Chick magnets save Gulf Islands National Seashore birds – Pensacola News Journal

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Melissa Nelson Gabriel , mnelsongab@pnj.com Published 6:03 a.m. CT March 12, 2017 | Updated 3 hours ago

National park ranger Renee Jones hands out chick magnets at the entrance to Fort Pickens on Wednesday, March 8, 2017.(Photo: Gregg Pachkowski/gregg@pnj.com)Buy Photo

Gulf Islands National Seashore Superintendent Dan Brown wanted to make park visitors aware of the dangers speeding cars pose to baby shorebirds when he dreamed up the idea of chick magnets back in 2014.

Brown had no idea how popular the car magnets, which featurebaby birds encouraging drivers to slow down, would become.

"I can drive 100 miles away from here and see cars with those magnets," he said. "I think people like the name;it's a fun thing that catches their attention."

New chick magnets are available at park entrance gates and the Fort Pickens visitors center.

Related content:Shorebird nesting season begins

The 2017 chick magnets feature a snowy plover chick with the message "Save a chick #drive 25."

Superintendent Dan Brown discusses how he came up with the idea for the chick magnets at the Fort Pickens National Park. Wednesday, March 8, 2017.(Photo: Gregg Pachkowski/gregg@pnj.com)

Renee Jones, a park service employee who was workingat the Fort Pickens entrance gate last week, said she already had gotten requests from people wanting the new magnets.

"People love them," said Jones, who has had the magnets stolen from her car in past years.

The release of the new magnets marks the start of shorebird nesting season, which stretches through September.

Related content:Pensacola Beach sand dunes getting new walkovers

Park biologist Kelly Irick said the park's birds often nest near the road and the flightless chicks are attracted to the pavement during the heat of the day when bugs swarm the hot asphalt. The chicks can also be hit by cars when people walk into nesting areas, causing the birds to flush.

Less than 10 percent of snowy plover eggs hatched in the park make it to becomefledgling birds, Iricksaid. In 2016, park officials documented about 100 shorebird deaths from cars.

In past years, the chick magnets have encouraged motorists to drive 20 miles per hour. The park upped the suggested speed limit for 2017 to 25 miles per hourto make it consistent with the speed limits throughout Gulf Islands National Seashore.

Despite the high mortality rate of newly hatched shorebirds, Brown said the chick magnet program appears to be making a difference.

"We have noticed more and more people obeying the speed limit signs and paying attention," he said.

Related content:Fort Pickens asphalt removal project complete

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Chick magnets save Gulf Islands National Seashore birds - Pensacola News Journal

Meet Diego, the Centenarian Whose Sex Drive Saved His Species – New York Times

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New York Times
Meet Diego, the Centenarian Whose Sex Drive Saved His Species
New York Times
CHARLES DARWIN RESEARCH STATION, Galpagos Of all the giant tortoises on these islands, where the theory of evolution was born, only a few have received names that stuck. There was Popeye, adopted by sailors at an Ecuadorean naval base.

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Meet Diego, the Centenarian Whose Sex Drive Saved His Species - New York Times

Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill – Washington Post

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Employers could impose hefty penalties on employees who decline to participate in genetic testing as part of workplace wellness programs if a bill approved by a U.S. House committee this week becomes law.

In general, employersdon't have that power under existing federal laws, which protect genetic privacy and nondiscrimination. But a bill passed Wednesday by theHouse Committee on Education and the Workforce would allow employers to get around thoseobstacles if the information is collected as part of a workplace wellness program.

Suchprograms which offer workers a variety ofcarrots and sticksto monitor and improve their health, such as lowering cholesterol have become increasingly popularwith companies.Some offer discounts on health insurance to employees who complete health-risk assessments. Others might charge people more for smoking.Under the Affordable Care Act, employers are allowed to discount health insurance premiums by up to 30 percent and in some cases 50 percent for employees who voluntarily participate in a wellness program.

[Obamacare revision clears two House committees as Trump, others tried to tamp down backlash]

The bill is under review by other House committees and still must be considered by the Senate. But it has already faced strong criticism from a broad array of groups, as well as House Democrats. In a letter sent to the committee earlier this week, nearly 70 organizations representing consumer, health and medical advocacy groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, AARP, March of Dimes and the National Women's Law Center said the legislation, if enacted, would undermine basic privacy provisions of the Americans With Disabilities Act and the 2008 Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act(GINA).

Congress passed GINA to prohibit discrimination by health insurers and employers based on the information that people carry in their genes. There is an exception that allows for employees to provide that information as part of voluntary wellness programs. But the law states that employee participation must be entirely voluntary, with no incentives for providing the dataor penalties for not providing it.

But theHouse legislation would allow employers to impose penalties of up to 30 percent of the total cost of the employee's health insurance on those who choose to keep such information private.

[Rich Americans seem to have found a way to avoid paying a key Obamacare tax]

It's a terrible Hobson's choice between affordable health insurance and protecting one's genetic privacy, said Derek Scholes, director of science policy at the American Society of Human Genetics, which represents human genetics specialists. The organization sent aletter to the committee opposing the bill.

The average annual premium for employer-sponsored family health coverage in 2016 was $18,142, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Under the plan proposed in the bill, a wellness program could charge employees an extra $5,443 in annual premiums if they choose not to share their genetic and health information.

The bill, Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act, HR 1313, was introduced by Rep. Virginia Foxx, (R-N.C.), who chairs the Committee on Education and the Workforce. A committee statement said the bill provides employers the legal certainty they need to offer employee wellness plans, helping to promote a healthy workforce and lower health care costs. It passed on a party-line vote, with all 22 Republicans supporting it and all 17 Democrats opposed.

The bills supporters in the business community have argued that competing regulations in federal laws make it too difficult for companies to offer these wellness programs. In congressional testimony this month, the American Benefits Council, which represents major employers, said the burdensome rules jeopardize wellness programs that improve employee health, can increase productivity and reduce health care spending.

A House committee spokeswoman told CNBC that those opposed to the bill are spreading false informationin a desperate attempt to deny employees the choice to participate in a voluntary program that can reduce health insurance costs and encourage healthy lifestyle choices.

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Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill - Washington Post

The Final Word: Healthcare vs. Health Care – Arcadia …

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A cursory review of all the textbooks, dictionaries, style guides, and news sources in the Anglophone world would reveal a complete lack of consistency in the conventions of how healthcare/health care/health-care (h/h/h) is written. Is anyone elses mind blown that no convention has been developed for how to write about a multi-trillion dollar industry? Mine certainly was. This is my attempt to rectify the lack of clear, well-researched direction on this subject.

If you were to look for an authoritative source on the topic, you would turn up a series of loose sets of rules and meritless rationales for conventions surrounding the veritable word cloud miasma that hovers around our industry. As such, I took to reading through the decisions handed down from the Court of Common Opinion in search of a compelling narrative for how we Anglophones the world over should free ourselves of this embarrassingly debilitating failure of language.

Frankly, this has annoyed the Internet for way too long. Health care is in the top 20% most searched words on Merriam-Websters online dictionary and understandably so. No one is looking up healthcare because its some hard, new word: people are looking up health care because they need to know conventions for how to use and spell it! And as I did yesterday, most people walk away from Merriam-Webster and similar sources with tails between legs, depressed they have to go through yet another day with no direction on whether they are using and writing h/h/h properly.

Michael Millenson recently tried his hand at unraveling this topic. He did a compelling investigational guest piece tracking down the history of usage and spelling for h/h/h on the blogThe Doctor Weighs In. Unfortunately, at the end of the article, Im still head-desking because Michael joins everyone else in what Im calling The Great Healthcare/Health Care Vacillation by not making an argument one way or another for usage and spelling.

The most developed, logical, and applicable set of conventions I have found was developed here by Deane Waldman, MD, MBA on his blog, Medical Malprocess. His refreshing approach is that we should use both healthcare and health care each for different purposes because the need for specificity is so great that no one version of this word/phrase would be sufficient. Here is my interpretation of how he has parsed these words:

health care (noun)

Definition: a set of actions by a person or persons to maintain or improve the health of a patient/customer

Examples:

healthcare (noun or adjective)

Definition: a system, industry, or field that facilitates the logistics and delivery of health care for patients/consumers

Examples:

To put it more simply, Dr. Waldman writes:

Health caretwo wordsrefers to provider actions.

Healthcareone wordis a system.

We need the second in order to have the first.

While this is a thorough and terribly useful set of conventions, the fact remains that in the US the most commonly accepted form in professional writing is health care (the Associated Press feels pretty strongly about it), regardless of the words part of speech and the concepts to which the author means to refer. My problem with this heavy-handed approach is that it flattens the language and allows the speaker and audience to discuss h/h/h with little specificity, leading to generalities made about h/h/h that are not valid for the other forms of the word/phrase/concept. As such, I think that Dr. Waldmans model, which judiciously incorporates both forms, should supplant all of, in my opinion, the half-formed and barely-enforced rules on how to write h/h/h.

You may be wondering why I (and others) care so much about this issue. The short answer is that healthcare has taken on more meaning as a closed compound word to describe the system/industry/field than is captured in the two separate words health and care. Health care does not sufficiently capture the increasing demand for nuance and specificity in referring to topics surrounding the practice and facilitation of services to maintain or improve health. Healthcare represents the political, financial, historical, sociological, and social implications of a system that provides health care to the masses.

As professionals in a fast-paced and demanding field, we should hold ourselves to a high standard of precision and accuracy in our language. More than a few (by that, I mean literally 100%) of the professionals in healthcare have found themselves at some point wondering whether they are writing this word/phrase properly. I say the time has come to end the Great Healthcare/Health Care Vacillation.

It is understandable for many to feel they have neither the time nor resources to dedicate themselves to the pursuit of grammatical perfection. However, our issue here is not simply a lack of differentiation between two words in some obscure intellectual niche. Our issue is that our entire profession, industry, and field lacks a single, unifying convention for how to portray itself to the world. There is no excuse for confusion coupled with a lack of conviction for the need and method to address the problem.

I am not so deluded to think this set of conventions will become common knowledge, but I can hope and pray that those of us tasked with writing about the healthcare system and the evolution of health care in practices will endeavor to establish and monitor a consistent set of conventions about something as powerful and pervasive as our health and the industry that supports it.

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The Final Word: Healthcare vs. Health Care - Arcadia ...

The GOP Wants More Health Care Choices. Is That Really a Good Idea? – NBCNews.com

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House Speaker Paul Ryan, right, and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy walk away following a news conference on the American Health Care Act on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. Susan Walsh / AP

"If a young man wrecks his Porsche and has not had the foresight to obtain insurance, we may commiserate but society feels no obligation to repair his car," he wrote in the blueprint. "But health care is different. If a man is struck down by a heart attack in the street, Americans will care for him whether or not he has insurance."

That's the problem with letting people choose not to have health insurance if they don't want it, said David Cutler, an economics professor and health policy expert at Harvard University.

"One way or another, sick people cost money," Cutler said.

Treating heart attack victims in the emergency room is far more costly than preventing the heart attack with good medical care.

"The best thing that we can do to protect health is to prevent illness in the first place," said Dr. Leana Wen, Baltimore's health commissioner. "The emergency room is not the safety net. By the time that people get there, it's often too late."

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A patient with schizophrenia may cost $50,000 a year to treat, but left untreated, could end up in jail at the taxpayer's expense, Cutler said.

"You can say, 'I want to pay for them through taxes'. You can say, 'I want them to die because they don't deserve coverage'. But you can't say, 'I don't want to pay for them but I want them to get care,'" he added.

The new GOP plan seeks to encourage but not mandate people to get insurance by letting companies charge higher premiums for those who have gone without coverage.

"Insurance is not really the end goal here," White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told MSNBC.

And it also would let states decide what kind of policies insurance companies should offer.

DeMoro, of the nurses union, sees it as a recipe for disaster.

The Obama administration even had trouble controlling insurers who sought to trim what they offered, she said.

"Even through the ACA, health exchanges, insurers routinely change plan designs yearly in ways to increase out-of-pocket costs and limit patient choice through narrower networks," she said.

That was one of the biggest complaints about Obamacare some customers lost access to doctors and hospitals they'd been using for years.

Related:

Cutler also worries people will try to game the system if they don't have to buy high-quality insurance.

"They can say, 'I am going to buy a crappy health insurance policy because I know if I get really sick someone will take care of me,'" he argued.

Holtz-Eakin doesn't think that's a risk.

"It's never been the case that we've had a race to the bottom with health insurance," he said. "That's not my model of how markets behaveInsurers offer policies that people want to buy."

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Trump budget chief: President is focused on health care, not insurance coverage – ABC News

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White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said critics of the new GOP health care bill should not be too worried about getting people coverage.

Rather, the Republican bill and President Trump are focued on getting people affordable health care, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos.

The bill actually helps a great many people, Mulvaney said on "This Week" on Sunday. It helps people get health care instead of just coverage.

Preliminary analyses from Brookings Institution and Standard and Poors estimate that six to 15 million people could lose coverage under the Republican proposal for repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare.

We think its going to be even better than Obamacare because the truly indigent are still getting care, and people with an income level just above the Medicaid limit will receive refundable tax credits, Mulvaney said.

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Trump budget chief: President is focused on health care, not insurance coverage - ABC News

Editorial: Don’t undercut Hoosiers’ health care – Indianapolis Star

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5:03 a.m. ET March 12, 2017

Several signs were seen at the Save My Care Bus Tour healthcare rally at the Statehouse. The two-month nationwide bus tour, which is making stops across the U.Ss, protests efforts by Congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump to repeal the Affordable Care Act.(Photo: Kelly Wilkinson/IndyStar)Buy Photo

Many questions surround the introduction of a Republican health-care plan this week in Congress, and its likely to take months to address them all. But one question that members of Indianas congressional delegation must insist on getting an answer to promptly and thoroughly is the fate of the Healthy Indiana Plan.

Launched in 2008 and rebooted as HIP 2.0 in 2014, the plan now covers more than 300,000 Hoosiers. It was a hallmark success of both the Mitch Daniels and Mike Pence administration, and has been billed as a possible model for national health-care reform.

Yet, the new Republican plan could substantially reduce Indianas ability to help low-income Hoosiers with access to health care.

Under the new proposal, states would receive a capped-amount of federal dollars to spend on Medicaid. That makes sense in trying to bring the bloated federal budget under control, but it also is likely to force states to make difficult choices about who is eligible for coverage as well as what procedures are covered.

Adding to the pressure on the states is a plan to eventually end federal funding for the expansion of Medicaid, one of the core provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Those federal dollars have helped drive the rapid growth of HIP 2.0 in recent years.

Among the questions facing Gov. Eric Holcomb and state lawmakers is how much of the health-care costs for low-income citizens will be shifted to the state. Will Indiana be forced either to pour substantially more money into Medicaid coverage or to raise the bar on eligibility? Will reimbursement rates for doctors and hospitals be reduced? If that happens, will providers decide to stop accepting Medicaid patients?

Indianas representatives on Capitol Hill especially Reps. Susan Brooks, Larry Bucshon and Jackie Walorski, who serve on key House committees that will review the Republican plan need to press for clear answers.

Now that Congress and a new president are set to repeal and replace the ACA, its essential that we dont revert to the days when far too many citizens were excluded from the health-care system.

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Editorial: Don't undercut Hoosiers' health care - Indianapolis Star

Health care bill gets a price tag; Fed weighs rate hike; SXSW buzz – CNNMoney

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The Congressional Budget Office is expected to issue its cost analysis of the House Republicans' Obamacare repeal bill on Monday. The White House and congressional Republicans are already downplaying the importance of the score. Subpar results could hinder efforts to fast-track the legislation through both houses on Capitol Hill.

The plan has come under fire from both sides of the aisle since it debuted Monday. Conservative groups and industry stakeholders have voiced their opposition. Republican senators say it probably can't pass their chamber. And Democrats, of course, oppose any partisan efforts to dismantle their flagship Affordable Care Act.

Related: What CBO got right -- and wrong -- on Obamacare

Related: Groups lining up in opposition to GOP health care plan

2. Fed rate hike? Markets seem to think it's a given that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates Wednesday.

Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen has said the Fed will move on a March rate hike if the economy stays on track. Friday's robust jobs report has made a bump all but certain.

The Fed last raised rates in December -- only the second time it's done so in about a decade. Most Fed leaders have forecast three or more rate hikes in 2017.

Related: Yellen signals March rate hike would be 'appropriate'

Related: U.S. economy added 235,000 jobs in Trump's first full month

3. Revised travel ban goes into effect: President Trump's revised order limiting travel from six Muslim-majority nations goes live on Thursday.

The scene at U.S. airports will probably be more orderly. But noise surrounding the ban's second iteration is ramping up. A federal judge will hear a lawsuit filed by Hawaii on Wednesday. Washington, Minnesota, Massachusetts, New York and Oregon are also asking a federal judge to block it.

More than 100 companies supported the legal fight against Trump's initial order. Many executives have maintained their opposition this go-round. That's particularly true in the tech industry, in which hiring immigrants is common practice.

Related: Federal judge to hear first lawsuit against new travel ban

Related: These 127 companies are fighting Donald Trump's travel ban

4. SXSW melee: Big ideas mega-conference South by Southwest kicked off in Austin, Texas, on Friday, and the action continues throughout the week.

Tech and media luminaries will rub elbows with a diverse cross-section of influencers at the event's panels and parties. Representatives from Alphabet (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN, Tech30), Facebook (FB, Tech30), Netflix (NFLX, Tech30), Lyft will all be in attendance.

5. Coming this week:

Monday - CBO releases score for House Republicans' health care bill

Tuesday - Fed meeting kicks off

Wednesday - Fed expected to announce rate hike; Labor secretary hearing; U.S. debt ceiling suspension expires

Thursday - Trump travel ban takes effect; OMB releases spending cut proposals

Friday - Steven Mnuchin attends G20 meeting

CNNMoney (New York) First published March 12, 2017: 8:01 AM ET

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Health care bill gets a price tag; Fed weighs rate hike; SXSW buzz - CNNMoney

Cotton warns House GOP about health care bill – Politico

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The bill probably can be fixed, but its going to take a lot of carpentry on that framework, Cotton said. | AP Photo

The House legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare would not only fail in the Senate but could also ruin Republicans' reelection efforts in 2018, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton said Sunday.

The bill probably can be fixed, but its going to take a lot of carpentry on that framework, Cotton told host George Stephanopoulos on ABCs This Week. As its written today, this bill in the House of Representatives cannot pass the Senate. And I believe it would have adverse consequences for millions of Americans. and it wouldn't deliver on our promises to reduce the cost of health insurance for Americans.

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Cotton is among a number of Republicans who have expressed opposition to the Houses plan to replace former President Barack Obamas Affordable Care Act. House leaders unveiled their plan, the American Health Care Act, last week, and it has already been marked up and advanced through two committees as leaders move to send the legislation to the Senate and President Donald Trumps desk before a congressional recess in April.

Cotton, however, warned fellow Republicans in the House not to acquiesce to a plan they dont support.

I would say to my friends in the House of Representatives with whom I serve, Do not walk the plank and vote for a bill that cannot pass the Senate and then have to face the consequences of that vote, he said.

The Arkansas senator advised the House to slow down and resolve issues with regard to Medicaid and the individual insurance markets before the measure reaches the Senate.

I'm afraid that if they vote for this bill, they're going to put the House majority at risk next year, he said. I just do not think that this bill can pass the Senate. And, therefore, I think the House should take a pause and try to get as close as we can to a good result before they send to it the Senate.

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Cotton warns House GOP about health care bill - Politico

Adviser: Trump willing to accept improvements to healthcare proposal – The Hill

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Gary Cohn, President Trumps chief economic adviser, said Sunday that Trump is open to negotiating with House conservatives who are demanding changes to the current GOP health care proposal.

The president has been very open and transparent on the issue, Cohn told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace.

He has been willing to accept improvements to the bill. Weve gone out of our way, and the president has said this, to say that anything that makes the bill better for Americans, we are willing to accept.

Some demands include an end the expansion of Medicaid by 2018 instead of 2020, and the removal of insurance mandates that provide certain benefits such as maternity care.

Cohn on Sunday also defended the bill, saying it provides Americans with health insurance coverage.

We believe if you want to have coverage, and we believe everyone should have coverage, were providing you access to coverage, Cohn added.

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Adviser: Trump willing to accept improvements to healthcare proposal - The Hill

Tocagen seeks $86M IPO to fund cancer gene therapy trial … – FierceBiotech

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Tocagen has filed to raise up to $86 million in an IPO to take its breakthrough-designated brain cancer gene therapy combination through the first part of a phase 2/3 trial. The San Diego, California-based biotech expects to deliver data from the phase 2 in the first half of next year, having wrapped up enrollment last month.

That trial is assessing the combination of gene therapy Toca 511 and prodrug Toca FC in patients with first or second recurrence of glioblastoma or anaplastic astrocytoma who are undergoing resection.

Subjects receive either standard of care or the Toca 511-Toca FC combination. Toca 511 is a retroviral replicating vector that encodes cytosine deaminase (CD). Its administration is intended to equip cancer cells to produce CD, a prodrug activator enzyme. Tocagen then gives patients the prodrug, Toca FC, an extended-release formulation of approved antifungal agent 5-fluorocytosine that is inactive until exposed to CD. Tocagen hopes Toca FC will cross the blood-brain barrier, be activated by CD and then kill both cancer cells and immunosuppressive cells.

Among the 24 patients who received the higher Toca 511 doses in a phase 1 and met the inclusion criteria for the phase 2/3, Toca saw three complete responses and two partial responses. At the time of the last data update, the responders were still alive 24 to 43 months after entering the study. The median overall survival for the 24 patients is 14.3 months.

The question facing Tocagen is whether that will translate into improved overall survival when the experimental regimen is pitted against standard of care options including Mercks Temodal and Roches Avastin. Tocagen is hoping Wall Street will provide the money it needs to start to answer the question.

Tocagen is yet to set the terms for its IPO, but listed $86 million as its proposed maximum offering. A chunk of the anticipated haul is earmarked for manufacturing scale-up and validation of Toca 511 and Toca FC. Tocagen plans to set aside another tranche to complete the ongoing phase 2, leaving some cash left over to wrap up a phase 1b of the combination in other indications, including newly-diagnosed brain cancer and a clutch of other solid tumors.

If Tocagen hits its fundraising goal, the IPO cash will see it through at least the next 12 months, taking it up to the delivery of phase 2 data.

Tocagen has financed its progress to date through a series of low-profile venture roundsmost recently a $28.8 million investment in 2015and by seeking donations via a brain cancer nonprofit.

Management must now persuade public investors to part with their cash. This year, Braeburn Pharmaceuticals and Visterra have both pulled IPOs after getting a frosty reception on Wall Street. Another company, ObsEva, hit its range but subsequently saw its stock slide. Tocagen will be hoping its experience has more in common with Jounce Therapeutics, which raised $102 million before seeing its stock go on a 30% tear in its first months on the market.

Jounce benefited from the starpower of a $2.6 billion pact with Celgene and a pitch that positions it at the forefront of the second wave of immuno-oncology. Tocagen lacks attributes with such pulling power, but in co-founder and R&D chief Harry Gruber, M.D. it has a name that could turn the heads of investors.

Gruber is gene therapy specialist who has played a role in getting a handful of biotechs started over the past 30 years, including Gensia and Viagene. Gensia ultimately became part of Teva through a $3.4 billion buyout, while Viagene accepted a $95 million bid from Chironnow part of Novartisafter a bumpy few years trying to develop gene therapies in the early 1990s.

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Tocagen seeks $86M IPO to fund cancer gene therapy trial ... - FierceBiotech

Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Are Officially Allowed on California Roads – Futurism

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California and Ubers Tricky Relationship

The well-known ride-sharing company, Uber, is making headlines again. After a struggle with the state of California, Uber notoriously packed its self-driving vehicles up and went to Phoenix, Arizona, setting up a location in addition to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for the companys self-driving initiative. This time, its about the companys return to California streets with self-driving cars.

Uber finally applied and received a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles that allows the testing of two Volvo SUVs on public roads. In addition, 48 backup drivers were approved by regulators, requiring them to sit behind the wheel in the event ofa mishap with the autonomous vehicles.

The $150 permit seems to be an olive branch of sorts, resolving the issues from late 2016 when Uber introduced a pilot program of more than a dozen autonomous vehicles in San Francisco without consulting state regulators. While Uber claimed that its cars did not meet the states definition of autonomous vehicles because they need a person present to monitor the car in case an intervention is needed, legal authorities felt differently when faced with Ubers malfunctioning AI. Without the permit, the state revoked the license of the 16 autonomous cars from Ubers pilot program.

Uber is now the 26th company to hold a permit to test self-driving vehicles in the state of California. However, the company wont be offering driverless rides just yet, and its not clear when passengers will be able to hitch a ride with one of them.

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Uber's Self-Driving Cars Are Officially Allowed on California Roads - Futurism

China to Send People to the Moon by 2020 – Futurism

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Chinas Mission to the Moon

China is working to develop a new spaceship that can both fly in low-Earth orbit and land on the moon.

Their announcement comes shortly after the US announced plans to fly two private citizens around the Moon by late 2018, under private aerospace company SpaceX.

Chinas spacecraft will be designed to be recoverable, with better capacity than other similar spaceships, capable of shuttling multiple crew members. Spaceship engineer Zhang Bainian, who spoke to Science and Technology Daily, compared the planned spacecraft to the NASA and the European Space Agencys Oriona spacecraft equipped for a moon landing operation, which they hope will be able to bring astronauts to space by 2023.

Despite joining the space race fairly recently (their first crewed mission was in 2003), Chinas achievements have firmly established the country as a major contender in the field.

In terms of rocket launches, China has already overtaken Russia in volume and is at par with the US, reaching a total of 22. In contrast, Russia, despite having a long-established space program, fell behind with only 17 launches. According to Harvard University astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, the US could have achieved more if the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket fleet had not been grounded after an explosion in September 2016.

In addition, Chinas most recent crewed mission saw two astronauts spend a month aboard the Chinese space station, with plans for a permanently crewed space station to start operations within five years.

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China to Send People to the Moon by 2020 - Futurism

You Can Rewire Your Brain to Have a Super Memory – Futurism

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Mnemonic Jocks

We know the brains of memory athletes are differentbut its not because they started out that way. The tasks that elite mnemonic athletes undertake in competitions may seem impossible to most of us, no matter how intelligent we are. Memorizing 500 digits in five minutes, for example, or thousands of random words in sequence. Yet new research shows that most people can successfully master and apply the memorization techniques that memory athletes use. Even more fascinating,research indicates that as we apply these techniques, we literally rewire our brains on a large scale.

The Radboud University research team, led by Martin Dresler, compared the minds of memory champions to those of people in the general population using brain scans and behavioral tests. These comparisons revealed a different pattern of brain connectivity in the brains of top memory athletes versus thecontrols. The team also found that the changes to brain connection patterns caused by learning a common memorization technique began to appear after a period of weeks. Not surprisingly, these subjects were able to significantly improve their memory skills and exhibit behaviors similar to those of memory athletes.

It makes sense thatlearning new skills throughout our lives could be healthy for our brains, but there isnt complete scientific evidence for its efficacy. However, some research links specific changes in the brain to certain skills. For example, one study showed that taxi drivers in London developed more gray matter in their hippocampi as they learned to navigate the streets of the city, and therefore had larger-than-average memory centers. The scientists were able to definitively say that not only did thedrivers have larger memory centers built up by their time on the roads, but that the developmentof this form of memory might inhibit developmentin other areas.

I think the interesting part is that not only can you boost memory in a similar way behaviorally in normal subjects compared to memory athletes, Dresler says, but on the brain level you see a reflection of that behavioral increase, and you drive the brains of naive subjects into the patterns of the best memorizers in the world.

The results of this study concurwith recent findings that some Alzheimers patients appear to be resistant to memory loss. The idea that the typical plaques associated with Alzheimersmay be present in a brain that continues to function normally suggests there may be protective factors involved, or practices we can adopt to maintain healthier minds as we age. The results of this super memorizer study certainly imply that rewiring the brain is within reach for most of us.

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You Can Rewire Your Brain to Have a Super Memory - Futurism

The Freedom Cities Campaign: Resistance through Progress at … – ACLU (blog)

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On Saturday night, people at more than 2,200 events around the nation tuned in for the inaugural event of People Power, a new platform harnessing nationwide grassroots resistance to the Trump administrations assault on our Constitution and our values. At the event, we announced Freedom Cities, a campaign that provides a concrete plan for the People Power team to play offense in cities and towns across the country.

Watch the Recording

Even before Freedom Cities, our grassroots activism has borne fruit, as evidenced by the incredible protests around the country that brought defeat to President Trumps first attempt to ban Muslims and refugees. We will resist with equal strength Muslim Ban 2.0, along with any other unconstitutional and un-American policies that flow from the White House.

While we resist, however, we must also play offense, and work to paint a picture of the type of country we want to be. More than 170,000 people have already signed up on the People Power platform ready to lead the movement we need. And the Freedom Cities campaign provides a playbook for tackling some of Trumps most harmful policies.

Freedom Cities encourages and supports grassroots activism aimed at driving policy change at the local level. It allows individuals and groups to come together to actively shape how we treat vulnerable communities, how we cherish and safeguard fundamental freedoms, and how we respond as a society to the needs of our families, friends, and neighbors.

Make the place you live and work a Freedom City, or a Freedom Town, or maybe a Freedom County. In doing so, you can help win the fight to protect our civil liberties and promote equality and justice in the age of Trump one neighborhood at a time.

Freedom Cities is a sustained, multi-issue campaign that strives to generate tangible and lasting policy change change that reaffirms our values and counters backward ideas that undermine the Constitution and American values. Freedom Cities will help advance issues we hold dear, like the protection of LGBT communities, equal pay and fair housing, and policing reform.

The first issue the Freedom Cities campaign will tackle is immigration.

President Trump has already caused massive harm through his immigration policies. He has outlined, through executive orders issued his first week in office, a blueprint for a mass deportation machine, which will pull families apart and uproot hard-working, law-abiding individuals who have lived here for decades. The impact of this agenda is plastered in our newspapers daily, whether through the detention of a father of five U.S. citizen children who has only worked hard and obeyed the law since his arrival 15years ago, or a domestic violence victim in Texas, who sought protection through our judicial system, but fell prey to Trumps henchmen apparently based on a tip provided by her abuser.

The Freedom Cities campaign will allow us to make American communities welcoming again.

Building on the work of countless groups around the country who have labored for years on these issues, and with the guidance of law enforcement leaders who are committed to smart policing and placing local communities first, we have developed model local policies that we hope to see adopted in every city and town nationwide. Instead of scrambling to react to each outrage that sees our neighbor hauled away to a privately run detention camp, we will systematically work to disable Trumps deportation machine. Some of these model policies and rules are already on the books in certain places around the country, yet there are plenty of ways for most cities, towns, and counties to become more immigrant-friendly. And even once a community has adopted the full set of rules, activists will have additional opportunities to lend a hand on related issues or in neighboring communities.

During the March 11 event livestreamed from Miami, we provided a Freedom Cities Action Guide to the People Power team, which included a plan for activists to use in their local communities, along with useful strategic and tactical advice. This roadmap is meant to get people started, but the movement is yours. The United States has always been, and remains, what we make it.

So if you have not already joined the People Power team, the door is open. Sign up, receive the Action Guide, and take the first step in the plan. I have a hunch that a big group of people is waiting to tag team with you in your neighborhood.

Lets do this.

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The Freedom Cities Campaign: Resistance through Progress at ... - ACLU (blog)

Just hours from freedom, Mosul’s civilians die under the bombs of their liberators – Telegraph.co.uk

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That anyone still lives in the ruins is a measure of how desperate the situation has become. The Iraqi army says it has carried out 3,780 sorties against Isil in northern Iraq since the offensive to liberate Mosul began, which averages out to almost 30 a day. The US, which is supporting Iraqi forces, has conducted more than double that.

They dropped leaflets over the city telling us not to worry about the strikes, saying that they were extremely precise and would not hurt the civilians, says Mr Ahmed, 47. Now it feels like the coalition is killing more people than Isil.

He said he thought as many as 300 people had been killed in raids during the battle to liberate Samood and his late brothers neighbourhood al-Mansour. It was difficult to immediately verify the claim. A recent report by Airwars, a UK-based organisation which monitors international air strikes against Isil, suggested as many as 370 civilian deaths could be attributed to coalition raids in the first week of March alone.

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Just hours from freedom, Mosul's civilians die under the bombs of their liberators - Telegraph.co.uk

Word of the Day: Cory Booker explains ‘freedom’ to Bert – Mashable

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Word of the Day: Cory Booker explains 'freedom' to Bert
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Two of your favorite SXSW attendees, Senator Cory Booker and Sesame Street's Bert, just shared a touching moment live on Twitter. After his eventful panel, Booker stopped by Day Two of "The Mashable Show" an exclusive 90-minute Twitter live stream of ...
Newly woke Muppet blown away by Sen. Cory Booker's linkage of freedom and health care coverageTwitchy

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Word of the Day: Cory Booker explains 'freedom' to Bert - Mashable

"Give Me Liberty": Exhibit highlights how African Americans fought for freedom during the Revolution – Virginian-Pilot

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One night in July 1775, slave Joseph Harris slipped from his Hampton home and made it to the HMS Fowey, anchored in the York River. Colonists and British forces had already clashed in the north at Lexington and Concord. Now, Virginians were seething after Lord Dunmore, the Colonys royal governor, had hinted about freeing the Colonys slaves and arming them to fight with the British.

Dunmores headquarters was now the Fowey, and Harris knew hed have a chance at freedom if he could work with him. He was a harbor pilot and knew the local waters better than any other man.

The British welcomed him and others who followed, and in late October the Royal Navy attacked Hampton in the Souths first contest of the Revolutionary War.

Much has been written about slaves who found freedom along the Underground Railroad or who jumped behind Union lines during the Civil War in the 1860s.

But their fight for freedom started a century before. It is being explored in the Hampton History Museums latest exhibition, Give Me Liberty: Fugitive Slaves and the Long Revolution Against Slavery. It looks at the lives of more than 30 fugitive Hampton slaves who became known as Black Loyalists and joined the British navy and army during the Revolution. During the War of 1812, they were called refugees.

The yearlong exhibition includes artifacts such as the swivel gun from the HMS Liberty, a British ship that ran aground in Hampton a month before the attack on the town. The exhibit also includes items on loan from Europe and Canada, where thousands of African Americans settled after the wars.

Beth Austin, registrar with the Hampton museum, said it wanted to resurrect Harris story after the institution produced a re-enactment two years ago and realized it was little-discussed history. The museum had also received donated documents that shed light on the role of escapees during the War of 1812.

We realized the story of slave resistance is something thats a much bigger story than maybe weve told before, and the usual story that gets told, Austin said. We wanted to connect the dots and draw the line of the revolutionary movement.

A portrait of Olaudah Equiano, a leader in England's abolition movement or his friend and fellow abolitionist Ottobah Cugoano is part of exhibit titled "Give Me Liberty: Fugitive Slaves and the Long Revolution Against Slavery." The exhibit opened Feb. 25, 2017, at the Hampton History Museum. According to a title under the portrait "He was also well-connected to the Black Atlantic. He traveled widely as an enslaved sailor, a free man, and in the Royal Navy. He settled in London and worked tirelessly as an antislavery activist. The man in this portrait is unidentified but probably Equiano or his friend and fellow abolitionist Ottobah Cugoano.

The exhibition shows how the local waterways made escape and passing along information among slaves easier. It also explores how the talk of resistance and revolution among Colonists ignited the subjugated population. Then, as slaves took responsibility for their freedom, more Virginia Colonials wanted theirs from Britain. But they did not want to end slavery.

It highlights the more complicated story of the Revolution, Austin said.

Slaves ran, knowing they would return to harsher circumstances if caught. But the idea of a better existence was enough. For many, however, that wouldnt come to pass.

More than half a million African Americans lived in the 13 Colonies by 1775, most of them enslaved, most born here.

The British attack on Hampton wasnt simply to quell the rebels fervor, Austin said. It was tinged with the issue of slavery.

When the Liberty beached in a hurricane that September 1775, Harris helped the British commander on board flee with the help of a slave. Local patriots then pillaged the ship and burned it. The British demanded their supplies back, but Hampton fighters refused: The British needed to return their slaves.

The British not only said no but attacked in late October and also skirmished with militia across the water in Norfolk.

In November, Dunmore stayed true to his threat and issued a proclamation offering freedom to slaves or indentured servants in the Colony who would fight for the Crown. Within a month, hundreds flocked to the British, with some slaves coming from as far away as New Jersey, said Jason Farmer, senior interpreter for The Black Loyalist Heritage Centre in Birchtown, Nova Scotia. These escapees formed Dunmores Ethiopian Regiment.

In December, the unit, whose shirts bore the words Liberty to Slaves, joined the British in attacking rebels at the Battle of Great Bridge in present-day Chesapeake. Repelled, the British retreated to Norfolk, but African American men continued to join the ranks.

Tom Davidson, senior curator with the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, said its impossible to know how many enslaved people fought with the British. It is estimated that as many as 80,000 to 100,000 looked for sanctuary with the British, but that includes women and children.

Ed Ayres, historian at the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, said most of the African American men who fled were used in support roles, such as cooking food and building reinforcements.

The British were as reluctant to give arms to the blacks as the South was during the Civil War, Ayres said.

In 1779, a British declaration out of New York offered freedom to enslaved people throughout the Colonies in exchange for their help. Promises of resettlement and land came later. Thousands swarmed to join the ranks.

The exhibition has a panel about a slave known only as Tom. He escaped from his Hampton master but was recaptured after the Battle of Hampton and sent to work in lead mines in Fincastle, Va. He was later sold in Antigua in 1776 by the state to buy gunpowder and war supplies.

Joseph Harris, who had joined the Royal Navy, died within a year of his escape, likely from disease.

Many of the members of the Ethiopian Regiment, Ayres said, died from smallpox once they mingled with the British, who had been exposed to it back in England. Those English who survived smallpox had a natural inoculation.

Still, the enslaved left, including women and children, who were of little use to the British.

Historical accounts describe British Maj. Gen. Charles Cornwallis and his troops developing an entourage of women and children as his men moved through Virginia in 1781, Ayres said. Cornwallis marched to Portsmouth seeking to establish a base but thought the area was too swampy. He then moved to fortify Yorktown.

He basically left the women and children in Portsmouth, Ayres said. You can bet the minute they left, the Virginians took them back and put them into slavery.

The siege of Yorktown began in September, and the British were surrounded by Colonial forces and their French allies. As supplies got low, the British expelled the former slaves and left them to be re-enslaved or killed by unsympathetic Colonials.

Weve treated these people very cruelly, a British soldier wrote in his journal, Ayres said.

After the British surrendered, Black Loyalists evacuated with them, primarily from New York. Some slaveholders, including Gen. George Washington, demanded their property back.

Washington and others were denied.

The names of the Black Loyalists were written in the Book of Negroes. It included information on each person, like Rachel Fox, 42, thin weakly wench, formerly slave to James Moorfield, late of Norfolk, Virginia; came from thence with Lord Dunmore.

Replica of the homes Black Loyalists would have built once they resettled in Birchtown, Nova Scotia after the Revolutionary War. It is called a pit house and starts by diggin a hole in the ground and using what could be found around them for the roof.

Black Loyalists were put on ships and deposited wherever the ships landed, a few in England and some in the West Indies, but more than 3,500 went to Canada. Most settled in Birchtown, Nova Scotia, which became the largest settlement of free blacks outside of Africa.

The promises of land did not come to pass. Heads of households were to get land for farming and a smaller lot for a home, with supplies from the British until they could live independently. The British dispersed land by rank and, first, to white loyalists who had also left the states. Former slaves were on the last rung; only about a third got land, and it wasnt the full amount promised, said Farmer, the Canadian historian. They were often left with the dregs, land too rocky to farm. In 1792, about a third left to go to a colony being established in Sierra Leone in Africa.

That community became the countys current capital Freetown.

When the British and Americans came to blows again in 1812, slaves again were offered freedom by the British.

In 1813, Bray and Milly Cooper of Hampton were the property of John Cooper, who had recently died. The couple and their five children fled on July 18 to two British ships. Other Cooper slaves ran, too. Coopers widow got on one of the ships and tried to talk Bray and Milly into returning. They wouldnt and later settled in Nova Scotia.

More than 4,000 slaves found freedom during the short-lived war. The refugees produced another wave of migration for Nova Scotia, Farmer said. About 2,000 settled in an area of Preston, about 2 hours north of Birchtown. Others were taken to Trinidad, where they were each given 16 acres of land. They called themselves Merikans.

Farmer descends from a Black Loyalist, a slave who had escaped from bondage in New Jersey. He learned that one of his ancestors, Jupiter, changed his last name from his masters Harmer to Farmer once he made a home in Nova Scotia.

It was a pattern among escapees.

They were trying to forget about their old life, a life of enslavement, he said, and start a new one where they would be free.

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"Give Me Liberty": Exhibit highlights how African Americans fought for freedom during the Revolution - Virginian-Pilot

Eugenics was a progressive cause | Columns … – Weatherford Democrat

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WASHINGTON The progressive mob that disrupted Charles Murrays appearance last week at Middlebury College was protesting a 1994 book read by few if any of the protesters. Some of them denounced eugenics, thereby demonstrating an interesting ignorance: Eugenics controlled breeding to improve the heritable traits of human beings was a progressive cause.

In The Bell Curve, Murray, a social scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, and his co-author, Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein, found worrisome evidence that American society was becoming cognitively stratified, with an increasingly affluent cognitive elite and a deteriorating quality of life for people at the bottom end of the cognitive ability distribution. They examined the consensus that, controlling for socioeconomic status and possible IQ test bias, cognitive ability is somewhat heritable, that the black/white differential had narrowed, and that millions of blacks have higher IQs than millions of whites. The authors were resolutely agnostic concerning the roles of genes and the social environment. They said that even if there developed unequivocal evidence that genetics are part of the story, there would be no reason to treat individuals differently or to permit government regulation of procreation.

Middleburys mob was probably as ignorant of this as of the following: Between 1875 and 1925, when eugenics had many advocates, not all advocates were progressives but advocates were disproportionately progressives because eugenics coincided with progressivisms premises and agenda.

Progressives rejected the Founders natural rights doctrine and conception of freedom. Progressives said freedom is not the natural capacity of individuals whose rights pre-exist government. Rather, freedom is something achieved, at different rates and to different degrees, by different races. Racialism was then seeking scientific validation, and Darwinian science had given rise to social Darwinism belief in the ascendance of the fittest in the ranking of races. The progressive theologian Walter Rauschenbusch argued that with modern science we can intelligently mold and guide the evolution in which we take part.

Progressivisms concept of freedom as something merely latent, and not equally latent, in human beings dictated rethinking the purpose and scope of government. Princeton University scholar Thomas C. Leonard, in his 2016 book Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics & American Economics in the Progressive Era, says progressives believed that scientific experts should be in societys saddle, determining the human hierarchy and appropriate social policies, including eugenics.

Economist Richard T. Ely, a founder of the American Economic Association and whose students at Johns Hopkins included Woodrow Wilson, said God works through the state, which must be stern and not squeamish. Charles Van Hise, president of the University of Wisconsin, epicenter of intellectual progressivism, said: We know enough about eugenics so that if that knowledge were applied, the defective classes would disappear within a generation. Progress, said Ely, then at Wisconsin, depended on recognizing that there are certain human beings who are absolutely unfit, and who should be prevented from a continuation of their kind. The mentally and physically disabled were deemed defectives.

In 1902, when Wilson became Princetons president, the final volume of his A History of the American People contrasted the sturdy stocks of the north of Europe with southern and eastern Europeans who had neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligence. In 1907, Indiana became the first of more than 30 states to enact forcible sterilization laws. In 1911, now-Gov. Wilson signed New Jerseys, which applied to the hopelessly defective and criminal classes. In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Virginias law, with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes saying that in affirming the law requiring the sterilization of imbeciles he was getting near to the first principle of real reform.

At the urging of Robert Yerkes, president of the American Psychological Association, during World War I the Army did intelligence testing of conscripts so that the nation could inventory its human stock as it does livestock. The Armys findings influenced Congress postwar immigration restrictions and national quotas. Carl Brigham, a Princeton psychologist, said the Armys data demonstrated the intellectual superiority of our Nordic group over the Mediterranean, Alpine and Negro groups.

Progressives derided the Founders as unscientific for deriving natural rights from what progressives considered the fiction of a fixed human nature. But they asserted that races had fixed and importantly different natures calling for different social policies. Progressives resolved this contradiction when, like most Americans, they eschewed racialism the belief that the races are tidily distinct, each created independent of all others, each with fixed traits and capacities. Middleburys turbulent progressives should read Leonards book. After they have read Murrays.

George Wills email address is georgewill@washpost.com.

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Eugenics was a progressive cause | Columns ... - Weatherford Democrat

Grow your own hotel: this tropical high-rise in Singapore has its own ecosystem – Wired.co.uk

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K. Kopter

Singapore's Oasia Hotel Downtown is alive - and growing fast. Covered in 21 species of verdant climbers and flowers, it was designed by local architects WOHA as the first tropical high-rise. "We wanted as many species as possible to recreate an ecosystem," says WOHA co-founder Wong Mun Summ, 54. "It has flowers to attract insects and climbers for squirrels and lizards."

Patrick Bingham-Hall

Work on the 76 million building is due to be completed this spring, and Mun Summ estimates the climbers - planted in 1,793 boxes at the tower's ground corners to allow easy maintenance - will be fully mature within three years. "It will look furry, almost like an animal," he says.

Patrick Bingham-Hall

Located in Singapore's dense business district, the 190-metre-high building was designed to compensate for the area's lack of greenery. "Sustainability is important to us," Mun Summ says. It has open-sided gardens, so there is no need for mechanical ventilation in the hotel's 314 rooms and 100 office units. Most of the water for the irrigation system is harvested from rainfall.

"Singapore is a land-limited country," says Mun Summ. "As it gets denser, it is necessary to create a liveable environment." His next challenge? A building with a beach inside. WIRED hopes it has a volleyball court, too.

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Grow your own hotel: this tropical high-rise in Singapore has its own ecosystem - Wired.co.uk