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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.

Abram Leyzorek

1/17/19

Current Events

• Science: In a paper published on the pre-print online server bioRxiv on December 28, 2018, scientists at InSilico Medicine, a startup company focusing on artificial intelligence, detailed their findings that, using an algorithm that they trained by analyzing samples of gut bacteria from ninety percent of the people from a healthy group of 1,165 people equally distributed among age groups 20-39, 40-59, and 60-90 and comparing them to the ages of the sampled individuals, they could predict the ages of the remaining ten percent within four years based on samples of their gut bacteria.

Date: January 11, 2019.

From: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/bacteria-your-gut-may-reveal-your-true-age.

Read more: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/12/28/507780.

• Mashable: According to a study published January 9, 2019, in the journal Science, astrophysicists have calculated the spin velocity of a black hole that belched a burst of X-rays after swallowing a star millions of years ago as fifty percent of the speed of light.

Date: January 9, 2019.

From: https://mashable.com/article/black-hole-spin-eruption-flare/#3hzeLHIdqmqT.

Read more: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2019/01/08/science.aar7480.

• Space.com: After 212.75 hours, a Chinese experiment to compare the growth of plants on the moon vs. on Earth ended on January 13, 2019, when all samples, including successfully germinated cotton seedlings, seeds of rapeseed, potato, and Arabidpsis plants as well as fruit fly eggs and yeast, froze to death during the lunar night inside their unheated capsule left in the Von Kármán crater on the far-side of the moon by China’s Chang’e 4 lunar lander.

Date: January 16, 2019.

From: https://www.space.com/43025-china-moon-mission-plants-dead.html.

Read more: https://gbtimes.com/lunar-nighttime-brings-end-to-change-4-biosphere-experiment-and-cotton-sprouts.

• BGR: The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) reported on January 15, 2019, that it plans to construct a sixty-two mile long, ten billion dollar particle collider called the Future Circular Collider to gather more statistics on subatomic particles than the much smaller Large Hadron Collider currently operated by CERN on the French-Swiss border; Japan and China are also planning to build particle colliders, according to ScienceAlert.

Date: January 16, 2019.

From: https://bgr.com/2019/01/16/cern-new-collider-plans-revealed-atom-smasher/.

Read more: https://www.sciencealert.com/cern-has-just-described-its-next-gen-particle-smasher-and-it-s-a-monster.

• NPR: A study published on January 15, 2019, in the journal Neurology and led by Dr. Aron Buchman of the Rush University, Chicago, tracked 454 people aged seventy or older, testing their memory, cognition, and, in their final years, physical activity; the study found that those who had more physical activity performed better on the cognitive tests, even those who regularly performed light, housework-related tasks, and among some of the participants who showed signs of Alzheimer’s disease, thirty percent of them did not show symptoms.

Date: January 16, 2019.

From: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/01/16/684589375/daily-movement-even-household-chores-may-boost-brain-health-in-elderly.

Read more: http://n.neurology.org/content/early/2019/01/16/WNL.0000000000006954.

• Interesting Engineering: Troy Hunt, an expert in digital security, has discovered a file containing 770 million email addresses and 22 million passwords on a well-trafficked cloud platform for hackers under the file heading “Collection #1” that were gathered from thousands of sources; internet users can go to Hunt’s website Have I been Pwned to see if their data was leaked in the breach.

Date: January 18, 2019.

From: https://interestingengineering.com/770-million-email-addresses-22-million-passwords-found-on-popular-hacking-site.

Read more: https://www.troyhunt.com/the-773-million-record-collection-1-data-reach/.

• The New York Times: On January 21, 2019, certain Venezuelan National Guard members were detained for plotting to overthrow current Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and swearing allegiance to an opposition party called the National Assembly which has been backed by the United States government and which maintains that Nicolas Maduro’s election was rigged and that he should be replaced by the winning candidate of a fair election; the National Assembly has called for protests to be held on January 23, 2019.

Date: January 21, 2019.

From: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/world/americas/venezuela-maduro-national-guard.html.

Read more: https://www.rt.com/news/449340-venezuela-soldiers-arrested-uprising/.

• Air Force Times: On January 19, 2018, a National Reconnaissance Official Satellite, a type of spy satellite from the National Reconnaissance Office, for the United States was launched from Vandenburg Air Force Base, California, aboard a Delta 4 Heavy rocket.

Date: January 20, 2019.

From: https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2019/01/20/us-spy-satellite-launched-into-orbit-from-vandenberg-air-force-base/.

Read more: http://www.nro.gov/About-the-NRO/.

• WKRN.COM: Princeton Pharmaceuticals, Inc., is recalling the high blood pressure medications Irbesartan and Irbesartan HCTZ Tablets because they were found to contain small amounts of a cancer-linked chemical called N-nitrosodiethylamine.
• CNN: A US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study published on January 17, 2017 revealed that a birth defect with potentially deadly consequences called gastroschisis has more prevalence in areas where opioid prescriptions are higher; the defect causes babies to be born with exposed intestines and the babies of teen mothers as well as mothers who smoke and drink are have a higher risk of being born with the defect.

Date: January 17, 2018.

From: https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/17/health/birth-defect-gastroschisis-opioid-study/index.html.

Read more: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6802a2.htm?s_cid=mm6802a2_w.

• Middle East Eye: On January 20, 2019, Mohammed al-Gheiti, an Egyptian television host who last year interviewed a gay man, was sentenced by a misdemeanors court in Giza, Egypt, to one year in prison, fined the Egyptian equivalent of 147 U.S. dollars, and will be subjected to surveillance for one year after his sentence expires for allegedly “promoting homosexuality and contempt of religion”; appearance of homosexuals on Egyptian media outlets was banned by the Supreme Council for Media Regulation after a rainbow flag appeared at a 2017 concert in Cairo.

Date: January 21, 2019.

From: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/egypt-sentences-tv-host-year-jail-over-gay-interview-1577817921?utm_source=samizdat&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=free.

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-46946612.

• World Socialist Web Site:  A suit brought against Rockefeller Foundation, various sections of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb US Pharmaceutical Group and Mead Johnson & Company in 2015 by 734 plaintiffs including the Estate of Arturo Girón Álvarez seeking one billion dollars in damages for experiments carried out by the United States government on hundreds of Guatemalan citizens between 1946 and 1948 involving infection with gonorrhea and syphilis was granted permission to proceed by federal judge serving in Maryland Theodore Chuang on January 3, 2019.

Date: January 21, 2019.

From: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/01/21/guat-j21.html?utm_source=samizdat&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=free.

Read more: https://www.somo.nl/examples-of-unethical-trials/.

• Breitbart: VICE’s French edition published interviews with young French people who were willingly sterilized in an effort to reduce the negative impact of humans on the planet; some said that the “simple act of living pollutes the planet.”

Date: January 18, 2018.

From: https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/01/18/vice-celebrates-frenchmen-sterilised-themselves-save-world/?utm_source=samizdat&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=free.

Read more: https://www.marianne.net/politique/pour-proteger-l-environnement-l-ex-ministre-yves-cochet-prone-la-suppression-des.

• Science: A new study published on January 16, 2019, in the journal Science found that certain chemicals produced by bacteria in the genus Xenorhabdus act as potent feeding-deterrents to Aedes aegypti, Anopheles gambiae, and Culex pipiens, three species of mosquitoes wich carry deadly diseases, as good or better than N,N-diethyl-3-methylbenzamide, otherwise known as DEET.

Date: January 16, 2019.

From: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau6141.

Read more: https://www.epa.gov/insect-repellents/deet.