Sunday, September 3, 2017
Save the Diamondbacks
Helps rare native turtles rebound from declining population
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| URI senior Jordan Powell holds a rare diamondback terrapin near the Potowomut River in East Greenwich. (Photo courtesy of Jordan Powell.) |
The Houston native spent the summer
as a Science and Engineering Fellow working with Professor Laura Meyerson to
study and monitor a declining population of a rare turtle in East Greenwich.
“I’ve always been interested in
science, and I especially like environmental science, so when one of my
favorite professors asked me to help with her diamondback terrapin project, I
jumped at it,” said Powell, a senior majoring in environmental science and management.
Diamondback terrapins are on the
state list of rare species, and their population along the Potowomut River has
been declining because few hatchlings have survived in recent years.
Connecticut Senator Blumenthal wants Russiagate “dossier” to go public
Details Trump collaboration
and ties to Russia
BY
President Trump got a rude reminder that his Russia-related
troubles are far from over. In fact, they could be heating back up.
Newsweek is reporting that
Glenn Simpson, the man whose firm oversaw the compilation of what came to be
known as the “Pee-Tape Dossier,” may soon testify in
public.
Simpson’s consultancy,
Fusion GPS, contracted former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele
to investigate Trump’s many Russian and Eastern European associates and past
business deals.
Fusion expected him to return with run of the mill opposition research. What Steele delivered was anything but run of the mill.
Fusion expected him to return with run of the mill opposition research. What Steele delivered was anything but run of the mill.
Steele’s dossier alleged that Trump colluded with Russian agents to undermine opponent Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. It also included lurid claims that the Russian government possessed compromising material on Trump, including a video of him getting Russian prostitutes to urinate on a Moscow hotel room bed on which Barack and Michelle Obama once slept.
The dossier has cast a
shadow over the entire Trump-Russia scandal. U.S. intelligence agencies
have known about the dossier since before President Trump took office, and it’s
been reported that the FBI has been using the dossier as a road map for its
own investigation into his campaign’s possible collusion with Russia to
influence the 2016 election.
Continue for a more detailed chart showing Trump ties to Russia.
Continue for a more detailed chart showing Trump ties to Russia.
Saturday, September 2, 2017
We don’t know what’s coming next, but know it will be bad
Fear And Loathing In
The Trump White House
If the late, great Hunter S.
Thompson were to pen a commentary on the presidency of Donald J. Trump, he just
might rework one of his previous books and title it Fear And Loathing In the Trump White House: A
Savage Assault on the Heart of the American Dream
In
Thompson’s book Fear and
Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey Into the Heart of the American Dream, Thompson
includes a quote to begin his tale:
“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain
of being a man.”
If there is a better description of
Donald Trump, I don’t know what it is.
While the ongoing disaster of Donald
Trump unfolds daily before us, we stand helplessly by as each new chapter is
written.
We
never know what is coming next, but we do know that whatever it is, the
underlying reason is a president who is consumed by the fear that he will be
exposed for the fraud he is and a loathing of his predecessor whom he knows is
still loved by a majority of the American people.
At the Charlestown Gallery
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Lots you can learn from sea squirts
URI student
studies how climate change will affect larval growth of marine invertebrates
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| Evelyn Siler collects sea squirts from the edge of a marina dock as part of her research. Photo by Amy Dunkle |
Hopkinton resident Evelyn Siler has
long been interested in studying genetics, in part to learn whether there is a
genetic component to her brother’s autism.
The University of Rhode Island senior has taken initial steps in that direction by studying the genetics of an invasive marine organism that can be used to understand the environmental effects on numerous other ocean creatures.
The University of Rhode Island senior has taken initial steps in that direction by studying the genetics of an invasive marine organism that can be used to understand the environmental effects on numerous other ocean creatures.
Siler,
who is majoring in cell and molecular biology, is working with URI Professor
Steven Irvine to understand how climate change may affect a common sea squirt, Ciona intestinalis, which she describes as
“two-siphoned, gelatinous blobs that filter feed and spawn.”
The animals are found on marina docks, shallow rocks, and other coastal habitats where you might also find mussels.
The animals are found on marina docks, shallow rocks, and other coastal habitats where you might also find mussels.
Brown University study counts the costs
Simulation shows the high cost of dementia,
especially for families
A new simulation of
how the costs and the course of the dementia epidemic affect U.S. families
finds that neurodegenerative conditions can more than double the health care
expenditures of aging and that the vast majority of that financial burden
remains with families rather than government insurance programs.
The total average cost
to care for a person with dementia was more than $321,000 over about five
years, compared to an average cost of $137,280 to care for the same person
without dementia, the simulation showed.
Typically, 70 percent of the total cost burden fell on the patients and their families to cover with their own labor and out-of-pocket spending, with the balance split evenly by Medicare and Medicaid.
In each year, costs of care, which ranged from the informal time and services of family members to acute care hospitalizations, reached as high as $89,000.
Typically, 70 percent of the total cost burden fell on the patients and their families to cover with their own labor and out-of-pocket spending, with the balance split evenly by Medicare and Medicaid.
In each year, costs of care, which ranged from the informal time and services of family members to acute care hospitalizations, reached as high as $89,000.
Now Trump is pro-litter
The President Is Removing
Litter Protections from National Parks
By
By most measures Trump’s had an ineffective presidency.
If you oppose his agenda, as I do, this is no doubt a good
thing. Like countless others, I rely on Obamacare for my health insurance. I
sleep soundly at night only because Trump and congressional Republicans failed
in their attempts to take my insurance away.
But, while Trump spews verbal diarrhea at press conferences,
refuses to denounce Nazis, fires and replaces half of his top appointees, and
attempts to convince us he didn’t collude with the Russians, there’s one area
in which he’s getting a few things done.
While Trump cannot single-handedly pass new laws, he can alter
the policies within the executive branch of the government. And that’s what
he’s been doing.
Even as we’ve been distracted by Russia investigations and
Nazis, Trump managed to find the time in between his busy golfing and cable TV
watching schedule to trash a few Obama-era environmental programs.
To take one petty example, he eliminated a ban on bottled water in national parks.
Friday, September 1, 2017
Trump’s Running Out of Friends, and It’s His Own Fault
Seems like the only one
still standing by him is David Duke. They deserve each other.
By
I hate to say this, but I’m starting to feel sorry for Donald
Trump. He’s only been in office for half a year, and already he’s running out
of Americans to attack.
Of course, he came into office already having notched his AK-47
Twitter rifle with hundreds of hits on the American citizenry — including
“nasty women,” Mexican Americans, and Muslim Americans.
Since then, he’s repeatedly used the presidential bully pulpit
for mass-bullying assaults on every reporter who refuses to be a Sean
Hannity-style suck-up to The Donald.
The trigger-happy tweeter-in-chief also relishes gunning down
his own political kin.
Climate change and voting?
Voter
behavior influenced by hot weather
Political rebellions and riots have been associated with warmer
weather, but until now, there has been little research on its potential
influence on peaceful and democratic political behavior. A new study, published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Psychology, has uncovered a connection between changes in temperature and voting behavior in the United States of America.
"We found that increases in state-level temperatures from
one election to another are related to increases in state-level voter turnout,
and increases in votes for the incumbent party," says Jasper Van Assche,
who completed this research in the Department of Developmental, Personality and
Social Psychology at Ghent University, Belgium.
Cholesterol lowering drugs may fight infectious disease
Salmonella, Typhoid,
Ebola use cholesterol to
enter cells
Duke University
That statin you've been taking to lower your risk of heart
attack or stroke may one day pull double duty, providing protection against a
whole host of infectious diseases, including typhoid fever, chlamydia, and
malaria.
Duke scientists have recently discovered that a gene variant
that affects cholesterol levels could increase your risk of contracting typhoid
fever. They also showed that a common cholesterol-lowering drug (ezetimibe or
Zetia) could protect zebrafish against Salmonella Typhi, the culprit behind the
nasty infection.
The findings, which appear the week of Aug. 21 in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, give insight into the mechanisms that
govern human susceptibility to infectious disease. They also point to possible
avenues to protect those who are most vulnerable to pathogens -- like the
Salmonella bacteria -- that hijack cholesterol to infect host cells.
Why did he do it?
By April Hamlin
On
August 25, Donald Trump announced he had pardoned America’s most racist
sheriff, Joe Arpaio.
Democrats
and Republicans alike have condemned Trump’s decision to let Arpaio off the
hook after he was convicted of contempt for refusing to stop his
discriminatory policing practices (aka concentration camps for suspected
illegal immigrants).
So, with his approval ratings already historically low, Trump
went ahead and sabotaged himself yet again. Why on earth would he do something
so stupid?
The answer is actually pretty simple and actually has very
little to do with Arpaio.
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