Sunday, July 27, 2014


News Clips For The Day


Will Hamas recognize Israel as a Jewish state? – CBS
By REBECCA KAPLAN FACE THE NATION July 27, 2014

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal skirted a question of whether his group would ever recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, saying only that Palestinians would make that decision once they had a state of their own with no Israeli presence.

"When we have a Palestinian state then the Palestinian state will decide on its policies. You cannot actually ask me about the future," Meshaal said through a translator in an exclusive interview with "CBS This Morning" co-host Charlie Rose, which aired on "Face the Nation" Sunday and will appear in full on PBS. Additional excerpts will air on "CBS This Morning" Monday.

Prior to that, Meshaal told Rose that while he is "ready to coexist" with Jews, Christians and Arabs, adding however: "I do not want to live with a state of occupiers."

"We are not fanatics; we are not fundamentalists. We do not actually fight the Jews because they are Jews per se. We do not fight any other races. We fight the occupiers," Meshaal said.

The militant group, which controls the Gaza strip, has demanded that Israel and Egypt lift their blockades in exchange for a truce in the ongoing conflict. Meshaal rejected the idea that it was a precondition for the end of hostilities.

"Life is not a prerequisite. Life is a right for our people in Palestine," he said. "This is a collective punishment; we need to lift the siege. We have to have a port. We have to have an airport. This is the first message. The second message in order to stop the bloodletting we need to look at the underlying causes, we need to look at the occupation, we have to stop the occupation."

He blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also appeared on "Face the Nation" Sunday, for the breakdown in peace talks between the two sides earlier this year that failed to produce any results.

"Netanyahu doesn't take heed of our rights," Meshaal said. "Netanyahu has killed our hope, has killed our dream, and he has killed the American initiative," he added, in reference to Secretary of State John Kerry's role in the peace talks.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in a separate interview, said Meshaal's response to questions about whether Hamas could coexist with Israel "sounded like double talk to me."

"But the bottom line is they are seeing each other's problems from a completely negative side and what you need to do in diplomacy is at least try to put yourselves into the other person's shoes and they are definitely not doing that," Albright said. "Hamas is definitely trying to persuade its population that everything is the fault of Israel which I think is unfair."




Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said in an interview with Charlie Rose, “while he is 'ready to coexist' with Jews, Christians and Arabs, adding however: 'I do not want to live with a state of occupiers. We are not fanatics; we are not fundamentalists. We do not actually fight the Jews because they are Jews per se. We do not fight any other races. We fight the occupiers,' Meshaal said. When asked when Hamas would recognize Israel as a legitimate state, he said that the decision whether to agree to that would be made after they have a state of their own with no Israeli presence. That certainly doesn't sound like Hamas is anywhere near the point of negotiating in good faith with Israel. Life goes on.





What can you learn from a sleep tracking device?
By JESSICA FIRGER CBS NEWS July 25, 2014

The average adult needs at least seven hours of sleep each night, though unfortunately many get a lot less. Approximately 70 million Americans have a sleep disorder, which may be why there's tremendous interest in popular fitness trackers that allow you to quantify and evaluate the quality of your sleep -- without the expense of a sleep specialist.

Personal sleep trackers seem like a great investment for anyone suffering from insomnia or sleep deprivation. But are they accurate?

"The reason why these devices are so good is it puts greater emphasis on sleep," Michelle Primeau, clinical instructor at the Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences & Medicine told CNET reporter Sumi Das. "Most adults in the U.S. are somewhat sleep deprived."

Fitness trackers with sleep tracking capabilities, such as Fitbit, work by keeping track of how much you toss and turn in your bed to provide data on your sleep quality. This is done with accelerometers.

"They are measuring an indirect approximation of sleep through movement," said Primeau. "In order to make these estimations of deep or light sleep they are probably using an algorithm that takes into account the relative amount of movement that a person is having in the course of a night."

On the other hand, sleep specialists base their treatments and diagnoses on polysomnography, a special multifaceted test that typically involves sleeping in a controlled environment -- a sleep lab -- hooked up to plenty of wires. This gold-standard for sleep specialists measures everything from your brain activity, heart rate and breathing to your eye and muscle movements. Polysomnography generates far more information than currently any personal sleep tracker can, and is used to diagnose problems such as sleep apnea, circadian rhythm disorders, nighttime movement disorders and other health issues.

"Polysomnography is a collection of different physiological measurements that we use to define and characterize sleep," explained Primeau. "We start with EEG which are little electrical wires that measure your brainwaves. It also includes measures like a snore mic. Belts around you chest and abdomen will also record your breathing."

But some experts argue that sleeping in a controlled setting, such as a sleep lab, messes up the evaluation before it even has the chance to begin, since the person won't sleep the same as in their own bed. In general, a personal sleep tracker could be a good starting point for a better night of sleep, but these devices may not be enough to diagnose and solve your shuteye challenges.

If you're desperately tired but still skeptical, a sleep app for a smartphone may be a good place to start, since it will only set you back a few dollars compared with a hundred or more for a tracker device. Sleep Cycle, Sleep as Android and Sleepbot operate on the accelerometers built into a phone.




“Approximately 70 million Americans have a sleep disorder... Fitness trackers with sleep tracking capabilities, such as Fitbit, work by keeping track of how much you toss and turn in your bed to provide data on your sleep quality. This is done with accelerometers. 'They are measuring an indirect approximation of sleep through movement,' said Primeau. 'In order to make these estimations of deep or light sleep they are probably using an algorithm that takes into account the relative amount of movement that a person is having in the course of a night.'”

“On the other hand, sleep specialists base their treatments and diagnoses on polysomnography, a special multifaceted test that typically involves sleeping in a controlled environment -- a sleep lab -- hooked up to plenty of wires. This gold-standard for sleep specialists measures everything from your brain activity, heart rate and breathing to your eye and muscle movements.” A less expensive method for tracking sleep which does not require that you move into a laboratory for the night, is an app to be operated by a smart phone of which there are several – Sleep Cycle, Sleep as Android and Sleepbot.”

As a long time insominiac I am painfully aware that I rarely sleep all the way through the night, and often don't initiate sleep for three or four hours after lying down. I have learned to go to bed very early and use my TV set on a low volume, playing interesting informational documentaries taped over a number of years, to distract my mind pleasurably from the fact that I don't feel sleepy. The fear of not sleeping takes over without the tapes and causes me to lie even longer without drifting off to sleep. An app might give me a true reading of just how many hours I slept, but I can tell by the way I feel if I didn't get enough. I probably won't invest in any kind of tracker. Luckily I don't have to go to work now.




Close Encounters Of The Radio Kind? Mystery Bursts Baffle Astronomers – NPR
by JOE PALCA
July 26, 2014

Scientists say a brief burst of radio activity has been detected at the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. This new report resembles previous activity detected in Australia, which has scientists debating possible causes, including solar flares, blitzars, or something even more mysterious.

Astronomers have a mystery on their hands. Two large radio telescopes, on opposite sides of the planet, have detected very brief, very powerful bursts of radio waves.

Right now, astronomers have no idea what's causing these bursts or where they're coming from. And nothing has been ruled out at the moment — not even the kind of outrageous claims you'd expect to see in tabloid headlines.

Australian Recordings Inspire Curiosity And Doubt

The first report of these "fast radio bursts" appeared in 2007. Duncan Lorimer and his colleagues had found the signal buried in recordings made at the Parkes radio telescope in Australia.

Lorimer argued at the time that the source of the burst came from way beyond our galaxy. But then the same telescope recorded more bursts that were similar, but clearly coming from something much closer by.

"They cast a lot of doubt on the original detection that we made," Lorimer says; something nearby would probably have a much more pedestrian explanation.

Other astronomers began to suspect Lorimer's extra-galactic detection was a fluke — but that changed last year, when a significant paper in Science announced the discovery of four more bursts.

That paper convinced most astronomers that something real, far away and still very mysterious was happening.

But there was one lingering doubt. All of the detections were made by one radio telescope, the Parkes telescope. Some astronomers wondered if the bursts might not be an astronomical event at all, but some problem with the electronics in the telescope.

But now, Lorimer says, "It's clearly not."

In Puerto Rico, Fresh Reports Renew Speculation

There's a report of a burst detected at the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. Lorimer says several more reports of detections will soon be showing up in the scientific literature.

As you would imagine, there's been lots of speculation about what's behind these mysterious bursts. Some astronomers think they're caused by blitzars, pulses of energy from a supermassive star collapsing into a black hole. Others think they may be caused by power solar flares coming from stars nearer by.

And Lorimer says he has to mention it: "There's even been discussions in the literature about signatures from extraterrestrial civilizations."

It's just a theoretical paper suggesting the bursts could be generated by intelligent beings intentionally beaming a radio signal directly at Earth.

James Cordes, an astronomer at Cornell University who's also on the hunt for an explanation of these radio bursts, says he'd bet against the possibility of extraterrestrial involvement.

Cordes says astronomers will need to find more examples of these bursts before they'll be able to say with any certainty what's causing them.

But finding examples will take time. The kinds of radio telescopes that can detect these bursts have what Cordes calls tunnel vision: "We don't see the whole sky — we see just a very narrow snippet of it."

So catching a burst in the act requires a bit of luck. That's frustrating for astronomers, but having only a tiny bit of hard data does have its upside: Theoreticians can spin out all kinds of interesting ideas.

"The nice things about this in the current stage is that we really don't know what these bursts are caused by," Cordes says. "And so the sky's the limit in some respects."




“This new report resembles previous activity detected in Australia, which has scientists debating possible causes, including solar flares, blitzars, or something even more mysterious. Astronomers have a mystery on their hands. Two large radio telescopes, on opposite sides of the planet, have detected very brief, very powerful bursts of radio waves.” Is ET trying to phone his earthbound friends? I love sci fi movies and scientific speculation about intelligent life on other planets, but I have little faith in their ability to send a flying saucer here to observe us.

I think we on Earth are probably not alone, as life here has been through such extremely different forms and inhabits such different environments – for instance, bacteria have been found in rocks and in the very hot waters of Yellowstone's geysers, plus in the undersea “black smokers” emerging from volcanic vents. I think that among all the suns in the universe there are most probably planets that have simple life and may certainly have advanced life, even civilizations. Water ice has been detected on several of the planets around our sun, and where there is water there may be life.

One scientist in discussing the flying saucer question, said that the likelihood of another civilization with a high enough technological develop to come here is very, very unlikely. I think when we succeed, if we do, in sending an exploratory team to Mars, we should definitely go to the Martian poles which fluctuate in the amount of ice they have seasonally, and therefore must at times have some liquid water.

If there is one thing I do think from considering the ancient bacteria that have been found in several extreme environments here on Earth, it is that life is probably spontaneously formed and very hard to extinguish completely, so life on Mars – at least when it had more water on its surface – very probably existed, and may still persist to this day. By life, I do mean one celled organisms. Nonetheless, it's a start.





Charlie Crist Delivers Perfect Response To Rick Scott On Climate Change
The Huffington Post
By Igor Bobic
Posted 7/26/2014

Florida Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist on Friday delivered the perfect response to Republicans who claim they lack the scientific background to express an opinion as to whether man-made climate change is real.

“I’m not a scientist either, but I can use my brain, and I can talk to one,” Crist said Friday at a Florida State University presentation on greenhouse gases and rising sea levels, according to SaintPetersBlog.

The claim is a common refrain in the Republican Party. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)explained in 2012 that, while he "wasn't a scientist, man," he believed the age of Earth was "one of the great mysteries." House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) similarlysaid earlier this year that he was "not qualified to debate the science over climate change." And Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) also used the line when asked whether he was worried that rising sea levels posed a threat to his coastal home.

President Barack Obama made hay out of the line in June, slamming politicians who use it for failing to curb the harmful effects of carbon emissions.

“Let me translate," he said in drought-stricken California. "What that means is, ‘I accept that man-made climate change is real, but if I admit it, I’ll be run out of town by a radical fringe that thinks climate science is a liberal plot.'"

"I'm not a scientist either, but we've got some good ones at NASA," he added.

Crist, who is a former Republican, currently leads Scott 45 percent to 40 percent in Florida’s hotly contested governor’s race, according to a new Quinnipiac Universitysurvey.




Rick Scott has been hammering relentlessly on Charlie Crist's former record as Governor of Florida in multiple television ads here in Jacksonville. I remember him as my governor from his various comments, which I liked “in spite of the fact that he was a Republican.” The Republican party was not always so hidebound and group solidarity oriented, with some of them freely espousing forward-looking and socially open views, even though they got some flack for it. Senator McCain and Chris Christie in modern times are also more free-thinking than the Tea Party. Some Republicans think deeply into issues before they jump on the party bandwagon, and I respect them. Some Republicans did criticize Crist for being a “Republican In Name Only” and it wasn't long after he lost in a senatorial race to Marco Rubio that he dropped his Republican Party membership and became an independent, to switch once more in 2012 to the Democratic Party. I am looking forward to the next election this November, so I can go out and vote for Crist again.






Has Last Christian Left Iraqi City of Mosul After 2,000 Years? – NBC
BY JONATHAN KROHN
First published July 27th 2014

QARAQOSH, Iraq -- Samer Kamil Yacub was alone when four Islamist militants carrying AK-47s arrived at his front door and ordered him to leave the city.

The 70-year-old Christian had failed to comply with a decree issued by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). Yacub's hometown of Mosul had boasted a Christian community for almost 2,000 years. But then the al Qaeda-inspired fighters who overran the city last month gave Christians an ultimatum. They could stay and pay a tax or convert to Islam -- or be killed.

Yacub, 70, was one of the few Christians remaining beyond last Saturday's noon deadline. He may have even been the last to leave alive.

"[A] fighter said, ‘I have orders to kill you now',” Yacub said just hours after the Sunni extremists tried to force their way into his home at 11 a.m. on Monday. “All of the people in my neighborhood were Muslim. They came to help me —about 20 people — at the door in front of my house. They tried to convince ISIS not to kill me.”

The rebels spared Yacub but threw him out of the city where he had spent his entire life. They also took his Iraqi ID card before informing him that elderly women would be given his house.

In June, ISIS declared a caliphate covering parts of Syria and Iraq, decreed that all of the world's Muslims must pledge allegiance to their leader and said it wanted to be known as just "Islamic State." In Syria, ISIS brought back seventh-century laws to govern Christians after seizing the city of Raqqa. "They have no mercy," one Christian living there told NBC News in March. In Mosul, ISIS this week ordered shopkeepers to cover the faces of mannequins andblew up a mosque that was said to be the tomb of the Prophet Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale in a biblical story.

While an estimated 2 million Christians called Iraq home in the 1990s, church leaders say that figure plunged to around 200,000 by last year. The sudden rise of ISIS has sent many other Christians fleeing in terror.

Yacub, who struggles to walk, explained that he stayed in Mosul not because he wanted to, but due to his severe health problems. He eventually made his way to Qaraqosh, about 20 miles southeast of Mosul, finding refuge in the Christian city that is under the protection of Kurdish peshmerga troops. He now spends his nights on a thin mattress in an unfinished housing project with dozens of other refugees.

Two of Yacub’s new housemates are Raida Samir-Kaman, 35, and sister Ruwayda, 30. They fled Mosul bound for Qaraqosh with their brother at 3:30 p.m. the day before ISIS' deadline. At a militant 

checkpoint, the women were taken out of their car and ushered into a nearby trailer by a female ISIS member dressed in full hijab.

Its interior was barren, but for a small bed in the corner which was covered in a continually replenished mountain of money, gold, and jewelry. The female ISIS agent searched the women, finding money in their bags and hidden within Raida’s clothes. She took it all from them. Next she removed their earrings one by one, placing them in the pile on the bed. She tried to take off Ruwayda’s bracelets, but they got caught on her arm. Eventually the agent was able to yank them off, injuring Ruwayda in the process, and she added them to the growing pile.

“We asked them for 10,000 or 100,000 [Iraqi Dinars -- about $8.50 or $85.00] just to take a taxi, or for pocket money,” Raida recalled. “And she refused that.” Once finished, an ISIS fighter who had been 

standing guard outside the trailer came inside and picked up all the loot, loading it into a car to take it back to Mosul.

Ahead of the sisters in the checkpoint line was a young girl with a ring on her finger. She wept as an ISIS militant tried to pull it off as it kept getting stuck. Even further ahead, Raida remembers seeing an elderly woman pulled out of a car in a wheelchair. ISIS seized the car, forcing her roll through the checkpoint on her own.

More than 400 of these refugee families have passed through Qaraqosh alone. This is only a fraction of the the several thousand Christians who were in Mosul until recently. Of those, about 35 families have stayed at the local seminary, where the Archbishop of Northern Iraq for the Syriac Catholic Church is based. Surrounded by many smaller towns controlled by ISIS, it has become a border town of sorts: a haven near the front lines.

The situation in Qaraqosh is not all rosy, though. Since the fighting between ISIS and the peshmerga last month, water and electricity have become more scarce, leading many to leave. Now the city mostly relies on generator power for electricity and upon imported shipments and freshly dug wells not far from nearby ISIS-controlled towns for its water supply.

For now, Qaraqosh is safe. But whether that will remain the case is another question.

According to Yacub, one of the ISIS militants offered a chilling farewell as he left the checkpoint.

"Go to your family in Qaraqosh," the fighter said. "Go there. We're coming there, too."




The Islamic religion is supposedly tolerant of the religious practices of others, but ISIS seems to march to its own drummer, and they are only interested in conquest and war. They're too much like Boko Haram, behaving, as far as I'm concerned, like barbarians. It isn't the first time Christians have had to leave or face death, but I hate to see history repeat itself in this manner. When I was growing up I thought it was a world moving toward a higher level of evolution, the 50s, 60s and 70s were optimistic years, but I just don't think so anymore. A few fundamentalist religions can turn the clock backward in no time.






Time Running Short For Congress To Agree On Border Bill – NPR
by DAVID WELNA
July 27, 2014

Congress is set to disband later this week for a summer break stretching past Labor Day. That leaves lawmakers only a few more days to act on an urgent request from President Obama.

The president wants nearly $4 billion in emergency funds to deal with the tens of thousands of children from Central America who've been illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months. The GOP-led House may act on just a fraction of that request, setting up a clash with the Democratic-led Senate.

House Republicans are in a tricky spot: with mid-term elections coming up, they don't want to be seen as the party that ignores the plight of Latin Americans fleeing to the U.S. But many GOP lawmakers are also loathe to give President Obama what they perceive to be a blank check for resolving the crisis.

House Speaker John Boehner declared Thursday there will be no blank check, but he also made clear doing nothing is not an option.

"I think taking some action to solve this problem is in order," Boehner said. "I think dealing with the humanitarian crisis on the border is also in order, and I've frankly been clear with my colleagues about it."

Boehner gathered his fellow Republicans behind closed doors Friday in the basement of the Capitol to pound home that message. It was enough to sway even Rep. Steve King, the Iowa conservative who'd earlier opposed funding for the border crisis.

"I'm a little more comfortable with the speaker's position on this than I was when I woke up this morning," King said.

And Texas Republican Pete Sessions, another hardliner on border security, declared his aim was to reverse the tide of illegal immigration.

"We're gonna make sure that these children are treated humanely and that we move them back to their home countries, which is where they belong," Sessions said.

Republicans say the only way to do that is by amending a 2008 law that allows young people from nations other than Canada and Mexico, who've entered illegally, to remain in the U.S. while their cases are adjudicated. Republican Rep. Kay Granger of Texas is a key player in the House response to the president's request. She says any bill it passes must have two things.

"One thing is changing the 2008 law, treating everyone the same," Granger said. "The other thing is to have more judges — significantly more judges — so they can hear these cases more quickly."

But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, like most House Democrats, opposes attaching a change in that law to the funding bill.

"You want to have a separate bill on 2008? Discuss it there," Pelosi said. "Don't hold the children hostage to the cosmetics of how tough you are on the border."

Most Senate Democrats also oppose such a change, including New Mexico's Martin Heinrich.

"It's one thing to say you're gonna speed up that process; that's something I can probably support," Heinrich said. "But you can't short-circuit that process; you can't take due process away from those kids."

House Republicans may also approve only about a quarter of the funds the president requested. Senate Democrats are also likely to give Obama less than what he wants.

"Some people argue it is too expensive," said Dick Durbin, the Senate's number two Democrat. "Well, we can argue about the exact amount of money, but I hope we aren't arguing about the value and the principle that is being tested. I hope we are not arguing about whether the United States is a caring and compassionate nation."

Senate Democrats are doing their own emergency funding bill; even if it passes, there may be no time left this week to reconcile it with whatever the House produces.




“House Speaker John Boehner declared Thursday there will be no blank check, but he also made clear doing nothing is not an option. 'I think taking some action to solve this problem is in order,' Boehner said. 'I think dealing with the humanitarian crisis on the border is also in order, and I've frankly been clear with my colleagues about it.'.... "We're gonna make sure that these children are treated humanely and that we move them back to their home countries, which is where they belong," Sessions said. Republicans say the only way to do that is by amending a 2008 law that allows young people from nations other than Canada and Mexico, who've entered illegally, to remain in the U.S. while their cases are adjudicated. Republican Rep. Kay Granger of Texas is a key player in the House response to the president's request. She says any bill it passes must have two things. 'One thing is changing the 2008 law, treating everyone the same,' Granger said. 'The other thing is to have more judges — significantly more judges — so they can hear these cases more quickly.'"

These Republican comments look basically okay to me. I do agree that the wording of the 2008 law is the basic cause of this flood of children. We also need to work strongly with the governments in Central America to improve living conditions there and put a stop to the basically lawless actions of the parents down there who are making deals with coyotes. The whole human smuggling business should be eradicated. That's like the businessmen in the US who knowingly hire illegal immigrants even though they don't have work permits – that is one of the root causes for the adult illegal immigration, which remains a problem of its own as we focus on the children.

The Honduran president was quoted recently as saying that he wants temporary work permits to be issued in Honduras to a certain number of people, because the money such immigrants send home to his country is an important part of their national economy, making up some 17% of the total figure. I don't see why we can't do that. That alone explains some of the laxity of enforcement against the coyotes. Hopefully Obama will continue to work to improve the international reasons for the flow of children and adults.





How Our Story About A Child's Science Experiment Sparked Controversy – NPR
by ALAN GREENBLATT
July 27, 2014

A story that ran last Sunday on All Things Considered about a sixth-grader's science fair project has elicited not just criticism but controversy.

Since the student's project built on the work of scientists, she's been accused this week of being a"plagiarist" who "ripped off" earlier work.

We think those charges are not just overblown but inaccurate.

A bit of background. As our original story notes, Lauren Arrington, who is now 13, conducted an experiment that explored the levels of salinity of water in which lionfish could live.

That's an important question in Florida, where Lauren lives, because the ocean-dwelling fish is now invading inland waterways. The state has imposed a ban on imports of live lionfish that takes effect Aug. 1.

Lauren's project also received coverage from NBC and CBS, among other outlets. After our story aired, a researcher named Zack Jud complained on Facebook that his own discoveries about lionfish had been misattributed to Lauren in media coverage.

"My name has been intentionally left out of the stories, replaced by the name of the 12-year-old daughter of my former supervisor's best friend," he wrote. "The little girl did a science fair project based on my PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED DISCOVERY of lionfish living in low-salinity estuarine habitats."

His post was widely shared and picked up considerable media coverage on its own. We looked into the matter and decided that while our story and headline may have overplayed the impact of Lauren's project — as noted by our standards editor — she had in fact done original work. (We have updated the Web version of the All Things Considered story in ways that are noted on the page.)

There appears to be no question that Jud has not just conducted pathfinding research on lionfish in Florida but been a public advocate about the issue, giving numerous talks in public forums and speaking with media outlets about it.

So what did Lauren add to the discussion?

Jud's own work in 2011 notes, "There is no published record for salinity tolerance in lionfish." In other words, it wasn't clear whether the lionfish could live in water with much lower levels of salt than in the ocean, which was important for determining how far inland the species might go. "All lionfish were captured at [at least] 0.5 m in depth, suggesting that they may avoid lower-salinity surface waters," the paper states.

In a 2010 interview with the Palm Beach Post, Jud said that "our theory is that the water is saltier at the bottom" of the Loxahatchee River, where he found that the lionfish was living. In a 2012 paper, Jud and his coauthors say there might be more saline content upriver than expected, as they had found "a strong salt wedge" and the salinity at their study site was nearly as high as seawater.

Long story short: It appears that at that point, Jud and his colleagues still weren't sure whether the lionfish could survive in freshwater or had found sources of high-saline water well inland.

That's the question Lauren sought to address. According to her dad, Albrey Arrington — who is listed as a coauthor on Jud's 2011 study — Lauren read that study and attended a presentation given by Jud and his professor at Florida International University, Craig Layman. (Jud has completed his Ph.D. and Layman is now at North Carolina State University.)After our story aired, a researcher named Zack Jud complained on Facebook that his own discoveries about lionfish had been misattributed to Lauren in media coverage.

"My name has been intentionally left out of the stories, replaced by the name of the 12-year-old daughter of my former supervisor's best friend," he wrote. "The little girl did a science fair project based on my PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED DISCOVERY of lionfish living in low-salinity estuarine habitats."

Conducting an experiment to determine the lowest salinity lionfish can tolerate was Lauren's own idea, Albrey Arrington says.

In response to the media furor, Layman this past week posted a detailed timeline about lionfish research.

When Lauren presented her findings at her school's science fair in December 2012, Layman writes, "At this point, to my knowledge, there had been no published accounts of this salinity tolerance in lionfish. So Lauren had made a contribution to science. One can argue the magnitude of this finding, but a contribution regardless."

That contribution was acknowledged by Jud, Layman and a coauthor in their own recent study about the lionfish's salinity tolerance.

"Dr. Jud acknowledged Lauren," Albrey Arrington says. "To me, that is evidence alone that she didn't steal his idea."

It appears that Lauren picked up on a field of inquiry, and the scientists working in that field subsequently built on her findings. That's not intellectual theft, that's part of the scientific method — starting with an unanswered question and then answering it.

In short, scientists were not "shocked" by Lauren's findings, as our Web headline originally put it, but neither is she a plagiarist of their work.

NPR contacted Jud for comment. Through a spokeswoman, he objected to something Lauren said in our story: "Scientists were doing plenty of tests on them, but they just always assumed they were in the ocean," Lauren said. "So I was like, 'Well, hey guys, what about the river?' "

Clearly, Jud and his colleagues had thought about the river already. But Lauren is 13 — you be the judge as to whether her statement represents an intentional or malicious error on her part. And bear in mind that her science fair project cited Jud and Layman.

It's a fact of life that, under the right circumstances, a child's science experiment can attract more media attention than work done over a period of years by academic researchers.

"Is it a surprise that the media hyped up a story about a 12-year-old that made a finding that was cited in a scientific paper?" Layman writes in his timeline. "I am more shocked by those who are shocked that the media would sensationalize such a story."

As for Jud's contention that NPR and other media outlets "intentionally" left his name out of the coverage about Lauren, it's simply not in the nature of journalism that all science stories would credit all the important work in the field, in the way a scientific study would do.

"At this stage in my career, this type of national exposure would be invaluable...if only my name was included in the stories," Jud wrote in his Facebook post.

His name is certainly out there now.

"I am glad tens of thousands of people now know about Zack's research and Lauren's project that never would have otherwise," Layman writes. "But it is unfortunate how it played out in such a manner over the last few weeks."




Scientific research is highly competitive and can get rancorous. In this case Zack Jud made a complaint in Facebook that slandered the teenaged girl without looking into the matter thoroughly enough. Besides, the girl did give him credit in her project for his discovery. Jud's professor and co-author consulted a timeline of the various findings on the subject of salinity in a Florida river, responded to NPR's followup on their original article and then gave the teenager Lauren Arrington credit for her work on the question. Case closed. This was pretty exciting as scholarly research goes.