From member station in Boston reports that $34.00 parents are charged in the scandal but Huffman is the 1st to be punished in Boston spectral court Hoffman's voice shook as she recalled the moment her daughter learned of her mother's actions and asked Why didn't you believe in me Hoffman had pleaded guilty to paying $15000.00 to hire a ringer to change her daughter's S.A.T.'s ORs in addition to 2 weeks in jail public faces 250 hours of community service a $30000.00 fine and 12 months of supervised release over the next 2 months nearly a dozen other parents are scheduled to be sentenced so far 15 parents are pleaded guilty while 19 including actress Lori Laughlin and her husband designer Mossimo Giannoulias are still fighting the charges For N.P.R. News I'm Kirk therapy as I in Boston New York state officials allege the owners of produce farmer are hiding profits while dealing with lawsuits stemming from the opioid crisis they contend the Sackler family has transferred at least a $1000000000.00 overseas a spokesperson for Mortimer Sackler is defending the transaction saying they were perfectly legal and occurred over a decade ago New York's Attorney General's Office is asking a judge to enforce subpoenas for companies banks and advisers to Purdue and the SAC lawyers This is N.P.R. News. An Illinois man who developed a lung disease is suing a cigarette maker Joel labs alleging the company's products made him sick 18 year old Adam heard in Rader contends the company deliberately targeted young people through Instagram and other sites the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating $380.00 confirmed or probable cases of long illnesses type of aping her going Rader says he vague for a year activists Juanita Abernathy the winner of the late civil rights icon Ralph Abernathy has died at the age of $87.00 N.P.R.'s Bracton Booker reports that she's being remembered as both fearless and the mother of the Civil Rights Movement one need Abernathy is said to have written the business plan for the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery Alabama that protest which went on for more than a year eventually led the courts to outlaw racial segregation on buses Georgia congressman and civil rights legend John Lewis says Abernathy's legacy is quote a testament to the towering role that women played in the civil rights movement he also called her his sister on the front lines in the struggle for change Juanita Abernathy worked during the height of the civil rights movement fighting for equality for black Americans in areas ranging from voting rights to school desegregation to housing protections Brecht Booker N.P.R. News discount theater subscription service movie passes shutting down today the company says its months long effort to restructure and raise funds have not been successful I'm Chase Stevens N.P.R. News in Washington Support for N.P.R. Comes from N.P.R. Stations other contributors include the size sems foundation since 1985 supporting advances in science education and the arts towards a better more just society more information is available at side Sam's Foundation dot org. Edward Snowden has been called a hero and a traitor some people say I betrayed the United States well how did I betray the United States all of my information. Merican the N.S.A. Whistleblower takes on his critics and explains why he's still in Russia also a filmmaker Ken Burns takes on the history of country music in a mere 16 hours Saturday and we can EDITION from N.P.R. News this morning. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY I'm Ira Flatow in the weeks following the National Weather Service country dating president trumps a prediction about the path of Hurricane Dorian also known as hash tag sharpie gate they have been reported threats of firings and suppression of science at the agency here to fill us in is so he Bushwick technology editor at Scientific American Welcome back Sophia always good to see Thank you so let's let's talk about this so what happened in the weeks after death Dorian How has that in ministration an agency handled this well the president and his support stopped have doubled down on the idea that Alabama really was at risk from hurricane Dorian and this was contradicted when the National Weather Service office in Birmingham tweeted that Alabama was in no danger which is makes a lot of sense in terms of preparation you don't want people making runs on stores or thinking they have to evacuate if there's no danger and then the New York Times has recently reported that the secretary of commerce then threatened Noa the National Weather Service is part of now law and they threatened to fire the political appointees if they didn't issue a corrective to the message and so as a result there was an unsigned memo that no one released sort of saying that the Alabama office shouldn't have tweeted out that Alabama wasn't going to be in danger so they were really asking politics that triumph over science and that's correct and that's this really kind of points out the danger of a post truth you're right like it's. One thing if you're arguing about the size of a crowd and it's another thing when you're talking about people's lives at risk I mean knowing accurately where a hurricane is going to strike and what areas are in danger in which areas are not is really vital to saving people's lives and also to preventing damage and if you can't rely on that and if you sow distrust of the weather service that's potentially extremely dangerous. For the next time you may think it's a hoax also exactly exactly you know you can't trust an accurate hurricane forecast then you're not going to take action in the best possible way let's move on to another story another interesting story about a test for P.T.S.D. Yes this one's really interesting because there's still today is a lot of stigma around post-traumatic stress disorder many people don't if if they're experiencing symptoms they might not want to admit it or to go seek the treatment they need so the military obviously has a lot of soldiers are often exposed to traumatic situations and they want to have a some way of screening for P.T.S.D. That wouldn't just rely on people self reporting and so they've investigated they supported research that has found potential blood test that could be used to screen for P.T.S.D. So basically they chose about a 1000000 different biomarkers so biomarkers are just things that could be like heart rate or proteins or molecules in the blood and they compared these biomarkers into groups of veterans all of it was about $150.00 people all of them had served overseas and had experienced a potentially traumatic. Event in battle and about half of them had symptoms of P.T.S.D. And other have to not so by comparing these biomarkers in the 2 groups they narrowed down to a list of 28 different biomarkers So 27 substances in the blood and the heart rate that could be used to differentiate between the group and was a pretty accurate it was it was about as accurate as some other screenings it was about 81 percent. Of the time it could distinguish between these groups when they tested it and the idea is that this wouldn't be you wouldn't just take this test and be like oh I have P.T.S.D. But it would be oh this person potentially has P.T.S.D. And it would allow that person to then go into a psychological evaluation or undergo further screening and it's not quite ready then no it's not on time ready yet 1st of all they only tested it in quite small right like about 150 people initially and then they tested it on a different smaller group and the 2nd thing is it was only men in this group and it was only veterans so if you wanted to use it in say the general population or in women you want to do a lot more testing and indeed the research group does plan to test it further interesting let's move on to the Indian space organization Space Research Organization launched the lunar lander but they sort of lost contact with their right. Yes sad story it's a little sad but there's a silver lining so they the lander was supposed to land it would be the 1st lander to land near the south pole of the moon and unfortunately which is about 2 kilometers above the surface Indian Space Research Organization lost contact with it and so they thought it might have crashed but just recently so this was a 2 part mission that was an orbiter as well as a lander and the orbiter photographed a part of the surface of the moon where and the Indian Space Research Organization has said they found where the lander is and now they're trying to reestablish contact but you know we there in the in the in your program doesn't get a lot of press here they're really very serious Yes Absolutely they've sent they've sent an orbiter to Mars they're only they've landed a previous mission they are sent an orbiter around the moon and it crash landed at the end of its mission and then this was their attempt at a soft landing and if they did cheat did they would have only been the 4th nation to ever have a soft landing on the earth let's keep our fingers crossed for reestablishing I will finally your last story is shocking I'm shocked because it's about electric eels. Scientists fine found the new electric eel species so basically what happened was we had just assumed that electric eels were all one species and this study talk about 107 different electric eels and they compared their head shapes and their D.N.A. And they they say no there's actually 3 different species we're looking at here and one of them my favorite electrify electrophoresis ball tie I think I might be getting the genus name wrong but this species is the most shocking of all it can release 860 volts shock for comparison a defeat relator that can shark shock your hurt back to life is about a 1000 do we do we know at why it's so big and how big it got that one you know so basically the way that electric eels produce these shocks are with organs made up of electric current producing cells and the idea is if you have more cells they act kind of like batteries in a series and they can strengthen and increase the output of the shock very interesting so if we thank you for taking time to be with us today always good to have me thanks for having me Bushwick a technology editor at Scientific American and now it's time to check in on the state of science this is. Have a great night one of the local science stories of national significance if you've driven by a wind turbine you've probably noticed that they are huge kidding big here they're often several 100 feet tall in the blades can be as tall as the Statue of Liberty you heard me right so I want to turban is the commission most of the parts can be recycled or used but not the blades and this is causing a problem for wind farms and landfills what happens to these giant turbans at the end of their life spans my next guest is here to tell us how the Midwest deals with this carnage turban Blaine's Christina Stella is a reporter for Harvest Public Media and any T.V.'s The Brask educational telecommunications in Lincoln Welcome Christina Hey Ira Thanks. Having You're welcome there's a lot of wind energy developing happening in the Midwest tell us a little bit about what it's like in Nebraska there are lots of turbans going up there well I mean a lot of states in the middle of the country have really been embracing when development especially over the last 10 years but now Brosco has been a little slower on the uptake so across our state we've got about a 1000 turbines operating across $25.00 farms and to give you a little context that's pretty low compared to our neighbors like Kansas and Iowa which each have between $3.50 Iowa having closer to $5000.00 turbines so so these 2 as I mentioned these turbans they have these big blades on them that what are they made out of and what is the problem with this pose of them after life yeah so the problem really is twofold OK They're really strong and they're really big which you already said so turbine blades are made from a mix of resin and fiberglass and so the resin is what makes them really durable while the fiberglass gives them a little bit of bend sort of like an airplane wing so they're really built to survive any kind of weather pattern. Now go ahead I'm sorry go ahead so but that what that means is that it takes really high powered equipment to break them down and it costs a lot of money and energy to do that so a lot of times blades will just get cut up into 3 yourself pieces and hauled off and that poses quite a space issue for landfills so there's really there of the lead you have to have a special landfill to to take them in not just any landfill Yeah I mean a lot of municipal landfills are just not as interested in taking on wind projects because they just create so much waste you know to give you a sense of the size of the wind farm that I visited in Kimball Nebraska one turbine blade was 127 feet long and that's an old model these days the blades are upwards of 300 feet long and so if each turbine has 3 blades and a farm can have tens of turbines you can imagine how quickly that adds up at the landfill and I can you talk to rob them fleet who's a scrapper in Nebraska someone who disposes of these blades and we have a clip from him. So if you're a small utility or municipality let's say and all of a sudden hundreds of blades start to come to your land that you don't want to use up your capacity for your local municipal trash for it would interpret really so what do they do then what happens when a winter been is the commissioner are there any regulatory regulations for what to do with the blades Well right now in the U.S. There's actually no federal regulations for wind turbine disposal I mean a couple of states have adopted some policies requiring companies to provide what's called an end of life plan but a lot of the time it's really local governments asking for those plans as as the farm is being developed but the thing about those plans is that they don't tend to include where the waste actually goes just kind of how turbines will be taken down and how the land is going to be restored so a lot of the time they do end up just being taken to whatever landfills will accept them now in Europe the E.U. Has tightened their waste management guidelines really to try and forced companies to divert when Turman waste from landfills and sometimes that looks like selling older parts to markets in Eastern Europe and Asia but here because the industry is still pretty young we are still and companies are still trying to answer that question find a better solution very. Slim and what you do talk to a couple of people who are thinking of new ways of getting rid of these plays I'm thinking of sin the language German Caspar Karl angle and tell us about what they said so Cindy has actually established a special turbine blade disposal project in my story she talked about how it was too expensive for them really to actually crush up the blades and so she cuts them up into 3 pieces and then she takes 2 of them and stuff them into the 3rd and then they sort of store that at their landfill in Wyoming and Karl is actually he's worked on a process that involves grinding up the blade. And then making something called a poly pallet out of them he sort of takes that material and mixes them with thermal plastics and so you can make all kinds of cool stuff like decking material piping and all that creative ways we're going have to come up with some more of them thank you very much Christine thank you Christina Stella REPORTER Any T. And Harvest Public Media in Lincoln Nebraska we're going to take a break and when we come back we're going to talk about facial recognition what do you think about it do you think it's gone too far are you in favor of it do you dislike it you know you can you can let us know what you think give us a break and we'll be taking a break here's the WHO IT IS We'll be right back. I'm Ira Flatow this is SCIENCE FRIDAY from W. N.Y.C. Studios. Immigrant politicians to pick the Statue of Liberty not as mother of Exiles but as a guardian fielding America from the teeming awards I mean it is a sign of how powerful she is and public life that they feel like they just have to wrestle with her and she keeps fighting back Brooke physics with Lady Liberty on this week's On the media from everyone let's see Sunday morning she can on 89.3 K. P.C.C. . Supporters include the Science History Institute presenting rare earth elements the intersection of science and society on Tuesday September 24th from 730 to 9 pm at Hudson loft in downtown Los Angeles moderated by Ira Flatow host of N.P.R.'s Science Friday a panel of experts will discuss why these critical elements have been in the news and why they are essential to building a greener future information and tickets at Science History dot org This is SCIENCE FRIDAY I'm Ira Flatow 3 U.S. Cities I'm talking about Oakland San Francisco and Somerville Massachusetts have banned their police departments from using a form of artificial intelligence called facial recognition it analyzes a person's facial features and checks its database of faces and comes up within identity match the idea that your face is now being recorded and stored can be upsetting presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is demanding a national ban on this technology and other candidates are calling for greater scrutiny of how it's being used this hour weren't there we're going to be talking about it ourselves and taking our own Look at how police departments law enforcement agencies and courtrooms are using facial recognition and other forms of AI from emotion detection algorithms to risk assessments and asking whether these technologies are really accurate and fair and that's what I'm going to be asking you what do you think. About using facial recognition and other forms of JA in the criminal justice system give us a call our number 8447248255 and 8447 to 4255 or you can tweet us tweet us at the side Frye let me start out with the facial recognition technology 1st Jennifer Lynch is the surveillance litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY Thank you well just just to start off give me give me a definition of what facial recognition is sure face all recognition or face recognition is a technology that allows you to identify or verify the identity of somebody based on specific features of their face usually that's performed on digital images but it can also be performed on video. And went to law enforcement when law enforcement is using facial recognition we are are these photos coming from. Well for the most part of law enforcement is using face recognition the photographs are coming from mug shot databases so about 14 different states partner with the F.B.I. And share their mug shot photographs with the F.B.I. And then they have access to the F.B.I.'s photos but what we also know is that many states also include face recognition and their driver's license databases so about $43.00 states in the United States include face recognition in their driver's license databases and of those 20 to 30 states are sharing that information with the cops as well so that's really very interesting could it could I find out if I'm in a database. Well you know I think that if you live in one of the 43 states that has face recognition and their driver's license database then you're likely in that database of you have a driver's license if you have a passport you could also be in the State Department's face recognition database and if you've ever been arrested for a crime there's a good chance that your in the F.B.I. Is mug shot database but there's no central place on the internet that I can look up my name and see if I'm in a database someplace no there's no central place on the Internet and so I think that's really challenging for Americans right now because based