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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JANUARY 27, 2017
Want to track
cellphones?
Get a warrant,
lawmakers say
By DAVE COLLINS
Associated Press
HARTFORD, Conn. —
Law enforcement cellphone
tracking devices are com-
ing under scrutiny in several
states, where lawmakers have
introduced proposals rang-
ing from warrant require-
ments to an outright ban on
the technology.
Privacy and constitutional
concerns, including Fourth
Amendment search and sei-
zure violations, are being
cited with the proposed laws
on cell-site simulators.
The suitcase-size devices,
widely known under the
brand name Stingray, mimic
cellphone towers and allow
law enforcement to col-
lect unique subscriber num-
bers and other basic data
from cellphones in a partic-
ular area. The data can help
police determine the location
of a targeted phone — and
phones of innocent bystand-
ers — in real time without
the users even making calls
or sending text messages.
Law enforcement offi-
cials say the devices are vital
in helping to find suspects
and victims, and to solve
crimes.
ments of Justice and Home-
land Security.
Courts around the coun-
try, meanwhile, have issued
conflicting opinions about
whether warrants are needed
for cellphone location data,
leading to a hodgepodge of
rules.
Bills addressing use of the
devices are now pending in at
least eight states, according to
a review by The Associated
Press. Most of them would
require police to get war-
rants. One bill, introduced
by South Carolina state Rep.
J. Todd Rutherford, would
ban the purchase and use of
cell-site simulators by law
enforcement.
“I think most people
would be offended if they
knew exactly how much sur-
veillance the government is
doing,” said Rutherford, a
Democrat from Columbia
who is the House minority
leader and a criminal defense
lawyer. “It’s got to stop
somewhere.”
Rutherford isn’t even sure
if any police agencies in his
state are using the simula-
tors. Many state and local law
enforcement agencies sign
nondisclosure agreements
with the device manufacturer.
13 require warrants
Six more states
At least 13 states already
require warrants to track cell-
phones in real time: Cal-
ifornia, Colorado, Flor-
ida, Illinois, Indiana, Maine,
Maryland, Minnesota, Mon-
tana, New Hampshire, New
Jersey, Utah and Virginia.
Federal law enforcement
officers also must get war-
rants, under policies put in
place in 2015 by the depart-
This year, lawmakers in
at least six states are propos-
ing bills to require warrants
to use cellphone surveillance
devices: Connecticut, Missis-
sippi, Missouri, New Hamp-
shire, New York and Ore-
gon. A California bill would
require local governments to
approve the use of cell-site
simulators and other surveil-
lance technology.
Little girls doubt that women
can be brilliant, study shows
By MARIA DANILOVA
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Can
women be brilliant? Little girls
are not so sure.
A study published Thurs-
day in the journal Science sug-
gests that girls as young as 6
can be led to believe men are
inherently smarter and more
talented than women, making
girls less motivated to pursue
novel activities or ambitious
careers. That such stereotypes
exist is hardly a surprise, but
the findings show these biases
can affect children at a very
young age.
“As a society, we associ-
ate a high level of intellec-
tual ability with males more
than females, and our research
suggests that this association
is picked up by children as
young 6 and 7,” said Andrei
Cimpian, associate profes-
sor in the psychology depart-
ment at New York University.
Cimpian coauthored the study,
which looked at 400 children
ages 5-7.
‘Really, really smart’
In the first part of the study,
girls and boys were told a story
about a person who is “really,
really smart,” a child’s idea of
brilliance, and then asked to
identify that person among the
photos of two women and two
men. The people in the pho-
tos were dressed profession-
ally, looked the same age and
appeared equally happy.
At 5, both boys and girls
tended to associate brilliance
with their own gender, mean-
ing that most girls chose
women and most boys chose
men.
But as they became older
and began attending school,
children apparently began
endorsing gender stereotypes.
At 6 and 7, girls were “sig-
nificantly less likely” to pick
AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
News anchor Barbie, left, and computer engineer Barbie
are arranged for a photo at the New York Toy Fair. A new
study published Thursday in the journal Science suggests
that girls as young as 6 can be led to believe that men are
inherently smarter and more talented than women, mak-
ing them less motivated to pursue novel activities and
ambitious careers. That such stereotypes exist is hardly a
surprise, but the findings show that the biases can affect
children at a very young age.
women. The results were sim-
ilar when the kids were shown
photos of children.
Interestingly, when asked
to select children who look
like they do well in school, as
opposed to being smart, girls
tended to pick girls, which
means that their perceptions of
brilliance are not based on aca-
demic performance.
“These stereotypes float
free of any objective mark-
ers of achievement and intelli-
gence,” Cimpian said.
Board games
In the second part of the
study, children were intro-
duced to two new board
games, one described as an
activity “for children who are
really, really smart” and the
other one “for children who try
really, really hard.” Five-year-
old girls and boys were equally
likely to want to play the game
for smart kids, but at age 6 and
7, boys still wanted to play that
game, while girls opted for the
other activity.
“There isn’t anything about
the game itself that becomes
less interesting for girls, but
rather it’s the description of it
as being for kids that are really,
really smart.”
As a result, believing that
they are not as gifted as boys,
girls tend to shy away from
demanding majors and fields,
leading to big differences in
aspirations and career choices
between men and women.
“These stereotypes discourage
women’s pursuit of many pres-
tigious careers; that is, women
are underrepresented in fields
whose members cherish bril-
liance,” the authors wrote.
Origins
It is still unclear where the
stereotypes come from. Par-
ents, teachers and peers and
the media are the usual sus-
pects, Cimpian said.
But it is evident that action
must be taken so that these
biases don’t curtail girls’ pro-
fessional aspirations. “Instill
the idea that success in any line
of work is not an innate abil-
ity, whatever it is, but rather
putting your head down, being
passionate about what you are
doing,” Cimpian said, add-
ing that exposure to successful
women who can serve as role
models also helps.
Toy companies like Mattel,
maker of the Barbie doll, have
taken steps to try to reduce
gender stereotypes.
Mattel’s “You can be any-
thing” Barbie campaign tells
girls that they can be paleon-
tologists, veterinarians or pro-
fessors, among other careers.
The campaign also holds out
the possibility that a girl can
imagine herself to be a fairy
princess.
Rebecca S. Bigler, profes-
sor of psychology at the Uni-
versity of Texas at Austin,
described Cimpian’s study
“as exceptionally nice work.”
She suggested that the stereo-
types develop in early elemen-
tary school when students are
exposed to famous scientists,
composers and writers, the
“geniuses” of history, who are
overwhelmingly men. Bigler
said it is important to combine
that knowledge with informa-
tion on gender discrimination.
“We need to explain to
children that laws were cre-
ated specifically to prevent
women from becoming great
scientists, artists, composers,
writers, explorers, and lead-
ers,” Bigler added. “Children
will then be ... more likely to
believe in their own intellec-
tual potential and contribute
to social justice and equally
by pursuing these careers
themselves.”
Scientists take first steps to growing human organs in pigs
Could help with
growing human
transplant organs
By MALCOLM RITTER
Associated Press
NEW YORK — Scientists
have grown human cells inside
pig embryos, a very early step
toward the goal of growing
livers and other human organs
in animals to transplant into
people.
The cells made up just a
tiny part of each embryo, and
the embryos were grown for
only a few weeks, researchers
reported Thursday.
Such
human-animal
research has raised ethical con-
cerns. The U.S. government
suspended taxpayer funding of
experiments in 2015. The new
work, done in California and
Spain, was paid for by private
foundations.
Any growing of human
organs in pigs is “far away,”
said Juan Carlos Izpisua Bel-
monte of the Salk Institute in
La Jolla, California, an author
of the paper in the journal Cell.
He said the new research is
“just a very early step toward
the goal.”
Even before that is
achieved, he said, putting
human cells in animals could
pay off for studies of how
genetic diseases develop and
for screening potential drugs.
Chimeras
Animals with cells from
different species are called
chimeras. Such mixing has
been done before with mice
and rats. Larger animals like
pigs would be needed to make
the transplant, the problem of
rejection should be minimized,
said another Salk researcher,
Jun Wu.
Daniel Garry of the Uni-
versity of Minnesota, who
is working on chimeras but
didn’t participate in the new
work, called the Cell paper
“an exciting initial step for this
entire field.”
The details
Salk Institute
A 4-week-old pig embryo which had been injected with
human stem cells on Jan. 24. The experiment was a very
early step toward the possibility of growing human or-
gans inside animals for transplantation.
human-sized organs. That
could help ease the shortage of
human donors for transplants.
The Salk team is working
on making humanized pan-
creases, hearts and livers in
pigs. The animals would grow
those organs in place of their
own, and they’d be euthanized
before the organ is removed.
Most of the organ cells
would be human. By injecting
pig embryos with stem cells
from the person who will get
Here’s what the new paper
reports:
Scientists used human stem
cells, which are capable of pro-
ducing a wide variety of spe-
cialized cells. They injected
pig embryos made in the lab
with three to 10 of those cells
apiece, and implanted the
embryos into sows. At three
to four weeks of development,
186 embryos were removed
and examined.
Less than 1 in every
100,000 embryonic cells was
human, which still comes to
about a million human cells,
Wu said. That contribution is
lower than expected, he said,
“but we were very happy to
see we actually can see the
human cells after four weeks
of development.”
The cells generated the pre-
cursors of muscle, heart, pan-
creas, liver and spinal cord
tissue in the embryos. The
researchers said they plan
to test ways to focus human
cells on making specific tis-
sues while avoiding any con-
tribution to the brain, sperm or
eggs.
That addresses ethical con-
cerns that the approach could
accidentally lead to pigs that
gain some human qualities in
their brains, or make human
egg or sperm.
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