The Cutting Edge

Abdul-Jalil, leader of National Transitional Council of Libya

Eastern Libya will declare itself as an autonomous province, according to a report from the London-based Exclusive Analysis, thus increasing the risk of further war and risks to global oil prices.

The region – called Barqa – will become a self-governing state within a federal Libya. The new state will extend beyond historical Cyrenaica to include part of oil-rich Fazzan in the Gulf of Sirte. Eastern Libya has 65 percent of Libya’s oil production but only 25 percent of its population.

The report from Exclusive Analysis reported that 'Barqa' (Arabic for Cyrenaica) and its territory will stretch from the Egyptian border in the east to the city of Sirte in the west. It was Sirte that served as a stronghold of the rebels who eventually brought down the government of Muammar Gaddaffi. The declaration will stipulate that Barqa will have its own parliament and separate oil, defence and finance ministries, and its own army. The report noted that a so-called 'Barqa Army' has already been formed out of former eastern-based units of Gaddafi's Army and the rebels’ eastern militias. Read more ..

Tremendous changes can occur over the course of one year. Regarding defense spending, the Administration is now planning to pay out $4.5–$5 trillion over the next ten years on defending the country, compared to nearly $6 trillion just 12 months ago. This, in part, reflects the debt ceiling agreement of last summer when Congress and the Administration called for reducing a ten-year deficit of $10 trillion to $7.5 trillion.

Many Americans would no doubt applaud such a reduction. They would probably also assume the spending cuts reflect America’s withdrawal from Iraq, and the drawdown in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, what the citizenry probably does not know is that while the cuts in funding for the two wars will occur, they cannot count toward the required budget cuts agreed to in August 2011 as part of the debt agreement. Read more ..

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told President Obama that Israel would decide for itself whether to strike Iran.

“My supreme responsibility as prime minister of Israel is to ensure that Israel remains the master of its fate,” Netanyahu told Obama. In a sit-down on March 5 with the president in the Oval Office, Netanyahu pushed back against the administration’s repeated attempts to dissuade Israel from attacking Iran.

“Israel must reserve the right to defend itself and after all, that’s the very purpose of the Jewish state to, restore to the Jewish people control of our destiny,” said Netanyahu, who is meeting with the president in advance of his speech later today before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual policy conference. Israel reserves the right to strike Iran if need be, Netanyahu said. Read more ..

The fastest wind ever discovered blowing off a disk around a stellar-mass black hole has been observed by a team of astronomers that includes a University of Michigan doctoral student. Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, an orbiting telescope, they clocked the record-breaking super wind at about 20 million mph, or about 3 percent of the speed of light. This is nearly 10 times faster than astronomers had previously observed from a stellar-mass black hole.

"This is like the cosmic equivalent of winds from a category five hurricane," said Ashley King, a doctoral student in the Department of Astronomy and lead author of the study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. "We weren't expecting to see such powerful winds from a black hole like this."

The result has important implications for understanding how this type of black hole behaves. Stellar-mass black holes are born when extremely massive stars collapse. They typically weigh between five and 10 times the mass of the sun. The stellar-mass black hole powering this super wind is known as IGR J17091-3624, or IGR J17091 for short. Located in the bulge of the Milky Way galaxy, about 28,000 light years away from Earth, it is a binary system in which a sun-like star orbits the black hole. Read more ..

The two high-tech workers laughed when asked if they could afford the smartphones made by their colleagues on Mexican production lines. “No, no, no,” chuckled Maria and Alma, two Guadalajara workers who have labored for years in Mexico’s Silicon Valley. A cheap $20 cell phone has to make do for Maria, while Alma uses a similarly low-priced contraption she won on a five-dollar raffle ticket. “It’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity, especially when you have kids,” Alma said.

The two women, who asked that their real names not be used because of possible employer retaliation, recently sat down to discuss their jobs and lives as factory workers in Mexico’s second largest city and one of the world’s most important centers in the electronics industry supply chain. An assembly-line worker, Maria makes about $10 for an eight hour shift six days a week. Although Maria said she gets all the benefits afforded by Mexican law, she must renew her work contract every two months. A quality control specialist, Alma has more responsibilities than Maria but gets the same amount of pay. A third woman who joined the conversation worked in the local high-tech industry until she was fired two years ago. Unlike Maria and Alma, the friend completed higher education training for a technician’s career but still maxed out her earnings at approximately $500 monthly after a dozen years in the industry. Read more ..

Recently, a front-page story in America's newspaper of record, the New York Times, reported that "American intelligence analysts continue to believe that there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb." Apparently, the Times's reporters-as it would otherwise be a betrayal of their objectivity and fairness-must first witness Iran exploding a nuclear bomb to have enough "hard evidence" to conclude Iran's (partial) objective is to obtain one. 

Why does this matter? "At the center of the debate is the murky question of the ultimate ambitions of the leaders in Tehran," the paper read. That is true. But when the center of a crucial foreign policy debate is the "ultimate ambitions of the leaders in Tehran"-rather than a concrete solution or direction to move in-the debate itself would seem not to reflect any sort of policy.

What's also at the center of the debate is this: If Iran is determined to seek nuclear weapons, and if it can be credibly determined that Iran might use those weapons against its adversaries, then the United States-as well as its allies-has a strategic and moral duty to disarm the rogue regime. Read more ..

Israeli Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor

Amid the din of debate over a possible Israeli strike on Iran, perhaps it is unsurprising that Israeli Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor's press conference on February 20 attracted so little international attention. But in a world that claims to view an Israeli-Palestinian deal as a top priority, it should have sounded alarm bells. Israelis, warned Meridor, may never again sign another land-for-peace deal if Egypt unilaterally alters or abrogates its treaty with Israel.

Meridor is not the first Israeli to issue this warning in recent months, but he is one of the most prominent. Moreover, despite serving in a government usually dismissed overseas as "hard-line" or "right-wing," he is a politician far more popular on the left than on the right, an outspoken advocate of an Israeli-Palestinian treaty who even supports freezing construction in the settlements (outside the major settlement blocs). When someone like that warns that the entire land-for-peace paradigm is in danger, it is worth paying attention. Read more ..

Home alternative energy system with connections needing isolation (in red)

Home energy systems based on renewable sources such as solar and wind power are becoming more popular among consumers and gaining increasing support from governmental bodies. Such systems, however, need fault protection in order to achieve the product lifetime that consumers demand as well as isolation to ensure consumer safety. Integrating the two capabilities can help simplify system design as well as lower cost.

The typical renewable energy system has multiple parts operating in different voltage domains. At one end of the system are the power sources, such as solar panels, wind turbine generators, and batteries. The primary power sources—solar panels and wind generators—typically include some form of power conditioning. Read more ..

President Obama reaffirmed his staunch commitment to Israel on March 4, making clear in no uncertain terms that “I have Israel’s back.” But, at the same time, he urged Israel and its supporters to allow time for diplomacy and “crippling” sanctions on Iran to take hold to halt Tehran’s nuclear program.

Addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the influential pro-Israel lobby group, Obama tried to reassure the crowd of 13,000 people, who initially greeted him with a lukewarm response, by saying that if Iran fails to meet its obligations and the problem remains, “we must accomplish our objective.”

“Iran’s leaders should know that I do not have a policy of containment, I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” Obama said, drawing hearty applause from the crowd. “And as I’ve made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.” During his address, which comes one day before he sits down with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Obama sought time and again to reassure Israel and its supporters that he will do whatever it takes to help defend the country. Read more ..

Happening right now in Washington, D.C. is the largest AIPAC (American Israel Political Action Committee) Policy Conference of all time, with more than 13,000 people in attendance.

While the annual AIPAC conference has traditionally brought Jews from all across the United States to the nation’s capital, this particular one draw a bigger, more diverse crowd.  A larger group of Christian evangelical supporters of Israel have come this year, and organized groups of African-Americans and Latinos have made it a point to come out for Israel this year as well.

Over the past 12 months or so, troubles within Arab countries have put more pressure on Israel.  The rise of the Moslem Brotherhood in the wake of the collapse of the Mubarak regime in Egypt has threatened the tentative peace between the two countries, and the amassing unrest in Syria has put Israel’s military on high alert as it watches uncomfortably as its president, Bashar al-Assad continues the slaughter of his own people. Read more ..

Urban Children

The United Nations Children's Fund warns hundreds of millions of children who live in cities and towns are excluded from vital services, as it relates to their health, education, clean water and sanitation. In this year’s 2012 State of the World's Children report, UNICEF describes the grim reality of children growing up in poverty in city slums, which offer few of the benefits that are available to children of a wealthier class. For those individuals and families who can afford to go to the doctor, get an education and take advantage of the many recreational activities available, cities are great places to live. And yet, they are not such great places for poor children forced to live in slums and shantytowns. The U.N. Children’s Fund says these children are among the most disadvantaged and vulnerable in the world. They live amid violence and exploitation, in addition to being deprived the most basic services.
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Cell lineage tree; oocytes (egg cells) red, bone marrow stem cells yellow

In recent years, a number of controversial claims have been made about the female mammal’s egg supply, including that it is renewed over her adult lifetime (as opposed to the conventional understanding that she is born with all of her eggs) and that the source of these eggs is stem cells that originate in the bone marrow. Now, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have disproved one of those claims and pointed in new directions toward resolving the other. The method, developed over several years in the lab of Prof. Ehud Shapiro of the Department of Biological Chemistry and Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, creates a sort of family tree for cells by using mutations in specific genetic markers to determine which cells are most closely related and how far back they share a common parent cell. Read more ..

Iran seems certain to be the main topic of discussion during Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's March 5 White House meeting with President Obama. Whatever the substantive content of their conversations on the Iranian nuclear program, they need to address their public messaging, which has undermined mutual trust and efforts to achieve their common objective: a diplomatic solution to the nuclear crisis with Tehran.

For its part, the Obama administration must spend less time messaging Israel and Congress, and more time messaging Iran. It also needs to iron out contradictory elements in its public messaging that undermine ongoing efforts to reach a diplomatic solution with Iran and risk bringing about the very outcomes it hopes to avoid: an Israeli preventive strike or a fateful miscalculation by Tehran that could lead to war. Specifically, these contradictory elements pertain to U.S. policy objectives (no nuclear weapons capability, or no nuclear weapons), the red lines that flow from these policy objectives (achieving a capability to rapidly build a bomb, or the actual decision to build one), and U.S. attitudes toward the use of force (as a last resort, or never). Read more ..

Russia's parliamentary elections in December were characterized by the opposition and observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as seriously flawed. Few were surprised. But what did raise eyebrows was the response of tens of thousands of ordinary Russians who took to the streets to protest. Why did so many, in a country notorious for political apathy, react so differently to violations well-known from votes in the past? At least part of the answer appears to be how those violations were reported, and by whom. The Russian case, analysts say, is a prime example illustrating that technologically-advanced, citizen-driven election monitoring has potential for impact beyond that of more traditional electoral observation by the government and international bodies.

Researchers like Lisa Kammerud of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems in Washington also maintain that the pairing of citizens and new technology for election monitoring is probably here to stay, both in Russia and elsewhere. "The advent of the use of these new digital and personal technologies to monitor elections is definitely on the rise because the technology that's available now simply wasn't available before," she says. "And that's part of why this has definitely increased in the last few years. And there's no reason to think that it won't continue as more people have access to cell phones [and] personal devices that take videos and pictures." Read more ..

China is planning a double-digit rise in military spending this year, an increase authorities say is in line with the country's economic development and defense needs. Li Zhaoxing, the spokesman for the National People's Congress, announced on Sunday the overall figure for China's 2012 military spending. Li says the defense budget will be about $110 billion (670.2 billion RMB), which represents an 11.2 percent increase over what was spent last year. This compares to a 12.7 percent increase in military spending last year and is in line with a nearly unbroken string of double-digit increases over the past two decades. The spokesman says China has the world's largest population, a big territory and a long coastline, but only spends 1.28 percent of its gross domestic product on defense spending. By comparison, he points to other developed countries like the United States and Britain, which spend more than 2 percent of their national budgets on defense. Li says China is committed to a path of peaceful development and pursues a defense policy that is defensive in nature. Read more ..

Two U.S.-based filmmakers have made a riveting documentary looking into the struggles and activism of Uganda's embattled gay community. The film is called Call Me Kuchu. Kuchu is the name used in Uganda to describe members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. The film's trailer gives voices to some of them, like Stosh. "People want to know our stories. That is one reason I decided to come out, no matter what," said Stosh. Filmmaker Malika Zouhali-Worrall said she noticed most outside media coverage seemed to focus on the victimization of gays in Uganda, while she wanted to show a more complex reality. "Main stories that were getting out there and being reported on were stories of persecution to the LGBT community, all of which was of course happening and it was very important that that got out there," said Zouhali-Worrall. "But it seemed that no one was actually aware that there was this activist community there that was actually working very hard to change the situation and in some cases actually succeeding in making steps toward changing the situation there."

One victory last year came when a judge in Uganda ruled a tabloid newspaper violated the civil rights of gays whose pictures were published accompanied with the words "Hang Them." The film's other director Katherine Fairfax Wright says Uganda is losing a lot by marginalizing its vibrant gay community. "By and large this is a demographic that is highly educated, highly organized, highly energetic and really hard working. But they are not able to hold jobs, they are kicked out of their homes, they are just not able to be the active members of society as they would like to be," said Wright. Read more ..

Crouched near a mound of rocks and dirt, Ramón swings a short-handled pick at a shallow hole, showing off the technique he uses to mine what he calls “black pebbles” — stones laced with minerals important to high-tech manufacturers worldwide. Over the last couple of years Ramón has labored at small, out-of-the-way mines, walking up to a week to reach claims he’s staked out deep in southwest Venezuela’s Amazon jungle, near the country’s border with Colombia. It’s worth the backaches and sweat, Ramón said, rolling a near-black rock in the palm of his hand. He said he earns good money supplying brokers with stones that hold coltan ore. Applied to microchips, the metal enables electronic capacitors to perform superbly in an array of devices, like smart phones in the pockets of more and more consumers. Refined into a powder and applied to solar panels, coltan increases energy efficiency. And as a strategic mineral, Coltan carries weight because it allows guidance controls in smart bombs to work in extreme climate conditions. Because of that, Venezuelan coltan has raised concerns in Washington, D.C., as the government of President Hugo Chávez has selected Iranian, Chinese and Russian firms to explore minerals and is looking to develop future supplies of different ores. Read more ..

Afghani Taliban

Although the situation in Afghanistan has spiraled downward over the past 10 days, before making hasty decisions on next steps, U.S. policymakers need to consider what has contributed to this ominous turn of events and what options there are for adjusting the U.S. strategy to avoid further such incidents. U.S. policymakers should also be aware that leaving Afghanistan prematurely would likely lead to the revival of al-Qaeda and increase the threat of further attacks on the U.S. homeland. President Obama’s laser-like focus on timelines for troop withdrawals over the past two years has signaled that the U.S. is more interested in getting its troops out of the country than in achieving its goals. This has led Afghan President Hamid Karzai to become a less reliable partner for the U.S. as he seeks to hedge against an early U.S. drawdown. As events over the past 10 days demonstrate, America cannot carry out the mission in Afghanistan without reliable Afghan partners.

The manner in which the Administration has sought to engage the Taliban has raised further questions about U.S. strategy. The U.S. needs to take into account the views of Afghan civil society and coordinate its peace moves more closely with the Karzai administration. The public disagreement between U.S. and Afghan officials over the opening of a Taliban office in Doha, Qatar, revealed weakness in the strategy and gave the impression that talking with the Taliban was leading to splits between Washington and Kabul. Moving forward, the U.S. should be more transparent about the negotiations with the Taliban and reassure Afghans that it will not sacrifice the progress on human rights, including for women, made over the past decade. Read more ..

Semadar Art Center

Take the Waldorf-Astoria, a beacon of luxury, and add a group of environmentally conscious mud-brick builders from the middle of the Negev Desert. Though an unlikely partnership from the outset, together they cooperated on a building that is sure to be designated one of Jerusalem's most inspired architectural works. The interior design of the soon-to-be-opened upscale hotel is the work of acclaimed Turkish architect Sinan Kafadar. Knowing that the Waldorf-Astoria is located on the grounds of the former Palace Hotel, Kafadar painstakingly preserved and restored the 1923 building to its original magnificence. As any hotel guest would agree, it's the little things that make the biggest difference. So when Kafadar needed glass fiber-reinforced concrete for intricate details, in addition to complex geometries, he turned far south to Kibbutz Neot Semadar, which is best known for its communal living, organic farming and environmental activities. It's also acclaimed for its unique desert architectural techniques and new building materials. Read more ..

A much-anticipated government study of more than 12,000 miners — whose publication was delayed by litigation from a group of mining companies — has found that exposure to diesel engine exhaust significantly increases the risk of lung cancer.

For the most heavily exposed miners, the risk of dying from lung cancer was three times higher than it was for those exposed to low doses. For non-smokers, the risk was seven times higher.

“[T]he findings suggest that the risks may extend to other workers exposed to diesel exhaust in the United States and abroad, and to people living in urban areas where diesel exhaust levels are elevated,” Joseph Fraumeni Jr., director of the National Cancer Institute’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, said in a press release Friday morning. Read more ..

credit: EQ Doc

When you hear the name Tyrannosaurus Rex, you probably think of a giant monster, the most fearsome dinosaur ever. With a mouth full of teeth that can easily rip flesh and crush bones, images of T-Rex can be quite frightening.

It turns out T-Rex’s bite was even more devastating than thought.

Scientists studying T-Rex’s toothy smile focus mostly on the huge and varying size of its teeth, but a Canadian paleontologist has gone beyond that.

After analyzing the teeth of the entire tyrannosaurid family of meat-eating dinosaurs, the University of Alberta’s Miriam Reichel found there is considerable variation in the serrated edges of the teeth. These variations, or keels, not only cut through flesh and bone, but also guided the food into its mouth. Read more ..

Credit: Y. Gelber

Leafcutter ants, the tiny red dots known for carrying green leaves as they march through tropical forests, are also talented farmers that cultivate gardens of fungi and bacteria. Ants eat fungi from the so-called fungal gardens, but the bacteria's role has been unclear until now.
 
New research shows the bacteria help decompose the leaves and play a major role in turning the leaves into nutrients that may be important for both ants and fungi. "This research provides some of the first tangible details about the fascinating symbiotic relationship between leafcutter ants, fungi and bacteria," said Kristin Burnum, a bioanalytical chemist at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Burnum is a co-author on the paper and led the study's protein analysis. "Understanding how bacteria turn plant matter into a source of energy in ant fungal gardens could also help improve biofuel production." The gardens in question are initially sowed by the ants, which bring leaf pieces into their underground nests. From the leaves grow the fungus Leucoagaricus gongylophorus, traditionally thought of as the ants' food. The relationship between leafcutter ants and fungi has been known since 1874, but it wasn't until the late 1990s that scientists started to also identify bacteria in the underground gardens. Read more ..

Teenagers who turn their backs on a healthy lifestyle and turn to drink, cigarettes and junk food are significantly unhappier than their healthier peers. New research also shows that 12-13 is a catalyst age when young people turn away from the healthy habits of their younger years and start to get involved in risky behaviours.

The research, which used information from Understanding Society, a long-term study of 40,000 UK households funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), looked at the responses of 5,000 young people between the ages of 10-15 to questions about their health-related behaviours and levels of happiness. The results show that young people who never drank any alcohol were between four and six times more likely to have higher levels of happiness than those who reported any alcohol consumption.
Youth who smoked were about five times less likely to have high happiness scores compared to those who never smoked. Higher consumption of fruit and vegetables and lower consumption of crisps, sweets and fizzy drinks were both associated with high happiness.The more hours of sport youth participated in per week the happier they were. Read more ..

A polymer is a mesh of chains, which slowly break over time due to the pressure from ordinary wear and tear. When a polymer is squeezed, the pressure breaks chemical bonds and produces free radicals: ions with unpaired electrons, full of untapped energy. These molecules are responsible for aging, DNA damage and cancer in the human body.

In a new study, Northwestern University scientists turned to squeezed polymers and free radicals in a search for new energy sources. They found incredible promise but also some real problems. Their report is published by the journal Angewandte Chemie.

The researchers demonstrated that radicals from compressed polymers generate significant amounts of energy that can be used to power chemical reactions in water. This energy has typically been unused but now can be harnessed when polymers are under stress in ordinary circumstances -- as in shoe soles, car tires or when compacting plastic bags. Read more ..

Researchers of the DFKI Robotics Innovation Centre in Bremen have developed a smart electric car with flexible morphology that can change its shape according to the current needs. The prototype has been built in the scope of a project "New mobility in rural spaces" which among other topics explores innovative technologies associated to electromobility.

The EO smart connecting car disposes of a flexible undercarriage which enables multiple vehicles to be connected to a single "road train". When the undercarriage is folded together, the driver cabin is automatically moved into a vertical position. Thus, the vehicle reduces its overall length by about half a meter to a total of about 2 meters. Conversely, its height grows from 1.60 meters to about 2 meters. This change in shape facilitates the formation of so called road trains: Shorter vehicles result in a shorter, more agile train. "If multiple vehicles have to travel over the same distance, they can effectively connect to each other and increase energy efficiency", explained Fank Kirchner, head of the DFKI Robotics Innovation Center. "Data and energy are carried over among the vehicles and only the front vehicle steers the train." Read more ..

Yeast cell membranes (credit: Masur)

Sugar, cholesterol, phosphates, zinc—a healthy body is amazingly good at keeping such vital nutrients at appropriate levels within its cells. From an engineering point of view, one all-purpose type of pump on the surface of a cell should suffice to keep these levels constant: When the concentration of a nutrient—for example, sugar—drops inside the cell, the pump mechanism could simply go into higher gear until the sugar levels are back to normal. Yet, strangely enough, such cells let in their nutrients using two types of pump: One is active in “good times,” when a particular nutrient is abundant in the cell’s environment; the other is a “bad-times” pump that springs into action only when the nutrient becomes scarce. Why does the cell need this dual mechanism?

A new Weizmann Institute study, reported in Science, might provide the answer. The research was conducted in the lab of Prof. Naama Barkai of the Department of Molecular Genetics by postdoctoral fellow Dr. Sagi Levy and graduate student Moshe Kafri, with lab technician Miri Carmi. Read more ..

The aftermath of the American disposal of Korans mutilated by Afghan Muslims requires revisiting our position in Afghanistan. Not because Americans were killed by their Afghan "partners." Not because dozens of Afghans have died in rioting as well, or because the UN evacuated its northern offices.  Not even because Hamid Karzai called for "punishment and an investigation" in that order.

U.S. policy in the Middle East/South Asia region revolves around certain fixed principles. Not democracy, free enterprise and civic tolerance, but aid – economic assistance plus military aid and training, and/or military intervention. It is the entire American enterprise that requires review.

We've trained Egyptians, Yemenis, Jordanians, Saudis, Kuwaitis, Bahrainis, Palestinians, Iraqis and Afghans. We've given security assistance to Yemen, Lebanon, Jordan, the Palestinians, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. (Yemen violates the Child Soldiers Prevention Act, which should make it ineligible, but the Obama administration requested a waiver.) We've spent untold billions on military training for people who already know how to kill, apparently thinking we can get them to kill the people we want dead. Read more ..

A much-anticipated government study of more than 12,000 miners — whose publication was delayed by litigation from a group of mining companies — has found that exposure to diesel engine exhaust significantly increases the risk of lung cancer.

For the most heavily exposed miners, the risk of dying from lung cancer was three times higher than it was for those exposed to low doses. For non-smokers, the risk was seven times higher.

“[T]he findings suggest that the risks may extend to other workers exposed to diesel exhaust in the United States and abroad, and to people living in urban areas where diesel exhaust levels are elevated,” Joseph Fraumeni Jr., director of the National Cancer Institute’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, said in a press release Friday morning. Read more ..

He categorically said, “Jews are very good neighbors; you can't say any more about them.”  When I had the opportunity to sit with John Batchelor earlier this week, he was sanguine about his opportunity to speak before the One Israel Fund 18th Gala Anniversary Dinner on Wednesday, March 14 where he will also be honored.  Batchelor, the nationally syndicated radio talk show host will address the audience of the organization dedicated to not only supporting Israel, but promoting the unification of Judaea and Samaria as a pivotal mainstay of the Jewish State.

The distinction of advancing the eternal attachment of the West Bank to the Greater Israel, makes the support of someone like Mr. Batchelor unique among non Jewish advocates for the only Democracy in the Middle East.  However, while raised as a Protestant in the Presbyterian church and married to a pastor, he does not attribute his attitude toward Israel as so much a religious consideration as it is a practical levelheaded belief in the people. Read more ..

The relationship between Arabs and Jews as it relates to the modern State of Israel has always been examined through the lens of land, given the theological bond both peoples have to the land itself and how they define themselves. Since 1937, most thinkers on the topic saw the idea of the two-state solution revolving around the concept of partitioning the land between two indigenous peoples: Jews and Palestinian Arabs. Since the creation of the State of Israel the debate began to focus on the question of coexistence between a Jewish state and a Palestinian Arab state.

This model is the one advocated by most of the international community, spearheaded by Washington. Furthermore, its attainment is the official policy of both the government of Israel and the Palestine Authority under Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad.

Enter Prof. Asher Susser of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University. In his latest book, Israel, Jordan, and Palestine: The Two-State Imperative, he tackles the notion of the two-state model and its relevance today. Susser has done extensive research on Jordan and the Palestinians and was the only Israeli academic in 1994 to accompany then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin to his meeting with King Hussein of Jordan for the signing of the Washington Declaration before the US Congress. In addition, he authored a political biography of Jordan's prime minister Wasfi al-Tall.

Susser makes it clear that this model of coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians is far from perfect. He writes, "For both Israelis and Palestinians, a two-state solution was not an ideal, but the lesser evil. The positions of both sides fractured the perfect symmetry of the two-state paradigm." Moreover, he underscores that the notion of "land for peace" that grew out of the 1967 UN Security Council Resolution 242 was intended for state actors like Egypt, Syria and Jordan, not the Palestinian state-to-be.  Read more ..

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) annual Policy Conference, being held in Washington D.C., promises to be the largest Policy Conference in AIPAC history, with more than 13,000 people participating and thousands heading to Capitol Hill on the final day of the March 4-6 conference to lobby Congress in support of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

According to organizers, this year’s conference comes as the global threat posed by Iran is at an all-time high. Diplomatic efforts by the United Nations, and the United States and its allies, to effectively halt a feared Iranian nuclear weaponization program Iran have been frustrated, leading to increased fears of Iranian hegemony. Read more ..

U.S. pro-democracy activists charged with encouraging unrest in Egypt have left Cairo after courts there lifted a travel ban against them. The standoff threatened more than $1 billion in U.S. financial support for Egypt.

State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Thursday that the the Americans were allowed to leave Egypt after their non-governmental organizations agreed to post their bail.

“We are very pleased that the Egyptian courts have now lifted the travel ban on our NGO employees,” said Nuland. “The U.S. government has provided a plane to facilitate their departure. And they have left the country. They are currently en route home.” Read more ..

Computational sprinting is a groundbreaking new approach to smartphone power and cooling that could give users dramatic, brief bursts of computing capability to improve current applications and make new ones possible. Its developers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan are pushing mobile chips beyond their sustainable operating limits, much like a sprinter who runs fast for a short distance. The researchers presented a paper on their concept at the International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture in New Orleans.

"Normally, these devices are designed for sustained performance, so that they can run full bore forever. We're proposing a computer system that can perform a giant surge of computation, but then gets tired and has time to rest," said Thomas Wenisch, study co-author and an assistant professor at the U-M Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. "We asked, 'What if we designed a chip to run at 16 times the sustainable rate, but only for half a second? Can we do it without burning out the chip?'" said one of the study's authors, Milo Martin, associate professor in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science. "We did the calculations and simulations, and we find that it is indeed possible to engineer such a system."  Read more ..

One in five households with children in poverty are surviving on the cash equivalent of a half gallon of milk per person per day in a given month. The National Poverty Center has released a new report that examines poverty trends between 1996 and 2011. The number of households with children who are in extreme poverty in a given month—living at $2 or less in income per person per day—in 2011 totaled roughly 1.46 million households, including 2.8 million kids. This number is up from 636,000 households in 1996, nearly a 130 percent increase.

The study finds that in-kind public programs are having an effect, though. The number of children living in extreme poverty is cut in half to 1.4 million in 2011 when the statistics take into account benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program). Read more ..

The Egyptian trial of employees of four American groups that were promoting democracy was abruptly postponed earlier this week. But the crisis in U.S.-Egyptian relations continues, for reasons, according to a University of Michigan researcher, that have a lot to do both with domestic Egyptian politics and with American Middle East policy.
 
"Many Americans believed that Egyptians would welcome American democracy promotion efforts since there has been broad public support in Egypt for both democracy in general and the ouster of the anti-democratic regime of Hosni Mubarak in particular," said University of Michigan political scientist Mark Tessler, who co-directs the Arab Barometer Study, which surveys public attitudes in 11 Arab nations. "But in fact, the survey we conducted in Egypt just this summer showed that a solid majority of the Egyptian public distrusts American foreign policy and this includes American democracy promotion activities in their country." Read more ..

Tibetan prayer flags (Credit: Marin Clark)

Fifty million years ago, India slammed into Eurasia, a collision that gave rise to the tallest landforms on the planet, the Himalaya Mountains and the Tibetan Plateau. India and Eurasia continue to converge today, though at an ever-slowing pace. University of Michigan geomorphologist and geophysicist Marin Clark wanted to know when this motion will end and why. She conducted a study that led to surprising findings that could add a new wrinkle to the well-established theory of plate tectonics – the dominant, unifying theory of geology.

"The exciting thing here is that it's not easy to make progress in a field (plate tectonics) that's 50 years old and is the major tenet that we operate under," said Clark, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan. Read more ..

In recent years, a large number of Asian companies have profited by doing business with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States and the European Union have struck back, cutting off access to these companies' markets by levying sanctions on Iran. As a result, Asian giants such as Huawei Technologies, one of the world's largest and most powerful telecommunications firms, have finally decided to cut back their Iranian dealings. Those companies that have yet to make the right decision should consider carefully whether doing business with the mullahs is worth the risk. Huawei is a Chinese multi-national corporation that is soon expected to surpass Sweden's Ericsson as the largest telecommunications infrastructure supplier in the world. The company has annual revenues of $32 billion and over 110,000 employees, and its products and services are deployed in most of the world's largest telecom markets. Huawei was also recently ranked 352 out on Fortune magazine's global 500 list. Read more ..

Biofuel Field

Several years ago, as we at The Auto Channel opened our eyes to the potential of alternative fuel and energy sources, we championed the entire suite of domestic solutions: wind, solar, compressed natural gas, propane, alcohol (ethanol and methanol), electric, the variety of algae-based fuels, and even some really exotic ideas such as compressed air-powered motors. We liked them all. At the earliest stage we also subscribed to the common notion that there was not one single bullet solution to ending our energy dependency by replacing gasoline. However, as my business partner, Bob Gordon, and I delved further into our studies on the issues we realized two key things: First, that maturation of some of the solutions, like electric, was decades away from practical reality. Moreover, battery production and the dependence upon rare earth elements from foreign sources to make the batteries left us in the same vulnerable supply position as dealing with the OPEC terrorists.The second key point was that supporting a myriad of solutions was actually tantamount to inaction because it insured that nothing would get done. We came to understand that the main advocate for multiple solutions was the petroleum oil industry itself. If nothing would be accomplished in finding a serious alternative to gasoline it means that the oil and gasoline producers would remain in firm control of the world’s economies.

As we learned more and more we recognized that there really is one single bullet solution: alcohol. Referring, of course, to ethanol and/or methanol, both of which are produced by distilling alcohol. We were extremely fortunate to make the acquaintance of some very experienced and knowledgeable ethanol proponents, most notably David Blume (permaculture expert and author of “Alcohol Can Be A Gas”) and Ted Chipner, president of Ohio BioSystems Cooperative.

This isn’t to say that CNG or propane are not also important candidates in their own right to be single bullet solutions, but you have to keep in mind that even gasoline is not truly a single bullet fuel source. We still need diesel to power heavy vehicles and large stationary machines, and home heating oil or gases are needed for residential uses. Therefore, the so-called single bullet only really refers to the primary fuel used to power the overwhelming number of vehicles on the road: passenger cars, light trucks and motorcycles. If we can decide on one fuel to replace gasoline for these vehicles then everything else would fall into place because our domestic supply of petroleum oil would be more than adequate to provide us with all the diesel we need; particularly when we add in or replace petroleum oil-based diesel with bio-diesels. Consequently, as the supply of domestic natural gas and propane increases, home heating oil becomes unnecessary. Read more ..

Flag of Argentina with 'We Shall Return' and Falklands map superimposed

In recent months the government of Argentina has launched a new political and public relations campaign aimed at putting pressure on Great Britain to negotiate the future of the Falkland/Malvinas Islands. The islands constitute an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean 300 miles from the Argentinean coast. These islands have been ruled by Great Britain since 1833 except for a short period in April 1982 after the Argentinean navy invaded and conquered the islands.

Argentina has continued to claim the islands, arguing that the country acquired them from Spain after Argentina became an independent state in 1810. The United Nations called for the Argentineans and the British to conduct a dialogue over the future of the Islands. The British government has asserted, particularly since 2009, that there will be no talks since the residents of the islands do not wish to be part of Argentina. Read more ..

When we sense a threat, the brain center responsible for responding goes into gear, setting off a chain of biochemical reactions that lead to the release of cortisol from our adrenal glands.

Dr. Gil Levkowitz and his team in the Department of Molecular Cell Biology have now revealed a new kind of “on/off” switch in the brain for regulating the production of a main biochemical signal from the brain that stimulates cortisol release in the body. This finding, which was recently published in Neuron, may be relevant to research into a number of stress-related neurological disorders.

This signal is corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH). CRH is manufactured and stored in special neurons in the hypothalamus. Within this small region of the brain, the danger is sensed, the information is processed, and the orders to go into stress-response mode are sent out. As soon as the CRH-containing neurons have depleted their supply of the hormone, they are already receiving the directive to produce more.

The research, which used zebrafish as a model, was spearheaded by Dr. Liat Amir-Zilberstein, together with Drs. Janna Blechman, Adriana Reuveny, and Natalia Borodovsky, as well as Maayan Tahor. The team found that a protein called Otp is involved in several stages of CRH production. In addition to directly activating the genes encoding CRH, Otp also regulates the production of two different receptors on the neurons’ surface for receiving and relaying CRH production signals—in effect, on and off switches. Read more ..