News – Page 4 – The Speaker News Journal

Tokyo Launches Drone Squad

January 1, 2016December 18, 2015 by The Speaker Editors

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The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department announced a new policing initiative this week to combat illegal drone operation in metropolitan areas.

The police drones will monitor no-fly zones, enforcing Japan’s drone legislation. Upon finding illegal activity, the drone squad will seek for the drone operator and order the drones to be grounded.

If the squad is not able to remove the drone from the air using this method, 10-foot long drone enforcers will be dispatched to collect the offending drones with large nets.

Japan also recently amended its Civil Aeronautics Law to limit the airspace of drones to 500 feet from the ground. Also, now in densely populated areas, all drones over 300 grams are banned.

The police force also has drone terrorism in mind in pursuing the program. The metropolitan police bureau recently told national media that such attacks were a possibility, and that the force hoped to defend Japan against any such scenario.

The potential for a serious attack in Japan was highlighted earlier this year, when an activist flew a drone carrying radioactive sand to the top of the office building of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The act was a protest against nuclear power, the man said, and no one was injured by the symbolic action.

The new drone squad will consist of dozens of trained officers and will begin operations later this month, according to police officials.

By Andy Stern

New $7 Million XPrize Competition Aims To Explore Oceans

December 17, 2015December 17, 2015 by Tony Simpson

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On Monday, the XPrize Foundation announced its latest competition: the $7 Million Shell Ocean Discovery XPrize, which aims to map the ocean floor in high resolution, and find sources of pollution autonomously. Teams will test their technologies in two rounds at two separate undisclosed locations, mapping a 500 square kilometer area of ocean floor in high resolution at depths of 2, and 4 kilometers; winners will receive a grand prize of $4 million.

An additional $1 million will be awarded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to teams that have technology capable of “sniffing out” specified objects through biological and chemical signals. Xprize claims that such technology could also help us learn about our own history, and find medical advancements to currently fatal diseases.

The competition was designed to create better maps, and expand our present knowledge of the oceans, as they are currently 95% unexplored, and remain as one of Earth’s last mysteries. We have mapped the moon, Venus, and Mars, all in much higher resolution than our own oceans. It is also estimated that two thirds of species in the ocean remain to be discovered.

Each of the 25 teams will try to create new, relatively low cost technology that can map the ocean floor, and identify archaeological, Biological, and geological features. Each team must prove their robotics can function efficiently at a depth of 2 and 4 kilometers, where there is no sunlight, high pressure, and temperatures below freezing. A bonus $1 million will go to any team that can make technology that can track chemical and biological signatures to find objects. Such technology could lead to many other discoveries and inventions, as well as helping to find sources of human-caused pollution and slow global warming.

Unlike land, the sea floor can’t be mapped in high resolution by satellite, since radar waves don’t pass through water. Satellites rely on precisely measuring the height of the ocean, and when enough data is collected, scientists can calculate the differences in the ocean surface caused by the landscape below the surface. This technology has given us a full map of the ocean to a resolution of 5 kilometers, which allows us to see the largest features, such as ocean trenches; leaving us with plenty of room for discovery under the water that covers two-thirds of our planet. We’ve mapped the entire surface of the moon at a resolution of 7 meters, and most of Mars and Venus at 100 meters.

XPrize is hopeful that the competition will usher a new era of ocean exploration, and help to better humanity through future innovation from it. The competition is the third of five multi-million dollar ocean based challenges to be created by 2020. The 10 year XPrize Ocean Initiative was created to address critical challenges in ocean exploration and technology; with the goal to make the oceans “healthy, valued, and understood”.

By Tony Simpson

Sources: The Verge | Ocean Discovery Overview

Leonardo DiCaprio Expresses Fear Of Chinooks

December 14, 2015 by The Speaker Editors

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Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who filmed the historical adventure picture ‘The Revenant’ in Alberta and British Columbia this year, recently commented on his northern experience at a Q&A, expressing grave concern over the weather phenomena known as the “Chinook.”

“We were in Calgary,” said DiCaprio, “and the locals were saying, ‘This has never happened in our province ever.’ We would come and there would be eight feet of snow, and then all of a sudden a warm gust of wind would come.”

DiCaprio has become somewhat of an expert on environment matters in recent years, producing the climate change documentary “The 11th Hour” in 2007. Reportedly, the actor is now working on another climate change documentary. However, many Canadians were surprised that the actor would refer to what in Canada is commonly known as a Chinook, a warm breeze felt during colder weather, as a sign of impending disaster.

DiCaprio stated:

“[I]t was scary. I’ve never experienced something so firsthand that was so dramatic. You see the fragility of nature and how easily things can be completely transformed with just a few degrees difference. It’s terrifying, and it’s what people are talking about all over the world. And it’s simply just going to get worse.”

Despite what may be an unusual cause of concern, 2015 was the warmest year on record, and the cast of the film had to relocate to a glacier in Argentina to find a snowy location — the snow at their Canadian location melted in August, forcing the unexpected move.

By Andy Stern
Photo: 20th Century Fox

BC Supreme Court Rules In Favor Of Trinity Western’s Law School

January 26, 2021December 14, 2015 by The Speaker Editors

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CHILLIWACK, British Columbia — In the latest of the trials over Trinity Western University’s planned law school, a B.C. Supreme Court judge has found in favor of the school, rejecting the Law Society of BC’s rejection of TWU.

The Law Society had not properly maintained its discretion when it went back on its initial approval of Trinity Western’s law school after holding a referendum among its disapproving members, B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson found.

“I conclude that the benchers permitted a non-binding vote of the LSBC membership to supplant their judgment,” said Hinkson.

“In so doing, the benchers disabled their discretion under the [Legal Profession Act] by binding themselves to a fixed blanket policy set by LSBC members. The benchers thereby wrongfully fettered their discretion.”

The matter at issue is Trinity Western’s “Community Covenant,” which all staff and students must sign. The covenant is a pledge that an individual will maintain the teachings of the Bible and refrain from sex outside traditional marriage.

The Langley, B.C.-based school — Canada’s largest Christian university with 4,000 students — applied for and received permission from the British Columbia Law Society in 2013.

Afterwards, responding to the disapproval of its members — B.C. lawyers — the LSBC held a referendum. After finding that 74 percent of its members wanted to deny graduates of Trinity Western to practice, the Law Society changed its decision and withdrew its approval.

Hinkson concluded that, besides allowing their discretion to be clouded by popular sentiment, the Law Society had infringed on the freedom of religion guaranteed by the nation’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Hinkson ordered the Law Society to return to its original decision to allow Trinity Western’s graduates to practice law in B.C.

Provincial courts across Canada have been hearing Trinity Western’s case — some are finding for the school, some against. It is expected that the matter will proceed to the Supreme Court of Canada to be settled.

Canada And Sweden Sign Arctic Agreement

July 30, 2016December 12, 2015 by The Speaker Editors

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Canada and Sweden have signed a new cooperative agreement based on science in the Arctic. The deal may have a special meaning for Canada, because the nation’s claims to a large tract of the Arctic is contested by other claimants Russia, Denmark, the U.S., and Norway.

Canada’s claim depends upon proving that the boundaries of its continental shelf extends beneath the North Pole. However, proving the extent of the shelf is challenging because much of the Arctic is still uncharted and work in the area is expensive and dangerous.

The new five-year “Arctic Science Cooperation Agreement” was completed by Canada’s Science Minister Kristy Duncan and Sweden’s Polar Research Secretariat head Bjorn Dahlback, and was announced by Ottawa Saturday.

According to international law, countries are entitled to 200 nautical miles of water as a coastal economic zone.

Currently, Canada, the U.S., Russia, Denmark and Norway are working with the United Nations to resolve jurisdictional boundaries in the Arctic. Rewrites have been made, including a 2013 rewrite by Canada’s Conservative government which included a claim to the North Pole, and a 2015 claim by Russia claiming 1.2 million square kilometers of the Arctic shelf. Denmark also claims the North Pole.

By Andy Stern

Curiosity Rover Reaches Mars’s Sand Dunes — Photos

December 21, 2015December 11, 2015 by The Speaker Editors

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The active sand dunes of Mars were reached by NASA’s Curiosity rover last month, and Friday NASA released some of Curiosity’s latest photography.

The Bagnold Dunes are as high as two stories, and compose the bottom portion of a layered mountain Curiosity is trekking up this month.

Some of Curiosity’s latest photos show the bot’s view looking up the dune hill. Others show the texture of the sand its treaded wheels are covering.

NASA states that the individual dunes of the Bagnold band — which is located along the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp inside Gale Glacier — move up to 3 feet (1 meter) per year, based on observations from orbit.

Curiosity’s current mission task is to scale Sharp and examine the higher layers. It has already explored outcrops between its landing site and the mountain since landing in August 2012.

By James Haleavy

Photos: NASA

Best Meteor Shower — Colorful Geminids — This Weekend

December 11, 2015 by The Speaker Editors

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The Geminids — “the King of Meteor Showers” — will rain down around 100 to 150 multi-colored slow-moving streaks per hour this weekend, visible from anywhere, but the best views will be for those in the Northern Hemisphere.

The show will peak over the night of Sunday, December 13 — between midnight and morning with the highest activity between 2 and 3 a.m. There should be some meteors visible already at sunset, though. While the meteors will radiate from the southwest, there is no particular part of the sky where viewers need to focus their attention because the shower will be so high.

The Gemenids are famous not only for the frequency of meteors, but also their slow movement and the varied colors which are produced by the different chemical compounds burning in the sky.

The Gemenids are a relatively young shower — first observed 150 years ago. They originated from the 3200 Phaeton asteroid — one of only two major showers not originating from a comet.

By Andy Stern

Alberta Premier Says NDP Might Not Raise Minimum Wage To $15

July 30, 2016December 10, 2015 by The Speaker Editors

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Alberta’s Premier said this week that she was not sure the provincial government would raise the minimum wage to $15 after all, citing the state of the Alberta economy and the possibility that raising the minimum wage might lead to job losses.

The NDP came to power in May, the first non-Conservative party to govern the province in 44 years. Among the NDP’s election campaign promises was that the minimum wage would be increased to $15 dollars per hour by 2018. The plan angered businesses, but the NDP indicated that raising the wage would create jobs and insure a better standard of living for all.

In June, Notely reasserted that they would “stick to that promise,” and in October the NDP raised the minimum wage from $10.20 to $11.20.

However, Wednesday Premier Rachel Notley said the government would examine the wage issue in light of continuing economic trends — Alberta has been in recession and predictions for the next couple of years are significantly worse.

Notley said that they would now consider the best available research before making a decision about raising the minimum wage.

She said that the $15 target was an idea rather than a plan.

“[I]n fact,” said Notley, “what we’ve said all along is the pace is something that needs to be sensitive to the current economic situation — the depth and breadth of which we are still, all of us, are still coming to understand. So that’s what we’re going to do.”

By Andy Stern

Tuberculosis – Surprising Diversity In Ethiopian Strains May Rewrite History

January 26, 2021December 10, 2015 by The Speaker Editors

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“Virgin soil” hypothesis of African tuberculosis burden now challenged by new “European wave” hypothesis

Ethiopia is a hotspot for tuberculosis infection, ranking third among African countries and eighth in the world for TB burden according to the World Health Organization. But, say researchers who have analyzed the genomes of 66 TB strains and reported their findings in the Cell Press journal Current Biology Thursday, that’s most likely not because TB was absent in the country before Europeans made contact–the so-called “virgin soil hypothesis”–as had been proposed ever since colonial times. Rather, they suggest, Europeans may have introduced a new wave of disease spread by more virulent TB strains, which spread during the 20th century as countries of Sub-Saharan Africa grew increasingly urbanized.

The new genomic analysis finds a surprising amount of diversity amongst TB strains in Ethiopia. It also adds to evidence that Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium responsible for TB, originated in Africa.

“The diversity of M. tuberculosis in Ethiopia is considerably higher than is recorded in most other countries; the number of genotypes present in the population is large, and some of them have clear links with other global genotypes while others are specific to East Africa,” says Stefan Berg of the Animal and Plant Health Agency in Surrey, United Kingdom. “Before this project was initiated, this high diversity was not expected.”

“The diversity of M. tuberculosis complex in Ethiopia confirms the African origin of the disease and contradicts early notions that TB was not present in Africa before main European contact,” adds Iñaki Comas of FISABIO Public Health in Valencia, Spain. “However, it remains to be explained why high rates of infection among native people were observed after the contact.”

The findings are part of a larger effort by Comas and Berg along with colleagues in Europe and Ethiopia to understand the high rates of TB and specifically extra-pulmonary TB–a less common form of the infection affecting areas of the body outside of the lungs–seen in Ethiopia.

In the new study, the researchers analyzed a broad sample of M. tuberculosis strains collected from infected people in Ethiopia. Their analysis shows that all of the strains collected trace back to a single common ancestor with a proposed origin in East Africa. The analysis also revealed a pattern of serial introductions of TB strains into Ethiopia in association with human migration and trade.

Although more work remains, the researchers “propose that increased TB mortality in Africa was driven by the introduction of European strains of M. tuberculosis alongside expansion of selected indigenous strains having biological characteristics that carry a fitness benefit in the urbanized settings of post-colonial Africa.”

The new evolutionary analyses shed light on past epidemics of TB. They might also help to understand global trends in TB infection and perhaps even better predict the future. “Understanding factors that may have influenced the current population structure of M. tuberculosis in Africa and worldwide can potential help predicting future trends in the disease epidemiology,” Berg says.

Comas says they would now like to sequence the bacteria along with their human hosts to further investigate the biological factors underlying high rates of extrapulmonary TB in Ethiopia, which may lead to new strategies for combatting this form of disease globally. They’d also like to explore whether certain human populations are more susceptible to certain bacterial strains.

The report, “Population Genomics of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Ethiopia Contradicts the Virgin Soil Hypothesis for Human Tuberculosis in Sub-Saharan Africa” was published in the journal Current Biology.

By Joseph Caputo
With images from the report and WHO (WHO/P. Virot)

Bacteria Engineered With Synthetic Circadian Clocks

January 26, 2021December 10, 2015 by The Speaker Editors

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Many of the body’s processes follow a natural daily rhythm or so-called circadian clock, so there are certain times of the day when a person is most alert, when the heart is most efficient, and when the body prefers sleep. Even bacteria have a circadian clock, and in a December 10 Cell Reports study, researchers designed synthetic microbes to learn what drives this clock and how it might be manipulated.

“The answer seems to be especially simple: the clock proteins sense the metabolic activity in the cell,” says senior author Dr. Michael Rust, of the University of Chicago’s Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology.

“This is probably because cyanobacteria are naturally photosynthetic–they’re actually responsible for a large fraction of the photosynthesis in the ocean–and so whether the cell is energized or not is a good indication of whether it’s day or night,” he says. For photosynthetic bacteria, every night is a period of starvation, and it is likely that the circadian clock helps them grow during the day in order to prepare for nightfall.

To make their discovery, Rust and his colleagues had to separate metabolism from light exposure, and they did this by using a synthetic biology approach to make photosynthetic bacteria capable of living on sugar rather than sunlight.

“I was surprised that this actually worked–by genetically engineering just one sugar transporter, it was possible to give these bacteria a completely different lifestyle than the one they have had for hundreds of millions of years,” Rust says. The findings indicate that the cyanobacteria’s clock can synchronize to metabolism outside of the context of photosynthesis. “This suggests that in the future this system could be installed in microbes of our own design to carry out scheduled tasks,” he says.

In a related analogy, engineers who developed electrical circuits found that synchronizing each step of a computation to an internal clock made increasingly complicated tasks possible, ultimately leading to the computers we have today. “Perhaps in the future we’ll be able to use synthetic clocks in engineered microbes in a similar way,” Rust says.

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Other researchers have shown that molecules involved in the mammalian circadian clock are also sensitive to metabolism, but our metabolism is not so closely tied to daylight as the cyanobacteria’s. Therefore, our bodies’ clocks evolved to also sense light and dark.

“This is presumably why, in mammals, there are specialized networks of neurons that receive light input from the retina and send timing signals to the rest of the body,” Rust explains. “So, for us it’s clearly a mixture of metabolic cues and light exposure that are important.”

The bacteria that live inside of our guts, however, most likely face similar daily challenges as those experienced by cyanobacteria because we give them food during the day when we eat but not during the night. “It’s still an open question whether the bacteria that live inside us have ways of keeping track of time,” Rust says.

The report, “Controlling the Cyanobacterial Clock by Synthetically Rewiring Metabolism,” was published in Cell Reports.

By Kevin Jiang

Julian Assange Shares Thoughts And Information On Turkey And ISIS

August 3, 2016December 10, 2015 by The Speaker Editors

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ISIS will be eliminated in about six months, Assange predicted, who blamed both Russia and Turkey for the jet downing last month

Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange spoke via live video stream on a panel on security and surveillance featuring terrorism expert Philip Giraldi, political activist Raymond McGovern, and strategic analyst Gregory Copley Thursday. At the end of the discussion, hosted by broadcast organization Russia Today, Assange commented on the recent developments in the Middle East. Assange criticized Russia for its action in the region, as well as its “severe incompetence” with regards to its jet being shot down by Turkey in November. He also made predictions about the end of ISIS as a significant power, and hinted at new information he had received about the last Turkish election and how it may relate to the jet incident.

“Northern Turkey can be looked at as ‘Novo Turkey,'” said Assange. “It’s a similar situation to which Russia was dealing with in the Ukraine.”

“And that if we imagine a situation where let’s say the United Kingdom came in and bombed rebels in eastern Ukraine in support of western Ukraine — Russian-backed rebels — what would the Russian response be? Would it be to shoot down those planes if it could find a technical excuse to do so?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn4IvHgb7Qk

“And I think the answer is ‘Yes,’ that the domestic nationalist imperative would be to do that.”

Assange continued to criticize Russian actions or lack of actions preceding the downing of its jet along the Turkish border.

“And Turkey send out many warnings. Sorry, it sent out several warnings to Russia in the preceding week.”

Assange began to speak of information relating to the last Turkish election, and that policy established at that time had a part in the jet’s being shot down.

“Now there is some other information that has arisen which what perhaps occurred was a plan that was set in train immediately before the election — the Turkish election, which Erdogan won. And that was a national imperative to win that election.

“And rules of engagement were set up such that if there was a technical violation — even for a second — of Turkish airspace or it could be suggested that there was, this would be a plan to ensure winning that election. And those rules of engagement were not taken down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyEuc4PjVQk

“I’m not sure what the result is but you can see that it’s quite a complex situation, that we don’t have time to go into, but Turkey has historical interest in northern Syria. It has also used the Kurds to create a form of nationalism in Turkey. It is going to continue to push to have various forms of control of at least northern Syria, and that’s a conflict with many different actors that I don’t see going anywhere nice. It’s impossible to satisfy all those actors at once.

“And I really think that while shooting down Russia’s jet was not justified, we have to pause and consider what is perhaps a severe incompetence of Russian intelligence services. Severe incompetence in relation to Ukraine, and severe incompetence in relation to Turkey, because there were plenty of warning signals being given off by the Turks. Why won’t those warning signals properly understood?”

Assange also made predictions about the impending end of ISIS as a significant power. ISIS would be “almost completely debilitated as a state” in about six months time, said Assange, and will return to being a guerilla group.

The U.S., Russia, Iran and other groups which had been militarily active against ISIS would then remain in the region, Assange believed, and continue other activities.

By James Haleavy

Mars Will Develop Rings Like Saturn, Study Predicts

December 9, 2015 by Tony Simpson

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The red planet’s future rings

Mars will most likely develop rings similar to Saturn’s, when its largest moon, Phobos, gets close enough to break apart, according to a recently published study in Nature Geoscience. Mars would be the only inner planet with rings if this took place. Scientists predict it will happen in about 20 – 40 million years.

Unlike Earth’s moon, which is slowly moving away from us, Mars’s largest and inner most moon, Phobos, has been slowly moving towards its parent planet, and once close enough, will be torn into bits by Mars’s gravity. The aftermath of Phobos being torn apart may result in a large ring orbiting Mars, as well as bombarding Mars with meteors for years afterwards. The study concludes that it is far more likely that Phobos will break apart before making contact with Mars, creating rings around the red planet.

Phobos is the larger of Mars’s two moons, and is thought to be a “rubble planet” that is comprised of numerous rocks held together by gravity, to form a large clump with a crust only 100 meters thick, compared to Earth’s average 30 kilometer crust. Every 100 years Phobos orbits 2 metres closer to Mars, and is thought to break apart into thousands of small pieces over 20 million years from now, creating dense rings similar to Saturn’s.

Phobos is Mars’s largest moon, and is made up of thousands of boulders held together by gravity

All planets in our solar system have had rings at one point in time, including Earth, though most rings were too unstable to last very long, and either rained down as meteors, or flew out of orbit. Only the outer gas giant planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune have retained their rings, which will make Mars the only inner planet to have rings again, and will probably be the last time any terrestrial planet gains new rings.

The researchers also said that several missions to Phobos have been proposed, and could help us learn more about asteroids, plate tectonics, and make measurements to test their theories.

By: Tony Simpson

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