Saturday, January 4, 2014
CONTACT ME AT: manessmorrison2@yahoo.com


News Clips For The Day


Intelligence chief declassifies FISA court approval for collection of phone data
By M. Alex Johnson, Staff Writer


The top U.S. spy opened the door a sliver Friday on the mass collection of telephone records, acknowledging that national intelligence agencies had sought and been granted permission to vacuum up Americans' calling data for three more months.
In a statement released quietly on Friday (.pdf), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Director James Clapper had decided to declassify and disclose that the government made the request to the hush-hush Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approved it earlier in the day.

U.S. District Judge William Pauley upheld the constitutionality of the National Security Agency's bulk collection of millions of Americans' telephone records — what's called "telephony metadata" — in a controversial ruling in New York last week. The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the suit challenging the program, said Thursday that it would appeal Pauley's ruling.

Pauley's ruling came just 11 days after U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said the program appeared to be unconstitutional in a ruling in Washington, D.C., that sided with two Americans who wanted their data removed from NSA records.
It's now up to appeals courts and, most likely, the U.S. Supreme Court to sort through the contradictory findings.

The intelligence statement said Friday that Clapper was officially disclosing the FISA process "in order to provide the public a more thorough and balanced understanding of the program," which has polarized Americans over how deeply the U.S. government should dig into their privacy to keep them safe.

Documents released by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the agency has been scarfing up phone and Internet metadata — information about where and when calls are made, not the content of those calls — without a warrant since two months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. 

The FISA court reviews the program every three months, meaning Friday's seal of approval is the 36th it has issued since May 2006, when the administration of President George W. Bush successfully persuaded the secret court that the mass collection of data was legal under the USA Patriot Act.

Friday's statement also represented a sharp reversal from March, when Clapper flatly denied in testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the NSA was doing any such thing. 

After the Snowden documents emerged, however, the intelligence community came under vigorous attack from civil liberties advocates, and Clapper issued a public apology in July for having "misstated" the program's reach in his testimony.

"The Intelligence Community continues to be open to modifications to this program that would provide additional privacy and civil liberty protections while still maintaining its operational benefits," Friday's statement said.
While Clapper disclosed that the FISA court had issued the approval, the court's ruling itself wasn't made public.


The District of Columbia case is going next to the US Supreme Court, according to this article. That is a good thing, since the chance of their stopping the massive surveillance by any other means is low. I do hope they rule this “big brother” file to be illegal, and the intelligence agencies have to go back to prosecuting individual cases on their own merit, with specific approval each time. This would keep the NSA on record and presumably more honest in their collection of data, even if the records are classified. Clapper's denials of the activity to the Senate Intelligence Committee make it even more suspect. All branches of the government should be aware of what goes on in the name of security. .

I have called my boss in Italy and Germany ten or twenty times, so I know my telephone number is in the file. I'm sure he has never been involved in action against the government, of course, since he was an officer in the army based in Afghanistan and now has a position working for the State Department. It's just too comprehensive a data base for my comfort.



5 members of Doctors Without Borders detained in northern Syria – NBC
By Elisha Fieldstadt and Alexander Smith

Five staffers with the medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders were removed from their house in northern Syria on Thursday night, a spokesman confirmed to NBC News.

The five were seized “allegedly for questioning,” said media relations representative, Michael Goldfarb. The group, known officially as Medecins Sans Frontieres, has struggled to contact the staff, according to Reuters.
“For the safety of our staff we cannot provide any more information at this time,” Goldfarb said in a statement without specifying whether MSF officials knew specifically what  “group” wanted to question the five staffers.

While Goldfarb also did not share the identities of the detainees, he did say in the statement that MSF operates six hospitals and four health care centers in northern Syria. “In addition, MSF provides assistance to hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Turkey,” he said.

Refugees have fled Syria in an effort to escape the violence of the country’s civil war, which began in 2011 when rebels incited protests in an effort to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad's presidency.

Assad still controls portions of northern Syria, but rebels have seized part of his territory there, adding to the unrest.

More than 100,000 people have been killed by the violence, including 12 U.N. staff members. Twenty one U.N. staffers were detained in the country as of November, according to a U.N. document.

MSF sends medical personnel to ailing and deprived sections of the world. Over 700 international and Syrian MSF workers are stationed in Syria, according to a document on the non-profit’s website that was updated in November 2013.


It isn't safe to set foot in some of these countries, whatever your credentials. Of course, Louis Leakey was once on an archaeological dig in the Middle East and was caught spying for the US. That was probably 20 years ago. Maybe these doctors will be treated well and released soon. There should be some follow up news articles about them. I'll try to track the case.





3-D printed livers offer glimpse into the future of biomedical research
Yannick LeJacq NBC News
Dec. 27, 2013


Scientists have already used 3-D printing technology to help produce human body parts like an ear, but what about a full-blown organ like a liver, kidney or heart? Companies like the San Diego-based startup Organovo broke new ground in this field in 2013. Having successfully printed human liver tissue, the company is now planning a product launch (of sorts) for 2014 in the form of 3-D printed liver models that can be used by other pharmaceutical companies for toxicology testing.

Don't think "Frankenstein" quite yet, though. We're far from — and may never get to — the point where somebody will be able to just press "Print" from a home computer and get a brand-new liver. Scientists won't be growing human hearts and lungs in large glass tubes anytime soon. Speaking in an interview with NBC News, Keith Murphy, chairman and CEO at Organovo, emphasized that what his company is making is "tissue for research," not a "liver for immediate transplant."

But even then, the work still offers an incredible potential for improvement from older models of research and development, Stuart Williams, scientific director of the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute in Louisville, Ky., who has worked with Organovo in the past, told NBC News.

"We're getting very good at printing out the parts for the aircraft carrier, but not the whole carrier yet," Williams said. "So for a near-term application, what this allows us to do is print out the cells that are in the liver and use those to test out the safety of certain drugs, for instance." 

Williams said that Organovo's real achievement in this regard isn't necessarily a result of new technology. Using 3-D printers to produce organic material with human cells has been a part of the biomedical industry since the late '90s, he explained. But what Organovo was able to do better than anybody else was make what Williams called a superior "recipe" that kept the liver tissue intact and performing its essential functions for an extended time.

Jordan Miller, a professor of bioengineering at Rice University, agreed with Williams, telling NBC News that, once they are extracted, "liver cells are one of the most fragile types of cells in the human body."

"It's been a huge area of interest for decades," Miller said. "The ability to stabilize them long enough that you can print them is very exciting."
Placed in a standard Petri-dish culture, Organovo's Murphy explained, liver cells will "stop functioning like the liver after 48 hours." Using its 3-D printing technique, Organovo was able to get its liver samples to last for 40 days. This allows researchers to measure subtler and longer-term effects of drugs on the liver.
Improvements in the technology have also allowed them to make the tissue as thick as one millimeter. While that might not sound like much, it goes a long way toward replicating the actual physical structure of the organ, down to the level of its microvascular architecture. So rather than simply analyzing a cluster of isolated cells, scientists can see these mini-organs (Williams referred to them as "tissue mimics") acting as a real liver would: producing essential proteins, cholesterol and bile — not to mention clearing the blood of toxic materials.

It's hard to predict where researchers will take this kind of work in the coming months and years, but Miller told NBC News that 3-D printing techniques like Organovo's give the entire field something it's always needed more of: data.
"What we need in the biomedical industry is a lot of data," Miller said. "We need to be able to produce many experiments a number of times to get enough information to make solid conclusions. This extremely reproducible fabricated tissue gives us the architecture to actually produce that."

Organovo won't be the only company trying to build this new architecture, however. Earlier this month, the Methusela Foundation, a Springfield, Va.-based nonprofit that offers funding for research into regenerative medicine, announced that it would issue a $1 million prize to the first organization that produces a fully functioning human liver.

"They're not alone," Williams said of Organovo. "There is a real arms race for printing all these organs."


3-D printers seem miraculous, but this use of them is amazing. My nephew is part owner in a new company that produces skin – grows it – from baby foreskins removed in the hospital during circumcision. It is used for skin transplants, especially for burn victims. They are still in the stage of clinical trials, but are close to approval of their technique. Medicine has made huge steps since I was young, and the field is very interesting to me, along with other biological subjects. This is good news for researchers – one more step forward.



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22 States Curb Access To Abortion In 2013 – NPR
by Julie Rovner

The year 2013 marked the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
It also marked another year of success for those who would restrict or even outlaw the procedure.

While much national attention was focused on efforts to restrict abortion in Texas, a new study from the Guttmacher Institute reports that as many as 22 states enacted 70 provisions aimed at curbing access to abortion. That makes 2013 second only to 2011 in the number of abortion restrictions enacted in a single year, according to the think tank for reproductive rights.

To put the recent trend in some perspective: The 205 abortion restrictions enacted between 2011 and 2013 were more than the 189 enacted during the entire previous decade (2001 to 2010).

More than half of the restrictions passed in 2013 fell into one of four categories:
Regulations aimed at closing down abortion clinics by imposing restrictions that go beyond those required to protect patient safety. One such rule forces clinics to meet standards that were designed for hospitals or outpatient surgery centers that do more advanced techniques; another requires doctors who perform abortions to have hospital admitting privileges.

Limits on insurance coverage of abortion, particularly within the new health exchanges that have been set up to sell coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
Bans on abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Limits on abortions that rely on pills rather than surgery.
The Guttmacher report also notes a marked geographic shift in the number of states considered "hostile" to abortion rights, which the institute defines as a region that has at least four major types of abortion restrictions. In 2000, the institute counted 13 "hostile" states (home to 31 percent of the nation's women). In 2013, as many as 56 percent of all U.S. women found themselves living in one of the 27 states considered "hostile" to abortion rights.

From the perspective of abortion rights groups, about the only bright spot in the report was a new California law that expands access to abortion by allowing medical professionals other than physicians to perform the procedure.


I hold to the belief that the individual woman has the right to determine whether or not she brings a baby into the world, especially in cases of rape, incest and endangerment to the health of the woman. It's a deeply personal issue in the life of a woman, and in many cases when a baby simply isn't wanted he won't be nurtured properly, either. I know many people will disagree with this viewpoint, either due to religious reasons or political party beliefs. It's an ongoing struggle, apparently, even though Roe vs Wade is still in force.

The right to abortion is an issue basic to the ability of a single woman, in particular, to maintain her life security. The forces which militate against abortion rights are mainly of the “conservative” population, along with a group of other rights issues such as gay rights, racial inclusion in schooling or on jobs, religious membership, etc. They're part of a freer and more varied America, which is a better place to live. No church should mandate it's views through the forces of the government.



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Want Perfect Pitch? You Might Be Able To Pop A Pill For That – NPR
by NPR Staff
­
Jazz singer Ella Fitzergerald was said to have perfect pitch.
In the world of music, there is no more remarkable gift than having perfect pitch. As the story goes, Ella Fitzgerald's band would use her perfect pitch to tune their instruments.

Although it has a genetic component, most believe that perfect pitch — or absolute pitch — is a primarily a function of early life exposure and training in music, says Takao Hensch, professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard.

Hensch is studying a drug which might allow adults to learn perfect pitch by recreating this critical period in brain development. Hensch says the drug, valprioc acid, allows the brain to absorb new information as easily as it did before age 7.
"It's a mood-stabilizing drug, but we found that it also restores the plasticity of the brain to a juvenile state," Hensch tells NPR's Linda Wertheimer.

Hensch gave the drug to a group of healthy young men who had no musical training as children. They were asked to perform tasks online to train their ears, and at the end of a two-week period, tested on their ability to discriminate tone, to see if the training had more effect than it normally would at their age.

In other words, he gave people a pill and then taught them to have perfect pitch. The findings are significant: "It's quite remarkable since there are no known reports of adults acquiring absolute pitch," he says.



Valproic acid
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Valproic acid (VPA, Valproate), an acidic chemical compound, has found clinical use as an anticonvulsant and mood-stabilizing drug, primarily in the treatment of epilepsy, bipolar disorder, and, less commonly, major depression. It is also used to treat migraine headaches. VPA is a liquid at room temperature, but it can be reacted with a base such as sodium hydroxide to form the salt sodium valproate, which is a solid. The acid, salt, or a mixture of the two (valproate semisodium) are marketed under the various brand names Depakote, Depakote ER, Depakene, Depakene Crono (extended release in Spain), Depacon, Depakine, Valparin and Stavzor.

Approved uses of the various formulations vary by country; e.g., valproate semisodium is used as a mood stabilizer and also in the US as an anticonvulsant.
VPA is a histone deacetylase inhibitor and is under investigation for treatment of HIV and various cancers.[1]

In the United States, valproic acid is approved by the Food and Drug Administration only for the treatment of manic episodes associated with bipolar disorder, adjunctive therapy in multiple seizure types (including epilepsy), and prophylaxis of migraine headaches.[3][4]

Valproic acid is also used off-label for controlling behavioral disturbances in dementia patients.[4]


A second online article on Depakote lists some significant side effects, and I wouldn't want to take it for the simple reason of gaining perfect pitch. The most interesting thing in this article is the fact that it changes the brain to a condition like that of a seven year old child. I still wouldn't want to take it – I trust the natural maturation process to produce a brain that is properly developed, even though some things may be harder to learn in adulthood. I wonder if the acquisition of new languages could also be aided by this drug, since our ability to learn languages drops after the early twenties.

I wonder if other psychotrophic drugs are as potent as this one? I take medication for bipolar disorder, and I must say it is much more effective than years of psychotherapy alone at actually preventing depression and euphoria. I elected not to take Depakote because it causes abnormal muscular spasms, which I definitely don't want. Still, this is interesting. It would make a good subject for a science fiction movie.



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Phil Everly Dies; Transformed Rock 'N' Roll With Brother Don – NPR
by Mark Memmott

­ One half of one of the most influential duos in rock 'n' roll history has died.
Phil Everly, 74, died Friday in a Burbank, Calif., hospital. His son Jason tells The Associated Press, NPR and other news outlets that the legendary singer suffered from chronic pulmonary disease.

Everly's brother Don, now 76, is among the other survivors.
Their webpage on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame catalog of inductees rightly notes that the brothers "transformed the Appalachian folk, bluegrass and country sounds of their Kentucky boyhood into a richly harmonized form of rock and roll. ... With Don taking the melody and Phil harmonizing above him, the Everlys released a steady string of hit records between 1957 and 1962 that crossed over from country to pop and even R&B charts."

A bit of 'Bye Bye Love'
Those hits included:
— "Bye Bye Love"
— "Wake Up Little Susie"
— "All I Have to Do Is Dream"
They also wrote songs that became hits for others, including:
— "Cathy's Clown"
— "When Will I Be Loved"
— "('Til) I Kissed You."

But a list of hits doesn't do justice to their place in rock 'n' roll. As the Hall of Fame adds, the brothers' "close-harmony singing directly influenced a rising tide of musicians that included the Beatles, the Hollies, Simon and Garfunkel and the Byrds."
Last October, singer Graham Nash talked on Fresh Air about how the Everly Brothers about what happened the first time he and friend Allan Clarke heard "Bye Bye Love." The English lads were at a school dance when they started to walk across the room:
"We got halfway across the floor and 'Bye Bye Love' by The Everly Brothers came on — and it stopped us in our tracks. We sang together, so we knew what two-part harmony was, but this sounded so unbelievably beautiful. ... Ever since that day, I decided that whatever music I was going to make in the future, I wanted it to affect people the same way The Everly Brothers' music affected me on that Saturday night."
Nash and Clarke would go on to found The Hollies, and Nash would later be part of the super group Crosby, Stills & Nash (and sometimes Young, of course).

When Simon and Garfunkel toured in 2003, Rolling Stone writes:
"They knew only one group could possibly share the bill with them: the Everly Brothers. As teenagers, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel used to sing Everly Brothers songs on the grounds of Forest Hills High School. They were their single biggest influence, with no close second. ...

"Simon and Garfunkel didn't want their biggest influences to actually open for them, so the Everlys were called onstage in the middle of the show to perform 'Wake Up Little Susie,' 'Let It Be Me' and 'All I Have to Do Is Dream' before Simon and Garfunkel came back out to join them on 'Bye Bye Love.' Seeing two of the most combative duos in rock history all sharing the stage was a pretty incredible sight."
Both of those famous duos split and reunited over the course of their careers. As the AP says, the Everly Brothers "broke up amid quarreling in 1973 after 16 years of hits. ... Their breakup came dramatically during a concert at Knott's Berry Farm in California. Phil Everly threw his guitar down and walked off, prompting Don Everly to tell the crowd, 'The Everly Brothers died 10 years ago.' "

But the brothers reunited 10 years later, "sealing it with a hug," Phil Everly said.
Update at 4 p.m. ET. They Were "Most Beautiful Sounding Duo I Ever Heard," Paul Simon Says.

From The New York Times:
"Paul Simon, whose song 'Graceland' includes vocals by Phil and Don Everly, said in an email on Saturday morning: 'Phil and Don were the most beautiful sounding duo I ever heard. Both voices pristine and soulful. The Everlys were there at the crossroads of country and R&B. They witnessed and were part of the birth of rock and roll.' "


I was in high school when I first heard the Everly Brothers. At the time I thought some of the rock and roll songs on the radio were silly or unnecessarily loud, but I loved the Everly Brothers. Their music was truly beautiful, like great concert music or some of the best of the pop singers who aimed at adult audiences of the 60's.

As an adult I was lucky enough to be visiting the Ohio State Fair when they performed on the stage there. They seemed to argue a little, which I took to be because they were brothers. It didn't prevent them from delivering a very good concert, though. I am sorry now to see that Phil has died. I can't get A & E on television anymore because I don't have cable tv, but maybe National Public Television will produce a biography about him and their career. I hope so.