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takyon writes:

Six former executives and managers from Arizona-based drugmaker, Insys Therapeutics, face conspiracy charges over what a federal prosecutor calls a "racketeering crime." In this case, according to the indictment, the former employees of the drug manufacturer are alleged to have rewarded doctors for prescribing their spray version of the opiate fentanyl, even when it wasn't medically appropriate.

[...] Three years ago on CNBC, Michael Babich demonstrated the company's drug, "Subsys," a prescription pain reliever for cancer patients which is delivered through a spray. The medication, which the company first sold in 2012, racked up $329 milllion in sales last year. "The device that I brought with me today allows the patient to simply with no priming spray the drug underneath their tongue," Babich explained.

According to the indictment, the defendants "conspired with one another to use bribes and kickbacks" for doctors who "wrote large numbers of... prescriptions, most often for patients who did not have cancer." The scheme allegedly funneled tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to practitioners, including one whom a sales representative boasted in an email was running "a very shady pill mill and only accepts cash."

Source: CBS News

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"exec" submits this very interesting article from The New Yorker:

Shortly after the dam went into use, Nadhir al-Ansari, a consulting engineer, made an inspection for the Ministry of Water Resources. “I was shocked,” he told me. Sinkholes were forming around the dam, and pools of water had begun bubbling up on the banks downstream. “You could see the cracks, you could see the fractures underground,” Ansari said. The water travelling around the dam, known as “seepage,” is normal in limited amounts, but the gypsum makes it potentially catastrophic. “When I took my report back to Baghdad, the chief engineer was furious—he was more than furious. But it was too late. The dam was already finished.”

The dam was built in an area that contains a high amount of water-soluble gypsum. The pressure from the dam's water is causing this gypsum to dissolve, leaving behind voids in the ground beneath the dam. Workers and engineers have been working to fill the voids with 'grout' - a cement mixture:

Inside the gallery, the engineers are engaged in what amounts to an endless struggle against nature. Using antiquated pumps as large as truck engines, they drive enormous quantities of liquid cement into the earth. Since the dam opened, in 1984, engineers working in the gallery have pumped close to a hundred thousand tons of grout—an average of ten tons a day—into the voids below.

[...]When ISIS fighters took the dam, in 2014, they drove away the overwhelming majority of the dam’s workers, and also captured the main grout-manufacturing plant in Mosul. Much of the dam’s equipment was destroyed, some by ISIS and some by American air strikes. The grouting came to a standstill—but the passage of water underneath the dam did not.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/02/a-bigger-problem-than-isis

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

International investigators hunting for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 have admitted after combing the Indian Ocean for two years search crews were likely looking in the wrong place.

Tuesday's conclusion raises the possibility the search for the Boeing 777 could continue well beyond next month, when crews are expected to finish their deep sea sonar hunt of the current search zone west of Australia.

Australia's transport minister, however, suggested that was doubtful.

The latest analysis of the plane's whereabouts comes in a report from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which is leading the search for the aircraft.

The report is the result of a November meeting of international and Australian experts who re-examined all the data used to narrow down the search area for the plane, which vanished during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board.

In the years since the plane disappeared, experts have analysed a series of exchanges between the aircraft and a satellite to estimate a probable crash site along what's known as the seventh arc - a vast arc of ocean that runs through the southern hemisphere. A deep sea search of a 120,000sq km stretch of water along the seventh arc has so far come up empty.

In November, the experts went back over the satellite data, along with the results of a new ocean drift analysis of the more than 20 items of debris likely to have come from the plane that have washed ashore on beaches throughout the Indian Ocean. The analysis, which looked at where the items washed ashore and when, suggested the debris originated in an area farther north along the arc from the current search zone.

Given the number of aircraft parts found so far, the team concluded there must have been a debris field floating on the surface of the water when the plane crashed. So they eliminated an area that had already been the subject of a surface search by air crews in the early stages of the hunt.

That left a 25,000-square kilometre area immediately to the north of the current search zone as the most likely place where the plane hit the ocean, the ATSB report said.

The investigators concluded there is "a high degree of confidence" the plane is not in the current search area and they agreed the new area needs to be searched.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Sounds, such as music and noise, are capable of reliably affecting individuals' moods and emotions, possibly by regulating brain dopamine, a neurotransmitter strongly involved in emotional behavior and mood regulation.

However, the relationship of sound environments with mood and emotions is highly variable across individuals. A putative source of variability is genetic background.

In this regard, a new imaging genetics study directed by Professor Elvira Brattico from Aarhus University and conducted in two Italian hospitals in collaboration with the University of Helsinki (Finland) has provided the first evidence that the effects of music and noise on affective behavior and brain physiology are associated with genetically determined dopamine functionality.

This suggests techies are hard-wired on a genetic level to dislike certain kinds of music.

T. Quarto, et al. Interaction between DRD2 variation and sound environment on mood and emotion-related brain activity. Neuroscience, 2017; 341: 9 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2016.11.010

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DutchUncle writes:

"I'm just a farmer's wife," says Christine Conder, modestly. But for 2,300 members of the rural communities of Lancashire she is also a revolutionary internet pioneer.

Her DIY solution to a neighbour's internet connectivity problems in 2009 has evolved into B4RN, an internet service provider offering fast one gigabit per second broadband speeds to the parishes which nestle in the picturesque Lune Valley.

.... "It wasn't rocket science. It was three days of hard work." Her motto, which she repeats often in conversation, is JFDI. Three of those letters stand for Just Do It. The fourth you can work out for yourself.

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Several SoylentNews readers have submitted this story:

Amazon Echo is a voice-activated and cloud-connected speaker device that actively listens to a room using several microphones and communicates with Amazon servers to perform various queries and tasks.

Warrant Filed for Amazon Echo Records in Arkansas Murder Case

Booga1 writes:

Arkansas police filed what is believed to be the first request to retrieve information from an Amazon Echo device in a homicide investigation.

[...] Authorities charged Bates, 31, with murder earlier this year, but police in the Ozark city are now looking to find evidence on his Echo, according to The Information [paywalled].

[...] Amazon twice refused to hand over information requested by police, according to The Information, but gave them Bates' account information and purchase history.

The company said in a statement on Tuesday that it "will not release customer information without a valid and binding legal demand properly served on us."

[Continues...]

jasassin writes:

In the wrong place at the wrong time? Tough luck, says the state of Colorado. If you are arrested the police will charge you a $25 booking fee. If you can't pay on the spot, don't worry, they'll bill you. Even if charges are dismissed, or you are aquitted, you still pay a price! But fear not, if you can prove you are innocent (beyond reasonable doubt) you can get your money back. This is not something new, but something that people should be aware of.

Charon writes:

There is a case before the US Supreme Court, Nelson v. Colorado, which will be argued on Jan. 9, regarding the difficulty of getting fees and penalties refunded when defendants are found innocent.

And it's not just Colorado. Another case from Minnesota:

Corey Statham had $46 in his pockets when he was arrested in Ramsey County, Minn., and charged with disorderly conduct. He was released two days later, and the charges were dismissed.

But the county kept $25 of Mr. Statham's money as a "booking fee." It returned the remaining $21 on a debit card subject to an array of fees. In the end, it cost Mr. Statham $7.25 to withdraw what was left of his money.

The Supreme Court will soon consider whether to hear Mr. Statham's challenge to Ramsey County's fund-raising efforts, which are part of a national trend to extract fees and fines from people who find themselves enmeshed in the criminal justice system.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Using ultrafast imaging of moving energy in photosynthesis, scientists have determined the speed of crucial processes for the first time.

This should help scientists understand how nature has perfected the process of photosynthesis, and how this might be copied to produce fuels by artificial photosynthesis.

During photosynthesis, plants harvest light and, though a chemical process involving water and carbon dioxide, convert this into fuel for life.

A vital part of this process is using the light energy to split water into oxygen and hydrogen. This is done by an enzyme called Photosystem II. Light energy is harvested by 'antennae', and transferred to the reaction centre of Photosystem II, which strips electrons from water. This conversion of excitation energy into chemical energy, known as 'charge separation', is the first step in splitting water.

It was previously thought that the process of charge separation in the reaction centre was a 'bottleneck' in photosynthesis - the slowest step in the process - rather than the transfer of energy along the antennae.

Marius Kaucikas, Karim Maghlaoui, Jim Barber, Thomas Renger and Jasper J van Thor, Ultrafast infrared observation of exciton equilibration from oriented single crystals of photosystem II will be published in Nature Communications. DOI: 10.1038/NCOMMS13977

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n1 writes:

Tom Secker of SpyCulture.com on the CIA and Top Chef

The CIA finally jumped on the cooking-themed reality TV propaganda bandwagon in 2010 when they hosted an episode of Top Chef. This week we take a look at the episode in question, how it flattered the CIA, and how Top Chef has involved numerous government agencies and departments. We round off looking at some of the reasons why cooking programmes make for effective propaganda.

[...] So, while the Pentagon seem to be obsessed with using reality TV to promote themselves and their agendas, and other institutions like the Department of Homeland Security also quite regularly appear in some form in these programmes, the CIA have been a bit late to the party. So we're going to step down into the fourth circle of hell that is reality TV and go for a taste of Top Chef. The episode in question is from 2010 and is called Covert Cuisine. Essentially, the contestants were each given a 'classic dish' which they had to try to disguise and then serve to the CIA at Langley. And yes, it's absolutely as dumb and ridiculous as that sounds.

[...] So, just to draw out the obvious, these are ordinary people being inducted – very briefly and in a trivial way – into the secret world of the CIA. Willing fools and so on. And they're all 'OMG, we're so privileged' and 'like, how cool is the CIA?' about it. So that's rather simple from a propaganda point of view – the contestants are a vehicle for us, the audience, to be inducted into the CIA's desired public view of themselves. In return, the programme gets added production value to inject a bit of originality into a very tired and repetitive format. They're doing the same thing they do every week, but in a new location.

[...] So there are a lot of bad jokes in there that people politely laughed at and the whole thing is kind of jolly and daft so the unassuming viewer might not realise what they're being told. The critical moment comes when then CIA director Leon Panetta is interrupted by a waiter with a slip of paper. Panetta reads it under the table, makes his excuses and leaves.

[Continues...]

takyon writes:

News of a NATO dictatorship:

Turkish authorities have arrested the cafeteria manager of the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper for insulting the president after he said he would not serve tea to Tayyip Erdogan, one of the manager's lawyers told Reuters on Monday. Senol Buran, who runs the cafeteria at the Istanbul office of Cumhuriyet, was taken into custody after police raided his home late on Saturday, lawyer Ozgur Urfa said. The newspaper is among the few still critical of the government. Insulting the president is a crime punishable by up to four years in prison in Turkey.

[...] Buran was detained after a police officer providing security for the newspaper said he heard him use a derogatory term to describe Erdogan and say he would refuse to serve the president tea if he ever visited the cafeteria, his lawyer said. According to court documents obtained by Reuters, Buran has denied using an insulting term, while confirming that he had said he would refuse to serve the president tea. He also said he had a dispute with the police officer two years ago.

The judge at an Istanbul court on Sunday ordered Buran's arrest pending trial, citing "strong suspicion of crime committed" and saying the suspect might otherwise put pressure on witnesses, the documents showed.

Previously: Turkey's Erdogan Continues Crackdown on Media with Detention of Cumhuriyet Newspaper Staff (same newspaper)

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Fnord666 writes:

Researchers have discovered a way to program cells to inhibit CRISPR-Cas9 activity. "Anti-CRISPR" proteins had previously been isolated from viruses that infect bacteria, but now University of Toronto and University of Massachusetts Medical School scientists report three families of proteins that turn off CRISPR systems specifically used for gene editing. The work, which appears December 15 in Cell, offers a new strategy to prevent CRISPR-Cas9 technology from making unwanted changes.

"Making CRISPR controllable allows you to have more layers of control on the system and to turn it on or off under certain conditions, such as where it works within a cell or at what point in time," says lead author Alan Davidson, a phage biologist and bacteriologist at the University of Toronto. "The three anti-CRISPR proteins we've isolated seem to bind to different parts of the Cas9, and there are surely more out there."

More information:
  Cell, Pawluk et al.: "Naturally occurring off-switches for CRISPR-Cas9" DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2016.11.017

takyon: Not a dupe of this related story, in case you were wondering.

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Phoenix666 writes:

It didn't dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I'd just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn't have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn't succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. "Ivy retardation," a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn't talk to the man who was standing in my own house.

It's not surprising that it took me so long to discover the extent of my miseducation, because the last thing an elite education will teach you is its own inadequacy. As two dozen years at Yale and Columbia have shown me, elite colleges relentlessly encourage their students to flatter themselves for being there, and for what being there can do for them. The advantages of an elite education are indeed undeniable. You learn to think, at least in certain ways, and you make the contacts needed to launch yourself into a life rich in all of society's most cherished rewards. To consider that while some opportunities are being created, others are being cancelled and that while some abilities are being developed, others are being crippled is, within this context, not only outrageous, but inconceivable.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://ensia.com/features/open-source-seeds/

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fubari writes:

In the good news department: Bill Gates Launches $1 Billion Breakthrough Energy Investment Fund
Why is that good?
The cool things I see are they claim 1) a high tolerance for risk, and 2) long term thinking. They're looking at a 20 year investment window, which may be enough time to fund actual advances.

Gates wote:

"We need affordable and reliable energy that doesn't emit greenhouse gas to power the future—and to get it, we need a different model for investing in good ideas and moving them from the lab to the market."

The group has spelled out five "grand challenges" which it says are the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions around the world:

• Electricity
• Buildings
• Manufacturing
• Transportation
• Food

I hope these people do some good and I will be following their work. Seems like a concrete step for moving away from fossil fuels, as discussed at some length in A Christmas Miracle for Soylent News.

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Phoenix666 writes:

How much is a child's future success determined by innate intelligence? Economist James Heckman says it's not what people think. He likes to ask educated non-scientists -- especially politicians and policy makers -- how much of the difference between people's incomes can be tied to IQ. Most guess around 25 percent, even 50 percent, he says. But the data suggest a much smaller influence: about 1 or 2 percent.

So if IQ is only a minor factor in success, what is it that separates the low earners from the high ones? Or, as the saying goes: If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?

Science doesn't have a definitive answer, although luck certainly plays a role. But another key factor is personality, according to a paper Heckman co-authored in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last month. He found financial success was correlated with conscientiousness, a personality trait marked by diligence, perseverance and self-discipline.

Why aren't you rich? You obviously slept with the wrong people!

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