Monthly Archives: July 2017

Scientists hide a real movie within a germ’s DNA – Science News for Students

Posted: July 31, 2017 at 9:49 am

(for more about Power Words, clickhere)

audioHaving to do with sound.

bacterialHaving to do with bacteria, single-celled organisms. These dwell nearly everywhere on Earth, from the bottom of the sea to inside animals.

bit(in computer science) The term is short for binary digit. It has a value of either 0 or 1.

code(in computing) To use special language to write or revise a program that makes a computer do something.

colleagueSomeone who works with another; a co-worker or team member.

CRISPRAn abbreviation pronounced crisper for the term clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. These are pieces of RNA, an information-carrying molecule. They are copied from the genetic material of viruses that infect bacteria. When a bacterium encounters a virus that it was previously exposed to, it produces an RNA copy of the CRISPR that contains that virus genetic information. The RNA then guides an enzyme, called Cas9, to cut up the virus and make it harmless. Scientists are now building their own versions of CRISPR RNAs. These lab-made RNAs guide the enzyme to cut specific genes in other organisms. Scientists use them, like a genetic scissors, to edit or alter specific genes so that they can then study how the gene works, repair damage to broken genes, insert new genes or disable harmful ones.

dataFacts and/or statistics collected together for analysis but not necessarily organized in a way that gives them meaning. For digital information (the type stored by computers), those data typically are numbers stored in a binary code, portrayed as strings of zeros and ones.

DNA(short for deoxyribonucleic acid) A long, double-stranded and spiral-shaped molecule inside most living cells that carries genetic instructions. It is built on a backbone of phosphorus, oxygen, and carbon atoms. In all living things, from plants and animals to microbes, these instructions tell cells which molecules to make.

E. coli(short for Escherichia coli) A common bacterium that researchers often harness to study genetics. Some naturally occurring strains of this microbe cause disease, but many othersdo not.

gene(adj. genetic) A segment of DNA that codes, or holds instructions, for a cells production of a protein. Offspring inherit genes from their parents. Genes influence how an organism looks and behaves.

geneticHaving to do with chromosomes, DNA and the genes contained within DNA. The field of science dealing with these biological instructions is known as genetics. People who work in this field are geneticists.

GIF (short for Graphics Interchange Format) This is a format used to send images, especially movies, on the internet. An animated GIF file is one that can move on the internet, such as a swirling flag or jumping frog.

moleculeAn electrically neutral group of atoms that represents the smallest possible amount of a chemical compound. Molecules can be made of single types of atoms or of different types. For example, the oxygen in the air is made of two oxygen atoms (O2), but water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom (H2O).

nucleotidesThe four chemicals that, like rungs on a ladder, link up the two strands that make up DNA. They are: A (adenine), T (thymine), C (cytosine) and G (guanine). A links with T, and C links with G, to form DNA. In RNA, uracil takes the place of thymine.

organismAny living thing, from elephants and plants to bacteria and other types of single-celled life.

pixelShort for picture element . A tiny area of illumination on a computer screen, or a dot on a printed page, usually placed in an array to form a digital image. Photographs are made of thousands of pixels, each of different brightness and color, and each too small to be seen unless the image is magnified.

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Seeing double in arachnid genomes: new insights into the consequences of whole genome duplication in animals – BMC Blogs Network (blog)

Posted: at 9:48 am

Research published today in BMC Biology finds that whole genome duplication, a process in which an organisms entire genome duplicates, occurred in the lineage leading to spiders but not their distant arachnid relatives, ticks and mites. Here to discuss this research and whole genome duplication in the ancestors of vertebrates and other chelicerates is author of the study, Alistair P. McGregor.

Alistair P. McGregor 31 Jul 2017

Luka Miles

It is thought that gene duplication plays an important role in generating new genetic material for the evolutionary diversification of species. Gene duplication can be caused by several mechanisms and in the extreme case two copies of all of the genes in a genome can be generated by whole genome duplication (WGD).

In a recent study published in BMC Biology, my colleagues and I analyzed the genome of the common house spider Parasteatoda tepidariorum and we have found evidence for a WGD in the lineage leading to spiders.

This event was likely shared with scorpions and probably other arachnopulmonates like whip-scorpions and whip spiders, but not with more distantly related arachnids such as ticks and mites. This suggests that the approximately 45,000 extant species of arachnopulmonates evolved from a polyploid ancestor over 400 million years ago.

Our study also suggests that this WGD in arachnids was likely independent of WGD in another group of chelicerates, the horseshoe crabs. Our findings thus offer an exciting opportunity to discover more about the outcomes of WGD in terms of gene content and regulation, and how such events may contribute to animal diversification.

In the ancestor of vertebrates there were two rounds of WGD and these events may have led to the diversification of these animals through the retention and utilization of duplicated genes. For example, while most animals contain a single cluster of Hox genes, vertebrates, like ourselves, have four Hox clusters and these additional genes play many important roles in development. However, genes can be retained or lost for many reasons after WGD events, including random mutation, recombination and dosage effects.

A better understanding of the patterns of gene retention and loss after WGD and identification of commonalities, as well as potentially the genes that may underlie evolutionary innovation, requires the study of independent events. This comparison, however, suffers from the fact that only a few examples of WGD have been described in animals to date.

Our identification of a WGD in arachnids, consequently, provides a much-needed new data point for understanding the general and lineage specific impact of WGD events.

Our identification of a WGD in arachnids, consequently, provides a much-needed new data point for understanding the general and lineage specific impact of WGD events. The duplicated genes that have been retained in both spiders and scorpions represent many that encode proteins with important roles in development, including two copies of most Hox genes arranged in two (nearly) complete clusters.

Furthermore the paralogs of each of the spider Hox genes differ in their timing and spatial expression during embryogenesis suggesting that some of the new copies perform novel functions with respect to the single copy ancestral gene. Therefore our study reveals an intriguing parallel between the outcomes of WGD in arachnids and vertebrates.

Interestingly, our study and previous work also reveals a high rate of retention of duplicated microRNAs. These genes are thought to modulate the expression levels of their target genes and they have perhaps been retained in high numbers after WGD to buffer the dosage effects of targeted duplicated protein coding genes, rather than contributing to the emergence of novel traits. Indeed, a possible outcome of gene duplication is developmental systems drift, whereby different genes and interactions can be used to achieve the same phenotypic outcome, but this remains to be investigated systematically.

Cave Whip Spiders Damon variegates

Wikimedia commons

More fully understanding the consequences WGD event in arachnids requires the analysis of additional arachnid genomes to determine exactly when this event occurred and which lineages were affected. For example, it would be interesting to explore whether there is any evidence for WGD in other arachnid orders like camel spiders, harvestmen and pseudoscorpions.

In addition, comparing the genomes of whip spiders and whip scorpions with spiders and scorpions could help reveal genes that have been retained by most groups after WGD versus lineage specific retentions and losses. These data will not only provide insights into arachnid genomes before and after the WGD event, but a better understanding of how duplicated genes produced by this event have contributed to the evolution of innovations in these animals, for example, silk production in spiders and the booklungs (novel breathing organs) of arachnopulmonates.

Finally, a more detailed understanding of the patterns of gene retention and loss after WGD in arachnids will provide an excellent comparison to such events in vertebrates to better understand the broader implications and consequences of WGD for the evolution of animal genomes and their biology.

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Maryland scientists research gene linked to depression | The … – The Spokesman-Review

Posted: at 9:45 am

Sun., July 30, 2017, 8:58 p.m.

Dr. Mary Kay Lobo and her colleagues at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have been examining the gene known as Slc6a15 and researching the role it plays in either protecting from stress or contributing to depression. (Karl Merton Ferron / Karl Merton Ferron/Baltimore Sun)

BALTIMORE Although there are medications to treat depression, many scientists arent sure why theyre effective and why they dont work for everyone.

Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine believe they may have found a key to the puzzle of major depression that could lead to therapies for those who dont respond to medications already on the market.

A study by the researchers has identified the central role a gene known as Slc6a15 plays in either protecting from stress or contributing to depression, depending on its level of activity in a part of the brain associated with motivation, pleasure and reward seeking.

Published in the Journal of Neuroscience in July, the study is the first to illuminate in detail how the gene works in a kind of neuron that plays a key role in depression, the according to the medical school.

Specifically, the researchers found that mice with depression had reduced levels of the genes activity, while those with high levels of the genes activity handled chronic stress better.

Though senior researcher Mary Kay Lobos primary studies were done with mice, she also examined the brains of people who had committed suicide and found reduced levels of the genes activity, confirming a likely link.

She hopes now that drugs could be developed that would encourage the genes activity.

I thought it was fascinating we had this system in place that allows us to go after things or be motivated or have pleasure and I was interested in how it becomes dysfunctional in certain diseases like depression, Lobo said. I hope that we can identify molecules that could potentially be therapeutically treated or targeted to treat depression.

Lobo and her colleagues have been examining the gene for years. In 2006, they discovered that it was more common among specific neurons in the brain that they later learned were related to depression. Five years later, other researchers learned that the gene played a role in depression and Lobo and her research colleagues decided to investigate what that role is in those specific neurons.

About 15 million adults, or 6.7 percent of all U.S. adults, experience major depression in a given year, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. It is the leading cause of disability for Americans ages 15 to 44. It is more prevalent in women and can develop at any age, but the median age of onset is 32.5.

David Dietz, an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, said little was known previously about the biological basis of depression in the brain. Many drugs used to treat depression were discovered serendipitously, he said, and it wasnt clear why they worked.

Were starting to really get an idea of what does the depressed brain look like, Dietz said. When you put the whole puzzle together, you see where the problem is. For too long weve been throwing things at individual pieces. Its so complex and we have so little information that it was almost bound to be that way. For the first time this is one of those bigger pieces you can slide into the jigsaw puzzle.

Lobo said its not clear yet how Slc6a15 works in the brain, but she believes it may be transporting three types of amino acids into a subset of neurons called D2 neurons in a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens. The nucleus accumbens and D2 neurons are known to play a role in pleasure, activating when one eats a delicious meal, has sex or drinks alcohol.

The amino acids would then be synthesized into neurotransmitters. Depression previously has been linked to imbalances of the neurotransmitters serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine.

So even though people may have proper levels of amino acids in their bodies, the neurons in their brains that need them may not be getting enough if the transporter is not working as it should.

This gene is critical for putting very specific amino acids in the right place so that neurotransmitters can be synthesized, said A.J. Robison, an assistant professor in the Department of Physiology at Michigan State University. Its the location, location, location idea. Its not the amino acids, its where theyre at and in which cells.

Robison said Lobos next step would be discovering more about how the transporter gene works.

The fact that this transporter seems to be important is what the paper shows and how it does it is not shown, and thats a challenge for her, he said. Figuring out the how of it is the next step and Dr. Lobo is particularly positioned to do it.

Lobos team was able to use gene therapy, a form of therapy in the early stages of being studied in humans, in the mice to boost the genes activity. The mice were exposed to larger, more aggressive mice, which usually causes depressive symptoms. But the gene therapy helped protect the mice against the stress, the team found. When the team reduced the genes activity in the mice, just one day of exposure to the aggressive mice was enough to cause symptoms of depression.

Gene therapy is starting to be used in the treatment of some types of cancers, but Lobo said science had not yet advanced to the point where it can be used for treating neurological issues in human patients. A more likely treatment would be a drug that targets the genes activity directly, she said.

I think this is a major step toward our understanding of the precise maladaptive changes that occur in response to stress, said Vanna Zachariou, an associate professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. It can be a more efficient way to target depression because its not simply targeting monoamine receptors or dopamine but targeting molecular adaptations that occur. It doesnt act necessarily as the drugs we have available, so it might create an alternative avenue to treat depression.

Lobo said she wouldnt refer to Slc6a15 as a depression gene, saying the disease was complex and could have many factors.

I wouldnt say theres one depression gene she said. A number of things play a role, and also theres no depression neuron, theres multiple depression neurons.

There also may be different types of depression with different symptoms, she said. With the disease, some sufferers sleep a lot, while others sleep a lot less, for example.

With all these complex diseases, its hard to link it to something, she said. Like Huntingtons disease, we know theres a specific gene that causes Huntingtons disease. For depression we dont have that.

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Gene Markers Can Predict Your Outcome of Cancer or Immune Disease – Technology Networks

Posted: at 9:45 am

Publishing in the July 24, 2017, issue of Nature Communications, Professor Klaus Ley, M.D., who led the study, and his team identify gene markers that directly correlate with the outcome of inflammatory and malignant diseases in humans, including survival of osteosarcoma, melanoma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), Burkitt lymphoma and large-cell lung carcinoma. Their findings emphasize that accounting for immune diversity is a critical factor to increase the success rate of predicting disease outcomes based on immune cell measurements.

Traditionally, researchers have relied on inbred mouse strains to gain insight into the complex world of human diseases while reducing what is known as experimental noise. If you take a black, a brown or a white mouse each one will give you a different answer in the same assay. For example, if you vaccinate them, their responses will be different, which creates a lot of experimental noise, says Ley. However, when you think about patients, or even healthy people, we are all different.

To mine those differences for valuable information, the LJI researchers actively embraced the experimental noise. Instead of analyzing a single inbred mouse strain, Buscher turned to the hybrid mouse diversity panel (HDMP). The panel was developed by co-author Aldons J. Lusis, Ph.D., a professor in the Departments of Medicine, Human Genetics, and Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The HDMP is a panel of about 100 different inbred mouse strains that mirror the breadth of genetic and immunological diversity found in the human population. You can think of the panel as a hundred different patients, or healthy people, explain Buscher.

Buscher, Lusis, Ley and others studied the natural variation in the activation pattern of abdominal macrophages, versatile members of the immune system. Professional phagocytes, they clear worn-out cells and cellular debris; survey tissue surfaces for foreign invaders; engulf bacteria and cancer cells; increase or quiet down inflammation and recruit other members of the immune system.

Macrophages isolated from 83 different mouse strains from the HDMP were exposed to lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a major component of the outer wall of gram-negative bacteria, to gauge their reaction to the strong inflammatory. Gram-negative bacteria are the cause of wide range of different illnesses, including food poisoning, cholera, tuberculosis and periodontitis, among many others.

Fundamentally, when the immune system is confronted with gram-negative bacteria, it can deal with the situation in two ways: Either, it gets very angry and tries to kill the bacteria or it can wall them off in an attempt to live with it, explains Ley. Both strategies carry a certain risk but a long evolutionary history has insured that mice and people can survive with either strategy.

The LPS-induced reactions of the macrophages analyzed as part of the study covered the whole spectrum from very aggressive (LPS+) to very tolerant (LPS-) depending on the mouse strain. This LPS+ and LPS- designation is related to the M1 and M2 designation introduced by Charles D. Mills, another co-author of the study. Next, the researchers asked which genes were active during each response type to identify gene signatures that correlated with LPS-responsiveness. Ley and his team then ran these gene signatures across various human gene expression data sets and discovered that they strongly correlated with human disease outcomes.

For example, macrophages isolated from healthy joints were enriched in LPS-tolerant genes, whereas macrophages from rheumatoid arthritis patients were strongly skewed towards LPS-aggressive. The same held true for macrophages found in the kidneys of healthy people versus lupus erythematosus patients.

Since it had been known that mice and people with the aggressive phenotype are better at fighting canceralthough they are more susceptible to cardiovascular diseasethe scientists specifically asked whether the level of LPS-responsiveness could predict tumor survival.

After analyzing data from 18,000 biopsies across 39 different tumor types, they found that the LPS+ gene signature strongly correlated with survival while the LPS- signature correlated with cancer death. The pattern was significant across many different types of cancer, including osteosarcoma, melanoma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, Burkitt lymphoma and large-cell lung carcinoma.

This article has been republished frommaterialsprovided byLa Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

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Not many in ‘Valley’ buy Trump’s job promises – The-review

Posted: at 9:44 am

By RANDY LUDLOW The Columbus Dispatch Published: July 31, 2017 3:00 AM

YOUNGSTOWN -- If only it was as simple as President Donald Trump makes it sound.

It never has been. The long-suffering Mahoning Valley was a charter member of the "rust belt" long before the phrase became politically incorrect.

All those old, shuttered hulks of the valley's steel-making heyday -- what Trump called "big, once incredible job-producing factories" -- will come roaring back to life, the president told his supporters Tuesday.

Don't sell your homes, Trump told a packed house of 8,000 at a Covelli Centre rally. Don't move in search of employment. Those long-lost jobs, "they're all coming back." It was similar to his promises to coal miners and others from the 2016 campaign.

The specifics of how the fortunes of the Youngstown-Warren area will suddenly and dramatically improve did not accompany Trump's remarks last week.

The Valley, a traditional Democratic stronghold long hungry for good jobs, cast a larger share of its votes for the Republican last fall. It has heard promises from politicians and presidents across generations.

But they have only sporadically translated into bottom-line improvement for residents of the Youngstown-Warren region, which has lost nearly 20 percent of its population since the mills began closing more than three decades ago.

Few, beyond perhaps Trump's most hard-core supporters, expect a return of a lot of high-paying factory jobs. Instead, the area's advocates are concentrating on diversifying the Valley economy beyond blast furnaces and assembly lines.

Youngstown Mayor John McNally, a Democrat, was polite, saying it would be a "challenge" to resurrect all those long-gone jobs in heavy industry.

"It's one of those promises that the previous Democratic campaigns have tried with residents around here. Unless you can deliver on that promise, coming back the next time the response may be different from folks," he said. "I don't think this area as a whole believes those jobs are coming back. I don't know why we keep hearing it."

But Trump supporters say he deserves a chance to deliver on his promises.

"He came back to the area to check on the people. He hasn't forgotten Youngstown," said Marleah Campbell, auxiliary chair of the Trumbull County Republican Party. "He's trying to do what he wants to do, but getting no cooperation. The Republicans need to get behind him."

It's hard to envision a manufacturing revival when the Mahoning Valley is fighting to hang on to what it already has amid an area economy that has bled some of its better jobs just since the start of Trump's presidency.

United Auto Workers Local 1417 trustee Jeff Terrace, a survivor from the stamping-line at one of the pair of General Motors' plants at Lordstown, saw the speech as typical untempered, over-promising Trump.

"I've been a gambler all my life. He's one of those guys who's all-in on every hand regardless of what he holds. We haven't seen any action. It's all talk," said the 57-year-old Terrace.

The lack of demand for small cars led General Motors in March to eliminate the third shift at the plants that build the Chevrolet Cruze. More than 1,000 jobs were lost, including some at area suppliers of seats and bumpers.

The area's unemployment rate stands at 5.9 percent, 20 percent higher than the statewide average. Even after a slight comeback, 700 fewer manufacturing jobs exist now than in January, according to federal figures. The overall jobs picture, however, has improved from 8.2 percent unemployment rate of March due to growth in many lower-paying positions.

Terrace and fellow stamping-line worker Ernie Long, 39, are disappointed that Trump and his administration have not yet abandoned or renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, as he promised.

Addressing NAFTA might help retrieve the production of the Cruze hatchback model from Mexico might help restore the lost third shift at Lordstown, the men said. Trump told the Youngstown crowd that if he doesn't get a "great deal," he will terminate the pact.

Noting that Trump's overseas-made, Trump-branded products and his moves to hire more foreign workers at a golf property, Long was displeased that Trump has not demonstrated an all-out commitment -- quoting the signs held by his rally supporters -- to "Buy American, Hire American."

"He's supposed to be bringing all these steel jobs back. Where are they?" he asked. "It's all smoke."

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, asked the same question last week at Wheatland Tube in Warren, where he implored Trump to amend an executive order to implement legislation he introduced with Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, to require American-made steel and products in all federally funded infrastructure and public works projects.

Sarah Boyarko, senior vice president of economic development for the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber, stresses diversity and support jobs for emerging industry and trades as the key to Valley job growth.

"We learned from our past experience with the steel industry about having most of our eggs in one basket, and it just doesn't look that way anymore," she said.

A $70 million Obama administration initiative established America Makes in Youngstown to attract investments and provide job training and ongoing development of 3-D printing in metals.

Efforts continue to attract jobs in health care, warehouse distribution and logistics, well-drilling support and high-tech manufacturing, and the area is already attempting to position itself to capture petrochemical and plastic support jobs related to the proposed PTT Global Chemical America $6 billion ethane cracker plant in Belmont County, she said.

The chamber also is attempting to attract more support service jobs for the aluminum industry. The Youngstown-Warren area produces the second-largest amount in the nation.

rludlow@dispatch.com

@RandyLudlow

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Trump Goes Rogue – New York Times

Posted: at 9:44 am

Mr. Trump has no patience for consultants and experts, especially the consultants and experts in the Republican Party who were proven wrong about his election. Insecurity is a management tool: keeping people guessing where they stand, wondering what might happen next, strengthens his position.

Mr. Trumps bombast, outsize personality, lack of restraint, flippancy and vulgarity could not be more out of place in Washington. His love of confrontation, his need always to define himself in relation to an enemy, then to brand and mock and belittle and undermine his opponent until nothing but Trump catchphrases remain, is the inverse of how Washingtonians believe politics should operate. The text that guides him is not a work of political thought. Its The Art of the Deal.

The difference in style between Mr. Trump and Washingtonians is obvious. D.C. is a conventional, boring place. Washingtonians follow procedure. Presidents, senators, congressmen and judges are all expected to play to type, to intone the obligatory phrases and clichs, to nod their heads at the appropriate occasions, and, above all, to not disrupt the established order. We watch Morning Joe during breakfast, attend a round table on the liberal international order at lunch, and grab dinner after our summer kickball game. No glitz, no glam, no excitement.

Washingtonians avoid conflict. When someone is disruptive on the Metro we shuffle our feet, look another way, turn in the opposite direction. Residents of the most literate city in America, we do not shout, we read silently. We lament partisanship, and we pine for a lost age when Democrats and Republicans went out for drinks after a long day on Capitol Hill. The extent of our unanimity is apparent in the Politico poll of bipartisan insiders, the vast majority of which, regardless of party or ideology, tend to agree on who is up, who is down, who will win, who will lose.

To say that Donald Trump challenges this consensus is an understatement. Not only is he politically incorrect, but his manner, habits and language run against everything Washington professionals in particular, people like Reince Priebus have been taught to believe is right and good.

This is what distinguishes him from recent outsider presidents such as Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan: Both had a long history of involvement in politics, and thought the Washington political class might play some role in reform. Mr. Trump does not.

In this respect, Mr. Trump has more in common with Jimmy Carter. Neither president had much governing experience before assuming office (Mr. Trump, of course, had none). Like Mr. Carter, Mr. Trump was carried to the White House on winds of change he did not fully understand. Members of their own parties viewed both men suspiciously, and both relied on their families. Neither president, nor their inner circles, meshed with the tastemakers of Washington. And each was reactive, hampered by events he did not control.

If President Trump wants to avoid Mr. Carters fate, he might start by recognizing that a war on every front is a war he is likely to lose, and that victory in war requires allies. Some even live in the swamp.

Matthew Continetti is editor in chief of The Washington Free Beacon.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on July 31, 2017, on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Goes Rogue.

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Letters: Keep politics out of football – South Bend Tribune

Posted: at 9:44 am

USA Todays Jarrett Bell must be Colin Kaepernicks uncle. Why else would he write so much about him, and with total disregard to business? Why would any NFL team sign Kaepernick as a quarterback? He continues to disrespect our great country by kneeling during the national anthem as his form of protest.

The NFL ratings were down last year and owners can ill afford losing more fans while harboring a pariah that can be divisive to a team. I go to movies to be entertained the same as I watch sports. If I do not like an actor, I will avoid his movies. If I do not like a player, I will not watch his team. If the league sanctions him or allows his action, I will avoid it totally. Keep politics in politics and entertainment as entertainment.

Incidentally, if I wear a political shirt to work or if I have a politically incorrect bumper sticker, my place of employment will ask me to remove them. That is their right to safeguard interests, so should the NFL be different? It is his place of employment. He may crusade, just do it off the field and off my television.

I applaud U.S. Rep. Jackie Walorski for her tireless work with her constituents and especially her work to help the senior citizen groups. She most definitely does not ever get the credit she so strongly deserves. Go, Jackie.

I find it interesting that our president is inquiring if he has the power to pardon members of his family and himself. He must know that one must be accused of a crime prior to being pardoned. Do you think hes getting nervous?

Am I to believe there are only six train crossings in South Bend that are not in compliance with federal requirements? And that the six are all in a row in one section of town? Stop the blowing of horns!

I agree wholeheartedly with Jim Reabe of Granger that The Tribune should print all baseball box scores, even if they are a day late. It already prints three teams late box scores, anyway. I always spent 10 or 15 minutes every day checking all the box scores, even though I am strictly a White Sox fan. Todays baseball page takes about two minutes to read anything of importance.

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Apple removes VPN apps in China as Beijing doubles down on censorship – CNBC

Posted: at 9:44 am

Beijing appeared to have doubled down on its crackdown of the internet in China, with news emerging that over the weekend, Apple pulled several virtual private network (VPN) services from the local version of the App Store.

Multiple VPN service providers, affected by the decision, slammed the move online, calling it a "dangerous precedent" set by Apple, which governments in other countries may follow.

VPN service providers received notification from Apple on July 29 that their apps were removed from the China App Store for including "content that is illegal" in the mainland, according to a screenshot posted by ExpressVPN.

VPNs let users in China bypass the country's famous "Great Firewall" that heavily restricts internet access to foreign sites. It also allows for privacy by hiding browsing activities from internet service providers.

Manjunath Bhat, a research director at Gartner, told CNBC that a VPN could circumvent government censorship.

"VPN creates a private tunnel between you (the user) and the service you want to consume," Bhat said, explaining that such a connection escapes government censorship, hiding a user's true origin. It also encrypts communications so that users can be confident others aren't reading their information when connected to public internet services.

Data on GreatFire.org, a site that monitors censorship activity in the mainland, showed 167 of the top 1000 domains are blocked in China. Those include YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google and Instagram among others.

Golden Frog said its VyprVPN service is still accessible in China, despite the app's removal from the App Store. ExpressVPN said users can stay connected to the open internet with the company's apps for Windows, Mac, Android and other platforms.

Apple has recently stepped up business efforts in China. Earlier this month, the company announced the appointment of Isabel Ge Mahe in a new role of vice president and managing director of Greater China to provide leadership and coordination across Apple's China-based team. Apple is also setting up its first data center in the mainland by partnering with a local company, in order to comply with tougher cybersecurity laws in China.

In a blog post, ExpressVPN said it was "disappointed" with Apple's decision. It "represents the most drastic measure the Chinese government has taken to block the use of VPNs to date, and we are troubled to see Apple aiding China's censorship efforts," the post read.

Golden Frog also said in a blog post that it was "extremely disappointed" in Apple's decision. It added, "If Apple views accessibility as a human right, we would hope Apple will likewise recognize internet access as a human right (the UN has even ruled it as such) and would choose human rights over profits."

The move was also criticized by others, including U.S. whistle-blower Edward Snowden in a tweet.

"Earlier this year China's (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) announced that all developers offering VPNs must obtain a license from the government," an Apple spokesperson told CNBC. "We have been required to remove some VPN apps in China that do not meet the new regulations. These apps remain available in all other markets where they do business."

Apple's decision to remove the apps comes at a time when businesses and individuals inside the mainland are finding it harder to connect to the so-called open internet outside China via VPN. A business executive told CNBC that connecting through VPN in cities like Hangzhou is becoming far more difficult, as compared to bigger places such as Beijing and Shanghai. People using an international SIM card or apps downloaded from App Stores outside China are still able to use VPNs on the mainland, according to the executive.

Some of the remaining VPN companies that have yet to face Beijing's crackdown could end up collaborating with the authorities, according to Martin Johnson (a pseudonym) from GreatFire.org. He told CNBC that some of those companies may hand over user data when requested and be allowed to operate without restrictions. "Those that protect their users security will be removed."

Johnson added, "Apple is now an integral part of China's censorship apparatus, helping the government expand it's control to a global scale."

To be sure, Apple's removal of those apps is not the first time Beijing's cyber regulators have gone after VPN providers. Recent reports said two popular providers GreenVPN and Haibei VPN stopped their services following a notice from the regulators. In fact, a number of VPN apps are still available on the local App Store as of Monday.

In January, the MIIT embarked on a 14-month campaign to "clean up" China's internet connections by March 31, 2018. In a notice, the ministry said that, while China's internet access service market is facing "a rare opportunity for development," there are also signs of "disorderly development" needing to be rectified.

Among other services, the move also affected VPNs: The Ministry said those connections cannot be created without the approval of the relevant telecommunications authorities.

State-owned news outlet Global Times reported that a spokesperson for MIIT said at a press conference last week that foreign companies or multinational corporations that need to use VPN for business purposes could rent special lines from telecom providers that legally provide such services.

Previously, the Ministry had denied a Bloomberg report that it ordered major telco operators China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom to block individuals' access to all VPNs by February 1, 2018.

Johnson said the authorities would "prefer to divide users such that businesses can continue to access the global internet, while ordinary users can only access the filtered internet."

"The Chinese government does not care at all about freedom of speech, but they do care very much about economic growth and China's economy continues to be very dependent on the outside world. Apple should use this leverage and stand up for the principle. Sadly they don't," he said.

CNBC's Barry Huang contributed to this report.

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Apple removes VPN apps in China as Beijing doubles down on censorship - CNBC

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Russian censorship law bans proxies and VPNs – Engadget – Engadget

Posted: at 9:44 am

Accordingly, the President has signed another law requiring that chat apps identify users through their phone numbers after January 1st, 2018. Some messaging clients already encourage you to attach an account to a phone number, but this makes it mandatory -- Facebook and others can't reject the idea if they're prefer to give you some kind of anonymity. The measure also demands that operators limit users' access if they're spreading illegal material.

The timing likely isn't coincidental. Russia is holding a presidential election in March, and banning technology like VPNs will make it harder for voters to see news that questions Putin's authority. Likewise, you may be less likely to organize a protest if you know that the police can trace anonymous chats back to you through your phone number. As with China's VPN crackdown, Russian officials are trying to control the online conversation at a crucial moment to make sure the powers that be go unchallenged.

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Russian censorship law bans proxies and VPNs - Engadget - Engadget

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In China, internet censors are accidentally helping revive an invented Martian language – Quartz

Posted: at 9:44 am

When Chinese social media users on microblog Weibo came across an almost illegible post earlier this month, many of them would have instantly recognized it as Martian, a coded language based on Chinese characters that was very popular many years ago.

It was a version of a post by a prominent retired sociologist and sex adviser, Li Yinhe, in which she called for the elimination of censorship in China. The original post went viral on Weibo, which is similar to Twitter and has some 340 million monthly active users. More than 60,000 users (link in Chinese) shared the postunsurprisingly, it was soon deleted.

Chinese internet users and media observers have noticed tightening online restrictions in recent months, as stricter internet rules for online journalism and a new cybersecurity law came into effect in June. This month, in the wake of the death of Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo in custody, pictures vanished from private conversations on messaging platform WeChat, and similar blocks were noticed on WhatsApp, the last product from Facebook available in the country, and hotels announced they were reconfiguring internet access to comply with Chinese law.

To navigate around restrictions, Chinese internet users have often engaged in linguistic acrobatics, from code words, slang, and coded images, to dipping into other languages. Recently, some have turned to Martian (huo xing wen), a linguistic invention from the early days of the Chinese-language internet that had fallen out of favor and now is resurfacing.

Martian dates back to at least 2004 but its origins are mysterious. Its use appears to have begun among young people in Taiwan for online chatting, and then it spread to the mainland. The characters randomly combine, split, and rebuild traditional Chinese characters, Japanese characters, pinyin, and sometimes English and kaomoji, a mixture of symbols that conveys an emotion (e.g. O(_)O: Happy). For example, the word (y g), which means one of or one thing is transformed into in Martian language. It replaces with the number in a circle and adds a small square to the left of the traditional version of .

A Weibo user who goes by the alias Tangnadeshuo, and is a Martian-language user, says its a marker for Chinese people born after 1990: We use it to make fun and sneer. Its a cultural symbol of the post-1990s [generation], he said.

Its not an easy language to masterthe same Chinese character can have more than one Martian counterpart.

Even so, Martian language fever swept across the strait as players chatted in popular online games like Audition Online (link in Chinese) and then flooded onto Tencent QQ, a widely-used instant messaging app at the time. Soon creative Chinese developed new Martian language input methods for keyboards. The language has online translation tools.

It was very popular back in my school days People used Martian language in their ID and profile descriptions on QQ, Lotus Ruan, a research fellow at University of Torontos Citizen Lab, which conducts research on censorship, told Quartz.

Though its hard to read, young Chinese adopted the language not only because it was new and cool but also because it was incomprehensible to parents and teachers. Parents in paternalistic China seldom regard teenagers messages and diaries as their private materials. But they werent familiar with the transformation rules of Martian (and some even worried that using Martian might affect other language skills). Gossiping in Martian prevented many moms (link in Chinese) from understanding childrens messages in QQ and prevented teachers from reading notes passed to classmates.

Although Martian language is not as popular now as it was five to 10 years ago, people will still resort to it from time to time to circumvent the censors, Victor H. Mair, a professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania, told Quartz.

Internet censorship works by filtering information for sensitive keywords. Research by Citizen Labs Jason Q. Ng shows that a Weibo post will first be reviewed by a machine and flagged if it contains certain keywords that are blacklisted. Human censors also review published posts. Using Martian can prolong the longevity of a post. If the Martian language [versions] of certain keywords are not on the blacklist already, it can be used to bypass censorship until a human reviewer censors it, she said.

It isnt only the Chinese whove resorted to using workarounds derived from Martian, such 7-1, 5-1 to refer to the June 4 Tiananmen Square protests (the math in the workaround refers to the date 6/4). In 2014 when the British Embassy in China published a 2013 human rights report, it posted (link in Chinese) the title in Martian: 2013 was written as 2013MZ. The new titl breaks down the word (rights) into its two parts , replaces with its synonym , and changes (democracy) into the initials of its pinyin MZ.

In the face of renewed efforts to ban the use of individual VPNs and crack down on online video streaming services, Chinese netizens have become increasingly concerned about their ability to communicate online. Earlier this month, a Weibo user posted in Martian language (link in Chinese and Martian language): From today on, I will post on Weibo in Martian language. Because if I post in Chinese I will be gagged. Guys you can have a try.

After the sexologist Li Yinhes anti-censorship July 9 post in Chinese was deleted in Chinait can still be read outside Chinait was reposted several times in Martian. Several of those posts got deleted too, most likely by a human censor, but one still survives.

Ruan notes that just because a Martian term gets blocked on one platform doesnt mean it wont be useful on another. Internet users should also note that censorship in China is not monolithic, she said. If a Martian-language keyword is censored on Weibo it does not necessarily mean that it is censored on other platforms such as WeChat.

Still, as Chinas sensitive-terms blacklist gets refined, Martian language may become less helpful. Also Chinese Martian users trying to evade censorship shouldnt ignore the possibility that, like them, people working in internet censorship groups might once have been Martian-speaking teens too.

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In China, internet censors are accidentally helping revive an invented Martian language - Quartz

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