Links to cool places or things.
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Hallie was featured on the front page of the N&O, 15 Nov 2017
This is at least the second time she’s been featured on the N&O’s front page, if not the third. The first time was when she was still a guest of the WakeMed NICU.
Messier 33 galaxy, by Rowland Archer
My friend and former boss Rowland Archer has a hobby of astrophotography. He’s built up quite a collection of stunning photographs that he’s taken from the little observatory he’s build in his backyard outside of Durham. Here’s one of the latest photos he’s shared, of the Milky Way’s nearest neighboring galaxy, Messier 33.
Says Rowland:
This is Messier 33, the Triangulum Galaxy, so named because it is in the constellation Triangulum and was the 33th object discovered by Charles Messier – who was a comet hunter and famously compiled a list of “darn, another fuzzy thing that’s not a comet!” Ironically, his list of stuff to avoid is now one of the most popular list of things to observe! M33 is part of the local group of galaxies – it’s smaller than our Milky Way, and fainter than the Andromeda Galaxy posted earlier this week, but I think it’s a rocking looking galaxy from our view here on Earth – the blue spiral arms, the red knots of color in the arms that are active star forming regions, and the individual stars visible in both. It’s about 3 million light years away from us, and contains “only” about 30 billion stars. But it’s still the third largest member of our local group – our neighborhood of galaxies that are close enough to be bound together by gravity.
Amazing stuff!
This segment is great stuff.
News broke today that Hallie is trying again, this time with friends, to get North Carolina’s environment back on track. Go, Hallie!
Hallie Turner was 13 years old when she stood outside a Wake County courtroom telling media crews with cameras trained on her that she planned to continue to fight for action on climate change despite her unsuccessful attempt to sue North Carolina over its environmental rules.
Now 15, Hallie is trying again to get the state Department of Environmental Quality and the state Environmental Management Commission to adopt a rule calling for a sharp reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases over the next three decades. This time, two other North Carolina teens — Emily Liu, 16, of Chapel Hill, and Arya Pontula, a Raleigh 17-year-old, will join Hallie in petitioning the commission.
With the help of Ryke Longest at the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, and Our Children’s Trust, a Oregon-based nonprofit focused on climate change, the teens hope to persuade the state to adopt a rule ensuring that by 2050 carbon dioxide emissions would be down to zero.
“It would be a future in which you would not be burning fossil fuels to power your homes,” Longest said on Monday, the day before the teens plan to file their petition.
The anger window is open. For decades, centuries, it was closed: Something bad happened to you, you shoved it down, you maybe told someone but probably didn’t get much satisfaction — emotional or practical — from the confession. Maybe you even got blowback. No one really cared, and certainly no one was going to do anything about it.But for the past six weeks, since reports of one movie producer’s serial predation blew a Harvey-size hole in the news cycle, there is suddenly space, air, for women to talk. To yell, in fact. To make dangerous lists and call reporters and text with their friends about everything that’s been suppressed.
This is not feminism as we’ve known it in its contemporary rebirth — packaged into think pieces or nonprofits or Eve Ensler plays or Beyoncé VMA performances. That stuff has its place and is necessary in its own way. This is different. This is ’70s-style, organic, mass, radical rage, exploding in unpredictable directions. It is loud, thanks to the human megaphone that is social media and the “whisper networks” that are now less about speaking sotto voce than about frantically typed texts and all-caps group chats.
Really powerful white men are losing jobs — that never happens. Women (and some men) are breaking their silence and telling painful and intimate stories to reporters, who in turn are putting them on the front pages of major newspapers.
I got an email yesterday from Dr. James Baraniuk, the researcher who ran the Gulf War Illness research study I participated in back in October 2016. His paper has just been published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.
It’s interesting research, showing brain differences between GWI and CFS patients. Will it prove useful to me? Probably not. In all honesty, I have not had as many episodes of fatigue since I participated the study, in part due to my taking up running, I believe. I still have occasional cognitive issues (which really piss me off when they happen) but energy hasn’t been too big of a problem. That 65 mile bike ride I did with Travis and Kelly absolutely did wreck me the next day (or two), but I suppose it would do that for anyone else who hadn’t properly trained for it.
I’ve always said that the cognitive issues were the biggest issue for me. I wish I had the memory and mental clarity I had in my twenties. As they say, youth is wasted on the young!
Gulf War Illness (GWI) and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) have similar profiles of pain, fatigue, cognitive dysfunction and exertional exhaustion. Post-exertional malaise suggests exercise alters central nervous system functions. Lumbar punctures were performed in GWI, CFS and control subjects after (i) overnight rest (nonexercise) or (ii) submaximal bicycle exercise. Exercise induced postural tachycardia in one third of GWI subjects (Stress Test Activated Reversible Tachycardia, START). The remainder were Stress Test Originated Phantom Perception (STOPP) subjects. MicroRNAs (miRNA) in cerebrospinal fluid were amplified by quantitative PCR. Levels were equivalent between nonexercise GWI (n?=?22), CFS (n?=?43) and control (n?=?22) groups. After exercise, START (n?=?22) had significantly lower miR-22-3p than control (n?=?15) and STOPP (n?=?42), but higher miR-9-3p than STOPP. All post-exercise groups had significantly reduced miR-328 and miR-608 compared to nonexercise groups; these may be markers of exercise effects on the brain. Six miRNAs were significantly elevated and 12 diminished in post-exercise START, STOPP and control compared to nonexercise groups. CFS had 12 diminished miRNAs after exercise. Despite symptom overlap of CFS, GWI and other illnesses in their differential diagnosis, exercise-induced miRNA patterns in cerebrospinal fluid indicated distinct mechanisms for post-exertional malaise in CFS and START and STOPP phenotypes of GWI.
A law professor sorts out the issues in the Gen. Baker case at GITMO.
On November 1, at Guantanamo Bay, an Air Force colonel sentenced a Marine general to 21 days confinement and $1000 fine. Both the colonel and the general are jurists with different roles in the trial of a suspected al-Qaeda mass murderer. Which of the two senior officers is in the right? That’s what this column will endeavor to elucidate.
Source: Semper Fidelis: Guantanamo and The Ethical Dilemma of Gen. John Baker
A Pentagon official ordered the release Friday of a Marine Corps general who was sentenced to 21 days confinement to quarters in connection with a dispute over defense attorneys at the Guantánamo Bay military tribunals.
A Defense Department lawyer who heads up the military commissions, Harvey Rishikof, agreed to a “deferral” of the punishment imposed on Brig. Gen. John Baker by a military judge Wednesday afternoon, according to a court filing.
An attorney for Baker confirmed he was advised that he is no longer confined to his quarters at Guantánamo.”I have spoken with him and he has been told he is free to go,” Baker’s lawyer Barry Pollack told POLITICO.
Friday’s move came about an hour before a federal judge in Washington convened a hearing on a habeas corpus petition seeking Baker’s immediate release.
Source: Pentagon official releases Marine general confined in Guantanamo dispute – POLITICO
What is going on at GITMO? Recording attorney-client conversations? Jailing generals who disagree?
The U.S. Government has in their custody a bad, bad man and the military is doing its damnedest to screw up his trial. The attorneys were right to quit and Judge Spath needs to back the f up.
The Guantanamo Bay military tribunals on Wednesday won their first conviction without a plea deal since 2008. Only it wasn’t a terrorist who was convicted – it was a one-star Marine general sticking up for the rights of the accused to have a fair trial.
In defending the principle that attorneys ought to be able to defend their clients free from government surveillance, Brigadier General John Baker was ruled in contempt of court and sentenced to 21 days in confinement. He also must pay a $1000 fine.
Baker is a senior officer within in the highly controversial military commissions process: the Chief of Defense Counsel. Maj. Ben Sakrisson, the Pentagon spokesman for detentions, confirmed that Baker is being confined in his quarters – at Guantanamo Bay.
“The military commissions are willing to put people in jail for defending the rule of law,” Jay Connell, who represents another Guantanamo detainee facing a military commission, told The Daily Beast. “If they’re willing to put a Marine general in jail for standing up for a client’s rights, they’re willing to do just anything.”
Source: Gitmo Judge Convicts U.S. General—Because He Stood Up for Detainee Rights
An astonishing astronomical event is taking place. We are constantly shown that we have only the slightest idea of how the universe really works.
Some 500 million light-years away, in a galaxy so distant it looks like little more than a smudge, a star exploded five times over the course of nearly two years, spewing the contents of 50 Jupiters and emitting as much energy as 10 quintillion suns.
This isn’t even the first time this star has gone supernova: Astronomers believe this same body was seen exploding 60 years ago.
Somehow, this “zombie” star has managed to survive one of the most powerful, destructive events known to science — multiple times. It should make us question, researchers wrote Wednesday in the journal Nature, how much we really know about supernovas.
Bonus link to ARS Technica article with juicy astronomy details on this event.
