Scientists Just Created a Brilliant New Technique for Finding Aliens

The recent discovery of seven potentially habitable exoplanets orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1, just 40 light-years away, greatly raises the odds of finding alien life on other worlds with whom we might one day have a real chance of directly coming into contact.
But before we get ahead of ourselves, we'll need to figure out for certain whether there are signs of life on those and other planets. A group of scientists at Caltech's Exoplanet Technology Laboratory believe they have a solution for turning our most powerful telescopes into alien-hunting instruments.
The technique is called "high-dispersion coronagraphy," and is intended to help scientists find biosignatures on exoplanets. Biosignatures are disturbances in an environmental equilibrium; they reveal the existence of an unknown force or process. Certain colors might indicate photosynthesis, for example, or a certain kind of excess gas might indicate an organic life source.
In order to study faraway planets, scientists need to block the light emanating from the stars they orbit. Stars are brighter than planets — anywhere from a thousand times to several billion times brighter — and that light can interfere with our ability to take a good look at anything around them. To fix this problem, scientists employ a coronagraph, which is a device in a telescope that helps block starlight.
Scientists have been using coronagraphs for some time, but this new high-dispersion coronagraphy technique innovatively combines it with a high-res spectrometer. Spectrometers expose the "fingerprints" of chemicals; researchers can use them to find elements that are associated with life, such as oxygen.
But here's the real kicker: scientists realized that using a coronagraph with a high-res spectrometer specifically caused even more light to be filtered out than usual. Using these two instruments together allows researchers to "improve the sensitivity of our system by a factor of 100 to 1,000 over ground-based methods," explained Dimitri Mawet, the head of the Caltech team who made the discovery.

The team used optical fibers to combine the coronagraph with the high-res spectrometer. The fibers, it turns out, also help to remove starlight. These discoveries were, in the words of team member Garreth Ruane, "serendipitous."
When high-dispersion coronagraphy is put into practice, scientists will be able to learn much more about the molecules that exist in exoplanets' atmospheres, as well as the planets' appearances, rotation rates, and weather patterns. We'll need that information if we want to discern whether life exists outside of our galaxy.

What high-dispersion coronagraphy looks like.

Right now, we only have one in-progress telescope that'll be up to the job of locating biosignatures using high-dispersion coronagraphy. It's called the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), and it will become the world's biggest optical telescope when it's finished in about a decade. Scientists will be able to use TMT to apply this new technique to planets around M-dwarf stars, the most common star in the galaxy, which are smaller than our sun. Stronger telescopes designed in the future could help researchers apply the technique to planets around bigger stars.
Since TMT won't be finished until the late 2020's, right now this is a waiting game, at least in terms of using the new technique to help solve the mystery of extraterrestrial life. High-dispersion coronagraphy has already been tested in laboratories, and scientists can use it for now on certain gas exoplanets. But we'll have to wait for the blessed day it can be used on the Earth-like exoplanets around TRAPPIST-1.

Photos via Photo via Caltech/IPAC-TMT, GIF via Caltech/IPAC-TMT, Getty Images / NASA

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

Blackwater founder held secret Seychelles meeting to establish Trump-Putin back channel

The United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladi­mir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to U.S., European and Arab officials.
The meeting took place around Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump's inauguration — in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, officials said. Though the full agenda remains unclear, the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective that would be likely to require major concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions.
Though Prince had no formal role with the Trump campaign or transition team, he presented himself as an unofficial envoy for Trump to high-ranking Emiratis involved in setting up his meeting with the Putin confidant, according to the officials, who did not identify the Russian.
Prince was an avid supporter of Trump. After the Republican convention, he contributed $250,000 to Trump's campaign, the national party and a pro-Trump super PAC led by GOP mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, records show. He has ties to people in Trump's circle, including Stephen K. Bannon, now serving as the president's chief strategist and senior counselor. Prince's sister Betsy DeVos serves as education secretary in the Trump administration. And Prince was seen in the Trump transition offices in New York in December.
U.S. officials said the FBI has been scrutinizing the Seychelles meeting as part of a broader probe of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and alleged contacts between associates of Putin and Trump. The FBI declined to comment.

The Seychelles encounter, which one official said spanned two days, adds to an expanding web of connections between Russia and Americans with ties to Trump — contacts that the White House has been reluctant to acknowledge or explain until they have been exposed by news organizations.
"We are not aware of any meetings and Erik Prince had no role in the transition," said Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary.
A Prince spokesman said in a statement: "Erik had no role on the transition team. This is a complete fabrication. The meeting had nothing to do with President Trump. Why is the so-called under-resourced intelligence community messing around with surveillance of American citizens when they should be hunting terrorists?"
Prince is best known as the founder of Blackwater, a security firm that became a symbol of U.S. abuses in Iraq after a series of incidents including one in 2007 in which the company's guards were accused — and later criminally convicted — of killing civilians in a crowded Iraqi square. Prince sold the firm, which was subsequently rebranded, but has continued building a private paramilitary empire with contracts across the Middle East and Asia. He now heads a Hong Kong-based company known as the Frontier Services Group.

ADVERTISING

Prince would probably have been seen as too controversial to serve in any official capacity in the Trump transition or administration. But his ties to Trump advisers, experience with clandestine work and relationship with the royal leaders of the Emirates — where he moved in 2010 amid mounting legal problems for his American business — would have positioned him as an ideal go-between.
The Seychelles meeting came after separate private discussions in New York involving high-ranking representatives of Trump with both Moscow and the Emirates.
The White House has acknowledged that Michael T. Flynn, Trump's original national security adviser, and Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner met with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, in late November or early December in New York.
Flynn and Kushner were joined by Bannon for a separate meeting with the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who made an undisclosed visit to New York later in December, according to the U.S., European and Arab officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
In an unusual breach of protocol, the UAE did not notify the Obama administration in advance of the visit, though officials found out because Zayed's name appeared on a flight manifest.
Officials said Zayed and his brother, the UAE's national security adviser, coordinated the Seychelles meeting with Russian government officials with the goal of establishing an unofficial back channel between Trump and Putin.
Officials said Zayed wanted to be helpful to both leaders who had talked about working more closely together, a policy objective long advocated by the crown prince. The UAE, which sees Iran as one of its main enemies, also shared the Trump team's interest in finding ways to drive a wedge between Moscow and Tehran.
Zayed met twice with Putin in 2016, according to Western officials, and urged the Russian leader to work more closely with the Emirates and Saudi Arabia — an effort to isolate Iran.
At the time of the Seychelles meeting and for weeks afterward, the UAE believed that Prince had the blessing of the new administration to act as its unofficial representative. The Russian participant was a person whom Zayed knew was close to Putin from his interactions with both men, the officials said.
When the Seychelles meeting took place, official contacts between members of the incoming Trump administration and the Russian government were under intense scrutiny, both from federal investigators and the press.
Less than a week before the Seychelles meeting, U.S. intelligence agencies released a report accusing Russia of intervening clandestinely during the 2016 election to help Trump win the White House.
The FBI was already investigating communications between Flynn and Kislyak. The Washington Post's David Ignatius first disclosed those communications on Jan. 12, around the time of the Seychelles meeting. Flynn was subsequently fired by Trump for misleading Vice President Pence and others about his discussions with Kislyak.
Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE's ambassador in Washington, declined to comment.
Government officials in the Seychelles said they were not aware of any meetings between Trump and Putin associates in the country around Jan. 11. But they said luxury resorts on the island are ideal for clandestine gatherings like the one described by the U.S., European and Arab officials.
"I wouldn't be surprised at all," said Barry Faure, the Seychelles secretary of state for foreign affairs. "The Seychelles is the kind of place where you can have a good time away from the eyes of the media. That's even printed in our tourism marketing. But I guess this time you smelled something."
Trump has dismissed the investigations of Russia's role in the election as "fake news" and a "witch hunt."
The level of discretion surrounding the Seychelles meeting seems extraordinary given the frequency with which senior Trump advisers, including Flynn and Kushner, had interacted with Russian officials in the United States, including at the high-profile Trump Tower in New York.
Steven Simon, a National Security Council senior director for the Middle East and North Africa in the Obama White House, said: "The idea of using business cutouts, or individuals perceived to be close to political leaders, as a tool of diplomacy is as old as the hills. These unofficial channels are desirable precisely because they are deniable; ideas can be tested without the risk of failure."
Current and former U.S. officials said that while Prince refrained from playing a direct role in the Trump transition, his name surfaced so frequently in internal discussions that he seemed to function as an outside adviser whose opinions were valued on a range of issues, including plans for overhauling the U.S. intelligence community.
He appears to have particularly close ties to Bannon, appearing multiple times as a guest on Bannon's satellite radio program over the past year as well as in articles on the Breitbart Web site that Bannon ran before joining the Trump campaign.
In a July interview with Bannon, Prince said those seeking forceful U.S. leadership should "wait till January and hope Mr. Trump is elected." And he lashed out at President Barack Obama, saying that because of his policies "the terrorists, the fascists, are winning."
Days before the November election, Prince appeared on Bannon's program again, saying that he had "well-placed sources" in the New York City Police Department telling him they were preparing to make arrests in the investigation of former congressman Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) over allegations he exchanged sexually explicit texts with a minor. Flynn tweeted a link to the Breitbart report on the claim. No arrests occurred.
Prince went on to make unfounded assertions that damaging material recovered from Weiner's computers would implicate Hillary Clinton and her close adviser, Huma Abedin, who was married to Weiner. He also called Abedin an "agent of influence very sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood."
Prince and his family were major GOP donors in 2016. The Center for Responsive Politics reported that the family gave more than $10 million to GOP candidates and super PACs, including about $2.7 million from his sister, DeVos, and her husband.
Prince's father, Edgar Prince, built his fortune through an auto-parts company. Betsy married Richard DeVos Jr., heir to the Amway fortune.
Erik Prince has had lucrative contracts with the UAE government, which at one point paid his firm a reported $529 million to help bring in foreign fighters to help assemble an internal paramilitary force capable of carrying out secret operations and protecting Emirati installations from terrorist attacks.
The Trump administration and the UAE appear to share a similar preoccupation with Iran. Current and former officials said that Trump advisers were focused throughout the transition period on exploring ways to get Moscow to break ranks with Tehran.
"Separating Russia from Iran was a common theme," said a former intelligence official in the Obama administration who met with Trump transition officials. "It didn't seem very well thought out. It seemed a little premature. They clearly had a very specific policy position, which I found odd given that they hadn't even taken the reins and explored with experts in the U.S. government the pros and cons of that approach."
Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said he also had discussions with people close to the Trump administration about the prospects of drawing Russia away from Iran. "When I would hear this, I would think, 'Yeah that's great for you guys, but why would Putin ever do that?' " McFaul said. "There is no interest in Russia ever doing that. They have a long relationship with Iran. They're allied with Iran in fighting in Syria. They sell weapons to Iran. Iran is an important strategic partner for Russia in the Middle East."
Following the New York meeting between the Emiratis and Trump aides, Zayed was approached by Prince, who said he was authorized to act as an unofficial surrogate for the president-elect, according to the officials. He wanted Zayed to set up a meeting with a Putin associate. Zayed agreed and proposed the Seychelles as the meeting place because of the privacy it would afford both sides. "He wanted to be helpful," one official said of Zayed.
Wealthy Russians and Emirati royalty have a particularly large footprint on the islands. Signs advertising deep-sea fishing trips are posted in Cyrillic. Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov owns North Island, where Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, went on their honeymoon in 2011. Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, president of the UAE, built a hilltop palace for himself with views across the chain of islands.
The Emiratis have given hundreds of millions of dollars to the Seychelles in recent years for causes including public health and affordable housing. But when the Emirati royal family visits, they are rarely seen.
"The jeep comes to their private jet on the tarmac and they disappear," said one Seychellois official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to be seen as criticizing the Emiratis.
Zayed, the crown prince, owns a share of the Seychelles' Four Seasons, a collection of private villas scattered on a lush hillside on the main island's southern shore, overlooking the Indian Ocean, according to officials in the Seychelles. The hotel is tucked away on a private beach, far from the nearest public road.
Current and former U.S. officials who have worked closely with Zayed, who is often referred to as MBZ, say it would be out of character for him to arrange the Jan. 11 meeting without getting a green light in advance from top aides to Trump and Putin, if not the leaders themselves. "MBZ is very cautious," said an American businessman who knows Zayed and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. "There had to be a nod."
The Seychelles meeting was deemed productive by the UAE and Russia but the idea of arranging additional meetings between Prince and Putin's associates was dropped, officials said. Even unofficial contacts between Trump and Putin associates had become too politically risky, officials said.
Sieff reported from the Seychelles. Julie Tate, Devlin Barrett, Matea Gold, Tom Hamburger and Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

Why Trump lies Pt.2 Los Angeles Times

Donald Trump did not invent the lie and is not even its master. Lies have oozed out of the White House for more than two centuries and out of politicians' mouths — out of all people's mouths — likely as long as there has been human speech.
But amid all those lies, told to ourselves and to one another in order to amass power, woo lovers, hurt enemies and shield ourselves against the often glaring discomfort of reality, humanity has always had an abiding respect for truth.
In the United States, born and periodically reborn out of the repeated recognition and rejection of the age-old lie that some people are meant to take dominion over others, truth is as vital a part of the civic, social and intellectual culture as justice and liberty. Our civilization is premised on the conviction that such a thing as truth exists, that it is knowable, that it is verifiable, that it exists independently of authority or popularity and that at some point — and preferably sooner rather than later — it will prevail.
Even American leaders who lie generally know the difference between their statements and the truth. Richard Nixon said "I am not a crook" but by that point must have seen that he was. Bill Clinton said "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" but knew that he did.

" He targets the darkness, anger and insecurity that hide in each of us and harnesses them for his own purposes. " Share this quote

The insult that Donald Trump brings to the equation is an apparent disregard for fact so profound as to suggest that he may not see much practical distinction between lies, if he believes they serve him, and the truth.
His approach succeeds because of his preternaturally deft grasp of his audience. Though he is neither terribly articulate nor a seasoned politician, he has a remarkable instinct for discerning which conspiracy theories in which quasi-news source, or which of his own inner musings, will turn into ratings gold. He targets the darkness, anger and insecurity that hide in each of us and harnesses them for his own purposes. If one of his lies doesn't work — well, then he lies about that.
If we harbor latent racism or if we fear terror attacks by Muslim extremists, then he elevates a rumor into a public debate: Was Barack Obama born in Kenya, and is he therefore not really president?

An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that @BarackObama's birth certificate is a fraud.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 6, 2012

Libya is being taken over by Islamic radicals—-with @BarackObama's open support.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 31, 2011

If his own ego is threatened — if broadcast footage and photos show a smaller-sized crowd at his inauguration than he wanted — then he targets the news media, falsely charging outlets with disseminating "fake news" and insisting, against all evidence, that he has proved his case ("We caught them in a beauty," he said).
If his attempt to limit the number of Muslim visitors to the U.S. degenerates into an absolute fiasco and a display of his administration's incompetence, then he falsely asserts that terrorist attacks are underreported. (One case in point offered by the White House was the 2015 attack in San Bernardino, which in fact received intensive worldwide news coverage. The Los Angeles Times won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on the subject).
If he detects that his audience may be wearying of his act, or if he worries about a probe into Russian meddling into the election that put him in office, he tweets in the middle of the night the astonishingly absurd claim that President Obama tapped his phones. And when evidence fails to support him he dispatches his aides to explain that by "phone tapping" he obviously didn't mean phone tapping. Instead of backing down when confronted with reality, he insists that his rebutted assertions will be vindicated as true at some point in the future.
Trump's easy embrace of untruth can sometimes be entertaining, in the vein of a Moammar Kadafi speech to the United Nations or the self-serving blathering of a 6-year-old.

" He gives every indication that he is as much the gullible tool of liars as he is the liar in chief. " Share this quote

But he is not merely amusing. He is dangerous. His choice of falsehoods and his method of spewing them — often in tweets, as if he spent his days and nights glued to his bedside radio and was periodically set off by some drivel uttered by a talk show host who repeated something he'd read on some fringe blog — are a clue to Trump's thought processes and perhaps his lack of agency. He gives every indication that he is as much the gullible tool of liars as he is the liar in chief.
He has made himself the stooge, the mark, for every crazy blogger, political quack, racial theorist, foreign leader or nutcase peddling a story that he might repackage to his benefit as a tweet, an appointment, an executive order or a policy. He is a stranger to the concept of verification, the insistence on evidence and the standards of proof that apply in a courtroom or a medical lab — and that ought to prevail in the White House.
There have always been those who accept the intellectually bankrupt notion that people are entitled to invent their own facts — consider the "9/11 was an inside job" trope — but Trump's ascent marks the first time that the culture of alternative reality has made its home at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Support our journalism

Become a subscriber today to support editorial writing like this. Start getting full access to our signature journalism for just 99 cents for the first four weeks.

If Americans are unsure which Trump they have — the Machiavellian negotiator who lies to manipulate simpler minds, or one of those simpler minds himself — does it really matter? In either case he puts the nation in danger by undermining the role of truth in public discourse and policymaking, as well as the notion of truth being verifiable and mutually intelligible.
In the months ahead, Trump will bring his embrace of alternative facts on the nation's behalf into talks with China, North Korea or any number of powers with interests counter to ours and that constitute an existential threat. At home, Trump now becomes the embodiment of the populist notion (with roots planted at least as deeply in the Left as the Right) that verifiable truth is merely a concept invented by fusty intellectuals, and that popular leaders can provide some equally valid substitute. We've seen people like that before, and we have a name for them: demagogues.
Our civilization is defined in part by the disciplines — science, law, journalism — that have developed systematic methods to arrive at the truth. Citizenship brings with it the obligation to engage in a similar process. Good citizens test assumptions, question leaders, argue details, research claims.
Investigate. Read. Write. Listen. Speak. Think. Be wary of those who disparage the investigators, the readers, the writers, the listeners, the speakers and the thinkers. Be suspicious of those who confuse reality with reality TV, and those who repeat falsehoods while insisting, against all evidence, that they are true. To defend freedom, demand fact.
This is the second in a series.

The problem with Trump

A series of Times editorials

• Reader reactions: praise and scorn

Be the first to get the latest in our editorial series on Trump. Sign up for our Today's Headlines newsletter.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook

Support our journalism

Already a subscriber? Thank you for your support. If you are not, please consider subscribing today to support editorial writing like this. Start getting full access to our signature journalism for just 99 cents for the first four weeks.

Design and production by Andrea Roberson

---

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

Our Dishonest President Pt.1 Los Angeles Times

It was no secret during the campaign that Donald Trump was a narcissist and a demagogue who used fear and dishonesty to appeal to the worst in American voters. The Times called him unprepared and unsuited for the job he was seeking, and said his election would be a "catastrophe."

Still, nothing prepared us for the magnitude of this train wreck. Like millions of other Americans, we clung to a slim hope that the new president would turn out to be all noise and bluster, or that the people around him in the White House would act as a check on his worst instincts, or that he would be sobered and transformed by the awesome responsibilities of office.
Instead, seventy-some days in — and with about 1,400 to go before his term is completed — it is increasingly clear that those hopes were misplaced.
In a matter of weeks, President Trump has taken dozens of real-life steps that, if they are not reversed, will rip families apart, foul rivers and pollute the air, intensify the calamitous effects of climate change and profoundly weaken the system of American public education for all.
His attempt to de-insure millions of people who had finally received healthcare coverage and, along the way, enact a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich has been put on hold for the moment. But he is proceeding with his efforts to defang the government's regulatory agencies and bloat the Pentagon's budget even as he supposedly retreats from the global stage.

" It is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation. " Share this quote

These are immensely dangerous developments which threaten to weaken this country's moral standing in the world, imperil the planet and reverse years of slow but steady gains by marginalized or impoverished Americans. But, chilling as they are, these radically wrongheaded policy choices are not, in fact, the most frightening aspect of the Trump presidency.
What is most worrisome about Trump is Trump himself. He is a man so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality that it is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation. His obsession with his own fame, wealth and success, his determination to vanquish enemies real and imagined, his craving for adulation — these traits were, of course, at the very heart of his scorched-earth outsider campaign; indeed, some of them helped get him elected. But in a real presidency in which he wields unimaginable power, they are nothing short of disastrous.

Support our journalism

Become a subscriber today to support editorial writing like this. Start getting full access to our signature journalism for just 99 cents for the first four weeks.

Although his policies are, for the most part, variations on classic Republican positions (many of which would have been undertaken by a President Ted Cruz or a President Marco Rubio), they become far more dangerous in the hands of this imprudent and erratic man. Many Republicans, for instance, support tighter border security and a tougher response to illegal immigration, but Trump's cockamamie border wall, his impracticable campaign promise to deport all 11 million people living in the country illegally and his blithe disregard for the effect of such proposals on the U.S. relationship with Mexico turn a very bad policy into an appalling one.

---

In the days ahead, The Times editorial board will look more closely at the new president, with a special attention to three troubling traits:
1Trump's shocking lack of respect for those fundamental rules and institutions on which our government is based. Since Jan. 20, he has repeatedly disparaged and challenged those entities that have threatened his agenda, stoking public distrust of essential institutions in a way that undermines faith in American democracy. He has questioned the qualifications of judges and the integrity of their decisions, rather than acknowledging that even the president must submit to the rule of law. He has clashed with his own intelligence agencies, demeaned government workers and questioned the credibility of the electoral system and the Federal Reserve. He has lashed out at journalists, declaring them "enemies of the people," rather than defending the importance of a critical, independent free press. His contempt for the rule of law and the norms of government are palpable.
2His utter lack of regard for truth. Whether it is the easily disprovable boasts about the size of his inauguration crowd or his unsubstantiated assertion that Barack Obama bugged Trump Tower, the new president regularly muddies the waters of fact and fiction. It's difficult to know whether he actually can't distinguish the real from the unreal — or whether he intentionally conflates the two to befuddle voters, deflect criticism and undermine the very idea of objective truth. Whatever the explanation, he is encouraging Americans to reject facts, to disrespect science, documents, nonpartisanship and the mainstream media — and instead to simply take positions on the basis of ideology and preconceived notions. This is a recipe for a divided country in which differences grow deeper and rational compromise becomes impossible.
3His scary willingness to repeat alt-right conspiracy theories, racist memes and crackpot, out-of-the-mainstream ideas. Again, it is not clear whether he believes them or merely uses them. But to cling to disproven "alternative" facts; to retweet racists; to make unverifiable or false statements about rigged elections and fraudulent voters; to buy into discredited conspiracy theories first floated on fringe websites and in supermarket tabloids — these are all of a piece with the Barack Obama birther claptrap that Trump was peddling years ago and which brought him to political prominence. It is deeply alarming that a president would lend the credibility of his office to ideas that have been rightly rejected by politicians from both major political parties.

---

Where will this end? Will Trump moderate his crazier campaign positions as time passes? Or will he provoke confrontation with Iran, North Korea or China, or disobey a judge's order or order a soldier to violate the Constitution? Or, alternately, will the system itself — the Constitution, the courts, the permanent bureaucracy, the Congress, the Democrats, the marchers in the streets — protect us from him as he alienates more and more allies at home and abroad, steps on his own message and creates chaos at the expense of his ability to accomplish his goals? Already, Trump's job approval rating has been hovering in the mid-30s, according to Gallup, a shockingly low level of support for a new president. And that was before his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, offered to cooperate last week with congressional investigators looking into the connection between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.

" Those who oppose the new president's reckless and heartless agenda must make their voices heard. " Share this quote

On Inauguration Day, we wrote on this page that it was not yet time to declare a state of "wholesale panic" or to call for blanket "non-cooperation" with the Trump administration. Despite plenty of dispiriting signals, that is still our view. The role of the rational opposition is to stand up for the rule of law, the electoral process, the peaceful transfer of power and the role of institutions; we should not underestimate the resiliency of a system in which laws are greater than individuals and voters are as powerful as presidents. This nation survived Andrew Jackson and Richard Nixon. It survived slavery. It survived devastating wars. Most likely, it will survive again.
But if it is to do so, those who oppose the new president's reckless and heartless agenda must make their voices heard. Protesters must raise their banners. Voters must turn out for elections. Members of Congress — including and especially Republicans — must find the political courage to stand up to Trump. Courts must safeguard the Constitution. State legislators must pass laws to protect their citizens and their policies from federal meddling. All of us who are in the business of holding leaders accountable must redouble our efforts to defend the truth from his cynical assaults.
The United States is not a perfect country, and it has a great distance to go before it fully achieves its goals of liberty and equality. But preserving what works and defending the rules and values on which democracy depends are a shared responsibility. Everybody has a role to play in this drama.
This is the first in a series.

The problem with Trump

A series of Times editorials

• Reader reactions: praise and scorn

Be the first to get the latest in our editorial series on Trump. Sign up for our Today's Headlines newsletter.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook

Support our journalism

Already a subscriber? Thank you for your support. If you are not, please consider subscribing today to support editorial writing like this. Start getting full access to our signature journalism for just 99 cents for the first four weeks.

Design and production by Andrea Roberson

---

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

Fibonacci and his Magic Numbers - OpenMind

Leonardo Bigollo (Leonardo Pisano or de Pisa) was a mathematician who lived in Italy between the 12th and 13th century (1170-1240) and who turned to turn his back on the Roman numerals system that prevailed at that time. He has been known throughout history by his nickname: Fibonacci, a derivative of adding the words fillius + bonnacci which, in Latin and Italian mean something along the lines of "son of the well intended". Apparently, Fibonacci's father (Guglielmo) was a good person, as well as being a trader, travelling through North Africa. It was there that his son Leonardo discovered the magic of Arabic numbers.

Drawing of Fibonacci /Image: wikimedia

The Hindu Arabic system traveled from India to Persia and then on to the Middle East and Northern Africa, from where it jumped to Europe thanks to, among other mathematicians, Fibonacci. The Pisan's idea of using Arabic numbers included the possibility of working with whole numbers or fractions, dividing a number into prime factors, square roots, etc. It wasn't easy to adopt this system despite its numerous advantages. The Crusades against Islam that were ongoing at the time placed anything labeled as "Arabic" under suspicion.Arabic numbers were even banned in the city of Florence in 1299 on the grounds that "they were easier to falsify than Roman numerals".
Thanks to his father's job, Fibonacci had the opportunity to meet the great mathematicians that were outside the Eastern bubble (Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Greece, etc.) during long journeys through different countries in the Arabic world and the Mediterranean. He later returned to Italy, and when he was 32, he published the book Liber abaci (1202), which explained the importance of the Arabic numbering systems and he applied it to different everyday situations in the trade world to prove that it was more practical than the Roman numeral system: foreign exchange, commercial accounting, converting weights and measurements, etc. A quarter of a century later (1227), he published a second edition of the same book, extended and rewritten, that has become the reference version of "Liber abaci", as there are no copies of the first handwritten edition from 1202.
Federico II de Hohenstaufen (1194-1250) was the Holy Roman Emperor when he learned about the work of Fibonacci thanks to the correspondence that the mathematician maintained after returning to Italy with certain members of his court, including Michael Scotus, an astrology admired by the Pisan and to whom he dedicated the second edition of his most famous book. Johannes of Palermo also formed part of the Court and  challenged Fibonacci with a mathematical problem that would give him a place in history forever.

The rabbits problem

A man put two rabbits in an area surrounded by a wall on all sides.  How many pairs of rabbits can be produced from this pair in one year, if every month each pair breeds a new pair which reproduce after the second month?

Fibonacci accepted the challenge and resolved the problem, publishing the solution in a paper entitled "Flos" (1225). He developed a numeric series that will be passed down throughout history as the Fibonacci series. This succession of numbers starts with 0 and 1, and from there on, each element or Fibonacci number is the sum of the previous two. And that's how Leonardo represented the reproductive problem of the rabbits which, although it is an artificial model in the case of these animals (since biologically speaking, it's not strictly true), it fits in perfectly with the reproductive model of bees. Only the queen reproduces in a beehive: she's the only one that lays eggs.

• If they are fertilized, worker bees are born (females). With 50% of the genetics provided by the mother (the queen) and the other 50 by the father (the drone).
• The drones or male bees are produced from unfertilized eggs. Therefore, female worker bees have two parents and drones have one. 100% of their genetic information is provided by the mother.

Schema simulating the genealogical tree of bees / Image: Canada's SchoolNet

Bees are not the only exception, and these numbers are behind many different phenomenon of nature: the arrangement of flower petals, the formation of hurricanes, etc. How is this possible? Are they a magical combination, the "abracadabra" of mathematics? The mystery behind this succession of numbers that seems to be written in the mathematical foundations that surround us (at least in many of things that exist around us) have fascinated experts from many fields of science for centuries, and there are even publications specialized in finding new fields related with it.

From medieval mathematics to the "divine proportion"

But how much "magic" is there in the famous Fibonacci series? To what point was the Pisan the exclusive discoverer of these numbers and the proportions that give rise to the relationship between them? History has left clues about previous references to the formula, as is the case of various Indian mathematicians: Gopala (1135) and Hemachandra (1150), who had already mentioned it in their documents several decades before Fibonacci was born. Even several centuries later, Kepler (1571-1630) continued to be fascinated with the research into this series and, centuries later, developed the concept that would go down in history as "the divine proportion" in his book "Strena Seu de Nive Sexangula" (1611).
Kepler rediscovered the sequence using the proportion that existed between the consecutive terms in the series. 2 is to 3 what 3 is to 5 and what 5 is to 8 and so on with all the elements. Therefore, there is a proportion (divine proportion or golden ratio) which is constantly maintained when dividing any of the numbers by their predecessor in the series. This proportion is represented by the number phi (in honor of the Greek sculptor Fidias, and not Fibonacci): φ = 1.618.
In his book "Strena Seu de Nive Sexangula" (1611), Kepler defined the importance of this proportion which, according to him, developed in a similar way in the reproductive process, which managed to perpetuate him. Kepler's idea about a biological auto-replication process marked by the Fibonacci sequence was ignored by biologists until not long ago, when Phyllotaxis -the arrangement of leaves on a stalk- was scientifically consolidated.

Statue of Fibonacci in the cemetery of the city of Pisa (Italy) / Image: courtesy of Holoweb.

However it came about, the discovery of the numerical series that gave rise to divine proportion was enough to give Fibonacci immortality in time and in the memory of mathematicians. In the 19th century, a statue was erected in his honor in Pisa, which can be visited today in the city's cemetery, in the Piazza dei Miracoli. There isn't much information about the end of his life, although there is a decree by which the Republic of Pisa granted Leonardo a lifetime salary in 1240 in recognition of his service to the city as an accounting advisor.

Dory Gascueña for OpenMind
@dorygascu

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

Israel founded by 'most successful terrorist campaign in history', says Richard Falk

Controversial Cork conference told Zionist leadership escalated violence around the world

The Israeli flag raised in 1948, the year the country was founded

Israel's foundation has been called the "most successful terrorist campaign in history", by an author with a history of being accused of promoting antisemitism.

Richard Falk today made the keynote speech at a conference debating the right of Israel to exist when he accused the Zionist leadership of escalating a campaign of violence around the world.
 Mr Falk, who recently authored a rejected UN report that attempted to label Israel an "apartheid state", also claimed Western "guilt" over the Holocaust allowed the state to come into existence in 1948.

The Jewish-born academic also claimed Zionist leaders had been duplicitous, hiding their extreme views from the general public.

Mr Faulk told gathering at Cork City Hall, in Ireland, that the initial campaign to establish a Jewish state had been one of "colonialism".

But that changed and became a "terrorist" campaign that spread beyond the borders of then Palestine and included "threats of letter bombs against Churchill, Attlee and others", he said.
Mr Falk added that Israel had been given "moral justification" because of the Holocaust.
"Liberal democracies felt guilt and it was easy to soothe their consciousness by encouraging and accepting the state of Israel."

He said the "terrorist" campaign has "started the 70-year period of Palestinian suffering."
Mr Falk claimed his recent UN report had been attacked by people who "have not read it" but who objected to the word "apartheid".

Later Dr Ghada Karmi told around 150 participants at the conference, including academics from across Europe and the States, that "the Jews were an unwanted and unpopular people" who were "offloaded" on the Palestinian state.

 The University of Exeter lecturer said:"Jews were not wanted in Europe or the US. "
 In an opening speech Oren Ben-Dor, one of the organisers of the event, said: "We should be using international law as a tool for justice and peace - in that order".

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

In Sweden, Hundreds Of Refugee Children Gave Up On Life

4:01 PM ET

Susan Brink

Two refugee children who show the symptoms of uppgivenhetssyndrom, or resignation syndrome. Magnus Wennman for The New Yorker 

The Swedish word uppgivenhetssyndrom sounds like what it is: a syndrome in which kids have given up on life. That's what several hundred children and adolescents have done — literally checked out of the world for months or years. They go to bed and don't get up. They're unable to move, eat, drink, speak or respond. All of the victims of the disorder, sometimes called resignation syndrome, have been youngsters seeking asylum after a traumatic migration, mostly from former Soviet and Yugoslav states. And all of them live in Sweden.

Rachel Aviv, a staff writer at The New Yorker, described these children in the April 3, 2017, article "The Trauma of Facing Deportation."

The children go into these comalike states when their families are notified that they will be deported. The only known cure is for their families to receive residency permits allowing them to stay in Sweden. It's not a sudden, magical reawakening when family members read the approved residency permit in the nonresponsive child's presence. Somehow, the information gets through. While there are no long-term follow-up studies, Aviv says, over a period of days, weeks, sometimes a few months, the child begins to eat, move, react and come back to the world. Goats & Soda talked with Aviv about the story.

The story is shocking. It reads like one of those ancient fairy tales where terrible things happen to innocent children. Were you initially skeptical that this was a real disorder?
I first read about it in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. Because I was reading about it in an academic article, I didn't think to doubt it. But when I met the two girls I wrote about, it felt very strange. There was a sense of unreality. There was a disconnect between how young and healthy, even beautiful, they looked. They looked like they were sleeping. It was a sickening feeling to know that they were in that position for years. People make comparisons to bears hibernating. But humans don't hibernate. It felt surreal.

The two sisters you wrote about were Roma, from Kosovo. The older sister lost her ability to walk within 24 hours of the family's application for residency being turned down. Her younger sister is also "bedridden and unresponsive."
They were lying in bed. Their doctors were manipulating their bodies, and the girls did not show any signs that they were aware that there were people around them. When I met them, one of the girls had been in that state for two years, the other one only for a few months. When the doctor shined a flashlight on the girls' eyes, the one who had been sick the longest, she just sort of stared directly at the doctor as if she didn't even notice that someone was opening her eyelid.
I met a boy that I didn't write about. He lived in a hotel. He and his mother had received a residency permit already. He had been apathetic for about two years [while the family waited and worried that they would be deported]. Even though his family had received the residency permit about three months before, the only progress he had made was to open his eyes. He was sitting up, but he could not hold his head up on his own. We'd be talking — his family, his doctors — and suddenly I'd remember that he was in the room. It was almost as if there was a mannequin in the room that I kept forgetting about. He didn't seem to be there mentally. That was concerning. He should have been recovering by then. His doctors were hopeful that he'd get better, but there have been almost no follow-up studies about what happens to these children.

You did write extensively about Georgi from the Russian province of North Ossetia, who went to bed and stayed there when his family's permit was denied in 2015. "In late May, 2016, Georgi's family received another letter from the Migration Board. Their neighbor Ellina Zapolskaia translated it. 'The Migration Board finds no reason to question what is stated about Georgi's health,' she read out loud. 'He is therefore considered to be in need of a safe and stable environment and living conditions in order to recuperate.' " What was his recovery like?
I would never have known that he was sick. He looked and acted completely normal. But even with complete recovery, some of these children have missed two years of their lives, and that's a big deal.

Is it possible that the children who went into these comalike states knew of the syndrome? And if so, might they have been unintentionally showing symptoms as a way of saving their families from deportation?
I think everyone acknowledges that there's a degree of psychological contagion. Georgi had a family friend with the condition; the two sisters had a cousin; and the boy in the hotel saw at least three other children in the hotel with the syndrome. It's a little like the way anorexia emerged in the U.S. at a moment in time when people were preoccupied with body image and the media were emphasizing thinness. The illness borrows from the culture, and suddenly you have all these people who are starving themselves and doctors began diagnosing anorexia. It's hard to pinpoint what the mechanism would be for children to develop resignation syndrome. It seems to have become a culturally permissible way of expressing one's despair.

There was a government report that came out in 2006. The report posed a theory that the children, many of them Roma, came from holistic cultures, without a clear boundary between the individual self and the family. The children were sacrificing themselves for their families. They take on a martyr role. And, in fact, the illness does allow the family to stay. [Sweden's Migration Board has decided that families of uppgivenhetssyndrom children will be granted residency permits.]

Immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers all over the world suffer. Has this happened anywhere else?
I've not heard of children with these symptoms anywhere else. I have no doubt that children from Syria, for example, are experiencing fears and traumatic reactions, but there is no evidence that they are slipping into this syndrome. There was a slang term, muselmann, referring to captives in concentration camps in World War II. They were people who decided to stop trying, to just sort of give up. Once you realize that nothing you do will change your situation, you give up and become passive. But that wasn't quite the same thing.

Why is this happening to children in Sweden?
Yes, why Sweden? Refugees there are among the best treated in the world. There's a national conversation about refugees; people are consumed about how best to treat people seeking asylum. People feel a lot of guilt about whether the country is living up to its humanitarian ideals and doing enough.
So doctors are primed to think about how social conditions can affect health. And I think culture shapes the way we express our despair. Once a particular set of symptoms becomes sanctioned as a way of showing suffering, it becomes more common.
One thing I admired in Sweden was the way these children galvanized the national conversation. The government was concerned, the media were concerned and politicians were concerned. At so many levels, there was so much conversation about symptoms of children seeking asylum.
Susan Brink is a freelance writer who covers health and medicine. She is the author of The Fourth Trimester, and co-author of A Change of Heart.

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

Rapper Dessa Darling's Musical Sweet Spot

Dec 6, 2016

Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this interview. 
Minneapolis-based rapper, singer and writer, Maggie Wander — who is known as Dessa Darling to the world — got her start in spoken word poetry when she was studying philosophy as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota.
She soon joined the hip-hop scene and found her way to the rap collective, Doomtree, and would later become the CEO of their independent record label.
Dessa now has three full-length albums and has published two books of poetry. She talks with The Takeaway about her latest single, "Quinine," and says when it comes to her work, "the sweet spot lives between beauty, anger and tenderness."

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

Black Italian boxer’s erased history resurfaces in new documentary

Leone Jacovacci was a Congo-born African-Italian boxer who shook up the sport after his 1928 European middleweight title win over the heavily favored (by fascist leaders) white Italian boxer, Mario Bosisio. Enraged by Jacovacci's achievement, Mussolini ordered his win—which signified the delegitimization of racist claims of inferiority held by the Fascists—to be erased from the record books. But a new documentary, "The Duce's Boxer", produced by Istituto Luce recently brought Jacovacci's forgotten history to the surface last Tuesday when the film premiered in 25 Italian cities for U.N. International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Luce is in talks to bring the film to an international audience.

By Erin White*, AFROPUNK contirbutor

Il Pugile del Duce - TRAILER - from Produzione Light on Vimeo.

*Erin White is an Atlanta-based writer and AFROPUNK's editorial and social media assistant. You can follow her on Tumblr or friend her on Facebook. Have a pitch or an inquiry? Shoot her an email at erin@afropunk.com.

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

GO JACK GO!!!