The New Yorker: The Man Who Refused to Spy

By Laura Secor

    In 2017, just after a US travel ban on Iran, an Iranian materials scientist named Sirous Asgari received a call for approval of his visa request to visit his children in the States. Upon his arrival, he was arrested by the FBI on charges of stealing trade secrets and violating sanctions.

    On a previous visit, he had been contacted by a laboratory at Case Western, which had transmission electron microscopes. Asgari had always been fascinated with these, and the one in Tehran, where he worked, was missing parts due to US sanctions. The head of the lab told him that he would request Asgari's visitor visa to be changed to an H1B work visa. A few months later, his request was denied, and he got ready to return to Iran. Before he left, he was contacted by FBI agents, who offered to pay him for his work at Case Western if he would be an informant on the Iranian government. Asgari denied.

    Now, he finally understood. They were using the law to force him to cooperate. FBI agents had gotten wiretaps to his Gmail dating back several years and found many pieces of flimsy, circumstantial evidence to indict him. They claimed he had stolen trade secrets about low-temperature carburization and assisted the Iranian military in violating sanctions with his contacts in the US.

    In fact, the techniques which had been emailed to him were already patented and published, an idea for one that had been emailed to him by a student at his university in Tehran was completely different, and his sector of material science had no relation to illegal activity at all. His lawyers got him exonerated, but upon the end of his case, he was detained by ICE. When he was arrested by the FBI months ago, they had taken his passport and given him a visa that was only valid while he was on trial. That had now expired. For the next several months, he would spend his time in disgusting detention centers, even catching coronavirus as a result of neglect. Eventually, he returned to Iran in a prisoner exchange, which he refused to politize, for he knew he had done nothing wrong. However, he still loves the US. He says the freedoms he had in imprisonment - being able to talk to the press, protest for better conditions - weren't available everywhere.

CNN 10 9/14/2020 ~ 9/18/2020

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Monday, September 14, 2020

In the western US, wildfires are burning in 12 different states. More than 4.5 a million acres have burned, and over 30,000 firefighters have been enlisted to help fight the blaze. Where I live, in California, more than 24 fires are burning, and over 12 have been reported in multiple states. As the smoke rose up, a strange phenomenon occurred. In California, Oregon, and Washington, skies turned orange, making it look like some sort of apocalyptic scene. This is because all the smoke and ash rose up above something called a marine layer, effectively blocking the sun and changing colors. Honeybees are credited with 1/3 of the US food chain. However, while bee colonies have grown around the world, those in the US have dropped to just half of their original number, mainly due to the use of pesticides. New technology might be able to save them. A small device from Apis Protect can be placed on the roof of the hive to measure interior conditions. The Internet-connected device would contact the beekeeper if anything goes wrong. A new dog-like robot is being used by the military. The autonomous unmanned ground vehicles go into an area and scout it out before the soldiers go in, alerting them of possible dangers.

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Another hurricane is approaching the US Gulf Coast. Hurricane Sally is expected to hit Mississippi and parts of Louisianna; Lousianna was already hit by a category 4 four hurricane earlier this season. Luckily, Sally is expected to be much weaker. It had strengthened to category 1 status when the show was produced and is expected to become a category 2 storm. However, it is also a very slow-moving storm. This means many areas will experience storm conditions for prolonged periods of time. Mandatory evacuations have been ordered for some areas, and the governor has declared a state of emergency. Storm chasers are people who go into storms like these. They also have complex instruments that they drop from planes to gather data and help better understand hurricanes and protect people from them. On Sunday, the largest number of single-day coronavirus cases was recorded at over 308,000 positive infections. Across Europe, new COVID-19 rules are taking place. In areas like Britain, France, and Israel, new lockdowns and restrictions are being enforced after recent surges in cases. In Italy, though, schools are reopening with safety protocols in place. Last month, TikTok was given until September 20 by the US government to sell its US operations to a United States company or be banned in the US. This is because the Chinese app collects lots of user data that could be used by the Chinese government. TikTok said that this was false, it doesn't have to disclose data, and that it would sue the US. However, the company is now considering partnering with Oracle. This kind of deal, of course, would be incredibly complicated, but the app might be allowed to continue in the US.

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

The US has advised against travel to China and Hong Kong because of tensions between the two. Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China, and it wants more freedom from the mainland while China maintains that it has ultimate control over the area. China has also had a bitter feud with Taiwan. Taiwan was created as a democratic country after the communist party won a civil war and forced the former democratic rulers to flee. Its official name is the Republic of China (China is the People's Republic of China) and both countries claim sovereignty over the mainland. In the 1990s, tensions eased when diplomats reopened communications and travel strictly for the purpose of economic and cultural exchange. Since then, the relationship has fluctuated depending on the ruling party in Taiwan, one of which is more favorable toward China. Hurricane Sally did not make landfall as expected yesterday. As it approached the Gulf Coast, it slowed down significantly. Fortunately, it didn't get any stronger, but its slower speed could bring prolonged storm surges and rainfall, worsening its impacts. On Venus, the gas phosphine, which is produced on Earth by bacteria that don't use oxygen. However, this doesn't mean that life exists on Venus because its super-hot and acidic conditions would kill the life forms. However, the way the gas arrived on the planet is an intriguing mystery for scientists.

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Hurricane Sally went through a series of changes before finally making landfall in Alabama as a category 2 hurricane in the same spot as Hurricane Ivan 16 years ago. Although it was a weaker storm, it moved much slower, at 2 mph, dumping rain and storm surges on Alabama and Florida for a longer period of time. On the other side of the country, people are praying for the rain. In the Western US, wildfires are still burning. They have destroyed thousands of homes and burned over 4.7 million acres with much of the wildfire season left to go. As we reported on Monday, skies across the region turned orange as smoke and ash blocked the blue and green light waves from the ground, creating a Martain looking orange daylight. In India, a man is trying to do his part in saving Earth's biodiversity with plants. Because of the industrialization of agriculture, seed diversity has dropped. By planting our own, we can each do a small part to save what is left.

Friday, September 18, 2020

The US has often been at the head of diplomacy in the Middle East, from President Jimmy Carter's deal with Egypt and Israel and the accord between Israel and Jordan orchestrated by President Clinton. Now, President Trump has achieved a major peace treaty. His administration had failed at achieving the slippery goal of Palestinian and Israeli peace after the president showed pro-Israeli leanings, but the UAE, Bahrain, and Israel signed the Abraham Accord at the White House recently, which the Trump Administration calls the beginning of a new Middle East. The US presidential debates are coming up soon. There will be two between incumbent President Trump and Democratic nominee Biden, and one between Vice President Pence and California Senator Kamala Harris. They will give the public a chance to see their candidates in action and how they will perform. The giant Magellan telescope will be the largest of its kind and is currently being created at the University of Arizona, which is the only place with the technology. Each mirror takes years to create, and the final telescope will be assembled in the Chilean Andes.

TedEd: A brief history of plastic

A TedEd by the TedEd team

Plastics are endemic to society. But they first came from a round object that wasn't even made of plastic - billiard balls. Billiard balls used to be made from elephant tusk ivory. But overhunting led to a decline in elephant populations, and ball manufacturers posted huge rewards for a new material. In 1863, American scientist John Wesley Hyatt decided to try. For 5 years, he worked to create celluloid, made from a compound in wood and straw called cellulose. Unfortunately, celluloid wasn't heavy enough and didn't bounce the right way to replace ivory in billiard balls. But it could be tinted and patterned to resemble other materials. Plastics are polymers - long molecules made of repeating parts. Plastics are soft and can be easily molded. The first plastic, celluloid, was unfortunately highly flammable, making it less useful. In 1907, Bakelite was created from a mix of phenol and formaldehyde. Since phenol came from the remnants of coal tar, it was cheaper to make, and it was less flammable. In the decades that followed, many other plastics came out, and polyethylene, developed in 1933, is still very commonly used. Injection molding was also created, and it allowed for plastics to be formed in the same mold over and over, opening up an array of possibilities. Surprisingly, plastics were first widely used in World War II, when they were used to make a variety of equipment, rather than to make consumer products. After the war, the factories began making consumer products like furniture and packaging. Unfortunately, the new ease and low costs also came with massive environmental impacts because plastics use many nonrenewable resources and take a very long time to decompose. Scientists today are working on more renewable materials and recycling what we already have.

Time: An American Nightmare: How the U.S. Succumbed to Complacency and Let 200,000 People Die of COVID-19

By Alex Fitzpatrick and Elijah Wolfson

    By mid-September, more than 200,000 people will have died from COVID-19 in the US. This is despite the fact that just 45 days before the first coronavirus infection, the US was ranked first out of 195 countries in its ability to handle a disease outbreak. They failed to take into account the political polarization and the fracturing within the country over the past few years. Had the United States used its vast resources to prepare for the virus and done extensive testing and contact-tracing instead of lulling the people into a false sense of security and ridiculing experts, we might be in a different situation. In fact, some much less prosperous countries have had no cases or gotten their outbreaks under control.

    At the top, the leadership continually downplayed the severity of the virus and refused to follow proven scientific guidelines. Because America is so fractured down party lines today, the division was clear for all to see. A majority of Republican-leaning voters thought masks were not important, while a majority of Democrats said masks are important. Similar results were seen for questions about medical professionals. The President also failed to test effectively, often decreasing the number of tests and blaming testing for increases in cases. Individual states have been left to fend for themselves, and few have succeeded.

    The pandemic has also dredged up the country's racist past. Because Blacks, Native Americans, and Latinos were systematically persecuted for so long, the socioeconomic gap remains, and it is reflected in their higher COVID infection and death rates.

    Then there is the fact that most Americans are self-centered, according to a Pew survey. This is especially bad now when we need to be united against this virus and sacrifice some pleasures for the group.

    But all is not lost yet. A vaccine, the magical fix that lawmakers are hoping for might be here by the end of the year (although many people have said they might not take it), and we can still improve. Adequate amounts of PPE should be produced and distributed, and we need to listen to scientific experts. Most of all, we should stay home and sacrifice some things from normal life. "...some 200,000 Americans have already died, and many more may do so before a vaccine emerges unless America starts to implement and invest in the science-based solutions already available to us. Each one of those lives lost represents an entire world, not only of those individuals but also of their family, friends, colleagues and loved ones. This is humbling—and it should be. The only path forward is one of humility, of recognition that if America is exceptional with regard to COVID-19, it’s in a way most people would not celebrate."