Monday, June 16, 2014


News Clips For The Day


Deep Underground, Oceans Of Water May Be Trapped In A Crystal 'Sponge' – NPR
by L. CAROL RITCHIE
June 15, 2014

Science teachers may have to add a whole new layer to the water cycle.

Scientists have discovered evidence of a vast reservoir of water hiding up to 400 miles beneath the surface.

The discovery could transform our understanding of how the planet was formed, suggesting that Earth's water may have come from within, rather than from collisions with large, icy comets.

The water is trapped in a blue mineral called ringwoodite that sits in the mantle, a hot, rocky layer between the Earth's crust and outer core. That means the water is not the familiar liquid, vapor or ice, but a fourth, mineral form. We reported earlier this year on a rare diamond containing a microscopic piece of ringwoodite that bolstered evidence for the vast wet zone.

It is likely the largest reservoir of water on the planet, and could be the source of the oceans' liquid. The study was published in the journal Science.

The study is also remarkable for the discovery that melting and movement of rock occurs in a layer of the mantle known as the transition zone, between the upper and lower mantles, the Guardianreports. Most melting was thought to occur at much shallower depths.

"Geological processes on the Earth's surface, such as earthquakes or erupting volcanoes, are an expression of what is going on inside the Earth, out of our sight," said Geophysicist Steve Jacobsen from Northwestern University, co-author of the study.

"I think we are finally seeing evidence for a whole-Earth water cycle, which may help explain the vast amount of liquid water on the surface of our habitable planet. Scientists have been looking for this missing deep water for decades," he said.

The study relied on seismometers across the U.S. and lab experiments simulating rocks under high pressure, says Nature World News.

"Ringwoodite here is key," it notes. "Its crystal-like structure makes it act like a sponge and draw in hydrogen and trap water."

It could be a vast amount of water, says the Guardian. "If just 1 percent of the weight of mantle rock located in the transition zone was water it would be equivalent to nearly three times the amount of water in our oceans, Jacobsen said."




“Ringwoodite” is a mineral which “traps” water. The following article explains. http://dailydigestnews.com/2014/06/blue-ringwoodite-sparked-the-discovery-of-earths-inner-reservoir/:

Blue ringwoodite sparked the discovery of earth’s inner reservoir
By Tom Sherman, Daily Digest News
June 15, 2014

Researchers from Northwestern University and the University of New Mexico report evidence for potentially oceans worth of water deep beneath the United States; the discovery may represent the planet’s largest water reservoir.

University of New Mexico seismologist Brandon Schmandt and Northwestern geophysicist Steve Jacobsen and have found deep pockets of magma located about 400 miles beneath North America, a likely signature of the presence of water at these depths. The discovery suggests water from the Earth’s surface can be driven to such great depths by plate tectonics, eventually causing partial melting of the rocks found deep in the mantle.

“I think we are finally seeing evidence for a whole-Earth water cycle, which may help explain the vast amount of liquid water on the surface of our habitable planet,” said Jacobsen. “Scientists have been looking for this missing deep water for decades.”

Scientists have long speculated that water is trapped in a rocky layer of the Earth’s mantle located between the lower mantle and upper mantle, at depths between 250 miles and 410 miles, known as the “transition zone,” on a regional scale. The region extends across most of the interior of the United States.

The study combined Schmandt’s observations using vast amounts of seismic data from the USArray, a dense network of more than 2,000 seismometers across the United States, and Jacobsen’s lab experiments in which he studied mantle rock under the simulated high pressures of 400 miles below the Earth’s surface.

Their findings converged to produce evidence that melting may occur about 400 miles deep in the Earth. H2O stored in mantle rocks, such as those containing the mineral ringwoodite, likely is the key to the process, the researchers said.

This water is not in a familiar form – neither liquid, ice nor vapor. This fourth form is water trapped inside the molecular structure of the minerals in the mantle rock. The weight of 250 miles of solid rock creates such high pressure, along with temperatures above 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, that a water molecule splits to form a hydroxyl radical (OH), which can be bound into a mineral’s crystal structure.

Schmandt and Jacobsen’s findings build on a discovery reported in March in the journal Nature in which scientists discovered a piece of the mineral ringwoodite inside a diamond brought up from a depth of 400 miles by a volcano in Brazil. That tiny piece of ringwoodite — the only sample in existence from within the Earth — contained a surprising amount of water bound in solid form in the mineral.

“Whether or not this unique sample is representative of the Earth’s interior composition is not known, however,” Jacobsen said. “Now we have found evidence for extensive melting beneath North America at the same depths corresponding to the dehydration of ringwoodite, which is exactly what has been happening in my experiments.”

For years, Jacobsen has been synthesizing ringwoodite, colored sapphire-like blue, in his Northwestern lab by reacting the green mineral olivine with water at high-pressure conditions. (The Earth’s upper mantle is rich in olivine.) He found that more than one percent of the weight of the ringwoodite’s crystal structure can consist of water.

“The ringwoodite is like a sponge, soaking up water,” Jacobsen said. “There is something very special about the crystal structure of ringwoodite that allows it to attract hydrogen and trap water. This mineral can contain a lot of water under conditions of the deep mantle.”

If just one percent of the weight of mantle rock located in the transition zone is H2O, that would be equivalent to nearly three times the amount of water in our oceans, the researchers said




"'Geological processes on the Earth's surface, such as earthquakes or erupting volcanoes, are an expression of what is going on inside the Earth, out of our sight,' said Geophysicist Steve Jacobsen from Northwestern University, co-author of the study. 'I think we are finally seeing evidence for a whole-Earth water cycle, which may help explain the vast amount of liquid water on the surface of our habitable planet. Scientists have been looking for this missing deep water for decades,' he said.”

Water from the surface may have been driven deep into the earth by plate tectonics, or the movements between the continents that occur on the ocean floor. The pressure and high heat present at the several hundreds mile depths cause water molecules to split into a “hydroxyl radical” designated as (OH), which becomes embedded in the crystal ringwoodite. “For years, Jacobsen has been synthesizing ringwoodite, colored sapphire-like blue, in his Northwestern lab by reacting the green mineral olivine with water at high-pressure conditions. (The Earth’s upper mantle is rich in olivine.) He found that more than one percent of the weight of the ringwoodite’s crystal structure can consist of water.”

Nothing in these two articles suggests that scientists will ever be able to reach that layer of ringwoodite and “mine it,” or otherwise extract the water, so it may not be important technologically. It may however explain the large amount of water on the planet's surface, which scientists used to say came from comets crashing into the earth. It's very interesting, whether it's useful information or not.





ISIS Militants Seize Iraq's Strategic Town of Tal Afar – NBC
- The Associated Press
First published June 16th 2014

BAGHDAD -- Sunni militants captured a key northern Iraqi town along the highway to Syria early on Monday, compounding the woes of Iraq's Shiite-led government a week after it lost a vast swath of territory to the insurgents in the country's north.

The town of Tal Afar, with a population of some 200,000 people, was taken just before dawn, Mayor Abdulal Abdoul told The Associated Press.

The town's ethnic mix of mostly ethnic Shiite and Sunni Turkomen raises the grim specter of large-scale atrocities by Sunni militants from the al Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), who already claim to have killed hundreds of Shiites in areas they captured last week.

Tal Afar's capture comes a week after Sunni militants took Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, and Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit in a lightning offensive that has plunged Iraq into its worst crisis since the 2011 withdrawal of U.S. Troops.

A resident in Tal Afar, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad, confirmed the town's fall and said over the telephone that militants in pickup trucks mounted with machineguns and flying black jihadi banners were roaming the streets as gunfire rang out.

The local security force left the town before dawn, said Hadeer al-Abadi, who spoke to the AP as he prepared to head out of town with his family. Local tribesmen who continued to fight later surrendered to the militants, he said.

"Residents are gripped by fear and most of them have already left the town for areas held by Kurdish security forces," al-Abadi said.

Tal Afar is only 93 miles from the border with Syria, where ISIS is fighting against President Bashar Assad's government and controls territory abutting the Iraqi border.

Fighting in Tal Afar began on Sunday, with Iraqi government officials saying that ISIS fighters were firing rockets seized from military arms depots in the Mosul area.




ISIS has captured another city in Iraq, this one close to the Syrian border. The local security force abandoned the town and local tribesmen surrendered. Most of the residents have left for Kurdish controlled areas. Meanwhile the Iraqi government is gathering an army, according to yesterday's reports, of new Shiite recruits called out to fight by the president of Iraq and by Imams. Hopefully they can raise a sufficient force to stand down the pure brutality of the Sunni rebels. According to President Obama, however, the interim government has a history of mistreating the Sunni minority, which needs to be stopped before the US intervenes.





Border Children Tell Their Stories: Why We Came to the US – NBC
BY LISA RIORDAN SEVILLE AND HANNAH RAPPLEYE
First published June 12th 2014

Cesar was four years old when a group of men in his tiny hometown killed his father. He was a teenager when he says the same group of men began to threaten his older brother.

At age 17, tired of hiding in his house, Cesar left the poverty, violence and drug gangs of Guatemala behind and set out for the U.S.

“I wanted to escape all of that,” he said. “You arrive at a point where you can take no more.”

He joined a wave of Central American children crossing the U.S. border that is now overwhelming the federal government. Just four years ago, about 6,000 unaccompanied kids crossed the border annually. The numbers jumped in 2011 and have doubled every year since. More than 47,000 “unaccompanied minors” -- kids traveling alone or with other youths -- have been apprehended along the Southwestern border since October, and the number is projected to rise to 10,000 a month by fall. Many are now crowded into holding areas along the border, since U.S. law doesn’t allow unaccompanied minors from Central America to be deported immediately.

Earlier this month, the White House called the influx a humanitarian crisis fueled by increasing violence and instability in countries like El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, which have some of the highest murder rates in the world. Widespread poverty, and increasingly unstable states are also fueling migration from the region, some say.

“This crisis to us is like the refugee crisis from Europe after WWII,” said Nancy Lander, interim vice president for mission advancement at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, an advocacy group that works with migrants. “They cannot go back to their homeland for fear of death, persecution.”

Others say rumors and lax enforcement are driving the growing numbers. An internal report from Customs and Border Protection, recently made public by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, cited interviews with 230 immigrants detained at the border in May. According to the memo, detainees said they migrated because of a “new” U.S. “law” giving a “free pass” to unaccompanied children and mothers with children.

"To reject out of hand the notion that perception of lax enforcement is not a motivator is naive at best and destructive at worst," said Sen. Jeff Flake, R.-Arizona.

But in a 2011 report prepared by researchers at the U.N.’s refugee agency, the unaccompanied minors gave their own menu of reasons for leaving Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. The study noted only one instance in 404 interviews in which a child specifically mentioned the possibility of benefitting from U.S. immigration reform.

Many kids cited the dissolution of family networks, or a desire to reunite with family in the U.S., but violence was a recurrent theme. Many young girls reported being victims of sexual violence, including rape and assault by gang members. Both boys and girls talked of forced recruitment by street gangs and transnational drug cartels, and some had witnessed murders of family members, friends and classmates. The violence has spread from urban centers like Guatemala City to rural villages. Cesar said he “barely left the house” despite living far out in the countryside.

“I’ve had parents, and even some of the children tell me, ‘There is no childhood here,’” said Elizabeth Kennedy, a Fulbright scholar who is currently researching the causes of child migration in Central America. “There’s not any calculated attempt to game the system. There’s just one last attempt to survive, and try to have some quality of life.”

In order to survive, however, the kids head north, and their escape is fraught with its own dangers.

'There's No Future in Honduras'

Ruby, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, left western Honduras less than a year ago, but her eyes still go wide as she recounts her 1,600 mile journey. The 15-year-old says she and one of her sisters slept in the brush, walked through deserts, were captured by kidnappers and held in a trailer, and eventually picked up the U.S. Border Patrol in Texas.

“You have to risk yourself,” said Ruby. “There’s no future in Honduras.”

Ruby was barely school age when her father abandoned their family. Her older sister, Ana, left soon after for the U.S. For about 10 years, as violence escalated in Honduras and work became increasingly illusive, Ana supported the family by cleaning houses in the U.S. and sending money home. But it wasn’t enough.

Ruby was pregnant when she left, and hoped that the U.S. might mean a better life for her unborn baby.

“There’s a lot of crime, a lot of narcotraffickers [in Honduras],” she said. “They kidnap people. Adults and children, old people, to get money. People who have nothing. It doesn’t matter to them. The police do nothing.”

A country of just 8 million, Honduras boasts the world’s highest per capita homicide rate, with 90.4 homicides per 100,000 people, according to U.N. figures. An estimated 270 Honduran children were killed within the first three months of 2014 according to Casa Alianza, a nonprofit that works with children across Latin America. Experts on the region say this helps explain why an estimated 8,000 children flee the country unaccompanied each year.

“The police are overwhelmingly corrupt, as is the judicial system and prosecutors,” said Dana Frank, a history professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has written widely on human rights and U.S. policy in Honduras. “There's near complete impunity, which means anybody can kill anybody they want, and nothing will happen to them.”

Honduran authorities in the U.S. did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The route north is well known, as are its perils. Families in both Central America and the U.S. pay thousands of dollars to smugglers, known as “coyotes,” who promise to help individuals cross the border. Those promises are often broken. Young women are at great risk for assault or sex trafficking. Children can be robbed, assaulted or murdered. Gang networks have come to see these migrants as a source of income. They kidnap the migrants and extort their families for money, threatening harm or death to those whose loved ones cannot pay.

Ruby left her hometown in western Honduras last fall with her sister, Maira, a cousin and the cousin’s two small children. They got as far as Mexico, then were detained and returned to Honduras.

On their second try, Ruby and her companions reached the Mexican side of the Texas border. A group of people befriended them and offered to help them cross the Rio Grande river. Ruby and the other girls got into a small boat, as two cars waited on the opposite bank.

Suddenly the mood changed, recalled Ruby. The people roughly ordered Ruby and the others into the cars. “They forced us to climb in,” Ruby remembered. “They were very angry. Acting really ugly.” The kidnappers took them to a trailer behind a house in southern Texas, and ordered Ruby to call her sister Ana in Maryland and ask for $4,000.

Said Ruby, “They dialed the number for me to tell her to send the money or else they would kill me.”

Ruby reached her sister Ana in Maryland, but could barely deliver her plea for help.

“I was so afraid all I could do was cry,” Ruby said.

Ruby says she and the others spent two weeks locked in the trailer as the kidnappers tried to extract money from her family. They were able to run away during a moment when their captors weren’t paying attention. They reached a bus station, and called Ana, who told them to ask for help. Border Patrol officers came and took Ruby and the other girls into custody.

Cesar says he also found kidnappers waiting near the border. He’d already been robbed on the way north from Guatemala, and had no ransom to offer, but the kidnappers held him for three days until he was able to run away.

Like Ruby, he wound up in the hands of U.S. authorities, and then entered their system for processing minors. Once Immigration and Customs Enforcement realized he was under 18 -- which took a month -- ICE transferred him to the arm of the Department of Health and Human Services charged with caring for the flood of young migrants.

'We Are Good People'

While children from Mexico or Canada can be returned to their own countries immediately, children from other nations must go through a more elaborate immigration process before they are either deported or granted some sort of relief from deportation.

By law, within 72 hours children must be moved into a shelter system that extends from Texas to Oregon to New York City and is managed by an arm of the Department of Health and Human Services. Within a few weeks, authorities work to find a sponsor, often a family member or friend, or a foster parent, who they live with as they go through immigration proceedings, which can take months or years.

Most of the shelters are run by non-profits and private agencies, but as the tide of underage migrants has grown the government has scrambled to open additional emergency facilities in Texas, California and Oklahoma, even appropriating a shuttered military base.

Cesar, who arrived in the U.S. in 2011, was transferred to the custody of an uncle in Maryland while his deportation case moved through the system. On his own initiative, he then contacted an organization called Kids in Need of Defense, which connected him with a pro bono lawyer at the D.C. law firm Kirkland & Ellis. He applied for, and was granted, a special kind of relief available to children who have been neglected, abused, or abandoned by a parent. He is now in the process of applying for a “green card” -- official permanent residency.

After staying in a shelter, Ruby moved in with a foster family, and then traveled to Maryland to join her sister Ana. Ana is now Ruby’s sponsor as she goes through proceedings. She has an attorney, and is petitioning for deportation relief.

Ruby gave birth to a baby girl in April, and she and her infant now live in a small white house outside Baltimore with Ana and her family.

Ana knows that families like hers are at the center of a national debate about immigration.

“We don’t ask for anything, just to work,” Ana said. “We are good people. We don’t mean harm to anyone.”

Cesar is now 20 and in high school, seeking to finish by 2015. Because his education ended early he spoke poor Spanish, and had a lot of reading, writing, and grammar to learn. Now he's learning English too. His dream is to go to college.

Said Cesar, "To live again like I lived before, that would be horrible. If you've escaped where you are, you don't want to go back. You need to go forward."

"I'm fighting. I'm fighting for an important goal."




Tens of thousands of minors have been moving across the border into the US. “Many are now crowded into holding areas along the border, since U.S. law doesn’t allow unaccompanied minors from Central America to be deported immediately.... An internal report from Customs and Border Protection, recently made public by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, cited interviews with 230 immigrants detained at the border in May. According to the memo, detainees said they migrated because of a 'new' U.S. 'law' giving a “free pass” to unaccompanied children and mothers with children.” However a UN report in 2011 stated reasons given by some 400 children being drug and street gang violence, sexual assault and murder rather than “lax enforcement” at the US border. “The violence has spread from urban centers like Guatemala City to rural villages. Nonetheless, I'm sure there will be congressional investigation of the Obama Administration as causing the problem.






KFC investigates whether scarred girl was told to leave
CBS/AP June 15, 2014

JACKSON, Miss. - KFC Corp. says it's investigating allegations that a restaurant employee in Jackson asked a 3-year-old girl to leave because her facial injuries disturbed other patrons.

The company is also giving $30,000 toward Victoria Wilcher's medical bills, a spokesman said Sunday.

The allegation about KFC was made Thursday on "Victoria's Victories," a Facebook page following Victoria Wilcher's recovery from a pit bull attack in April. The administrator posted a photo showing Victoria smiling shyly in spite of her facial scars and cartoon-decorated eye patch, and wrote, "Does this look scary to you? Last week at KFC in Jackson MS this precious face was asked to leave because her face scared the other diners."

KFC posted an apology the next morning, requesting details.

"As soon as we were notified of this report on Friday, we immediately began an investigation, as this kind of hurtful and disrespectful action would not be tolerated by KFC," spokesman Rick Maynard wrote Sunday in an email to The Associated Press. "Regardless of the outcome of our investigation, we have apologized to Victoria's family and are committed to assisting them. The company is making a $30,000 donation to assist with her medical bills. The entire KFC family is behind Victoria."

Her grandmother Kelly Mullins said Victoria had just been to a doctor's office when they stopped at the restaurant. She ordered mashed potatoes for Victoria because she thought the hungry child could swallow the soft food without chewing.

She says she was then approached by an employee.

"I sat down at the table and started feeding her and the lady came over and said we'd have to live because we were disturbing her customers. Victoria's face was disturbing the other customers," Mullins told CBS affiliate WJTV.

"I never thought anyone would act like that," the grandmother said,

Victoria wept all the way home and now is embarrassed by her appearance - something that wasn't the case before, Mullins said.

"She won't even look in the mirror anymore," Mullins told WAPT-TV. "When we go to a store, she doesn't even want to get out" of the car.

Victoria was attacked by pit bulls at her grandfather's home. The dogs broke her nose, both jaws, cheekbones and right eye socket; the right side of her face is paralyzed and she lost that eye, according to her Facebook site. Her bottom jaw was reconstructed but she needs a feeding tube and must grow more bone in her face before more surgery is possible, it states.

The page's administrator wrote Sunday that "Victoria's Victories" had gone from 250 people praying for Victoria to thousands.

The page had more than 32,500 "likes" on Sunday.

A message posted Friday evening by another Mississippi KFC franchisee, Dick West of West Quality Food Service in Laurel, offered "a big KFC picnic" for the child and her family.

West also wrote that he knows the Jackson restaurant owners "and they have never in the 50 years they have operated in Jackson allowed anyone coming into their restaurants to be treated with disrespect."

In a message to the AP, he wrote, "I am sure KFC will make their finding public as soon as the facts are in. In the meantime, I offered to treat Victoria to a picnic because regardless of the outcome of the investigation, she has been thru more than any little girl should and I wanted to give her a special treat."




This is one of those painful stories that result from human insensitivity. KFC told a four year old child and her grandmother to leave because her facial scars were disturbing other customers. Last time I was in KFC it wasn't such a high class restaurant that a little girl's appearance would cause a major problem. Of course KFC has apologized and offered her $30,000 for medical expenses. KFC management is “studying” the situation. I wonder if the family will sue – they should.






"Bionic pancreas" shows promise for diabetes management
By JESSICA FIRGER CBS NEWS June 16, 2014

A cure for Type 1 diabetes is still far from sight, but new research suggests an artificial "bionic pancreas" holds promise for making it much more easily manageable.

For some time, researchers have been on a quest to create a device that mimics the functions of the body's natural pancreas and seamlessly stabilizes blood sugar in a person with Type 1 diabetes. Now, results from two early NIH-funded trials, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, may indicate one prototype for a bionic pancreas is on the right track.

It was created by researchers at Boston University and Massachusetts General Hospital and is different from other models currently in development or on the market.

This particular device not only monitors glucose levels in real-time, but also is a bi-hormonal system, which means the device administers both insulin as well as glucagon. The latter hormone typically is used as a "rescue drug," or an antidote for insulin. Almost 10 percent of diabetes-associated deaths are due hypoglycemia, a result of accidental insulin overdose.

"The bionic pancreas completely takes over your blood sugar control," Ed Damiano, the paper's senior author and an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University, told CBS News.

"It's a fully autonomous soup-to-nuts solution. You enter the patient's body weight. That is it, and then it just starts controlling blood sugar. Basically, it takes the burden of day-to-day diabetes management off your shoulders."

Damiano said the device would allow Type 1 diabetics to do away with standard -- and often inconvenient -- maintenance such as finger-stick tests and manual insulin injections, as well as the constant worry about keeping up with unpredictable blood sugar changes that result from daily activity and food consumption.

According to the American Diabetes Association, about one million Americans have Type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease that often develops in childhood. Recent figures show nearly 10 percent of American adults have diabetes, but the vast majority of them are Type 2. The exact cause of Type 2 diabetes is unknown, but excess weight and a sedentary lifestyle are known to play a role.

The bionic pancreas includes two small pumps that administer both hormones, which are activated by tiny sensors in a thin needle that's placed just under the skin. The prototype is currently monitored with a smartphone through an app built by Damiano and his team.

Damiano said he is working with two medical technology companies, Tandem Diabetes Care and Dexcom, to build the device. They hope to test it on a larger number of patients and get it approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration within the next three years.

So far his prototype has been tested on a small number of adults and children. In one of the trials, 20 adults wore the device for five days and went about normal activity. In the other trial, 32 young people wore the device for five days at a camp for children with Type 1 diabetes.

Damiano and his team found that the device did a better job of keeping blood glucose levels consistent than patients who monitored their levels on their own. Overall the researchers found patients in the study needed 37 percent fewer interventions for hypoglycemia. Additionally, there was a more than twofold reduction of time in hypoglycemia in adults using the bionic pancreas than with the manual pump.

Last September, the FDA signed off on the MiniMed 530G, which joins their internal insulin delivery system to the continuous glucose monitor, both of which previously were sold as separate devices by Medronics. Though that device is a breakthrough, it still only provides insulin to a patient.

"What we're building is a system that uses glucagon like a brake in a car," said Damiano. "The insulin is like the accelerator and the glucagon is like the brake system."

Both the adult and teen study participants demonstrated overall improvements in glucose levels with the device, particularly during sleep when it can be especially challenging for a person with diabetes to keep blood sugar levels stable.

"One of the great fears of people with diabetes is going to bed at night," said Damiano.




“An artificial 'bionic pancreas' is being tested at Boston University and Massachusetts General Hospital which is new in design. It “monitors glucose levels in real-time, but also is a bi-hormonal system, which means the device administers both insulin as well as glucagon. The latter hormone typically is used as a "rescue drug," or an antidote for insulin. Almost 10 percent of diabetes-associated deaths are due hypoglycemia, a result of accidental insulin overdose.... 'It's a fully autonomous soup-to-nuts solution. You enter the patient's body weight. That is it, and then it just starts controlling blood sugar...'” The device will be especially useful at night during sleep, a time when the glucose balance often changes and the patient is unable to detect it. The fact that the device delivers both insulin and glucagon to prevent hypoglycemia deaths is one of the key improvements over previous instruments. Damiano hopes to get the pump authorized by the FDA within the next three years.





In Escalation, Russia Cuts Gas Supplies To Ukraine
by EYDER PERALTA
June 16, 2014

Escalating a long-running conflict, Russia said it has decided to cut off gas supplies to Ukraine on Monday.

The move comes after the two sides failed to find common ground on the price of natural gas and, perhaps more importantly, it marks another chapter in the conflict between the two countries, which flared after a popular uprising ousted pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.

The Associated Press reports:

"Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said that since Ukraine had paid nothing for the gas by Monday, from now on the company would demand that Ukraine pay in advance for any future deliveries.

"'Gazprom supplies to Ukraine only the amount that has been paid for, and the amount that has been paid for is zero,' Kupriyanov said Monday morning.

"Ukraine's Naftogaz company head Andriy Kobolev said Russia had cut the supply of gas to Ukraine. He added that Ukraine can manage without Russian gas until December."

The BBC reports that the Russians came out of the negotiations with a grim view, saying the chances "we meet again are slim."

But EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said he was "not pessimistic."

The AP adds that while 15 percent of Europe's gas flows through Ukraine, this move does not immediately disrupt that supply.

The BBC explains:
"Mr Oettinger later added that Ukraine intended to fill its gas transit commitments to the EU and he was also confident that Russia would meet its gas supply pledges to Europe.

"Ukraine's discounted rate for gas was axed in April after Moscow accused Kiev of failing to pays its bills.

"On Monday, Gazprom stressed that it would continue to supply European consumers with gas at 'full volume' and that it was Ukraine's responsibility to make sure the gas transited through the country."




Ukraine's Naftogaz company head Andriy Kobolev has said that Ukraine can do without the Russian gas, and Guenther Oettinger of the EU said that he expects Russia to furnish gas to Europe, though Russia says that Ukraine is responsible for funneling the gas to European destinations. Apparently nobody considers this to be a crisis, and likewise it looks as though Russia is in no rush to send thousands of troops across the Ukrainian border in a warlike move. I expect Ukraine will continue its efforts to dislodge separatists from Ukrainian cities. Personally I hope they will, but also make parliamentary changes to give Russian speakers a fair deal and possibly release the Eastern regions from complete control by Kiev. There has been no further talk about those things lately, and no more about fighting either. It would be nice if that meant peace, but of course it doesn't. I'll report more stories as I see them.