Daily Archives: March 8, 2017

Holy See calls for respect of religious freedom – Vatican Radio

Posted: March 8, 2017 at 1:12 pm

Archbishop Ivan Jurkovi at the United Nations in Geneva - RV

(Vatican Radio) Archbishop Ivan Jurkovi spoke to a high-level side event on Tuesday at the UN entitled Mutual Respect and Peaceful Coexistence as a Condition of Interreligious Peace and Stability: Supporting Christians and Other Communities.

The Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations in Geneva called on participants to recognize religious freedom as a fundamental human right.

He said, Protection is one of the key elements surrounding any debate on religious freedom as a fundamental human right because it is intrinsic to the human person.

Archbishop Jurkovi said a possible way forward could be represented by the universal recognition of religious freedom as a fundamental human right for every person, in every country, and respected equally by everybody.

Please find below the full text of his address:

Opening Remarks by H.E. Archbishop Ivan Jurkovi, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Genevaat the High-Level Side Event:Mutual Respect and Peaceful Coexistence as a Condition of Interreligious Peace andStability: Supporting Christians and Other Communities

7 March 2017

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, dear Friends,

I am honored to take part in this High-Level discussion, among other distinguished panelists and, most especially with His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion, Chairman of the Department of External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Despite so many efforts to promote and reinforce the fundamental human right of religious freedom, we are actually witnessing a continued deterioration, we might even say, an assault, of this inalienable right in many parts of the world. Religion has always been the subject of great consideration. This is evident in its regulation by domestic or international legal systems as well as in the mixed and even controversial interest elicited within the institutions of the international community. The choice of faith and the consequent belonging to a religion impact every level of life, the social and political spheres. They play a formidable role in addressing the challenges our societies go through on a daily basis. Today, moreover, religion has taken on a renewed importance due to the complex relationship between the personal choice of faith and its public expression. Due to such implications, the choice and practice of ones faith must be free of constraints and coercion.

While the situation of religious freedom in the world is rather shocking, especially when one acknowledges the unprecedented number of cases of violence against Christians and other religious communities, there remains a strong effort to keep the spotlight on human rights violators and the perpetrators of these abuses. These efforts represent the hope that the international community will react, that it has not lost its conscience, that it has not become too cynical or, in the words of Pope Francis, succumbed to a global indifference.

Over the last years, millions of people have been either displaced or forced to leave their ancestral lands. Those who stay in conflict zones or areas controlled by terrorist groups live under the permanent threat of human rights violations, repression and abuses. Numerous Christian churches and ancient shrines of all religions have been destroyed. The situation of Christians in the Middle East, a land on which they are living for centuries and have the right to remain, raises deep concerns. There are more and more reasons to fear seriously for the future of the Christian communities that have more than two thousand years of existence in this region, where Christianity has its full place, and began its long history. [1] Persecution against Christians today is actually worse than in the first centuries of the Church, and there are more Christian martyrs today than in that era. [2]

Protection is one of the key elements surrounding any debate on religious freedom as a fundamental human right because it is intrinsic to the human person. In fact, they also serve a strategic role in evaluating and ensuring the proper attention and guarantee granted by public authorities. This interpretation reflects the process of affirmation of human rights that has characterized the history of the last few centuries, placing the human person and his/her rights at the center of legal, political, cultural and religious actions. Indeed, religious freedom raises the question of the indivisibility of human rights, which has become a guiding principle and fundamental assumption of the international law of human rights.

Religious freedom is a fundamental human right which reflects the highest dimension of human dignity, the ability to seek the truth and conform to it, recognizing a condition which is indispensable to the ability to deploy all of ones own potentiality. Religious freedom is not only that of private belief or worship. It is the liberty to live, both privately and publicly, according to the ethical principles resulting from religious principles. This is a great challenge in the globalized world, where weak convictions also lower the general ethical level and, in the name of a false concept of tolerance, those who defend their faith end up being persecuted.

Religious freedom certainly means the right to worship God, alone and in community, as our consciences dictate. But religious freedom by its nature, transcends places of worship and the private sphere of persons and families. Our various religious traditions serve society primarily by the message they proclaim. They call persons and communities to worship God, the source of all life, liberty and happiness. They remind us of the transcendent dimension of human existence and our irreducible freedom in the face of every claim to absolute power. Our rich religious traditions seek to offer meaning and direction, they have an enduring power to open new horizons, to stimulate thought, to expand the mind and heart. [3] They call to conversion, reconciliation, concern for the future of society, self-sacrifice in the service of the common good, and compassion for those in need. At the heart of their spiritual mission is the proclamation of the truth and dignity of the human person and human rights. In a world where various forms of modern tyranny seek to suppress religious freedom, or try to reduce it to a subculture without a right to a voice in the public square, or to use religion as a pretext for hatred and brutality, it is imperative that followers of the various religions join their voices in calling for peace, tolerance and respect for the dignity and rights of others.

The tendency towards globalization is good, it unites us, it can be noble. But if it pretends to make us all the same, it destroys the uniqueness of each people and each person. We live in a world subject to the globalization of the technocratic paradigm, [4] which consciously aims at a one-dimensional uniformity and seeks to eliminate all differences and traditions in a superficial quest for unity. Religions thus have the right and the duty to make clear that it is possible to build a society where a healthy pluralism which respects differences and values them as such [5] is a precious ally in the commitment to defending human dignity and a path to peace in our troubled world. [6]

Religious freedom, acknowledged in constitutions and laws and expressed in consistent conduct, promotes the development of relationships of mutual respect among the diverse confessions and their healthy collaboration with the State and political society, without confusion of roles and without antagonism. In place of the global clash of values, it thus becomes possible to start from a nucleus of universally shared values, of global cooperation in view of the common good. It is incomprehensible and alarming that still today discrimination and restrictions of human rights continue for the single fact that one belongs to and publicly professes an unwavering faith. It is unacceptable that real persecution is actually sustained for reasons of religious affiliation! This distorts reason, attacks peace and abuses human dignity.

In conclusion, If we intend to try to address incisively the many problematic issues and tragedies of our time, it is necessary to speak and act as brothers, in a way that all can easily recognize. This too is a way of confronting the globalization of indifference with the globalization of solidarity and fraternity. [7]

Looking at the whole scenario, a possible way forward could be represented by the universal recognition of religious freedom as a fundamental human right for every person, in every country, and respected equally by everybody. The failure to apply and defend this right on a universal level affects the implementation of all other human rights, as experience shows. Such a failure has precisely precipitated the overwhelming situation that we face in our world today. The challenge facing the international community, the Human Rights Council and States is a renewed commitment to what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. [8] Closing the gap between the ideal proposed by international instruments and the practice on the ground remains a daunting task, but there is no alternative other than to continue working in the direction of a more effective guarantee of religious freedom for all.

[1] Joint Statement Supporting the Human Rights of Christians and Other Communities, particularly in the Middle East 28thSession of the Human Rights Council, Geneva, 13 March 2015.

[2] Cfr., Pope Francis, Address to participants in the conference on International religious freedom and the global clash of values, June 2014.

[3] Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium,n.256.

[4] Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter, Laudato S, n.106.

[5] Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, n.255.

[6] Ibid., 257.

[7] Cfr., Pope Francis, Address to the participants in the Ecumenical Convention of Bishop-friends of the Focolare Movement, 7 November 2014.

[8] United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 18.

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Freedom Rider: Trump and Russia, the Perfect Lie – Black Agenda Report

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by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

The latest New York Times article is proof that outgoing president Obama was looking not for intelligence he knew didnt exist, but anything that could be used against Trump and his team. When it comes to intrigue, Donald Trump is grossly outmatched by the Democrats, the spooks and the corporate media. Team Obama has the most adept spies in the world while Trump has his son-in-law and untested staff who are completely out of their league.

If there is evidence that the Russian Federation took some action that propelled Donald Trump to victory it has yet to be revealed. One wouldnt know that from the daily Russophobic hysteria presented in the corporate media and the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton tried to make Vladimir Putin an issue in the election but it didnt help her at all. She often compared Putin to Adolph Hitler and labeled Trump his puppet but the charges didnt prevent the political upset from taking place.

Having lost, the Democratic Party and their media cohorts continue the effort to make trouble for another nation whose only crime is the pursuit of its own interests. The anti-Russia strategy also distracts the Democratic rank and file. They ought to be angry that their standard bearer and their party leadership lost an election because of corruption, hubris and incompetence but instead they are taken in by propaganda.

What passes for proof are nonsensical terms like Russian digital finger prints and claims that any and every Russian is always acting on Putins orders.

Donald Trump is partly being hoisted on his own petard, as his nonsensical claim of having done deals in Russia has come back to haunt him. In 2013 Trump hosted his Miss Universe pageant in Moscow but he returned home empty handed after trying to consummate real estate deals there. This aspect of Trumps personality makes him the perfect target when his enemies want to tell lies about him.

We know that someone gave Wikileaks emails from the Democratic National Committee but it isnt clear if the information was hacked by a hostile actor or was leaked by an insider. What passes for proof are nonsensical terms like Russian digital finger prints and claims that any and every Russian is always acting on Putins orders.

Trump is the perfect fall guy because he is so hated and so incompetent. At least half of all Americans despise the new president and for very good reasons. Unlike other presidents who use euphemism and code words, he openly activated the racist elements who are never far from the surface in this country. His victory was also unexpected and defied so-called expert opinion. The combination of dislike and shock makes it easy for the worst charges made about him to be believed.

At least half of all Americans despise the new president and for very good reasons.

But the Democratic Party has been relentless in using any and all information to make it appear that he and his team are all under the sway of Moscow. Trump assembled a group as amateurish and unprepared as he is and they are no match for the concerted effort inveighed against them.

The Obama friendly New York Times said as much. Their article Obama Administration Rushed to Preserve Intelligence of Russian Election Hacking is proof that the outgoing president was looking not for intelligence he knew didnt exist, but anything that could be used against Trump and his team. It isnt surprising that Attorney General Sessions was asked about campaign contacts with Moscow. The Senate already knew that he met with the Russian ambassador to the United States. They knew that the now ousted National Security Adviser spoke to the same ambassador. There is nothing illegal about these contacts and Trump is not the first president elect to have had contacts with foreign governments.

In 1968 Richard Nixon convinced the Vietnamese not to engage Hubert Humphrey in offers of peace talks. In 1980 Ronald Reagan delayed the release of hostages held by Iran in order to secure his victory against Jimmy Carter. If the corporate media were to point out this history they would jeopardize their role as partners of the Democratic Party sector of the ruling classes.

Trump is not the first president elect to have had contacts with foreign governments.

These facts dont matter of course. What does matter is that Trump said things that made the rest of the rulers nervous. If he made good on his promise to have some sort of dtente with Russia he would undo the imperialist agenda. If he stopped the trade deals that they used to help the capitalists move their capital he was upending very serious plans. Calling NATO obsolete was another danger when NATO is an active partner in interventions around the world.

But Trump isnt smart enough to counter the attacks. In between tweets about his old reality show and jibes at celebrities he unleashed ICE against undocumented immigrants and pursues his scheme to keep Muslims from seven countries out of the United States. Instead of acting like other presidents and getting undercover white supremacists on his staff, Trump puts avowed racists front and center and makes himself a target of progressives who probably wouldnt care what he did if he had an Obamaesque, smooth presentation of evil doing.

Presentation is everything and Trump presents such an ugly face that he makes life easy for his opponents. It is obvious that Flynn and Sessions were under surveillance but Trump has twitter outbursts and accuses Obama of tapping his phone. Team Obama has the most adept spies in the world while Trump has his son-in-law and untested staff who are completely out of their league.

Trump said things that made the rest of the rulers nervous.

Now Russia is hated by progressives. This antipathy is no small matter because it makes war more acceptable and therefore more likely. Once again progressives stand down and allow serious harm to be done to this country and the rest of the world.

The animosity directed at Trump the man should be directed at the system. We are watching the perfect crime take place. The neo-liberal corporatist Democrats are winning the fight against Trump but not because they want to do good. Their schemes were upended by his election and they will stop at nothing to get back into power. The end game isnt clear. For now they are succeeding in handcuffing Trump. Their intentions are never good for people in this country or in the rest of the world. Our lives are still very much at risk because of Democratic Party corruption and Trumps failings and incompetence.

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Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council names ‘Opee’ winners – WisconsinWatch.org

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By WisconsinWatch | 1 hour ago

Jentri Colello/For the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, recounted the ups and downs of the previous year as he presented 'Opees' at the 2016 Wisconsin Watchdog Awards.

Two citizens, two journalists, one fired government worker and one small but gutsy Wisconsin newspaper are among the recipients of the 2016-17 Openness Awards, or Opees, bestowed annually by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.

The awards, announced in advance of national Sunshine Week (sunshineweek.org), March 12-18, recognize extraordinary achievement in the cause of open government. This is the 11th consecutive year that awards have been given.

Now, more than ever, protecting Wisconsins traditions of open government depends on the courage and initiative of individuals, said Bill Lueders, council president. We saw a good deal of that in 2016.

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council is a nonpartisan group that seeks to promote open government. It consists of about two dozen members representing media and other public interests. Sponsoring organizations include the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, Wisconsin Broadcasters Association, Wisconsin Associated Press, Wisconsin News Photographers and the Madison Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. (Two staff members of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, Managing Editor Dee J. Hall and Executive Director Andy Hall, serve on the council.)

The winners are invited to receive their awards at the seventh annual Wisconsin Watchdog Awards Dinner in Madison on Thursday, March 30. The event is presented jointly by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council and the Madison Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Awards are being given this year in six categories. The winners are:

Citizen Openness Award (Copee): Tie: John Krueger, Lance Fena

Krueger, an Appleton parent, joined with the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty in suing the Appleton Area School District for not letting him attend meetings of a committee formed in response to his curricula-related concerns. That case is now being decided by the state Supreme Court. Fena is the Milton School District resident who asserted his right to make a video recording at a school board meeting, as the law expressly allows. The board not only backed down after initially adjourning to avoid being filmed, it subsequently began live-streaming its proceedings.

Media Openness Award (Mopee): New Richmond News

It took more than three years, but this small newspaper in St. Croix County won its case challenging wholesale records redactions by law enforcement agencies all around the state. A state appeals court in May affirmed that local officials were overreacting to a 2012 federal court ruling in the amount of driver-license-related information they have been withholding. Issues remain but the New Richmond News brought a measure of clarity to what had been chaos.

Political Openness Award (Popee): Cory Mason

This Democratic lawmaker from Racine continues his efforts to end the ability of legislative party caucuses to meet in secret, but revelations that GOP lawmakers in 2011 used this secrecy to gleefully attack voting rights make the issue more urgent than ever. Mason also broke ranks with some members of his party last year to make the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association subject to state openness laws, and before that opposed efforts to reduce transparency of campaign donors and the attempt to gut the open records law through the state budget.

Open Records Scoop of the Year: Tie: Katelyn Ferral, Patrick Marley

In what was a banner year for reporting that drew on public records, we picked two major projects involving threats to vulnerable populations. Ferral, of The Capital Times, exposed the dismal conditions at a state veterans facility in King, Wisconsin; the Legislature ordered an audit, the federal government issued citations, and the head of the states Department of Veterans Affairs resigned. Marley and other Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters documented shocking abuses at two state juvenile prisons; the state has increased training and oversight, and federal authorities are looking into possible indictments and civil rights prosecutions.

Whistleblower of the Year (Whoopee): Ronald Klym

This federal employee, a long-time senior legal assistant for the administrative law judges who grant or deny Social Security benefits, blew the whistle on what Watchdog.org, which reported his story, called incompetence, misconduct and long case delays at a Milwaukee disability office. Klym was allegedly subjected to additional work assignments, unreasonable deadlines and unjustified suspensions; in August, he was fired. Absolutely. I am being punished because I am a whistleblower, he said at the time. Now hes being honored for it.

No Friend of Openness (Nopee): The Wisconsin Department of Corrections

Among an unfortunately broad array of candidates, no other state agency has compiled such a bleak record on openness. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in June catalogued an array of DOC denials and delays, including those concerning the states troubled juvenile prisons. In September, the agency proceeded with a plan to immediately destroy training videos after earlier spiking plans to do so. And DOC Secretary Ed Wall was fired for writing to another state official at home with the express goal of avoiding the open records law. The DOCs awesome power to deprive people of liberty must be matched with a strong commitment to transparency. Were waiting.

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism is a nonprofit organization. If you value our work, please help support it.

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Apple, Samsung and Microsoft react to Wikileaks’ CIA dump – BBC News

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MIT Technology Review
Apple, Samsung and Microsoft react to Wikileaks' CIA dump
BBC News
Apple's statement was the most detailed, saying it had already addressed some of the vulnerabilities. "The technology built into today's iPhone represents the best data security available to consumers, and we're constantly working to keep it that way ...
The Wikileaks CIA Stash May Prove Interesting, But Not Necessarily for the HacksMIT Technology Review
Smartphones, PCs and TVs: the everyday devices targeted by the CIAThe Guardian
Wikileaks: CIA has tools to snoop via TVsBBC News
WIKILEAKS -WikiLeaks -New York Times
all 936 news articles »

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Apple, Samsung and Microsoft react to Wikileaks' CIA dump - BBC News

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The vegetable technology gap – Politico

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In the great quest to get Americans eating healthier, spinach is an unusual success story. Were consuming four times as much fresh spinach as we were four decades ago, as a vegetable once derided as choke-it-down good for you has become a mainstay of home cooking and upscale restaurants. But the spinach boom wasnt driven by changing tastes, or the cartoon exhortations of Popeye. It was driven by technology.

Spinach, like many vegetables, is finicky. If you packaged it in the same airtight bags used for potato chips, the leaves would start to break down before they made it from Californias Central Valley to a supermarket in Chicago. It wasnt until scientists came up with a special bagone that controls how much oxygen and carbon dioxide can seep in and outthat pre-washed, ready-to-eat spinach became something that a shopper could grab in the produce section and dump straight into a salad bowl or smoothie. Spinach, and leafy greens in general, have become so convenient that Americans are actually eating more of theman impressive feat considering just one in 10 Americans eats the recommended servings of fruits and vegetables each day.

As the country seeks solutions to the obesity epidemic, theres been plenty of debate about how to get people to eat better. Do we need to improve access to healthy foods? Teach cooking? Tax sugary drinks? But theres one thing thats often left out of the conversation: technology.

It might seem strange to think about vegetables as a technology, but they are. The average supermarket produce aisle represents decades, if not centuries, of agricultural research and development. But in the United States, big-league commodity crops like corn and soy, as well as meat, gobble up most of the agricultural research investment from both the public and private sectors. The U.S. Department of Agricultures dietary guidelines tell us to fill half our plate with fruits and vegetables to maintain a healthy diet, but its research priorities are far different. So-called specialty cropsthe governments name for the category that includes, essentially, all fruits, vegetables and nutsreceived just 15 percent of the federal research budget over much of the past three decades.

Theres nothing more important we can do to improve the health of this country than to invest billions and billions into researching the fruits and vegetables that were encouraging people to eat, said Sam Kass, the former White House chef and food policy guru under the Obama administration who now works with food tech startups.

Agricultural research is fundamental to improving how we raise, grow, harvest, process and ship everything that we eat. It took millions of dollars of public and private research and years of experimenting with limp leafy greens before breathable salad packaging came onto the scene. Consumers no longer have to wash sand and dirt off their greens, remove tough stems and ribs or chop them into bite-sized portions. The same types of technologies have also helped bring us baby carrot packs with dips, sliced apples in McDonalds Happy Meals and ready-to-eat kale salad kits.

Packages of Fresh Express salad wait for customers in a San Francisco grocery store. The technology that keeps spinach and lettuce fresh in breathable packaging was based on government agricultural research conducted in the 1950s. | Getty

The enormous logistical and technological challenges facing so many of the foods that nutritionists tell us to eat make research especially critical for produce, which as a sector is still relatively inefficient. Apples bruise. Berries don't all ripen at once. Cilantro wilts. Cherries can split and crack if it rains at the wrong timea problem that can be so expensive, some growers hire helicopters to fly over their crop to dry the delicate fruit. Many of these crops still rely on increasingly expensive (and oftentimes undocumented) labor to pick them by hand. And water. They need lots of water.

Specialty crops remain specialjust 3 percent of cropland is dedicated to growing themthough they make up roughly a quarter of the value of crops grown in the U.S. because they demand higher prices. This lopsided dynamic means that specialty crops have historically received very little federal research investment compared to their value. It also means the country simply doesnt have a food system that supplies what were told to eat. In 2007, there were about 8.5 million acres of specialty crops in a sea of more than 300 million acres of everything else.

If Americans were to actually go ahead and jump into consuming the amount of fruits and vegetables recommended, wed be hard-pressed to meet that demand, said Sonny Ramaswamy, director of the USDAs National Institute for Food and Agriculture, which coordinates a large part of the governments agricultural research portfolio. Theres an incredible amount of innovation that we need, all the way from the farm to the table.

The imbalance is no accident: In a sense, its built into the mission of the USDA itself, which frustrates both vegetable growers and nutrition advocates. But there are signs its starting to changeif slowly.

THE ROAD TO packaged salad isnt just an example of how research pays off: It shows just how long the process can be, and how much commitment it requires. It began in the late 1920s when a young Berkeley grad named Bruce Church bought a field of head lettuce in Salinas, California, and devised a plan to ship it, packed in ice, by rail across the United States. According to local lore in the Salinas Valley, children as far away as Maine would greet the rail cars excitedly, shouting: "The icebergs are coming! The icebergs are coming!" The name stuck.

After World War II, a handful of USDA scientists stationed in Fresno, California, set out to learn more about how to best handle, store and ship fruits and vegetables. They obsessively measured temperatures, shelf life, spoilage and the rate at which different crops respireor breathewhich is one way of measuring how fast something will rot.

Theyre still alive! explained Gene Lester, national program leader for the Agricultural Research Services food science and technology division. Youre eating a lettuce leaf or a kale leaf, or a string bean, or an appletheyre still alive. Theres still CO2 and oxygen exchanging in those organisms, and thats whats keeps them healthy for us.

A vintage poster for Bruce Church, Inc., the Salinas, California company that helped popularize iceberg lettuce starting in the 1920s. Bruce Church Inc. later morphed into Fresh Express, which pioneered the use of breathable packaging for lettuce and other leafy greens. | Fresh Express

In 1954, researchers published a roundup of everything theyd learned in a massive book, known as AH-66. That tome served as a base of knowledge that preceded major advances in produce innovation for decades afterward. That was kind of a bible for us, said Jim Lugg, a longtime agriculture scientist who in many ways is the grandfather of modern salad technology. The problems werent really with growing the crops, it was with shipping them and keeping them fresh. Lugg, whos now 83 years old, still consults in the industry (and, for the record, still eats lots of salad).

In 1963, Lugg signed on to lead the research division of Bruce Church Inc., which teamed up with a subsidiary of refrigerator-maker Whirlpoola partnership based largely on the hope that they might be able to figure out how to get lettuce from Salinas to the East Coast before it turned brown. After a lot of experimentation, they figured out how to manipulate the atmosphere inside the vehicles in which they shipped the lettuce so that it was more hospitable, providing the right balance of CO2 and oxygen in refrigerated rail cars and containersa hack that took the shelf life of the lettuce from three or four days to 14, as long as the lettuce was kept cold.

Weve put it to sleep, Lugg explained. Its sleeping! Its not breathing at its normal rate.

Bruce Church Inc. eventually morphed into Fresh Express, which in 1989 introduced what is believed to be the first pre-washed, bagged salad in grocery stores nationwide. That first mix, packaged in breathable bags, was chopped iceberg lettuce, with bits of shredded carrots and purple cabbage, a combo that meant home cooks could serve a multi-ingredient salad without chopping a single vegetable. We saw a way to really improve the customer experience with lettuce, Lugg said.

Lugg recalled serving on a board that helped advise the government on investing in specialty crop research in the 1990s. I dont think they were spending very much, he says. (USDA couldnt provide an estimate.) The then-head of [the Agricultural Research Service] was very defensive about all the problems they had getting money and that they had to spend money for things like corn and ethanol and cotton.

Hed sometimes give Ed Knipling, the then-head of ARS, a hard time about the disparity. He would point out how much they spent on this crop or this crop, and wed say Well, how much did you spend on lettuce?

SO WHY DOESNT the nation spend more on better lettuce? The answer lies partly in the history of the U.S. Department of Agriculture itself. On one hand, the department, founded by Abraham Lincoln, is dedicated to promoting and boosting American agriculture as an industry. That means investing in the massive commodity crops that largely fuel American farming, giving us the cheapest, most abundant food supply in the history of the world. But the department is also tasked with encouraging healthy eatingits the agency that gives Americans nutrition adviceand these two major goals can at times be directly at odds.

Public health advocates have long lamented that the USDAs nutrition advice doesnt align with how the institution actually spends its money, and they often point to crop subsidies as the most glaring example. Between 2008 and 2012, for example, fruits and vegetables and other specialty crops got just under one-half of 1 percent of all the subsidies that were doled out. A full 80 percent of those payments went to supporting grains used in all manner of foods, to feed livestock and to fuel our cars, and oils, like what we use to fry potato chips.

The disparity is something that frustrates Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine, who also happens to be an organic farmer. When the congresswoman speaks at food conferences, she often shows a side-by-side graphic comparing MyPlate, the governments nutrition guide, and a plate representation of crop subsidies.

Vegetables are called specialty crops! Dont ask me to explain why, Pingree said as she unveiled her graphic at TedxManhattan back in 2014. The room full of foodies gasped and mumbled disapprovingly.

The idea that junk food is cheaper than produce because of farm subsidies is so often repeated by food movement leaders like Michael Pollan that almost everyone assumes that its true. But the reality is more nuanced.

Subsidies on their own dont explain why processed foods are cheaper than produce, calorie for calorie. Fruits and vegetables, first and foremost, are highly perishable, which makes everything about growing, harvesting, storing and shipping them infinitely more complicated and expensive. Many of these crops also take a ton of labor to maintain and harvest. Economists whove crunched the numbers have found that removing agricultural subsidies would have little effect on consumers food prices, in part because the cost of commodities like corn and soybeans represent just a tiny share of the cost of the food sold in the grocery store.

The U.S. has simply gotten much better at growing corn than lettuce. Today, we get about six times as much corn out of one acre of land as we did in the 1920s, when Bruce Church started his lettuce farm. Iceberg lettuce yields, on the other hand, have only doubled in that time. The USDA didnt start tracking such data for most of the darker leafy greens until the 1990s.

Even if subsidies did make fruits and vegetables dramatically cheaper, its far from clear that everyone would start eating their broccoli. The price of produce isnt the only cost to eating fruits and vegetables; many consumers also lack the time or the skills to prepare and cook their perishables. And increasing fruit and vegetable consumption is hard to keep up as Americans eat more of their food on the go, away from home and prepare far fewer traditional meals on their own.

Moreover, the produce industry doesnt want to be subsidized like Big Corn or Big Soy. When industry leaders come to Capitol Hill, they have been clear that they didnt want traditional subsidies, like price supports, said Glenda Humiston, vice president of agriculture and natural resources at the University of California. They want help with the infrastructure to do their jobs better, she says, including more funding for research labs and data collection that can help industry solve problems on the ground.

Migrant workers pick organic spinach in a field in Colorado. Labor, often from immigrant workers, remains one of the most costly inputs to growing healthy fruits and vegetables. | Getty

Reducing the need for labor is one of the top priorities for the industry, especially with the Trump administrations rhetoric and recent crackdown on undocumented workers. Labor alone can account for half a farms costs and labor shortages are already preventing the expansion of acreage of specialty crops in many regions. Farmers can be hesitant to invest in growing, watering and raising a crop if theres uncertainty about having enough workers to harvest it.

Growers and shippers are going to have to find ways to mechanize, or were not going to be able to harvest our products, and were talking about delicate products, said Steve Church, CEO of Church Brothers Farms, a major grower in Salinas.

The biggest issue we have here is labor, Church added. No question in my mind.

Today, the government is funding research at Washington State University and other universities to design robots that can gently harvest apples and even see or smell when the fruit is ripea potential leap for the kind of mechanization that has so far eluded much of the produce industry.

USDA researchers are also working on a system that drastically cuts down on the need to sort fruit. The prototype is an elaborate, six-armed machine that goes into the field with apple pickers. The apples are fed onto a conveyer belt that uses an infrared system to detect blemishes and even grade the fruit on the spot.

Other research is focusing on improving flavor. In Florida, researchers have cracked the code to make tomatoes taste better, an innovation that could help reverse decades of breeding tomatoes for durability and thick skin that has left the fruit tasteless and watery. The tomatoes, which also have more lycopene, an important nutrient and anti oxidant, have begun being marketed in Florida under the name Tasti-Lee. The company that commercialized the technology says nearly 94 million pounds of the tastier tomato have been sold so far.

We first of all had to have a stable supply. We had to figure out how to get tomatoes from the West Coast to the East Coast, says a USDA scientist, permitted to speak on background. But now we can focus on the whole flavor component.

Making tomatoes tastier is only the beginning. Understanding this pathway, its not unique to just tomatoes, but you can use this as a model for citrus, or peppers or apples or anything else, the scientist said.

THOUGH SPECIALTY CROPS have lagged behind their shelf-stable brethren for much of the past century, the needs of the produce industry havent gone totally unheard in the halls of Washington. The idea that these smaller crops might deserve more attention began to gain some traction in the early 2000s, when California growers became increasingly angry that their state was the No. 1 agriculture state based on value, largely due to high-dollar specialty crops, but they were coming up around 16th in terms of USDA research funding coming into the state.

In 2006, there was also a renewed interest in investing in research after a deadly E. coli outbreak linked to packaged spinach rocked the entire produce industryand consumer confidence. Three people died, and 276 people were hospitalized. The disaster fueled an intense food-safety push across Salinas Valley and the rest of the produce industry. It also helped energize a diverse coalition of growers that had started to organize to ask Washington for a greater share of spending in the farm bill, the law that every five years sets the agenda for the Agriculture Department. They demanded that more money be invested in food safety and other types of research. Producers of commodities like dairy and grains were less than pleased to have another group vying for a part of the federal pie, according to congressional aides.

It was a hell of a fight, said Humiston.

But Big Produces political push has paid off. In 2008, the farm bill for the first time included a section dedicated to specialty crops. Theres now a $72 million fund to promote various specialty crop projects, like building hoop houses to extend the growing season. Fruit and vegetable farmers are also starting to get access to the same government-subsidized insurance policies that other commodities have enjoyed for years. But the biggest growth for specialty crops in recent years has been in research spending.

The USDA now dedicates some $400 million to studying specialty crops each yeara big increase, though still a modest fraction of the nearly $3 billion the government invests in agricultural research each year. That pot of money is spread among USDAs in-house research, land grant universities and other public research institutions. The USDA couldnt provide specialty crop research estimates from before 2008.

The Obama administration and its intense focus on healthy eating was also a boon to the specialty crop sector. The administration not only backed allocating more money to the crops, but it also promoted more fruits and vegetables in school meal programs that serve 30 million children each day, and in the Women, Infants and Children program, which provides nutritional support for half of all babies born in the United States.

While much of the new federal boost for produce investment is motivated more by the industrys business needs than any push to combat the nations crippling obesity epidemic, public health advocates with little political clout are thrilled to see the needle moving, however it happens.

If what we want is for people to eat fruits and vegetables, we have to make it easier, we have to make it taste better, said Marion Nestle, a food studies professor at New York University and author of the popular blog Food Politics.

Its about time produce got some attention.

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The vegetable technology gap - Politico

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Mainstream Image-Recognition Technology And What It Means For Marketers – Forbes

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Mainstream Image-Recognition Technology And What It Means For Marketers
Forbes
Every day there's a fresh news story about "image recognition," aka "computer vision" terms that have a faintly sci-fi feel to them. The technology can seem almost forbiddingly futuristic and complicated, though the science at its heart has a ...

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Without a ‘world government’ technology will destroy us, says Stephen Hawking – The Independent

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A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore

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A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore

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A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore

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Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea

Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images

Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea

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The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie 'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company

Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images

Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea

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Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi

Rex

Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session

Rex

A test line of a new energy suspension railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China

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A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China

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A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China

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A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China

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A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China

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A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London

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A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv

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Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S

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The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar. This is a production preview of the Jaguar I-PACE, which will be revealed next year and on the road in 2018

AP

Japan's On-Art Corp's CEO Kazuya Kanemaru poses with his company's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot 'TRX03' and other robots during a demonstration in Tokyo, Japan

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Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot 'TRX03'

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Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot 'TRX03' performs during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan

Reuters

Singulato Motors co-founder and CEO Shen Haiyin poses in his company's concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China

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Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0

Reuters

The interior of Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China

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A picture shows Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China

Reuters

Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo. The Connected company is a part of seven Toyota in-house companies that was created in April 2016

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A Toyota Motors employee demonstrates a smartphone app with the company's pocket plug-in hybrid (PHV) service on the cockpit of the latest Prius hybrid vehicle during Toyota's "connected strategy" press briefing in Tokyo

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An exhibitor charges the battery cells of AnyWalker, an ultra-mobile chasis robot which is able to move in any kind of environment during Singapore International Robo Expo

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A robot with a touch-screen information apps stroll down the pavillon at the Singapore International Robo Expo

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An exhibitor demonstrates the AnyWalker, an ultra-mobile chasis robot which is able to move in any kind of environment during Singapore International Robo Expo

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Robotic fishes swim in a water glass tank displayed at the Korea pavillon during Singapore International Robo Expo

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An employee shows a Samsung Electronics' Gear S3 Classic during Korea Electronics Show 2016 in Seoul, South Korea

Reuters

Visitors experience Samsung Electronics' Gear VR during the Korea Electronics Grand Fair at an exhibition hall in Seoul, South Korea

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Amy Rimmer, Research Engineer at Jaguar Land Rover, demonstrates the car manufacturer's Advanced Highway Assist in a Range Rover, which drives the vehicle, overtakes and can detect vehicles in the blind spot, during the first demonstrations of the UK Autodrive Project at HORIBA MIRA Proving Ground in Nuneaton, Warwickshire

PA wire

Ford EEBL Emergency Electronic Brake Lights is demonstrated during the first demonstrations of the UK Autodrive Project at HORIBA MIRA Proving Ground in Nuneaton, Warwickshire

PA

Chris Burbridge, Autonomous Driving Software Engineer for Tata Motors European Technical Centre, demonstrates the car manufacturer's GLOSA V2X functionality, which is connected to the traffic lights and shares information with the driver, during the first demonstrations of the UK Autodrive Project at HORIBA MIRA Proving Ground in Nuneaton, Warwickshire

PA wire

Full-scale model of 'Kibo' on display at the Space Dome exhibition hall of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Tsukuba Space Center, in Tsukuba, north-east of Tokyo, Japan

EPA

Miniatures on display at the Space Dome exhibition hall of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Tsukuba Space Center, in Tsukuba, north-east of Tokyo, Japan. In its facilities, JAXA develop satellites and analyse their observation data, train astronauts for utilization in the Japanese Experiment Module 'Kibo' of the International Space Station (ISS) and develop launch vehicles

EPA

The robot developed by Seed Solutions sings and dances to the music during the Japan Robot Week 2016 at Tokyo Big Sight. At this biennial event, the participating companies exhibit their latest service robotic technologies and components

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The robot developed by Seed Solutions sings and dances to music during the Japan Robot Week 2016 at Tokyo Big Sight

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Government and industry are working together on a robot-like autopilot system that could eliminate the need for a second human pilot in the cockpit

AP

Aurora Flight Sciences' technicians work on an Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automantion System (ALIAS) device in the firm's Centaur aircraft at Manassas Airport in Manassas, Va.

AP

Stefan Schwart and Udo Klingenberg preparing a self-built flight simulator to land at Hong Kong airport, from Rostock, Germany

EPA

An elated customer at the launch of PlayStation VR at the GAME Digital Westfield White City midnight launch.

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It’s the Technology. Period. – The Financial Brand

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Doing more, better, with a smaller workforce, is the main outcome we should expect from the systemic and systematic application of advanced technology in the financial services industry. Is the industry ready?

By Pascal Bouvier, Venture Partner at Santander InnoVentures

As of December 2016, theBureau of Labor Statisticsshows the US financial services industry employing 8.4m people. This figure includes credit and non credit intermediation, securities and insurance activities. For good measure, we may want to add payroll, collection agencies and credit bureau activities, which increases the tally by an additional 400k for a grand total of 8.8m. Lets label this Fact #1.

For the past 6 years, the financial services industry has undergone a transformation, attempting to shed its industrial age structures, rebuilding itself alongside new digital paradigms. The first transformative steps have focused on the digitization of front end processes and systems.

As we cycle through these first steps, we are made aware of the next steps the industry is (or will) undertake digitizing middle office and back office processes and systems. Terms and technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), straight through processing, robotics, process automation, blockchain or distributed ledgers are all connected to a meta intent to modernize and increase the industrys productivity. Lets label this Fact #2.

Innovation is the process whereby technology is applied to human processes, with the resulting outcome beingincreased productivity. In other words, innovation enables humans to do more with less. This has invariably led established industries to produce more with less labor, or die trying. Witness agriculture and manufacturing. Lets label this Fact #3.

Newly elected President Trump ranon a Make America Great Again platform, which in part means the creation of domestic jobs, or the repatriation of offshored jobs to the US. Arguably this dialectic has focused mostly on the manufacturing, energy and extraction industries. Lets label this Fact #4.

We also know the Trump administration has made known its intent to free the US economy from its regulatory debt, which includes financial regulatory debt (which in and of itself is worthy exercise although the devil is in the details). I discussed the Executive Order regarding the US financial systemhere. The purpose of this intent is obviously to facilitate job creation. Lets label this Fact #5.

The US financial services industry has, much like its manufacturing brethren, engaged in offshoring. We need to unpack this statement though. Global banks (retail, commercial or i-banks) have offshored jobs, not the entire industry, and certainly not regional, community banks or domestic insurers. Further, global banks have offshored certain categories of jobs such as low level IT, risk management and compliance to locations with a lower cost of labor.

Thusly, the aggregate amount of US financial services jobs lost to offshoring is probably minimal. I would venture a guess of no more than 150k jobs lost to offshoring (arguably I might be completely off). Further, some of this offshoring might very well be grounded in sound business decisions, such as the need to have global support operations in multiple time zones across the globe.

Additionally, it remains to be seen whether deregulation or the lack of enforcement of current regulation will help with financial services job creation per se. The demise of brick and mortar branches as the primary distribution channel for a financial product is not regulatory driven. It is borne out of societal changes enabled by new technologies. The slow unbundling and rebuilding of traditional financial services models is a byproduct of the internet age.

I cannot avoid concluding that any push to force large banks to repatriate jobs back to the US will not yield significantresults, and that any deregulation push as a basis for job creation is a weak proposition at best. Therefore the desired outcomes powering Fact #4 & Fact #5 (bringing jobs back to America and creating new jobs) are questionable, regardless of how well meaning the intent is.

On the other hand, financial institutions, are under assault frominnovative fintech startups and ravenous tech companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple (GAFA). The industry also is serving a younger consumer base withdrastically different appetites and behaviors compared to their predecessors. This leaves no other choice but to complete their transformations towards greater productivity.

Tomorrows banks will discharge their regulatory burden with but a fraction of the number of employees needed today. Tomorrows insurer will reach consumers with a digital brokerage workforce at odds with current prevalent distribution channels. Buy and Sell side institutions are today actively deploying advanced technologies that makes them brutally efficient at pre-trading, trading and post trading activities.

Everyone is betting on a conversational banking/insurance model via mobile social media apps. I am not even attempting to draft a comprehensive list of transformational changes, yet readers will clearly decipher the inevitable conclusion namely that the probability the financial services industry will employ fewerpeople in 5 to 10 years from now is much higher than the probability aggregate employment will remain unchanged or increase.

No amount of political nudging, deregulation, or trade re-engineering will prevent or reverse the consequences of technology innovation. We are left with attempting to decipherone unknown: How many jobs will the US financial services industry shed in the next 5 or 10 years, and how swift will the shedding occur? Fact #2 & #3 loom larger and stronger.

How will the impact of such dislocation be tackled? 8.8m workers is not a small number and, as the last US presidential election has proven, not paying attention to technology dislocation is unsustainable.

Notice how certain European governments treat their domestic banks as employment stabilizers and do their utmost to ensure no material waves of redundancies occur. Will the US follow this path? If so, will this furtherenable GAFA and fintech startups? More importantly, which will be the new demand curves created on the back of this dislocation?

I am sure the CEOs of most financial institutions have not failed to notice all technology companies have a much higher revenue per employee ratio than traditional banks or insurers. You have been warned and make sure to check how the statistics behind fact #1 will behave going forward Its the technology. Period!

All content 2017 by The Financial Brand and may not be reproduced by any means without permission.

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‘This is an all hands on deck thing’: A former Obama technology adviser on robots, jobs and cyberwarfare – Washington Post

Posted: at 1:12 pm

During the Obama administration, R. David Edelman was one of the president's topadvisers. As a part of Obama's National Security Council and his National Economic Council, Edelman was among those responsible for crafting U.S. policies on cybersecurity, technology and innovation at a time when all three were making national headlines. Now, Edelman is headed to MIT, where he'll direct the university's new Project on Technology, the Economy, and National Security. On Monday, I sat down with Edelman for an interview at The Washington Post's officesto discuss the future of automation, jobs and cyberwarfare. The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Likemany Americans, I've been thinking a lot about robots taking over jobs. People talk a lot about job retraining and education to put people back to work, but it's almost always in an abstract way. What specifically canwe do to help people who are struggling?

Think about the people who are IT technicians maintaining the WiFi equipment in hotels. Or enterprise software back-end folks that are helping to administer an HR database. Those are jobs that exist everywhere.There are opportunities out there for individuals to get higher paying jobs that require technical skills that are not four-year bachelor of science, MIT degree jobs. And that's what TechHire was designed to fill the gap on.

There is a formula here. You've got tohave either a community college or other educational institutions, but you also have to have employers that are articulating what their specific needs are what are the vacancies you need to fill? What are the skills you require? Do you need SQL certification? Do you need Microsoft certification? What are the actual specific skills? And then you need a city government that is willing to participate in that. That's a formula. That's not just, send 'em all to one school and hope it works.

We as a country have decided that unless you went to a four-year university, somehow you're not a full player in the economy. That's wrong. And as long as we continue to culturally stigmatize that, we're going to have a shortage of labor in key categories, we're going to have a lot of people get stuck assuming their job skills are going to take them on a 40 to 50 year career. For a lot of people, those days are gone.

This is not Washington declaring a death sentence on particular ways of life or particular industries. But there is a reality here, and that is that a lot of Americans are hurting and want a way out. The really hard question and I don't have the answer, I don't think any one person does is what you do with those individuals. I agree with you, the answer is not going to be just train 'em to code. That's not going to work. It is going to work in a lot of areas, but you're also going to have areas or job categories where mobility is not easy, where people want to stay tied to where they are.

The U.S. has a program to retrain workers who've lost their jobs due to trade; it's called Trade Adjustment Assistance. Could you see an Automation Adjustment Assistance program someday?

Yes. I could. And this is getting back to my theory that this is going to have to be an all-hands on deck thing.This is not just an issue for the government to take on. You're also going to have to get academia working on some of the questions you were raising before about what does work in job retraining. There's a role that employers are going to have in articulating what their particular needs are and reassessing their willingnessto send jobs abroad. This is one of the biggest questions that we will be solving in the next 10-15 years.

Some high-profile folks in Silicon Valley have proposed that the government give everyone a basic amount of income every year as a solution. What do you think?

Most of our social programs are designed to make sure that if you need support you can get it, but that if you don't need support you're not automatically going to get a handout. That's a fundamental critique [of universal basic income] that the economists I respect the most have leveled against UBI. It has not been adequately addressed.

But the general awareness of UBI, the fact that it's become fashionable in Silicon Valley, is actually a really good sign. It shows they're thinking about the broader social consequences of the disruptive business models that they've put forward. And that's healthy.

President Obama has said that he resisted taking actions in cyberspace that could set a precedent legitimizing a potentially destructiveform of cyberwarfare. Do you think China and Russia agree with that principle?

I believe the Chinese come at it from a general sense of profound insecurity, fear ofalmost mutually assured destruction of sorts and therefore a profound desire to try to put limitations on areas where it is not costly to them.That's where you think of arguments against intentionally targeting critical infrastructure. Don't go after dams. There's one that China, operator of the Three Gorges Dam, could probably agree with, along with the United States, and actually has said to us on occasion.

The Russians come at it from a different place. They have a strong history and tradition of talking to the United States about difficult things on which we don't agree.We managed to get nuclear arms control treaties out of the Russians to mutual accommodation.

Microsoft's top lawyers have proposed a kind of Geneva Conventions to governcyberwarfare. Are we likely to see such an agreement out ofthis White House?

I don't think they have yet articulated a grand strategy of how they're going to treat these issues. But to me, as important as where the White House is will be where everyone else is.The United States is not a unitary actor in cyberspace. And if the Russians, the Chinese, the South Koreans, the Japanese, the Australians decide they want to come up with a pseudo-regional cybersecurity treaty, that's going to carry a lot of weight in the international system. The way the U.S. can guarantee it won't have a say is to withdraw from everything. That doesn't mean the progress is going to stop. The question is just whether the U.S. gets a voice or not.

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'This is an all hands on deck thing': A former Obama technology adviser on robots, jobs and cyberwarfare - Washington Post

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Patchy progress on fixing global gender disparities in science – Nature.com

Posted: at 1:12 pm

Although women are publishing more studies, being cited more often, and securing more coveted first-author positions than they were in the mid 1990s, overall progress towards gender parity in science varies widely by country and field. This is according to a massive report released on 8 March that is the first to examine such a broad swath of disciplines and regions of the world over time (see 'Slowly but surely').

The report1 by the publisher Elsevier found that despite their moderate advances, women still published fewer articles than men, and were much less likely to be listed as first or last authors on a paper. Citation rates, however, were roughly equal: although female authors were cited slightly less than male authors, work authored by women was downloaded at slightly higher rates.

Elsevier used data from Scopus, an abstract and citation database of more than 62 million documents. The reports authors broke the data down into 27 subject areas, and compared them across 12 countries and regions and two 5-year blocks of time: 19962000 and 201115. The report included only researchers who were listed as an author on at least one publication within either of the two five-year periods.

Source: Elsevier Scopus

Although women might be publishing less research, the citation rates indicate that their work is equally scientifically important, says Holly Falk-Krzesinski, vice-president of global academic and research relations at Elsevier who is based in San Diego, California.

However, Cassidy Sugimoto, an information scientist who studies gender disparities at Indiana University Bloomington, notes that she would expect to see men and women cited at similar ratios because many papers have multiple authors representing more than one gender. The small number of female first authors, she says, reflects the inequalities that still exist in science today.

I think this report does a tremendous job of demonstrating and reinforcing that the leaky pipeline is still in effect, says Sugimoto, referring to the decline seen in the proportion of women at succesive stages in research. We see an increase in the number of women researchers and an increase in the number of women first authors, but those rates are not progressing equally. We have a pipeline problem, and time is not erasing it.

But patching that pipeline has proved extremely difficult. Women must overcome a number of barriers in science, says Sugimoto, ranging from conscious and unconscious sexism to expectations of womens roles in child care and care for the elderly.

In response to its own findings, Elsevier has been addressing issues of gender imbalance on its journal boards by setting benchmarks for the number of men and women included on them. But Sugimoto cautions that simply putting women in positions to review papers may not solve the problem: in some studies, she says, women in science were just as likely to discriminate against other women when hiring as men were2, although other studies have failed to find such hiring bias3.

This report confirms the results of many past studies on gender disparities in research, says Shulamit Kahn, an economist at Boston University in Massachusetts who studies gender differences in science. But the multinational, multidisciplinary scope of this study allows for more in-depth analysis, she says.

Source: World Intellectual Property Organization

Although the overall proportion of women in science has grown, the rates have hardly been equal across countries or disciplines. In Japan, the proportion of female researchers rose by only 5% between the two study periods, whereas in Brazil, it rose by 11%. Women were also represented unequally in different scientific fields. Although they were strongly represented in life and biomedical sciences, few women specialized in the physical sciences. And when the report analysed patent data from the World Intellectual Property Organization, they found that only 14% of people filing patent applications in 201115 were women (see 'Patent pattern').

What our report demonstrates is that gender disparities arent the same all over. What works to fix them in one place and one field might not work in another, says Falk-Krzesinski.

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Patchy progress on fixing global gender disparities in science - Nature.com

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