Latin leaders accommodating
but wary of NSA with Kerry


John Kerry made his first trip to South America as U.S. secretary of State this week. His goal was to boost ties while he sought to temper concern about U.S. surveillance activities in the region. Details leaked by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden have complicated U.S. relationships in Latin America and beyond.

Kerry's first stop was Colombia.

After a show of support for the nation's war wounded, Kerry and Colombian Foreign Minister María Holguin pledged cooperation and understanding even on the issue of spying.
 
“This was, in fact, a very small part of the overall conversation, and one in which I am confident that I was able to explain thoroughly, precisely, how this has received the support of all three branches of our government," said Kerry.
 
Holguin said her country got the necessary assurances from the U.S. about its reported monitoring of phone calls and emails in Latin America.
 
But Kerry faced a bigger test in Brazil, where Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota warned of a loss of trust if U.S. explanations about its surveillance programs are not satisfactory.

"We need to stop practices that violate sovereignty and the relationships of trust between states and violations of individual freedoms which our countries praise so much," said Patriota.
 
Carl Meacham, Americas director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says for Brazil, China, Russia and other countries,  that stance is hypocritical.
 
“All of these countries are involved in intelligence gathering to protect their interests, to advance their interests and to get an edge on competitors," said Meacham.
 
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf says the administration will continue discussing with foreign partners the issues raised by the disclosures of fSnowden. But, she says, that shouldn't overshadow the work the U.S. needs to do with those nations.
 
“It shouldn’t detract from the broad bilateral relationships we have around the world with a variety of countries that we work with both on security cooperation, but a host of other issues as well," said Ms. Harf.
 
It's a goal that will be tested when Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff travels to Washington in October on a state visit, the only such visit of a foreign head of state this year.


Manning's actions bizarre,
his defense team claims


Lawyers for Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier convicted of giving classified documents to WikiLeaks, sought to show during a sentencing hearing Tuesday that the Army ignored his mental health problems and bizarre behavior.

Manning's violent outbursts and his emailing a supervisor a photo of himself in a dress and blond wig with the caption “This is my problem” were signs the gay soldier should not have a job as an intelligence analyst, defense attorney David Coombs told the court-martial.

Manning, a 25-year-old private first class, faces up to 90 years in prison after being convicted July 30 on 20 charges, including espionage and theft, in the biggest release of classified files in U.S. history.

Attorneys for Manning are expected to read a statement from him Wednesday as they conclude their case in the last part of the trial. Sentencing by the judge, Col. Denise Lind, could follow shortly after.

Manning's court-martial has drawn international scrutiny, and the trove of documents he provided catapulted WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, into the spotlight.

Coombs asked Manning's supervisor, former Master Sergeant Paul Adkins, why he did not remove Manning from his job as an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2009 and 2010 when he showed erratic and sometimes violent behavior.

Coombs mentioned incidents in which Manning punched a soldier in the face, carved the words “I want” into a chair with a knife and flipped over a table while being reprimanded about being late to his job.

Adkins said his unit was short-staffed and needed Manning's analysis work.

“The biggest threat to our soldiers and our operational environment emerged from the Shia insurgent group, which PFC Manning helped to assess,” said Adkins, who was demoted after the WikiLeaks release.

He said he believed Manning was being helped by mental therapy. “I wrongly assessed that he was stable enough to continue his shift,” said Adkins.

Coombs has asserted that the Army's failure to act on  Manning's mental health problems contributed to his release of more than 700,000 secret diplomatic and military documents and videos.

Under questioning from the prosecutor Capt. Angel Overgaard, Adkins said Manning was among several soldiers in his unit who underwent psychological counseling for stress in Iraq.

Chief Warrant Officer Joshua Ehresman said that in a December 2009 incident Manning turned over a table with two computers on it while being reprimanded for tardiness.

“I felt as though he was going toward the weapons rack,” Ehresman said. “I grabbed him and put him in a full nelson and put him on the bench.”

Defense lawyers have sought to portray Manning as naive but well-intentioned and struggling with his sexual identity when he arrived in Iraq. His lawyers have said Manning wanted to show Americans the human cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The prosecution has portrayed Manning as arrogant in releasing the classified material and has tried to show damage that the leaks to WikiLeaks, a pro-transparency Web site, had done to the United States.

Judge Lind overruled three of five defense objections to classified information presented during court sessions that were closed to the public and media.

The judge did not reveal the information, but said it was proper aggravation evidence of the damage the releases did to U.S. foreign relations. She upheld the other two objections, saying the information presented by military officials was speculative.

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A company in New Zealand is now one step closer to making the jet pack, a long-time staple of science fiction stories, a travel reality.

The Martin Aircraft Co., based in Christchurch, says it has been given approval by New Zealand's Civil Aviation Authority to conduct test flights for its prototype jetpack. The company says the personal aircraft can fly higher than a kilometer and travel at speeds of 112 kilometers per hour.

The company already has conducted remote-controlled unmanned flight tests of the pack. They hope to have the aircraft commercially available sometime next year.

Martin Aircraft intends to initially market the jetpacks for emergency and defense use, while continuing to develop a lighter recreational version.

They say they have had more than 10,000 inquiries about purchasing the jet pack, which they intend to sell for about $150,000.
 

U.S. Senate committee seeks
more info on virtual currencies


A powerful U.S. Senate Committee has started an inquiry into Bitcoin and other virtual currencies, asking a range of regulators to list what safeguards are in place to prevent criminal activity.

In an Aug. 12 letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs also said it had started interviewing people about the risks and promises of virtual currencies.

Virtual currencies “can be sent nearly anonymously, leaving little or no trail for regulators or enforcement agencies,” said the letter, which was signed by the committee's chairman, Tom Carper, a Democrat from Delaware, and ranking member Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican.

“Their near anonymous and decentralized nature has also attracted criminals who value few things more than being allowed to operate in the shadows,” the senators wrote.

Identical letters were sent to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a spokeswoman for the committee said.

The senators had asked these agencies to list any policies or procedures in place to regulate virtual currencies, any information on how they were cooperating with other agencies and any other initiatives in the area.

The Senate committee had been interviewing individuals inside and outside of government on the threats and risks related to virtual currencies, the letter added.

The lawmakers' interest comes among increased scrutiny of virtual currencies, electronic money that can be passed between parties without traditional banking or money transfer systems, of which Bitcoin is the most prominent one.

This week, a memo showed that New York's top banking regulator Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, is considering issuing guidelines to regulate virtual currencies.

The virtual currency industry also has been the subject of enforcement actions and other attempts to crack down on potential wrongdoing.

In May, U.S. prosecutors filed an indictment against the digital currency exchange Liberty Reserve, accusing the Costa Rica-based company of helping criminals around the world to launder more than $6 billion in illicit funds.

Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, the world's largest exchanger of U.S. dollars with Bitcoins, had two accounts held by its U.S. subsidiary seized this year by agents from the Department of Homeland Security on the grounds that it was operating a money transmitting business without a license.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation last year reported Bitcoin was used by criminals to move money around the world, and the U.S. Treasury in March said that digital currency firms were required to stick to anti-money laundering rules.


Induced labor correlates
with increased autism risk


Women who undergo induced or augmented labor during childbirth may increase the risk their baby will be autistic, according to a new study. The risk may even be higher if the baby is a male.

“Inducing or augmenting labor has been previously suggested as a contributing factor to autism development,” said the study’s lead author, Simon G. Gregory, associate professor of medicine and medical genetics at Duke University. “However, these studies produced conflicting results and consisted of a relatively small number of subjects. Our study is by far the largest one of its kind to look at the association between autism and induction or augmentation.”

Researchers at the University of Michigan and Duke University, looked at records of all births in North Carolina over an eight-year period and matched 625,042 births with corresponding public school records, which indicated whether children were diagnosed with autism.

Approximately 1.3 percent of male children and 0.4 percent of female children had autism diagnoses. In both male and female children, the percentage of mothers who had induced or augmented labor was higher among children with autism compared with those who did not have autism.

Autism is a developmental disability that can cause social, communication and behavioral difficulties. It affects approximately one in 88 children in the United States.

Gregory said the increased risk associated with induced labor is similar to other known autism risk factors, including a mother being older or a baby being born before 34 weeks of gestation. Additional analysis suggests that not inducing labor might eliminate two in every 1,000 autism cases among male children born to mothers who underwent induced labor.

The latest government data suggest one in five U.S. women have labor induced, twice as many as in 1990. Induced labor is stimulating contractions before the onset of spontaneous labor and has been shown to prevent complications, including stillbirth.

“The findings of this study must be balanced with the fact that there are clear benefits associated with induction and augmentation of labor,” said study co-author Chad A. Grotegut, assistant professor of obstetrics/gynecology at Duke University Medicine. “Labor induction, especially for women with post-date pregnancies or medical conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure, has remarkably decreased the chance of stillbirth.”

Researchers caution that the study “does not prove cause and effect,” but that the results call for more study of the relationship between induced labor and autism.

For example, the researchers noted that some information that could have benefitted their analyses was not available, including detailed data on the children’s autism diagnoses. No information was available on the severity of autism, nor were records available for children diagnosed with autism who did not attend a public school.

The researchers also did not have access to the full maternal or child medical records, which would provide more detailed information on the pregnancy and events of labor and delivery.

“The scientific community has long looked for environmental contributors to the rising rates of autism in the United States,” said Marie Lynn Miranda, senior author of the paper and a professor in both Environmental Informatics and Pediatrics at the University of Michigan. “This study provides preliminary evidence of an association between autism and labor induction/augmentation, especially among male children.”

The findings were published this week in JAMA Pediatrics.

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One credit card transfers funds to a second card using ambient backscatter.



University of Washington engineers have created a new wireless communication system that allows devices to interact with each other without relying on batteries or wires for power.

Using ambient backscatter, these devices can interact with users and communicate with each other without using batteries. They exchange information by reflecting or absorbing pre-existing radio signals.

The new communication technique, which the researchers call ambient backscatter, takes advantage of the TV and cellular transmissions that already surround most areas around the clock. Two devices communicate with each other by reflecting the existing signals to exchange information. The researchers built small, battery-free devices with antennas that can detect, harness and reflect a TV signal, which then is picked up by other similar devices.

The technology could enable a network of devices and sensors to communicate with no power source or human attention needed.

“We can repurpose wireless signals that are already around us into both a source of power and a communication medium,” said lead researcher Shyam Gollakota, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering. “It’s hopefully going to have applications in a number of areas including wearable computing, smart homes and self-sustaining sensor networks.”

The researchers published their results at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Data Communication 2013 conference in Hong Kong, which began Monday. They have received the conference’s best-paper award for their research.

“Our devices form a network out of thin air,” said co-author Joshua Smith, an associate professor of computer science and engineering and of electrical engineering. “You can reflect these signals slightly to create a morse code of communication between battery-free devices.”

Everyday objects could be enabled with battery-free tags to communicate with each other. A couch could use ambient backscatter to let the user know where keys were left.

Smart sensors could be built and placed permanently inside nearly any structure, then set to communicate with each other. For example, sensors placed in a bridge could monitor the health of the concrete and steel, then send an alert if one of the sensors picks up a hairline crack. The technology can also be used for communication – text messages and emails, for example – in wearable devices, without requiring battery consumption.

The researchers tested the ambient backscatter technique with credit card-sized prototype devices placed within several feet of each other. For each device the researchers built antennas into ordinary circuit boards that flash an LED light when receiving a communication signal from another device.

Groups of the devices were tested in a variety of settings in the Seattle area, including inside an apartment building, on a street corner and on the top level of a parking garage. These locations ranged from less than half a mile away from a TV tower to about 6.5 miles away.

Researchers found that the devices were able to communicate with each other, even the ones farthest from a TV tower. The receiving devices picked up a signal from their transmitting counterparts at a rate of 1 kilobit per second when up to 2.5 feet apart outdoors and 1.5 feet apart indoors. This is enough to send information such as a sensor reading, text messages and contact information.

It’s also feasible to build this technology into devices that do rely on batteries, such as smartphones. It could be configured so that when the battery dies, the phone could still send text messages by leveraging power from an ambient TV signal.

The applications are endless, the researchers say, and they plan to continue advancing the capacity and range of the ambient backscatter communication network.


Mediterranean diet halts
certain strokes, study says 


A gene variant strongly associated with development of type 2 diabetes appears to interact with a Mediterranean diet pattern to prevent stroke, report researchers from the Jean Mayer Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University and from the CIBER Fisiopatología de la Obesidad y Nutriciόn in Spain. Their results, published online in Diabetes Care, are a significant advance for nutrigenomics, the study of the linkages between nutrition and gene function and their impact on human health, particularly chronic disease risk.

The researchers set out to investigate whether genetics contribute to the cardiovascular benefits seen in the  Prevencion con Dieta Mediterranea trial. Based in Spain, the randomized, controlled trial enrolled more than 7,000 men and women assigned to either a Mediterranean or low-fat control diet and monitored them for cardiovascular disease, stroke and heart attack for almost five years.

“Our study is the first to identify a gene-diet interaction affecting stroke in a nutrition intervention trial carried out over a number of years in thousands of men and women,” said senior author José  M. Ordovás, director of the Nutrition and Genomics  Laboratory at Tufts University. “The PREDIMED study design provides us with stronger results than we have ever had before. With the ability to analyze the relationship between diet, genetics and life-threatening cardiac events, we can begin to think seriously about developing genetic tests to identify people who may reduce their risk for chronic disease, or even prevent it, by making meaningful changes to the way they eat.”

Led by Ordovás, the researchers focused on a variant in the Transcription Factor 7-Like 2 (TCF7L2) gene, which has been implicated in glucose metabolism but its relationship to cardiovascular disease risk has been uncertain. About 14 percent of the PREDIMED participants were homozygous carriers, meaning  they  carried two copies of the gene variant and had an increased risk of disease.

“Being on the Mediterranean diet reduced the number of strokes in people with two copies of the variant. The food they ate appeared to eliminate any increased stroke susceptibility, putting put them on an even playing field with people with one or no copies of the variant,” explained Ordovás, “The results were quite different in the control group following the low-fat control diet, where homozygous carriers were almost three times as likely to have a stroke compared to people with one or no copies of the gene variant .”

The Mediterranean diet features olive oil, fish, complex carbohydrates and nuts.

The results of the study were not significantly changed by adjusting for variables that could have affected the findings, including type 2 diabetes, body mass index  and heart and diabetes medications. The authors note more studies are needed to determine what mechanism may be involved in the interaction they observed.