Santa Monica Beach, a very wide, artificially built, and regularly maintained beach. Photographed on September 9, 2019 in Santa Monica, California.; Credit: James Bernal for KPCC

Jacob Margolis

You may not know this, but oftentimes in newsrooms we write obituaries ahead of time so that they're ready to publish when the person passes away. But what if the obit wasn't for a person, but for a place that's been the home of magical memories for generations?

Sea levels could rise by more than three feet by the end of the century, and that's going to mean many things you love about our coast are not going to be around much longer.

As part of our Covering Climate Now collaboration, we thought it was appropriate to start preparing an obit for one of Southern California's most prized areas of Pacific Coast Highway: Santa Monica to Malibu. 

It's slated to run in 80 years or so - the year 2100. 

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The engineered Dominguez Gap Wetlands in Long Beach filters stormwater and runoff from the Los Angeles River, then the water is siphoned under the river to a spreading ground to the west.; Credit: Sharon McNary/KPCC

Sharon McNary

Angelenos are used to looking up Heal the Bay's annual beach water quality report card each May as we search out the cleanest places to swim and surf.

Now, the environmental advocacy group is focusing on a new target — the often polluted water that flows into the ocean from the mountains and across the L.A. Basin.

In a first-ever report, it concludes the managers of 12 watersheds from Malibu to Long Beach are making too little progress toward cleaning up this major source of pollution in the Pacific.

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Several countries around the world are emitting less carbon due to the pandemic slowdown, but the climate will continue to warm.; Credit: Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images

Lauren Sommer | NPR

With the dramatic reduction in car traffic and commercial flights, carbon emissions have been falling around the globe. If the slowdown continues, some are estimating the world could see the largest drop in emissions in the last century.

Still, overall greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere are still going up and the decline will likely be smaller than what scientists say is necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

So far, the effects are just starting to appear. In China, the first country to lock down, greenhouse gas emissions dropped an estimated 25% in February as factories and industrial producers slowed output. That decreased coal burning, which has come back slowly since then.

"A month or two of shelter in place will drop carbon dioxide emissions a few percent here or there, but it won't change the year substantially unless we stay like this for some time," says Rob Jackson, environmental scientist at Stanford University.

The declines are still too small to be read by greenhouse gas observatories around the world, like the one on top of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii, given the natural changes in atmosphere this time of year. Because much of the Earth's land mass is in the northern hemisphere, plants and forests there cause carbon levels to fluctuate as they bloom in the spring, drawing carbon dioxide from the air.

If countries continue shelter-at-home orders, emissions declines could be greater. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates U.S. emissions from gas and energy use could drop more than 7% this year, similar to a 2009 decline during the financial crisis.

Worldwide, early estimates put global emissions dropping around 4%. Still, that's less than the 7.6% the U.N. says is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change by limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

To achieve those cuts, scientists say more fundamental changes are needed, like switching to renewable energy.

"This isn't the way we want to reduce our fossil fuel emissions," says Jackson. "We don't want tens of millions of people being out of work as a path to decarbonizing our economy. We need systemic change in our energy infrastructure and new green technologies."

Still, Jackson says the recent changes are providing useful insights.

"It's as if a third of the cars on the road were suddenly electric, running on clean electricity and the air pollution is plummeting," says Jackson. "It's really a remarkable experiment and it shows the benefits of clean energy."

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Barbara Campbell | NPR

Updated at 10 p.m. ET

Australia's High Court has found reasonable doubt that Cardinal George Pell sexually assaulted two boys in the 1990s and has overturned his conviction.

The court acquitted the former Vatican treasurer of the charges, and no retrial will be possible.

Pell, 78, had been serving a six-year prison sentence in the case. The High Court ordered that he be released.

He was convicted of sexually abusing two 13-year-old choirboys at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne.

As an adult, one of them went to the police in 2015 and accused the cardinal of abusing him and the other boy in 1996. The other individual died of a heroin overdose the previous year without reporting abuse.

In a statement after the acquittal, as reported by Reuters, Pell said, "I hold no ill will toward my accuser, I do not want my acquittal to add to the hurt and bitterness so many feel; there is certainly hurt and bitterness enough."

Pell was convicted in 2018 and an appellate court upheld those convictions last year.

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference's comments on the acquittal recognize that the outcome will be good news for some people and "devastating for others."

"The result today does not change the Church's unwavering commitment to child safety and to a just and compassionate response to survivors and victims of child sexual abuse. The safety of children remains supremely important not only for the bishops, but for the entire Catholic community. Any person with allegations of sexual abuse by Church personnel should go to the police."

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed an executive order banning all elective medical procedures, including abortions, during the coronavirus outbreak. The ban extends to medication abortions.; Credit: Eric Gay/AP

Nina Totenberg | NPR

Governors across the country are banning elective surgery as a means of halting the spread of the coronavirus. But in a handful of states that ban is being extended to include a ban on all abortions.

So far the courts have intervened to keep most clinics open. The outlier is Texas, where the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit this week upheld the governor's abortion ban.

Four years ago, Texas was also the focus of a fierce legal fight that ultimately led to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in which the justices struck down a Texas law purportedly aimed at protecting women's health. The court ruled the law was medically unnecessary and unconstitutional.

Now Texas is once again the epicenter of the legal fight around abortion. In other states--Ohio, Iowa, Alabama, and Oklahoma--the courts so far have sided with abortion providers and their patients.

Not so in Texas where Gov. Greg Abbott signed an executive order barring all "non-essential" medical procedures in the state, including abortion. The executive order was temporarily blocked in the district court, but the Fifth Circuit subsequently upheld the governor's order by a 2-to-1 vote, declaring that "all public constitutional rights may be reasonably restricted to combat a public health emergency."

"No more elective medical procedures can be done in the state because of the potential of needing both people ... beds and supplies, and obviously doctors and nurses," said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in an interview with NPR.

'Exploiting This Crisis'

Nancy Northrup, CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, sees things very differently. "It is very clear that anti-abortion rights politicians are shamelessly exploiting this crisis to achieve what has been their longstanding ideological goal to ban abortion in the U.S.," she said.

Paxton denies that, saying Texas "is not targeting any particular group."
The state's the "only goal is to protect people from dying," he said.

Yet the American Medical Association just last week filed a brief in this case in support of abortion providers, as did 18 states, led by New York, which is the state that has been the hardest hit by the coronavirus.

They maintain that banning abortion is far more dangerous,because it will force women to travel long distances to get one. A study from the Guttmacher Institute found that people seeking abortions during the COVID-19 outbreak would have to travel up to 20 times farther than normal if states successfully ban abortion care during the pandemic. The AMA also notes that pregnant women do not stop needing medical care if they don't get an abortion.

Northrup, of the Center for Reproductive Rights, sees this as more evidence that the ban is a calculated move by the state: what "puts the lie to this is the fact that they're trying to ban medication, abortion as well; that's the use of pills for abortion.

"Those do not need to take place in a clinic and they can be done, taken effectively by tele-medicine. So it shows that the real goal here, tragically, is shutting down one's right to make the decision to end the pregnancy, not a legitimate public health response."

'I Was Desperate'

Affidavits filed in the Texas case tell of harrowing experiences already happening as the result of the Texas ban. One declaration was filed by a 24-year-old college student. The week she lost her part-time job as a waitress, she found out she was pregnant. She and her partner agreed they wanted to terminate the pregnancy, and on March 20 she went to a clinic in Forth Worth alone; because of social distancing rules, her partner was not allowed to go with her.

Since she was 10 weeks pregnant, still in her first trimester, she was eligible for a medication abortion. Under state law, she had to wait 24 hours before getting the pills at the clinic, but the night before her scheduled appointment, the clinic called to cancel because of Abbott's executive order.

He partner was with her and we "cried together," she wrote in her declaration. "I couldn't risk the possibility that I would run out of time to have an abortion while the outbreak continued," and it "seemed to be getting more and more difficult to travel."

She made many calls to clinics in New Mexico and Oklahoma. The quickest option was Denver--a 12-hour drive, 780-mile drive from where she lives. Her partner was still working, so her best friend agreed to go with her. They packed sanitizing supplies and food in the car for the long drive and arrived at the Denver Clinic on March 26, where she noticed other cars with Texas plates in the parking lot, according to the affidavit.

At the clinic, she was examined, given a sonogram again, and because Colorado does not have a 24-hour waiting requirement, she was given her first abortion pill without delay and told she should try to get home within 30 hours to take the second pill.

She and her friend then turned around to go home. They were terrified she would have the abortion in the car, and tried to drive through without taking breaks. But after six hours, when it turned dark they were so exhausted they had to stop at a motel to catch some sleep. The woman finally got home and took the second pill just within the 30-hour window.

She said that despite the ordeal she was grateful she had the money, the car, the friend, and the supportive partner with a job, to make the abortion possible. Others will not be so lucky, she wrote. But "I was desperate and desperate people take desperate steps to protect themselves."

A 'Narrative' Of Choice

Paxton, the Texas attorney general, does not seem moved by the time limitations that pregnancy imposes, or the hardships of traveling out of state to get an abortion. He told NPR "the narrative has always been 'It's a choice' ... that's the whole narrative. I'm a little surprised by the question, given that's always been the thing."

On Thursday abortion providers and their patients returned to the district court in Texas instead of appealing directly to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Fifth Circuit's ruling from earlier this week. The district court judge, who originally blocked the governor's ban, instead narrowed the governor's order so that medical abortions--with pills--would be exempt from the ban, as well as abortions for women who are up against the state-imposed deadline. Abortions in Texas are banned after 22 weeks.

In the end, though, this case may well be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. And because of the addition of two Trump appointees since 2016--the composition of the court is a lot more hostile to abortion rights.

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; Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Nina Totenberg | NPR

What does the right to a unanimous jury verdict have to do with abortion, or school prayer, or federal environmental regulations? Stay tuned.

The U.S. Supreme Court Monday struck down state laws in Louisiana and Oregon that allowed people accused of serious crimes to be convicted by a non-unanimous jury vote. The 6-to-3 decision overturned a longstanding prior ruling from 1972, which had upheld such non-unanimous verdicts in state courts.

And these days, any decision to overturn a longstanding precedent rings the alarm bells in the Supreme Court.

In the short run, Monday's decision was a victory for Evangelisto Ramos, who in 2016 was convicted of second-degree murder by a jury vote of 10-to-2 in Louisiana.

Only two states--Louisiana and Oregon--had provisions allowing non-unanimous verdicts, and Louisiana just recently changed its law to be like those in 48 other states and the federal government.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, laid out the history behind the laws in both states. Gorsuch noted that the measure was first added to the Louisiana state constitution in 1898, after the Supreme Court ruled that racial minorities could not be barred from juries; that same year, Louisiana added the non-unanimous jury provision to its state constitution as part of a package of amendments that deliberately made it difficult for black citizens to vote or otherwise participate meaningfully in the state's governance. Specifically, Gorsuch said, the non-unanimous jury provision was a way to ensure that even if one or two African Americans made it on to a jury, their participation would be "meaningless."

The adoption of the non-unanimous jury rule in Oregon, Gorsuch wrote, "can similarly be traced to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and efforts to dilute the influence of racial and ethnic and religious minorities on Oregon juries."

Despite these state provisions, there has never been any dispute that the unanimous jury requirement applies to the federal government. The question in this case was whether that aspect of the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial applied to the states as well.

Over the last 75 years or so, the court has applied just about every other provision of the Bill of Rights to the states, but in 1972 it deviated from that practice, declining to apply the unanimous jury requirement in a similar fashion.

On Monday, however, the 1972 decision came tumbling down. The six-justice court majority — composed of conservatives and liberals — said the earlier ruling was a mistake.

The decision, written by the conservative Gorsuch, was joined in whole or in part by liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Justice Clarence Thomas, another conservative, agreed with the result, but on entirely different grounds.

Writing for the dissenters, Justice Samuel Alito — joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and for the most part, Justice Elena Kagan — maintained that the principle of adhering to precedent should be followed in this case because to do otherwise would require "a potentially crushing" number of new trials for people currently imprisoned under the old rule.

"Where is the justice in that?" replied Justice Gorsuch. "Not a single member of this court" is prepared to say that the 1972 decision was correct, he noted. "Every judge must learn to live with the fact that he or she will make mistakes ... But it is something else entirely to perpetuate" a wrong "only because we fear the consequences of being right."

The consequences of Monday's decision will likely be felt more in Louisiana, which allowed non-unanimous verdicts for more serious crimes than Oregon. The court's decision will require retrials for any prisoner who still has appeals pending.

There are about 100 of those cases in Louisiana, says Jamila Johnson, the managing attorney at the Promise of Justice Initiative, which represented Ramos. But there are also at least 1,700 prisoners in the state who might qualify for a new trial if the court eventually holds that Monday's decision is retroactive.

The high court left that question open for another day.

Altogether the majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions totaled a whopping 86 pages and reflected an important subtext--divergent views about when the court should follow its usual rule of adhering to precedent and when it should not.

It's important because, the new ultra-conservative court majority has very different views than the courts of the last 75 years on topics as diverse as abortion, voting rights, federal regulation, and the clash between religious views and generally applicable laws.

"The court's views about when it's OK to overrule prior precedent have always been more about the eye of the beholder than they have been about a rule that is easy or straightforward to apply," says Deborah Pearlstein, professor and co-director of the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy at Cardozo School of Law. Ultimately, she said, "all of these major questions that are coming before the court are going to be fought along these lines."

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Embattled Korean Resource Center board president DJ Yoon takes interviews in a photo dated February 2014. ( ; Credit: Korean Resource Center via Flickr

Josie Huang

In Los Angeles, another Asian American civil rights organization is in upheaval. A month after major layoffs at Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles, the Korean Resource Center has lost more than half of its staff.  

 

The Korean Resource Center  is a leading advocate for low-income and undocumented Koreans. Its organizers worked on flipping Orange County from red to blue. Its legal staff provides free aid to immigrants. But 18 people have left in recent weeks, many upset with board president DJ Yoon and his management style. 

 

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, is seen here in 2018.; Credit: Toya Sarno Jordan/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Laurel Wamsley | NPR

Updated at 6:14 p.m. ET

The federal scientist who was ousted from his role as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority has filed a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

Rick Bright was a high-ranking federal scientist focused on vaccine development and a deputy assistant secretary with the Department of Health and Human Services. Last month, Bright said he was transferred to a "less impactful position" at the National Institutes of Health after he was reluctant to promote the use of drugs such as hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 patients.

In the complaint, Bright alleges a range of government wrongdoing by Dr. Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary of preparedness and response at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and others. Bright's boss was Kadlec, who in turn reported to HHS Secretary Alex Azar.

At the time of his removal, Bright said he had been ousted because of his "insistence" that the government spend funds on "safe and scientifically vetted solutions" to address the coronavirus crisis and not on "drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit."

Bright says in the complaint that he raised concerns about the need to prepare for the coronavirus in January but encountered opposition from Trump administration officials. He says he was transferred out of BARDA in retaliation.

According to the complaint, relations between Bright and Kadlec had been strained since 2018 or so, when Bright began "raising repeated objections to the outsized role Dr. Kadlec allowed industry consultants to play in securing contracts that Dr. Bright and other scientists and subject matter experts determined were not meritorious."

"Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, however, Dr. Bright became even more alarmed about the pressure that Dr. Kadlec and other government officials were exerting on BARDA to invest in drugs, vaccines, and other technologies without proper scientific vetting or that lacked scientific merit," the complaint continues. "Dr. Bright objected to these efforts and made clear that BARDA would only invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the COVID-19 pandemic in safe and scientifically vetted solutions and it would not succumb to the pressure of politics or cronyism."

The complaint alleges that Bright made repeated efforts to get the U.S. government to make adequate preparations for coronavirus, but was stymied by political appointees leading the HHS, including Azar.

HHS did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment.

Bright says that in an effort to get the word out to the public about the risks associated with hydroxychloroquine, he shared with a reporter nonclassified emails between HHS officials that "discussed the drug's potential toxicity and demonstrated the political pressure to rush these drugs from Pakistan and India to American households." He says Azar and Kadlec removed him from his post within days of publication of an article about chloroquine because they suspected he was the article's source.

Bright says he stopped receiving a paycheck on April 20 and has not been assigned any further duties.

News of the whistleblower complaint was made public by his attorney on Tuesday.

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Physical and occupational therapists carry bags of personal protective equipment on their way to the room of a COVID-19 patient in a Stamford Hospital intensive care unit in Stamford, Conn., on April 24. This "prone team" turns over COVID-19 to help them breathe.; Credit: John Moore/Getty Images

Jon Hamilton | NPR

Intensive care teams inside hospitals are rapidly altering the way they care for patients with COVID-19.

The changes range from new protective gear to new treatment protocols aimed at preventing deadly blood clots.

"Things are moving so fast within this pandemic, it's hard to keep up" says Dr. Angela Hewlett, an infectious diseases physician at University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha and medical director of the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit. To stay current, she says, ICUs are updating their practices "on an hourly basis."

"We are learning at light speed about the disease," says Dr. Craig Coopersmith , interim director of the critical care center at Emory University. "Things that previously might have taken us years to learn, we're learning in a week or two. Things that might have taken us a month to learn beforehand, we're learning in a day or two."

The most obvious changes involve measures to protect ICU doctors, nurses and staff from the virus.

"There is a true and real probability of infection," says Dr. Tiffany Osborn a critical care specialist at Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. "You have to think about everything you touch as if it burned."

So ICUs are adapting measures used at special biocontainment units like the one at the University of Nebraska. These units were designed to care for patients affected by bioterrorism or infected with particularly hazardous communicable diseases like SARS and Ebola.

The Nebraska biocontainment unit "received several patients early on in the pandemic who were medically evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship," Hewlett says. But it didn't have enough beds for the large numbers of local patients who began arriving at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

So the nurses, respiratory therapists and physicians from the biocontainment team have "fanned out and are now working within those COVID units to make sure that all of our principles and protocols are followed there as well," Hewlett says.

Those protocols involve measures like monitoring ICU staff when they remove their protective gear to make sure the virus isn't transmitted, and placing infected patients in negative pressure rooms, which draw air inward, when possible to prevent the virus from escaping.

One of the riskiest ICU procedures is inserting a breathing tube in a COVID-19 patient's airway, which creates a direct path for virus to escape from a patient's lungs. "If you're intubating a patient, that's a much higher risk than, say, going in and doing routine patient care," Hewlett says.

So ICU teams are being advised to add several layers of protection beyond a surgical mask.

Extra personal protective equipment may include an N95 respirator, goggles, a full face shield, a head hood, an impermeable isolation gown and double gloves.

In many ICUs, teams are also placing a clear plastic box or sheet over the patient's head and upper body before inserting the tube. And as a final safety measure, the doctor may guide the tube using a video camera rather than looking directly down a patient's airway.

"It usually takes 30 minutes or so in order to get all of that equipment together, to get all of the right people there," says Dr. Kira Newman, a senior resident physician at UW Medical Center in Seattle. "and that would be a particularly fast intubation."

But most changes in the ICU are in response to an ongoing flood of new information about how COVID-19 affects the body.

There's a growing understanding, for example, that the infection can cause dangerous blood clots to form in many severely ill patients. These clots can kill if they block arteries supplying the lungs or brain. But they also can prevent blood from reaching the kidneys or even a patient's arms and legs.

Clots are a known risk for all ICU patients, Cooperman says, but the frequency and severity appears much greater with COVID-19. "So we're starting them on a higher level of medicine to prevent blood clots and if somebody actually develops blood clots, we have a plan B and a plan C and a plan D," he says.

ICU teams are also recalibrating their approach to ensuring that patients are getting enough oxygen. Early in the pandemic, the idea was to put patients on mechanical ventilator quickly to make sure their oxygen levels didn't fall too far.

But with experience, doctors have found that mechanical ventilators don't seem to work as well for COVID patients as they do for patients with other lung problems. They've also learned that that many COVID-19 patients remain lucid and relatively comfortable even when the oxygen levels in their blood are extremely low.

So many specialists are now recommending alternatives to mechanical ventilation, even for some of the sickest patients. "We're really trying now to not intubate," Osborn says.

Instead, ICU teams are relying on devices that deliver oxygen through the nasal passages, or through a mask that fits tightly over the face. And there's renewed interest in an old technique to help patients breathe. It's called proning.

"Instead of them being on their back, we're turning them on their front," Osborn says. The reason, she says is to open up a part of the lung that is collapsed when a patient is on their back.

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Eilís O'Neill | NPR

Eight-year-old Mariana Aceves is doing her math homework — subtraction by counting backwards — while sitting on the bed she shares with her mom, Lorena Aceves.

They're sitting on the bed because they have nowhere else to go: they live in an 8-foot-by-12-foot room called a tiny house. It's part of Seattle's transitional housing where people experiencing homelessness can live until they find a job and a place of their own.

There's room for the bed they share, a TV shelf, "and a little tiny plastic dresser, and then all of our clothing and our food goes underneath our bed," Lorena Aceves says.

Tens of millions of kids are taking classes online at home right now because of the coronavirus pandemic. That's hard enough for most families. But, if you're homeless and have no computer, sketchy wifi, and no quiet place to study, it's even more difficult. That's the case for the one and a half million school kids currently experiencing homelessness across the U.S.

When Seattle's schools closed in March, Aceves had to quit her new job, because she couldn't find childcare. She and her daughter have been holed up in their tiny house ever since.

"It's the boredom," Aceves says, "and me trying to reach out and find resources — work, a car, things like that — while also making sure that she's entertained."

Aceves and her daughter have a tiny amount of private space. Other homeless families have no privacy at all.

Sixteen-year-old Capelle Belij is living with his parents at a shelter, part of a network of family shelters in the Seattle area run by the nonprofit Mary's Place.

The Belijes share a room with two other families, divided only by curtains.

"My friends, like, come up to my bed space and ask if I want to play or something," Belij says. "If we had our own place, I could learn better."

Three-quarters of children and youth considered homeless live doubled-up with another family. That's the situation for the family of 17-year-old Michelle Aguilar. She's part of KUOW's youth reporting program, called RadioActive.

"I can't really find a specific space where it's like quiet and calm and I can actually have wifi," Aguilar says.

Since Aguilar's shared bedroom doesn't have wifi, she ends up in the living room or kitchen with the rest of her family.

"And they just, like, continue their chaotic life of yelling and screaming and, like, playing music and listening to the TV and cooking," she says.

"Whenever I'm, like, in the environment of it being really loud," Aguilar says, "I tend to, like, read over and over and over and over the assignment."

"We're definitely very concerned with there being an achievement gap during this time," says Tisha Tallman, the executive director of the National Center for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth. "The longer this goes, the more likely our children are to fall behind."

And, Tallman adds, schools provide much more than an education: many homeless kids get two meals per day there, and they rely on it as a safe and stable place to be.

Back in her tiny house, Lorena Aceves is trying to keep her daughter's education on track with a strict schedule of math, reading, and typing.

"Even though this is frustrating," Aceves says, "we are having this time together and that's something typically that we don't have."

Aceves says it's good to feel close to her daughter during a time that she has to stay far away from nearly everyone else.

Copyright 2020 KUOW. To see more, visit KUOW.

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Students walk outside Detroit's Pershing High School in 2017. A lawsuit claims the state of Michigan failed to provide the city's students with the most fundamental of skills: the ability to read.; Credit: Carlos Osorio/AP

Cory Turner | NPR

In a landmark decision, a federal appeals court has ruled that children have a constitutional right to literacy, dealing a remarkable victory to students.

The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit brought by students of five Detroit schools, claiming that because of deteriorating buildings, teacher shortages and inadequate textbooks, the state of Michigan failed to provide them with the most fundamental of skills: the ability to read.

For decades, civil rights lawyers have tried to help students and families in underfunded schools by arguing that the U.S. Constitution guarantees children at least a basic education. Federal courts have consistently disagreed. Until now.

The ability to read and write is "essential" for a citizen to participate in American democracy, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday. One cannot effectively vote, answer a jury summons, pay taxes or even read a road sign if illiterate, wrote Judge Eric Clay, and so where "a group of children is relegated to a school system that does not provide even a plausible chance to attain literacy, we hold that the Constitution provides them with a remedy."

"Like a daycare"

The 2016 complaint alleges that Michigan's then-Gov. Rick Snyder and the state's board of education denied Detroit students their fundamental right to literacy. It cites textbooks that were tattered, outdated and in such short supply that teachers could not send work home. The suit also describes school buildings that were in shocking disrepair: broken toilets and water fountains, leaking ceilings, shattered windows.

In warmer months, the complaint says, a lack of air-conditioning caused some students to faint; in winter, students regularly wore hats, coats and scarves to class. Students became accustomed to seeing cockroaches, mice or rats scurrying across the floor.

"You're sitting down in the classroom, and you see rodents in a corner. Or you can hear things crawling in the books," says Jamarria Hall, a plaintiff in the class-action suit, who graduated in 2017. "But the saddest thing of all was really the resources that they had, like, being in a class where there's 34 students, but there's only six textbooks."

Given these conditions, the five K-12 schools named in the complaint also struggled to retain teachers. Many classes were taught by paraprofessionals or inexperienced teachers placed through the Teach For America program. Often, Hall says, when teachers quit suddenly or didn't show up, students would simply be sent to the gym.

"For days on end — weeks on end — if the school didn't have a substitute or couldn't fill that gap, the gym was basically the go-to place. Or they would set students down in the classroom and really put on a movie, like Frozen... like a daycare," Hall remembers.

At one school, the complaint says, a math teacher quit soon after the school year began "due to frustration with large class sizes and lack of support. ... Eventually, the highest performing eighth grade student was asked to take over teaching both seventh and eighth grade math. This student taught both math classes for a month."

The complaint delivers a crushing assessment of these schools' failure to educate students: Proficiency rates "hover near zero in nearly all subject areas," it says.

"Illiteracy is the norm."

Previous legal efforts to argue that families in low-income, underfunded schools deserve better have run headlong into the U.S. Constitution, which makes no mention of the word "education," let alone a right to it.

One of the most famous cases, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, made it all the way to the Supreme Court before the justices, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that families in poorer districts have no federal right to the same levels of funding as wealthier districts. They essentially said: The system isn't fair, but the U.S. government has no obligation to make it so.

In fact, the first judge to hear the current, Detroit case came to much the same conclusion.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Murphy dismissed the Michigan suit in 2018, writing that, yes, "literacy — and the opportunity to obtain it — is of incalculable importance," but not necessarily a fundamental right.

The students' lawyers disputed Murphy's reasoning and appealed his ruling, and, on Thursday, two of three judges took their side.

"We're not asking for a Cadillac"

In the past, many of the arguments used to pursue educational equity in the courts have been inherently comparative. Using the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, lawyers have focused on disparity — how one school or one district's resources compare to another's.

"This [case] is different," says Tacy Flint, a partner at Sidley Austin LLP and a lawyer for the plaintiffs. "It's not comparative. It's not a question of some people being treated worse than others. This fundamental right to a basic minimum education is a right that every child has."

Flint and her co-counsel focused more on a different pillar of the 14th Amendment, the Due Process Clause, saying the Constitution protects essential rights that "you can't imagine our constitutional democracy or our political life functioning without." And, Flint says, "access to literacy clearly fits that description."

Put simply: The plaintiffs' lawyers did not set out to level the playing field for all students. Instead, they attempted to use the appalling conditions of five Detroit schools to establish a floor.

"This case focuses squarely on literacy as the irreducible minimum," says Kristine Bowman, professor of law and education policy at Michigan State University.

And that minimum is pretty minimal.

"We're not asking for a Cadillac, or even a used, low-end Kia. We're asking for something more than the Flintstones' car," says co-counsel Evan Caminker, a former dean of the University of Michigan Law School.

In his dissent to Thursday's decision, Circuit Judge Eric Murphy argued that accepting literacy as a constitutional right would open a Pandora's box for states, and force federal courts to wrestle with questions beyond their purview: "May they compel states to raise their taxes to generate the needed [school] funds? Or order states to give parents vouchers so that they may choose different schools? How old may textbooks be before they become constitutionally outdated? What minimum amount of training must teachers receive? Which HVAC systems must public schools use?"

Murphy wrote that history, and legal precedent, are on his side: "The Supreme Court has refused to treat education as a fundamental right every time a party has asked it to do so."

After all, the judge reasoned, food, housing and medical care are also "critical for human flourishing and for the exercise of constitutional rights," but the Constitution "does not compel states to spend funds on these necessities of life." Why should education be any different?

A spokesperson for Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer says her office is reviewing the court's decision before it decides what to do next. Whitmer's office also said in a statement that "the governor has a strong record on education and has always believed we have a responsibility to teach every child to read."

While the ruling is historic, it comes with several caveats. Basic literacy is a remarkably low standard to set for schools. As such, legal experts say, this ruling won't have an immediate impact on children in underfunded schools.

"We're not talking about the court having to recognize a broad-based, free-floating, generalized right to education," says Michelle Adams, a professor at Cardozo School of Law in New York City. This will not "open the floodgates of litigation. We're talking about a situation where students are being warehoused and required to be in school and yet they literally cannot read."

The case is also relatively young. The court's decision could be reviewed by the full 6th Circuit, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, or returned to play out in District Court. Whitmer's office has not yet indicated how the state will respond.

"The fight is not done yet," says Jamarria Hall, who is now living in Tallahassee, Fla., and taking classes at a community college. "We were fighting just to get into the ring. Now we're in the ring. Now the fight really starts."

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: /Hanna Barczyk for NPR

Elissa Nadworny | NPR

What will happen on college campuses in the fall? It's a big question for families, students and the schools themselves.

A lot of what happens depends on factors outside the control of individual schools: Will there be more testing? Contact tracing? Enough physical space for distancing? Will the coronavirus have a second wave? Will any given state allow campuses to reopen?

For all of these questions, it's really too early to know the answers. But one thing is clear: Life, and learning for the nation's 20 million students in higher education, will be different.

"I don't think there's any scenario under which it's business as usual on American college campuses in the fall," says Nicholas Christakis, a sociologist and physician at Yale University.

So why are so many colleges announcing they will be back on campus in the fall?

In many cases, it's because they're still trying to woo students. A survey of college presidents found their most pressing concern right now is summer and fall enrollment. Even elite schools, typically more stable when it comes to enrollment, have reportedly been tapping their waitlists.

In the midst of all this uncertainty, it's worth looking at some of the ideas out there. With the help of Joshua Kim and Edward J. Maloney, professors and authors of the book Learning Innovation and the Future of Higher Education, here are some potential scenarios for reopening colleges and universities:

All virtual

Perhaps the most obvious option for the fall is to continue doing what they've been doing this spring. Colleges have signaled that they're planning for this option — even if it's a last resort. California State University, Fullerton, was one of the first to announce publicly it was planning for a fall semester online.

"Obviously we want to resume in-person teaching as soon as possible, but we also need to make sure that we're safe," says Ellen Treanor, who helps lead strategic communication at the school. Treanor says it made a lot of sense to assume the school would start online. "What would be the easier way to transition? It would be easier to transition beginning virtually and then transitioning in person," she said. "The faculty [needs] to be prepared."

With virtual classes, students can remain at home, although some colleges are exploring bringing them back to campus, where they could use the school's Wi-Fi to take online classes.

Delayed start

A delay in the semester would allow a school to wait it out until it was safer to reopen. One option is to push back a month or two, starting in October or November. Another idea is to push a normal start to January. In that case, the spring semester would become the fall semester, and potentially students could stay on campus through next summer to make up the spring semester. Boston University floated a version of this January start date when it announced a number of plans it was exploring.

One downside to a late start is what students will do in the meantime, especially those who don't have financial stability and rely on campus or the university to be a safe and stable home.

Some online, some face-to-face

This would be a hybrid model, with a combination of virtual and in-person classes. It may be a good choice for campuses that don't have enough classrooms to allow adjusting face-to-face teaching to the requirements of social distancing.

"You might have some of the larger classes being taught online simply because it's harder to imagine a 150- or 350-person classroom," says Maloney, who leads the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship at Georgetown University. "So you might see that class split up into multiple sections." For large, entry-level classes, colleges may have a lecture component online and then meet in smaller groups in person.

"The hybrid model doesn't have to just be about modality," Maloney says. "It can be, but it could also be about fundamentally rethinking what the core structure has been for those large classes."

Of course, shifting larger classes online may not be enough, by itself, to alleviate the health concerns of having students on campus. Early research from Cornell University found that eliminating such classes didn't lessen student interactions with each other.

Shortened blocks

In block scheduling, students take just one course at a time for a shorter duration, typically three or four weeks. Colorado College, a liberal arts school south of Denver, has been using this model for 50 years. The college adopted this style of classes because "it allows [students] to take a deep dive and really focus in unique ways on the single subject," says Alan Townsend, the provost there. In a typical year, the school offers eight blocks.

In addition to its intensity, block scheduling is attractive right now because it allows flexibility. Colleges that use it have the opportunity to change the way classes look every three weeks — since there are multiple start and stop points. (With a semester, you have only a single start and then, often 16 weeks later, an end.)

"It's easier for us to now think creatively for next year," Townsend says. "Different students can make different choices. That's really hard to do with a semester-based system, but the blocks allow us to do that a little bit more flexibly."

The school is also entertaining the idea of sending faculty abroad to teach a block for international students who might not be able to enter the U.S, or adding summer blocks to give students even more opportunities to take classes.

Only some on campus

Some colleges have suggested bringing only freshmen back to campus and having upperclassmen either delay their start, or be online and remote.

The idea centers on research that shows just how important a student's first year of college is as a predictor of graduation. Adapting to campus can be a challenge, so this would allow first-year students to get comfortable and have extra support on campus.

Since upperclassmen are already familiar with how campus and classes work, the theory goes, they can more easily adapt to an online environment. Other versions of this approach would have students who have housing needs come back to campus first, and then, over time, phase in other groups of students.

All these options seek to keep the population density of the campus lower while still maintaining some face-to-face interactions.

On campus, with some changes

Social distancing, improved testing and contact tracing could help colleges reopen their campuses.

"Every school is trying to figure out a way to have students come back and do whatever we can while also protecting public health," says Learning Innovation co-author Joshua Kim, director of online programs and strategy at Dartmouth College.

"At the same time, we know that, however that works, things will be different. It's probably unlikely that we'll be able to cram students together in large, packed lecture halls or put doubles and triples in residence halls or have big events."

To follow social distancing, professors are measuring their classrooms, calculating how many students could fit in the space if they were 6 feet apart. Deans are planning out how students could enter and exit the classrooms safely.

But it's not just the classrooms that pose a challenge. For residential colleges, it's the dorms.

"Whether or not students are actually learning in the classroom, it's incredibly important for them to have an on-campus experience," Maloney says. So schools are thinking about how they can spread their students out, putting them in places where they normally wouldn't go.

Some ideas include housing students in offices that aren't being used, local hotel rooms or off-campus housing. Institutions are also reimagining campus events, like freshman orientation, since it's unlikely hundreds of students will be in a packed auditorium.

"Rethinking how we do everything we do at a university is part of the process," Maloney says.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Patt's outfit for April 12, 2013.; Credit: Michelle Lanz/KPCC

Patt Morrison with Michelle Lanz

You don’t believe it looking out your windows in Southern California today, but spring it is. Perhaps I am forcing the spring by wearing bouquets on my stems – I think I can identify ranunculus, poppies, dianthus, and maybe roses?

I don’t know how authentically botanical fabric print designers think they ought to be, but I have an unshakable childhood recall of a bedroom in my great-grandmother’s house wallpapers in blue roses, and I was for years thereafter convinced that I could grow myself some blue roses.

And is there a happier color than this jacket’s coral/peach, or a springier fabric than the cotton-blend pique? It’s not as strenuous a shade as it would be in its brightness equivalent elsewhere on the color wheel, like electric blue or acid green. [And if it were, well, I’d wear it anyway!]

But the cloche hat – Daisy Buchanan, eat your platinum heart out. The ruched ombre silk ribbon on the crown and the minute bits of bent and curled ostrich feathers, like hatchlings on the hat! [I like saying that even more than I like writing it: "ruched ombre." It sounds like a fantastical concoction of molecular gastronomy: "the rambutan brûlée this evening is topped with ruched ombre."?     

Any bets on whether the May release of "The Great Gatsby" will revive 1920s chic? Who’s ready for dropped waistlines, lower heels and  long sautoir necklaces?

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Circus of Books storefront.; Credit: Netflix/Circus Of Books (2020)

Sabrina Fang | FilmWeek®

Rachel Mason had, to a certain extent, the normal upbringing you’d imagine a family of five with small business owner parents would have. But in her documentary, ‘Circus of Books’, she pulls the curtain on the double-life her parents led as modest business owners and pillars of the LGBTQ community.

Karen and Barry Mason established West Hollywood’s Circus of Books on Santa Monica Boulevard in the 1980s. What seemed like an unassuming bookstore was actually a gay porn shop that became an institution in the LGBTQ community during a time when homosexuality was still largely unaccepted. The store was far from being a “bookstore with a circus theme”. The Los Angeles-based shop was the central hub for gay pornography around the country, once one of the main distributors for adult films. 

While the store was becoming a home for gay culture and pride, the Masons largely kept their business a secret from colleagues, friends, family, even their own children. It’s a central conflict that Rachel Mason explores throughout the film as the daughter of two shop owners caught between the pressures of maintaining a traditional family image and making a living as gay pornography distributors.

Today on FilmWeek, we’re joined by ‘Circus of Books’ director Rachel Mason for a conversation on her documentary and the experience of creating a film with her parents and their secret as the subject.

‘Circus Of Books’ is currently streaming on Netflix. For more on the film from LAist’s Mike Roe, click here.

Guest:

Rachel Mason, director of the Netflix documentary ‘Circus of Books’ and daughter of Circus of Books owners Karen and Barry Mason; she tweets @RachelMasonArt

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The effects of seafloor trawling can extend further than the immediate fishing grounds, affecting delicate deep-sea ecosystems, new research suggests. In this Mediterranean study, the researchers demonstrated that clouds of sediment from trawling reached deeper habitats, increasing water-borne sediment particle concentrations to a hundred times that of background levels.

Camera brings unseen world to light

Wide receiver Wes Welker #83 of the Denver Broncos tries to avoid the tackle of free safety Earl Thomas #29 of the Seattle Seahawks during Super Bowl XLVIII at MetLife Stadium in this file photo taken February 2, 2014 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Under a new drug policy agreed to by the NFL and the players union, Welker and two other suspended players will be allowed to return to the field.; Credit: Jeff Gross/Getty Images

The NFL said Wednesday that its new performance-enhancing drug policy will allow the Broncos' Wes Welker and two other suspended players to return to the field this week.

The deal with the players association also adds human growth hormone testing, ending several years of wrangling between the league and the union.

Welker, Dallas Cowboys defensive back Orlando Scandrick and St. Louis Rams wide receiver Stedman Bailey had been suspended for four games.

Under the new rules, players who test positive for banned stimulants in the offseason will no longer be suspended. Instead, they will be referred to the substance abuse program.

The league and union are also nearing an agreement on changes to the substance abuse policy. That could reduce Cleveland Browns receiver Josh Gordon's season-long ban.

Testing for HGH was originally agreed upon in 2011, but the players had balked at the science in the testing and the appeals process for positive tests. Under the new deal, appeals of positive tests in the PED program will be heard by third-party arbitrators jointly selected by the NFL and union. Appeals will be processed more expeditiously under altered procedures

Testing should begin by the end of the month.

The new rules also change the length of suspensions. Previously, all first-time violations of the performance-enhancing drug policy resulted in at least a four-game suspension.

Now, use of a diuretic or masking agent will result in a two-game suspension. The punishment for steroids, in-season use of stimulants, HGH or other banned substances is four games. Evidence of an attempt to manipulate a test is a six-game suspension.

A second violation will result in a 10-game ban, up from a minimum of eight games. A third violation is at least a two-year suspension. Before, the ban was at least a year.

With the recent 22% rise in the price of uranium, Peter Epstein of Epstein Research considers the upside for Skyharbour's holdings in the Athabasca Basin.

Ron Struthers of Struthers' Resource Stock Report details the value proposition of Bam Bam Resources and its flagship prospect.

“Union members and non-union members have a strong interest in seeing our economy grow," said Rusty Hicks, the new head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, which represents over 300 unions.; Credit: Ben Bergman/KPCC

Ben Bergman

Labor unions have led the fight to raise the minimum wage in several American cities, including Los Angeles, where the City Council is considering two proposals right now that would give raises to hundreds of thousands of workers (to $13.25 an hour by 2017 and $15.25 an hour by 2019).

But few of the unions' members have benefited directly from the initiatives. So why do unions care about a $15 wage for non-union workers? 

It’s part of a long-term strategy to protect the interests of their members, labor leaders say. They also see an opportunity to raise the profile of unions after years of falling membership.

"We can’t be the movement that’s just about us," said David Rolf, an international vice-president of SEIU, who led the first successful $15 minimum wage campaign in SeaTac, the town in Washington that is home to the region's similarly named airport. 

“We have to be the movement that’s about justice for all," Rolf added. "The labor movement that people flocked to by the tens of millions in the 1930s wasn’t known for fighting for 500-page contracts. They were known for fighting for the eight-hour day, fighting to end child labor.”

The idea that workers should earn $15 dollars an hour first came to the public’s attention during a series of fast food strikes that started in New York City in late 2012. Those workers didn’t just walk off the job by themselves. They were part of a campaign organized by unions, led by SEIU, which is made up mostly of public sector and health care workers.

$10 million fast-food strikes

The Service Employees International Union spent $10 million dollars on the fast food strikes, according to The New York Times. But none of those restaurants have unionized, and because it’s been so hard to form private sector union these days, they probably never will, said labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein.

“In effect what you have now is the SEIU – its hospital membership or its members working at the Department of Motor Vehicles – helping to raise the wages of fast food workers, but not their own wages,” Lichtenstein said.

That's because unionized workers earn far more than the current or proposed new minimum wages, in L.A. an average of more than $27 an hour, according to UCLA's Center for Research on Employment and Labor. 

The spread of the $15 minimum wage from SeaTac to Seattle to San Francisco — and now possibly Los Angeles — is a huge victory for labor unions, but it’s unlikely most of the people getting raises will ever be part of organized labor.

Still, the rank and file seem to support their unions' efforts.

“I personally support using our organization as a way to advocate for those who don’t have a voice," said Rafael Sanchez III, a teacher's assistant at Bell High School who's a member of SEIU Local 99. 

A challenging time for the labor movement

In the 1950’s, about one in three American workers belonged to a union. Last year, just 11 percent did – or 6 percent of private sector workers – the lowest numbers in nearly a century.

Rolf says the minimum wage campaigns mark a change in tactics for organized labor; Rather than the shop floor, the focus is on the ballot box and city hall.

“Since at least the 1980s, winning unions in the private sector has been a Herculean task," Rolf said. "The political process provides an alternative vehicle.”

And an increasingly successful one. It was voters who approved the first $15 wage, in Washington state in 2013, and another one in San Francisco last year.  

In Los Angeles, the issue is before the city council. Mayor Eric Garcetti opened the bidding, proposing a raise of $13.25 on Labor Day before six council members countered with $15.25.

The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor – lead by Rusty Hicks — is pushing for the higher option.

“Union members and non-union members have an interest in seeing our economy grow," said Hicks. "You can’t continue to have a strong, vibrant economy if in fact folks don’t have money in their pockets.”

Other benefits for unions: A safety net and a higher floor

Some union members see a higher minimum wage as a safety net.

Robert Matsuda is a studio violinist represented by the American Federation of Musicians, part of the AFL-CIO. Even though he’s not working for the minimum wage now, he worries that may not last: He’s getting fewer and fewer gigs as more film and TV scoring is outsourced overseas.

“I might have to take a minimum wage job in the near future, so it might directly affect me,” said Matsuda.

There’s also a more tangible benefit for unions, says Nelson Lichtenstein, the labor historian: A higher minimum wage means a higher wage floor to negotiate with in future contracts.

“It’s one labor market, and if you can raise the wages in those sectors that have been pulling down the general wage level – i.e: fast food and retail – then it makes it easier for unions to create a higher standard and go on and get more stuff,” said Lichtenstein.

On Friday morning, union members will rally in front of Los Angeles City Hall, calling on the council to enact a $15.25 an hour minimum wage as soon as possible.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Tesoro says it’s been planning for a strike and will continue operating two of the effected refineries, including one in Carson.; Credit: Getty Images

Ben Bergman

More than 800 workers walked off the job early Sunday at an oil refinery in Carson because of a labor dispute, joining workers at eight other refineries around the country. 

National strikes have been rare in the refining business. The last one happened in 1980, and it took three months to resolve. If this dispute lasts that long, analysts say gas prices could rise.

“It’s very possible we may have seen the last of two dollar gasoline in the near term,” said Carl Larry director of oil and gas at consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. “Without production from these refineries, we’re going to see tighter supply and higher prices."

Making matters worse, many refineries are switching over to summer blend gas, which is cleaner burning, but also more expensive.

Jim Burkhard, Managing Director at IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, cautions that it is too soon to know what the effect of the strike will be, and even though the steelworkers have 64 percent of U.S. oil output in their hands, there’s still a lot of other supply.

 “Remember the oil market overall is very well supplied right now,” said Burkhard. "There's plenty of refining capacity around the world, you would just have some modification of trade flows."

The Carson refinery processes 363,000 barrels per day at peak capacity and employs 1,450 workers. Tesoro Corporation, which operates the plant, says it’s been planning for a strike and will continue operations.

"Tesoro is confident that the Company can continue to safely operate the refineries and meet customer commitments until resolution is reached with the [United Steel Workers]," Tesoro said in a written statement.

The USW represents workers at 65 U.S. refineries. It says the facilities where workers have not walked out will continue operating under a rolling 24-hour contract extension. 

“This work stoppage is about onerous overtime; unsafe staffing levels; dangerous conditions the industry continues to ignore; the daily occurrences of fires, emissions, leaks and explosions that threaten local communities without the industry doing much about it; the industry’s refusal to make opportunities for workers in the trade crafts; the flagrant contracting out that impacts health and safety on the job; and the erosion of our workplace, where qualified and experienced union workers are replaced by contractors when they leave or retire,” USW International Vice President Gary Beevers said in a written statement.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Camera brings unseen world to light

Full Text:

National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded researchers from North Carolina State and Elon universities have developed a technique that allows them to remotely control the movement of soft robots, lock them into position for as long as needed and later reconfigure the robots into new shapes. The technique relies on light and magnetic fields. "By engineering the properties of the material, we can control the soft robot's movement remotely; we can get it to hold a given shape; we can then return the robot to its original shape or further modify its movement; and we can do this repeatedly. All of those things are valuable, in terms of this technology's utility in biomedical or aerospace applications," says Joe Tracy, a professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and corresponding author of a paper on the work. In experimental testing, the researchers demonstrated that the soft robots could be used to form "grabbers" for lifting and transporting objects. The soft robots could also be used as cantilevers or folded into "flowers" with petals that bend in different directions. "We are not limited to binary configurations, such as a grabber being either open or closed," says Jessica Liu, first author of the paper and a Ph.D. student at NC State. "We can control the light to ensure that a robot will hold its shape at any point."

Image credit: Jessica A.C. Liu

Full Text:

How do galaxies such as our Milky Way come into existence? How do they grow and change over time? The science behind galaxy formation has long been a puzzle, but a University of Arizona-led team of scientists is one step closer to finding answers, thanks to supercomputer simulations. Observing real galaxies in space can only provide snapshots in time, so researchers who study how galaxies evolve over billions of years need to use computer simulations. Traditionally, astronomers have used simulations to invent theories of galaxy formation and test them, but they have had to proceed one galaxy at a time. Peter Behroozi of the university's Steward Observatory and colleagues overcame this hurdle by generating millions of different universes on a supercomputer, each according to different physical theories for how galaxies form. The findings challenge fundamental ideas about the role dark matter plays in galaxy formation, the evolution of galaxies over time and the birth of stars. The study is the first to create self-consistent universes that are exact replicas of the real ones -- computer simulations that each represent a sizeable chunk of the actual cosmos, containing 12 million galaxies and spanning the time from 400 million years after the Big Bang to the present day. The results from the "UniverseMachine," as the authors call their approach, have helped resolve the long-standing paradox of why galaxies cease to form new stars even when they retain plenty of hydrogen gas, the raw material from which stars are forged. The research is partially funded by NSF's Division of Physics through grants to UC Santa Barbara's Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Aspen Center for Physics.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/J. Lotz and the HFF Team/STScI

The seemingly insatiable demand among people and businesses alike helps reveal a rash of privacy and security issues facing the platform

The post Zoom’s privacy and security woes in the spotlight appeared first on WeLiveSecurity

Here’s how you can greatly improve your Zoom privacy and security in a few simple steps

The post Zoom security: Getting the settings right appeared first on WeLiveSecurity

Ghost wasn’t the only victim of break-ins over the weekend that exploited critical holes in infrastructure automation software for which patches were available

The post Ghost blogging platform servers hacked to mine cryptocurrency appeared first on WeLiveSecurity

Source: Streetwise Reports   05/01/2020

Seattle Genetics shares traded 8% higher, reaching a new 52-week high, after the company reported Q1/20 financial results which included a 10% y-o-y increase in net revenues fueled by a 22% increase in sales of ADCETRIS® and a strong debut for PADCEV™ in its first full quarter of sales.

Seattle Genetics Inc. (SGEN:NASDAQ) yesterday announced financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2020.

The company also provided an update on commercial results achieved in the quarter for its lead medicines including ADCETRIS® (brentuximab vedotin) and PADCEV^™ (enfortumab vedotin-ejfv) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval and launch of TUKYSA^™ (tucatinib).

The company's President and CEO Clay Siegall, Ph.D., commented, "We have had a remarkable start to 2020, delivering record product sales in the first quarter that are now coming from both ADCETRIS and PADCEV. Notably, strong PADCEV sales in the first full quarter of launch reflect the unmet need among patients with metastatic bladder cancer...With the recent approval of TUKYSA for patients with metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer, we have now launched our third product just four months after our second...We are also preparing for European commercial operations and have hired general managers in major European markets ahead of potential ex-U.S. approvals of TUKYSA. With two new products, growing revenues, and an advancing pipeline of novel cancer programs, we have exciting prospects for future growth."

The company highlighted that ADCETRIS net sales in the U.S. and Canada increased by 22% to $164.1 million in Q1/20, compared to $135 million in Q1/19. The firm indicated that PADCEV net sales in the U.S. reached $34.5 million in Q1/20, which was its first full quarter of commercialization. The company added that royalty revenues in Q1/20 were $20.4 million and collaboration and license agreement revenues in Q1/20 totaled $15.6 million.

The firm reported a net loss for Q1/20 of $168.4 million, or $0.98 per diluted share, compared to net loss of $13.3 million, or $0.08 per diluted share for Q1/19. The company explained that "the net loss in Q1/20 included a net investment loss of $59.1 million primarily associated with its common stock holdings in Immunomedics, which are marked-to-market, compared to a net investment gain of $38.1 million in Q1/19."

The company advised that its TUKYSA was approved by the FDA for patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer who have received one or more prior anti-HER2 regimens in the metastatic setting. The firm mentioned that it also expects to be able to report topline data in late Q2/20 or Q3/20 for the innovaTV 204 pivotal trial of tisotumab vedotin in patients with recurrent and/or metastatic cervical cancer who have relapsed or progressed after standard of care treatment.

The company noted that it is regularly monitoring the effects of the COVID-19 situation and is maintaining its business outlook estimates for FY/20 that it provided previously on February 6, 2020. For FY/20 it expects ADCETRIS net product sales of $675–700 million, royalty revenues of $105–115 million and collaboration and license agreement revenues of $30–50 million. The firm advised that for FY/20 it expects that R&D expenses will range from $860–950 million with SG&A expenses of $475–525 million.

Seattle Genetics is headquartered in Bothell, Wash., and is a global biotechnology company focused on discovering and commercializing cancer medicines.

Seattle Genetics has a market capitalization of around $23.7 billion with approximately 172.5 million shares outstanding. SGEN shares opened 2.75% higher today at $141.00 (+$3.77, +2.75%) over yesterday's $137.23 closing price and reached a new 52-week high price this morning of $157.00. The stock has traded today between $140.05 and $157.00 per share and is currently trading at $148.51 (+$11.28, +8.22%).

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The post Episode 955 Scott Adams: Extra Cussing Tonight. Put the Kids to Bed. Close Your Windows, Get Under the Covers appeared first on Scott Adams' Blog.

With the recent 22% rise in the price of uranium, Peter Epstein of Epstein Research considers the upside for Skyharbour's holdings in the Athabasca Basin.

Shares of Energous Corp. skyrocketed after the company reported that it received certification from the FCC for its new, "groundbreaking" over-the-air, power-at-a-distance wireless charging WattUp® technology.

The new agreement and its potential impact on Point Loma Resources are discussed in a Mackie Research Capital Corp. report.

Shares of ION Geophysical traded higher after the company reported Q1/20 financial results that included a 53% year-over-year increase in revenue.

New research has found evidence that a small Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the Mediterranean has the potential to deliver larvae of some fish species to surrounding, non-protected areas. This is one of few studies to investigate this desired role of MPAs and its design could be used to evaluate current and future MPAs elsewhere.

A recent study has assessed the lifecycle environmental impact during the production and use phase of three battery types for plug-in hybrid (PHEV) and full performance battery electric vehicles (BEV). The study indicates that newer lithium-ion (Li-ion) technologies outperform current nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries and identifies processes contributing to 13 environmental impacts

A new German study suggests that residents??? level of satisfaction with their urban neighbourhood can be predicted from their perceptions of multiple and co-occurring burdens, such as poor air quality, lack of green space, noise and low cleanliness.

Green roofs can cool buildings in summer and prevent heat loss in winter. A new study suggests, however, that in the warm climates of southern Europe the additional cost of watering means that 'cool roof coatings??? may be more cost effective.

The world’s marine ecosystems are at risk of sudden and damaging changes. The authors of a recent study say that co-ordinated management of the many drivers of marine changes, such as overfishing and pollution, is needed across international, national and local scales to help avoid the ‘regime shifts’ that affect ecosystem services and human wellbeing.

Increases in the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere can be beneficial to crops, by providing a source of carbon for growth. However, very high levels of CO₂ have the reverse effect, decreasing the yield and quality of vegetable crops, a new study has shown. The researchers say atmospheric CO₂ concentration should be kept below 5 000 ppm to enhance the yield of leafy vegetables such as cabbage and lettuce.

A new study indicates that ‘commitment’ interventions are effective in encouraging environmentally-friendly behaviour, both in the short- and long-term. However, to increase the effectiveness of such interventions, whereby people promise or pledge to perform certain behaviours, more research is needed on the psychological processes behind their effects.

A new study indicates that ‘commitment’ interventions are effective in encouraging environmentally-friendly behaviour, both in the short- and long-term. However, to increase the effectiveness of such interventions, whereby people promise or pledge to perform certain behaviours, more research is needed on the psychological processes behind their effects.

An overview of research into ‘nudge’ theory and practices has recently been presented. While there is much evidence to show how humans make decisions, translating these psychological and economic insights into viable policy instruments that encourage behavioural change remains challenging, the authors conclude.

Campaigns which remind individuals of the environmentally-friendly actions they already perform may motivate them to even more pro-environmental behaviours, new research suggests. If people identify themselves as environmentally-friendly, they are more likely to carry out green actions, even in the absence of any incentive.

The risk of small or medium oil spills from ships, pipelines, storage facilities and refineries is higher than from oil exploration and production. However, the risk of severe oil spills is highest from exploration and production, according to a recent study. Furthermore, the study suggests that the Deepwater Horizon accident, the largest recorded oil spill, cannot be considered as a particularly rare event.

Researchers from the University of Oxford's Bodleian Libraries and from universities in the Netherlands have used high-tech imaging to uncover the details of a rare Mexican codex dating from before the colonization of the Americas. The newly revealed codex, or book, has been hidden from view for almost 500 years, concealed beneath a layer of plaster and chalk on the back of a later manuscript known as the Codex Selden, which is housed at the Bodleian Libraries. Scientists have used hyperspectral imaging to reveal pictographic scenes from this remarkable document and have published their findings in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

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