Latest News Clips 2017.10.16

                      

1.          2017 Nobel Prize in Medicine Goes to 3 Americans for Body Clock Studies

The New York Times  OCT. 2, 2017

The three scientists used fruit flies to isolate a gene that controls the rhythm of a living organism’s daily life. Dr. Hall, Dr. Rosbash and Dr. Young were “able to peek inside our biological clock,” helping “explain how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronized with the Earth’s revolutions,” the Nobel Prize committee said.

By examining the internal workings of fruit flies, the investigators helped determine that the gene they were analyzing encoded a protein that accumulated in cells at night, and then degraded during the day.

Using fruit flies as a model organism, this year’s Nobel Laureates isolated a gene that controls the daily biological rhythm.

Why Is the Work Important?

Over decades of research, these scientists identified the mechanisms governing the clockwork inside the cell, shedding light on the biology of humans and other multicellular organisms whose biological clocks function on the same principles.

 “With exquisite precision, our inner clock adapts our physiology to the dramatically different phases of the day,” committee members noted. “The clock regulates critical functions such as behavior, hormone levels, sleep, body temperature and metabolism.”

The researchers studied fruit flies in which a gene called period seemed to control circadian rhythm; when it was mutated, the insects lost that rhythm.

But what was period, and how did it work? The questions were relevant not just to flies: All organisms, including humans, operate on 24-hour rhythms that control not only sleep and wakefulness but also physiology generally, including blood pressure and heart rate, alertness, body temperature and reaction time.

In 1984, the scientists isolated the period gene and discovered that cells use it to make a protein that builds up at night, during sleep. In daytime, the protein degrades in accordance with the insects’ sleep-wake cycle.

The researchers believed that this protein, which they called PER, somehow blocked the period gene during the day. As PER was broken down in daytime, the gene regained its function and worked again the next night, directing the synthesis of PER.

The entire system turned out to involve several other proteins needed to control the accumulation of PER. These include one that attaches to PER, helping to block the period gene, and another that slows the buildup of the protein.

Continuing to investigate this biological system over the years, the scientists went on to discover still other components, notably one that allows light to influence the 24-hour rhythm.

Their work was pivotal, the Nobel committee said, because the misalignment between a person’s lifestyle and the rhythm dictated by an inner timekeeper — jet lag after a trans-Atlantic flight, for example — could affect well-being and over time could contribute to the risks for various diseases.

2.      Kobe Steel’s Falsified Data Is Another Blow to Japan’s Reputation

The New York Times   OCT. 10, 2017

A Nissan Motor Corporation assembly line in Yokohama, Japan, in August. Nissan and other Japanese automakers said they would investigate whether they would be impacted by Kobe Steel’s disclosure that some employees had falsified inspection certificates. CreditShizuo Kambayashi/Associated Press

TOKYO — Big manufacturers of cars, aircraft and bullet trains have long relied on Kobe Steel to provide raw materials for their products, making the steel maker a crucial, if largely invisible, pillar of the Japanese economy.

Now, Kobe Steel has acknowledged falsifying data about the quality of aluminum and copper it sold, setting off a scandal that is reverberating through the global supply chain and casting a new shadow over the country’s reputation for precision manufacturing.

The fallout has the potential to spread to hundreds of companies. Big multinationals, including automakers like Toyota Motor, General Motors and Ford, as well as aircraft manufacturers like Boeing and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, are investigating.

The companies are trying to determine if substandard materials were used in their products and, if so, whether they present safety hazards. It is a daunting task, since multinationals source from various suppliers and producers.

The scandal hits a tender spot for Japan. The country relies on its reputation for quality manufacturing as a selling point over China and other countries that offer cheaper alternatives. But its reputation has been marred by a series of problems at some of Japan’s biggest manufacturers.

Last week, Nissan Motor said unqualified staff members had carried out inspections at its factories, prompting the carmaker to recall 1.2 million vehicles, though it was not clear if the quality of the vehicles had been affected. Mitsubishi Motors and Suzuki Motor both admitted last year that they had been exaggerating the fuel economy of their vehicles by cheating on tests.

Perhaps the biggest blow to Japan’s reputation for quality has come from Takata, the airbag maker that was at the center of the largest auto safety recall in history, involving tens of millions of vehicles. Its faulty airbags have been blamed for more than a dozen deaths. Takata declared bankruptcy in June.

Toshiaki Oguchi, director of Governance for Owners Japan, a corporate watchdog, said that Japanese companies were generally diligent about quality, but that when cheating occurred — because of competitive pressure or other factors — it could too easily go unchecked. Japanese companies, he said, tend to discourage thorough examination or criticism, either from employees or from independent outsiders.

“When something goes wrong, companies always hire a committee of outsiders to examine what happened,” Mr. Oguchi said. “But why not be proactive? Why not have people reviewing procedures all the time?”

The extent of the problems at Kobe Steel are still unfolding.

Kobe Steel said on Sunday that employees at four of its factories had altered inspection certificates on aluminum and copper products from September 2016 to August this year. The changes, it said, made it look as if the products met manufacturing specifications required by customers — including for vital qualities like tensile strength, a measure of material’s ability to withstand a load without breaking when being stretched — when they did not.

On Wednesday, the company said it was investigating possible data falsification involving another product, powdered steel, which is used mostly to make gears. The company said the powdered steel it was examining had been sold to one customer it did not name.

Kobe Steel added that it was examining other possible episodes of data falsification going back 10 years. The company did not provide significant details on the discrepancies, making it difficult to immediately determine if they posed a safety threat. No deaths or safety incidents have been attributed to Kobe Steel.

The company’s share price dropped sharply on Tuesday, the first day of trading after a holiday, and as of Wednesday morning in Tokyo had lost about one-third of its value since last week.

“The falsification problem has become an issue that could destroy international faith in Japanese manufacturing,” the Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei said in an article on Tuesday.

3.      A Burst of Gunfire, a Pause, Then Carnage in Las Vegas That Would Not Stop

The New York Times   OCT. 2, 2017

What happened at the concert venue

Mass Shooting in Las Vegas

Dozens of people were killed and hundreds injured when a gunman opened fire at a country music festival near the Mandalay Bay casino.

LAS VEGAS — At first, it sounded like fireworks — a loud, crackling noise. Then the awful realization began to spread, unevenly, through the huge crowd.

It dawned on people when they heard screams, when they saw bloodied victims collapse around them, or when others stampeded for the exits, trampling some of the people in their way.

Many of the terrified concertgoers followed their instincts and crouched or lay flat, not realizing that they remained exposed to a gunman lodged high above them. Others surged into surrounding streets and buildings, leaving behind debris lost in the panic — drink cups, shoes, and cellphones that kept ringing for hours, as relatives and friends tried to reach their loved ones and find out if they were safe.

By sunrise on Monday, the staggering toll at an outdoor country music festival on a cool desert night was becoming clear: at least 59 people killed, the police said, and 527 injured, either by gunfire or in the flight to safety.

A lone gunman perched on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino had smashed the windows of his suite with a hammer, taken aim at a crowd of 22,000 people, and committed one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history. Late on Monday, law enforcement officials said they still had no idea what the motive was.

The police said they found 23 firearms in his suite. And when they searched the attacker’s house, they discovered an additional 19 firearms and, according to Sheriff Joseph Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, “some explosives, and several thousand rounds of ammo.” He added that they also found ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer sometimes used in making bombs, in the gunman’s car.

The sheriff said some rifles found in the hotel room may have been modified to make them fully automatic. Automatic rifles, which fire multiple rounds with a squeeze of a trigger, are highly regulated, and on videos posted online by witnesses, the rapid-fire sound indicated that at least one weapon was fully automatic.

Down below at the Route 91 Harvest Festival, Melissa Ayala, 41, was drinking and laughing with four friends from California when they heard the gunfire, which at first they thought was fireworks. Then a man near her fell with a bullet wound to his neck. “There was blood pouring everywhere,” she said.

And then: “It was just total chaos,” she said. “People falling down and laying everywhere. We were trying to take cover and we had no idea where to go.”

The police identified the gunman as Stephen Paddock, 64, a retiree with no significant criminal history, who liked to gamble and seemed to live a quiet life with his girlfriend in Mesquite, Nev., about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas. He shot himself to death before the police entered his room.

  1,516 mass shootings in 1,735 days: America's gun crisis – in one chart

The attack at a country music festival in Las Vegas that left at least 58 people dead is the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history – but there were six other mass shootings in America this past week alone.

No other developed nation comes close to the rate of gun violence in America. Americans own an estimated 265m guns, more than one gun for every adult.

Data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive reveals a shocking human toll: there is a mass shooting – defined as four or more people shot in one incident, not including the shooter – every nine out of 10 days on average.