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In their Hacking for Defense class, students at Stanford University in California don’t hit the books or work on problem sets in the library. They go out into the field, tackling real world problems given to them by the Department of Defense and the U.S. military. The unusual 10-week course is an eye opener for the students who learn up close the challenges facing national security. VOA’s Michelle Quinn checked it out.
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From: MeNeedIt
There’s a glimmer of hope for the American bee population. But, according to a new study, the outlook for this critical insect is mostly grim. Researchers report a slowing of the rate of decline in the bee population over the past year, dropping to its lowest since 2011-2012.
But, both commercial and small-scale beekeepers lost 33 percent of their honey bee colonies between April 2016 and April 2017.
“While it is encouraging that losses are lower than in the past, I would stop short of calling this ‘good’ news,” said Dennis van Engelsdorp, an assistant professor of entomology at the University of Maryland and project director for the Bee Informed Partnership, in a summary of the study.
“Colony loss of more than 30 percent over the entire year is high,” he added. “It’s hard to imagine any other agricultural sector being able to stay in business with such consistently high losses.”
Researchers point to many causes for the drop in bee populations, with parasites, particularly the varroa mite, and other diseases as the main culprits. Pesticides are also a factor, according to the study, particularly among commercial beekeepers. The researchers describes like a kind of synergy among all the causes that amount to worsening each individual problem.
“This is a complex problem,” said Kelly Kulhanek, a graduate student in the UMD Department of Entomology who helped with the survey. “Lower losses are a great start, but it’s important to remember that 33 percent is still much higher than beekeepers deem acceptable. There is still much work to do.”
The annual survey, which has been conducted for 11 years, aims to find why bee colonies are suffering, a problem that can have big consequences for human beings, given that honey bees pollinate $15 billion worth of U.S. agriculture annually. Almonds, researchers say are a perfect example: their growth is entirely dependent on bees for pollination.
“Bees are good indicators of the health of the landscape as a whole,” said Nathalie Steinhauer, a graduate student in the UMD Department of Entomology who leads the data collection efforts for the annual survey. “Honey bees are strongly affected by the quality of their environment, including flower diversity, contaminants and pests….Honey bee health is a community matter.”
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From: MeNeedIt
An Indian film that addresses social themes and stars actor Aamir Kahn has captivated audiences in China. The film is thriving, despite the fact that India was the only major country to boycott Beijing’s Belt and Road Forum earlier this month.
But the irony and sharp contrast of those two developments was largely lost on the millions of Chinese viewers who have helped keep the Hindi language film land in the top slot, despite the fact that it has subtitles and no voice-over dubbing.
Analysts, film critics, and social media pundits are still debating what drove hordes of Chinese viewers to this movie, which is not your standard Bollywood mix of songs, dance and bloodletting violence.
Breaking new ground
According to industry sources, this is the first time a movie that was not made in Chinese or English has emerged as the top seller in the world’s second-largest movie market. China imports very few foreign films a year, and non-Hollywood movies make up an even smaller portion of that share.
A wide range of reasons are being forwarded as explanations for the success of Dangal, which has grossed $124 million since its May 5 release in 9,000 theaters across China. On Friday, three weeks after its release, the movie finally slipped from the first to the second highest selling slot. The runner-up, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy 2, has brought in $98 million in China over the same period.
Perhaps an important reason for Dangal’s success is the celebrity status that Aamir Khan, the star and driving force behind the movie, has enjoyed in China for several years with his previous movies, PK and 3 Idiots, which did very well with Chinese movie-goers. Even before Dangal arrived on the Chinese scene, Amir had a bigger following on his Sina Weibo social media account than Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His following now stands at 600,000 fans compared to Modi’s 165,000.
Deft marketing including personal canvassing by Khan, who spent a week traveling across Chinese cities, also played a part.
But critics and social media pundits in China see an altogether different reason. Thousands of reviews, articles and social media posts have focused on the peculiar connection between patriarchal society in China and India.
Patriarchy vs feminism
The film revolves around a wrestler father who forces his reluctant daughters to take up the sport.
His authoritarian and strict parenting style is something audiences in China can easily relate to, said Edward Chan, a sociology professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
“I think the father role portrayed by the movie in India is quite similar to the culture, especially the traditional culture in China,” Chan said.
Tansen Sen, professor of history and Asian studies at the City University of New York said, “It has a story that resonates with the Chinese, both with regard to parent-child relationship as well as the fascination with sports.”
And while some feminists see the father’s behavior as problematic, they also see much to applaud in the story. For those that do, the movie is seen as empowering women.
Two feminist groups, Jianjiao Buluo (Screaming Pepper Tribe) and Cheng Yusan (Orange Umbrella) treated a group of 120 people to a free screening of the film in Guangzhou.
Lu, a 20-something entertainment industry employee, says the movie piqued her curiosity towards India, a country with a population as large as China. Lu says that many young Chinese like her want to follow their own dreams and have the support of their parents.
“I feel the father’s support for his children was especially moving and that parent’s strictness toward their children is for their own good,” Lu says.
The party-backed tabloid, the Global Times, slammed the movie for celebrating the values of a domineering father, who pushes his two reluctant daughters into wresting as a career choice. The paper said the film has sparked off a major controversy over different aspects of feminism in China, and whether modern day girls should completely reject the values of patriarchal society.
But the paper also quoted viewers who had a different viewpoint. “It made me think of my father,” the Times quoted one person as saying. “His reticent love for us. I wanted to call him, say nothing, just cry, and cry like a river to release myself from my deep regrets.”
Cao, a fan who says he has been watching Aamir Kahn’s movies for years said there are not enough films like Dangal in the Chinese market. He said he admires Kahn for his dedication to his profession (how he lost and gained weight) and the effort he put into addressing a social cause through the film.
“Just like people are saying online, he is influencing all of India as a country and all of its people,” Cao says “And I think that’s really great!”
Next Bollywood blockbuster?
Another Hindi movie, Tubelight, is waiting to access the Chinese market. It features Chinese actress and singer Zhu Zhu, and the story revolves around the 1962 India-China war. Analysts are asking if Beijing will allow its entry given its reluctance to discuss this war publicly.
“The two governments should just let the people know each other through free-flowing exchanges and interactions. Sometimes this will result in negative perceptions and misunderstandings, but it will eventually lead to a more nuanced and balanced views of each other,” Sen added.
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From: MeNeedIt
Two truck owners have filed a class-action lawsuit against General Motors, alleging the company rigged diesel pickups to cheat government emissions tests.
The suit was filed Thursday in federal court in Detroit, home of the country’s largest car builder.
GM is accused of installing three devices on hundreds of thousands of trucks, allowing them to spew less pollution in tests than they would on the road, under real-life driving conditions.
Plaintiffs Andrei Fenner of Mountain View, California, and Joshua Herman of Sulphur, Louisiana, said they wouldn’t have purchased, or wouldn’t have paid as much for, their vehicles — a 2011 GMC Sierra and a 2016 Chevrolet Silverado, respectively — had they been aware of the alleged rigging.
The lawsuit also names the German-based Bosch company for allegedly working with GM to develop the devices.
GM called the allegations “baseless,” while Bosch refused to comment on an outstanding legal matter.
The price of GM shares fell about 2 percent Thursday on the news.
GM is the latest automobile giant charged with trying to fix emissions tests. The U.S. Justice Department sued Fiat Chrysler this week, claiming it used illegal software to fake emission test results on its diesel vehicles, and Germany’s Volkswagen paid billions of dollars after admitting it had cheated on government emissions tests.
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From: MeNeedIt
Scientists looking at the first pictures of the planet Jupiter sent by the NASA probe Juno were shocked at what they saw: monster cyclones, hundreds of kilometers wide, tearing across the planet’s north and south poles.
The scientists said the poles are nothing like the planet’s familiar placid and colorful equatorial region.
“That’s the Jupiter we’ve all known and grown to love,” Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute, an applied research and development organization in San Antonio, Texas, said in an article released Thursday in the journal Science. “And when you look from the pole, it looks totally different. … I don’t think anybody would have guessed this is Jupiter.”
Bolton called the findings “Earth-shattering. Or, should I say, Jupiter-shattering.”
Along with the fierce storms, the researchers saw a huge river of ammonia gas extending from Jupiter’s deep atmosphere down to its interior. They said they thought the ammonia might be part of what’s causing the huge storms.
NASA launched Juno in 2011, and it reached Jupiter’s orbit last year. The scientists said Juno’s next fly-by would come in July, when it will take pictures of the planet’s trademark Great Red Spot — a huge, hurricane-like storm that experts say has been raging for hundreds of years.
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From: MeNeedIt
National parks traveler Mikah Meyer had plenty of fun among giant powdery dunes recently, as he celebrated a milestone. He’s exactly one-third of the way through his 3-year journey to visit all 417 sites within the U.S. National Park Service. The young adventurer shared highlights of his 139th site visit with VOA’s Julie Taboh.
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From: MeNeedIt
California-based company Rocket Lab said Thursday it had launched a test rocket into space from its New Zealand launch pad, although the rocket didn’t reach orbit as hoped.
The company said its Electron rocket lifted off at 4:20 p.m. Thursday and reached space three minutes later.
“It has been an incredible day and I’m immensely proud of our talented team,” company founder Peter Beck said in a statement.
Beck, a New Zealander, said the early stages of the mission went well.
“We didn’t quite reach orbit and we’ll be investigating why, however reaching space in our first test puts us in an incredibly strong position,” he said.
More tests approved
Rocket Lab was given official approval last week to conduct three test launches from the remote Mahia Peninsula on the North Island. The company hopes to begin commercial launches later this year and eventually launch about one rocket every week.
The company said it will target getting to orbit on the second test and will look to carry the maximum payload.
New Zealand has never had a space program but officials hope regular launches could change perceptions of the South Pacific nation and generate hundreds of millions of dollars each year in revenue.
Rocket Lab plans to keep costs low by using lightweight, disposable rockets with 3D-printed engines. It sees an emerging market in delivering lots of small devices into low Earth orbit. The satellites would be used for everything from monitoring crops to providing internet service.
New space club member
Politicians are rushing through new space laws and the government has set up a boutique space agency, which employs 10 people.
“So far, it’s only superpowers that have gone into space,” Simon Bridges, New Zealand’s economic development minister, told The Associated Press last week. “For us to do it, and be in the first couple of handfuls of countries in the world, is pretty impressive.”
Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket is unusual in many respects. It carries only a small payload of about 150 kilograms (331 pounds). It’s made from carbon fiber and uses an electric engine. Rocket Lab says each launch will cost just $5 million, a tiny fraction of a typical rocket launch.
It’s a different plan than some other space companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which uses larger rockets to carry bigger payloads.
Rocket Lab was founded by Beck and is privately held. The company has received about $150 million in venture capital funding.
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From: MeNeedIt
A new study suggests that probiotics, so-called “good” bacteria that aid in digestion, may also ease symptoms of depression. The finding adds to a growing body of evidence that what happens in the gut affects the brain.
Some 300 to 500 bacterial species inhabit the human gut, many aiding in digestion and the proper functioning of the gastrointestinal tract.
Experts say some of these bacteria produce proteins that communicate with the brain.
Your gut, your mood
The gut flora not only play a role in helping to orchestrate the neural responses that regulate digestion, scientists say, but evidence is emerging that gut bacteria can also affect a person’s mood.
Premysl Bercik, a gastroenterologist at Ontario Canada’s McMaster University, researches what he calls the microbiota-gut-brain axis, or the communication between the gut and the brain through the millions of bacteria that live in the gastrointestinal tract.
Bercik said between 40 and 90 percent of people with irritable bowel syndrome, a distressing intestinal disorder, also battle symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Research led by Bercik suggests the gut bacteria themselves may have an effect on mood.
In Bercik’s pilot study of 44 patients with irritable bowel syndrome and mild to moderate anxiety or depression, half of the patients received a daily probiotic — a beneficial gut bacterium called Bifidobacterium longum — and the other half were given a placebo. The participants were followed for 10 weeks.
“What we found was that the patients that were treated with this probiotic bacterium improved their gut symptoms but, also surprisingly, decreased their depression scores,” Bercik said. “That means their mood improved. And this was associated also with changes in the brain imaging.”
Depression, anxiety improve
At the beginning of the study, the patients’ levels of depression and anxiety were scored. The patients also underwent high-tech brain imaging to see which structures were activated in response to happy and sad images.
At six weeks, 64 percent of patients taking the probiotic had a decrease in their depression scores compared to 32 percent of the placebo patients.
A second round of imaging showed changes in multiple brain areas involved with mood control in the patients who felt better.
While the participants’ gut symptoms improved, Bercik said it was not to a statistically significant degree, suggesting the probiotic may have improved their anxiety and depression independent of symptom relief.
Results of the study were published in the journal Gastroenterology.
More study needed
Bercik says larger studies are needed to confirm the findings.
“However, I think that it shows a great promise,” he said. “I mean new treatments, not only for patients with functional bowel disorders like irritable bowel syndrome, but it may also offer some new treatments for patients with primary psychiatric disorders like depression or anxiety.”
B. longum was developed by Nestle, a Swiss food and drink company, which funded the study. It is not yet commercially available.
However, Bercik says it’s possible other probiotics found in the gut have the potential to improve mood. And he doesn’t stop there. Bercik says he envisions a form of personalized medicine using genome sequencing techniques to create microbiome profiles of individuals, which can be tweaked with oral probiotics for maximum health.
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From: MeNeedIt
Just as President Xi Jinping was launching the One Belt, One Road initiative to expand China’s geo-economic footprint, a former high-level U.S. trade official raised concerns that Beijing has been reversing its policies of reform and keeping the market to itself.
Charlene Barshefsky, who worked as the U.S. Trade Representative under President Bill Clinton and witnessed China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, told a group of corporate executives gathered in Tokyo that “China has stopped the process of economic reform and opening, and instead has put in place a spate of measures that are zero-sum, highly mercantilist, and discriminate against U.S. and foreign companies.”
Sinicizing the Chinese economy
Barshefsky accuses Beijing of “Sinicizing” the Chinese economy, all the while taking advantage of other countries’ open markets.
The former U.S. trade representative’s remarks echo sentiments revealed in the latest Business Climate Survey put out by the American Chamber of Commerce in China, which represents nearly 1,000 companies doing business there.
Respondents to the survey said it seems “China has gone backwards … more regulations, taxes and local company market share protectionism.” Others noted that “despite a long track record of employing and training locals and investing in the local community, when the economy gets tough, the foreign firm is always seen as somehow not friendly to China.”
Golden days over?
William Zarit, head of AmCham China, tells VOA that “25 percent of our companies are either reducing investment or not increasing investment — that’s one out of four companies. Some companies are looking elsewhere in Asia, and some companies are looking back to North America.”
In another sign of how China is losing its luster in the eyes of foreign investors, the latest Business Climate Survey shows the percentage of companies that consider China a high priority investment destination has dropped below 60 percent. Zarit points out that nearly 60 percent “would seem to be good except that three or four years earlier, it was over 80 percent.”
Watch: William Zarit, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China
Dangers despite continued presence
“Every company has to be in China, to a certain extent,” says Georgetown University’s Ted Moran, professor of business and economics.
While a majority of companies may choose to maintain a presence, their decisions to expand less rapidly “are also a danger,” Moran says.
“They may be there, but they’re not going to have as strong value-added, they’re not going to expand as rapidly, they’re not going to introduce their best technology,” which in turn will confine China to a work bench economy, instead of one where companies feel comfortable bringing in operations with higher technology components.
Watch: Ted Moran, Georgetown professor of business and economics
‘A lot of things we have to consider’
Barshefsky, the former trade official, calls on President Donald Trump to either renegotiate the trade relationship with China or to revive the Trans-Pacific Partnership led by the United States.
A Chinese trade official, speaking at the same forum, defended Beijing’s policies, saying the reform, although having slowed down, is still going on, and “there are a lot of things we have to consider.” The official, Long Yongtu, who now presides over the Boao Forum for Asia, also warned foreign companies to buckle up for stiff competition coming from Chinese domestic companies.
Resurgence of the state in the Chinese economy
Ever since China started accumulating more and more capital and demonstrating less and less hesitancy to use that capital to advance its interests abroad, many have voiced the concern that as Beijing’s investment spreads, so will its politics. Lately, concern over expansion of the state sector in the Chinese economy as well as the government-guided overseas investment strategy and potential consequences have grown louder.
In a report issued earlier this year by the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics, Nicholas Lardy, a senior fellow, pointed to official figures released by the People’s Bank of China that corporate loans issued to government-backed firms rose from 35 percent in 2013 to 60 percent in 2014, the latest year official figures were available.
While one negative of pumping money into state-owned enterprises is that less capital and less market share would be available to smaller, private firms, other concerns have to do with both the financial viability of this approach and how it could impact not only China but the United States and other countries.
In a sign of both the ballooning footprint of Chinese state-owned companies in the world economy as well as the uncertainties of their fates, three Chinese state-owned companies made Fortune Magazine’s Global 500 list in 2016, but two of the three, China National Petroleum Corporation and Sinopec (a producer of chemical products) saw significant reductions in revenue in 2016 (more than 30 percent from the previous year), and a loss of profit of 56.7 percent and 30.6 percent, respectively.
Rory MacFarquhar, a former White House economics and finance official, warns that if the Chinese government continues to prop up state firms that he says are “more indebted, less profitable and less productive than private firms,” and use them to channel China’s plans and objectives abroad, it could have serious spillovers for other countries, including the United States, because the presence of these companies could potentially “distort the competitive playing field, and their outward investment may raise national security concerns.”
One Belt, One Road
President Xi promised that China would add billions of dollars’ worth of investment to the One Belt, One Road initiative. Asked if it is true that American companies are giving the initiative the “cold shoulder,” as some media reports have suggested, Zarit, the president of AmCham China, replied: “A number of AmCham China members are closely following OBOR developments to gauge progress and substantive opportunities for their respective companies, although some members still view the project with a bit of skepticism.
“Despite OBOR still being a fledgling initiative, the Chinese have rolled out this Xi Jinping presidential priority through an oversized summit with undersized substance. Having said that, American companies are interested in OBOR if it makes business sense.”
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From: MeNeedIt
According to a recent analysis, in about 15 years, depending on the country, up to 38 percent of jobs performed by humans may be turned over to robots. Experts who gathered last week at a robotic expo in Paris say we have to prepare for the new reality if we want to avoid disruptive social changes. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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From: MeNeedIt