Despite meltdowns, a tsunami and public opposition, Japan may soon restart a nuclear power plant — or several

radioactive isotopes (along with the salt) before releasing it into the ecosystem. Regular leaks, sometimes of hundreds of tons of water, into the sea have angered environmental groups and brought harsh words from Tokyo. Tepco attempted an experimental underground “ice wall” that would freeze soil into a barrier surrounding the site to keep contaminated water from flowing into the water or sea. That containment system has yet to show results, and regular media reports of leaks from the site have done little to restore public confidence in the company. Meanwhile, Japan has had other recent disasters — notably, the eruption of Mount Shindake — which have spurred debates about whether nuclear power is a safe bet on an island with active earthquake faults. Court challenges to restarts Civil society is not the only challenger to the restarts; some courts that typically have aligned with the central government have ruled with those opposed to nuclear power. Civic groups around Japan have filed challenges to reactor restarts in district courts, and one court ruled this spring to block the NRA-approved restart of a reactor. Although the owner of that reactor has vowed to appeal, it may take longer than a year for the case to reach the Supreme Court. A plaintiffs’ group known as Liaison Group of Lawyers to Stop Nuclear Power has vowed to sue every utility seeking to restart its reactors. The public may have found the courts to be a favorable venue for voicing its concerns about nuclear power. The Abe administration is pushing nuclear power nevertheless Despite these social and legal challenges, the Abe administration’s energy policy has gone further than others in promoting the restoration of nuclear power’s role in Japan’s energy mix. Pro-nuclear advocates offer several justifications for the restarts, mostly based on Japan’s increased use of imported fossil fuels while the nuclear reactors are shut down. They argue that Japan needs nuclear power to meet the country’s commitment to the Kyoto Protocol and the goals of lowering carbon dioxide emissions, achieving energy supply security and keeping electricity costs low for corporations. With nuclear power offline, utilities have brought back mothballed coal and oil plants to generate electricity — increasing carbon dioxide emissions — and have raised prices across the country to compensate for the offline atomic plants. Business organizations such as Keidanren have supported the nuclear restarts, arguing that Japanese firms — already under stiff


The heroes and the secrets of the Pluto mission

One day after NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft confirmed that it made it to Pluto, mission specialists unveiled stunning, close-up images of the dwarf planet. The words you never hear from NASA: “This is actually really hard to do.” Or: “We’re not sure this is gonna work.” There is a code among engineers: Express confidence, exude competence. But space is hard, as we keep pointing out lately. Things blow up. Computers reboot themselves at inopportune moments. A planet turns out to be in a slightly different location, and even a different size, than you’d previously thought. Uncertainty about success is implicit in aerospace engineering, particularly when you are trying to send a robotic probe to the edge of the solar system and persuade it to perform a 600-maneuver dance — hydrazine thrusters firing like mad — as it conducts 433 scientific observations of Pluto and its moons in a one-shot flyby. And by the way, you’ve already had a last-minute computer glitch, one of the 249 “contingencies” that you’d dreamed up that might ruin the mission. At this point everyone knows that the New Horizons mission was a screaming success, but I’m not sure everyone grasps how difficult this was to pull off, and how dicey in the home stretch, and how the team based at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory had to make some tough calls when things were down to the wire. If you look at the first big close-up photo of Pluto, you’ll notice the shadow line, the terminator. The spacecraft wasn’t supposed to aim right there — it was off a little bit, slightly closer to the terminator than they had planned, Alan Stern, the principal investigator, told me last week. But therein lies a huge engineering lesson from New Horizons: You don’t have to be perfect. Good enough is great enough when you’re getting the first pictures of Pluto. That image was fantastic. [Here are some more stunning close-ups of Pluto’s surface.] The New Horizons team was aiming for a rectangular box in space 90 kilometers by 60 kilometers. They hit their box, but came in a little bit high, which translated to arriving about 72 seconds early and 40 miles closer to Pluto’s surface. This wasn’t a mistake, because perfection isn’t possible when you’re dealing with a spacecraft and astronomical objects that are all moving, and when you have an imperfect knowledge of


Marc Leishman excels at British Open after wife nearly died

(AP Photo/David J. Phillip) Marc Leishman of Australia has taken his turn atop the British Open’s crazy final-round leader board. Marc Leishman birdies No. 12 (-16). Leads Adam Scott, Zach Johnson by 1, Jordan Spieth and 2 others by 2 ESPN, http://t.co/yfmxW7hyON Open leader Marc Leishman was T-50th after 36 holes. If he wins, it would be worst 36-hole position for a winner of a major Earlier this year, Leishman’s wife Audrey had a terrible health scare that caused him to miss the Masters. ABC Grandstand Sport tells the story Initially thinking she was just fighting the flu and with Marc already at Augusta National preparing for the Masters, Audrey finally admitted herself to urgent care on March 31 when her condition worsened. Marc flew back to be by her side in hospital and soon after she was placed in an induced coma as the respiratory distress syndrome took hold. “It was very scary. I can very clearly remember not being able to breathe,” she said. From there toxic shock took hold of her organs and Leishman was told the dire prognosis. “It wasn’t looking good for her survival. It was shattering. The toxic shock syndrome started shutting down all of her organs,” Leishman explained. “We were told her chances of survival was at five per cent. The only thing in our favour was she was fit, goes to the gym all the time, is young and has two young kids and a real will to live. Thankfully in the end, that’s what got her through.” Doctors were able to flip Audrey onto her stomach to help with fluid on her lungs and slowly but surely she showed improvement, before finally regaining her consciousness four days after being placed in the induced coma. Audrey Leishman recovered enough to allow her husband to return to the PGA Tour. Now he’s in the running for the first Grand Slam title of his career (he finished fifth at the British Open last year and fourth at the 2013 Masters).


Obama welcomes Buhari and commends Nigeria’s ‘commitment to democracy’

military rule in 1991. Shortly after Buhari's visit, Obama will depart for Kenya and Ethiopia. Some human rights advocates and foreign policy experts have questioned why Obama chose to visit Ethiopia, whose May elections failed to yield a single opposition seat in parliament, rather than Nigeria on that trip. [Editorial: Mr. Obama’s visit to Ethiopia sends the wrong message on democracy] Grant Harris, senior director for Africa at the National Security Council, said Friday that the administration took the "unprecedented action" of inviting Buhari to the United States rather than have Obama visit Buhari in the Nigerian capital of Abuja because it gives the new president access to many more top American policymakers. "And our view was that we needed to have this occur as soon as possible, and that we would also want to maximize this opportunity to have him in Washington with his advisers," Harris said, adding that Cabinet officials, such as Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, will have a chance to confer with Buhari. "Whereas they might not otherwise or would not be traveling on this trip that the president has coming up. It’s an opportunity for President Buhari and his team also to meet with members of Congress, and to meet with civil society and non-governmental organizations here and speak to a domestic audience." Buhari, who said he was "extremely grateful" for the invitation, noted the "positive trends" of elections in his country and credited "pressure from the United States and Europe to make sure elections were free and credible" for leading them to where they are now. Vice President Biden, National Security Adviser Susan Rice and Secretary of State John F. Kerry all joined Buhari and Obama in the Oval Office Monday morning. "It’s a reset of the bilateral relations, which is what both sides have wanted for several months," said American University professor Carl LeVan, author of the book “Dictators and Democracy in African Development: The Political Economy of Good Governance in Nigeria. LeVan added that the administration clearly views Buhari's recent reform moves, such as the decision to replace the heads of Nigeria’s army, navy and air force, as "credible and meaningful." [READ: Buhari on the push for good governance and fight against terrorism, in his own words] "President Buhari comes into office with a reputation of integrity and a very clear agenda and that is to make


Men who harass women online are quite literally losers, new study finds

(Farhan Perdana/Flickr) Here’s a research finding that should surprise no one: The men most likely to harass women online … are the men most likely to have their own problems. That bit of validation comes courtesy Michael Kasumovic and Jeffrey Kuznekoff, researchers at the University of New South Wales and Miami University, respectively. For their latest study, published in the journal PLOS One last week, the duo watched how men treated women during 163 plays of the video game Halo 3. [The only guide to Gamergate you’ll ever need to read] As they watched the games play out and tracked the comments that players made to each other, the researchers observed that — no matter their skill level, or how the game went — men tended to be pretty cordial to each other. Male players who were good at the game also tended to pay compliments to other male and female players. Some male players, however — the ones who were less-skilled at the game, and performing worse relative their peers — made frequent, nasty comments to the female gamers. In other words, sexist dudes are literally losers. A chart from the Halo study that shows how nice male gamers were to other males (dotted line) and females (solid line) during gameplay. Men always treat each other about the same. But the better a player gets, the more likely he is to be nice to ladies. (Kasumovic et al) In today’s online environment, alas, this is not an idle observation. According to a recent Pew report, 40 percent of Internet users have personally experienced harassment. While both genders are frequent victims of this abuse, women tend to get the worst of it: They are “particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment and stalking,” Pew said. [Online harassment isn’t just a women’s issue — it hurts guys, too] I asked Kasumovic, the lead author on the study, how applicable his findings were in other online or offline settings. In other words, how much of this derives from human nature, and how much of it relates to the unique demands of first-person shooters? Kasumovic argues that video games actually make incredible proxies for studying real-life behavior — Halo 3, especially. There are three things you should know about the game, for the purpose of understanding this study: (1) players are anonymous, and the possibility of “policing individual behavior is almost impossible”; (2) they


The Unarmed Forces: Will the Pentagon let troops carry weapons after Chattanooga?

installations. Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Rep. Mac Thornberry (R.-Tex.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, also called Friday for the Pentagon to do more to protect troops. “Long before the Chattanooga attack, we had been working to clarify a post commander’s authority to allow carrying of personal firearms,” McCain and Thornberry said in a joint statement. “This year’s National Defense Authorization Act will reflect that work. Together, we will direct the Pentagon to end the disconnect between the threats our war fighters and their families face and the tools they have to defend themselves.” The independent Marine Corps Times captured the sentiment among many rank-and-file Marines on the cover of its newspaper on Monday. The headline: “The call to arm all Marines — now.” It was greeted by readers on Facebook with widespread agreement. This week's issue of @Marinetimes: The call to arm all #Marines now following the tragedy in #Chattanooga http://t.co/6P3GBac2gs In the 1990s, the Pentagon restricted who can carry weapons at military facilities, ostensibly to make them safer by allowing only military police to carry weapons in most situations. There is some disagreement over where the policy originated. Some have blamed former President Clinton, citing a 1993 Army directive that limited the use of firearms on military bases. But it actually traces back a little farther. A 1992 Defense Department directive issued during President George H.W. Bush’s administration addressed the issue and provided the Pentagon’s rationale for limiting who carried firearms in the United States. “The authorization to carry firearms shall be issued only to qualified personnel when there is a reasonable expectation that life or DoD assets will be jeopardized if firearms are not carried,” the directive said. “Evaluation of the necessity to carry a firearm shall be made considering this expectation weighed against the possible consequences of accidental or indiscriminate use of firearms. DoD personnel regularly engaged in law enforcement or security duties shall be armed.” The issue has come up after numerous shootings on military bases, including the 2009 and 2014 attacks at Fort Hood, Tex., and the 2013 mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard. This post has been updated to reflect that no blanket directive was issued telling Marine recruiters not to wear their uniforms, following the Chattanooga attack. Some commanders in specific locations may have done so, according to Marine Corps Recruiting Command.


A&P was ‘the Wal-Mart of its day.’ Now it’s filing for bankruptcy.

Marc Levinson, who wrote a history of the company, “The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America.” New management tried to play it safe, ending a series of pivots that took A&P from a mail-order tea company to a chain of small stores to a supermarket behemoth. But the company made bad business moves, Levinson said, missing out on California’s rapid growth after pulling out of the state and investing in manufacturing as brand-name food took off. In the decades that followed, the company that popularized the supermarket model with low prices and massive reach – “the Wal-Mart of its day” – was lapped by the competitors it helped spawn, Levinson said. Kurt Jetta, founder of consumer analytics firm Tabs Group, called the bankruptcy filing an “inevitable end” for a brand that slid from public consciousness decades ago. “This was a bankruptcy that came as a surprise to absolutely no one in the industry,” Jetta said. A&P’s bankruptcy filing comes amid a period of flux in the grocery business that, analysts say, exacerbated the company's woes. Revenue growth has slowed, and competition has ramped up from low-cost retailers like Wal-Mart and Aldi and high-end stores like Whole Foods. That pressure has led to a flurry of mergers and buyouts in the industry in recent years as companies with flattening sales seek to grow their profits through cost-cutting. So far this year, that’s included the acquisition of Safeway by Albertsons and the corporate owner of Food Lion by the owner of Giant, deals that created two of the nation’s biggest chains. A&P tried that strategy in 2007 when it bought Pathmark, another New Jersey-based chain, for $1.3 billion. The gambit didn't work. Howard Davidowitz, who runs the retail consulting firm Davidowitz & Associates, said the bankruptcy shows that corporate maneuvering alone can’t keep a business afloat. “In the end, how impressed will the consumer be? And that’s the question you have to work on,” Davidowitz said. “A&P never got around to it. They never did anything to fix anything.” To Levinson, A&P’s decline is a cautionary tale that even a giant can fall if it doesn’t keep up. “The big lesson from A&P is that businesses have to keep changing, and when a business stops changing, it’s sentencing itself to death,” Levinson said. “By the late '50s, A&P was not the low-cost retailer. It was just another retailer.”


Hearing Elon Musk explain why his rocket blew up shows why he’s such an intense CEO

(FILES)This May 29, 2014 file photo shows Elon Musk as he unveils SpaceX's new seven-seat Dragon V2 spacecraft, in Hawthorne, California.<br />AFP PHOTO / Robyn BeckROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images Every time SpaceX prepares to launch a rocket, Elon Musk plays the role of a wedding officiant, shooting an e-mail to the entire company, urging employees to step forward if anyone has reason to call off the flight-- speak now or forever hold your peace. No one did that last month, and the launch proceeded as it has many times before. But on this flight, the Falcon 9 rocket, laden with food and supplies for the International Space Station, but no astronauts, exploded two minutes into the flight—the most catastrophic failure of the space company’s history. The explosion appears to have been caused by one small piece of hardware, Musk said Monday—a steel strut, two feet long and one-inch at its thickest point—on a towering 224-foot tall piece of complicated machinery, powered at liftoff by nine engines. The piece failed, causing helium to over pressurize an oxygen tank in the second stage, which led to the explosion, he said. SpaceX’s unmanned Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Sunday but exploded a few minutes after liftoff. It was on a mission to resupply the International Space Station. But Musk also pointed to another possible cause, saying that as the company continues to grow it may have lost some of the inherent paranoia that fueled SpaceX in its early days, when it was unclear whether the Internet tycoon and his loyal band of rocket scientists would ever be able to reliably launch rockets into space. The explosion was the “first time we’ve had a failure in seven years,” Musk said. “To some degree I think the company as a whole maybe became a little complacent.” Musk is a notoriously hard-charging executive, who operates on little sleep, fires off tweets in the middle of the night and famously keeps his desk where everyone can see the insane hours he dedicates to his companies, which includes Tesla Motors. He is an obsessive who sweats every launch, and wants his employees to as well, which is why he fires off the e-mail before each flight, telling his employees that if they blow the whistle on a problem they would be protected even if they go over their managers’ heads. “They should call me immediately


‘U.S. military tells recruiting centers to step up security,’ by (among other things) closing blinds

A memorial at the Armed Forces Career Center in Chattanooga, Tenn. (Tami Chappell/Reuters) So reports the Wall Street Journal (Dion Nissenbaum) about action taken in the wake of Mohammod Youssef Abdulazeez’s attack on the Chattanooga recruiting center, which killed five: Adm. Bill Gortney, head of the U.S. Northern Command, which oversees security for military facilities in the U.S., issued a directive Sunday night that calls for modest new security measures while the Defense Department considers more substantive steps to address threats to the facilities, officials said. The security boost doesn’t authorize recruiters to carry weapons in the centers — a move that would require higher-level action. Instead, officials said they are directing hundreds of recruiting and reserve centers and ROTC facilities to increase surveillance and take basic steps such as closing blinds at the offices. I don’t want to overstate the importance of symbolism, and it may be that my perception of the symbolism here is idiosyncratic. But symbolism is important, whether in fighting a war generally or in military recruiting in particular. And the symbolism of disarmed service members closing the blinds so that it’s slightly harder for the enemy to shoot them through the windows strikes me as pretty poor — and pretty unlikely to yield a winning environment for recruiting future service members. Just my lay opinion; I’d love to hear yours. Thanks to InstaPundit for the pointer.


Rand Paul readying Hill push for guns on military bases and in recruiting stations

Paul will push for guns on base (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images) Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is working on legislation to allow soldiers to carry guns on military bases, and could introduce it as soon as this week. That could establish him as a leader among conservatives who say last week’s massacre at a Chattanooga, Tennessee recruiting station should change how the military looks at the issue. “After Major [Nidal] Hasan did the shooting at Fort Hood, we did legislation on arming military on bases,” said Paul, in a roundtable with reporters at his Washington, D.C campaign office. “This was a recruiting station, right? Well, I would include recruiting stations. One of the weird things is that we have 15-20 states where you can open carry. So everybody can carry, except for the military? I think that’s crazy. The rules that apply to everybody should at least apply to the military.” Paul, who was elected to the Senate a year after Hasan’s 2009 killing spree on the Texas military base, has long favored a policy shift that would allow guns on bases. His new bill may go even further than the versions that followed Fort Hood. In 2013, former Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Tex.) sponsored a Safe Military Bases Act, written to allow guns. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), one of Paul’s rivals for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, has used his perch on the Armed Services Committee to ask for hearings on the gun policy. The killings in Chattanooga have pushed the issue into overdrive. On Monday afternoon, the National Rifle Association called for military recruiters to be armed. In recent days, Republican frontrunners Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, and Scott Walker have all questioned the logic of the gun ban. “These [members of the military] are people who could have handled guns very easily,” said Trump at a Republican fundraiser in Arkansas. “They would have had a good chance if they had a gun.” Paul’s commitment to gun rights has a stronger pedigree than Trump’s. He is closely tied to the National Association for Gun Rights, a group that positions itself to the right of the NRA. “I think guns are a great deterrent anyway,” Paul said on Monday. “I’ve also had bills, for a couple of years now, making it easier to arm pilots. “ In the wake of Chattanooga, Paul has also criticized immigration laws, asking whether they are


‘Lone Survivor’ Marcus Luttrell calls out decisions by Marine Corps, Obama following Chattanooga

because he cares about his safety or is scared of some sh–bag walking in off the street and trying this again (WRONG), that’s not gonna happen, that’s not how we respond in the military when we get hit, we don’t take off our uniforms drop our weps [sic] and run,” Luttrell wrote. “Also, you can outfit every recruiting station w/ firearms, grenades or a F..?!ing tank, this goes down again and there is a good chance you’ll find a the person beaten to death by the water cooler or stapler.” [Gen. Mark Milley, Army chief nominee, open to arming recruiters following Chattanooga] Luttrell concluded: “The bullets will be the last of you [sic] problems. Think on it. RIP brothers, your families will miss you, the country will mourn you, and those still wearing the uniform will never forget you.” President Obama asked that the nation pray for the families of the victims in the shootings at a Naval facility in Chattanooga, Tenn., which left five people dead including the shooter. In a separate Facebook post, Luttrell seemed to send a message to President Obama, who has been criticized for not ordering American flags to be lowered to half-staff to recognize the Americans killed. They are Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, 40; Staff Sgt. David Wyatt, 35; Sgt. Carson A. Holmquist; Lance Cpl. Squire D. “Skip” Wells, 21, and Petty Officer 2nd Class Randall Smith, 26. “Oh one more thing, lower the FLAG!!!!!!!! Sir,” Luttrell wrote. On Tuesday, the president issued a proclamation ordering that flags be ordered to half-staff. Meanwhile, Marine Corps officials said recruiters were back in uniform, and only temporarily told not to wear them as a safety precaution. The order was issued at Recruiting Station Nashville in Tennessee, which oversees the station in Chattanooga and other similar small facilities in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and western Georgia. [The Unarmed Forces: Will the Pentagon let troops carry weapons after Chattanooga?] Luttrell isn’t the first high-profile veteran to criticize decision-making by senior officials following the Chattanooga attack. Marine Sgt. Dakota Meyer, a Medal of Honor recipient, also has done so, appearing on Fox News on Monday night and then following up with more on Facebook afterward. “First and foremost, to ask a United States Marine to take their uniform off for their own safety is absolutely asinine,” Meyer wrote. “The proudest moments of my life were spent dawning the colors of


U.S. Capitol flags will fly at half-staff today in honor of Chattanooga victims

Daly Simmons prays at the entrance to the U.S. Navy Operational Support Center & Marine Corps Reserve Center after a shooting in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Saturday, July 18. (EPA/BILLY WEEKS) This post has been updated. Flags over the U.S. Capitol will fly at half-staff Tuesday in honor of the five military service members shot to death Thursday in Chattanooga, Tenn. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced the tribute Tuesday morning, the first day Congress has been back in session since the shooting -- and amid growing outrage over the delay in President Obama's decision to lower flags at the White House and federal facilities. Obama announced the lowering of flags Tuesday afternoon, after Boehner and McConnell announced their decision. "America continues to mourn these men, and the U.S. Senate’s thoughts are with their families and loved ones, and with all those who protect us here, and around the world," McConnell said in a statement. Boehner said the House will mark a moment of silence during its floor business Tuesday. "We will continue to pray for their loved ones and also take action to protect our men and women in uniform who protect all Americans," Boehner said in his own statement. [Will the Pentagon let troops carry weapons after Chattanooga?] Boehner's statement indicates that the outrage that has surrounded the shooting could soon translate into legislation. Several members of Congress have called for action to make clear that military recruiters may carry weapons. Only one of the five men killed Thursday may have been armed, according to authorities. Because recruiting centers are located in civilian areas, personnel there have been prohibited from carrying weapons. [From Tennessee to Times Square, military recruiting centers prove easy targets] Gunman Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, 24, fired dozens of rounds at a military recruiting center, then drove to a Naval Reserve Center and sprayed more bullets at service members. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter on Friday outlined “immediate steps” to better protect military installations following the shooting, but those steps did not include arming troops. Several lawmakers have announced their intention to introduce bills allowing more military personnel to carry firearms. The chairmen of the Armed Services committees in both houses, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), issued a joint statement Friday saying they were "working to clarify a post commander’s authority to allow carrying of


A house near a high-performing D.C. school will cost you. Here’s how much.

elementary school where 80 percent or more students are proficient or advanced in reading costs more than $800,000. The always-interesting District, Measured — a blog from the city’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer — sifted through this data to determine how much it would cost to purchase a house in a neighborhood zoned for a top public elementary school. The main, and expected, takeaway: The best schools are not equally distributed throughout the city. The most expensive homes and best schools are in upper Northwest neighborhoods, and the cheapest homes are east of the river, along with a high concentration of low-performing schools. The median sales price of a house in a school zone where 60 to 80 percent of students are proficient or advanced in reading will run between the high $600,000s to more than $1 million. The interactive graph below plots public elementary schools based on their test scores and the median sales price for a three-bedroom home in that school’s boundaries. Typically, the higher the test scores, the higher it costs to live there. There are neighborhoods, like Logan Circle and Petworth, that have experienced rapidly rising housing costs in recent years, though their schools, when measured by test scores, are not high-performing. The school that boasts the highest real estate costs with the lowest test scores is Garrison Elementary School in the Logan Circle/Shaw neighborhood. The median home sales price there is about $1.1 million and only 25 percent of students test at proficient or advanced levels. ‘="" src="’https://public.tableau.com/static/images/D_/D_C_familiesbuyinghomeshavetospendalotforthetopDCPSelementaryschools/D-scatterplot/1_rss.png’" style="’border:" none’="" /> These next charts allow you to sort through schools based on their performance and your budget. If you’re looking at one of the best-performing schools, those are clustered in upper Northwest neighborhoods and Capitol Hill. The median price for homes in these areas start at $750,000 and go to well over $1 million. If you want a three-bedroom house for less than $300,000, you’ll have to move east of the river. When ranked on a five-point scale — with five being the lowest-performing schools and one being the highest-performing — most elementary schools there have a four or five ranking. But a few schools, like Leckie, Ketcham and Nalle, have a “two” ranking. In the Nalle district, the median home price is $150,000. (with="" filter="" for="" performance)="" ‘="" src="’https://public.tableau.com/static/images/DC/DCPSelementaryschoolzonesmappedbyhomesaleprices/D-Mapbyprice/1_rss.png’" style="’border:" none’="" /> (with="" filter="" for="" home="" sale="" prices)="" ‘="" src="’https://public.tableau.com/static/images/P2/P2JYM3T4D/1_rss.png’" style="’border:" none’="" />


Here are some of the weird rumors China thinks it needs to censor

in 1985 that lead former party chairman Hu Yaobang to be ousted from the party. 又一位美女大明星倒下了，带给我们怎样的反省？ Another female star falls, accompanied by her rich boyfriend Claims that Zhilin Guan, a famous actress from Hong Kong, has brain cancer as a result of pollution. 又一个独裁政权倒台 Another dictatorship falls Claims that North Korea is about to fall and that Kim Jong Un may be under house arrest. 【广州告急】广州黑人为所欲为，已经刻不容缓… Black people in Guangzhou do whatever they want, it’s urgent! Claims that black immigrants in Guangzhou are committing crimes and marrying Chinese women. 令.计划为何在央视养情人？ Why does Ling Jihua have a lover from CCTV? Suggests an improper relationship between a Chinese politician and a journalist. 最新权威消息：金正恩已经抵达中国！ Newest credible news: Kim Jong-un has arrived in China Suggests the North Korean leader had a stroke and has been in China for treatment. 农夫山泉停产，这水我再也不敢喝了！我要买水机！！ Nongfu Spring shut down its production Suggests that China has a severe water problem that will cause more people to get cancer in near future. 女孩才五岁啊，就肝癌晚期！医生忠告9种毒零食，千万别吃！！ Five year old girl in the last stage of liver cancer! Doctors advise you not to eat these nine kinds of snacks! Says that children are getting liver cancer because they are eating items such as ramen noodles, sausage, preserved fruit, jelly, ice cream, cookies, milk tea, gum and chips. 警告！NASA证实地球将于12月16日起进入连续六天的黑夜！ Warning! NASA confirms Earth will enter darkness for 6 days starting Dec. 16 Claims that NASA has issued a dramatic warning that the world will be dark for several days. 中科院宣布：汽车水燃料将全面替代汽油 ，成本接近于零 ！ Chinese Academy of Sciences announces: water fuel will replace gasoline entirely for cars, the cost is almost nothing! Suggests that a water-based fuel has been created and is worth $1 trillion. 一滴水从高处落下来，会不会砸死人？ Would a drop of water falling from high above kill a person? Suggests water falling from different heights can kill people. 周 小平同志，请不要辜负这个时代 Xiaoping Zhou, do not let this era down A number of comments that criticize the patriotic Chinese essayist. 事态严重了！昨晚就发生在广州！请紧急通知家人 .. The situation is serious! It happened last night in Guangzhou, please tell your family. Claims KFC and McDonald's use hormones to raise chicken with multiple legs and wings to have more chicken to sell. 未来可能无工可打，无商可务！ There might be no jobs and no business in the future! Suggests intelligent machines will soon take all jobs from humans. 易中天颠覆中国历史观 Yi Zhongtian overturns Chinese people’s historic views Challenges historical ideas about China (such as Chinese history being 5,000 years old) purportedly using


How the Apple store took over the world

People wait to get into the Apple store in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) “Sorry, Steve: Here’s Why Apple Stores Won’t Work,” proclaimed a headline in BusinessWeek in May 2001. Published the day after Apple opened its first retail store in Tyson’s Corner, Va., the opinion piece argued that Apple’s focus on a few products and a “perfectionist attention to aesthetics” would limit the company’s appeal. "Apple's problem is it still believes the way to grow is serving caviar in a world that seems pretty content with cheese and crackers," the article quotes former CFO Joseph Graziano as saying. The author was not the only nay-sayer when it came to Apple’s new store idea. At the time, Apple’s strategy of opening expensive, airy retail stores to display just a handful of products seemed incredibly profligate for a growing brand with no retail experience -- especially when more established consumer electronics chains were in decline. Gateway closed a chain of 188 consumer electronics stores in 2004, while CompUSA, one of Apple’s main retailers before it opened its stores, said it would shutter its stores in 2007. The Apple store in Pudong, Shanghai. REUTERS/Carlos Barria Even in hindsight, it’s kind of crazy that Apple pulled off its unique store strategy – but clearly, it did. As Apple reports third quarter earnings after market close on Tuesday, the company has 265 stores in the U.S. and more than 400 worldwide. According to research company eMarketer, Apple's stores generated sales of $5,009 per square foot in the 12 months leading up to May 2015, more than any other brand in the U.S., including Tiffany & Co. and Restoration Hardware. [Apple shares plummet after lower than expected iPhone sales] The animated map below, from CartoDB, a platform that provides web mapping tools, shows how Apple stores have spread around the world since 2001. The yellow dots are new Apple stores, while the blue dots show urban areas around the world. What was the secret to Apple’s success? As the map above suggests, part of the recipe was Apple's tendency to try things out over and over again and let its ideas evolve in a better direction -- like it has also done with its products. Before Apple opened its first store in Tyson’s Corner, the company trialed 34 outlets inside big-box electronics store in Japan to see what worked for the brand.


How the Apple store took over the world

They also built a complete mockup of an Apple Store in a warehouse in Cupertino, just to test things out. The company was slow to open retail stores in China, even when it already had millions of customers in the country. The other factor that helped to guarantee Apple's success seems to be that the brand envisioned its stores as much more than, well, stores. In the 1990s, Apple was selling its products through Sears and CompUSA. Sales weren’t that great, and Apple’s products were buried among others in a way that Steve Jobs and other executives felt compromised the brand. When Apple finally designed its own stores, it left plenty of space for people to interact with the technology. It also only used a fraction of its store to sell products. Apple designed their stores based not on product divisions, but what they called “solutions.” A large part of the store was dedicated to letting people try out and learn about products, as well as ask questions at the Genius Bar, an idea similar to a concierge service at a nice hotel. The video below captures a turtleneck-clad Steve Jobs describing this store strategy as he unveils Apple's first retail store. You can see how the store idea has evolved since 2001, when wireless networking was a new thing, mp3 players were all the rage, and people still talked about "surfing" the Internet. Unveiling Apple's First Retail Store Jobs was famously detail-oriented; at one point, he even insisted that the metal bolts that held together glass panels in a store be replaced, says Tim Kobe, the store designer who worked with Jobs, says in an interview with Bloomberg. With his oversight, the company developed its trademark glass cube design, with a floating staircase and plenty of space for consumers to ask questions and play with products. "I’m not even sure “store” is the right word anymore," Tim Cook, who took over Apple after jobs, said in 2013. "They’ve taken on a role much broader than that. They are the face of Apple for almost all of our customers." The Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/Files You might also like: -Fascinating photos show the best and worst office designs for employees -Research says your bad boss may be making you sad, lazy and fat -The Rich Kids of Instagram are a product of extreme inequality, and they’re


Newest photos of Pluto’s tinier moons reveal a red jelly-bean satellite

Pluto's moons Nix and Hydra as photographed by the New Horizons spacecraft. (NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI) The latest photos from the July 14 Pluto flyby were released by NASA on Tuesday, and the dwarf planet's moons are looking decidedly less pixelated than they did in their first public appearance. [NASA’s spacecraft made it to Pluto. So what happens now?] Now we can gaze upon Nix and Hydra, the second and third of Pluto's five moons to be discovered. Charon, the largest moon, is no more mysterious to us than Pluto is -- it's half the size of its host planet, giving it the biggest moon-to-host ratio in the entire solar system, so we've already got some pretty stellar images of Charon. NASA’s New Horizons has sent back the first in a series of the sharpest views of Pluto it obtained during its July flyby – and the best close-ups of Pluto that humans may see for decades. But Nix and Hydra are about 26 and 34 miles long, respectively. They're also much further away from Pluto than Charon is, so the New Horizons spacecraft could only get a distant glimpse at them as it sped by into the Kuiper Belt. [New images of Pluto’s moons hint at unusual behavior] But these new photos are more than just blobs: Scientists are already using them to try to make conclusions about the tiny moons. (Side note: This kind of on-the-fly planetary science -- based on data we'll receive bit by bit for the next 16 months -- is a rare opportunity to see scientists make immediate conjectures and talk about them publicly. So enjoy it but also maybe keep in mind that the next batch of photos could completely contradict the assumptions made previously.) One day after NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft confirmed that it made it to Pluto, mission specialists unveiled stunning, close-up images of the dwarf planet. Hydra, previously described on this very blog as being shaped like a "space spud," now resembles the state of Michigan -- at least according to NASA scientists. It's estimated to be 34 miles long and 25 miles wide, with at least a couple craters and some color differences that hint at variations in the composition of Hydra's surface. The itty-bitty Nix, jelly-belly of a moon that it is, looks to be about 26 miles long and 22 miles wide. As you may have noticed, it's kind of


Army Gen. Mark Milley, Army chief nominee, open to arming recruiters

can be resolved.” “I think under certain conditions, both on military bases and in out stations — recruiting stations, reserve centers — that we should seriously consider it, and in some cases I think it’s appropriate,” Milley said. Kelly Caparell, left, and her daughter Keldon Bevel, place American flags by a makeshift memorial at the entrance to the Naval Operational Support Center and Marine Reserve Center Saturday, July 18, 2015, in Chattanooga, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Zaleski) Milley’s comments come amid a national debate about whether more U.S. service members should be allowed to carry weapons at U.S. military facilities. Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, 24, opened fire on a recruiting station, and then ambushed service members at a naval reserve center several miles away. Killed at the reserve center were Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, 40; Staff Sgt. David Wyatt, 35; Sgt. Carson A. Holmquist; Lance Cpl. Squire D. “Skip” Wells, 21; and Petty Officer 2nd Class Randall Smith, 26. Law enforcement officials said Monday [Portraits of service: A profile on each U.S. service member killed in the Chattanooga attack] Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter called on Friday for “immediate steps” to be taken to enhance force protection following the Chattanooga shooting, but arming troops was not one of them. Mark Wright, a spokesman at the Pentagon, said that the Marine Corps chose to close all recruiting offices within 40 miles temporarily, instruct some recruiters not to wear uniforms and to boost security at recruiting stations to force protection level Charlie, indicating an increased terrorist threat exists. The Army also increased its security at recruiting centers to force protection level Charlie, and the Navy opted to have more random searches at facilities and coordinate more closely with law enforcement. Carter, asked about the review Sunday, did not say whether he is considering arming U.S. troops while on base Stateside. “We took some steps on Friday that seemed immediately advisable,” the secretary told reporters while traveling to Israel, without elaborating. “I’ve asked the services to quickly, but in a comprehensive way, assess additional things that they might recommend.” The Pentagon has restricted which troops can carry firearms while Stateside since at least the early 1990s. A 1992 Defense Department directive issued during President George H.W. Bush’s administration addressed the issue and provided the Pentagon’s rationale for limiting who carried firearms in the United States. “The authorization to carry firearms shall be issued only to


Obama orders flags at half-staff at all federal buildings in the U.S. and overseas

Alaina Fitzner, wife of an Air Force officer, hugs Paula Proxmire, whose son was fatally shot July 18, 2015, in Chattanooga, Tenn., on July 19. (Greg Jaffe/The Washington Post) President Obama called for all flags at the White House and all federal buildings, including overseas embassies, to be lowered to half-staff to honor the five troops killed in a shooting rampage at a Chattanooga, Tenn., reserve center. The move, which comes four days after the killings, follows growing calls and criticism from conservatives and some veterans groups calling on the president to honor the men. The White House issued the president's order a few minutes after Obama finished a speech at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Pittsburgh on Tuesday. "Our thoughts and prayers as a Nation are with the service members killed this week in Chattanooga," Obama said in a statement. In his most extended remarks about the Chattanooga shootings, Obama on Tuesday praised the four Marines and the sailor “killed so senselessly in Chattanooga.” He read out their names one by one, recounting some highlights of their personal lives, their pride in wearing the uniform and their service overseas. He described how Marine Gunnery Sgt. Thomas J. Sullivan had charged the gunman, trying to protect his troops when the shooting began. After pressure from critics, the U.S. flags at federal buildings are now flying at half-staff in tribute to the five servicemen killed in last week's shooting rampage at a military recruiting center in Tennessee. “Our nation endures because people like you put on the uniform and help keep this nation free,” he said in his VFW speech. Obama announced his decision to lower the flags shortly after House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) ordered flags at the Capitol lowered. Pro-gun groups have called in recent days for Obama to reverse rules, instituted during the Clinton administration and backed by the Pentagon's brass, that prohibit military recruiters from carrying firearms. Marcus Luttrell, a former Navy SEAL who wrote the best-selling book “Lone Survivor” about his experiences in Afghanistan, was among those calling for arming recruiters. He also ripped the military's decision to have recruiters in the vicinity of Chattanooga temporarily come to work in civilian clothes. "That's not how we respond in the military when we get hit, we don't take off our uniforms, drop our weps and run," Luttrell


Researchers retract study claiming marriages fail more often when wife falls ill

(iStock) A study that suggested marriages are more likely to fail when the wife falls ill — than if she is healthy — has been retracted this week due to a coding error in the research. The article got a lot of media attention — including from The Washington Post — when it was published in March in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. The research looked at 2,701 heterosexual marriages of people 51 and older, and found that when the wife falls seriously ill, there's a 6 percent greater chance the couple will divorce than if she remains healthy. A husband's illness, in contrast, has no impact on the odds that the couple will divorce. The study seemed to suggest that in later-life marriages, men are more likely to bail on a sick spouse, although the data didn't go into detail about why the divorce happened or who initiated it. [Citing ‘misconduct,’ accounting journal retracts 25 articles by once-renowned scholar] However, when researchers at Bowling Green State tried to replicate the study results, they discovered the results were skewed by a mistake in the data, which counted people who left the study as divorces. "They pointed out to us, to our horror, that we had miscoded the dependent variable," Amelia Karraker, the study's author and a professor at Iowa State University, told Retraction Watch. "As soon as we realized we made the mistake, we contacted the editor and told him what was happening, and said we made a mistake, we accept responsibility for it." [Major publisher retracts 43 scientific papers amid wider fake peer-review scandal] Using the corrected code, Karraker found that the results stand only when wives develop heart problems, not other illnesses. "While you would never want to discover that you made a mistake, what’s ultimately important is to do good research, and sometimes that requires you to make a correction," Karraker said. Read more: Half of all basic life science research is seriously flawed TV-watching toddlers are at a higher risk of being bullied later on Standing desks at schools: The solution to the childhood obesity epidemic? Yes, men gain weight when they become dads, study confirms CDC warning: Stop hugging and kissing your pet chickens


After controversy, Marine recruiters back in uniform following Chattanooga attack

An FBI investigator investigates the scene of a shooting outside a military recruiting center in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Friday. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, File) Marine Corps recruiters in Chattanooga, Tenn., are back to work and in uniform, less than a week after a gunman opened fire on two military facilities in the city and killed four Marines and a Navy sailor. The recruiters of Recruiting Substation Chattanooga, one of the facilities ambushed, are now using an alternative location while their office is under repair, said Maj. Garron Garn, a spokesman for Marine Corps Recruiting Command in Quantico, Va. They’re also dressed in their typical dress blue “Delta” uniform, which includes a short-sleeve khaki shirt with ribbons and blue dress pants. That comes after commanders in Tennessee briefly told recruiters to change out of their uniforms, angering some service members and veterans who thought doing so showed weakness. [‘Lone Survivor’ Marcus Luttrell, Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer rip decisions after Chattanooga attack] The return to some semblance of normalcy comes after the shooter, Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, 24, opened fire on the recruiting station and the naval reserve support center several miles away. No one was killed at the recruiting station, but Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, 40; Staff Sgt. David Wyatt, 35; Sgt. Carson A. Holmquist; Lance Cpl. Squire D. “Skip” Wells, 21; and Petty Officer 2nd Class Randall Smith, 26; were mortally wounded at the reserve center. The Marine Corps has faced tough criticism after Pentagon officials described some of the measures its commanders put in place following the shooting. They included closing all recruiting stations within 40 miles of Chattanooga, telling some recruiters not to wear uniforms and boosting the force protection status to “Charlie,” indicating an increased terrorist threat exists, according to a statement released Monday. Navy Seal veteran Marcus Luttrell, whose story was depicted in the movie “Lone Survivor,” took to Facebook on Monday night and said he “laughed out loud” when he heard about the measures taken, adding that service members “don’t take off our uniforms” or drop their weapons in the face of adversity. Marine veteran Dakota Meyer, a Medal of Honor recipient, wrote on his Facebook page that he considered the decision to not wear uniforms “absolutely asinine” and a “slap in the face.” [Gen. Mark Milley, nominee to be top Army general, signals openness to arming recruiters] The Defense Department released a statement Monday


Armadillos are spreading leprosy in Florida

For once in his life, Florida man is not the focus of a news story. Instead, Florida armadillos are in the spotlight. Local health officials are warning Floridians to stay away from the animals after nine people were infected with leprosy after coming into contact with the leathery armored creatures. Typically, Florida sees just 10 cases of leprosy in a year. The centuries-old bacterial infection, also known as Hansen’s disease, causes nerve damage and disfigurement and was once a considered a sentence to death or life in isolation. Thanks to antibiotics, the disease is now treatable and only rarely spreads from person to person in the U.S., typically via coughing or sneezing. A 2011 genetic study found that armadillos naturally harbor the bacteria that causes the illness in humans, and they may be responsible for some infections, though it is far less common for leprosy to be spread that way. But that’s what seems to be happening in Florida. “New homes are being developed, and we are tearing down armadillos’ homes in the process,” Dr. Sunil Joshi, president-elect of the Duval County Medical Society, told CNN. “Now these creatures are coming out in the daytime, and the people who are getting exposed are those working outside.” Armadillos aren’t native to Florida, but the cat-sized mammals are now common throughout the state, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. They are not the cuddliest of creatures either — they resemble a cross between a rat and a beetle and are extremely difficult to trap. “Especially if they’re trying to get out of a cage they can spit on you,” Florida wildlife trapper Kyle Waltz told Jacksonville TV station WJAX. The bacteria that causes leprosy can lie dormant for years, according to the CDC, and it may take up to a decade for symptoms to appear. The most of the human population isn’t susceptible to the disease, and fewer than 300 new cases were reported in the U.S. in 2010. But the CDC reports that as many as 2 million people have been permanently disabled by the disease worldwide.


Scientists are working with the light of fireflies to improve medical diagnoses

A firefly alights on a fence post in Oconomowoc, Wis. (John Hart/Wisconsin State Journal via AP) Luciferase: Few people could say what it is, but just about anyone venturing outside on a summer night would be familiar with it. It's the protein that makes fireflies glow, and a group of researchers thinks it will someday be used to detect cancer and other diseases. The concept is pretty simple. Proteins essentially act like keys in the body. Their unique shape and structures are designed to attach to specific molecules in the body and cause reactions to take place — like giving off light in fireflies. A group of Swiss scientists, whose work was published Wednesday in Nature Communications, took the protein from the insects and added a chemical tag so that when it attaches to another molecule, like one on a tumor cell, it will glow. [After her husband’s Parkinson’s diagnosis, she invented a product to improve the lives of millions] The goal is to use these designed proteins to make it faster and cheaper for doctors to diagnose their patients, potentially cutting out expensive readout devices. Scientists, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Laussane also say it's a highly accurate detection system because the light signal could be seen with a naked eye. "You can think of the tagged luciferase as a cyborg molecule," said Kai Johnsson, a professor at the Institute, in a statement. "Half bio, half synthetic ... With this chemical trick, all we have to worry about is designing an appropriate tag that can recognize the target protein." Here is an example of the luminescence produced by the chemical modifications. (Photo courtesy of Kai Johnsson/EPFL) Johnsson and his colleagues have already used the concept to develop a molecule that monitors drug use, leading to the creation of a startup company called Lucentix in 2014. The young company is developing test strips that allows people to analyze a drop of blood or spit with the modified proteins. They haven't had any products hit the market yet, but the hope is that someday doctors could quickly be able to tell how much of a drug someone has in his or her system by the color that the strips glow. The researchers think "biosensors" and the concept of taking advantage of luminescence could have applications throughout medicine, although it would take more research to create a product that's


eye. "You can think of the tagged luciferase as a cyborg molecule," said Kai Johnsson, a professor at the Institute, in a statement. "Half bio, half synthetic ... With this chemical trick, all we have to worry about is designing an appropriate tag that can recognize the target protein." Here is an example of the luminescence produced by the chemical modifications. (Photo courtesy of Kai Johnsson/EPFL) Johnsson and his colleagues have already used the concept to develop a molecule that monitors drug use, leading to the creation of a startup company called Lucentix in 2014. The young company is developing test strips that allows people to analyze a drop of blood or spit with the modified proteins. They haven't had any products hit the market yet, but the hope is that someday doctors could quickly be able to tell how much of a drug someone has in his or her system by the color that the strips glow. The researchers think "biosensors" and the concept of taking advantage of luminescence could have applications throughout medicine, although it would take more research to create a product that's ready for use. Johnsson said that will probably take another two to three years. [Breakthrough HIV study could change course of treatment for millions] But the medical side of the research is just one part of the puzzle. Scientists are just now detailing the steps needed for proteins to glow during bioluminescence — something that's been a mystery for decades. A group of researchers from Connecticut College and Yale University published a study this week in the Journal of the American Chemical Society that shows the light is the result of a highly reactive molecule, called superoxide ion. It's generally toxic to animals, but it doesn't hurt fireflies because when it reacts and lets off light, it's contained and only happens for a short amount of time. "We've made a basic scientific advance," said Bruce Branchini, a professor at Connecticut College who led a team reproducing the firefly's glow in a lab. "We hope this will improve practical applications in biomedications." Read more: Most antipsychotic drugs prescribed to teens without mental health diagnosis, study says A scientist discovered a new insect species living in New Jersey. He’s already worried about its survival. The monarch butterfly might end up on the endangered species list this year When bugs want to bite, what do you do?


One device will change how we cook forever

Voila, your completely customized order. (AP Photo/Francois Mori) Alex Lightman is a futurist who spends a lot of his time thinking about what new food technology will mean for the way people eat. And he believes that one of the surest things about the future of 3-D printed food is that it won't work the way people imagine it will. "People think that things are going to be automated and scaled, but that's not true," he said. "The truth is that people really misunderstand how it's going to work." Lightman serves on the advisory board of Natural Machines, a Barcelona-based company that is getting ready to launch a new 3-D printer called Foodini that will allow both amateur home-cooks and Michelin star chefs to manipulate food in ways that weren't previously possible—at least commercially. The machine, which will be released later this year, can produce almost any shape and process many different inputs (not simply chocolate, like other proof of concepts). Homemade pasta of almost any shape and size, perfectly packed veggie burgers, carefully portioned, identically shaped servings of mashed potatoes—these things will all be easy tasks for the new food toy. Natural Machines is the creator of a 3D printer called Foodini, which can make many types of dishes. In this video, the printer makes pizza and quiche. "We already have a number of restaurants, including national chains, and Michelin starred chefs who have expressed interests," said Lynette Kucsma, the founder and chief marketing officer of Natural Machines. "We expect the demand to be very big, and very broad." Like so many innovations before it, 3-D printed food will give rise to all sorts of projections—some truer than others—about what the future of food will look like. One vision is a dystopian future in which much of our food is mass produced by some later mutation of current 3-D food printing technology. But there's another possibility: that by taking different ingredients, combine them together and producing food to exact three dimensional dimensions, the future of food could be wildly creative—and fun. "The key word here is customization," said Lightman. "I really don't think people quite understand how much control they will have over the things they will be able to order." The future Lightman sees is one that takes Burger King's long-held slogan, 'have it your way,' to a much more literal place. Once the price of 3-D printers


Why arming military recruiters after Chattanooga is so legally complicated

17 shows a sign that says “Weapons Prohibited” on the door of the Armed Forces Career Center in White Plains, N.Y., where the U.S. Army and Marines have recruiting offices. Security at military recruiting and reserve centers will be reviewed in the aftermath of the deadly shooting in Tennessee. (AP Photo/Jim Fitzgerald) Those laws vary state to state, as a guide released by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives details. All states allow gun owners to carry some form of concealed weapon, but licensing and permitting can be drastically different. Openly carrying a firearm is only allowed in a handful of states. There also are a variety of laws prohibiting weapons from being brought to schools, college campuses and other gun-free zones — locations recruiters frequent regularly. In response to the issue, Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R.-Calif.) and Sen. Steve Daines (R.-Mont.) introduced legislation Monday that would permit the Pentagon to authorize one service member at each recruiting facility to carry a service-issue sidearm to protect themselves and others while on duty, superseding other laws. The legislation also would authorize the secretary to implement other security measures, something that could include adding bulletproof glass or adding locked doors at which visitors must be buzzed in. “We’re getting to the point where these soft targets are becoming bigger targets for radicals, terrorists and straight up nutjobs,” said Joe Kasper, a spokesman for Hunter. “So why not give the military that enhanced protection?” [After controversy, Marine recruiters back in uniform in Chattanooga] The legislation is called the Securing Military Personnel Response Firearm Initiative Act, or SEMPER FI Act. That’s an allusion to the Latin saying adopted by the Marine Corps, “Always faithful.” The bill is specific that recruiters carrying weapons are not to be used for law enforcement, which would violate the Posse Comitatus Act that limits the federal government’s ability to use the military to control civilians. Other legislators, including Sen. Ron Johnson (R.-Wis.), Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.) and Rep. Mac Thornberry (R.-Tex.) have also called for the Pentagon to do more to protect troops while Stateside. “Long before the Chattanooga attack, we had been working to clarify a post commander’s authority to allow carrying of personal firearms,” McCain and Thornberry said in a joint statement. “This year’s National Defense Authorization Act will reflect that work. Together, we will direct the Pentagon to end the disconnect between the


The correlation between test scores and home prices

Generally speaking, higher test scores at a D.C. Public Schools elementary school correlate with higher housing costs. But there are a few “bargain” neighborhoods, and one outlier school that’s surrounded by pricey housing despite low scores. The median price of a typical three-bedroom home within the attendance zone of a top-scoring DCPS elementary school is more than $800,000, according to District Measured, a blog produced by D.C.’s Office of Revenue Analysis. At those schools, largely in Northwest, 80 percent or more students score proficient or advanced in reading. At the next tier down, schools where 60 percent to 80 percent of students are proficient or advanced, housing prices aren’t much lower: median sale prices vary from the high $600,000s to more than $1 million. If you want to pay less than that, you may have to go to a neighborhood where the zoned school has reading proficiency rates below 60 percent. In addition to a graph that correlates reading test scores and median sale prices, the ORA has created two maps. The first one shows school zones according to school rankings, and you can filter it by median home prices. Click here for the interactive version. The second map shows home sale prices. You can filter it by school rankings. Click here for the interactive version. ORA used the school boundaries that will go into effect this fall. Those new boundaries only apply to students entering the DCPS system. Students who are currently enrolled at a school can stay there even if the boundaries change. [Continue reading Natalie Wexler’s post at DC Eduphile.] Natalie Wexler blogs at DC Eduphile and Greater Greater Washington and is a member of the board of the D.C. Scholars Public Charter School. 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.


Happy birthday Mei Xiang! Here’s some panda cake.

Mei Xiang, a panda at Smithsonian's National Zoo, celebrated her 17th birthday with a cake made of frozen juice. (Editor's note: A previous description of the video incorrectly described Mei Xiang's birthday treat.) Bao Bao’s mom, Mei Xiang, is turning 17, and to celebrate the National Zoo has gifted her some pretty spectacular looking cake. And, if this short video is any indication, it looks like she’s enjoying it. In 2013, Mei Xiang famously gave birth to D.C.’s celebrity Bao Bao. Now, the D.C. panda is famously trying to get pregnant. [D.C. finally gets that long-awaited shipment of frozen panda sperm from China] Happy Birthday!


A stunning new look from space at nature, North Korea and Chipotle

fascinating application is the use of satellite imagery to measure the growth of agricultural crops. Beyond just looking for bare patches in forests, companies can now measure different wavelengths of light to calculate the actual amount of plant material in a field. In the near future, scientists might be able to calculate the amount of every crop in every field around the world, says Will Marshall, the co-founder and CEO of Planet Labs. Satellite images clearly show how fields grow over time. The image below, from Planet Labs, shows winter wheat growing in fields near Lubbock, Tex. After several months, the fields have clearly grown. But scientists can use the ratio of visible light to near-infrared light to create a more precise measurement of a plant's photosynthetic activity. In the image below, a company called Urthecast compares the normal satellite image on the left with a "vegetation index" on the right. The green-colored areas in the image indicate dense and healthy plants, while the red areas indicate sparse or stressed vegetation. By adding up these green areas across the globe, analysts could produce a much more accurate estimate of how the world's crops are growing. A competitive field For a world in which people are constantly connected to one another through the Internet and mobile devices, our ability to look at the Earth from space is surprisingly limited. Google Earth allows us to see almost any point on the planet, to be sure. But the image that Google provides is static – usually, between one and three years old. Most people have no way of seeing the Earth in real time. “How many trees were cut down yesterday around the planet? How much coal was mined yesterday or last week or last month? The basic infrastructure doesn’t exist to answer those questions at all,” says Andrews of BlackSky Global. Getting satellite images is not yet as easy as having your photos printed at the drug store. Many more satellites need to be launched, and it will take time for companies to develop the big-data algorithms that can accurately analyze images and assess fluctuations in economic trends. In the meantime, the industry is already consolidating. Just a few weeks ago, UrtheCast purchased the Deimos satellite operations and its global imagery archive. Then last week, Planet Labs announced that it would acquire the BlackBridge geospatial companies, which have been collecting Earth imagery


Call off the bee-pocalypse: U.S. honeybee colonies hit a 20-year high

The perfect capitalists: industrious, efficient, single-minded in their pursuit of success (Joe DeLuca/Flickr). You've heard the news about honeybees. "Beepocalypse," they've called it. Beemageddon. America's honeybees are dying, putting honey production and $15 billion worth of pollinated food crops in jeopardy. The situation has become so dire that earlier this year the White House put forth the first National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators, a 64-page policy framework for saving the nation's bees, butterflies and other pollinating animals. The trouble all began in 2006 or so, when beekeepers first began noticing mysterious die-offs. It was soon christened "colony collapse disorder," and has been responsible for the loss of 20 to 40 percent of managed honeybee colonies each winter over the past decade. The math says that if you lose 30 percent of your bee colonies every year for a few years, you rapidly end up with close to 0 colonies left. But get a load of this data on the number of active bee colonies in the U.S. since 1987. Pay particular attention to the period after 2006, when CCD was first documented. As you can see, the number of honeybee colonies has actually risen since 2006, from 2.4 million to 2.7 million in 2014, according to data tracked by the USDA. The 2014 numbers, which came out earlier this year, show that the number of managed colonies -- that is, commercial honey-producing bee colonies managed by human beekeepers -- is now the highest it's been in 20 years. So if CCD is wiping out close to a third of all honeybee colonies a year, how are their numbers rising? One word: Beekeepers. A 2012 working paper by Randal R. Tucker and Walter N. Thurman, a pair of agricultural economists, explains that seasonal die-offs have always been a part of beekeeping: they report that before CCD, American beekeepers would typically lose 14 percent of their colonies a year, on average. So beekeepers have devised two main ways to replenish their stock. The first method involves splitting one healthy colony into two separate colonies: put half the bees into a new beehive, order them a new queen online (retail price: $25 or so), and voila: two healthy hives. The other method involves simply buying a bunch of bees to replace the ones you lost. You can buy 3 pounds of "packaged" bees, plus


NASA is set to announce its latest exoplanet finds Thursday

There's been a lot of buzz about the announcement, and while some of it has made scientists kind of cranky (no, they didn't find aliens, and there probably isn't a confirmed "Earth twin" out there in the distant cosmos) it's understandable: Kepler has found some pretty incredible things in the past, including over 1,000 confirmed planets and 3,000 suspected ones. [Most stars in the galaxy have planets in the habitable zone, according to new research] The space telescope -- which actually should have gone kaput after a hardware failure in 2013 -- is designed to figure out just how special Earth is. The hope, of course, is that we're not special at all: The more "Earth-like" planets there are, the more likely it is that life (in a form we can recognize) evolved somewhere else in the universe. [Stephen Hawking announces $100 million hunt for alien life] And when we say Earth-like, we mean it in the loosest possible sense. These are planets that are the right size and distance from their sun to be rocky planets, like our own, and ones that could potentially hold liquid water. But the Kepler isn't getting a close-up view of these planets -- it's measuring them based on the way they dim the light of their host stars as they pass in front of them. Some of these planets have also been confirmed through a second method on the ground that looks for wobbles (or Doppler shifts) in the starlight caused by the gravity of the orbiting objects. A look at the best photos of space. So while we can hope that NASA has found some more interesting planets, Kepler isn't capable of confirming that planets have life, or even that they can definitely support it. It's just good at letting us know they're there, and that they might be a little more like us than your average piece of rock in space. Which is great. We'll have more on the latest Kepler finds at noon. In the meantime, tide yourself over with some of the telescope's recent finds: Kepler space telescope spies a ‘Mega-Earth’ NASA’s Kepler telescope doubles number of known planets outside solar system Kepler space telescope finds Earth-size, potentially habitable planets are common Newly found star system has 5 Earth-sized planets, the oldest ever seen in the Milky Way Two new exoplanets are more Earth-like than any we’ve found before


Scientists discover 12 new potential Earth-like planets

view of these planets — it's measuring them based on the way they dim the light of their host stars as they pass in front of them. Some of these planets have also been confirmed through a second method on the ground that looks for wobbles (or Doppler shifts) in the starlight caused by the gravity of the orbiting objects. So scientists can't say for sure just how much like Earth this strange new world really is. And even in the best case scenario -- where the planet holds liquid water -- that doesn't mean it holds life. But it has potential. Images from some of the space agency’s explorations of the solar system. “Kepler 452b takes us one step closer to understanding how many habitable planets are out there,” Joseph Twicken, lead scientific programmer for the Kepler mission, said in a statement. “Continued investigation of the other candidates in this catalog and one final run of the Kepler science pipeline will help us find the smallest and coolest planets. Doing so will allow us to better gauge the prevalence of habitable worlds.” [Most stars in the galaxy have planets in the habitable zone, according to new research] Scientists are especially interested in studying Kepler 452b for the ways in which its star is different from our own. It's similar in size (just 4 percent more massive and 10 percent brighter) but it's at least 1.5 billion years older. “If Kepler 452b is indeed a rocky planet, its location vis-a-vis its star could mean that it is just entering a runaway greenhouse phase of its climate history,” Doug Caldwell, a SETI Institute scientist working on the Kepler mission, said in a statement. “The increasing energy from its aging sun might be heating the surface and evaporating any oceans. The water vapor would be lost from the planet forever.” And that means that the planet could give us a look into our distant future. “Kepler 452b could be experiencing now what the Earth will undergo more than a billion years from now, as the sun ages and grows brighter," Caldwell said. Read More: NASA’s Kepler telescope doubles number of known planets outside solar system Kepler space telescope finds Earth-size, potentially habitable planets are common Newly found star system has 5 Earth-sized planets, the oldest ever seen in the Milky Way Two new exoplanets are more Earth-like than any we’ve found before


Campbell Soup looks to hummus and cold-pressed juices to stay relevant

Campbell Soup Co. products. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg) To understand the ideas driving the overhaul of Campbell Soup Co., it helps to consider how the packaged food giant is talking about the products they make. According to chief executive Denise Morrison, the research and development team now describes their work in terms of “recipes and cooking, not formulas and processing.” It’s a subtle verbal cue that reflects what the company behind Campbell’s soup, Pepperidge Farm cookies and Spaghettios is describing as an “extreme makeover” to prevent it from becoming irrelevant in a new era of American eating. At an investor meeting on Wednesday, the company outlined a slate of new measures that aim to cater to consumers’ desires for fresh foods with simple ingredients. It plans to remove all artificial flavors and ingredients from its products in North America by 2018 and will begin moving some kids’ soups to non-BPA cans. And it will invest heavily in its newly created Campbell Fresh division, which includes items such as carrots, hummus, and refrigerated salsas that customers perceive to be healthier snacks than, say, legacy Campbell items, such as Goldfish crackers. “It’s often difficult to recognize a revolution when you’re in the midst of it. But it’s clear that the food industry is being transformed right before our very eyes,” Morrison told investors. Indeed, Campbell is hardly the only company that is scrambling to adapt to this new reality: Its rivals H.J. Heinz and Kraft Foods Group announced earlier this year that they planned to merge in an effort to better weather the changes. Outside the grocery category, fast-food giant McDonald’s has delivered a string of dismal quarterly earnings reports, which the company says is in part because some consumers believe that their food isn’t fresh or healthy. [Your healthy eating habits are pummeling the packaged food industry] Campbell’s plan to reinvigorate its slowing sales growth relies largely on shifting its portfolio to include more of what it calls “packaged fresh” foods, such as hummus and refrigerated salad dressings. One such experiment is a new brand of cold-pressed, organic juices called 1915 that it developed in less than 12 months. They hope that it will appeal to the kind of customers who skip past their shelf-stable juices. They also hope to expand the reach of Garden Fresh Gourmet, a brand of dips, tortilla chips and salsas that Campbell said in June it had agreed


Abrupt climate change may have doomed mammoths and other megafauna, scientists report

This image shows mammoth vertebrae in ice in Yukon Territory, Canada. (Kieren Mitchell) Ever since humans uncovered the fossil records of the mammoths, giant sloths and other extinct megafauna that walked the Earth until about 11,000 years ago, scientists have been trying to solve the mystery of why they vanished. Was it human hunting and activity? Or did climate change bring about their end? A new study suggests that the key to solving the question lies in a series of abrupt warming events over the course of the Late Pleistocene era, going back at least 50,000 years. The study, published in Science on Thursday, is the first to link specific climatic events to localized extinctions of megafauna. In this case, the events are called “interstadials,” or short warming periods that occurred throughout the era. The interstadials saw temperature increases anywhere from 4 to 16˚C, the study’s authors explain, and sometimes that warming occurred over just a few decades. Once warming occurred, the Earth would stay warm for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years. The finding could reverse a long-held belief that human activity was the primary driver of megafaunal extinction, one of the study’s authors, Alan Cooper of the University of Adelaide, explained in an interview. “You could connect the arrival of humans to extinctions,” Cooper said, “When humans arrived 50,000 years ago in Australia, for instance, the megafauna disappeared soon after.” The theory is based on the work of American paleontologist Paul Martin, who first proposed the idea in 1985 that advanced human hunting techniques wiped out local populations of megafauna as our species spread around the world. One of the more famous examples used in support of this theory has to do with the extinction of mammoths in North America, which coincided with when researchers believe humans arrived on the continent. But that extinction happened as part of a whole cluster of extinction events around the world, and not all of them can be explained in the same way. “Several taxa (e.g., mammoth) go extinct on the mainland of Eurasia considerably later than that of the New World, despite a much longer exposure to human hunting,” the study says. The idea that climate change caused the mammoths to vanish was, for a time, relegated to history, an old-fashioned idea that relied on less reliable methods of dating than those used by Martin and other whose evidence supported the human


The Daily 202: Trump wears white golf shoes to tour the border

will open an investigation. HRC pushback: The Times tweaked the lead of their story after publication to make it clearer that Hillary herself is not necessarily the target, - The initial version said: “Two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government information on a private email account she used as secretary of state…” - What it says right now: “Two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used as secretary of state…” - No explanation was added for the edit. Hillary with one of her mobile devices in 2011 (AP file photo) — — A Mason Dixon poll shows Marco Rubio taking a hit in Florida with the rise of Scott Walker. Jeb Bush leads Rubio 28-16 among registered Republicans, with Walker at 13 percent. In April, Rubio and Bush were statistically tied (31-30). — Defense Secretary Ash Carter, traveling in the Middle East, announced that a U.S. airstrike in eastern Afghanistan killed a senior Al-Qaida operational commander, Abu Khalil Al-Sudani. GET SMART FAST: - The DNC will partially lift its ban on PAC and lobbyist donations related to the national convention, a reflection of Clinton’s influence over the party. - Nearly six in ten Americans think race relations are generally bad, and four in ten think they’re getting worse, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll. - A Texas prosecutor announced that the results of an autopsy of Sandra Bland were consistent with hanging and suicide. - The GOP-controlled Senate Appropriations Committee voted to ease the travel ban to Cuba, along with two other amendments. It is the first legislation approved by a congressional panel to ease U.S. policy toward Havana. - NASA scientists, using the Kepler space telescope, have discovered 12 new, potentially Earth-like planets in the distant solar system. NASA circulated this artist’s concept of the newly discovered exoplanet Kepler-452b. It is the smallest planet to date discovered orbiting in the habitable zone, the area around a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of an orbiting planet, of a G2-type star, like our sun. The confirmation of Kepler-452b brings the total number of confirmed planets to 1,030. The Kepler-452 system is located 1,400 light-years away from Earth in


CDC report: Lyme disease is spreading to new territories

more sound theory is rising temperatures. "Climate change is responsible for opening up areas that were just too harsh for ticks," Ostfeld said. Lyme disease rashes, as seen here on the leg of a male, often appear in the shape of a bulls-eye, but not all infections result in a rash. (iStock) Tick larvae are basically vampires — they hatch in midsummer and have to find a good blood meal before going to sleep in the winter. If they don't, they die. Warmer weather gives them more time to find their victims. Still, that doesn't explain why the disease is moving south, to places like Virginia, West Virginia and the Carolinas. It could be the case that some of the rise is actually a good thing — more people are aware of the disease and are reporting it. "We know some of the answer, but not all of it," Ostfeld said. There are methods available that could reduce the tick population, but Ostfeld said the funding to pull together an all-out assault against the insect is limited. "This is something the government and philanthropy could help with if they pony up," he said. [With arrival of tick season, heightened efforts to prevent Lyme disease] The prevalence of the disease is important to keep on the radar, because the infection can be pretty nasty. Immediate symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue and possibly a bulls-eye skin rash, but that can extend to the joints, heart and nervous system if left untreated. Most cases can be addressed within a few weeks with the help of antibiotics, but it's not the easiest disease to treat. Experts say about 10 to 20 percent of people treated will experience ongoing symptoms. The CDC recommends that people use insect repellents, apply pesticides and remove any ticks from skin as quickly as possible with a pair of fine-tipped tweezers. After the bug is removed, people should thoroughly wash the area with soap and water, and monitor the area for rashes. This post has been corrected to show that the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies is in Millbrook, N.Y. Read more: Chronic Lyme disease can seriously affect a person’s quality of life CDC warning: Stop hugging and kissing your pet chickens United Nations chief: World is on track to end AIDS epidemic by 2030 Should you be taking Prozac or Paxil while pregnant? CDC finds link to birth defects


NASA estimates 1 billion ‘Earths’ in our galaxy alone

planet to date discovered orbiting in the "habitable zone"—the area around a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of an orbiting planet. As Rachel Feltman reported Thursday, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has discovered a bunch of new planets, including one, Kepler 452b, that scientists described as the most Earth-like planet ever found outside our solar system. It’s something like 60 percent bigger in radius than the Earth (the exact size is hard to measure because it’s 1,400 light years away and cannot be directly imaged). But it’s probably rocky, and it's in the habitable zone of its parent star, which is like our own sun, a G-type “yellow dwarf” star. The parent star is 6 billion years old, roughly (everything’s “roughly,” unfortunately). [Why NASA’s top scientist is sure that we’ll find signs of alien life in the next decade] A few important reminders about our cousin Kepler 452b: No one has seen it. Only Kepler has detected it — it’s too far away and dim to be detected with other instruments so far. So there’s a lot we don’t know about it. We don’t know for sure whether it’s rocky. We don’t know whether it has an atmosphere or water at the surface or anything like that. We’ve seen only the dimming of the starlight from the host star. The pattern of that dimming gives us a good measure of its orbital period (385 days) and, less precisely, its size. We’re not even sure of the exact size of the host star. These objects are very far away. Images from some of the space agency’s explorations of the solar system. We also shouldn’t obsess over this one particular planet, nor over any of the intriguing Earth-like planets found by Kepler so far. Kepler is looking at a narrow cone of our galaxy. It’s not an all-sky survey. The main purpose of Kepler was to do a census of a small patch of sky to get an estimate of the abundance of planets. That’s been a huge success: We now know our galaxy is lousy with planets. They’re everywhere. And they come in all sizes. [Gorgeous new photo shows Pluto with jazzed up color] During the NASA newser Thursday, I asked whether the latest Kepler data offered any new insight on the abundance of Earth-like planets around sun-like stars (the shorthand for this formulation is "eta-Earth"), and then


something like 60 percent bigger in radius than the Earth (the exact size is hard to measure because it’s 1,400 light years away and cannot be directly imaged). But it’s probably rocky, and it's in the habitable zone of its parent star, which is like our own sun, a G-type “yellow dwarf” star. The parent star is 6 billion years old, roughly (everything’s “roughly,” unfortunately). A few important reminders about our cousin Kepler 452b: No one has seen it. Only Kepler has detected it — it’s too far away and dim to be detected with other instruments so far. So there’s a lot we don’t know about it. We don’t know for sure whether it’s rocky. We don’t know whether it has an atmosphere or water at the surface or anything like that. We’ve seen only the dimming of the starlight from the host star. The pattern of that dimming gives us a good measure of its orbital period (385 days) and, less precisely, its size. We’re not even sure of the exact size of the host star. These objects are very far away. Images from some of the space agency’s explorations of the solar system. We also shouldn’t obsess over this one particular planet, nor over any of the intriguing Earth-like planets found by Kepler so far. Kepler is looking at a narrow cone of our galaxy. It’s not an all-sky survey. The main purpose of Kepler was to do a census of a small patch of sky to get an estimate of the abundance of planets. That’s been a huge success: We now know our galaxy is lousy with planets. They’re everywhere. And they come in all sizes. During the NASA newser Thursday, I asked whether the latest Kepler data offered any new insight on the abundance of Earth-like planets around sun-like stars (the shorthand for this formulation is "eta-Earth"), and then followed up with an e-mail to NASA. Batalha, an astrophysicist who is the mission scientist for the Kepler telescope, e-mailed her answer: Previous estimates of eta-Earth suggest that 15-25% of stars host potentially habitable planets. These estimates are based largely on discoveries of planets orbiting the cooler stars called M dwarfs. These new discoveries suggest that the statistics for sun-like stars are roughly in-line with estimates from the cooler M-type stars. So how does that translate to the number of planets in the galaxy? M, K,


How a Virginia physicist can predict the Tour de France’s outcome from 4,000 miles away

his feet up on his desk, and sees whether he was able to predict the peloton’s progress. [The psychology of why sports fans see their teams as extensions of themselves] Following the Tour de France isn’t just a spectator sport for Goff: it’s been his job since 2003, when a student got him interested in the race. For over a decade, he’s published research on the race and the science of other sports, like World Cup soccer. In recent years, Goff has had to adjust his model for bigger power outputs (read: faster cyclists). Could doping be the reason? He’s coy. “It’s quite possible that in 10 years cyclists have just improved,” he concedes, noting that better training methods, diets and gear are being developed all the time. [Forget doping, Greg LeMond thinks Tour de France riders could be cheating with tiny motors] Goff also demurs when it comes to the issue of betting. Though he himself doesn’t bet on the race, he admits that his predictions, which model how an elite cyclist will likely perform during each stage, could be used for gambling. “It would be incredibly naive of me to think that there aren’t people who rely on my blog for a bit of help,” he says, adding that every year, his blog generates e-mails from fans worldwide who imply they do just that. His model might help others win big, but in true physicist style, Goff prefers to focus on the science behind the cyclists. There’s no telling which real-life conditions each cyclist will face once they’re on the road, he says—or which strategies will be used by teams who want to protect their leading cyclists and who have to deal with things like urine-throwing bystanders and freak hailstorms. After all, he says, the human element can confound even the best model. “This is a three-dimensional world.” Erin Blakemore (@heroinebook) is a freelance journalist from Boulder, CO. She is the author of The Heroine’s Bookshelf (Harper). Read More: Watching a tattoo needle in slow motion reveals the physics of getting inked Your baby is doing little physics experiments all the time, according to a new study Slow-mo video of raindrops reveals how rain gets its distinctive smell A scientist said sports-related head injuries aren’t a big deal. He forgot to say he works for the NFL. Why a coffee is more likely to spill than a latte


Two of every three bus stops in Arlington County need accessibility improvements

make them accessible to all, and compliant with the ADA guidelines. But some jurisdictions have been more successful than others are making progress. Montgomery County, for example, announced Thursday that it has completed improvements to 3,025 of 3,400 bus stops that were identified as needing upgrades. The county, which has a total of 5,400 bus stops, has made an investment of $11 million on the program. Most other jurisdictions have depended on federal grants to make the improvements. (We have asked other counties for information about their bus stop accessibility plans and will post those as we get them). Metro estimates that about 6,500 of the region’s 19,000 bus stops are inaccessible to wheelchair users and others with limited mobility. And even where improvements have been made, many stops fall short of true accessibility because they lack walkable pathways, accessibility and transit officials say. The cost of improvements range, but Metro estimates that on average fixing one stop can cost $10,000. [Accessibility of bus stops is a ‘work in progress’ in the Washington region] Arlington appears to be increasing its allocation of funds to tackle the deficiencies at transit stops. For example, $6.1 million is included in the 2015-2024 Capital improvement Program, compared to only $2.6 million in a budget approved two years earlier. Last year the County Board also approved a one-time $181,000 allocation to accelerate the improvements. (The improvements are funded with federal, state, and regional, and local funds, as well as some developer contributions.) County officials say they have made accessibility improvements to approximately 70 bus stops since 2013. And the county’s goal is to make 20 ADA accessibility improvements and replace 10 old bus shelters each year, with funds dedicated to those efforts in the county’s budget for capital improvements. This year’s budget provides funds for 60 additional improvements. As part of the effort, plans are to retrofit about 70 old shelters with new benches by fall. About 41 percent of the county’s 250 bus shelters are not compliant with the ADA guidelines, according to information provided by the county. As is true elsewhere in the region, retrofitting bus stops to make them accessible to people with disabilities can be a challenging task in Arlington. The county says it faces limitations typical of constrained urban environments and higher-density land uses such as “difficulties obtaining public right-of-way from private land owners, utility relocation, alteration of drainage structures.”


Obama to meet with African leaders on South Sudan

our commitment to work with Somali authorities, our regional partners, and the broader international community to bring an end to acts of terrorism and combat violent extremism in Somalia," Price added. [READ: South Sudan swirls toward chaos] African nations, led by Ethiopia, have been trying to broker a peace in South Sudan through the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional body, and are almost ready to present a possible compromise to the warring parties. The two sides will have until Aug. 17 to response to the proposal, and White House officials said they need to be prepared to exert significant pressure on them should they reject the offer. Administration officials painted a pessimistic portrait of the warring factions, saying they had little reason to believe they would accept any sort of peace deal at this point despite the tremendous human toll their dispute has wrought. Forty percent of South Sudanese receive humanitarian assistance, and much of it comes from the United States. An administration official, who asked for anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the talks, said a positive outcome is not a “likelihood.” In that case, the official said, the United States would explore other options, which could include setting up a transitional government and then calling an election; the application of increased pressure on both sides through new sanctions; or an arms embargo. “I don’t think anybody should have high expectations that this is going to yield a breakthrough," the official said. "The parties have shown themselves to be utterly indifferent to their country and their people, and that is a hard thing to rectify.” Speaking to reporters last week, White House national security adviser Susan E. Rice said she was “deeply disappointed” that the world’s newest country had devolved into chaos over the past year and a half. “Thus far, the sides have put their own personal power and wealth ahead of the interests of their people and have refused to accept numerous rational proposals for a peaceful resolution of the conflict,” Rice said. Neither South Sudanese government officials nor the rebels will be invited to the talks, officials said. “, I think at this point our view is that both parties are part of the problem and this is not an opportunity for them to have a bunch of air time,” said the administration official who asked for anonymity. Princeton Lyman, a senior adviser