Astronaut Scott Kelly’s historic year-long space mission is coming to an end

U.S. Astronaut Scott Kelly says he feels like he's been "camping for a year" after more than 300 days without running water aboard the International Space Station. Kelly is due back on March 1. It has been a long, long time, but record-breaking rocket man Scott Kelly is finally coming back to Earth. On Tuesday, the 52-year-old NASA astronaut will wrap up a 342-day mission on the International Space Station. It's not the longest jaunt in space — back in the days when Russia had its own space station, several cosmonauts pulled longer stretches and one even lasted 437 days. But it's the longest stint ever taken on the ISS, and it's the first time scientists have focused on the physical effects of such long-term spaceflight. The hope is that studying Kelly — and his identical twin, Mark Kelly, a retired astronaut who spent the year on Earth — will help us figure out what challenges astronauts might face setting out on even longer trips, as they probably will when journeying to Mars and beyond. Doctors will check to see how microgravity, increased radiation and other uniquely spacey problems may have affected Scott Kelly's health over the course of the year. His brother won't be a perfect match — it's not as though NASA scientists can point to any differences between them as being related to spaceflight — but the existence of a "control" twin will make for some interesting data. Take a leap and explore new possibilities! #GoodMorning & Happy #LeapDay from @space_station! #YearInSpace https://t.co/qWz7GeMNMo "Obviously, this is a tiny sample size, so we're not really looking at how Scott and Mark are different during the year, exactly,"Johns Hopkins Medical School's Andrew Feinberg told The Washington Post just before Kelly's launch last year. "It's not statistically valid to say that differences between them must be due to the spaceflight." But, added Feinberg — whose project for the mission focused on epigenetics, or the way different environments affect the expression of our genes — "if something happens after Scott departs, increases during his trip, and then goes back to normal after he comes back to Earth — if we don't see that kind of sequential change in his twin, well, it's not proof of anything, but it certainly suggests something interesting is going on." In addition to the reams of personal scientific data he'll provide, Kelly had a pretty successful


The return of Olympic bidding scandals: 2016, 2020 Games under investigation

(Kimimasa Mayama/EPA) Investigators in France have expanded their probe into world track and field’s governing body to include possible corruption in the bidding process for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio and the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, the Guardian’s Owen Gibson reported Tuesday. Lamine Diack, the Senegalese former president of the International Association of Athletics Federations, and his son Papa Massata Diack, the IAAF’s former marketing consultant, are at the center of the probe. At issue is whether the two acted as intermediaries between the cities that bid for the 2016 and 2020 Games and a group of International Olympic Committee members. “Papa Massata Diack had appeared to arrange for ‘parcels’ to be delivered to six IOC members in 2008 at a time when Qatar was bidding for the 2016 Olympic Games, though it failed to make it beyond the shortlisting stage. Qatar has denied any wrongdoing,” Gibson writes. Those parcels would be delivered to the IOC members via a person Papa Massata Diack described as a “special adviser” in an email. That adviser, according to Gibson, was likely Lamine Diack, who was an IOC member himself from 1999 to 2013. French police already have arrested Lamine Diack over allegations that he accepted more than $1 million in bribes to cover up systemic doping by Russian track and field athletes. A footnote in an independent review of the matter by former World Anti-Doping Agency president Dick Pound suggested possible corruption in the 2020 Olympic bidding process, as Diack reportedly switched his support from Istanbul to Tokyo after a Japanese sponsor signed a deal with the IAAF. The IOC instituted sweeping rule changes after the bidding scandals that tarnished the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City. In 1999, six IOC members were expelled and four resigned after it was determined that Salt Lake Olympic organizers had given them more than $1 million in cash, gifts, trips and scholarships. Candidate cities are no longer allowed to have direct contact with IOC members, and the allegations against the Diacks would seem to suggest that some in the IOC are seeking to circumvent that rule. Despite the reforms, the Olympic bidding process still is seen as ripe for corruption. In a 2004 investigation into the bidding process for the 2012 London Games, the BBC uncovered agents who are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to act as middlemen between the contending host


Scientists find first links between Zika and temporary paralysis: What you need to know

Army soldiers in Rio de Janeiro set up a sign that reads in Portuguese "A mosquito is not stronger than an entire country" as troops across Brazil try to tackle the Zika virus. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo) A retrospective study of a Zika outbreak in Tahiti in 2013-14 has found evidence of a link between the virus and a temporary form of paralysis. The finding is the latest sign that the virus that has existed for over 50 years may be more threatening than once believed. As concerns over the virus have mounted in recent months, officials in Tahiti went back and analyzed blood samples from 42 adults who were diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare neurological disorder, around the time the virus was raging on the French Polynesian island. All but one showed signs of Zika antibodies, indicating they had been previously infected. Writing in the journal Lancet, scientists warned that at-risk countries in the Americas where the virus is spreading "need to prepare for adequate intensive care beds capacity to manage patients with Guillain-Barré syndrome." Guillain-Barré occurs when the immune system goes awry and attacks the nerves. This typically happens two to eight weeks after an infection and typically begins with a tingling sensation and can progress to paralysis. One study found that a quarter of the patients need respiratory assistance and that the death rate is as high as one in 20. In the cases documented in Tahiti, the symptoms progressed very fast. The patients reported symptoms consistent with the Zika virus a median of six days before they showed neurological symptoms. Most appeared to have a variant of the syndrome known as acute motor axonal neuropathy, or AMAN, which is characterized by paralysis and loss of reflexes. The median age of the patients was 42 years, and there were 31 men and 11 women. Nearly all were born in French Polynesia. The researchers speculated that past infection with the dengue virus might have made them more vulnerable to the syndrome but did not find any evidence of this. The study, however, contained some positive news. The patients' outcomes were "generally favorable," the researchers wrote. And they had a "faster recovery than usually observed in typical Guillain-Barré syndrome," according to the researchers. Those outcomes are in sharp contrast to what health officials are reporting on the ground in Latin America. Turbo, Colombia, has reported a recent outbreak of


Douglass G/F Cameron Hayes plays the recruiting waiting game

think good things will happen for him,” Douglass Coach Tyrone Massenburg said. “There’s some things he’s good at, some things he’s not as skilled, but he can play the game and he has a passion. He’s great in the classroom. “His thing is he’ll go with whoever wants him. This is just a stepping stone to other things. His attitude is great.” NUMBER CRUNCH: 25 Points scored by guard Corey Clemmons as Bowie upset No. 16 Wise, 47-45, in Monday’s 4A South region quarterfinals in boys’ basketball. The Bulldogs advanced to Wednesday’s semifinal round against No. 5 Eleanor Roosevelt, which they upset to close the regular season last week. NUMBER CRUNCH (Part II): 8 The number of lower seeds that won games Monday night in the Maryland 4A boys’ basketball tournament, including four from Montgomery County (Whitman, Clarksburg, Springbrook and Blair) BREAKFAST LINKS - Check out The Post’s latest top 20 poll for boys’ basketball, where Potomac (Va.) makes a jump and Battlefield enters the rankings after winning region titles. - Here’s our newest girls’ basketball poll, where Paul VI re-takes the No. 1 spot and four new teams join the mix. - Clarksburg upset No. 16 Quince Orchard, 52-50, with defense to highlight a wild Monday night in the Maryland 4A West boys’ basketball playoffs. - Broad Run girls’ basketball rallies around Coach Derrick Jenkins after a stroke. - George Mason boys’ basketball remains unbeaten and now takes aim at its first state title. - Montgomery girls’ basketball notebook: The White sisters bolster Bethesda-Chevy Chase’s backcourt, while sophomore Jordan Odom powers Quince Orchard. - Junior Sam Lewis leads Howard’s quest for redemption against Paint Branch in the Maryland 4A North region girls’ basketball tournament. - Senior swingman Blake Pagon does it all for 6A North region boys’ basketball champion Battlefield. VIDEO OF THE DAY Speaking of Whitman, here’s a vine of junior Max Oppenheim’s buzzer-beating tip in that gave the Vikings a 48-47 win over rival Bethesda-Chevy Chase. VIDEO OF THE DAY (PART III) Clarksburg also scored a big upset last night as the Coyotes edged No. 16 Quince Orchard to advance to the Maryland 4A West region quarterfinals. Check out the highlights. The Coyotes pull of a huge upset over the Cougars in a 52-50 win to advance in the playoffs. VIDEO OF THE DAY (PART II) Check out the latest episode of AllMetSports Top Basketball Plays. Host


Picking genders for characters could be the next big thing for emoji

According to the common emoji keyboard, women don’t run. Only men run. See? 🏃 But that could soon change under a new draft proposal to the Unicode Consortium, the body that develops and maintains software standards for texts and characters. The document outlines a number of changes, including male, female and neutral gender options for many human-looking characters. If adopted, this would follow Apple’s move last year to unveil a new set of emoji that allows users to pick skin tones, which came after calls for racially diverse emoji. The new gender options would allow, for instance, a male, or female runner: (Unicode) And, the businessman who levitates? Now a businesswoman or businessperson can hover, for some reason. (Seriously, why is this person in a suit hovering?) From Emojipedia: Male, female and gender-neutral person hovering. (Screenshot Emojipedia) Other changes would allow for customizing hair color to black, blond, brown, red and gray, as well as bald. According to the proposal, the list of hair options come from “the distinctions made in the U.S. Online Passport form, the UN Grounds Pass application, and other forms such as driver’s licenses.” The proposal also includes changing the direction of characters to face left or right and the possibility for some regional flags. Individual companies would still have to implement the changes, if adopted by Unicode, on their platforms. For instance, Google’s Android, which already has a set of gender-neutral emoji, doesn’t allow users to pick skin tones for emoji the way that Apple’s keyboard does. Given the large number of possible combinations, the proposals states that it’s “anticipated that only certain combinations would be supported by major vendors.” “There is no requirement or expectation that all of the possible combinations — or even any large subset of them — be supported by vendors, until there is technology in the fonts to deal with the combinatorics,” it states. READ MORE EMOJI: The secret double meanings of emoji A 12-year-old girl is facing criminal charges for using certain emoji. She’s not alone. Here are the new, racially diverse emoji Meet the guy trying to turn emoji into a legitimate, usable language


Main Street Morning: Medical pot marches forward in Georgia

small businesses that make giant fast-food brands possible. Start-ups - Silicon Valley is shaken as 19 start-ups see their valuations slashed – which is one of the reasons why more and more tech workers are increasingly looking to leave Silicon Valley. - These are the 10 top start-up communities in Silicon Valley. - Fidelity slashes more start-up valuations. - A company that provides a marketplace app for blue collar jobs raises $10 million. Technology - Microsoft’s HoloLens is now available for pre-order if you have $3,000 to spare. - Microsoft reignites the PC vs Mac wars. - Sean Penn plans to talk cybersecurity in San Francisco. - Sony has a new robotic personal assistant. Online - Square’s money-sending app now holds on to customers’ cash. Social Media - These are 23 hidden ways to use Twitter advanced search. Ideas - Researchers have created solar cells so thin and light they float on a soap bubble. On This Day in 1936 - The Hoover Dam is finished. Around the Country - The seas are rising around Miami Beach and people are starting to respond. - Georgia’s House of Representatives passes a medical marijuana bill. - Applications are open for the seventh annual Bright Buffalo Niagara Entrepreneur Expo. - All California business owners should know about this state funded training program. - A bridge repair in a Pennsylvania town imperils a business. - The fate of a Massachusetts restaurant is unclear after its owner is arrested at the Canadian border. - An iconic Phoenix food truck is opening a brick-and-mortar location in Scottsdale. Around the World - These the 10 freest economies for entrepreneurs. - Israeli investment firms received $665 million in commitments in February. - More firms are going out of business in Singapore then are being formed. - Japan’s factory output rises for the first time in three months. - Iran is set to elect a record number of women into its parliament. - Argentina reaches a $4.65 billion “agreement in principle” with hedge funds in a 15-year long battle. - Why it took Starbucks 45 years to announce a store in Italy. - An historic Italian city bans ethnic food to protect its culture. - American domain giant GoDaddy launches in 11 Asian markets. - Pasta made from insects is selling well in France. - Burkina Faso targets 4,000 business partnerships. Gene Marks owns the Marks Group, a Bala


Study suggests a new trick for finding alien civilizations

educated guesses about what sort of body the planet is — and whether it could hold liquid water. NASA now estimates that there are more than 1 billion "Earth-like" planets in our galaxy alone. It's true that we have absolutely no idea what intelligent life on another planet might look like, but looking for life that evolved on a planet like our own seems like a safe start. After all, we know it happened at least once. The new study suggests expanding that approach: What if aliens didn't just evolve on an Earth-like planet, but evolved into the sort of beings who would use planetary transits to go looking for other Earth-like planets? In other words, what if the aliens have their own Kepler? If that's the case, then those aliens would be within Earth's own "transit zone" — the thin sliver of space from which an observer could see our planet's passage in front of the sun. "It's impossible to predict whether extraterrestrials use the same observational techniques as we do," study co-author René Heller of the Institute for Astrophysics in Göttingen, Germany, said in a statement. "But they will have to deal with the same physical principles as we do, and Earth's solar transits are an obvious method to detect us." In theory, we may be able to catch a planet that had already sent us some kind of message long, long ago. And once we knew what direction to listen in, we'd stand a better chance of capturing it. So how much does that narrow down our potential search? A lot, but probably not enough: There are likely at least 10,000 star systems with planets worth checking out in that region. And in 2010, researchers turned a telescope array on the transit zone for a few days just to check for any obvious alien signals. Like most proposed techniques in the hunt for intelligent life, this idea — while intriguing — is unlikely to drop an alien civilization into our lap. But it doesn't hurt to look. A look at the best photos of space. Read More: Why NASA’s top scientist is sure that we’ll find signs of alien life in the next decade Study: Maybe we can’t find aliens because they’ve all died already This broken space telescope keeps spotting new planets New evidence suggests a ninth planet lurking at the edge of the solar system


The eerie math that could predict terrorist attacks

PredPol monitor data on past crimes to model geographic “hotspots” that can be more heavily policed or can become the focus of specific crime-prevention policies. Predicting terrorist attacks In their paper, Tench, Fry and Gill apply this same model to terrorism in Northern Ireland. The paper looks at more than 5,000 explosions of improved explosive devices (IEDs) around Northern Ireland during a particularly violent time known as “the Troubles” between 1970 and 1998, when paramilitary groups in the mostly Catholic Northern Ireland fought to secede from Britain and join Ireland. The researchers used the process to analyze when and where one group, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), launched its terror attacks, how the British Security Forces responded, and how effective those responses were. As the chart below shows, the IED explosions follow a pattern. After one incident, others follow more quickly before subsiding, creating the peaks in the data below. (Fry, Tench and Gill) So you have the ordinary chance of the event, but afterward you have a “little kick,” as Fry says, that increases the probability that you’ll have another attack – but then fades away over time. Mathematicians can capture and model these patterns using a Hawkes process equation. The math can reveal patterns in past terrorist activity that weren't seen before, or be used to test different theories about those patterns, the researchers say. It can also create predictive models, which estimate the probability of future attacks at different times and in different areas. The researchers say that their analysis shows distinct phases in the conflict between the Irish terrorists and authorities. For example, bombings slowed down as the IRA was infiltrated by British security forces and when more of its members were imprisoned, and bombings increased when the group launched a renewed campaign of violence or tried to use incidents of terrorism as a bargaining tool in negotiations. One of the most fascinating lessons of the research is on the effects of counterterrorist operations. The paper shows evidence that the death of Catholic civilians, whom the IRA claimed to be representing, would cause the group to increase their IED attacks in retaliation. That finding echoes previous research that looked at counterterrorism operations by the United States and its coalition partners in Iraq. That paper showed that counterinsurgency operations that were carried out indiscriminately – in other words, attacks that hurt or kill innocent people who


Osama bin Laden in secret speech: I know why U.S. soldiers commit suicide

New documents released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence reveal more information about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. A newly released trove of documents confiscated from the Pakistani home in which al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed by Navy SEALs includes a speech that notes a spike in suicides among U.S. troops because of the brutality of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The documents, kept secret by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence until Tuesday, cover an array of themes, and includes one called “The America Speech.” [In secret will, bin Laden wanted his fortune to funding war against West] The speech is not dated, but likely was penned before Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, was killed in a U.S. airstrike in June 2006. Bin Laden said in the speech that Zarqawi had started an organization “whereby Iraq has become a point that attracts and gathers Mujahid energies.” Bin Laden then underscored the psychological impact on U.S. troops as they faced insurgents attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, and noted that one American officer had recently compared U.S. soldiers in Iraq to ducks in a barrel. “Do you know why the rate of suicide among your soldiers in Iraq has risen?” bin Laden asked. “Look at these pictures from the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan that reveal that hell and the psychological state of the soldier as he gathers the limbs of his brothers, and he will be like them today or tomorrow.” The speech shows again how bin Laden — who possessed a library that included everything from U.S. counterinsurgency manuals to porn — kept up with the news of the day while facing a massive manhunt by the United States. In 2006, the Army, in particular, coped with a rash of suicides. There were 99 confirmed suicides in the service that year, a third of which occurred in Iraq or Afghanistan. Bin Laden argued in the speech that the intensity of combat faced by the U.S. military in Iraq had prompted U.S. officials to “dispense with optimistic phrases about the war.” That again may provide a hint on when it was written: U.S. officials began to acknowledge skyrocketing sectarian violence in 2006, ahead of the U.S. troop surge there that was ordered in January 2007. Read more: Osama bin Laden almost sounds like a U.S. presidential candidate in this secret


Watch Live: Record-breaking astronaut Scott Kelly comes home

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who's just completed a record-breaking 340-day mission, starts his journey back to Earth on Tuesday evening. You can watch it happen in the video above, streamed live by NASA. Around 4:15 p.m. Eastern time, you can watch Kelly and the two other astronauts heading back to Earth enter the Soyuz capsule and prepare for their bumpy ride home. They'll be closed into the capsule around 4:40 p.m., and they'll be back on the air to prepare to undock at 7 p.m (with the undocking itself scheduled for an hour after that). #Thanks for following our #YearInSpace The journey isn't over. Follow me as I rediscover #Earth! See you down below! https://t.co/7byNy6fMG4 Sign back on at 10 p.m. to watch the capsule de-orbit. The astronauts are expected to land at 11:25 p.m. After a year of doing some thrilling science — and gardening — Kelly is finally on his way home. Let's give him a warm welcome. Read more: Study suggests a new trick for finding alien civilizations New Hubble photo shows a serene blue ‘bubble’ in space Astronaut Scott Kelly’s historic year-long space mission is coming to an end On Friday, half a pair of twins leaves for a year in space. Here’s why that’s awesome.


Ted Cruz’s off-base claim that having women in combat leads to increased casualties

(Photo by Ricky Carioti/ The Washington Post) “You know, the Marines recently did studies on this, looking [at] that. Putting women in that position [in combat] ended up increasing casualties both among the women and among the men, that it decreases military effectiveness.” –Sen. Ted Cruz, FOX News forum, Feb. 24, 2016 Combat integration is a controversial topic that has come up regularly on the campaign trail. During a recent forum, Cruz cited a United States Marine Corps study examining the issue. But did this study find that putting women in previously-closed combat positions would increase casualties among men and women and decrease military effectiveness, as Cruz claimed? No, he’s stretching the data. Let’s take a look at what the study really said. The Facts All combat positions in all military branches have been open to women since Jan. 1, 2016. The Army and Marine Corps has had more gender-restricted positions than other military branches. The Marine Corps ran a nine-month experiment to find out how the Corps would look with integrated combat units, which included previously-closed positions (infantry, artillery and mechanized units). The units in the study were integrated into ratios that would be expected. There were two phases of the study: a four-month training period and a five-month “deployment” period to the Mojave Desert in Twentynine Palms, Calif. They simulated a training and warfare cycle that was common over the past 15 years. The result was a nearly 1,000-page report. Researchers looked at critical components of ground combat: speed, cohesion, lethality (ability to hit the target), survivability (ability to withstand or avoid enemy gunfire) and readiness (whether you are well enough to do your job when called on to do it). All-male teams performed better on 69 percent of the tasks compared to integrated units, which finished their tasks at a slower rate and with fewer hits on target (except with the .50 caliber machine gun). But integrated teams had higher unit cohesion. Women didn’t do as well as men removing wounded bodies from the battlefield. This was done using a 220-pound dummy body, which represents the weight of an average Marine (174 pounds) carrying full combat gear. The average weight of a female volunteer in the study was 142 pounds. There was no finding that supported Cruz’s claim that having an integrated team would increase “casualties” (when a person can no longer can fight because of injury


Indian army makes recruits take test in underwear — to avoid cheating

Indian army candidates sit in their underwear in a field as they take a written exam after being asked to remove their clothing to deter cheating during a recruitment day in Muzaffarpur on Feb. 28, 2016. STRDEL/AFP/Getty Images If you Google “cheating on tests,” you can find 24 million entries in just seconds. There are, for example, supposedly helpful discussions about “28 ways to cheat on a test using school supplies” and “what are the sneakiest ways to cheat on a test.” News stories from around the world abound about one cheating scandal after another. There’s cheating, for example, on the SAT, administration after administration, in countries around the world, leading the College Board to withhold scores to investigate. There’s cheating on the Test of English as a Foreign Language and the Graduate Record Examination, which allows foreign nationals to enter U.S. colleges and universities without actually knowing English and with falsified records. (Last year the U.S. Justice Department indicted 15 Chinese nationals in an elaborate cheating scheme to enter U.S. colleges.) There’s cheating on K-12 tests; a survey of 40,000 high school students done by the nonprofit Josephson Institute of Ethics in 2010 found that more than half of teenagers said they had cheated on a test in the previous year, and 34 percent said they had done it more than twice. Even prestigious universities are not immune; at Stanford University, students in recent years have been caught cheating in computer science (using someone else’s coding), and other subjects. And Harvard has had its own cheating scandals, too. High tech has made it even easier for students to cheat, with apps available to help. But it’s not just in academia where cheating is common. A story from the Wall Street Journal last year tells about the famed Goldman Sachs firing of 20 junior employees for cheating on training tests, and one from WFTV (Channel 9) in Florida reports about a 2015 investigation into firefighters cheating on tests for certification in pediatric advanced life support, and a story just the other day from PennLive.com describes a cheating scandal at the Pennsylvania State Police Academy in which 29 cadets were removed. The auto industry has had its share of cheating news recently. Tire maker Nokian Renkaat is reported to have cheated on tire comparisons tests, and, of course, Volkswagen famously cheated on car emissions tests. And now, we have this from


Bangladeshi women are being trafficked to Syria as sex slaves

spoils," including slaves, and the exploitation of natural resources. REUTERS/Stringer/Files According to Reuters, "scores" of young Bangladeshi women have been trafficked to Syria and forced into both domestic and sex work. The news agency's report cited a senior Bangladeshi official from the Rapid Action Battalion, an elite police agency, who claimed that his unit came across about 45 cases last year involving women who had been taken to the war-ravaged Middle Eastern country, tricked, exploited and, in some cases, raped and abused. Some 8 million Bangladeshis work overseas; a considerable number of them are employed as construction and domestic labor in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. Many of the women taken to Syria -- and it's not clear from the report where in the country they have been trafficked -- likely migrated with the understanding that they had jobs lined up in Jordan, Lebanon or elsewhere, and from there were coerced into going to Syria. Reuters has more: "It started with one woman called Shahinoor who escaped from her captors in Syria. She called her mother who complained to us," Commander Khadaker Golam Sarowar of RAB-3 told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Monday. "Shahinoor was supposed to go to Lebanon. Instead she was taken to Dubai with five other women, and then on to Syria where she was sold to different people -- sometimes to work as a maid, sometimes for sex. She told us there were others." Sarowar said the 34-year-old woman was "extremely sick and unable to move." Bangladeshi officials in Syria flew her to Dhaka where she is being treated for a kidney illness, he added. Last week, local media reports in Bangladesh detailed raids carried out by the RAB on suspected human trafficking cells, though it's unclear whether the arrests made had any connection to the cases linked to Syria. The miserable, five-year conflict in Syria has seen the rise of the jihadist Islamic State, which has carried out mass abductions of women, particularly in Iraq. Many of these women, including some teenage girls, have been forced into a widespread system of rape and enslavement by the militants. More on WorldViews The Islamic State's horrifying practice of sex slavery, explained Indian student went to join the Islamic State, but all he got was this lousy job cleaning toilets Some of the Islamic State’s former sex slaves were forced to have ‘virginity tests’ after escaping


The cosmic hunt for Fast Radio Bursts just got a surprising new twist

a collision of massive stars as the cause of the mysterious signal. But massive collisions don't repeat – and now it seems apparent that FRBs can and do. "I don’t think the final nail is in the coffin on that," Jason Hessels, corresponding author of the latest study, told The Post in reference to the other team's research."There are more observations that need to be done, but it seems less convincing than it did last week." It is possible, he and other experts said, that there is more than one kind of FRB out there – some sent out by massive crashes in space, and others coming from different, more sustainable sources. Harvard University’s Edo Berger, who is a co-author on an as-yet-unpublished paper that sets out to refute the supposed FRB origin, was more blunt: "Essentially I would say that the whole rationale behind the paper has gone away within about two or three days of when it was published," he told The Post, explaining that he believes the signal described in that paper has lasted too long to be associated with an FRB, and is likely some other space phenomenon they stumbled upon by accident. Evan Keane, an astronomer with the Square Kilometer Array Organization who led the first study, told The Post that he won't comment on the particulars of Berger's takedown until it's reviewed by other scientists and published in a journal. But Keane and Berger agree on one thing: The latest paper is the real deal. "My initial thoughts on the paper are that it is quite exciting, and as it is repeating it is clearly not due to a 'one off’ event, like (say) a supernova, or merger of two objects; they would only happen once," Keane told The Post in an email. He wasn't surprised or concerned about implications for his own findings, since scientists have floated the idea of multiple FRB origins before, "but it is clearly excellent to see the repetition, and so clearly," he said. The findings stem from a discovery made in November, when McGill University Ph.D. student Paul Scholz was working with FRB data from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, which is the largest of its kind. After months of gathering and analyzing more data from the same spot in the sky, Scholz, Hessels and their colleagues showed several bursts with properties consistent with those of


Give me a break: classical musicians who step away.

afterwards. A detail from an interview I did with the pianist Yefim Bronfman in 2007 has stuck in my mind. In order to learn a new piece that the composer was late delivering, he matter-of-factly said, he had to stay in the hall after his recitals and practice until two or three in the morning. (The composer is virtually always late delivering a new piece.) I also refer often to something a former member of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program said to me about a piece of advice from Renee Fleming. It wasn’t about performing. It was about budgeting your time so you were able to learn your music. [Opera houses make room for relative youngsters.] Of course, musicians have always had to focus on the practicalities. Yet as I attend more and more performances that seem accurate but joyless, I fear that the business of classical music has taken some of the fun right out of the game. “I don’t want to become a two-hundred-concert-per-year performing machine,” Anderszewski said to Humans of New York. “It requires too much efficiency. And the efficiency burns you out. … If you’re piloting a Boeing 777 with four hundred people on board, you aren’t going to try new maneuvers. You aren’t going to have fun or experiment. You don’t have time to stay in your dreams or ideas… I won’t say that taking time off makes you a ‘better’ musician, because I don’t like the word ‘better.’ It sounds competitive. But it does make you less of an automaton and more human.” Pierre-Laurent Aimard spoke of his sabbatical in similar terms. “I have the feeling [I was] starting a new life,” he said to me in 2014, shortly after his return to the stage. “Sincerely, I was a little afraid. There were moments when I thought if I could, I would remain like that for the rest of my life.” Of course, most people would love to take a year off from the grind of their daily jobs and pursue outside passions. We just don’t expect to hear this from artists. Artists, after all, are supposed to be having fun at what they do, communicating great truths, deriving new strength from their art even as they pour themselves out. The paradigm of the jet-set artist is Placido Domingo, seemingly insatiable in his thirst for performance, flying in and out for single evenings, finding


Target ramps up spending on logistics to win your shopping dollars

A Target store in Torrance, Calif. (Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg News) NEW YORK — As Target looks to build on improved store traffic and a holiday-season surge in digital sales, the big-box retailer said Wednesday that it plans to boost annual spending on technology and supply chain initiatives to as much as $2.5 billion a year by 2017, sharply higher than the $1.4 billion spent last year. At a presentation to investors here Wednesday, executives outlined a major effort to transform Target’s logistics operations to speed delivery of online purchases while keeping store shelves better stocked. The plan involves looking at issues including big changes in how it will use its warehouses to fulfill online orders and seemingly small details such as ordering the optimal-sized packs of each product so they are easy for workers to unload on shelves. “Over time, we’ve been adding stress and complexity to systems that frankly were built for another time,” said John Mulligan, Target’s chief operating officer. Target expects its spending on capital expenditures such as these to increase to $1.8 billion in 2016, and then the company plans to further ratchet up spending in 2017 and beyond to between $2 billion and $2.5 billion a year. Although those behind-the-scenes changes may not be especially visible to Target shoppers, some of the retailers’ other big bets for 2016 surely will: Target will be making an effort to improve its $18.5 billion grocery business, a category that chief executive Brian Cornell said has previously left guests “underwhelmed and disappointed.” This year, Target will be working to improve its assortment of fresh grocery items, in particular. But Cornell told reporters Wednesday that executives are doing an item-by-item evaluation “from the grove to the shelf” on how to make sure customers see fresher food at Target. “Turning this business around will be a multi-year effort, and it’s not going to be easy,” Cornell said. Customers might also notice new investment in the kids’ department: Target recently launched Pillowfort, an exclusive brand of gender-neutral kids’ bedding and home goods. On Wednesday, Cornell said that a children’s apparel brand, Cat & Jack, is poised to launch during the back-to-school season and that the company expects the line to be a “multibillion-dollar brand.” Target’s plans for this year are an extension of a strategy that Cornell outlined shortly after he took the helm of the company in 2014, one focusing on


This tiny dragonfly makes record-breaking flights around the globe

The body and wings of the dragonfly Pantala flavescens have evolved in a way that lets the insect glide extraordinary distances on weather currents. (Greg Lasley) Imagine being just an inch and a half long and flapping your wings all the way across the ocean. This week, we're all buzzing with news of astronaut Scott Kelly's record-breaking flight on the International Space Station. But here at home, a much smaller organism may be circling the globe time and time again without accolades: According to a new study, the itty bitty dragonfly Pantala flavescens could take longer flights than any other known insect, putting it in the ballpark of larger migratory animals like birds and whales. The estimated 4,400 miles or more traveled by members of this tiny species smashes the previous record for insect migration of 2,500 miles, held by monarch butterflies. The study, published Wednesday in PLOS ONE, couldn't rely on GPS trackers to figure out flight durations for the little bugs – they couldn't support the weight of such devices. Instead, researchers looked at their genes. The reason Pantala flavescens were suspected to be such prolific fliers is that they can be found all over the globe. For this study, researchers looked at the genes of Pantala collected in Texas, eastern Canada, Japan, Korea, India and South America. "This is the first time anyone has looked at genes to see how far these insects have traveled," senior author Jessica Ware, an assistant professor of biology at Rutgers, said in a statement. "If North American Pantala only bred with North American Pantala, and Japanese Pantala only bred with Japanese Pantala, we would expect to see that in genetic results that differed from each other. Because we don't see that, it suggests the mixing of genes across vast geographic expanses." In other words, the insects are more similar from continent to continent than scientists would expect, should they mostly stick to their own regions. They must be doing a lot of long-distance dating – assuming they really are as frequent fliers as their genes would suggest. It seems that Pantala is well-suited for long-haul flights, with wings designed for gliding on the wind for much of the trip, especially if they can get caught up in strong hurricane winds. But believe it or not, crossing an ocean when you're the size of a paper clip – even if you've evolved


A definitive guide to the best cheap-eats destinations in the D.C. area

not to miss The other Le Pain Where: Ritchie Center The causa sampler at La Limena in Rockville. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) One of countless strip malls that litter Rockville Pike (suggested motto: “We’re Faceless and We Love It!”), the Ritchie Center saves all its character for the tenants that occupy the doggedly dull storefronts. Over the course of a week, you can wander the globe: Mexican regional cuisine one day (order the poc chuc, a Yucatan pork dish, at El Mariachi) and Vietnamese soups and sandwiches the next (Pho 95 and Mr. Banh Mi). Your tour will continue through Peru and Cuba (La Limena), Taiwan (Jumbo Jumbo Bubble Express), India (Om Fine Indian Cuisine, a misnomer in my experience) and Japan/China/South Asia (the ambitious and mostly delicious Super Bowl Noodle House). There’s also a bakery, Yasaman, that finds inspiration in the wide world of sweets, from France to Asia. Even molecular gastronomy pops its egghead into the Ritchie Center: Mr. Banh Mi sells bubble drinks with little black balls that explode on contact with your teeth, just like the liquid olives made famous at El Bulli. Dish not to miss The sweet finish Where: Downtown Silver Spring Raw hunks of ribeye with two hot sauces and paprika powder at Lucy Ethiopian restaurant in Silver Spring. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post) Ethiopians and their fragrant, sometimes fiery finger food dominate this commercial district just north of Washington. By my unofficial count, there are at least 13 restaurants, cafes, grocery stores and coffee shops dedicated to the East African fare. For those forever complaining about a lack of late-night eats, downtown Silver Spring is your place. Ethiopians have no qualms about digging into a platter of stews, some spiced with an incendiary berbere spice mix, at 10:30 p.m. Or later. These places don’t rest, either. After a late service, they’ll turn around and open for breakfast, Ethiopian-style, with morning dishes spiked with jalapenos and/or berbere, which will jolt you awake faster than a strong cup of black coffee from Yirgacheffe. Dish not to miss Beyond Ethiopian coffee Where: Wheaton Crispy Maryland chicken egg-noodle soup at Mi La Cay. (Tim Carman/The Washington Post) This Maryland neighborhood has long served as an incubator for small, family-run restaurants. The community has nurtured some of the most beloved eateries in the area: El Pollo Rico, Nava Thai, Ren’s Ramen, Max’s Kosher Cafe, Hollywood East Cafe,


Legal marijuana is finally doing what the drug war couldn’t

Assessment. "Law enforcement reporting indicates that Mexican cartels are attempting to produce higher-quality marijuana to keep up with U.S. demand." If the decline in border seizures is any indication, however, it appears that Mexican growers are having difficulty competing with domestic production. Some federal authorities are beginning to believe this is the case. Noting the decline in border seizures, Michael Botticelli, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, told a Senate committee last year that "given the increase in marijuana use among the American population, this suggests that people using marijuana in the United States may be increasingly obtaining marijuana from domestic sources." Experts caution, however, that the recreational marijuana market in places such as Colorado and Washington, is likely having a smaller impact than the much larger and older medical marijuana market in many states, primarily California. "Those trying to understand what has happened with U.S. cannabis consumption and imports over the past decade need to pay close attention to licensed and unlicensed production in medical states, especially California," Beau Kilmer of the RAND Corporation said in an email. California remains the country's leader in the illicit production of marijuana, as well as marijuana grown legally under the state's medical marijuana regime. A good barometer of this is the DEA's data on marijuana eradication, which indicates where law enforcement officers discover and destroy marijuana crops. In 2014, California accounted for more than 60 percent of all marijuana plants seized in the United States. Given those numbers, "it’s still too soon for production in Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska to be a bigger story than California," said Jonathan Caulkins, a Carnegie-Mellon drug policy expert, in an email. Still, there's no question that drug production south of the border is changing. The DEA has even found evidence that the flow of illegal marijuana is starting to reverse, with some cases of U.S. marijuana being smuggled into Mexico. The cartels, of course, are adapting to the new reality. Seizure data appears to indicate that with marijuana profits tumbling, they're switching over to heroin and meth. As of Feb. 26, 2015 marijuana was made legal in D.C.—sort of. Here are the ins and outs of the complex pot law. More from Wonkblog: Why Mexico's drug cartels love America's gun laws These 'marijuana goggles' are supposed to make you feel stoned These places banned booze. Now they're dealing with something far worse


Everything you need to know about Britain leaving the European Union

(Reuters/Suzanne Plunkett) Are you tired of portmanteaus about Europe's nervous breakdown and potential breakup? Well, I've got some bad news for you then. There's a new one called "Brexit," and you're going to be hearing a lot about it between now and June. That's when Britain heads to the polls to decide whether or not to leave the European Union—get it, Brexit, as in British exit?—after 43 years as part of the now-28-nation bloc. In the best case, doing so would hurt their economy for the next 5 to 10 years, and leave them no better off after that. And in the worst, it would send political shockwaves through Europe that would dwarf the economic ones hitting Britain. Indeed, people are already talking about Brexit leading to Czexit and who knows how many others as Europe wakes up from its dream of an "ever closer union" to the reality of a new nationalism. But let's back up a minute. What would Brexit mean, and why would anyone want it? Let's go through it step-by-step. What exactly would Britain be leaving? The most important thing here is to keep our portmanteaus straight. Brexit would be nothing like Grexit. That's because Britain doesn't use the euro like Greece does. In the latter case, we were talking about a country potentially changing all the money in its economy from euros that were worth a lot to drachmas that wouldn't have been—which is why people tried to turn their bank deposits that were at risk into cash that wasn't. The possibility alone was enough to set off a slow-motion financial crisis. Brexit, by comparison, doesn't seem like it would be that bad. They'd have the pound today, and still have the pound tomorrow. Which is to say that there wouldn't be any kind of bank run. No, this would "just" mean getting rid of Britain's free trade agreement with the rest of Europe, along with all the obligations that go with it. What are those? Well, adopting all the regulations the European Union decides on, allowing the free movement of people within the bloc and paying into the joint budget. But it sounds a lot worse when I put it like this: Britain would be scrapping a free trade deal with its largest trading partner. About 45 percent of all British exports go to Europe. So while it's hard to say just how much


New assignments on National and Investigative

Announcement from National desk: We’re pleased to announce several changes spanning the National and Investigative staffs that will place some of the newsroom’s most talented reporters in new assignments. After a distinguished run covering the Pentagon marked by high-impact accountability journalism, Craig Whitlock will move to the Investigative staff, fulfilling an ambition he has held since his arrival at The Post nearly two decades ago. Joby Warrick, after his extraordinary year on the environment beat, will return to the national security staff where he will focus on the Islamic State and the operation of modern terrorism. Brady Dennis, a gifted reporter and story teller, will take on the environment with a new focus on environmental justice and accountability following the revelations around Flint, Mich., and on the immediate consequences of a warming climate. For five years, Craig has found a target-rich environment for his investigative reporting at the Pentagon. He has revealed time and again the escapades of misbehaving generals and admirals, the military’s deplorable record on sex crimes, secret surveillance operations in Africa, and the Air Force’s practice of dumping the cremated remains of U.S. war dead in a landfill. In recent years, Craig has focused on drones, pulling back the curtain on secret bases and the alarming safety record of flying robots. He came to The Post in 1998 and spent six years on Metro, where he covered the Maryland State House and (with David Fallis) documented a horrific record of police misconduct in Prince George’s County. He served six years on Foreign as Berlin bureau chief, specializing in the war on terror overseas. Working with other Post reporters, Craig has been a Pulitzer finalist three times. He graduated from Duke University, where he led the campus daily and, in a sign of things to come, once royally infuriated Coach K. He lives in Silver Spring with his wife, Jennifer, and their son, Kyle. Joby is returning to a subject he covered during earlier stints on the national security team, where his assignments ranged from intelligence and Middle East diplomacy to weapons of mass destruction. He won an Overseas Press Club of America award for his reporting on proliferation threats, and he later helped cover the Arab Spring uprisings, including the rise of a then-obscure terrorist group that called itself the Islamic State. His new book on ISIS, “Black Flags,” was named one of the ten best books


The Middle East just suffered its worst drought in 900 years

A pigeon sits on a wire during a sandstorm in Beirut, Lebanon September 8, 2015. (Reuters/Alia Haju) A NASA study has found that a drought that affected the Middle East over the past decade was perhaps the worst in the region's history for nearly a millennium. The scientists, who published their study in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, examined the tree-ring record of the Eastern Mediterranean — countries ranging from Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Syria — to determine when water was most scarce. A thinner ring signifies drier years, whereas thicker ones indicate when water was in greater abundance. "The magnitude and significance of human climate change requires us to really understand the full range of natural climate variability," said Ben Cook, lead author and climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, gesturing at the need to take a larger look at the forces at play. From NASA's press release: Between the years 1100 and 2012, the team found droughts in the tree-ring record that corresponded to those described in historical documents written at the time. According to Cook, the range of how extreme wet or dry periods were is quite broad, but the recent drought in the Levant region, from 1998 to 2012, stands out as about 50 percent drier than the driest period in the past 500 years, and 10 to 20 percent drier than the worst drought of the past 900 years. This points to the impact humans potentially have had on the climate over the past century. And a changing climate has, in turn, impacted societies living in the arid Levant. Other research has suggested severe drought conditions in the Middle East over the past decade had a "catalytic effect" for the upheaval and conflict that eventually gripped Syria. "There is evidence that the 2007-2010 drought contributed to the conflict in Syria," stated an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year. "It was the worst drought in the instrumental record, causing widespread crop failure and a mass migration of farming families to the urban centers. ... For Syria, a country marked by poor governance and unsustainable agricultural and environmental policies, the drought had a catalytic effect, contributing to political unrest." Amid the turbulence of the war last year, an epic dust storm, kicked up from the Syrian deserts, cloaked a large swath of the region and led


Astronomers just saw farther back in time than they ever have before

told the BBC. And new ones were popping out all the time; GN-z11 formed stars at a rate 20 times faster than our own Milky Way. For a brief time, they burned brilliantly. And then they burned out. The researchers say that the existence of such a hot and active galaxy shows how little they know about the universe’s toddler years. Marijn Franx, a co-author from the University of Leiden, noted in the statement that previous research suggested that such a thing wasn’t possible. How exactly the brilliant GN-z11 was created “remains somewhat of a mystery for now,” added his colleague Ivo Labbe. There is some skepticism about GN-z11’s age from other scientists. Speaking to the AP, Richard Ellis, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory who found the previous record-holder for farthest galaxy ever seen, noted that the astronomers studied a spectrum of light that’s seen as less reliable. Ellis wrote in an email that those light signatures are “noisier and harder to interpret,” and that for GN-z11 to be visible it would have to be three times brighter than typical galaxies. Oesch responded that his team made sure “this was as clean as possible a measurement,” and noted that the technique he used is now becoming standard. This will probably stand as one of Hubble’s last big accomplishments and almost certainly its most distant find. The decades-old behemoth hasn’t been repaired since 2009, and will likely be retired after NASA launches its new space telescope, the James Webb, in 2018. Exactly how that happens is still up in the air, so to speak. The telescope could be booted into a higher “parking orbit,” where it will float for centuries as yet another piece of space junk. Or it might be summoned back to Earth via a robotic craft, which would guide it on a fiery descent into the Pacific Ocean. But both options are still years away. If anything, Oesch said, the new find shows that after more than two decades aloft, Hubble has still got it. “Hubble has proven once again, even after almost 26 years in space, just how special it is,” he told the BBC. “When the telescope was launched, we were investigating galaxies a little over half-way back in cosmic history. Now, we’re going 97 percent of the way back. It really is a tremendous achievement.” A look at the best photos of space.


Drug intoxication, water immersion led to Bobbi Kristina Brown’s death: medical examiner

A medical examiner says Bobbi Kristina Brown's death was "clearly not due to natural causes," but has classified the manner of her death as "undetermined." The face of Bobbi Kristina Brown was immersed in water, a factor that — coupled with drug intoxication — led to to her 2015 death, according to a Georgia medical examiner’s office. The Fulton County Medical Examiner on Friday released a statement on the death of Brown, who was found unresponsive in a bathtub at her Georgia home in January 2015. The cause of death was determined to be lobar pneumonia, which resulted from the “drug intoxication” and water immersion, according to the office. “The underlying cause of death is the condition which starts the downhill course of events leading to death and in this case is the immersion associated with drug intoxication,” a release on a Brown’s death said. The information was released on what would have been Brown’s birthday; the only child of Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown died at a hospice facility at age 22, months after she was discovered in the tub. “The autopsy alone could not reveal the underlying cause of death because of the long interval between Ms. Brown being found unresponsive in the bathtub and her eventual death,” the medical examiner’s release states. “Thus, the underlying cause of death is based substantially on review of medical records, the results of toxicology tests, investigative records, and the fact that the autopsy did not show any other likely underlying cause of death or reason for Ms. Brown becoming unresponsive.” Earlier this week, a judge ruled that Brown’s autopsy records could be unsealed, siding with media organizations that had been seeking the information, the Associated Press reported. Bobbi Kristina’s death bears similarities to her mother’s; Whitney Houston was discovered face-down in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton hotel in February 2012. She died at age 48. The daughter of the legendary singer was found unresponsive in a bathtub on Jan. 31, 2015. She died on July 26, 2015. Marijuana and alcohol were among the substances cited in Friday’s statement, as well as medications that were used “for sedation or to treat anxiety.” Officials also investigated the manner of Brown’s death, which means they looked at whether it occurred because of natural causes or an intentional act, or whether an unintentional cause was to blame. However, the release states, that wasn’t something


Goodyear’s radical idea of what driverless car tires will look like

The Goodyear Eagle-360 concept tire Amid a whirlwind of interest around self-driving cars, companies are sharing flashy videos and prototypes of what they believe the car of the future will look like. Some are small and podlike. Others are sleek sedans covered in chrome. The interiors of these vehicles generally look drastically different than what we’re seeing today. The Eagle-360 looks like a large rubber ball with a tread on it. (Goodyear) But one thing generally has gone unchanged on these vehicles — the tires. Goodyear, however, changed that this week at the Geneva International Motor Show, revealing spherical tires as its vision for the tires of future autonomous vehicles. The tires, called the Eagle-360, are essential large rubber balls. These tires wouldn’t connect to the vehicle’s axles; instead they would magnetically levitate under the vehicle. The vehicle would magnetically levitate over the car. (Goodyear) The tire treads would also have unique designs based on a vehicle’s location and habits. Does a car drive a lot in the city or on highways? A pattern would be selected to provide the best performance for those circumstances. The tires would also include sensors that communicate road and water conditions to other vehicles. So the wheels on one car might rotate to use a different part of their tread — perhaps one built for wet conditions — after receiving word from a car ahead of an approaching slick patch. The tire treads are based after the appearance of the human brain. (Goodyear) The tires would also monitor their own wear and tear, so the 360-degree tires would rotate regularly to spread wear evenly in order to maximize the tire’s life. And for the record, the wheels wouldn’t even turn in a traditional sense. The balls would just begin rolling in a different direction. Goodyear points to benefits such as more efficient, densely packed parking lots because cars could turn at 90-degree angles rather than the traditional wider turns that require broader lanes. In this image the car is driving sideways down the lane to a parking spot. This is made possible by the unique tires. (Goodyear)


Arizona has a wild burro problem

far, have been fatal only to burros, not humans). The animals also mow down the landscape, damaging the habitat and “out-competing” the native bighorn sheep in the area, Moss said. And with no real predators, the burro population doubles in size every four years. Oatman Burros Ire has been rising among local and state officials, particularly those in the Arizona Game and Fish Department, which is in charge of managing wildlife in the state – but not the burros, because of that 1971 congressional act. Its commissioner has accused the bureau of shirking its duties and has threatened legal action. But as a first step, it has proposed providing expertise and logistical support to the feds in the hope of expanding burro adoptions in Arizona. The bureau’s director, Neil Kornze, told the House Appropriations Committee on Thursday that the program is one of the bureau’s “most challenging responsibilities” and has “substantial and unsustainable” costs. ]Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is concerned about wild burros. (Evan Vucci/AP) Amber Cargile, a spokeswoman for the bureau’s Arizona office, said the agency is trying new approaches to burro adoptions, including billboards and “increasing social media profiles” of the burros looking for their forever homes. In the past year, she said, 300 burros in the state have entered “the adoption pipeline.” The bureau is also working with the Humane Society of the United States to prepare for a field study on using the contraceptive PZP to control the burro population, focusing on the Black Mountain burros, she said. “The BLM recognizes the need for innovative solutions to put the management of wild burros on a sustainable path for the benefit of the animals, the land and the U.S. taxpayers,” Cargile said. Moss said he and other officials think contraceptives would be too expensive. Holly Hazard, a senior vice president at the Humane Society and the group’s resident burro expert, said they would cost less than a large-scale adoption program, and she also urged Mohave County to stop letting tourists feed the burros. “Contraception would be a perfect antidote,” Hazard said. But “they also have to train these burros not to come to the smorgasbord that they have in the center of Oatman.” Plenty of YouTube videos star the burros of Oatman. Some feature burro fights, which Moss said is also a sign of the population problem: Males now spar over females in plain view of visitors.


How protecting the environment changes human nature

Fishers catching live bait in the Gulf of California, Mexico. (Image credit: Xavier Basurto) Establishing nature preserves and other types of protected areas is one of the most common conservation strategies — and its benefit to the environment is clear. What’s less obvious, though, is how these protected areas affect the human communities nearby. It’s an important question to consider, not only from a social standpoint, but from a conservation perspective as well: If a local community reacts negatively to the establishment of a preserve — which changes the ways in which they’re permitted to interact with the environment — it may be less likely that the protections will last or be successful in the long run. Until now, it’s an issue that’s been poorly investigated. But a new study, published Friday in the journal Science Advances, may open the door to a new vein of research aimed at fostering greater understanding of the potential of protected areas for both environmental and human well-being. The study finds that protected areas may actually change the social structure of their associated human communities, inciting both higher degrees of cooperation and competition among community members — but with a net outcome that, in the right circumstances, can give a boost to overall social cohesion. “This creative study provides some of the first experimental evidence showing that both negative and positive interactions can intensify after a cooperatively based human network is formed,” said Brian Silliman, a professor of marine conservation biology at Duke University (who was not involved with the new study) by email. The new study, led by researcher Xavier Basurto, focuses on the social effects of marine protected areas off the coast of Baja California, Mexico. “A lot of work has been done on the biological effects of marine protected areas, and much less work has been done trying to understand the effects that they have in fishing communities, or in the communities on the coastline that are influenced by marine protected areas,” said Basurto, an assistant professor of sustainability science at Duke University. His main interest in the issue, he said, came from a civil society perspective. “If marine protected areas are having a negative effect, that will undermine the local rural civil society that is needed to help sustain and maintain these marine protected areas over time,” he said. “The likelihood that marine protected areas are going to be there


Pioneering approach to prevent peanut allergies in children provides ongoing protection, study shows

(iStock) A pioneering approach to prevent peanut allergies in children offers them ongoing protection after the youngsters stop eating the peanut protein that immunized them against the potentially fatal reaction, according to a study released Friday. Research last year showed that exposing infants to bits of peanut butter -- rather than keeping peanuts away from them-- offered initial protection for most children at high risk of developing an allergy. The new study, conducted by the same group of scientists and again published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that the safeguard lasted for a year after the children stopped consuming the small amounts of protein. And in a second study released Friday, the researchers tried to replicate those results with other foods known to produce allergies in children, including milk, eggs, fish, wheat and sesame. They again produced evidence that the approach might work, but because so few families stuck to the difficult feeding regimen, the outcome cannot be considered conclusive. Yet collectively, the studies offer more evidence that some medical authorities' long-established infant feeding recommendations may need to be revised. The World Health Organization, for example, recommends only breastfeeding for the first six months of life; following that guideline would keep a parent from introducing foods that might stave off allergies. In the United States, federal guidelines on the diagnosis and management of food allergies already are being reconsidered because of the results announced last year. The research team, led by Gideon Lack, head of the Department of Pediatric Allergy at King's College London, plans to continue following the hundreds of children to determine how durable the protection may be. Extended research is needed to determine how long the protection might continue, he said. "It would seem plausible, and the immunologic changes that we observed in [the study] suggest but do not demonstrate, that this may be a longer-term process," he said. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which helped to sponsor the research, said proof of ongoing protection is valuable given most people's difficulty in avoiding exposure to peanuts and peanut butter. He said that while researchers can't assume that the protection will last beyond a year until that is proven, the result is a good indication of long-lasting safety. "A year is a pretty good time," Fauci said. For some people who are allergic to them, peanuts can


Whistleblower might add to his complaint against Agriculture Department

Jonathan Lundgren, an entomologist and 11-year veteran of the department’s Agricultural Research Service, filed a complaint in October alleging that his supervisors retaliated against him in a dispute over his research. (Photo by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post) Government scientist turned whistleblower Jonathan Lundgren’s case against the government was withdrawn on Thursday, but his attorney says she made the move to buy time to assess whether to expand the scientist’s complaint against the Agriculture Department. Lundgren, an entomologist and 11-year veteran of the department’s Agricultural Research Service, filed a complaint in October with the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), an independent agency designed to protect federal employees, alleging that his supervisors retaliated against him in a dispute over his research into the effect of pesticides on pollinators like butterflies and bees. The Agriculture Department (USDA) vigorously denies this, saying Lundgren was suspended, twice, for cause – a travel-related infraction and conduct unbecoming a federal employee. The dispute was highlighted in a story published online Thursday by The Washington Post Magazine, in which Lundgren talked about starting an independent lab to conduct research free of government influence on pesticides and farming practices. [Was a USDA scientist muzzled because of his bee research?] Now Jeff Ruch, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), an alliance of scientists and other professionals working on environmental issues and representing Lundgren, says that several weeks ago USDA opened a new investigation—this time into whether Lundgren’s new ventures have created a conflict of interest. “In light of that,” says Ruch, “a couple of weeks ago, the judge in the case asked if we would like to withdraw the current claim, without prejudice, which allows for the possibility of adding to it with another count of retaliation against USDA.” A USDA spokeswoman on Friday said the agency did not object to the request to dismiss the case and added the department “cannot comment on an ongoing personnel investigation.” Ruch says MSPB claims have to be heard within a certain time frame, so withdrawing and refiling has the added benefit of “restarting the clock” on Lundgren’s action. Earlier this week, PEER informed the judge that it would like to do just that. On Thursday, administrative Judge Patricia M. Miller made it official, ordering the case withdrawn “without prejudice.” Miller’s order indicates that, as a matter of procedure, the case will automatically be refiled in a year,


Results of NASA’s twin study won’t actually be released for a year or two

Commander Scott Kelly of NASA. (Joel Kowsky/NASA) Scott Kelly may be back on Earth (and back to his normal height) but his work as a guinea pig is just getting started. Kelly's record-breaking, year-long mission to the International Space Station is giving scientists across the country a treasure trove of valuable data to study, and NASA representatives say it could take two years for most of the related research to make it to the public. In fact, Scott Kelly and his twin brother, Mark — who is being used as a sort of "control" for 10 experiments carried out over the course of the 342-day mission — will continue to report for NASA checkups and blood draws for another nine months. There are even samples taken aboard the ISS that won't return until May, when a SpaceX resupply vehicle equipped with a freezer comes back to Earth. "Just because the flight's over doesn’t mean the mission’s over," NASA scientist John Charles said Friday during a news briefing. "The data analysis is only now beginning in earnest." Much of the data will be batch analyzed — examined by the same technician, at the same time and place, with the same equipment — in an effort to avoid variables that may be mistaken for changes that occurred in space. NASA likes to give researchers "a solid year" to work with the data they're given, Charles explained, and then those findings will be submitted to scientific journals for peer review — a process in which uninvolved experts check the studies to see whether they seem sound. Initial results that provide insights may be published a year from now, Charles said, but it's likely that most findings will come out a year after that. So for now, we only have anecdotal feedback on Kelly's record-breaking jaunt into space: During the Friday news briefing, Scott and Mark Kelly both mentioned Scott's eye trouble — a common problem for astronauts. When asked how the year-long mission had compared with his previous six-month mission, Scott Kelly said that soreness was an issue. "Initially, this time, coming out of the capsule I felt better than I did last time," Kelly said. "But at some point those two lines have crossed, and my level of muscle soreness and fatigue is a lot higher than last time." Kelly explained that some astronauts find the transition into life in space more


After a series of delays, SpaceX launches upgraded Falcon 9 rocket

just past the edge of space, and not to orbit. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.) SpaceX has also previously tried to land its rocket on the drone ships coming close but ultimately failing to remain upright. Before Friday's launch, the company warned that, “a successful landing is not expected.” Its previous landing attempts came after launches to an altitude of more than a couple hundred miles up. But Friday's launch was destined to go much further, to Geostationary Transfer Orbit, more than 22,000 miles away. The great distance makes a landing attempt difficult. The higher the altitude, the greater the velocity on return. To get the satellite that high “we’re going to need a lot of propellant,” Lauren Lyons, a SpaceX enginner, said during the company’s webcast last week. “That means we’re not going to have a ton of it leftover in the first stage when we fly it back down to the droneship. And given the need to use every single last drop of that remaining propellant to burn the Falcon 9 engines to slow it down, and to orient it on to the drone ship, this landing attempt is going to be one of the more challenging ones that we’ve done.” Wondering how Falcon 9's first stage will attempt to fly back to Earth on our next launch? Image courtesy of SpaceX. Even though SpaceX landed a rocket successfully on land in December, Musk has said it would still need to be able to land at sea for “high velocity missions,” where getting back to land is more challenging--and dangerous. The company is also developing its Falcon Heavy rocket, which would be powered by 27 engines, or three times as many as the Falcon 9. The rocket that launched Friday is an upgraded version of the Falcon 9, and it has only flown once before. It is fueled by unusually cold liquid oxygen, which has caused some problems last week. Last week, the company scrubbed the launch “out of an abundance of caution” to ensure the temperature of its liquid oxygen was a low as possible. The company also had to abort the launch the following day with less than two minutes until liftoff because the propellant "wasn't loading as expected," the company said. Then on Sunday, the flight computer detected a problem and aborted the launch seconds before liftoff, even though the engines had started to fire.


9 things to do in the D.C. area on the weekend of March 5-6

Here are this weekend's best bets in nightlife, music, movies, theater and much more around the Washington area. - The Hotlist: 9 things to see, eat, drink and do in March 2016. The Yards Park announces Light Yards, a two week long art installation that will feature a large-scale projection mapping display on a giant illuminated "cloud," as well as enormous luminescent bunnies, live DJ sets, a giant Lite-Brite and more. This unique sensory experience will kick off on Saturday, February 20 and continue through Sunday, March 6, with featured events for families, and music and art lovers alike on Saturdays the 20th and 27th. Saturday-Sunday: Saturday: Saturday: Saturday: [The definitive guide to the best cheap-eats destinations in D.C.] Saturday-Sunday: Saturday-Sunday: [6 new bars to try around D.C. right now] Saturday: Saturday: Sunday:


Listen to the eerie noises emitted from the ocean’s darkest depths

the project whose mission was to obtain a baseline recording — from Challenger Deep, the lowest point in the Mariana Trench — for future scientists to use in measuring the change in underwater noise levels. The team was composed of researchers from NOAA, Oregon State University and the U.S. Coast Guard and was funded by NOAA. They found a cacophony dominated by earthquakes, as well as the moans of baleen whales and the sound of a typhoon passing above. “There was also a lot of noise from ship traffic, identifiable by the clear sound pattern the ship propellers make when they pass by,” Dziak said. Guam, a regional shipping hub, is very close to Challenger Deep. A modified Google Earth map shows the location of Challenger Deep in relation to Guam. (NOAA/Oregon State University) Recovering audio from the ocean’s deepest point required overcoming pressure more than 1,000 times greater than that at the surface. (Atmospheric pressure on land is roughly 15 pounds per square inch. At the bottom of the Mariana Trench, it is greater than 16,000 PSI.) “We had never put a hydrophone deeper than a mile or so below the surface, so putting an instrument down some seven miles into the ocean was daunting,” said Oregon State ocean engineer Haru Matsumoto, who helped design the hydrophone used to make the recording. Deployment of the deep-ocean hydrophone mooring from deck of the Coast Guard cutter Sequoia at Mariana Trench. (NOAA) The device was in free-fall for six hours before it hit the ocean floor last July. It reached its storage capacity for audio recording over the course of about 23 days, but remained on the floor until November when conditions were right for it to float back to the surface — a process triggered by an acoustic signal sent from above. Over the course of several months, the team began piecing together what they recorded: a magnitude 5.0 earthquake, centered in the ocean’s crust nearly a mile above the device; a typhoon; big storms that drove up the ambient noise for a period of days; and even waves and winds at the surface. “Sound doesn’t get as weak as you think it does, even that far from the source,” Matsumoto said. The researchers plan to conduct a similar project next year, for a longer period and with a camera attached. Listen to five recordings from last year’s deployment below:


Trump is closer to what most Republicans believe than the ‘establishment’ candidates are

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Donald Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg) On Super Tuesday, Donald Trump continued his surprise series of wins, gaining seven out of the 11 states in play that day. In response, many are asking: Why have establishment candidates had such a hard time in this year’s Republican nomination contest? Some suggest that Republicans who bother to vote in the primaries are farther to the right than the Republicans as a whole – and are unimpressed with the somewhat more moderate establishment candidates. Others suggest that less-educated citizens who don’t usually vote are turning out just to vote for Trump. Is Donald Trump being "flexible," or is he flip-flopping? His critics say he picks the most convenient positions, but he says he's just changing. These may be part of the answer. But we offer a different suggestion to explain Trump’s meteoric rise: The GOP establishment is out of touch with its base. Trump actually represents Republicans better if you examine beliefs issue by issue. To investigate, we have teamed up with Pollfish, a start-up survey platform, to track American public opinion on 11 key campaign issues weekly during the election season. Pollfish’s survey platform delivers online surveys to almost 200 million potential respondents. We specifically target smartphone owners in the United States. Our sampling technique is best described as randomly targeting people of a sample of adults in the U.S. with smartphones. Using highly technical statistical techniques to adjust for non-response (a legitimate concern in all surveys) coupled with demographic breakdowns of the voting population derived from Big Data on all registered voters in the U.S., we monitor public opinion on these issues broken down by the general population and by party, and compare it to leading political figures in the 2016 primary season. Let’s look here at opinion on three highly divisive and partisan issues: - Abortion. We track agreement with a conservatively anchored position: “Do you support abortion in cases of rape/incest?.” - Gun rights. We track agreement with a neutrally anchored position” “How do you feel about federal laws to make it more difficult for people to buy a gun?” - Income inequality. We track agreement with a liberally anchored position: “How do you feel about government measures to reduce differences in income levels?” On all three issues, most Democratic politicians (including both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders) agree very strongly or


I bumped into my fate, and against China’s adoption rules

Hu on the flight back to China. (By host guardian Julie G.) Several months ago, somewhere over the middle of rural China, a star must have changed its course just a hair of a fraction. Hu, a 4-year-old who had been abandoned at birth – one of 2 million Chinese orphans awaiting adoption – had been offered a once-in-a lifetime opportunity. Just as he approached the age at which he would become statistically less likely to be adopted, an international organization offered him and 28 other special-needs orphans the opportunity to come to the United States for three weeks over Christmas. The purpose of the trip: The possibility of bumping into a forever family. It may sound like an improbable goal, but nearly 80 percent of orphans who come here through this program are ultimately adopted by American families. With his lottery ticket in hand, Hu just had to meet the right people on American soil. Yet somehow, as his visit was drawing to a close, this dimpled little child was still without a home. His host-mom and self-appointed advocate, Julie G. (we aren’t using Julie’s last name for privacy reasons), had spent their precious three weeks together racing him between medical appointments, trying to gather as much information as possible to convince potential adoptive parents that his apparent “special needs” – a small head circumference, mildly crossed eyes and a severe clubfoot – should be non-issues rather than non-starters. Seventy-two hours before boarding his return flight through Chicago, two more stars converged and aligned, this time over a pool in Charlottesville, the 40,000-person Virginia college town Julie calls home. On his visit to the U.S. (Julie G.) “Kick, Hu, kick!” she urged. Julie wanted the exhausted little boy to stretch his short, tight calf muscles in the indoor therapy pool’s warm waters. That’s when I spotted him. Through fogged goggles, I happened to notice a familiar hooked right foot flapping in the water. “Does he have a club foot?” I sputtered. “Yes.” “My baby has club feet, too,” I said. “Uh … well, he had them when he was born. His legs were in casts for a few months, but now he just wears a brace at night.” My son just turned one. Thanks to the children’s hospital a few blocks from our home, he’s already standing up by himself in the middle of a room, trying to muster


Main Street Morning: Periscope is edging out Meerkat in the live-streaming battle

their increasingly indebted millennial workforce: assistance in paying down student loans. Management - The Great Recession has stalled some business owners from retiring. - A new class-action lawsuit alleges that Google broke an Illinois state law by keeping people’s personal bio-metric information without written consent. - How one bad employee can destroy your entire business. - This is what every executive should know before going overseas. - Why keeping a hometown watering hole turning a profit isn’t easy. Entrepreneurs - Chocolate gifts are the latest business started by this blind entrepreneur. - An entrepreneur who helped blind people see passes away. Retail - Amazon decides its users deserve encryption after all. - Nine things you didn’t know about the very popular Wegmans grocery stores. Sales Marketing - Eminem plans to re-release “The Slim Shady LP” on cassette. Travel - A new ranking of the world’s most powerful passports shows who gets through airports easily and who doesn’t. Finance - A start-up bank raises £1 million in just 96 seconds in its crowdfunding campaign. - In the bizarro world of negative interest rates, saving will cost you. Start-ups - This start-up wants to be a Google Maps for people with disabilities. Online - Some think Meerkat has lost the live-streaming battle to Periscope. Social Media - Here are five ways to use Instagram to create a booming online business. - Apple’s support has responded to nearly 100 tweets per hour so far. On This Day in 1876 - Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for telephone. Around the Country - This is the cost of living and working in 20 top cities, ranked from lowest to highest. - Chinese business investment in Virginia sets records and includes a few flops and iffy deals. - Downtown Augusta is looking to bring in more small business. - According to AP, San-Francisco-based Metabiota bungled the Ebola response. - The Pennsylvania Treasury’s inaugural small business initiative event will feature a “Shark Tank” winner. Around the World - These charts show just how dire the European economic situation is. - China tries to reassure investors on their economy and cuts a growth target. - Africa gets its first solar-powered airport. Gene Marks owns the Marks Group, a Bala Cynwyd PA consulting firm that helps clients with customer relationship management. Follow Gene Marks and On Small Business on Twitter. News we should know about? Email us here.


Pineapple and Pearls will open April 7 with dinner priced at $250 per person

will be billed the other half automatically on the day of their reservation. If they cancel 72 hours in advance of their reservation, diners will be refunded their initial payment. Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. March 14 on the Pineapple and Pearls website for dinner services starting on April 7. (Reservations will be released every Monday for dates a month out.) Customers will be able to select between the eight-seat chef's counter or the 22-seat dining room via a reservation system custom-built by GiftRocker; the seven-seat bar will eventually be added to the system. (In February, Silverman opened a coffee shop of the same name, located in front of his fine-dining operation.) [Aaron Silverman enters the breakfast business with Pineapple and Pearls coffee shop.] Pineapple and Pearls wants to "eliminate the guest from ever having to look at a bill," Silverman says. "When you show up, you have nothing to worry about. Everything is paid for. All you have to do is sit back and have a good time. We'll take care of the rest." In deciding on the price tag, Silverman and team reviewed the competition, including Michelin-starred establishments and three- and four-star restaurants in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other places. The lowest-priced tasting menu they uncovered was in the District. “Komi was coming in at $260 or $280 or something like that," Silverman says. (Komi's tasting menu costs $150 per person, with another $75 for wine pairings, not including tax and tip.) "Komi is like the cheapest in the country. I don’t know how they’re doing it, but it’s impressive because they’re obviously doing well," Silverman continues. "It’s hard to do what we want to do, charging $250. There’s not going to be truffles and caviar and foie gras everywhere, although there’s a little bit of those things. . . You have to be more creative.” Part of the ticket price will cover server salaries. Silverman expects to pay his front-of-the-house staff a living wage — in "teens or twenties per hour," the owner says — and then supplement the base pay with restaurant profits. If, for example, Pineapple and Pearls manages to generate only 80 percent or less of its maximum sales per week, the servers will be paid their base salary. But if the restaurant generates over and above that amount, the extra revenue will be shared among the floor


Why Obama says bank reform is a success but Bernie Sanders says it’s a failure

banks and who said that "now is the right time for Congress to consider going further than Dodd-Frank with bold, transformational solutions." "As we work to recover from this crisis, we've also worked to prevent this crisis from happening again. The laws that we've passed have worked," Obama said to reporters at the end of the meeting. Flanked by Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen and Richard Cordray, head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Obama said, "It is popular in the media, and political discourse both on the left and on the right to suggest that the crisis happened and nothing changed. That is not true." But many critics of financial reform say that while some things have happened - notably increased capital requirements at major banks - many other changes are languishing. "On the one hand I think objectively a lot has been done," said Dennis M. Kelleher, chief executive of Better Markets, a liberal leaning non-profit group. But, he said, "what we have is a bunch of rules tied up at the agencies by a war of attrition by Wall Street and its lobbyists." "There are a bunch of areas where not all the Dodd-Frank rules have been implemented and that's incredibly important," said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, a liberal coalition of community, consumer, labor and other groups. Obama acknowledged that work remains on shadow banking, executive compensation and cyber security. But he said if there has been a holdup in issuing regulations, it is the fault of lawmakers. "If there is a significant challenge in terms of regulating Wall Street and regulating our financial sector it is primarily coming from certain members of Congress who are consistently pressuring independent regulators to back off," he said. Donner said several key issues remain unresolved. One is section 956, which says that regulators should write a rule preventing executives of large financial institutions from being paid in ways that encourage excessive risk taking. It was originally proposed in 2011 but has not been reproposed even though last year Obama called for its completion. Under section 621, the Securities and Exchange Commission has not finalized a rule that would bar a firm from packaging securities to sell to clients and then, on its own trading account, bet that those securities would collapse in value. And the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has not yet issued a final


Ted Cruz’s favorite argument about climate change just got weaker

one from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and the other from Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa, Calif. — both show that February of 2016 was the hottest month ever recorded in the lower troposphere, a layer of the atmosphere stretching from the surface to about 6 miles in the air. Using the University of Alabama in Huntsville dataset, Roy Spencer, one of the scientists involved in the research, last week announced a record warm monthly measurement for the lower troposphere on his blog. And Remote Sensing Systems found the same thing, both for the lower and also the middle troposphere. “We actually just had the hottest month ever,” said physicist Carl Mears of Remote Sensing Systems. “I really suspect that 2016 is going to be the warmest ever” out of all the years in the satellite record, he said. That record goes back to 1979. Perhaps we shouldn’t make too much of one record warm month. But what about a new satellite dataset that also shows more warming than before? Mears and his colleague Frank Wentz just published a new paper in the Journal of Climate, a publication of the American Meteorological Society, detailing a new correction to their satellite temperature dataset for the middle troposphere (from the surface to roughly 50,000 feet in the air). The correction was necessary because of a long-standing problem with data derived from polar orbiting satellites — as they circle the globe from top to bottom, they tend to drift. “It might have started out its mission measuring at 2:00 in the afternoon, but years later, it’s drifted, so it’s now 6:00 in the afternoon. And most places, it’s not as warm at 6:00 as it is at 2:00,” Mears said. Moreover, there was no way of independently checking whether the satellites were actually measuring the right temperature 8 kilometers into the atmosphere over the equator, Mears said. There are no hovering thermometers there. Previously, his team had tried to correct the problem by using a climate model to estimate that temperature, but the method was “not sufficiently accurate,” according to the new study. So now, a new correction has been applied, and the result is that the satellite record kept by Remote Sensing Systems shows more global warming than before. Specifically, Mears said, the prior dataset had shown about a 0.08 degree Celsius warming trend per decade for the middle troposphere,


Google to the rescue! Volunteer engineers join Zika fight.

Google engineers have previously jumped into other health-related projects, such as flu tracking and helping debug problems with HealthCare.gov. (Evert Elzinga/European Pressphoto Agency) Google engineers have long been known for their do-gooder tendencies. In 2008, the company launched a free, publicly available service that aimed to predict the outbreak of the flu. In the fall of 2013, when President Obama's signature HealthCare.gov insurance site was crashing at every turn, several of them took leave to help get the site back online. Now Googlers are putting their tech prowess to fighting the Zika outbreak. A group of volunteer engineers, designers and data scientists are teaming up with UNICEF to analyze data on things such as the weather and travel patterns to try to predict where the virus is heading next. The spread of the mosquito-borne virus in Latin America has alarmed public health officials because of its link to birth defects as well as a neurological condition that can lead to paralysis. "As a company whose mission is helping people find information, with a lot of experience in analyzing large sets of data, we’re in a good position to help — at scale and at speed," read a post on Google's official blog. The set of tools being developed could also be used, they said, to help out in future emergencies. Separately, Google said it is providing UNICEF with a $1 million grant that will be used broadly on the ground to do things such as support the development of diagnostics and vaccines and spread awareness of the danger of the pathogen. The company said it would also highlight Zika information in some of its existing services, such as search. Below is a look at a widget Google created to show the 3,000 percent increase in searches about Zika from October to February. Read more: IBM and New York Genome Center’s new cancer tumor repository aims to revolutionize treatment Paul Allen’s $500 million quest to dissect the mind and code a new one from scratch SPECIAL REPORT: Tech titans’ latest project — defy death: For centuries explores have searched the earth for the fountain of youth. Today’s billionaires think they can create it, using technology and data. For more health news, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter


Federal agencies cautioned against sending employees to Zika-affected areas

“Like all Americans, federal employees who plan to travel for business or personal reasons in the upcoming weeks and months may be understandably concerned.” In both, Cobert suggested that employees who do travel to affected areas familiarize themselves with information about the virus and preventive measures from the State Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The locations with ongoing Zika virus transmission are likely to change over time, so be sure to check back to these websites before each trip you are planning to take,” she wrote in the blog post. Several other agencies have cited the CDC’s position in cautioning their employees. For example, a February message to Army military and civilian personnel said that “If you are pregnant and plan to travel to an area with ongoing Zika virus transmission, consider postponing travel until after delivery. If you are pregnant and traveled to an area with ongoing Zika virus transmission, your provider can arrange for testing to see if you were infected, even if you never experienced symptoms. If you are not yet pregnant, there is no evidence that Zika infection prior to conception poses a risk for any future pregnancies.” Also, the Department of Defense’s Southern Command “is offering voluntary relocation out of affected areas to all pregnant DoD employees and beneficiaries, and all Army medical facilities have been notified of the concerns surrounding Zika infections and are prepared to assist patients who may have been infected,” it said. At least one pregnant military service member has been relocated out of an affected area, according to news reports. A Southern Command spokesman did not immediately respond to a query about whether any other military or civilian personnel have been relocated. OPM guidance last week allowed several agencies to use a short-cut procedure to speed the hiring of people to respond to the outbreak. The authority is targeted at the State Department, Health and Human Services, and Agency for International Development in occupations including nursing, microbiology, epidemiology, emergency management and IT. The administration recently asked Congress for emergency funding to improve health services for pregnant women at risk of infection or diagnosed with Zika, and for children with microcephaly; accelerated research on vaccines, therapies, and diagnostics; and on mosquito control. Said Monday’s memo, “As scientists learn more about this virus, we expect additional recommendations. CDC alerts and other key information are updated regularly on www.cdc.gov/zika/.”