US citizen and former president George W. Bush was among a group of potential jurors in a Dallas courthouse Wednesday.
“President Bush received his jury summons and reported for service this morning at the George Allen Courts Building in Dallas,” Bush spokesman Freddy Ford told CNN in a statement. “He sat through the jury selection panel for a case in Judge Eric Moye’s court on the 14th civil district but — surprise! — was not picked to serve as a juror. He was there for about three hours and posed for photos with other jury candidates, judges, and court staff.”
Surprised and excited fellow jury duty reportees posed for photos with Bush.
A large percentage of those who do not end up actually on the jury panel are people who do not receive their summons — the mail is returned as undeliverable in 4 million of the 32 million annual summonses. Another 3 million Americans fail to appear.
An evacuation is underway at Lakebay Marina due to shots being fired in the air by a man who has claimed to have a bomb strapped to the fuel and propane tanks on his 30-foot cruiser boat, docked at the marina.
At around 3 p.m. local time, a 56-year-old man began firing shotgun rounds into the air from his boat, according to Det. Ed Troyer of the Piece County Sheriff’s Department, and SWAT and other police units are now on the scene, which is reported as secure.
Troyer said local police did not know the man previously, and that the man did not have a criminal background.
Police are attempting to access the nature of the threat posed by the man.
Media are currently behind the evacuation blockade, according to KOMO-TV’s Matt Markovich:
“Middle-Eastern males” are approaching the families of US military personnel at their houses, the FBI has warned in an unclassified situation information report published Sunday.
The FBI activity alert specifies Colorado and Wyoming states, where there were “numerous” accounts of “Middle-Eastern men” confronting the families of US military personnel at their doorsteps.
The report details incidents in May and June.
“In May 2015, the wife of a US military member was approached in front of her home by two Middle-Eastern males,” the report reads. “The men stated that she was the wife of a US interrogator. When she denied their claims, the men laughed. The two men left the area in a dark-colored, four-door sedan with two other Middle-Eastern males in the vehicle. The woman had observed the vehicle in the neighborhood on previous occasions.
“Similar incidents in Wyoming have been reported to the FBI throughout June 2015. On numerous occasions, family members of military personnel were confronted by Middle-Eastern males in front of their homes. The males have attempted to obtain personal information about the military member and family members through intimidation. The family members have reported feeling scared.
The identifications of the men are not known, according to the FBI warning, which requests that anyone with information contact the bureau in Colorado at 970-663-1028 or Wyoming at 307-632-6224.
Nature and nurture in music has now been mapped by McGill neurologists who have recorded the activity and changes in the brains of young adults over the course of a six-week piano training session. Among the results of the research is a greater understanding of how natural disposition factors into skills like music.
“What we try to do in our experiments is to isolate specific components of these changes so that we can characterize them accurately.”
In their recent work, the Neuro team sought to display and map the brain’s response to learning music. They also sought for differences in how individuals learn and respond to musical training.
The team provided six weeks of piano training for 15 young adults who had little or no background in music.
Dr. Robert Zatorre
“We measured the entire brain simultaneously using functional MRI,” Zatorre told us, “and then searched the whole brain to find the areas that changed after training, and to distinguish them from those areas which were predictive of learning success.”
The brains of all of the young adults changed as they learned the motor skills involved with playing simple piano pieces, but the team found that the brain activity of some students predicted how quickly they would become skilled.
“The areas that changed most after training were in the premotor cortex and in the parietal cortex, regions concerned with coordinating movements and mapping actions to sounds; the areas that were predictive of subsequent learning were totally different from these and involved the auditory cortex and the hippocampus, the latter of course a structure involved in the formation of memories.”
Zatorre commented on the important role of individual predisposition in learning a skill like music.
“We think that those people who are better at initially encoding sound properties will subsequently have an edge when it comes to learning how to move their fingers to produce that same sound pattern,” Zatorre said.
And the findings do not apply only to music, but are an example of how the brain responds to any skill, according to the neurologists.
“We see it in the context of other research looking at skills such as learning the sounds of a foreign language, or skilled sports activities. In each of these cases there are distinct neural circuits that have to be “trained up” so the specific brain regions involved might differ. But we think the same principle may apply, that is, that some brain circuits are changed by training, but others may be indicative of the predisposition to learn a specific skill.”
Two known Canadian Muslim extremists, who had previously been found guilty of plotting to detonate homemade bombs in the British Columbia legislature during Canada Day two years ago, have been charged with new extremist crimes.
Amanda Korody and husband John Nuttal are currently on trial at a BC Supreme Court for plotting to infiltrate a synagogue and kill Jews.
The court Monday heard testimony written by undercover RCMP officers who thwarted the plan over a months-long undercover sting operation. The couple, according to the undercover officer, planned to become “regulars in the synagogue.”
John Nuttal and Amanda Korody
“They will gain the trust of everybody. And once they have everything they will get enough guns and ammo to go ahead with their mission,” Crown lawyer Sharon Steele read from the undercover RCMP officer’s notes.
The couple believed they would be able to infiltrate the synagogue because “they were both white and could pass for Jewish,” Steele read.
However, the couple were themselves infiltrated and arrested by RCMP who began their investigation after receiving a tip-off from Canada’s spy agency in late 2012.
At least two teachers have resigned in outrage after two teachers fired for involvement in “Trojan Horse” Islamization of UK students were reinstated by their Birmingham school, reports the Telegraph UK, which has been actively covering many of the ongoing developments.
Although still subject to “interim prohibition orders,” Park View School assistant principal Shakeel Akhtar and director of student progress Saqib Malik are back teaching kids after being involved along with over a dozen other teachers in the “Park View Brotherhood,” a discussion group where anti-Western extremists conversed online.
The man responsible for the reinstatement, Waheed Saleem, who was recently promoted to chair of governors at Park View School, resigned Saturday after being contacted by the Telegraph UK about bringing the teachers back into classrooms.
Saleem denied there were problems at the school and stated that extremism “didn’t exist.”
Park View School continues to deny that there was any payoff to another former teacher, Mr Hussain, although three sources have said he received the equivalent of US $46,500 for loss of employment and another approximately $95,000 for seven months suspension. Allegedly, the school has paid over $465,000 in salary while waiting for the national teaching board of the nation to complete disqualification hearings.
In what sport could you not use a 20 percent boost in performance? Scientists have found a food that does just that — the beet. And the why? It’s a root that naturally contains high levels on nitrates.
“This is one of the sports nutrition stories of the decade,” Dr. Andy Jones of England’s University of Exeter said of his teams work. “I think this is one of these discoveries, for want of a better word, that transcends — it’s not just performance, but it has a health application and implication as well.”
Part of the energy cost of athletic performance is in oxygen — the body burns through oxygen as it works. If performance consumes less oxygen, the body can work for longer before fatiguing. One way to do this is to increase blood flow to transport oxygen. Nitrates do just that: they increase blood flow plus dilate blood vessels, so the workload of the heart is reduced so it can better deliver oxygen to the muscles that burn it.
Other research has found that drinking a glass (about half a liter) of beetroot juice every day lowers blood pressure by about seven percent.
The team had study participants drink beetroot juice for two weeks. Then these participants hit the gym with their lowered blood pressure and dilated blood vessels to exercise, hooked up to performance-measuring equipment. When they did, their blood vessels dilated more easily and their hearts consumed less oxygen.
“We found a significant reduction in the oxygen cost of exercise, which implies that energy demand of exercising at a particular work rate is significantly lower.”
The benefits for athletes fully exerting themselves was even more profound.
“When we extended our studies to ask our subjects to exercise to exhaustion, we found that they were able to go significantly longer at the same high intensity work rate, so there seemed to be a performance benefit as well.
“The reduction in the oxygen cost of exercise during sub-maximal work was or the order of five to 10 percent, which is really quite meaningful, and then the improvement in the times to exhaustion — at a high intensity rate — were of the order of 15 to 20 percent.”
Beet root juice may also help to reduce blood pressure because of the same naturally high level of nitrates, the research has found.
Old age, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other metabolic diseases — these are some of the populations Jones would like to explore his findings in.
“We and others are at the beginning, really, of this story, so there are dialogues going on with NHS and with various charities, the elderly and others, who want to deal with medical conditions — to really try and use this in a more practical way.”
Beetroot juice is not the only way to get nitrates, although it was the souce studied by the Exeter team. Celery, cabbage, spinach, and some lettuces and other green vegetables also contain high concentrations of nitrates.
A joint letter was sent today to the International Olympics Committee calling on them to reject China’s bid for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, citing past claims that the 2008 Games would reduce China’s human rights violations contrasted with evidence that the 2008 Games actually increased human rights abuses in the Asian nation.
The letter, which was submitted one week before the Olympic committee makes its decision, was signed by the president of the World Uyghur Congress, the director of the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center, the president of Initiatives for China and a former Tibetan political prisoner, jailed and tortured for actions related to the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008.
The letter states, “All of the people we represent have suffered as a result of the Chinese government’s contempt for human rights. We hope that you are aware by now that the 2008 Beijing Games did nothing to alleviate human rights abuses in China or enhance freedom.”
The letter warns the Olympic committee not to make the same mistake it made last time, when the IOC expected awarding Beijing the Games would improve human rights in China.
“The reality is that the 2008 Beijing Olympics left a trail of human rights abuses directly linked to the Games,” the letter asserts, citing Human Rights Watch’s 2008 report on the Beijing Games, which documents some of the abuses.
The letter also references the Olympic spirit, which, as other human rights groups representatives have pointed out, expressly requires safeguarding the dignity of the individual as a requirement of Olympism, and questions how allowing the Games to become a part of human rights violations will reflect on the Olympics.
“Until the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party are prepared to reform and recognize the inherent rights of all people, they should not be awarded the honour of another Olympics,” the letter states. “The IOC must recognise that the Olympic spirit and the reputation of the Olympic Games will suffer further damage if the worsening human rights crisis in China is simply ignored.”
The conclusion of the letter is a warning: “[T]he Games returning to Beijing will be a green light for the government’s ongoing abuse of their rights and denial of their hopes for freedom.”
With one week to go before the International Olympic Committee makes its decision, Human rights groups are raising their voices in protest over the possibility of China being awarded another Olympic Games. One hundred seventy-five such groups have joined in submitting a letter to the committee saying the IOC should refuse China’s bid on the grounds of China’s human and civil rights record.
“Specifically, the Olympic Code of Ethics says, ‘Safeguarding the dignity of the individual is a fundamental requirement of Olympism’ while the Charter aims to put ‘sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to encouraging the establishment of a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.'”
Matteo Mecacci, President of ICT
“To evaluate the issue of the next winter Olympic games in China we have to take a broader look at the developments in China,” Mecacci told us.
Meccaci, who has presided over the ICT since 2013, elaborated on the types of offences dealt with every day by the organization.
“ICT is very concerned about the serious human rights violations that continue to take place in Tibet through repressive political campaigns, institutional racism, and long-term policies that marginalize Tibetans economically, threaten the survival of the Tibetan identity, and cause tension and ill-will between the Chinese and Tibetans peoples. We are also concerned about the increasing repression of human rights advocates all over the country since Xi Jinping rose to power.”
Mecacci also commented on the recent mass jailing of Chinese lawyers and the death of one of China’s most notable Tibetan prisoners.
“The last 2 weeks have seen a wide-ranging attack on civil society by Chinese authorities, including the detention of more than 70 lawyers, and the death of a revered Tibetan lama, the highest profile Tibetan political prisoner whose case was raised by governments worldwide.
“There is an urgent need for the international community to push back against China’s hardline policies and violations of human rights and to send a signal of support to Chinese civil society and the Tibetan and Uyghur people.”
Mecacci expressed sentiments similar to other Tibetan rights groups that if the IOC chooses China as host again, they would in effect be condoning China’s continued human rights abuses.
“They would be supporting a government that continues to jail and intimidate responsible and moderate individuals who are trying to create a better and fairer society,” stated Mecacci.
“The Chinese people deserve to be part of international sport events, including hosting them, but it is up to the Chinese leadership to show — and to make a credible and verifiable commitment — to the International Olympics Committee and the international community that it is deserving of yet another Olympics. Sadly, the Chinese Government so far has failed to make this commitment and show concrete results. Without this, awarding China with another Olympics will not be a wise decision.”
Warmer waters in the north mean less overwinter death and increased growth for cold-blooded fish, so they will benefit from global warming… or so the theory went. New research says that these species may actually suffer more than they benefit, and global warming will end up reducing their populations.
“Even if summer conditions are better for growth under a warmer climate, this may mean little if the number of offspring produced has already been limited by short, warm winters,” Auburn University’s Dr. Troy Farmer told The Speaker.
The research team studied a particular species of northern fish, yellow perch, in Lake Erie, one of North America’s Great Lakes shared between the United States and Canada.
The reason for the yellow perch population reduction, the team found, had to do in large part with reproduction and early development.
Dr. Troy Famer
“Our results suggest that climate warming during winter may negatively affect yellow perch populations by reducing reproductive success,” Farmer told us.
A shorter winter, the researchers found, results in a spawn that takes place within warm waters. A warm water spawn is different from a cold water spawn for yellow perch: smaller eggs are produced that hatch at lower rates and produce smaller larvae.
“Our research also offers an explanation for observed trends in Lake Erie yellow perch populations. Specifically, it indicates that reduced reproductive success may be responsible for lower juvenile abundance following short, warm winters. Ultimately, we also found that years of low juvenile abundance led to lower adult abundances in future years.”
This makes for a new picture of the future cold water fish species, according to Farmer:
Yellow Perch
“Climate change will likely affect northern fish species in many different ways. As winters get shorter, longer summer growing seasons may benefit some fishes. However, shorter winters may also have negative effects on reproduction, as our study indicates. Understanding which species thrive and which species decline in a warmer climate will require a more complete understanding of how warmer temperatures during both summer and winter influence all aspects of survival, growth, and reproduction. For some fishes, such as our study species, yellow perch, the negative effects of short winters on reproduction may outweigh any positive benefits from a longer growing season.”
“Prior to our research, scientists speculated that cool-water fish species like yellow perch would benefit from warmer temperatures associated with climate change. Warmer temperatures would equate to a longer growing season, which could lead to larger fish that survive the winter better or that could produce more eggs or better quality larvae. But, few studies have speculated on how reproduction might be affected by a change in winter severity or temperature.
“When we looked at long-term monitoring data for yellow perch in Lake Erie, however, we saw just the opposite: short, warm winters were followed by fewer juveniles the following year. The largest cohorts of juvenile fish came after long, cold winters.
Lake Erie in winter
“Yellow perch females spawn (or lay their eggs) during the spring, which means any effect of winter temperatures on juvenile production were likely the result of temperature effects on adults during the egg development phase. This phase occurs during winter.
“One potential explanation for this pattern was suggested by previous laboratory research, conducted in the 1970s, which suggested that yellow perch require a certain number of cold days to successfully develop their eggs – but the reasons for this were unknown.”
The teams research involved a simple comparison; they studied yellow perch in both warm and cold water conditions and recorded how the two groups fared.
“We conducted a laboratory experiment in which we exposed half of a group of adult female yellow perch to a short winter and the other half to a long winter. Females exposed to the short winter produced smaller eggs that hatched at lower rates and produced smaller larvae than females exposed to a long winter. This is important because large larvae grow and survive better than small larvae during their first months of life in Lake Erie. These results help explain why short winters were associated with poor years of yellow perch production in Lake Erie.
Farmer also touched upon the complexity of the cold water ecosystem of Lake Erie, and how the diet of fish species like yellow perch might also be affected by warmer waters.
Yellow Perch eggs
“We also observed another negative effect of warm winters on yellow perch reproduction. When spring arrival was extraordinarily early, yellow perch did not shift their spawning time. Instead, females spawned at the normal time when temperatures were already too warm. Unfortunately, zooplankton (the prey of the yellow perch larvae) might grow in response to warming temperatures, appearing earlier in years with an early spring. Thus, short winters may cause a mismatch in timing between yellow perch larvae and their prey.”
What can we expect then, for ectotherms if their environments continue to suddenly heat up?
“Most temperate ectotherms have highly evolved lifecycles that are tightly coupled to seasonal temperature cycles,” Farmer told us. “As summers grow longer and the duration of cold winter temperatures shrink, this may disrupt the highly evolved lifecycles of ectotherms. In our study species, yellow perch (a cool-water fish), we saw that shorter winters negatively affected egg development and altered the timing of spawning, leading to lower reproductive success.”
The report, “Short winters threaten temperate fish populations,” was completed by Troy M. Farmer, Elizabeth A. Marschall, Konrad Dabrowski & Stuart A. Ludsin, and was published on Nature Communications.
Thousands of Chrysler vehicles can be hacked into from any computer connected to the internet, cutting out breaks, steering and transmission, according to two security experts and hackers who spend the last year creating a Uconnect hack.
Recently, a 2014 Jeep Cherokee was tested out by WIRED editor Andy Greenberg, who let the hackers attack his vehicle from the comfort of their couch as he proceeded down the highway.
Charlie Miller, security engineer at Twitter and Chris Valasek, director of vehicle safety research at Idactiv, triggered Greenberg’s PTSD by cranking the volume of the music and level of the fan in the vehicle, then activating the parking brake as the journalist drove down a busy highway.
So far, the hack has only been tested on the 2014 Jeep, but the team says that all late-model Chryslers equipped with Uconnect software are vulnerable.
According to Greenberg, who followed up on the security issue, Chrysler has since released a software update for the Uconnect issue. Chrysler posted a notice to its website informing its customers about a “software update to improve vehicle electronic security.”
For late-model Chryslers with Uconnect, owners are advised to update their software by entering their VIN number on Chryslers website, download the update to a USB, connect the USB to the vehicle, and answer the vehicle’s prompt, “Yes,” the owner confirms he wants to update the software.
This update is also a free service for anyone who brings their Chrysler into a dealership.
![Chryslers can now be hacked, brakes, steering, transmission controlled over internet [video]](https://thespeakernewsjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Three-Vehicle-Cornwall-Centre-03-Nov2414-Edited.jpg)