Scientists use Doppler to peer inside cells

Process leads to Scientists use Doppler to peer inside cells, leading to better, faster diagnoses and treatments of infection

PURDUE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: DAVID NOLTE WORKS WITH THE DOPPLER APPARATUS TO PEER INSIDE LIVING CELLS, GIVING HIM INSIGHT INTO INTRACELLULAR ACTIVITY, METABOLISM, AND PATHOGENICITY view more 

CREDIT: PURDUE UNIVERSITY PHOTO/REBECCA MCELHOE

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Doppler radar improves lives by peeking inside air masses to predict the weather. A Purdue University team is using similar technology to look inside living cells, introducing a method to detect pathogens and treat infections in ways that scientists never have before.

In a new study, the team used Doppler to sneak a peek inside cells and track their metabolic activity in real time, without having to wait for cultures to grow. Using this ability, the researchers can test microbes found in food, water, and other environments to see if they are pathogens, or help them identify the right medicine to treat antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

David Nolte, Purdue's Edward M. Purcell Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy; John Turek, professor of basic medical sciences; Eduardo Ximenes, research scientist in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering; and Michael Ladisch, Distinguished Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, adapted this technique from their previous study on cancer cells in a paper released this month in Communications Biology.

Using funding from the National Science Foundation as well as Purdue's Discovery Park Big Idea Challenge, the team worked with immortalized cell lines -- cells that will live forever unless you kill them. They exposed the cells to different known pathogens, in this case salmonella and E. coli. They then used the Doppler effect to spy out how the cells reacted. These living cells are called "sentinels," and observing their reactions is called a biodynamic assay.

"First we did biodynamic imaging applied to cancer, and now we're applying it to other kinds cells," Nolte said. "This research is unique. No one else is doing anything like it. That's why it's so intriguing."

This strategy is broadly applicable when scientists have isolated an unknown microbe and want to know if it is pathogenic -- harmful to living tissues -- or not. Such cells may show up in food supply, water sources or even in recently melted glaciers.

"This directly measures whether a cell is pathogenic," Ladisch said. "If the cells are not pathogenic, the Doppler signal doesn't change. If they are, the Doppler signal changes quite significantly. Then you can use other methods to identify what the pathogen is. This is a quick way to tell friend from foe."

Being able to quickly discern whether a cell is harmful is incredibly helpful in situations where people encounter a living unknown microorganism, allowing scientists to know what precautions to take. Once it is known that a microbe is harmful, they can begin established protocols that allow them to determine the specific identity of the cell and determine an effective antibiotic against the microorganism.

Another benefit is the ability to quickly and directly diagnose which bacteria respond to which antibiotics. Antibiotic resistance can be a devastating problem in hospitals and other environments where individuals with already compromised bodies and immune systems may be exposed to and infected by increasingly high amounts of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Sometimes this results in a potentially fatal condition called bacterial sepsis, or septicemia. This is different from the viral sepsis that has been discussed in connection with COVID-19, though the scientists say their next steps will include investigating viral sepsis.

Treating sepsis is challenging. Giving the patient broad-spectrum antibiotics, which sounds like a good idea, might not help and could make the situation worse for the next patient. Letting bacteria come into close contact with antibiotics that do not kill them only makes them more resistant to that antibiotic and more difficult to fight next time.

Culturing the patient's tissues and homing in on the correct antibiotic to use can take time the patient does not have, usually eight to 10 hours. This new biodynamic process allows scientists to put the patient's bacterial samples in an array of tiny petri dishes containing the tissue sentinels and treat each sample with a different antibiotic. Using Doppler, they can quickly notice which bacterial samples have dramatic metabolic changes. The samples that do are the ones that have reacted to the antibiotic -- the bacteria are dying, being defeated and beaten back by antibiotics.

CAPTION

The team isolated living immortalized cells in multi-well plates to study them with Doppler.

CREDIT

Purdue University photo/Rebecca McElhoe

"When we treat with antibiotics, the bacteria don't have to multiply much before they start to affect the tissue sentinels," Nolte explained. "There are still too few bacteria to see or to measure directly, but they start to affect how the tissues behaves, which we can detect with Doppler."

In less than half the time a traditional culture and diagnosis takes, doctors could tell which antibiotic to administer, bolstering the patient's chances for recovery. The researchers worked closely with the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization to patent and license their technologies. They plan to further explore whether this method would work for tissue samples exposed to nonliving pathogenic cells or dried spores, and to test for and treat viral sepsis.

CAPTION

The Doppler apparatus allows scientists to observe living cells in real time

CREDIT

Purdue University photo/Rebecca McElhoe

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a top public research institution developing practical solutions to today's toughest challenges. Ranked the No. 5 Most Innovative University in the United States by U.S. News & World Report, Purdue delivers world-changing research and out-of-this-world discovery. Committed to hands-on and online, real-world learning, Purdue offers a transformative education to all. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue has frozen tuition and most fees at 2012-13 levels, enabling more students than ever to graduate debt-free. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap at https://purdue.edu/.

ABSTRACT

Doppler imaging detects bacterial infection of living tissue

Honggu Choi, Zhe Li, Zhen Hua, Jessica Zuponcic, Eduardo Ximenes, John J. Turek, Michael R. Ladisch and David D. Nolte

Living 3D in vitro tissue cultures, grown from immortalized cell lines, act as living sentinels as pathogenic bacteria invade the tissue. The infection is reported through changes in the intracellular dynamics of the sentinel cells caused by the disruption of normal cellular function by the infecting bacteria. Here, the Doppler imaging of infected sentinels shows the dynamic characteristics of infections. Invasive Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis and Listeria monocytogenes penetrate through multicellular tumor spheroids, while non-invasive strains of Escherichia coli and Listeria innocua remain isolated outside the cells, generating different Doppler signatures. Phase distributions caused by intracellular transport display Lévy statistics, introducing a Lévy-alpha spectroscopy of bacterial invasion. Antibiotic treatment of infected spheroids, monitored through time-dependent Doppler shifts, can distinguish drug-resistant relative to non-resistant strains. This use of intracellular Doppler spectroscopy of living tissue sentinels opens a new class of microbial assay with potential importance for studying the emergence of antibiotic resistance.

Farmers in developing countries can protect both profits and endangered species

RICE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

HOUSTON - (Feb. 25, 2021) - Low-income livestock farmers in developing countries are often faced with a difficult dilemma: protect their animals from endangered predators, or spare the threatened species at the expense of their livestock and livelihood.

A new paper by Rice University economist Ted Loch-Temzelides examines such circumstances faced by farmers in Pakistan. "Conservation, risk aversion, and livestock insurance: The case of the snow leopard" outlines a plan under which farmers can protect themselves from crippling financial losses while preserving and possibly benefiting from the lives of endangered predators.

"These livestock owners often have very low incomes," Loch-Temzelides said. "The loss of even one animal can be financially devastating. They're faced with the difficult task of weighing conservation efforts against economic losses due to attacks on their herds. And this situation isn't limited to snow leopards -- it applies anywhere large predators live near livestock."

Loch-Temzelides proposes establishing community livestock insurance contracts for farmers in developing countries who don't have access to the types of policies available in more developed nations. Under these contracts, farmers would agree to share the cost of lost animals with other farmers in their community. For example: If one farmer in a community of 10 lost an animal valued at $100, each community member would lose the equivalent of about $10.

By aiding conservation efforts, he added, farmers may stand to reap additional benefits.

"Tourists around the world are willing to pay to see endangered species such as snow leopards in their natural habitats," Loch-Temzelides said. "And revenue from ecotourism can benefit communities and their residents significantly."

While Loch-Temzelides' study focuses on Pakistan, he hopes community livestock insurance can be useful around the world.

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The study will appear in an upcoming edition of the journal Conservation Letters and is available online at

https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/conl.12793.

This news release can be found online at news.rice.edu.

Follow Rice News and Media Relations on Twitter @RiceUNews.

Photo link: https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2021/02/115314887_l.jpg

Photo credit: 123rf.com

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,978 undergraduates and 3,192 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 1 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance.

 

Improving water quality could help conserve insectivorous birds -- study

Scarcity of insect prey in disturbed lakes and streams drives decline of birds

FRONTIERS

Research News

 

A new study shows that a widespread decline in abundance of emergent insects - whose immature stages develop in lakes and streams while the adults live on land - can help to explain the alarming decline in abundance and diversity of aerial insectivorous birds (i.e. preying on flying insects) across the USA. In turn, the decline in emergent insects appears to be driven by human disturbance and pollution of water bodies, especially in streams. This study, published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, is one of the first to find evidence for a causal link between the decline of insectivorous birds, the decline of emergent aquatic insects, and poor water quality.

Human activities, such as urbanization and agriculture, have adverse effects on aquatic ecosystems. In the US, 46% of streams are in poor condition, while 57% of lakes suffer from strong human disturbance. The immature stages of aquatic insects, especially stoneflies, mayflies and caddisflies, are known to be highly sensitive to pollution, which is why they have often been used as biomonitors for water quality. But the authors of the present study predicted a priori that emergent insects - whose adult flying stages are important sources of food for birds, spiders, bats and reptiles - should likewise be powerful biomonitors for the health of terrestrial ecosystems. This prediction is borne out by the new results.

"The massive decline in bird fauna across the USA requires that we adopt new paradigms for conservation. Currently, most management and conservation agencies and plans are separated into aquatic and terrestrial divisions. However, aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems are inextricably linked through a suite of ecological connections," says author Dr Maeika Sullivan, associate professor in the School of Environment and Natural Resources and Director of the Schiermeier Olentangy River Wetland Research Park at Ohio State University.

Sullivan and colleagues analyzed data from multiple open-access surveys monitoring water quality, aquatic invertebrates and 21 species of aerial insectivorous birds from the contiguous United States. "The task of putting together these big data sets, collected by different US agencies with different goals and objectives, revealed several new questions and challenges which will require interdisciplinary thinking to resolve," says corresponding author Dr David Manning, assistant professor in the Department of Biology, University of Nebraska at Omaha.

First, the authors show that water quality is a good predictor for local relative abundance of emergent insects. Then they show for the first time that water quality and the associated abundance of emergent insects explains a moderate but significant proportion of the variation in local abundance of aerial insectivorous birds in the US, including both upland and riparian (i.e. foraging on river banks) species.

Not all bird species were equally negatively impacted by declines in the abundance of emergent insects, suggesting that factors such the birds' microhabitat and foraging strategy may also play a role. The western wood pewee (Contopus sordidulus, an upland bird species), the olive-sided flycatcher (C. cooperi, which facultatively lives in riparian zones), and the Acadian flycatcher (Empidonax virescens, which almost exclusively occurs near water) depended most strongly on the local abundance of overall emergent insects. The eastern phoebe (Sayornis phoebe), violet-green swallow (Tachycineta thalassina), tree swallow (Tachycineta bicolor), eastern wood-pewee (C. virens), barn swallow (Hirundo rustica), and chimney swift (Chaetura pelagica), were specifically sensitive to the relative abundance of stoneflies, mayflies and caddisflies.

The authors emphasize the need for interdisciplinary research to develop new conservation and biomonitoring strategies focused on the effects of water quality on endangered birds and other terrestrial wildlife.

"We need a better understanding of the common mechanisms that could drive declines in both aquatic insects and many bird species. We would like to explore some of these shared mechanisms in future research, but at a much larger scale than previously. Tackling these questions will require collaboration among freshwater ecologists, ornithologists, landscape ecologists, entomologists, data scientists, and others," says Manning.

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OU study highlights need for improving methane emission database

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

Research News

 

A University of Oklahoma-led study published in 2020 revealed that both area and plant growth of paddy rice is significantly related to the spatial-temporal dynamics of atmospheric methane concentration in monsoon Asia, where 87% of the world's paddy rice fields are situated. Now, the same international research team has released a follow-up discussion paper in the journal Nature Communications. In this paper, the team identifies the limits and insufficiency of the major greenhouse emission database (EDGAR) in estimating paddy rice methane emissions.

"Methane emission from paddy rice fields contribute to the rising of atmospheric methane concentration (XCH4), one of the greenhouse gases for global warming and climate change," said Xiangming Xiao, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, College of Arts and Sciences. "In this paper, our team highlighted the needs and pathways to improve this dataset, which could lead to substantial improvement in understanding and modeling methane emission, atmospheric transport and chemistry over monsoon Asia and the globe."

OU researchers developed annual paddy rice maps at 500-meter spatial resolution and quantified the spatial-temporal changes in rice paddy area in monsoon Asia during 2000-2015. Xiao said these annual maps are the first of their kind and could be used to further improve simulations of models that estimate methane emission from paddy rice fields.

Toronto's COVID-19 bike lane expansion boosted access to jobs, retail

A study by University of Toronto Engineering researchers found Toronto's temporary cycling infrastructure increased low-stress road access to jobs and food stores by between 10 and 20 per cent, and access to parks by 6.3 per cent.

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO FACULTY OF APPLIED SCIENCE & ENGINEERING

Research News

 

IMAGE: A MAP OF TORONTO'S BIKEWAY NETWORK WITH COLOURS REPRESENTING THE ROUTE'S LEVEL OF STRESS. view more 

CREDIT: IMAGE COURTESY OF BO LIN / UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO ENGINEERING

With COVID-19 making it vital for people to keep their distance from one another, the city of Toronto undertook the largest one-year expansion of its cycling network in 2020, adding about 25 kilometres of temporary bikeways.

Yet, the benefits of helping people get around on two wheels go far beyond facilitating physical distancing, according to a recent study by three University of Toronto researchers that was published in the journal Transport Findings.

University of Toronto Engineering PhD candidate Bo Lin, as well as professors Shoshanna Saxe and Timothy Chan used city and survey data to map Toronto's entire cycling network - including the new routes - and found that additional bike infrastructure increased low-stress road access to jobs and food stores by between 10 and 20 per cent, while boosting access to parks by an average of 6.3 per cent.

"What surprised me the most was how big an impact we found from what was just built last summer," says Saxe, an assistant professor in the department of civil and mineral engineering.

"We found sometimes increases in access to 100,000 jobs or a 20 per cent increase. That's massive."

The impact of bikeways added during COVID-19 were greatest in areas of the city where the new lanes were grafted onto an existing cycling network near a large concentration of stores and jobs, such as the downtown core. Although there were new routes installed to the north and east of the city, "these areas remain early on the S-Curve of accessibility given the limited links with pre-existing cycling infrastructure," the study says.

In these areas, the new infrastructure can be the beginning of a future network as each new lane multiplies the impact of ones already built, Saxe says.

As for the study's findings about increasing access to jobs, Saxe says they are not only a measure of access to employment but also a proxy for places you would want to travel to: restaurants, movie theatres, music venues and so on.

The researchers used information from Open Data Toronto and the Transportation Tomorrow 2016 survey, among other sources. Where there were discrepancies, Lin, a PhD student and the study's lead author, gathered the data himself by navigating the city's streets (as a bonus, it helped him get to know Toronto after moving here from Waterloo, Ont.).

"There were some days I did nothing but go around the city using Google Maps," he says.

For Lin, the research has opened up new avenues of investigation into cycling networks, including how bottlenecks can have a ripple effect through the system.

The study, like some of Saxe's past work on cycling routes, makes a distinction between low- and high-stress bikeways to get a more accurate reading of how they affect access to opportunities. At the lowest end of the scale are roads where a child could cycle safely; on the other end are busy thoroughfares for "strong and fearless cyclists" - Avenue Road north of Bloor Street, for example.

"It's legal to cycle on most roads, but too many roads feel very uncomfortable to bike on," Saxe says.

For Saxe, the impact of the new cycling routes shows how a little bike infrastructure can go a long way.

"Think about how long it would have taken us to build 20 kilometres of a metro project - and we need to do these big, long projects - but we also have to do short-term, fast, effective things."

Chan, a professor of industrial engineering in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering, says the tools they used to measure the impact of the new bikeways in Toronto will be useful in evaluating future expansions of the network, as well as those found in other cities.

"You hear lots of debates about bike lanes that are based on anecdotal evidence," he says. "But here we have a quantitative framework that we can use to rigorously evaluate and compare different cycling infrastructure projects.

"What gets me excited is that, using these tools, we can generate insights that can influence decision-making."

The University of Toronto team's research, which was supported by funding from the City of Toronto, may come in handy sooner rather than later. Toronto's city council is slated to review the COVID-19 cycling infrastructure this year.

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New research shows unpredictable work schedules impact restaurant revenue

Nearly a 5% drop in checks handled by servers asked to stay longer

INSTITUTE FOR OPERATIONS RESEARCH AND THE MANAGEMENT SCIENCES

Research News

 

INFORMS Journal Management Science Study Key Takeaways:

• Changing an employee's hours during their shift, typically by having them stay longer, hurts restaurant revenue.
• Checks for parties handled by servers who'd been asked to stay longer during their shift dropped by 4.4%, on average.
• Servers asked to stay longer reduced the effort spent on upselling and cross-selling additional menu items.

CATONSVILLE, MD, February 25, 2021 - Short notice versus no advance notice makes a huge difference when it comes to employee scheduling in the restaurant industry. New research in the INFORMS journal Management Science finds checks for parties handled by servers who were asked (with no advance notice) to stay longer than their scheduled shift dropped by 4.4%, on average.

The study, "Call to Duty: Just-in-Time Scheduling in a Restaurant Chain," conducted by Masoud Kamalahmadi of the University of Miami, Qiuping Yu of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Yong-Pin Zhou of the University of Washington analyzed 1.5 million transactions from 25 restaurants in 2016 to look at the impact that unpredictable work schedules have on server sales efforts and restaurant revenue.

The research finds giving an employee a couple of days' notice (short-notice scheduling) doesn't affect sales efforts, however, real-time scheduling (changing people's hours during their shift, typically by having them stay longer) hurts revenue.

"Our analysis indicates that this occurred because servers reduced the effort spent on upselling and cross-selling additional menu items," said Kamalahmadi, an assistant professor of management science. Employee fatigue is controlled for in the study.

"We also show that the reduction in server's sales effort is more profound among less-skilled workers, during the weekend or non-rush hours," continued Yu, an assistant professor of operations management and business analytics at the Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech.

The researchers found that stepping away from the heavy use of real-time schedules not only creates more predictable work schedules, but also improves the expected profit by up to 1%.

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About INFORMS and Management Science

Management Science is a premier peer-reviewed scholarly journal focused on research using quantitative approaches to study all aspects of management in companies and organizations. It is published by INFORMS, the leading international association for operations research and analytics professionals. More information is available at http://www.informs.org or @informs.

European unions' support varies for precarious workers

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

ITHACA, N.Y. - In many cases, unions in Europe have helped nonunionized workers whose jobs are precarious, according to new Cornell University research.

In "Dualism or Solidarity? Conditions for Union Success in Regulating Precarious Work," published in December in the European Journal of Industrial Relations, the researchers surveyed academic articles to see how often they would find evidence of unions helping nonunionized workers or helping only their own members, and which conditions were associated with each outcome.

The paper was co-authored by Laura Carver, M.S. 20, and Virginia Doellgast, associate professor of international and comparative labor in the ILR School.

Unions respond to growing worker insecurity in different ways, Carver said.

In some cases, unions work with management to protect their own members while allowing management to cut pay or otherwise increase insecurity for nonunionized workers, she said. This is called dualism, because it creates a dual labor market where unionized insiders are still paid relatively well and have some job security, and nonunionized outsiders are subjected to increasing insecurity.

Unions also can act in solidarity with nonunion workers by proactively extending union protections and increasing security for precarious workers. Examples of union support include the Unite union support of the "Justice for Cleaners" protests in the United Kingdom and support by the French union CGT for the "sans papiers" movement for undocumented immigrant workers in France.

A third union response is described as "failed solidarity" by Carver and Doellgast.

"Unions' attempts at inclusivity are not always successful - in other words, attempts to stand in solidarity with nonunion workers sometimes do not actually reduce their experiences of precarity," Carver said.

After surveying 56 case study-based articles published between 2008 and 2019, they found that:

• In 46% of cases, solidarity was practiced when unions improved working conditions for the peripheral workforce. This includes cases in which the union simultaneously improved conditions for the core workforce, as well as those in which the conditions for the core workforce remained stable or even declined.
• In 26% of cases, the unions practiced dualism by maintaining or improving working conditions for the core, unionized workforce, with either no attempt to address precarity for peripheral workers or increased precarity for these workers.
• In 12% of the cases, solidarity failed - there was no reduction in precarity in spite of union attempts to regulate or improve conditions for peripheral workers.
• In 16% of cases, there were no clear outcomes of dualism, solidarity or failed solidarity.

"The fact that successful solidarity was the most common outcome is notable," Carver said. "This suggests there is cause for optimism, or that increased precarity is not the inevitable outcome."

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Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accu

Top Facebook execs silenced an enemy of Turkey US SYRIAN ALLIES THE KURDS

By Jack Gillum & Justin Elliott, ProPublica

Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer for Facebook, testifies before the Senate intelligence committee examining social media companies' responses to foreign influence operations in 2018. File Photo by Pat Benic/UPI | License Photo

Feb. 24 (UPI) -- As Turkey launched a military offensive against Kurdish minorities in neighboring Syria in early 2018, Facebook's top executives faced a political dilemma.

Turkey was demanding the social media giant block Facebook posts from the People's Protection Units, a mostly Kurdish militia group the Turkish government had targeted. Should Facebook ignore the request, as it has done elsewhere, and risk losing access to tens of millions of users in Turkey? Or should it silence the group, known as the YPG, even if doing so added to the perception that the company too often bends to the wishes of authoritarian governments?





It wasn't a particularly close call for the company's leadership, newly disclosed emails show.

"I am fine with this," wrote Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's No. 2 executive, in a one-sentence message to a team that reviewed the page. Three years later, YPG's photos and updates about the Turkish military's brutal attacks on the Kurdish minority in Syria still can't be viewed by Facebook users inside Turkey.

The conversations, among other internal emails obtained by ProPublica, provide an unusually direct look into how tech giants like Facebook handle censorship requests made by governments that routinely limit what can be said publicly. When the Turkish government attacked the Kurds in the Afrin District of northern Syria, Turkey also arrested hundreds of its own residents for criticizing the operation.

Publicly, Facebook has underscored that it cherishes free speech: "We believe freedom of expression is a fundamental human right, and we work hard to protect and defend these values around the world," the company wrote in a blog post last month about a new Turkish law requiring that social media firms have a legal presence in the country. "More than half of the people in Turkey rely on Facebook to stay in touch with their friends and family, to express their opinions and grow their businesses."

But behind the scenes in 2018, amid Turkey's military campaign, Facebook ultimately sided with the government's demands. Deliberations, the emails show, were centered on keeping the platform operational, not on human rights. "The page caused us a few PR fires in the past," one Facebook manager warned of the YPG material.

The Turkish government's lobbying on Afrin-related content included a call from the chairman of the BTK, Turkey's telecommunications regulator. He reminded Facebook "to be cautious about the material being posted, especially photos of wounded people," wrote Mark Smith, a U.K.-based policy manager, to Joel Kaplan, Facebook's vice president of global public policy. "He also highlighted that the government may ask us to block entire pages and profiles if they become a focal point for sharing illegal content."

(Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist organization, although neither the United States nor Facebook do.) 

FREEDOM FIGHTERS FOR AN AUTONOMOUS KURDISTAN

The company's eventual solution was to "geo-block," or selectively ban users in a geographic area from viewing certain content, should the threats from Turkish officials escalate. Facebook had previously avoided the practice, even though it has become increasingly popular among governments that want to hide posts from within their borders.

Facebook confirmed to ProPublica that it made the decision to restrict the page in Turkey following a legal order from the Turkish government -- and after it became clear that failing to do so would have led to its services in the country being completely shut down. The company said it had been blocked before in Turkey, including a half-dozen times in 2016.

The content that Turkey deemed offensive, according to internal emails, included photos on Facebook-owned Instagram of "wounded YPG fighters, Turkish soldiers and possibly civilians." At the time, the YPG slammed what it understood to be Facebook's censorship of such material. "Silencing the voice of democracy: In light of the Afrin invasion, YPG experience severe cyberattacks." The group has published graphic images, including photos of mortally wounded fighters; "this is the way NATO ally Turkey secures its borders," YPG wrote in one post.

Facebook spokesman Andy Stone provided a written statement in response to questions from ProPublica.

"We strive to preserve voice for the greatest number of people," the statement said. "There are, however, times when we restrict content based on local law even if it does not violate our community standards. In this case, we made the decision based on our policies concerning government requests to restrict content and our international human rights commitments. We disclose the content we restrict in our twice yearly transparency reports and are evaluated by independent experts on our international human rights commitments every two years."

The Turkish Embassy in Washington said it contends the YPG is the "Syrian offshoot" of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which the U.S. government considers to be a terrorist organization.

Facebook has considered the YPG page politically sensitive since at least 2015, emails show, when officials discovered the page was inaccurately marked as verified with a blue check mark. In turn, "that created negative coverage on Turkish pro-government media," one executive wrote. When Facebook removed the check mark, it in turn "created negative coverage [in] English language media, including on Huffington Post."

In 2018, the review team, which included global policy chief Monika Bickert, laid out the consequences of a ban. The company could set a bad example for future cases and take flak for its decision. "Geo-blocking the YPG is not without risk -- activists outside of Turkey will likely notice our actions, and our decision may draw unwanted attention to our overall geo-blocking policy," said one email in late January.

But this time, the team members said, the parties were embroiled in an armed conflict and Facebook officials worried their platform could be shut down entirely in Turkey. "We are in favor of geo-blocking the YPG content," they wrote, "if the prospects of a full-service blockage are great." They prepared a "reactive" press statement: "We received a valid court order from the authorities in Turkey requiring us to restrict access to certain content. Following careful review, we have complied with the order," it said.

In a nine-page ruling by Ankara's 2nd Criminal Judgeship of Peace, government officials listed YPG's Facebook page among several hundred social media URLs they considered problematic. The court wrote that the sites should be blocked to "protect the right to life or security of life and property, ensure national security, protect public order, prevent crimes or protect public health," according to a copy of the order obtained by ProPublica.

Kaplan, in a Jan. 26, 2018, email to Sandberg and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, confirmed that the company had received a Turkish government order demanding that the page be censored, although it wasn't immediately clear if officials were referring to the Ankara court ruling. Kaplan advised the company to "immediately geo-block the page" should Turkey threaten to block all access to Facebook.

Sandberg, in a reply to Kaplan, Zuckerberg and others, agreed. (She had been at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, touting Facebook's role in assisting victims of natural disasters.)

In a statement to ProPublica, the YPG said censorship by Facebook and other social media platforms "is on an extreme level."

"YPG has actively been using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and others since its foundation," the group said. "YPG uses social media to promote its struggle against jihadists and other extremists who attacked and are attacking Syrian Kurdistan and northern Syria. Those platform[s] have a crucial role in building a public presence and easily reaching communities across the world. However, we have faced many challenges on social media during these years."

Cutting off revenue from Turkey could harm Facebook financially, regulatory filings suggest. Facebook includes revenue from Turkey and Russia in the figure it gives for Europe overall and the company reported a 34% increase for the continent in annual revenue per user, according to its 2019 annual report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Yaman Akdeniz, a founder of the Turkish Freedom of Expression Association, said the YPG block was "not an easy case because Turkey sees the YPG as a terror organization and wants their accounts to be blocked from Turkey. But it just confirms that Facebook doesn't want to challenge these requests, and it was prepared to act."

"Facebook has a transparency problem," he said.

In fact, Facebook doesn't reveal to users that the YPG page is explicitly banned. When ProPublica tried to access YPG's Facebook page using a Turkish VPN -- to simulate browsing the Internet from inside the country -- a notice read: "The link may be broken, or the page may have been removed." The page is still available on Facebook to people who view the site through U.S. Internet providers.

PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY
U.S., China lead world as military spending increases globally

An aerial photo of the U.S. Department of Defense in Washington, D.C., also known as the Pentagon. Photo by Shutterstock.com

Feb. 25 (UPI) -- Global defense spending reached a new high point in 2020, with the United States spending more than any other country and China pulling in second, according to data released by The International Institute for Strategic Studies this week.

The IISS analyzed numbers from the Military Balance Plus database and found that global defense spending increased in 2020 to reach $1.83 trillion -- a 3.9% increase over 2019 figures.

The United States, which spent $738 billion on defense in 2020, accounted for 40.3% of total global defense spending, the IISS said.

China's defense spending did not increase as sharply in 2020 as it did in 2019, but the country still spent $193.3 billion on defense in 2020 -- $12 billion more than the year before.

Overall global defense spending grew by 3.9%, the report said.

IISS noted that defense spending rose inversely with overall global economic activity, which contracted last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report also said European defense spending grew by 2% in 2020.

That's a smaller rate of growth than the 4.1% increase from 2019 -- but part of an upward trend, with overall defense spending by NATO members being up 20% from 2014.

FAA orders inspections for 777 engines like one that failed over Denver


Federal investigators examine a United Airlines Boeing 777 in Denver, Colo., after the plane made an emergency landing on its way to Hawaii due to engine failure. Photo courtesy NTSB/Flickr

Feb. 24 (UPI) -- The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered mandatory inspections for fan blades on some Boeing 777s after an engine failed in mid-air on a flight to Hawaii last weekend.

The FAA's order late Tuesday covers Pratt & Whitney engines on 777s in the United Airlines fleet after the carrier had already grounded 24 of the planes.

The engine that failed last weekend spread broken parts into yards and a soccer field on the ground before the plane made an emergency landing near Denver.

A Japan Airlines 777 had a similar engine failure in December that also forced the plane to return for an emergency landing. Japan and South Korea have taken the model out of service.

Boeing on Monday recommended suspending 69 in-service and 59 in-storage 777s powered by Pratt & Whitney 4000-112 engines until the FAA identified inspection protocol.

"The FAA is issuing this [Emergency Airworthiness Directive] because the agency has determined the unsafe condition described previously is likely to exist or develop in other products of the same type design," the FAA said in its order.

Monday, the National Transportation Safety Board said its investigation has found that the engine's inlet and cowling separated and two fan blades broke, one near the root and the other about mid-span.