Month: October 2023

Enlarge / The Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. (credit: Getty | Bobby Bank)

Nonprofit hospitals are under increasing scrutiny for skimping on charity care, relentlessly pursuing payments from low-income patients, and paying executives massive multi-million-dollar salaries—all while earning tax breaks totaling billions.

One such hospital system is RWJBarnabas Health, a large nonprofit chain in New Jersey, whose CEO made a whopping $17 million in 2021, while the hospital system only spent 1.65 percent of its nearly $6 billion in revenue on charity care.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, is gearing up for a showdown next week with the CEO of RWJBarnabas Health, Mark Manigan. Nurses at one of the chain's locations, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, are on strike, saying that the facility has become a dangerous place to work due to inadequate staffing levels.

Enlarge / The Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. (credit: Getty | Bobby Bank)

Nonprofit hospitals are under increasing scrutiny for skimping on charity care, relentlessly pursuing payments from low-income patients, and paying executives massive multi-million-dollar salaries—all while earning tax breaks totaling billions.

One such hospital system is RWJBarnabas Health, a large nonprofit chain in New Jersey, whose CEO made a whopping $17 million in 2021, while the hospital system only spent 1.65 percent of its nearly $6 billion in revenue on charity care.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, is gearing up for a showdown next week with the CEO of RWJBarnabas Health, Mark Manigan. Nurses at one of the chain's locations, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, are on strike, saying that the facility has become a dangerous place to work due to inadequate staffing levels.

Enlarge (credit: Justin Paget)

On Tuesday, the US National Academies of Science released a report entitled "Accelerating Decarbonization in the United States." The report follows up on a 2021 analysis entitled, "Accelerating Decarbonization in the US Energy System." When the earlier report was prepared, the US didn't have a decarbonization policy, although the growth of natural gas and renewables was dropping the emissions involved in producing electricity. Within the following year, the US passed an infrastructure law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), all of which contained provisions intended to help cut the US's emissions in half by 2030. The Environmental Protection Agency has also formulated policies that should radically reduce the emissions of generating electricity.

In other words, shortly after the report's release, the US formulated a plan to accelerate decarbonization and a target of a 50 percent emissions reduction by 2030.

Rather than pat themselves on the back, however, the experts who prepared the original report recognized that the US's climate goals require it to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century, and that will require lots of policy changes beyond the ones already in place. The new report is largely a call for people to start thinking of what we need to implement to ensure emissions keep dropping after 2030.

Enlarge (credit: Justin Paget)

On Tuesday, the US National Academies of Science released a report entitled "Accelerating Decarbonization in the United States." The report follows up on a 2021 analysis entitled, "Accelerating Decarbonization in the US Energy System." When the earlier report was prepared, the US didn't have a decarbonization policy, although the growth of natural gas and renewables was dropping the emissions involved in producing electricity. Within the following year, the US passed an infrastructure law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), all of which contained provisions intended to help cut the US's emissions in half by 2030. The Environmental Protection Agency has also formulated policies that should radically reduce the emissions of generating electricity.

In other words, shortly after the report's release, the US formulated a plan to accelerate decarbonization and a target of a 50 percent emissions reduction by 2030.

Rather than pat themselves on the back, however, the experts who prepared the original report recognized that the US's climate goals require it to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century, and that will require lots of policy changes beyond the ones already in place. The new report is largely a call for people to start thinking of what we need to implement to ensure emissions keep dropping after 2030.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

A critical vulnerability that hackers have exploited since August, which allows them to bypass multifactor authentication in Citrix networking hardware, has received a patch from the manufacturer. Unfortunately, applying it isn’t enough to protect affected systems.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-4966 and carrying a severity rating of 9.8 out of a possible 10, resides in the NetScaler Application Delivery Controller and NetScaler Gateway, which provide load balancing and single sign-on in enterprise networks, respectively. Stemming from a flaw in a currently unknown function, the information-disclosure vulnerability can be exploited so hackers can intercept encrypted communications passing between devices. The vulnerability can be exploited remotely and with no human action required, even when attackers have no system privileges on a vulnerable system.

Citrix released a patch for the vulnerability last week, along with an advisory that provided few details. On Wednesday, researchers from security firm Mandiant said that the vulnerability has been under active exploitation since August, possibly for espionage against professional services, technology, and government organizations. Mandiant warned that patching the vulnerability wasn’t sufficient to lock down affected networks because any sessions hijacked before the security update would persist afterward.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

A critical vulnerability that hackers have exploited since August, which allows them to bypass multifactor authentication in Citrix networking hardware, has received a patch from the manufacturer. Unfortunately, applying it isn’t enough to protect affected systems.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-4966 and carrying a severity rating of 9.8 out of a possible 10, resides in the NetScaler Application Delivery Controller and NetScaler Gateway, which provide load balancing and single sign-on in enterprise networks, respectively. Stemming from a flaw in a currently unknown function, the information-disclosure vulnerability can be exploited so hackers can intercept encrypted communications passing between devices. The vulnerability can be exploited remotely and with no human action required, even when attackers have no system privileges on a vulnerable system.

Citrix released a patch for the vulnerability last week, along with an advisory that provided few details. On Wednesday, researchers from security firm Mandiant said that the vulnerability has been under active exploitation since August, possibly for espionage against professional services, technology, and government organizations. Mandiant warned that patching the vulnerability wasn’t sufficient to lock down affected networks because any sessions hijacked before the security update would persist afterward.

Enlarge / Detail from left panel of the the Melun Diptych (circa 1455) by medieval French painter and miniaturist Jean Fouquet. The strangely shaped rock in the lower right hand corner is most likely a Stone Age hand ax, a recent analysis concluded. (credit: Public domain)

Around 1455, a medieval French painter and miniaturist named Jean Fouquet painted a small diptych with two panels, one of which depicts St. Stephen holding a strangely shaped stone—usually interpreted as a symbol of the saint's martyrdom by stoning. A new analysis by researchers from Dartmouth University and the University of Cambridge has concluded that the stone depicted in the so-called Melun Diptych is most likely a prehistoric stone hand ax, according to a recent paper published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal.

Originally housed in the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame in Melun in northwest France, the diptych is painted in oil. The left panel depicts Etienne Chevalier, who served as treasurer to King Charles VII, clad in a crimson robe while kneeling in prayer. The figure to his right is St. Stephen, Chevalier's patron saint, in dark blue robes, holding a book in his left hand with the mysterious jagged rock resting on it, while his right arm drapes across Chevalier's shoulder. The right panel depicts the Madonna breastfeeding the Christ Child, possibly a portrait of the king's mistress Agnes Sorel, or possibly the king's wife Catherine Bude.

The two panels were once connected by a hinge, with a small medallion believed to be a mini-portrait of Fouquet as a kind of signature (he otherwise never signed his work). By 1775, the Collegiate Church was in dire need of funds for a restoration and sold the diptych, breaking it apart. The left panel is now housed at the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, while the right panel belongs to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium. As for the medallion, it's now part of the Louvre's collection in Paris.

Enlarge / Detail from left panel of the the Melun Diptych (circa 1455) by medieval French painter and miniaturist Jean Fouquet. The strangely shaped rock in the lower right hand corner is most likely a Stone Age hand ax, a recent analysis concluded. (credit: Public domain)

Around 1455, a medieval French painter and miniaturist named Jean Fouquet painted a small diptych with two panels, one of which depicts St. Stephen holding a strangely shaped stone—usually interpreted as a symbol of the saint's martyrdom by stoning. A new analysis by researchers from Dartmouth University and the University of Cambridge has concluded that the stone depicted in the so-called Melun Diptych is most likely a prehistoric stone hand ax, according to a recent paper published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal.

Originally housed in the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame in Melun in northwest France, the diptych is painted in oil. The left panel depicts Etienne Chevalier, who served as treasurer to King Charles VII, clad in a crimson robe while kneeling in prayer. The figure to his right is St. Stephen, Chevalier's patron saint, in dark blue robes, holding a book in his left hand with the mysterious jagged rock resting on it, while his right arm drapes across Chevalier's shoulder. The right panel depicts the Madonna breastfeeding the Christ Child, possibly a portrait of the king's mistress Agnes Sorel, or possibly the king's wife Catherine Bude.

The two panels were once connected by a hinge, with a small medallion believed to be a mini-portrait of Fouquet as a kind of signature (he otherwise never signed his work). By 1775, the Collegiate Church was in dire need of funds for a restoration and sold the diptych, breaking it apart. The left panel is now housed at the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, while the right panel belongs to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium. As for the medallion, it's now part of the Louvre's collection in Paris.