Participants at the Cannes Film Festival will be given fliers warning “Proper Behavior Required” as part of an anti-sexual harassment campaign at the May 8-19 event.

The top women’s rights official for the French government announced Friday that she reached a deal with Cannes organizers for the campaign. It will include written warnings urging appropriate behavior and a hotline for victims and witnesses to report abuse.

Secretary of State for Women’s Affairs Marlene Schiappa noted that Cannes is one of the places where disgraced Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein allegedly raped and harassed women.

Schiappa’s office says the French government is urging other upcoming festivals and events to join the effort.

Film festivals have been soul-searching since the Weinstein scandal, rewriting codes of conduct and redoubling gender equality efforts.
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From: MeNeedIt

A prehistoric sloth hunt is frozen in time in footprints preserved in the New Mexico desert, according to new research.

It’s an extremely rare find that authors say could revolutionize our understanding of how ancient humans interacted with large animals.

It also may shed light on whether our ancestors drove the giant ground sloth to extinction.

Footprints in footprints

In the gypsum sediments of New Mexico’s White Sands National Monument, scientists found more than 100 prints dating back approximately 10,000 to 15,000 years.

The footprints seem to show humans stalking giant ground sloths, animals that could reach the size of an elephant. The creatures went extinct around the end of the last Ice Age, at roughly the same time as humans arrived on the scene.

In some of the prints, the humans walked in the sloth tracks, even though the stride of a giant sloth was longer than that of a human. One human appears to draw near a sloth on tip-toe.

Where the human tracks approach the sloth tracks, the animal suddenly changes direction. The researchers found what they call “flailing circles,” rounded heel prints and knuckle and claw prints where it looks like the animal reared up on its hind legs to defend itself with its front limbs.

Risky hunting

Hunting an animal the size of a giant sloth, with long arms and sharp claws, “would have come with huge amounts of risk,” said Bournemouth University geology professor Matthew Bennett, senior author of the research, published in the journal Science Advances. 

“If you were chasing a small rabbit or something, [there’s] little risk associated,” he added. “But going head to head with a sloth, the chances are that you might come off badly.”

With the newly discovered footprints, “we can begin to understand how they did it,” Bennett said.  “That gives us a better understanding whether we are guilty or not” of hunting the animals to extinction.

“It is very rare, if not unique, to see unequivocal evidence of human interactions with large vertebrates based on tracks,” said retired University of Colorado Denver paleontology professor Martin Lockley, who was not involved with the new research.

“There are only a handful of ancient human footprint sites in North America, making this one of the best,” he added.

The authors say there are likely more tracks to be found at the White Sands site.
…

From: MeNeedIt

A prehistoric sloth hunt is frozen in time in footprints preserved in the New Mexico desert, according to new research.

It’s an extremely rare find that authors say could revolutionize our understanding of how ancient humans interacted with large animals.

It also may shed light on whether our ancestors drove the giant ground sloth to extinction.

Footprints in footprints

In the gypsum sediments of New Mexico’s White Sands National Monument, scientists found more than 100 prints dating back approximately 10,000 to 15,000 years.

The footprints seem to show humans stalking giant ground sloths, animals that could reach the size of an elephant. The creatures went extinct around the end of the last Ice Age, at roughly the same time as humans arrived on the scene.

In some of the prints, the humans walked in the sloth tracks, even though the stride of a giant sloth was longer than that of a human. One human appears to draw near a sloth on tip-toe.

Where the human tracks approach the sloth tracks, the animal suddenly changes direction. The researchers found what they call “flailing circles,” rounded heel prints and knuckle and claw prints where it looks like the animal reared up on its hind legs to defend itself with its front limbs.

Risky hunting

Hunting an animal the size of a giant sloth, with long arms and sharp claws, “would have come with huge amounts of risk,” said Bournemouth University geology professor Matthew Bennett, senior author of the research, published in the journal Science Advances. 

“If you were chasing a small rabbit or something, [there’s] little risk associated,” he added. “But going head to head with a sloth, the chances are that you might come off badly.”

With the newly discovered footprints, “we can begin to understand how they did it,” Bennett said.  “That gives us a better understanding whether we are guilty or not” of hunting the animals to extinction.

“It is very rare, if not unique, to see unequivocal evidence of human interactions with large vertebrates based on tracks,” said retired University of Colorado Denver paleontology professor Martin Lockley, who was not involved with the new research.

“There are only a handful of ancient human footprint sites in North America, making this one of the best,” he added.

The authors say there are likely more tracks to be found at the White Sands site.
…

From: MeNeedIt

U.S. comedian Bill Cosby was convicted Thursday of drugging and molesting a one-time friend in 2004, which could send him to prison for the rest of his life.

The 80-year-old Cosby now faces up to 10 years in prison for each of three counts of aggravated assault after a Pennsylvania jury convicted him of an attack on Andrea Constand, now 45. At the time of the assault, she was an administrator for the women’s basketball team at Temple University in Philadelphia, Cosby’s alma mater.

Cosby, best known as the lovable dad on his 1980’s television hit The Cosby Show, was convicted by a jury of seven men and five women after a two-week trial, not quite a year after another jury was unable to reach a verdict on the charges and a mistrial was declared.

Cosby stared straight ahead when the jury announced its verdict after deliberating 14 hours over two days.

But moments later Cosby lashed out at District Attorney Kevin Steele, calling the prosecutor an “asshole” after he asked that Cosby be immediately jailed because he might flee. The judge, however, decided Cosby could remain free pending sentencing.

A Cosby defense attorney said the entertainer continues to believe he did nothing wrong. “The fight is not over,” the lawyer said.

WATCH: Cosby accusers react moments after guilty verdict

In the retrial, unlike in the first trial, prosecutors introduced testimony from five women who said that Cosby, married for 54 years, drugged and violated them.

One of them, through tears, asked him, “You remember, don’t you, Mr. Cosby?”

Constand told jurors that Cosby knocked her out with three blue pills he called “your friends.” She testified that Cosby penetrated her with his fingers as she lay immobilized, unable to resist or say no.

Cosby’s conviction came in one of the first celebrity sexual-assault cases of the MeToo era in the U.S., in which dozens of powerful men in the corporate world, the film industry, media circles and academia have been accused by women of years of repeated behind-the-scenes sexual misconduct.

Cosby’s first trial ended just before women leveled a flood of accusations against the rich and famous, including powerful Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, television anchors Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose, and Senator Al Franken. Many of the men apologized for their misconduct, some resigned from their jobs, and others were fired.

In all, more than 60 women have accused Cosby of sexual assaulting them over several decades.

Gloria Allred, a lawyer who represented one of the women who testified against Cosby, said, “We’re very, very happy and proud of the result. Women were finally believed. And we thank the jury for that.”
…

From: MeNeedIt

U.S. comedian Bill Cosby was convicted Thursday of drugging and molesting a one-time friend in 2004, which could send him to prison for the rest of his life.

The 80-year-old Cosby now faces up to 10 years in prison for each of three counts of aggravated assault after a Pennsylvania jury convicted him of an attack on Andrea Constand, now 45. At the time of the assault, she was an administrator for the women’s basketball team at Temple University in Philadelphia, Cosby’s alma mater.

Cosby, best known as the lovable dad on his 1980’s television hit The Cosby Show, was convicted by a jury of seven men and five women after a two-week trial, not quite a year after another jury was unable to reach a verdict on the charges and a mistrial was declared.

Cosby stared straight ahead when the jury announced its verdict after deliberating 14 hours over two days.

But moments later Cosby lashed out at District Attorney Kevin Steele, calling the prosecutor an “asshole” after he asked that Cosby be immediately jailed because he might flee. The judge, however, decided Cosby could remain free pending sentencing.

A Cosby defense attorney said the entertainer continues to believe he did nothing wrong. “The fight is not over,” the lawyer said.

WATCH: Cosby accusers react moments after guilty verdict

In the retrial, unlike in the first trial, prosecutors introduced testimony from five women who said that Cosby, married for 54 years, drugged and violated them.

One of them, through tears, asked him, “You remember, don’t you, Mr. Cosby?”

Constand told jurors that Cosby knocked her out with three blue pills he called “your friends.” She testified that Cosby penetrated her with his fingers as she lay immobilized, unable to resist or say no.

Cosby’s conviction came in one of the first celebrity sexual-assault cases of the MeToo era in the U.S., in which dozens of powerful men in the corporate world, the film industry, media circles and academia have been accused by women of years of repeated behind-the-scenes sexual misconduct.

Cosby’s first trial ended just before women leveled a flood of accusations against the rich and famous, including powerful Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, television anchors Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose, and Senator Al Franken. Many of the men apologized for their misconduct, some resigned from their jobs, and others were fired.

In all, more than 60 women have accused Cosby of sexual assaulting them over several decades.

Gloria Allred, a lawyer who represented one of the women who testified against Cosby, said, “We’re very, very happy and proud of the result. Women were finally believed. And we thank the jury for that.”
…

From: MeNeedIt

International scientists have identified 44 genetic variants that can increase the risk of developing major depression and found that all humans carry at least some of them.

The new findings could help explain why not everyone treated with antidepressants sees their condition improve, the scientists said, and point the way towards new medicines.

In the largest study of its kind, scientists also found that the genetic basis for depression is shared with other psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and that a number of the variants are linked to the targets of antidepressant drugs.

Major depression affects around 14 percent of people worldwide and is the biggest contributor to long-term disability in the general population. Yet only about half of patients respond well to existing treatments.

“The new genetic variants discovered have the potential to revitalize depression treatment by opening up avenues for the discovery of new and improved therapies,” said Gerome Breen of King’s College London, who worked on the research team.

The study was a global effort, with data covering more than 135,000 patients with major depression and around 344,000 controls as comparisons.

“This study has shed a bright light on the genetic basis of depression, but it is only the first step,” said Cathryn Lewis, another King’s College London expert who worked on the study.

“We need further research to uncover more of the genetic underpinnings, and to understand how genetics and environmental stressors work together to increase risk of depression.”

 
…

From: MeNeedIt

The freedom to wear whatever you want is taken for granted here in the U.S. But some people’s idea of fashion options is being viewed by others as condoning the repression of women.  In her first television interview, a U.S. designer of Muslim clothing explains her why she designed her line. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti has our story.
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From: MeNeedIt

The U.S. House approved a bill Wednesday that would reverse a federal judge’s order to spill more water from four Pacific Northwest dams to help migrating salmon reach the Pacific Ocean.

The bill, approved 225-189, would prevent any changes in dam operations until 2022. It was sponsored by Republican Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Dan Newhouse, both of Washington state. 

They say the four Snake River dams provide hydropower, flood control and other benefits while already allowing record salmon runs.

 “We are recognizing the role dams play in the Northwest and that dams and fish can co-exist,” McMorris Rodgers, the fourth-ranking House Republican, said after the vote.

Critics, however, blame the giant dams, built in the 1960s and 1970s, for killing wild salmon, an iconic species in the Northwest. Environmentalists have pushed to remove the dams to aid salmon recovery.

The bill now goes to the Senate.

“I urge my colleagues in the Senate to come forward and support our dams,” Newhouse said.

Once one of the greatest salmon fisheries in the world, the Columbia-Snake river system now has more than a dozen endangered salmon runs.

Democrats have argued that on-going studies of the dams, including whether they should be removed, must go forward.

The four dams — Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite — span the Snake River between the Washington cities of Pasco and Pullman. Together they produce about 4 percent of the region’s electricity.

Proposals to remove the dams have percolated in the Northwest for decades, and have devolved into a largely partisan issue with Democrats generally on the side of fish and Republicans for keeping the dams.

The government has spent some $15 billion over the decades to increase salmon runs, with mixed results.

In March 2017, U.S. District Judge Michael Simon of Portland, Oregon, ordered the dams to increase spillage beginning this spring. Federal agencies estimated that increasing spill from early April to mid-June would cost ratepayers $40 million in lost power revenues this year.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld Simon’s order.

The dams operate under a plan to protect salmon created by a collaboration of federal agencies, states and Indian tribes during the Obama administration.

Simon found the plan does not do enough. He ruled a new environmental study is needed and it must consider the option of removing the dams. He also wrote that wild salmon were in a “precarious” state.

McMorris Rodgers countered that the number of salmon returning from the ocean to spawn is high.

“We have been in court now for 20 years,” McMorris Rodgers said.

The House bill would delay changes to the 2014 plan for dam operations until 2022, she said.

“The experts … should be the ones deciding how to best manage this system,” Newhouse said. “Not a judge in Portland, Oregon.”

Northwest RiverPartners, which represents a group of river users, hailed the bill as good news for salmon.

Salmon “will continue to benefit from protections that are already working,” director Terry Flores said.

But environmental groups were dismayed by the bill.

“This legislation ensures that we continue on the same costly, ineffective path that has seen continued declines in wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest,” the environmental groups said in a joint press release.

The bill “would push salmon closer to extinction,” they contend.
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From: MeNeedIt

It’s a punchline that sends every 12-year-old boy into a fit of giggles. Now it has been proven to be true. Uranus stinks!

Scientists using a huge telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano found the seventh planet from the sun is surrounded by clouds made up of hydrogen sulfide, the gas that smells like rotten eggs and bad flatulence.

The study by scientists from the California Institute of Technology, University of Oxford and the University of Leicester was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

“If an unfortunate human were ever to descend through Uranus’ clouds they would be met with very unpleasant and odiferous conditions,” Patrick Irwin of the University of Oxford wrote.

Not that they would live long enough to sniff it. “Suffocation and exposure in the negative 200 degrees Celsius atmosphere made of mostly hydrogen, helium and methane would take its toll long before the smell,” Irwin wrote.

Despite previous observations by ground telescopes and the Voyager 2 spacecraft, scientists had failed to determine the composition of Uranus’ atmosphere.

The new data was obtained by using a spectrometer on the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii. It should help scientists better understand the formation of Uranus and other outer planets.
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From: MeNeedIt

The path to sharper vision has gone from glasses to contact lenses to laser correction … and now, to eyedrops. Faith Lapidus has details of the latest development.
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From: MeNeedIt

A customer from Beijing and one from Hong Kong walk into Starbucks. A chair blocks the path between the counter and their seats. Who of the two moves the chair?

It’s not a joke. It’s a psychology experiment, designed to test the long-lasting imprints of a culture’s agrarian past.

A new study in the journal Science Advances says that over thousands of years, rice farmers in southern China have evolved a culture of interdependence not found in northern, wheat-growing parts of the country. 

The authors say those influences persist even in China’s modern, relatively wealthy cities, among people who have never farmed. And they show up in how people behave in their daily lives — even as they navigate their local coffee shop.

Rice theory

The study found people were much less likely to move the Starbucks chair in southern China, where rice has been the staple crop for thousands of years, than those in the wheat-farming north.

According to what the researchers call the “rice theory of culture,” growing rice demands more cooperation than growing most other crops. Neighbors in rice-farming villages have to coordinate when they will flood and drain their paddies, for example.

And since rice requires about twice as much labor as wheat, rice-growing villagers often share the workload.

Over the centuries, people developed “folkways and habits of thoughts and behavior norms that, once they’re established, you’re not even thinking, ‘I’m doing this because I’m a rice farmer.’ If you’re thinking about it at all, you’re thinking about it as, ‘I’m doing this because I’m a good person. Because that’s how I was raised. Because that’s what they talk about in school,’ ” said psychologist Andrew Ryder at Concordia University in Montreal, who was not part of the research team.

Moving the chairs

To test their theory, University of Chicago psychologist Thomas Talhelm and colleagues went to Starbucks in five cities: Beijing and Shenyang in the wheat-growing north; and Guangzhou, Shanghai and Hong Kong in the rice-growing south.

They chose the Western coffee chain for its uniformity, introducing fewer variables in the environment that might complicate the results.

Researchers put two chairs a hip’s width apart in high-traffic aisles and watched how customers got past them.

In southern China, almost everyone squeezed through them. Just 6 percent moved a chair.

In the north, on the other hand, 16 percent were chair-movers.

“Previous research has found that when people in independent cultures like the United States encounter a problem, they’re more likely to want to change the environment to solve that problem,” Talhelm said. “But when people in interdependent cultures like Japan encounter problems, they’re more likely to try to fit [themselves] into the environment.”

Moving the chair rather than squeezing past it suggests a more independent mindset, he said.

The study also found northerners were more likely than southerners to sit alone: There were about 10 percent more singletons in northern Starbucks shops compared with southern ones during the week, and about 5 percent more on weekends.

Modernization

Talhelm said the findings go against the common theory that “as areas become more wealthy, more modernized [and] more urbanized, people become more individualistic or more Western.”

Even in Hong Kong, among the wealthiest, most modern and most urban cities in China, chair-movers were rare and few people sat alone.

“People’s farming legacies seem to be more important than GDP in explaining their behavior,” he added.

The researchers also checked population density, age, gender, climate and disease presence. Nothing explained the results as well as the rice versus wheat split.

The findings fit with a different type of study Talhelm and colleagues did that tested students on measures of thinking style. They found the same cultural differences between rice-growing regions and wheat-growing regions, even among students from rice-growing or wheat-growing regions of the same county.

The rice theory had been “floating around for quite a long time,” Ryder said, but “I think people hadn’t even necessarily expected that it would be all that testable.” 

Now, he noted, several studies from different approaches are converging on the same results. 

And, he added, it’s an important reminder that China is not a cultural monolith. No country is.

“Get away from ‘one country equals one culture,’ ” he said.

Next, Talhelm is testing the theory in India, another country with a rice/wheat split. 
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From: MeNeedIt

This year marks the 35th anniversary of the discovery of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Visiting Malawi this month, one of the pioneers of that research, the American scientist Jay Levy, said Malawi could be among the countries in Africa on track to eradicate the virus, though he said the battle is still far from over. For VOA, Lameck Masina has the story from Blantyre.
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From: MeNeedIt