By Omar López-Arce*

Oil seems immune to what in the past — artificially, effectively and quickly — caused a surge in its prices.  Recent OPEC cuts have had little (or no) effect on the market. The sanctions from Saudi Arabia (and other countries in the Persian Gulf) on Qatar were barely noticed. Unlike all NYSE indexes, that show a steady post-crisis growth, crude oil benchmarks have not taken off, showing a bear market behavior. Forecasting trends and prices brings up an important question: Will geopolitics alone be able to influence the oil and gas market as it did in the past?

We may be witnessing a more realistic version of the market taking over — the invisible hand in action. New players have a bigger stake on the oil industry, thus the power to influence oil prices is scattered among a larger number of parties rather than a cartel and its allies (as it was in the past with OPEC). The result is that a single action (i.e., cutting oil production) does not have a large effect on the global oil market, because there are other “forces” playing a role almost just as big in the commodity’s overall supply and demand. Perhaps we are approaching to a period of steadier values — i.e., “lower for (much) longer.” Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting that the trends will be easier to predict, but that it may be more difficult for a single party to artificially influence prices.

One thing to watch closely is the current glut and the storage capacity, which is likely what has driven not only the market but also OPEC’s decisions in the last years. Russia has agreed to follow Saudi cuts in a hopes of reducing their current stock and rising crude prices, but the market has showed the opposite. The glut alone is far from being the main price driver. There are two main non-OPEC actors that also play an important role.

China’s Slowdown

China’s energy consumption plays a major role in the global economy. According to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, China’s total energy consumption increased less than 2% YoY in the last two years (2015, 2016) and its GDP annual growth rate in 2016 (6.79%) was lower than that one in 2015 (6.9%). Oil consumption shows a rather low increase (3%), half of what the country’s oil demand was for the previous year (6.9%).

Infrastructure plans might be seriously jeopardized, amid corruption scandals and a huge debt. All big infrastructure projects (planned, designed and executed by the Chinese communist party) seem to honor the motto “build it and they will come.” According to a study conducted by the University of Oxford, “fewer than a third of the 65 Chinese highway and rail projects he examined were genuinely economically productive, while the rest contributed more to debt than to transportation needs.” With a null return on such big spending, China keeps adding debt to their economy (more debt in the first nine months of 2017 than the US, Japan and the EU combined.). Another global crisis may be on the verge. China, with its demand for energy and its economic policies, is a major external player in the oil and gas market prices.

US: Leading Oil Production, Optimizing Fracking, Withdrawing from the Paris Accord

Unlike China, the United States (a non-OPEC country) does not have the Federal Government playing a big role (by international standards) in the domestic oil and gas market. This is even moreso since the export ban was lifted in 2015. This nation is leading the world oil’s production for the third year in a row; a direct hit on OPEC’s further plans on cutting production. Higher prices (if supply reduction is strong enough to rise them) will mean a bigger market share for the current US shale oil and gas industry, where some producers have managed to run the business with lower costs (an incentive created by the low oil prices).  Activity is already showing positive numbers, the US oil rig count has increased for the first time in the last two years.

No less important is Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, perhaps a breath for the oil and gas industry — at least at a domestic level-. The country has no obligation to impose “green” taxes on fossil fuels; this avoids an artificial, negative effect on oil, gas and coal demand, thus keeping prices free to change with the market.  This particular topic should not be isolated from the expected corporate tax cuts (to be approved by Congress), because that might create incentives for investing in technology, targeting a new reduction in production costs. The growth of renewable energy will still depend on subsidies –if current demand of such energy remains unchanged–, but they will not come from taxes on oil, at least temporarily.  The actual destination of those extra bucks in the investor’s pockets will depend on the decisions made by shareholders on the corporate boards.

Crude prices have not soared, let alone showed a significant increase in the last three years. The big glut is still driving some geopolitical decisions, but there are other factors, powerful enough to spontaneously challenge the market. With supply and demand not influenced by geopolitics anymore, the oil and gas markets might soon be free or at least strong enough to overcome the remaining political intervention.

How crude prices react with upcoming events (i.e., Aramco IPO, future OPEC’s cuts, India and South America development, etc.) will tell us whether the power is still held by a (new) cartel or not. Meanwhile, longer periods of price stability are good news to consumers and so are they for the industry.

About the author:
*Omar Lopez-Arce has worked for the oil and gas industry since 2005. He is a Mechanical Engineer and holds a Masters Degree in International Business. He has been assigned to Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador and is currently based in Houston, Texas. Follow him on Twitter. 

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

(Civil.Ge) — Senator Ben Cardin, the leader (ranking member) of the U.S. Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee members from the Democratic Party, released a minority staff report on January 10, documenting Russia’s aggressive activities abroad and calling on President Donald Trump’s administration to counter these threats.

The 206-page staff report, titled “Putin’s Asymmetrical Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe: Implications for U.S. National Security,” includes numerous references to Georgia, with its executive summary stating that Moscow aggressively targeted Georgia and Ukraine after they moved closer to the European Union and NATO, attacking them “with cyber warfare, disinformation campaigns, and military force.”

The document also states that the goal of Russia’s interference in Georgia and Ukraine appears to be to weaken these countries to the point that they become failed states, rendering them “incapable of joining Western institutions in the future and presenting the Russian people with another example of the ‘‘consequences’’ of democratization.”

The Senate Democrats speak of the August 2008 Russian invasion as well, particularly highlighting the combination of conventional military operations with a cyber-attack that Russia used against Georgia during the war, and stating that it was “the first instance in which cyberattacks occurred alongside a military strike.”

The staff report also highlights Russia’s political influence and propaganda activities in Georgia. “Beyond its military assaults on Georgian territory, the Russian government also supports a variety of pro-Kremlin political parties, NGOs, and propaganda efforts in the country,” it notes.

One of the examples, according to the document, is Obiektivi TV, a media outlet, which “reportedly relied on Russian funding in its support of the ultra-nationalistic Alliance of Patriots political party.” “Obiektivi’s xenophobic, homophobic, and anti-western narrative helped the Alliance of Patriots clear the threshold to enter parliament during the October 2016 election,” reads the report.

The document says “the Russian propaganda in Georgia borders on the bizarre,” bringing up as an example the claims that the United States uses the “Richard Lugar Public Health Research Center” in Tbilisi “to carry out biological tests on the Georgian population.”

The Senate Democrats consider that while it is “difficult to measure” the impact of Russia’s disinformation and other non-military activities on Georgia, “the Russian government is able to exert considerable influence in Georgia using these different avenues.”

A high fertility rate, coupled with a discouraging job market at home, spurs Filipino workers to seek opportunities abroad.

By Barry Mirkin*

Hailed for decades as Heroes of the Republic, Filipino migrants abroad play a crucial role in their country’s development. At least 11 million Filipinos, or 10 percent of the population, reside abroad – including more than 5 million emigrants, 4.2 million temporary migrants and at least 1.1 million unauthorized migrants. To manage high population growth, combined with chronic high unemployment and underemployment rates and low wages, Philippine administrations since the 1970s have aggressively promoted emigration of its citizens. Furthermore, the Catholic Church’s unrelenting opposition to all forms of modern contraception, supported by sympathetic lawmakers, has eviscerated government efforts at family planning, resulting in high fertility rates and a population growing by more than a million annually.

The overseas job-seeking trends are facilitated by a bureaucracy constantly searching for new employment opportunities and protecting the well-being of migrants abroad. Filipino migrant workers possess advantages over their counterparts from other countries, tending to be well-educated and fluent in English, often holding at least a high school diploma.

Between 2005 and 2015, almost 900,000 emigrants left the Philippines. The primary destination was once the United States, followed by Canada. Recently, more emigrants from the Philippines stay closer to home with an emerging middle class in Asia. Women represent 60 percent of migrants, and an estimated 25 percent of the world’s seafarers are Filipinos.

Money sent home by these Filipino workers is a mainstay and key driver of the country’s economic growth. The World Bank projects that the country’s foreign remittances will climb to a record US$33 billion for 2017, the third highest in the world after India and China. Remittances to the Philippines account for 10 percent of the country’s GDP and remain resilient despite declining inflows from some countries. For example, under a Saudi Arabian amnesty program, some 19,000 stranded and undocumented Filipinos left the kingdom after mid-2016. The dip in remittances produced a temporary drop in the Philippine stock market, demonstrating the country’s sensitivity to shortfalls in this source of revenues.

An increasing number of returnees is the consequence of economic and political crises, conflict and natural disasters abroad.  The government of the Philippines has a history with mass rescues, repatriating 30,000 overseas workers from Iraq during the 1990-1991 Gulf War, 6,000 from Lebanon in 2006, and more recently 10,000 from Libya and 3,300 from Syria. For Filipinos working in the volatile Middle East, the country’s Department of Foreign Affairs has drawn up plans to respond to any contingency. In formulating a national plan to reintegrate returning workers, the Philippine government has acknowledged the enormity of the task, given the need for a sufficient number of well-paying jobs, public infrastructure and security.

The government also responds to reports of abuse of Filipino workers, especially domestic workers, by employers. About half of domestic workers in Singapore, or 72,000, are from the Philippines. A 2017 study suggests that 60 percent of domestics are exploited in the form of low pay, inadequate time off, and verbal and physical abuse. However, despite reports of hardships, exploitation and abuse, surveys have generally found that returning migrants report positive assessments of their experiences abroad. About a quarter of families in the Philippines receive remittances, and families with overseas workers unsurprisingly fare better than families without. Other studies suggest that extended family members often step in to shoulder some responsibilities of the overseas parent.

Compared with workers in the land-based sector, workers in the sea-based sector enjoy better protections because of international conventions and access to seafarer union membership. The 2006 Maritime Labour Convention benefits the world’s seafarers, including up to 400,000 Filipinos working aboard international vessels.

Some sectors of the nation’s educational system are geared to export graduates. For example, advertisements in the country tout that the fastest way to the United States is through nursing school. An estimated 20 percent of registered nurses in the state of California are from the Philippines, and the 1928 establishment of the Philippines Nursing Association of New York testifies to a long tradition of employing Filipino nurses in US cities. Nursing schools in the Philippines now produce some 80,000 graduates annually. Graduates cannot ignore that a registered nurse in the Philippines earns less than 10 percent of what he or she could earn in the United States.

More Filipino nurses are likely to seek employment abroad after former President Benigno Aquino III vetoed a bill in 2016 that would have increased the starting salary of government nurses to US$575 a month. A Philippine senator sponsoring the bill noted that the increase would have “stopped the mass exodus of our nurses.” According to the World Health Organization, about 22,000 health professionals leave the Philippines every year to work abroad, with many citing unemployment, low salaries and unjust working conditions as primary reasons for their departure.

With the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union expected in 2019, fears are that a “Brexodus” may lead to the loss of significant numbers of medical personnel. About 12 percent of the country’s National Health Service staff is non-British. This has prompted recruiters to scour for nurses beyond the European Union, including in the Philippines, to fill shortfalls.

Negotiations are underway between Philippine and Chinese officials to formalize recruitment of Filipino domestic workers. Reports suggest that some 200,000 unauthorized Filipinos already work in China, due to their knowledge of English and reluctance of some Chinese to be employed as domestics.

In a recent evaluation of international migration, the World Bank reported that the highly developed support system for migrant labor in the Philippines could serve as a model for other countries. A Philippine government priority continues to be protection of its workers. In November, member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations signed an accord strengthening social protections and access to legal and health services for migrant workers.

The rapidly expanding domestic economy reduced poverty from 25 percent in 2012 to 22 percent in 2015. The International Monetary Fund expects the Philippine economy to grow 6.6 percent in 2017. However, the persistence of high fertility contributes to lingering poverty. At almost three births per woman, the nation’s fertility rate is among the highest in Southeast Asia. Contraceptive use in the country remains among the lowest in the sub-region where Catholicism is the predominant religion. Since 2012, a series of decisions by the country’s Supreme Court have temporarily blocked distribution of most contraceptives and stymied domestic family-planning programs. In late 2017, a temporary restraining order was lifted on distribution of some contraceptives, including subdermal implants, based on a decision by the country’s Food and Drug Administration that these contraceptives are not abortifacients.

According to the latest population projections issued by the UN Population Division, the country’s current population of 105 million is projected to climb to 151 million by 2050. The government is hard pressed to generate a sufficient number of well-paying jobs.

In 2017, the country’s labor leaders warned that graduates of colleges and vocational schools are likely to end up unemployed or face poor working conditions. Job-skills mismatch, short-term contractual work, underemployment, low wages and unsafe workplaces await the estimated 1 million graduates this year.

Strong economic growth and accelerated job creation, while essential, are not keeping up with the high fertility rate. Family planning programs providing safe, effective, inexpensive and widely available contraception are also required. In their absence, the Philippines will continue to praise the Heroes of the Republic for decades to come and promote the departure of future generations.

*Barry Mirkin is a former chief of the Population Policy Section of the United Nations Population Division.

If week-long anti-government protests in Iran exposed the Islamic republic’s deep-seated economic and political problems, they also laid bare Saudi Arabia’s structural inability to establish itself as the leader of the Sunni Muslim world.

The responses to the protests of major Sunni Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa demonstrated that none of the contenders for regional dominance and leadership that include Turkey and Egypt were willing to follow the Saudi lead.

In fact, the responses appeared to confirm that regional leadership was likely to be shared between Turkey, Iran, and Egypt rather than decided in a debilitating power struggle between Saudi Arabia and the Islamic republic that has wreaked havoc across the Middle East and North Africa and that the kingdom has so far lost on points.

Uncharacteristically, Saudi Arabia under the rule of King Salman and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has refrained from commenting on the protests. The kingdom has also been silent in the walk-up to US President Donald J. Trump’s decision what to do with American adherence to the 2015 international nuclear agreement with Iran.

While Saudi media, oblivious of the potential for dissent in the kingdom, gloated about the exploding discontent in Iran, Saudi leaders stayed quiet in a bid to avoid providing Iranian leaders with a pretext to blame external forces for the unrest. (That did not stop Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other Iranian leaders from laying the blame at the doors of Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States).

Similarly, Saudi Arabia, whose regional prominence is to a significant extent dependent on US, if not international containment of Iran, stayed publicly on the side lines as Mr. Trump deliberated undermining the agreement that for almost three years has severely restricted Iran’s nuclear program and halted the Islamic republic’s potential ambition of becoming a nuclear power any time soon.

While the Saudis would welcome any tightening of the screws on Iran, they have come to see the agreement as not only preventing Iran, at least for now, from developing a military nuclear capability but also as avoiding a regional nuclear arms race in which Turkey and Egypt as well as potentially the United Arab Emirates would not be left out.

The agreement gives the kingdom in the meantime an opportunity to put in place building blocks for a future military nuclear capability, if deemed necessary. Mr. Trump’s apparent willingness to ease restrictions on Saudi enrichment of uranium as part of his bid to ensure that US companies play a key role in the development of Saudi Arabia’s nuclear energy sector facilitates the Saudi strategy.

In contrast to the Saudis, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was vocal in his support for the Iranian government and call to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to express his solidarity. Egypt, like Saudi Arabia, has not commented on the protests but has been studious in avoiding being sucked into the Saudi-Iranian rivalry, including its multiple proxy battles in Yemen and elsewhere.

The different responses to the Iranian protests represent more than a difference of evaluation of recent events in the Islamic republic. They represent the fault lines of two, if not three, major alliances that are emerging in the Middle East and North Africa and adjacent regions like the Horn of Africa around the contenders for regional leadership.

They also highlight Saudi Arabia’s inability to garner overwhelming support for its ambition and/or multiple efforts to achieve it by among others declaring an economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar, intervening militarily in Yemen, and failing to force the resignation of Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri.

Turkey has effectively sought to counter Saudi moves not only by forging close ties to the Islamic republic despite differences over Syria, but also by supporting Qatar with a military base in the Gulf state and the supply of food and other goods whose flow was interrupted by the Saudi-led boycott.

Turkey has further established a military training facility in Somalia; is discussing creating a base in Djibouti, the Horn of Africa’s rent-a-military base country par excellence with foreign military facilities operated by France, the United States, Saudi Arabia, China and Japan; and recently signed a $650 million agreement with Sudan to rebuild a decaying Ottoman port city and construct a naval dock to maintain civilian and military vessels on the African country’s Red Sea coast. Saudi Arabia sees the Turkish moves as an effort to encircle it.

Turkey, to the chagrin of Saudi Arabia, and its closest regional ally, the UAE, as well as Egypt has supported the Muslim Brotherhood as well as other strands of political Islam. Egypt this week launched an investigation into embarrassing leaks from an alleged intelligence officers that were broadcast on the Brotherhood’s Istanbul-based Mekameleen tv station and published in The New York Times. Egypt has denied the accuracy of the leaks.

If Saudi Arabia, backed by the UAE and Bahrain and Israel as an officially unacknowledged partner constitutes one block, Turkey forms another that could either include or cooperate with the region’s third pole, Iran. Egypt, conscious of its past as the Arab world’s undisputed leader, may not be able to yet carve out a distinct leadership role for itself, but has worked hard to keep the door open.

Underlying the jockeying for regional dominance is a stark reality. Turkey, Iran and Egypt, to varying degrees, have crucial assets that Saudi Arabia lacks: large populations, huge domestic markets, battle-hardened militaries, resources, and a deep sense of identity rooted in an imperial past and/or a sense of thousands of years of history. Saudi Arabia has as the custodian of Islam’s most holy cities, Mecca and financial muscle. In the longer run, that is unlikely to prove sufficient.

“Being president isn’t like hosting a talk show or running a media brand. Oprah’s success in her field is no more indicative of her potential to be a good president than Trump’s success in real estate was. You can’t criticize Trump for having no relevant experience or evident understanding of public policy, then say that the solution for Democrats is just to throw up their hands and find their own celebrity to promote.” — Paul Waldman, “Get a Grip, People. Oprah should not run for President”, Washington Post

Will she or won’t she?

No one knows for sure.  Best friend, Gayle King, says Oprah Winfrey has no plans to run for president, but longtime Oprah partner, Stedman Graham, disagrees. Graham says bluntly, “She would absolutely do it. It’s up to the people.”

So who’s right and who’s wrong? And what’s up with the Golden Globes? Was the reaction to Winfrey’s emotionally-charged speech really as spontaneous as we’ve been led to believe or was the deluge of adulatory coverage in the media already in the works?

I don’t know about you, but the ridiculous outpouring of praise –including more than 700 gushing articles in the MSM accompanied by a saturation campaign on social media— smells fishy to me. Was this supposed to be an inspirational speech to fans and well-wishers or a ‘product launch’ by Democratic party leaders who needed a glitzy venue to showcase their future presidential candidate, Ms. Talk TV herself, Oprah Winfrey?

If I was a gambling man, I’d bet that the whole Sunday night extravaganza, including Winfrey’s heart-wrenching oration, was a set-up from soup to nuts. My guess is that the DNC honchos have cynically decided that their best chance to beat Trump in 2020 is by following the blueprint that worked for the inexperienced, 2-year Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.

First, they start with the product launch to a target audience, then they create a positive buzz in the media and on the internet, then they magnify the size of the “groundswell” of support (remember the fainting ladies at O’s speeches?), then they transport their candidate from one soapbox to the next where he/she mutters the same stale chestnuts over and over again to the adoring throng.

Oh yeah, and one other thing: Real issues have to be avoided like the plague while promises should be made in the vaguest, but most uplifting terms possible. That was the key to Obama’s success and it looks like that Oprah is following his lead.

Here’s a brief clip from her speech:

“I’ve interviewed and portrayed people who’ve withstood some of the ugliest things life can throw at you, but the one quality all of them seem to share is an ability to maintain hope for a brighter morning — even during our darkest nights.”

Ahh, another 8 years of hope and change. Who would’ve known?

Of course, Winfrey is enormously popular but her popularity does not necessarily translate into political support. Take a look at this excerpt from an article in the Washington Post and you’ll why her transition from TV celbrity to presidential candidate could be bumpier than many people expect:

 “A March 2017 Quinnipiac University poll found Winfrey had a 52 percent favorable rating (and just a 23 percent unfavorable rating). She was most popular with Democrats (72 percent) and independents (51 percent). But that doesn’t mean those polled wanted her to throw her hat into the ring: Just over 1 in 5 said Winfrey should run in 2020, and 69 percent said she shouldn’t.” (Washington Post)

That doesn’t mean it’s a lost cause, it just means that her presidential bid is not a sure thing.  It’s going to be a long, uphill slog with plenty of pitfalls and mudslinging.  Even so,  most analysts expect Winfrey to sail through the Democratic primaries without breaking a sweat. There’s simply no prospective candidate in the party who could compete with her charisma, her name recognition or her wide-ranging fan-base. But nabbing the nomination and becoming the party’s standard-bearer merely puts Oprah in a position where she can lock horns with big Don Trump in a no-holds-barred cage match that will decide whether the country is going to be governed by a flamboyant billionaire oligarch or by a flamboyant billionaire oligarch.  Could things get any weirder?

I always thought the Dems would put Michelle Obama on the 2020 ticket, after all, for the ‘identity politics’-driven Dems, Michelle has it all; she’s black, she’s a woman, she’s bright, she has massive name recognition, she has stature, gravitas, charisma, she knows how to deliver a riveting speech, she knows how to handle herself among dignitaries, and she knows ‘the drill’, that is, she knows that the president is a meaningless figurehead who has very little power and follows a tight script that is written by his big money constituents. Michelle knows all of that which is what makes her the perfect candidate.

But Michelle probably didn’t want the job. And why would she? Hubby just cashed in on a $60 million book deal, so Michelle can afford to put her feet up and enjoy life. That’s why the Dems moved on to Door Number 2: Oprah Winfrey. If Trump can win with no political experience (the thinking goes), then why not Winfrey?

Why not, indeed? Here’s how Paul Waldman at the Washington Post sums it up:

“It’s true that Democrats have underappreciated the importance of charisma in presidential politics. But the answer to those electoral failures isn’t to stop caring about substance. It’s to find candidates who are both charismatic and serious, who would be able both to win and to do the job once they took office….”

(Paul Waldman, Washington Post)

Bingo. And what would it take to make Oprah Winfrey a “serious” candidate?

Well, she’d have to have a good grasp of the issues which means she’d have to take a crash course in policy, world affairs, negotiation and economics. She’d need to have an opinion about the nuclear standoff with North Korea, the confrontation in the South China Sea, the Saudi war and blockade of Yemen, the escalating conflict in Afghanistan, the US occupation of East Syria,  frayed relations with Turkey, economic sanctions against Iran, Russia, Venezuela and Cuba. And she’d have to understand domestic issues, cuts to Medicaid, corporate tax cuts, burgeoning budget deficits, stagnant wages, the skyrocketing price of tuition,  out-of-control health care costs, free trade, deregulation, Wall Street, the environment, transportation,  law enforcement, national security and the steady evisceration of the American middle class. Whew.

The fact that Oprah really has no grasp of any of these things nor any understanding of how to negotiate with congress, staff an administration, or appoint judges to the bench, makes me think that Democratic honchos are merely using her as a stalking horse to shoehorn themselves back into power so they can–once again–enjoy the spoils of war.

Isn’t that what this whole ‘Oprah for Prez-thing’ is really all about?  Aren’t the party fatcats and their behind-the-scenes constituents just looking for the right vehicle to tout their message and fly their banner without any intention of addressing the issues that ordinary working people really care about?

Of course they are. These people are cynics.

When babies crawl, their movement across floors, especially carpeted surfaces, kicks up high levels of dirt, skin cells, bacteria, pollen, and fungal spores, a new study has found. The infants inhale a dose of bio bits in their lungs that is four times (per kilogram of body mass) what an adult would breathe walking across the same floor.

As alarming as that sounds, lead researcher Brandon Boor of Purdue University is quick to add that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“We are interested in the biological material an infant inhales, especially during their first year of life when they are crawling. Many studies have shown that inhalation exposure to microbes and allergen-carrying particles in that portion of life plays a significant role in both the development of, and protection from, asthma and allergic diseases,” Boor said. “There are studies that have shown that being exposed to a high diversity and concentration of biological materials may reduce the prevalence of asthma and allergies later in life.”

Scientists have previously done studies to determine how much dirt and biological material is kicked up and resuspended into the air when an adult walks indoors, but this is the first study to look at what happens with infants and their unique forms of locomotion.

Human babies are the only mammals that can’t get up and walk soon after being born. Elephants, giraffes, horses, all can take a few wobbly steps soon after they enter the world, but it’s months before a human can claim the same accomplishment. (Anthropologist David Tracer of the University of Colorado has suggested that based on studies of indigenous cultures, crawling is not necessary for human development. In fact, he has suggested, it only became common once people began living in structures with wooden floors.)

As babies roll, slide and crawl on the floor, their movements stir up more particulates into the air, and their mouths and nostrils are much closer to the floor where the concentrations are greater. This is countered somewhat by the fact that babies tend to move in much shorter bursts of activity than do older children or adults.

To study just how much of the floor debris babies breathe, the research team built a robotic crawling baby (which is much less adorable than the real thing) and tested it crawling on actual carpet samples they had removed from homes. Then the researchers measured and analyzed the particulates in the breathing zone.

“We used state-of-the-art aerosol instrumentation to track the biological particles floating in the air around the infant in real-time, second by second. The instrument uses lasers to cause biological material to fluoresce. Most bacterial cells, fungal spores, and pollen particles are fluorescent, so they can be reliably distinguished from non-biological material in the air,” Boor said. “We also worked with a microbiology group at Finland’s National Institute for Health and Welfare, which conducted DNA-based analysis of the microbes we collected onto filters.”

The researchers found that a concentrated cloud of resuspended particles forms around the Pig-Pen wannabes, and that the concentrations around them can be as much as 20 times greater than the levels of material higher in the room.

Moreover, infants’ bodies aren’t as good at blocking this dust storm, Boor said.

“For an adult, a significant portion of the biological particles are removed in the upper respiratory system, in the nostrils and throat. But for very young children, they more often breathe through their mouths, and a significant fraction is deposited in the lower airways–the tracheobronchial and pulmonary regions. The particles make it to the deepest regions of their lungs.”

Counterintuitively, perhaps, this may be just what nature intended.

In the late 1980s, British epidemiologist David Strachan was the first to propose the “hygiene hypothesis,” which says that too clean of an environment may suppress the development of the immune system. Allergists also sometimes refer to this as “the farming effect.”

“Exposure to certain bacterial and fungal species can result in the development of asthma, but numerous studies have shown that when an infant is exposed to a very high diversity of microbes, at a high concentration, they can have a lower rate of asthma later in life. Such exposures act to stimulate and challenge your immune system,” Boor said.

In Western societies, infants spend nearly all of their time indoors, where indoor dust resuspension may contribute significantly to their respiratory encounters with biological material.

“While our research established new methods for infant microbial exposure assessment, much remains to be discovered,” Boor said. “I hope to continue to work with microbiologists and immunologists to better understand the role of indoor air microbes and allergens on early-childhood health.”

January 11, 2018 marked the 16th year that Guantanamo prison has exclusively imprisoned Muslim men, subjecting many of them to torture and arbitrary detention.

About thirty people gathered in Washington D.C., convened by Witness Against Torture, (WAT), for a weeklong fast intended to close Guantanamo and abolish torture forever. Six days ago, Matt Daloisio arrived from New York City in a van carefully packed with twelve years’ worth of posters and banners, plus sleeping bags, winter clothing and other essentials for the week.

Matt spent an hour organizing the equipment in the large church hall housing us. “He curates it,” said one WAT organizer.

Later, Matt reflected that many of the prisoners whose visages and names appear on our banners have been released. In 2007, there were 430 prisoners in Guantanamo. Today, 41 men are imprisoned there. Shaker Aamer has been reunited with the son whom he had never met while imprisoned in Guantanamo. Mohammed Ould Slahi, author of Guantanamo Diary, has finally been released. These encouraging realities don’t in the slightest diminish the urgency we feel in seeking the release of the 41 men still imprisoned in Guantanamo.

Not even one of the 41 prisoners now in Guantanamo was captured by the U.S. military on a battlefield. Afghan militias and the Pakistani military were paid cash bounties for selling 86 percent of these prisoners into US custody. Imagine the “green light” given for other countries to practice buying and selling of human beings.

Aisha Manar, working with the London Campaign to Close Guantanamo, points out that “the rights violating practices surrounding Guantanamo are now a model for the detention and incarceration polices of the US and other states.”

This chilling reality is reflected in Associated Press reports revealing that the United Arab Emirates operates a network of secret prisons in Southern Yemen, where prisoners are subjected to extreme torture. This has included being trussed to a rotating machine called “the grill” and exposed to a roasting fire.

“Nearly 2,000 men have disappeared into the clandestine prisons,” the AP reports, “a number so high that it has triggered near-weekly protests among families seeking information about missing sons, brothers and fathers.”

One of the main detention complexes is at Riyan Airport in Yemen’s southern city of Mukalla. Former detainees, speaking on condition of anonymity told of “being crammed into shipping containers smeared with feces and blindfolded for weeks on end. They said they were beaten, trussed up on the ‘grill,’ and sexually assaulted.”

A member of the Yemeni security force set up by the United Arab Emirates told AP that American forces were at times only yards away.

“It would be a stretch to believe the US did not know or could not have known that there was a real risk of torture,” said Amnesty International’s director of research in the Middle East, Lynn Maalouf.

On January 9, 2018, WAT members tried to deliver a letter to UAE Ambassador Yusuf Al Otaiba, seeking his response to these reports. Security guards took our pictures but said they were unable to accept our letter.

Two days later, joining numerous other groups for a large rally, we donned orange jumpsuits and black hoods, carried placards bearing the number “41” and displayed two main banners. One said: “It would take a genius to close Guantanamo.” And the other: “We are still here because you are still there.

Forty-one hearts still beat in Guantanamo prison cells. That’s forty-one too many.

A version of this article was first published on The Progressive website.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif asked the US to remain committed to the 2015 nuclear agreement, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and warned that the Islamic Republic has numerous options on the future of the deal.

In remarks released on Thursday night, Zarif hailed talks with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Moscow and a meeting he had with the European Union’s diplomatic chief and the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany on Thursday.

“What was clear at the meetings yesterday and today (Thursday) was that the international consensus was based on (the fact that) any move leading to the destruction of the JCPOA or a change in it would be unacceptable and would be confronted by the international community,” he noted.

The Iranian top diplomat also said in the talks, he has emphasized that all parties, including the US, should remain committed to the JCPOA and implement the deal completely so that Iran do the same.

The Islamic Republic has repeatedly proved that it is committed to its international obligations, Zarif said, adding that Tehran has numerous options on the future of the deal, which would protect the interests of the Iranian nation.

The remarks came as US President Donald Trump must decide today whether to waive nuclear sanctions on Iran or effectively end the United States’ participation in the nuclear agreement.

In October, Trump said he would not certify Iran’s compliance with the nuclear agreement that was negotiated under the previous administration because it was “in violation of the spirit” of the accord.

The Trump administration asked Congress then to come up with and pass a companion agreement that addresses those issues.

It said it would also like Congress to amend the legislation that gives lawmakers the authority to slap sanctions on Iran if it decides Tehran is in violation of the nuclear agreement, outlining “trigger points” instead that set off automatic sanctions.

Trump said he wants Congress to fix “the deal’s many flaws” such as existing sunset provisions.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said last week that Trump would be inclined to authorize another sanctions waiver if he felt that real progress was being made toward the changes he demanded in October.

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By James Reinl

US President Donald Trump will extend sanctions relief granted to Iran under the 2015 nuclear deal, but will not issue any future waivers unless the accord is strengthened, White House officials said on Friday.

Trump, who has vowed to scrap the pact, will give the US Congress and European allies a 60-day window to reinforce the deal. Without improvements, the administration renewed a threat to withdraw from the agreement.

Officials called for curbs on Iran’s ballistic missile program, and safeguards that Tehran will stay at least one year away from possessing a nuclear weapon in perpetuity — overriding the so-called “sunset clauses” that see parts of the deal expire over the coming years.

“The president’s decision is to waive once more the nuclear sanctions that the terms of the JCPOA require the US to waive in order to remain in the deal,” a White House official said, using the formal acronym for the deal.

“But in his statement, the president will also make clear that this is the last such waiver that he will issue.”

At the same time as the renewed waiver was announced, the US Treasury slapped sanctions on 14 Iranian figures and companies, including the head of the country’s judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, linking him to the torture of political dissidents and the execution of juveniles.

Trump had faced a deadline on Friday to decide whether to waive the sanctions. A decision to withhold a waiver would have effectively ended the deal that limits Iran’s nuclear program.

Iranian activist Mohsen Sazegara, president of the Research Institute on Contemporary Iran, said he backed the nuclear accord, but praised Trump for restricting cash flows to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

“I hope they put pressure on the sources of money for Khamenei and the IRGC, because they use these monies to suppress the people of Iran,” Sazegara told Arab News, referencing the regime’s recent crackdown on protests across 80 cities.

“They pay sometimes $100-$150, almost half the minimum wage of a laborer’s monthly salary, to the thugs that they bring to the streets to beat people. If they don’t have money, they can’t continue to suppress people.”

Barbara Slavin, a former US State Department advisor on Iran, said Trump’s move likely reflected changes in Iran’s behavior: Fewer ballistic missile tests and changes in drug laws to reduce the number of death penalty cases.

Trump had come under heavy pressure from European allies to issue the sanctions waiver. “The administration has been swayed in part by the Europeans, who were unanimous in support of the agreement, and in telling the Trump administration not to scrap this deal while there’s no alternative,” Slavin told Arab News.

“I have very large doubts about the capacity of the Trump administration to negotiate any kind of replacement, and the Iranians have been quite firm that they won’t agree to renegotiate the agreement at this point.”

Sir Peter Westmacott, a former British ambassador to Turkey and the US, said Trump had likely given up on plans to substantially renegotiate the accord, and would shift to tackling Iranian activities beyond the scope of the deal.

“It’s about threatening language and some additional sanctions to try to bring into the field of constraint on Iranian policymaking those areas that were very specifically, and for good reason, excluded from the nuclear negotiation: Regional destabilization, human rights, and support for extremist groups of Shiite persuasion,” Sir Westmacott told Arab News.

“Is that really going to work? That’s another story, and of course the Iranians feel that some of the assertions that are made against them are simply not realistic.”

Trump has argued that former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, brokered a bad deal for the US in agreeing to the nuclear accord.

Hailed by Obama as key to stopping Iran from building a nuclear bomb, the deal lifted economic sanctions in exchange for Tehran limiting its nuclear program. It was also signed by China, France, Russia, Britain, Germany and the EU.

Iran says its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes. It has said it will stick to the accord as long as the other signatories respect it, but will “shred” the deal if Washington pulls out.

The US Congress requires the president to decide periodically whether to certify Iran’s compliance with the deal and issue a waiver to allow American sanctions to remain suspended.

Trump chose in October not to certify compliance, and warned he might ultimately terminate the deal.

He accused Iran of “not living up to the spirit” of the accord, even though the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says Tehran is complying.

Hawkish US lawmakers have called for the re-imposition of the suspended sanctions and an end to the nuclear deal, while some liberal Democrats want to pass legislation that would make it harder for Trump to pull Washington out without congressional consent.

Trump’s team has been negotiating with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker and others to try to change sanctions legislation so he does not face a deadline on whether to recertify Iranian compliance with the nuclear deal every 90 days.

By Mohammed Nosseir*

The Muslim Brotherhood’s struggle with the Egyptian state due to its involvement in violence since its foundation in 1928 should have eliminated the organization from the political scene a long time ago — yet it has persisted for 90 years. This should prompt us to contemplate the reasons behind its endurance. Surprisingly, the organization, although currently malfunctioning, is still vibrant among many of its members.

Learning about the Muslim Brotherhood’s strengths may help us to defeat them.

The Muslim Brotherhood, still functioning according to its obsolete internal bylaws, is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year, ensuring it has outlived many progressive political entities that have been established and effaced in that time. The relationship between the Egyptian state and the Brotherhood has gone through many difficult phases and it is presently in the most challenging period since its foundation.

Nevertheless, to claim that the organization has been abolished entirely is certainly an overstatement.

The current marginalization of the Muslim Brotherhood from Egyptian politics does not mean that it has dwindled (that may happen, but not in the near future). While the measures applied by the Egyptian state vis-a-vis the Brotherhood over the past few years have certainly weakened the organization, they have not altered its members’ allegiances and beliefs, which continue to spread silently across Egyptian society. The Muslim Brotherhood has always relied on three main pillars, which have succeeded in maintaining the vitality of the organization.

Islamic ideology has been the backbone of the Brotherhood, managing to sustain its members and sympathizers for almost a century with smooth handovers from one generation to the next. Placing Islam as the core value and overall theme of the organization has helped to evade the kinds of political debate that all political parties engage in. Sadly, this proposition has strengthened the Muslim Brotherhood at the expense of our religion.

The Brotherhood’s second active dimension is its organization, not in terms of hierarchy, but in terms of functional organization — it works on erasing any individual ambition or egoism. The markedly individualistic behavior that is common in our society does not exist among members of the Muslim Brotherhood; the organization works to attract the middle-class mainly, ignoring the elite (who often aspire to taking on superior roles). Each member of the organization is called upon (falsely) to serve Islam. In reality, this translates into serving the Brotherhood with no expectation for personal reward.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s third supporting pillar is an external one that consists of simply highlighting the Egyptian state’s failure to uplift the masses from poverty. The ineffectiveness of government projects and the irresoluteness of efforts to fight corruption and reduce bureaucracy are easily exploited issues. They have bolstered the Brotherhood, which has refrained from developing an alternative economic program of its own, claiming that the application of Islam will solve our challenges.

The strengths of the Muslim Brotherhood are often counteracted with various fabricated, weak measures offered by the Egyptian state and by other political parties.

The state provides Egyptian society with preachers that are not sufficiently convincing and that keep their audiences at a distance, and our political parties are established to serve their presidents, not to engage citizens effectively. Meanwhile, the state’s political affiliates tend to be dominated by opportunists rather than by citizens who want to serve their country.

In fact, the tools used by the Egyptian state to combat the Muslim Brotherhood have been benefiting the illegitimate organization at the expense of our country. The Egyptian government should always remember that “political Islamists” garnered roughly three-quarters of Egyptians’ votes in the 2012 parliamentary elections.

Correctly assessing the magnitude of the political Islam factor in our lives is better than underestimating it. In addition, using religion for political purposes has served the Brotherhood substantially better than the Egyptian state.

Egypt needs sound political entities capable of replacing the Muslim Brotherhood’s role by effectively engaging millions of citizens. This is the best means to fragment and weaken the Brotherhood. The current policy of assuming that the Muslim Brotherhood has been eliminated, that the economy is doing well and that Egyptian citizens support the state blindly is a fragile one that won’t last. Continuing to pursue this policy will bring the Muslim Brotherhood back to power sooner or later.

*Mohammed Nosseir, a liberal politician from Egypt, is a strong advocate of political participation and economic freedom.

Increased fluctuations in the path of the North Atlantic jet stream since the 1960s coincide with more extreme weather events in Europe such as heat waves, droughts, wildfires and flooding, reports a University of Arizona-led team.

The research is the first reconstruction of historical changes in the North Atlantic jet stream prior to the 20th century. By studying tree rings from trees in the British Isles and the northeastern Mediterranean, the team teased out those regions’ late summer weather going back almost 300 years — to 1725.

“We find that the position of the North Atlantic Jet in summer has been a strong driver of climate extremes in Europe for the last 300 years,” said Valerie Trouet, an associate professor of dendrochronology at the University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.

Having a 290-year record of the position of the jet stream let Trouet and her colleagues determine that swings between northern and southern positions of the jet became more frequent in the second half of the 20th century, she said.

“Since 1960 we get more years when the jet is in an extreme position.” Trouet said, adding that the increase is unprecedented.

When the North Atlantic Jet is in the extreme northern position, the British Isles and western Europe have a summer heat wave while southeastern Europe has heavy rains and flooding, she said.

When the jet is in the extreme southern position, the situation flips: Western Europe has heavy rains and flooding while southeastern Europe has extreme high temperatures, drought and wildfires.

“Heat waves, droughts and floods affect people,” Trouet said. “The heat waves and drought that are related to such jet stream extremes happen on top of already increasing temperatures and global warming — it’s a double whammy.”

Extreme summer weather events in the American Midwest are also associated with extreme northward or southward movements of the jet stream, the authors write.

“We studied the summer position of the North Atlantic jet. What we’re experiencing now in North America is part of the same jet stream system,” Trouet said.

This winter’s extreme cold and snow in the North American Northeast and extreme warmth and dryness in California and the American Southwest are related to the winter position of the North Pacific Jet, she said.

The paper, “Recent enhanced high-summer North Atlantic Jet variability emerges from three-century context,” by Trouet and her co-authors Flurin Babst of the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL in Birmensdorf and Matthew Meko of the UA is scheduled for publication in Nature Communications on Jan. 12. The U.S. National Science Foundation and the Swiss National Science Foundation funded the research.

“I remember quite vividly when I got the idea,” Trouet said. “I was sitting in my mom’s house in Belgium.”

While visiting her family in Belgium during the very rainy summer of 2012, Trouet looked at the newspaper weather map that showed heavy rain in northwestern Europe and extreme heat and drought in the northeastern Mediterranean.

“I had seen the exact same map in my tree-ring data,” she said. The tree rings showed that hot temperatures in the Mediterranean occurred the same years that it was cool in the British Isles — and vice versa.

The part of an annual tree ring that forms in the latter part of the growing season is called latewood. The density of the latewood in a particular tree ring reflects the August temperature that year.

Other investigators had measured the annual latewood density for trees from the British Isles and the northeastern Mediterranean for rings formed from 1978 back to 1725.

Because August temperatures in those two regions reflect the summer position of the North Atlantic jet stream, Trouet and her colleagues used those tree-ring readings to determine the historical position of the jet stream from 1725 to 1978. For the position of the jet stream from 1979 to 2015, the researchers relied on data from meteorological observations.

“There’s a debate about whether the increased variability of the jet stream is linked to man-made global warming and the faster warming of the Arctic compared to the tropics,” Trouet said.

“Part of the reason for the debate is that the data sets used to study this are quite short — 1979 to present. If you want to see if this variability is unprecedented, you need to go farther back in time — and that’s where our study comes in.”

With the discovery of much older trees in the Balkans and in the British Isles, Trouet hopes to reconstruct the path of the North Atlantic jet stream as much as 1,000 years into the past. She is also interested in reconstructing the path of the North Pacific jet stream, which influences the climate and weather over North America.

The Syrian Arab Army continues its restless drive throughout the southwestern countryside of Aleppo province, wresting control of yet another seven towns and villages on Friday, January 12 en-route to link up with other government forces in eastern Idlib, Al-Masdar News reports.

Following the opening of a new offensive axis by Syrian troops against armed groups in the Al-Hass plateau region of southwest Aleppo on Friday morning, pro-government forces have since sped on forward throughout the day to capture yet another seven settlements on top of the 5 they seized earlier in the day.

Military-linked sources have identified the newly captured towns and villages as Jubb Intash Fawqani, Jubb Intash Tahtani, As-Suhur, Al-Hardanah, Rasm al-Amaysh, As-Salihiyah and Al-Hawayir.

Whether or not clashes were required in order for government troops to take control of the settlements remains unknown; however, given the general speed of the Syrian army’s advance (again, having captured another 5 towns earlier in the day), it is highly possible that jihadist fighters were either not present or had since abandoned the area in which pro-government forces are advancing, the media outlet says.

New research reports that hyperreactive brain networks could play a part in the hypersensitivity of fibromyalgia.

A new study finds that patients with fibromyalgia have brain networks primed for rapid, global responses to minor changes. This abnormal hypersensitivity, called explosive synchronization (ES), can be seen in other network phenomena across nature.

Researchers from the University of Michigan and Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea report evidence of ES in the brains of people with fibromyalgia, a condition characterized by widespread, chronic pain. The paper, published in Scientific Reports, details only the second study of ES in human brain data.

“For the first time, this research shows that the hypersensitivity experienced by chronic pain patients may result from hypersensitive brain networks,” said co-senior author Richard Harris, Ph.D., associate professor of anesthesiology at Michigan Medicine with the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center. “The subjects had conditions similar to other networks that undergo explosive synchronization.”

In ES, a small stimulus can lead to a dramatic synchronized reaction in the network, as can happen with a power grid failure (that rapidly turns things off) or a seizure (that rapidly turns things on). This phenomenon was, until recently, studied in physics rather than medicine. Researchers say it’s a promising avenue to explore in the continued quest to determine how a person develops fibromyalgia.

“As opposed to the normal process of gradually linking up different centers in the brain after a stimulus, chronic pain patients have conditions that predispose them to linking up in an abrupt, explosive manner,” said first author UnCheol Lee, Ph.D., a physicist and assistant professor of anesthesiology at Michigan Medicine. These conditions are similar to other networks that undergo ES, including power grids, Lee says.

‘Electrically unstable’ findings

The researchers recorded electrical activity in the brains of 10 female participants with fibromyalgia. Baseline EEG results showed hypersensitive and unstable brain networks, Harris says. Importantly, there was a strong correlation between the degree of ES conditions and the self-reported intensity of chronic pain reported by the patients at the time of EEG testing.

Lee’s research team and collaborators in South Korea then used computer models of brain activity to compare stimulus responses of fibromyalgia patients to the normal condition. As expected, the fibromyalgia model was more sensitive to electrical stimulation than the model without ES characteristics, Harris said.

“We again see the chronic pain brain is electrically unstable and sensitive,” Harris said.

He said this type of modeling could help guide future treatments for fibromyalgia. Since ES can be modeled essentially outside of the brain or in a computer, researchers can exhaustively test for influential regions that transform a hypersensitive network into a more stable one. These regions could then be targeted in living humans using noninvasive brain modulation therapies.

George Mashour, M.D., Ph.D., co-senior author and professor of anesthesiology at Michigan Medicine, said, “This study represents an exciting collaboration of physicists, neuroscientists and anesthesiologists. The network-based approach, which can combine individual patient brain data and computer simulation, heralds the possibility of a personalized approach to chronic pain treatment.”

By Jeoffrey Maitem

The United States set aside another U.S. $6.6 million (332.3 million pesos) to help Marawi residents recover from last year’s five-month battle between Islamic State-linked militants and government forces that left their southern Philippine city in ruins.

The funds, distributed through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), will go to programs aimed at helping people get back to work after the fighting left more than 1,000 combatants and civilians dead and the local economy in tatters. The latest U.S. aid infusion by the long-time Philippine defense treaty ally brings the total contribution to Marawi to $20.9 million (1 billion pesos).

“This new funding will support some of the most vulnerable populations affected by the conflict,” U.S. Ambassador Sung Kim said.

“The United States is deeply committed to supporting our friend and ally in long-term recovery efforts to ensure a brighter and more peaceful future for the people of Mindanao,” he said.

Previously, the U.S. sent military personnel to Marawi to help in intelligence efforts when Filipino government troops were fighting IS-linked forces who were backed by foreigners in the battle, which began on May 23 and ended in late October.

Regional social welfare director Bai Zorahayda Taha said nearly half of the 200,000 Marawi residents displaced by the fighting had returned since the government declared the city liberated from the militants.

“But residents in the main battle areas cannot return yet as the military continues their clearing missions for bombs,” Taha said.

At the same time, Taha said residents covered by the country’s “conditional cash transfer program” need not worry about losing their monthly stipend for failing to meet conditions set by the program.

It requires children to stay in school and maintain class attendance of at least 85 percent each month. Pregnant women are required to avail pre- and post-natal care and delivery must be assisted by skilled health personnel, while parents are mandated to take “family development sessions.”

“This means that even if they are not attending schools or not going to health clinics, or not even attending the family development sessions, they will be receiving their monthly grants,” she said.

The USAID’s early assistance to Marawi involved restoring access to water and distributing much-needed desks to schools where displaced students were enrolled. The agency also helped set up health clinics to provide health services in evacuation camps.

Mark Navales in Cotabato City, Philippines, contributed to this report.

The digital reconstruction of the skull of a 200-million-year-old South African dinosaur, Massospondylus, has made it possible for researchers to make 3D prints and in this way facilitate research on other dinosaurs all over the world.

Kimi Chapelle, a PhD student at the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa (Wits), has used the Wits MicroFocus CT facility to peer inside the skull of the dinosaur Massospondylus.

Chapelle was able to use the CT facility to rebuild every bone of Massospondylus‘s cranium, and to even look at tiny features like nerves exiting the brain and the balance organs of the inner ear. Her research is published today in the open-access journal, PeerJ.

Along with the paper, which is open for anybody to download and read, a 3D surface file of the skull is available to be downloaded.

“This means any researcher or member of the public can print their own Massospondylus skull at home,” said Chapelle.

Massospondylus is one of the most famous dinosaurs from South Africa and was named in 1854 by the celebrated anatomist Sir Richard Owen. Fossils of Massospondylus have been found in many places in South Africa, including Golden Gate National Park, where James Kitching discovered fossil eggs and embryos in 1976. Surprisingly, the skull of Massospondylus has never been the focus of an in-depth anatomical investigation.

“I was amazed when I started digitally reconstructing Massospondylus‘ skull, and found all these features that had never been described,” said Chapelle, “it just goes to show that researchers still have a lot to learn about South Africa’s dinosaurs.”

Some of the most interesting discoveries from the skull, which is described in Chapelle’s paper include:

• details on how the inner ear and the middle ear contacted each other and what these looked like
• Where the nerves connecting different parts of the skull to the brain were and which bones they went through
• that replacement teeth don’t erupt in a specific pattern and are present on all teeth, and
• that the bones that surround the brain in this specific fossil were not fully fused

“By comparing the inner ear to that of other dinosaurs, we can try and interpret things like how they held their heads and how they moved. You can actually see tiny replacement teeth in the bones of the jaws, showing us that Massospondylus continuously replaced its teeth, like crocodiles do, but unlike humans that can only do it once,” said Chapelle.

“Also, the fact that the bones of the braincase aren’t fully fused means that this particular fossil is that of an individual that is not fully grown yet. This allows us to understand how Massospondylus grew, how fast it grew and how big it could grow.”

Hundreds of Massospondylus fossils have been found in South Africa, ranging in size from hatchlings to adult. Chapelle is using CT technology to study these additional fossils for her PhD. “I’ll be using scans of other specimens to answer new questions,” said Chapelle, “for example, how did Massospondylus babies weighing less than 100g grow up to be half-tonne adults?”.

“Students like Kimi have been able to use our CT facility to produce cutting-edge research like this,” said Prof. Jonah Choiniere, the supervisor and co-author of the study, “and it’s changing the way we do dinosaur research.”

Three Occupy movement co-founders and six leading protesters appeared at West Kowloon Magistrates’ Court on Jan. 9 for pre-trials.

The co-founders faced a charge of inciting people to incite others to cause public nuisance in 2014 among three charges.

They were Benny Tai Yiu-ting, associate professor of law at Hong Kong University; Chan Kin-man, associate professor of sociology at Hong Kong Chinese University; and Reverend Chu Yiu-ming of Hong Kong Baptist Church.

The other defendants were legislators Tanya Chan and Bottle Shiu Ka-chun; former student leaders Tommy Cheung Sau-yin and Eason Chung; Raphael Wong Ho-ming, vice-chairman of the League of Social Democrats; and Lee Wing-tat, a member of the central committee of the Democratic Party.

The case was adjourned until Feb. 13.

All but Lee were charged with inciting people to incite others to cause public nuisance. Other charges were conspiracy to commit public nuisance and incitement to commit public nuisance.

Tai told ucanews.com on Jan. 10 that it was hard to be optimistic about the verdict.

“It depends on how much the court is willing to protect the rule of law in Hong Kong at this very moment,” he said.

“The Hong Kong government will continue to use the law as a tool to suppress the opposition.”

January is likely to be tough for pro-democracy leaders and activists. The media expect four to six trials to start involving about 40 defendants.

The appeals on Jan. 16 of three people from student group Scholarism and the Hong Kong Federation of Students and of 13 pro-democracy protesters will be a focal point.

The former student activists are Joshua Wong Chi-fung, secretary-general of pro-democracy party Demosisto; Alex Chow Yong-kang, a former secretary-general of the Hong Kong Federation of Students; and Nathan Law Kwun-chung, a former legislator.

They were convicted of unlawful assembly at a square near government headquarters in 2014, setting off the Occupy movement.

They were sentenced to social service or probation in 2016, but Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen Kwok-keung appealed against the verdict and they were jailed for six to eight months.

Similarly, the 13 protesters were convicted of unlawful assembly after protesting against the Hong Kong government’s new town development plan in the northeastern New Territories in 2014.

After being sentenced to social service of 80 to 150 hours, the Department of Justice appealed against the verdict, resulting in them being jailed for eight to 13 months.

Jackie Hung, officer of the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission of Hong Kong, told ucanews.com: “The Hong Kong government and the Secretary of Justice are gripping the youths and not letting them go in order to threaten them.”

One commentator has claimed the government is using an unprecedented tribunal to criminalize the democratic movement.

Shiu, one of the defendants on Jan. 9, told ucanews.com that the government under authoritarian rule used justice to intimidate.

“In the case of those youths, the government continued to charge them until they were jailed,” he said.

In December 2017, Rimsky Yuen resigned and Teresa Cheng Yeuk-wah took over in January, but Shiu believes that the government will not make any major changes.

“Under authoritarian rule, I do not have any expectations of the new Secretary for Justice. Whoever takes the office, he or she must follow the ruling party; otherwise, is he or she possibly in?” he said.

“The Hong Kong government adopts authoritarian rule since it is the same strain of China. Chinese President Xi Jinping is adopting authoritarian rule to deal with dissidents with law. If it is a national policy, can Hong Kong not follow?”

Shiu admitted there must be changes in Hong Kong, but first of all China needs to change. However, he is not optimistic. “Under such circumstances, it may take a long time before Hong Kong can step out of winter.”

Just days before Pope Francis’ visit to Chile, three Catholic churches in the capital of Santiago were attacked by unknown assailants.

A fourth church – Christ the Poor Man Shrine – was targeted by a bomb threat and was subsequently investigated by a bomb squad.

Hours before, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary Parish in the Estación Central district was fire bombed. The arsonists fled the scene, leaving behind messages against the Holy Father’s visit to the country.

“Pope Francis, the next bombs will be in your cassock,” said a pamphlet left behind.

The community of priests that live at Saint Elizabeth’s and the neighbors immediately worked to extinguish the fire, which damaged the entrance doors and several windows.

Two other chapels in the city also suffered damage, including broken windows and doors.

At some of the churches, pamphlets were left behind, saying, “We will never submit to the dominion they want to exercise over our bodies, our ideas and actions because we were born free to decide the path we want to take…We are attacking with the fire of battle, making your disgusting morals explode.”

The pamphlets also called for “autonomy and resistance” in the Mapuche conflict. The Mapuche are the largest indigenous group in the country. Many of them live in the region of Araucania, which Pope Francis will visit during his trip.

Chile incorporated Araucania by military conquest between 1861 and 1883, resulting in a major rift between the government and the Mapuche people. The tension continues to this day, with Mapuche communities calling for the return of ancestral lands, respect for their cultural identity, and in some cases, autonomy.

“This was a cowardly act. I’m upset, pained, because this is a poor community, a struggling community: these are people who don’t know the consequence of what they’re doing,” the parochial vicar Fr. Marcelo Cabezas lamented.

“On the other hand, if there are attacks, it’s because we’re having an impact as Catholics,” he said.

No one was injured in any of the attacks. Police investigators are on location to determine if the attacks were related.

Deputy Secretary of the Interior, Mahmud Aleuy, visited the damaged churches and said the Government of Chile will prosecute the offenders when found.

The Archdiocese of Santiago released a statement saying, “We are deeply pained by these incidents, which contradict the spirit of peace that animates the Pope’s visit to the country.”

“With humility and serenity we call on those who have committed these acts, which we consider in no way to represent the feeling of the vast majority of the population, to reflect on the need that exists for respect and tolerance among all, to build a homeland of brothers.”

Later in the morning, a group of protestors stormed the apostolic nunciature, before the police arrived and evicted them from the building.

Roxana Miranda, head of wrote a group that protests high mortgage rates, took responsibility for the nunciature protest in a Twitter statement. She said the group was protesting the cost of the papal visit.

President Donald Trump announced Thursday he canceled a visit to London to open the United States’ new British embassy.

Trump said on Twitter he canceled his visit because the U.S. embassy’s former location was sold at a “bad deal.” He was scheduled to visit the British capital in February to open the new U.S. embassy there.

“Reason I canceled my trip to London is that I am not a big fan of the Obama Administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for ‘peanuts,’ only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars. Bad deal. Wanted me to cut ribbon-NO!” Trump wrote.

In 2009, the Obama State Department agreed to sell the Grosvenor Square building where the U.S. embassy was located to the Qatar royal family. The sale was made because the British government wanted to list the building as one of historical importance, which would have made renovations and a potential sale more difficult to do.

In November 2016, the Qatar royal family won approval from London officials to turn the building into 137-room luxury hotel.

While Trump blamed the embassy real estate deal for his decision not to visit the capital of one of the United States’ closest allies, various reports indicate planned protests contributed to the decision.

Facebook groups organizing for Trump’s planned February visit called for one of the largest protests Britain had ever seen.

“He will be met by a million of us attempting a citizen’s arrest of him for incitement of racial hatred,” one group said, according to the Independent.

Original article

Two patterns of antecedent or “prodromal” psychiatric symptoms may help to identify young persons at increased risk of developing bipolar disorder (BD), according to a new analysis in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

Early signs of BD can fall into a relatively characteristic “homotypic” pattern, consisting mainly of symptoms or other features associated with mood disorders; or a “heterotypic” pattern of other symptoms including anxiety and disruptive behavior. Environmental risk factors and exposures can also contribute to BD risk, according to the analysis by Ciro Marangoni, MD, at the Department of Mental Health, Mater Salutis Hospital, Legnato, Italy; Gianni L. Faedda, MD, Director of the Mood Disorder Center of New York, NY, and Co-Chairman of a Task Force of the International Society for Bipolar Disorders on this topic; and Professor Ross J. Baldessarini, MD, Director of the International Consortium for Bipolar & Psychotic Disorders Research of the Mailman Research Center at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass.

Different Symptom Patterns, Differing Implications for BD Risk

The authors reviewed and analyzed data from 39 studies of prodromal symptoms and risk factors for later development of BD. Their analysis focused on high-quality evidence from prospective studies in which data on early symptoms and risk factors were gathered before BD was diagnosed.

BD is commonly preceded by early depression or other symptoms of mental illness, sometimes years before BD develops, as indicated by onset of mania or hypomania. Nevertheless, the authors note that “the prodromal phase of BD remains incompletely characterized, limiting early detection of BD and delaying interventions that might limit future morbidity.”

The evidence reviewed suggested two patterns of early symptoms that “precede and predict” later BD. A homotypic pattern consisted of affective or mood-associated symptoms that are related to, but fall short of, standard diagnostic criteria for BD: for example, mood swings, relatively mild symptoms of excitement, or major depression, sometimes severe and with psychotic symptoms.

The authors note that homotypic symptoms have “low sensitivity”–that is, most young people with these mood symptoms do not later develop BD. However, this symptom pattern also had “moderate to high specificity”–homotypic symptoms do occur in many patients who go on to develop BD.

The heterotypic pattern consisted of other types of prodromal symptoms, such as early anxiety and disorders of attention or behavior. This pattern had low sensitivity and specificity: relatively few patients with such symptoms develop BD, while many young people without heterotopic symptoms do develop BD.

The study findings also associate several other factors with an increased risk of developing BD, including preterm birth, head injury, drug exposures (especially cocaine), physical or sexual abuse, and other forms of stress. However, for most of these risk factors, both sensitivity and specificity are low.

Although many elements of the reported patterns of prodromal symptoms and risk factors have been identified previously, the study increases confidence that they are related to the later occurrence of BD. The researchers note that the findings of high-quality data from prospective studies are “encouragingly similar” to those of previous retrospective and family-risk studies.

“There was evidence of a wide range of [psychiatric] symptoms, behavioral changes, and exposures with statistically significant associations with later diagnoses of BD,” the authors conclude. With further study, the patterns of prodromal symptoms and risk factors may lead to new approaches to identifying young persons who are likely to develop BD, and might benefit from early treatment. The investigators add that predictive value might be even higher with combinations of multiple risk factors, rather than single predictors.

The Pentagon intends to deploy an estimated 1,000 new combat advisers to Afghanistan as part of the Trump administration’s planned troop surge, according to reports.

As early as February, members of an Army security-force assistance brigade from Fort Benning, Georgia, will be sent to work as combat advisers to Afghan National Security Forces. Their deployment will bring the number of American personnel in the country to about 14,000.

US military officials told the Wall Street Journal the Pentagon hopes to dramatically increase the American military presence in Afghanistan in time for spring, when the “fighting season” begins.

With operations against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) winding down in Syria and Iraq, the US military also plans to send more helicopters, ground vehicles, artillery and other equipment to Afghanistan.

A large fleet of armed and unarmed drones will also be sent to the country, which will provide the US advisers with air support, as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

President Trump announced in August that 3,000 to 4,000 more troops would be sent to Afghanistan in an attempt to finally score a decisive victory in a war that has dragged on for more than fifteen years.

As part of Trump’s strategy, the White House has delegated substantial decision-making authority to his generals. The new management style has been coupled with a penchant for secrecy regarding troop deployment numbers.

General John Nicholson, the head of US forces in Afghanistan, told reporters last month there would be more US boots on the ground in the coming months, but did not provide specifics.

There are “well over 1,000 advisers out at any given time,” Nicholson said, but in 2018 “this [number] will increase dramatically.”

In December, the White House omitted the number of troops stationed in Afghanistan from a semi-annual report meant to bring greater accountability to the executive branch on military matters.