Link Roundup November 2018

US Supreme Court allows historic kids’ climate lawsuit to go forward

The plaintiffs, who include 21 people ranging in age from 11 to 22, allege that the government has violated their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property by failing to prevent dangerous climate change. They are asking the district court to order the federal government to prepare a plan that will ensure the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere falls below 350 parts per million by 2100, down from an average of 405 parts per million in 2017. By contrast, the US Department of Justice argues that “there is no right to ‘a climate system capable of sustaining human life’” — as the Juliana plaintiffs assert.

Far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro elected president of Brazil

He has reportedly advocated for restoring "traditional" Brazilian values, a term some Brazilians have interpreted as support for returning to a dictatorship. He has thrown his support behind torture and mass killings by government forces and has spoken fondly of the country's military dictatorship that lasted from 1964 to 1985.

The New Science of Seeing Around Corners

Research on seeing around corners and inferring information that’s not directly visible, called “non-line-of-sight imaging,” took off in 2012 with Torralba and Freeman’s accidental-camera paper and another watershed paper by a separate group at MIT led by Ramesh Raskar. In 2016, partly on the strength of those results, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched the $27 million REVEAL program (for “Revolutionary Enhancement of Visibility by Exploiting Active Light-fields”), providing funding to a number of nascent labs around the country.

Native American Mashpee tribe turns to Congress in land dispute

Former President Barack Obama's administration took the land of the Mashpee into trust in 2015, giving the tribe jurisdiction over the reservation, which is located in Massachusetts. Less than a year later, a judge ruled that the Obama administration had acted outside of its remit in entrusting the reservation to the federal government.

You Snooze, You Lose: Insurers Make The Old Adage Literally True

Medicare, the government insurance program for seniors and the disabled, began requiring CPAP “compliance” after a boom in demand. Because of the discomfort of wearing a mask, hooked up to a noisy machine, many patients struggle to adapt to nightly use. Between 2001 and 2009, Medicare payments for individual sleep studies almost quadrupled to $235 million. Many of those studies led to a CPAP prescription. Under Medicare rules, patients must use the CPAP for four hours a night for at least 70 percent of the nights in any 30-day period within three months of getting the device. Medicare requires doctors to document the adherence and effectiveness of the therapy. Sleep apnea experts deemed Medicare’s requirements arbitrary. But private insurers soon adopted similar rules, verifying usage with data from patients’ machines — with or without their knowledge.

Dems say they'll vote 'no' on their 'Abolish ICE' legislation

A group of Democrats who introduced legislation to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said they will vote against the measure if GOP leadership follows through with their vow to bring it to the House floor. Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) released a statement Thursday accusing GOP leaders of exploiting the legislation for political gain after leadership confirmed it planned to hold a vote. While the Democratic lawmakers said they plan to vote against their own measure – which would create a commission to examine ICE’s responsibilities and then recommend transferring them to other agencies – they said they welcome the opportunity for debate.

How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet

Ken Croasdale, a senior researcher for the company’s Canadian subsidiary, led a team that investigated the positive and negative effects of warming on Exxon’s Arctic operations. In 1991, he found that greenhouse gases were rising due to the burning of fossil fuels. “Nobody disputes this fact,” he said. The following year, he wrote that “global warming can only help lower exploration and development costs” in the Beaufort Sea. Drilling season in the Arctic, he correctly predicted, would increase from two months to as many as five months. At the same time, he said, the rise in the sea level could threaten onshore infrastructure and create bigger waves that would damage offshore drilling structures. Thawing permafrost could make the earth buckle and slide under buildings and pipelines. As a result of these findings, Exxon and other major oil companies began laying plans to move into the Arctic, and started to build their new drilling platforms with higher decks, to compensate for the anticipated rises in sea level.

Chinese researcher claims first gene-edited babies

The use of that embryo suggests that the researchers’ “main emphasis was on testing editing rather than avoiding this disease,” Church said. Even if editing worked perfectly, people without normal CCR5 genes face higher risks of getting certain other viruses, such as West Nile, and of dying from the flu. Since there are many ways to prevent HIV infection and it’s very treatable if it occurs, those other medical risks are a concern, Musunuru said.

Amid uproar, Chinese scientist defends creating gene-edited babies

He is an expert in DNA sequencing, a technique he used to assess whether CRISPR caused unintended genetic changes. He found one off-target edit in an embryo before it was implanted, he said, but considered it unlikely to affect any biological function; when the parents deemed that an acceptable glitch, “the couple elected to implant this embryo to start a two-embryo pregnancy,” He said. He added that sequencing done after the births didn’t confirm the off-target edit. Another glitch was that only some of the cells of the early-stage embryo were successfully edited; others retained their original CCR5 gene, meaning they might in fact not be protected against HIV. Again, He said the parents accepted that “mosaicism” and said they wanted the embryo implanted. Finally, one edit resulted in a CCR5 protein missing five amino acids. It’s not clear if that’s serious enough to disable the receptor and thus prevent HIV infection, Liu said.

Trump denies tear gas was used on child migrants despite pictures, video

On Monday morning, the President tweeted that the US "will close the Border permanently if need be."

Singing ‘Amazing Grace,’ a church surrounded an ICE van to stop an arrest. 27 were jailed.

It was supposed to be routine, just a fingerprint — a step on the road to a deportation reprieve. Oliver-Bruno, a 47-year-old father to a U.S.-citizen son, had been living in a Sunday-school classroom in the church basement for the past 11 months, a refuge where immigration authorities couldn’t arrest him. His appointment with USCIS would mark the first time he stepped beyond the church property line since then, and what seemed like half his church went with him because, May said, “we don’t really believe that sanctuary is just a building.”...Two minutes later, they traded the singing for screaming. “No! They’re arresting him!” one woman yelled.

How bosses are (literally) like dictators

Why are workers subject to private government? The state has set the default terms of the constitution of workplace government through its employment laws. The most important source of employers’ power is the default rule of employment at will. Unless the parties have otherwise agreed, employers are free to fire workers for almost any or no reason. This amounts to an effective grant of power to employers to rule the lives of their employees in almost any respect — not just on the job but off duty as well. And they have exercised that power. Scotts, the lawn care company, fired an employee for smoking off duty. After Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) notified Lakeland Bank that an employee had complained he wasn’t holding town hall meetings, the bank intimidated her into resigning. San Diego Christian College fired a teacher for having premarital sex — and hired her fiancé to fill her post. Bosses are dictators, and workers are their subjects.