Scientists Discover Psychedelic-Like Drug That Doesn't Cause Hallucinations

THAT'S NO FUN

(Victor de Schwanberg/Getty Images)


CARLY CASSELLA
29 APRIL 2021

Scientists have discovered a psychedelic-like drug that can produce rapid, long-lasting antidepressant effects in mice without the effect of hallucinations.

The molecule, called AAZ-A-154, acts on the same serotonin receptors in the brain as antipsychotic drugs (like clozapine) and psychedelics (like LSD), promoting neuronal growth and producing beneficial behaviors in rodents for weeks after a single dose.

Researchers say the treatment is comparable to the fast-acting nature of ketamine, which has recently emerged as a promising drug for conditions like depression, substance abuse, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

However, some psychedelic drugs that are being investigated for their medical effects, such as psilocybin, routinely trigger hallucinations, which means they should only really be used as a treatment under the guidance and supervision of experts.

Finding a safe alternative without the risk of hallucinations would be extremely useful clinically, but the thing is, we still don't know if these hallucinogenic effects are needed to actually reshape the brain.

To explore this issue in greater detail, researchers from the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) genetically encoded a green fluorescent protein into a specific type of serotonin receptor responsible for triggering hallucinations, allowing them to observe the receptors being activated in living tissue.

Applying the novel sensor to 34 compounds with extremely similar structures but unknown hallucinogenic potentials, the team found one molecule in particular, AAZ-A-154, which exhibited a high selectivity for the receptor with few side effects.


When this compound was administered to mice, it produced antidepressant-like effects within 30 minutes and failed to cause any head-twitches, an indicator in mice suggesting the compound would cause hallucinations in humans. Even at relatively high doses, the results appeared to be the same, with cognitive benefits lasting for over a week.

According to the researchers, this is only the second non-hallucinogenic drug they've found that shows clinical benefits similar to psychedelics.

The other compound, Tabernanthalog (TBG), was engineered last year by some of the same authors, and while it increased the branching of mouse neurons in similar ways to ketamine, LSD, MDMA, and DMT, it appears AAZ-A-154 may have stronger and more sustained antidepressant effects in live animals.

Compared to existing psychedelics, a drug that people can take home, put in their medicine cabinets, and take on their own without supervision would be a much safer and more practical alternative, and TBG and AAZ-A-154 seem like promising new candidates.

So far, these compounds have only been tested in mice, so we still don't really know how they differ functionally to other psychedelic substances humans take with similar structures.


Far more research is needed to understand the underlying mechanisms, both at the molecular and cellular level, before we can even consider testing these compounds on our own species.

"Serotonin reuptake inhibitors have long been used for treating depression, but we don't know much about their mechanism," says UC Davis biomedical researcher Lin Tian.

"It's like a black box."

Now we just need to crack the lid and see what's underneath.

The study was published in Cell

Even Closed Oil Wells Are Still Spewing Methane Into The Air, Scientists Warn

(Cavan Images/Getty Images)


PETER DOCKRILL
29 APRIL 2021


The legacy of abandoned oil wells in the US isn't hard to see, even leaving gaping holes in the landscape that are frightening to look at. But their invisible aftermath is more alarming still.


Across the US and Canada, there are millions of abandoned or inactive oil and gas wells left behind by their former operators, and often improperly sealed. These stranded reserves – sometimes called orphan wells – may have been deserted by humans, but they are not a spent force.

Abandoned wells, hundreds of thousands of which are thought to be undocumented, are estimated to spew vast amounts of heat-trapping methane emissions into the atmosphere, far exceeding the projections of environmental authorities such as the US EPA.

Conservative estimates suggest abandoned wells might represent up to 4 percent of methane gas emissions from oil and gas systems in the US, although the veracity of such estimates is debatable, given the relative lack of on-the-ground measurements.

It gets worse – in part due to the fractured nature of abandonment. Aside from outright abandoned wells, a sub-category of inactive wells known as 'shut-ins' can pose the same methane-leaking risks, but fly under the radar in official figures.

Shut-ins are idle wells that are not currently being used for oil production, likely due to market conditions, but which could be re-activated in the future. Despite all the growing concern over just how big the abandoned wells fiasco is, shut-ins, many of which are uncapped, have never been measured for their own contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.


In a new study by scientists at the University of Cincinnati, researchers sought to rectify that.

Biogeochemist Amy Townsend-Small and her research assistant Jacob Hoschouer visited the sites of 37 inactive wells located on private property in Texas's Permian Basin, the largest oil production basin in the US, which on the whole produces roughly 60 percent higher methane emissions than the national average for oil and gas production regions.

Part of the problem, the researchers found, is shut-ins. While many of the inactive wells measured for elevated methane levels showed either no leaks or little leaking, several were leaking methane in high amounts, up to a maximum of 132 grams per hour.

"Some of them were leaking a lot," Townsend-Small says. "A few sources are responsible for most of the leaks."

While the problem may vary from shut-in to shut-in, the high readings of the outliers pushed the average for all the inactive wells measured to 6.2 grams per hour – which is higher than the average output for abandoned wells in other western states (including Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming) but lower than counterparts in the Appalachian Basin in the US northeast.


If the same levels of leaking were found for all of Texas's roughly 100,000 wells, it would be about 5.5 million kilograms of methane released annually – around the equivalent of burning 150 million pounds of coal each year, the researchers say.

Again, though, we can't yet conclude too much from the existing data, since there are millions of abandoned or inactive wells in North America, and many more measurements need to be taken.

Once we do, however – if similar patterns of leaking bear out across all sites – there could be practical solutions to fixing most of the leaks by focusing on the worst offenders.

"If you want to make a big impact, you only have to fix the big leakers," Townsend-Small told Grist and the Texas Observer.

Overall, inactive wells seem to produce less methane emissions than active oil-producing wells, but these largely neglected and unmaintained sites also present other environmental problems.

In their expedition, Townsend-Small and Hoschouer observed evidence of polluted water pooling at five of the wells, with brine leaks producing ponds surrounded by dead vegetation and a strong gassy smell.


"I was horrified by that," Townsend-Small says.

"I've never seen anything like that here in Ohio. One was gushing out so much water that people who lived there called it a lake, but it's toxic. It has dead trees all around it and smells like hydrogen sulfide."

Ultimately, there's a lot more work to do, both in assessing the environmental and health impacts of what these tapped but unspent wells could represent to the planet and its people.

The Biden administration has already strongly signaled an intention to begin addressing the toxic legacy of abandoned wells, encompassed in a US$16 billion spending plan.

In addition to plugging the worst leakers and conducting more measurements at inactive wells, the researchers say regular inspections of shut-ins could help prevent neglected sites from becoming problematic emitters, and infrared cameras could be set up to identify leaks.

Ideally, of course, all of this would have been done yesterday. While carbon dioxide reductions have been the central focus of many climate initiatives, the unfortunate truth is that in the shorter term, methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas – with a warming potential 28 times greater over a 100-year period.

Despite the severe dangers, emissions are entirely headed the wrong way. Just this month, a new analysis by the NOAA showed annual global methane emissions just experienced their largest year-on-year increase since records began in 1983.

Old wells aren't the only things that are broken.

The findings are reported in Environmental Research Letters.

A Pregnant Ancient Egyptian Mummy Has Been Discovered in a Shocking World First


Photo and scans of the mummy. (Ejsmond et al., J. Archaeol. Sci., 2021)



MICHELLE STARR
30 APRIL 2021


At first, archaeologists thought they were scanning the mummy of an ancient Egyptian priest named Hor-Djehuty. Then, in the body's abdomen, images revealed what appeared to be the bones of a tiny foot.


Full scans confirmed it: the foot belonged to a tiny fetus, still in the womb of its deceased and mummified mother.

Not only is this the first time a deliberately mummified pregnant woman has been found, it presents a fascinating mystery. Who was the woman? And why was she mummified with her fetus? So peculiar is the discovery, scientists have named her the Mysterious Lady of the National Museum in Warsaw.

"For unknown reasons, the fetus had not been removed from the abdomen during the mummification," archaeologist Wojciech Ejsmond of the Polish Academy of Sciences told Science in Poland.

"For this reason, the mummy is really unique. Our mummy is the only one identified so far in the world with a fetus in the womb."

The mummy and its sarcophagus were donated to the University of Warsaw in 1826 and kept in the National Museum in Warsaw, Poland since 1917. The artifact actually has an interesting history. The mummy was initially thought to be female, likely because of the elaborate sarcophagus.

The coffin, cartonnage case, and mummy. (National Museum in Warsaw, Warsaw Mummy Project)

It wasn't until around 1920 when the name on the coffin and cartonnage was translated that perception shifted. The writing revealed that the interred was named Hor-Djehuty, and was highly placed.

"Scribe, priest of Horus-Thoth worshiped as a visiting deity in the Mount of Djeme, royal governor of the town of Petmiten, Hor-Djehuty, justified by voice, son of Padiamonemipet and lady of a house Tanetmin," the translation read.


In 2016, however, computer tomography revealed that the mummy in the sarcophagus may not have actually been Hor-Djehuty. The bones were too delicate, male reproductive organs were missing, and a three-dimensional reconstruction revealed breasts.

Given that artifacts weren't exactly handled with the best care in the 19th century, and given that the coffin and cartonnage were indeed made for a male mummy, it seems that an entirely different mummy was placed in the sarcophagus at some point - perhaps to be passed off as a more valuable artifact.

This is supported by damage to some of the mummy's bandages - likely caused by 19th century looters rifling through looking for amulets, the researchers said.

Thus, it's impossible to know who exactly the woman was, or even if she came from Thebes where the coffin was found; however, a few facts can be gauged from her remains.

Firstly, she was mummified with great care, and with a rich set of amulets, suggesting in and of itself that she was someone important - mummification was a luxury in ancient Egypt, unavailable to most.

X-ray and CT scans of the mummy's abdomen, revealing the fetus. (Ejsmond et al., J. Archaeol. Sci., 2021)

She died just over 2,000 years ago, in approximately the first century BCE, between the ages of 20 and 30, and the development of the fetus suggests she was between 26 and 30 weeks pregnant.

As the first-ever discovery of a pregnant embalmed mummy, the Mysterious Lady poses fascinating questions about ancient Egyptian spiritual beliefs, the researchers said. Did the ancient Egyptians believe that unborn fetuses could go on to the afterlife, or was this mummy a strange anomaly?

It's unclear how she died, but the team believes that analysis of the mummy's preserved soft tissues might yield some clues.

"High mortality during pregnancy and childbirth in those times is not a secret," Ejsmond said. "Therefore, we believe that pregnancy could somehow contribute to the death of the young woman."

The team's research has been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Baby Mantis Shrimp Can Throw Knockout Punches at Just 9 Days Old

Side view of an 11-day-old mantis shrimp larva. (Jacob Harrison)

NICOLETTA LANESE, LIVESCIENCE
30 APRIL 2021

Mantis shrimp wield a spring-loaded appendage that punches through water with explosive force - and their babies can start swinging just nine days after they hatch.

In a new study, published Thursday (April 29) in the Journal of Experimental Biology, scientists studied larval Philippine mantis shrimp (Gonodactylaceus falcatus) originally collected from Oahu, Hawaii.

The team also reared some of the same species from eggs, carefully monitoring their development through time and then zooming in on their punching appendage under the microscope.

The appendage, called the raptorial appendage, works similarly to a bow and arrow, in that the tip of the appendage gets pulled back, "nocked" against a spring-like mechanism and then let loose in a sudden release of elastic energy, said first author Jacob Harrison, a graduate student in the biology program at Duke University.

"While we have a pretty great understanding of how it functions in the adults … we didn't really have a solid understanding of how it develops," Harrison told Live Science.

Related: Smash! Super-stabby mantis shrimp shows off in video

Now, in a "remarkably complete and carefully controlled" study, Harrison and his team have started to unravel the mystery of when mantis shrimp start throwing down like lightning-fast boxers, said Roy Caldwell, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the study.

A larval mantis shrimp punching at 20,000 frames per second. (The Company of Biologists, Harrison et al., J. Exp. Biol., 2021)

And furthermore, since larval mantis shrimp have transparent shells, "what's new about this study is [that] the transparency of the raptorial apparatus allows them to see in great detail exactly what's going on," Caldwell said.

"That hasn't been possible in looking at adults," whose exoskeleton is opaque, he said.

Slower than expected, but still impressive

When adult mantis shrimp unleash a flurry of strikes, the tips of their appendages can slice through the water at about 50 mph (80 km/h), according to National Geographic.

But a mathematical model, published in 2018 in the journal Science, hinted that baby mantis shrimp might throw even faster punches than adults, assuming they take up boxing at a young age.

This model, developed in the same lab Harrison works in, zoomed in on the spring mechanism mantis shrimp use to deliver punishing blows.

"We see these mechanisms all over biology," from jumping frogs and insects to stinging jellyfish that fire venom-filled capsules into their prey, Harrison noted.

The model hinted that these spring-loaded mechanisms should generally become less efficient at larger scales, and therefore, smaller springs with less mass should generate higher acceleration when let loose.

Another model that specifically focused on mantis shrimp revealed a similar result, indicating that larger mantis shrimp species strike more slowly than smaller species, the researchers reported in 2016 in the Journal of Experimental Biology.


Harrison and his team wanted to see if these models held up in larval mantis shrimp, since of course, they're smaller than adults of their species. So the team searched for tiny, translucent mantis shrimp in Hawaii in the dead of night.

"If you go out where you can find adult mantis shrimp, you can actually stick a light in the water, and mantis shrimp will come like a moth to a flame," Harrison said. That said, larval crabs, shrimp and fish also flock to the light and get scooped up in the same buckets as the mantis shrimp; so therein lies the challenge.

These free-swimming shrimp larvae had matured enough to exit the burrow in which they hatched, so they tended to be at least 9 to 14 days old at the time of capture, Harrison noted.

To collect data on even younger mantis shrimp, Harrison also collected an egg clutch from a female G. falcatus found at Wailupe Beach Park. The eggs hatched in transit on their way to Duke University, but the team still managed to raise the puny mantis shrimp for 28 days in their lab.


Related: Six bizarre feeding tactics from the depths of our oceans

With mantis shrimp in hand, the team carefully observed how the larvae developed through time. G. falcatus larvae were previously known to progress through six larval stages, each marked by the larva molting its exoskeleton. The team found that, in the first and second larval stages, the larvae huddled together at the bottom of the tank; by the third stage, they began swimming but did not throw any punches.

But by the fourth stage, around day 9 to 14, "larvae began striking and 'waving' their raptorial appendages as they swam through the water," the authors wrote in their report.

At this point, the raptorial appendages had fully formed and closely resembled an adult's, in terms of structure, and the larvae also began snacking on larval brine shrimp that the team provided. Each larva measured about the size of a grain of rice at this juncture.

The team shot high-speed, high-resolution video of the strikes by the older larval mantis shrimp they'd scooped from the ocean, to see just how they hurl their appendages through water. This required placing the rice-size larvae into a custom rig and securing them with glue, so they'd stay in frame and in focus.

The footage enabled the team to not only examine the speed and mechanics of each punch, but also to watch as elements of the spring mechanism slid to and fro under the transparent exoskeleton.

"What we found was that they could produce really high accelerations and velocities relative to their body size," Harrison said.

These metrics specifically measure how rapidly the larvae appendages can transition from stillness to striking, so in this respect, the larvae were "roughly on par with a lot of the adult species," he said.

However, in terms of their overall speed, the larval strikes only traveled about 0.9 mph (1.4 k/h) - an order of magnitude slower than the adult strikes.

"The finding that was a little bit surprising was that the speed of the strike is less than what we see in adults," Caldwell said.

This difference in speed may be related to the actual materials making up the spring, he said; perhaps the spring itself or the "latch" that nocks the appendage in place, differs in larval and adult mantis shrimp, limiting the amount of elastic energy that the larvae can deploy.

Related: Dangers in the deep: 10 scariest sea creatures

The water surrounding the mantis shrimp may also impact their striking speed, Harrison suggested.

To teeny marine creatures, like larvae, water feels quite viscous, more like molasses than water as we experience it, he said. It may be that, as mantis shrimp mature, they can better overcome the stickiness of the water and execute faster strikes.

And despite being slower than adults, the larvae still threw punches that were five to 10 times faster than the reported swimming speeds of similarly sized organisms and more than 150 times faster than their favorite brine shrimp snacks can swim, the authors wrote.

Evolutionarily, there may not be much pressure for larvae to increase their striking speed before reaching maturity, Caldwell said.

The study is also limited in that the team only collected video of defensive strikes, provoked by irritating the larvae with a toothpick, Caldwell noted. "We know, in adults, there's considerable ability to modulate the strength of the strike depending on what it's being used for," whether that be defense, or capturing or stabbing prey, he said. So the speed of the strike may differ somewhat, depending on its purpose.

Looking forward, Harrison and his team plan to probe what factors limit the larval mantis shrimps' striking speed, as well as when the shrimp overcome this limitation in the course of development, he said. They also want to examine whether the raptorial appendage develops similarly across the hundreds of mantis shrimp species, he added.

"The larval stomatopods," another term for mantis shrimp, "are basically a black box, we know very little about them," Caldwell noted. "Almost anything done on larval stomatopods is new and interesting … They've just literally scratched the surface in terms of looking at morphology."

Related Content:

Image gallery: Magnificent mantis shrimp

Photos: The amazing eyes of the mantis shrimp

Photos: Ancient shrimp-like critter was tiny but fierce

This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.

Nigerian artist Laolu uses African celebrities as his canvas for malaria awareness campaign

Earl Nurse, CNN 4/29/2021


When Laolu Senbanjo received an email requesting him to work with Beyoncé, he thought it was a scam.

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© Cindy Ord/Getty Images NEW YORK, NY - SEPTEMBER 06: Laolu Senbanjo paints a model during the Belvedere Vodka's Celebration of the Launch of the 2018 Limited Edition bottle designed by Laolu Senbanjo during New York Fashion Week at The Whitney Museum Of American Art on September 6, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images for Belvedere)

"The Nigerian in me was just thinking it's just one of those emails," the 38-year-old recalls. "I wanted to know what the catch was and when they would ask me to pay some money." Eventually, he did respond -- and ended up with a job doing body art for Beyoncé's 2016 visual album "Lemonade."

Having recently relocated from Nigeria to New York City to pursue his passion, this was the biggest break of his career.

The artist, who now goes by Laolu NYC or simply Laolu, has a style that stands out mostly because of his willingness to use anything, or anyone, as a canvas. Whether it's sneakers for Nike, bottles for Belvedere, or face art for Serena Williams, Laolu's signature brush strokes are in demand.

"The style is called 'Afromysterics,' which means the mystery of African thought pattern," Laolu explains, adding that it "heavily relies on very sophisticated symbols. I call them hieroglyphs from Yoruba mythology."

Now, the visual artist is using that style to help raise awareness for one of the world's deadliest diseases.


An artistic take on malaria

Last year, Laolu was asked to become the art director for a new campaign geared to raise awareness among African youth about the dangers of malaria. Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease that is most prevalent in Africa, with Laolu's home country of Nigeria accounting for almost a quarter of the more than 400,000 people that die from the disease each year.

A former human rights attorney in Nigeria, Laolu has caught malaria multiple times himself and eagerly volunteered his services to help spread the message.

"Malaria has taken so many lives in my country," he says. "(It) continues to be a stumbling block for a lot of us. And just to know that this is preventable -- for me it's a worthy cause."

The campaign, which launched in February, is called Draw The Line Against Malaria. It includes a short film featuring African talents such as Nigerian actor Omotola Jalade Ekeinde, Rwandan choreographer Sherrie Silver, and Kenyan marathon runner Eliud Kipchoge.

All are sporting custom artwork by Laolu. "It's a skill that I've had to develop over time to be able to create art on anyone," he says as he explains his body art process. "They have to be comfortable because it's a level of intimacy that they probably don't give just anyone. So it's very ritualistic and is very sacred to me."

© TSE Laolu paints on the legs of Kenyan athlete and Olympic Gold Medalist Eliud Kipchoge, who features in the Draw The Line campaign film.

The Muundo

The designs for the campaign aren't just random -- they are based around images Laolu created that all have meaning.

The collection of symbols, lines and shapes creates a new visual language he calls "The Muundo" which means "artistic creation" or "structure" in Swahili.

As part of the campaign, users can design their own contribution to the Muundo. The goal is to create a giant mural that will be presented to world leaders at the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Rwanda, later this year.

"It's a way where we are all collaborators on this project," Laolu says. "We have everybody drawing the line, everybody's being an artist, everybody, creating something, (and) being part of drawing the line against malaria. I think it's pretty phenomenal.

© Courtesy of Laolu NYC Beyoncé wears face paint by Nigerian artist Laolu for her visual album "Lemonade."

This Woman Faced Felony Charges For Not Returning A Sabrina The Teenage Witch VHS

Long gone are the days when a part-time Blockbuster employee sick with power was tasked with hounding delinquent movie renters who, for one reason or another, just couldn’t bring themselves to return that VHS on time. Who among us didn’t pay a late fee for keeping the 1998 masterpiece Armageddon an extra week or two?! The ending! The ending alone!

© Provided by Refinery29

The consequences of failing to return a rented movie, however, are anything but in the past for one Texas woman. When Caron McBride tried to change her name after getting married, she was notified of an “issue” she had in Cleveland County, OK: felony charges for not returning Sabrina the Teenage Witch to a movie rental store in the town of Norman in 1999.

“They told me that I had an issue in Oklahoma and this was the reference number for me to call this number and I did. Meanwhile, I’m a wanted felon,” McBride told CBS Dallas/Fort Worth. “I thought I was gonna have a heart attack.”

McBride was charged for felony embezzlement of rented property in March 2000, according to the local news channel. She had been unaware of the charges, however, or that the movie had even been rented in her name. She thinks her at-the-time roommate must have rented the movie and failed to return it, but didn’t even mention it.

“He had two kids, daughters that were 8, 10, or 11 years old, and I’m thinking he went and got it and didn’t take it back or something,” McBride said. “I have never watched that show in my entire life. Just not my cup of tea.” (Not sure what our Lord and Savior Melissa Joan Hart did to deserve that, but I digress.)

The rental store, Movie Place, went out of business in 2008 (thanks, Netflix), so whoever is in possession of the 1996 coming-of-age movie can certainly keep it now. But McBride says that over the past two decades, she thinks she may have been terminated from various jobs due to the felony charges showing up on background checks.

The Cleveland County District Attorney reportedly dropped the charges once McBride’s story aired on local television. Her record, however, still reflects the charges, and the DA said that McBride would have to get her case expunged in order to clear her record entirely. Refinery29 reached out to Cleveland County DA Greg Mashburn for comment, but did not hear back at the time of publication.

Sure, Netflix might be the ruthless streaming service that had the audacity to put movie rental shops like Blockbuster and Movie Place out of business, only to promote a documentary about it. But would Netflix hold a 20-year grudge against an absent-minded customer to the tune of federal charges? Honestly, probably. Did you see that Blockbuster documentary? Talk about cold-blooded.

'Summer Of Soul (...Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised)'

Duration: 01:01

 Directed by Questlove, "Summer Of Soul (...Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised)" is a feature documentary about the legendary 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival which celebrated African American music and culture, and promoted Black pride and unity.

More from ET

How Vinyl Got Its Groove Back: Its Dominance, Decline & Comeback

The vinyl comeback isn’t just spin. In 2020, records accounted for $626 million in U.S. sales — exceeding those of CDs and contributing 5.2% of industry revenue, according to the RIAA. And MRC Data shows vinyl sales have been rising for 15 years, to 27.5 million units last year, up a staggering 46.2% during the pandemic. “It’s the movie theater,” Jack White toldBillboard about the format in a March 14, 2015, cover story, “compared [with] the iPhone.”


After World War II, a music-business format fight broke out when the then-dominant shellac 78 rpm records faced two challengers: Columbia Records’ 33 1/3 rpm vinyl LPs and RCA Victor’s shorter 45s. This “mark[ed] the beginning of a historic disk battle,” Billboard wrote in a Jan. 8, 1949, story, advising readers to “hold your hats, kids, and run for the storm cellars.” In the Feb. 19 issue, Columbia’s chairman of the board called out RCA, predicting that its LP would win a “record war … which Columbia Records has not initiated and in which it cannot be defeated.”

The 45 quickly eighty-sixed the 78 as the leading singles format, but LPs brought in more money. The June 3, 1950, Billboard reported that during a 12-month period, U.S. labels produced 7.3 million 45s and 3.3 million LPs — but those 45s had a retail value of $5.6 million, compared with $12.5 million for the LPs. By the end of the year, RCA started making LPs, too.

By the late 1980s, CDs and cassettes were outselling records, and in 1989, Billboard tracked what an April 22 report called vinyl’s “inevitable phase-out.” That April issue also covered how the country’s largest independent record plant stopped making vinyl after “what was seen as a gradual decline in market demand turned into a ‘swift and precipitous tailspin.’ ” Vinyl’s extinction seemed inevitable. “It’s not a question of if,” said Tommy Boy chairman Tom Silverman in the May 27 issue. “It’s a question of when.”

Two decades later, a group of independent retailers organized the first Record Store Day on April 19, 2008. The Billboard that was published on that date asked, “Can Record Store Day Work?” The question was still open in the May 3 issue, when one record-store manager shrugged at a modest sales bump: “I don’t know if it’s because of the nice weather,” she said, “or Record Store Day.”

It was Record Store Day all along. After higher-profile annual events that included record store “Ambassadors” like Ozzy Osbourne, Chuck D and Metallica, an April 27, 2016, headline read, “Record Store Day Spurs 131 Percent Gain In Vinyl Album Sales In U.S.,” compared with the previous week. Many of those buyers wouldn’t remember the format’s decline. The April 3, 2021, Billboardreported that “during the pandemic, sales picked up, thanks to a new kind of customer: young people.”

This article originally appeared in the April 24, 2021, issue of Billboard.

Gorsuch's textualism gives immigrant a chance to challenge deportation 

"Admittedly, a lot here turns on a small word," Gorsuch said referring to "a. "

"Words are how the law constrains power," he said.

By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter 4/29/2021

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by an unusual alignment of conservative and liberal justices, ruled in favor of a 'nonpermanent resident alien' on Thursday who is seeking to challenge his deportation, arguing that the government had not given him proper notice of his removal proceedings

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© Erin Schaff/The New York Times/Pool Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch

The case is extremely technical concerning immigration procedures and the interpretation of a sentence in immigration law, but the opinion produced odd bedfellows as the justices quibbled over statutory interpretation and opened fissures related to how closely the court should rely on the exact text of a statute when interpreting the law.

Gorsuch's 16-page opinion highlights his fidelity to his view of "textualism" -- the task of interpreting the words on the page. It was a judicial philosophy championed by the late conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia, who reshaped how judges look at statutes by insisting that they put a sharp focus on what Congress actually said, and not what it might have intended in passing a law.

But recently, conservative justices have deeply divided on how the method should be applied which has resulted in unusual voting patterns, and sharp words, as was evident on Thursday.

Gorsuch, writing for the 6-3 majority, held that the US government had erred by sending two documents to the immigrant instead of one. He explained that the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act says that an undocumented immigrant seeking to fight removal can be served with "a notice of appeal." But here, the immigrant was sent two notices of appeal with different information.

"The government says it needs this kind of flexibility to send information piecemeal," Gorsuch wrote -- but he emphasized that the law calls for only one document.

"Admittedly, a lot here turns on a small word," Gorsuch said referring to "a."

Gorsuch, however, had no sympathy for the federal government.

"If the government finds filling out forms a chore, it has good company," he wrote. "The world is awash in forms, and rarely do agencies afford individuals the same latitude in completing them that the government seeks for itself today."

He provided a stark example from the immigration area. "Asylum applicants must use a 12-page form and comply with 14 single-spaced pages of instructions," Gorsuch wrote. "Failure to do so properly risks having an application returned, losing any chance of relief, or even criminal penalties."

Last term, Gorsuch stunned conservatives when he once again relied on his view of textualism to rule in favor of LGBT workers. At issue in that case was whether title VII of the Civil Rights Act, that bars discrimination "because of sex" also covers claims based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Gorsuch, joined by the Chief Justice John Roberts and the four liberals on the bench at the time, held that it did.

At the time Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote, "The Court's opinion is like a pirate ship. It sails under a textualist flag, but what it actually represents is a theory of statutory interpretation that Justice Scalia excoriated."

On Thursday, Gorsuch was joined by conservative Thomas, Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the three liberals on the bench in the 6-3 decision.

Three conservatives -- Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Alito -- read the immigration statute differently and quibbled with Gorsuch's interpretation.

"The Court's decision contravenes Congress' detailed requirements for a noncitizen" to fight to cancel his removal, Kavanaugh wrote in the dissent. He said that the two documents the government sent two months apart "included all the statutorily required information."

Kavanaugh added that he found the majority's reasoning "rather perplexing as a matter of statutory interpretation." He said that the immigrant actually "gains an advantage" when the government sends two documents instead of one because he can learn more about the removal proceedings. Kavanaugh said that delivering the documents in two installments satisfies the requirements of a "notice to appear."

The ruling means that Agusto Niz-Chavez, a native and citizen of Guatemala, can challenge his deportation in court. Niz-Chavez arrived in the US unlawfully in 2005. He had left Guatemala after a land dispute and settled in Detroit in 2007. He has three children. He was stopped twice for driving without a license and in 2013 for a broken taillight, after which he was referred to immigration authorities.

Under law, an immigrant can apply for cancellation of deportation if he has been in the United States for 10 years.

Niz-Chavez's lawyers claimed that he was in the US for 12 years. But the government argued that when it sent the "notice to appear" it served as a "stop-time" mechanism and he could only claim continuous residency for eight years.

For Gorsuch, that small difference of the exact language matters -- and ignoring it would lead the court down a dangerous road.

"We are no more entitled to denigrate this modest statutory promise as an empty formality than we might dismiss as pointless the rules and statutes governing the contents of civil complaints or criminal indictments," Gorsuch wrote Thursday.

"Words are how the law constrains power," he said.

THIS APPLIES ACROSS CANADA

Opinion: All workers and inmates in Saskatchewan jails need to be vaccinated now

James Gacek 

As Regina Correctional Centre faces yet another COVID-19 outbreak, the provincial government’s handling of the virus in jails can hardly be considered a success. Health Minister Paul Merriman continues to suggest that his vaccine approach is working ; that is, that correctional centres are safe “contained” spaces for inmates and staff. This is a ludicrous position to take

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© Provided by Leader Post The Regina Provincial Correctional Centre.

Pre-pandemic, prison researchers around the country were calling for safer, hygienic conditions in provincial jails across Canada. 

Our work demonstrates:

Disease and virus transmission (including needle sharing) was already rampant in these spaces;

Cells are double, if not triple, bunked, making safe physical distancing near impossible;

Ventilation systems in correctional centres have not been properly maintained or redressed;

Bureaucratic delays of prescriptions for inmates;

Lack of visits from nurses, health-care practitioners and counsellors;

An inability to secure medical aids like prosthetics and crutches.

In short, health care in Canadian jails is abysmal, even on the best days. With the pandemic, health-care problems have only gone from bad to worse.

This is why the provincial government’s vaccine approach to jails can’t be taken seriously. “Contained” spaces does not mean that these spaces are clean or hygienic. It does not mean that inmates or prison staff can safely self-isolate. “Contained” spaces remain contagious spaces.




This creates dangerous conditions for inmates, prison staff, their families and their communities, especially when inmates are released or staff are off shift. Upon release, many inmates (who are too often racialized, already marginalized individuals) return to their congregate spaces in the community, to multi-generational homes (where self-isolation and physical distancing is near impossible) and where the chances are great that those living in these home are low-paid, precarious workers deemed “essential.”

Jail staff repeatedly suggest they are frustrated with the province’s handling of vaccinations , and remain fearful of bringing home the virus to their families. The outbreak at RCC gives the virus room to grow, and the province’s mismanagement of jails aids this growth. Risky populations, and those caring over risky populations (like jail staff), become populations at risk of getting the virus. Decisions about who should get vaccinated should be based on risk to public health. If you have a risky population, they should be moved up the priority list. To suggest then, as Merriman does, that “contained” spaces, are somehow separate or removed from Regina or other Saskatchewan communities is short-sighted of the government. The province needs to do more to protect inmates and staff, and the province’s vaccine approach remains indifferent and uncaring to these populations at risk.

A meaningful vaccine approach would seriously consider the pleas by inmates and staff. This approach would pave the way open for a broader conversation about meaningful health care in the provincial correctional system itself. The pandemic has opened up the discussion around Canadian health care at large, raising issues about how we treat people. Why does the province feel like we can exclude jail staff, let alone inmates, from this conversation? The exclusion of these voices from discussion should concern the public, especially the exclusion of inmates. Inmates are people, and these people form part of our public. While people have committed crimes, the pandemic isn’t part of their sentence. Provincial governments are tasked with ensuring the care and custody of their provincial inmates and staff, and this government, under the helm of Premier Scott Moe, is no exception. From Merriman’s statement to the media, we can see the custody — but where is the care?

As a great thinker by the name of Stanley Cohen put it eloquently in another context, there are a variety of ways of not knowing, or avoiding knowledge, about the suffering of others. The challenge then lies in thinking harder about whether the provincial government will be appropriately held accountable to its decisions about provincial jails, and the ways in which the public can be empowered to impact these decisions. Now is the time to increase the care in jails. Now is the time to vaccinate everyone inside of them.

James Gacek is an assistant professor in the Department of Justice Studies at the University of Regina.