93-year-old Mickey Salazar has a life story not many have lived.

“I was a junior in college. I went home for Christmas, got my physical and enlisted in the air force,” said Salazar.

During the war he was stationed across the sea in Japan’s capital, Tokyo.

“When I got there the Japanese didn’t have any sovereignty, so we controlled everything,” said Salazar.

He moved to Florida in 1961 and settled in palm Beach Gardens. Now at 93, his home needed new paint on its exterior and the Florida American Legion Auxillary stepped in to help.

“If more people would volunteer, the world would be a better place,” said Jane Hardacre, American Legion Auxillary.

Hardacre and her team spent a whole morning painting a brand-new coat on the veteran’s home. It’s something she loves to do and wishes more veterans were vocal about.

“What we need to do is have them not be afraid to ask for help, we are out here looking for those veterans in need of assistance, that’s how we were founded,” said Hardacre.

For Salazar, his home is now going to have a fresh paint job, but more importantly for him, it’s the thought of veterans helping veterans that makes him happy.

“I’m very grateful. I never expected anything like this to happen,” said Salazar.

The American Legion Auxillary supports and honors those who serve our country by enhancing the lives of our veterans, military and their families both at home and abroad.

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I invite you TODAY to perform strategically focused, inspirational acts of kindness for others today. Do not limit your self to the comfort of those you know. Extend your self to those with whom you have no obvious connection. Invite others that you know--friends, family, and acquaintances to join you (us) in this effort. As you perform these acts, invite the recipients to do their own version for another. Create a chain of happiness with your actions today.

Success or sabotage? There is little value to success if you are not willing to assist in creating greater success for another.

Is this going to be an incredible day? As you give, so shall ye receive. There is a reason why this "do unto me" philosophy exists in every culture and religion. it is the truth!

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Ever since she was a 10th grader in Seattle, Annalice Ni wanted to develop software for a prominent tech company like Google. So she went to great lengths to meet the internship and other résumé criteria that make students attractive hires to the biggest tech firms.

In high school, Ms. Ni took computer science courses, interned at Microsoft and volunteered as a coding teacher for younger students. She majored in computer science at the University of Washington, earning coveted software engineering internships at Facebook. After graduating from college this year, she moved to Silicon Valley to start her dream job as a software engineer at Meta, Facebook’s parent company.

Then last month, Meta laid off more than 11,000 employees — including Ms. Ni.

“I did feel very frustrated and disappointed and maybe a bit scared because all of a sudden, I didn’t know what to do,” Ms. Ni, 22, said of her unexpected career setback. “There’s not much I could have done, especially in college, more than I already did, better than I already did.”

Over the last decade, the prospect of six-figure starting salaries, perks like free food and the chance to work on apps used by billions led young people to stampede toward computer science — the study of computer programming and processes like algorithms — on college campuses across the United States. The number of undergraduates majoring in the subject more than tripled from 2011 to 2021, to nearly 136,000 students, according to the Computing Research Association, which tracks computing degrees at about 200 universities.

Tech giants like Facebook, Google and Microsoft encouraged the computing education boom, promoting software jobs to students as a route to lucrative careers and the power to change the world.

But now, layoffs, hiring freezes and planned recruiting slowdowns at Meta, Twitter, Alphabet, Amazon, DoorDash, Lyft, Snap and Stripe are sending shock waves through a generation of computer and data science students who spent years honing themselves for careers at the largest tech companies. Tech executives have blamed a faltering global economy for the jobs slowdown.

The cutbacks have not only sent recent graduates scrambling to find new jobs but also created uncertainty for college students seeking high-paying summer internships at large consumer tech companies.

In the past, tech companies used their internship programs to recruit promising job candidates, extending offers to many students to return as full-time employees after graduation. But this year, those opportunities are shrinking.

Amazon, for instance, hired about 18,000 interns this year, paying some computer science students nearly $30,000 for the summer, not including housing stipends. The company is now considering reducing the number of interns for 2023 by more than half, said a person with knowledge of the program who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Brad Glasser, an Amazon spokesman, said the company was committed to its internship program and the real-world experience that it provided. A Meta spokeswoman referred to a letter to employees from Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, announcing the company’s layoffs last month.

Hiring plans are also changing at smaller tech firms. Roblox, the popular game platform, said it planned to hire 300 interns for next summer — almost twice as many as this year — and was expecting more than 50,000 applications for those spots. Redfin, which employed 38 interns this summer, said it had canceled the program for next year.

There are still good jobs for computing students, and the field is growing. Between 2021 and 2031, employment for software developers and testers is expected to grow 25 percent, amounting to more than 411,000 new jobs, according to projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But many of those jobs are in areas like finance and the automotive industry.

“Students are still getting multiple job offers,” said Brent Winkelman, chief of staff for the computer science department at the University of Texas at Austin. “They just may not come from Meta, from Twitter or from Amazon. They’re going to come from places like G.M., Toyota or Lockheed.”

College career centers have become sounding boards for anxious students on the cusp of entering the tech job market. In career counselors’ offices, the search for a Plan B has heightened.

Some students are applying to lesser-known tech companies. Others are seeking tech jobs outside the industry, with retailers like Walmart or with government agencies and nonprofits. Graduate school is also an option.

“This particular class has been a lot more savvy than previous classes,” said Hazel Raja, senior director of the career development office at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. “Even those who have secured job offers, they’re still making sure they’re networking and staying engaged in campus recruiting opportunities.”

Helen Dong, 21, a senior majoring in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, interned at Meta twice, in 2021 and 2022. So she was surprised at the end of this summer, she said, when she did not receive a job offer from the company. Meta’s recent layoffs prompted her to apply for jobs outside tech, at automotive and financial companies. Last month, she posted videos on TikTok advising her peers to adjust their job expectations.

“I chose to major in computer science so that I could get a ton of offers after college and make bank,” Ms. Dong joked in one TikTok, as she sang along to “Reduce Your Expectations to 0.” In this job market, she wrote at the bottom of the video, “be grateful with 1 offer.”

In interviews, 10 college students and recent graduates said they were not prepared for a slowdown in jobs at the largest tech companies. Until recently, those companies were fiercely competing to hire computer science majors at top schools — with some students receiving multiple job offers with six-figure starting salaries and five-digit signing bonuses. An entire genre of TikTok videos had sprung up dedicated to young techies extolling their job perks and their annual compensation, with at least one highlighting a $198,000 package, complete with stock options and relocation expenses.

Dozens of people who were recently laid off, or whose tech job offers were rescinded, have posted details of their plights on LinkedIn. To alert recruiters, some have added the hashtag #opentowork to their LinkedIn profile photos.

Tony Shi, 23, who majored in computer science and business at Western University in London, Ontario, is one of them. After graduating this year, he began working as a product manager at Lyft in August. In November, the ride-hailing company laid off about 650 employees, including Mr. Shi.

Now he is on a tight deadline to find a new job. Mr. Shi is Canadian, from Waterloo, Ontario, and obtained a visa to move to San Francisco for his job at Lyft. Under the visa, he has 60 days to find a new job. He said he had become more sensitive to the businesses and balance sheets of potential employers.

“I need to be a little more risk-averse. I definitely don’t want to get laid off again,” he said. Instead of his taking a company for its word, he added, “now, the product needs to make a lot of sense.”

Some recent graduates did not get the chance to start their new tech jobs.

Rachel Castellino, a statistics major at the California Polytechnic State University, worked to land a job at a major tech company. During college, she interned as a project manager at PayPal, received a data science fellowship funded by the National Science Foundation and founded a data science club at her school.

Ms. Castellino, 22, knew she would have to grind to pass companies’ technical interviews, which typically involve solving programming problems. Last year, she spent much of the fall job hunting and preparing for coding assessments. For four days a week, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., she studied probability concepts and programming languages. Even so, she said, the interview process was brutal.

In November 2021, Meta offered her a job as a data scientist, starting in December 2022. Last month, Meta rescinded the offer, she said.

“I worked so hard for those interviews. It felt really good to earn something of a high caliber,” she said. “I had so much to look forward to.”

The setback has been disheartening. “I was upset,” Ms. Castellino said. “It wasn’t good to hear.”

As for Ms. Ni, she now views losing her dream job as an opportunity to broaden her career horizons. Over the last month, she has applied to midsize tech firms and start-ups that she finds innovative — potential employers she had not previously considered.

“I’m exploring opportunities that I didn’t before,” Ms. Ni said. “I feel like I’ve already learned some things.”

Karen Weise contributed reporting.

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The study evaluated 14 water-stressed locations across the globe for the feasibility of a hypothetical structure capable of capturing water vapor from above the ocean and condensing it into fresh water – and doing so in a manner that will remain feasible in the face of continued climate change.

Kumar, graduate student Afeefa Rahman and atmospheric sciences professor Francina Dominguez published their findings today (December 6) in the Nature journal Scientific Reports. The study was led by Praveen Kumar, professor of civil and environmental engineering and executive director of the Prairie Research Institute.

Professor Praveen Kumar and study co-author Afeefa Rahman. The background shows significantly lower-than-normal water levels in the Mississippi River near Grand Tower, Ill. Also seen in the image is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ effort to dredge the river to facilitate barge traffic. Credit: Photo by Fred Zwicky

 

“Water scarcity is a global problem and hits close to home here in the U.S. regarding the sinking water levels in the Colorado River basin, which affects the whole Western U.S.,” Kumar said. “However, in subtropical regions, like the Western U.S., nearby oceans are continuously evaporating water because there is enough solar radiation due to the very little cloud coverage throughout the year.”

Previous wastewater recycling, cloud seeding, and desalination techniques have met only limited success, the researchers said. Though deployed in some areas across the globe, desalination plants face sustainability issues because of the brine and heavy metal-laden wastewater produced – so much so that California has recently rejected measures to add new desalination plants.

Francina Dominquez, an atmospheric sciences professor at Illinois and study co-author. Credit: Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

 

“Eventually, we will need to find a way to increase the supply of freshwater as conservation and recycled water from existing sources, albeit essential, will not be sufficient to meet human needs. We think our newly proposed method can do that at large scales,” Kumar said.

The researchers performed atmospheric and economic analyses of the placement of hypothetical offshore structures 210 meters in width and 100 meters in height.

Through their analyses, the researchers concluded that capturing moisture over ocean surfaces is feasible for many water-stressed regions worldwide. The estimated water yield of the proposed structures could provide fresh water for large population centers in the subtropics.

One of the more robust projections of climate change is that dry regions will get drier, and wet areas will get wetter. “The current regions experiencing water scarcity will likely be even drier in the future, exacerbating the problem,” Dominguez said. “And unfortunately, people continue moving to water-limited areas, like the Southwestern U.S.”

However, this projection of increasingly arid conditions favors the new ocean vapor-harvesting technology.

“The climate projections show that the oceanic vapor flux will only increase over time, providing even more fresh water supply,” Rahman said. “So, the idea we are proposing will be feasible under climate change. This provides a much-needed and effective approach for adaptation to climate change, particularly to vulnerable populations living in arid and semi-arid regions of the world.”

The researchers said one of the more elegant features of this proposed solution is that it works like the natural water cycle.

“The difference is that we can guide where the evaporated water from the ocean goes,” Dominguez said. “When Praveen approached me with this idea, we both wondered why nobody had thought about it before because it seemed like such an obvious solution. But it hasn’t been done before, and I think it is because researchers are so focused on land-based solutions – but our study shows other options do, in fact, exist.”

The researchers said this study opens the door for novel infrastructure investments that can effectively address the increasing global scarcity of fresh water.

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Here’s how marsh grass shrimp reduce drag while swimming

Planes are Daniel Duggan’s passion. His professional life has been spent flying military aircraft and training others. His social media is filled, almost exclusively, with videos of aircraft from around the world.

But a man so often untethered to the ground has now spent 45 days in segregated and high-security custody in New South Wales. He still does not know the charges against him.

The arrest of Daniel Edmund Duggan, an Australian citizen and former US Marines fighter pilot, on secret charges is a “politically motivated injustice”, his wife has said, arguing her husband is a “victim of the United States government’s political dispute with China”.

Duggan was “provisionally arrested” at his home in the NSW town of Orange by Australian federal police on 21 October, on request from the FBI, shortly after he returned to Australia from China.

His case has remained shrouded in secrecy: the charges against him are sealed because of a US grand jury indictment. But his arrest coincided with warnings from Australian and British authorities over the practice of former military pilots being offered lucrative contracts to train pilots in China. Duggan’s lawyer, Dennis Miralis, has said the 54-year-old pilot will fight any extradition request, and resolutely maintains his innocence.

“He denies having breached any US law, any Australian law, any international law,” Miralis said.

A court heard Duggan was set to be transferred to Australia’s highest-security prison, the “Goulburn Supermax” in regional NSW, as an “extreme high risk restricted inmate”, but the state’s corrective services agency has refused to comment on where he is being held.

The US has until 20 December - 60 days from his arrest – to formally lodge an extradition request, or he will be eligible for release.

Duggan, the father of six school-age children, is a naturalised Australian citizen who has renounced his US citizenship. He spent more than a decade flying in the US Marine Corps, reaching the rank of major and working as a military tactical flight instructor, according to his company website.

He moved to Australia after leaving the Marines, establishing an “adventure flight” company called Top Gun Tasmania, running joy flights in fighter planes in the southern island state.

The company operated “an initial military training aircraft of the Chinese air force” known as a Nanchang fighter jet, according to its website.

“Our Nanchang aircraft are maintained to the same high standard using the maintenance systems used by the Chinese air force,” the website said.

Australian company records indicate Duggan moved to Beijing around 2014. Since 2017 he has been managing director of Avibiz Limited, “a comprehensive aviation consultancy company with a focus on the fast growing and dynamic Chinese Aviation Industry”, based in the eastern city of Qingdao, site of a strategically important naval base.

It is unclear which, if any, of these activities attracted the attention of the US authorities, but both the British and Australian governments have warned its former military personnel not to be lured to China on lucrative contracts.

“Australians who work or have worked for the government in any capacity, particularly our Australian defence force, who come into possession of the nation’s secrets, have an obligation to maintain those secrets beyond their employment,” Australia’s defence minister Richard Marles said last month. “This is an enduring obligation and to reveal any of those secrets is a crime.”

Duggan’s wife, Saffrine Duggan, has launched a public petition calling on Australia’s attorney general to refuse any US extradition request – a “politically motivated … injustice” – and order the pilot freed.

“Daniel’s treatment in segregation and classification as an ‘extreme high risk’ inmate is completely unjustified – he has never been charged or convicted of any crime in Australia, and is a model father, husband, friend and Australian citizen.”

She said Duggan, through no fault of his own, “now finds himself a victim of the United States government’s political dispute with China”.

“Daniel has been caught in a geopolitical storm for working in China, doing work that has been done there for decades by western, African and European pilots for decades with the full knowledge of these governments.”

“Daniel is away from his children, his beloved family, friends and community because of an obviously politically motivated case based on a 2017 indictment that was part of the United States’ now-disgraced China Initiative.”

The China Initiative was a Trump-era national security program designed to address growing Chinese espionage, stealing US secrets, technology and research. But the initiative was abandoned by the justice department in February this year, having been marred by allegations it engaged in racial profiling against Asian-Americans, and by FBI misconduct, including deliberately basing cases on false evidence.

A former Marines pilot who has known Duggan for almost 20 years told Agence France-Presse it was widely known Chinese companies had been recruiting military pilots, and he struggled to comprehend why Duggan would now be targeted for arrest.

“I can’t imagine what secrets he would have, that he would pass along, that would have caused him this much trouble,” the ex-Marine, who requested anonymity because he still works for a commercial airline, said.

“I think the China work was pretty well-known by most ex-military pilots. I would have first heard about it well over 10 years ago … it’s just that it’s recently made the news.”

Duggan has indicated he will fight his extradition and has lodged a formal complaint with Australia’s attorney general, saying he has been treated like a convicted terrorist, without even knowing the charges against him.

In court last week, Miralis said his client had endured “extraordinary, unprecedented, unjustifiable” treatment, which he believed was the result of “foreign interference”.

Outside court, Miralis said his client “has been struggling”, having been segregated in prison. He said he has been denied vital medical care, as well as access to stationery so he could document his complaints at his treatment.

“As we informed the court, this is unprecedented, to have an Australian citizen being placed on the most severe inmate restrictions akin to people convicted of terrorist offences and multiple homicides in circumstances where he has never been in trouble with the police neither in Australia or anywhere in the world.

“In 22 years of practising criminal law specialising in extradition, I am yet to see something as remarkable as this.”

Miralis said the precise allegations against Duggan remain unclear because he was secretly indicted by a US grand jury and the details are not required to be divulged until a formal extradition request is made.

“While there is some commentary concerning the nature of the allegations, Mr Duggan’s position is very clear: he denies having breached any US law, any Australian law, any international law,” Miralis said. “This is a position that he will defend vigorously.”

Barrister Trent Glover, representing the US government, told court Duggan’s case had followed an “ordinary extradition process” and the Australian citizen could either waive the extradition, consent to it, or contest his eligibility to be surrendered to the US.

A spokesperson for the Australian attorney general’s department said it “does not comment on extradition matters until after the person has been brought before the court pursuant to that request”. Duggan’s case returns to court on 16 December.

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Elon Musk’s Neuralink, a medical device company, is under federal investigation for potential animal-welfare violations amid internal staff complaints that its animal testing is being rushed, causing needless suffering and deaths, according to documents reviewed by Reuters and sources familiar with the investigation and company operations.

Neuralink Corp is developing a brain implant it hopes will help paralyzed people walk again and cure other neurological ailments. The federal investigation, which has not been previously reported, was opened in recent months by the US Department of Agriculture’s inspector general at the request of a federal prosecutor, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation. The inquiry, one of the sources said, focuses on violations of the Animal Welfare Act, which governs how researchers treat and test some animals.

The investigation has come at a time of growing employee dissent about Neuralink’s animal testing, including complaints that pressure from Musk to accelerate development has resulted in botched experiments, according to a Reuters review of dozens of Neuralink documents and interviews with more than 20 current and former employees. Such failed tests have had to be repeated, increasing the number of animals being tested and killed, the employees say. The company documents include previously unreported messages, audio recordings, emails, presentations and reports.

Musk and other Neuralink executives did not respond to requests for comment.

Reuters could not determine the full scope of the federal investigation or whether it involved the same alleged problems with animal testing identified by employees in Reuters interviews. A spokesperson for the USDA inspector general declined to comment. US regulations don’t specify how many animals companies can use for research, and they give significant leeway to scientists to determine when and how to use animals in experiments. Neuralink has passed all USDA inspections of its facilities, regulatory filings show.

In all, the company has killed about 1,500 animals, including more than 280 sheep, pigs and monkeys, following experiments since 2018, according to records reviewed by Reuters and sources with direct knowledge of the company’s animal-testing operations. The sources characterized that figure as a rough estimate because the company does not keep precise records on the number of animals tested and killed. Neuralink has also conducted research using rats and mice.

The total number of animal deaths does not necessarily indicate that Neuralink is violating regulations or standard research practices. Many companies routinely use animals in experiments to advance human health care, and they face financial pressure to quickly bring products to market. The animals are typically killed when experiments are completed, often so they can be examined post-mortem for research purposes.

Elon Musk next to a surgical robot during a 2020 presentation. Photograph: Neuralink/AFP/Getty Images

But current and former Neuralink employees say the number of animal deaths is higher than it needs to be for reasons related to Musk’s demands to speed research. Through company discussions and documents spanning several years, along with employee interviews, Reuters identified four experiments involving 86 pigs and two monkeys that were marred in recent years by human errors. The mistakes weakened the experiments’ research value and required the tests to be repeated, leading to more animals being killed, three of the current and former staffers said. The three people attributed the mistakes to a lack of preparation by a testing staff working in a pressure-cooker environment.

One employee, in a message seen by Reuters, wrote an angry missive this year to colleagues about the need to overhaul how the company organizes animal surgeries to prevent “hack jobs”. The rushed schedule, the employee wrote, resulted in under-prepared and over-stressed staffers scrambling to meet deadlines and making last-minute changes before surgeries, raising risks to the animals.

Musk has pushed hard to accelerate Neuralink’s progress, which depends heavily on animal testing, current and former employees said. This year, the chief executive sent staffers a news article about Swiss researchers who developed an electrical implant that helped a paralyzed man to walk again. “We could enable people to use their hands and walk again in daily life!” he wrote to staff at 6.37am Pacific time on 8 February. Ten minutes later, he followed up: “In general, we are simply not moving fast enough. It is driving me nuts!”

On several occasions over the years, Musk has told employees to imagine they had a bomb strapped to their heads in an effort to get them to move faster, according to three sources who repeatedly heard the comment. On one occasion a few years ago, Musk told employees he would trigger a “market failure” at Neuralink unless they made more progress, a comment perceived by some employees as a threat to shut down operations, according to a former staffer who heard his comment.

Five people who have worked on Neuralink’s animal experiments told Reuters they had raised concerns internally. They said they had advocated for a more traditional testing approach, in which researchers would test one element at a time in an animal study and draw relevant conclusions before moving on to more animal tests. Instead, these people said, Neuralink launches tests in quick succession before fixing issues in earlier tests or drawing complete conclusions. The result: more animals overall are tested and killed, in part because the approach leads to repeated tests.

One former employee who asked management several years ago for more deliberate testing was told by a senior executive it wasn’t possible given Musk’s demands for speed, the employee said. Two people told Reuters they had left the company over concerns about animal research.

The problems with Neuralink’s testing have raised questions internally about the quality of the resulting data, three current or former employees said. Such problems could delay the company’s bid to start human trials, which Musk has said the company wants to do within the next six months. They also add to a growing list of headaches for Musk, who is facing criticism of his management of Twitter, which he recently acquired for $44bn. Musk also continues to run the electric carmaker Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX.

The US Food and Drug Administration is in charge of reviewing the company’s applications for approval of its medical device and associated trials. The company’s treatment of animals during research, however, is regulated by the USDA under the Animal Welfare Act. The FDA didn’t immediately comment.

Missed deadlines, botched experiments

Musk’s impatience with Neuralink has grown as the company, which launched in 2016, has missed his deadlines on several occasions to win regulatory approval to start clinical trials in humans, according to company documents and interviews with eight current and former employees.

Some Neuralink rivals are having more success. Synchron, which was launched in 2016 and is developing a different implant with less ambitious goals for medical advances, received FDA approval to start human trials in 2021. The company’s device has allowed paralyzed people to text and type by thinking alone. Synchron has also conducted tests on animals, but it has killed only about 80 sheep as part of its research, according to studies of the Synchron implant reviewed by Reuters. Musk approached Synchron about a potential investment, Reuters reported in August.

Synchron declined to comment.

In some ways, Neuralink treats animals quite well compared with other research facilities, employees said in interviews, echoing public statements by Musk and other executives. Company leaders have boasted internally of building a “Monkey Disneyland” in the company’s Austin, Texas, facility where lab animals can roam, a former employee said. In the company’s early years, Musk told employees he wanted the monkeys at his San Francisco Bay Area operation to live in a “monkey Taj Mahal”, said a former employee who heard the comment. Another former employee recalled Musk saying he disliked using animals for research but wanted to make sure they were “the happiest animals” while alive.

The animals have fared less well, however, when used in the company’s research, current and former employees say.

Musk holds a Neuralink implant at the 2020 presentation. Photograph: Neuralink/AFP/Getty Images

The first complaints about the company’s testing involved its initial partnership with University of California, Davis, to conduct the experiments. In February, an animal rights group, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, filed a complaint with the USDA accusing the Neuralink-UC Davis project of botching surgeries that killed monkeys, and publicly released its findings. The group alleged that surgeons used the wrong surgical glue twice, which led to two monkeys suffering and dying, while other monkeys had different complications from the implants.

The company has acknowledged it killed six monkeys, on the advice of UC Davis veterinary staff, because of health problems caused by experiments. It called the issue with the glue a “complication” from the use of an “FDA-approved product”. In response to a Reuters inquiry, a UC Davis spokesperson shared a previous public statement defending its research with Neuralink and saying it followed all laws and regulations.

A federal prosecutor in the northern district of California referred the animal rights group’s complaint to the USDA inspector general, which has since launched a formal investigation, according to a source with direct knowledge of it. USDA investigators then inquired about the allegations involving the UC Davis monkey research, according to two sources familiar with the matter and emails and messages reviewed by Reuters.

The investigation is concerned with the testing and treatment of animals in Neuralink’s own facilities, one of the sources said, without elaborating. In 2020, Neuralink brought the program in-house, and it has since built its extensive facilities in California and Texas.

A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office for the northern district of California declined to comment.

Delcianna Winders, director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at the Vermont Law and Graduate School, said it was “very unusual” for the USDA inspector general to investigate animal research facilities. Winders, an animal-testing opponent who has criticized Neuralink, said the inspector general has primarily focused in recent years on dogfighting and cockfighting actions when applying the Animal Welfare Act.

Employee concerns

The mistakes leading to unnecessary animal deaths included one instance in 2021 when 25 out of 60 pigs in a study had devices that were the wrong size implanted in their heads, an error that could have been avoided with more preparation, according to a person with knowledge of the situation and company documents and communications reviewed by Reuters.

The mistake raised alarm among Neuralink’s researchers. In May 2021, Viktor Kharazia, a scientist, wrote to colleagues that the mistake could be a “red flag” to FDA reviewers of the study, which the company planned to submit as part of its application to begin human trials. His colleagues agreed, and the experiment was repeated with 36 sheep, according to the person with knowledge of the situation. All the animals, both the pigs and the sheep, were killed after the procedures, the person said.

Kharazia did not comment in response to requests.

On another occasion, staff accidentally implanted Neuralink’s device on the wrong vertebra of two different pigs during two separate surgeries, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter and documents reviewed by Reuters. The incident frustrated several employees who said the mistakes “on two separate occasions” could have easily been avoided by carefully counting the vertebrae before inserting the device.

The company veterinarian Sam Baker advised his colleagues to immediately kill one of the pigs to end her suffering.

“Based on low chance of full recovery … and her current poor psychological wellbeing, it was decided that euthanasia was the only appropriate course of action,” Baker wrote colleagues about one of the pigs a day after the surgery, adding a broken heart emoji.

Baker did not comment on the incident.

Neuralink is developing a brain implant it hopes will help paralyzed people walk again. Photograph: Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock

Employees have sometimes pushed back on Musk’s demands to move fast. In a company discussion several months ago, some Neuralink employees protested after a manager said that Musk had encouraged them to do a complex surgery on pigs soon. The employees resisted on the grounds that the surgery’s complexity would lengthen the amount of time the pigs would be under anesthesia, risking their health and recovery. They argued they should first figure out how to cut down the time it would take to do the surgery.

“It’s hard on the little piggies,” one of the employees said, referring to the lengthy period under anesthesia.

In September, the company responded to employee concerns about its animal testing by holding a town hall to explain its processes. It soon after opened up the meetings to staff of its federally mandated board that reviews the animal experiments.

Neuralink executives have said publicly that the company tests animals only when it has exhausted other research options, but documents and company messages suggest otherwise. During a 30 November presentation the company broadcast on YouTube, for example, Musk said surgeries were used at a later stage of the process to confirm that the device worked rather than to test early hypotheses. “We’re extremely careful,” he said, to make sure that testing is “confirmatory, not exploratory”, using animal testing as a last resort after trying other methods.

In October, a month before Musk’s comments, Autumn Sorrells, the head of animal care, ordered employees to scrub “exploration” from study titles retroactively and stop using it in the future.

Sorrells did not comment in response to requests.

Neuralink records reviewed by Reuters contained numerous references over several years to exploratory surgeries, and three people with knowledge of the company’s research strongly rejected the assertion that Neuralink avoids exploratory tests on animals. Company discussions reviewed by Reuters showed several employees expressing concerns about Sorrells’ request to change exploratory study descriptions, saying it would be inaccurate and misleading.

One noted that the request seemed designed to provide “better optics” for Neuralink.

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The US is mulling disabling or destroying Taiwan’s semiconductor factories in the event of a Chinese invasion. This stark change raises questions about its capabilities and commitment to defend the island. 

At the Richard Nixon Foundation’s Grand Strategy Summit last month, former US national security adviser Ambassador Robert O’Brien suggested that the US might destroy Taiwan’s semiconductor factories in the event of a Chinese invasion, as reported by Army Technology. 

“If China takes Taiwan and takes those factories intact – which I don’t think we would ever allow – they have a monopoly over chips the way OPEC has a monopoly or even more than the way OPEC has a monopoly over oil,” O’Brien said. 

In addition, as reported by Bloomberg in October, the US may be planning to evacuate the island’s semiconductor engineers in the event of a Chinese invasion. The source says unnamed US officials said that accelerated preparations had been made for an action plan to evacuate such skilled personnel to the US in the worst-case scenario.

Also read: Pentagon, Chinese analysts agree US can’t win in Taiwan Strait

In response to the Bloomberg report, Taiwanese Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said Taiwan and the US had conducted no such evacuation plan in this year’s Han Kuang annual military exercises, as reported by Focus Taiwan in October. 

According to Chiu, none of the war games in the exercise included an evacuation scenario, and he stressed that Taiwan relies on self-reliance and restraint to maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait. 

O’Brien’s remarks and the Bloomberg report are consistent with a 2021 study published by the US Army War College that suggests the US and Taiwan lay plans for a scorched-earth strategy by threatening to destroy Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company manufacturing facilities. TSMC produces about 55% of the world’s semiconductors used in everything from mobile phones to computers and sophisticated military weapons and equipment. 

The study says the destruction of TSMC’s facilities would cripple China’s war effort, with the resulting economic damage seriously threatening the legitimacy of the Communist Party of China. In addition, the study says the US or Taiwan could install automatic self-destruct systems in semiconductor factories. Therefore, the Taiwanese government should clearly state that it will not allow these facilities to fall into China’s hands. 

It also states that the US and its allies must prepare to give refuge to Taiwan’s semiconductor scientists and engineers to preserve the human component of the island’s semiconductor industry. 

This scorched-earth strategy is a considerable departure from the porcupine strategy espoused by Taiwanese and US defense officials. Instead of deterring a Chinese invasion by raising the prospect of unacceptable casualties, a scorched-earth strategy could destroy Taiwan’s strategic and economic value to dissuade China from pursuing forceful military reunification. 

China’s rapid military modernization and relative US decline in conventional deterrence may factor into adopting a scorched-earth strategy for Taiwan. 

Given that, the 2022 China Power Report by the US Department of Defense notes that China’s warfighting concepts and abilities continue to strengthen its ability to fight a war against the US in the sense of countering its intervention in a Taiwan Strait conflict.

In contrast, Mackenzie Eaglen notes in a November article in 19fortyfive that US conventional deterrence is rapidly declining because of bureaucracy, lack of urgency, and underinvestment in military industries. 

Apart from the growing disparity between China and the US regarding conventional military capability, Taiwan may not be making the right moves for its defense. Asia Times has previously noted that Taiwan is fluctuating between an asymmetric porcupine strategy and fighting China head-on, as it still invests in high-profile, high-cost, and high-prestige assets such as submarines, frigates, and fighter jets. 

That thinking stems from bureaucratic inertia from previous decades when the US and Taiwan thought they could repel an invasion by China’s inferior forces. However, as China’s military modernization took off, it became outdated.

Also, William Murray writes in the US Naval War College Review that China’s growing missile arsenal allows it to overwhelm Taiwan’s Patriot missile defenses, incapacitate its navy, and ground or destroy large portions of its air force in the opening moments of an invasion. 

In addition, the US position of strategic ambiguity complicates Taiwan’s porcupine strategy. In a September 2021 article for Geopolitical Futures, Philip Orchard states that while China’s growing anti-access/area denial capabilities have made US intervention increasingly costly and dangerous to do so, US strategic ambiguity keeps Taiwan’s military modernization plans in limbo.

He notes that a porcupine strategy makes sense if Taiwan can trust US security guarantees. If not, Taiwan needs to develop its counterstrike capabilities, but spending to develop one undermines the effectiveness of the other. 

Thus the erosion of US conventional deterrence, China’s military modernization, and pitfalls of strategic ambiguity suggest that a scorched-earth strategy is a tacit admission that the US cannot defend Taiwan through military means. 

Further, implementing a scorched-earth strategy may fail, for multiple reasons. 

In a November 2020 interview with Global Times, former KMT chairman Hung Hsiu-chu noted that most Taiwanese will not be able to stomach the idea of Taiwan ending up as scorched earth. Hung also chastised hawkish factions advocating such strategy as having never lived through war, sticking to wishful thinking about US assistance, and profiteering from human suffering. 

Also, Taiwanese leaders would not want to destroy the island’s semiconductor industry, as it would lose a powerful bargaining tool to manage the complex interests of the US and China. In a March 2021 article for The Strategist, Elena Yi-Ching Ho noted the strategic importance of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry to the US and its allies and said that despite China’s push for self-reliance, it still depends on Taiwan for its own needs.

Ho said the strategic importance of TSMC should give the US and China pause to think, as both would stand to lose with its destruction.

In addition, a scorched-earth strategy might not deter China from pushing for reunification with Taiwan. The Chinese State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office noted in a December 2021 article that “the mainland’s pursuit of cross-Strait reunification is definitely not for TSMC,” hinting at a myopic reasoning of using a scorched-earth strategy for deterrence. 

In line with this, Timothy Rich notes in a December 2021 article in The News Lens that the destruction of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry might only be a temporary setback for China as its industries take off.

He states that while Taiwan’s economic self-harm might deter China in the short term, its ability to prepare for an invasion would be severely weakened, as Taiwan could no longer use its semiconductor industry to build components for sophisticated weapons such as drones, missiles, and radars. 

Source

It might seem obvious that ectothermic animals are severely impacted by global warming. It is well known that their body temperature and, by extension, their biochemical processes rely on ambient temperature and on sunlight.

However, the fact that heat injury doubles for every degree the ambient temperature exceeds animals’ tolerance limit surprised even the researchers who conducted the new study.

The researchers are five Aarhus University zoophysiologists who have recently published their findings in the prominent scientific journal Nature, where the study is featured on the cover. The researchers based their findings on data from prior studies on ectothermic animals.

There is a well-known relationship between the geographical distribution of ectotherms and their ability to endure ambient temperature conditions. They can only survive at temperatures that enable them to develop and reproduce, and in harsh winter and summer temperatures that are neither too cold nor too hot for lengthy periods of time.

The rate of heat injury for fish like these Monodactylus argenteus swimming in Madagascar is likely to increase by an average of 180 percent with the expected increase in maximum temperatures in connection with global warming. Credit: Brocken Inaglory, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

 

The animals sustain injuries if temperatures exceed the threshold for what they can tolerate. These injuries accumulate over time and ultimately determine whether the species can survive under the prevailing temperature conditions.

“And the higher the temperature exceeds the tolerance level of the species, the quicker they will accumulate injuries,” explains one of the co-authors of the study, postdoc Lisa Bjerregaard Jørgensen.

The researchers have analyzed the temperature sensitivity for heat stress of 112 ectothermic species. the analysis shows that the rate of heat injury accumulation more than doubles if the temperature rises by only 1°C.

And since this is an exponential increase, a temperature increase of 2°C will increase the rate of heat injury accumulation by more than four times, while for a 3°C increase the injury rate will be more than eight times faster.

Reptiles like this baby Sonoran Desert tortoise in Arizona are ectotherms but not necessarily cold-blooded; its blood temperature depends on the ambient temperature. And THAT is getting dangerously hotter. Credit: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Southwest Region

 

The researchers then compared their data for temperature sensitivity with models for the expected increase in maximum temperatures in connection with global warming. This data shows that the rate of heat injury for ectotherms at a global level could increase by an average of 700 percent, and in many environments on land by more than 2000 percent.

For aquatic ectotherms, the corresponding figures are 180 percent and 500 percent.

Regional analysis suggests huge impacts, especially in the northern temperate zone which covers most of Europe and North America, and the ocean around the Arctic.

Even though the researchers do not know the underlying physiological and biochemical reactions that lead to heat stress and death, their study demonstrates that these processes are extremely sensitive to temperature across all groups of ectotherms. This could indicate that similar processes determine the degree of heat injury.

“Neither can we predict how many species and individuals risk succumbing to rising temperatures because the threshold for heat stress differs significantly from one species to the next. Furthermore, many land-based ectothermic animals can regulate their temperature by finding shade, thereby reducing the risk of heat injury. This is not so easy for aquatic animals,” says Professor Johannes Overgaard, who is a co-author of the study.

And he adds: “The point is that this very high sensitivity to heat injury means that we risk underestimating the impacts of future heatwaves. Our results indicate that future heatwaves will have major consequences – even if not all species will be impacted to the same degree.”

Source

The first time David Coyle saw a Jorō spider outside his house in 2020, he recognized it immediately. The bluish-green bands across its thick yellow abdomen made the critter easily identifiable. At the edge of his backyard, he found another. Then a third. “And all of a sudden, they were just all over the place,” he says. 

As an invasive species expert at Clemson University, Coyle had known about the spider’s presence in the United States for some time, but until that point, they had yet to show up in his neighborhood. The explosion of Jorōs across Georgia over the next two years was followed by sightings in Tennessee, Alabama, and the Carolinas—and even farther north in Maryland and West Virginia. But it wasn’t until last spring, when entomologists found out that Jorōs can survive the cold, that Coyle noticed the proliferation of news headlines: exaggerated accounts of giant, parachuting spiders that would soon invade the Northeast. That’s when he decided something had to be done.

In November, Coyle and four other scientists published a paper in Biological Invasions—a journal devoted to the management of invasive species—to stop the spread of misinformation about Jorōs. In it, they summarize what’s actually known about the species (spoiler alert: not much) and, perhaps more important, everything that isn’t. They include a pointed plea to journalists and field experts to exercise caution when communicating with the public and to wait for future studies before drawing conclusions about the spider’s potential environmental and economic effects.

Coyle gets the hype: Jorōs are new, big, brightly coloured spiders that drape massive webs across homes, carports, trees, and power lines. “They’re a media sensation,” he says. “Lots of things that garner clicks are wrapped up into this one creature.” But, he continues, “our knowledge of them is poor. We know what they are, where they are, and we know that populations are increasing exponentially. But we have no clue about the impacts.”

Courtesy of David R. Coyle

Native to East Asia, Jorōs are one of many so-called golden orb weavers, named after the shiny silk they use to spin webs (which can be a whopping 10 feet wide, by the way). The spider was first spotted in the US by scientists in Colbert, Georgia, in 2014, though local accounts suggest it may have been around for a few years prior. Colbert is near a hub of warehouses and distribution centers, making it likely that the spider arrived by unintentionally hitching a ride on an international cargo ship. 

In 2020, the Jorō population skyrocketed. Scientists believe they’re primarily dispersing via a technique called ballooning: Baby spiderlings climb up high, shoot out silk, and glide along the air currents to their next destination. That’s when the spiders first caught the media’s attention. A second wave of news came with the discovery that, unlike native orb weavers, Jorōs can tolerate colder climates. Some articles referenced palm-sized parachuting spinners that would soon fly up the East Coast. Others painted them as a positive—perhaps Jorōs would prey on harmful invasive species, like stink bugs, and keep them at bay. But neither of these have been proven true. 

“There’s a strong temptation to label them as a good or bad thing,” says University of Florida arachnologist Angela Chuang, a coauthor of the paper. “But we just don’t know enough yet to say.” Chuang’s previous work found that 47 percent of all spider news is inaccurate, containing misidentified images or factual errors about their anatomy and venom toxicity. In addition, 43 percent of articles are overblown, exaggerating spiders’ size or hairiness and associating them with trigger words—like terrifying, nightmarish, and deadly—that can spur arachnophobia. 

Negative coverage contorts perceptions about the risk spiders pose to humans and shapes people’s decisions about wildlife protection efforts. At worst, sensationalized accounts lead to a loss of money and resources: Spider sightings have caused unnecessary school closures and have driven people to extreme measures of eradication. Increased usage of pesticides (which are but a temporary solution, Coyle says) can hurt both homeowners’ finances and nearby flora and fauna. 

On the other hand, Coyle says, overly positive coverage is also disingenuous, because it can lull the public into a false sense of security before scientists have thoroughly assessed a new species’ environmental and economic effects.

The reason it’s so difficult for scientists to predict the future is because spider invasions are largely understudied. Unlike insects, they’re not agricultural pests, so monitoring invasions is of low economic priority. Most are also harmless. “The vast majority of spiders don’t pose a threat to humans and do a lot of good work,” says Catherine Scott, a behavioral ecologist at McGill University. They’re essential predators that help maintain equilibrium in nearly every terrestrial ecosystem.

But most experts acknowledge that the Jorōs must be having some effect, especially because of their rapid population growth. Today they span an estimated 46,000 square miles (120,000 square kilometers), most densely concentrated in northern Georgia—though a few have been spotted as far north as Washington, DC, and as far west as Oklahoma. “There’s just no conceivable way that they’re seamlessly slipping into the ecosystem without causing some ripples,” Coyle says. His hunch, based on some preliminary survey work, is that Jorōs will likely push out smaller native spiders, which might have a cascading effect further up the food chain. There’s also the lesser chance they could deplete pollinator populations that are critical for high crop yield if too many bees and butterflies get caught in their webs. 

Seeing the spread happen in real time is a rare opportunity for researchers to study the situation as it evolves. To figure out the repercussions for native species, researchers could examine how the populations of local spiders and insects change as the number of Jorōs grows in a certain area. Coyle’s team has done some basic spider tracking, driving out from their own communities and stopping every few miles in search of Jorōs to pin down the edges of their current range. 

Scott thinks the paper put out by Coyle’s team was timely. “I agree with and appreciate the call the authors made to be cautious with the message being sent about these spiders,” they say, noting that it’s too soon to even label the Jorō as “invasive.” This term is supposed to be used only for newly arrived species that cause some type of environmental or economic harm. Rather, Jorō spiders should be considered an introduced species that is currently established—meaning they can disperse and reproduce without human assistance—in Georgia and neighboring states. 

There is a silver lining, though, to the Jorōs’ popularity: It means the public is paying attention. Thousands of people have documented observations on iNaturalist, an app that helps identify local wildlife. With little funding available to study their spread—most researchers are doing so as a side project—these records provide a burgeoning data set to pull from. Coyle’s team has already used the sightings to estimate their range across the Southeast and to compare the Jorōs’ peak observation month (October, when the spiders are typically the largest) with those of local orb weavers they might outcompete. 

Despite the uncertainty, one thing is for sure: Jorōs are here to stay. They’re self-sustaining, rapidly spreading, and don’t have any known predators. Chuang hopes that arachnologists can take advantage of Jorōs’ heightened visibility to teach the public about spiders and make them less afraid of eight-legged crawlers. “I used to have the worst arachnophobia when I was younger—the kind where you see a tarantula in a textbook and cover it up,” she says. “So I hope that exposure to interesting things about spiders can help people with that.”

Please Stop Freaking Out About This Giant Yellow Spider

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Orion, the Earth, and the Moon, captured during the Artemis I mission.

NASA

 

The launch of the Artemis I mission in mid-November was spectacular, and NASA's Orion spacecraft has performed nearly flawlessly ever since. If all goes as anticipated—and there is no reason to believe it won't—Orion will splash down in calm seas off the California coast this weekend.

 

This exploration mission has provided dazzling photos of Earth and the Moon and offered a promise that humans will soon fly in deep space again. So the question for NASA, then, is when can we expect an encore?

 

Realistically, a follow-up to Artemis I is probably at least two years away. Most likely, the Artemis II mission will not happen before early 2025, although NASA is not giving up hope on launching humans into deep space in 2024.

 

It may seem strange that there's such a long gap. After all, with its flight in November, the Space Launch System rocket has now demonstrated its capability. And should Orion return to Earth safely, it will validate the calculations of engineers who designed and built its heat shield. Should it really take more than two years to finish building a second rocket and spacecraft and complete the certification of life support systems inside Orion?

 

The short answer is no, and the reason for the long gap is a bit absurd. It all goes back to a decision made about eight years ago to plug a $100 million budget hole in the Orion program. As a result of a chain of events that followed this decision, Artemis II is unlikely to fly before 2025 because of eight relatively small flight computers.

 

"I hate to say that it’s Orion this time holding us up," said Mark Kirasich, who served as NASA's program manager for Orion when the decision was made, in an interview. "But I’m bringing up the rear. And it’s part of my legacy."

A long time ago, in a budget far away

About eight years ago, senior officials at NASA and Orion's primary contractor, Lockheed Martin, needed to fill a budget hole. At the time, NASA was spending $1.2 billion per year developing the Orion spacecraft, and while it was making progress on the design, there were still challenges.

 

NASA's exploration plans at the time were substantially different from the Artemis Program of today. Nominally, the agency was building Orion and the SLS rocket as part of a "Journey to Mars." But there was no clear-cut plan on how to get there and no well-defined missions for Orion to fly.

 

One key difference is that NASA only planned to fly the original version of the SLS rocket, known as "Block 1," a single time. After this initial mission, the agency planned to upgrade the rocket's upper stage, making a version of the rocket known as "Block 1B." Because this variant was taller and more powerful than Block 1, it required significant modifications to the rocket's launch tower. NASA engineers estimated that it would take nearly three years of work after the initial SLS launch to complete and test the reconstructed tower.

 

So it seemed plausible that the Orion planners could reuse some components from the first flight of their spacecraft on the second one. In particular, they focused on a suite of two dozen avionics "boxes" that are part of the electronics system that operates Orion's communications, navigations, display, and flight control systems. They estimated it would take about two years to re-certify the flight hardware.

 

By not needing to build two dozen avionics boxes for the second flight of Orion, the program closed the $100 million budget hole. And schedule-wise, they would have nearly a year to spare while work was being done on the launch tower.

 

"It was simply a budget decision," Kirasich said. "The launch dates were completely different at the time."

After the Artemis I mission’s brilliant success, why is an encore 2 years away?

The overdose crisis is getting worse. Biblical-plague worse. The United States recorded more than 107,000 drug-induced deaths in 2021, up 28 percent from the previous year. Fentanyl has played a key role in this spike, with 64 percent of those deaths involving the synthetic opioid and its analogs. On the ground, harm-reduction groups are working to save lives with medications like naloxone, yet their efforts can only do so much. But they could soon have more tools to save lives: Scientists have discovered several fentanyl-related substances with potential to reverse overdoses. And this month, Congress has an opportunity to make studying these drugs and others like them easier. 

Right now, getting approved to research fentanyl-related substances (often called “fentalogs” in the lab) requires leaping through onerous regulatory hoops. University of Michigan pharmacology professor John Traynor is one of the relatively few researchers who have successfully gone through the approval process, which he calls “not impossible, but frustratingly slow.” It took one year to receive partial approval, and another additional year for his lab to get full access to the fentalogs it needed. In a recent open letter to President Joe Biden, more than a hundred other researchers called the process “prohibitively difficult.” 

The reason for all this red tape? In 2018, the Trump Administration temporarily classified all fentalogs as Schedule I drugs, which means they have no accepted medical use. (Fentanyl itself remained Schedule II, as it is a commonplace pain medication in hospitals.) The byzantine approval process to study these drugs reflects their status in the eyes of regulators as potential hazards; the US Drug Enforcement Agency doesn’t want just anyone getting their hands on these substances, and wants to ensure they are handled properly. Traynor’s lab had to buy a new safe during their approval process, and received many in-person visits from local DEA officers.

This particular classification move was unprecedented. Typically, the DEA schedules individual drugs after a multi-step evaluation process, looking at whether each one might have therapeutic value and potential for abuse. This time, it banned an entire group of molecularly related substances without evaluating them first. Thousands of these substances are thought to exist, many of which may be completely harmless, and some of which may be helpful. The ban even covers hypothetical fentalogs—substances that don’t exist yet, and for which there cannot possibly be any proof of danger. Like, for instance, substances that could be vital to developing overdose-reversing medications. 

Despite this sweeping, unorthodox approach, the Schedule I order was not especially controversial in Washington. In fact, it had bipartisan support. (The Biden Administration actually recommended a permanent Schedule I classification for these substances last year.) 

This stridency reflects the national mood towards fentanyl. Politicians have been desperate to address the overdoses ravaging their constituencies. (Some have even called for the drug to be labeled a “weapon of mass destruction.”) Prior to the temporary scheduling, drug traffickers had been introducing fentalogs to the street at a rapid clip; by changing the molecular structure slightly, they created substances which were harder for law enforcement to detect. The reclassification looked like a straightforward way to stymy traffickers’ efforts. Since Biden took office, this temporary Schedule I policy has been repeatedly extended by Congress. It’s up for renewal once again, as the current extension expires at the end of this year. 

Critics say the Schedule I classification is heavy-handed, based on fear rather than evidence. “It bypasses science,” says Maritza Perez, a director at the Drug Policy Alliance, a non-profit focused on drug policy reform. Frustrated by this blanket ban, and eager to develop new overdose treatments, a growing number of scientists, doctors, and other researchers are pushing back. 

“A class-wide ban based on chemical structure alone would preclude a lot of research that could lead to life-saving medications,” says West Virginia University chemistry professor Gregory Dudley, one of the co-authors of the open letter to Biden. In that letter, Dudley and other scientists argue that permanent Schedule I status could “inadvertently criminalize” important tools to fight the overdose crisis. 

Dudley supports a bill US senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), introduced last week, the TEST Act, which would temporarily extend Schedule I classification again, but which would also require the government to evaluate individual fentalogs, de-scheduling those with therapeutic uses or without risk of abuse. Booker is hopeful he can pitch his bill as a common-sense approach to the issue. “This bill strikes a middle ground to ensure that we are doing all we can to save lives,” he told WIRED by email. 

Even some experts who support permanent scheduling recognize that the status quo doesn’t work. “I believe that the fentanyl-related substances should be permanently put into Schedule I. But I also very strongly believe that the research on Schedule I drugs—and this is more than just the fentanyl-related substances—should be made easier,” forensic pathologist and George Washington University professor Victor Weedn says. In addition to fentalogs, drugs like cannabis and psilocybin are also classified as Schedule I, which has impeded research on those substances as well. 

The discovery of a new overdose-reversal medication would be a major victory for public health. Naloxone–often called by its brand name, Narcan—is currently the only drug widely available for reversing opioid overdoses. Molecularly similar to the opioid oxymorphone, naloxone works by binding to opioid receptors, blocking the effects of other opioids. It isn’t a silver bullet, but it has become an important tool for keeping  people alive. It’s often in short supply, though—and it can be expensive. 

“Anything we can do that would increase the variability of products on the market could potentially help overcome supply chain issues and hopefully drive down prices,” says Stacy McKenna, a harm reduction fellow at the libertarian-leaning think tank the R Street Institute. “And there might be something that works better to help reverse fentanyl overdoses.”

While naloxone can reverse fentanyl overdoses, it’s not always as effective as it is with less-powerful opioids. “One problem is re-narcotization,” Traynor says. A dose of naloxone that would revive someone who took too much heroin might wear off for someone who took fentanyl, causing their overdose symptoms to return. This means multiple doses of naloxone can be necessary to stop fentanyl overdoses—bad news for people who might just have a single dose handy. If there’s another option out there more efficient at specifically reversing fentanyl overdoses, it could have a seismic lifesaving effect. 

Last year, during a Congressional hearing, Douglas Throckmorton, the US Food and Drug Administration’s deputy director for regulatory programs, revealed that the agency knew of at least one fentalog with the potential to reverse overdoses. An FDA spokesperson told WIRED by email that the agency has studied “fewer than 35” fentanyl-related substances thus far; they did not provide any additional information about the substance Throckmorton mentioned. But there have already been other promising developments. At Traynor’s University of Michigan lab, his team has already discovered several other fentalogs with potentially overdose-reversing properties, with two especially strong candidates; they aim to develop a proprietary overdose-reversal medication based on these substances. 

As it took years to complete the approval process, this hasn’t been a particularly fast-moving project. “We’ve only been working at it for a year or so, and we’re a tiny team,” Traynor says. So far, they have only studied the substances in biochemical assays; they are discussing what tests on mice would look like, but aren’t at that stage just yet. It’s enormously exciting work, but still in early days. 

As Traynor’s team continues its work, other scientists like Dudley continue to advocate for easier access to fentalogs. If the TEST Act passes, more researchers will be able to jump into the race to create a new breed of overdose reversal meds, heightening chances of success. 

But it’s crunch time: Because the renewal of the temporary Schedule I order expires at the end of the year and the Congressional session ends a few days later, the bill will have to pass this month, possibly as part of an omnibus bill. Otherwise, Booker would have to reintroduce it in 2023. As the overdose crisis continues, every day that passes without new tools is a lost day.

The Next Great Overdose-Reversing Drug Might Already Exist

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In 1989, distinguished Australian geographer Gerard Ward wrote that the Pacific was emptying out. As people on smaller islands left to seek opportunity elsewhere, the region risked becoming Earth’s empty quarter. He wrote:

Perhaps 100 years hence, almost all of the descendants of today’s Polynesian or Micronesian islanders will live in Auckland, Sydney, San Francisco and Salt Lake City. Occasionally they may recall that their ancestors once lived on tiny Pacific islands … set in an empty ocean.

Ward’s prediction attracted criticism for its doomsday tone. But was he right?

For some points on the map, he may have been spot on. Some of the smallest populations are now falling. An extreme case is tiny Pitcairn Island, a British territory with a population of fewer than 50; it’s been well over a decade since the last child was born there.

A considerable percentage of the tiny Pitcairn population turned out for a baptism ceremony after Adventists abroad began sending preachers to help revive the island’s church. Photo: Adventist Review

But it’s not the same everywhere in the Pacific. While Micronesia and Polynesia are broadly shrinking, Melanesian populations are booming.

Migration isn’t new, of course. What will be new is the prospect of so many people moving that small nations and territories effectively cease to exist. Climate change will only intensify these shifts.

Who’s leaving – and where are they going?

Just in the past six months, populations have declined in the US territory American Samoa and in the Marshall Islands, a sovereign nation that has a “compact of free association” with the US, as well as in the French overseas collectivity of New Caledonia.

American Samoa’s population has fallen from around 56,000 in 2010 to under 50,000 in 2020, according to US census data. This is due in part to younger people moving to the US mainland and having children there. Just 6% of the territory’s population were born in the United States, indicating very few people return once they have moved.

Populations are falling even faster in the Marshall Islands to the north, down 20% between 2011 and 2021 to around 42,000 people. Where are people going? Predominantly to the US, where Marshall Islanders are scattered from Hawaii to Arkansas.

There are good reasons for people to move. The Marshall Islands’ 2021 census found that almost half of all families on the islands worried about not having enough to eat. Islanders are moving to escape poverty.

New Caledonia’s population has now fallen below 270,000. Birth rates have fallen, while Covid drove death rates up. When people migrate, they tend to move to France.

Places like Pago Pago, the capital of American Samoa, are farewelling young people overseas. Photo: Wikipedia

Is the same trend visible elsewhere?

Longer-term declines are visible in the neighboring Federated States of Micronesia and Palau, although not at such dramatic rates. Following New Caledonia into decline are the Pacific’s other two French territories, French Polynesia, where the population has plateaued, while the population of the much smaller territory known as Wallis and Futuna is steadily declining.

For other states, the major migration has already happened. More than 90% of all Niue residents live in New Zealand, where they hold citizenship, leaving only around 1,600 living on the islands as of 2017. For the people of this isolated, rocky island, migration has become normal, expected and even necessary.

Tokelau, too, has the lion’s share of its people in New Zealand – 7,000, compared with just 1,500 remaining on the islands. It’s the same for the larger Cook Islands, with more than 60,000 in New Zealand and fewer than 15,000 people on the islands. The populations on all three of these island nations are holding relatively steady.

What about the larger states? Long sandwiched between smaller Polynesian and larger Melanesian states, Fiji’s population growth has now slowed dramatically. Many people are moving internally, leaving smaller islands farther out in favor of the two main islands.

Both Tonga and Samoa are steadily losing people, many to New Zealand. These nations still have the majority of their populations resident on their islands, for now.

Why do people leave even larger island states, where there are better economic opportunities?

One answer is remittances, the funds that migrants working overseas send back home to support their families. Remittances were particularly important during Covid lockdown periods when tourism collapsed – and even more so for Tonga after this year’s giant eruption of an undersea volcano. On the world stage, Tonga and Samoa are among the top remittance-receiving countries. The World Bank estimates remittance flows are equivalent to 40% of Tonga’s GDP and 25% of Samoa’s.

What about climate change?

Rising sea levels are affecting the lowest-lying nations first, such as the atoll states of Kiribati and Tuvalu, which are only a few meters above sea level.

Already, storm surges have forced people to move to higher ground, while flooding from the sea has made some farmland too salty for crops. That’s why Kiribati’s former president, Anote Tong, has sought “migration with dignity” – essentially, wholesale relocation of all Kiribati people.

You might expect the populations of these threatened nations to be dropping, but they’ve actually grown in recent years. Despite this, people are moving wherever possible – one by one, household by household. A third of all Tuvaluans now live in Auckland.

There’s not a lot between Tuvalu and the sea, as shown by this 2011 aerial view of the capital, Funafuti. Tuvalu is a remote country of low lying atolls, making it vulnerable to climate change. Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Lily-Anne Homasi / DFAT

The exception: Melanesia

Only the independent Melanesian states of Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea are resisting this trend. Here, populations are still growing and few people are leaving permanently.

In part, that’s because their former colonizers aren’t interested in encouraging migration. Australia, which governed Papua New Guinea until 1975, has shown interest mainly in bringing migrants to Australia temporarily, to help with the farm labor shortage.

That means the largest islands in the Pacific – and the islands closest to Australia – will continue to grow, with the attendant pressure on resources.

What does mass emigration do to a country?

Losing skills, farmers and the next generation to faraway places is not conducive to national development. Remittances are not the same as actual people. Children born overseas often have little interest in “returning” to a home they’ve never seen.

Remarkably, this is happening when the Pacific has become geopolitically crucial, as China and the US vie for influence over a massive and valuable space.

Gerard Ward foresaw what these alarming trends would mean for the blue continent. Even as the world’s population has just shot past eight billion, one part of the world is contracting.

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IN 2011, AS a cyclone bore down on American Samoa, Craig Fugate was closely monitoring the situation. As the head of the US Federal Emergency Management Administration, he wasn’t short of ways to track the storm’s impact. But he chose a free tool he’d liked even before he got the job: Twitter. It was quick and versatile, let confused and scared residents find and support each other, and let humanitarian groups and emergency response agencies blast out warnings and hear crucial updates from people caught on the front lines. And the platform’s character limit forced everyone to be concise. 

As the cyclone got closer, Fugate says he struck up a conversation on Twitter with a resident of American Samoa who reported that winds were picking up and ferries had stopped running. Then the local shared another crucial nugget of information:

He started tweeting about the NFL game on TV. “I knew he had power and a TV signal,” Fugate says. The then-administrator passed the intel along to FEMA colleagues trying to figure out where different emergency resources needed to go.

More than a decade later, Twitter has become an even more powerful and established tool for collecting and disseminating information in crisis. Government agencies and organizations like the Red Cross have built the platform into operating procedures for responding to natural disasters like cyclones or earthquakes, or manmade ones like war.

But now that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has acquired (and hollowed out) Twitter, the platform is changing in ways that threaten to transform how people dealing with disaster and the authorities trying to help them communicate. Musk has said he favors looser moderation, welcomed back banned users, and attempted to allow anyone to pay for the check mark originally designed to verify notable accounts, including those of government agencies, NGOs, and journalists.

Emergency managers and humanitarian groups worry the changes to Twitter could hinder their lifesaving work. “I don’t think Twitter has looked at the second, third, fourth tier effects of what they do—and that’s what we do, generally,” says Kate Hutton, the communications coordinator at the Seattle Office of Emergency Management.

Crisis and Twitter have gone hand in hand since shortly after the service debuted in 2006. A disaster even helped popularize the hashtag as an organizing tool. In 2007, users adopted #sandiegofire as a way to track and aid others in the midst of fast-moving wildfires in southern California. As the platform grew, some emergency managers began to use the platform more formally to blast out crucial messages to the public and inform decisions about where to send resources. Twitter provided a direct route to residents and media, who could in turn easily amplify information via retweets.

“Platforms like Facebook are a lot ‘heavier’—there are more things you can do, more connections to make, more things to check,” says Amanda Lee Hughes, an associate professor at Brigham Young University who studies the use of social media during crises. “With Twitter, it’s the simplicity of it.” A recent study of Twitter usage during 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, which devastated parts of Texas, suggests that data pulled from the platform provided a good, if imperfect, picture of the disaster’s effects, including flood depth and infrastructure damage.

Robert Mardini, the director general of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), says that the organization has its own trends analysis unit that uses software to monitor Twitter and other online sources in places where the organization operates. That can help keep workers safe in conflict zones, for example. 

Of course, you can’t believe everything you read on Twitter. During a crisis, emergency responders using social media must figure out which posts are false or unreliable, and when to call out dangerous rumors. This is where Twitter’s own moderation capacity can be crucial, experts say, and an area for concern as the downsized company changes. In conflict zones, military campaigns sometimes include online operations that try to use the platform for weaponized falsehoods.

“Misinformation and disinformation can inflict harm on humanitarian organizations,” Mardini says. “When the ICRC or our Red Cross Red Crescent Movement partners face false rumors about our work or behavior, it can put our staff’s safety in jeopardy.”

In May, Twitter introduced a special moderation policy for Ukraine aimed at curbing misinformation about its conflict with Russia. Nathaniel Raymond, coleader of the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale’s School of Public Health, says that though Twitter has not made any recent announcements about that policy, he and his team have seen evidence is being enforced less consistently since Musk took over as CEO and fired many staff working on moderation. “Without a doubt we are seeing more bots,” he says. “This is anecdotal, but it appears that that information space has regressed.” Musk’s takeover has also put into doubt Twitter’s ability to preserve evidence of potential war crimes posted to the platform. “Before we knew who to talk to get that evidence preserved,” Raymond says. “Now we don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Other emergency responders worry about the effects of Twitter’s new verification plan, which is on hold after some users who paid for a verification check mark used their new status to imitate major brands, including Coca-Cola and drug company Eli Lilly. Emergency responders and people on the front lines of a disaster both need to be able to determine quickly whether an account is the legitimate Twitter presence of an official organization, says R. Clayton Wukich, a professor at Cleveland State University who studies how local governments use social media. “They’re literally making life and death decisions,” he says.

WIRED asked Twitter whether the company’s special moderation policy for Ukraine remains in place, but did not receive a response as the company recently fired its communications team. A company blog post published Wednesday says that “none of our policies have changed” but also that the platform will rely more on automation to moderate abuse. Yet automated moderation systems are far from perfect and require constant upkeep from human workers to keep up with changes in problematic content over time.

Don’t expect emergency managers to leave Twitter immediately. They are, by nature, conservative, and unlikely to rip up their best practices overnight. FEMA’s public affairs director Jaclyn Rothenberg did not respond to questions about whether it is contemplating changing its approach to Twitter. She said only that “social media plays a crucial role in the field of emergency management for rapidly communicating during disasters and will continue to for our agency.” But on a practical level, people have been primed to expect emergency updates on Twitter and it could be dangerous for agencies to abandon the platform. 

For people who work in emergency management, the upheaval at Twitter has raised larger questions about what role the internet should play in crisis response. If Twitter becomes unreliable, can any other service fill the same role as a source of distraction and entertainment, but also dependable information on an ongoing disaster?

“With the absence of this kind of public square, it’s not clear where public communication goes,” says Leysia Palen, a professor at University of Colorado Boulder who has studied crisis response. Twitter wasn’t perfect, and her research suggests the platform’s community has become less good at organically amplifying high quality information. “But it was better than having nothing at all, and I don’t know we can say that anymore,” she says.

Some emergency managers are making contingency plans. If Twitter becomes too toxic or spammy, they could turn their accounts into one-way communication tools, simply a way to hand out directions rather than gather information and quell worried people’s fears directly. Eventually, they could leave the platform altogether. “This is emergency management,” says Joseph Riser, a public information officer with Los Angeles’ Emergency Management Department. “We always have a plan B.”

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Pupils in the grades 5-8 classrooms spent homeroom time on Nov. 14 celebrating the occasion–which actually was one day prior–and made messages which would be sent to Pugliese West, Garfield East, McKinley STEM Academy and Wells Academy. Kindness also was the theme of their monthly Overcoming Obstacles program, which often touches upon issues impacting youth today. School social worker Shay Greiner said more world themes will be incorporated into monthly programs in an attempt to build esteem, share inspirational messages and simply have fun.

“We do Overcoming Obstacles with topics based on the sound of our building,” she explained. “This year, we took a little different approach and looked up different days on the calendar.”

She said curriculum coaches Tiffany Pierro and Gina Arlesic helped plan Unity Day in October while December will focus on National Twin Day, where students and staff are invited to dress alike. National Popcorn Day is on Jan. 19 and will center on relaxation, motivation and self-care while Feb. 18 will be Random Acts of Kindness Day, which is similar to the recent event but will include sales of candygrams.

“You never get enough of kindness and diversity,” Greiner added.

The year will continue with Absolutely Incredible Kid Day on March 16 and Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive Day in May, which will include a collection to give back to the community.

For World Kindness Day, teachers provided video presentations for their homeroom classes and students were then divided into groups to create their inspirational messages with the Google Slides program on their computers. Their creations were sent to Greiner, who then printed them out and sent them to the elementary buildings for faculty, staff and students to enjoy.

In eighth-grade math teacher Melissa Bowers’ class, students learned that being kind can go a long way and could inspire others to pay it forward. Bowers also stressed the value of good character.

“The world has changed a lot, but I was always taught to be kind to others,” she said. “It is knowing that everyone has a right to be treated with kindness and respect, and acceptance is understanding that we are all different but we are all people.”

Other lessons ranged from avoiding hate speech to knowing that no one should be discriminated against for their age, race or status. Bowers said kindness could also create a domino effect.

“No kind act or gesture is too small and it can encourage others to model the same behavior.”

Several of her students also described what kindness meant to them.

“Being kind, to me, opens the door to others to pay it forward,” said Amsley Malcom.

“I think kindness is one of the most important qualities,” added Jolee Lombardo.

“Kindness is something you can be spreading and need to be more of in the world,” said Andrew Matzorkis.

“Kindness is being the best person you can be, and being nice to people in general,” said Noah Koniski.

“When we’re all kind, it makes the world a better place,” concluded Noah Kokiko. “They may not remember who you are, but they’ll remember the way you made them feel.”

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"Our study found that women are advised to lose weight, exercise and improve their diet to avoid cardiovascular disease but men are prescribed lipid-lowering medication," said study author Dr. Prima Wulandari of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, U.S. "This is despite the fact that guideline recommendations to prevent heart disease are the same for men and women."

Previous studies have shown that women with cardiovascular disease are given less aggressive treatment compared with men. This study investigated whether these sex differences extend to the prevention of cardiovascular disease.

The study used data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2017 to 2020. Of 8,512 men and women aged 40 to 79 years and no history of cardiovascular disease, 2,924 participants were at increased risk for developing cardiovascular disease according to a validated risk calculator and therefore eligible to receive statins.

For the 2,924 participants, the researchers calculated the odds of men, compared with women, being prescribed statin therapy, and receiving advice to lose weight, exercise, reduce salt intake, and reduce fat or calorie consumption. The analyses were adjusted for age, risk of cardiovascular disease, body mass index, resting heart rate, depression score, and education status.

The analysis showed that men were 20% more likely to be prescribed statins compared with women. Compared with men, women were 27% more likely to be advised to lose weight, and 38% more likely to receive recommendations to exercise. Regarding diet, women were 27% more often than men advised to reduce their salt intake, and 11% more frequently told to reduce their fat or calorie consumption.

Dr. Wulandari said, "Following our analysis, we conducted a review of the literature to find possible explanations for the results. This demonstrated that a potential root of the discrepancy in advice is the misconception that women have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease than men. Our findings highlight the need for greater awareness among health professionals to ensure that both women and men receive the most up-to-date information on how to maintain heart health."

ESC cardiovascular prevention guidelines recommend that adults of all ages should do at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate intensity, or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous intensity, aerobic physical activity a week, or an equivalent combination. Everyone should quit smoking. A healthy diet is recommended, emphasizing plant-based foods including whole grains, fruits, vegetables, pulses, and nuts. Salt should be limited to less than 5 g per day. It is advised that overweight and obese people lose weight to lower blood pressure, blood lipids, and the risk of diabetes, and thereby reduce the likelihood of cardiovascular disease. Statins are recommended according to individual characteristics including age and risk of developing heart disease.

Provided by European Society of Cardiology

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It was my mum's birthday. I was staying up late to wish her and that's when I started getting messages from my friends about layoff announcements. They were all anxious.

At around 6am here, I received an email that I'd been let go. I had joined Meta earlier this year as a product manager. My team was shocked because I'd been performing really well.

It went against my motto, work is worship, instilled early by my favourite teacher at school. Initially, it felt like the Titanic sinking because I was losing access to things one by one - workplace, then email, then laptop. But I was pleasantly overwhelmed and surprised in a positive way by my network on LinkedIn. Many colleagues, ex-colleagues and friends reached out in a very supportive way, making introductions and referrals. It made me feel like I have so many people in this country who care for me, made me feel like I belong to this country.

Ms Gupta says she's in touch with many companies and is exploring all options

My last day at Meta is in January and my H1-B visa [a non-immigrant visa that allows firms in the US to hire foreigners for up to six years] allows me to stay in the US for another 60 days, so early March is the deadline for me to find another job.

The job search is going to be difficult now as hiring will be slow in December because of the holidays. But I'm very focused. I am in touch with multiple companies and exploring options.

What I'll miss most about Meta is the workplace and my colleagues. Being at Meta meant not only being able to build an amazing product for millions of people, but also being able to participate in fireside chats and growth and learning opportunities. As a product manager, it would have been rewarding to see the project I was working on go further.

My parents taught me to never give up in life. They tell me to stay strong because I'm a person who can convert problems into opportunities. They tell me 'aur kuch accha mil jayega' [you'll find something better].

But my ability to work and stay in the US depends on my H1-B visa. I moved to the US in 2009 and I have worked very hard to build my career on my own strength and intellect. I have worked in prominent companies like Tesla, Intuit, etc., built great products, got top ratings, paid taxes, and contributed to the US economy for more than 15 years, but I feel that I am in the same place as far as permanent residency goes because of the limitations of the H1-B. I was crowned Miss Bharat California [a beauty pageant] by my idol, Bollywood actress Sushmita Sen. I have walked the ramp at New York Fashion Week. I have my own podcast.

We face unnecessary stress because the US has a country cap which takes forever for Indian H1-B holders to get a green card (permanent residency). Even though I am in the green card queue, when I track my status, I sometimes get a wait-time of two decades, and at other times, 60 years.

Our personal life suffers because of the uncertainty. Buying a home has been a question mark in my mind - do I invest in a home and then what if I have to leave. In spite of having gone ahead with the YC [Y Combinator is an American technology start-up accelerator], I can't start a company even though I have a great idea because I don't have a green card.

Ms Gupta was crowned Miss Bharat California by her idol Sushmita Sen

I travelled to 30 countries before turning 30 years old, but now I'm unable to travel much, even though it's my dream to travel the world, because I'm nervous about facing problems while trying to get my H1-B visa re-stamped. I have heard from my friends who work at great companies like Google and PayPal about getting stuck abroad.

I have even curtailed my travels home to India. A few years back, I got stuck in India. I had gone to attend a wedding and I had to get my H1-B visa stamped. But that took several months as it went into random administrative processing and I wasn't even sure when it would come through.

The uncertainty and the wait caused problems in my marriage. The visa issues had a very big role in my marriage. It was not the only reason, but it became one of the major reasons for the break-up of my marriage. I also had to drop out of a semester at New York University, where I was studying at the time, because I didn't know when I would be able to return to the US. Why do people on H1-Bs have to deal with this?

I have not met my parents since the Covid-19 pandemic because they haven't been able to come to visit me for three-and-a-half years. They are elderly, and don't keep too well. I constantly think - if my parents need support, will I be able to go to help them? Nobody realises how it impacts our life.

But despite whatever has happened, I believe this experience too has a silver lining. Spirituality is a significant part of my life. I am a believer and follower of Sadhguru ji [as followers refer to Indian yoga guru Jaggi Vasudev]. He says that we should not be identified only by or limit our identity to our professional role. In Silicon Valley, the most frequently asked question is - Which company do you work for? But I am still me, not just a product manager. Everyone should realise that they are more than just the company they work for.

As told to Savita Patel

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An attempt to flood social media platforms with spam in order to drown out coverage of the lockdown protests in China was probably backed by the Chinese government, according to analysis by a US cybersecurity firm.

Recorded Future found that networks of coordinated bot accounts were targeting non-Chinese social media platforms to crowd out genuine posts about the demonstrations with spam content and by hijacking hashtags of names of Chinese cities. It said China’s government was most likely to be behind the tactic.

Charity Wright, a senior analyst at Recorded Future, said: “These spambot networks are resilient, well-resourced and agile. The rate at which they are posting content and spinning up new accounts tells us that they have automation tools to flood the information space. Very few influence operations are capable of this level of activity.”

“We believe it is likely that this was a large-scale operation either sponsored by the Chinese government or outsourced by the state to a surrogate like a well-resourced troll farm,” she added.

The analysis follows evidence last week that Twitter was being bombarded with nuisance posts, many of them adverts for escorts, in an attempt to obscure news of the anti-lockdown protests in China. Alex Stamos, director at the Stanford Internet Observatory, said the Chinese activity indicated the “first major failure” to stop government interference on the platform under Elon Musk’s ownership.

Recorded Future found that networks of thousands of accounts and posts were targeting Mandarin-speaking audiences by jumping on hashtags used to flag coverage of the protests. The bot accounts then distribute high volumes of posts under those Chinese-language hashtags – for instance the locations of protests like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Wuhan – using content such as adverts for escorts, dating services, pornography and short video-clips advertising various services.

In some cases, the posts consist of random strings of English words with tracking codes attached, potentially to gauge how much posts are being used.

Recorded Future said the automated accounts bore the hallmark of coordinated disinformation campaigns. Telltale signs include the use of newly created accounts with zero or low follower numbers; accounts created in blocks of hundreds or thousands; using similar account name structures such as female name + numbers; identical text content; and sharing photos or videos of young Asian women.

“At first glance, it appears that this campaign is intended to drown out the discussion of the anti-Covid lockdown protests in China” said Wright.

She said there was evidence that bot networks had hijacked city name hashtags in previous campaigns, including in September and late October.

Recorded Future’s analysis of the cross-platform disruption campaign found a limited spread of vexatious bot content on Facebook and Instagram, while there was nothing notable on Chinese-owned TikTok, which has been carrying footage of the protests.

Wright said authorities in China and domestic social media platforms were able to crack down quickly on content they deem to be objectionable. However, that is not possible for foreign-owned platforms, which makes bot accounts a potential option for quelling coverage of the demonstrations.

“One option is to control the narrative by flooding the platform with the narrative they prefer,” said Wright. “In this case, the spambots did not tell any particular story or push a state-sponsored narrative. Instead, they simply overwhelmed social media feeds with spam content.”

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Marine protected areas act as a safeguard for oceans, seas, and estuaries. These regions help in the preservation of the plants and animals that are native to these waters, but the advantages of protected areas go well beyond their boundaries. A group of experts describes how marine protected areas support ecological and social adaptation to climate change and help in the sequestration of carbon in a study that was recently published in the journal One Earth. 

“Marine protected areas are increasingly being promoted as an ocean-based climate solution. Yet such claims remain controversial due to the diffuse and poorly synthesized literature on climate benefits of marine protected areas,” write the authors. “To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a systematic literature review of 22,403 publications spanning 241 marine protected areas.”

The scientists discovered that carbon sequestration increased significantly in marine-protected seagrass areas, mangroves, and regions where sediment was not trawled. “Partial or full degradation of mangroves and seagrass both resulted in similar decreases of sequestered carbon, indicating that even low levels of human impact result in important carbon emissions,” they write.

In addition to boosting carbon sequestration, preserved areas were more biodiverse, had increased species richness, and showed benefits for humans, too. Marine-protected areas had greater food security, and fish stocks in waters adjacent to these protected areas swelled. The authors note that the mitigation and adaptation benefits of these protected areas were only achieved under high levels of protection and that benefits increased the longer an area had been protected.

“Across all four pathways analyzed, only full and high levels of protection resulted in mitigation or adaptation benefits,” they write. “In contrast, low levels of protection generated no benefits. Furthermore, increases in species richness and in fishers’ income only occurred for fully protected areas, where no fishing is allowed.”

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Pandemic-related stressors have physically altered adolescents’ brains, making their brain structures appear several years older than the brains of comparable peers before the pandemic. This is according to a new study from Stanford University that was published on December 1, 2022, in the journal Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science.

In 2020 alone, reports of anxiety and depression in adults rose by more than 25 percent compared to previous years. The new findings indicate that the neurological and mental health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescents may have been even worse.

“We already know from global research that the pandemic has adversely affected mental health in youth, but we didn’t know what, if anything, it was doing physically to their brains,” said Ian Gotlib, the Marjorie Mhoon Fair Professor of Psychology in the School of Humanities & Sciences, who is the first author on the paper.

Gotlib notes that as we age, changes in brain structure occur naturally. During puberty and early teenage years, kids’ bodies experience increased growth in both the hippocampus and the amygdala, areas of the brain that respectively control access to certain memories and help to modulate emotions. At the same time, tissues in the cortex, an area involved in executive functioning, become thinner.

COVID-19 pandemic-related stressors have physically altered adolescents’ brains, making their brain structures appear several years older, according to new research from Stanford University.

 

By comparing MRI brain scans from a cohort of 163 children taken before and during the pandemic, Gotlib’s study showed that this developmental process sped up in adolescents as they experienced the COVID-19 lockdowns. Until now, he says, these sorts of accelerated changes in “brain age” have appeared only in children who have experienced chronic adversity, whether from violence, neglect, family dysfunction, or a combination of multiple factors.

Although those experiences are linked to poor mental health outcomes later in life, it’s unclear whether the changes in brain structure that the Stanford team observed are linked to changes in mental health, Gotlib noted.

“It’s also not clear if the changes are permanent,” said Gotlib, who is also the director of the Stanford Neurodevelopment, Affect, and Psychopathology (SNAP) Laboratory at Stanford University. “Will their chronological age eventually catch up to their ‘brain age’? If their brain remains permanently older than their chronological age, it’s unclear what the outcomes will be in the future. For a 70- or 80-year-old, you’d expect some cognitive and memory problems based on changes in the brain, but what does it mean for a 16-year-old if their brains are aging prematurely?”

Originally, Gotlib explained, his study was not designed to look at the impact of COVID-19 on brain structure. Before the pandemic, his lab had recruited a cohort of children and adolescents from around the San Francisco Bay Area to participate in a long-term study on depression during puberty – but when the pandemic hit, he could not conduct regularly-scheduled MRI scans on those youth.

“Then, nine months later, we had a hard restart,” Gotlib said.

Once Gotlib could continue brain scans from his cohort, the study was a year behind schedule. Under normal circumstances, it would be possible to statistically correct for the delay while analyzing the study’s data – but the pandemic was far from a normal event. “That technique only works if you assume the brains of 16-year-olds today are the same as the brains of 16-year-olds before the pandemic with respect to cortical thickness and hippocampal and amygdala volume,” Gotlib said. “After looking at our data, we realized that they’re not. Compared to adolescents assessed before the pandemic, adolescents assessed after the pandemic shutdowns not only had more severe internalizing mental health problems, but also had reduced cortical thickness, larger hippocampal and amygdala volume, and more advanced brain age.”

These findings could have major implications for other longitudinal studies that have spanned the COVID pandemic. If kids who experienced the pandemic show accelerated development in their brains, scientists will have to account for that abnormal rate of growth in any future research involving this generation.

“The pandemic is a global phenomenon – there’s no one who hasn’t experienced it,” said Gotlib. “There’s no real control group.”

These findings might also have serious consequences for an entire generation of adolescents later in life, added co-author Jonas Miller. During the study, he was a postdoctoral fellow in Gotlib’s lab, and he is now an assistant professor of psychological sciences at the University of Connecticut.

“Adolescence is already a period of rapid reorganization in the brain, and it’s already linked to increased rates of mental health problems, depression, and risk-taking behavior,” Miller said. “Now you have this global event that’s happening, where everyone is experiencing some kind of adversity in the form of disruption to their daily routines – so it might be the case that the brains of kids who are 16 or 17 today are not comparable to those of their counterparts just a few years ago.”

In the future, Gotlib plans to continue following the same cohort of kids through later adolescence and young adulthood, tracking whether the COVID pandemic has changed the trajectory of their brain development over the long term. He also plans to track the mental health of these teens and will compare the brain structure of those who were infected with the virus with those who weren’t, with the goal of identifying any subtle differences that may have occurred.

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Tuesday, December 6

• The first launch this week is a SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying 40 OneWeb satellites. OneWeb is a competitor to SpaceX’s own Starlink network, but since OneWeb no longer has access to Russian rockets, it has been looking for other methods to get its satellites to space. The mission will launch at 10:37 p.m. UTC from Florida. It might be streamed live on SpaceX’s website.

Wednesday, December 7

On Wednesday, there are two launches.

• The first launch is the private Chinese firm ExPace’s Kuaizhou KZ-11 rocket carrying Xingyun satellites 4 and 5. These satellites will sit in a low Earth orbit and act as a “constellation for Internet-of-Things communications”. This mission will launch at 1:15 a.m. UTC from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center and is unlikely to be streamed, but footage will be available after.
• The second launch is a Falcon 9 carrying the Hakuto-R M1 mission to the Moon. This was delayed from last week. A lunar lander tech demo will be carrying commercial and governmental payloads, including two rovers that will explore the Moon’s surface. It’s due for launch at 8:04 a.m. UTC from Cape Canaveral and is already being streamed on YouTube.

Friday, December 9

• Rocket Lab is due to launch an Electron rocket carrying some small radio frequency monitoring satellites to space for Hawkeye 360. In typical Rocket Lab fashion, the launch has an interesting name, this time it’s “Virginia is for Launch Lovers”. The launch is scheduled for between 11:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. UTC from Wallops Island and may be shown on Rocket Lab’s website.

Sunday, December 11

• The final mission of the week is the launch of a Chinese Long March 11 rocket from Xichang Satellite Launch Center. It will be carrying the Shenjian 2013 satellite to space at 7:20 a.m. UTC, but it’s not clear what the satellite will do. Check next week’s recap for footage of the launch.

Recap

• The first launch we got last week was a Long March 2F carrying three taikonauts to the Chinese Space Station. The three crew members were Junlong Fei, Qingming Deng, and Lu Zhang. They took off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.

• Once they reached the station, they had to dock, you can see that below.

• Finally, the taikonauts entered the Chinese Space Station and met those already aboard.

That’s all we’ve got this week, be sure to check in next time!

TWIRL 94: Private mission to the Moon will launch this week instead

As the Arctic warms, beavers are moving in

Phoenix — This week I made a surprise visit to the Alhambra Traditional School in Phoenix. Though I anticipated a warm welcome, I was not prepared for everyone to be in shock.

Our connection clearly runs deep, thanks to teacher Derek Brown, who for more than a decade has been showing his fifth graders one of my stories every day.

"Math, English, reading, writing — nothing matters if the kids aren't grounded and good," Brown said of why he does it.

He says the Americans we meet on "On The Road" every week teach character better than he ever could.

Brown's students said it's working.

"It made me nicer to my little brother," one student said.

And it's not just happening in Phoenix. CBS News has learned of other teachers across the country bringing "On the Road" into the classroom. We estimate there are thousands of others.

CBS News has started a Facebook group called Kindness 101 for Teachers to bring them all together to share lesson plans and strategies. If you know a teacher who might be interested, Brown says please tell them about it.

"They have to let their kids see this," Brown said. "Kids have to connect to these."

And when that happens, he says the possibility opens wide for kids to go from watching goodness to emulating it.

"I'd like to see them act it out, so then maybe one of my kids could be the topic of one of your stories," he said. "That would be the ultimate."

For both of us.

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