on this scandal. Clinton’s worst nightmare is a legal one, but a political fiasco ensues if she once again loses Iowa. Her last debate performance did not help her, but maybe her ground game will pull her over the finish line. If not, all hell breaks out in the Democratic Party primary.


What does the fake ‘Ladyball’ campaign say about women’s sports?

Ball is not real. The fake ad was a joint effort of the Ladies Gaelic Football Association and Lidl, a European grocery-store chain that has become the league’s official title sponsor. In a video released Friday, the LGFA and Lidl said the Ladyball campaign was created to start a conversation about how women’s sports in general are perceived (and, one must assume, tie the Lidl brand into a cause hopefully perceived as noble). Lidl and LGFA behind “Ladyball” concept (Gaelic football is a team sport that’s most popular in Ireland. Players advance a round ball either by carrying it, bouncing it, kicking it or passing it, with the hopes of kicking the ball into a goal or through a set of uprights above it. Think a soccer-rugby hybrid.) “Through the ‘Ladyball’ initiative Lidl has demonstrated their innovative and dedicated approach to supporting our sport,” LGFA President Marie Hickey said in story posted on the league’s Website. “We hope to see everyone who spoke so passionately in women’s defence in this debate, channel that same energy into pitchside support during the coming season.” Said Lidl in a statement But will it work? The 2015 LGFA final in Dublin drew 31,083, which the Irish Examiner says was the biggest crowd to watch a women’s sporting event in Europe last year. But still, the stadium at which it was held seats 82,000. And for sport-to-sport comparison’s sake, a Euro 2017 qualifying match between the Ireland and Finland women’s soccer teams on Sept. 21 drew just 2,905 to a stadium that seats 6,000. Writes The Journal in Dublin It was all about putting the spotlight on women in sport in Ireland and raising awareness of the difficulties female sportspeople have in getting the same recognition as their male counterparts. But doesn’t it just tell you something – that the only time we ever hear about Irish women in sport is in relation to Twitter outrage over a fake product? Where is that passion and support for female sportspeople the rest of the year? Why aren’t more people talking about Irish women in sport? But few people are talking about women in any sport, of any nationality, at least when compared with the attention lavished on men’s sports. For every Ronda Rousey, Serena Williams or U.S. women’s soccer team — women or groups of women that certainly move the needle — there’s the WNBA, which


New evidence suggests a ninth planet lurking at the edge of the solar system

at that time," Brown said. "She suggested a few years ago that she'd forgive me if I found a new planet. So I guess I've been working on this for her." NASA's director of planetary science, Jim Green, cautioned Wednesday that there could be other explanations for the observed motion of the small bodies in the outer solar system. He referenced the famous dictum from Carl Sagan that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." “The Sagan Rule applies. If it's there, find it. I challenge you. Somebody out there oughta find it," Green said. But he said he was personally excited about the new research: "What an era we're in, where we’re discovering new things about our solar system that we never thought possible even a handful of years ago." Brown and Batygin initially set out to prove that Planet Nine didn't exist. Their paper builds on earlier research by two other astronomers that revealed a peculiar clustering of the small, icy objects discovered in the past decade or so in the remote regions of the solar system. In 2014, Scott Sheppard of the Washington-based Carnegie Institution of Science and Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii published a paper in the journal Nature that discussed the potential existence of a giant planet affecting the orbits of those dwarf worlds. Sheppard and Trujillo noted a similarity in the motion of those bodies when they are closest to the sun. "We thought their idea was crazy," Brown said, explaining that extra planets are always the "go-to suggestion" when astronomers find orbital behavior they can't explain. But he and Batygin struggled to debunk that hypothetical ninth planet. They used mathematical equations and then computer models, ultimately concluding that the best explanation for the smaller objects' clustering was the gravitational effects of something far bigger. Such clustering is similar to what's seen in some asteroids that are about as close to the sun as the Earth. They wind up in stable orbits that keep them far from Earth and free from any significant disturbance by the Earth's gravity. Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin stand for a portrait in front of an artist portrayal of Planet Nine at Caltech (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon for The Washington Post) "Until then, we didn't really believe our results ourselves. It just didn't make sense to us," Brown said. But their modeling showed that a planet with


CDC: ‘Dozen or so’ cases of Zika virus among U.S. residents

(This video was updated on Feb. 2, 2016.) Authorities have confirmed more than 30 cases of Zika virus in the United States. Here's what you need to know. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that there are at least “a dozen or so” confirmed cases of Zika virus in residents who recently traveled to countries where the mosquito-borne virus is spreading. The agency said it was not able to provide an immediate breakdown by state because states must authorize the release of that information. Several state health departments have reported confirmed cases in recent days. These include: Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey and Texas. The number of cases is from 2015 to date, CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said. Health officials said there is no risk to the public because all the cases so far have been in returning travelers who were likely infected by mosquitos abroad rather than by mosquitos in the U.S. mainland. Workers in Brazil are going door to door encouraging and educating residents about how to clean up standing water, which provides perfect breeding ground for the Zika-carrying mosquitoes. (Panos Pictures/For The Washington Post) [Zika FAQ: More than a million infected globally, dozen in the United States] The CDC and only a few state health departments have the capability to conduct the test to confirm a Zika virus. Many states have been sending samples to the CDC for testing, and that is how the CDC is finding out about potential cases. State health departments are not required to notify the CDC about any cases of the Zika virus. The CDC is in the process of working out a system for collecting information about confirmed Zika virus cases, Skinner said. Zika is a pathogen carried by mosquitos that typically causes only mild symptoms, but health officials have recently been alarmed because of a possible link between the virus and more than 3,500 children born with microcephaly in Brazil since October. The rare condition, marked by an abnormally small head, is associated with incomplete brain development. [Brazil declares emergency after thousands of babies are born with brain damage] Hawaii health officials say a baby recently born with microcephaly at an Oahu hospital to a mother who lived in Brazil in the spring was infected with the Zika virus in utero. The New Jersey health department said Wednesday that it was notified by the CDC on Dec.


New York Times news story on climate change singles out Republicans

Ice calves from the northern wall of the Perito Moreno glacier in Los Glaciares National Park, part of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, on Nov. 29 in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. (Mario Tama/Getty Images) A year ago, New York Times climate reporter Justin Gillis wrote a detailed story on the fact that 2014 was the hottest year on record. “2014 Breaks Heat Record, Challenging Global Warming Skeptics,” read the headline on the piece, which discussed the science of the matter and included a reference to its politics as well: Skeptics of climate change have long argued that global warming stopped around 1998, when an unusually powerful El Niño produced the hottest year of the 20th century. Some politicians in Washington have seized on that claim to justify inaction on emissions. But the temperature of 1998 is now being surpassed every four or five years, and 2014 was the first time that happened without a significant El Niño. Gavin A. Schmidt, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, said the next strong El Niño would probably rout all temperature records. Bolding added to highlight New York Times neutrality. Today, New York Times climate reporter Justin Gillis wrote a detailed story on the fact that 2015 was the hottest year on record. “2015 Was Hottest Year in Historical Record, Scientists Say,” reads the headline on the piece, which discusses the science of the matter and includes a reference to its politics as well: Politicians attempting to claim that greenhouse gases are not a problem seized on that slow period to argue that “global warming stopped in 1998,” with these claims and similar statements reappearing recently on the Republican presidential campaign trail. Bolding added to highlight reporting of the facts. Fair, too: The Republican Party has distinguished itself for its denial — the AP would say “doubt” — of the science of climate change.


PM Update: Light snow tapering, treacherous roads remain

Two hour radar loop of rain and storm movement through the area. Refresh page to update. Winter weather advisory through midnight. 8:35 p.m. update: 7:30 p.m. update: .@capitalweather cars already slipping and sliding in Courthouse https://t.co/XWIpjbbr2K RT @KT421: @capitalweather Slippery sidewalks and slushy roads at GMU-Fairfax https://t.co/qJ0WDhZcn0 RT @jcernstphoto: Snow covered roads at Fairfax Corner and still coming down https://t.co/Y1CH8WCsS9 MT @DNeckel19: If this is what happens when there's a dusting, imagine the two feet in two days. https://t.co/ga6G6NgrRf 6:40 p.m. update: 5:11 p.m.: An inch of snow caused a traffic standstill in parts of Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20. Slick roads led to more than 100 traffic accidents ahead of the huge winter storm headed D.C.'s way over the weekend. [Blizzard watch: Severe snowstorm likely Friday through Sunday] Through Tonight: [How to prepare for this weekend’s high-impact winter storm] Tomorrow (Thursday): See Dan Stillman’s 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. Ice on the river. (Carol Jean Stalun via Flickr) Special missions: The Hurricane Hunters have a dropsonde mission on Thu in the Gulf of Mexico to collect data for the models #blizzard https://t.co/Mh2ErOEzKs Additionally, NWS offices across the eastern U.S. are conducting special additional balloon launches to better analyze the atmosphere and hopefully improve model accuracy. Special Balloon Launch on Wednesday, January 20th, 2016. #NDWX https://t.co/dNeoSN6Btx


D.C. area forecast: Blockbuster snowstorm moves in Friday afternoon, calm today

* Blizzard watch Friday night through Saturday night | How to prepare | School closings and delays | An inch of snow unleashes 9 hours of traffic chaos TODAY’S DAILY DIGIT 6/10: EXPRESS FORECAST Today: D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser updates residents on the city's response plan to the massive snow storm expected to hit the area as early as Friday. FORECAST IN DETAIL Everyone take a deep breath. We are still a full day away from what may rank among the bigger snowstorms ever seen in these parts. The first flakes are likely to drift in during the midday to afternoon period Friday, but the first inch may take until the early evening (though an inch, as shown last night, can cause gridlock). The snow then intensifies overnight and falls at a furious pace well into Saturday. The combination of strong winds and heavy snow makes travel difficult to impossible. Some power outages are possible. Programming note: Capital Weather Gang's Angela Fritz has your forecast and snow accumulation predictions as D.C. enters a state of emergency in response to a major storm heading toward the District and the Mid-Atlantic region. 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: A LOOK AHEAD Saturday This is a good day to just hunker down and allow the road crews unhindered access. Highs hold in the upper 20s to lower 30s. Snow lingers well into the evening and finally tapers off overnight but strong winds still hamper visibility. Lows range through the 20s. Confidence: Medium-High Before sunrise Sunday skies start to clear and you might catch a glimpse of the full moon so very aptly named the “snow moon”. A mainly sunny day and calming winds make for a good day for the great dig out. Highs do no better than low-to-mid 30s so not much help on that front, just keep shoveling. The fresh snow cover and calming winds lead to overnight lows plunging into the teens. Confidence: Medium-High Monday SNOW POTENTIAL INDEX 10/10 (↑): A double-digit snowfall closed businesses and the Metro in Washington.


The Smithsonian’s fine instruments are for playing, not for looking at

Washington Post Express reporter, and amateur fiddle player, Sadie Dingfelder got the chance to play one of the Smithsonian's Stradivarius violins. Here is a look at how the National Museum of American History acquired the priceless instruments. Last year, during a rehearsal at the National Museum of American History, cellist Kacy Clopton accidentally bumped one of the museum’s rare instruments against her music stand. “It was my worst nightmare,” she says. “Now there’s a tiny little scar on the neck, and I put it there.” Kenneth Slowik, artistic director of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society, took the accident in stride. “It’s our philosophy to preserve these instruments … but we don’t keep them locked up behind glass,” he says. While many museums do keep their million-dollar instruments out of musicians’ hands, the history museum brings its out for more than a dozen concerts every year. (When not in use, they’re stored in climate-controlled lockers.) The Excelsa Quartet will play Amati instruments at the National Museum of American History. The next performances, on Saturday and Sunday, will feature instruments by master luthier Antonio Stradivari and by his teacher, Nicolo Amati, played by members of the Smithsonian’s Axelrod String Quartet and the Excelsa Quartet, which is currently the graduate fellowship string quartet at the University of Maryland. “We’re playing Mendelssohn’s Octet on four Strads and four Amatis, and those instruments all have such a rich, warm tone,” says Clopton, Excelsa’s cellist. “I think it’s going to sound unbelievable when you hear them all together.” That is, if the musicians can master the instruments’ tricky sheep-gut strings. “They can squawk really quickly when your bow doesn’t hit them just right,” Clopton says. Slowik could put modern metal strings — louder, brighter and less finicky — on the 17th- and 18th-century instruments, but that would be counter to the goals of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society. Washington Post Express reporter Sadie Dingfelder learned the song 'Bile 'Dem Cabbage Down' as a child. After, playing the song on the Stradivarius she said the violin's sound did not quite fit the song. “We want you to hear the instruments much like they would have sounded when they were made,” he says. Some concessions have been made to modernity, however. The players will use their own bows, which are stiffer and longer than baroque bows, and the cellos have been fitted with endpins, whereas they previously would


Star Wars vs NASA: The importance of the universe of a child’s imagination

worlds that make up most of their imaginative lives, and the real worlds they must traverse each day? Discussing the issue of imagination with the Wall Street Journal, Paul Harris, a professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education explained “there is evidence that imagination and role play appears to have a key role in helping children take someone else’s perspective.” These experiences give them practical experience to learn how to process social cues. Playing pretend, it turns out, helps children navigate through reality as well. Jacqueline Woolley The Star Wars series is not unique in that within its story, parents have an opportunity to teach children valuable lessons. For our family, we’ve enjoyed the depth of discussions that seem to take the story line past the actual plot and towards conversations centered at the deeper issues contained in the films. These conversations have made their way past the imaginary world depicted in the movie and into our day to day lives. For example, some of Yoda’s words are fantastic to help kids visualize smart choices. My current favorite is an old Yoda quote from The Empire Strikes Back. In that movie, Yoda smartly reminds young Luke, “You will know the good from the bad when you are calm.” The conversations in our home still often center around imaginary Starships and follow almost instantaneously by dreams of one day traveling to the moon. I’ve assisted in building my fair share of Lego battle fleets and I am getting quite good at drawing Darth Vader. I still can’t fully explain the nuanced differences between space travel in Star Wars and at the awesomeness of NASA rockets. But I can help my children by asking questions and helping them seek out the truth themselves. In the great words of Yoda, “Truly wonderful the mind of a child is.” Stacey Steinberg is a legal skills professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. She is also a lifestyle photographer and a mom. Follow Stacey on Twitter @sgsteinberg or view Stacey’s photography on Facebook. Join On Parenting on Facebook for more essays, news and advice. You can sign up here for our e-newsletter and can find us at washingtonpost.com/onparenting. You might also be interested in: How to talk to your infant about Star Wars She needed glasses, I needed a new perspective How old is too old for Santa? Two parents, two perspectives


Planet Nine isn’t a Death Star or the killer planet ‘Nibiru.’ It may not even exist.

used to mail me letters occasionally), who discerned evidence for such a planet in ancient Sumerian writings. Astronomers say they have evidence of a ninth planet in our solar system. Here's what they say they know about it. Backing up a second for the big picture: There are people who strongly believe that human history, and reality more broadly, is different from what you're told in the textbooks. Theirs is a kind of alternative universe, one in which evolution, for example, is inadequate to explain our emergence as a technology species. These alternative narratives invoke external agents: aliens. In some versions, we have alien blood. Another common trope is that we have something the aliens need, and so they come to sample our DNA. These are stories that often claim that we should not assume ourselves to be the highest form of intelligence in the universe (a straw man argument), but have at their core a belief in human exceptionalism in the context of life on Earth. We could not possibly have evolved from common beasts without assistance or some extra alien juice in the mix. Also, catastrophes happen. Biblical events have astronomical origins. This goes back to Immanuel Velikovsky, and "Worlds in Collision." And you know there's a Face on Mars, and all manner of living things hopping and crawling around Mars right now, despite NASA's denials! Eschatology, exoarcheology, alien invasion, there's a lot going on here. I'm not trying to debunk any of this, because as you know, debunking doesn't work, it just makes the believers bunker down further. [The Face on Mars is easier to see after about nine beers.] NASA has had to deal with rumors of killer planets lurking in the solar system. In 2012, the agency put out a statement saying that no, the world was not going to come to an end on Dec. 21 of that year, despite rumors of a Mayan prophecy foretelling Doomsday. The NASA statement specifically said that there was no evidence that a hidden planet was going to invade the inner solar system and crash into the Earth. NASA's own David Morrison explained why we knew this not to be so: "If there were anything out there like a planet headed for Earth, it would already be [one of the] brightest objects in the sky. Everybody on Earth could see it. You don't need to ask the government,


In science, unfortunately, not everyone gets a trophy [Updated]

young, and willing to take chances. Many worked in obscure places and were published in obscure journals after being rejected by more prominent journals. Message: The government agencies that award grants should give the young folks a shot. - Major breakthroughs “are typically ensemble acts, played out over a decade or more, in which the cast becomes part of something greater than what any one of them could do alone.” Anyone disagree with that? Now, here are some links to coverage of the dispute. [WaPo: A social media war just erupted over the biotech innovation of the century] [WaPo: Control of CRISPR, biotech’s most promising breakthrough, is in dispute] [MIT Technology Review: A Scientist’s Contested History of CRISPR] [The Scientist: “Heroes of CRISPR disputed"] [WaPo: Scientists debate the ethics of an unnerving gene-editing technique] ORIGINAL BLOG POST: Said it before but will say it again: There aren’t all that many Eureka! moments in science, legend to the contrary. There is much plodding ahead. There is tedious labor. There are collaborative efforts and incremental advances and minor tweakings of what has previously been established. In science, as in life, you spend a lot of time just grinding the corn. There is the occasional miraculous epiphany. And there are a few outlier geniuses, such as Einstein, who did their best work alone. But even Einstein had to labor for many years on general relativity, and overcome mistakes, and revise his calculations, and then call in help when the math required a closer. [General Relativity turns 100.] Because science is incremental and collaborative, it’s sometimes hard to identify a single person or even a small team of people who deserve credit for a discovery. Although this issue of scientific priority is an old one (ask Darwin and Wallace), it seems more urgent in this era of prize proliferation. The Nobel is the most famous of the prizes, but there are many others, and they come with staggering financial rewards. At some point soon, some scientists will be honored for the discovery of the revolutionary gene-editing technique called CRISPR. On NPR’s “Diane Rehm Show” on Tuesday, Francis Collins, a doctor, offered a brief summary of the technique’s discovery: Well, when you go back 30 years, you can see the original discovery of these strange DNA sequences involved quite a number of people who didn’t quite know what they were looking at and that bounced


U.S., Brazilian officials probing possible link between Zika virus, rare paralysis condition

The Aedes aegypti mosquito carries the Zika virus, which has been linked to suspected brain damage in thousands of Brazilian newborns. (AFP/Getty Images) This post has been updated. U.S. and Brazilian health officials are investigating whether there may be an association between the mosquito-borne Zika virus that is spreading in the South American country and an increase in cases of a rare syndrome that causes paralysis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has sent a four-member team to Brazil to help the health ministry in its investigation of the growing number of cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome and a potential connection to the Zika outbreak there. Spokeswoman Christine Pearson said Thursday that the CDC team, dispatched at Brazil’s request, has been on the ground for less than a week. It includes a neuroepidemiologist and a medical epidemiologist. [Zika's alarming spread: More than a million infected with virus globally] Guillain-Barré syndrome occurs when individuals’ own immune system damages their nerve cells, causing muscle weakness and sometimes paralysis. Symptoms usually last for a few weeks. Most people recover fully from it, but some have long-term nerve damage. In rare cases, people have died, usually from difficulty breathing. Brazilian officials have identified hundreds of cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome. A number of states have reported significant increases. Rio Grande do Norte state had reported 33 by August, compared to 23 in the whole of 2014, TV Globo said last month. Brazil’s Ministry of Health said in December that it was investigating whether the syndrome could be caused by Zika. The ministry said the symptoms being seen start in the legs, before radiating through the trunk, arms and face. The condition is most dangerous when it involves respiratory muscles. “In this case, the syndrome can cause death if respiratory support measures are not adopted,” the ministry said. Earlier this week, the Pan American Health Organization and World Health Organization announced an “increase of congenital anomalies, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and other neurological and autoimmune syndromes in areas where Zika virus is circulating.” PAHO warned member states to step up detection, prepare for a possible increase in neurological cases and reduce mosquito transmission. Zika is carried by mosquitoes and typically causes only mild symptoms, but health officials globally have recently been alarmed because of a possible link between the virus and nearly 3,900 children born with suspected microcephaly in Brazil since October. The rare condition, marked by an


of cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome. A number of states have reported significant increases. Rio Grande do Norte state had reported 33 by August, compared to 23 in the whole of 2014, TV Globo said last month. Brazil’s Ministry of Health said in December that it was investigating whether the syndrome could be caused by Zika. The ministry said the symptoms being seen start in the legs, before radiating through the trunk, arms and face. The condition is most dangerous when it involves respiratory muscles. “In this case, the syndrome can cause death if respiratory support measures are not adopted,” the ministry said. Earlier this week, the Pan American Health Organization and World Health Organization announced an “increase of congenital anomalies, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and other neurological and autoimmune syndromes in areas where Zika virus is circulating.” PAHO warned member states to step up detection, prepare for a possible increase in neurological cases and reduce mosquito transmission. Zika is carried by mosquitoes and typically causes only mild symptoms, but health officials globally have recently been alarmed because of a possible link between the virus and nearly 3,900 children born with suspected microcephaly in Brazil since October. The rare condition, marked by an abnormally small head, is associated with incomplete brain development. (This video was updated on Feb. 2, 2016.) Authorities have confirmed more than 30 cases of Zika virus in the United States. Here's what you need to know. Last week, CDC issued an advisory warning pregnant women against travel to Brazil or more than a dozen other countries and territories in South America, Central America and the Caribbean where local transmission of the virus has been confirmed. The agency then followed up with guidelines for doctors who care for pregnant women, advising that they be tested for Zika infection if they show symptoms after visiting any of those areas. The guidelines note: “Guillain-Barré syndrome has been reported in patients following suspected Zika virus infection.” [How climate change could help the spread of Zika virus and other infectious diseases] In recent days, several countries have taken drastic measures to try to combat the Zika virus, with Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador and Jamaica all calling on women to consider delaying becoming pregnant. In the United States, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Texas and Hawaii have confirmed Zika infections involving returning travelers who were likely bitten by mosquitoes while abroad. The CDC said there have


The zombie claim that 300,000 children are used as child soldiers

United States is even listed as having 6,700 child soldiers (14 percent girls) while Britain is listed as having 5,528 child soldiers (11 percent girls). In both cases, the numbers reflect anyone who enlisted in the military under the age of 18. By 2003, researchers began to question the accuracy of Brett’s estimate. When UNICEF published a report on the 10th anniversary of Machel’s landmark study, it cited the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers as saying the number of armed conflicts involving children had declined — and any estimates should be viewed with caution. (The group was founded with the help of the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva, where Brett was a key figure.) “While it is possible to determine where children are associated with armed forces or armed groups, it is much more difficult to determine how many children have been involved,” the 2007 report noted. “In fact, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers no longer provides estimated figures. However, there is a sense that the numbers have fallen over the past decade, as conflicts in some countries have ended and demobilization agreements have been reached.” In fact, it appears the 300,000-figure was discarded by the group after 2003; instead the group simply provided a more reasonable estimate of “tens of thousands.” And yet the 300,000-figure continues to circulate. The difficulty of obtaining hard numbers is illustrated by the situation in Afghanistan, which constituted more than a third of Brett’s estimate. The recruitment of child soldiers in Afghanistan is an ongoing concern, but there is little evidence that the 108,000 figure was correct. Child Soldiers International, a successor organization to Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, lists Afghanistan as a “priority country” but offers no estimates about the number of child soldiers. Some 7,500 child soldiers were demobilized between 2003 and 2006 after the Taliban fell, the United Nations says. An annual report on children and armed conflict issued by the U.N. Secretary General said that the United Nations in 2014 documented the recruitment and use of 68 children by the Afghan National Police and armed groups, a decline from 97 in 2013. (The report said the numbers are almost certainly underreported.) Nearly 260 boys were held in juvenile rehabilitation centers for association with armed groups. “It is nearly impossible to provide authoritative figures for the number of child soldiers


The Daily 202: Bernie Sanders has a Eugene V. Debs problem

via AP) — — — North Korean authorities arrested a University of Virginia student who was part of a tourist group organized by Young Pioneers, which labels itself as the first company to offer discount tours of the country. GET SMART FAST: - The D.C. Circuit denied a petition to block the EPA from implementing the Clean Power Plan, a win for environmentalists. (AP) - Planned Parenthood Action Fund spent more than twice as much on lobbying in 2015 as it did in 2014, and the NRA spent just over $3 million — a 9 percent increase from the prior year. (Catherine Ho) - In another unintended consequence of Obamacare, many companies are now excluding outpatient surgery from their list of covered medical procedures. (Jay Hancock) - An F-16 from Arizona’s Luke Air Force Base crashed. The pilot’s condition is not known. (ABC News) - A bill aimed at removing a Confederate general as Florida’s representative in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall made it through a key committee in the state legislature. (Florida Politics) - That Oklahoma City cop convicted of four counts of first-degree rape was sentenced to 263 years in prison. (Sarah Larimer) - Alabama executed its first inmate since 2013 after the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal. (Mark Berman) - Authorities in Tajikistan shaved the beards of 13,000 men and shut down 160 stores that sell traditional Islamic attire in an attempt to curb radicalization. (Ishaan Tharoor) - The Islamic extremist group al-Shabab attacked a restaurant in Somalia and killed more than 20 people. (AP) - At least 21 refugees drowned after two boats sunk off the Greek Isles. (AP) - Al-Jazeera said three of its journalists were probably kidnapped while on assignment in Yemen. (AP) POWER PLAYERS IN THE NEWS: - George W. Bush might soon campaign for Jeb. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see 43 on the trail in South Carolina,” said Dorothy Bush Koch, Jeb and George W.’s sister, on a call for administration alums. (New York Times) - Rubio cut his Iowa television spending by $860,000. (Politico) - Bob Gates, who was Defense Secretary when Clinton was at State, said “the odds are high” that the Russians, Chinese or Iranians compromised Hillary’s homebrew email server, despite her insistence they did not. He said he never used email when he was SecDef or DCI. (Hugh Hewitt) - John Kerry, in Davos,


The Venus flytrap has a really creepy trick for catching its prey

count? "The carnivorous plant Dionaea muscipula, also known as Venus flytrap, can count how often it has been touched by an insect visiting its capture organ in order to trap and consume the animal prey," study author Rainer Hedrich of the University of Würzburg said in a statement. Plants don't have brains, so the Venus flytrap doesn't do anything that we'd recognize as "counting," in a cognitive sense. But according to this new study, the plant somehow keeps track of the number of times it's touched, which allows it to react appropriately to its prey. (Discovery via Giphy) When the scientists probed at their plants with mechano-electric pulses, they found that one touch set the flytraps into high-alert mode – but didn't actually result in any action on the plant's part. If a second touch happened within a few seconds, the trap snaps partially shut. It only shuts all the way after more touches, and the fifth touch triggered the release of digestive enzymes. After that, more touches mean more digestive enzymes. This allows the plant to expend just enough energy to successfully subdue and consume its prey: A bigger, livelier insect will get more attention than a weak bug. "The number of action potentials informs [the plant] about the size and nutrient content of the struggling prey," Hedrich said in a statement. "This allows the Venus flytrap to balance the cost and benefit of hunting." Or, in the words of The Atlantic's Ed Yong: "The plant apportions its digestive efforts according to the struggles of its prey. And the fly, by fighting for its life, tells the plant to start killing it, and how vigorously to do so." So if you ever find yourself in a nightmarishly huge Venus flytrap (you won't, that's silly) try not to struggle. Or, alternatively, if the trap has already shut fully on you, fight valiantly to ensure that your death is as swift as possible. The researchers hope to learn more about the mechanism behind this counting by sequencing the plant's genome. Read More: This praying mantis is terrifyingly good at pretending to be a flower Why more and more vultures eat their prey butt first Plants send out stress signals just like animals, scientists find Boa constrictors actually don’t suffocate their prey, are still terrifying This brilliant plant pretends to be poop Bees love caffeine, too — and tricky flowers take advantage


Dazzling new Hubble photo shows off a cluster of cosmic bling

One of the largest gatherings of hot, massive and bright stars in the Milky Way, this cluster houses some of the most luminous stars in our entire galaxy. (NASA & ESA, Jesús Maíz Apellániz (Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia)) Why NASA’s top scientist is sure that we’ll find signs of alien life in the next decade A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows off a cluster of brilliant stars that look like diamonds in the sky. The cluster Trumpler 14, which lies around 8,000 light years away from Earth in the Carina Nebula, features some of the brightest stars in our galaxy. The brightest star in the image – supergiant HD 93129Aa – is two and a half million times brighter than the sun, and 80 times as massive. This star cluster is young at just 500,000 years old, making it hundreds of millions of years younger than some other clusters in its home nebula. But it's a live fast, die young kind of cluster: Bright, blue-white stars are forming rapidly, and the high-speed particles they fling into space form strong stellar winds. In addition to triggering intense X-ray bursts when they plough into gas and dust outside the cluster, the winds also carve out cavities that can become nurseries for new stars. Astronomers believe the arc-shaped cloud at the bottom of the image was formed by these winds. As more and more of these young stars form, they're quickly tearing through the cluster's available hydrogen supplies. In just a few million years, they'll explode as supernovae. Not all diamonds are forever. Read More: This is what it looks like when a black hole tears a star apart Why NASA’s top scientist is sure that we’ll find signs of alien life in the next decade Only 5 billion years until The Milky Way gets gobbled up The new biggest thing in the universe, and why it’s a headache for scientists This suspected supernova is 570 billion times as bright as our sun New evidence suggests a ninth planet lurking at the edge of the solar system


Why grocery stores can’t seem to keep shelves stocked during snow storms

Shelves at a D.C. Giant, 9:30 p.m. on Thursday. (Lydia DePillis for The Washington Post) It's become a familiar sight for denizens of cities up and down the Eastern seaboard over the past few days: Grocery shelves stripped of bread and milk, rationally or not, as people prep for a storm that's been described in increasingly apocalyptic terms throughout the week. If you shop on the way home from work, you might spend hours in lines to the back of the store -- but if you leave it until later, the pickings could be slim. So what gives, America? Why can't the citizens of the most powerful nation on Earth buy the food they want when they want it? The short answer is that planning for peak usage is hard, as anyone trying to handle customer service call volume at an airport during a snowstorm knows. But grocers do what they can. One of the biggest in the D.C. area is Giant Foods, whose parent company Ahold also owns Stop & Shop in the Northeast. Giant has a whole team that, while not employing meteorologists like airlines do, monitors the weather and coordinates demand response. "We start pre-planning pretty much immediately," says Giant spokesman Jamie Miller. In this case, it was Monday, when a large storm started to seem inevitable. "That involves coordination with our vendors who provide direct delivery to our stores, as well as increasing orders through our own supplies." Every day, your average Giant store has 15 or 20 vendors who drop off loads of their main product, like Pepsi and Coke, Sara Lee, and H&S Bakery. A few days out, Giant asks them to bump up their deliveries for the days preceding a big weather event, especially for the things that people like to stock up on: Milk, eggs, bread, batteries, water. Giant -- and most other grocery companies -- also has its own distribution centers in the suburbs, which take deliveries and supply stores as needed. On a normal day, the average store receives one trailer full of perishable goods and one of dry goods. On a pre-storm day, that delivery volume nearly doubles. The problem is, you can't just keep unlimited amounts of food around to restock as items disappear. Most urban grocery stores don't have huge back rooms for storage, and you can't order a truck full of something on a few hours


Study: Maybe we can’t find aliens because they’ve all died already

CSIRO Parkes radio telescope is searching for alien civilizations. (Wayne England) The hunt for extraterrestrial life is one of humanity's most exciting endeavors. The pieces are all falling into place: We're finding more and more planets outside of our own solar system, and soon the James Webb Telescope will give us unprecedented looks at these distant worlds. We've populated Mars with robots looking for signs of ancient habitability. Orbiters dive through the icy geysers of ocean-covered moons in hopes of catching some life-giving minerals. Our radio telescopes are tuned in to mysterious stars, listening for the sounds of a hustling and bustling civilization. In spite all of that, we've yet to find a single measly microbe off-world. So where is everybody? In a new study published in Astrobiology, researchers from the Australian National University offer up one possible explanation: Maybe all of the other life in our neighborhood has already come and gone. It's not a new idea. One of my favorite songs is about this very concept: Space is big and time is long, so it's likely that any life (intelligent or otherwise) would manage to miss us. It's a standard answer to the Fermi Paradox, which is the contradiction between the immense number of Earth-like planets and the apparent rarity of Earth-like life. The new study goes a step further, suggesting that life, if it evolved, would often be too fragile to survive past its infancy. In other words, it's possible that other planets in our own solar system had blips of microbial life – tiny emergences that stood no chance of evolving into intelligent organisms. In fact, you could kind of blame climate change. But in this case, early organisms didn't do enough to change their planet's shifting climate. "Most early planetary environments are unstable. To produce a habitable planet, lifeforms need to regulate greenhouse gases such as water and carbon dioxide to keep surface temperatures stable," lead author Aditya Chopra said in a statement. The study authors believe that Earth's early microbial life helped to stabilize the planet's climate, while any life that might have existed on the nearby, similarly rocky planets Venus and Mars failed to do so. "Between the early heat pulses, freezing, volatile content variation and runaway positive feedbacks, maintaining life on an initially wet, rocky planet in the habitable zone may be like trying to ride a wild bull. Most life falls


Good work, humans: Storks have stopped migrating so they can live off our trash

A stork landing at its nest. (Image credit: Julio Blas) Human activities have plenty of obvious impacts on wildlife. Overhunting and overfishing, habitat destruction and the side effects of climate change are all notable forces that have cause wildlife populations to shrink or move. Perhaps a less talked-about, but nonetheless significant, impact of humans on wild animals, however, is our ability to alter — and even destroy — their migration patterns, a phenomenon that could have serious ecological consequences. “A lot of attention has rightfully been focused on protecting endangered species, preventing species from becoming extinct,” said The newest instance of humans versus wildlife migration has cropped up in a “It seems that the waste that is provided by humans is a big food source for some of the wintering populations,” said the paper’s senior author The researchers used GPS devices to follow the migrations of eight populations of juvenile white storks, a species found throughout Europe, western Asia and parts of northern Africa. They were interested in observing how different migration behaviors in each of the populations might affect the amount of energy the birds expend during the journeys and, thus, their chances of survival. The storks in this study came from a variety of home bases, including Greece, Poland, Russia, Spain, Germany and Uzbekistan. In general, different populations are known to migrate south into different areas during the winter, some into sub-Saharan Africa, and others overwintering north of the Sahara. The notable exception is the Uzbekistan population, which researchers have observed no longer migrates at all, although it used to overwinter in the Middle East. In general, the researchers were able to confirm the idea that the less energy expended by the birds, the greater their chance of survival during the migration. And they also observed that the birds are strategic when it comes to minimizing their energy expenditure. One of the most notable observations was the storks’ tendency to take advantage of human resources along the way — even if the result was a disrupted or halted migration. A flock of storks. (Image credit: Julio Blas) The researchers found that human population density along the migration route had a high influence on the storks’ behavior. Storks that traveled through heavily populated landscapes tended to stop frequently and be highly active during these pauses, presumably taking advantage of human resources by moving around and feeding during these pauses.


So on one side of the coin, these migratory changes actually seem to be a boon for individual birds, giving them a better shot at survival through the winter than they would have making the long haul south. But on the flip side, disrupting a long-standing migration pattern can have bigger consequences for the ecological webs these animals belong to. “If you have large numbers of animals on the move, they’re going to affect the ecosystems that they move through,” said Wilcove, the Princeton professor, who was not involved in this particular study. For example, migrating birds, specifically — storks included — often eat large quantities of insects during the journey, providing a valuable pest-control service to plants along the way. Halting a migration could take this service away and allow insect populations in certain areas to get out of balance. Migrating animals can also play an important role in seed dispersal and nutrient cycling in the ecosystems they move through. So there’s a clear benefit to protecting the longstanding migratory patterns of wildlife. But unfortunately, it’s not just storks that are changing their behaviors. Humans have had clear influences on the migratory patterns of other species as well, Wilcove said. One notable example he pointed to is the effect of dam-building in the Pacific Northwest, which has severely disrupted the migration of salmon in the region. This is a problem because salmon are an important component of the nutrient cycle. Salmon are born in freshwater, but migrate out to sea while they’re still young and spend the majority of their lives in the ocean. When it comes time for them to reproduce, they migrate back upstream, spawn and die soon after. Their bodies then decompose, and their nutrients are distributed into the freshwater system. But as salmon are blocked from moving through certain parts of the freshwater systems in the Pacific Northwest, scientists believe there’s been a drop in the nutrients, notably nitrogen, that help sustain plants that grow within these areas, Wilcove said. Another perhaps less dramatic example is the behavior of geese in the United States. “By virtue of the creation of corporate lawns and golf courses and ponds, we’ve basically short-circuited the goose migration, and a lot of these resident geese simply weren’t here 40 years ago,” Wilcove noted. “That’s a case where large population of an animal has essentially stopped migrating.” The issue of altered