Just like Bei Bei, Toronto’s giant panda cubs have been named and are heading for a debut

The Toronto Zoo named Jia Panpan (the male on the right) and Jia Yueyue (the female on the left). (Toronto Zoo) Two giant panda cubs at the Toronto Zoo in Canada have been named and will soon make their debut there. Meet Jia Panpan and his sister, Jia Yueyue. Their names mean Canadian Hope and Canadian Joy, according to the zoo’s website. #TOPandaCubs have been named! Say hello to Jia Panpan (Canadian Hope) & Jia Yueyue (Canadian Joy). https://t.co/K6hHVrSvz6 Their names were picked after a nearly month-long public voting process. The cubs are expected to make their debut March 12 at Toronto’s zoo. The cubs were 4 months old in February. Meanwhile in Washington’s National Zoo, Bei Bei is doing his share of cuteness as documented by social media. It's easy to see why panda cubs are such great climbers with paws & claws like these! #BeiBei #PandaStory https://t.co/ct9LUfHo7j And check out his 2-year-old sister Bao Bao’s apparent gymnastics talents. Bao Bao did tree gymnastics for the crowd. #PandaStory #BaoBao @BaoBaoPanda https://t.co/ApM72xbigR And here’s Bao Bao doing what pandas do — eating bamboo. Bao Bao enjoying her bamboo breakfast. #PandaStory #BaoBao @BaoBaoPanda https://t.co/UYVhtdECE6 Bei Bei was born in August at the National Zoo, along with a twin, who died a few days later. Bei Bei’s name is pronounced “bay bay” and means “precious treasure” in Mandarin. Bei Bei made his debut in January.


These are your 2016 Rammy finalists

Palmer Steak - Le Diplomate - The Red Hen Employee of the Year: - Jorge Martinez, the Source by Wolfgang Puck - Jim Mayo, PassionFish Reston - Aniko Olah, Martin's Tavern - Yovani Peralta, B Too - Andrea Raiello, Water & Wall Manager of the Year: - Carlos Fernandez, Best Buns Bread Co. - Margarita Krivchikova, Belga Cafe - Sudhir Kumar, Indique - Jennifer Lucy, Estadio - Atul Narain, Rasika Service Program of the Year: - Bourbon Steak - Fiola - Iron Gate - Rasika - The Source by Wolfgang Puck Pastry Chef of the Year: - Jemil Gadea, Masseria by Nicholas Stefanelli - Eva Kronenburg, Convivial - Alex Levin, Osteria Morini - Bridie McCulla, Northside Social, The Liberty Tavern, Lyon Hall - Tressa Wiles, Bayou Bakery Rising Culinary Star of the Year: - Erin Clarke, Casa Luca - Brad Deboy, Blue Duck Tavern - Jonah Kim, Yona - Piter and Handry Tjan, Sushiko - James Wozniuk, Maketto Everyday - Bar Pilar - Daikaya - The Fainting Goat - Pearl Dive Oyster Palace - Pizzeria Orso Upscale Casual Restaurant of the Year: - Le Diplomate - Osteria Morini - Sushiko - The Red Hen - Zaytinya New Restaurant of the Year: - Centrolina - Clarity - Convivial - Maketto - Masseria by Nicholas Stefanelli Formal Fine Dining Restaurant of the Year: - Iron Gate - Marcel's by Robert Wiedmaier - Rasika - Restaurant Eve - Trummer's on Main Chef of the Year: - Amy Brandwein, Centrolina - Erik Bruner-Yang, Toki Underground, Maketto - Scott Drewno, the Source by Wolfgang Puck - Tarver King, the Restaurant at Patowmack Farm - Cedric Maupillier, Mintwood Place, Convivial Regional Food and Beverage Producer of the Year: - DC Brau Brewing Co. - Port City Brewing Co. - Don Ciccio & Figli - Green Hat/New Columbia Distillers - One Eight Distilling Restaurateur of the Year: - Cava Group (Cava Grill, Cava Mezze, Cava Foods, Sugo) - Gruppo FT Restaurants (Fiola, Fiola Mare, Casa Luca) - JL Restaurant Group (Hank's Oyster Bar, Hank's Pasta Bar, Twisted Horn) - Mike Isabella Concepts (Graffiato, Kapnos, G, Kapnos Taverna, Pepita, Yona, etc.) - Paul Ruppert, Warehouse Industries (Room 11, Crane & Turtle, Petworth Citizen, Slim's Diner Related items: Post critics on Rammy Awards: Time to smell the Rose's Who won at the 2015 Rammy Awards, D.C.'s annual restaurant prom Two restaurants almost got Rammy nominations they weren't eligible for


Watch the total solar eclipse sweep across Pacific Ocean tonight

Slooh Live Update: Watch the total solar eclipse live via Slooh.com in the video above beginning at 6 p.m. Eastern Time. The moon’s shadow will sweep across the Pacific Ocean from Indonesia to Hawaii this week in the first total solar eclipse in a year. Total solar eclipses occur when the moon passes directly between the Earth and the sun for a few minutes. The previous total solar eclipse happened on March 20, 2015, over the far North Atlantic Ocean and parts of northern Europe. The next total eclipse will pass squarely over the continental United States on Aug. 21, 2017, and will be visible from the Pacific Northwest to the Southeast. The eclipse occurs on Wednesday, Pacific time, but those in the United States (outside Hawaii) will need to gaze online on Tuesday evening. You can watch in the live stream on this page starting at 6 p.m., Eastern Time, thanks to Slooh.com. From its location, Slooh expects its glorious two-minute portion of totality to occur at 7:37 p.m. Eastern Time. There will be live views from partner observatories in Hawaii during a partial phase of the eclipse.The greatest part of totality lasts for 4 minutes and 9 seconds. Astronomer Paul Cox will guide you through the enchanting stages of the partial eclipse phase, then totality and partiality, again, along with a team from the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands. Special guests will include science communicator Lucie Green. Viewers are invited to ask questions on Twitter during the broadcast using the hashtag #SloohEclipse. Total solar eclipses occur when the moon slides perfectly between the Earth and sun for a few minutes. The March 8 eclipse sweeps across the Pacific Ocean from Indonesia to Hawaii beginning around 6 p.m., Eastern Time. All eclipses occur in families, and this eclipse is number 52 in the family “Saros 130,” a series that started on Aug. 20, 1096, and it will last until Oct. 25, 2394. Solar eclipses in these series occur every 18 years and 11 days, or one Saros cycle. “When two eclipses are separated by a period of one Saros, they share a very similar geometry,” writes NASA. “The two eclipses occur at the same node with the moon at nearly the same distance from Earth and at the same time of year. Thus, the Saros is useful for organizing eclipses into families or series.” Each Saros begins


No quick fix for shortage of Customs officers

of two days.” He said the programs have cut hiring time by over 60 percent in some cases. Yet, the agency’s inability to hire efficiently has costs beyond overtime and long lines. A joint statement from the House and Senate Appropriations committees in December said CBP’s failure to hire up to approved budget levels for several years has resulted in “tens of millions of dollars appropriated for personnel compensation and benefits being diverted to unbudgeted activities.” One group’s rogue is another’s honoree IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has been awarded The National Academy of Public Administration’s (NAPA) Elliot L. Richardson Prize for Excellence in Public Service. NAPA honored him last week for “possessing the outstanding public service virtues exemplified” by Richardson, who led four cabinet departments. William D. Ruckelshaus, who was Environmental Protection Agency administrator among other positions, also was honored by NAPA. In October, however, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and 18 Republican colleagues moved to impeach Koskinen, saying he had “violated the public trust” by a series of failures related to the IRS treatment of conservative political groups. Going paperless A group of former Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) officials are protesting the agency’s decision to go paperless. A January memo from FWS Deputy Director Steve Guertin says the agency decided to stop printing “newsletters, updates, and other periodic publications in all areas of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.” The purpose is to support “conservation efforts by eliminating waste, increasing recycling, and preventing pollution by reducing paper use.” He added that “this will provide cost savings and faster communications more in line with today’s use of social media.” But seven former FWS officials want the decision reversed. Their letter to the agency says the new policy conflicts with equality of service and relies on false economies. “An immediate and across-the-board suspension of printed communications ignores large sectors of the American public who, for a variety of reasons, consume information from their government in traditional ways — seniors and the elderly; minority, non-English-speaking, and economically-disadvantaged citizens without sustained access to expensive technology; and rural Americans with limited or non-existent broadband capabilities,” they wrote. “In its quest to appeal to the sensibilities of urban and economically advantaged millennials,” their letter said, “the agency is turning its back” on large segments of the public who don’t use social media. On false economies, the former officials said


From Earth, air, and space, Wednesday’s solar eclipse over the Pacific was a stunner

Onlookers in Indonesia were able to watch a a rare total solar eclipse on March 9. The astronomical phenomenon was only visible from a small area, but a partial eclipse could be seen from Australia, parts of Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The moon passed between a swath of the Earth and our closest star Wednesday, producing a beautiful solar eclipse. The eclipse swept over the Pacific Ocean from Indonesia to Hawaii. Onlookers in Indonesia saw the sun’s face fully obscured while its periphery radiated a golden glow. From space, the Himawari satellite from the Japan Meteorological Agency caught the shadow of the moon cast against the Earth as the eclipse proceeded (hat tip @Benelsen on Twitter). Solar eclipse, March 9, 2016, captured by Himawari satellite (Japan Meteorological Agency via @benelsen on Twitter) Check out this epic view from an Alaskan Airlines flight, which purposefully intercepted the eclipse path to the delight of passengers: Now that's a view of the #Eclipse2016 from flight #870. Photo: Anchorage flight attendants Rachael C. & Sofia S. https://t.co/Sa6qOUysRu Now we all await the next total solar eclipse to pass directly over the continental U.S. Aug. 21, 2017, which will be visible from the Pacific Northwest to the Southeast. Next Total Solar Eclipse: August 21, 2017 and YES it will be visible from #USA! (total from #Georgia to #Oregon) https://t.co/hqYEUqlNih


Main Street Morning: Emissions scandal could drive Volkswagen to cut jobs

career of wings and beer. - A market run by students in a small town makes a small profit. - Kim Kardashian has earned $80 million from her iPhone game. Retail - Home Depot agrees to pay $13 million to compensate consumers affected by a massive 2014 data breach. Restaurants - IHOP offers free stacks on National Pancake Day. Sales and Marketing - Tennis star Sharapova loses big sponsorships after a positive drug test. - Pinterest opens up its ads manager tools to smaller and medium-sized businesses. Travel - The airlines did something truly amazing last year. Finance - JPMorgan Chase is the latest bank to rebuild itself in a start-up’s image. - Indiegogo launches a push to support female entrepreneurs. Start-ups - A financing start-up raises $3.6 million to fund solar projects. - Why your start-up needs a pre-nup. - This start-up employs refugees who cook their native cuisine. Technology - Most people in the U.S. don’t know virtual reality devices exist, a study says. - A big-data tool similar to those that have transformed the way airlines and hotels make money will be coming to hair salons, day spas, fitness studios and piano lessons. Online - Women are spending more time on Google search than men. - The $107 billion industry that nobody’s talking about. Social Media - Ad fraud causes Facebook to abandon a new ad buying platform. - Here are a few types to avoid on LinkedIn. Ideas - Ford patents a movie screen windshield for driverless cars. - A nifty device takes the hassle out of remembering meds. On This Day in 1959 - Barbie made her debut. Around the Country - These are the best cities for black women to launch and operate a thriving business. - Cornell University is building a high-tech school that it wants to be a home for New York entrepreneurs. - Pennsylvania raises its minimum wage for state workers. - Small business owners are asking New York’s lawmakers to reject a $15 minimum wage plan. - This is what happens when 2 grannies take a Lamborghini for a spin, - The Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce will host a half-day issues summit on the Flint water crisis and Detroit Public Schools next Friday. Around the World - More than 5,000 National Health Service operations are cancelled in the U.K. as doctors prepare to strike. - German industrial production


The Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon hits D.C. on Saturday. Getting around will be hard.

Runners make their through the streets of the District during the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon in 2012. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) [This post has been updated.] There’s no event on the annual calendar in the nation’s capital that has as much power to disrupt traffic as the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon. That power stems from the number of participants (more than 25,000), the Saturday timing and the extent of the street closings, which span all quadrants of the District. The marathon starts at 7:30 a.m. Saturday from a line on Constitution Avenue NW at 14th Street and finishes in mid-afternoon at Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Stadium. In between, many residents will feel trapped in their neighborhoods, while travelers will be left wondering how to reach Reagan National Airport, Union Station and other can’t-be-late destinations. Most of the street closings will be in effect from 7 a.m. to about 3 p.m. There will be exceptions, and police can always adjust to prevailing conditions and temporarily open some access points along the route when no runners are in the vicinity. Watch for “No Parking” signs along the route. Streets generally reopen as the last runners pass by and any race equipment is removed from that sector. Capitol Hill, Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights, Southwest Waterfront and Anacostia are among the communities where streets will close. Major roadways affected include Constitution Avenue NW, Arlington Memorial Bridge, Rock Creek Parkway, Calvert Street NW, Columbia Road NW, Harvard Street NW, North Capitol Street, K Street NE, H Street NE, East Capitol Street, Minnesota Avenue SE, South Capitol Street and Maine Avenue SW. See the D.C. police traffic advisory here. The marathon has tremendous range, passing through all of the District’s quadrants. See more course details and maps on the event website. (Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon image) Metro The best stations for reaching the start of the race are Federal Triangle, Smithsonian and Archives. The station nearest the finish line is Stadium-Armory. It will be very crowded, so note that it has two entrances. See a station map here. The Red Line will be split into two segments, Shady Grove-Silver Spring and Silver Spring-Glenmont. Between Shady Grove and Silver Spring, the Saturday trains are scheduled to operate every six to 12 minutes. The shuttle between Glenmont and Silver Spring will operate about every 20 minutes. To avoid the transfer at Silver Spring, participants could park at


Viral video appears to show Afghan police dragging man behind truck

The video is undated and the Afghan Interior Ministry said that the perpetrators have not yet been identified. The Washington Post has edited this video for time. KABUL — A gruesome video that appears to show Afghan security forces torturing a detainee emerged on social media Wednesday, prompting the country's chief executive to vow the perpetrators would be punished. It is unclear whether the detainee, who reports said was a suspected suicide bomber, survived the abuse. The amateur footage was reportedly taken in the Panjwai district of southern Kandahar province, and it shows men in Afghan police uniforms tying another man to the back of a truck and dragging him across the pavement. After he is untied, one of the men in uniform bites hard on the detainees' arm, forcing him to the ground. The prisoner is then hustled into the cab of the truck, clearly marked "police," before the video ends. The video is undated, and the Interior Ministry has said that the perpetrators have not been identified. In a statement Wednesday, the ministry said the Kandahar police force has been ordered to investigate. Afghan security forces have "clear orders on how to behave with prisoners," Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah posted on Twitter on Wednesday. The Interior Ministry "will investigate this incident and those involved will end up punished," he said. Torture is banned by Afghan law but is rife in detention facilities across the country, according to the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan. A U.N. report last year said authorities have not been held accountable for abuses, which range from electric shocks and near-asphyxiation to beatings with pipes and cables. "Many Afghan security and police officials interviewed appeared not to accept that torture is illegal and saw it as a proper tool to obtain valuable intelligence information," the U.N. report said. The United States has spent more than $60 billion on training and equipping Afghan police and the army. Read more: Taliban rejects peace talks with Afghan government Why disaffected young Afghans are warming to a Taliban comeback These are the 11,000 soldiers who might save Afghanistan


‘There’s nothing but rubble and bricks’: Massive explosion injures 9 Seattle firefighters

a report of a natural gas leak, the department said in a news release. All nine fire-service members “were transported to Harborview Medical Center with minor injures and are expected to be released later today,” the department said. “Search dogs have been brought in as a precaution to ensure there are no other patients.” A gas explosion in Seattle that injured nine firefighters early Wednesday, March 9, was caught on a nearby surveillance camera. Fire investigators are working with the Seattle Police Arson Bomb Unit and Puget Sound Energy to determine the cause of the explosion and two-alarm fire, the department said. Fire crews responded to the gas leak shortly after 1 a.m. in the Greenwood neighborhood, the department said. The explosion that followed “blew out windows in businesses and storefronts in the surrounding blocks,” sending glass and debris flying, the department said. “It shook the house,” Josh Koolbaugh, who lives in the neighborhood, told NBC News. “It sounded like an extremely loud boom.” Koolbaugh told NBC that he walked to the scene after the explosion. “I saw three buildings that were all leveled,” he said. “There’s nothing but rubble and bricks, and there was a fire in the middle of the rubble. … It’s like something out of a movie.” Firefighters pour water on the smoldering rubble left from an early-morning explosion Wednesday in Seattle. (Elaine Thompson/AP) A photographer from a Fox affiliate was in the area when the explosion occurred, the station wrote on its website, and “described the aftermath of the explosion as a war zone,” Q13 Fox said in its story. Another resident of the neighborhood, Emily Pfeifer, told NBC that she “heard a low boom and was rocked from a dead sleep, like a single gentle shove.” “The rocking was accompanied by the sound of things shaking briefly in my room,” she said, adding: “I thought a car must have hit my building.” The fire department said there were 67 firefighters, medics and commanders at the scene following the explosion. Some of them will remain at the scene “on fire watch” throughout the day, the department said. A Puget Sound Energy spokesman told the Seattle Times it is a “reasonable assumption” that a gas leak caused the explosion. Gas has been shut off to the location, the spokesman told the newspaper. Nine firefighters were injured when a massive explosion blasted through a quiet Seattle neighborhood.


Chipotle just had another food safety incident

A Chipotle restaurant near Boston was closed March 8, after four workers fell sick. A Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant in the Boston area closed Tuesday after employees fell ill and one tested positive for norovirus, local health officials said. One employee of the restaurant came down with norovirus, Billerica Board of Health Director Richard Berube told USA Today. Four Chipotle employees reported feeling sick, Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold told the Boston Globe. Additional employees who feel ill will be tested, he added. "After learning that four of our employees were not feeling well — none of whom worked while sick — our restaurant in Billerica, Mass., was closed for a full sanitization," Arnold said, USA Today reported. Richard Berube, Billerica's public health director, speaks toe reporters outside the temporarily closed Chipotle restaurant. (Brian Snyder/Reuters) The store has been cleaned, and Berube told WHDH that he expects it will reopen on Thursday Health inspectors who visited the store on Wednesday found it to be clean, which "was consistent with the perfect health inspection score of 100 percent this restaurant received less than a week ago, on March 3," Arnold, the Chipotle spokesman, told The Post via email. "There are no confirmed customer illnesses connected to this incident," Arnold added. 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. This is the latest incident in a string of bad health-safety news for the Mexican fast-casual chain, including in December when more than 100 Boston College students became sick after eating at Chipotle. Health officials said norovirus was the cause. In the fall, an E. coli outbreak linked to Chipotle prompted the company to temporarily shutter more than 40 restaurants in Washington and Oregon. Then another seven states reported cases of E. coli linked to the chain. Shares of the company's stock fell more than 6 percent by Wednesday, Reuters reported. "We suspect that investors and consumers will be sensitive to this announcement, particularly in light of the adverse news flow over the last six months at Chipotle," CRT Capital analyst Lynne Collier said in a client note, the wire service reported. "The publicity around this news announcement will be another negative data-point that may affect consumer demand." All Chipotle stores closed on Feb. 8 for a national food safety meeting, during which company officials talked


This aging star’s dusty halo could mean it’s still churning out planets

The Very Large Telescope Interferometer at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile has obtained the sharpest view ever of the dusty disk around an aging star. (ESO) When stars are young, they often host massive rings of dusty material — the ingredients that will form their future planets. And late in life, scientists have found, stars sometimes form similar disks a second time. The images above, taken with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile, provide the sharpest-ever glimpse of one of these mature star disks. Scientists still aren't sure whether this star — or other dusty ones of the same age — are actually making planets so late in life. But the new images show that the disks of new and old stars are strikingly similar. This view shows the VLTI reconstructed image, with the brighter central star removed. A fainter glow from the secondary star is visible, which came as a surprise to the observers. (ESO) The host of the dust disk is a double star called IRAS 08544-4431. It sits about 4,000 light years away from us. "By combining light from several telescopes of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer, we obtained an image of stunning sharpness — equivalent to what a telescope with a diameter of [nearly 500 feet] would see," Jacques Kluska, an Exeter University researcher who helped to image the star system, said in a statement. "The resolution is so high that, for comparison, we could determine the size and shape of one Euro coin seen from a distance of [1,243 miles]." In addition to a clear picture of the ring itself — dust thrown off by the decrepit red giant — the researchers believe they can detect a fainter ring around the smaller companion star, as well. Read More: Scientists reveal the secret behind Mercury’s unusually dark surface Why NASA’s top scientist is sure that we’ll find signs of alien life in the next decade This is what it looks like when a black hole tears a star apart Scientists caught a new planet forming for the first time ever


This solar eclipse video is ‘double rainbow’ all over again

In a moment similar to that of the "double rainbow" viral video, an astronomer on an Alaska Airlines flight is overcome with glee while witnessing a total solar eclipse on Mar. 8. Alaska Airlines adjusted its flight schedule by 25 minutes to allow 'eclipse chasers' onboard the perfect view. This is amazing. Tuesday’s total solar eclipse wasn’t visible from the U.S., but 163 lucky passengers on Alaska Airlines Flight 870 saw the whole event off the wing of a Boeing 737. Among those passengers was this guy — arguably the most excited man on the planet to be witnessing the eclipse. Alaska airlines delayed the flight, which was bound from Anchorage to Honolulu, for 25 minutes so that passengers could see the eclipse in the path of totality. The airline wrote that there were around a “dozen astronomers and veteran ‘eclipse chasers’ among the 163 passengers onboard, gazing out oval windows as the moon blocks the sun for nearly two minutes.” “We recognize our customer’s passions,” said Chase Craig, Alaska’s director of onboard experience. “Certainly we can’t change flight plans for every interest, but this was a special moment, so we thought it was worth it. Now we have a plane full of customers who will be treated to a special occurrence.” So jealous. We’re guessing this guy will be an Alaska Airlines customer for life.


Transcript: The Post-Univision Democratic debate, annotated

not be buying elections. We've got to end this rigged economy where people are working longer hours for low wages, almost all new income and wealth going to the top 1 percent, and of course, we need comprehensive immigration reform and a path toward citizenship. And here in Miami... (APPLAUSE) SANDERS: ... here in Miami as much as any city in America, we know that we have got to combat climate change, transform our energy system, and leave this planet in a way that is healthy and habitable for our kids and our grandchildren. SALINAS: Thank you, Senator. First question, Secretary, you have been starting to sound like the nominee lately, but many voters are saying, not so fast. Where did you fail last night in Michigan? CLINTON: Well, look, I won one of the contests and lost another close one. I am continuing to work hard for every single vote across our country. I was pleased that I got 100,000 more votes last night than my opponent and more delegates. So this is a marathon, and it's a marathon that can only be carried out by the kind of inclusive campaign that I'm running, a campaign that reaches out to everybody, a campaign that offers real positive solutions to the problems that we face, a campaign that is based on how together we can make progress, because I am a progressive who likes to get things done. So I'm excited about the upcoming contests, including right here in Florida. And we'll continue to work as hard as I can to earn the vote of every single voter. SALINAS: What went wrong in Michigan? (APPLAUSE) SALINAS: What went wrong in Michigan? What went wrong in Michigan? What failed in Michigan specifically? CLINTON: It was a very close race. We've had some of those. I've won some. I've lost some. But, you know, I was very pleased by the overall outcome last night. And now we're on to the states for next Tuesday and I'm looking forward to campaigning hard in all of them. SALINAS: Senator, aside from your astounding upset last night in Michigan, you are still far behind Secretary Clinton in delegate count. She has 1,221 delegates, including superdelegates, and you have 571. What is your pathway to make up the deficit, and can you realistically catch up? SANDERS: Well, you know, when we began this campaign, I was


United States of America. (APPLAUSE) (CROSSTALK) TUMULTY: Secretary Clinton, Senator Elizabeth Warren -- Senator Elizabeth Warren says personnel is policy. And she says that there is a revolving door between Wall Street and the highest levels of economic policy-making and regulation in Washington. Three of the last four Treasury secretaries appointed by Democratic presidents had ties to Citigroup. Do you agree with Elizabeth Warren's criticism that both your husband's administration and President Obama's have relied too heavily on advisers who represent the world view of the big banks? CLINTON: Well, Karen, I do agree that we have to end the revolving door. I strongly support a piece of legislation from Senator Tammy Baldwin that would do just that. And I will be looking for people who will put the interests of consumers first, who will do more to try to make sure Main Street flourishes. And I will very much reach out and ask for advice as to who should be appointed, including to Senator Warren and many of my other former colleagues in the Senate. But I think it's important also to look at what we want to accomplish. You know, in the debates we've had -- maybe this is the seventh or so -- Senator Sanders is always criticizing the two recent Democratic presidents -- President Clinton and President Obama. And that's fine, but I wish he would criticize and join me in criticizing George W. Bush, who I think wrecked the economy and created the conditions for the great recession. You know, at the end of the '90s, we had 23 million new jobs. Incomes went up for everybody. We were talking earlier about what needs to be done for Latinos and African Americans. Well, we were doing it by the end of the '90s. Median family income went up 17 percent. For minorities, it went up even more. Along came the Republicans, trickle-down economics -- one of the worst ideas since snake oil -- was put back into place. And we ended up with the great recession. President Obama had to rescue the economy. And I don't think he gets the credit he deserves for doing that. TUMULTY: Senator Sanders, your name was mentioned. (APPLAUSE) SANDERS: Now, let me say this. I gather Secretary Clinton hasn't listened to too many of my speeches. (LAUGHTER) Or followed my work in the Congress as very few people stood


Training for the Olympics is grueling enough; imagine being pregnant while doing it

Artal said. “Over the years, it progressed to where we said, ‘It’s okay to exercise in pregnancy.’ It was not until this past year that we said, ‘It’s also okay to engage in vigorous, intensive exercise, provided there are no complications of pregnancy.’” Brown, 29, was not planning on getting pregnant. Well, at least not yet. An Olympic hopeful, the Warrenton, Va. resident and former All-Met Athlete of the Year in outdoor track was on pace for the best season of her career by early summer last year. She had set personal bests at 800-meters and 1500-meters, and felt her career was on the right path after several injury-filled seasons. The positive results and good feelings did not last long. Sarah Brown strength training at the Warrenton Aquatic and Recreation Facility two weeks before giving birth. (Courtesy of Darren Brown) “All of sudden, it was literally like I had kind of went off a cliff,” Brown said of her subpar results later that summer in Europe. “I was running really well and it was just like, it was like I drove myself off a cliff and all of a sudden my races just were terrible, absolutely terrible.” Perhaps it was just mental fatigue, thought Brown (nee: Bowman) and her husband, Darren. A blood test later revealed that she was pregnant. Brown was in a state of disbelief upon receiving the news, and not just because she was on an intrauterine device for birth control. (An earlier pregnancy test had turned out negative.) Brown’s late March due date meant that she would only have about three months to train for the Olympic Trials after giving birth. “I was relieved because I finally at least understood what was going on,” Brown said. “But I was also really scared. …I knew that having an IUD and being pregnant were not really good things to be having. I couldn’t even focus on the running aspect. It became like a health issue – the safety of the baby, the safety of me.” Once doctors reassured her that it would be fine to exercise and that the baby appeared healthy, Brown, a nine-time all-American at Tennessee, wasted no time getting back on the track. There was no doubt in her mind that she would be training through her pregnancy. She is a runner, and she knew, one way or another, she was going to run. Brown’s


husband, who also doubles as her coach, came up with the training schedule. She would do some form of exercise seven days a week and usually twice a day. She ran up to five times a week. On Mondays, Brown would go on a 10-12 mile run. Her heart rate would hover around 75-80 percent of her max, which equated to 175-180 beats per minute. The pace of her runs would be approximately six minutes per mile. “There was a theme: ‘You’ll know if you’re doing too much’ and I never felt like I was putting myself in a position that I was doing that,” Brown said. “I monitor my body temperature before I start a workout, sometimes mid-work out, after the workout, just making sure I’m doing the right things and making sure I’m getting enough water.” The second trimester proved to be the most difficult for Brown. Around the 21st week, Brown experienced muscle spasms, which forced her to work on her cross training. But by the third trimester, Brown was back on the track, running sprints with what she said felt like “a bowling ball on my stomach.” Brown said she is encouraged by those before her who have had successful professional running careers after the birth of their child. Fellow pros Stephanie Rothstein Bruce, Sara Slattery, Alysia Montaño, Sara Ensrud Vaughn and Julia Webb all served as inspirations who helped drown out the negative comments Brown said she sometimes read or overheard about her decision to train. “I think it’s great what she’s doing,” said Montaño, who famously competed July 2014 in an 800-meter race while 34 weeks pregnant. “I’m hopeful that she will be, and I hope that I was, an inspiration for pregnant women and families who are pursuing running and a family.” To Artal, people like Brown can help encourage more women to exercise during pregnancy. It’s something his research has shown is associated with limited risk and plenty of benefits, partially due to the frequent access to medical supervision that women have during pregnancy. “I think it’s a positive message,” he said. “Women with uncomplicated pregnancies should be encouraged to engage in aerobic and strength-conditioning exercises.” Welcome to the world Abigail Ann Brown! 5lb 15oz and 21" of pure grit & fight. Mom & baby girl are doing great. 💪😊🙏 https://t.co/f5jLCnbHbc Friday morning, the Browns welcomed their daughter, Abigail Ann Brown, into


This mind-boggling study shows just how massive sea level rise really is

A satellite view of Antarctica is seen in an undated NASA photo released on Feb. 6, 2012. (Reuters/NASA) As our planet continues to warm, coastlines worldwide will retreat inland — in the long run, maybe by a lot. That means some coastal cities, in places like Florida — where Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders debated precisely this topic on Wednesday night — stand to lose quite a lot of land where people currently live and own property. It seems doubtful that we can defend all of the many coastal zones that will be at risk. So is there any other way to head off sea level rise? It may sound ridiculous to even contemplate. But in a new study just out in the open access journal Earth System Dynamics, scientists have actually published an idea for doing that and provided some calculations regarding the scale of what it would take. That scale turns out to be simply massive, ultimately rendering the idea about as unfathomable as the oceans themselves. But then, that’s kind of the point. “This is not a proposition,” said Anders Levermann, a sea-level expert at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and one of the study’s authors. “It’s a discussion. It’s supposed to initiate the discussion on how big the sea level problem really is.” The paper was composed by Levermann and fellow researchers Katja Frieler and Matthias Mengel. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies mapped five-year global temperature averages. 2014 now ranks as the warmest year on record since 1880, according to an analysis by NASA scientists. Their idea, simply put, is to pump excess seawater more than two miles into the air to the top of the Antarctic ice sheet, where it would freeze and stay put — for a very long time, although not forever. The new study, accordingly, uses a computer model of Antarctica to study the consequences of adding huge volumes of salt water to different portions of the ice sheet. And there turn out to be a few, er, problems: the unfathomable amount of energy required and the massive geoengineering of what is arguably the only truly unspoiled place on Earth. Accordingly, the Potsdam Institute itself has framed the research as backing the idea that “future sea-level rise is a problem probably too big to be solved even by unprecedented geo-engineering.” The problem with using geoengineering to counter rising seas


NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter celebrates 10 years of stunning scientific work

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has clocked more than a decade of service at the Red Planet and has yielded scientific discoveries and magnificent views of a distant world. On March 10, 2006, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter set six of its engines to a powerful burn, allowing it to slow down enough for the gravitational pull of Mars to catch it and bring it into orbit. Ten years later, NASA is celebrating the MRO's continued success: The orbiter has lasted for five times longer than its planned primary scientific mission and counting, delivering unprecedented data on Mars and its history back to scientists on Earth. "The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter remains a powerful asset for studying the Red Planet, with its six instruments all continuing capably a decade after orbit insertion. All this and the valuable infrastructure support that it provides for other Mars missions, present and future, make MRO a keystone of the current Mars Exploration Program," Project Scientist Rich Zurek of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement. Our Martian rovers might get most of the attention – after all, they're trawling around on the surface of Mars itself – but the MRO was responsible for last year's studies on the possibility of seasonal liquid water on the Red Planet. And without the MRO, our landers wouldn't be nearly as successful: The detailed images from the orbiter, which has now circled the planet over 45,000 times, help scientists determine landing sites and new destinations for rovers. It's also used to relay signals from Curiosity and Opportunity back to Earth. It's capable of sending more data per second back to Earth than any of the other interplanetary missions combined, which allows it to send tons of incredibly high-resolution images home without breaking a sweat. Watch the video above to get a glimpse of what MRO has accomplished so far. With all six of its instruments in perfect working order, there's no end in sight for the orbiter – and it's likely that the spacecraft will be around to help NASA select a landing spot for our first crewed mission to Mars. Read More: What water on Mars can teach us about scientific ‘breakthroughs’ NASA’s latest findings on Mars: Solar wind stripped away atmosphere and water NASA’s leaky Mars lander will get another chance in 2018 Scientists just grew vegetables in ‘Martian’ soil — but there’s a catch Scientists reveal the


Zika outbreak: ‘The more we learn, the worse things seem to get’

The mosquito-borne disease suspected of causing serious birth defects is expected to spread to all countries in the Americas except Canada and Chile and remains a global health emergency, according to the World Health Organization. This post has been updated. The top U.S. health officials leading the response to the mosquito-borne Zika virus sweeping through the hemisphere said its growing links to a broad array of birth defects and neurological disorders are worse than they originally suspected, increasing the risk for devastating harm during pregnancy. Until Zika, "there has never been a mosquito-borne virus that could cause serious birth defects on such a large scale," Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Thursday during a conference call with reporters. Frieden and Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, used Thursday's briefing to plead for urgently needed funds from Congress to battle Zika. They described the growing risk to pregnant women, the almost-certain link to Guillain-Barré syndrome, a neurological condition that can cause paralysis, and the lack of effective agents to fight mosquitoes that have developed resistance to commonly used insecticides. It's also clear from their frank warnings that officials are trying to lower expectations that they will be able to protect all pregnant women in the United States. "There is nothing about Zika control that is quick or easy," Frieden said. "The only thing quick is the mosquito bite that can give it to you." Cases of the virus are expected to rise on the island in coming months. And that raises the likelihood of transfer to the mainland. Puerto Rico is a Zika target that has Frieden "very concerned." The CDC director, who just returned from a trip to the island, said he expects hundreds of thousands of people there will be infected by year's end, including thousands of pregnant women. The U.S. territory is on the "front lines of the battle," he said. At some point, Zika cases there will increase "not steadily but dramatically," he said. Moreover, the latest research findings underscore the rising number of unanswered and very disturbing questions, Fauci said. "As the weeks and months go by, we learn more and more about how much we don't know, and the more we learn the worse things seem to get," Fauci told reporters. The two experts cited a study last week in the New England


Why climate change is such a big issue in Florida

among their allies — how can climate change be addressed? Sanders suggested that Republicans were afraid to address the subject because they were worried about losing campaign funding. Later, he called for a "tax on carbon" and for heavy investments in energy efficiency and sustainable energy. He also called for an end to fracking. It's worth explaining each of those things. A "carbon tax" is basically what it sounds like. For large sources of carbon dioxide emissions — mostly coal-burning power plants — there would be a fee associated with those emissions. (Scientists believe that carbon dioxide emitted from burning fossil fuels stays in the atmosphere, preventing heat from escaping into space.) This is not as controversial as it sounds; a number of oil companies have backed such a tax. Energy efficiency comes at a reduction in greenhouse gases from the other side. Since energy use means more electricity production and, therefore, more burning of coal, or since more heat means more heating oil, efforts to reduce the amount of energy we use will indirectly reduce the amount of fuel we burn. Sustainable energy is wind and solar, forms of generating electricity without burning coal. These are some of the most commonly considered ways to reduce the long-term effects of climate change. But they don't do much for Miami Beach right now. Sea level rise simulator (NOAA) Tumulty then offered the same question to Hillary Clinton. Clinton dropped some local knowledge about Miami Beach and mentioned the need to transition from coal to natural gas to renewable energy sources. This is her response to Sanders's no-fracking demand: Natural gas emits far less greenhouse gas when burned, making it preferable to coal. The problem is that natural gas itself is a very potent greenhouse gas that often escapes into the atmosphere as it's removed from the ground. (Also, the wastewater from fracking is injected into high-pressure wells underground, a process that has been linked to earthquakes.) Clinton summarized her strategy: "Invest in resilience and mitigation while we are trying to cut emissions." Cutting emissions and mitigation point to the things we just discussed. She specifically referred to President Obama's Clean Power Plan which, among other things, would mandate that existing power plants limit carbon dioxide emissions. It's the "resilience" here that's particularly interesting. The government has a toolkit to help individuals and cities prepare for the effects of climate change. Here,


The CNN Miami Republican debate transcript, annotated

to use it again. The second problem with the current structure of the program that people perhaps don't understand is a lot of these companies are not directly hiring employees from abroad. They are hiring a consulting company like Tata, for example, out of India. That company then hoards up all of these visas. They hire workers. You hire -- Disney or some other company hires this company. What they're basically doing is they are insourcing and outsourcing. They are bringing in workers from abroad that are not direct employees of a Disney or someone else, they're employees of this consulting business. And what I argue is that no consulting business such as that should be allowed to hoard up all of these visas, that the visas should only be available for companies to use to directly hire workers and that we should be stricter in how he enforce it. It is illegal now, it is a violation of the law now to use that program to replace Americans. And if a company is caught doing that, whether it be Disney or anyone else, they should be barred from using the program in the future. DINAN: Senator Rubio, real quick follow-up on this. (APPLAUSE) You've -- in the -- in the context of illegal immigration, you've called for basically putting off any legalization process until we get the border secured. RUBIO: Correct. DINAN: Why not call for a pause on H1Bs until those abuses you've talked about are solved. RUBIO: Well first, I think -- well, I'd be open to it if it takes a pause. But I don't think it takes a pause to enforce the law. What they are doing is they are in fact using that program to replace an American. If there's an American working at Disney and they bring someone from another country using H1B to replace their direct job, that's in violation of the law. And what I'm explaining to you is, what they are doing now is they are not -- what they are doing is they are eliminating the job. They are outsourcing the entire tech division to a consulting company. They are making the argument that we didn't replace you. We just replaced the whole unit by hiring a company to do it instead. And that company that they're hiring is bringing their workers from abroad. It's a loophole they've figured


How a New York art show about Chinese online censorship found itself censored

Internet and block access to various foreign websites. In these screenshots, you can how an image search for Tiananmen Square on Google shows shots of a lone protester (the Tank Man) standing in front of the tanks rolling into the square to suppress the 1989 pro-democracy protests: a Baidu search does not. A text search shows a similar contrast between the two services, one prominently mentioning the massacre of protesters, the other leading on the site as a tourist attraction. A screenshot of a Google and a Baidu image search for "Tiananmen Square," taken at the Firewall Cafe in New York on February 26, 2016. (Courtesy of Joyce Yu-Jean Lee) Similarly, a search on Google for Li Tingting brings up the Chinese feminist activist who was detained for over a month, along with four other feminists, a year ago this week. The Baidu search brings up an opera singer, and some photographs of a scantily-clad woman, but no mention of the feminist. This Chinese feminist wants to be the country's first openly lesbian lawyer, and police harassment won't stop her A Google search for Li Tingting alongside a Baidu search for the same thing, in Chinese and translated into English, shown on March 10, 2016. The twin searches give a taste of online life behind China's Great Firewall. (Xu Yangjingjing/The Washington Post). The Chinese woman who faced threats over her participation in the New York event declined to be named or interviewed directly, for fear of reprisals, but did give Lee permission to talk to The Washington Post about the incident. Human rights groups say China's security services have become increasingly bold their drive to clamp down on dissidents not just at home but also outside mainland China, with booksellers from Hong Kong apparently abducted from Thailand and Hong Kong in recent months, and activists forcibly repatriated from Thailand and Burma. How a 16-year-old found himself caught up in China’s latest crackdown The cafe was open for a month until last weekend, and saw visitors from nearby Chinatown as well as curious and enthusiastic Chinese tourists. Lee says she is collating the searches that people carried out while in the cafe, and hopes to develop an app that will allow people to mirror the experience of visiting the cafe, as well as online life on both sides of China’s Great Firewall. Asked to comment on the search results, Kaiser Kuo,


Astronomers say they’ve found the biggest structure in the universe and they named it the BOSS

spectacular acronym — say that the newly discovered cosmic feature is the largest structure in the universe. Or at least, as much of the universe as they’ve mapped so far. In a study published in the newest issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, the scientists describe the BOSS Great Wall (BGW) as an enormous collection of galaxies more than one billion light-years across. “It was so much bigger than anything else in this volume,” Heidi Lietzen of the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics, a lead author on the study, told the New Scientist. “Walls” like the BGW are part of the underlying structure of the universe. Most of space is a vast empty void, and all the stuff that astronomers look for — stars, planets, the galaxies they constitute — is threaded through that nothingness. Pulled together by gravity, galaxies coalesce into clusters, which in turn form larger structures called superclusters, as explained by PBS. Those are then corralled into “walls” — the coronary arteries of this giant system of matter, and the biggest things in space. Researchers for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (the BOSS survey is one of its projects) have been trying to map that web in order to better understand the universe’s history, size and speed of expansion. Using a dedicated telescope located in the remote desert scrubland of Sunspot, N.M., they scan huge swaths of the sky for distant galaxies, brilliant quasars and other celestial objects. In the process, they’ve found some pretty enormous things. Like the “Sloan Great Wall,” which Lietzen and her co-authors say is the closest system of superclusters comparable to the BGW. But even that is dwarfed by the Sloan survey’s newest find. The BOSS Great Wall has ten times the volume of the Sloan wall and is almost 70 percent larger in diameter. It comprises four superclusters containing 830 galaxies, and it looms in space some 5 billion light-years away from Earth. (For what it’s worth, the biggest thing in our neck of the woods, the Laniakea supercluster that includes our own Milky Way galaxy, is less than half the size of the BGW.) Indeed, the BGW is so big that some scientists question whether it can really be considered all one thing. “I don’t entirely understand why they are connecting all of these features together to call them a single structure,” Allison Coil, an astrophysicist at the University


D.C. area forecast: Early shower possible before sunnier and breezier conditions; Weekend a little unsettled but still warm

Two hour radar loop of rain and storm movement through the area. Refresh page to update. TODAY’S DAILY DIGIT 8/10: EXPRESS FORECAST Today: FORECAST IN DETAIL Wind, clouds, and showers may keep us from labeling any part of this weekend with a Nice Day Stamp but no washouts are expected, and temperatures remain above-average for this time of year. If you can put up with periodic unsettled conditions, you can still enjoy the somewhat classic D.C. spring weather—yeah, slightly ahead of schedule! Today (Friday): Tonight: For related traffic news, check out Dr. Gridlock. Keep reading for the forecast into next week… Tomorrow (Saturday): We have a big day of outdoor events in D.C. and think attendees should be able to enjoy the Rock ‘n’ Roll DC Marathon + ½ Marathon — with race start temperatures near 50 degrees. The Shamrock Festival at RFK should also be decent. If outdoors later in the afternoon, just try to watch potential showers perhaps popping up on radar. Confidence: Medium Tomorrow night: Sunday: Blossoms doing their blooming thing in Fairfax, VA. (Taken on March 8 by Namrata D’Souza via our CWG Facebook page) A LOOK AHEAD Sunday night: Above-average temperatures continue Monday into Tuesday. We just have to put up with Monday showers (50/50 chance) and clouds. High temperatures, even without much sunshine, still get into the 60s—perhaps near 70 south of town? More sun than clouds on Tuesday should clear the way for 70 degrees in most locations, perhaps a few mid-70s in sunniest of spots. As always when looking this far out, stay tuned for forecast updates that may be needed as we get closer! Confidence: Low-Medium


Links between climate change and extreme weather are increasingly clear and present

NASA visualization of Super storm Sandy (NASA) Commentary When a hurricane, flood, heat wave, or other extreme weather event strikes, reporters call scientists like me and ask us what human-induced climate change had to do with this event. Until recently, most of us would say something like this: “Climate change is real. It alters the broader patterns, the statistics of weather. But we can’t attribute any single weather event to climate change.” We are starting to respond differently. A new area of scientific research, known as “extreme event attribution”, has emerged to provide more substantive and quantitative answers. Our science has reached the point where we can look for the human influence on climate in single weather events, and sometimes find it. Today, the National Academy of Sciences released the report, “Attribution of extreme weather events in the context of climate change“, which concludes it is now “often possible” to describe how human-induced climate change altered the likelihood and/or intensity of a specific extreme weather event. The report was written by a panel of climate scientists who have studied linkages between climate change and extreme weather, in which I was honored to participate. One of the questions that motivated this report is: “Did climate change cause this event?” This is a question we hear frequently after devastating instances of extreme weather. We’ve never been able to provide a satisfying answer and we still can’t because the question is ill-posed. No weather event has a single cause. Each event has many causes, and most of them are natural. Climate change is one influence among many, and it can be a subtle one. But the report makes clear that we now can begin to provide meaningful responses to the following kinds of questions: “Did climate change make a heat wave like this more likely to occur, and if so by how much?” Or, “Given that a storm like this occurred, did climate change make it more intense?” The answers can depend on how they are framed, as much as they depend on the specifics of the event. But at least in some cases, substantive, quantitative answers to these questions are possible. We obtain those answers by comparing the event that just happened to a reconstruction of what might have happened if humans hadn’t changed the climate. In one common method, scientists perform many realistic computer model simulations, over long times (in computer


It’s official: We can now say global warming has made some weather events worse

Flood waters saturate the Tall Timbers subdivision of Haughton , La., on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Mike Silva) From Hurricane Katrina to Superstorm Sandy, to last year’s devastating heat wave in India, the question never ceases to arise: Did global warming cause this? That question has long made scientists squirm. They know the atmosphere is a complicated place. They know weather events are the result of a huge array of factors — like, say, the El Niño event that has been making weather really, really weird lately. And they know their notion of causation itself is far more complex and multifaceted than the colloquial understanding of the term “cause.” But now, says a new report from the National Academy of Sciences exploring the attribution of extreme events to climate change, scientists can be at least a little bit less conservative about this. In the past, a typical climate scientist’s response to questions about climate change’s role in any given extreme weather event was “we cannot attribute any single event to climate change,” says the report, which was composed by a committee of 10 scientists led by David Titley of Penn State University. “The science has advanced to the point that this is no longer true as an unqualified blanket statement.” Rather, the new report argues, careful studies can be conducted that suggest that the probability of a given event occurring was increased because of the current state of the planet. This can be done by observing how far a single event, like a heat wave, is outside the norm of prior events, or by using computer models to determine how often an event like it would occur with or without human greenhouse gas emissions (which can be included or excluded from the model). As with most things in science, it’s best to use several methods, combining the approaches above, to reach a stronger conclusion. “In many cases, it is now often possible to make and defend quantitative statements about the extent to which human-induced climate change (or another causal factor, such as a specific mode of natural variability) has influenced either the magnitude or the probability of occurrence of specific types of events or event classes,” says the report. But this is also far easier for some types of events than others. Major heat waves and extreme heat events are the easiest to attribute, the report says. After all, the reasoning isn’t


Could man-hating microbes help fight off the mosquitoes that carry Zika?

if they introduced strains of bacteria known to target male insects into the population first – to reduce the number of males the sterilized bugs would have to compete with. They showed that some of these microbial killers could eliminate the entire group of insects on their own. Each species of the bacteria lives alongside a matching insect species, so one day scientists could supplement other pest-control methods with male-killing bacteria to kill off pests like disease-carrying mosquitoes. “To reduce the cost you can reduce the natural population of males with the male-killing bacteria first,” said Ludek Berec, researcher at the Institute of Entomology at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and chief author of the study, recently accepted to the Journal of Applied Ecology. This is the first study that’s modeled how quickly the bacteria could eliminate pests, said Berec, and it shows that in some circumstances, the bacteria are such efficient assassins that sterilization is unnecessary. Scientists don't have to tinker with bacteria in the lab to induce this manslaughter. There are plenty of bacteria that have evolved to target male insects of different species – and kill them in different ways. In ladybugs, for example, a mother infected with Wolbachia will lay eggs filled with the stuff. Once the eggs are fertilized, any male embryos are swiftly killed by the bacterial infection. This leaves the females with less competition for their first meal – and a lot of dead brothers to snack on – giving them a better chance of survival, and giving the bacteria in their eggs a better chance of being passed on to another round of offspring. Eventually, if there were no more males left to fertilize those infected eggs, the whole population could die off. Scientists still aren't sure how the bacteria can tell the males from the females, said Francis Jiggins, who studies infectious diseases and “feminist bacteria” at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. “There’s lots of different bacteria that cause male killing, so there's probably lots of different ways they can do it.” But however they manage it, these bacteria are often very good at what they do. Jiggins, who wasn't involved in the new study, has seen populations of butterflies in Africa that were 80 percent to 90 percent female thanks to the microscopic misandrists. The butterfly Acraea encedon. In populations in Uganda, more than


good at what they do. Jiggins, who wasn't involved in the new study, has seen populations of butterflies in Africa that were 80 percent to 90 percent female thanks to the microscopic misandrists. The butterfly Acraea encedon. In populations in Uganda, more than 98 precent of the males are killed by male-killing bacteria. (Courtesy Francis Jiggins) And a world with few men isn’t usually a paradise for female insects. In uninfected butterfly species, for example, the males will typically wait in large groups at the tops of hills for the females to come along and take their pick. But in species infected with male-targeting bacteria, the behavior switches and the females start waiting around for the few remaining males. “The males themselves can become quite exhausted from the excess of females with which to mate,” Jiggins said. “But that only happens in the few cases where there's an extreme prevalence of the bacteria.” Jiggins doubts that male-killing bacteria alone could eradicate a pest population; evolution catches up and if males emerge who are immune to the bacteria, that trait would quickly spread throughout the species. But he agreed that male-killing bacteria could be effective when combined with sterilization. Plus, specific bacterium target specific species, so to kill off only the mosquitoes that carry the Zika virus, for example, one could potentially introduce the matching boy-crazy bacterium. Berec cautioned that the model is still in its infancy, and in a perfect world it would still take five to ten years of theoretical and experimental research for male-killing bacteria to end up on the market for pest control. And many in the field still embrace pesticides as the best method to get rid of dangerous bugs. “Ecologists are not that open to new techniques,” Berec said. “But I hope people will see this new method and want to collaborate.” Ryan Mandelbaum is a freelance journalist who's serious about science, pizza, Guy Fieri and not much else. He enjoys writing about the environment, physics and the macabre. Read More: Scientists examine why men even exist How’d the bedbug get its bite? Scientists look to its genome for clues. These blood-loving spiders could help fight malaria Without genes pilfered from bacteria, ticks would drop dead of the Lyme disease they carry Climate change is great news for Arctic mosquitoes You’re unlikely to catch Ebola from a survivor — unless you have sex with them


These teen scientists, vying for $1 million in scholarships, will give you faith in the future

transferred those kidney cells onto a three-dimensional structure. That 3-D structure was composed of de-cellulized mouse tissue, or mouse tissue stripped of all its cells. Demetri Maxim is a skiier, a musician and a soccer player in addition to a scientist. (Courtesy Intel STS) “And that’s never been done before,” Maxim said. “It’s one thing to have cells in a dish, but it’s a totally different story to have functional tissue.” Maxim then tested the kidney cells by transplanting them into a live mouse with a functioning kidney. He found that the cells survived and became integrated into the mouse’s organ. There’s still a lot of work to be done before human patients can receive organ transplants grown from their own cells. But Maxim plans to stick with it when he goes to college next year. Meantime, he’s been helping his high school create a research program for other aspiring young scientists. He applied for grants and solicited donations that allowed him to build a lab at the school, and he’s been teaching freshmen and sophomores how to do basic lab work. Maxim said it’s difficult to find other students his age who are interested not just in skiing and soccer and music, as he is, but also deeply interested in science. He said he was shocked to be an Intel finalist, and is excited to spend time with the other 39 finalists. “You’re with your real friends for a week,” he said. “That’s what I’m most looking forward to.” Varma presents her research at Intel’s International Science and Engineering Fair. (Heidi Black) Maya Varma, 17, created an inexpensive device to diagnose and monitor chronic lung diseases, Hospital-grade spirometers cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, Varma said. Her version: $35. “People can’t afford this expensive equipment, and I decided to do something about it,” said Varma, a high school senior from Cupertino, Calif. Doctors can use data from Varma’s invention to diagnose and manage chronic pulmonary illnesses such as asthma or emphysema. Patients blow into the device and a smartphone app — which Varma created — analyzes the results. Next, Varma wants to test the device on a wider scale, and eventually she’d like to take it to market. Last year, she was featured in Popular Mechanics magazine as one of “15 young innovators who are already making a difference.” She plans to study biomedical engineering in college. Maya Varma’s


Russia’s military is recruiting dolphins, and their mission is a mystery

had been moved to a “private dolphinarium to perform for tourists,” were being sold to Iran because its handler could no longer feed them. Ukraine resurrected the dolphin military training program in 2012, according to the Guardian. But after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, it also took control of the military aquarium and the dolphins, despite Ukrainian objections. That same year, an anonymous source told the state news agency RIA Novosti that the Russian military was again training flippered fighters, which the Defense Ministry denied. (A Ukrainian military spokesman pooh-poohed the whole matter at the time, telling The Washington Post that “dolphins are not a military asset.”) Whatever the case, the recruits will have a pretty fierce legacy to live up to. Dolphins’ fantastic sonar skill, or echolocation, make them excellent at detecting mines and sea vessels, locating lost divers and swimmers, and detecting enemy activity on the sea, shore and ships. The U.S. Navy agrees: It has used dolphins, as well as sea lions, since the 1960s. But the Soviet dolphin secret agents were also trained as killers, according to some accounts. Viktor Baranets, a retired Russian colonel, told the Guardian this week that they planted explosive devices on enemy ships. The dolphins’ trainer told the BBC in 2000 that the animals were fitted with harpoons that they used to stab enemy swimmers and carried out kamikaze attacks on foreign vessels. “The dolphins could allegedly distinguish foreign and Soviet submarines by the sound of their propeller,” the BBC wrote. Doug Cartlidge, a former dolphin trainer, told Wired in 2007 that he had visited the Crimea dolphins after they were decommissioned. He said he was told that they were sometimes armed with needles connected to carbon dioxide cylinders, a poke from which could be lethal, and that they’d learned to parachute out of helicopters. [What’s up with tough guy Vladimir Putin’s love for cute animals?] The U.S. Navy started the dolphin arms race in the late 1950s when it began studying marine mammals’ hydrodynamic swimming skills for help in designing better torpedoes and subs. Then Navy officials realized that animals, particularly bottlenose dolphins and sea lions, could help divers themselves. Dolphins have biological sonar, and sea lions have strong underwater vision and excellent hearing. Both can dive deep without getting decompression sickness, and they’re fast. They are also “highly reliable, adaptable and trainable marine animals,” according to the U.S. Navy


Almost everything you buy, from cereal to mascara, is killing the rain forest

I could and couldn’t buy. Since there’s no special label or branding for “deforestation-free” products, I decided to avoid anything that contained one of the big four commodities. Paper was the easiest. I defined “no-deforestation paper” as 100 percent recycled, because that meant no forests were newly cleared to make it. I also allowed myself to buy paper products with the Forest Stewardship Council certification, because that label requires that the product be clearly traceable to a sustainably managed forest. It wasn’t hard to find toilet paper and printer paper that were marked. (It also didn’t cost me any extra — the certified toilet paper I found was actually less expensive than some non–certified brands.) I also stopped buying food in cardboard packaging because it was too difficult to determine the source of the cardboard. This eliminated a lot of options, including some of my favorite snack foods: cereal, crackers, cookies and macaroni and cheese. But it also introduced me to the bulk-food aisles at natural grocery stores, where I found rice, pasta, nuts and candied ginger, all without cardboard packaging. Soy was harder. I didn’t think I consumed a lot of soy until I realized that most land-dwelling animals we eat are fed soybean meal. My mom raises chickens at my childhood home in Massachusetts — about as cage-free as they come — and even those lucky ducks eat pellets made of soy. So for the month, I mostly ate like a vegan, except that I didn’t eat soy-based dairy alternatives or tofu (though some tofu brands are produced in the United States and are deforestation-free). I drank milk from grass-fed cows because it came in a returnable glass bottle and the cows lived nearby. And I ate locally raised, grass-fed beef on two occasions, because it came from a farm that emphasizes sustainability and grows food for its animals on-site. Other than that, my major source of protein over the month was three jars of peanut butter. Palm oil was by far the most tedious to avoid, especially since it’s the go-to replacement for oils containing trans fat. It’s also the cheapest vegetable oil to produce and has a high melting point, making products that contain it smooth and easily spreadable: useful qualities for both margarine and lotion. To make matters more complicated, palm oil goes by hundreds of different names and is often behind innocuous-sounding ingredients such


A transportation planning degree combines sustainability, transit and city development

a parking lot near the Greensboro Metro Station. The pop-up is giving commuters and locals a sense of community that will continue with a mixed-use development set to begin construction soon. Another course, Social Dependence on the Automobile, offered an interesting counterpoint to the pop-ups project. “We’re over here trying to improve and promote the use of transit, when historically, humans prefer the freedom of driving,” Gomes says. Ruby Shamayleh, 38, who landed a job in a civil engineering firm shortly after graduating from George Washington University’s sustainable urban planning program in 2013, wasn’t following a specific interest in transportation. But once she started work, she realized her training in climate change and urban planning had been “a game changer.” “I was the only one [in the firm] trained in climate-change management, and when you’re talking about vulnerability in the transportation sector, you need to understand the basics of climate change,” Shamayleh says. Her job was to assess what structures — bridges, highways, tracks, etc. — could become vulnerable to future flooding and instruct clients such as Maryland’s State Highway Administration on how to strengthen them. Sustainability is a theme that permeates transportation discussions. “Urban living is actually key to doing things like reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” says John Carruthers, director of GW’s sustainable urban planning program, “because urban living facilitates people using mass transit systems, which help to minimize use of single cars.” Understanding how the environment affects transportation and how transportation affects the planet and people alike motivates Virginia Tech doctoral student Hamre to continue to learn and teach others. “We know that a lot of things about automobile dependence are unsustainable, certainly the environmental pollutions in terms of local, regional, global air pollution, water pollution and noise pollution,” she says. Automobile dependence also means people are sitting rather than walking or biking, which affects health care, she says. And driving isn’t an option for many people, such as children, seniors and those with disabilities. “So I think that a multimodal society is one that is cleaner and healthier and more inclusive,” Hamre says. “That sounds like a good investment to me.” Correction: This story previously misidentified the type of pilot license Christopher Gomes earned. It has been corrected. More in higher education: When studying abroad in a conflict zone, safety is key Want more specific skills than a master’s degree offers? A master of professional studies degree


The surprising reason Hollywood gets birds all wrong

use as animal actors. That’s a surprise to many producers, said Benay Karp, owner of Benay’s Bird and Animal Rentals in Woodland Hills, Calif. She has supplied Hollywood with birds, dogs, cats, coyotes, reptiles and other creatures for more than 30 years, and she said filmmakers often request native species. “They’ll come in and ask for a blue jay, but we’ll tell them we can’t use blue jays,” Karp said. They might end up with a black-throated magpie-jay, which looks like a blue jay but isn’t protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. It’s a native of Mexico, a heritage that won it a spot on “The Big Bang Theory.” If they want a chickadee, she’ll offer a white-cheeked bulbul, a bird native to the Middle East. It “looks sort of like a chickadee,” Karp said. Karp said she’s lost a few jobs because she couldn’t supply North American birds. But that’s the point of the prohibition, which is a central tenet of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, said Steve Holmer, a senior policy adviser at the American Bird Conservancy. Before it took effect, some bird populations were almost “decimated” because they were used commercially, he said. “Snowy egrets were nearly driven to extinction in the early 1900s because their plumes were used to decorate hats, and lots of different game birds were under severe hunting pressure,” he said. A snowy egret in Florida. (Photo by Tara Tanaka) When the act was passed in 1918, its proponents trumpeted in Bird-Lore magazine — the predecessor to Audubon magazine — that they were finally relieved of “combating the numberless attempts to legalize the destruction of birds for private gain.” Egret numbers rebounded, and many other species benefited. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act has, by all accounts, been a success. Nearly 100 years later, Hollywood still seems to be abiding by it, said Laury Parramore, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which enforces the act. She said she was unable to recall any enforcement actions it had taken against companies supplying animal actors. But as a birder, I wonder: Do we lose something by not being able to use native species on-screen? Are we missing out on an opportunity to inform viewers about native birds? What’s wrong with using a blue jay when the scene calls for a blue jay? Karp said she thinks changing the law might actually benefit


The Paris climate agreement calls for big investments in renewable energy. Here’s why governments love it.

Ice breaks off from the northern wall of the Perito Moreno Glacier on Nov. 29, 2015, in Los Glaciares National Park, part of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field in Argentina. (Mario Tama/Getty Images) This past December, governments of the world met in Paris to negotiate a global climate agreement. It’s considered a breakthrough. Here’s why. Until now, climate agreements were “top-down,” giving countries targets and timetables for reducing climate-warming carbon emissions. The Paris agreement, by contrast, allows governments to come up with their own emissions reduction plans. Every five years, governments meet to review how well each country has done in meeting its pledges. This “bottom-up” strategy is a remarkable departure from the conventional top-down approach. But for this bottom-up strategy to work, governments must be willing to invest heavily in climate mitigation. Most research on climate change treats it as a global collective-action problem (as Scott Barrett detailed in 2008). Individual nations must take on the expense and effort of reducing emissions — but the benefits spread throughout the globe. Governments are therefore tempted to take a “free ride” by reaping the benefits of others’ efforts without reducing their own emissions. As a result, everyone suffers from climate change. So how can a bottom-up strategy based on decentralized action work? Renewables: The $300 billion question The most important reason for optimism is that nations around the world have been investing heavily in technologies that offer renewable energy — wind turbines, solar panels, biomass and so on. In 2014, those global investments reached $270 billion. China led the pack, investing $83 billion in wind turbines and solar panels. The United States was the distant second, investing $38 billion, especially in wind energy. Indonesia, Chile, Mexico and Kenya invested more than a billion dollars each. The investment boom comes in large part because the cost of renewable electricity generation has decreased rapidly. However, companies will keep investing in these technologies only in nations with government policies that support the growth of renewables. Because polluting fossil fuels are still mostly cheaper than renewables, clean energy requires subsidies or similar policies. Are governments ready for the challenge? Recent political science research shows that renewable energy investments allow governments to both realize their national environmental goals and reap political gains by distributing resources to politically powerful groups. For governments, renewables are a political winner Governments of all kinds like renewables because they help the


Cannabis-derived drug shows promise for kids with epilepsy; GW pharma stock doubles

Beth Collins, center, of Fairfax, Va., holds up a sign explaining how her family is divided between Colorado and Virginia over the legalization of medical marijuana. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post) In 2014, I interviewed a number of moms from across the country who were fighting to get access to a form of cannabis oil that they believed would help their children’s seizures. They had an uphill battle in lobbying conservative legislatures to allow them to import the oil and in convincing their own doctors to try the experimental treatment. Many ended up going to Colorado, where there is a small community of growers, medical practitioners and researchers willing to work with them. Their work may have finally paid off. [‘Mommy lobby’ emerges as a powerful advocate for medical marijuana for children] GW Pharmaceuticals announced Monday that the first of its four major studies of the cannabis-based drug appeared to dramatically reduce seizures in patients with Dravet syndrome, a rare and severe form of epilepsy. “This shows that cannabinoids can produce compelling and clinical important data and represent a highly promising new class of medications, hopefully in a range of conditions,” Justin Gover, GW Pharmaceuticals’ chief executive, told Reuters. The trial, which involved 120 patients, showed that the median reduction in convulsive seizures was 39 percent in those taking the drug, called Epidiolex, versus 13 percent in those taking a placebo. The mean age of patients was 10 years old and they had previously tried and failed an average of more than four anti-epileptic treatments. GW is also conducting other Phase 3 studies on Dravet syndrome with 150 patients and Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome and Tuberous Sclerosis Complex. Orrin Devinsky, a researcher with New York University Langone Medical Center’s Comprehensive Epilepsy Center who is the principal investigator, said that the data finally provides the epilepsy community “the prospect of an appropriately standardized and tested pharmaceutical formulation of cannabidiol being made available by prescription in the future.” The company’s announcement that it will be seeking Food and Drug Administration approval for the treatment sent its shares soaring 120 percent by midday. The company has fast-track status for its application to treatment on newborns with epilepsy. Jim Cramer of “The Street” said on CNBC’s Squawk that the positive reaction may also be due to the hope that the drug could replace some addictive painkillers. The theory that marijuana could be used to treat


How cleaner air could actually make global warming worse

of the world — translating to a similarly pronounced increase in warming when they finally rained back down to Earth. The researchers on that study are already starting an examination of whether changes in North American aerosol emissions — though less pronounced than the changes that have taken place in Europe — might have had similar effects, said the paper’s senior author As if that’s not enough, the second study published in Nature Geoscience on Monday points to the significance of the aerosol effect on a global scale. Because of the major impact aerosols can have on the Earth’s temperature, many scientists agree that it’s important to consider them when making predictions about the earth’s climate future. And one important way of understanding what future warming will look like is to investigate a phenomenon known as Earth’s “transient climate sensitivity” — that is, how much the planet’s temperature will change when the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reaches double the level it was in preindustrial times. This carbon dioxide doubling is expected to occur some time in this century, depending on how much humans are able to reduce carbon emissions in the meantime, said These calculations are generally based on the temperature responses caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere already. But because aerosol emissions are believed to have masked a significant amount of the warming that’s happened on Earth so far, some scientists believe that estimates of Earth’s climate sensitivity are too low — that the climate may, in fact, be more sensitive to carbon emissions than anyone realized, which would likely mean greater warming in the future. Storelvmo and an interdisciplinary group of colleagues decided to investigate. But rather than using climate models, which they say don’t always accurately simulate the effect of aerosols on clouds in the atmosphere, they instead based their calculations entirely on records of temperature and solar radiation taken from more than a thousand measurement sites around the world between 1964 and 2010. They then performed a statistical analysis designed to help distinguish between the temperature changes that were caused by greenhouse gas emissions and those caused by aerosols. Their analysis suggests that about a third of the continental warming that occurred between 1964 and 2010 was masked by the cooling effect caused by aerosols. In other words, greenhouse gas emissions during that period had a bigger effect on the climate than


Another drop in unemployment tops off a good year for the D.C. economy

(AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Unemployment in the D.C. area continued to fall in January, with Maryland’s rate dropping below 5 percent for the first time since before the 2008 recession, according to the latest government data. And the region added about 70,600 jobs in the past year, a respectable 2.3 percent growth rate. The figures released Monday suggest the region continues to rebound after a government shutdown and mandatory federal budget cuts stalled local growth. “It was a tremendous turnaround,” said Stephen S. Fuller, an economist at George Mason who studies the Washington area economy. Unemployment rates in Virginia and D.C. also edged down slightly to 4.1 percent and 6.5 percent respectively. Northern Virginia attracted more new jobs than elsewhere in the region. But when taken as a percentage growth from where it as last year, Northern Virginia is neck in neck with suburban Maryland. At the same time, the size of the labor force increased in all three states, allaying some analysts’ concerns that a shrinking labor market might be putting a damper on economic activity. For the third monthly jobs report in a row, more workers are coming back into the D.C. market, and they don’t seem to be having as much trouble finding jobs as they did a few years ago. “Because we have a fairly strong labor market, we’re able to accommodate these people and they can find good jobs,” said Andy Bauer, a regional economist at the Richmond Fed. The types of jobs being added have experts particularly optimistic. The largest share came within the professional and business services category, typically higher-paying positions found in the government contracting and legal sectors. A close second was leisure and hospitality jobs—waiters, bartenders and restaurant managers—whose salaries tend to be lower. But even as unemployment continues to drop and more new jobs pop up, businesses still aren’t handing out raises. Wages here and nationally have yet to take off the way hiring has, and the figures are barely out-stripping inflation. The fact that some workers are re-entering the job market suggests businesses might finally be dangling more attractive wages. That bodes well for 2016, analysts said. “I think the signs are that this year we’re going to see much more wage growth because there’s such a shortage of qualified workers,” said Fuller. “It has to be hitting every sector now.”


Why the government can’t actually stop terrorists from using encryption

"absolutist perspective" of privacy on smartphones doesn't account for the danger of letting digital security stand in the way investigators. His comments come as the Justice Department is trying to force Apple to help the authorities unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. The New York Times reported that the Justice Department is also weighing how to approach a case where encryption used by Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp stymied a wiretap order. In both situations, investigators ran into difficulties because the companies are using types of encryption where they don't store the digital keys needed to unlock data for authorities even when they have a warrant. But any U.S. mandate on encryption would only affect software covered by U.S. law, said Blaze. "It's not going to prevent people from using open source software or foreign-made software, even in the United States," he explained. Last year, researchers at New America's Open Technology institute cataloged 16 different encrypted communications applications that are either developed outside of the U.S. or by open source projects. The U.S. government can't really stop what developers do outside of its borders, so cracking down on domestic tech companies that offer strong encryption protections may just drive consumers to foreign competitors without the same restrictions, analysts said. And open source projects tend to rely on volunteers based around the world. That means there often isn't one person the U.S. government could ask to get encrypted data. But even if the government did succeed in closing down an open source project, the code would already be available online — so pretty much anyone could set up their own homebrew version of the application. At best, the government's efforts to push U.S. companies away from the technology could slow its spread — at least among normal users. More people are using strong forms of encryption now than ever, but mostly because tech companies have started making it an automatic feature, according to Matthew Green, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University. For instance, new iPhones encrypt information stored on the device by default when you set up a passcode. And WhatsApp users don't have to think about encrypting their messages — the protection is just there. The government likely realizes it can't stop encryption from being available, but law enforcement officials probably hope to reduce the amount of information that automatically receives the protection, according


The only meat everyone can’t stop eating

in Paradise: The Stories Behind the Food We Eat, alluding to the hamburger's near ubiquitous appeal. The fact that hamburgers can be reproduced effortlessly and without compromising quality has helped too, propelling its rise, at the very least. This, Fresco touches upon, too: What made McDonald’s, Burger King, Jack in the Box, the once ubiquitous White Castle, and their like such successful companies was not the hamburger itself, nor the franchise system that has enabled it to penetrate all markets, but the systems and technology used to ensure that identical hamburgers would roll off production lines all over the world to be served to a public that knew exactly what to expect. The hamburger has also shown resilience because it is malleable. While its base components—lettuce, tomato, ground meat, and bread—are simple and cheap, it has thrived because of how adaptable it is to change. This has proven particularly important as of late, as the enthusiasm for chains like Shake Shack has supplanted the long-held allegiance to less shiny establishments like McDonald's. More expensive versions of the hamburger, meanwhile, have become staples on restaurant menus, incorporating different meats and adding pricier accoutrements. In Fresco's words: The history of the hamburger is the story of a continual quest to reinvent a food item by sophisticated means, leaving the end product apparently unchanged and therefore completely dependable for the consumer while almost invisible introducing one innovation after another. Vegetarians and non-beef eaters, can likely attest. They, have found themselves with a plethora of alternatives to satisfy their hamburger cravings. Perhaps the most important selling point for hamburgers, however, at least today, is that they require little time to make and eat. They are convenient. And that convenience is about as appreciated as it ever has been. "Convenience is the one thing that’s really changing trends these days," Howard Telford, an industry analyst at market research firm Euromonitor, said last year. This is true in the United States, where people gladly drink crappier but more efficient coffee, shun breakfast foods that require even the most modest forms of clean-up, and increasingly rely on delivery. But it's also true in France, where a tradition of long, drawn out meals appears to be dissipating. Forty years ago, the French spent an average of roughly an hour and twenty minutes on each meal, but today that's down to less than half an hour, according to data


Why we should give up trying to make people less sexist

impasse. When I taught negotiation [at Harvard], I was struck by how difficult it was to get people to understand this. Informing people that this bias exists does very little. If it does anything — and this tells us something about the human mind — it backfires. People become more aware of the bias in others. They say “Oh, now I see why my counterpart was negotiating so assertively.” But they don’t recognize the problem in themselves. Simple awareness itself doesn’t do the trick. Researchers have tried a number of different things. What eventually worked was for people to force themselves to write down counterarguments to their own beliefs. You have to have a little bit of your brain always playing the devil’s advocate. Write down five reasons you might be wrong. That helps people de-bias themselves the best. It’s super hard to do and only works if people are extremely conscious of the kinds of tricks their minds play. The argument you make in the book is that we should change the world so it’s harder for our biases to harm other people. Bohnet: Yes, so one intervention that has huge potential for organizations are blinded evaluations. We have very good evidence that they work. In the 1970s, the major symphony orchestras in the United States began making musicians audition behind a curtain. They found that this made women 50 percent more likely to advance to later rounds. It contributed to an increase of female musicians in major orchestras in the U.S., from 5 percent in the 1970s to almost 40 percent today. This example is important to me for two reasons. First, it drives home the idea of unconscious bias. These weren’t bad selection committees. They were convinced that they cared only about the music, not whether somebody looked the part. Still, they fell prey to their biases. Second, the curtain represents a design innovation. It doesn’t try to change people’s mindsets. It just makes it easier for our biased minds to get things right. It would be very easy for most organizations to blind themselves to people’s demographic characteristics, at least in the early rounds of hiring. They could really focus on people’s abilities, their performance and their potential to do the job well. To me, this is a low-hanging fruit. Blind evaluations are powerful innovation that wouldn’t be expensive to implement but could have huge benefits.


One of the most important names in D.C. brewing is back, with help from DC Brau

to the staff of the Heurich House, who decided to have a 1,000-gallon batch made at DC Brau, with a recipe refined by head brewer Jeff Hancock. He decided to use Bavarian yeast and added both flaked rice and flaked maize to the body. "It's a fun little hybrid between pre- and post-Prohibition lagers," Hancock explains. DC Brau released Heurich's Lager on draft during the 2013 DC Beer Week, selling it at the brewery and special events. Earlier this year, Hancock asked the Heurich House whether his brewery could brew the lager again – and, this time, release it in cans. "We enjoyed it so much the first time around," Hancock says, but the problem was that lagers sit in fermentation tanks for weeks longer than ales, which would tie up much needed production space. However, DC Brau has been steadily ramping up its capacity – Hancock says they're on track to brew close to 19,000 barrels of beer this year – which means that the lager could ferment "in tanks without holding up any of our other beers." The can is based on a 1930s label from the Heurich House archive, but designed by artist Graham Jackson, who also did DC Brau's Solar Eclipse and Smells Like Freedom cans. "The cool thing about this is that it says it was brewed for the Christian Heurich Brewing Company by DC Brau," explains Heurich House's Bender. "We're bringing back the name." The Heurich House, one of the best-preserved Victorian homes in America, frequently uses beer as a way to reach out to the public, whether it's at the monthly History and Hops gatherings, which bring beer lovers to the mansion for meet-and-greets and tastings with local brewers, or the annual Oktoberfest held in the house's garden. "Anything we can do to educate people about who Christian Heurich was, and his importance to this city, we're going to do that," Bender says. "The history of the beer and the existence of the historic beers are really important to us. We're trying to make history interesting to people, more than just walking through a museum as someone talks at you. [Heurich's Lager] is living history." [History and Hops: History collides with local beer at the Brewmaster’s Castle] The official release of the beer is during a 1916-themed party at the Heurich House on Thursday, March 24, which features live jazz, hors d'oeuvres and