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Sunday, May 12, 2013

Hawking Boycotts Israel

Hawking Boycotts Israel

by Stephen Lendman

Hawking was invited to participate in a June 18 - 20 Israeli Presidential Conference. Initially he accepted. In early May he declined. He's boycotting. He's protesting Israel's occupation. More on that below.

Hawking's a renown British physicist. His web site says he's the "former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge."

His books include "A Brief History of Time." It was an international bestseller. His latest book co-written with "renowned science writer" Leonard Miodinow is titled "The Grand Design."

It's described as a "groundbreaking new work." It's based on Hawking's 40 years of research and recent "extraordinary astronomical observations and theoretical breakthroughs to reveal an original and controversial theory."

Hawking remains active at Cambridge. He retains an office in its Department for Applied Maths and Theoretical Physics. He's university Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology.

He's worked on basic laws governing the universe. He's widely published. He received 12 honorary degrees, as well as many awards, medals and prizes.

He's a Royal Society Fellow and US National Academy of Sciences member. He's now 71. At age 21, he was diagnosed with ALS. It's known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

It's characterized by debilitating progressive weakness, muscle atrophy and fasciculations, muscle spacticity, dysarthria, dysphagia, and dyspnea. ALS is the most common neuron disease. It confines Hawking to a wheelchair.?

It hasn't dimmed his extraordinary intellect. He combines family life and research. He has three children and three grandchildren. He hopes one day he'll make it into space.

The fifth Israeli Presidential Conference focuses on "Facing Tomorrow 2013" and "The Human Factor in Shaping Tomorrow."

It's planned for Jerusalem. It's under the auspices of Shimon Peres. ?It's celebrating his 90th birthday. Long ago he should have been condemned.?

He's a war criminal multiple times over. He's responsible for decades of crimes of war and against humanity. He helped institutionalize Israeli state-sponsored terror.

As a Knesset member, Deputy Defense Minister, Defense Minister, Foreign Minister, other ministerial positions, Vice Premier, Prime Minister, and Israeli President, his crimes include colonialism, apartheid, militarized occupation, and regional wars of aggression.

He shamelessly represents rogue leadership. In 1994, Nobel Committee members awarded him their Peace Prize. It wasn't the first time it went to a war criminal. It won't be the last.

Israel's Presidential Conference announcement said the following:

"As in previous years, it'll "look at tomorrow and engage the central issues that will influence the face of our future: geopolitics, economics, society, environment, culture, identity, education, new media, and more."

Attendees include "world leaders, international scholars, activists, poets and scientists, artists and clergy, entrepreneurs, economists and industrialists, as well as representatives of the next generation of leaders - promising young individuals who radiate innovation and creativity."

Participants include Netanyahu, Peres, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, Monaco's Prince Albert, Barbra Streisand, Natan Sharansky, David Axelrod, and Elliott Abrams, among others.

Topics include:

"Should We Wait it Out? Israel and a Changing Middle East"

"Tomorrow's Wars - No Longer Science Fiction"

"The World Order - Facing Tomorrow's Challenges"

"Political Islam - Where is It Headed?"

"The Decisions that will Shape Tomorrow"

Hawking was scheduled as a featured speaker. At least one report said he'd keynote the conference.

Initially, Cambridge University communications director, Tim Holt, said he cancelled for health reasons. Later he said Hawking's office told him otherwise. He withdrew "based on advice from Palestinian academics that he should respect the boycott."

He's protesting Israel's occupation. On May 3, he wrote conference organizers, saying:

"I accepted the invitation to the Presidential Conference with the intention that this would not only allow me to express my opinion on the prospects for a peace settlement, but also because it would allow me to lecture on the West Bank."?

"However, I have received a number of emails from Palestinian academics. They are unanimous that I should respect the boycott."?

"In view of this, I must withdraw from the conference. Had I attended, I would have stated my opinion that the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster."

Anti-Defamation League (ADL) demagoguery is longstanding. It disseminates pro-Israeli propaganda. It attacks Israeli critics unjustifiably. Its national director, Abraham Foxman, called Hawking's withdrawal "a slap in the face to academic freedom."

Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said:

"Never has a scientist of this stature boycotted Israel." Hawking became "part of the problem, not the solution," he added.

Conference chairman Israel Maimon said:

"The academic boycott against Israel is in our view outrageous and improper, certainly for someone for whom the spirit of liberty lies at the basis of his human and academic mission."

"Israel is a democracy in which all individuals are free to express their opinions, whatever they may be. The imposition of a boycott is incompatible with open, democratic dialogue."

Israel's no democracy. It never was. It isn't now. It's a rogue terror state. It's intolerant of legitimate Israeli criticism.

Palestinian academics, activists and others support Hawking's decision. Omar Barghouti's a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).

He welcomed Hawking's decision, saying:

"Palestinians deeply appreciate Stephen Hawking's support for an academic boycott of Israel."?

"We think this will rekindle the kind of interest among international academics in academic boycotts that was present in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa."

Separately, PACBI said:

"Boycotting Israeli academic and cultural institutions is an urgently needed form of pressure against Israel that can bring about its compliance with international law and the requirements for a just peace."

The British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) supports the academic boycott of Israel. It said Hawking decided to support the initiative, adding:

"This is his independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there."

Before announcing his boycott, Birzeit University's Samia al-Botmeh said:

"We tried to communicate two points to him."?

"First, that Israel is a colonial entity that involves violations of the rights of the Palestinians, including academic freedom, and then asking him to stand in solidarity with Palestinian academic colleagues who have called for solidarity from international academics in the form of boycotting Israeli academia and academic institutions."

Al-Botmeh called his withdrawal "fantastic. I think it's wonderful that he has acted on moral grounds."?

"That's very ethical and very important for us as Palestinians to know and understand that there are principled colleagues in the world who are willing to take a stand in solidarity with an occupied people."

Desmond Tutu and other noted figures call Israeli apartheid worse than anything South Africa experienced.

Fifteen years ago, Nelson Mandela said:

"We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."

Cambridge University acting communications director, Tim Holt, corrected his initial statement saying:

"We have now received confirmation from Professor Hawking's office that a letter was sent on Friday to the Israeli president's office regarding his decision not to attend the Presidential Conference, based on advice from Palestinian academics that he should respect the boycott."

Numerous high-profile figures, academics, independent journalists, activists, and others support the boycott Israel campaign.

Doing the right thing is its own reward. Imagine the difference if most everyone felt the same way.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.?

His new book is titled "Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.?

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

http://www.dailycensored.com/hawking-boycotts-israel/

Source: http://warisacrime.org/content/hawking-boycotts-israel

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Saturday, May 11, 2013

How individuality develops: Experience leads to growth of new brain cells

May 9, 2013 ? The adult brain continues to grow with the challenges that it faces; its changes are linked to the development of personality and behavior. But what is the link between individual experience and brain structure? Why do identical twins not resemble each other perfectly even when they grew up together? To shed light on these questions, the scientists observed forty genetically identical mice that were kept in an enclosure offering a large variety of activity and exploration options.

"The animals were not only genetically identical, they were also living in the same environment," explains principal investigator Gerd Kempermann, Professor for Genomics of Regeneration, CRTD, and Site Speaker of the DZNE in Dresden. "However, this environment was so rich that each mouse gathered its own individual experiences in it. Over time, the animals therefore increasingly differed in their realm of experience and behavior."

The DFG-Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden -- Cluster of Excellence at the TU Dresden (CRTD), the Dresden site of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin played a pivotal role in the study.

New neurons for individualized brains

Each of the mice was equipped with a special micro-chip emitting electromagnetic signals. This allowed the scientists to construct the mice's movement profiles and to quantify their exploratory behavior. The result: Despite a common environment and identical genes the mice showed highly individualized behavioral patterns. They reacted to their environment differently. In the course of the three-month experiment these differences increased in size.

"Though the animals shared the same life space, they increasingly differed in their activity levels. These differences were associated with differences in the generation of new neurons in the hippocampus, a region of the brain that supports learning and memory," says Kempermann. "Animals that explored the environment to a greater degree also grew more new neurons than animals that were more passive."

Adult neurogenesis, that is, the generation of new neurons in the hippocampus, allows the brain to react to new information flexibly. With this study, the authors show for the first time that personal experiences and ensuing behavior contribute to the ?individualization of the brain." The individualization they observed cannot be reduced to differences in environment or genetic makeup.

?Adult neurogenesis also occurs in the hippocampus of humans," says Kempermann. "Hence we assume that we have tracked down a neurobiological foundation for individuality that also applies to humans."

Impulses for discussion across disciplines

?The finding that behavior and experience contribute to differences between individuals has implications for debates in psychology, education science, biology, and medicine," states Prof. Ulman Lindenberger, Director of the Center for Lifespan Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (MPIB) in Berlin. "Our findings show that development itself contributes to differences in adult behavior. This is what many have assumed, but now there is direct neurobiological evidence in support of this claim. Our results suggest that experience influences the aging of the human mind."

In the study, a control group of animals housed in a relatively unattractive enclosure was also examined; on average, neurogenesis in these animals was lower than in the experimental mice. ?When viewed from educational and psychological perspectives, the results of our experiment suggest that an enriched environment fosters the development of individuality," comments Lindenberger.

Interdisciplinary teamwork

The study is also an example of multidisciplinary cooperation -- it was made possible because neuroscientists, ethologists, computer scientists, and developmental psychologists collaborated closely in designing the experimental set-up and applying new data analysis methods. Biologist Julia Freund from the CRTD Dresden and computer scientist Dr. Andreas Brandmaier from the MPIB in Berlin share first authorship on the article. In addition to the DZNE, CRTD, and the MPIB, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence in Saarbr?cken and the Institute for Geoinformatics and the Department of Behavioural Biology at the University of M?nster were also involved in this project.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/1qlU0Ar5Pr8/130509142050.htm

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Facebook Home Is Now Available For the HTC One and Galaxy S4

Since Facebook launched last month, it's only officially been available for a small pool of phones. But no longer: it seems the HTC One and Galaxy S4 are now fully Facebooked, too.

Android Central reports that after an update to the official Facebook app both phones?along with the Sony Xperia ZL?are able to run Zuck's new launcher. Verge confirms that to be the case, too, and I can certainly confirm it's the case for the HTC One?though the app's Google Play listing makes no mention of the change.

It seems strange that Facebook decided to roll the feature out without any fanfare. But if you have one of the handsets why not go check it out? [Android Central]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/facebook-home-is-now-available-for-the-htc-one-and-gala-499488791

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Friday, May 10, 2013

Say Media Lays Off 10 Percent Of Staff, Aims For Profitability In Second Half Of 2013

Matt Sanchez, co-founder and CEO of Say Media (which owns sites like xoJane, ReadWrite, and Dogster), just told me that the company has laid off about 10 percent of its 400-person staff. Sanchez described this as part of Say's transformation from an ad network to "a digital media company." The company isn't getting out of the ad network business completely, but that part of Say is relatively mature and that the company's focus should be on the content side. The layoffs, Sanchez said, were really about looking "at all parts of the business except for sales and our content organization" and bringing them in line with that vision.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/1DrMkf5zvf0/

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Elevated cadmium levels linked to disease: Men especially affected

May 9, 2013 ? People with higher levels of cadmium in their urine -- evidence of chronic exposure to the heavy metal found in industrial emissions and tobacco smoke -- appear to be nearly 3.5 times more likely to die of liver disease than those with lower levels, according to a study by Johns Hopkins scientists.

The research findings do not show that cadmium directly causes liver disease, the scientists caution, but do suggest an association that needs more investigation.

Reviewing information from a large population-based survey, the Johns Hopkins investigators say the cadmium-liver disease link disproportionately affects men. The gender differences could occur because of the protective effects of menopause chemistry, which may redistribute stored cadmium from liver and kidneys, where it can do more damage, and into bones where it remains more stable.

Cadmium levels in the body accumulate over time because of the metal's long chemical half-life, according to the researchers, who reported their findings online in the Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery.

"We already know about the health hazards of heavy metals like lead and mercury, but we don't know much about what cadmium does to the body," says study leader Omar Hyder, M.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "In mice, chronic cadmium exposure has been shown to cause liver failure, but we need to understand more about the factors that may cause liver disease in humans, and whether we can do anything to prevent it."

Cadmium is found widely in the environment, with tobacco smoke the most important, single source of exposure in the general population. Other environmental sources of human exposure include fossil fuel combustion and the incineration of municipal waste. For many years, most of the batteries in the United States were made with cadmium, and it is also found in pigments and plastics.

Hyder says long-term exposure is known to cause kidney disease and has been linked to lung cancer. Studies have shown an increase in all-cause mortality and cancer mortality in populations exposed to low levels of cadmium for long periods of time.

For their study, Hyder and his colleagues analyzed data from 12,732 participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III), which also includes interviews, physical examinations, blood and urine tests and ultrasound scans. They looked at levels of cadmium in urine samples, as well as records of ultrasound results used to diagnose various liver diseases.

The researchers separated cadmium levels in the urine into four quartiles, finding that those in the highest quartile were nearly 3.5 times as likely to die of liver-related diseases than those in the lower three quartiles. The diseases included nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, both marked by fatty deposits in the liver that impede the liver's efforts to filter toxins from the bloodstream, aid in digestion, produce hormones and store energy.

Hyder says that although occupational exposure to cadmium among factory workers has decreased, environmental exposure continues. If such exposure is ultimately found to cause liver disease, further efforts should be made to reduce it.

Medications are available that bind to heavy metals and remove them from organs, but such chelation therapies have not been used on those with chronic cadmium exposure because their value is unclear, Hyder says.

Other Johns Hopkins researchers involved in the study include Michael Chung, B.S., M.H.S.; David Cosgrove, M.D.; Joseph Herman, M.D., M.Sc.; Zhiping Li, M.D.; Amin Firoozmand, M.D.; Ahmet Gurakar, M.D.; Ayman Koteish, M.D.; and Timothy M. Pawlik, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/_MMjxWiJ85Y/130509123657.htm

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Open Compute Project To Develop A Network Switch, A First-Of-Its-Kind Open Source Project

Open Compute will develop a specification and a reference box for an?open networking switch and will do so from the ground up in the fashion of open-source software efforts, such as those developed by the Apache Foundation. The OS-agnostic, top-of-rack switch will be the first developed as an open-source project with the spec developed by the Open Compute community. "Closesd switches are still the primary way things work," said?Frank?Frankovsky in an interview this week. Frankovsky is a Facebook vice president in hardware design and supply operations who plays a focal role at Open Compute. "...Networking has always had a black box nature to it. You give it a packet and it gives it back on the other end."

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/_GmUnApQvpk/

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