It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, March 16, 2021
Vietnam Sentences Four for Involvement in US-Based Exile Government
Freedom House drops Hanoi’s freedom score in 2021 report.
2021-03-13
Members of the Provisional National Government of Vietnam stand guard in uniform at the group’s compound in the Mojave Desert in California September 2, 2018.
Reuters
A court in Vietnam has sentenced four people on charges of “activities to overthrow the people’s government” for their involvement in an anti-communist Vietnamese government in exile, state media reported.
Vu Thi Kim Phuong, 51, Le Van Lac, 55, Nguyen Thi Kim Duyen, 43, and Le Van Sang, 49, received sentences on Thursday ranging from five to 13 years for participating in research for the Provisional National Government of Vietnam, the indictment said.
The provisional government was founded in 1991 by soldiers and refugees that had been loyal to the South Vietnamese government prior to the country’s unification under communist rule in 1975. It is headquartered in Orange County, California. In 2018, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security classified the provisional government as a terrorist organization.
According to the indictment, Phoung had from 2015 to 2019 conducted research for the provisional government. She and the other three registered people to participate in a poll that would establish the provisional government’s president Dao Minh Quan as leader of a new non-communist government in Vietnam.
In Feb. 2020, they were arrested after having registered 1,595 people for their poll, well short of their goal of five million.
Phuong was sentenced to 13 years in prison, while Lac, Duyen and Sang received seven, six and five years respectively.
Vietnam has arrested two others for their involvement with the government in exile this year.
RFA attempted to contact the provisional government for comment but received no response.
Freedom score decreases
Vietnam’s foreign ministry on Thursday said it was a protector and advocate of human rights, rejecting a report by a Washington-based watchdog group which classified it among countries that were “not free”
In Freedom in the World 2021 report, Freedom House gave Vietnam an overall score of 19 out of a possible 100, a one-point decrease from last year’s rating. Vietnam scored three out of 40 in political rights, and 16 out of 60 in civil liberties.
When asked about the report at a news conference, Le Thi Thu Hang, spokesperson for Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that Vietnam has always made an effort to refine its laws and policy to better ensure human rights, the rights of citizens, and it has actively taken part in international cooperation for human rights.
She said that Vietnam has a consistent policy that promotes human rights including those stipulated in the country’s 2013 constitution and other related documents.
The Freedom House report said that in 2020 the balance of the world trended toward tyranny.
“As a lethal pandemic, economic and physical insecurity, and violent conflict ravaged the world, democracy’s defenders sustained heavy new losses in their struggle against authoritarian foes,” the report said.
The Freedom House has described Vietnam as “a one-party state, dominated for decades by the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV).”
“Freedom of expression, religious freedom, and civil society activism are tightly restricted. The authorities have increasingly cracked down on citizens’ use of social media and the internet,” it said.
Reported by RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Translated by Chau Vu. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
Cambodian Activist Arrested For Criticizing Chinese COVID-19 Vaccine
2021-03-15
CNRP member Thorn Kimsan, arrested for criticizing China's COVID-19 vaccine, is shown in an undated photo.
Facebook / CNRP
A member of Cambodia’s banned political opposition party was arrested at the weekend on accusations she incited social unrest by claiming that Chinese-made vaccines aimed at preventing the spread of COVID-19 were unsafe and had caused several deaths, sources in the country said Monday.
Thorn Kimsan, a Koh Totem commune council member In Kampong Cham province for the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), was taken into custody by plainclothes police on Sunday while working in a restaurant in Phnom Penh, her daughter told RFA on Monday.
“They arrested her for no reason, and I watched and waited all night for her to come home,” Thorn Somethea said, calling her mother’s arrest politically motivated and “unjust” and saying that officers had not shown a warrant ordering the arrest.
“They didn’t explain anything. They only said that they were going to take her to the Tuol Kok district office. I want the authorities to get in touch with [our family] and tell us what is going on,” she said, adding that her mother suffers from hypertension and high cholesterol and now needs medicine brought to her in jail.
Phnom Penh Police Commission spokesperson San Sok Seyha told RFA on Monday that Thorn Kimsan had been arrested because of statements made on her Facebook page that had “gravely affected social security.”
“She sent a voice message saying that the Chinese vaccine has caused people in Cambodia to die, and this is not true. This constitutes incitement to create social unrest and misunderstandings. In reality, there has been no such problem so far,” he said.
Thorn Kimsan’s arrest was the latest in a string of arrests of political opposition and social activists on unspecified charges or accusations of “incitement,” with no warrants shown or explanations provided to suspects or their families.
Including CNRP members, environmental activists, NGO members, and Buddhist monks, nearly 80 have been taken into custody from the end of July 2020 to March 15 this year, sources say.
These arrests routinely violate the rights of those taken into custody, said Seung Sen Karuna, spokesperson for the Cambodia-based rights group Adhoc.
“The person placed under arrest has to be told why he or she is being arrested and [where they will be taken next],” he said, adding, “Those enforcing the law have to be completely transparent and not hide anything related to the arrest procedure.”
Two others also arrested
At least two other CNRP activists—Thun Chantha and Mey Sophon—were recently arrested for making comments on Facebook criticizing the Chinese-made vaccine, with a court in Phnom Penh charging them on Feb. 28 with making comments likely to incite “grave social unrest.”
“We are busy now trying to motivate people across the entire country to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, but they were creating chaos by saying the vaccine can cause death,” said Chhay Kim Kheourn, a spokesperson for the National Police Commission.
“They were confusing people and insulting [Cambodia’s] leaders. Is that really freedom of speech?” he asked.
“We have to enforce the law.”
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has variously spoken in favor or against Chinese vaccine.
Cambodia’s Ministry of Health on March 11 confirmed the country’s first COVID-19 related death, one year to the day that the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus that causes the disease a global pandemic.
The patient, 50, was a driver for a Chinese company chief who lived in Sihanoukville city, and who had also tested positive for COVID-19, according to a ministry statement. The driver died at a Phnom Penh hospital, the statement said, without providing further details.
There have been no confirmed reports in Cambodia of deaths caused by use of the Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccine.
Reported by RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Sok Ry Sum. Written in English by Richard Finney.
China's Pension Funds Face Rising Risk
Government plans to increase retirement age after cutting company contributions.
An analysis by Michael Lelyveld
Elderly people sit in a street during morning rush hour in Beijing, China, November 3, 2020. Reuters
China is facing major strains in its pension system after tapping social security funds to stimulate the economy for the past two years.
On Feb. 26, China's minister of human resources and social security, Zhang Jinan, said the government had paid all of its old-age pensions "on time and in full" last year with increases for 120 million retirees despite concerns about deficits and contribution cuts, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Public concerns have been rising since a 2019 report by the ministry and the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences (CASS) warned that the pension fund for urban workers would start running deficits in 2028 and become insolvent by 2035, largely due to demographic trends.
China's over-60 population is projected to rise from 254 million in 2019 to 300 million in 2025, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, while a declining number of younger workers will be paying into the social security funds.
The forecasts have become a potential source of social instability because younger workers bear the financial burden of supporting the pension funds, as well as the risk that the funds will run out before they retire.
On Feb. 26, President Xi Jinping cited the need to improve the social security system at a Politburo study session of the Communist Party Central Committee, Xinhua said.
"Social security is the most imminent and realistic issue the people care about," said Xi, raising expectations of major changes in the 2021-2025 period of the 14th Five-Year Plan.
"Although China has basically established a fully functional social security system ..., the country still needs to ... make practical improvements on the weak links of the system, as the principal contradiction in Chinese society has evolved," Xi said.
In its outline of the five-year plan, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) promised to "increase social security efforts."
"We will refine the national unified platform for social insurance public services, bring basic old-age insurance funds under national unified management, and develop a multi- tiered, multi-pillar old-age insurance system," the government's top planning agency said.
Earlier this week, Bloomberg News reported that banking regulators are considering a plan that could form one of the pillars.
The plan calls for creating a national pension company with state-owned banks and insurers as shareholders, Bloomberg said, but details have yet to be worked out.
Demographic fallout
The pressures on pension funding from China's discredited one-child policy are expected to play out over the next decade.
"From now up till 2030, people aged above 55 will increase by 124 million ... (while) people aged below 35 will decline by 46 million as a result of population aging," said Robin Xing, Morgan Stanley chief China economist, in a report by China Global Television Network (CGTN).
The retirement age for men is 60. Women in the blue-collar workforce retire at 50, or 55 for white-collar workers, Xinhua said.
China's main pension fund has already been running an annual deficit of 730 billion yuan (U.S. $113 billion), according to the CGTN report.
The strain on the system comes despite a government decision in 2017 to pump up reserves by ordering China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to transfer 10 percent of their shares to the national pension fund.
In January, the Ministry of Finance said the transfers from the centrally-administered SOEs had been completed. The value of the shares in the 93 big companies was estimated at 1.68 trillion (U.S. 260 billion), the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) said.
But the transfers may be little more than a paper shuffle.
Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, has described the assets as "clearly not liquid" and unlikely to generate cash to pay benefits.
The government has added strains to the system by allowing enterprises to reduce their contributions to social security funds since 2019 as part of its plan to ease "corporate burdens," boost profits and stimulate the economy.
The plan predated the COVID-19 crisis, which dealt a further blow to social security contributions.
As part of its campaign to rescue the economy by easing corporate costs, the government raised its tax and fee cuts from 2 trillion yuan (U.S. $308 billion) in 2019 to 2.6 trillion yuan (U.S. $400 billion) last year.
Based on the numbers cited by Zhang at his press conference last month, the reduction in employers' social insurance contributions accounted for nearly 60 percent of the government's tax and fee cuts last year. Reduced payments
Over half of the cuts came from reduced payments to old- age pension funds.
The reported balance of 4.7 trillion yuan (U.S. $723 billion) in the pension fund appears to have fallen by 6 percent in less than two years.
The condition of the fund could be considerably worse if the SOE shares have been overvalued.
One implication of the share transfers is that the pension fund will be a major stakeholder in SOEs, but with no influence over their activities.
"The transfer does not change (the) state firms' management as the pension fund will be a long-term financial investor, only enjoying stock dividend and not interfering in operations," Du Tianjia, a SASAC research official, told CGTN.
The government is working on plans to reduce underfunding, but all appear to face problems.
One clear task is to unify the country's pension funds into a comprehensive national system by 2025 as announced by the Central Committee last year, the official English- language China Daily reported.
Merging the funds from lower levels of government would allow financial support to flow from regions with younger populations to older ones that have relied on government bailouts, the paper said.
Unification at the provincial level from funds run by cities and lower-level authorities has already been "widely achieved," said Lu Quan, secretary-general of the China Association of Social Security.
But the unification plan has been resisted by younger work forces in coastal regions with concerns about greater financial burdens and higher corporate contribution rates.
"They have become the biggest opposition force to a unified system," China Daily quoted Lu as saying.
An even tougher solution may be to raise the retirement thresholds.
The government has been laying the groundwork for the difficult decision, which has met with public outcries every time it comes up.
At the social security press conference on Feb. 26, You Jun, vice-minister for human resources, said the government is working on a detailed plan to raise the retirement age limits "in a gradual manner" for the 14th Five-Year Plan period.
You's comments echoed a government announcement of the gradual changes in November, citing targets for 2035, Reuters reported.
Officials have argued to no avail that China's longstanding benchmarks are lower than those for other countries including South Korea and Japan, while average life expectancy in China has risen to 77.3 years as of 2019.
The average lifespan is expected to increase by one year during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, Premier Li Keqiang said in his government work report.
You said the plan to raise the retirement ages "will both draw on international experiences and practices and fully consider China's own condition, traditions and history," Xinhua reported.
The announcement of retirement changes in November drew complaints on social media, according to Reuters.
"Delaying retirement means we have to postpone our pension," one user wrote on Weibo. Another user said the decision "has no rationality or necessity," Reuters reported.
In an email message, Hufbauer said that solutions to the underfunding problems are bound to be difficult, noting that the social security system in the United States is also facing pressure.
Last year, the Social Security Administration projected that its trust fund could be depleted by 2035, forcing it to reduce benefits unless remedial measures are taken.
"I think the ultimate solution for China, as for the U.S., will be to tap general funds. But in the meantime, there could be small fixes, like increasing the retirement age a little bit, raising taxes a little bit, etc.," said Hufbauer.
"Solutions will be painful, but I don't expect either China or the U.S. to cut pension benefits," he said.
Vietnamese Dissident Released After Serving Full Prison Term
2021-03-15
Doan Thi Hong, also called Xuan Hong, is shown in a protest in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in a June 2018 photo.
Facebook / Xuan Hong
Vietnamese dissident Doan Thi Hong has been released from prison after serving a sentence of two and a half years for “disturbing security” by organizing public protests and has been reunited with her family, Vietnamese sources say.
Hong, also called Xuan Hong, was freed on March 9 in poor health with weakened eyesight, a digestive disorder, and a tumor growing in her chest, and is the first member of the activist Hien Phap, or Constitution Group, to be freed from prison.
“I’m very happy to be reunited with my family and to see my relatives and children,” said Hong, whose youngest daughter was three years old when Hong was arrested.
“However, having my freedom now reminds me of those others who are still in prison, and I feel so sorry for them whenever I think of them,” she said.
Hong said that after having her health checked, she will try to reclaim a motorbike seized by police at the time of her Sept. 2, 2018 arrest in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 12 for planning to organize a public protest two days later.
“Once I get the motorbike back to use for my transportation, I can think about how to buy and sell some goods to help me make ends meet,” she said.
The Hien Phap Group, a network of activists formed in 2017 to call for the rights to freedom of speech and assembly guaranteed by Vietnam’s own Constitution, had played a major role in calling for protests that rocked Vietnamese cities in June 2018 in opposition to a proposed cybersecurity law and a law granting concessions of land to Chinese businesses.
Seven of its members are still in prison serving sentences of from five to eight years on charges of “disturbing security” under Article 118 of Vietnam’s Penal Code.
Police investigators strongly urged Hong following her arrest not to hire a lawyer to defend her in court, saying this would only earn her a longer sentence on conviction, Hong said, adding that she had already wanted to avoid placing a financial burden on her family.
“Therefore, I refused to [have a lawyer]. But after seeing my family, and especially after speaking with [my elder sister], I decided to get a lawyer anyway,” she said.
In its Freedom in the World 2021 report, Washington D.C.-based Freedom House gave Vietnam an overall score of 19 out of a possible 100, a one-point drop from last year’s rating. Vietnam scored three out of 40 in political rights, and 16 out of 60 in civil liberties.
”Freedom of expression, religious freedom, and civil society activism are tightly restricted [and the] authorities have increasingly cracked down on citizens’ use of social media and the internet,” Freedom House said.
Reported by RFA’ Vietnamese Service. Translated by Chau Vu. Written in English by Richard Finney.
TRAPPED WITH CREEPY CRAWLERS Navy battles bedbugs aboard submarine USS Connecticut The nuclear submarine USS Connecticut, pictured in 2011 at the Arctic Circle, is in port at Naval Base Kitsap-Bremerton, Wash., to deal with an infestation of bedbugs. Photo by MCS2 Kevin O'Brian/U.S. Navy
March 12 (UPI) -- A year-long infestation of bedbugs aboard the nuclear submarine USS Connecticut has involved "all feasible measures" for eradication by Navy entomologists.
The presence of bedbugs, parasites which hide in daylight and bite exposed skin to draw blood of victims in darkness, was first observed aboard the submarine after its participation in ICEX 2020 exercises in the Arctic Ocean in March 2020.
A bite from the apple seed-sized insect can cause symptoms ranging from a rash to a severe allergic reaction.
"People were getting eaten alive in their racks[sleeping berths]," an unidentified petty officer told Navy Times, which first reported the story earlier this week. The petty officer added that the infestation spread to several enlisted berthing spaces and at least one officer state room.
The issue was first formally reported to the Navy in December 2020, but the presence of bedbugs was not officially established until Feb. 19, 2021, Naval Submarine Forces Pacific said.
Daily inspections led to dispersal, by Navy entomologists, of diatomaceous dust, an organic spray meant to draw the insects out of hiding. The scientists later certified that "all feasible measures have been taken" to control the problem, Military.com reported.
HEAT YOU NEED HEAT TO KILL THEM
EIGHT HOURS AT OVER 2000 DEGREES,
USING PROPANE HEATERS
Mattresses, linens and privacy curtains in the vessel's berthing areas have been replaced, and additional measures will be taken since submarine's arrival at Naval Base Kitsap-Bremerton, Wash., its homeport.
Members of the 100-person crew have complained of lack of sleep, in addition to the pain of bedbug bites.
"They are really frustrated and feel like they have been let down by the Navy," Jeffery Rachall, who served aboard the submarine and has kept in contact with the current crew since his 2018 retirement from the Navy, told the Seattle Times.
"They are complaining about a lack of sleep. They itch, and the bugs are crawling all over," Rachall said.
On March 16, 1827, Freedom's Journal, the first Black-owned and -operated newspaper in the United States, was published in New York. File Photo courtesy of The Afro-American Press/Wikimedia
Can I squeeze through here? How some fungi can grow through tiny gaps
University of Tsukuba research team sheds new light on how fungi that cause diseases can penetrate tissues by squeezing through tiny gaps between plant or animal cells
IMAGE: A TEAM LED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF TSUKUBA HAS FOUND KEY DIFFERENCES THAT EXPLAIN WHY SOME SPECIES OF FUNGI CAN GROW SUCCESSFULLY THROUGH TINY GAPS, WHEREAS OTHER FUNGI--TYPICALLY THOSE WITH... view more
CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF TSUKUBA
Tsukuba, Japan - Fungi are a vital part of nature's recycling system of decay and decomposition. Filamentous fungi spread over and penetrate surfaces by extending fine threads known as hyphae.
Fungi that cause disease within living organisms can penetrate the spaces between tightly connected plant or animal cells, but how their hyphae do this, and why the hyphae of other fungal species do not, has been unclear.
Now, a team led by Professor Norio Takeshita at University of Tsukuba, with collaborators at Nagoya University and in Mexico, has discovered a key feature that helps explain the differences among species. They compared seven fungi from different taxonomic groups, including some that cause disease in plants.
The team tested how the fungi responded when presented with an obstruction that meant they had to pass through very narrow channels. At only 1 micron wide, the channels were narrower than the diameter of fungal hyphae, typically 2-5 microns in different species.
Some species grew readily through the narrow channels, maintaining similar growth rates before meeting the channel, while extending through it, and after emerging. In contrast, other species were seriously impeded. The hyphae either stopped growing or grew very slowly through the channel. After emerging, the hyphae sometimes developed a swollen tip and became depolarized so that they did not maintain their previous direction of growth.
The tendency to show disrupted growth did not depend on the diameter of the hyphae, or how closely related the fungi were. However, species with faster growth rates and higher pressure within the cell were more prone to disruption.
By observing fluorescent dyes in the living fungi, the team found that processes inside the cell became defective in the fungi with disrupted growth. Small packages (vesicles) that supply lipids and proteins (needed for assembling new membranes and cell walls as hypha extend) were no longer properly organized during growth through the channel.
"For the first time, we have shown that there appears to be a trade-off between cell plasticity and growth rate," says Professor Takeshita. "When a fast-growing hypha passes through a narrow channel, a massive number of vesicles congregate at the point of constriction, rather than passing along to the growing tip. This results in depolarized growth: the tip swells when it exits the channel, and no longer extends. In contrast, a slower growth rate allows hyphae to maintain correct positioning of the cell polarity machinery, permitting growth to continue through the confined space."
As well as helping explain why certain fungi can penetrate surfaces or living tissues, this discovery will also be important for future research into fungal biotechnology and ecology.
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The article, "Trade-off between plasticity and velocity in mycelial growth", was recently published in mBio at doi.org/10.1128/mBio.03196-20
UH OH
Multidrug-resistant candida auris discovered in a natural environment
Washington, D.C. - March 16, 2021 - For the first time, researchers have isolated the fungus Candida auris from a sandy beach and tidal swamp in a remote coastal wetland ecosystem. The discovery, reported this week in mBio, an open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, represents the first evidence that the pathogen thrives in a natural environment and is not limited to mammalian hosts. C. auris can cause infections resistant to major antifungal drugs, and since its identification in clinical patients 10 years ago scientists have sought to understand its origins.
A commentary accompanying the study, published concurrently in the journal, hailed the work as a "landmark discovery."
Medical mycologist Anuradha Chowdhary, Ph.D, at the University of Delhi, in India, led the new study. She and her colleagues analyzed 48 samples of soil and water collected from 8 sites including rocky shores, sandy beaches, tidal marshes, and mangrove swamps around the Andaman Islands, an isolated archipelago with a tropical climate in the Bay of Bengal. They isolated C. auris in the samples from two sites, a bay tidal salt marsh wetland and a beach.
In samples from the salt marsh, which was rich in seagrass and low in human activity, the researchers found 2 isolates, one of which proved to be multidrug susceptible when tested against antifungals. In samples from the beach, which was high in human activity, the team identified 22 isolates, all of which were multidrug resistant. Whole genome sequencing of the isolates revealed that they were closely related to pathogenic strains found in Southeast Asia.
"The isolates?found in the area where there was human activity were more related to strains we see in the clinical setting," Chowdhary said. Future studies, she said, may be able to explain that connection. "It might be coming from plants, or might be shed from human skin, which we know C. auris can colonize. We need to explore more environmental niches for the pathogen."
Although cases of C. auris trace to the mid-1990s, the fungus wasn't named until 2009. The new work also provides evidence for a hypothesis recently introduced by the microbiologists who authored the new commentary, including Arturo Casadevall, Ph.D, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore; Dimitrios Kontoyiannis, Ph.D, of the The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston; and Vincent Robert, Ph.D, Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute, in Utrecht, Netherlands.
The trio proposed that C. auris, which is tolerant to a range of temperatures and salinity, is native to wetlands, and its emergence as a pathogen in humans has resulted from global warming effects on those environments. Chowdhary, who has been studying C. auris for nearly a decade, said that hypothesis inspired her to explore ecological niches where the fungus might live.
"This study takes the first step in toward understanding how pathogen survives in the wetland," Chowdhary said, "but this is just one niche." Future studies, she said, could reveal more about how the fungus thrives in the wild--and better explain why it's such a menace to humans.
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The American Society for Microbiology is one of the largest professional societies dedicated to the life sciences and is composed of 30,000 scientists and health practitioners. ASM's mission is to promote and advance the microbial sciences.
ASM advances the microbial sciences through conferences, publications, certifications, educational opportunities and advocacy efforts. It enhances laboratory capacity around the globe through training and resources. It provides a network for scientists in academia, industry and clinical settings. Additionally, ASM promotes a deeper understanding of the microbial sciences to diverse audiences.
Electronic cigarettes help smokers with schizophrenia quit
A new study in Nicotine & Tobacco Research, published by Oxford University Press, finds that the use of high-strength nicotine e-cigarettes can help adults with schizophrenia spectrum disorders quit smoking.
Some 60-90% of people with schizophrenia smoke cigarettes, compared to 15-24% of the general population. The researchers from the University of Catania, in collaboration with colleagues from City University of New York and Weill Medical College of Cornell University, have assessed here the feasibility of using a high-strength nicotine e-cigarette to modify smoking behavior in people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders who smoke cigarettes. In this study 40 adults with schizophrenia spectrum disorders who smoked and did not intend to reduce or quit smoking participated in a 12-week study using Juul e-cigarettes loaded with 5% nicotine pods with a follow-up visit at 24 weeks. Researchers measured smoking frequency, smoking reduction, carbon monoxide expired air reduction, smoking cessation, and continuous abstinence 24 weeks after the study began.
Some 40% of participants had stopped smoking traditional cigarettes by the end of 12 weeks. Researchers observed an overall, sustained 50% reduction in smoking or complete smoking abstinence in 92.5% of participants at the end of 12 weeks. Researchers also observed an overall 75% reduction in median daily cigarette consumption from 25 to 6, by the end of the 12 weeks.
After six months, 24 weeks after the study began, 35% of participants had completely stopped smoking conventional tobacco cigarettes, while continuing to use e-cigarettes. Researchers here also measured a significant decrease in daily cigarette consumption was also confirmed at the end of 24 weeks. The study's authors report that 57.5% of participants reduced their cigarette usage by over 50%.
Additionally, researchers found that participants' mean blood pressure, heart rate and weight measurably decreased between the start of the study and the 12-week follow up. Positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia were not significantly different after using e-cigarettes throughout the whole duration of the study. At the end of the study 61.9% of participants reported feeling more awake, less irritable, and experiencing greater concentration, and reduced hunger.
"Smoking is the primary cause of the 15-25 years mortality gap between users of mental health services and the general population, said one of the paper's authors, Riccardo Polosa, professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Catania (Italy). "This study demonstrates that switching to high-strength nicotine e-cigarettes is a feasible highly effective smoking cessation method for smokers who have schizophrenia. And it improves their quality of life too!"
IMAGE: ANNA'S HUMMINGBIRD FLYING IN THE EXPERIMENTAL SETUP, DRINKING SUGAR WATER FROM A FAKE FLOWER. view more
CREDIT: PHOTO: LENTINK LAB / STANFORD UNIVERSITY.
The hummingbird is named after its pleasant humming sound when it hovers in front of flowers to feed. But only now has it become clear how the wing generates the hummingbird's namesake sound when it is beating rapidly at 40 beats per second. Researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology, Sorama, a TU/e spin-off company, and Stanford University meticulously observed hummingbirds using 12 high-speed cameras, 6 pressure plates and 2176 microphones. They discovered that the soft and complex feathered wings of hummingbirds generate sound in a fashion similar to how the simpler wings of insect do. The new insights could help make devices like fans and drones quieter.
The team of engineers succeeded in measuring the precise origin of the sound generated by the flapping wings of a flying animal for the first time. The hummingbird's hum originates from the pressure difference between the topside and underside of the wings, which changes both in magnitude and orientation as the wings flap back and forth. These pressure differences over the wing are essential, because they furnish the net aerodynamic force that enables the hummingbird bird to liftoff and hover.
Unlike other species of birds, a hummingbird wing generates a strong upward aerodynamic force during both the downward and upward wing stroke, so twice per wingbeat. Whereas both pressure differences due to the lift and drag force acting on the wing contribute, it turns out that the upward lifting pressure difference is the primary source of the hum.
The difference between whining, humming, buzzing and wooshing
Professor David Lentink of Stanford University: "This is the reason why birds and insects make different sounds. Mosquitoes whine, bees buzz, hummingbirds hum, and larger birds 'woosh'. Most birds are relatively quiet because they generate most of the lift only once during the wingbeat at the downstroke. Hummingbirds and insects are noisier because they do so twice per wingbeat."
The researchers combined all measurements in a 3D acoustic model of bird and insect wings. The model not only provides biological insight into how animals generate sound with their flapping wings, it also predicts how the aerodynamic performance of a flapping wing gives the wing sound its volume and timbre. "The distinctive sound of the hummingbird is perceived as pleasant because of the many 'overtones' created by the varying aerodynamic forces on the wing. A hummingbird wing is similar to a beautifully tuned instrument," Lentink explains with a smile.
High-tech sound camera
To arrive at their model, the scientists examined six Anna's hummingbirds, the most common species around Stanford. One by one, they had the birds drink sugar water from a fake flower in a special flight chamber. Around the chamber, not visible to the bird, cameras, microphones and pressure sensors were set up to precisely record each wingbeat while hovering in front of the flower.
You can't just go out and buy the equipment needed for this from an electronics store. CEO and researcher Rick Scholte of Sorama, a spin-off of TU Eindhoven: "To make the sound visible and be able to examine it in detail, we used sophisticated sound cameras developed by my company. The optical cameras are connected to a network of 2176 microphones for this purpose. Together they work a bit like a thermal camera that allows you to show a thermal image. We make the sound visible in a 'heat map', which enables us to see the 3D sound field in detail."
New aerodynamic force sensors
To interpret the 3D sound images, it is essential to know what motion the bird's wing is making at each sound measurement point. For that, Stanford's twelve high-speed cameras came into play, capturing the exact wing movement frame-by-frame.
Lentink: "But that's not end of story. We also needed to measure the aerodynamic forces the hummingbird's wings generates in flight. We had to develop a new instrument for that." During a follow-up experiment six highly sensitive pressure plates finally managed to record the lift and drag forces generated by the wings as they moved up and down, a first.
The terabytes of data then had to be synchronized. The researchers wanted to know exactly which wing position produced which sound and how this related to the pressure differences. Scholte: "Because light travels so much faster than sound, we had to calibrate each frame separately for both the cameras and the microphones, so that the sound recordings and the images would always correspond exactly." Because the cameras, microphones and sensors were all in different locations in the room, the researchers also had to correct for that.
Algorithm as a composite artist
Once the wing location, the corresponding sound and the pressure differences are precisely aligned for each video frame, the researchers were confronted with the complexity of interpretating high volume data. The researchers tackled this challenge harnessing artificial intelligence, the research of TU/e PhD student, and co-first author, Patrick Wijnings.
Wijnings: "We developed an algorithm for this that can interpret a 3D acoustic field from the measurements, and this enabled us to determine the most probable sound field of the hummingbird. The solution to this so-called inverse problem resembles what a police facial composite artist does: using a few clues to make the most reliable drawing of the suspect. In this way, you avoid the possibility that a small distortion in the measurements changes the outcome."
The researchers finally managed to condense all these results in a simple 3D acoustic model, borrowed from the world of airplanes and mathematically adapted to flapping wings. It predicts the sound that flapping wings radiate, not only the hum of the hummingbird, but also the woosh of other birds and bats, the buzzing and whining of insects and even the noise that robots with flapping wings generate.
Making drones quieter
Although it was not the focus of this study, the knowledge gained may also help improve aircraft and drone rotors as well as laptop and vacuum cleaner fans. The new insights and tools can help make engineered devices that generate complex forces like animals do quieter.
This is exactly what Sorama aims to do: "We make sound visible in order to make appliances quieter. Noise pollution is becoming an ever-greater problem. And a decibel meter alone is not going to solve that. You need to know where the sound comes from and how it is produced, in order to be able to eliminate it. That's what our sound cameras are for. This hummingbird wing research gives us a completely new and very accurate model as a starting point, so we can do our work even better," concludes Scholte.
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This research appears on March 16 in the journal eLife, under the title "How Oscillating Aerodynamic Forces Explain the Timbre of the Hummingbird's Hum and Other Animals in Flapping Flight." The experimental and analytical work of this research was conducted by PhD student Patrick Wijnings of TU Eindhoven under the supervision of Rick Scholte of Sorama and Sander Stuijk and Henk Corporaal of TU/e, and PhD student Ben Hightower of Stanford under the supervision of David Lentink of Stanford University with the assistance of four co-authors from the Lentink Lab: Rivers Ingersoll, Diana Chin, Jade Nguyen and Daniel Shorr. This research was financed by NWO Perspectief program ZERO and CAREER AWARD National Science Foundation (NSF).
Members of the Provisional National Government of Vietnam stand guard in uniform at the group’s compound in the Mojave Desert in California September 2, 2018.
Reuters
