Dear Readers,

From the brain to underground bacteria, the Middle East to interstellar space, I hope you enjoy this anthology of recent news!

On the website, I have posted new photographs of brumal beauty. I invite you all to submit your own to this month's photo of the month contest. Winners will be announced at the end of the month and the winning photograph will be archived and will become the home-page background for one month. For more information, visit this page on my website.

Enjoy!

Sincerely,

Abram Leyzorek

DISCLAIMER:

The opinions, sentiments, and/or intentions presented in the report below do not have any relation to the opinions, sentiments, and/or intentions of Abram Leyzorek.

• Yeni Safak: Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has banned the sale of yellow safety vests to all save police-approved companies as the anniversary of the January 25, 2011, overthrow of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak approaches, in an attempt to prevent protests similar to the ones ongoing in France to protest French president Emmanuel Macron’s economic policies.

Date: December 11, 2018.

From: https://www.yenisafak.com/en/world/sisi-bans-sales-of-yellow-vests-as-egyptian-revolution-anniversary-approaches-3468908?utm_source=samizdat&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=free.

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-46522605.

• The Independent: At the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union on December 11, 2018, scientists presented results of a so called “deep life” study which discovered an enormous ecosystem of bacteria and archaea with an estimated biomass of 50 trillion pounds, accounting for 70% of all bacteria and archaea, extending at least three miles below Earth’s surface with genetic diversity comparable to that of surface dwelling organisms.

Date: December 11, 2018.

​​​​​​​From: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/deep-life-microbes-underground-bacteria-earth-surface-carbon-observatory-science-study-a8677521.html.

​​​​​​​Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46502570.

• Live Science: Four papers recently published in the internet archive bioRxiv detail a nearly complete skeleton of a hominin in the Australopithecus genus that lived approximately 7 million years ago in Africa that was initially discovered approximately twenty years ago in the Sterkfontein caves and has finally been fully excavated and cleaned, although researchers are still unsure what species it belongs to, possibly an entirely new one; it was nicknamed “Little Foot” for its small feet.

​​​​​​​Date: December 12, 2018.

From: https://www.livescience.com/50336-little-foot-human-ancestor-dated.html.

Read more: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/little-foot-skeleton-analysis-reignites-debate-over-hominid-species.

• Earther: A new study published December 10, 2018, in the journal Nature Climate Change analyzed the response of the great barrier reef to heat waves in 2016 and 2017 which killed half of the entire, 1,400 mile long reef, finding that the reef was more resilient to the 2017 heat wave than to the one in 2016, because the 2016 heat wave killed off the most sensitive corals leaving the more heat resistant species; a recent climate report by the United Nations predicted that just 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming could see the destruction of between seventy and ninety percent of the world’s coral reefs did not take into account the changing structure of the reefs that make them more heat resistant.

Date: December 10, 2018.

From: https://earther.gizmodo.com/the-great-barrier-reef-is-becoming-more-heat-resistant-1830936079.

Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0351-2.

• The New York Times: On December 9, 2018, early results from the Adolescent Cognitive Brain Development (A.B.C.D) Study, which is a 300 million dollar National Institute of Health backed study tracking concussions, consumption of drugs and alcohol, and amount of time spent looking at electronic displays or “screen time” for 11,800 children through adolescence to learn how these factors affect brain development, were shown on the CBS show “60 Minutes,” which confirmed that screen time does change the structure of adolescent brains, but that is no surprise as so does every other activity, but there are no conclusive results about what effects these changes have on metrics like attention, problem solving proficiency, mood, etc.

Date: December 10, 2018.

From: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/health/screen-time-kids-psychology.html.

Read more: https://abcdstudy.org/.

• The Hill: The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill 206-203 that included at the bottom an article to stymie all resolutions seeking to invoke the War Powers Act of 1973 to do anything regarding Yemen for the remainder of the year; this comes as the Senate was preparing to do just that and force the withdrawal of all U.S. troops currently in Yemen that are not engaged with al-Qaeda.

Date: December 12, 2018.

From: https://thehill.com/policy/defense/421044-house-gop-blocks-lawmakers-from-forcing-yemen-war-votes-for-rest-of-year.

Read more: https://rules.house.gov/sites/republicans.rules.house.gov/files/Rule_CRHR2.pdf.

• Science: A paper published December 12, 2018 in the journal Science Translational Medicine proposes a new method of diagnosing Ebola from other diseases with similar symptoms such as malaria and Lassa virus which yields results in only half an hour from a small blood sample and is inexpensive, using a technique called surface enhanced Raman-scattering (SERS).

Date: December 12, 2018.

From: http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/10/471/eaat0944.

Read more: https://www.semrock.com/surface-enhanced-raman-scattering-sers.aspx.

• Science: Researchers will report findings that tornados may form from the ground up, rather than high in sky as previously thought, at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington D.C. on December 14, 2018; the researchers noticed that radar recorded the funnel near the ground several minutes before fast winds were recorded 250 meters above ground.

Date: December 13, 2018.

From: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/surprise-tornadoes-form-ground.

Read more: https://www.livescience.com/64309-weird-way-tornadoes-form.html.

• Science: On December 13, 2018, at a meeting of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) in NIH headquarters, Bethesda, Maryland,, NIH director Francis Collins defended the use of human fetal tissue in research by saying that it has many scientific benefits and can be done ethically, but also said that NIH will spend twenty million dollars on alternatives; meanwhile, the Department of Health and Human Resources is conducting a review of intramural acquisitions of fetal tissue and an NIH contract with the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) for fetal tissue dedicated to research developing “humanized mice,” and several other research projects involving federally funded fetal tissue have been cancelled or suspended; on the same day that Collins gave his defense of fetal tissue, scientists presented opposing views on the necessity of fetal tissue for research at a House of Representatives committee, two scientists saying that viable alternatives to fetal tissue exist, while another said that it is “essential.”

Date: December 13, 2018.

From: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/nih-chief-defends-use-human-fetal-tissue-opponents-decry-it-congress.

Read more: https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2018/09/24/statement-from-the-department-of-health-and-human-services.html.

• Science: A three-year-old, fifty million dollar NIH funded consortium called PsychENCODE is analyzing various kinds of genomic data from over 2,000 human brains to pinpoint which genes are related with certain psychiatric diseases, such as autism, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder; results were published in three separate papers in the sister journals Science, Science Translational Medicine, and Science Advances.

Date: December 13, 2018.

From: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/genomic-data-2000-human-brains-could-reveal-roots-schizophrenia-autism-and-other .

Read more: https://www.sciencemag.org/collections/psychencode.

• CNN: On December 10, 2018, NASA announced that its Voyager 2 probe, launched over four decades ago, has now passed outside of our solar system and into interstellar space; it is currently eleven billion miles from Earth.

Date: December 11, 2018.

From: https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/10/us/nasa-voyager-2-update.

Read more: https://www.space.com/42723-voyager-2-interstellar-parker-solar-probe-sun-flyby-coincidence.html.

• Science: Published December 4, 2018, in the journal Physical Review Letters were results from an impromptu study using two satellites equipped with atomic clocks that in 2014 were accidentally launched into elliptical orbits instead of circular ones causing various in orbital distances of up to 8,500 kilometers, meaning that, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity which states that times progresses more slowly close massive bodies like Earth than elsewhere, time for the satellites should have varied by one part in ten billion per orbit, which was confirmed to five-fold greater precision than previous measurements of this time dilation phenomenon.

Date: December 7, 2018.

From: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/after-botched-launch-orbiting-atomic-clocks-confirm-einsteins-theory-relativity.

Read more: https://physics.aps.org/synopsis-for/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.231102.

• Aljazeera: On December 17, 2018, a meeting was held in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE), between American officials and a Taliban representative, Zabihullah Mujahid, in the presence of representatives from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan to negotiate a means of ending the current, seventeen-year-old war in Afghanistan; the meeting followed a three-day dialogue between the Taliban and a Special Representative from the United States (US), Zalmay Khalilzad, in Qatar in November and a meeting on December 16, 2018, between Afghan, UAE, Pakistani, Taliban, and American representatives; Khalilzad wants some agreement to made before the Afghanistan elections on April 20, 2019.

Date: December 17, 2018.

From: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/taliban-meet-officials-uae-monday-181217063219519.html.

Read more: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2018/11/taliban-hold-talks-envoy-qatar-181118085252177.html.

• Breitbart: Teachers in Brighton and Hove, England, it was decided at a meeting of the Brighton and Hove city council on December 3, 2018, must teach children as young as eight years old that all people can menstruate, regardless of their gender; in October the City Council instated guidelines saying that if parents of “gender-questioning” students are not willing to consider their wishes to change gender, then school officials should contact social services.

Date: December 16, 2018.

From: https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2018/12/16/schools-eight-year-olds-boys-periods/?utm_source=samizdat&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=free.

Read more: https://phantom.brighton-hove.gov.uk/Published/C00000968/M00009226/AI00070290/$20181122094318_018166_0061256_Counteringperiodpovertyreport.docxA.ps.pdf.