Harvard chair charged for producing false statements
Last Tuesday, the chair of Harvard’s department of chemistry and chemical biology, Charles Lieber, was charged on the account of making false money statements regarding finances received from a Chinese government-run program. Researchers are legally obligated to disclose all payments to their academic institutions, but according to charging documents, Lieber failed to disclose the $50,000 per month salary and $150,000 per year living expenses he received from the Wuhan University of Technology. Lieber’s charge was part of a broad F.B.I. effort to root out theft in biomedical research in U.S. laboratories. Lieber was one of three Massachusetts scientists accused on Tuesday. However, Lieber is particularly noteworthy due to his experience at Harvard. In 2017, he was named a University Professor, Harvard’s highest faculty rank.
Florida’s Brightline is nation’s deadliest railroad
In an analysis by the Associated Press last month, the Brightline railroad was found to have the worst death rate per mile of any railroad across the nation. Brightline is a privately owned rail service that operates trains between Miami and West Palm Beach and is currently expanding to Orlando. The trains operate at speeds up to 79 mph for over a 70-mile stretch, which while not considered a high-speed rail is still much faster than many other tracks in the country. Since it launched two years ago, over 40 people have been killed by trains on the tracks, in a car, on a bike or on foot. Brightline has responded with a public education campaign to warn pedestrians to stay off the tracks. The line that Brightline uses has been a part of the Florida East Coast Railway for the past century. It had been used for slower freight trains before Brightline took over.
Dating apps investigated for underage use
Last Thursday, a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee began investigating popular dating services for allegedly allowing minors and sex offenders to use their service. The major services in question are popular apps such as Tinder, Grindr and Bumble. The U.S. House Oversight and Reform subcommittee on economic and consumer policy sent letters to the companies seeking information on users of their product, such as ages, procedures for verifying ages and complaints about assault, rape or minors’ use of the application. While in the U.S the minimum age for using internet services in usually 13 years of age, due to concerns about sexual predators, the majority of dating services require users to be at least 18 years old.
U.S. life expectancy increases after a downward trend
A report released last Thursday by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics found that the life expectancy in the U.S. is at an increase for the first time in four years. The report used numbers and factors from 2018, finding that while the expectancy is an increase, it is still considerably small, raised only by a month. For children born in 2018, the males are expected to live for 76 years and 2 months while women sit at 81 years and 1 month. For decades before 2014, U.S. life expectancy was rising a few months almost every year, but from 2014 to 2017, expectancy either fell or held steady. The downward trend was largely blamed on the rise of overdoses and suicides.
Photo: K. Karampelas
