Be Afraid be very afraid.....

Obama Reassures Americans There Is No Credible Threat of Terror

abcnews.go.com

Flanked by his national security team, President Obama reassured Americans that there was "no specific, credible threat" against the country ahead of the holidays.

"We do not have any specific and credible information about an attack on the homeland," Obama said today at the National Counterterrorism Center. "That said, we have to be vigilant."

Obama said security experts are constantly hard at work putting up safeguards to prevent terrorists from entering the country, while at the same time bringing the fight to terrorists plotting overseas.

Obama also urged “resilience” in the wake of the attack in San Bernardino, California, calling it “one of our greatest weapons” in the fight against terrorism.

“When Americans stand together, nothing can beat us,” Obama said. “We cannot give in to fear or change how we live our lives because that’s what terrorists want, that’s the only leverage they have.”

It's a similar message to one given in November by the president in the immediate wake of the terror attack in Paris, where he sought to reassure the American people that there was no "specific, credible threat" facing the homeland during the Thanksgiving holiday.

But following the attack in San Bernardino, an ABC News/Washington Post poll out Wednesday showed just 22 percent of Americans express confidence in the government’s ability to prevent lone-wolf terrorist attacks.

The animal that lives for 10,000 years

www.bbc.com

They fell out of the sky and landed on the pale blue planet with a splash. Many of the crew missed the whole thing. Deep inside the spacecraft, arranged in neat stacks, were rows and rows of sleeping astronauts. Each was curled up inside their own pod, where they could have stayed for 10,000 years.

These were no ordinary space travellers. In the following weeks, they burst from their shells and developed into full-blown aquatic monsters: they are salmon-pink, with three eyes and eleven pairs of thrashing legs.

This really happened. The year was 1972 and the slumbering passengers werebrine shrimp, otherwise known as "sea monkeys", returning from the Apollo 16moon mission. They had been taken into space to test the impacts of cosmic radiation on astronauts.

This treacherous experiment required a near-indestructible guinea pig. Enter the brine shrimp, whose survival skills defy belief.

You can safely dry them out, set them on fire, dissolve them in alcohol, deprive them of oxygen, zap them with ultraviolet light, boil them at 105 °C or chill them to temperatures approaching absolute zero: the point at which atoms stop moving. They can also survive extremes of pH that would dissolve human flesh, water that is 50% salt, or a bath of insecticides. They are happy in the vacuum of space or at the crushing pressures found under 6,000 metres (20,000 feet) of ocean.

We are now starting to understand how they do it.

Space is drenched in high-energy particles called cosmic rays, which easily rip through cells, tissues and the aluminium walls of a spacecraft. The Moon was the perfect place to study their effects.

Brine shrimp look rather fragile, with their wafting legs and long antennae

The "Biostack I" experiment involved stacking brine shrimp embryos, along with plant seeds and bacterial spores, between layers of radiation-sensitive materials. Any rays that passed through the stack would end up on the detection layer, so the NASA scientists knew exactly which passengers had been hit.

Of 110 brine shrimp embryos that took a galactic bullet, many hatched – albeit with deformities – and a few went on to live full shrimp lives.

A follow-up experiment called Biostack II was taken to the Moon by Apollo 17 later the same year. It achieved similar results.

The strange thing is, brine shrimp look rather fragile, with their wafting legs and long antennae. What is their secret?

Despite their brand name, sea monkeys do not live in the open ocean. They have been splashing around in salty pools and lakes, from the Great Salt Lake in Utah to the Caspian Sea, for over 100 million years.

If you live in a pond, there is always a risk that it will dry out

Brine shrimp are also not shrimp, but they do belong to the same group, the crustaceans. They are tiny, just 15mm long. They eat algae, which they filter out of the water. They swim upside-down and breathe through their legs, and females do not need a male to reproduce.

Crucially, they have a unique affinity for salt. They can tolerate concentrations up to 50%. Such water is far saltier than the ocean, which is only about 3.5% salt, and the salt will be on the verge of precipitating out as a solid. The brine shrimp are fine with this.

But there is a catch: if you live in a pond, there is always a risk that it will dry out. The pools and lakes brine shrimp inhabit frequently disappear for months, years or decades. This should be a gigantic problem, but the brine shrimp simply dry out.

When conditions are favourable, female brine shrimp produce thin-shelled eggs that hatch immediately. But when food is scarce or salt levels are rising, they resort to plan B. They produce hard-shelled "cysts", each of which contains a near-fully-developed larva.

Radiocarbon dating estimated they had been lying there for 10,000 years

These cysts are able to withstand near-total dehydration, losing more than 97% of their water content. All their life processes stop and they enter a state of suspended animation called anhydrobiosis, a bizarre stopover between life and death.

As anyone who has kept sea monkeys as pets will know, to resurrect the embryos you just add water. The cysts take on 1.4 times their weight in less than 24 hours, before hatching into larvae the size of the full stop at the end of this sentence. When they first hatch they have just one primitive eye, though they add two more sophisticated eyes later.

It is an aggressive strategy for an aggressive environment, and it works. In the 1990s, oil exploration crews were drilling near the Great Salt Lake when they dredged up a mat of cysts between two layers of salt. Wondering whether they would hatch, they put some in water and reportedly a few did. Radiocarbon dating estimated they had been lying there for 10,000 years.

How did they get away with it?

Water is the liquid in which the molecules inside our cells move and mix, giving rise to life-sustaining chemical reactions. So taking it away brings those processes to a halt.

But for most animals, losing too much bodily water doesn't just shut things down, it causes lethal damage. Humans can only lose 15% of our bodily water, and few animals can lose more than 50%.

As water is removed, the molecules inside our cells lose the three-dimensional network that buoys them up. Proteins, sugars, and chromosomes become warped and break down.

Ice crystals act like tiny knives, ripping cells apart from the inside out

The challenge is to allow molecules to keep their shape as they dry out. For this, brine shrimp have a sweet solution: they turn their cells into solid sugar.

The cysts are loaded with an unusual sugar called trehalose, which makes up 15% of their dry weight. It forms a solid rather like the glass in windows. This "matrix" props up proteins and membranes, maintaining their structures, and freezes them in place.

Trehalose is the magic ingredient uniting most organisms capable of suspended animation, including the near-invincible tardigrades, certain nematode worms, and the larvae of an African fly called thesleeping chironomid.

On its own, trehalose simply allows the brine shrimp to cope with dehydration. But that may be the key to many of their abilities. As it happens, giving up water has some surprising bonuses.

In the warm temperatures humans tend to favour, water is famous for its life-giving properties. But if you chill it or heat it too much, it becomes deadly. Ice crystals act like tiny knives, ripping cells apart from the inside out. Liquid water also expands as it approaches its freezing or boiling point, with similarly lethal effects.

It seems that their willingness to live in toxic places actually means their lives are safer

If you take away water, you take away all these threats. What's more, radiation does not pack much of a punch either.

Normally, cosmic rays interact with water molecules in the body. This unleashes highly reactive forms of oxygen, including chemicals similar to bleach. These chemicals rampage through cells and tissues, destroying anything in their path. Dried-out brine shrimp embryos side-step this danger.

Still, dehydration is not a cure-all. It does not protect DNA from a direct hit by a cosmic ray, or stop proteins unravelling as they heat up. So brine shrimp cysts have evolved several other tricks, from DNA repair molecules to proteins that lack a fixed structure in the first place.

Why did evolution push brine shrimp to become so resilient? It seems that their willingness to live in toxic places actually means their lives are safer.

Brine shrimp inhabit salt lakes, the conditions in which are so hostile that they are also known as "seas of death". For instance, the Great Salt Lake is between 5 and 27% salt, depending on how much water it holds.

Only a few animals can handle such extremes

The Lake sits at the bottom of a flat basin, which poses an additional challenge. If the water level drops by just a foot, the shoreline could move up to a mile. From 1963 to 1986, the lake swelled by nearly 60%.

If a shrinking shoreline and water saltier than bacon weren't enough, at the Great Salt Lake's high altitude creatures must be able to cope with 15% more ultraviolet light than there is at sea level. The final insult is the risk of suffocation, because salty water holds less dissolved oxygen. 

As you might expect, only a few animals can handle such extremes. Apart from the larvae of two species of insect calledbrine flies, brine shrimp have the lake entirely to themselves. That means there are no predators hunting them.

However, brine shrimp's relationship with salt is not entirely positive.

Their cells cannot cope with too much salt, so they pump it out of their bodies and their hard exoskeletons stop it creeping back in. This is an energy-sapping process, so you could be forgiven for wondering why they bother to live in the salt lakes at all.

Their diet seems to be the key. In order to survive on tough, toxic algae, brine shrimp have struck up a relationship with the bacteria in their guts, which help them to digest their meals. Odrade Nougué of the University of Montpellier in France wondered if it might be these microbial companions that like salt, not the brine shrimp themselves.

Every summer when females lay their eggs, thick "slicks" marble the lake's surface

In a study published in September 2015, Nougué and her colleagues raised brine shrimp larvae in sterile conditions to get rid of the gut bacteria, then exposed them to water with different concentrations of salt. She did the same with bacteria that still had their normal gut microbes.

It turned out that the sterile brine shrimp did better in low salt, while the bacteria-riddled batch needed lots of salt. To Nougué, this suggests that the brine shrimp are victims of their own symbiotic partners. They cannot live without their gut bacteria and the bacteria want salt, so the brine shrimp have to put up with salt too.

Despite the challenges, living in super-salty water offers big payoffs: it is rich in algae and low in competition. In the Great Salt Lake, brine shrimp number in the billions. Every summer when females lay their eggs, thick "slicks" marble the lake's surface and the shores are awash with their pink offspring. The next spring, as the salt lake warms, billions of tiny larvae begin to hatch.

All these eggs and brine shrimp mean big business for the region, which collects around 9,000

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Hillary Clinton's dream debate is one nobody watches

nypost.com

Busy Saturday night? Probably, what with the NCAA bowl games, the Jets’ must-win battle in Dallas and opening weekend for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” So you’ll skip the Democratic presidential debate — just as Hillary Clinton hoped.

Long, long ago, Clinton set out to ensure she wouldn’t be robbed of the nomination by some interloper, the way she lost to Barack Obama in 2008.

The party’s power-brokers played along, handing the Democratic National Committee to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a co-chair of Clinton’s ’08 campaign. Fix, in.

And so the DNC did its best to see nobody would watch the debates, lest voters dare think for themselves. Tomorrow’s is the second in a row on a Saturday night — easily the worst evening for TV viewership.

Over on the Republican side, they’ve delivered the three largest audiences ever for prez-primary debates. And seven more Republican debates are ahead; the Democrats have just three after Saturday.

The saddest thing about this “shield Hillary” approach is that it robs Democrats of a fair primary fight. Yes, it’s hard to see how socialist dinosaur Bernie Sanders or lightweight prettyboy Martin O’Malley is going to beat her — but they could at least push her to stand up for the party’s principles.

(Assuming it still has some.)

Worst of all is the message this sends about the frontrunner: Namely, that the last thing her supporters want is for the American public to hear what she has to say.

Debate memo to reporters: Bundle up

www.politico.com

---

the Saturday before Christmas, or that the localABC affiliate was pushed out over a labor dispute.

The media will be literally, on ice. A memo sent to reporters by host network ABC News warned that the media filing center is in an ice rink, and as such, reporters should bundle up.

"Please note in order to accommodate everyone, the media filing center is on St. Anselm’s hockey rink in the Sullivan Arena. Please remember to dress warmly," the memo reads.

Don't forget your skates!

Hadas Gold is a reporter at Politico.

STILL IN THE CLOSET

Lack of Democratic debates intentional

www.charlotteobserver.com

The Republican presidential candidates have demonstrated such an appetite for debates that if I set up nine lecterns in my living room on a weeknight around 8 p.m. and chanted “carpet bomb” and “anchor baby,” they’d probably materialize en masse, even before I had time to vacuum and put out the artichoke dip.

But I could send save-the-date cards, promise canapés by Mario Batali and recruit Adele to belt out “Hello” whenever the doorbell rang: Still the Democrats wouldn’t show up.

For all their flaws and fakery, the Republican candidates have squared off frequently, at convenient hours and despite the menacing nimbus of Donald Trump’s hair; the Democratic candidates have, in contrast, hidden in a closet.

Tuesday night’s meeting of Republicans was the fifth. The meeting of Democratic presidential candidates in a few days will be only the third.

And who’s going to watch it? It’s on a Saturday night, when a political debate ranks somewhere between dialysis and a Milli Vanilli tribute concert as a desirable way to unwind.

The previous meeting of the Democratic candidates was also on a Saturday night, and fewer than 9 million viewers tuned in, down from 15.3 million for the sole Democratic debate so far on a weeknight. All of the Republican debates have been on weeknights; the first two attracted more than 23 million viewers each.

In fact none of the first four Republican debates had an audience of less than 13.5 million. The fifth debate averaged 18 million viewers.

The Republican events certainly have seductions that the Democratic ones don’t. But the disparity in viewership is also a function of scheduling, and was thus predictable and obviously intended. When the Democratic debates were set up, party leaders assumed that Hillary Clinton would be their best candidate, put their chips on her and sought to make sure that some upstart didn’t upset their plans or complicate things.

Bernie Sanders complained. Martin O'Malley cried foul. So did a vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, Tulsi Gabbard. It was an ugly sideshow for a few days, then it blew over.

But we shouldn’t be so quick to forgive and forget how the Democratic Party behaved. It prides itself on being the true champion of democracy. Shouldn’t it want its candidates on vivid, continuous display? Shouldn’t it connect them with the largest audience that it can?

I’m surprised that I haven’t heard more griping about this. What I’ve heard instead is the concern that if Clinton indeed gets the nomination, she'll enter the general election less battle-tested than she’d be if she were facing stiffer primary competition and enduring a greater number of higher-stakes debates.

A politician who’s been through Whitewater, Travelgate, impeachment, an emotional 2008 campaign against Barack Obama and several Benghazi inquisitions doesn’t strike me as someone who needs more battle experience.

The real danger for her is that she’s become all armor.

And a real vulnerability is that she’s seen by voters as entrenched political royalty and thus too distant from everyday Americans.

That’s one of the problems with the Democratic debate schedule: It smacks of special treatment, and Clinton can’t afford to keep giving voters the impression that normal rules don’t apply to her.

And the Democratic Party can’t pretend that it’s done the right thing here. While these debates aren’t as high-minded as we’d wish or as illuminating as we sometimes pretend, they’re an important piece of the puzzle of figuring out candidates. They deserve priority and prominence. Artichoke dip optional.

Army women hurt more often in combat training, experience more mental health issues

Uhmmm duha!

www.washingtontimes.com

In basic combat training, women are injured at twice the rate of men. For example, among the fastest groups of men and women in a 2-mile run, the male injury rate is 10 percent and the female rate is 26 ... more >

Army women not only suffer more injuries than men during combat training, but the active-duty female soldiers also are stricken with significantly higher rates of mental health disorders.

The statistics come from a study conducted by the Army surgeon general last summer in conjunction with a bevy of analyses and experiments to judge women’s suitability for direct ground combat roles. It found, for example, that female soldiers suffer depression at more than double the rate of men and that one of the triggers is exposure to combat.

Still, the study concluded: “There is no medical basis to prohibit any [military occupational specialty] opening to females.”

The Obama administration announced Dec. 3 that it is opening all jobs in infantry, armor, artillery and special operations forces to women. The Pentagon then began releasing the services’ behind-the-scenes studies.

The Army numbers present a warning that if the Defense Department is going to usher a significant number of women into combat roles, which is its stated goal, the services will have to find better ways to prepare them physically and mentally.

In basic combat training, women are injured at twice the rate of men. For example, among the fastest groups of men and women in a 2-mile run, the male injury rate is 10 percent and the female rate is 26 percent. Women have a rate of stress factors during training four times higher than men.

Women also experience twice the injury rates of men when carrying 70 pounds of gear — about normal for an infantryman on patrol in combat.

Women’s injury rates are only slightly higher during deployments, but they have yet to join and deploy in direct land combat units.

The report says that “on average, female soldiers arrive at initial training relatively less fit than male soldiers.”

One idea to reduce women’s injury rates is to get them more physically fit, including the use of weight training. Another proposal is to boost iron levels, which have been shown to increase a woman’s ability to run faster.

“Bottom line,” the study states, “iron-deficient anemic female soldiers, when treated with supplements, run 1-2 minutes faster on 2 mile run.”

The June 24 study by Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho, the Army surgeon general, recommends that the service “implement multivitamin with iron program for females during intense training.”

Elaine Donnelly, who runs the Center for Military Readiness, called the results a “scandal” because the Pentagon knowingly is increasing physical risks for women who now will be less, not more, likely to join the military.

“This is a major scandal in the making,” Mrs. Donnelly said. “Here you have United States Army, with its own medical study pointing to the injury rates at least double compared to men. This is a consistent finding across the board. And they are proceeding anyway. And there is no indication that young women considering military service will be informed of the additional risk they will face over and above what men do. Once you sign up, they are going to be assigned to jobs beyond their strength anywhere the Armywants to send you.”

‘Real phenomena’

On the mental health front, or what theArmy refers to as “behavioral health,” the disparity between men and women is striking.

Women have double the rate of the disorder of not adjusting to Army life. They have more than double the rate of depression, at 500 cases per 100,000 compared with 210 for men. They suffer a 50 percent higher rate of anxiety. They have about the same rate of post-traumatic stress disorder. Men have twice the alcohol abuse rate, at 200 per 100,000 soldiers.

“Incidence rates of many [behavior health] disorders are higher among female than male soldiers,” the study concludes.

As a cure, the study says, “programs exist to promote mitigation of risk and enhancement of protective factors through the soldier life cycle.”

Of the top 10 diagnoses that result in soldier hospitalizations, five are results of mental health disorders.

Women are most at risk of behavioral health disorders during career or life transitions, when exposed to combat or when they become victims of assault.

Women make up about 14 percent of the 1.3 million active force, with about 70,000 female soldiers.

The disorders could affect the force because the attrition rates can run as high as 62 percent for both men and women within a year of diagnosis.

Retired Army Col. James Griffith, a research psychologist, said many of theArmy’s findings “parallel what we know about mental health between men and women in the general population.”

“For example, much more common among women than men are disorders of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress,” Mr. Griffith said. “Much more common among men are disorders of personality and alcohol/drug dependency.”

He said he is not aware of a study on how the disparity will affect combat performance. Not in the Army study are civilian women’s mental health rates and how they compare with those of military women.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter was asked about the female injury rate when he announced his sweeping decision.

He answered: “There are a number of studies that indicated that. Again, that’s something that doesn’t suggest to me that women shouldn’t be admitted to those specialties, if they’re qualified. But it’s something that needs, that’s going to need to be taken into account in implementation. So these are real phenomena that affect gender, that are, rather, affected by gender and need to be taken into account in implementation.”

Healing the ‘rift’

Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, fell into the dicey situation of disagreeing with Mr. Carter and did not attend the Dec. 3 press conference.

As Marine commandant just a few months ago, Gen. Dunford opposed opening Marine infantry units to women because of injury rates that materialized in an experimental coed unit. The Corps concluded that this presented a risk to combat effectiveness and thus endangered more lives.

On Monday, Gen. Dunford appeared at a defense conference hosted by the Center for a New American Security.

Anna Mulrine, a reporter with the Christian Science Monitor, sharply questioned him and purported to speak for a number of Marine women.

She said, “I guess throughout this process there have been a number of women who got the message, as a Marine Corps, ‘We don’t want you in these jobs. You’re going to ruin everything. You’re going to ruin the camaraderie, the fun, the fighting, the effectiveness of the force.’”

Ms. Mulrine asked Gen. Dunford how he was going to heal this “rift.”

“I don’t actually believe that there is some huge rift,” Gen. Dunford said. “Be honest with you, it would break my heart if I thought this were true.

“Even in the recommendation I made, we were going to open up all but a very few [military occupational specialties]where the data indicated there were some challenges we had to overcome. The secretary has determined we will overcome those in implementation. And that’s where I’m at right now.”

He added: “In terms of the value of women in the Marine Corps, I think the record speaks for itself over the last 10 or 12 years, and we certainly trumpeted that. There may be in Washington, D.C., some perception that women in the Marine Corps don’t feel valued. I’ve spent a hell of a lot of time with Marines, and I think I can sniff out BS when I see it and I don’t actually think that’s true. I think Marines are proud to be Marines and the women who’ve had different opinions than me have been quite vocal in sharing those with me in a very professional way. I don’t think there’s a rift to heal.”

Fugitive monkey goes on the run because he was being bullied

www.telegraph.co.uk

File photo: Tamil, the missing lion-tailed macaque from Howletts Animal Park, Kent Photo: SWNS

A monkey on the run in Kent has been missing for two days because he was bullied by other primates.

The lion-tailed macaque is still on the loose despite keepers setting traps and searching the fields and countryside around the animal park.

Keepers from Howletts Animal Park, Kent, are continuing the search for Tamil, the six-year-old macaque who ran away from the zoo on Tuesday night.

It is thought that in-fighting with other macaques in his enclosure prompted Tamil to run away.

Adrian Harland, Animal Director said: "It is common for young male primates to fight as they become more dominant.

“If you’re at the bottom of the hierarchy, it’s likely your position will be made very clear. To run away from aggression is the reasonable response of any primate.” Kit Opie

Man Wearing Tin Foil Hat Faces Firearm Raps

www.thesmokinggun.com

DECEMBER 17--An “agitated” Internal Revenue Service employee was wearing a tin foil hat last week when Massachusetts cops confronted him for illegally possessing several firearms, according to a police report.

Acting on information provided by a Department of Homeland Security investigator, Tewksbury cops Tuesday afternoon pulled over a car driven by Roland Moore, a 46-year-old IRS customer service worker.

The federal agent had told police that he was investigating Moore, who had recently been “evaluated for possible mental health issues.” During conversations with IRS inspectors, Moore reportedly admitted to having guns in his Tewksbury home. A records check, however, showed that Moore’s firearms license had been suspended nearly six years earlier following an assault arrest.

As detailed in a Tewksbury Police Department report, when cops contacted Moore, he was “wearing a piece of tinfoil on his head under his cap” and he was “agitated” by the presence of law enforcement officers.

Moore, who admitted having four firearms in his home, denied a police request to enter the residence and retrieve the weapons. “Moore laughed and stated that it was his natural right to have guns to protect him home,” noted DetectiveAndrew Richardson.

As first reported by The Lowell Sun, police subsequently secured a search warrant for Moore’s home and seized the four guns, two of which were loaded. They also removed a “large amount of ammunition and supplies to manufacture ammunition” from the property.

Moore was charged with four weapons possession counts, as well as failure to surrender firearms as ordered following his assault bust. Moore, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, is free on his own recognizance.

A District Court judge has barred Moore from possessing dangerous weapons and ammo and has directed him to comply with any current mental health treatment. Moore is next due in court on January 26. 

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