Acclaimed Harvard Scientist Is Arrested, Accused Of Lying About Ties To China
January 28th, 2020Via: NPR:
Charles Lieber, the chair of Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, has been arrested and criminally charged with making “false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to the U.S. Defense Department about his ties to a Chinese government program to recruit foreign scientists and researchers.
The Justice Department says Lieber, 60, lied about his contact with the Chinese program known as the Thousand Talents Plan, which the U.S. has previously flagged as a serious intelligence concern. He also is accused of lying about about a lucrative contract he signed with China’s Wuhan University of Technology.
In an affidavit unsealed Tuesday, FBI Special Agent Robert Plumb said Lieber, who led a Harvard research group focusing on nanoscience, had established a research lab at the Wuhan university — apparently unbeknownst to Harvard.
In response to the charges against Lieber, Harvard said in a statement to NPR: “The charges brought by the U.S. government against Professor Lieber are extremely serious. Harvard is cooperating with federal authorities, including the National Institutes of Health, and is initiating its own review of the alleged misconduct. Professor Lieber has been placed on indefinite administrative leave.”
The arrangement between Lieber and the Chinese institution spanned “significant” periods of time between at least 2012 and 2017, according to the affidavit. It says the deal called for Lieber to be paid up to $50,000 a month, in addition to $150,000 per year “for living and personal expenses.”
“Lieber was also awarded more than $1.5 million by WUT and the Chinese government to establish a research lab and conduct research at WUT,” the document states.
For a large part of the time frame in question, Lieber was also the principal investigator on at least six U.S. Defense Department research grants, with a cumulative value of more than $8 million, according to the affidavit. It also says he was the principal investigator on more than $10 million in grants funded by the National Institutes of Health.
“These grants require the disclosure of significant foreign financial conflicts of interest, including financial support from foreign governments or foreign entities,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts said in a statement announcing the charges against Lieber.
In interviews with Defense Department investigators in 2018 and 2019, Lieber said that while he had heard of the Thousand Talents Plan, he had never been asked to be part of it, according to the affidavit. Lieber’s email correspondence suggests he signed a three-year agreement and employment contract with WUT in 2012.
How Sanitation Conquered Disease Long Before Vaccines or Antibiotics
January 28th, 2020Via: Roots of Progress:
The bottom line is that sanitation—pest control, water filtration and chlorination, safe sewage disposal, milk pasteurization and other food safety, and public education about general hygiene—probably did more than anything else to reduce mortality rates, if only because these techniques were available decades, and in some cases centuries, before anything else.
Soybean Oil Linked to Metabolic and Neurological Changes in Mice
January 26th, 2020Via: UC Riverside:
New UC Riverside research shows soybean oil not only leads to obesity and diabetes, but could also affect neurological conditions like autism, Alzheimer’s disease, anxiety, and depression.
Used for fast food frying, added to packaged foods, and fed to livestock, soybean oil is by far the most widely produced and consumed edible oil in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In all likelihood, it is not healthy for humans.
America’s Radioactive Secret
January 26th, 2020Via: Rolling Stone:
Oil-and-gas wells produce nearly a trillion gallons of toxic waste a year. An investigation shows how it could be making workers sick and contaminating communities across America.
Newly Discovered Immune Cell Points to Universal Cancer Treatment
January 26th, 2020Via: New Atlas:
Breakthrough research from an international team of scientists has uncovered a new type of immune cell with the ability to target and kill most kinds of cancer cells. The discovery was previously thought to be impossible and, although it is still untested in human subjects, it offers the potential for revolutionizing immunotherapy as a possible universal cancer treatment.
One of the most groundbreaking recent advances in cancer treatment has been the development of CAR-T immunotherapy. This highly personalized treatment involves harvesting a patient’s immune T cells and reprogramming them to target specific proteins found on the patient’s cancer cells.
In 2017 the FDA approved the first treatment of this type for young patients with a rare kind of blood and bone marrow cancer. However, the therapy is expensive, time-consuming to produce, and not without the risk of severe side effects.
The big limitation faced by researchers working on CAR-T therapies is that there isn’t one universal T-cell receptor (TCR) that can target different kinds of cancers in all patients. In fact, it was generally thought this kind of universal cancer-targeting TCR simply didn’t exist.
A new study, published in the prestigious journal Nature Immunology, suggests a universal TCR does exist, and it has been found. The research describes the discovery of an immune T-cell that displays a novel receptor that seems to have the ability to target and kill a broad variety of human cancer cell types while leaving healthy cells alone.
The newly discovered T-cell is thought to be able to distinguish cancer cells from healthy ones by homing in on a surface molecule called MR1. While this molecule is present on almost all cells in the human body, the researchers suspect it presents differently on cancer cells, allowing for a single TCR to be able to effectively target a broad variety of tumors.
UBC Study Links Living Near Highways to Risk of Neurological Disorders
January 26th, 2020Via: Vancouver Sun:
Researchers at the University of B.C. have found a link between living near highways and an increased risk of several major neurological disorders, including dementia and Parkinson’s disease.
The study, published this week in Environmental Health, found proximity to major roads may also increase the risk for multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s diseases, likely because of exposure to more air pollution such as nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter.
Lead author Weiran Yuchi, and a team of researchers at the UBC school of population and public health, analyzed data for 678,000 adults between the ages of 45 and 84 in Metro Vancouver. The subjects were interviewed from 1994 to 1998, and again during a follow-up period from 1999 to 2003.
The researchers concluded that living less than 50 metres from a major road or less than 150 metres from a highway is associated with a higher risk of the neurological disorders, while living near green spaces such as parks and forests reduced risk.
“In our research, we found that the green spaces have protective effects against developing the neurological disorders,” said Yuchi, adding that they measured green space using an index of satellite images.
Yuchi said this is the first time UBC researchers have confirmed a link between air pollution and traffic proximity with a higher risk of dementia, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and MS at the population level. There are other epidemiological studies that have reported associations between road proximity and traffic-related air pollution with impaired cognitive function in adults and neurological disorders.
Tulsi Sues Hillary
January 26th, 2020Via: Tulsi Gabbard:
Warden in Charge When Jeffrey Epstein Died Behind Bars Given Top Job at ‘Club Fed’ Prison
January 25th, 2020Via: Daily Mail:
The warden in charge when Jeffrey Epstein died in his jail cell is getting a cushy new supervisor’s job at ‘Club Fed’ despite Attorney General Bill Barr’s demand that he be reassigned to a desk job.
Lamine N’Diaye is being reassigned to a leadership role at FCI Fort Dix, a low-security prison in Burlington County, New Jersey, two people familiar with the matter said.
The move comes months after Barr ordered N’Diaye be reassigned to a desk post at the Bureau of Prisons’ regional office in Pennsylvania after Epstein´s death as the FBI and the Justice Department´s inspector general investigated.
Schools Took Away Students’ Phones, Now They’re Treating Separation Anxiety
January 25th, 2020We’re far enough into the zombie apocalypse that we’re seeing the zombies spawning their own zombie children. Or, to use a different analogy, addicts are giving birth to more addicts.
The enabling of the behavior by the schools and the sycophantic coddling is absolutely unbelievable.
Even the French ban doesn’t go far enough, since it allows the students to physically keep the phones on them.
Sanity prevailing would look something like this:
Turn the phones in at the start of school
or
Leave them at home
The end.
Via: Wall Street Journal:
Before class each day, a high-school teacher in Indianapolis grabs a clear plastic bag and fastens it to her waist with a ribbon. The homemade pouch is a repository for phones that are either confiscated or handed over voluntarily by students who don’t want to be tempted to tap or swipe during class.
She calls it the “phoney pack,” and the magic of the makeshift vault isn’t that it keeps devices out of reach. It’s that it lowers students’ anxiety by keeping their phones in view.
Smartphones have long been a scourge for teachers and administrators, who have employed a range of strict measures to keep them out of the classroom. But it turns out that getting rid of phones introduced another distraction: withdrawal pangs.
Now, teachers across the country are testing their own methods for managing their students’ phone-related angst. Some use lockable pouches that let students hold their phones rather than having to leave them alone in their lockers. Others have set up charging stations in classrooms, betting that the visibility and value of a charge will keep students at ease. Then there are the teachers who have decided dangling extra credit and other prizes is the best defense against phone withdrawal.
Students don’t always appreciate the efforts to appease them.
July 2019: Chinese Researcher Escorted from Canadian Infectious Disease Lab Amid RCMP Investigation
January 25th, 2020Via: CBC:
A researcher with ties to China was recently escorted out of the National Microbiology Lab (NML) in Winnipeg amid an RCMP investigation into what’s being described as a possible “policy breach.”
Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, her husband Keding Cheng and an unknown number of her students from China were removed from Canada’s only level-4 lab on July 5, CBC News has learned.
A Level 4 virology facility is a lab equipped to work with the most serious and deadly human and animal diseases. That makes the Arlington Street lab one of only a handful in North America capable of handling pathogens requiring the highest level of containment, such as Ebola.
Security access for the couple and the Chinese students was revoked, according to sources who work at the lab and do not want to be identified because they fear consequences for speaking out.
Sources say this comes several months after IT specialists for the NML entered Qiu’s office after-hours and replaced her computer. Her regular trips to China also started being denied.
At meetings on July 8, NML staff were told the researchers are on leave for an unknown period of time. They were told not to communicate with them.
Qiu is a prominent virologist who helped develop ZMapp, a treatment for the deadly Ebola virus which killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa between 2014-2016.
