FDA Finds Hazards Lurking In Parsley, Cilantro, Guacamole
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The Food and Drug Administration has started testing randomly selected fresh herbs and prepared guacamole. So far, the agency has found dangerous bacteria in 3-6 percent of the samples it tested.
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Gordon Chibroski/Portland Press/Getty Images
The Food and Drug Administration has started testing randomly selected fresh herbs and prepared guacamole. So far, the agency has found dangerous bacteria in 3-6 percent of the samples it tested.
Gordon Chibroski/Portland Press/Getty Images
Last fall, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration started looking for dangerous bacteria in a few of America’s most beloved fresh foods: parsley, cilantro, basil, and prepared guacamole. The very freshness of these foods carries a risk. Since they aren’t normally cooked, they may harbor nasty bugs like salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes.
The testing has barely begun, but the agency has released the first results, revealing that it has, in fact, discovered disease-causing microbes in a small percentage of those samples.
Out of 139 samples of fresh herbs tested, four tested positive for salmonella and three contained disease-causing E. coli. Most of the herbs that the FDA tested, and all of the contaminated samples, were imported from other countries.
The FDA tested 107 samples of processed avocado and guacamole, divided roughly equally between domestic and foreign suppliers. Four samples tested positive for disease-causing listeria, three of which were processed in the United States.
Listeria is especially troublesome because it can proliferate in cold conditions, such as in a refrigerator.
Eventually, the FDA plans to test 1,600 samples of both fresh herbs and processed avocados. The agency says that no conclusions can be drawn from the results so far, because most of the testing remains to be done.
Robert Buchanan, an expert on food safety at the University of Maryland, wrote in an email to NPR that “I did not find the result unexpected. These frequencies are not unusual in fresh produce.”
Buchanan also cautioned that the amount of contamination in each sample, which the FDA did not disclose, is important in determining the real risk to human health. Healthy people can eat slightly contaminated food without getting sick.
No amount of contamination, however, is legal. According to the FDA, when it detects any of these disease-causing microbes in fresh produce through such tests, it can launch enforcement actions such as a recall, or, in the case of imported food, blocking that food from entering the United States.
Craig Hedberg, an expert on food safety at the University of Minnesota, says that contamination with salmonella or listeria is “an indication that companies need to pay more attention to sanitation in their plants.”
Washing fresh herbs may reduce the amount of bacterial contamination, he says, but it won’t eliminate it altogether.
3D modeling is a subject that leaves many people confused. “What program should I use?” is a very common question. The simple answer is actually “Whichever one you’re comfortable with.” There are pros and cons and tradeoffs with each, but whichever one you can get the job done in, is the one you should use.
In this case, Broken Nerd shows us how he models in Cinema 4D for 3D printing. This tutorial will take you through the entire modeling process of creating a Raphael’s sai (from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), before 3D printing them. There are tons of things to learn here, and you may find that Cinema 4D is the software that your brain works best with.
Be sure to check out his whole channel and give him a subscription. He’ll appreciate it.
From Painters to Potters, Scientists Stage an Online Art Show
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On January 24, University of British Columbia geneticist Dave Ng tweeted, "It’s always interesting to me how kids react when they find out I’m a scientist who also does artistic things (like they can’t co-exist or something). Would love to start a thread where other scientists share their artistic tendencies. #scienceartmix."
Ng posted some of his own visual art and writing, and invited others to chime in. Musicians, painters, dancers and more eagerly joined the dataset.
Aquatic ec
Google’s ARCore hits version 1.0, brings augmented reality to 100 million devices
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Mobile World Congress kicks off this weekend, and to celebrate, Google is launching version 1.0 of its “ARCore” Augmented Reality framework. Just like Apple’s ARKit, ARCore allows normal smartphones to run augmented reality apps. ARCore apps will either overlay 3D objects on top of the phone’s camera feed or allow you to use the phone as a camera in a 3D world, moving your viewpoint around as you move the phone.
For version 1.0, Google is greatly expanding the compatible devices for ARCore. Since ARCore requires calibration and a custom setup per device model, the minimum requirements aren’t based on an Android version but are instead limited to specific models. While the preview only supported the Google Pixels and Samsung Galaxy S8, today ARCore 1.0 is coming to a wide selection of flagship Android phones.
Google’s blog post lists the following phones as compatible: “Google’s Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL; Samsung’s Galaxy S8, S8+, Note8, S7 and S7 edge; LGE’s V30 and V30+ (Android O only); ASUS’s Zenfone AR; and OnePlus’s OnePlus 5.” All together, that’s about 100 million devices that can run augmented reality apps. In the future, Google says, “Samsung, Huawei, LGE, Motorola, ASUS, Xiaomi, HMD/Nokia, ZTE, Sony Mobile, and Vivo” will bring ARCore to their upcoming smartphone releases.
Another interesting tidbit is that Google is also launching ARCore in China. This move will be tough, since Google does almost no business in China—there’s no Google apps, no Play Store, and no Google Play Services. Google will get around its distribution problems by partnering with OEMs like Huawei, Xiaomi, and Samsung, allowing even non-Google Play devices to use ARCore apps.
Version 1.0 also means developers can now publish ARCore apps in the Play Store. Snap Inc is a big early booster for ARCore, having already built a “Snapchat experience” on the framework that transports people to Camp Nou stadium, the home of FC Barcelona. There is also Google’s AR Stickers app, which allows you to place Star Wars (and other) characters into the real world, but that’s still a Pixel 2 exclusive.
There’s something strange going on amid the satellite Internet rush
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As Thursday’s SpaceX launch of two test satellites vividly demonstrated, several companies are moving ahead with ambitious plans to design, build, and fly hardware capable of delivering broadband Internet from space. However, as intense as the battle for broadband may be in orbit, the fight is also heating up on the ground. In particular, there is a controversy quietly simmering at the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC.
In a somewhat bizarre situation, the founder and chairman of one company seeking to deliver broadband services, OneWeb, has founded a second company to compete with himself. In response, other companies proposing satellite constellations have objected, which has added considerable spice to an already heated battle for valuable spectrum.
Greg Wyler
The person at the center of the controversy is Greg Wyler, a colorful American entrepreneur who is among the most well-known people in the satellite Internet industry. More than 15 years ago, his company, Terracom, sought to bring the Internet to Rwanda through a contract to run fiber optic cables across the country. A few years later, after Terracom’s targets to connect schools to the Internet were not met and amid questions about the company’s business practices, Rwanda fined Terracom, and Wyler was out as its leader.
This experience did not deter Wyler nor, apparently, investors. In Africa, he had learned some harsh lessons about Earth-based infrastructure and politics and saw the potential of satellite Internet for rural areas and undeveloped nations. He founded O3b Networks in 2007, which began launching a small constellation of satellites six years later. In April, 2016, the Luxembourg-based communications satellite company SES took a controlling interest in O3b.
By then Wyler had already moved on to start another company dedicated to satellite Internet, WorldVu. For a time it looked like the new company would collaborate with Elon Musk and SpaceX to launch its constellation, but that partnership ultimately did not work out. By 2015, WorldVu had rebranded as OneWeb and began to raise significant capital for its satellite plans. (And SpaceX had gone its own way, intent on building its own satellite Internet constellation).
Through his more than a decade of experience in satellite Internet, Wyler has emerged as one of the most influential figures in the race to build satellites, establish a constellation in low-Earth orbit, and begin to deliver low-cost, low-latency Internet around the planet. In 2017, Fierce Wirelesstabbed Wyler as the “most powerful person in telecom.”
Wyler starts another
Today, Wyler is listed as the founder and executive chairman of OneWeb on the company’s site. He retains about 12 percent ownership in the company and remains its public face. However, Wyler has now founded yet another company, SOM1101, that seeks to launch and operate a satellite Internet service. Wyler owns 100 percent of this new company.
The existence of Wyler’s new company came to light after Boeing filed an application in December 2017 to the FCC. Boeing had previously indicated its own interest in building satellites for a constellation, and it was among the companies petitioning the FCC for access to V-band and Ka-band frequencies in the microwave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. With the new request to the FCC, Boeing sought to transfer its applications for spectrum access to SOM1101.
“The public interest benefits of permitting SOM1101 to substitute as the applicant are significant,” the Boeing petition stated. “Led by Greg Wyler, whose contributions to the satellite industry include the innovative O3b Networks and OneWeb NGSO constellations, SOM1101 is uniquely qualified to hold the requested authorization and bring the proposed services to market quickly and efficiently.”
Opposition
This petition has been met by opposition from other companies seeking to provide satellite Internet service, including O3b, Iridium, Telesat Canada, SpaceX, and others. Their petitions to deny can be read in their entirety on the FCC website here.
The primary objection these companies raised is that, under FCC rules, a party may not apply for more than one satellite system license in a particular frequency band—a prohibition against multiple ownership. In this case, Wyler is seeking to access the Ka- and V-bands both through OneWeb, where he remains executive chairman, and his new company, SOM1101.
In its petition, Boeing had argued that Wyler’s stake in OneWeb didn’t violate the FCC’s multi-ownership rules. The objections to Wyler’s participation in two bids for spectrum were unfounded, Boeing contended, because Wyler did not maintain “de jure” or “de facto” control over OneWeb.
The opponents were not buying this argument about Wyler’s stake in OneWeb. “If the founder, chief executive, board chairman, and a substantial equity holder does not qualify as a party with control over OneWeb, it is hard to imagine who else might,” the Iridium petition, for example, states.
Ars contacted several of the companies involved in this issue. A Boeing spokesman replied, “We are not commenting at this time on any business plans.” Inquiries to OneWeb for a company response, and an interview with Wyler, were simply ignored.
SES, the company that now controls O3b, indicated that it expects the FCC to rule against Boeing and SOM1101. “O3b and others are pointing out that FCC has clear policies for dealing with requests like this Boeing application—policies that aim to minimize speculation and delays in NGSO licensing—and the expectation is that FCC will address this request in line with these policy goals,” SES spokesman Markus Payer told Ars.
What is going on?
There appear to be two possibilities for what is actually happening here. One is that Wyler truly has set up a new company behind the back of OneWeb. Perhaps, as a serial entrepreneur, he seeks to leverage his industry connections to launch and control a fleet of satellites built by Boeing. The second possibility is that this is a pre-meditated effort by OneWeb to gain twice the amount of spectrum as its competitors, which it might do by simply acquiring SOM1101 should a transfer of Boeing’s interests occur.
Sources have told Ars that, generally, Boeing is interested in manufacturing satellites—something it is very good at—but doesn’t have a great interest in operating a constellation of satellites in space. Previously, there was speculation in the industry that Boeing would build satellites for Apple, but that company decided not to pursue such a system. That left Boeing as a builder of satellites without an operator.
It is not clear why Boeing is petitioning the FCC now, before the commission granted licenses for system operation. For example, three companies have now received permission to offer satellite Internet: OneWeb, Space Norway, and Telesat, and SpaceX will likely soon become the fourth. “The timing of this is weird, at such a risky point in time,” one source said. “I don’t understand why Boeing didn’t just wait until they got their license, and they could sell their business.”
New Maps Reveal Global Fishing’s ‘Vast Scope Of Exploitation Of The Ocean’
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A global map showing where all fishing vessels were active during 2016. Dark circles show the vessels avoiding exclusive economic zones around islands, where they aren’t allowed.
Global Fishing Watch
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Global Fishing Watch
A global map showing where all fishing vessels were active during 2016. Dark circles show the vessels avoiding exclusive economic zones around islands, where they aren’t allowed.
Global Fishing Watch
The fishing industry has long been hard to monitor. Its global footprint is difficult even to visualize. Much fishing takes place unobserved, far from land, and once the boats move on, they leave behind few visible traces of their activity.
But this week, the journal Sciencepublished some remarkable maps that help fill that gap. John Amos, president of an organization called SkyTruth, which helped produce them, issued a statement calling the maps “a stunning illustration of the vast scope of exploitation of the ocean.”
SkyTruth and its collaborators tracked most of the world’s fishing vessels through an entire year by monitoring radio transmissions that most vessels now emit automatically in order to avoid collisions with each other. The researchers were able to distinguish between different kinds of vessels — trawlers that drag nets behind them, for instance, versus vessels that deploy drifting “longlines” that are often used to catch tuna.
This map shows fishing by trawlers, which drag fishing nets behind them. They dominate fishing in coastal areas, such as fisheries near Europe and China.
Global Fishing Watch
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Global Fishing Watch
The maps show the most intense fishing activity along the coasts of heavily populated areas like Europe and southern China. But fishing also covered much of the high seas. According to the researchers, commercial fishing operations covered at last 55 percent of the world’s oceans. That area, it calculates, is four times larger than the area devoted to agriculture on land.
The researchers also were able to distinguish between fishing vessels from different countries. According to the study, five countries — China, Spain, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea — accounted for 85 percent of all high-seas fishing.
This map shows activity of fishing vessels that use drifting longlines. They roamed the high seas, especially in tropical latitudes.
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Global Fishing Watch
In addition to SkyTruth, researchers from Global Fishing Watch, the National Geographic Society’s Pristine Seas project, University of California Santa Barbara, Dalhousie University, Google, and Stanford University collaborated on the study.
PHOTOS: Myanmar Apparently Razing Remains Of Rohingya Villages
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For the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who have fled Myanmar and what authorities describe as a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing, the prospect of returning to their home villages might be more than just daunting. As satellite photographs show, a return home might be simply impossible.
The images released by DigitalGlobe reveal what appears to be a systematic bulldozing operation by Myanmar authorities, with the remains of dozens of predominantly Rohingya villages razed to the ground in a matter of months.
This composite image shows two satellite photographs of the same predominantly Rohingya village, Myar Zin, taken two months apart. The image on the left shows the village as it was on Dec. 2, and the one on the right shows it on Feb. 5, apparently leveled by Myanmar authorities in the intervening span.
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DigitalGlobe via AP
This composite image shows two satellite photographs of the same predominantly Rohingya village, Myar Zin, taken two months apart. The image on the left shows the village as it was on Dec. 2, and the one on the right shows it on Feb. 5, apparently leveled by Myanmar authorities in the intervening span.
DigitalGlobe via AP
“Many of these villages were scenes of atrocities against Rohingya and should be preserved so that the experts appointed by the UN to document these abuses can properly evaluate the evidence to identify those responsible,” Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement released Friday.
The international human rights organization said at least 55 villages have been leveled and stripped of all their buildings, plant life and distinguishing features since last November. Most of these villages had already been at least partially burned to the ground since August, when Myanmar’s crackdown against the stateless minority population erupted in response to an attack by Rohingya insurgents.
Since then, some 688,000 Rohingya have escaped Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh, where they live in massive makeshift camps bearing horrific accounts of widespread murder, rape and torture conducted by Myanmar’s military. Earlier this month, The Associated Press reported evidence of at least five mass graves at just one location; others, including two Reuters reporters who were arrested by Myanmar officials, have also reported evidence mass graves in Rakhine state, where most of the atrocities have been reported.
Adams said Friday the bulldozing operation apparently underway there is tantamount to a cover-up destroying dozens of crime scenes.
The operation not only “threatens to erase both the memory and the legal claims of the Rohingya who lived there,” he said. “Deliberately demolishing villages to destroy evidence of grave crimes is obstruction of justice.”
As diplomats head back to Sittwe, we fly over many more bulldozed villages…with so many lives to rebuild. Goodnight + tx for following. pic.twitter.com/FoM5BQnTdN
Myanmar’s government, for its part, says the Rohingya — whom it calls “Bengalis” — burned their own homes as they left their villages. Officials say their activities in Rakhine state are related to rebuilding efforts, conducted partly with the intention of repatriating the Rohingya refugees who escaped to Bangladesh.
Authorities are “making continuous and unremitting efforts” to support “the socioeconomic development and creation of employment opportunities in Rakhine State” and enable the closure of the region’s internally displaced person camps, the government said in a lengthy statement about the construction project posted earlier this week.
The AP reported some reasons to doubt the assertion that construction efforts were intended to help the Rohingya, who “fear authorities are seizing land they’ve lived on for generations.” Of the 787 houses planned in the effort, the news service says, only 22 have been reserved for the Rohingya.
On the left, a satellite image of the village of Thit Tone Nar Gwa Son on Dec. 2; on the right, the same village seen from space earlier this week. Human rights advocates say the government is destroying what amounts to scores of crime scenes before any credible investigation takes place.
DigitalGlobe via AP
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DigitalGlobe via AP
On the left, a satellite image of the village of Thit Tone Nar Gwa Son on Dec. 2; on the right, the same village seen from space earlier this week. Human rights advocates say the government is destroying what amounts to scores of crime scenes before any credible investigation takes place.
DigitalGlobe via AP
“Let me be clear. Conditions are not yet conducive to the voluntary repatriation of Rohingya refugees,” Grandi told members of the Security Council. “The causes of their flight have not been addressed, and we have yet to see substantive progress on addressing the exclusion and denial of rights that has deepened over the last decades, rooted in their lack of citizenship.”
The refugees want to return, Grandi said, so long as their protection and freedom of movement are assured. But as satellite images continue to filter out, showing their homes leveled and their farms bare of crops, it is unclear now just what it is they will be returning to.
“All the memories that I had there are gone,” one 18-year-old refugee told the AP. “They’ve been erased.”