“Middle-Eastern males” approaching US military families at home – FBI alert

by
fbi
Share this
Share

“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 report initially publicized by an American veterans advocacy organization.

The report matches a similar force protection advisory released by the Washington National Guard describing a incident in Washington.

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.

By James Haleavy

China Just Completed Their New Bus … It Drives Over Traffic

by
Share this
Share

This week China’s new bus took it’s first test run.

The bus has been referred to since pictures surfaced a few years ago as the “straddling bus” for it’s position above two lanes of traffic.

The bus is more technically referred to as the TEB-1 — Transit Elevated Bus.

It was test driven in Qinhuangdao, Hebei Province, Tuesday.

The interior space of the bus is 72 feet by 25 feet, and has a 16-foot tall ceiling. It can carry 300 passengers.

Underneath the vehicle is an open space 7 feet tall.

The test run was successful, but questions about feasibility remain.

china bus (1) china bus (2)

Gay days on the streets of Amsterdam

by
Amsterdam
Share this
Share

AMSTERDAM — This week rainbows and glitter decorated the streets of Amsterdam, commemorating the 2015 Gay Pride festival. Over 350,000 people swarmed the streets to celebrate the right to be openly gay in the iconic liberal city. The party-goers were from all walks of life, including flamboyantly dressed drag queens, openly gay couples, and straight tourists looking to be a part of the spectacle. Even the sun showed up, bringing temperatures up to 28°C.

The festival was officially on all week, but the real party began on Friday. It all kicked off with ‘The Drag Olympics,’ where you could find the fabulous contestants in their extravagantly fashioned drag costumes. The games began with a cat walk, where the girls could strut their stuff on the stage in front of a 400-strong applauding audience. The show continued with a few of the more provocative contestants performing and lip-syncing a song of their choice.

Followed by the final contest and inarguably the most entertaining; ‘the twerk off.’ The rowdy crowd were amused to watch the contestants get viciously competitive on stage between each other, doing their best twerking along to the thumping music, while blatantly trying to shove each other off stage whenever they got the chance.

However, all of the catty behaviour was amended with a final dance as the audience joined in commending the winners of each competition.

Saturday’s canal parade is what made Amsterdam’s Gay Pride festival unique. The lavishly decorated boats of all sizes and shapes cruised by, as the on looking admirers enjoyed wine and cheese platters along the edge of the canals. Queen and many more gay anthems filled the atmosphere, as people danced and even dived into the water, cooling off under the hot summer sun. Smiles gleamed everywhere as the gay and straight all enjoyed the amazing day together. However, it wasn’t all butterflies and cupcakes, as some intoxicated sailors forgot to duck as the boats drove under the bridges and men over board became frequent. Pandemonium arose as boats began to bounce off each other when order was lost. To the on-lookers amusement, it was quite the spectacle. Though it wasn’t long before the police were on the water and the parade eventually resumed.

The narrow streets surrounding the red-light district are where the party was all going off in the evening. It was so densely packed with people, and although walking became an arduous task, everyone embraced the chaos and the atmosphere remained positively wild, enjoying live music, alcohol and drugs that Amsterdam is renowned for.

The upbeat music pumped late through the night, as stumbling half-dressed men and woman partied on the streets of Amsterdam, but eventually deserted the street at the early hours of the morning.

When the sun rose, the empty streets were littered with colourful decorations, clothes and rubbish. The city was lifeless, other than the poor street cleaners who certainly had a strenuous task ahead of them.

At the end of the day, the 2015 Gay Pride Festival was a huge success, and the evidence was upon the thousands of gratified yet hung over faces.

By Dylan Botha

Refurbishing Mombasa

by
Share this
Share

Nicholas Okumu is a teacher at a small school in Mombasa. Here he writes about the surprising rate at which public works slide into dilapidation — or destruction — in Kenya’s tourist hub.

For the past one year and a half the county government of Mombasa has gone all out to upgrade the county’s infrastructure by re-carpeting roads – even within the housing estates, tarmacking sidewalks, improving the drainage system, increasing access to piped water, etc.

The current public works projects are, of course, quite welcome considering that when I first came to Mombasa – which is Kenya’s tourist capital – I was shocked by the dilapidated infrastructure and the amount of filth and garbage choking the town. I felt at the time that Mombasa’s reputation was overrated. How quickly things change! I spoke to one resident who expressed his joy by telling me that Mombasa isn’t what it used to be; that it could now be compared to London or to any of the world’s most celebrated cities. He however called upon the authorities to see to it that the trend was maintained.

Indeed such social and beautification projects are not new to Kenya or Mombasa. Sustaining them, however, has been a bit of a challenge. Previously, roads have been paved and tarmacked, only to be left to crumble and decay to the extent that a visitor would scarcely believe that the said roads ever existed. About two years ago, some security installations were put up at the ferry crossing. Exactly four months later they had ground to a halt, been vandalized and reduced to empty shells which passers-by now use garbage dumps. The authorities’ inability to keep such minor installations in working order did not, however, dampen their spirits. They have now put up bigger security gates complete with scanners; leaving skeptics to wonder how long they will be able to maintain those.

By Nicholas Okumu

Gender pay differences for doctors: Why women make less

by
Why women make less
Share this
Share

Setting out to access why men physicians make more than women, according to statistics, a joint-research team has published Thursday the results of their study, based on an analysis of data for 776 male and female physicians.

“In addition to implicit bias and differences in negotiations and social networks, women’s tendency to prioritize substantial pay less than men may account for some of the gender pay inequities that exist in our society. However, substantial pay is different from equal pay. I bet most women still want fair pay,” said Dr. A. Charlotta Weaver, lead author of the Journal of Hospital Medicine study.

Recent studies have determined that American female physicians make $50,000 less per year than male physicians — an average $165,278 compared with $221,297.

The new research, however, found that after accounting for age, geography, specialty, amount and type of work, women made around $15,000 less than men in the field.

The breakdown of the reasons women make less than men goes like this, according to the study: working women are younger, less likely to be leaders, and more often work part-time.

Women physicians more frequently prioritize other work interests over financial compensation, the researchers found. Women considered pay the fourth most important priority, while men ranked it the second. Both ranked optimal work load first.

Women more frequently were employed as pediatricians and staff in university settings.

It was also found that women work more nights, report fewer daily billable encounters than their male peers, and are more often divorced than male physicians.

“The gender earnings gap persists among hospitalists,” concluded the researchers. “A portion of the disparity is explained by the fewer women hospitalists compared to men who prioritize pay.”

By Cheryl Bretton

The brain and music: McGill team graphs regions of the brain responsible for music training and individual skill

by
brain and music
Share this
Share

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.

“I would venture to say that new skills probably change almost the entire brain in some way or another,” Dr. Robert Zatorre, Professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill’s Montreal Neurological Institute and lead author of the work, told The Speaker.

“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.

Robert Zatorre
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.Dr. Robert Zatorrebrain and music (1)

“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.”

The report, “Dissociation of Neural Networks for Predisposition and for Training-Related Plasticity in Auditory-Motor Learning,” was completed by Sibylle C. Herholz, Emily B.J. Coffey, Christo Pantev, and Robert J. Zatorre, and was published in Cerebral Cortex.

By Sid Douglas

Images 3 and 4 from the report of the Neuro team

Artist Douglas Coupland 3-D scanning and printing Canadians for 4-year project

by
Douglas Coupland
Share this
Share

Vancouver, British Columbia artist Douglas Coupland is visiting Simons department stores across Canada, scanning and 3-D printing customer volunteers for an art project that will be unveiled in 2019. The project will be shown in conjunction with the opening of a new Simons location in Yorktown, Ontario. Commissioned by Peter Simons, CEO of the Canadian chain of department stores, the work intends to emphasize the chain’s ongoing support of the arts.

Titled 3DCanada, Coupland’s project will be a collection of miniature busts of the individuals who are scanned during his tour. He plans to scan around 1,200 people in total over the course of his tour. Each finished bust will be roughly five centimeters in height, and the artist plans to apply gold leaf to the white plastic in the final piece. Coupland’s idea for the project began when he purchased his own 3-D printer and began offering personalized busts to house guests.

The artist is known for his work with technology and speculative futures, having achieving wide-spread recognition for his 1991 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. Waxing existential on the subject of the 3-D printed objects, Coupland notes that the idea of 3-D printing seems to hang between the 2nd and 3rd dimensions. Each bust is effectively a mirror that can be viewed from all angles.

Coupland plans on continuing his tour until 2017, visiting a total of six Simons locations. His visits will take place on Saturdays during regular business hours, allowing roughly 100 people per visit the opportunity to be scanned. The scans are free and each volunteer will receive a bust which will be ready for pick-up the following week. The next two scanning sessions will take place at Simons locations in Vancouver, BC and Mississauga, Ontario.

The Globe and Mail

Montreal Gazette

Stomach balloon approved by FDA for weight loss

by
ReShape Dual Balloon
Share this
Share

Dieting leaving you with that empty feeling? The FDA Tuesday approved a new device to fill in for food in the stomachs of weight loss practitioners with a device that requires no surgery: a dual balloon system.

Although medical professionals do not fully understand how filling the stomach triggers feelings of fullness — even in the absence of actual food — they understand that it works.

The ReShape Dual Balloon device is placed in the stomach through the mouth. The typical procedure is a 30 minute minimally invasive endoscopic one, according the the FDA.

Unlike some surgical measures undertaken to lose weight, the balloon does not alter the stomach’s anatomy.

The balloon is meant to be used for around six months while the person also exercises and follows a medically supervised diet.

“For those with obesity, significant weight loss and maintenance of that weight loss often requires a combination of solutions including efforts to improve diet and exercise habits,” said William Maisel, M.D., M.P.H., acting director of the Office of Device Evaluation at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health. “This new balloon device provides doctors and patients with a new non-surgical option that can be quickly implanted, is non-permanent, and can be easily removed.”

The balloon is not meant for all dieters. Only obese adults with a body mass index of 30 to 40 kg/m and who have one or more obesity-related conditions, such as diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure, are recommended to try it.

The FDA made their decision on the balloon after the successful results of a clinical trial in which 187 obese participants ranging in age from 22 to 60 lost an average of 14.3 pounds (or 6.8 percent of total body weight) in six months, and who kept off around 10 pounds after six more months. This was contrasted against a control group of roughly the same size who lost only 7.2 pounds in the first six months.

The device is not recommended for those who have had previous gastrointestinal or bariatric surgery or who have been diagnosed with inflammatory intestinal or bowel disease, large hiatal hernia, symptoms of delayed gastric emptying or active H. Pylori infection, nor is it for those who use aspirin daily or who are pregnant.

Potential side effects for the procedure, the FDA warned, include headache, muscle pain, and nausea from the sedation and procedure; in rare cases, severe allergic reaction, heart attack, esophageal tear, infection, and breathing difficulties can occur. Once the device is placed in the stomach, patients may experience vomiting, nausea, abdominal pain, gastric ulcers, and feelings of indigestion.

By Cheryl Bretton

Canadian Muslim extremists foiled in plot to kill Jews in synagogue

by
A synagogue in Vancouver, Canada
Share this
Share

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.”

Amanda Korody
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.

James Haleavy

Islamic radicalization teachers at UK school previously fired found to be reinstated and teaching again

by
Park View School
Share this
Share

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.

By James Haleavy

A Face Can Mean Life Or Death

by
death penalty
Share this
Share

In the US, 72 people were sentenced to death last year, and according to new research the faces of those tried in court may have had something to do with their sentence. An “alarming bias” in the criminal justice system, U of T researchers found, results from the prejudice attached to people’s appearance.

The researchers conducted two studies based on real world sentences, unlike past hypothetical experiments.

In the first study, they found that the trustworthiness of a person predicted whether they received death sentences. Two-hundred and eight American adults judged photos of the faces of 226 murder convicts on a trustworthiness scale of 1 to 8. The photos didn’t show that the faces were those of prison inmates. Of the faces of people convicted of first degree murder, some were sentenced to death and some were sentenced to life in prison — a less severe penalty. The faces of those who had received the lesser sentence were also the faces people perceived to be more trustworthy. The less trustworthy a face, the more likely the person behind it was to receive the death sentence.

Then in the second study, the researchers found that even for innocent people who had been exonerated after being falsely sentenced to death, the link of perceived trustworthiness and death sentence remained, demonstrating, the researchers concluded, that it wasn’t just that real criminals had meaner faces, but that anyone who had an untrustworthy-seeming face faced stiffer penalties.

The researchers surmised that the results show that people want to punish those who appear less trustworthy.

The researcher pointed to a lesson that could be learned from their study: since we know we are biased, we can police our thoughts to some degree.

The report, “Facial Trustworthiness Predicts Extreme Criminal-Sentencing Outcomes,” was completed by Drs. John Paul Wilson and Nicholas Rule of the University of Toronto and was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. It was published in Psychological Science.

The study material is publicly available.

Disease record cell identified in new research

by
immunity archive
Share this
Share

Emory University researchers have discovered cells that contain records the body’s response to infections during early life in bone marrow. The cells, dubbed “historical record” cells by the researchers, are a rare type of highly diverse plasma cell.

Using proteomics and RNA sequencing techniques, the team proved that one of the subsets of the infection-recording cells under their lenses was exclusively responsible for producing the measles-and-mumps-specific antibodies in the blood of one of their study participants.

Like other plasma cells, these “historical record” cells undergo changes in their DNA, but the subset D cells are much more diverse than other plasma cells. The researchers think this is the case because their genes do not devote too much space to any single infection.

The cells are unusual among bone marrow cells. They have a rare “fried egg” appearance, containing bubble-like vacuoles or lipid droplets. They also have more condensed nuclei than other white blood cells.

The report, “Long-Lived Plasma Cells Are Contained within the CD19−CD38hiCD138+ Subset in Human Bone Marrow,” was completed by Drs. Iñaki Sanz, Eun-Hyung Lee, and a team of others.

By Sid Douglas