Jiangmen Neutrino Detector located 2,297 feet Underground.  AP Photo. Ng Han Guan.

Dear Commons Community,

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory in southern China will soon begin the difficult task of spotting neutrinos: tiny cosmic particles with a mind-bogglingly small mass. Nobel Laureate (1988) Louis Lederman was one of the first scientists to discover the neutrino.

The detector is one of three being built across the globe to study these elusive ghost particles in the finest detail yet. The other two, based in the United States and Japan, are still under construction. As reported by The Associated Press.

Spying neutrinos is no small feat in the quest to understand how the universe came to be. The Chinese effort, set to go online next year, will push the technology to new limits, said Andre de Gouvea, a theoretical physicist at Northwestern University who is not involved with the project.

“If they can pull that off,” he said, “it would be amazing.”

What are neutrinos?

Neutrinos date back to the Big Bang, and trillions zoom through our bodies every second. They spew from stars like the sun and stream out when atomic bits collide in a particle accelerator.

Scientists have known about the existence of neutrinos for almost a century, but they’re still in the early stages of figuring out what the particles really are.

“It’s the least understood particle in our world,” said Cao Jun, who helps manage the detector known as JUNO. “That’s why we need to study it.”

There’s no way to spot the tiny neutrinos whizzing around on their own. Instead, scientists measure what happens when they collide with other bits of matter, producing flashes of light or charged particles.

Neutrinos bump into other particles only very rarely, so to up their chances of catching a collision, physicists have to think big.

“The solution for how we measure these neutrinos is to build very, very big detectors,” de Gouvea said.

A big detector to measure tiny particles

The $300 million detector in Kaiping, China, took over nine years to build. Its location 2,297 feet (700 meters) underground protects from pesky cosmic rays and radiation that could throw off its neutrino-sniffing abilities.

On Wednesday, workers began the final step in construction. Eventually, they’ll fill the orb-shaped detector with a liquid designed to emit light when neutrinos pass through and submerge the whole thing in purified water.

It’ll study antineutrinos — an opposite to neutrinos which allow scientists to understand their behavior — produced from collisions inside two nuclear power plants located over 31 miles (50 kilometers) away. When the antineutrinos come into contact with particles inside the detector, they’ll produce a flash of light.

The detector is specially designed to answer a key question about a longstanding mystery. Neutrinos switch between three flavors as they zip through space, and scientists want to rank them from lightest to heaviest.

Sensing these subtle shifts in the already evasive particles will be a challenge, said Kate Scholberg, a physicist at Duke University who is not involved with the project.

“It’s actually a very daring thing to even go after it,” she said.

China’s detector is set to operate during the second half of next year. After that, it’ll take some time to collect and analyze the data — so scientists will have to keep waiting to fully unearth the secret lives of neutrinos.

Two similar neutrino detectors – Japan’s Hyper-Kamiokande and the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment based in the United States – are under construction. They’re set to go online around 2027 and 2031 and will cross-check the China detector’s results using different approaches.

“In the end, we have a better understanding of the nature of physics,” said Wang Yifang, chief scientist and project manager of the Chinese effort.

Understanding how the universe formed

Though neutrinos barely interact with other particles, they’ve been around since the dawn of time. Studying these Big Bang relics can clue scientists into how the universe evolved and expanded billions of years ago.

“They’re part of the big picture,” Scholberg said.

One question researchers hope neutrinos can help answer is why the universe is overwhelmingly made up of matter with its opposing counterpart — called antimatter — largely snuffed out.

Scientists don’t know how things got to be so out of balance, but they think neutrinos could have helped write the earliest rules of matter.

The proof, scientists say, may lie in the particles. They’ll have to catch them to find out.

If we can collaborate internationally in physics,why can’t we in politics?

Tony

NASA astronauts Suni Williams, left, and Butch Wilmore.   AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)

Dear Commons Community,

NASA’s two stuck astronauts just got their space mission extended again. That means they won’t be back on Earth until spring, 10 months after rocketing into orbit on Boeing’s Starliner capsule.

NASA announced the latest delay in Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams’ homecoming  yesterday.

The two test pilots planned on being away just a week or so when they blasted off June 5 on Boeing’s first astronaut flight to the International Space Station. Their mission grew from eight days to eight months after NASA decided to send the company’s problem-plagued Starliner capsule back empty in September.

Now the pair won’t return until the end of March or even April because of a delay in launching their replacements, according to NASA.

A fresh crew needs to launch before Wilmore and Williams can return and the next mission has been bumped more than a month, according to the space agency.

Most space station missions last six months, with a few reaching a full year.

We wish NASA and the two astronauts luck with this!

Tony

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Gerry Connolly, D-Va.  NBC News/Getty Images.

Dear Commons Community,

A panel of congressional Democrats yesterday recommended Rep. Gerry Connolly, of Virginia, over Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, of New York, to be the top Democratic post on the House Oversight Committee, favoring a much more senior member of the party’s caucus to take on the second Trump administration.

The closed-door meeting of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, which is closely aligned with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., yielded 34 votes for Connolly and 27 for Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the panel said.  As reported by NCB News.

The position opened up after the top Democrat on Oversight, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., challenged Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., for a similar post on the Judiciary Committee, prompting Nadler to bow out.

In an upset, the steering committee Monday recommended Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota to be the top Democrat on the Agriculture Committee. She secured 34 votes and beat out two much more senior rivals on the first ballot— Rep. Jim Costa, of California, got 22 votes, and Rep. David Scott, of Georgia, who has held the top Agriculture job since 2021, got just five.

For the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee, the steering committee recommended senior Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., over more junior Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M. The vote was 44 to 17.

The full Democratic caucus is expected to vote on the steering committee’s recommendations Tuesday morning. While the caucus typically adopts the committee’s recommendations, there have been instances when the full caucus has overruled the panel’s votes and picked someone else.

The races for committee ranking member posts had been seen as a litmus test about the future of seniority in the Democratic Party as younger lawmakers clamored for new blood and generational change in the leadership.

But yesterday’s results yielded a mixed bag on that question.

Connolly, 74, is a senior member of the Oversight Committee and was first elected to Congress in 2008. Even though he announced last month he had been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus, he beat back a challenge from Ocasio-Cortez, 35, the progressive hero who was first elected in 2018.

The more senior Democrat also won the steering committee’s endorsement in the Natural Resources race. Huffman, 60, who was elected in 2012 and would be the second most senior Democrat on the committee next year, bested Stansbury, 45, a relatively junior member of the committee who won a special election in 2021.

With Huffman’s likely ascension to ranking member, Natural Resources will have a younger Democratic leader than in the past. Earlier, Huffman launched a surprise challenge to Rep. Raul Grijalva, of Arizona, 76, who was elected to Congress in 2002 and had been the committee’s top Democrat since 2015.

But in the Agriculture race, the younger insurgent prevailed. Craig, 52, a Democratic “Frontliner” and one of the panel’s least senior members, knocked off the incumbent, Scott, 79, who was first elected in 1982 and had been suffering from health issues for years, and another senior member, Costa, 72, a third-generation farmer who was next in line in seniority after Scott.

“I’m ready to help us win back rural Americans and with them a strong Democratic majority,” Craig said after the vote. “I look forward to earning the support of my colleagues across the full Democratic caucus tomorrow.”

While Democrats will remain in the minority in the new Congress that begins in January, the party committee leaders would wield enormous oversight power should Democrats retake control of the House in the 2026 midterm elections.

Ocasio-Cortez is an excellent spokesperson for the New York district she represents but nationally is not what the Democratic Party needs at this time.

Tony

Dear Colleagues,

James Davis, President of the Professional Staff Congress, notified members yesterday that a memorandum of agreement for a new collective bargaining contract was reached with the management of the City University of New York.  Below is his email.  Additional details are available at: https://psc-cuny.org/issues/contract-apeoplescuny/ta-2023-2027/.

Congratulations to all involved in the negotiations.

A welcome Christmas present!

Tony

———————————————————————–

The PSC’s Bargaining Team and Executive Council have voted unanimously to recommend a strong new contract for ratification!  The tentative agreement provides across-the-board raises of 13.4%, compounded, retroactive pay, additional equity raises for many of our lowest-paid colleagues, and a ratification bonus for full-time PSC members of $3000, prorated for part-timers. The agreement prioritizes raises and gains for all PSC members and provides additional equity raises for our lowest-paid full-time, adjunct, and graduate assistant colleagues. Faculty and staff at the top of their salary schedules will see extra pay as well. The proposed contract secures new paths to promotion and additional support for professional development, and it reconstructs a new adjunct multi-year appointment agreement targeted by management for elimination. The agreement respects the quality and importance of our work, critical for providing quality education and services for CUNY students.

If the proposed agreement is recommended for ratification by the Delegate Assembly on December 19, it will be up to every eligible rank-and-file dues-paying member to decide and vote to ratify it. Below are major advances and economic gains.

Major Advances & Economic Gains

• Agreement spans 4 years and 9 months from, 3/1/23 to 11/30/27
• Across-the-board salary increases of 13.4% compounded, with retroactive pay
  • 3.0% on 3/1/23
  • 3.0% on 4/1/24
  • 3.25% on 9/1/25
  • 3.5% on 9/1/26
• $3000 ratification bonus for full-time positions, prorated for part-time titles
• The minimum pay for an adjunct will increase 29.1% from $5500 to $7100 per three contact hour course, and 37.7% from $6,875 to $9,467 per four contact hour course, over the term of the contract, as hourly compensation is changed in 2027 to per course compensation.
  • Click here for a table on adjunct compensation.
• Additional equity raises for CUNY’s lowest-paid instructional titles: Assistants to HEO, CLIP and CUNY Start Instructors, Graduate Assistants, Non-Teaching Adjuncts, Adjunct CLTs, and Continuing Education Teachers.
  • Click here for more information, including a table outlining equity raises over the course of the contract.
• Effective 3/1/2027, additional $1250 salary increases for members who are on the top step of a salary schedule who are not already receiving an equity raise greater than $1250. Top-step Assistants to HEO will receive the $1250 instead of the $1000 equity increase.
• On September 1, 2026, a $2500 lump sum for Lecturers/Doctoral Lecturers upon attainment of a Certificate of Continuous Employment (CCE), or for those who already have a CCE.
• Promotional track from Lecturer/Doctoral Lecturer to new titles, Senior Lecturer/Senior Doctoral Lecturer.
• Guaranteed increase of at least one salary step upon promotion or reclassification.
• Eligibility for $2500 Assignment Differentials for full-time CLT and Senior CLT titles at the top salary step.
• Additional contributions of over $4 million in our PSC-CUNY Welfare Fund over the term of the contract, protecting and improving benefits.
• Allowing department chairs, GC Executive Officers, and SPS directors to roll over up to $6,000 of their Department Chair Research Awards and additional time to use the accumulated funds.
• HEO Assistants who have a masters degree or a PhD in a field related to their work will receive Salary Differentials of $1000 and $2500, respectively
• Workload credit for pay and benefits for adjuncts teaching “jumbo” courses, based on department and unit practice.

Major Non-Economic Gains

• A new multi-year appointment provision for teaching adjuncts that allows for two-year appointments with an additional third year at the college’s discretion and grandfathers in incumbent adjuncts on multi-year appointments
• Protections against outsourcing of teaching faculty/instructors of record to individuals outside of instructional staff or artificial intelligence
• For the first time, SEEK and College Discovery directors will be included in the PSC bargaining unit
• Extension of time for professional staff to use annual leave days from August 31 to December 31
• Expansion of Paid Parental Leave for full-time faculty and staff from 8 to 12 weeks, starting 3/1/25.
• PSC-CUNY Research Award restructured, increasing awards and expanding access to course release time.
• New Post-Tenure Reassigned Time Pilot Program for assistant and associate professors.
• Notification on the outcome of HEO reclassification requests will now be provided within 90 days of submission of application. There will now be at least one PSC-named HEO-series member on each College HEO Committee.
• Enhanced benefits and, for the first time, two-year appointments for CLIP and CUNY Start titles
• End to sabbatical quota for Hunter College Campus Schools faculty, with up to 100% pay for sabbatical.
• New college-based labor-management committees to address local health and safety workplace issues
• For the first time, HEO-series titles who have accumulated compensatory time may, through a defined process, either utilize the time or, by mutual agreement, receive pay for the extra hours worked.
• Expand eligibility for faculty stipends of up to $10,000 for defined projects to include adjuncts for the purpose of developing online and hybrid courses with an asynchronous component.

Labor-management committees for continued discussion

There are several issues around which we did not find agreement with CUNY administration, but instead secured a commitment to continue discussions under the new contract. These include:

• Graduate Assistant terms and conditions of employment
• Educational Opportunity Center workload
• Medical school faculty terms and conditions of employment
• Part-timer paid parental leave
• Procedures around job abandonment and unpaid leave of over a year
• Library faculty reassigned time
• Clinical professor and distinguished lecturer terms and conditions of employment
• Enhanced opportunities for members in the CLT and Senior CLT titles to receive promotions.

Dear Commons Community,

I don’t know how much traction the story about Luigi Mangione’s killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is getting in other parts of the country but here in New York it remains major news.  Above is the front page of yesterday’s New York Daily News that draws readers to a four-page article on Mangione and the killing.  Senior politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren while decrying the murder, also have expressed sympathy for the broader health care issues involved.  Filmmaker Michael Moore on Friday reacted to Luigi Mangione naming him in his “manifesto.”   As reported by The Hill and other media.

“It’s not often that my work gets a killer five-star review from an actual killer,” wrote Moore on his Substack page.

Mangione, who used the document to express anger with corporate America and the cost of health care in the U.S., appeared to cite the filmmaker as someone who has “illuminated the corruption and greed” in the industry.

Moore is behind the Oscar-nominated documentary film “Sicko” which, per his Substack post, focuses on “America’s bloodthirsty, profit-driven and murderous health insurance system.”

Moore noted that Mangione’s writings imply that people should look to his work to “understand the complexity — and the power-hungry abuse — within our current system” before pointing to those who’ve “stepped forward” to condemn anger directed at the health insurance industry following the shooting.

“The anger is 1000% justified,” the filmmaker wrote.

“It is long overdue for the media to cover it. It is not new. It has been boiling. And I’m not going to tamp it down or ask people to shut up. I want to pour gasoline on that anger.”

He slammed reporters who have asked whether he condemns murder as he pointed to his work on “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Bowling for Columbine” that has “condemned the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi people,” American soldiers and the tens of thousands killed each year due to guns.

Moore wrote that the anger with the health insurance industry isn’t about the killing of a CEO, rather, it’s about the “mass death and misery” that the industry has “levied against the American people for decades.”

“Just a government — two broken parties — enabling this INDUSTRY’s theft and, yes, murder,” he wrote.

He later continued, “Yes, I condemn murder, and that’s why I condemn America’s broken, vile, rapacious, bloodthirsty, unethical, immoral health care industry and I condemn every one of the CEOs who are in charge of it and I condemn every politician who takes their money and keeps this system going instead of tearing it up, ripping it apart, and throwing it all away.”

He emphasized that Americans must replace the system with “something sane, something caring and loving” that keeps people “alive.”

“This is a moment where we can create that change,” Moore wrote.

Tony

The cave where the ancient human remains were found is located beneath a castle in Ranis, Germany. – Martin Schutt/picture alliance/Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

Scientists have recovered the oldest known Homo sapiens DNA from human remains found in Europe, and the information is helping to reveal our species’ shared history with Neanderthals.

The ancient genomes sequenced from 13 bone fragments unearthed in a cave beneath a medieval castle in Ranis, Germany, belonged to six individuals, including a mother, daughter and distant cousins who lived in the region around 45,000 years ago, according to the study that published Thursday in the journal Nature.  As reported by Nature, Science, and CNN.

The genomes carried evidence of Neanderthal ancestry. Researchers determined that the ancestors of those early humans who lived in Ranis and the surrounding area likely encountered and made babies with Neanderthals about 80 generations earlier, or 1,500 years earlier, although that interaction did not necessarily happen in the same place.

Scientists have known since the first Neanderthal genome was sequenced in 2010 that early humans interbred with Neanderthals, a bombshell revelation that bequeathed a genetic legacy still traceable in humans today.

However, exactly when, how often and where this critical and mysterious juncture in human history took place has been hard to pin down. Scientists have believed interspecies relations would have occurred somewhere in the Middle East as a wave of Homo sapiens left Africa and bumped into Neanderthals, who had lived across Eurasia for 250,000 years.

A broader study on Neanderthal ancestry, published Thursday in the journal Science, that analyzed information from the genomes of 59 ancient humans and those of 275 living humans corroborated the more precise timeline, finding that the majority of Neanderthal ancestry in modern humans can be attributed to a “single, shared extended period of gene flow.”

“We were far more similar than we were different,” Priya Moorjani, a senior author of the Science study and an assistant professor in the department of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, said at a news briefing.

“The differences that we imagined between these groups to be very big, actually, were very small, genetically speaking. They seem to have mixed with each other for a long period of time and were living side by side for a long period of time.”

The research pinpointed a pivotal period that began about 50,500 years ago and ended around 43,500 years ago — not long before the now extinct Neanderthals began to disappear from the archaeological record. Over this 7,000-year time frame, early humans encountered Neanderthals, had sex and gave birth to children on a fairly regular basis. The height of the activity was 47,000 years ago, the study suggested.

The research also showed how certain genetic variants inherited from our Neanderthal ancestors, which make up between 1% and 3% of our genomes today, varied over time. Some, such as those related to the immune system, were beneficial to humans as they lived through the last ice age, when temperatures were much cooler, and they continue to confer benefits today.

The two studies lend “substantial confidence” to the timing of when humans and Neanderthals exchanged genes, something geneticists describe as introgression, said evolutionary geneticist Tony Capra, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics in the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute at the University of California, San Francisco.

“Genetic data from this crucial period in our evolution are very rare,” said Capra, who wasn’t involved in the research, via email. “These studies underscore how having even a few ancient genomes provides powerful perspective that enabled the authors to refine our understanding of human migration and Neanderthal introgression.”

A skull found in Zlatý kůň in the Czech Republic contains DNA that linked the woman to the Ranis individuals. – Marek Jantač

The scientists working on the two research projects decided to publish their work at the same time when they realized they had separately reached a similar conclusion.

How Neanderthal ancestry has shaped human genes

The research in Science found that genetic variants inherited from our Neanderthal ancestors are unevenly distributed across the human genome.

Some regions, which the scientists call “archaic deserts,” are devoid of Neanderthal genes. These deserts likely developed quickly after the two groups interbred, within 100 generations, perhaps because they resulted in birth defects or diseases that would have affected the survival chances of the offspring.

“It suggests that hybrid individuals who had Neanderthal DNA in these regions were substantially less fit, likely to due to severe disease, lethality, or infertility,” Capra said via email.

In particular, the X chromosome was a desert. Capra said the effects of Neanderthal variants that cause disease could be greater on the X chromosome, perhaps because it is present in two copies in females, but only present in one copy in males.

“The X chromosome also has many genes that are linked to male fertility when modified, so it has been proposed that some of this effect could have come from introgression leading to male hybrid sterility,” he said.

The Neanderthal gene variants detected most frequently in ancient and modern Homo sapiens genomes are related to traits and functions that included immune function, skin pigmentation and metabolism, with some increasing in frequency over time.

“Neanderthals were living outside Africa in harsh, ice age climates and were adapted to the climate and to the pathogens in these environments. When modern humans left Africa and interbred with Neanderthals, some individuals inherited Neanderthal genes that presumably allowed them to adapt and thrive better in the environment,” said Leonardo Iasi, co-lead author of the Science paper and a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

The individuals living at Ranis had 2.9% Neanderthal ancestry, not dissimilar to most people today, the Nature study found.

The new timeline allows scientists to understand better when humans left Africa and migrated around the world. It suggested that the main wave of migration out of Africa was essentially done by 43,500 years ago because most humans outside Africa today have Neanderthal ancestry originating from this period, the Science study suggested.

However, there is still much scientists don’t know. It’s not clear why people in East Asia today have more Neanderthal ancestry than Europeans, or why Neanderthal genomes from this period show little evidence of Homo sapiens DNA.

While the genomes sequenced from the Ranis individuals are the oldest Homo sapiens ones, scientists have previously recovered and analyzed DNA from Neanderthal remains that date back 400,000 years.

Lost branch of the human family tree

The individuals who called the cave in Ranis home were among the first Homo sapiens to live in Europe.

These early Europeans numbered a few hundred and included a woman who lived 230 kilometers (143 miles) away in Zlatý kůň in the Czech Republic. DNA from her skull was sequenced in a previous study, and researchers involved in the Nature study were able to connect her to the Ranis individuals.

These individuals had dark skin, dark hair and brown eyes, according to the study, perhaps reflecting their relatively recent arrival from Africa. Scientists are continuing to study remains from the site to piece together their diet and how they lived.

The family group was part of a pioneer population that eventually died out, leaving no trace of ancestry in people alive today. Other lineages of ancient humans also went extinct around 40,000 years ago and disappeared just like the Neanderthals ultimately did, said Johannes Krause, director at the department of archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. These extinctions may suggest that Homo sapiens did not play a role in the demise of Homo neanderthalensis.

“It’s kind of interesting to see that human story is not always a story of success,” said Krause, a senior author of the Nature study.

I found this discovery fascinating!

Tony

What appear to be large drones hover at high altitudes in  Toms River, N.J., on Dec. 8.

Dear Commons Community,

Mysterious drones in New York temporarily shut down runways at an Orange County airport, a frustrated Governor Kathy Hochul said, calling for federal assistance and declaring that “this has gone too far.”

The New York Stewart International Airport was forced to close runways Friday night for about an hour “due to drone activity in the airspace,” Hochul said in a statement.

In a statement Saturday to NBC New York, the Federal Aviation Administration said it slowed air traffic temporarily late Friday night “due to multiple reported drone sightings near and over the airport.”

The agency said there have been no safety impacts to aircraft.

The airport received a report of a drone sighting from the FAA around 9:40 p.m. Friday, said a spokesperson for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The runways reopened at 10:45 p.m., the spokesperson said. The closure did not impact flights.

“This has gone too far,” Hochul said.   As reported by NBC News.

The drones have been spotted over New York, New Jersey and other states in the Northeast, sparking concern and confusion. Some lawmakers, including Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. and New Jersey Republican Reps. Chris Smith and Jeff Van Drew, have called on the military to shoot them down. Experts, however, have said that shooting them poses a safety risk and is illegal.

Hochul said she directed the New York State Intelligence Center to actively investigate the sightings and coordinate with federal law enforcement to address the drones. The efforts remain ongoing, the governor said.

“But in order to allow state law enforcement to work on this issue, I am now calling on Congress to pass the Counter-UAS Authority Security, Safety, and Reauthorization Act,” she said. “This bill would reform legal authorities to counter-UAS and strengthen the FAA’s oversight of drones, and would extend counter-UAS activities to select state and local law enforcement agencies.”

“Extending these powers to New York State and our peers is essential. Until those powers are granted to state and local officials, the Biden Administration must step in by directing additional federal law enforcement to New York and the surrounding region to ensure the safety of our critical infrastructure and our people,” Hochul added.

The White House has said that it has “no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or a public safety threat, or have a foreign nexus.” Officials have said the drones flying over New Jersey in the past few weeks appear to be commercial-grade and not recreational.

During an interagency background call Saturday, an official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reiterated that there is no “evidence that there’s a threat to public safety.”

An FAA official said that it is not illegal to fly drones in U.S. airspace, while an official with the Federal Bureau of Investigation said there has “been a slight overreaction” to the drone sightings.

“We’re confident that many of the reported drone sightings are, in fact, manned aircraft being misidentified as drones,” the DHS official said in the call. “There is no evidence to date of any foreign based involvement in sending drones ashore from marine vessels in the area.”

The sighting of drones in the Middle Atlantic states has been going on for almost two weeks without any clear explanation of what they are or who is sending them into the sky.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A new report by New York State State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli examined issues related to broadband availability, access and affordability across New York City’s neighborhoods and found that despite high availability, one in four households had no cable, fiberoptic (FTTP) or digital subscriber line (DSL) internet subscription as of 2023, with the Bronx having the highest share of households without access(see graph aboce).

“Having high-speed internet access is no longer a luxury, but a necessity,” DiNapoli said. “While broadband connections exist in neighborhoods across the city, too many households still don’t have a subscription. Many of New York City’s lowest income families still face a digital divide that must be bridged. With affordability being one of the biggest challenges facing families, state and federal leaders should focus on measures to improve accessibility for those with the lowest incomes.”

Key highlights of the report:

• The citywide share of households without broadband service ticked up slightly between 2021-2023, but was still lower than prior to the pandemic.
• As of 2023, the Bronx, with the highest share of households with income below the federal poverty level (28.9%), also had the highest share with no broadband access (36.7%) and with access using cellular data plans only (20.3%).
• Brooklyn had the second highest share of households without broadband internet (27.3%).
• The Bronx and Brooklyn faced the highest average price for monthly broadband service among the five boroughs as of 2024.
• Out of 18 city neighborhoods with the highest share of households with income below the federal poverty level, 13 also had the highest shares without broadband. Ten of these neighborhoods had the highest shares that access the internet using cellular data plans only.

Broadband availability is a measure that captures whether a household has broadband service available via a local internet service provider. Broadband internet at a speed of 25/3 Mbps or higher was available to at least 98.1% of residents in the five boroughs, as of December 2022. The rate of broadband availability citywide is much higher than the national and statewide rates, which suggests local infrastructure is less of an impediment for internet access than in other parts of the state or country.

Trends in Access

Internet access, as defined in the report, measures whether a household has internet access through a broadband service or cellular data plan. While Federal Communications Commission (FCC) data showed Internet Service Provider (ISP) broadband connections were available to nearly all of New York City as of 2023, census data showed 91.8% of households citywide had internet access that year, up from 82.5% in 2017. As of 2023, 74.9% of city households accessed the internet using broadband and 14.8% used cellular data only.

The share of city households with broadband service in 2023 was higher than in 2017 (70.8%), yet lower than in 2021 (75.5%), when the pandemic spurred demand for high-speed internet to accommodate remote work and learning at home. Responding to the elevated demand, government, the private sector and non-governmental organizations worked to improve availability where gaps existed, while state and federal level subsidies were made available to lower-income households to help pay for service.

The level of broadband access citywide in 2021 was the highest recorded since the introduction of this metric in the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey in 2013. As the pandemic subsided, however, individuals may have resumed leveraging broaband via institutional access such as at schools and libraries, or may have returned to work that was less reliant on internet access. There may also have been a decline in demand for broadband services from businesses and community groups that provided new connections, especially in the South Bronx and Brooklyn during the height of the pandemic. The 2021 to 2023 increase in the share of households without broadband in the Bronx (which accounted for 16.3% of all city households in 2021) was 4.1%, whereas changes in the share of households without broadband in the other boroughs was less than 1% each. More recently, federal pandemic-era funding to support broadband access were scaled back or discontinued, including the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). FCC data showed total ACP enrollment of almost one million households across the City, with 25% for connections in the Bronx, representing 45.8% of households in that borough.

Access, Household Incomes and Affordability

Poorer households may choose to forgo internet access altogether, use cellular service to access the internet, or leverage connections of friends, family or neighbors to access the internet when needed. The Bronx, where more than one in three households has no broadband access, has the highest share with income below the federal poverty level and the highest share accessing the internet via cellular data plans. Households without broadband access citywide in 2023 included a 5.7% share with no internet connection of any type, a significantly lower proportion than the 2019 share of 12.6%. The Bronx and Brooklyn had the highest shares of households with no internet connection of any type, just over 7%, compared to 4% in Manhattan.

Disparities in broadband internet access were seen even more clearly at the neighborhood level, with more than a third of households in seven of the ten Census-defined neighborhoods in the Bronx having no access. Three of 18 Brooklyn neighborhoods have more than a third of households without broadband access, compared to one of 13 in Queens and one of ten in Manhattan. In Staten Island’s North Shore, 28% of households have no broadband access, the highest share among the borough’s three neighborhoods.

Affordability is one of the key determinants of whether households purchase high-speed internet service. The boroughs face significant differences in broadband prices, with the price for service at download speeds closest to the 100 Mbps standard being highest in the Bronx and lowest in Manhattan. The average price for high speed internet as a share of median household income is over 40% the average electricity cost for households in the Bronx and Brooklyn. Out of 18 neighborhoods (one-third of the total 55) with the highest shares of households with income below the federal poverty level, 13 have some of the highest shares without broadband and include 10 with some of the highest shares that access the internet using cellular data plans only. Of these neighborhoods, seven are in the Bronx.

Policy and Fiscal Resources

Federal funds for the state from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is being spent through the State’s ConnectALL office, with some funding being used to increase availability. The Broadband Act included in the state’s 2021 Enacted Budget required ISPs to provide a broadband service to qualifying low-income households for $15 to $20 per month, taxes and fees included.

In August 2024, the state entered into a settlement agreement with one of the largest ISPs to offer broadband at 30 Mbps for no more than $15 per month, for four years. For years two through four, the ISP can raise the price by no more than the rate of inflation. Five of the 11 broadband providers for which FCC data was analyzed for DiNapoli’s report also offer discounted broadband service at prices ranging from $20 to $35 per month for download speeds ranging from 30 Mbps to 50 Mbps, or via FTTP to qualifying subscribers.

During the COVID epidemic (2020-2022), the lack of Internet access among a large segment of public school students was most apparent when the NYC Department of Education moved to remote learning.

Tony

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

Texas has sued a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills to a woman near Dallas, launching one of the first challenges in the U.S. to shield laws that Democrat-controlled states passed to protect physicians after Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit on Thursday in Collin County, and it was announced Friday.  As described by The Associated Press.

Such prescriptions, made online and over the phone, are a key reason that the number of abortions has increased across the U.S. even since state bans started taking effect. Most abortions in the U.S. involve pills rather than procedures.

Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, said a challenge to shield laws, which blue states started adopting in 2023, has been anticipated.

And it could have a chilling effect on prescriptions.

“Will doctors be more afraid to mail pills into Texas, even if they might be protected by shield laws because they don’t know if they’re protected by shield laws?” Ziegler said in an interview Friday.

The lawsuit accuses New York Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter of violating Texas law by providing the drugs to a Texas patient and seeks up to $250,000. No criminal charges are involved.

Texas bars abortion at all stages of pregnancy and has been one of the most aggressive states at pushing back against abortion rights. It began enforcing a state law in 2021 — even before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and opened the door to state bans — that barred nearly all abortions by allowing citizens to sue anyone who provides an abortion or assists someone in obtaining one.

Paxton said that the 20-year-old woman who received the pills ended up in a hospital with complications. It was only after that, the state said in its filing, that the man described as “the biological father of the unborn child” learned of the pregnancy and the abortion.

“In Texas, we treasure the health and lives of mothers and babies, and this is why out-of-state doctors may not illegally and dangerously prescribe abortion-inducing drugs to Texas residents,” Paxton said in a statement.

The state said the Texas woman received a combination of two drugs that are generally used in medication abortions. Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone and primes the uterus to respond to the contraction-causing effect of the second drug, misoprostol. The two-drug regimen can be used to end pregnancies up through 10 weeks, but the drugs also have other uses and can help induce labor, manage miscarriages or treat hemorrhage.

A phone message left for Carpenter was not immediately returned, nor was an email to the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, where she’s co-medical director and founder.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, said she would continue to defend reproductive freedom “from out-of-state anti-choice attacks.”

“As other states move to attack those who provide or obtain abortion care, New York is proud to be a safe haven for abortion access,” James said in a prepared statement. “We will always protect our providers from unjust attempts to punish them for doing their job and we will never cower in the face of intimidation or threats.”

It was not clear what specific actions James would take.

While most Republican-controlled states began enforcing bans or tighter restrictions on abortion after Roe v. Wade was overturned, most Democratic states have adopted laws that aim to protect their residents from investigation or prosecution under other states’ abortion laws. At least eight states have gone farther, offering legal protections to health care providers who prescribe abortion pills to patients in states where abortion is banned. That scenario makes up for about 10% of all abortions in the U.S., a survey for the Society of Family Planning found.

The New York shield law includes a provision that allows a prescriber who is sued to countersue the plaintiff to recover damages.

That makes the Texas lawsuit thorny.

Even if Paxton prevails in Texas court, Ziegler said, it’s unclear how that could be enforced. “Is he going to go to New York to enforce it?” she asked.

Anti-abortion advocates, who legally challenged the Biden administration’s prescribing rules around mifepristone, have been readying provocative and unusual ways to further limit abortion pill access when Trump takes office next year. They feel emboldened to challenge the pills’ use and seek ways to restrict it under a conservative U.S. Supreme Court buttressed by a Republican-controlled Congress and White House.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a group of anti-abortion doctors and their organizations lacked the legal standing to sue to try to have the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone rescinded. But since then, the Republican state attorneys general from Idaho, Kansas and Missouri have sought to have some of the rules around the pills tightened — including to bar telemedicine prescriptions.

Also this year, Louisiana became the first state to reclassify the drugs as “controlled dangerous substances.” They can still be prescribed, but there are extra steps required to access them.

Lawmakers in at least three states — Missouri, New Hampshire and Tennessee — have introduced bills for next year that would bar or restrict use of the pills.

“I began to think about how we might be able to both provide an additional deterrent to companies violating the criminal law and provide a remedy for the family of the unborn children,” said Tennessee state Rep. Gino Bulso, who is sponsoring the legislation there targeting medications used in abortions.

Interesting case that is likely to fail!

Tony

Courtesy of The Telegraph.

Dear Commons Community,

Norway is building a four-lane undersea tunnel that is set to become the world’s longest and deepest.  As reported by The Telegraph.

The record-breaking project – known as Rogfast – will connect the districts of Randaberg and Bokn, which are separated by a 16-mile wide body of water.  (See map below.)

By removing the need for ferries, the tunnel will slash 11 hours from a 21-hour journey on Norway’s E39 coastal highway, which runs from Trondheim, in the far north, to Kristiansand, in the south.

It will help millions of people commute to the cities of Stavanger and Bergen on the 680-mile road, which is interrupted seven times by the need for ferries to cross fjords.

Rogfast is part of an ambitious £36 billion upgrade project of the entire highway, which also includes plans for tunnels “floating” within the sea.

The Rogfast project manager said the current ferry service can be delayed by bad weather, prolonging journeys further – a problem that will not affect the tunnel.

“The port at Mortavika is quite exposed and, in the winter, ferries sometimes have to divert to another port,” said Oddvar Kaarmo.

“Once the tunnel is finished, we will not have to rely on good weather to keep the roads open. About half a year after the last drill and blast, we have to deliver the project, so we have to get a lot of work done simultaneously. It’s more about logistics than tunnelling.”

The mega-tunnel will be carved through a layer of rock underneath the water, and will take 35 minutes to drive through. It will have a four-lane dual tunnel design, with a maximum depth of 1,300 ft and length of 16.5 miles.

Norway has said the project’s budget will be roughly £1.6 billion. It is hoped it will make the export of goods easier and encourage tourism along the country’s west coast.

The Rogfast project is set to be completed in 2033

The government will pay for around 40 per cent of the project, with the rest covered by a £30 toll to use the tunnel.

Rogfast will overtake Norway’s Lærdal tunnel – which spans 15 miles between Lærdal and Aurland – as the world’s longest sub-sea road when it opens, and is slated for completion in 2033. Work began in 2018, but suffered severe delays due to the pandemic. Plans were originally approved by Norway’s parliament in 2017.

Good luck with this!

Tony