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Palace Museum artefacts on show

The Science Museum is presenting the special Unlocking the Secrets - The Science of Conservation at The Palace Museum exhibition to tie in with the 600th anniversary of the Forbidden City in 2020.

 

More than 100 artefacts from the Palace Museum collection are being showcased to highlight the application of science and technology in conservation.

 

They include bronzes, clocks, textiles, thangkas, wood furniture, lacquerware and inlaid works along with ceramics, calligraphy and hand-painted copies of ancient paintings.

 

The show also presents the Conservation Office’s work by showcasing intriguing restoration cases so that visitors can learn more about the work and skills of conservators as well as their mission to preserve Hong Kong’s heritage assets.

 

The Science Museum will launch a series of interactive family activities, including demonstrations and workshops conducted by Palace Museum conservators, guided tours featuring theatrical plays and storytelling, and visits to conservation laboratories.

 

Jointly presented by the Leisure & Cultural Services Department and the Palace Museum, the exhibition will run until March 18 next year.

 

Call 2732 3232 for enquiries.




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Cultural centre art proposals invited

The East Kowloon Cultural Centre Public Artwork Commissioning Project is inviting artists, designers and architects to create an art landscape for the centre.

 

Presented by the Leisure & Cultural Services Department and organised by the Art Promotion Office, the project endeavors to capture and showcase the past, present and future of East Kowloon.

  

The commissioned artworks will represent five themes - memory, impression, moment, dream and imagination - aiming to display the district’s changing nature, and to manifest the local community’s cultural sustainability, aspirations and dreams.

 

Interested participants must submit their preliminary proposal with their curriculum vitae, documentation of their previous artwork and the artistic concept of the proposed artwork.

 

All proposals must be delivered to the centre’s Public Art Project Management Team at G/F, 50-54 Lok Ku Road, Sheung Wan before 7pm on May 4.

 

Participants shortlisted by the selection panel are required to submit detailed proposals before 7pm on June 30 for the next stage of the selection process.

 

Up to three proposals shall be chosen by the selection panel for commissioning and installing in the centre.




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Understanding What Kepler Did--Part I




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Understanding Kepler II--Earth's Motion




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Pretty as a Picture (Part I)




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Pretty as a Picture (Part II)




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Start-up Express returns for third edition

Start-up Express, a development programme launched by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) in 2018, is returning for its third edition to help local start-ups build connections, explore markets, seek partners and enhance...




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Mindful Eating: The Art of Presence While You Eat

Joseph B. Nelson
Aug 1, 2017; 30:171-174
From Research to Practice




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Drug-Induced Glucose Alterations Part 1: Drug-Induced Hypoglycemia

Mays H. Vue
Aug 1, 2011; 24:171-177
Pharmacy and Therapeutics




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Drug-Induced Glucose Alterations Part 2: Drug-Induced Hyperglycemia

Abdur Rehman
Nov 1, 2011; 24:234-238
Pharmacy and Therapeutics




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Complaints impartially probed

The Government has mechanisms to investigate complaints against civil servants impartially, Secretary for the Civil Service Patrick Nip said today.

 

Mr Nip made the remarks in response to media queries on recent allegations levelled against senior police officers.

 

He said: “There are established mechanisms to investigate every complaint in accordance with the procedures and rules. Depending on the circumstances and the case details, some are being handled by departments and bureaus. Some may be handled by the Civil Service Bureau.

 

“There are established mechanisms in dealing with that. Of course we would handle each and every complaint in a very serious and impartial manner.”




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John Lewis Partnership selects four startups to reduce plastic waste

The partnership will join hands with four UK startups as it hopes to reduce plastic waste as part of its retail tech initiative, JLAB




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Government unveils COVID-19 support package for startups

The Treasury has announced a new set of financial measures aimed at helping startups during the coronavirus pandemic, including a £250 Future Fund for startups with at least £250,000 in funding




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Expa launches UK office for European startups

The US-based 'startup studio' will launched a London office to welcome European startups




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2020 Mathematical Art Exhibition gallery on AMS Mathematical Imagery




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Harmonic Analysis and Partial Differential Equations

Patricio Cifuentes and Jose Garcia-Cuerva, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Gustavo Garrigos, Universidad de Murcia, Eugenio Hernandez, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Jose Maria Martell, Javier Parcet, and Keith M. Rogers, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, and Alberto Ruiz, Fernando Soria, and Ana Vargas, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Editors - AMS, 2014, 178 pp., Softcover, ISBN-13: 978-0-8218-9433-0, List: US$78, All AMS Members: US$62.40, CONM/612

This volume contains the Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Harmonic Analysis and Partial Differential Equations, held June 11-15,...




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An artificial 'tongue' of gold to taste maple syrup

(University of Montreal) A chemistry professor at Université de Montréal has developed a new test using gold nanoparticles to establish the flavour profile of maple syrup and help producers evaluate its quality.




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Dartmouth's Katherine Mirica wins National Teacher-Scholar Honor

(Dartmouth College) Annual award supports the research and teaching careers of talented young faculty in the chemical sciences.




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Mathematics from arts?




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2020 Mathematical Art Exhibition Awards

The 2020 Mathematical Art Exhibition Awards were made at the Joint Mathematics Meetings last week "for aesthetically pleasing works that combine mathematics and art." The chosen works were selected from the exhibition of juried works in various media by over 90 mathematicians and artists from around the world.

"Suspended Helical Stair," by Mark Donohue (California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA), was awarded Best textile, sculpture, or other medium. "A unique cable system to suspend a stair was developed in collaboration with a leading structural engineer. The suspended cables form a double helicoid nested within an ascending spiral hyperboloid to create the necessary points of support for the gravity loads and lateral bracing for the seismic loads. Each concrete stair tread was designed as an independent element that is strung together with the stairs above and below it to form a single spiral stair when the steel cables that run through them are post tensioned. The entire stair tread and suspension cable system can be understood as a play of ruled surfaces with each part related to the other through their shared geometric lineage." The work is string and plywood,45 x 23 x 23 cm, 2018.

2018

"A Unit Domino," by Douglas McKenna (Mathemaesthetics, Inc., Boulder, CO), was awarded Best photograph, painting, or print. "This piece is based upon an artist-discovered "half-domino" space-filling curve. The drawing comprises some half-million connected line segments, arranged in two perfectly recursive levels of double-spiral pairs, slowly changing color, in a single, over-one-mile-long self-avoiding path from lower left to lower right (the lower right square that sticks out is an integral part of its self-negative structure). The limiting curve covers a self-similar gasket tile with an infinitely long, almost-everywhere linear border. With an upside-down copy of itself, two such gaskets of unit area exactly cover a 1x2 domino, without overlap. The artist's app/eBook "Hilbert Curves" for iPad/iPhone explains how he discovered these beautiful constructions." The work is a glicée print,106 x 66 cm, 2015.

"Computational Wings," by David Bachman (Pitzer College, Claremont, CA), received Honorable Mention. "The body of this dragonfly is taken from a photograph, while the wings were computationally generated. A variety of algorithms were used to create them. First, a set of points were randomly populated across each wing and moved by a circle packing algorithm, where the radius of each circle was inversely proportional to the distance from the body. Next, those points were used to create a Voronoi diagram. Main veins were located by a shortest walk algorithm through the edges of this diagram, and those veins were given a variable thickness according to the distance travelled as you traverse them outward from the body." The work is laser etched acrylic, 23 x 35 x 3 cm, 2019.

(Click on the thumbnails to see larger versions of the images.)

The Mathematical Art Exhibition Award "for aesthetically pleasing works that combine mathematics and art" was established in 2008 through an endowment provided to the American Mathematical Society by an anonymous donor who wishes to acknowledge those whose works demonstrate the beauty and elegance of mathematics expressed in a visual art form. The awards are $400 for Best photograph, painting, or print; $400 for Best textile, sculpture, or other medium; and $200 for Honorable Mention. The Mathematical Art Exhibition of juried works in various media is held at the annual Joint Mathematics Meetings of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and Mathematical Association of America (MAA). a gallery of works in the 2020 exhibition will be on AMS Mathematical Imagery.

Find out more about the Mathematical Art Exhibition Award and see past recipients.

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The American Mathematical Society is dedicated to advancing research and connecting the diverse global mathematical community through our publications, meetings and conferences, MathSciNet, professional services, advocacy, and awareness programs.




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DHHC7-mediated palmitoylation of the accessory protein barttin critically regulates the functions of ClC-K chloride channels [Cell Biology]

Barttin is the accessory subunit of the human ClC-K chloride channels, which are expressed in both the kidney and inner ear. Barttin promotes trafficking of the complex it forms with ClC-K to the plasma membrane and is involved in activating this channel. Barttin undergoes post-translational palmitoylation that is essential for its functions, but the enzyme(s) catalyzing this post-translational modification is unknown. Here, we identified zinc finger DHHC-type containing 7 (DHHC7) protein as an important barttin palmitoyl acyltransferase, whose depletion affected barttin palmitoylation and ClC-K-barttin channel activation. We investigated the functional role of barttin palmitoylation in vivo in Zdhhc7−/− mice. Although palmitoylation of barttin in kidneys of Zdhhc7−/− animals was significantly decreased, it did not pathologically alter kidney structure and functions under physiological conditions. However, when Zdhhc7−/− mice were fed a low-salt diet, they developed hyponatremia and mild metabolic alkalosis, symptoms characteristic of human Bartter syndrome (BS) type IV. Of note, we also observed decreased palmitoylation of the disease-causing R8L barttin variant associated with human BS type IV. Our results indicate that dysregulated DHHC7-mediated barttin palmitoylation appears to play an important role in chloride channel dysfunction in certain BS variants, suggesting that targeting DHHC7 activity may offer a potential therapeutic strategy for reducing hypertension.




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Chairman of Council of Lingnan University departs early




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Profiles of kindergartens posted online




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First School Allocation Exercise 2020 invites applications for five kindergarten premises in public housing estates




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Application deadline extended for First School Allocation Exercise 2020 for allocation of five new estate kindergarten premises




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EDB to resume more public services starting next week




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Savannah College of Art and Design (Hong Kong) to discontinue operation




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Loan repayment by self-financing post-secondary institutions under Start-up Loan Scheme, non-profit-making international schools and student loan repayers to be deferred for two years




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Heng Tai Hse partially evacuated

People living in units 13 and 14 of the top six floors of Heng Tai House in Fu Heng Estate, Tai Po need to be quarantined as a precaution.

 

Hong Kong University Chair of Infectious Disease Prof Yuen Kwok-yung made the statement at a media briefing today after an expert team conducted initial epidemiological investigations in the building to find the cause of a new COVID-19 infection.

 

The new case announced this afternoon involves a 59-year-old man who lives on the 34th floor of the building.

 

Prof Yuen said: “There is a possibility that when the patients on the 32nd floor are defecating - we know now that the fecal material actually contains the virus - while they’re defecating the fecal material goes into the sewer system.

 

“There is a vent of air that comes through the venting pipe, which goes to the top floor and maybe aerosolised in the air and then the droplets try to settle but, while at the same time, when there’s a light wind blowing, in which the air current going over the rooftop carries the particles back into the top floors.

 

“And of course, the 34th floor is the top floor. That is the most dangerous, followed by the 33rd and 32nd floors.”

 

Prof Yuen added he is uncertain if the venting pipe will continue to produce more infected aerosolised particles.

 

“So it is just a precautionary measure that we must remove the residents from the top six floors in units 13 and 14 for a period of time.”

 

For information and health advice on COVID-19, visit the Government's dedicated webpage.




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A smart space for innovation

Entrepreneur Ricky Chan’s information technology company has been hard at work developing a virtual reality application that enables designers and their clients to walk through different versions of their home or office without having to physically move a single piece of furniture.

 

From the colour of the walls to the style of fixtures and fittings, Mr Chan’s app caters to all personal tastes and design ideas.

 

“We have customers who are interior designers or furniture retailers. Our virtual reality application brings their sketches to life. Designers in the past needed weeks to produce sketches. Now they can make designs instantly,” he explained.

 

Up to 40% of the application was developed at Smart-Space 8 in Tsuen Wan, Cyberport’s first co-working space outside its main Pok Fu Lam campus.

 

“Cyberport provides funding that helps to lower our expenses and we can hold seminars here with a rental fee that is much lower than the market price,” Mr Chan added.
 

The 20,000 sq ft space launched last year was specifically designed with young entrepreneurs in mind and provides workshops and seminars for startups. For companies that wish to join the Smart-Space 8 community, one of its founders must be aged between 18 and 35 and the company itself should not have been in operation for longer than seven years.

 

Smart-Space 8 users are entitled to comprehensive entrepreneurial support and value-added services to accelerate their businesses such as the Cyberport Creative Micro Fund and Cyberport Incubation Programme.

 

Mr Chan, who lives in the New Territories, said the added bonus of setting up shop in Smart-Space 8 is the commute, as Cyberport in Pok Fu Lam is farther away for him and his clients.

 

Cyberport may be expanding beyond Pok Fu Lam, but some entrepreneurs like agriculture technology company CEO and founder Gordon Tam have opted to stay at the home campus because of the incentives available.

 

“The business network here is unique. There are so many startups and we encourage and learn from each other.”

 

Mr Tam’s company sells vegetables from an indoor farm to local supermarkets and is now exploring the overseas market. He credits the vibrant community and ecosystem at Cyberport for building up his business.

 

“Traditional agriculture comes with a host of problems and the efficiency of Hong Kong’s agriculture industry is relatively low. This is why we are looking into indoor agriculture. We want to grow plants in industrial buildings.”

 

When Mr Tam joined the Cyberport Incubation Programme, his firm was offered two years of rent reduction. But more importantly, he said, the space is a one-of-a-kind ecosystem where his team can brainstorm ideas and continue to innovate.

 

Other startup owners share the same sentiment. Information technology company CEO and founder Stark Chan noted that with Cyberport as a public body, it offers a lot of support and rents are more stable.

 

“We have been here since we first started up. My colleagues are familiar with this environment and the atmosphere is good for innovation,” Mr Chan said.




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Indicators of cancer may also be markers of heart failure

(Wiley) Heart failure and cancer are conditions with a number of shared characteristics. A new study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine found that in patients with heart failure, several known tumor markers can also be indicators of heart failure severity and progression.





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How to Find the Perfect Office, According to a Founder Who's Moved His Startup 5 Times

Tuesday, September 10, 2019 - 21:15




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Meet the Most Disruptive MBA Startups of 2019 Poets and Quants – 10/28/2019

Monday, October 28, 2019 - 12:15




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Poets&Quants’ Top MBA Startups of 2020

Monday, March 30, 2020 - 11:15




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The Best MBA Programs for Venture-Backed Startups

Monday, March 30, 2020 - 12:00




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Diminished returns of educational attainment on heart disease among black Americans

(Bentham Science Publishers) Using a nationally representative sample, the researchers explored racial/ethnic variation in the link between educational attainment and heart disease among American adults.




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Which operations can restart first? New guide could help hospitals decide

(Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan) Now, as hospitals across the country start to return to doing non-emergency operations that keep their beds full and their books balanced, they need to think carefully about what resources each of those procedures will need as the pandemic continues. A new guide could help them prioritize and plan. Created by poring over seven years' worth of data from 17 common operations in dozens of hospitals, it's available for free for any hospital to use.




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ESO instrument finds closest black hole to Earth

(ESO) Astronomers have discovered a black hole lying just 1,000 light-years from Earth. The black hole is closer to our solar system than any other found to date and forms part of a triple system that can be seen with the naked eye. The astronomers found evidence for the invisible object by tracking its two companion stars using the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. They say this system could just be the tip of the iceberg.




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Cold air rises -- what that means for Earth's climate

(University of California - Davis) In the tropical atmosphere, cold air rises due to an overlooked effect -- the lightness of water vapor. This effect helps to stabilize tropical climates, and the impacts of a warming climate would be much worse without it.




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Examining heart extractions in ancient Mesoamerica

(University of Chicago Press Journals) A recent study confirms that Mesoamerican priests ripped the hearts out of their still-living victims in three different ways. New forensic evidence, historic witness accounts and native representations now show that the most common form of native heart extraction was from beneath the rib cage, second was forceful chest penetration between two ribs and at mid-chest level between the nipples, and thirdly, a mid-chest opening of one single blow, extracting the heart from the front.




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Is planet Earth young or old?

(World Scientific) New book explores human's endeavours to measure the age of the Earth -- the biblical story, geology's response, Darwin's contribution, Kelvin's cooling Earth model, and modern science.




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X-ray analysis sheds light on construction and conservation of artefacts from Henry VIII's warship

(University of Warwick) 21st century X-ray technology has allowed University of Warwick scientists to peer back through time at the production of the armour worn by the crew of Henry VIII's favoured warship, the Mary Rose.




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Outsmarting the enemy: Treefrogs rely on illusions to find a mate without being eaten

(Purdue University) Researchers at Purdue University have discovered that male treefrogs reduce their attractiveness to predators and parasites by overlapping their mating calls with their neighbors.




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'Wobble' may precede some great earthquakes, study shows

(Ohio State University) The land masses of Japan shifted from east to west to east again in the months before the strongest earthquake in the country's recorded history, a 2011 magnitude-9 earthquake that killed more than 15,500 people, new research shows.




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Michael Flynn Confessed. Justice Department Now Says It Doesn’t Care.

It may not be a pardon. But the Justice Department has dropped charges against Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.Retired Army Lt. Gen. Flynn, an important figure in the war on terror who gave Trump’s 2016 run military validation, will avoid prison time after the Justice Department provided a deliverance on Thursday that Flynn had long sought. It is also the second redemption that Trump has provided the general, who served as his first national security adviser for less than a month. “The Government has determined, pursuant to the Principles of Federal Prosecution and based on an extensive review and careful consideration of the circumstances, that continued prosecution of this case would not serve the interests of justice,” wrote Timothy Shea, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and a former senior aide to Attorney General William Barr. Shortly before the filing, lead prosecutor Brandon Von Grack abruptly withdrew from the case.The Justice Department filing, in essence, portrays Flynn as the victim of an FBI frame-up job, and his lies to the FBI as legally marginal. Shea wrote that Flynn’s lies needed to have been “not simply false, but ‘materially’ false with respect to a matter under investigation.” Later in the filing, Shea referred to those lies as “gaps in [Flynn’s] memory,” rather than deliberate falsehoods Flynn conceded. “Even if he told the truth, Mr. Flynn’s statements could not have conceivably ‘influenced’ an investigation that had neither a legitimate counterintelligence nor criminal purpose,” Shea wrote.It was an astonishing turnaround since 2018, when a federal judge said to Flynn in a sentencing hearing, “arguably, you sold your country out.” That judge, Emmet Sullivan, could still decide to reject Shea’s filing and continue with Flynn’ sentencing. Michael Bromwich, a former federal prosecutor and Justice Department inspector general, tweeted that the extraordinary move represented “a pardon by another name” and called it a “black day in DOJ history.”Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the decision to drop charges was “outrageous” and revealed “a politicized and thoroughly corrupt Department of Justice.” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) added, “If Barr’s Justice Department will drop charges against someone who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and who the White House publicly fired for lying to the vice president, there’s nothing it won’t do, no investigation it won’t taint.”Neither Flynn nor his attorney, Sidney Powell, responded immediately to requests for comment.Speaking to reports on Thursday afternoon, Trump said he had no prior knowledge of the Justice Department’s decision. “He was an innocent man,” Trump said, of Flynn. “Now in my book he’s an even greater warrior.”The dropped charges follow a years-long groundswell from Trump’s base, and particularly Fox News, to clear Flynn. His advocates claim that Flynn was set up by the same disreputable FBI figures who they believe persecuted Trump over phantom collusion with Russia.Flynn’s guilty plea, in December, 2017, has been no obstacle to the narrative, particularly since Flynn sought afterwards, unsuccessfully, to withdraw his plea. His sentencing, initially set for February, had also been delayed.Last month, agitation for a Flynn pardon intensified after documents emerged from two of Trump’s most hated ex-FBI figures, counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and attorney Lisa Page, discussing Flynn’s fateful January 2017 interview with the FBI. Page asked when and how to “slip it in” to Flynn that lying to an FBI agent is a crime, something that Flynn’s advocates believed showed the general being railroaded from the start. But veteran FBI agents and prosecutors have pointed out that the FBI is not legally obligated to inform an interview subject that lying to them is illegal. “Michael Flynn was very familiar with the FBI,” said Stephanie Douglas, a former executive assistant director of the FBI’s National Security Branch. “He would certainly have been aware of his obligation to provide candid and truthful information. His claim he was tricked and manipulated doesn’t sound valid to me.” Shea, in his Thursday court filing, suggested the FBI officials were “fishing for falsehoods merely to manufacture jurisdiction over any statement.” In Shea’s view, Flynn’s lies were less germane to the prosecution than the FBI “lack[ing] sufficient basis to sustain its initial counterintelligence investigation,” and its pre-interview position that it ought to close the investigation before speaking with the then national security adviser.Former FBI deputy head Andrew McCabe said on Thursday that the suggestion there was no reason to interview Flynn was “patently false, and ignores the considerable national security risk his contacts raised.” He said Flynn’s lies added to the FBI’s concerns about his relationship with Russia. “Today’s move... is pure politics designed to please the president,” he added.U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen, who was appointed by Barr to review Flynn’s and other high-profile cases, said on Thursday that he concluded “the proper and just course” was to dismiss the case. “I briefed Attorney General Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed,” he said.The FBI Didn’t Frame Michael Flynn. That’s Just Trump’s Excuse for a Prospective Pardon.While serving as national security adviser, Flynn misled FBI interviewers about conversations he had with the then-Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak. In one of those late 2016 conversations, according to court filings, Flynn asked the Russians to avoid escalatory actions in response to sanctions and diplomatic expulsions then President Barack Obama enacted as reprisal for Russian electoral interference. Shea, in his filing, called Flynn’s Kislyak calls “entirely appropriate on their face.”The national security adviser’s lies prompted the holdover attorney general, Sally Yates, to warn the White House that Flynn had given the Russians leverage to blackmail him. But it would take weeks before Trump fired Flynn over “an eroding level of trust” concerning misleading Vice President Mike Pence on the Kislyak contacts. By May, Trump was said to have regretted dismissing the general.  Flynn in 2017 agreed to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. The general avoided charges for taking $530,000 in unregistered money from interests connected to the Turkish government—something he only declared with the Justice Department after his downfall as national security adviser. During a sentencing hearing in 2018, a federal judge castigated Flynn for disgracing the uniform Flynn wore for three decades. “Arguably, you sold your country out,” Judge Emmet Sullivan said. Two years earlier, on stage at the Republican national convention, Flynn had led a chant of “lock her up” about Hillary Clinton. Protesters outside Flynn’s courtroom did not let the general forget it. Trump’s enduring bond with Flynn is a testament to the importance of the role the general played in 2016.A host of national security officials, many aligned with the Republican Party, rejected Trump in 2016 as unfit to be president owing to his nativism, his penchant for brutality and his benign view of dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Flynn was the exception. And the general was an exceptional figure. As the intelligence chief for the Joint Special Operations Command during the mid-2000s, Flynn is one of a select few people who can be said to have personally prosecuted the most sensitive missions of the war on terror. Michael Flynn Putting Mueller Deal at Risk in ‘Dangerous’ New TrialIt was a pivotal credential in another way. Flynn emerged from the war on terror endorsing Trump’s view that the security apparatus, abetted by hidebound liberals and cowardly conservatives, had neutered the war on terror by refusing to see it was a civilizational conflict with Islam. “Islam is a political ideology” that “hides behind this notion of being a religion,” Flynn told the Islamophobic group ACT for America shortly after the 2016 convention. His hostility to Islam informed his sanguine view of Russia, which both Flynn and Trump saw as naturally aligned with the U.S. against what they called “Radical Islamic Terror.”It also meant that Trump and Flynn shared a common bureaucratic enemy. James Clapper, then the director of national intelligence, was a lead architect of an intelligence assessment finding Russia intervened in the election on Trump’s behalf. In 2014, Clapper fired Flynn as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. It was deeply embittering. Just four years earlier, Flynn had been hailed as an innovator after claiming U.S. military intelligence had misunderstood the Afghanistan war. While Flynn portrayed himself as a martyr, victimized by the ‘Deep State’ for daring to warn about radical Islam, Clapper and other intelligence leaders had fallen out with Flynn over what they considered an incompetent management style and an iffy relationship with the truth. Reportedly, Flynn believed Iran was involved in the 2012 assault on a CIA compound in Benghazi that killed four Americans, and claimed incorrectly that Iran was responsible for more American deaths than al-Qaeda. Aides referred to such untruths as “Flynn facts.” Flynn facts did not disturb Trump. They validated his instincts on national security. Trump rewarded Flynn by making him national security adviser, one of the most important positions in the U.S. security apparatus. It was the first time Trump redeemed Flynn. Thursday’s dropped charges represent the second. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.





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‘A Start Towards Victory’: Gregory and Travis McMichael Charged With Murder of Ahmaud Arbery

SAVANNAH—Gregory and Travis McMichael have been arrested and charged with murder and aggravated assault in connection with the February killing of Ahmaud Arbery, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced Thursday. According to police, the white father and son, 64 and 34, chased Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, after he ran by Travis McMichael’s home in the Satilla Shores neighborhood of Brunswick on Feb. 23. He was unarmed and jogging at the time. “This is a start towards victory,” Thea Brooks, Arbery’s aunt, told The Daily Beast on Thursday. “This only the beginning though, but this is what we were all hoping for.”The McMichaels said they believed Arbery was a burglar responsible for a series of break-ins in their neighborhood and that they pursued him in their pickup truck while armed with a shotgun and a .357 magnum. The GBI alleges the McMichaels confronted Arbery, and that Travis shot him. A local prosecutor previously indicated a third man, William Bryan, took part in the chase and filmed the incident.‘It’s Murder’: This Shooting of an Unarmed Black Man Is Roiling GeorgiaAt least two shots hit the 25-year-old, the Glynn County Coroner’s Office told The Daily Beast last week.Video that Brooks said depicted her nephew’s death elicited a furious reaction nationwide, and residents of the area protested the initial failure to prosecute a case on Tuesday.“It’s murder. It’s heartbreaking to even look at. The whole city has seen it,” Brooks told The Daily Beast after the video was released this week.The Georgia NAACP echoed her words in a Thursday response to the McMichaels’ arrest: “The murderers of Ahmaud Arbery have been arrested.”Gregory McMichael, a former cop and investigator with a local prosecutor’s office, previously told The Daily Beast he “never would have gone after someone for their color.” He also said the “closest version of the truth” about the incident was captured in a letter effectively clearing him and his son that was written by a prosecutor who recused himself from the case, George Barnhill. McMichael also admitted he had no direct evidence that Arbery was a thief. “But he’s the guy who’s there without permission,” he said from behind the closed front door of his son’s home.The owner of an unfinished home just down the street from Travis McMichael's home, Larry English, told The Daily Beast earlier this week that he had surveillance footage that appeared to show Arbery stopping to look at the foundation of his still-under-construction home. While Gregory McMichael claimed to police that Arbery had been caught on surveillance video, it was not immediately clear what video he was referring to. English told The Daily Beast he had no knowledge of the McMichaels seeing his surveillance footage. McMichael’s ties to law enforcement helped fuel a haze of suspicion around the killing from the beginning. Barnhill was one of two area prosecutors who looked into the incident before recusing themselves. A third prosecutor—District Attorney Tom Durden—sought a GBI probe ahead of the arrests this week.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.





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Drs. Rasheeda Hall and Kah Poh (Melissa) Loh honored With AGS's Arti Hurria Memorial Award

(American Geriatrics Society) The American Geriatrics Society (AGS) and the AGS Health in Aging Foundation today conferred one of their newest honors, the Arti Hurria Memorial Award for Emerging Investigators in Internal Medicine Focused on the Care of Older Adults, on two experts: Rasheeda Hall, MD, a board-certified nephrologist and assistant professor of medicine at Duke University; and Kah Poh (Melissa) Loh, MBBCh, BAO, a board-certified internist, hematologist, and oncologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center.




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Technologies to extract, purify critical rare earth metals could be a 'game changer'

(Purdue University) New environmentally friendly technologies promise to be 'game changers' in the rare earth metals field and enable the US to create a more stable and reliable domestic source of these essential metals. Purdue University patented extraction and purifying processes using ligand-assisted chromatography are shown to remove and purify such metals from coal ash, recycled magnets and raw ore safely, efficiently and with virtually no detrimental environmental impact.




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Complementary and Integrative Medicine: Emerging Therapies for Diabetes, Part 1: Preface

Cynthia Payne
Aug 1, 2001; 14:
Preface