Month: August 2017

Art Exhibit Curated for Canines Opens in New York

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You won’t find any pictures of dogs playing poker at dOGUMENTA (I) NYC.

A three-day art exhibition is attracting hundreds of canines to a marina in Lower Manhattan, where hounds and terriers are feasting their eyes, and in some cases their mouths, on nearly a dozen masterpieces created expressly for them.

The idea is the brainchild of former Washington Post art critic Jessica Dawson, who says she was inspired by her rescue dog, Rocky, a tiny morkie (Yorkie-Maltese mix), who regularly joins her at exhibits of the human variety.

“When Rocky accompanied me on my gallery visits, I noticed that he was having a much better time than I was,” said Dawson, who moved to New York four years ago. “He was not reading the New York Times reviews, he was not reading the artists’ resumes, and so I said he has something to teach me about looking, and all dogs have something to teach us about looking at contemporary art and being with it.”

The exhibit, which takes its name from Documenta, which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany, was put on by Arts Brookfield. Organizers staggered the arrival times of the dogs to keep things orderly.

“I think she’s enjoying it,” said Lorraine Gates, who attended with her tiny Japanese Chin, Maltese and Papillon mix. “I love this idea; I think it’s really wonderful.”

The 10 works of art at the outdoor exhibit were all strategically placed at eye level for the canines. One featured an elaborate display of dog biscuits and other treats that attendees were invited to munch on.

At another exhibit, four-legged art critics were lifting their hind legs and “expressing” themselves on a work called “Fountain.” As the dogs left their marks, scribbles of blue streaks were left behind on the white blocks.

Dawson said Rocky had visited several times.

Susan Godwin and her morkie, Tasha, were soaking up the art vibes. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Godwin gushed. “You can go to museums all over New York and you can never bring your dog.”
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Kids’ Brains Need More Downtime, Research Shows

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Children and teenagers have become busier than ever. But neurologists and psychologists say pushing kids to be constantly learning and practicing, even during summer vacation, is not good for them.

Strength vs. weaknesses

Helping children succeed and thrive is one of the issues psychologist Lea Waters has been researching for two decades. In her book, The Strength Switch, she suggests that parents focus on building up their child’s strengths rather than fixing their weaknesses. 

“If you’re only focusing on what’s wrong with your child, what’s missing, what needs to be fixed, really the best results you can ever hope for is to take them from weakness to above average. But if you start putting more of your time and attention as a parent on what’s right, amplifying their strength, that’s when they really reach their full potential.”

Waters calls this approach the strength-based parenting. But she cautions that sometimes parents can go overboard trying “to get them extra tutoring, to get them into … every class possible and potentially risking over-structuring their life with the idea that practice equals building the strength. In some senses that’s true, but it’s only partly true.”

The result is often an overcrowded schedule, keeping kids’ brains constantly busy with learning, gathering information and practicing.

“Yes, practice builds up strength, but so does downtime,” she said.

What other experts find

Waters’ book is mainly based on her research in positive psychology, parenting and education at the University of Milbourn, Australia. She also refers to a variety of studies by other researchers.

She cites Deena Weisberg and her colleagues at Columbia University who have studied play curriculum and what happens to a child’s well-being and ability to think when play is deliberately incorporated into the school environment.

“And I love Kathy Hirsh-Pasek’s research at Temple University on not overscheduling your kids. She’s really influenced the way I parent my kids personally,” Waters added.

“I love Mary Helen Immordino-Yang’s research. She’s a professor of education, psychology and neuroscience at the University of Southern California. She’s done a lot of work on the idea that our brains have two alternative systems.”

Brain’s default mode

The brain’s two alternative modes or networks are on-task focus and free-form attention.

Researcher Immordino-Yang says the on-task focus is about perceiving one’s environment, watching and paying attention. That happens when you play sports, for example.

“You need to be watching other people on your team, and running fast and coordinating emotions and reacting to the things you’re perceiving,” Immordino-Yang explained. “Then, there is another network that’s extremely important for being able to make sense of what you’re doing. This network seems to be deactivated when people are sort of playing sports and attending to the outside and it’s activated when you’re resting and just daydreaming, thinking about your memories, imagining things that don’t exist here and now. You need both modes of attention in order to function as a person in the world.”

Psychologist Waters says slowing down actually helps kids reach their full potential.

“It’s a little bit like if you have too many programs running on your computer,” Waters said. “Your computer starts to slow down. And when you shut these programs down, the computer speeds up again. It’s very much like that for the child’s brain.”

Goofing off

Waters says machines need to reboot and kids need to goof off.

“What I mean by goofing off is really allowing kids to have some downtime, where they are not focused on any specific task, something that they choose to do like shooting baskets, or doing a creative project, or cooking,” she said. “It’s a project they’re interested in doing that they can do it automatically and get enjoyment from.”

Goofing off doesn’t mean the brain becomes inactive.

“It goes into this default network mode and uses that time to process all the information it had during the day, to integrate the new information,” she said.

Waters hopes parents understand that children don’t have to be busy constantly and, instead, should be given permission to goof off every now and then.
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Scientist Move Closer to Pig-human Organ Transplants

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There’s a word that everybody should learn because in a few years it may be in almost every day use.

According to scientists at Harvard University, advances in research of xenotransplantation, or transplantation of animal organs to humans, promises to bridge the huge gap between the number of human organs available for transplants and the number of patients on waiting lists.

The experiments stem from the fact that humans share a lot of DNA with mammals, specifically pigs. Pig heart valves are already being routinely transplanted into humans, some diabetes patients have transplanted pig pancreas cells and pig skin is often used for treating patients with severe burns.

Combining gene editing technique called CRISPR with cloning, Harvard scientists created piglets that do not harbor viruses harmful to humans. This, they say, may lead to the first direct xenotransplantation within as little as two years.

Such patients would still be required to take anti-rejection drugs so the ultimate goal is to grow pigs with human ready organs that don’t require any medication.

Other scientists express skepticism saying a lot more research is needed before xenotransplantation becomes widely available.
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Interview: How North Korea Tensions Impact Stock Markets

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Rising tensions between the United States and North Korea brought a wave of falling stock prices recently as worried investors moved money out of equities and into the perceived safety of gold, Swiss currency and similar products. At one point, this change of investment strategy cut $1 trillion from the value of global stock markets.

For some perspective on these concerns, VOA’s Jim Randle spoke with IHS Markit’s Rajiv Biswas in Singapore. IHS Markit employs thousands of financial, data, and other experts who track economic issues worldwide. Biswas is the company’s chief economist for APEC. His comments here were edited for brevity and clarity.

Randle: Why do rising nuclear tensions prompt falling stock prices?

Biswas: In the nightmare, but still low-probability scenario in which North Korea were to succeed in using nuclear weapons against South Korea, the devastation of the Korean peninsula would be catastrophic. Global financial markets would also suffer a tremendous shock in the short term, with massive flight to safe haven assets such as gold, USD and CHF. The humanitarian crisis and economic reconstruction of the Korean peninsula after such a nuclear conflict would require large-scale international cooperation led by China, the U.S. and EU, and would likely take over a decade to rebuild the economy.

Even a conventional war would result in considerable destruction to the South Korean economy… and likely result in tremendous casualties in both South and North Korea. The economic consequences … would likely be horrific, and … also result in a temporary shock to global financial markets. The greatest vulnerability would be for the South Korean financial markets and Korean won. Other regional East Asian financial markets would also be vulnerable, particularly Japanese financial markets, with risks of disruption to Northeast Asian regional trade and investment flows and manufacturing supply chains.

The South Korean economy accounts for around 1.9% of world GDP, and a severe drop in South Korean GDP … would have negative effects on key trade partners. Japan is also concerned that North Korea could launch missiles at Japanese targets, particularly… U.S. military bases in Japan. The reconstruction and rebuilding of South Korea’s economy after a major conflict would likely take many years, with significant international support needed to help South Korea with the reconstruction task.

Randle: Why do worried investors seek gold, oil, and Swiss currency?

Biswas: If international investors fear that the probability of a military conflict on the Korean peninsula is rising, they will likely reduce their exposure to global growth assets, such as Asian equities and Asian currencies…  as they fear that the world economy and Asian countries near North Korea could suffer economic dislocation and trade disruption in the event of a conflict.

In times of geopolitical crisis, the traditional safe haven assets for global investors are gold, U.S. dollars, U.S. Treasuries and Swiss francs, as these are very stable, internationally traded liquid assets. These safe haven assets tend to rise in value when investors fear that geopolitical crises could weaken global growth prospects as investors switch their investments out of global equities and emerging market currencies into the safe haven assets.

Randle: Are U.S. stocks ripe for a fall? 

Biswas: While geopolitical risks due to escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula have been reflected in some modest declines in some international equity markets in recent days, there has been many previous episodes of rising military tensions on the Korean peninsula. Global investors have previously shown considerable resilience to earlier bouts of geopolitical tensions on the Korean peninsula, such as North Korea’s sinking of the South Korean navy warship Cheonan and the North Korean artillery shelling of South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island in 2010

During 2017 to date, the U.S. equity market has been driven by a wide range of positive factors, including sustained U.S. economic growth momentum, planned corporate tax cuts by the Trump administration, moderate inflation pressures and positive U.S. corporate earnings growth prospects, so geopolitical risks from North Korea are not the only factor impacting on the U.S. equity market outlook.

Randle: Even if actual hostilities don’t break out, could these nuke worries be enough, in theory, to spark a sharp drop in financial markets? 

Biswas: “The canary in the coal mine that will signal rising international financial markets’ risk aversion [worry] is likely to be South Korean asset classes. The South Korean stock market and the Korean won are likely to be most vulnerable to declines in response to rising international investor concerns that military tensions are escalating further. One measure of financial risk are the South Korean sovereign credit default swap (CDS) spreads, with IHS Markit data indicating that South Korean CDS spreads widened in July following North Korea’s ICBM tests, and spiked up further this week following North Korea’s threat to attack Guam. So far, these widening spreads only signal a moderate increase in financial markets perceptions of geopolitical risks on the Korean peninsula, but a sharp further widening of the South Korean sovereign CDS spread would be a clear signal of rising investor anxiety.”
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Tesla to Test Self-driving Electric Trucks

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U.S. electric car manufacturer Tesla is close to testing a long-haul self-driving electric truck that could drive in convoys following a lead vehicle.

The company is reportedly also in contact with Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles about the possibility of testing the truck on the state’s roads.

Earlier this year Tesla’s founder Elon Musk announced that a new long-haul truck would be revealed in September but did not mention plans to make it self-driving.

Long-haul trucks on interstate highways often drive at relatively constant speeds with little or no intersections which makes autonomous driving easier to achieve.

Several large truck manufacturers, such as Volvo and Mercedes, as well as Silicon Valley companies have been working on the so-called ‘platooning’ technology that will enable long-range trucks to drive in formation, with only the lead vehicle having a human driver.

But even if the tech gets perfected, automakers are still struggling with the current limitations of electronic vehicles, namely their limited range per charge.
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Google CEO Defends Diversity Efforts

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Google’s workforce needs to “represent the world in totality,” said Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, at an international girls coding competition held on the company’s campus here Thursday night.

His comments come as the search engine giant grapples with a high profile internal debate over the number and influence of its female employees. Last year, the company reported that women represent just 31 percent of Google’s workforce and held 24 percent of leadership roles. Several initiatives are underway to boost those numbers, but those efforts are now a focus of some criticism.

On Monday, the company fired James Damore, a male engineer, who wrote about the role of women in tech and criticized the company’s efforts to bring more women into its workforce.  

This week, the author of the memo filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board. The company canceled an employee town hall meeting because of online harassment prior to the meeting, according to reports.

But the coding competition, Technovation, provided an apt backdrop for Pichai’s comments.

With girls waving their country flags and pitching their products, Pichai appeared to address the controversy without speaking about it directly.

“I want you to know there’s a place for you in this industry,” Pichai said. “There’s a place for you at Google. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You belong here, and we need you.”

The girls had competed for months – often teaching themselves to code – to make it to the final round in Mountain View, Calif. They learned how to test their products in the market and make their pitches in English.

Winners

A team from Kazakhstan won the senior round for their mobile app QamCare, which helps users keep track of each other in case of an emergency. They will receive $15,000.

Five runner-up senior teams from Kenya, Armenia, India and Kazakhstan will receive $10,000 each.

In the junior division, a team from Hong Kong won for Dementia Care Companion app. It uses games and cues to help people with dementia and their families stay connected. They will receive $10,000.

 

Runner-up teams from Cambodia, India, Canada and the U.S. will receive $5,000 each.

 

In the eight years of the competition, 15,000 girls from more than 100 nations have completed the program, said Tara Chklovski, founder and chief executive of Iridescent, the non-profit organization behind the event.

 

“The growing scale is exciting,” she said. “Many of these girls go on to win startup competitions, go to major in computer science. They get featured in national press. They get invited by heads of state.”
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Israel, Land of Milk and Honey – and Now Whiskey?

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Israel has been known as the land of milk and honey since Biblical times – but the land of single malt whiskey? One appropriately named distillery is trying to turn Israel into a whiskey powerhouse.

Smooth, honey-brown whiskey is not the first thing that comes to mind when most people think of Israel. However, at the Milk and Honey Distillery, rows of casks proudly stamped “Tel Aviv” hold liters of the stuff.

The country’s first whiskey distillery is preparing to release Israel’s first single malt whiskey.

 

“It’s a young whiskey,” said Eitan Attir, the distillery’s CEO.

 

Attir says the brew is aged for three years and two months in virgin oak and old bourbon barrels at the company’s renovated former bakery in a rugged industrial area of south Tel Aviv.

 

“It’s complex for its age,” he said. “The taste feels like more than three years, more like seven or eight and again the story is much more important in this case. This is the first ever single malt whiskey that any distillery has released from Israel.”

 

Although wine has been produced in the Holy Land for millennia, and modern Israeli wines have gained international renown in recent years, whiskey production is new to the country.

 

Milk and Honey was founded in 2013 and began distilling small experimental batches of whiskey a year later. One hundred bottles from their first cask of Single Malt are set to be sold at an online auction starting August 11.

 

Whiskey is universally acceptable for religious Jews to consume, Attir says, and Milk and Honey’s drink is “ultra-kosher.”

 

“We don’t work on Saturday, we don’t work on Yom Kippur or Passover,” he said. “And we want to symbolize our being Jewish or Israeli and then we called it the Milk and Honey Distillery.”  

 

Warmer climate more amenable

The single malt was made in Israel from start to finish, according to the company’s website, though the ingredients, barrels and equipment were imported from the U.S., U.K. and elsewhere. The warmer climate in Israel allows for a speedier aging process in the barrel than whiskey made in colder climates, according to Ran Latovicz, an Israeli whiskey connoisseur and bar owner.  

 

“In colder climates like Scotland or Ireland, whiskey usually ages for about seven to 10 to 12 years before it’s even bottled because [it is] just the way, you know, it gets to its full potential,” he said.

 

The distillery believes it is well positioned to ride a wave of growing international interest in new world whiskeys, like rising stars from Taiwan or India, and hopes this initial offering whets the appetites of aficionados everywhere.

“There’s a huge demand nowadays for whiskey from other places around the world – new world whiskey. There’s more than 70 countries now with a minimum of one distillery and one of them is Israel,” Attir said.

 

Gal Kalkshtein, Milk and Honey’s founder and owner, said he hopes that once the whiskey starts getting shipped abroad in 2019, it will create a buzz for Israeli whiskies.

 

“We want to be recognized for our quality, not the gimmick,” he said.
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New Cell Technology Works With Ambient Energy

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Researchers in the United States have unveiled a prototype of a battery-free mobile phone using technology they hope will eventually be integrated into mass-market products. The phone is the work of a group of researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle and operates by harvesting tiny amounts of power from radio signals, known as radio frequency or RF waves. VOA’s George Putic has details in this report by Kevin Enochs.
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Scientists Confirm Warming Planet as Trump Reviews Climate Report

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As the Trump administration reviews a government report that contradicts its views on climate change, another report confirms that humans have pushed the planet to record-setting temperatures. VOA’s Steve Baragona reports.
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Oil-state Senators Advise Against US Ban on Venezuela Oil

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Four U.S. Senate Republicans from oil-refining states Thursday urged the Trump administration not to block oil shipments from Venezuela as part of U.S. sanctions against the country, saying it could raise costs for U.S. fuel consumers.

The United States sanctioned President Nicolas Maduro and other Venezuelan officials after Maduro established a constituent assembly run by his Socialist Party loyalists and cracked down on widespread opposition. It has not placed sanctions on the OPEC member’s oil industry.

Four senators

Senators John Cornyn of Texas, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, and Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker of Mississippi said in the letter, which was seen by Reuters, that unilaterally blocking oil exports could harm the U.S. economy and the Venezuelan people.

The United States imports about 740,000 barrels per day of oil from Venezuela.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the letter, which was addressed to President Donald Trump.

“We believe it is critical to consider the role the U.S. energy industry and refining sector play in our economic and national security interest,” the senators wrote. “Blockading imports could inflict great harm on this industry and burden U.S. taxpayers with the cost.”

Effects on Venezuela

The senators said sanctions on shipments of Venezuelan oil to the United States could also increase the likelihood of a disorderly default by Venezuela, given the oil business is its main source of revenue. Creditors could then seize Venezuelan oil assets and cut off the government’s remaining sources of financing.

They also noted that such sanctions could expand the interests of China and Russia in Venezuela’s oil business. Both countries have invested in Venezuela for years.

Sources have said the United States could use heavy crude from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve held in caverns along the Gulf Coast, to relieve any short-term supply pressure if Venezuela’s shipments were blocked. Nearly 680 million barrels of oil are in reserve.

A drilling boom in the United States has allowed the government to store more oil than it needs to meet international spare supply agreements. 
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Arctic Fjords Help Russia Combat Fish Shortage Problems

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Arctic fjords that hid Soviet nuclear-powered submarines during the Cold War are now being used as a weapon in the sanctions war with Europe – to rear fish that Russia can no longer import.

Three years ago, Russia banned food imports from the West in response to a series of Western sanctions that aimed to punish Moscow for its role in the Ukraine crisis, including its annexation of the Crimean peninsula.

Trout and salmon, grown specially for Russia’s vast market at farms in Norway next door, were among the first victims of the sanctions war.

Moscow’s ban on the largest exporter of red fish to Russia led to a sharp hike in prices, while also offering lucrative prospects for Russian fish farmers.

In the Murmansk region in Russia’s northwest, where the rocky coastline of the Ura Bay still features deserted Soviet-era bases and top secret berths for today’s submarine fleet, huge fish farming cages are now becoming part of the landscape.

Thousands of adult trout and salmon swarm inside the open-sea cages as workers toss in generous portions of high-calorie feed.

The cages belong to Russian Aquaculture which farms salmon and trout in the Barents Sea off Murmansk and in Russia’s northern Karelia region.

When they mature, the fish are loaded onto special ships and, still alive, are brought to a Murmansk factory for processing.

Here the fish are either deep frozen or turned into filets and steaks.

Russian Aquaculture reared fish before the Ukraine crisis but under a different name. Once the sanctions were introduced, it increased production to fill the gap in the market previously occupied by Norwegian imports.

The company’s drive to increase output hit difficulties in 2015 when many of its fish succumbed to diseases. It says it has now overcome those problems, and is pushing hard again to produce more fish.

Over the next five to 10 years, Russian Aquaculture aims to ramp up its output to produce 25,000-30,000 tons of fish per year. In the first half of this year, the company produced 8,400 tons of fish.
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Climate Change Altering Europe’s River Floods, Study Says

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Climate change is affecting the timing of river floods across Europe, and societies may have to adapt to avoid future economic and environmental harm, scientists said Thursday.

River floods are among the costliest natural disasters worldwide, causing annual damage of more than $100 billion. They affect millions of people each year because many towns and cities are built along rivers.

Examining flood data across 50 years, researchers found significant shifts in timing along the Atlantic coast of Western Europe from 1960 to 2010.

According to a paper published in the journal Science, half of the measurement stations from England to Portugal showed floods were occurring on average at least 15 days earlier by 2010 compared with a half century earlier.

In northeastern Europe, earlier snowmelts also brought river floods forward by at least eight days over the 50 years, while areas around the North Sea are now seeing floods happen more than a week later than in 1960.

“If the trends in flood timing continue, considerable economic and environmental consequences may arise, because societies and ecosystems have adapted” to the average timing of floods, the authors concluded.

Farming, water provision

They cited possible harm to farming around the North Sea from later winter floods that leave the ground softer going into spring. Water utility companies in northeastern Europe may need to begin filling reservoirs with the earlier water surges rather than waiting for later flooding to ensure sufficient supply for hydropower plants and irrigation, they said.

The study’s authors, led by Guenter Bloeschl of Vienna’s Technical University, cautioned that the precise mechanism by which flood patterns change is complex and still needs to be fully understood.

While data on the timing of floods showed a clearer link with climate change than past studies that looked into flood severity, the researchers noted that several factors affect the timing of floods — including the amount of rainfall, the nature of the soil, upriver snowmelt and land use. Not all the shifts are necessarily caused by man-made global warming, they said.

Bloeschl said the researchers would try to use their findings to predict future changes in the timing of seasonal floods.

“We really expect these trends to increase,” he said.
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Last Blast from Gregg Allman, Southern Man

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So close to death was blues rocker Gregg Allman when he was making his final album, the cover photographer did not get to his Savannah, Georgia, house in time.

Instead, “Southern Blood,” Allman’s posthumous paean to his life and music to be released in September, is adorned with a sepia shot of the grounds, a wooden boardwalk heading away under the shade of Spanish Moss.

There probably could not be a more appropriate symbol for Allman, who died from cancer in May, aged 69. From the early days with his late brother Duane onwards, Tennessee-born Allman was the epitome of Southern rock and blues.

“Southern Blood” is not about the South per se — for that, skip back an album to the 2011 Grammy-nominated “Low Country Blues.” This one is about Allman.

“[Gregg] was acutely aware that his time was limited,” Allman’s manager and friend Michael Lehman told Reuters when asked about the recording session.

“These compositions, they are all poignant and meaningful and talk about his life’s journey. Everyone of them had meaning [for him].”

For his last hurrah, Allman chose a number of songs written by friends and favorite artists including Jackson Browne, Willie Dixon, Jerry Garcia and Lowell George.

Each song, including those written by Allman himself, touch on something of the man — who led a difficult life with the early death of his brother, six divorces including from his celebrity marriage to Cher, drug addiction, hepatitis C, a liver transplant and, ultimately, cancer.

George’s “Willin,'” for example, is the tale of a hard-times Southwestern truck driver who keeps on the road against all the odds, a hint at Allman’s near continual touring.

Another song — written by Mississippi bluesman Wilie Dixon — needs no explanation: “I Love The Life I Live, I Live The Life I Love.”

In a similar vein a lot of the songs are basically goodbyes.

One such is Allman’s sweet rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Going, Going, Gone” with it’s starting lyrics: “I’ve just reached a place/Where the willow don’t bend/There’s not much more to be said/It’s the top of the end.”

Perhaps most poignant of all is the opening track, Allman’s own “My Only True Friend” in which he calls on the people who have followed his music since before 1969, the year the Allman Brothers hit the road, to remember him.

“You and I both know this river must surely flow to an end Keep me in your heart, keep your soul on the mend I hope you’re haunted by the music of my soul, when I’m gone Please don’t fly away to find a new love.”
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Artificial Intelligence Robots Aiding in Battle Against Crippling Nerve Disease

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Artificial intelligence robots are turbocharging the race to find new drugs for the crippling nerve disorder ALS, commonly called Lou Gehrig’s disease.

The condition attacks and kills nerve cells controlling muscles, leading to weakness, paralysis and, ultimately, respiratory failure.

There are only two drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to slow the progression of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), one available since 1995 and the other approved just this year. About 140,000 new cases are diagnosed a year globally, and there is no cure.

“Many doctors call it the worst disease in medicine, and the unmet need is huge,” said Richard Mead of the Sheffield Institute of Translational Neuroscience, who has found artificial intelligence (AI) is already speeding up his work.

Such robots — complex software run through powerful computers — work as tireless and unbiased super-researchers.

They analyze huge chemical, biological and medical databases, alongside reams of scientific papers, far quicker than humanly possible, throwing up new biological targets and potential drugs.

Cell deaths prevented

One candidate proposed by AI machines recently produced promising results in preventing the death of motor neurone cells and delaying disease onset in preclinical tests in Sheffield.

Mead, who aims to present the work at a medical meeting in December, is now assessing plans for clinical trials.

He and his team in northern England are not the only ones waking up to the ability of AI to elucidate the complexities of ALS.

In Arizona, the Barrow Neurological Institute last December found five new genes linked to ALS by using IBM’s Watson supercomputer. Without the machine, researchers estimate the discovery would have taken years rather than only a few months.

Mead believes ALS is ripe for AI and machine-learning because of the rapid expansion in genetic information about the condition and the fact there are good test-tube and animal models with which to evaluate drug candidates.

That is good news for ALS patients seeking better treatment options. Famous sufferers include Gehrig, the 1923-39 New York Yankees baseball player; actor and playwright Sam Shepard, who died last month; and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, a rare example of someone living for decades with the condition.

If the research goes on to deliver new medicines, it would mark a notable victory for AI in drug discovery, bolstering the prospects of a growing batch of startup companies focused on the technology.

Those firms are based on the premise that while AI robots won’t replace scientists and clinicians, they should save time and money by finding drug leads several times faster than conventional processes.

British ‘unicorn’

Mead from Sheffield is working with BenevolentAI, one of a handful of British “unicorns” — private companies with a market value above $1 billion, in this case $1.7 billion — which is rapidly expanding operations at its offices in central London.

Others in the field include Scotland’s Exscientia and U.S.-based firms Berg, Numerate, twoXAR, Atomwise and InSilico Medicine — the last of which recently launched a drug discovery platform geared specifically to ALS.

“What we are trying to do is find relationships that will give us new targets in disease,” said Jackie Hunter, a former drug hunter at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) who now heads Benevolent’s pharma business. “We can do things so much more dynamically and be really responsive to what essentially the information is telling us.”

Unlike humans, who may have pet theories, AI scans through data and generates hypotheses in an unbiased way.

Conventional drug discovery remains a hit-and-miss affair, and Hunter believes the 50 percent failure rates seen for experimental compounds in mid- and late-stage clinical trials due to lack of efficacy is unsustainable, forcing a shift to AI.

A key test will come with a study by Benevolent to assess a previously unsuccessful compound from Johnson & Johnson in a new disease area — this time for treating Parkinson’s disease patients with excessive daytime sleepiness.

Big pharmaceutical companies like GSK, Sanofi and Merck are now exploring the potential of AI through deals with startups.

Being careful

They are treading cautiously, given the failure of “high throughput screening” in the early 2000s to improve efficiency by using robots to test millions of compounds. Yet AI’s ability to learn on the job means things may be different this time.

CPR Asset Management fund manager Vafa Ahmadi, for one, believes it is a potential game-changer.

“Using artificial intelligence is going to really accelerate the way we produce much better targeted molecules. It could have a dramatic impact on productivity, which in turn could have a major impact on the valuation of pharmaceutical stocks,” he said.

Drugmakers and startups are not the only ones chasing that value. Technology giants including Microsoft, IBM and Google’s parent Alphabet are also setting up life sciences units to explore drug R&D.

For Benevolent’s Hunter, today’s attempts to find new drugs for ALS and other difficult diseases amount to an important test vehicle for the future of AI, which is already being deployed in other high-tech areas such as autonomous cars.

“The aim is to show that we can deliver in a very difficult and complex area, ” Hunter said. “I believe if you can do it in drug discovery and development, you can show the power of AI anywhere.”
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Cooking Gas Shortages Force Venezuelans to Turn to Firewood

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Venezuelan homemaker Carmen Rondon lives in the country with the world’s largest oil reserves, but has spent weeks cooking with firewood due to a chronic shortage of home cooking gas – leaving her hoarse from breathing smoke.

Finding domestic gas cylinders has become increasingly difficult, a problem that oil industry analysts attribute to slumping oil output in the OPEC nation – which is struggling under an unraveling socialist economy.

State oil company PDVSA says the problem is due to difficulties in distributing tanks amid four months of anti-government protests in which its trucks have been attacked.

“I’ve spent three weeks cooking with wood and sometimes the food does not even soften properly, I can’t stand it anymore,” said Rondon, as she lined up to buy a cylinder under the scorching sun in the city of San Felix in southern Venezuela.

More than 100 people were ahead of her in line.

Nine out of 10 Venezuelan homes rely on cylinders for home gas usage, with only 10 percent receiving it via pipelines, according to official figures. The government launched a plan 12 years ago to bring some 5 million  households onto the natural gas network but was unable to follow through.

Venezuela’s socialist economy has been in free-fall since the oil price collapse in 2014, creating shortages of everything from diapers to cancer medication and spurring inflation to triple-digit levels.

President Nicolas Maduro says he is the victim of an “economic war” by the opposition, and says violent street protests are part of an effort to overthrow him.

With oil output near 25-year lows, PDVSA has been forced to import liquid petroleum gas, or LPG, which is used to fill natural gas cylinders. Venezuela imported 26,370 barrels per day of LPG in the first half of 2017, according to data seen by Reuters.

PDVSA did not respond to a request for comment.

Long lines to buy cylinders have spurred protests.

Demonstrators in May burned 22 PDVSA trucks in a single day in response to the shortages.

The company says it is now distributing gas cylinders at night and before daybreak due to such protests, which also include roadblocks that prevent free movement of vehicles.

“It’s not fair that a country with so much oil is going through this,” complained Maria Echeverria, a 44-year-old homemaker, who started waiting at dawn to buy a gas cylinder in San Cristobal, near the border with neighboring Colombia.
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IOC Monitoring Korean Tensions Amid Preparations for 2018 Winter Games

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The International Olympic Committee said Thursday that it was closely monitoring rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula, less than 200 days before the 2018 Winter Olympics are set to begin in South Korea’s Pyeongchang.

The games return to the country next year for the first time since the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. But what would be the first Winter Games in Asia outside Japan and the first of three consecutive Olympics on the continent risk being overshadowed by the mounting crisis involving North Korea.

The reclusive North’s apparent progress in developing nuclear weapons and missiles capable of hitting the U.S. mainland led to a war of words this week between the two countries, unnerving regional powers.

President Donald Trump said the United States would respond with “fire and fury” if North Korea threatened it. North Korea dismissed the warnings and outlined detailed plans for a missile strike near the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam.

Experts in South Korea said the plans for an attack around Guam ratcheted up risks significantly, since Washington was likely to view any missile aimed at its territory as a provocation, even if it were launched as a test.

Games on track

“We are monitoring the situation on the Korean Peninsula and the region very closely,” an IOC spokesperson said. “The IOC is keeping itself informed about the developments. We continue working with the organizing committee on the preparations of these games, which continue to be on track.”

South Korea failed to land the Winter Olympics of 2010 and 2014 but succeeded in getting the nod in 2011 for the 2018 edition, which is scheduled for February 9-25.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in said last month that the North would be given until the last minute to decide whether it will take part in the Olympics. He wants to get North Korea involved, even though none of its athletes have met the qualification standards.

His proposal for a unified team has already been turned down by a top North Korean sports official as unrealistic in the current political climate.
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US Defense Secretary Mattis Begins Tech Outreach with Amazon Visit

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U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis kicked off his first official visit to the U.S. technology industry on Thursday with a tour of Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, the first stop on a two-day outreach campaign intended to highlight the Pentagon’s commitment to tech innovation.

Mattis was scheduled to visit Mountain View, California, later in the day to tour the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Experimental Unit, or DIUx, a Silicon Valley outpost set up in 2015 by his predecessor, Ash Carter.

He was also expected to visit Alphabet’s Google headquarters in Palo Alto on Friday.

“A pleasure to host #SecDef James Mattis at Amazon HQ in Seattle today,” Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos wrote on Twitter.

The visit comes as the Trump administration has sparred with the technology industry on a host of issues, including immigration, privacy and net neutrality.

 
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Controversial Film About Russian Czar Cleared for Release

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A historical film about the last Russian czar’s affair with a ballerina has been cleared for release, the Culture Ministry said Thursday, despite passionate calls for its ban.

“Matilda,” which describes Nicholas II’s relationship with Matilda Kshesinskaya has drawn virulent criticism from some Orthodox believers and hard-line nationalists, who see it as blasphemy against the emperor, glorified as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Russian lawmaker Natalya Poklonskaya, who previously had served as the chief regional prosecutor in Crimea following its 2014 annexation by Moscow, spearheaded the campaign for banning the film. She even asked the Prosecutor General’s office to carry out an inquiry into “Matilda,” which is set to be released on the centennial of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.

The lavish production, filmed in historic imperial palaces and featuring sumptuous costumes, loosely follows the story of Nicholas II’s infatuation with Kshesinskaya that began when he was heir-apparent and ended at his marriage in 1894.

The czar and his family were executed by a Bolshevik firing squad in July 1918. The Russian Orthodox Church made them saints in 2000.

“Matilda” opponents have gathered signatures against the film, and earlier this month several hundred people gathered to pray outside a Moscow church for the movie to be banned.

The film’s critics were recently joined by Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed regional leader of Chechnya, and authorities in the neighboring province of Dagestan, who argued that “Matilda” should be barred from theaters in the mostly Muslim regions in Russia’s North Caucasus.

Director Alexei Uchitel has rejected the accusations and prominent Russian filmmakers have come to his defense. The film’s critics and its defenders both have appealed to the Kremlin, but it has refrained from publicly entering the fray.

On Thursday, the Russian Culture Ministry finally announced that the film has received official clearance.

Vyasheslav Telnov, the head of the ministry’s film department, said it checked “Matilda” and found it in full compliance with legal norms.

Asked to comment on statements from Chechnya and Dagestan, Telnov said that the film has been cleared for release nationwide, but the law allows regional authorities to make their own decisions.

“There is no censorship in Russia, and the Ministry of Culture stays away from any ideological views of beliefs,” he said. “A feature film can’t be banned for political or ideological motives.”

Disputes over the movie reflect the rising influence of the Russian Orthodox Church and the increasing assertiveness of radical religious activists.

Russia’s growing conservative streak has worried many in the country’s artistic community. A Moscow art gallery recently shut down an exhibition of nude photos by an American photographer after a raid by vigilantes, and a theater in the Siberian city of Omsk canceled a performance of the musical “Jesus Christ Superstar” following a petition by devout Orthodox believers.
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Egypt Inflation Surges to 33 Percent After Fuel Subsidy Cuts

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Egypt’s official statistics agency says the country’s inflation rate has jumped to 33 percent in July – up from 29.8 percent in June.

The announcement comes as Egyptians struggle in the face of steep price hikes as part of the government’s economic reform plan.

 

The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics made the announcement Thursday.

 

Economists believe the hike is driven by an increase in fuel prices. They expect inflation to remain above 30 percent over the next two months, especially after an increase in electricity, transportation and drinking water prices.

 

Egypt raised fuel prices in June by 55 percent for the commonly used 80-octane gasoline and diesel. It also doubled the price of the butane gas canisters, used in the majority of Egyptian households for cooking.
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New Hope for Japan’s Summer Delicacy

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The Japanese summer delicacy of roasted eel, braised with a tangy sauce and sprinkled with prickly mountain pepper, is in question as the creatures with their mysterious migrations become increasingly endangered. 

 

Soaring demand for Japanese eel, or Anguilla japonica, helped put the creatures on the International Union of Conservation of Nature’s “Red List” of endangered species in 2014. It’s spurring poaching of similar species off the U.S. East Coast. 

 

But Katsumi Tsukamoto, “Dr. Eel” of the only “Eel Science Laboratory” at Nihon University in Japan, thinks he’s unlocked the secrets to eventually farming the eels, known as unagi, sustainably and profitably. Tsukamoto found out where the eels are spawning, and that helped researchers study conditions needed to raise them from the egg stage to adulthood. 

​Secret life of unagi

The possibility of extinction, and soaring prices for grilled eel believed to help build stamina for enduring sweltering summer days, have dismayed many Japanese gourmands and the restaurants that specialize in the dish.

 

Despite their important role in Japanese food culture, until recently very little was known about the life cycles of eels, such as where they spawned and how tiny, nearly transparent glass eels manage to travel back to their freshwater habitats in Asia and elsewhere. 

 

Supplies depend on wild-catching the juveniles and farm raising them until adulthood, a practice that has spread from Japan to Taiwan and mainland China as demand has surged. 

 

Tsukamoto says his discovery of Japanese eel larvae and spawning adults west of the Mariana Ridge, near Guam, in 2009 has enabled him and other researchers to figure out the right diet and environmental conditions for spawning eels and their offspring. 

 

Eel farming

Despite skepticism about the potential for such farming to work, Tsukamoto says three Japanese state-owned laboratories are able to raise the eels from the larval stage and get them to spawn, completing their life cycle. But for now each lab can raise only about 3,000-4,000 a year. A lack of funds is hindering construction of the infrastructure needed to make such operations commercially viable by producing tens of thousands of eels a year.

 

The complete farming of eels and some other endangered species as a way to help them survive by relieving the pressure from soaring demand.

Depending on the restaurant, Yuta Maruyama, an intermediate wholesaler who handles wild blue eel at Tokyo’s famous Tsukiji Fish market, says a multi-course menu including grilled blue eel can cost up to 30,000 yen ($270) per person at exclusive restaurants, mainly in the flashy Ginza shopping and dining district. 

 

The choice eels are often served in different styles to the traditional “kabayaki” eels, which are grilled in a coating of dark soy sauce marinade. Restaurants that specialize in kabayaki, often handed down generation to generation, may offer both wild and farmed eels — with supply depending on what is available that day at the market. 

​Wild-caught, farm-raised

At Hashimoto, a Michelin one-star kabayaki restaurant in Tokyo that first opened in 1835, the eels are all farm-raised the conventional way on the southern island of Kyushu, after being caught as glass eels. 

 

Like farmed salmon, the farmed eels raised from wild-caught glass eels tend to be fattier. “They have a flavor that is preferred by most customers,” said Shinji Hashimoto, the sixth-generation owner.

 

Hashimoto said his kabayaki sauce is “light,” to allow the eel’s flavor to come through. 

 

“The Tokyo palette has traditionally disliked sweet flavors,” he said.

 

To manage with fewer catches and higher prices, Hashimoto tries to get two servings out of larger eels. 

 

After cleaning and slicing them open, the cooks skewer them to ensure they will stay together while cooking. They are grilled directly over hot charcoal, then steamed to soften the flesh. Afterward they are coated in a sauce of soy sauce boiled with sweet rice wine, or mirin and then returned to the grill and basted three times before being served as “unajyu,” steaming hot over rice in a neat lacquer box. 

 

The busiest days tend to be the Day of the Ox in the lunar calendar, the first of which in 2017 was Tuesday, July 25th. Hashimoto served about 150 customers that day. 

 

“Even if the price rose to 10,000 yen (about $90) for one box of unajyu, Japanese people would still eat it once a year,” Tsukamoto said. “Why do Japanese people like unagi? Because we like soy sauce. The salty-sweet sauce, made from a mixture of soy sauce and mirin, is brushed on, is singed and grilled on the eel over charcoal — and that smell makes it irresistible.”
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