State lawmakers to Congress: Butt out of our marijuana laws

In this 2014 photo, former U.S. Marine Sgt. Ryan Begin rolls a medical marijuana joint at his home in Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty) State lawmakers are calling on the federal government to change its drug laws to let states experiment with marijuana and hemp policy. The National Conference of State Legislatures, the de facto bipartisan group of lawmakers, passed a resolution at its annual meeting Thursday calling on the federal government to amend the Controlled Substances Act to authorize state marijuana laws and on the administration to keep its nose out of state pot policies. “State lawmakers just sent a message to Congress that could not be any clearer,” said Karen O’Keefe, director of state policies for the Marijuana Policy Project, which has been instrumental in the movement to legalize the drug for recreational use. “It’s time to end the federal prohibition of marijuana and let the states decide what policies work best for them.” Resolutions passed at the meeting will guide the group’s federal advocacy in the year ahead. In order to be approved, the resolution had to earn majority support from three-fourths of the states in attendance at Thursday’s meeting in Seattle. The resolution, introduced by New Hampshire state Rep. Renny Cushing, lays out the argument that with 23 states and D.C. having passed medical marijuana laws and four others — Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington — having approved marijuana for recreational use, it is time for the federal government to explicitly legalize those policy experiments. It also points to the difficulty marijuana businesses have had in securing financing — due to banks fearful of violating federal laws — and the potential medical benefits as reason for the change in federal laws. While lawmakers may disagree on easing existing law, they do agree that “states and localities should be able to set whatever marijuana and hemp policies work best to improve the public safety, health, and economic development of their communities,” the resolution concludes. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a 2016 presidential contender, recently said he would enforce federal drug laws in states that have legalized marijuana. However, some of his potential Republican opponents — like Sen. Ted Cruz and former Florida governor Jeb Bush — have said that despite their reservations about the laws themselves, they support states’ rights when it comes to passing and keeping them.


Transcript: GOP Aug. 6 undercard debate

a Tip O'Neill. When I was 21, my mom died. When I was 22, my dad died. We owned a liquor store, restaurant, bar and we lived in the back. Every penny we needed from -- every penny we got from Social Security, because my sister was a minor, we needed. Today, I'm 60, I'm not married, I don't have any kids. I would give up some Social Security to save a system that Americans are going to depend on now and in the future. Half of American seniors would be in poverty without a Social Security check. If you make your president, I'm going to put the country ahead of the party. I'm going to do what it takes to defend this nation. This nation has been great to me, and that's the only way I know to pay you back. MACCALLUM: Thank you. HEMMER: Thank you, Senator. I need a two-word answer to the following query. In 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama described Hillary Clinton as, quote, "likable enough," end quote. What two words would you use to describe the Democratic frontrunner? Governor Pataki to start. PATAKI: Divisive and with no vision. No vision at all. HEMMER: Wow. Carly Fiorina. FIORINA: Not trustworthy. No accomplishment. UNKNOWN: Secretive and untrustworthy. PERRY: Well, let's go with three. Good at email. HEMMER: Governor Jindal? JINDAL: Socialist and government dependent. GRAHAM: Not the change we need at a time we need it. HEMMER: Governor? GILMORE: Professional politician that can't be trusted. HEMMER: Not a lot of compliments. To be continued. MACCALLUM: So every candidate will have the opportunity to make a closing statement tonight. Each candidate will have 30 second for that. And we start with Governor Perry. PERRY: Well, this is going to be a show me, don't tell me election. I think America is just a few good decisions and a leadership change at the top away from the best years we've ever had. And I think that the record of the governor of the last 14 years of the 12th largest economy in the world is just the medicine America is looking for. 1.5 million jobs created during the worst economic time this country has had since the Great Depression while the rest of the country lost 400,000 jobs. We're talking about a state that moved graduation rates forward from 27th in the nation to second-highest. As a matter of


Annotated transcript: The Aug. 6 GOP debate

to straighten out that mess. (APPLAUSE) WALLACE: Senator Rubio. Senator Rubio, more than 3,000 people sent us questions about the economy and jobs on Facebook. And here is a video question from Tania Cioloko from Philadelphia. Here she is. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) QUESTION: Please describe one action you would do to make the economic environment more favorable for small businesses and entrepreneurs and anyone dreaming of opening their own business. (CLOSE VIDEO CLIP) RUBIO: That's a great question. WALLACE: Senator, how do you answer Tania? RUBIO: That's a great question. First of all, it begins by having leaders that recognize that the economy we live in today is dramatically different from the one we had five years ago. It's an economy that now has placed us in global competition with dozens of other countries around the world. Now, the big companies that have connections with Washington, they can affect policies to help them, but the small companies like the one Tania is talking about, they're the ones that are struggling. The first thing we need to do is we need to even out the tax code for small businesses so that we lower their tax rate to 25 percent, just as we need to lower it for all businesses. We need to have a regulatory budget in America that limits the amount of regulations on our economy. We need to repeal and replace Obamacare and we need to improve higher education so that people can have access to the skills they need for 21st century jobs. And last but not least, we need to repeal Dodd-Frank. It is eviscerating small businesses and small banks. (APPLAUSE) 20 -- over 40 percent of small and mid-size banks that loan money to small businesses have been wiped out over the -- since Dodd-Frank has passed. We need to repeal and replace Dodd-Frank. We need to make America fair again for all businesses, but especially those being run by small business owners. WALLACE: Senator Rubio, thank you. (APPLAUSE) BAIER: Gentlemen, another question for a few of you. Yesterday, just yesterday, President Obama criticized Republican lawmakers trying to block the Iran deal, calling them knee-jerk partisans, adding that hardliners in Iran who chant "death to America" were, quote, "making common cause with the Republican caucus." Here's what two of your opponents on the 5 p.m. debate stage said about Iran. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PERRY: I


Maryland open houses Aug. 8-9

4717 Leyden Way 4668 Smokey Wreath Way 3055 Mullineaux Lane 4990 Dorsey Hall Dr #a1 21043 5959 Charles Xing 4798 Ilkley Moor Lane 122 Frederick Rd 4837 South Haven Dr 8303 Spring Breeze Ct 1213 Oella Ave 8415 Old Frederick Rd 4537 Doncaster Dr 3169 Sonia Trail #45 FULTON 20759 8671 Reservoir Rd GLENELG 21737 14620 Corys Ct 13998 Burntwoods Rd JESSUP 20794 8060 Savage Guilford Rd 8010 Wright Pl 8817 Hub Garth #6 9325 Spring Water Path 7322 Cedar Ave WEST FRIENDSHIP 21794 2425 Ellies Way 12325 Fox Meadow Lane WOODBINE 21797 15884 Union Chapel Rd 16909 Old Sawmill Rd 16916 Old Sawmill Road 1540 Hoods Mill Rd 2001 Gillis Rd MONTGOMERY COUNTY ASHTON 20861 17319 Avenleigh Dr BETHESDA 20814 5215 Acacia Ave 10501 Montrose Ave #m-4 6004 Berkshire Dr 9804 Parkwood Dr 10004 Broad St 6048 Avon Dr 7500 Woodmont Ave #s1107 20816 6429 Wiscasset Rd 5301 Westbard Cir #435 4309 Torchlight Cir 4960 Sentinel Dr #10-102 6024 Walhonding Rd 5101 River Rd #409 4809 Sangamore Rd #6 5218 Nahant St 4313 Locust Lane E 20817 8900 Charred Oak Dr 8221 Caraway St 9714 De Paul Dr 8605 Fenway Dr 8309 Loring Dr 5712 Beech Ave 7501 Democracy Blvd #216 8104 Split Oak Dr 6721 Newbold Dr 6808 Newbold Dr 5804 Linder Lane 5806 Johnson Ave 6101 Kirby Rd BOYDS 20841 14507 Anchor Lane 14302 Harvest Moon Rd 18307 Clear Smoke Rd BROOKEVILLE 20833 3337 Tanterra Cir 2200 Carter Mill Way BURTONSVILLE 20866 3016 Novak Ter CHEVY CHASE 20815 2704 East West Hwy 4828 Bradley Blvd #212 4137 Woodbine St 3703 Bradley Lane 4702 Hunt Ave 7101 Meadow Lane CLARKSBURG 20871 23612 Bennett Chase Dr 13246 Windsong Lane 12925 Clarks Crossing Dr DAMASCUS 20872 10704 Budsman Ter 24700 Tandem Dr 24408 Kakae Dr DARNESTOWN 20874 14330 Poplar Hill Rd 17501 Carlson Farm Ct 14905 Finegan Farm Dr 20878 12909 Scarlet Oak DERWOOD 20855 7736 Barnstable Pl 15416 Indianola Dr GAITHERSBURG 20877 18713 Capella Lane 17707 Meadow Vista Way 7816 Mineral Springs Dr 20878 15311 Quail Run Dr 16725 Sioux Lane 465 Tschiffely Square Rd 204 Hart Rd 216 Hart Mews 329 Cross Green St #a 422 Phelps St 737 Summer Walk Dr 475 Chestertown St 1079 Hillside Lake Ter #1306 506 Chestertown St 718 Highland Ridge Ave 164 Crown Farm Dr 119 Timberbrook Lane #204 31 Booth St #251 20879 7517 Filbert Ter 7517 Filbert Ter 10732 Game


Blue Bell is making ice cream again, but no, you can’t buy it — yet

These are being made again, but they’re not for sale just yet. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner) Good news, Blue Bell fans: The South’s beloved ice cream maker is, well, making ice cream again. The bad news: It’s not for sale yet. The company confirmed this week that one of its smaller factories had reopened, the first time Blue Bell has made ice cream since it shut down production in April. It was forced to throw out 8 million gallons after Listeria-tainted ice cream sickened people in four states, the first recall in its 108-year history. Blue Bell is only making a few flavors at the Alabama plant (it isn’t saying which), and instead of going on shelves now, the company is building up its inventory, spokeswoman Jenny Van Dorf said. As for when it will return to grocery stores, Van Dorf said that hasn’t been decided either. [The South’s beloved Blue Bell ice cream is finally getting good news] Still, it’s a big deal for a company with a loyal fan base that has grown from its roots in tiny Brenham, Tex., to one of the biggest ice cream makers in the nation. Last year, it was the U.S.’s third-largest ice cream manufacturer, selling 6.4 percent of America’s ice cream. The news of the re-opening was well-received by fans on Twitter, who have at times sounded like they’re describing a long-lost lover, not a tub of ice cream. This time, they reacted with plenty of caps-lock, exclamation points and a mix of crying, prayer-hands and heart emojis. "You wanna drive to Alabama?" "Nah." "I heard their Blue Bell plant is re-opening." http://t.co/xhYBRSkFRJ https://twitter.com/kat_krazed/status/629452141220904960 Blue Bell says it has taken a number of steps to avoid another outbreak, like taking apart machines to sanitize them, cleaning air conditioning systems and re-training employees. The company has made “good progress” with its other factories, including its largest, which is near its Texas headquarters, Van Dorf said, but it hasn’t decided when they will reopen. Ice cream made in the Sylacauga, Ala., factory didn’t test positive for Listeria during the outbreak, and health inspectors haven’t come across problems since, said Jim McVay, director of health promotion and chronic disease at the Alabama Department of Public Health. The facility had closed voluntarily, and Alabama officials are placing “no restrictions whatsoever” on production, McVay said. Still, he said, inspectors will be visiting weekly, instead of just a


This new software can give you animal vision

The software reveals unseen markings on the male lizard (right), vital for mate selection. (Jolyon Troscianko) Ever wondered what the world looks like to nonhuman animals? Scientists do, too. It can actually be a really important question. Sometimes humans can't see things -- like skin markings designed to attract mates or flower colors meant to draw pollinators -- that are incredibly important in the life and behavior of an animal. That's why researchers at the University of Exeter have developed a software that converts photos to "animal vision." [This new program identifies birds with just a photo] The software, which is available for free online, is described in a recent paper in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution. Its creators have already used it extensively themselves to perform studies on animals who see light outside the spectrum visible to humans. They've also used it to track imperceptible color changes that occur in women's faces during ovulation. The software works by integrating photos taken using ultraviolet filters with those taken using regular color filters, a process that scientists used to have to dial in manually for whatever species they were studying. By meshing the visible light spectrum with information from a full-spectrum image, the software can replicate the visual experience of animals who see more colors than humans, including light in the ultraviolet range. Dandelions as seen in human vision (left), and honeybee vision (right). The center of the flower absorbs UV while the ends of the petals reflects it. (Jolyon Troscianko) That's especially important when looking at flowers, since they often have signals to pollinators that can only be seen in the ultraviolet range. [Evolution tuned this moth’s night vision to follow swaying flowers] The researchers have included specific camera settings for commonly studied animals, such as honeybees and some species of fish. Now that the software is open access, they hope other labs can benefit from the technology. And if you've got the right camera set-up, you can play around with it yourself and get a bee's-eye view of the world. Read More: Watch awestruck people seeing color for the first time Meet the eyeless man who says he can see (and is probably right) This creepy video was taken by a digital camera that never needs power Scientists trick subjects into feeling invisible No, carrots don’t make your eyesight better


Eating carbs may have given human ancestors a big brain boost

Cooked tubers may have been an integral part of the real "paleo" diet. (Deb Lindsey/ For The Washington Post). It's widely accepted these days that cooking helped make us human. It's easier to use energy from cooked food than raw, so pre-modern humans who dabbled in roasting had the energy surplus they needed to develop better brains, not to mention the time they needed to sit around and think deep thoughts with them. According to a new study For starters, sorry, vegans (and double sorry to raw vegans), but scientists generally believe that meat and cooking were totally integral to human evolution. To survive on a plant-based diet, especially a raw one, without the aid of modern conveniences like grocery stores and refrigeration, a human would have to spend pretty much all his or her time finding food. [What was in the real Paleo diet way back when? It wasn’t just meat] And eating raw just isn't healthy So it's not news that cooking is very, very important, in an evolutionary sense. But based on the analysis offered in this new study, those set on eating a "paleo" diet might want to make sure they're not cutting out too many carbs. The researchers, led by Karen Hardy of the University of York and the Autonomous University of Barcelona, basically argue that the human brain relies heavily on glucose and that a lack of carbs makes it hard to keep your brain satisfied. That's true: When your body's glucose stores are low, either because you're not eating or because you've cut out carbs, your brain starts to look for energy from other sources. The results are less than ideal: What If You Stopped Eating? The researchers also point out that humans have around three times as many copies of the gene used to make the enzyme that turns carbs into simple sugars — salivary amylase — as other primates do. Based on genetic analysis, they say, this adaptation cropped up around 1 million years ago. The spread of cooking — and the beginning of its visible benefits to pre-human physiology — is thought to have started around 2 million years ago, or perhaps a bit later. It would make sense, the researchers argue, if the genetic adaptation that made us efficient carb eaters cropped up after a few generations of cooking: Raw tubers are really hard for mammals to digest into


Kevin Hart was accepting ‘no excuses’ during his 5K in D.C.

there with other members of the Black Men Run collective, was particularly happy to see another African American man behind such an initiative. “I think with all the maladies that affect us, from diabetes, high cholesterol, so you see these brothers here … especially a guy like Kevin Hart using this as a platform is a beautiful thing,” said Williams, 49, who was once nearly 300 pounds before he started running. (He’s now 230.) “You know that we’re one of the most unhealthy countries in the world right now.” At the finish line, Hart’s fans were ecstatic to see him. One guy even tried to give him a “pimp cup” with his name on it. They took selfies, offered hugs, asked for birthday blessings and cracked jokes. He even did a couple of live TV interviews while high-fiving runners. The positivity of the scene was palpable. The last person to cross the finish line was Karon Phillips. A bit of a lapsed runner, she figured Hart’s event was a good time to get back out there. “For a black man to get out and promote something this positive is a really good thing as well, considering health disparities and all kinds of different predisposing factors that people of minority backgrounds face,” she said. “I just like that he’s out here promoting something positive and healthy.” Last runner across https://t.co/IDfPgJMIm7 Hart readily admits that his exercise events are about connecting with people with whom he normally can only interact with through a handshake or social media. Getting out on the trail gives him a more personal experience through athletics. “It’s something that we can do together. I’m accessible. I think what I’ve done and what I’ve done a good job of doing is taking away that gap in between celebrity and fan,” said Hart, a Philadelphia native whose favorite D.C. athlete is DeSean Jackson. “At the end of the day, yes I’m in movies and I’m ‘the star’ that people make you out to be, but I’m still an individual. I wake up in the morning, just like you do. I tie my shoes the same way you do.” And in those shoes, he runs every morning. Just like many of his fans. No excuses are excepted on the road to greatness! My question to all of you is are you on the road to greatness with me or not? #HustleHart


Sundevich owner to open Small Fry, a smoke house and fry shop in Parkview

Ali Bagheri, owner of A&D Bar and Sundevich in Shaw, on Friday confirmed the name and concept of the business he’s developing at 3212 Georgia Ave. NW. The restaurant, Small Fry, will be a “nontraditional smokehouse and fry shop,” Bagheri told Express in an email. Small Fry is at the location of a planned development that will have 105 residential units and 4,000-square-feet of retail, according to the Washington Business Journal. Construction at Small Fry is set to wrap up in the next two weeks, Bagheri said. More details as Express gets them.


WATCH: How do we balance the STEM equation?

research associate at the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education where she administered the preschool curriculum evaluation program and a grant program in mathematics education. She was director of research for the Rice University School Mathematics Project and has served on the advisory boards for the Merck Institute for Science Education, the Discovery Learning Research Center at Purdue University and Building Capacity for State Science Education. Meeta Sharma-Holt Meeta Sharma-Holt is the executive director of Techbridge’s Washington D.C. office. Techbridge’s programs aim to inspire middle and high school-aged girls in underserved communities to discover an interest in science, technology and engineering. Sharma-Holt began her career developing corporate mentoring programs for Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, and later operating a large multi-site after-school teen center, and summer program for at a settlement house. Once in Washington, D.C., she initially assisted over 20 charter school sites to develop their after-school services, and then directed a citywide effort to create the model of after-school program delivery called Project My Time. Russell Shilling Russell Shilling is the executive director of STEM at the U.S. Department of Education, overseeing the department’s policies to drive innovation in science, technology, engineering and math education and enhance interagency coordination. Previously, Shilling served as a Navy captain, retiring after 22 years of service as a Navy aerospace experimental psychologist focusing on education, training and psychological health. Shilling has also held several program management positions at the Office of Naval Research and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Michelle Th Michelle Thaller is the assistant director of science at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center. Thaller has a Ph.D. from Georgia State University. After a post-doctoral research fellowship at Caltech, she became particularly interested in public outreach and science communication and served as the public outreach lead for the Spitzer Space Telescope at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory before moving to Goddard. She is currently serving a one-year leadership fellowship in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in D.C. Thaller is one of the regular hosts of “The Universe” series on the History Channel, NatGeo’s “the Known Universe” and Discovery Science Channel’s “How the Universe Works,” and “The Stripped Universe.” She also serves as a science advisor for John and Hank Greene’s Crash Course series on PBS Home Video. Steven Hill Janella Franklin Julie Edmonds Biographies are provided by speakers and edited only for length and clarity.


Mike Huckabee says the military’s job is to ‘kill people and break things.’ Well, not quite.

pretty significantly in research that has helped to develop all sorts of medical and technological advancements -- oh, like this here thing called the Internet. As a result, the military and its needs have been the impetus behind not a small share of private-sector jobs. Military contracts are also an important source of work for the disabled. Janet Parsler, an employee with Industries for the Blind in West Allis, Wis., packs military regulation ballpoint pens into boxes. The pen has been around since the late 1960s and is assembled by blind and visually impaired people as mandated by a law from the 1930s. (Katie Derksen) (The virtual scrum around military contracts and the intensive lobbying that happens anytime the words "base closure" come up in Congress offer a clear testament to all of the above.) Second, on Huckabee's claims that the military has no role to play in transforming society -- and the related implication that a diverse armed forces has little to do with the military's defensive aims -- there's a lot of evidence to contradict him there too. More than a few intelligence officers, officials and defense agencies have been clear about the need to recruit and maintain soldiers and agents who look like the population of the United States. Understand that that's a pretty common and evidence-grounded idea inside both defense and intelligence agencies -- even if not always aggressively perused -- for both for optical and tactical reasons. The clearest example: A man who looks and sounds like Huckabee might have just a little harder time gathering information covertly right now than an American with ancestral ties to the Middle East or Africa, who speaks multiple languages with the fluency of an early-in-life learner or who is deeply familiar with the customs of other countries. And the military has played a key role in promoting diversity. When President Harry Truman ordered the military to integrate (and in the decade or so that it took for that to become real), prohibitions on which jobs, housing and food non-white members of the military could access weren't the only things that changed. Once given the chance, African Americans mastered the art and science -- and they, along with Latinos and Asian Americans, managed all sorts of ground-based military missions and engaged in complicated or perilous tasks with white soldiers. That life-long bonds forged between soldiers is a well-known phenomenon.


Rubio’s fantasy figure on bank closures due to Dodd-Frank

assets under $10 billion) lost 6 percent of their share of banking assets in the four years before Dodd-Frank — and then lost more than 12 percent in the four years after the law’s enactment, the report concludes. The researchers calculated the numbers by analyzing data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The report, which documents the importance of community banks in lending to farmers and for real estate transactions, pins at least some of the blame for the dwindling share of banking assets on Dodd-Frank: “What is behind the decline of the community bank? Technology is obviously a factor. It may drive consolidation but ensure that some traditional banking services will be available if community banks’ role in the banking sector naturally diminishes. Yet many commentators, community bankers, and regulators have also expressed fear or produced research showing that Dodd-Frank has exacerbated the preexisting trend of banking consolidation by piling up regulatory costs on institutions that neither pose systemic risks nor have the diversified businesses to support such costs.” Greene said number of community banks (banks with less than $10 billion in assets consolidated at the holding company level) decreased from 6,937 to 6,094 between the second quarter of 2010 and the second quarter of 2014 — about a 12 percent decline. A slightly longer dataset, published by the Mercatus Center, which goes to the end of 2014, indicates a 14 percent decline in community banks. While Rubio’s number for the nation is wildly off course, the American Banker newspaper noted that it is closer to the mark for Florida — where the number of banks has fallen by 37 percent since June 30, 2010, according to the FDIC. The Pinocchio Test There’s certainly a big difference between 14 and 40 percent — though to answer our reader’s question, even the correct figure shows that hundreds of banks have closed since Dodd-Frank was enacted. But it’s not entirely clear this is all the fault of the law. The number of banks has plunged in the last two decades, so the best case that Rubio could make is that the law has possibly increased the pace of closures. But he cannot so sweepingly blame the law—and he needs to get his numbers straight. Three Pinocchios (About our rating scale) Send us facts to check by filling out this form Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook


Astronauts will eat food grown in space for first time ever

used to study how flowering plants can grow and pollinate with little gravity. It’s not like astronauts on the space station never get any fresh food. The crew does get produce like apples and carrots whenever a supply ship is launched, but that’s limited and they must eat it quickly, according to a NASA payload specialist. Being able to replenish food sources during much longer voyages would be essential for future space travelers, not only for nutritional needs but also to give astronauts something to do. It also gives crew members a living vestige to remind them of Earth. “The farther and longer humans go away from Earth, the greater the need to be able to grow plants for food, atmosphere recycling and psychological benefits,” said Gioia Massa, also a scientist from Kennedy, in a statement. “I think that plant systems will become important components of any long-duration exploration scenario.” [Six scientists emerge from 8 months cooped up on ‘Mars’] NASA plans to grow food on future spacecraft and on other planets as a food supplement for astronauts. Fresh food, such as vegetables, provide essential vitamins and nutrients that will help enable sustainable deep space pioneering. (Courtesy of NASA) NASA scientists also said that studying how plants grow with LED lights could help in growing food on Earth. The space station’s technology could be applied to urban plant factories or other scenarios in which plants are grown using electric light and where water needs to be tightly conserved. In addition to taking breathtaking photos of Earth and the moon, the International Space Station has long been home to biology experiments. Crew members take advantage of their unique low-gravity and high-radiation environment to see how it affects living things like flatworms, mouse embryos and squids. Whisky makers have also been interested in how microgravity can affect the aging process or change the taste of the alcohol. The Japanese distillery Suntory is also sending up samples of whisky to the station, following up on a sample of Ardbeg Scotch Whisky that sat up on the station for 1,000 days. h/t NASA Read more: Another major rocket failure for a space industry out to prove itself Still sharp, Hubble Space Telescope turns 25 with a cloudy future Scientists are figuring out some weird things about a star they’ve nicknamed ‘Nasty’ Do we really want to know if we’re not alone in the universe?


The paper lobby’s new federal target: The Securities and Exchange Commission

under the name Consumers for Paper Options, says it is teaming up with Consumer Action and the National Consumers League to fend off the government’s latest move to the Internet. “While we recognize the trend towards a more digital world, it is critical that government efforts to ‘modernize’ information delivery do not disenfranchise Americans who need or want resources in paper format,” the group says in a statement on the mutual fund delivery proposal, known as Proposed Rule 30e-3. Consumers for Paper Options was set up by the Envelope Manufacturers Association (EMA), with financial backing from the paper industry’s largest trade group and several of North America’s biggest paper manufacturers. The group’s favorite talking point with the public and members of Congress from paper-producing states it lobbies is about Internet access. A quarter of Americans still don’t have it, many of them elderly. “Rule 30e-3 would impede access for many investors, especially the elderly, those with disabilities, and minority Americans — all demographics that are less likely to have regular Internet access,” the group says. This may sound a little like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. But the paper lobby is not backing down, and its fight against the government’s move to the Internet is paying dividends. The FDA is still weighing more than 950 comments opposing its proposal to eliminate paper inserts in drug packaging. And as of last week, the SEC had received 232 comments on its proposal to put shareholder statements online, almost all in opposition. The comments generally hewed to a template provided by Consumers for Paper Options, such as this one from someone named Robin Snyder: Please consider the following thought: Rule 30e-3 would impede access for many investors, especially the elderly, those with disabilities, and minority Americans – all demographics that are less likely to have regular Internet access. For example, 41 percent of Americans over 65 years of age do not use the Internet, yet, according to the Investment Company Fact Book, 34 percent of this population owns mutual funds. My request is that you please continue the use of paper; not only for ease of use and ability to maintain, but also because of the thousands of people who depend upon the paper industry for their livelihood. Thanks for your consideration, Robin Snyder An SEC spokeswoman said the agency considers all comments from the public when its commissioners vote on a proposal.


The science of skipping breakfast: How government nutritionists may have gotten it wrong

findings. In preparation, a government-convened panel known as the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee collected research on skipping breakfast. Some of it did, indeed, suggest that breakfast skippers may be more likely to gain weight. One of the key pieces of evidence, for example, examined the records for 20,000 male health professionals. Researchers followed the group for 10 years and published results in 2007 in the journal Obesity. They showed that after adjusting for age and other factors, the men who ate breakfast were 13 percent less likely to have had a significant weight gain. “Our study suggests that the consumption of breakfast may modestly lower the risk of weight gain in middle-aged and older men,” the researchers said. The advisory committee cited this and similar research, known as "observational studies," in support of the notion that skipping breakfast might cause weight gain. In "observational studies," subjects are merely observed, not assigned randomly to “treatment” and “control” groups as in a traditional experiment. Observational studies in nutrition are generally cheaper and easier to conduct. But they can suffer from weaknesses that can lead scientists astray. One of the primary troubles in observational studies is what scientists refer to as “confounders” — basically, unaccounted factors that can lead researchers to make mistaken assumptions about causes. For example, suppose breakfast skippers have a personality trait that makes them more likely to gain weight than breakfast eaters. If that’s the case, it may look as if skipping breakfast causes weight gain even though the cause is the personality trait. In analyzing the results of observational studies, scientists make statistical adjustments to adjust for the potential confounding factors that they can measure — age, alcohol consumption, exercise, employment, and the like. Breakfast skippers in the health professionals study, for example, tended to drink more, smoke more, and exercise less. The scientists adjusted their statistics accordingly. But the adjustments are imprecise, and there is no guarantee that the groups are not different in some other unmeasured way. Relying on observational studies has drawn fierce criticism from many in the field, particularly statisticians. S. Stanley Young, former director of bioinformatics at the National Institute of Statistical Sciences has estimated that for observational studies in the medical field, “over 90 percent of the claims fail to replicate” — that is they cannot be replicated later by more exacting experiments. “Wow. Is this really science?” he said during a


Check out this gorgeous space opal that NASA found

The "little gem" nebula. (ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt) Sometimes I write about photos of space because of the remarkable processes that created them. Sometimes I write about pictures of space because I want to literally wear that space on my body. I mean, this planetary nebula could basically just go straight into a ring, barring its immense size and the fact that it's made of ionized gas and a dying star. Can I at least get it printed on a skirt, please? Pictured above is NGC 6818, also known as the Little Gem Nebula, which is located 6,000 light years away in the constellation Sagittarius. It's not newly discovered, but it's given a major makeover in this new image, thanks to some new color filters. At half a light year across, it's huge compared to us -- but tiny for a nebula. Just days ago we gawked at the Southern Owl Nebula, which is eight times bigger than the little gem. [Gaze upon the Medusa (Nebula) in unprecedented detail] Need a refresher on planetary nebulae? They've got nothing to do with planets. They're so named for their round (ish) shapes. When a star is at the tail-end of its time as a red giant, it throws its gases off into space, forming a loose sphere around the star's smaller, white giant self. The star's exposed core ionizes the gases, which gives them brilliant color. After just a few tens of thousands of years -- a blip in the star's lifespan, which lasts billions and billions -- the gases will have all oozed out into space, leaving the tiny white dwarf behind as it continues to die. [This dying star looks like a beautiful cosmic butterfly] That's the eventual fate of our own sun Scientists believe that NGC 6818's irregular shape and brightness is being sculpted by powerful stellar winds from its host star. Particles being shot off of the white dwarf collide with the slower gasses forming the nebula, and those crashes cause particularly bright regions of the gem. A version of the image was submitted to NASA by Judy Schmidt as part of the Hubble's Hidden Treasures competition, where folks at home can comb through the archives to find little hidden gems like this one. Read More: This beautiful cosmic bubble is actually a dying star Here’s what our galaxy looks like from the outside Stunning timelapse


Study of land snails suggests Earth may have already lost 7 percent of its animal species

area the unfortunate moniker of “the extinction capital of the world.” Data on snail extinctions had led a team of international scientists to fear that the loss of biodiversity on the planet is far larger than previously predicted. Taking into account the millions of invertebrates often overlooked by researchers in the field, the researchers argue that the world has already lost 7 percent of its animal species, contributing to the long-theorized “sixth mass extinction” that is wreaking havoc on the planet’s biodiversity. On Hawaii alone, scores of brightly colored, tropical birds have been crossed off the islands’ list of extant fauna over the past two centuries. The same fate came to a number of moths and insects, and as a result, other species relying on those animals are now threatened. One of the islands’ plants, the stout Brighamia, known for growing on Hawaiian sea cliffs, now must be pollinated by hand because the insects that would do it naturally are gone. [Graphic: The great mass extinctions] To date, only around 800 of Earth’s roughly 1.9 million species are officially recorded as extinct by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The low number has had skeptics question if there is really a crisis, but the methods used by the IUCN to declare a species as extinct are extremely rigorous and take a lot of time. To cover the enormous amount of species in the world would take far more resources than would probably be possible, Cowie said. To get a more full idea of what’s really going on, Cowie and a team of researchers studied land snails throughout the world. The animal is the best invertebrate to study, because it leaves behind a trace that’s far more easy to observe: shells. This is a native Hawaiian snail habitat on Pu’u Kukui, Maui. (Robert Cowie) In Hawaii, boys have long collected the bright snail remnants like baseball cards, and many have been donated to museums. As a result, museums on the islands have some of the best records of its past snail populations. In a study published this week in the journal Conservation Biology, researchers determined that only 15 of the 325 species recognized in Hawaii can still be found alive, and that the rate of extinction in the state has been as high as 14 percent per decade. Snail species are a bit trickier to study globally, but with


Why a man who helped make Japan’s nuclear power plants is trying to stop them

Shouhei Nomura, 79, raises placards as security personnel stand guard during a rally against the restarting of Kyushu Electric Power’s Sendai nuclear power station in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima prefecture, Japan (Issei Kato/Reuters) He used to work for a manufacturer of nuclear plant equipment. Now, 79-year-old Shouhei Nomura lives with other protesters in a makeshift camp near the Kyushu Electric Power Company’s Sendai nuclear power station, campaigning to stop the nation’s nuclear reactors from coming back online. Just days after commemorating the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan continues to debate the nation’s nuclear energy program. [Stories from Fukushima: Still searching four years later] Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said restarting the country’s remaining reactors is needed to help counter the high costs of imported oil and gas, and because many communities are dependent on jobs and tax revenues associated with the nuclear plants. There is also pressure to burn through the nation’s stockpile of 40 to 50 nuclear weapon’s worth of plutonium. And Japan’s nuclear regulators deemed the plant safe to operate under stricter rules imposed after the 2011 meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which displaced more than 160,000 residents. On the 70th anniversary of the world’s first atomic bombing, survivors say the Japanese government’s move away from its pacifist constitution would be repeating the “mistakes of its past.” But many protesters remained unconvinced that the new safety requirements and evacuation protocols will be sufficient to avert another catastrophe. “You will need to change where you evacuate to depending on the direction of the wind,” said Nomura, according to Reuters. “The current evacuation plan is nonsense.” On Tuesday, amid protests and with tight security in place, one of Sendai’s two nuclear reactors was restarted, A young protester A day before the reactor was restarted, Abe had tried to answer such concerns. “We prioritize safety more than anything,” Abe told reporters. “Based on the harsh experience of Fukushima, we will not restart any plants unless they are approved as they meet the world’s strictest standards.” Shouhei Nomura pauses as he puts a windbreak around the protesters’ campsite near Kyushu Electric Power’s Sendai nuclear power station. (Issei Kato/Reuters) Shouhei Nomura transports items toward the protesters’ campsite on the sandy beach near Kyushu Electric Power’s Sendai nuclear power station. (Issei Kato/Reuters) Kyushu Electric Power’s Sendai nuclear power station is seen from the shoreline. (Issei Kato/Reuters) Shouhei Nomura checks radiation levels close to


In fight between French honeybees and Asian hornets, a carnivorous plant from Mass. wins

Massachusetts. According to the BBC, the carnivorous plant eats Asian hornets and flies, but not local hornets or honeybees, making it the perfect weapon in the fight against the invading menace. The carnivorous plant known as Sarracenia. (Georges Gobet/AFP/Getty Images) Sarracenia uses subterfuge to lure the hornets into a false sense of security. Perrocheau said the plant has developed a “very selective trap” designed specifically to attract the bugs. They perch on the rim of its tubular leaves, which are slicked with a coating that makes footing treacherous. Eventually, the hornet’s feet “slide like stepping onto a newly waxed floor in your sock feet,” in the words of the Botanical Society of America. It slips into the bowels of the plant and is consumed by the acid juices that slosh in its interior. [Are monarch butterflies really being massacred? A new study says it’s a lot more complicated than it seems.] According to the BBC, Perrocheau and an entomologist plan to study hundreds of these pitcher plants to determine the secret chemical solution that attracts the hornets. But botany alone won’t be enough to deal with the invasive species. A typical hornet’s nest houses 4,000 insects, and each Sarracenia can only trap about 50. The head of a Asian Hornet (Vespa Velutina) in 2014 at the Research Institute of Biology of the Insect (IRBI) in Tours, France. (Guillaume Souvant/AFP/Getty Images) Meanwhile, the Asian hornets aren’t limiting their campaign of terror to France’s honeybees. In their native China, they kill dozens a year with their toxic stings, according to CNN. Their venom has been found to destroy red blood cells, and a sting from one can trigger deadly anaphylaxis in those with allergies. (Okay, so a sting from a normal hornet or wasp can do that, too — but these insects are more than an inch long and far more terrifying.) The largest hornet species in the world, an Asian hornet can grow as large as a human thumb. Christopher K. Starr, a professor of entomology at University of West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago, told CNN they look like “the wasp analog of a pit bull” with “a face that looks like you just can’t reason with it.” And since their nests are often hidden underground or high in trees, they are very difficult to track down and destroy. You’re welcome for the nightmares. Maybe invest in a pitcher plant?


New study predicts the slow, inevitable death of the universe

This simulated fly-through shows the real positions and images of the galaxies that have been mapped so far. A new study suggests stars are slowly fading out across the universe. Like all good things, our universe will one day come to an end. Just how that end will look is still something of a mystery. But one new study suggests that our universe won't go out with a bang, but with a whimper: According to these scientists, stars are growing dim. Researchers presented their findings on Monday [Newly discovered exoplanet orbits a pair of stars] Based on observations of the galaxies over 21 different wavelengths of light, which allowed researchers to calculate their energy output, their rate of star formation and the rate at which they merged with one another, astronomers have concluded that the universe is dimming. Just 2 billion years ago, they report, the energy being produced in the section of the universe they studied was twice what it is today. “The universe is curling up on the sofa and becoming a couch potato,” study author Joe Liske of the European Southern Observatory told the Guardian. Scientists already knew that the stars of the universe were getting less bright in terms of ultraviolet light. However, this is the first study to look across all wavelengths of light, showing the general trend toward darkness and nothingness. This composite picture shows how a typical galaxy appears at different wavelengths in the GAMA survey. (ICRAR/GAMA and ESO) Here's what's happening, in a nutshell: The universe reached its peak period of star formation a long, long time ago. There just isn't as much raw material to work with as there used to be. The laws of physics are such that usable energy will increasingly waste away into forms that stars can't use, like heat. [Scientists are creating the first maps of the universe’s dark matter] It's not as if a "dead" universe would disappear. But with fewer and fewer bright stars, there would be fewer and fewer opportunities for life to evolve and thrive. One day our universe will host only dimly-lit stars, and those will dwindle over time, as well. But don't be too depressed: The sun is going to burn out way before we have to worry about the universe itself running out of energy. "It’s going to be a long process; I guess we've got worse things to worry


The Middle East and East Asia: A tale of two economic trajectories

of political economy diffused from Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore to Malaysia, Thailand, China, Indonesia, Vietnam and other “tigers” and “dragons.” As a result, East Asian economies today are increasingly vital to each other: Over 50 percent of their total exports stay within the region. By contrast, most Middle East regimes built firewalls against outward-oriented models, blocking change to protect their own ruling coalitions and conspiring against those who might have favored such shifts in Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere. Those dominoes that did spill over Middle East borders included civil wars, terrorism and human rights abuses rather than trade. Turkey is one of the few to eventually escape this domino effect. In recent years, some Persian Gulf monarchies have begun diversifying away from oil, but they are still a long way from achieving new socio-economic models. As a result of these different diffusion patterns, Middle East economies are far less integrated with each other and the world than their East Asian counterparts. Less than 16 percent of Middle East exports stay in their region. While East Asian economies account for 25 percent of world exports, those of the Middle East account for only about 5 percent, largely oil. Likewise, East Asia contributes nearly 30 percent of the world’s manufacturing exports, and the Middle East contributes less than 2 percent. Regarding democracy, authoritarians launched export-led models in East Asia with little intention to develop democratic institutions. Yet, in time, economic growth, stronger private sectors and professionalized militaries fostered better conditions for democratic institutions. Not all states in that region have gone through that transition yet, but a good number have. By contrast, devastated private sectors and civil societies and entrenched military industrial complexes have made authoritarianism more resilient in the Middle East. So, is the die cast? Cases around the world suggest that history can weigh heavily on a state’s future but does not invariably impose a point of no return. Southeast Asia was once labeled the “Balkans of the East,” but it is now a thriving region where a flexible, reformist and “modern” Islam has largely overcome its radical competitors. The barriers for the Middle East may be high but not insurmountable. Achieving effective reforms will require more than what some label “neoliberalism” that retains such basic features of the old model as corruption and rents. Reforms will demand a thorough transformation toward increased openness to the


A wider approach to hosting the Olympics

Residents waits for the decision for Beijing to be named the host city for the 2022 Winter Olympics. (Ng Han Guan/Associated Press) Boston has backed out of its bid to host the 2024 Olympics, and officials are begging the District and other cities to try to host the Games. But fewer and fewer cities want to. What if, instead of picking one host city, the entire country pitched in, with venues spread out in several cities coast to coast? The Olympics have a big problem. Virtually no democratic cities anywhere in the world want to host them anymore. The combination of sky-high costs for new facilities and the inconveniences put upon the populace by way of construction and tourist traffic have made the Olympics too much for one city to bear. But why should one city have to? To save the Olympics, the FIFA World Cup offers a compelling alternate in which countries host instead of cities. Different events would take place in different locations, hundreds or even thousands of miles apart. No single city would have to shoulder the burdens of more than one or two events. With a whole country to choose from, organizers could find existing facilities for virtually every event. Much less new construction would be necessary. Many fewer one-time-use buildings would become abandoned after the games end. And with fewer athletes and visitors in any one location, existing infrastructure and hotels could accommodate more of the influx of guests, with less disruption to residents. Hosting a single Olympic event would be more like hosting a college football bowl game, or the baseball All Star game. In short, everything would become easier. [Continue reading Dan Malouff’s post at Beyond DC.] Dan Malouff is an Arlington County transportation planner who blogs independently at BeyondDC.com. The Local Blog Network is a group of bloggers from around the D.C. region who have agreed to make regular contributions to All Opinions Are Local.


Will the Army open its elite Ranger Regiment to women? A controversial decision awaits.

are likely nursing injuries and other physical problems, but must press on anyway to graduate. Occasionally, some simply give up, said Capt. George Calhoun, a Ranger instructor who previously led an infantry platoon in Afghanistan. He recalled one student who simply refused to leave the swamp one day after reaching a breaking point. “Some of them say, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’ And some just stop. They quit by their action,” Calhoun said. After the students parachuted into Eglin last week, they fanned out into the woods near the drop zone. Their mission included searching for a variety of locations on the base containing materials they might search for in an overseas mission, including a mortar launcher and chemicals used in improvised explosive devices. A Ranger student prepares to traverse the Yellow River that winds through Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., on Tuesday as he takes on the third phase of Ranger School. The 17-day phase is the third and final portion of the school. (Dan Lamothe/ The Washington Post) Fivecoat said he wants to do whatever is possible to make sure that Ranger School is neither any harder nor any easier for the female students. After the initial phase with women was held at Fort Benning, two of the instructors based there visited others in northern Georgia and in Florida for a meeting without senior Ranger School leaders to discuss what worked and what needed improvement. Fivecoat said he wanted them to speak candidly. “I’m trying to make sure they have every opportunity to succeed or fail,” Fivecoat said of the female students. “I’m not naive enough to tell you that there aren’t folks out here that aren’t real big fans of it, but that’s our leadership issue that we dealt with.” The graduation ceremony, he acknowledged, will be closely watched if women complete the course. “Like any military organization, we’re doing prudent planning to prepare for that eventuality,” he said. “We think it’s going to be a big deal, and we think there will be a lot of media.” He later added: “It’s going to be a long week.” This article has been updated to include more context about what it takes for a soldier to join the Ranger Regiment. Related on Checkpoint: Why physical standards still dog the debate about women in combat units Women in special operations: Female troops detail their time in combat


No, Obamacare isn’t killing full-time jobs, new evidence shows

paper, published this month in the journal Applied Economics Letters, uses data from the federal Current Population Survey and finds no statistically significant change in the proportion of part-time workers in the sectors most likely to be affected by Obamacare, such as janitorial and restaurant work. The study, like ADP's analysis, only uses data from before the mandate took effect, on the assumption that employers would begin adjusting their workers' schedules beforehand. Yet Strain said that firms might still reduce their employees' hours in the future once they discover the cost of providing health care. "There's still a big open question about whether the Affordable Care Act and the employer mandate will increase part time work," said Strain, an opponent of Obamacare. "That question has not been settled. Our paper provides evidence that that shift hasn't happened yet." [Read more: Strain explains why he thinks Obamacare should end, even if people die as a result] Bowen Garrett, an economist at the Urban Institute, disagreed. "It's reasonable to think that if there was going to be a large effect, some of it would have happened in 2014," he said. That was when the main provisions of the law went into effect, and around 15 million people gained health insurance. This week, Garrett and his colleague Robert Kaestner published their own analysis of the federal survey data, coming to largely the same conclusions as Strain and his collaborators. They found that circumstances for workers last year were what you would predict based on overall economic conditions in 2013. In other words, the economy has recovered steadily, and if Obamacare has had an effect, it has been too small to measure. The researchers at Urban also examined a separate aspect of the law, the expansion of Medicaid to more beneficiaries. For many people, health insurance is one of the most important reasons to find and hold down a job. Obamacare's conservative opponents predicted that if Americans could receive insurance through Medicaid instead of through an employer, some of them would leave the workforce. Yet the Urban analysis did not find significant differences between states that expanded Medicaid and those that did not. "There's been a lot of talk about the ACA reducing the number of jobs, or killing some jobs, and we simply don't see the evidence of that in the data that we've been able to examine up to 2014," Garrett said.


Can Twitter and Yelp really help spot a salmonella outbreak?

complaints about food-related illnesses. Staff members monitor the potential cases and reach out to the ones that appear relevant, including a link to a form where residents can provide more information about their experience and flag restaurants that might be sickening people: @amberxacula Sorry to hear you're ill. The Chicago health department can help. https://t.co/Es7DiyhNxS Between March 2013 and January 2014, the effort identified 2,241 "food poisoning" tweets originating from Chicago and its neighboring suburbs, according to findings published last summer by the CDC. Of those, staff members identified 270 describing specific complaints of foodborne illness. The nearly 200 reports filed with FoodBorne Chicago, the group overseeing the effort, prompted 133 restaurant inspections. More than 90 percent of those inspections found at least one health violation. But nearly a quarter of the inspections turned up a "critical" violation, such as food not stored at appropriate temperatures. "It's the real-time nature of this that's great," said Raed Mansour, the project lead for FoodBorne Chicago, recalling a moment last year when the Twitter program spotted three tweets within a single hour about the same restaurant. "We were able to mobilize our inspectors right then and there. It's hard to say we prevented an outbreak, but we at least prevented further illnesses." In New York, officials at the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene have worked with researchers at Columbia University to scan reviews on Yelp for unreported cases of foodborne illness. Between July 2012 and March 2013, officials used a software program to analyze nearly 300,000 restaurant reviews and identified 893 that warranted further investigation by epidemiologists. [How New York used Yelp to find unreported cases of food poisoning] Ultimately, investigators interviewed dozens of Yelp reviewers and unearthed several previously unreported restaurant-related outbreaks in the city, involving dishes such as shrimp and lobster cannelloni and macaroni and cheese spring rolls. The three restaurants involved faced multiple food-handling violations, according to a CDC report. Officials in New York and Chicago could end up borrowing each other's creations in the future. Nsoesie, the University of Washington researcher, said other cities such as St. Louis and Boston are exploring similar efforts. Public health officials are quick to acknowledge that using social media to detect foodborne illness outbreaks is no panacea. It can be time-consuming, with unpredictable results. But when it works, it can give investigators what they need most: a head start. "We're really


The crippling problem restaurant-goers haven’t noticed but chefs are freaking out about

or four to [try out] in the kitchen, and make a decision,” Alfred Portale, the chef and owner of Michelin-starred Manhattan restaurant Gotham Bar and Grill, told Fortune recently. “Now it’s the other way around; there’s one cook and 12 restaurants.” And it extends to restaurants out West. Seattle is coping with the same dilemma. San Francisco, too. The glitz and glamour of rising through the ranks in the restaurant industry isn’t what it used to be. Long hours, low pay and a series of other cultural and economic factors have made lower-tier restaurant work a much less desirable path than it once was, leaving many kitchens chronically understaffed. One of the clearest obstacles to hiring a good cook, let alone someone willing to work the kitchen these days, is that living in this country’s biggest cities is increasingly unaffordable. In New York, for instance, where a cook can expect to make between $10 and $12 per hour, and the median rent runs upward of $1,200 a month, living in the city is a near impossibility. As a result, people end up living far from the restaurants where they work. Add to that how late dinner shifts can end, causing people to arrive home well into the night. Top it all off with the fact that culinary school graduates are often working through significant amounts of debt, and the burden can be insurmountable. It’s not as if restaurants are cheating workers out of heaping piles of cash, either. There simply isn’t a whole lot of money circulating. The National Restaurant Association estimates that the median profit margin for mid-level establishments (those with average checks of $25 and higher) was 4.5 percent. Celebrity chefs and successful restaurateurs exist, but they are the exception. And a good deal of the money earned by the former comes in the form of television contracts, book deals, guest appearances and other tangential earnings. “The pay just isn’t there,” said Kim McLynn, a representative for industry research firm NPD Group. Some also worry that food television has created a pervasive, mistaken perception among young, aspiring chefs that success is earned less through patience and perseverance than it is through sudden fame. Cooking shows on the Food Network, Bravo and elsewhere, have spread a misleading sense that kitchen work is mostly creative and fun. The reality check that young cooks experience at their first kitchen shift can


Best spots in D.C. region for viewing the Perseid meteor shower

Image from the 2007 Perseids meteor shower which was one of the more intense Perseids events in recent memory. (NASA) Given the lack of moonlight, this year’s Perseid meteor shower, which peaks tonight, is expected to be sensational. As many as 90-100 meteors per hour may dart through the sky at the expected peak, between about midnight and 6 a.m. Thursday. But meteors will be visible beginning at dark. [A phenomenal Perseid meteor shower peaks this week — here’s how to watch] The clearer and darker the skies above you, the more meteors you’ll be able to see. For Washingtonians, the good news is that we’re forecasting mostly cloud-free skies. But, for some, the region’s rampant light pollution will reduce both the number of visible “shooting stars” as well as their brilliance. Satellite image from NASA showing light pollution in Mid-Atlantic from 2012. To get the most out of the Perseids, get away from city lights. Beach and rural settings are ideal. Geoff Chester of the U.S. Naval Observatory said the best viewing locations close to the District tend to be within parks – many of which close at dusk unless you’re a member of one of the local astronomy clubs. But Chester offered some alternatives. “There are some areas that you could drive to and view from your car at the side of the road,” Chester said. “Surprisingly, the sky can be pretty decent along the George Washington parkway south of Alexandria…there are some parking areas that let you access the river bank, and Riverside Park has a nice open grassy area. The area around Great Meadow near The Plains is another good spot, and the road leading to Sky Meadows State Park would be another.” We asked our readers on social media for suggestions, and here’s a sampling of responses: @capitalweather An hour's drive from downtown DC: Sky Meadows State Park. CM Crockett Park. Harpers Ferry. Or any of the State Parks. @capitalweather skyline drive @capitalweather Assateague & Chincoteague. And I probably misspelled them both. @capitalweather George Washington National Forest near/in Woodstock. @capitalweather sugarloaf mountain :) You may also wish to consult the Dark Sky Finder, an interactive map which shows where the concentration of light pollution is greatest and least. Map showing bright skies and dark skies. (Dark Sky Finder) If you’re not motivated to drive some distance into the darkness, don’t despair. As long as


Cocaine is losing its popularity on online drug markets. But pot is more potent.

Marijuana is the most popular drug on online black markets. (Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune via AP) The government's war against online drug sales isn't working, according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. Despite law enforcement crackdowns, online drug black markets have matured into a resilient criminal industry that enables more than $100 million worth of worldwide sales a year, a new paper from researcher Kyle Soska and computer science professor Nicolas Christin reports. The report is one of the most comprehensive looks yet at the burgeoning online drug market. Researchers collected data on 35 online marketplaces that were active on the "Dark Web" -- sites that require the anonymous browsing tool Tor to access and are much harder for law enforcement to track -- between 2013 until January of this year. They wrote a program to scrape the sites for data, including examining the prices that the drugs -- from marijuana to cocaine -- were being sold for. They also collected information on how much feedback sellers received from customers on their purchases. The data helped the researchers estimate trends and total sales. The report was presented Wednesday at a Usenix Conference in Washington, D.C. The researchers found that the industry's growth has slowed since the early days of Silk Road -- one of the first online drug markets and the target of an aggressive government investigation that resulted in a life sentence for the man convicted of running the site. But sales continue to grow, and the market has matured beyond being dominated by a single player, they said. When the government closed Silk Road in fall of 2013, the online drug business just migrated to other sites, including Sheep Marketplace and Black Market Reloaded, according to the researchers. Those two sites closed not long afterward, causing "quite a bit of turmoil" in the online drug scene, they said. (Black Market Reloaded shuttered of its own accord, while Sheep users fell victim to an apparent scam.) But another crop of sites eventually stepped in to fill the void, including Silk Road 2.0, Agora, Pandora and Evolution, and the market began to mature. When some of those sites suffered big scams or government take-downs, the researchers said, the market had stabilized enough that sellers could just jump to another site. When Operation Onymous, a joint U.S. and European crackdown that resulted in 17 arrests, shut down Silk Road 2.0 and some


PM Update: A stellar night for Perseid viewing, and still terrific on Thursday

Sunrise at the Lincoln Memorial. (Nathan Jones via Flickr) That was quite the day! And get ready for an equally fantastic evening. Temperatures mostly reached the near 80 to mid-80s zone this afternoon as humidity keeps falling off on a northwest breeze. The “fair weather cumulus” that formed during the heating of the afternoon will die off as the surface cools this evening, leaving nothing but clear skies for overnight Perseid viewing. [Best spots in D.C. region for viewing the Perseid meteor shower] Through Tonight: Tomorrow (Thursday): See my forecast through the weekend. And if you haven’t already, join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter Want our 5 a.m. forecast delivered to your email in-box? Subscribe here. Pollen update: Reservoir No. 2 - Shade Balls Shade balls: The tactic prevents the chlorine in the water (used to disinfect it from pathogens) from reacting with sunlight to become bromate, a suspected carcinogen. It also protects water sources from wildlife and blocks it from the sun to reduce evaporation. It is believed that around 300 million gallons of water a year can be saved with this tactic. Plus it’s neat to watch the shade balls be deployed!


Mad Fox Tap Room is FINALLY ready to open in Glover Park

Madden anticipates filling them with 10 to 12 Mad Fox brews, all made at the Mad Fox brewpub in Falls Church, plus two ciders and two meads. "We're sourcing out local ciders," Madden says, starting with Millstone's Hopvine, a cider aged with Maryland hops and honey. Electronic boards behind the bar display the current draft list, alleviating the need for printed menus; On a visit earlier today, they also showed happy hour running from 3 to 7 p.m., with $2 off all drafts, though Madden's not sure if that information is accurate. (If so, happy hour would be the same as in Falls Church.) In the current configuration, the two floors pour exactly the same draft lists. Eventually, Mad Fox is going to modify the system so that each bar can independently offer 16 different taps. That would make it easy to host "tap takeovers, maybe an IPA festival or a barleywine festival" on one floor without having to take the house beers offline, Madden says. Since Mad Fox has built a reputation for serving traditional cask ales, there are three English-style hand pumps at the end of the downstairs bar. Madden says there will be a porter and an IPA to start, with some other treats, including his award-winning Scottish Wee Heavy, to come. Mad Fox's beers are available at beer bars around D.C., including Brookland Pint, Smoke and Barrel and City Tap House, but Madden is looking forward to having a flagship bar to show Washington beer lovers what he can do. "It's hard to get D.C. people to come out to Falls Church, and vice versa," he says. What's on the menu? While the menus are still being finalized, Madden says they'll be "similar to Falls Church, but we have a much smaller kitchen here. We don't have pizza ovens like we do in Falls Church, so there won't be pizza." Expect burgers, bahn mi, soft pretzels and salads. The Tap Room will open at 11 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, though brunch will begin "down the road," Madden says. Will there be beer events? Of course. "We're going to have beer dinners, holiday beer events – my typical shtick," Madden says. Expect more to happen once the new draft system is ready. For now, they're going to focus on pouring beer – and celebrating finally being open. Mad Fox Tap Room, 2218 Wisconsin Ave. NW. 202-791-0389. www.madfoxbrewing.com.


South Korean president to visit White House in October on rescheduled trip

South Korean President Park Geun-hye. (Yonhap News Agency via European Pressphoto Agency) South Korean President Park Geun-hye will visit the White House on Oct. 16 on a trip that was rescheduled after Park canceled in June to deal with an outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome, known as MERS. President Obama and Park will discuss security and economic issues, as well as the threat posed by North Korea's regime, the White House said in a statement. It is Park's second visit to the White House. The meeting will "demonstrate the close personal ties between the American and Korean people," the White House said. Park's visit will come a month after China's president, Xi Jinping, is scheduled to make his first state visit to Washington in mid-September. The White House also welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on a state visit in April, but Park will not receive the formal ceremonial trappings. (Former South Korean president Lee Myung-bak made a state visit in 2011.) However, Park's meeting with Obama will cap what White House aides have called a year of emphasis on the administration's "pivot to Asia," an attempt to shift U.S. foreign policy attention and resources away from the Middle East and Europe to the Asia Pacific to meet China's rise. The White House has sought to improve relations between U.S. allies Japan and South Korea, and there have been recent signs that the icy relationship between Tokyo and Seoul has begun a modest thaw.


Ohio set to vote on marijuana legalization this fall

A medical marijuana plants growing in Oakland, Calif. (Jeff Chiu/AP) Ohio voters will decide whether their state will be the next to legalize both recreational and medicinal use of marijuana this fall, thanks to a campaign that collected more than 300,000 signatures to put the issue on the ballot. Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted certified the petition Wednesday, The campaign, led by an advocacy group called [Marijuana law creates confusion but finds growing acceptance in District] “We couldn’t be more excited,” Ian James, executive director of ResponsibleOhio, said in a statement, The language of the amendment still needs to be approved by the Ohio Ballot Board, but it would establish a commission to regulate the growth, sale and taxation of marijuana, similar to laws passed by other jurisdictions that have legalized the substance. Tax revenues would go toward local governments, cannabis research and treatment for drug abuse and addiction, Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia made it legal to use marijuana last November, two years after Colorado and Washington state did the same. [The finer points of pot from Denver’s cannabis critic] ResponsibleOhio reportedly spent more than $2.5 million to collect the signatures. The group had to collect at least 305,591 signatures to make it on the ballot, Under the group’s plan, the marijuana industry would be heavily regulated and limited to A production assistant inspects a Cannabis plant in a state-owned agricultural farm in Italy. (Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters) Even if the ballot initiative is successful in November, it still faces another obstacle. State lawmakers who oppose ResponsibleOhio’s plan have already put another initiative on the November ballot that targets the plan’s limit of 10 sites to grow commercial marijuana in the state. The competing initiative “ If both initiatives pass in November, the Ohio’s secretary of state and attorneys for the lawmakers who oppose the marijuana initiative believe the anti-monopoly initiative will trump the pot plan, the newspaper also reported. The Ohio ballot initiative is seen as an important test for the marijuana legalization movement, as the state is often seen as a political bellwether for the rest of the country. An April 2015 If the ballot initiative is successful and marijuana is legalized in Ohio, the state will become the most populous state in the nation so far to legalize the substance, Read more: Oregon celebrates with free weed as recreational marijuana becomes legal A byproduct of


D.C. area forecast: Sun-soaked days through the weekend but humidity slowly seeps back in

TODAY’S DAILY DIGIT 10/10: EXPRESS FORECAST Today: FORECAST IN DETAIL While the lack of rain may bring a frown to gardeners (I empathize), we are in for a great stretch of sunny weather. This weekend sees both heat and humidity stealthily increasing but, for those of you with a last shot at the beach or poolside, it can’t be beat. While the Perseid meteor shower may be winding down, the stars are in full display this weekend as the moon goes missing for a few days. Today (Thursday): Tonight: For related traffic news, check out Dr. Gridlock. Keep reading for the forecast through the weekend… Tomorrow (Friday): Tomorrow night: Dusk’s last light in Washington on Aug. 8. (Joseph Gruber via Flickr) A LOOK AHEAD Saturday Sunday Monday


The Milky Way and beyond: An astrophotographer’s stunning sky vistas

Summer Milky Way, Farm Hakos, Namibia, SW-Africa. (Gerald Rhemann) Orion, Eichgraben/Lower Austria, January 2011. (Gerald Rhemann) Many recently looked up at the stars to get a glimpse of the spectacular Perseid meteor shower that fell across the night sky on Wednesday evening. Austrian astrophotographer Gerald Rhemann has been gazing up and photographing stunning sky vistas for decades. “From the beginning I was interested to image distant galaxies, nebula and comets,” Rhemann tells In Sight. “I very quickly noticed that imaging under the light-polluted skies of my backyard in Vienna didn’t lead to photographic success, because those objects are very faint.” So he began observing places in the Austrian Voralpen (the foothills of the Alps), which has no light pollution and very dark skies. Constellation Scorpius, from Farm Tivoli, Namibia/SW Africa, June 2013. (Gerald Rhemann) M3, Emberger Alm, Austria, Austria 2013. (Gerald Rhemann) Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy, Eichgraben, Lower Austria. (Gerald Rhemann) Helix Nebula Constellation Aquarius, taken from Farm Tivoli, in Namibia SW Africa, August 2014. (Gerald Rhemann) OPHIUCHI taken from the Farm Tivoli/Namibia/SW-Africa. (Gerald Rhemann) Rhemann later began frequenting Namibia in southwest Africa to photograph the far southern heavens from the Kalahari Desert, and he built a fully remote-controlled observatory in Eichgraben near his home in Vienna. Today, cooled CCD-cameras with various filters are used for astrophoto imaging. Long exposure times can last up to several hours, so a precise motorized mount that compensates for the rotation of earth is required. “My passion over the past three years shifted towards imaging of comets which is one of the biggest challenges in astrophotography,” Rhemann said. Part of VELA SNR from the Farm Tivoli, Namibia/SW-Africa, August 2010. (Gerald Rhemann) NEBULA ANTARES/OPHIUCHI, Farm Tivoli/Namibia/SW-Africa. (Gerald Rhemann) M78 Orion from Eichgraben/Lower Austria, August 2011. (Gerald Rhemann) Reflection and Emission Nebulas Scorpius/Ophiuchus IMAGE DETAIL, arm Tivoli, Namibia/SW Africa, May 2012. (Gerald Rhemann) Large Magellanic Cloud Constellation Mensa/Dorado, May 2012, Farm Tivoli, Namibia NGC 6188/ARA, Farm Tivoli/Namibia/SW-Africa. (Gerald Rhemann) Related: The spectacular Perseid shooting star show begins around the world On the edge of space: A photographer’s out-of-this-world selfie, 70,000 feet above the Earth To Mars with love: Photographer transforms the American West into backdrop for tourism to the red planet


Re-strategizing in Syria, Islamic State recruiting through sex slavery, and the army contradicts Trump

RE-STRATEGIZING IN SYRIA. SELLING ISLAMIC STATE ON SEX SLAVERY. REIN ‘ER IN, TRUMP.


The model redefining high fashion

four racks and that was your plus section. And I thought, âWhy are we in the back like this?â The other floors are pumping music and have makeup stands and shoes and this one is up on the quiet floor with the bedding.â This division is even more pointed when compared with the abundant options for smaller sizes, she says. âThere is a store I love to go to, it came over from London, itâs very popular. It carries everything: menâs, lingerie, purses, makeup, accessories, tall, petite, maternity, regular, shoes, amazing shoes â and no plus. So if you want to go in with your friend, a girlsâ day out shopping, you think, âWhat a fun one-stop shop!â Theyâre blasting music, you want a dress to go out tonight. âWell, I guess you could go look at shoes and a necklace.â It is just a bit infuriating.â A few mainstream retailers have started to embrace this consumer segment. Lane Bryant â whose entire customer base is 12-plus â has a new effort to make trendy pieces work for their customers, says chief executive Linda Heasley. âWe donât want our client to be bounded by notions of what she can and cannot wear,â Heasley says. âPart of the reason we say we lead with fashion and not size is weâre telling our internal teams we have to make this work for her. How do we give her the latest trends? How do we make fringe work? How do we make horizontal stripes work?â A major part of this push has been designer collaborations. Heasley and her teams have turned designs from Isabel Toledo, Sophie Theallet and Lela Rose into clothes that fit their customers. And by all accounts, they have been successful. Pieces of the Lela Rose line sold out the day it launched this spring. In June, the company announced a collaboration with Christian Siriano to much fanfare. Spanish contemporary brand Mango also has waded into the trendy plus-size market with the launch of its line Violeta. A spokesperson told The Post that the company has been pleased with the results and plans to open 75 more stores in Europe and South and Central America. Huffine starred in Mangoâs spring lookbook. Her aunt, a slender sizeÂ 6, texted saying she wished the dresses came in her size. High praise, Huffine says. Plus-size model Danielle Redman also lauds the design of


This is a terrible sign for McDonald’s

shutter as many as 700 locations around the world, roughly half of which are in the United States, China, and Japan. The company also said earlier this month that it will be downsizing the head count at its U.S. headquarters in Illinois. McDonald's has called the U.S. store crunch "minimal." And indeed, when one considers that the fast food giant still operates more than 14,000 locations around the country, it's hard to argue with that assessment. But the news is no less troubling for the company, given how rare a McDonald's downsize has been. The contraction is a telling sign that all is not right atop Big Mac mountain. Part of McDonald's woes are due to the growth of new-age competition. Chipotle Mexican Grill, which has become a staple for many Americans, is perhaps the best example. But the chain's popularity is emblematic of a larger trend away from traditional fast food outlets. Chipotle belongs to a new, somewhat nebulous category called fast casual, which also includes Panera and Shake Shack. The new wave, which is almost but not quite fast food, has proved that Americans are willing to pay a little extra if it means better quality and fresher ingredients. It now accounts for more than five percent of all restaurant traffic, roughly five times what it did 15 years ago. But McDonald's has also been a victim of its own lack of self-awareness. By offering salads, wraps, and other healthier fare, the chain has confused its place in the American food system. People visit cheap burger chains for a respite from their (hopefully) healthier dietary regimen, not another reminder that they could be eating something healthier. For now, the burger chain seems intent on winning back customers by reintroducing the brand as an able member of the popular fast casual sector. McDonald's has begun making burgers to order, and offering a range of fancier ingredients, like jalapenos, guacamole, and brioche buns. It has also considered a roll-out of all-day breakfast, which patrons have been requesting for years. But mimicking the new cool kids on the block might very well only further highlight the chain's inadequacies. McDonald's competition is buoyed, at least in part, by its association with meaningful trends in the food world that prioritize good food over cheap food. It's hard to convince people you're on board when your french fries have 19 different ingredients in them.


There’s nothing fishy about the vegan ‘sushi’ from Postmodern Foods

Denise Hicks isn't trying to recreate meat with the vegan dishes she sells through her Postmodern Foods business. And thank goodness for that. Case in point: her sushi. Vegan sushi from Postmodern Foods. (Becky Krystal/The Washington Post) Chances are, if you're considering buying her fish-free version of the Japanese staple, you're not expecting or interested in a replication of seafood. Instead, what you get is a refreshing vegetable- and nut-based dish fit for a summer's day. "In general, I try not to imitate meat products," said Hicks, who started Postmodern in 2012 with experience at vegan businesses including Sticky Fingers, Elizabeth's Gone Raw and Soupergirl. (She also trained at New York's Natural Gourmet Institute.) "I really try to focus on what the food is and creating flavor profiles." That profile is a satisfying mix of flavors and textures in the sushi ($10). It's a little sweet thanks to a mix of ground walnuts, peas and maple syrup that's balanced out by a savory cauliflower rice made with Himalayan pink salt and onions. Preserved radish provides a crunchy, salty, sour hit. For freshness, shredded carrots are rolled into the nori wrapper as well. Dip the sushi in the accompanying tamari sauce, and you get a whole different salty sensation. "It's very nontraditional," Hicks said. "When people look at it, they're not sure what to expect." Her repertoire also includes juices, smoothies, Mediterranean collard wraps and pad Thai. She opened her first retail location in Great Falls at the very end of 2014 in the space she also uses as her commercial kitchen. A second location is in the works, most likely in Washington. Postmodern Foods, 762B Walker Rd., Great Falls. Also available at the Tuesday CityCenterDC and Thursday Ballston FreshFarm markets. www.postmodernfoods.com. Related items: Put down the spoon and sip gazpacho like you’re supposed to How can a vegetarian graze on D.C.’s essential dishes? Glad you asked. Stop your ‘cleanse.’ Start drinking juice just because it’s delicious. Elizabeth's Gone Raw: 2014 Spring Dining Guide A look at the FreshFarm Market at CityCenterDC


Newly discovered, Jupiter-like planet may sit in a solar system much like our own

An illustration of the Jupiter-like exoplanet, 51 Eri b, seen in the near-infrared light that shows the hot layers deep in its atmosphere glowing through clouds. Because of its young age, this young cousin of our own Jupiter is still hot and carries information on the way it was formed 20 million years ago. (Danielle Futselaar & Franck Marchis/SETI Institute) Scientists have discovered a new exoplanet just 100 light years away that seems much like a young Jupiter. And its entire solar system may be similar enough to our own to give us a glimpse into the distant past. The planet 51 Eri b, which is reported in a study published Thursday in Science, is the first to be discovered by a new instrument called the Gemini Planet Imager. Unlike the Kepler space telescope, which has found more than 1,000 exoplanets by looking for the tell-tale dimming of their stars as they pass in front of them, the GPI looks for the glow of the planet itself. [After a hardware failure, the Kepler spacecraft finds a second life — and an important new exoplanet] "Since Kepler looks for the shadow of the planet as it passes in front of the star, it's good at identifying planets really close to their stars," study author Rahul I. Patel, a PhD student at Stony Brook University, told The Post. "To get a good look at a planet that's the same distance from its star as Earth is from the sun, you'd have to wait, say, three years to see three passes." But if a planet has an orbit that takes more than a couple of years, the waiting game to confirm its existence can stretch on for a lifetime. That's where GPI comes in: It's suited for small, distant planets. "This looks at really far out planets — no pun intended," Patel said. [Stephen Hawking announces $100 million hunt for alien life] And the younger, the better — since they're still hot from their creation, young planets will glow more brightly in infrared. "Finding these exoplanets is difficult," Patel explained. "You're basically looking for a firefly that's really close to a flood lamp, standing about a mile away and looking through a glass of water." The water, he said, is the atmosphere, which blurs the light of the host star. GPI has to cancel out the star's light (turning off the flood lamp)


Just how secure are private e-mail servers? Hint: not very

Hillary Clinton handed over her private email server to the FBI on Wednesday afternoon. REUTERS/Joe Skipper In the Wild West world of cyberspace, could a semi-secret private e-mail server be more secure than a government system? Not likely. Federal agencies are under intense scrutiny for failing to fend off hackers in several major cyberattacks, including an intrusion at the Office of Personnel Management that produced one of the largest online data thefts in U.S. government history. But in spite of these lapses, experts said that private e-mail servers like the one used by Hillary Clinton when she served as secretary of State are typically much worse off when it comes to cybersecurity. The FBI is now looking into Clinton’s set-up — her homebrew server was turned over to authorities Wednesday afternoon — after intelligence officials expressed concern that classified information might have been compromised in connection with the system. The referral from the intelligence community’s inspector general stated that some of Clinton’s e-mails should have been “transmitted via a secure network” because of their content, a reminder that the server in Clinton’s Chappaqua, N.Y., home was not specifically equipped to handle classified information. The memo seems to add credibility to fears that the Clintonemail.com system was inferior to the State Department networks when it came to cybersecurity. While there is no evidence that hackers had access to Clinton’s server, experts agreed that the system likely came under attack and that some intruders might have indeed broken in. “As the Secretary of State, she was a high-profile target and would have gotten the attention of elite [hacking] teams,” said Richard Bejtlich, chief security strategist at FireEye, a computer security firm. “My view is: if you can’t demonstrate the security of your system through aggressive monitoring of what is going on with it, you should just assume that it has been compromised,” Bejtlich said. The world of hackers — amateur, criminal and nation-state — moves at a pace and level of sophistication that was unthinkable a decade ago. Almost every system on the Internet gets probed for vulnerabilities at one point or another, posing risks to personal, corporate and government networks alike, experts said. “At the end of the day, neither government nor private-sector servers are very secure,” emailed Fred Cate, a law professor and cybersecurity expert at Indiana University. “That is the unfortunate but unmistakable bottom line.” Recent intrusions into federal


8 things to do in the D.C. area on the weekend of Aug. 14-16

The weekend's best bets in nightlife, festivals, music, theater and so much more around the Washington area. The Montgomery County Agricultural Fair opens Friday. (Linda Davidson/THE WASHINGTON POST) Friday: Zac Brown Band and the Avett Brothers Friday-Aug. 22: Montgomery County Agricultural Fair Saturday: Bikes Brews brewery tour [D.C Beer Week picks] Saturday-Sunday: Phish Saturday-Sunday: Washington Redskins training camp Sunday: Hanks on the Hill Beer-B-Q Sunday: D.C. Beer Scavenger Hunt Sunday: Sine Qua Non [For jazz bassist Michael Bowie and Sine Qua Non, space is the place]


Air pollution in China is killing 1.6 million people a year, researchers say

A woman wearing a mask makes her way during a polluted day at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on January 15, 2015. <br />(Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters) In parts of China, simply breathing can be deadly. “When I was last in Beijing, pollution was at the hazardous level; every hour of exposure reduced my life expectancy by 20 minutes,” Richard Muller, a physicist at University of California – Berkeley, said in a press release. “It’s as if every man, woman, and child smoked 1.5 cigarettes each hour.” Muller is a co-author of a new paper in the journal PLOS One that takes an issue we’ve all heard of — the pollution that clogs the air over much of China — and examines its eventual consequences for human health. [PHOTOS: China is disappearing] The results were striking: According to the study, air pollution is responsible for killing 1.6 million Chinese a year, about one sixth of all the premature deaths in the country. Both Muller and his co-author, physicist Robert Rohde, are researchers at Berkeley Earth, a non-profit devoted to analyzing global climate data. Using data from China’s national air quality reporting system and two third-party sources, the scientists mapped the concentrations of six major pollutants across eastern China, where 97 percent of the country lives. Earlier studies have also put the annual death toll between 1 and 2 million, according to the Associated Press, but this is the first to use real data from the Chinese monitoring system. [Air pollution killing 4,000 in China a day, U.S. study finds] Though air quality varies month by month and day by day, Muller and Rohde found that 92 percent of the country’s population experience 120 hours or more of pollution levels considered “unhealthy” by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. For more than a third of Chinese citizens, the air they breath averages “unhealthy” levels full time. In the U.S., the region with the highest level of particle pollution is Fresno-Madera, Calif., according to the American Lung Association. The area sees an average of 47 days a year when air quality hits “unhealthy” levels. But 99.9 percent of the eastern half of China has a higher annual average for small particle haze than Madera, Rohde told the AP. “In other words, nearly everyone in China experiences air that is worse for particulates than the worst air in the U.S.,” he said. Levels of particulate matter in


Who actually died in Egypt’s Rabaa massacre

little is known about the socioeconomic profiles of those who joined the occupation. In a tragic irony, the manner in which the killing unfolded allows us to address this shortcoming. Because security forces fired indiscriminately into the crowd, the victims were effectively a random sample that can help us better understand the social backgrounds of pro-Morsi protesters in the square. To conduct our analysis, we identified the home districts of 701 protesters killed at Rabaa using biographical data collated by WikiThawra, an online database of protesters killed and arrested in Egypt since the January 25th revolution. We then measured how the fatality rate varied across 333 districts, the lowest administrative level for which census and electoral data is available. The victims came from more than half of the country’s districts. Surprisingly, the fatality rate was not higher in districts that had voted for Morsi in the first round of the 2012 presidential election. However, two variables are significant: a district’s distance from Cairo and its illiteracy rate. The first graph shows the actual relationship between these two variables and the number of people killed. It also plots the statistical relationship. Note that we also adjust for the presence of parallel pro-Morsi occupations in other Egyptian cities, which provided alternative venues for protest against the coup. The second graph focuses on the rate of illiteracy, after taking into account a district’s distance from Cairo and alternative sites for protest. As our analysis shows, pro-Morsi protesters killed at Rabaa came from districts with low rates of illiteracy, in other words the most prosperous and urbanized parts of the country. This finding is important because it contradicts much of the reporting by state and pro-military private media in Egypt, which routinely depicts the Rabaa protesters as either “half-educated,” or “peasants” bused in from the countryside. Another version of this narrative asserts that, “75 percent of those in Rabaa were poor, lured into joining the occupation by the promise of a free meal.” Such labels play on enduring class cleavages in Egyptian society, and are designed to delegitimize popular opposition to Morsi’s ousting. Of course, whether or not protesters killed at Rabaa came from relatively prosperous urban areas does not alter the culpability of the current military regime. What it does do is further expose the energetic and politically motivated myth-making that has been taking place in Egypt since the crackdown began. Neil Ketchley


Alaska’s quest to power remote villages — and how it could spread clean energy worldwide

Energy, a small private energy firm, to test a “hydrokinetic” turbine that draws energy from the flow of the river. From a barge held in the water by a three-ton anchor, they lower the white, doughnut-shaped device (with short blades on the inside and out) through a moon door — and it starts to turn when water hits it. It kicks up a spray — at least until the turbine is submerged. Anticipation is high — renewable energy from rivers holds promise beyond traditional sources such as wind and solar, even if it’s far from clear whether the current technology will rise above competition or succeed in the marketplace. “Everybody uses the analogy of where wind was 15 years ago,” the university’s Jeremy Kasper, who is leading the research at Nenana, says of river power. “Everybody’s trying to come up with a good design and drive down the cost of production.” Researchers test the turbine in the river’s flow. (Todd Paris/University of Alaska Fairbanks) Alaska, a vast landmass with harsh winters and many remote native towns and villages facing dramatic electricity costs, has become an important and unique innovator in renewable energy. The implications extend far beyond the state. From Africa to small Pacific island chains, successfully powering grid-less, remote or underdeveloped communities with renewable energy, and easing their reliance on fossil fuels, is one of the biggest energy challenges of the century. “We prove up the technology, we prove up the economics, and then maybe it has application in Africa or the Canadian Arctic,” says Gene Therriault, director of policy and outreach at the Alaska Energy Authority, the state agency that has put over $1 million into the testing of the Oceana Energy turbine at the Tanana River test site. President Obama will visit Alaska this month. And while his full itinerary hasn’t been disclosed, the president has said that he’ll “be the first American president to visit the Alaskan Arctic, where our fellow Americans have already seen their communities devastated by melting ice and rising oceans.” In Kivalina, for instance, far to the northwest of Nenana and vastly more remote, 400 people live on a Chukchi Sea barrier island that is hammered by storms and intense erosion, threats accelerated by declining sea ice offshore. But as the president may see if he visits one of these communities, a changing climate isn’t their only challenge. Additional problems include sanitation