“We have studied the genetic relationships of all giraffe subspecies from across the continent. We found, that there are not only one, but at least four genetically highly distinct groups of giraffe, which apparently do not mate with each other in the wild. This we found looking at multiple nuclear genes considered to be representative of the entire genome” says Professor Axel Janke, researcher at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research and Professor at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. “Consequently, giraffe should be recognized as four distinct species despite their similar appearance.” (EurekAlert! 8-Sep-2016)
Relator Joseph M. Thomas brings this action on behalf of the United States of America under the False Claims Act (“FCA”), 31 U.S.C.§§3729-33, against Defendants Duke University, Duke University Health System, Inc,(“DUHS”), William M.Foster, Ph.D. (“Foster”), and Erin N. Potts-Kant (“Potts-Kant”) to recover losses sustained by the Public Health Service (“PHS”), the National Institutes of Health (“NIH”), the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”), and other Federal agencies responsible for administrering scientific aresearch grants. (Civil Action No.4:13-cv-00017)
WHEREFORE, Relator, on be half of the United Sates, prays that judgment be entered in their favor and against Defendants as follows: 1. That Defendants pay the United States triple the amount of its damages to be determined, plus civil penalties of up to $11,000 for each false claim, statement, or record; (Civil Action No.4:13-cv-00017)
”And last month, a U.S. district court unsealed a whistleblower lawsuit filed by a former colleague of Potts-Kant. It accuses the researcher, her former supervisor, and the university of including fraudulent data in applications and reports involving more than 60 grants worth some $200 million. If successful, the suit—brought under the federal False Claims Act (FCA)—could force Duke to return to the government up to three times the amount of any ill-gotten funds, and produce a multimillion-dollar payout to the whistleblower.” （Whistleblower sues Duke, claims doctored data helped win $200 million in grants. Science News By Alison McCook, Retraction WatchSep. 1, 2016 , 2:00 PM)
Duke Is Wake-up Call for Research Compliance (bna.com April 4, 2018) The case is in the discovery phase in preparation for a possible trial, according to filings tracked by Bloomberg Law.
Judge Refuses to Dismiss Whistleblower’s False Research Data Suit Against Duke University and Two Faculty Members (The Health Law Firm Thursday, May 11, 2017) On April 27, 2017, a federal judge in North Carolina refused to dismiss a False Claims Act (FCA) lawsuit against Duke University and some of its faculty.
Survival of Duke Research Whistle-Blower Case Could Mean More Suits (bna.com May 2, 2017) Duke University and two Duke researchers will have to face claims they defrauded the government on NIH research grants ( United States ex rel. Thomas v. Duke Univ. , M.D.N.C., No. 1:17-cv-00276-CCE-JLW, order 4/25/17 ). Former Duke University employee Joseph M. Thomas sufficiently stated claims against Duke and the researchers, Judge Catherine C. Eagles of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina said in an April 25 order refusing the defendants’ bid to dismiss the suit.
Joseph Thomas vs. Duke University: Lawsuit Update 4.28.17 (Scribd)
False Claims Act （Wikipedia): The False Claims Act (31 U.S.C. §§ 3729–3733, also called the “Lincoln Law”) is an American federal law that imposes liability on persons and companies (typically federal contractors) who defraud governmental programs. It is the federal Government’s primary litigation tool in combating fraud against the Government.[1] The law includes a qui tam provision that allows people who are not affiliated with the government, called “relators” under the law, to file actions on behalf of the government (informally called “whistleblowing” especially when the relator is employed by the organization accused in the suit). Persons filing under the Act stand to receive a portion (usually about 15–25 percent) of any recovered damages. As of 2012, over 70 percent of all federal Government FCA actions were initiated by whistleblowers.
UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla said that Tsien apparently died while on a bike trail, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported (http://bit.ly/2bSZn8Z), but the cause of death had not been determined.(abcnews.go.com)
Andrew R. Gehrke, Igor Schneider, Elisa de la Calle-Mustienes, Juan J. Tena, Carlos Gomez-Marin, Mayuri Chandran, Tetsuya Nakamura, Ingo Braasch, John H. Postlethwait, José Luis Gómez-Skarmeta, and Neil H. Shubin. Deep conservation of wrist and digit enhancers in fish.PNAS U.S.A. January 20, 2015
vol. 112 no. 3
iPhoneで月面撮影！ スマホ対応の天体望遠鏡 クレーターがくっきり見える(NIKKEY TRENDY NET 2016年05月19日):”エレコムの「スマホ天体望遠鏡 EDG-TLS001」は、段ボール素材のパーツを組み立てて作る天体望遠鏡。商品名の通りスマホで天体などが撮影でき る。望遠鏡としての性能は光学約35倍と入門機クラスで、スマホのズームと合わせると最大約130倍で天体を観察できるという。”
スマホで天体観測の時代がキタ！夏の夜空をタッチ撮影だ(ASCII.JP X ELECOM 2016年07月19日):”エレコムから「組立式スマホ天体望遠鏡」（EDG-TLS001）が登場。手持ちのスマホで月や惑星を手軽に取れるという画期的なものだ。とはいえ、厚紙製で組み立て式というから、どこまで撮影できるものなのか気になるところ。”
Aizawa S. Results of an attempt to reproduce the STAP phenomenon [version 1; referees: 1 approved]. F1000Research 2016, 5:1056 (doi: 10.12688/f1000research.8731.1)
Hitoshi Niwa. Investigation of the cellular reprogramming phenomenon referred to as stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP). Scientific Reports 6, Article number: 28003 (2016). doi:10.1038/srep28003. Reprogramming Totipotent stem cells. Received:06 October 2015. Accepted:26 April 2016, Published online:13 June 2016
If you fail to reproduce another scientist’s results, this journal wants to know (sciencemag.org/news/ By Jocelyn KaiserFeb. 4, 2016 , 4:00 AM):”The contradictory results—along with successful confirmations—will be published by F1000Research, an open-access, online-only publisher. Its new “Preclinical Reproducibility and Robustness channel,” launched today, will allow both companies and academic scientists to share their replications so that others will be less likely to waste time following up on flawed findings, says Sasha Kamb, senior vice president for research at Amgen in Thousand Oaks, California.”
Shiseido Opens Research Facility Dedicated to Hair Regeneration – Shiseido Cell-Processing and Expansion Center – (businesswire.com April 21, 2014 10:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time): “Shiseido Co., Ltd. (TOKYO:4911) announces plans to open the Shiseido Cell-Processing and Expansion Center (SPEC) on May 1, 2014. The center, located in the in the Kobe Biomedical Innovation Cluster in Kobe, Japan, will centralize research and development on hair regenerative medicine with an aim toward commercialization.”
RepliCel Receives Japanese Patent Covering its Hair Regeneration Technology (replicel.com January 13, 2014): “RepliCel Life Sciences Inc. (OTCQB: REPCF) (TSXV: RP) today announced that it has been granted a patent by Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry for hair follicle mesenchymal stem cells and their use thereof. These cells are used in RepliCel’s RCH-01 treatment for androgenetic alopecia, also known as pattern hair loss. With the issuance of this patent, RepliCel now has patents issued in Japan, the United States, Australia and the European Union protecting its technology with other jurisdictions still pending. This patent approval is an important milestone as RepliCel’s licensing partner, Shiseido Company, prepares to conduct human clinical trials using RCH-01. Shiseido has an exclusive license to use RCH-01 in Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan and the ASEAN countries representing a population of approximately 2.1 billion people.”
Video shows how to incubate an egg without the shell A class of high school students in Japan have used a plastic cup and cling film to incubate and “hatch” a chicken egg without the shell. (CNET June 7, 201611:53 PM PDT by Michelle Starr)
Froggy Style: New Sex Position Discovered Among Frogs and Toads
参考
Willaert B, Suyesh R, Garg S, Giri VB, Bee MA, Biju SD. (2016) A unique mating strategy without physical contact during fertilization in Bombay Night Frogs (Nyctibatrachus humayuni) with the description of a new form of amplexus and female call.PeerJ4:e2117https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2117
Irving Kirsch. Antidepressants and the Placebo Effect. Z Psychol. 2014; 222(3): 128–134. Abstract: Antidepressants are supposed to work by fixing a chemical imbalance, specifically, a lack of serotonin in the brain. Indeed, their supposed effectiveness is the primary evidence for the chemical imbalance theory. But analyses of the published data and the unpublished data that were hidden by drug companies reveals that most (if not all) of the benefits are due to the placebo effect. Some antidepressants increase serotonin levels, some decrease it, and some have no effect at all on serotonin. Nevertheless, they all show the same therapeutic benefit. Even the small statistical difference between antidepressants and placebos may be an enhanced placebo effect, due to the fact that most patients and doctors in clinical trials successfully break blind. The serotonin theory is as close as any theory in the history of science to having been proved wrong. Instead of curing depression, popular antidepressants may induce a biological vulnerability making people more likely to become depressed in the future.
“Science allows us to communicate across the seas and fly above the clouds, to cure disease and understand the cosmos, but those same discoveries can be turned into ever more efficient killing machines.” （科学のおかげで我々は海を越えてコミュニケーションを取り、雲より高く空を飛び、病気を治し、宇宙を理解することができる。しかし、これらの同じ発見が、今まで以上に効果的な殺人装置へと変わり得る。） – Barack Obama
“Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well.” （科学技術の進歩は、人間社会の進歩を伴わなければ、我々を破滅させる。原子核を分裂させるに至った科学革命には、倫理的な革命も同時に必要である） – Barack Obama
[Obama’s speech in Hiroshima] オバマ大統領 広島でのスピーチ
Text of President Obama’s Speech in Hiroshima, Japan (ニューヨークタイムズ MAY 27, 2016）
Seventy-one years ago, on a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.
Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in a not-so-distant past. We come to mourn the dead, including over 100,000 Japanese men, women and children, thousands of Koreans, a dozen Americans held prisoner.
Their souls speak to us. They ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are and what we might become.
It is not the fact of war that sets Hiroshima apart. Artifacts tell us that violent conflict appeared with the very first man. Our early ancestors having learned to make blades from flint and spears from wood used these tools not just for hunting but against their own kind. On every continent, the history of civilization is filled with war, whether driven by scarcity of grain or hunger for gold, compelled by nationalist fervor or religious zeal. Empires have risen and fallen. Peoples have been subjugated and liberated. And at each juncture, innocents have suffered, a countless toll, their names forgotten by time.The world war that reached its brutal end in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was fought among the wealthiest and most powerful of nations. Their civilizations had given the world great cities and magnificent art. Their thinkers had advanced ideas of justice and harmony and truth. And yet the war grew out of the same base instinct for domination or conquest that had caused conflicts among the simplest tribes, an old pattern amplified by new capabilities and without new constraints.
In the span of a few years, some 60 million people would die. Men, women, children, no different than us. Shot, beaten, marched, bombed, jailed, starved, gassed to death. There are many sites around the world that chronicle this war, memorials that tell stories of courage and heroism, graves and empty camps that echo of unspeakable depravity.Yet in the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of humanity’s core contradiction. How the very spark that marks us as a species, our thoughts, our imagination, our language, our toolmaking, our ability to set ourselves apart from nature and bend it to our will — those very things also give us the capacity for unmatched destruction.
How often does material advancement or social innovation blind us to this truth? How easily we learn to justify violence in the name of some higher cause.
Every great religion promises a pathway to love and peace and righteousness, and yet no religion has been spared from believers who have claimed their faith as a license to kill.
Nations arise telling a story that binds people together in sacrifice and cooperation, allowing for remarkable feats. But those same stories have so often been used to oppress and dehumanize those who are different.
Science allows us to communicate across the seas and fly above the clouds, to cure disease and understand the cosmos, but those same discoveries can be turned into ever more efficient killing machines.
The wars of the modern age teach us this truth. Hiroshima teaches this truth. Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well.
That is why we come to this place. We stand here in the middle of this city and force ourselves to imagine the moment the bomb fell. We force ourselves to feel the dread of children confused by what they see. We listen to a silent cry. We remember all the innocents killed across the arc of that terrible war and the wars that came before and the wars that would follow.
Mere words cannot give voice to such suffering. But we have a shared responsibility to look directly into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again.
Some day, the voices of the hibakusha will no longer be with us to bear witness. But the memory of the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, must never fade. That memory allows us to fight complacency. It fuels our moral imagination. It allows us to change.
And since that fateful day, we have made choices that give us hope. The United States and Japan have forged not only an alliance but a friendship that has won far more for our people than we could ever claim through war. The nations of Europe built a union that replaced battlefields with bonds of commerce and democracy. Oppressed people and nations won liberation. An international community established institutions and treaties that work to avoid war and aspire to restrict and roll back and ultimately eliminate the existence of nuclear weapons.
Still, every act of aggression between nations, every act of terror and corruption and cruelty and oppression that we see around the world shows our work is never done. We may not be able to eliminate man’s capacity to do evil, so nations and the alliances that we form must possess the means to defend ourselves. But among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.
We may not realize this goal in my lifetime, but persistent effort can roll back the possibility of catastrophe. We can chart a course that leads to the destruction of these stockpiles. We can stop the spread to new nations and secure deadly materials from fanatics.
And yet that is not enough. For we see around the world today how even the crudest rifles and barrel bombs can serve up violence on a terrible scale. We must change our mind-set about war itself. To prevent conflict through diplomacy and strive to end conflicts after they’ve begun. To see our growing interdependence as a cause for peaceful cooperation and not violent competition. To define our nations not by our capacity to destroy but by what we build. And perhaps, above all, we must reimagine our connection to one another as members of one human race.
For this, too, is what makes our species unique. We’re not bound by genetic code to repeat the mistakes of the past. We can learn. We can choose. We can tell our children a different story, one that describes a common humanity, one that makes war less likely and cruelty less easily accepted.
We see these stories in the hibakusha. The woman who forgave a pilot who flew the plane that dropped the atomic bomb because she recognized that what she really hated was war itself. The man who sought out families of Americans killed here because he believed their loss was equal to his own.
My own nation’s story began with simple words: All men are created equal and endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Realizing that ideal has never been easy, even within our own borders, even among our own citizens. But staying true to that story is worth the effort. It is an ideal to be strived for, an ideal that extends across continents and across oceans. The irreducible worth of every person, the insistence that every life is precious, the radical and necessary notion that we are part of a single human family — that is the story that we all must tell.
That is why we come to Hiroshima. So that we might think of people we love. The first smile from our children in the morning. The gentle touch from a spouse over the kitchen table. The comforting embrace of a parent. We can think of those things and know that those same precious moments took place here, 71 years ago.
Those who died, they are like us. Ordinary people understand this, I think. They do not want more war. They would rather that the wonders of science be focused on improving life and not eliminating it. When the choices made by nations, when the choices made by leaders, reflect this simple wisdom, then the lesson of Hiroshima is done.
The world was forever changed here, but today the children of this city will go through their day in peace. What a precious thing that is. It is worth protecting, and then extending to every child. That is a future we can choose, a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare but as the start of our own moral awakening.
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