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Post by towhom on Sept 23, 2009 7:37:36 GMT 4
End of an era: New ruling decides the boundaries of Earth's historyEurekAlert Public Release: 22-Sep-2009www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/w-eoa092209.phpAfter decades of debate and four years of investigation an international body of earth scientists has formally agreed to move the boundary dates for the prehistoric Quaternary age by 800,000 years, reports the Journal of Quaternary Science. The decision has been made by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), the authority for geological science which has acted to end decades of controversy by formally declaring when the Quaternary Period, which covers both the ice age and moment early man first started to use tools, began. In the 18th Century the earth's history was split into four epochs, Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Quaternary. Although the first two have been renamed Palaeozoic and Mesozoic respectively, the second two have remained in use by scientists for more than 150 years. There has been a protracted debate over the position and status of Quaternary in the geological time scale and the intervals of time it represents.
"It has long been agreed that the boundary of the Quaternary Period should be placed at the first sign of global climate cooling," said Professor Philip Gibbard. "What we have achieved is the definition of the boundary of the Quaternary to an internationally recognised and fixed point that represents a natural event, the beginning of the ice ages on a global scale."Controversy over when exactly the Quaternary Period began has raged for decades, with attempts in 1948 and 1983 to define the era. In 1983 the boundary was fixed at 1.8 million years, a decision which sparked argument within the earth science community as this point was not a 'natural boundary' and had no particular geological significance. Up to now it has been widely felt within the scientific community that the boundary should be located earlier, at a time of greater change in the earth-climate system. "For practical reasons such boundaries should ideally be made as easy as possible to identify all around the world. The new boundary of 2.6 million years is just that," concluded Gibbard, "hence we are delighted at finally achieving our goal of removing the boundary to this earlier point.""The decision is a very important one for the scientific community working in the field," said Journal Editor Professor Chris Caseldine. "It provides us with a point in geological time when we effectively did move into a climatic era recognisably similar to the geological present."
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Post by towhom on Sept 23, 2009 11:14:25 GMT 4
Toward a Universal Flu VaccineA company is preparing human trials of a DNA-based, universal influenza vaccine.Technology Review / arXiv Blogs Tuesday, September 22, 2009www.technologyreview.com/business/23510/The first doses of H1N1 flu (swine flu) vaccine are due to be shipped to hospitals around the country in the next few weeks--seven months after the virus strain was first identified. These vaccine doses will use either inactivated or weakened live viruses to prompt immunity--an approach that can fail if any of the live viruses is strong enough to replicate, or if the inactivated viruses have been killed beyond all immune recognition. One biomed company is working to completely revolutionize how vaccines are produced and applied. As Inovio CEO Joseph Kim will describe at the EmTech@MIT 2009 conference on Wednesday, the group is developing a vaccination that could someday protect against all flu strains simultaneously-- including avian and swine flu--in one shot. The first human trials are set to begin next year. The flu virus manages to temporarily evade our immune systems year after year because it mutates so quickly. To fight off the most virulent strains as they emerge, researchers have to change the vaccine every year. Today, most influenza vaccines are grown in chicken eggs, a process that takes six months or more, and they only protect against a few strains of flu--whichever ones experts believe will be circulating during the next flu season. Inovio hopes to swap this arduous process for one that involves a DNA-based vaccine. With this approach, small bits of DNA that are found in every human flu virus are engineered to be taken up by cells, thereby prompting the cells to produce antibodies against different strains of viral invaders in order to marshal the appropriate immune response. "We felt it was time for a change. Having to guess at which strains to protect society against for the coming fall is a very antiquated system, with very small room for error," says Kim, who is also a 2002 TR35 Young Innovator. "We don't accept that for any other vaccine protocol. You don't change the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine every year." DNA vaccines can be quickly modified, are cheap to produce, and have a much longer shelf life than traditional vaccines. But they suffer from one large drawback: typical injections result in very little DNA being taken up by cells. Inovio is working on that problem by combining vaccines with a technique called electroporation, which delivers a tiny electric shock right after injection. The shock momentarily disrupts cell membranes and enhances DNA uptake. To create the DNA vaccines, Inovio uses a platform it calls SynCon--short for "synthetic construct." Using genetic data and complex algorithms, the company has developed a process for designing consensus genes--synthetic ones that look similar enough to components from a variety of viruses, eliciting an immune response broad enough to fight off different strains of the same disease. Inovio's system identifies the amino acids that are most often present in each position of a few of the virus's most important genes, then strings these together to create an antigen that induces immunity to a virus with any of these genes. "To me, it's a wonderful advance," says Tom Edgington, an immunologist and professor emeritus at Scripps Research Institute in San Diego. "With DNA vaccines, there is no issue about having a live particle in there anywhere. You can make very large amounts of DNA and keep it for years, and you don't have to infect a half-million eggs every year." The H in H1N1 stands for hemagglutinin, the virus's outer protein and one that human immune systems respond to. There are 15 known versions of the protein, only five of which are specific to human disease. So by targeting these hemagglutinin proteins, Inovio's system should, at least in theory, be effective not just for seasonal flu, but for avian (H5N1) and swine (H1N1) flu as well. "There's nothing magical about swine H1N1 versus seasonal flu," Kim says. "It's just a divergence from what your body has been exposed to, and looks different enough to the immune system to evade it." In animal tests, this certainly seems to be the case. The company has tested the H1 component of the vaccine in mice infected with the virulent, epidemic-causing 1918 version of the H1N1 virus. The vaccine prevented any visible symptoms in inoculated mice, while every single one of the nonvaccinated mice died. Of course, putting something as novel as an electroporation vaccine into widespread use could prove difficult especially because it requires its own technology, which is currently expensive. "If you have to do electroporation, that could potentially be a difficult thing to implement, certainly more difficult than spraying something up someone's nose," says Greg Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group, in Rochester, MN. (This is how live, weakened-virus flu vaccines are currently administered; inactivated-virus vaccines are given with the classic needle and syringe.) As far as the vaccine itself goes, most of the experts are in agreement. "The idea is a very good one, the need is a great one, and any company that would make a dent into this would certainly be a winner," says virologist Peter Palese, head of the microbiology department at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in New York City. But, although the company's animal studies are an improvement over earlier DNA vaccination results, he notes that "the proof of the pudding will lie in human trials." Inovio has tested its H1 and H5 components in animals, and the group hopes to start human trials of the H5 component in early 2010. H1 tests, they believe, are just a short distance behind. "We think it would likely take two shots, a month apart, and then a booster every five years," Kim says. Inovio isn't limiting itself to influenza, either. It has an HIV vaccine in development and is also working to create vaccines for diseases that are of greater concern in developing countries: malaria and dengue are at the top of the list. In contrast to the $20 billion flu-vaccine market, though, "such vaccines hold promise but will never even start to pay for themselves," says Scripps's Tom Edgington. "It's a long path to something that helps the public and changes the world."
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Post by towhom on Sept 24, 2009 2:28:08 GMT 4
Ramsey's Method of Separated Oscillating Fields and its Application to Gravitationally Induced Quantum PhaseshiftsarXiv H. Abele, T. Jenke, H. Leeb, J. Schmiedmayer [v1] Thu, 30 Jul 2009 23:32:13 GMT Subjects: Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex) PACS numbers: 03.65.Ge,03.65.Ta,04.50.-h,04.80.Cc,11.10.Kkarxiv.org/abs/0907.5447AbstractWe propose to apply Ramsey's method of separated oscillating fields to the spectroscopy of the quantum states in the gravity potential above a vertical mirror. This method allows a precise measurement of quantum mechanical phaseshifts of a Schroedinger wave packet bouncing off a hard surface in the gravitational field of the earth. Measurements with ultra-cold neutrons will offer a sensitivity to Newton's law or hypothetical short-ranged interactions, which is about 21 orders of magnitude below the energy scale of electromagnetism. Complete article available for download in multiple formats at the link displayed above.
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Post by towhom on Sept 24, 2009 4:00:21 GMT 4
To the Legislative Branch of the United States of America:
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have watch the news, read the congressional and senatorial releases, followed the progress (or shall I say the lack thereof...) of the legislation submitted, etc., throughout the course of the past year.
We are facing another winter. That brings us full circle to the issue of how many families, once again, face the prospect of being unable to adequately heat their homes - that is, if they are fortunate enough to still have a home AND a job.
You have stalled on health care reforms, financial regulatory reforms, budgetary reforms, meaningful environmental reforms, tax reforms, etc. You have produced NOTHING that aids the very people you work for - the citizens of this country.
I have heard very little on the issue of the oil industry, its continued polluting of the environment and its enormous stranglehold on the entire process of regulations and equitable taxation of ANY kind on their industry. That, in and of itself, speaks volumes...the SILENCING OF TRUTH.
All one has to do is follow the bluster and one will find the puppets who dance and sing as their strings are manipulated by the puppet masters.
So, what excuses are you going to use this year for the cold, hungry, jobless and/or homeless constituents you continue to break faith with season after season, year after year?
We've already been exposed to the belligerence and disrespectful manner in which you have interacted with the President of the United States and his Executive Office administration. I can't wait to see what you have "planned" for the rest of us.
Normally one would use the closing statement "Respectfully Yours", however, with the exception of Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter and Senator Jeanne Shaheen to whom I do extend my respects, I'll just sign this:
Whatever...
Sally Anne New Hampshire, USA
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Post by towhom on Sept 24, 2009 4:26:10 GMT 4
Speed of light in the extended gravity theoriesarXiv Azam Izadi, Ali Shojai [v1] Wed, 2 Sep 2009 08:08:00 GMT Subjects: General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc)arxiv.org/abs/0909.0341AbstractWe shall investigate the possibility of formulation of varying speed of light (VSL) in the framework of Palatini non-linear Ricci scalar and Ricci squared theories. Different speeds of light including the causal structure constant, electromagnetic, and gravitational wave speeds are discussed. We shall see that two local frames are distinguishable and discuss about the velocity of light in these two frames. We shall investigate which one of these local frames is inertial. Complete article available for download in multiple formats at the link displayed above.
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Post by nodstar on Sept 24, 2009 9:34:14 GMT 4
There Are More Slaves Today Than at Any Time in Human History[/size][/b] AlterNet www.alternet.org/world/142171/there_are_more_slaves_today_than_at_any_time_in_human_history/2009-09-24 The world suffers global recession, enormous inequity, hunger, deforestation, pollution, climate change, nuclear weapons, terrorism, etc. To those who say we’re not really making progress, many might point to the fact that at least we’ve eliminated slavery. But sadly that is not the truth. One hundred forty-three years after passage of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and 60 years after Article 4 of the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights banned slavery and the slave trade worldwide, there are more slaves than at any time in human history -- 27 million. Today’s slavery focuses on big profits and cheap lives. It is not about owning people like before, but about using them as completely disposable tools for making money. During the four years that Benjamin Skinner researched modern-day slavery, he posed as a buyer at illegal brothels on several continents, interviewed convicted human traffickers in a Romanian prison and endured giardia, malaria, dengue and a bad motorcycle accident. But Skinner is most haunted by his experience in a brothel in Bucharest, Romania, where he was offered a young woman with Down syndrome in exchange for a used car. Currently a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and previously a special assistant to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, Skinner has written for Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy and others. He was named one of National Geographic’s Adventurers of the Year 2008. His first book, now in paperback, is A Crime So Monstrous: Face to Face with Modern-Day Slavery. Terrence McNally: What first got you interested in slavery? Benjamin Skinner: The fuel began before I was born. The abolitionism in my blood began at least as early as the 18th century, when my Quaker ancestors stood on soapboxes in Connecticut and railed against slavery. I had other relatives that weren’t Quaker, but had the same beliefs. My great-great-great-grandfather fought with the Connecticut artillery, believing that slavery was an abomination that could only be overturned through bloodshed. Yet today, after the deaths of 360,000 Union soldiers, after over a dozen conventions and 300 international treaties, there are more slaves than at any point in human history. TM: Is that raw numbers or as a percentage of the population? BS: I want to be very clear what I mean when I say the word slavery. If you look it up in Webster's dictionary, the first definition is "drudgery or toil." It's become a metaphor for undue hardship, because we assume that once you legally abolish something, it no longer exists. But as a matter of reality for up to 27 million people in the world, slaves are those forced to work, held through fraud, under threat of violence, for no pay beyond subsistence. It's a very spare definition. TM: Whose definition is that? BS: Kevin Bales's. [His Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy was nominated for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize, and he is the president of Free the Slaves ] I'm glad you asked because he's not given enough credit. He originally came up with the number 27 million, and it's subsequently been buttressed by international labor organization studies. Governments will acknowledge estimates of some 12.3 million slaves in the world, but NGOs in those same countries say the numbers are more than twice as high. Kevin did a lot of the academic work that underpinned my work. I wanted to go out and get beyond the numbers, to show what one person's slavery meant. In the process of doing that, I met hundreds of slaves and survivors. TM: As an investigative reporter rather than an academic, you take us where the trades are made, the suffering takes place and the survivors eke out their existences. BS: In an underground brothel in Bucharest, I was offered a young woman with the visible effect of Down syndrome. One of her arms was covered in slashes, where I can only assume she was trying to escape daily rape the only way she knew how. That young woman was offered to me in trade for a used car. TM: This was a Romanian used car? BS: Yes, and I knew that I could get that car for about 1,500 euros. While that may sound like a very low price for human life, consider that five hours from where I live in New York -- a three-hour flight down to Port au Prince, Haiti, and an hour from the airport -- I was able to negotiate for a 10-year-old girl for cleaning and cooking, permanent possession and sexual favors. What do you think the asking price was? TM: I don't know ... $7,500? BS: They asked for $100, and I talked them down to $50. Now to put that in context: Going back to the time when my abolitionist ancestors were on their soapbox, in 1850, you could buy a healthy grown male for the equivalent of about $40,000. TM: When I first read such big numbers, I was shocked. BS: This is not to diminish the horrors that those workers would face, nor to diminish their dehumanization one bit. It was an abomination then as it is today. But in the mid-19th century, masters viewed their slaves as an investment. But here's the thing: When a slave costs $50 on the street in broad daylight in Port au Prince -- by the way, this was in a decent neighborhood, everybody knew where these men were and what they did -- such people are, to go back to Kevin's term, eminently disposable in the eyes of their masters. TM: If my reading is correct, the biggest concentrations of the slave trade are in Southeast Asia and portions of Latin America? BS: If you were to plot slaves on the map, you'd stick the biggest number of pins in India, followed by Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan. There are arguably more slaves In India than the rest of the world combined. And yet, if you look at international efforts or American pressure, India is largely let off the hook because Indian federal officials claim, "We have no slaves. These are just poor people. And these exploitive labor practices," -- if you're lucky enough to get that term out of them -- "are a byproduct of poverty." Let me be clear, the end of slavery cannot wait for the end of poverty. Slavery in India is primarily generational debt bondage, people whose grandparents took a debt. TM: To go back to the definition: Forced to work against their will with no escape. BS: Held through fraud under threat of violence for no pay beyond subsistence. These are people that cannot walk away. I stumbled upon a fellow in a quarry in Northern India who'd been enslaved his entire life. He had assumed that slavery at birth. His grandfather had taken a debt of 62 cents, and three generations and three slave masters later, the principal had not been paid off one bit. The family was illiterate and innumerate. This fellow, who I call Gonoo -- he asked me to protect his identity -- was still forced to work, held through fraud under threat of violence for no pay beyond subsistence. Since he was a child, he and his family and his children, along with the rest of the enslaved villagers, took huge rocks out of the earth. They pummeled those rocks into gravel for the subgrade of India's infrastructure, which is the gleaming pride of the Indian elites. They further pulverized that gravel into silica sand for glass. There's only one way that you turn a profit off handmade sand, and that's through slavery. TM: Another method you describe: Someone shows up in a poverty-stricken village saying they need workers for the mines hundreds of miles away. BS: It's a massive problem in the north of Brazil. What's tricky about this, in many cases these workers want to work. But they don't want to be forced to work under threat of violence, beaten regularly, having the women in their lives raped as a means of humiliating them, and then not being paid anything. TM: They are transported to the mines, and when they arrive, they have a debt for that transportation, which is greater than anything they will ever be able to repay. BS: And if they try to leave, there are men with guns. That's slavery. In the Western Hemisphere, child slavery, as we spoke of before, is most rampant in Haiti. According to UNICEF, there are 300,000 child slaves in Haiti. TM: Does that mean in Haiti or originating in Haiti? BS: That means within Haitian borders. TM: So with all the poverty in Haiti, there are still people who can afford 300,000 slaves? BS: Well if they're paying $50 ... I went back last summer with Dan Harris of ABC Nightline. He was pretty incredulous of my claim. In fact, it ended up taking him 10 hours from ABC's offices in Manhattan, but by the end of those 10 hours, he'd negotiated with not one, but three traffickers who'd offered him three separate girls. As he put it, the remarkable thing is not that you can get a child for $50, but that you can get a child for free. When you go up into these villages, you see such desperation on the parts of the parents. I want to make clear, I never paid for human life; I never would pay for human life. I talked to too many individuals who run trafficking shelters and help slaves become survivors. They implored me, "Do not pay for human life. You will be giving rise to a trade in human misery, and as a journalist, you'll be projecting to the world that this is the way that you own the problem." If you were to buy all 300,000 child slaves in Haiti, next year, you'd have 600,000. TM: If you were to buy the 300,000 slaves in Haiti in one fell swoop, you would be telling traders, "Hey, business is good," and so they'd grab more slaves. BS: You're talking about introducing hard currency into a transaction that in many cases hasn't involved hard currency in the past. You're massively incentivizing a trade in human lives. TM: These are those who practice what they call redemptions, buying slaves their freedom. Who's doing it, and what's your analysis of it? BS: On the basis of three months spent in southern and northern Sudan, two months in southern Sudan in particular. ... There was one particular evangelical group based in Switzerland, organized and run by an American who raised cash around the States. They'd go to a Sunday School or a second-grade class in Colorado, talk about slavery, and say, "Bring us your lunch money. If you can get us $50, we will buy a slave's freedom." It was a very effective sales pitch. They managed to raise over $3 million dollars by my calculations over the course of the 1990s. In theory, they were giving money to "retrievers" who would go into northern Sudan, and through whatever means necessary, secure the slaves' freedom and bring them back down into the south. In the context of the Sudanese civil war, slavery is used as a weapon of war by the north. Northern militias raid southern villages, and in many cases, kill the men and take the women and children as slaves and as a weapon of genocide. That much is not questioned. There is no question that these slave raids were going on. I found that redemption on the ground was enormously problematic. There was scant oversight. They were literally giving duffel bags full of cash to factions within the rebels that were at that point resisting an ongoing peace process. What they risked doing, whether through recklessness or through intent, was to become essentially angels of destruction at a time when a negotiated peace was just beginning to take hold. Thankfully, at this point they've scaled back the redemptions. TM: So they were collecting money in the States to free slaves, and then funding a rebel movement in a war, and ... BS: Potentially prolonging the war. Thankfully, in the end, the death of rebel leader John Gurang meant that a different faction came to be more powerful. From my perspective, however, what was going on there was largely fraudulent. I went back and asked the rebel officials, "What do you do with this money?" and they said, "We use it for the benefit of the people." Which begs the question, "But I thought this was being used to buy back slaves. I don't get it." And they said, "Well you know, there's clothes, uniforms ..." They didn't actually say arms, but they said all sorts of things that they needed hard currency for, and this was their way of getting the cash. I don't blame the rebels. If I were in a similar situation, I'd probably do the same thing. The most important point is this: By the merest estimates there are still some 12,000 slaves held in brutal bondage in the north of Sudan, and the government has not arrested or prosecuted one slave raider, one slave trader, one slave master. And as long as that continues to be the situation, the government of Sudan is in gross violation of international law. TM: How does the distinction between sexual slavery and other sorts of labor show up, and how does it matter? BS: When we're defining slavery, fundamentally at its core it's the same in each and every circumstance. We're talking about people forced to work held through fraud, under threat of violence, for no pay beyond subsistence. If we're talking about forced commercial sexual slavery, forced prostitution, there's an added element of humiliation or shame, because we're talking about rape. In many parts of the world and in many traditional societies, if a woman is raped it's her fault. If a woman is liberated and tries to go back to the village she comes from, she will never again lead a normal life. I think it's safe to say even in the United States, which we assume is a much more welcoming, tolerant society, women who've been in prostitution, regardless if it's forced or not, have a difficult time leading a normal life afterward. There is a school of thought that sexual slavery is somehow worse than other forms of slavery. I actually don't buy that. I think that all slavery is monstrous, and no one slave's emancipation should wait for that of another. At the same time, if some people are moved to fight sexual slavery and sexual trafficking at the exclusion of other forms of slavery, God bless them, as long as they're fighting slavery at the end of the day. TM: Briefly, what is the situation in America? BS: On average, in the past half-hour, one more person will have been trafficked to the United States into slavery. About 14,000-17,000 are trafficked into the U.S. each year and forced to work within U.S. borders under threat of violence for no pay beyond subsistence. TM: What can people do? BS: On a personal basis, they can support CAST (Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking) in Los Angeles. CAST has the oldest shelter in the country for trafficked women and has terrific programs that help victims of all forms of trafficking. It's a solid, mature organization. They can also get involved with Free the Slaves. And they can talk about the issue more. Barack Obama is still setting his foreign policy agenda. He needs to hear from all of us that the true abolition of slavery needs to be a part of his legacy. A quarter of Skinner's publishing royalties go to Free the Slaves.
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Post by nodstar on Sept 24, 2009 13:09:16 GMT 4
Australian Prime Minister Prime Minister Kevin Rudd addresses the 64th United Nations General Assembly[/size] Rudd sticks to script at UN By Online parliamentary correspondent Emma Rodgers www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/24/2695208.htm?section=worldPosted 6 hours 59 minutes ago Updated 4 hours 35 minutes ago Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has used his speech to the United Nations to hammer home his previous calls for action on global economic reform and climate change. Addressing the General Assembly, Mr Rudd called on leaders of the world to look beyond their own self interest to reach international agreement in both areas, saying international cooperation was crucial to economic recovery and long-term economic growth. His address came after wildly contrasting speeches from US President Barack Obama, who challenged world leaders not to rely on America alone to tackle global problems, and Libya's Moamar Gaddafi, who railed against the UN and demanded an investigation into the assassination of John F Kennedy. Mr Rudd took the stage hours later at the end of a session which had already seen speeches from the leaders of Ukraine, Poland, Argentina, Monaco and Equatorial Guinea, among others. He used the speech to call on the upcoming G20 forum to formulate an effective plan to ensure long-term economic growth and recovery. "The IMF estimates that, effectively implemented, coordination between major economies could add significantly to global growth," he said. "In Pittsburgh we have an historical opportunity to agree on a framework to deliver effective coordination of our national economic policies." Mr Rudd outlined how this could be done through several main elements. Global leaders should outline their own national strategy to the G20 which the IMF should analyse to determined if they are adequate and the plans should also be scrutinised by the G20. Mr Rudd also criticised the pace of action on climate change and said the bickering between developing and developed countries must end. "The truth is all our governments need to reach beyond their self interest and instead fashion a grand bargain between the developed and developing countries of the world," he said. He urged leaders to rise to the challenge to find common ground on global issues. "It is we who must find solutions to the problems we face, build consensus around those solutions and implement those solutions," he said. In his wideranging speech Mr Rudd also discussed the Doha trade talks and nuclear disarmament. He also warned that job losses would continue and urged world leaders not to forget those who had been hit hardest by the global financial crisis. "The global recession is hurting in very real ways," he said. "We can never forget these men, these women and their families as we seek to find a path out of this global recession." Mr Rudd had also used an earlier speech in New York, to the Foreign Policy Association, to call for a reinvigoration of world bodies and argue the case for making the G20 the prime driver of global politics. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When it comes to being smart, our Kev fits the Bill[/size] Brad Norington, New York | September 24, 2009 Article from: The Australian www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26117384-11949,00.html KEVIN Rudd has given Bill Clinton a dose of the nerdy know-all side to his personality - and the former US president is impressed. Mr Clinton described the Prime Minister yesterday as "pretty smart", rating him one of the world's most intelligent leaders. He described how, as the pair shared breakfast two days earlier, Mr Rudd went into "excruciating detail" on George Washington's strategy to defend New York against the British during the American War of Independence. The former president, an Oxford scholar, gave his impressions of Mr Rudd while introducing him as a panellist at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative think tank. Mr Rudd's appearance was a break from his main reason to be in town - to attend the UN climate change conference before this week's G20 summit in Pittsburgh. On Sunday, Mr Rudd visited Mr Clinton at his home in Chappaqua, north of New York, and the pair breakfasted together at a local cafe. Mr Clinton said yesterday: "In my opinion, he is one of the most well-informed, well-read, intelligent leaders in the world today." But the former president's admiration did not prevent one slip as he referred to the Prime Minister as "Mr Rude". It is not clear if Mr Clinton is aware of reports in the Australian media in the past few days about Mr Rudd's temper-fuelled use of bad language at home. Mr Clinton said Mr Rudd was like many Australian politicians who "know more about America than they know about Australia", and referred to his encyclopaedic knowledge of a precious part of US history. "He then proceeded to describe in excruciating detail George Washington's strategy to hold New York in the revolutionary war," Mr Clinton said. But it didn't stop there. Mr Rudd had told him how his wife, Therese Rein, gave him for his birthday this week a book of maps used by Washington. "This guy's pretty smart," Mr Clinton said. Since he arrived on Saturday, Mr Rudd has been calling for urgent action on climate change, and wants Australia to be seen as frontrunner for reform. He co-chaired a climate change round-table at the UN yesterday, as well as being a panellist for Mr Clinton. But the main focus remains on the leaders of the US, China and India and their potential remedies for reducing carbon emissions. Mr Rudd told Mr Clinton yesterday the larger institution of the G20, rather than the G8, made sense as a problem-solving body for the 21st century because it included China, India, Brazil, Mexico and the Muslim world. Unspoken, but obviously included in the PM's preferred G20 mix, was Australia. "It's got its imperfections but you have all those guys on board," Mr Rudd said.Yes ladies and gentleman .. Australia IS ON BOARD, as the times change and the world faces the biggest challenges ever to come down the pipeline, Ozzies in general are committed to a better planet, and greater participation on the world stage in helping to solve the problems that face humanity [/b]
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Post by galaxygirl on Sept 24, 2009 20:12:45 GMT 4
www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/sep/23/barack-obama-gordon-brown-talksBarack Obama snubs Gordon Brown over private talksWhite House spurned five requests from PM's aides for bilateral meetingPatrick Wintour Gordon Brown and Barack Obama at a joint news conference at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London in April 2009. Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters Gordon Brown lurched from being hailed as a global statesman to intense embarrassment tonight, after it emerged US President Barack Obama had turned down no fewer than five requests from Downing Street to hold a bilateral meeting at the United Nations in New York or at the G20 summit starting in Pittsburgh today.
The prime minister, eager to portray himself as a leading player on the international stage in America this week, was also forced to play down suggestions from inside his own party that he might step down early, either due to ill health or deteriorating eyesight.
There have been tensions between the White House and No 10 for weeks over Brown's handling of the Scottish government's decision to release the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
Brown's efforts to secure a prestigious primetime slot for his keynote speech at the general assembly in New York were also thwarted when the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, delivered a 100-minute speech to the UN, massively running over Brown's 15 minute slot.
Brown had not only been seeking a bilateral meeting with Obama, but feelers were also sent out to hold a joint press conference, an event that would have boosted Brown's efforts to offer himself as a linchpin of international diplomacy. Government sources said that Britain even changed its policy on swine flu immunisation in Africa to match that of the Obama administration last week, in an attempt to rebuild relations.
No 10 denied there had been any hint of a snub, saying Obama and Brown had plenty of chances to talk as they sat next to one another at the summits. They insisted they were working closely on issues such as future economic regulation, bankers' bonuses, nuclear non-proliferation and climate change. Brown himself insisted: "I do say that the special relationship is strong, it continues to strengthen."
But Obama has held bilateral meetings in New York with the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, and the new Japanese prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama.
News of the five spurned approaches compounded a miserable day for Brown at home which saw a parliamentary aide resign over the prime minister's refusal to sack Lady Scotland, the attorney general, after she was fined £5,000 for employing an illegal immigrant, as well as a withering attack by the former home secretary Charles Clarke.
Stephen Hesford, Labour MP for Wirral West, told Brown in a resignation letter: "In my view, the facts of the case do not matter. It is the principle which counts, particularly at a time when the public's trust of Whitehall is uncertain to say the least. We have to be seen to be accountable."
Brown was also savaged by Charles Clarke, who told the Evening Standard that in his view Brown's leadership risked letting "the whole Labour ship crash on to the rocks of May 2010 [the expected date of the general election] and sink for a very long time". He said he hoped rumours that Brown would quit would come true. "I think his own dignity ought to look to that kind of solution."
In two interviews , Brown was forced for the first time to field questions about his health. "My sight is not at all deteriorating," he told NBC.
Asked on BBC Radio 5 Live whether he might quit for health reasons, the prime minister replied: "I am healthy and I am very fit. I run a lot to keep fit and I will continue to keep fit.
"I keep going. I have got a job to do. I have got work to do. We have got to meet this challenge."
In his own speech to the UN, Obama promised an end to the unilateralism marked by the previous Bush administration, an approach that saw US and Britain working in tandem. In remarks that suggest Obama will focus on broadening American alliances across the globe, he said: "The time has come for the world to move in a new direction … a new era of engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect."
Last week, the White House had unusually briefed that Obama had told Brown in a phone conversation that he disapproved of the release of the Lockerbie bomber on compassionate grounds, something No 10 had not highlighted. Megrahi was released on the basis that he had three months to live, and then received a hero's welcome as he returned to Tripoli.
Brown had said he respected the release, but insisted undertakings by the Libyans that the return would be low-key had been broken.
In an attempt to distance himself from the Libyans, Brown moved to toughen his position against Colonel Gaddafi after Libya's leader theatrically tore up the UN charter in his address. Gaddafi said the security council should be renamed "the terror council".
Brown countered in his speech in New York later: "I am here to reaffirm the UN charter, not to tear it up. I call on everyone to support its universal principles."
He urged world leaders to recognise that the next six months presented tests on climate change and terrorism that were as huge as the banking crisis. On climate change he said: "If we miss this opportunity to protect our planet, we cannot hope for a second chance some time in the future. There will be no retrospective global agreement to undo the damage we have caused. This is the moment now to limit and reverse climate change we are inflicting on future generations."
He added: "If the poorest and most vulnerable are going to be able to adapt, if the emerging economies are going to embark on low-carbon development paths, if the forest nations are going to slow and stop deforestation, then the richer countries must contribute financially."
No 10 again denied that the prime minister had been snubbed last night. A spokesman said the stories were "without foundation. As we have said throughout the week, the prime minister and President Obama are having a number of meetings throughout the week. These included a wide-ranging discussion following last night's climate change dinner. They will also be co-chairing an important meeting on Thursday on Pakistan and the fight against terrorism. As the prime minister has already said, there will be further meetings at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh."
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Post by towhom on Sept 25, 2009 0:55:53 GMT 4
Drug industry clout reflected in Senate voteBenefits for seniors on Medicare emerge as a flashpoint in committeeMSNBC updated September 24, 2009 at 2:32 PM EDTwww.msnbc.msn.com/id/33003920/ns/politics-health_care_reformWASHINGTON - Senators rebuffed an attempt to squeeze more money from the drug industry Thursday after two Democrats warned it would undermine the fragile political coalition pushing a sweeping health care overhaul. The Senate Finance Committee voted 13-10 to reject an amendment that would have required the industry to rebate $106 billion over 10 years to the government for medications used by low-income Medicare beneficiaries. Three Democrats, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, Tom Carper of Delaware, and Chairman Max Baucus joined Republicans in voting against the proposal. Minutes earlier, Menendez and Carper warned that approval of the amendment could undermine support for the overall legislation. Not only are pharmaceutical companies major employers in their states, but the industry is also a leading backer of overhauling the health care system this year. The vote reflected the industry's clout.[Note: Leading backer, huh...as in dictating the acceptable terms of any legislation. Unfortunately, this does NOT include ANYTHING that will undercut or undermine the PROFITS these companies realize from their drugs. What is a few billion dollars spread out over a ten-year period to an industry that will make TRILLIONS in profits in the same time period...petty cash, that's what.]The author of the amendment, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., had wanted to use the money to close the coverage gap in the Medicare prescription benefit — long a policy goal for Democrats. But would have been on top of $80 billion in reduced fees the industry already agreed to in a deal with the White House and Finance Chairman Max Baucus. Senators said the White House lobbied against Nelson's amendment. Carper said after the vote that the drug companies had not said they would have abandoned the deal if the amendment passed. But he added: "I know I would...I'd say, 'Take a hike.' " Menendez told senators during debate that Nelson's amendment "may very well undermine the essence of this agreement" and "put us in a position that makes it very difficult to move forward." As senators began their third day of slow-moving deliberations, benefits for seniors on Medicare — and their costs — emerged as a flashpoint. The committee voted 13-10 along party lines to reject an amendment by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, that would have delayed coverage for the uninsured if a million or more people who now have insurance wound up having to pay higher premiums as a result of the legislation. Hatch said his amendment was intended to protect seniors who signed up for private insurance plans through Medicare and could lose some benefits as a result of cuts to the commercial plans. About 10 million seniors are now signed up through the private plans, about one-fourth of Medicare recipients. The 'Medicare Advantage' plans can offer enhanced benefits because the government pays them more than it costs to care for seniors in traditional Medicare. More amendments on the issue are expected, including a Democratic alternative from Nelson that would shield seniors currently in private plans from the cuts. With polls showing seniors are skeptical about Obama's call for legislation, Democrats said the bill included numerous provisions to enhance benefits under Medicare, and Baucus said it would improve the solvency of the financially strained Medicare trust fund. The Finance Committee is the last of five congressional panels to debate health care legislation that is atop Obama's domestic agenda. While the bill omits several provisions backed by liberals, Baucus hopes to hold support from all Democrats on the panel, and perhaps pick up support from Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine as well. Snowe has yet to disclose her intentions, and while she sometimes sided with fellow Republicans during the day, she also voted with Democrats at other points. At its core, the bill is designed to expand health insurance coverage to millions of people who lack it, employing a new system of federal subsidies for lower-income individuals and families and establishing an insurance exchange in which coverage would have federally guaranteed benefits. Insurance companies would be prohibited from refusing to sell insurance based on an individual's health history, and limits would be imposed on higher premiums based on age. At the same time, Baucus — in keeping with Obama's wishes — drafted legislation that would reduce the skyrocketing rate of medical spending overall. The bill's price tag is less than $900 billion over a decade. Legislation already has cleared three committees in the House, and the leadership is slowly piecing together changes that could lead to a vote next month. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said he intends to bring legislation to the Senate floor as soon as possible. Whatever measure emerges from the Finance Committee must be blended with a bill that cleared the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee several weeks ago.
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Post by towhom on Sept 25, 2009 1:25:28 GMT 4
Fight begins over new consumer protection agencyMSNBC / Red Tape Chronicles Posted: Thursday, September 24 2009 at 05:00 am CTredtape.msnbc.com/2009/09/it-would-be-the-most-sweeping-change-to-american-consumer-protection-in-decades-perhaps-since-1930-it-would-wrest-power-awa.htmlIt would be the most sweeping change to American consumer protection in decades, perhaps since 1930. It would wrest power away from major banking regulators and the Federal Trade Commission and place it in the hands of five appointees charged with putting consumers first.
And apparently it scares the heck out of the banking industry and other business interests. Debate on proposed Financial Product Safety Commission, brainchild of Harvard bankruptcy expert Elizabeth Warren, is about to heat up in Congress. The new government office would be the first major new federal consumer protection agency since the creation of the Federal Trade Commission in the 1930s. As proposed, the new commission would have the authority to subpoena and fine corporations, enforce requirements for clear contracts, provide a single place for consumers to register complaints, collect and share information on misbehaving companies and much more. Perhaps the most dramatic provision of the legislation would be the "transfer of functions" from the Federal Reserve, Comptroller of the Currency, Office of Thrift Supervision, FDIC, National Credit Union Administration and Federal Trade Commission to the new agency. "It's a reflection of the degree to which those folks haven't done the job," said Gail Hillebrand, financial services expert with Consumers Union. Until now, she said, consumer protection efforts have been split among the agencies and, as a result, got short shrift from them all. "Consumer protection is too important to be the orphan in the regulatory system. It has been everybody's last priority," she said. The concept for a stand-alone financial protection agency -- modeled loosely after the Consumer Product Safety Commission - was first introduced this year by Sen. thingy Durbin, D.-Ill. But the White House has recently thrown its support behind newer legislation introduced by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. A House committee is expected to debate the measure early next month, while Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., will soon introduce a companion bill in the Senate. In addition to pooling all consumer protection efforts into one agency, the law would give the agency broad powers, including the ability to: - Review new consumer contracts, such as credit card terms of service, and demand changes for clarity.
- Create new mortgage loan disclosure forms.
- Create model versions of contracts that could be used by banks to make offers of credit.
- Force banks to store and share information on products in standard electronic formats, to encourage the creation of third-party products that help consumers compare terms and conditions.
- Impose fines ranging from $1,000 to $1 million per day for violations of the agency's rules.
- Require so-called "plain vanilla" offerings of products whenever companies sell complex financial instruments to consumers. For example, the provision -- called "standard consumer financial products" -- could force a bank that's offering a negative-amortization loan to also offer a basic, 30-year fixed loan for comparison.
- Require lenders to compile and share detailed data about financial transactions. The data will be used to analyze market trends and to make sure "traditionally under-served consumers and communities have access to financial services."
- Issue subpoenas to review bank records and investigate complaints.
- Restrict the use of binding, mandatory arbitration by banks.
- Preserve the right of individual states to enact tougher consumer protection laws.
[/b][/i][/li][/ul]Ed Mierzwinski, program director at the Public Interest Research Group, says broad changes are necessary to prevent abusive bank tactics the led to last year's economic collapse."In 1929 we had a collapse of the financial system and in 2008 we had a collapse," Mierzwinski said. "In 1929, we had a radical reconstruction that prevented another collapse for 80 years. Today, Congress hasn't done anything yet except bail out the biggest banks that caused the collapse. We need to start at the bottom and protect consumers."The proposal faces an uncertain future. President Barack Obama has said creation of the new agency is a top priority for his administration, and the U.S. Treasury Department is behind the plan. But regulators who stand to lose power are much less supportive. And, not surprisingly, industry lobbyists are readying a pitched battle to stop it. In testimony before Congress earlier this year, the American Bankers Association argued strongly against the creation of a new agency, arguing that heavily regulated traditional banks were not to blame for the mortgage mess. [Note: SNORT!]"The biggest failures of the current regulatory system, including consumer protection failures, have not been in the regulated banking system, but in the unregulated or weakly regulated sectors," said Edward Yingling, ABA president. "The most pressing need is to close the regulatory gaps outside of the banking industry through better supervision and regulation," he said. Aggressive campaignThe U.S. Chamber of Commerce is leading the opposition, paying for a series of TV ads and creating a Web site called "StoptheFPSC.com." "Maybe instead of a bigger government, we should focus on making government better," says one ad. Critics also argue that separating two chief duties of banking watchdogs –"safety and soundness monitoring,” which assesses banks’ balance sheets and risk, and consumer protection -- is a recipe for confusion and mismanagement. They envision a situation where the imposition of a consumer protection rule by the new agency, which might decrease bank revenue, could contradict an order by the Federal Reserve to raise capital and lower risk. "Simply creating another agency isn't going to solve this problem. ...There are already six different entities in the government that deal with consumer protection," said Tom Quaadman, who studies capital markets for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "This bill creates a vast new system of government regulation of the economy and sets up competing agencies that will be engaged in turf battles. It's going to make it harder to have a 21st Century regulatory structure for our economy." [Note: No, it's going to make it harder for the financial industry to make exorbitant profits by slamming the consumers.] He prefers a proposal floated recently by Rep. Walt Minnick, D-Idaho, which would create a "consumer financial protection council" made up of members of existing regulators. [Note: Yeah, let's re-create the FLAT wheel here with a council made up of the very regulators that have been ignoring the consumers to begin with. Uh huh - right...NOT.] Protecting consumers is good businessBut Assistant Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin recently made the case that arguments against a creation of a new, consumer-focused agency "don't hold water." "In the first place, we reject the notion that profits based on unfair practices can ever be considered sound," he said in an op-ed piece that appear in The Hill. “In the second place, there are few – if any – realistic examples of a true conflict between consumer protection and safety and soundness. And there are no conflicts that could not be easily resolved.” [Note: Mr. Wolin, you wouldn't understand "REALISM" if it bit you on your butt. That was the biggest pile of "crap" I've heard so far.]Hillebrand, the Consumers Union expert, goes a step further, arguing that tough consumer protection rules -- rules that would have made many exotic mortgages illegal during the past 10 years – actually make banks stronger, too. "It turns out that consumer protection would have been the ultimate protection for safety and soundness," she said. Opponents of the idea have other objections to the bill. Quaadman said the Frank bill goes too far by covering any entity that extends credit, meaning it could apply even to local small businesses that casually allow customers to pay with credit or purchase on layaway, according to the Chamber. Odysseas Papadimitriou, a former Capital One credit card executive who now publishes CardHub.com, said adding another regulatory agency would still leave the largest flaw of bank oversight intact -- “regulator shopping.” Banks can, and do, reorganize under different charters in order to work with more friendly agencies.[Note: Hence the need for financial industry regulatory reform. Get it straight. They're trying to protect the consumers. You should ALSO be addressing the reforms needed to regulate the industries that left the consumers out on the streets...and allowed them the use of our tax dollars to "accomplish" this.]"You have a race to the bottom because companies that issue credit cards can choose their regulator," he said. He favors a new structure that organizes regulators by product, so there is a single federal agency that regulates credit cards, another that regulates mortgages, and so on. "(This bill's supporters) seem to have a very clear understanding of the problem and yet they are choosing the easiest solution. Add one more regulator and problem solved," he said. "That's not how it works." Then, there's the sheer scope of the restructuring. Not only would the new commission take regulatory duties away from seven other agencies, it would siphon off workers. Hundreds -- if not thousands -- of government consumer protection agency workers would immediately switch hats and work for the new office, an agency transfer that might remind some of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Said one consumer protection agency worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity: "It will take them all two years just to get to know each other. Who will be regulating in the meantime?" But Hillebrand dismisses such objections, pointing out the severity of the current financial crisis. "This is a big problem and it's going require a big solution," she said. “There is one thing that is clear here. The mistakes the financial sector made affected real Americans, real neighborhoods. We can't afford to say, ‘Let's go back to business as usual.’”
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Post by towhom on Sept 25, 2009 1:48:21 GMT 4
Obama to set higher bar to claim state secrets New policy may affect suits filed by alleged victims of torture, surveillanceMSNBC updated 5:15 a.m. ET, Wed., Sept . 23, 2009www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32979404/ns/politics-washington_post/WASHINGTON - The Obama administration will announce a new policy Wednesday making it much more difficult for the government to claim that it is protecting state secrets when it hides details of sensitive national security strategies such as rendition and warrantless eavesdropping, according to two senior Justice Department officials. The new policy requires agencies, including the intelligence community and the military, to convince the attorney general and a team of Justice Department lawyers that the release of sensitive information would present significant harm to "national defense or foreign relations." In the past, the claim that state secrets were at risk could be invoked with the approval of one official and by meeting a lower standard of proof that disclosure would be harmful.
That claim was asserted dozens of times during the Bush administration, legal scholars said. The shift could have a broad effect on many lawsuits, including those filed by alleged victims of torture and electronic surveillance. Authorities have frequently argued that judges should dismiss those cases at the outset to avoid the release of information that could compromise national security. 'Higher standard'The heightened standard is designed in part to restore the confidence of Congress, civil liberties advocates and judges, who have criticized both the Bush White House and the Obama administration for excessive secrecy. The new policy will take effect Oct. 1 and has been endorsed by federal intelligence agencies, Justice Department sources said. "What we're trying to do is . . . improve public confidence that this privilege is invoked very rarely and only when it's well supported," said a senior department official involved in the review, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the policy had not yet been unveiled. "By holding ourselves to this higher standard, we're in some way sending a message to the courts. We're not following a 'just trust us' approach." The policy, however, is unlikely to change the administration's approach in two high-profile cases, including one in San Francisco filed by an Islamic charity whose lawyers claim they were subjected to illegal government wiretapping. That dispute, involving the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, provoked an outcry from the American Civil Liberties Union and other public policy groups this year after the Obama Justice Department followed the Bush strategy and asserted "state secrets" arguments to try to stop the case. In a separate lawsuit filed by five men who say they were transported overseas to CIA "black site" prisons, where they underwent brutal interrogation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit this year criticized the Justice Department for making a sweeping argument to scuttle the case and keep even judges from reviewing materials. To side with the government, the court ruling said, would mean that judges "should effectively cordon off all secret government actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the CIA and its partners from the demands and limits of the law." In a news conference the day after the court's ruling, Obama told reporters that he thought the privilege was "overbroad" and could be curtailed. "There are going to be cases in which national security interests are genuinely at stake and that you can't litigate without revealing covert activities or classified information that would genuinely compromise our safety," the president said in late April. "But searching for ways to redact, to carve out certain cases, to see what can be done so that a judge in chambers can review information without it being in open court, you know, there should be some additional tools so that it's not such a blunt instrument." Narrowly tailored argumentsUnder the new approach, a team of career prosecutors must review and the attorney general must approve any assertions of the state secrets privilege before government lawyers can make that argument in court. Officials said the new policy will ensure that the secrecy arguments are more narrowly tailored and that they are not employed to hide violations of law, bureaucratic foul-ups or details that would embarrass government officials. The policy will also severely limit the government's ability to claim that the very subject of some lawsuits should trigger the state secrets privilege, except when necessary to protect against the risk of significant harm. It is unclear how the new policy will affect pending legislation on Capitol Hill, where Democrats in the House and Senate Judiciary committees have introduced bills that would give judges more authority to sift through sensitive evidence when the government has invoked the legal privilege. The legislation would raise the standard for state secrets to instances when the release of material "would be reasonably likely to cause significant harm to the national defense or the diplomatic relations of the United States." That standard closely tracks language in a memo drafted by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. laying out the new state secrets policy. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), a co-sponsor of one state secrets bill, said reforms are a "priority . . . to bring a greater degree of transparency and accountability to a process that has been shrouded in secrecy." The Justice Department officials said Tuesday that their agency would give regular reports on their use of the state secrets privilege to oversight committees on Capitol Hill and that the attorney general would pass along "credible" allegations of wrongdoing by government agencies or officials to watchdogs at the appropriate agencies, even if the administration had decided to invoke the legal privilege in sensitive cases. The new policy was welcomed by Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a nonprofit that promotes government transparency. He said it was "enormously consistent with open-government recommendations" from himself and other advocates. Since February, a Justice Department task force of eight lawyers has been sifting through about a dozen pending cases in which state secrets arguments have been made. So far, they have reversed course in only one lawsuit — a bizarre case in federal court in the District in which a former agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration accuses the State Department and the CIA of installing listening devices in a coffee table in his home.
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Post by towhom on Sept 25, 2009 2:40:02 GMT 4
Superheavy Element 114 Confirmed: A Stepping Stone to the Island of StabilityLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory September 24, 2009newscenter.lbl.gov/press-releases/2009/09/24/114-confirmed/Berkeley, CA – Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been able to confirm the production of the superheavy element 114, ten years after a group in Russia, at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, first claimed to have made it. The search for 114 has long been a key part of the quest for nuclear science’s hoped-for Island of Stability. Heino Nitsche, head of the Heavy Element Nuclear and Radiochemistry Group in Berkeley Lab’s Nuclear Science Division (NSD) and a professor of chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, and Ken Gregorich, a senior staff scientist in NSD, led the team that independently confirmed the production of the new element, which was first published by the Dubna Gas Filled Recoil Separator group. Using an instrument called the Berkeley Gas-filled Separator (BGS) at Berkeley Lab’s 88-Inch Cyclotron, the researchers were able to confirm the creation of two individual nuclei of element 114, each a separate isotope having 114 protons but different numbers of neutrons, and each decaying by a separate pathway. “By verifying the production of element 114, we have removed any doubts about the validity of the Dubna group’s claims,” says Nitsche. “This proves that the most interesting superheavy elements can in fact be made in the laboratory.” Verification of element 114 is reported in Physical Review Letters in an article available online to subscribers at link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.132502. In addition to Nitsche and Gregorich, the Berkeley Lab team included Liv Stavestra, now at the Institute of Energy Technology in Kjeller, Norway; Berkeley Lab postdoctoral fellow Jan Dvořák; and UC graduate students Mitch Andrē Garcia, Irena Dragojević, and Paul Ellison, with laboratory support from UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Zuzana Dvořáková. The realm of the superheavyElements heavier than uranium, element 92 – the atomic number refers to the number of protons in the nucleus – are radioactive and decay in a time shorter than the age of Earth; thus they are not found in nature (although traces of transient neptunium and plutonium can sometimes be found in uranium ore). Elements up to 111 and the recently confirmed 112 have been made artificially – those with lower atomic numbers in nuclear reactors and nuclear explosions, the higher ones in accelerators – and typically decay very rapidly, within a few seconds or fractions of a second. Beginning in the late 1950s, scientists including Gertrude Scharff-Goldhaber at Brookhaven and theorist Wladyslaw Swiatecki, who had recently moved to Berkeley and is a retired member of Berkeley Lab’s NSD, calculated that superheavy elements with certain combinations of protons and neutrons arranged in shells in the nucleus would be relatively stable, eventually reaching an “Island of Stability” where their lifetimes could be measured in minutes or days – or even, some optimists think, in millions of years. Early models suggested that an element with 114 protons and 184 neutrons might be such a stable element. Longtime Berkeley Lab nuclear chemist Glenn Seaborg, then Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, encouraged searches for superheavy elements with the necessary “magic numbers” of nucleons.“People have been dreaming of superheavy elements since the 1960s,” says Gregorich. “But it’s unusual for important results like the Dubna group’s claim to have produced 114 to go unconfirmed for so long. Scientists were beginning to wonder if superheavy elements were real.” To create a superheavy nucleus requires shooting one kind of atom at a target made of another kind; the total protons in both projectile and target nuclei must at least equal that of the quarry. Confirming the Dubna results meant aiming a beam of 48Ca ions – calcium whose nuclei have 20 protons and 28 neutrons – at a target containing 242Pu, the plutonium isotope with 94 protons and 148 neutrons. The 88-Inch Cyclotron’s versatile Advanced Electron Cyclotron Resonance ion source readily created a beam of highly charged calcium ions, atoms lacking 11 electrons, which the 88-Inch Cyclotron then accelerated to the desired energy. Four plutonium oxide target segments were mounted on a wheel 9.5 centimeters (about 4 inches) in diameter, which spun 12 to 14 times a second to dissipate heat under the bombardment of the cyclotron beam. “Plutonium is notoriously difficult to manage,” says Nitsche, “and every group makes their targets differently, but long experience has given us at Berkeley a thorough understanding of the process.” (Experience is especially long at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley – not least because Glenn Seaborg discovered plutonium here early in 1941.) When projectile and target nuclei interact in the target, many different kinds of nuclear reaction products fly out the back. Because nuclei of superheavy elements are rare and short-lived, both the Dubna group and the Berkeley group use gas-filled separators, in which dilute gas and tuned magnetic fields sweep the copious debris of beam-target collisions out of the way, ideally leaving only compound nuclei with the desired mass to reach the detector. The Berkeley Gas-filled Separator had to be modified for radioactive containment before radioactive targets could be used. In sum, says Gregorich, “The high beam intensities from the 88-Inch Cyclotron, together with the efficient background suppression of the BGS, allow us to look for nuclear reaction products with very small cross-sections – that is, very low probabilities of being produced. In the case of element 114, that turned out to be just two nuclei in eight days of running the experiment almost continuously.” Tracking the isotopes of 114The researchers identified the two isotopes as 286114 (114 protons and 172 neutrons) and 287114 (114 protons and 173 neutrons). The former, 286114, decayed in about a tenth of a second by emitting an alpha particle (2 protons and 2 neutrons, a helium nucleus) – thus becoming a “daughter” nucleus of element 112 – which subsequently spontaneously fissioned into smaller nuclei. The latter, 287114, decayed in about half a second by emitting an alpha particle to form 112, which also then emitted an alpha particle to form daughter element 110, before spontaneously fissioning into smaller nuclei. The Berkeley Group’s success in finding these two 114 nuclei and tracking their decay depended on sophisticated methods of detection, data collection, and concurrent data analysis. After passing through the BGS, the candidate nucleus enters a detector chamber. If a candidate element 114 atom is detected, and is subsequently seen to decay by alpha-particle emission, the cyclotron beam instantly shuts off so further decay events can be recorded without background interference. In addition to such automatic methods of enhancing data collection, the data was analyzed by completely independent software programs, one written by Gregorich and refined by team member Liv Stavsetra, another written by team member Jan Dvořák. “One surprise was that the 114 nuclei had much smaller cross sections – were much less likely to form – than the Dubna group reported,” Nitsche says. “We expected to get about six in our eight-day experiment but only got two. Nevertheless, the decay modes, lifetimes, and energies were all consistent with the Dubna reports and amply confirm their achievement.” Says Gregorich, “Based on the ideas of the 1960s, we thought when we got to element 114 we would have reached the Island of Stability. More recent theories suggest enhanced stability at other proton numbers, perhaps 120, perhaps 126. The work we’re doing now will help us decide which theories are correct and how we should modify our models.” Nitsche adds, “During the last 20 years, many relatively stable isotopes have been discovered that lie between the known heavy element isotopes and the Island of Stability – essentially they can be considered as ‘stepping stones’ to this island. The question is, how far does the Island extend – from 114 to perhaps 120 or 126? And how high does it rise out the Sea of Instability.”The accumulated expertise in Berkeley Lab’s Nuclear Science Division; the recently upgraded Berkeley Gas-filled Separator that can use radioactive targets; the more powerful and versatile VENUS ion source that will soon come online under the direction of operations program head Daniela Leitner – all add up to Berkeley Lab’s 88-Inch Cyclotron remaining highly competitive in the ongoing search for a stable island in the sea of nuclear instability. “Independent verification of element 114 production in the 48Ca + 242Pu reaction,” by L. Stavestra, K. Gregorich, J. Dvořák, P. A. Ellison, I. Dragojević, M. A. Garcia, and H. Nitsche, appears in Physical Review Letters 103, 132502 and is available online at link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.132502. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research for DOE’s Office of Science and is managed by the University of California. Visit our website at www.lbl.gov.
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Post by towhom on Sept 25, 2009 2:53:36 GMT 4
Caltech scientists get detailed glimpse of chemoreceptor architecture in bacterial cellsFindings show that structure is the same throughout bacterial kingdom, and may provide insight into more complex signaling pathwaysEurekAlert Public Release: 24-Sep-2009www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/ciot-csg092409.phpThis side view of the bacterium Helicobacter hepaticus shows the flagella and the region in which the chemoreceptors cluster. Credit: PNAS/Ariane Briegel, CaltechPASADENA, CA — Using state-of-the-art electron microscopy techniques, a team led by researchers from Caltech has for the first time visualized and described the precise arrangement of chemoreceptors—the receptors that sense and respond to chemical stimuli—in bacteria. In addition, they have found that this specific architecture is the same throughout a wide variety of bacterial species, which means that this is a stable, universal structure that has been conserved over evolutionary time.Their research, which was published this week in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), may help scientists better understand the complex signaling pathways that are at the core of many biological processes. Bacteria swim using flagella to propel themselves. But it's not as simple as that, explains Grant Jensen, associate professor of biology at Caltech and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), who led the team. After all, they need to decide where to swim. "They tend to swim toward a favorable environment, and away from a harsh environment," Jensen says. How do they know which is which? Enter the chemoreceptors, tiny protein molecules found at the front of the bacterium, near the flagella. "It's like a protein antenna that protrudes from the bacterial cell body, through the membrane, and out onto the surface," says Jensen. "It binds to nutrients and other chemical stimuli." While swimming in a single direction, a bacterium such as Escherichia coli may encounter some nutrients, which then bind to the chemoreceptors. "This transmits a signal to the inside of the cell saying that things are good," says Jensen. "So the bacterium will keep swimming in the same direction. But if there are no good nutrients, the cell will do something called 'tumbling,' in which it stops and randomly flips over in the fluid, then starts swimming again in a random direction in a search for better conditions." This is a model of the hexagonal arrangement of the chemoreceptors in what are known as "trimers of dimers." Credit: Molecular Microbiology/Ariane Briegel, Caltech"One of the remarkable things about this system," says Jensen, "is that the chemoreceptors are exquisitely sensitive to changes in the concentrations of positive and negative stimuli."
Scientists believe that this sensitivity is due to the way the hundreds of chemoreceptors cluster together in the bacterial cell. "It is known that if one receptor binds a stimulus molecule, it turns on other receptors around it as well to amplify the signal," Jensen explains. "The whole system also adapts to changing conditions, dynamically adjusting the range of concentrations that it responds to."To fully understand just what is happening in these cells, Jensen says, it is thus important to figure out the ways in which these receptors interact with one another, which in turn depends on understanding precisely how they are situated in relation to one another. In other words, scientists need to be able to "see" the internal architecture of the bacterial cell and, in particular, how its chemoreceptors are arrayed. Jensen and his team were able to get just such a glimpse at the chemoreceptor architecture at the macromolecular level, thanks to a state-of-the-art electron cryomicroscope that was purchased with a gift from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. "The electron cryomicroscope allows us to see the arrangement of individual proteins inside cells in a lifelike state," says Jensen. "To do this, living cells are quickly frozen so that all the proteins are frozen in place—in the same places they were in the living state." The high-tech microscope allowed the researchers to take 3-D images of intact cells through a technique called electron cryotomography. The researchers looked at some 700 tomographic images—or tomograms—of bacterial cells, says Caltech postdoctoral scholar Ariane Briegel, the first author on the PNAS paper, and an HHMI associate. "This is the first time such a large number of tomograms was used to answer a biological question," she notes. "And it was made possible by the combination of a state-of-the-art electron microscope and fully automated data collection." What they saw when they glimpsed the insides of these quick-frozen bacteria were chemoreceptors arranged in a regular, repeating lattice of hexagons—a structure with six sides and six corners or vertices—that are 12 nanometers apart, center to center. At each of the vertices sit six chemoreceptors, arranged in what scientists call "trimers of dimers," which means there are three sets of two paired receptors in each grouping. The two receptors in each dimer twine around one another, and those dimers then cluster together at one vertex of the hexagon to form a trimer."One beauty of this is that we've shown that the receptors cluster in cells in the same way they did in the crystal structure," says Jensen. "In the past, we didn't know if that was an artifact of the crystallography. Now we can see how the pieces fit together in real cells." The paper also showed that this particular architecture is no single-species fluke. "We looked at 13 different species that cover the whole bacterial kingdom," Jensen says. "The arrays were all the same. This shows us that this structure has been universally conserved, that it's a universal architecture."And that's important to know, he adds, because it gives scientists a basis for trying to figure out how this sort of architecture leads to the bacteria's sensitivity to chemical cues in its environment and establishes that work using key model systems such as E. coli will be generally applicable. "Bacterial chemotaxis consists of only a few key components, making it an important model system for all cell signaling pathways," says Briegel. "We need to understand this system first before we can hope to fully understand the more complex eukaryotic signaling systems. Chemotaxis also plays an important role in the first steps of host invasion for pathogenic bacteria. Understanding it might help in the development of new antimicrobial agents."In addition to Jensen and Briegel, other authors on the PNAS paper, "Universal architecture of bacterial chemoreceptor arrays," include Caltech's Elitza Tocheva, Zhuo Li, Songye Chen, Axel Müller, Cristina Iancu, Gavin Murphy, and Megan Dobro; Davi Ortega and Kristin Wuichet of the University of Tennessee; and Igor Zhulin of the University of Tennessee and of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Their work was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Beckman Institute at Caltech, and gifts to Caltech from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Agouron Institute.
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Post by towhom on Sept 25, 2009 3:11:54 GMT 4
Peruvian glacial retreats linked to European events of Little Ice AgeEurekAlert Public Release: 24-Sep-2009www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/uonh-pgr092209.phpDURHAM, NH – A new study that reports precise ages for glacial moraines in southern Peru links climate swings in the tropics to those of Europe and North America during the Little Ice Age approximately 150 to 350 years ago. The study, published this week in the journal Science, "brings us one step closer to understanding global-scale patterns of glacier activity and climate during the Little Ice Age," says lead author Joe Licciardi, associate professor of Earth sciences at the University of New Hampshire. "The more we know about our recent climate past, the better we can understand our modern and future climate." The study, " Holocene glacier fluctuations in the Peruvian Andes indicate northern climate linkages," was borne of a convergence of a methodological breakthrough in geochronological techniques and Licciardi's chance encounter with well-preserved glacial moraines in Peru. On vacation in 2003, Licciardi was hiking near the well-known Inca Trail when he noticed massive, well-preserved glacial moraines – ridges of dirt and rocks left behind when glaciers recede -- along the way, about 25 kilometers from the ruins of Machu Picchu. "They very clearly mark the outlines of formerly expanded valley glaciers at various distinct times in the recent past," he says. But Licciardi, who had no geologic tools with him at the time, did not take any samples. Two years later, coauthor David Lund, assistant professor of geology at the University of Michigan and a friend of Licciardi's from graduate school, was in the same region and offered to chisel off some samples of the salt-and-pepper colored granitic rock. "Dave also recognized the potential of this site and shared my enthusiasm for initiating a study," says Licciardi. "That was the catalyst for turning our ideas into an actual project." Licciardi returned in 2006 to the slopes of Nevado Salcantay, a 20,000-foot-plus peak that is the highest in the Cordillera Vilcabamba range. Over the next two years, he and his graduate student Jean Taggart, also a coauthor, collected more rock samples from the moraines. The researchers analyzed the samples using a surface exposure dating technique -- measuring the tiny amounts of the chemical isotope beryllium-10 that is formed as cosmic rays bombard exposed surfaces -- to place very precise dates on these relatively young glacial fluctuations. Licciardi and Taggart, who received a master's degree from UNH last month, worked with coauthor Joerg Schaefer, a geochemist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, to produce some of the youngest ages ever obtained from the beryllium isotope dating method. "The ability to measure such young and precise ages with this method provides us with an exciting new way to establish the timing of recent glacier fluctuations in places far afield from where we have historical records," says Licciardi. Because the Little Ice Age – from about 1300 AD to 1860 AD -- coincides with historical accounts and climate observations in Europe and North America, the event is well documented in the Northern Hemisphere. In remote and sparsely inhabited areas like the Peruvian Andes, however, chronologies of Little Ice Age glacial events are very scarce. A key finding of the study is that while glaciers in southern Peru moved at similar times as glaciers in Europe, the Peruvian record differs from the timing of glacier fluctuations in New Zealand's Southern Alps during the last millennium, as reported in another recent study in Science led by Schaefer."This finding helps identify interhemispheric linkages between glacial signals around the world. It increases our understanding of what climate was like during the Little Ice Age, which will in turn help us understand climate drivers," says Taggart. "If the current dramatic warming projections are correct, we have to face the possibility that the glaciers may soon disappear," adds Schaefer. Licciardi and his colleagues will continue working in Peru toward a more complete understanding of glacial expansion during the Little Ice Age – and their subsequent retreat. "Our new results point to likely climate processes that can explain why these glaciers expanded and retreated when they did, but there are still many open questions," he says. "For example, what's the relative importance of temperature change versus precipitation change on the health of these glaciers?" The research team plans to explore this question using coupled climate-glacier models that evaluate the sensitivity of glaciers in southern Peru to the two main factors that drive glacier expansion – cold temperatures and abundant snowfall.Funding was provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation, UNH, Sigma Xi, and the Geological Society of America.
The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea, and space-grant university, UNH is the state's flagship public institution, enrolling 11,800 undergraduate and 2,400 graduate students.
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Post by towhom on Sept 25, 2009 3:25:25 GMT 4
Cracking the brain's numerical codeEurekAlert Public Release: 24-Sep-2009www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/cp-ctb091709.phpBy carefully observing and analyzing the pattern of activity in the brain, researchers have found that they can tell what number a person has just seen. They can similarly tell how many dots a person has been presented with, according to a report published online on September 24th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. These findings confirm the notion that numbers are encoded in the brain via detailed and specific activity patterns and open the door to more sophisticated exploration of humans' high-level numerical abilities. Although "number-tuned" neurons have been found in monkeys, scientists hadn't managed to get any farther than particular brain regions before now in humans. "It was not at all guaranteed that with functional imaging it would be possible to pick this up," said Evelyn Eger of INSERM in France. "In the monkey, neurons preferring one or the other numerosity appear highly intermixed among themselves as well as with neurons responding to other things, so it might seem highly unlikely that with fMRI [functional magnetic resonance imaging] at 1.5 mm resolution—where one voxel contains many thousands of neurons—one would be able to detect differences in activity patterns between individual numbers. The fact that this worked means that there is probably a somewhat more structured layout of preferences for individual numbers that has yet to be revealed by neurophysiological methods." The researchers presented ten study participants with either number symbols or dots while their brains were scanned with fMRI. They then used a multivariate analysis method to devise a way of decoding the numbers or number of dots people had observed. Although the brain patterns corresponding to number symbols differed somewhat from those for the same number of objects, the numerosity of dot sets can be predicted above chance from the brain activation patterns evoked by digits, the researchers show. That doesn't work the other way around, however.At least for small numbers of dots, the researchers did find that the patterns change gradually in a way that reflects the ordered nature of the numbers—allowing one to conclude that 6 is between 5 and 7, for instance. In the case of digits, the researchers could not detect that same gradual change, suggesting that their methods are not yet sensitive enough or that digits are in fact coded as more precise, discrete entities. The methods used in the new study may ultimately help to unlock how the brain makes more sophisticated calculations, the researchers say. "With these codes, we are only beginning to access the most basic building blocks that symbolic math probably relies on," Eger said. "We still have no clear idea of how these number representations interact and are combined in mathematical operations, but the fact that we can resolve them in humans gives hope that at some point we can come up with paradigms that let us address this." The researchers include Evelyn Eger, INSERM U562, Gif/Yvette, France, NeuroSpin, Institut d'Imagerie Biomedicale, Direction des Sciences du Vivant, Commissariat a` l'E´ nergie Atomique, Gif/Yvette, France, Universite´ Paris-Sud, Orsay, France; Vincent Michel, NeuroSpin, Institut d'Imagerie Biomedicale, Direction des Sciences du Vivant, Commissariat a` l'E´ nergie Atomique, Gif/Yvette, France, Universite´ Paris-Sud, Orsay, France, Parietal Team, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA) Saclay-Iˆle-de-France, Orsay, France; Bertrand Thirion, NeuroSpin, Institut d'Imagerie Biomedicale, Direction des Sciences du Vivant, Commissariat a` l'E´ nergie Atomique, Gif/Yvette, France, Parietal Team, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA) Saclay-Iˆle-de-France, Orsay, France;
Alexis Amadon, NeuroSpin, Institut d'Imagerie Biomedicale, Direction des Sciences du Vivant, Commissariat a` l'E´ nergie Atomique, Gif/Yvette, France, Laboratoire de Resonance Magnetique Nucleaire, Gif/Yvette, France; Stanislas Dehaene, INSERM U562, Gif/Yvette, France, NeuroSpin, Institut d'Imagerie Biomedicale, Direction des Sciences du Vivant, Commissariat a` l'E´ nergie Atomique, Gif/Yvette, France, Universite´ Paris-Sud, Orsay, France; and Andreas Kleinschmidt, INSERM U562, Gif/Yvette, France, NeuroSpin, Institut d'Imagerie Biomedicale, Direction des Sciences du Vivant, Commissariat a` l'E´ nergie Atomique, Gif/Yvette, France, Universite´ Paris-Sud, Orsay, France.
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