America's Liberal Progressive Idea

An Introductory Approach to Physical Cosmology as a Means of Understanding the Universe

2009-10-20T11:32:00.009-04:00

The Cosmic Microwave Background temperature fluctuations from the 5-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe data seen over the full sky. The average temperature is 2.725 Kelvin (degrees above absolute zero; absolute zero is equivalent to -273.15 C or -459 F

"Observations suggest that the universe as we know it began around 13.7 billion years ago. Since then, the evolution of the universe has passed through three phases. The very early universe, which is still poorly understood, was the split second in which the universe was so hot that particles had energies higher than those currently accessible in particle accelerators on Earth. Therefore, while the basic features of this epoch have been worked out in the big bang theory, the details are largely based on educated guesses.

"Following this, in the early universe, the evolution of the universe proceeded according to known high energy physics. This is when the first protons, electrons and neutrons formed, then nuclei and finally atoms. With the formation of neutral hydrogen, the cosmic microwave background was emitted. Finally, the epoch of structure formation began, when matter started to aggregate into the first stars and quasars, and ultimately galaxies, clusters of galaxies and superclusters formed. The future of the universe is not yet firmly known, but according to the ΛCDM model it will continue expanding forever," according to Wikipedia.

The above illustration addresses "Physical cosmology, as a branch of astronomy," which concerns "the study of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of our universe and is concerned with fundamental questions about its formation and evolution.[1] Cosmology involves itself with studying the motions of the celestial bodies and the first cause. For most of human history, it has been a branch of metaphysics and religion. Cosmology as a science originates with the Copernican principle, which implies that celestial bodies obey identical physical laws to those on earth, and Newtonian mechanics, which first allowed us to understand those motions. This is now called celestial mechanics. Physical cosmology, as it is now understood, began with the twentieth century development of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity and better astronomical observations of extremely distant objects.

"The twentieth century advances made it possible to speculate about the origins of the universe and allowed scientists to establish the Big Bang as the leading cosmological model, which most cosmologists now accept as the basis for their theories and observations. Vanishingly few researchers still advocate any of a handful of alternative cosmologies, but professional cosmologists generally agree that the big bang best explains observations. Physical cosmology, roughly speaking, deals with the very largest objects in the universe (galaxies, clusters and superclusters), the very earliest distinct objects to form (quasars) and the very early universe, when it was nearly homogeneous (hot big bang, cosmic inflation, cosmic microwave background radiation and the Weyl curvature hypothesis).

"Cosmology is unusual in physics for drawing heavily on the work of particle physicists' experiments, and research into phenomenology and even string theory; from astrophysicists; from general relativity research; and from plasma physics. Thus, cosmology unites the physics of the largest structures in the universe with the physics of the smallest structures in the universe," according to Wikipedia.

"Light elements, primarily hydrogen and helium, were created in the Big Bang. These light elements were spread too fast and too thinly in the Big Bang process (see nucleosynthesis) to form the most stable medium-sized atomic nuclei, like iron and nickel. This fact allows for later energy release, as such intermediate-sized elements are formed in our era. The formation of such atoms powers the steady energy-releasing reactions in stars, and also contributes to sudden energy releases, such as in novae. Gravitational collapse of matter into black holes is also thought to power the most energetic processes, generally seen at the centers of galaxies (see quasars and in general active galaxies).

"Cosmologists are still unable to explain all cosmological phenomena purely on the basis of known conventional forms of energy, for example those related to the accelerating expansion of the universe, and therefore invoke a yet unexplored form of energy called dark energy[2] to account for certain cosmological observations. One hypothesis is that dark energy is the energy of virtual particles (which mathematically must exist in vacuum due to the uncertainty principle).

"There is no unambiguous way to define the total energy of the universe in the current best theory of gravity, general relativity. As a result it remains controversial whether one can meaningfully say that total energy is conserved in an expanding universe. For instance, each photon that travels through intergalactic space loses energy due to the redshift effect. This energy is not obviously transferred to any other system, so seems to be permanently lost. Nevertheless some cosmologists insist that energy is conserved in some sense" according to Wikipedia.

"Thermodynamics of the universe is a field of study to explore which form of energy dominates the cosmos - relativistic particles which are referred to as radiation, or non-relativistic particles which are referred to as matter. The former are particles whose rest mass is zero or negligible compared to their energy, and therefore move at the speed of light or very close to it; the latter are particles whose kinetic energy is much lower than their rest mass and therefore move much slower than the speed of light.

"As the universe expands, both matter and radiation in it become diluted. However, the universe also cools down, meaning that the average energy per particle is getting smaller with time. Therefore the radiation becomes weaker, and dilutes faster than matter. Thus with the expansion of the universe radiation becomes less dominant than matter. In the very early universe radiation dictates the rate of deceleration of the universe's expansion, and the universe is said to be 'radiation dominated'. At later times, when the average energy per photon is roughly 10 eV and lower, matter dictates the rate of deceleration and the universe is said to be 'matter dominated'. The intermediate case is not treated well analytically. As the expansion of the universe continues, matter dilutes even further and the cosmological constant becomes dominant, leading to an acceleration in the universe's expansion." according to Wikipedia.

"Modern cosmology developed along tandem observational and theoretical tracks. In 1915, Albert Einstein developed his theory of general relativity. At the time, physicists were prejudiced to believe in a perfectly static universe without beginning or end. Einstein added a cosmological constant to his theory to try to force it to allow for a static universe with matter in it. The so-called Einstein universe is, however, unstable. It is bound to eventually start expanding or contracting. The cosmological solutions of general relativity were found by Alexander Friedmann, whose equations describe the Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker universe, which may expand or contract.

"In the 1910s, Vesto Slipher (and later Carl Wilhelm Wirtz) interpreted the red shift of spiral nebulae as a Doppler shift that indicated they were receding from Earth. However, it is notoriously difficult to determine the distance to astronomical objects: even if it is possible to measure their angular size it is usually impossible to know their actual size or luminosity. They did not realize that the nebulae were actually galaxies outside our own Milky Way, nor did they speculate about the cosmological implications.

"In 1927, the Belgian Roman Catholic priest Georges Lemaître independently derived the Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker equations and proposed, on the basis of the recession of spiral nebulae, that the universe began with the "explosion" of a "primeval atom"—what was later called the big bang.

"In 1929, Edwin Hubble provided an observational basis for Lemaître's theory. Hubble proved that the spiral nebulae were galaxies and measured their distances by observing Cepheid variable stars. He discovered a relationship between the redshift of a galaxy and its luminosity. He interpreted this as evidence that the galaxies are receding in every direction at speeds (relative to the Earth) directly proportional to their distance. This fact is known as Hubble's law. The relationship between distance and speed, however, was accurately ascertained only relatively recently: Hubble was off by a factor of ten.

"Given the cosmological principle, Hubble's law suggested that the universe was expanding. This idea allowed for two opposing possibilities. One was Lemaître's Big Bang theory, advocated and developed by George Gamow. The other possibility was Fred Hoyle's steady state model in which new matter would be created as the galaxies moved away from each other. In this model, the universe is roughly the same at any point in time.

"For a number of years the support for these theories was evenly divided. However, the observational evidence began to support the idea that the universe evolved from a hot dense state. Since the discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1965 it has been regarded as the best theory of the origin and evolution of the cosmos. Before the late 1960s, many cosmologists thought the infinitely dense singularity at the starting time of Friedmann's cosmological model was a mathematical over-idealization, and that the universe was contracting before entering the hot dense state and starting to expand again. This is Richard Tolman's oscillatory universe. In the sixties, Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose demonstrated that this idea was unworkable, and the singularity is an essential feature of Einstein's gravity. This led the majority of cosmologists to accept the Big Bang, in which the universe we observe began a finite time ago," according to Wikipedia

Primordial Earth Most Likely Was Populated by Numerous Colonies of Arsenic-Eating Bacteria

2009-10-19T00:29:00.001-04:00

Examples of "lowly bacteria found in a foul-smelling hot spring near Mono Lake, California is a living window into Earth’s early history, a time when photosynthesis was barely evolved and the atmosphere non-existent."

Image: Science

The photos above provide evidence that: "Arsenic(III) Fuels Anoxygenic Photosynthesis in Hot Spring Biofilms from Mono Lake, California."

Science Magazine has written that: "Phylogenetic analysis indicates that microbial arsenic metabolism is ancient and probably extends back to the primordial Earth. In microbial biofilms growing on the rock surfaces of anoxic brine pools fed by hot springs containing arsenite and sulfide at high concentrations, we discovered light-dependent oxidation of arsenite [As(III)] to arsenate [As(V)] occurring under anoxic conditions. The communities were composed primarily of Ectothiorhodospira-like purple bacteria or Oscillatoria-like cyanobacteria. A pure culture of a photosynthetic bacterium grew as a photoautotroph when As(III) was used as the sole photosynthetic electron donor. The strain contained genes encoding a putative As(V) reductase but no detectable homologs of the As(III) oxidase genes of aerobic chemolithotrophs, suggesting a reverse functionality for the reductase. Production of As(V) by anoxygenic photosynthesis probably opened niches for primordial Earth's first As(V)-respiring prokaryotes."

That points to the discovery of: "A new kind of photosynthesis that uses arsenic instead of water to harvest light promises to rewrite evolutionary history - at least that of arsenic metabolism on Earth.

It is well known that: "The evolution of efficient, oxygen-based photosynthesis has been hard to explain. Primitive forms gathered energy from light by using it to free electrons from sulphur and iron in an oxygen-free environment. Oxygenic photosynthesis, which involves freeing electrons from water, takes more energy and produces oxygen. But oxygen was deadly to most primitive life on Earth. "The first organisms to do this would die," says Hyman Hartman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology." This realization has lead some scientists to look to arsenic using bacteria as an answer to this vexing problem because "arsenic metabolism could have evolved much earlier, giving plenty of time for bacteria to diversify."

"Some bacteria use arsenate (a deadly poison) - arsenic with four oxygen atoms attached - as an energy source. It was thought that this form of metabolism didn't get going until long after photosynthesis filled the atmosphere with oxygen about 2.7 billion years ago. When this happened, naturally occurring arsenite would be transformed into arsenate."

"Ronald Oremland and colleagues at the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California," believe "arsenic metabolism could have evolved much earlier, giving plenty of time for bacteria to diversify."

"Mono Lake in California, USA NASA Landsat 7 image," Furthermore: "In the warm, bubbling pools of Mono Lake in California, scientists have isolated a bacterium that fuels itself on arsenic."

The team of American scientists explained: "Once you spit out oxygen, all kinds of things arise," said Ronald Oremland, a United States Geological Survey biogeochemist and co-author of the bacteria’s description, published today in Science. "It’s Part One of the evolution of Earth."

Regarding Mono Lake, which lies near the Sierra Nevada mountain range, Dr Oremland explained: "These lakes are fed by hydrothermal waters that leach out arsenic-containing minerals from the surrounding rocks."

The arsenic fueled bacteria "had colonised small, hot pools, forming colourful "biofilms"."

Dr Oremland explained their findings: "We suspected that these bacteria were using arsenic to make a living, so we scraped the biofilms off the rock and studied them under laboratory conditions."

Bacteria living in Mono Lake, California can survive the high levels of arsenic. BBC NEWS

The original study
T.R. Kulp, S.E. Hoeft, M. Asao, M.T. Madigan, J.T. Hollibaugh, J.C. Fisher, J.F. Stolz, C.W. Culbertson, L.G. Miller, R.S. Oremland, Arsenic(III) Fuels Anoxygenic Photosynthesis in Hot Spring Biofilms from Mono Lake, California, Science, 321 (2008) 967-970. DOI: 10.1126/science.1160799

NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer satellite, IBEX, Provides Evidence That a Narrow Ribbon Structure of Densely Packed Neutral Atoms Bounds our Solar System

2009-10-18T00:30:00.000-04:00

A map of neutral atoms, generated by NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, shows a ribbonlike structure near the edge of the heliosphere, the boundary between the solar system and interstellar space. The ribbon is not predicted by any model. Blue denotes the lowest intensity of atoms, red the highest.
Credit: Image from Southwest Research Institute

Ron Cowen, writing for the October 16, 2009 edition of ScienceNews reveals that: "New observations reveal a dense ribbon structure that current models don’t explain.

ScienceNews' Cowen summarizes recent observations: "The edge of the solar system is tied up with a ribbon, astronomers have discovered. The first global map of the solar system reveals that its edge is nothing like what had been predicted. Neutral atoms, which are the only way to image the fringes of the solar system, are densely packed into a narrow ribbon rather than evenly distributed."

Herbert Funsten of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, who along with Stephen Fuselier of the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, Calif.have produced a paper detailing their findings to which co-author Funsten says: "Our maps show structure and energy spectra that are completely different from what any model has predicted.”

Cowen, of ScienceNews, adds that: "NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer satellite, or IBEX, discovered the narrow ribbon, which completes nearly a full circle across the sky. The density of neutral atoms in the band is two to three times that in adjacent regions.

"IBEX is a NASA mission that will for the first time take a picture of the edge of our solar system. This video explains the way IBEX will create a global map of the boundaries of our solar system. IBEX uses energetic neutral atoms to map these boundaries. The Voyagers spacecraft launched in the 1970s is looking at two points only, while IBEX images the global structure of the boundaries that surround our solar system."

"IBEX will study the interaction between the solar wind and the material beyond our Solar System called the interstellar medium. The solar wind flowing out of the sun inflates a bubble that we call the heliosphere. IBEX's job is to study those boundaries and understand how they really work and tell us how the heliosphere is able to do the important job of protecting us here on Earth as well as astronauts in space from the dangerous galactic cosmic rays."

"These and related findings, reported in six papers posted online October 15 in Science," Cowen explains "will not only send theorists back to the drawing board, researchers say, but may ultimately provide new insight on the interaction between the heliosphere — the vast bubble in which the solar system resides — and surrounding space."

Tom Krimigis of Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.developes further on the concept of the solar system bounded by a huge bubble explains: "The bubble is inflated by solar wind, the high-speed stream of charged particles blowing out from the sun to the solar system’s very edge. For 48 years, researchers have assumed that the solar wind sculpted the structure at the heliosphere’s boundary with interstellar space."

Theorist Nathan Schwadron of Boston University, a lead author of one of the studies, says: "...the newly found ribbon’s orientation suggests that the galaxy’s magnetic field, just outside the heliosphere, seems to be the chief organizer of structure in this region."

ScienceNews writer Cowen adds that: "It’s not known whether the ribbon lasts for just a few years or is a permanent feature.

He continues: "Equally puzzling are observations of the same boundary region with an instrument on the Cassini spacecraft, which recorded the density of atoms at higher energies, above 6,000 electron volts. From its vantage point at Saturn, Cassini sees a belt rather than a ribbonlike structure, a team led by Krimigis also reports in Science. The belt is substantially broader than the ribbon seen by IBEX but is in the same general area."

Schwadron's observations are summarized by Cowen: "The heliosphere shields the solar system from 90 percent of energetic cosmic rays — high-speed charged particles that would otherwise bombard the planets and harm life. Understanding more about the heliosphere and its ability to filter out galactic cosmic rays could be critical for assessing the safety of human space travel. The new findings may also help predict how the heliosphere varies in shape and size as it moves through the galaxy and encounters regions of space having different densities and magnetic field strengths."

David McComas of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, notes: "The ribbon found by IBEX, recorded at energies between 200 and 6,000 electron volts, is brightest at about 1,000 electron volts and lies between about 100 and 125 astronomical units from the sun." Cowen explains: "One astronomical unit is the distance between the Earth and the sun. The atoms recorded by IBEX, which orbits Earth, took a year or two, depending on their energies, to reach the craft from the outer edge of the heliosphere.

Image: Walt Feimer/Goddard Space Flight Center

"The IBEX ribbon runs perpendicular to the direction of the galaxy’s magnetic field at the interstellar boundary, an indication that the field has a much stronger than expected influence on the sun’s environs," Cowen includes that a report (issued by) Schwadron and his colleagues regarding the ribbon adds: "One possibility is that pressure from this external magnetic field has forced particles just inside the heliosphere to bunch together into a ribbon."

“First and foremost, this is a big surprise because we thought we know a lot about this region, the edge of the heliosphere,” McComas says. Cowen cites previous ScienceNews articles and reminds readers that: "The Voyager 1 craft in 2004 (SN: 1/3/04, p. 7) and the Voyager 2 craft in 2007 (SN: 8/2/08, p. 7) journeyed to opposite sides of this fringe region of the solar system and crossed the termination shock — where the solar wind encounters a shock that precedes the influx of particles drifting into the solar system from interstellar space. Both craft recorded the density of particles and the strength of the magnetic fields."

McComas points out: "Both Voyager 1 and 2 missed seeing the newly found ribbon because it spans a region between their flight paths,... No existing model can explain the ribbon, he adds, which was found independently by two instruments on IBEX."

Krimigis notes: "Researchers had assumed that the pressure from the solar wind would compress in the heliosphere in the direction that the solar system was moving through space and create a cometlike tail in the opposite direction." Krimigis adds further perspective: "Now we know that’s wrong..”

Study coauthor Stephen Fuselier of the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, Calif., notes: "IBEX has also generated the first maps of neutral hydrogen and oxygen atoms entering the solar system from interstellar space. Previous observations had traced only incoming helium atoms. The sensitivity of the IBEX instruments allowed researchers to record the relatively small number of oxygen atoms that travel from beyond the termination shock, about 16 billion kilometers from Earth, to the spacecraft."

Fuselier adds further: "Hydrogen atoms are more abundant than either helium or oxygen but their low mass means they are easily swept aside by the high-speed solar wind and can’t readily be detected. The sun’s unusually low activity during the current minimum in the solar cycle allowed more of the hydrogen atoms from the outer heliosphere to travel unimpeded to the inner solar system, enabling IBEX to record those atoms."

An artists rendering of IBEX in proximity of a ribbon structure and energy spectra that nearly encircles the solar system.

10/17/09 President Barack Obama Weekly Radio Address

2009-10-17T17:37:00.000-04:00

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17TH, 2009 AT 12:01 AM
Weekly Address: Taking the Insurance Companies on Down the Stretch
Posted by Jesse Lee
As the health insurance reform debate enters into its final stages in Congress, the President denounces the desperate and deceptive last-ditch efforts of the health insurance companies to derail it.

read the transcript

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

________________________________________________
For Immediate Release October 17, 2009

WEEKLY ADDRESS: President Obama Calls Hails Progress on Health Insurance Reform Despite Defenders of the Status Quo

WASHINGTON – In his weekly address, President Barack Obama praised the progress that has been made on health insurance reform, and spoke out against those who defend the status quo in order to score political points and protect their profits. With reform the closest it has ever been to becoming law, the insurance companies are rolling out deceptive ads, paying for misleading studies, and flooding Capitol Hill with lobbyists. Now, Washington needs to serve the American people, not the special interests.

October 17, 2009 , 10:44 am

The Saturday Word: Health Care Battles

By Janie Lorber

"President Obama defended his health care overhaul against the health insurers with renewed gusto Saturday morning after a week in which insurance companies circulated reports and ran advertisements deeply critical of his plans.

“They’re filling the airwaves with deceptive and dishonest ads. They’re flooding Capitol Hill with lobbyists and campaign contributions. And they’re funding studies designed to mislead the American people,” Mr. Obama said adding firepower to Congressional Democrats’ already hostile responses. “It’s smoke and mirrors. It’s bogus. And it’s all too familiar. Every time we get close to passing reform, the insurance companies produce these phony studies as a prescription and say, “Take one of these, and call us in a decade.”

"His comments were the latest sign that the relationship between insurance companies and the administration has deteriorated after months of cooperation.

"On Friday the White House backed away from restrictions laid in September that prohibited insurance companies from warning Medicare recipients of potential cuts to their program in the health care overhaul. The administration also cited one company in particular, Humana, for violating Medicare rules, saying the company had misled its beneficiaries to derail the plan."

Obama Chastises "Dishonest" Health Insurers
By REUTERS
Published: October 17, 2009

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - "U.S. President Barack Obama lashed out on Saturday against the "deceptive and dishonest" efforts of health insurance companies, who he said are trying to kill healthcare reform, no matter the cost to the country.

The Democratic president's push to overhaul the $2.5 trillion (1.528 trillion pound) U.S. healthcare industry, his top domestic policy priority, received a big boost this week when the Senate Finance Committee approved its version of a reform measure with the support of Republican Senator Olympia Snowe.

"Many experts expect some version of a healthcare bill will pass this year, but there are still major disagreements on details including whether the measure will include a government-run insurance program, the "public option."

"For the first time ever, all five committees in Congress responsible for health reform have passed a version of legislation," Obama said in his weekly radio address. "As I speak to you today, we are closer to reforming the health care system than we have ever been in history."

"However, he acknowledged the overhaul still must clear significant hurdles before becoming law. "And there are still those who would try to kill reform at any cost," he said.

"The history is clear: for decades rising health care costs have unleashed havoc on families, businesses and the economy. And for decades, whenever we have tried to reform the system, the insurance companies have done everything in their considerable power to stop us."

BATTLE LEAPED IN INTENSITY THIS WEEK

"The battle over reform between angry Democrats and health insurers leaped in intensity when the industry trade group America's Health Insurance Plans issued a report on Monday, on the eve of the finance committee's vote, saying Senate healthcare legislation would lead to increases in annual insurance premiums of as much as $4,000 by 2019.

"Democrats denied the findings, citing a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that said the Finance Committee bill would make health coverage affordable to millions of Americans who do not have it and slow the growth of healthcare costs.

"In fact, the insurance industry is rolling out the big guns and breaking open their massive war chest -- to marshal their forces for one last fight to save the status quo," Obama said.

"They're filling the airwaves with deceptive and dishonest ads. They're flooding Capitol Hill with lobbyists and campaign contributions. And they're funding studies designed to mislead the American people," he said.

Democratic leaders in Congress began work this week on merging the various committees' proposals on healthcare while keeping party liberals and moderates -- and Snowe -- happy.

"Senate Republicans demanded Democrats allow more time to debate the details of the sweeping plan. Obama has set the end of the year as his goal for passing a measure that would begin to slow increases in healthcare costs, regulate the insurance market and expand health coverage without increasing the federal budget deficit.

"Health insurers' shares dropped this week after news of the finance committee's vote.

"Obama vowed an overhaul will go through.

"Every time we get close to passing reform, the insurance companies produce these phony studies as a prescription and say, 'Take one of these, and call us in a decade.' Well, not this time," Obama said.

(Editing by Todd Eastham)

Obama Praises Senate Committee's Health Care Vote

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 17, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) -- "Pushing back against his critics, President Barack Obama says overhauling the health care system, while helping millions of people, also will test whether policy makers can ''serve the national interest despite the unrelenting efforts of the special interests.''

"The administration is trying to build momentum for the president's overhaul effort after the Senate Finance Committee voted 14-9 this week for a bill that would extend health care coverage to millions of people. One Republican, Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, supported the bill, and the measure faces considerable opposition from the health care industry, labor unions and large business organizations.

''The history is clear: For decades rising health care costs have unleashed havoc on families, businesses and the economy,'' the president said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address. ''And for decades, whenever we have tried to reform the system, the insurance companies have done everything in their considerable power to stop us.''

"The health insurance industry released a study earlier this week concluding that the Finance Committee bill -- one of five competing House and Senate health care measures -- would raise premiums significantly for millions of people who already have health coverage.

"The report drew intense criticism from the White House, congressional Democrats and other advocates of the bill who deemed the study a last-ditch effort to sway public opinion against the measure.

"Obama said he would not abide ''those who would bend the truth or break it to score political points and stop our progress as a country.'' He accused the industry of ''filling the airwaves with deceptive and dishonest ads,'' sending money and lobbyists to Capitol Hill and paying for studies ''designed to mislead the American people.''

"The insurance industry responded Saturday, saying it supports a comprehensive, bipartisan overhaul of the system but that separate studies recently found that some of the existing proposals will increase significantly health care costs for families and employers.

''Reform needs to work and deliver on the promise made to the American people that everyone will have quality, affordable coverage,'' Karen Ignagni, president of the industry group America's Health Insurance Plans, said in a statement.

"The bills moving through Congress generally would require most Americans to buy insurance, provide federal subsidies to help lower-income people afford coverage and help small businesses defray the cost of extending coverage to their workers.

"The measures would bar insurers from denying coverage because of pre-existing medical conditions and limit their ability to charge higher premiums based on age or family size. Expanded coverage would be paid for by cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from future Medicare payments to health care providers. Higher taxes also are included in the bills.

"Republican opponents say the bills will increase costs for patients, further job losses and give the government more of a say in who gets medical care, and what kind.

''Americans inherently know government interference drives costs up, not down,'' Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, said in the GOP's weekly message. ''The massive health care plans being crafted behind closed doors in Washington will ultimately allow the government to decide what doctors we can see, what treatments the government thinks you deserve and what medicines you can receive.''

White House Photo, Pete Souza_10-17-09

Researchers Investigate the Connection Between the Diminishment of Biodiversity and the Weakening of Global Economic Development

2009-10-16T00:47:00.009-04:00

Yellow banded dart frog. Amphibians are facing some of the worst threats to their biodiversity. A report in the journal Science highlights how biodiversity loss is weakening efforts to tackle global poverty.

PHYSORG.COM writes: "Biodiversity loss is undermining global development, leading scientists warn. The paper brings together a broad group of scientists and policy makers, including Natural History Museum plant expert Dr Sandra Knapp."

Global economic development is being threatened by the sustained loss of biodiversity according to a group of respected scientists: Jeffrey D. Sachs, Jonathan E. M. Baillie, William J. Sutherland, Paul R. Armsworth, Neville Ash, John Beddington, Tim M. Blackburn, Ben Collen, Barry Gardiner, Kevin J. Gaston, H. Charles J. Godfray, Rhys E. Green, Paul H. Harvey, Brett House, Sandra Knapp, Noëlle F. Kümpel, David W. Macdonald, Georgina M. Mace, James Mallet, Adam Matthews, Robert M. May, Owen Petchey, Andy Purvis, Dilys Roe, Kamran Safi, Kerry Turner Matt Walpole, Robert Watson, Kate E. Jones who published an article, "Biodiversity Conservation and the Millennium Development Goals," to publish their findings in the September 18, 2009 issue of Science.

The summary that appears in Science condenses the main thrust of the collaborative article: "The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are designed to inspire efforts to improve people's lives by, among other priorities, halving extreme poverty by 2015 (1). Analogously, concern about global decline in biodiversity and degradation of ecosystem services (2) gave rise in 1992 to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The CBD target "to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss" was incorporated into the MDGs in 2002. Our lack of progress toward the 2010 target (3, 4) could undermine achievement of the MDGs and poverty reduction in the long term. With increasing global challenges, such as population growth, climate change, and overconsumption of ecosystem services, we need further integration of the poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation agendas."

The main thrust of the article argues that "Biodiversity loss is undermining global development."

The authors of the article explain that: "Goals set to alleviate extreme poverty will not be met unless we address the accelerating rate of biodiversity loss,.., and new achievable targets are needed urgently."

The authors of the study contend that: "Poverty and environmental degradation have many of the same fundamental causes, such as the pressures of unsustainable human population growth."

The group of authors are in accord that: "More research is needed into the links between biodiversity and poverty, the team says, so that better decisions can be made about how the environment is used in future. The outcomes should benefit both poverty alleviation and conservation."

‘Degradation of the natural diversity of our planet will inevitably bring problems for our own species,’ says Dr Sandra Knapp.

Dr Knapp explains, ‘The integration of conservation and development goals will be difficult, and will require new interactions between scientific communities and with the public at large’.

‘We hope the newly opened Darwin Centre at the Natural History Museum can be a focal point for discussion of issues that confront all of us as we integrate the Millennium Development Goals with our concern for the natural world,’ Dr Knapp concluded.

PHYSORG.COM explains that: "The 8 Millennium Development Goals were agreed by all the world’s countries and one of the goals is to halve extreme poverty by 2015. The Convention on Biological Diversity, signed by 150 governments at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, is dedicated to promoting sustainable development. However, the goals of both of these will not be met unless humans begin living in a more sustainable way."

Dr Kate Jones, Senior Research Fellow at ZSL concludes: ‘The global issues are now so intense we will only succeed if we have an integrated environment and development agenda - our children’s environment is an essential part of their welfare.’

Provided by American Museum of Natural History (news : web)

Global development and biodiversity

Scientists Feel Confident That They Have Finally determined that the flatworm Acoelomorpha Belongs as a Sister Clade to Other Bilateral Animals

2009-10-15T03:03:00.000-04:00

An international research team led by Brown University has determined that the flatworm Acoelomorpha belongs as a sister clade to other bilateral animals. The finding means the worm is a product of the deepest split within the bilateral animals, the first evolutionary divergence within the group.

Credit: Eric Rottinger/Kahikai.org

An article in PHYSORG.COM explains: "When it comes to understanding a critical junction in animal evolution, some short, simple flatworms have been a real thorn in scientists' sides. Specialists have jousted over the proper taxonomic placement of a group of worms called Acoelomorpha. This collection of worms, which comprises roughly 350 species, is part of a much larger group called bilateral animals, organisms that have symmetrical body forms, including humans, insects and worms. The question about acoelomorpha, was: Where do they fit in?"

Acoelomorpha, the most primitive bilateral animals, has held the fascination of researchers for a number of years. It as been referred to as an "enigmatic,... rogue animal,." As it has been studied: "It has been wandering throughout the animal tree of life," said Casey Dunn, an evolutionary biologist at Brown University. Acoelomorpha are "tiny, cryptic worms that many consider to be the most primitive of all bilaterally symmetrical animals."

Acoelomorpha, a tiny, primitive flatworm

The reason why Acoelomorpha are a disputed phylum of animals with planula-like features (free-swimming or crawling larval type common in many species of the phylum Cnidaria (e.g., jellyfish, corals, and sea anemones). The Acoelomorpha has recently been classified by Jaume Baguñà and Marta Riutort as a separate phylum, basal, forming a basis; fundamental; basic form among the Bilateria."There are two or more superphyla (main lineages) of Bilateria" including ... "the protostomes (which) include most of the rest, such as arthropods, annelids, mollusks, flatworms, and so forth.... There are a number of differences, most notably in how the embryo develops. In particular, the first opening of the embryo becomes the mouth in protostomes."

Acoelomorpha are very primitive flatworms

PHYSORG.COM explains: "The worm wanders no more. Through a laborious genetic sequencing analysis, Dunn and an international team of scientists have settled the long-standing debate and determined that acoelomorpha belongs as a sister clade to other bilateral animals. The finding is significant, Dunn said, because it shows the worm is a product of the deepest split within the bilateral animals, the first evolutionary divergence within the group. Because of that, scientists have gained a key insight into the most recent common ancestor to bilaterians, a species that remains unknown.

The flatworm is "as distant as an animal can be in bilateria and still be a bilaterian," said Dunn, "So, now we have two perspectives to (find out about) this common ancestor, the acoelomorphs and all the other bilateral animals."

A team of 17 scientists from the United States, France Germany, Sweden, Spain and the United Kingdom, published the results of their research recently in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, and produced two interesting findings that stood out:

"The debate appears to be over for Xenoturbella, a type of marine worm whose ancestral affiliation had been tossed between worms and mollusks. The researchers reported their genetic analysis shows diminishing evidence for placing xenoturbella within Deuterostomia, one of the major groups within the animal kingdom. Coincidentally, it also shows that xenoturbella may be a close relative to acoelomorpha.

"Cycliophora, a single species discovered in 1994 that lives on the bristles surrounding the mouth of the Norway lobster Nephrops norvegicus, has found a home with Entoprocta and Ectoprocta. The researchers base their findings on an analysis that reached further into the genetic makeup of cycliophora than previous studies had done."

"The team used a genetic sequencing technique called expressed sequence tags to carry out the phylogenetic studies. The aim of this approach, discussed in a study led by Dunn that appeared in Nature last year, is to analyze a large number of genes from a large number of animals. For this paper, the researchers looked at 1,487 genes, a 10-fold increase in the number of genes analyzed in previous studies. In all, the researchers logged 2.25 million processor hours on a supercomputer in California to obtain the results. Dunn called the effort the most computationally intensive phylogenetic analysis to date."

A color enhanced photo of the primitive flatworm Acoelomorpha

A Thick, Misty Haze of Organically Rich Compounds Filled the Atmosphere of a Young Earth and Contributed to the Development of Terrestrial Life Forms on the Surface of our Home Planet

2009-10-14T04:31:00.000-04:00

The photochemistry of methane and carbon dioxide may have produced an organic haze layer on early Earth.. Credit: NASA

Anuradha K. Herath of PHYSORG.COM summarizes the view that: "Haze in the early Earth atmosphere could have played a crucial role in the origin of life. By forming a protective shield, the haze would have safeguarded organic substances from harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation."

H. Langley DeWitt of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Colorado at Boulder, adds his conjecture that "Knowing more about the atmospheric conditions right before life began to develop could give researchers clues to how exactly life developed.”

There was a global blanketing of organic haze across the young planet Earth according to a group of research scientists led by H. Langley DeWitt.

"Haze is produced when sunlight comes in contact with certain gases in the atmosphere," Herath explained. "The types of aerosols formed through this photochemical reaction depend on the specific composition of the atmosphere.

"The amount and the composition of the haze would determine whether it produced a warming or cooling effect for the planet. This new study shows that the amount of haze on early Earth was inadequate to have the type of cooling effect that scientists had previously predicted.The amount and the composition of the haze would determine whether it produced a warming or cooling effect for the planet. This new study shows that the amount of haze on early Earth was inadequate to have the type of cooling effect that scientists had previously predicted," concluded Herath.

Two other scientists; Armen Mulkidjanian of the University of Osnabrueck, Germany and Michael Galperin of the U.S. National Institutes of Health have advanced their view: "that life on Earth originated at photosynthetically-active porous structures, similar to deep-sea hydrothermal vents, made of zinc sulfide (more commonly known as phosphor). They argue that under the high pressure of a carbon-dioxide-dominated atmosphere, zinc sulfide structures could form on the surface of the first continents, where they had access to sunlight. Unlike many existing theories that suggest UV radiation was a hindrance to the development of life, Mulkidjanian and Galperin think it actually helped.

“The problem of the origin of life is such that you have to answer a set of different questions to explain how life has originated,” says lead author Mulkidjanian. “We just provide answers to the problem of energetics of the origin of life.”

Most scientists agree today that the atmosphere primarily originated from the accumulation of carbon dioxide mixed with smaller amounts of other gases. Living organisms originated by using some form of energy flow—solar radiation or chemical reactions to contribute to the development of life has also led some researchers to the conjecture that "zinc sulfide may have played a major role in the development of life" on Earth.."Its ability to store light makes zinc sulfide an important factor in the discussion on life’s origin." Mulkidjanian explains that, "once illuminated by UV light, zinc sulfide can efficiently reduce carbon dioxide, just as plants do."

Mulkidjanian and Galperin "suggest that life on Earth originated at photosynthetically-active porous structures, similar to deep-sea hydrothermal vents, made of zinc sulfide (more commonly known as phosphor). They argue that under the high pressure of a carbon-dioxide-dominated atmosphere, zinc sulfide structures could form on the surface of the first continents, where they had access to sunlight. Unlike many existing theories that suggest UV radiation was a hindrance to the development of life, Mulkidjanian and Galperin think it actually helped.

“The problem of the origin of life is such that you have to answer a set of different questions to explain how life has originated,” says lead author Mulkidjanian. “We just provide answers to the problem of energetics of the origin of life.”

"Included in these recent theories concerning the developments of terrestrial life is the proposal "that there was plate-tectonic activity in the first 500 million years of Earth's history," said geochemistry professor Mark Harrison, director of UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics and co-author of the Nature paper. "We are reporting the first evidence of this phenomenon."

"Unlike the longstanding myth of a hellish, dry, desolate early Earth with no continents, it looks like as soon as the Earth formed, it fell into the same dynamic regime that continues today," Harrison said. "Plate tectonics was inevitable, life was inevitable. In the early Earth, there appear to have been oceans; there could have been life — completely contradictory to the cartoonish story we had been telling ourselves."

"We're revealing a new picture of what the early Earth might have looked like," said lead author Michelle Hopkins, a UCLA graduate student in Earth and space sciences. "In high school, we are taught to see the Earth as a red, hellish, molten-lava Earth. Now we're seeing a new picture, more like today, with continents, water, blue sky, blue ocean, much earlier than we thought."

"The research by Harrison, Hopkins and Craig Manning, a UCLA professor of geology and geochemistry, is based on their analysis of ancient mineral grains known as zircons found inside molten rocks, or magmas, from Western Australia that are about 3 billion years old. Zircons are heavy, durable minerals related to the synthetic cubic zirconium used for imitation diamonds and costume jewelry. The zircons studied in the Australian rocks are about twice the thickness of a human hair.

"... Analysis determined that some of the zircons found in the magmas were more than 4 billion years old. They were also found to have been formed in a region with heat flow far lower than the global average at that time.

"The global average heat flow in the Earth's first 500 million years was thought to be about 200 to 300 milliwatts per meter squared," Hopkins said. "Our zircons are indicating a heat flow of just 75 milliwatts per meter squared — the figure one would expect to find in subduction zones, where two plates converge, with one moving underneath the other."

"The data we are reporting are from zircons from between 4 billion and 4.2 billion years ago," Harrison said. "The evidence is indirect, but strong. We have assessed dozens of scenarios trying to imagine how to create magmas in a heat flow as low as we have found without plate tectonics, and nothing works; none of them explain the chemistry of the inclusions or the low melting temperature of the granites."

"Evidence for water on Earth during the planet's first 500 million years is now overwhelming, according to Harrison.

"You don't have plate tectonics on a dry planet," he said.

"Strong evidence for liquid water at or near the Earth's surface 4.3 billion years ago was presented by Harrison and colleagues in a Jan. 11, 2001, cover story in Nature.

"Five different lines of evidence now support that once radical hypothesis," Harrison said. "The inclusions we found tell us the zircons grew in water-saturated magmas. We now observe a surprisingly low geothermal gradient, a low rate at which temperature increases in the Earth. The only mechanism that we recognize that is consistent with everything we see is that the formation of these zircons was at a plate-tectonic boundary. In addition, the chemistry of the inclusions in the zircons is characteristic of the two kinds of magmas today that we see at place-tectonic boundaries."

"We developed the view that plate tectonics was impossible in the early Earth," Harrison added. "We have now made observations from the Hadean (the Earth's earliest geological eon) — these little grains contain a record about the conditions under which they formed — and the zircons are telling us that they formed in a region with anomalously low heat flow. Where in the modern Earth do you have heat flow that is one-third of the global average, which is what we found in the zircons? There is only one place where you have heat flow that low in which magmas are forming: convergent plate-tectonic boundaries."

"Three years ago, Harrison and his colleagues applied a technique to determine the temperature of ancient zircons.

"We discovered the temperature at which these zircons formed was constant and very low," Harrison said. "You can't make a magma at any lower temperature than what we're seeing in these zircons. You look at artists' conceptions of the early Earth, with flying objects from outer space making large craters; that should make zircons hundreds of degrees centigrade hotter than the ones we see. The only way you can make zircons at the low temperature we see is if the melt is water-saturated. There had to be abundant water. That's a big surprise because our longstanding conception of the early Earth is that it was dry."

"Scientists have looked to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon," Herath explained, "to try to better understand the organic haze that may have existed on early Earth. Titan has a thick atmosphere containing 95 percent nitrogen, three percent methane and two percent of hydrogen and other hydrocarbons, and an atmospheric pressure about 1.6 times that of Earth. Titan is also the only planetary body other than Earth with surface liquid (on Earth that surface liquid is water, while on Titan the surface liquid is ethane and methane.)

"In a 2006 NASA study, a group of researchers that included DeWitt replicated the atmospheres of Titan and early Earth. They then compared the aerosols produced in the laboratory to the haze observed in Titan’s atmosphere during NASA’s Cassini mission. The group concluded that the two atmospheres were similar.

"But there was one troubling result. An important distinction between the atmospheres of Titan and Earth is the carbon dioxide that is present in the Earth’s atmosphere. The laboratory results in the 2006 study suggested that the reaction of carbon dioxide and methane would produce more haze on early Earth than the amount found on Titan. That implies that the Earth would have been subjected to a large anti-greenhouse or cooling effect.

"The current study puts that concern to rest. DeWitt and her colleagues did additional laboratory experiments that expanded upon the 2006 study. They added hydrogen to the atmospheric composition and found that it reduced aerosol formation to the point where any potential anti-greenhouse effect would be negligible.

A colorized image of Titan’s haze taken during the Cassini mission. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

"DeWitt’s team also looked at how varying quantities of the three main substances—hydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide—may have affected the haze that formed on Earth billions of years ago.

“Many models calculate the amount of haze that would be present at the different ratios of these chemicals,” DeWitt explains. “However, the models don’t always include experimental data in their calculations and instead use assumptions about the chemistry.”

"The new study used a simplified version of an atmospheric model to examine two scenarios. One mixture contained high quantities of hydrogen and carbon dioxide with low amounts of methane. In the second simulation, the team analyzed the effects of hydrogen in a mixture that contained high amounts of methane. After the gas mixtures were exposed to UV radiation, the scientists measured the aerosols that were formed.

"Their findings showed that an increase in hydrogen levels reduced the haze formation rate. They also concluded that the amount of hydrogen present in the early Earth atmosphere most likely resulted in warmer surface temperatures.

“If an organic haze did form on early Earth, the consequences of its presence beg all sorts of interesting questions,” says co-author Christa Hasenkopf of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, also at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

"A question for astrobiologists is what role haze would have played in the formation of life. The scientists stated that the aerosols produced on early Earth provided a major source of organic substances to the Earth’s surface. Scientists think these organics played an important role in the origin of life on our planet. Understanding the characteristics of haze that make a planet’s surface ripe for organic material could be immensely helpful in the quest for life on other planetary bodies.

"Hasenkopf says some scientists believe that the early Earth atmosphere was “virtually oxygen-free when life first formed.” That allows astrobiologists to think more broadly about what types of environments on other planets could possibly support life.

“We only know of one place in the entire universe that life was able to initially form and develop, and that was on the early Earth,” says Hasenkopf. “The climactic conditions on early Earth provide clues to our own origins.”

"Scientists don’t know enough about our planet’s environment approximately four billion years ago to be able to precisely mimic the atmospheric conditions back then. The laboratory re-creation of early Earth therefore was based on many assumptions.

"The study model used simplified calculations for determining surface temperature, and the chemical reactions were based on shorter reaction times than what would have occurred under actual conditions. Additionally, the researchers only focused on three gases: methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen. While these are believed to be the major constituents of the early Earth atmosphere, there could have been other components, such as sulfur dioxide, which were not taken into account in this study. Still, DeWitt says their study could improve the accuracy of models that predict chemical reactions in the atmosphere.

"Hasenkopf says the findings also can contribute to the understanding of the current effects of climate change.

"Some scientists believe that the early Earth atmosphere contained higher levels of carbon dioxide and methane than current atmospheric levels. Hasenkopf explains that the interaction between the gases that produce greenhouse warming and the haze that brings about the anti-greenhouse cooling is similar to the present-day emissions caused by human activity.

“On one hand, humans emit greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, causing warming,” Hasenkopf says. “Yet humans also emit large amounts of particulate pollution, which may have a net cooling effect, similar to the early Earth haze.”

Recent Research in Humanity's Migration Out of Africa Took Place More Recently Than Previously Believed

2009-10-13T03:26:00.001-04:00

Humans spread out of Africa later

Modern humans spread out of Africa 20,000 years later than previously thought, according to new genetic research just published. Detailed world map showing directions and times of major migration of modern humans. New research shows they spread out of Africa 20,000 years later than previously thought at around 55-60,000 years ago.

Research scientists are constantly developing new approaches to developing innovative methods to examine information obtained from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Professor Chris Stringer has been studying the various methods scientists use to determine chronologies for important points in human evolutionary history.

"Mitochondria are the tiny structures in each human cell that produce the cell’s power. They contain their own DNA and this is inherited through the mother."

‘We tried alternative ways to date recent episodes in human evolution, such as our split from Neanderthals, and we found these events occurred more recently in time,’ says Prof Stringer.

It is now believed that modern humans and Neanderthals underwent a species separation approximately 300-400,000 years ago; this is much earlier than the previously accepted era 500-600,000 years ago.

It is believed that: "modern humans migrated out of Africa between 55-60,000 years ago rather than the previous dates of 70-80,000 years."

Researchers have also ascertained "more recent dates for other crucial events such as the age of our African ancestral mother, known as mitochondrial Eve, from who all recent humans (Homo sapiens) descended. She was found to have lived around 110-130,000 years ago, rather than previous estimates of 150,000-200,000 years ago.

‘The new dates are consistent with the most recent fossil and archaeological data for Neanderthal evolution, our exit from Africa and our arrival in Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas,’ says Prof Stringer.

‘And they also cast doubt on ideas of an early exit from Africa towards China and Australia.’

Sources: PHYSORG.COM; Chris Stringer, Phillip Endicott, Simon Y.W. Ho, and Mait Metspalu's Evaluating the Mitochondrial Timescale of Human Evolution paper is published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution; American Museum of Natural History (news : web)

Nature's Eye Candy

2009-10-12T02:59:00.003-04:00

Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress) anther (20x) Confocal / Heiti Paves, Tallinn University of Technology, courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Fluorescent actin protein filaments. / Dennis Breitsprecher, Institute of Biophysical Chemistry at Germany’s Hannover Medical School. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Pleurosigma (marine diatoms) (200x), Darkfield and Polarized Light. / Michael Stringer, Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, United Kingdom. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Double transgenic mouse embryo, 18.5 days (17x), Brightfield, Darkfield, Fluorescence (GFP and RFP). / Gloria Kwon, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Insititute. Courtesy of Nikon Small World

Mouse colon (740x), 2-Photon. / Paul L. Appleton, University of Dundee, UK. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Muscoid fly (house fly) (6.25x), Reflected light. / Charles B. Krebs, Charles Krebs Photography, Issaquah, Washington, USA. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Quantum dot nanocrystals deposited on a silicon substrate (200x), Polarized reflected light. / Seth A. Coe-Sullivan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Filamentous actin and microtubules (structural proteins) in mouse fibroblasts (cells) (1000x), Fluorescence. / Torsten Wittmann, The Scripps Research Institute. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Sagittal section of rat cerebellum (40x), Fluorescence and Confocal. / Thomas J. Deerinck, National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, University of California, San Diego. Courtesy of Nikon Small World

Fresh water rotifer feeding among debris (200x), Darkfield. / Harold TaylorKensworth, UK. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Avicennia marina (mangrove) leaf (40x), Fluorescence and Differential Interference Contrast. / Daphne Zbaeren-Colbourn, Bern, Switzerland. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Newt lung cell in mitosis (5 different structures) (240x), Fluorescence. / Alexey Khodjakov, Wadsworth Center, New York State Department of Health. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Endothelial cells (100x), Fluorescence, Double Exposure. / Jakob Zbaeren, Inselspital, Bern, Switzerland. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Mouse fibroblasts (160x), Fluorescence. / Barbara A. Danowski, Union College. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Doxorubin in methanol and dimethylbenzenesulfonic acid (80x), Polarized Light. / Lars BechNaarden, The Netherlands. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Larva of Pleuronectidae (20x), Rheinberg Illumination and Polarized Light. / Christian Gautier, JACANA Press Agency, France. Courtesy of Nikon Small World

Cross-section of very young beech (40x), Brightfield. / Jean Rüegger-Deschenaux, Mikroskopische Gesellschaft, Zurich, Switzerland. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Fossil Fusulinids in limestone (8x), Polarized Light. / Ron Sturm, Construction Technology Laboratories, Inc., Illinois, USA. COurtesy of Nikon Small World.

10-year old preparation of barbital, fenacetine, valium and acetic acid (35x), Polarized Light. / Lars BechDeurne, The Netherlands. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Polyurethane elastic fiber bundle (25x), Polarized Light. / Marc Van Hove, Centexbel, Belgium. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Crystals evaporated from solution of magnesium sulfate and tartaric acid (50x), Polarized Light. / Richard H. Lee, Argonne National Laboratory. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Multiple exposure of a knitting machine needle (10x), Brightfield. / Marc Van Hove, Centexbel, Belgium. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Gold residue and gold-coated bubbles in glassy matrix (20x), Brightfield. / David Smith, Queensland, Australia. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Crystals of influenza virus neuraminidase isolated from terns (14x), Brightfield with Colored Filters. / Julie Macklin and Dr. Graeme Laver, Australian National University. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Live water mount of Hydra viridissima capturing Daphnia pulex (10x), Darkfield. / Steven F. Lowry, University of Ulster at Coleraine, North Ireland. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Formalin-fixed whole mount of a spiral nematode, multiple exposure (160x), Darkfield. / Jon D. Eise

nback, North Carolina State University. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Inclusions of goethite and hematite in Brazilian agate (30x), Transmitted light with reflected fiber-optic illumination. / John I. Kolvula, Gemological Institute of America. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Suctorian attached to stalk of red algae, encircled by ring of diatoms (125x), Darkfield. / Elieen Roux, Bob Hope International Heart Research Institute. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Silverberry scaly hair whole mount (400x), Brightfield. / Jon D. Eisenback, North Carolina State University. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Collapsed bubbles from an annealed experimental electronic sealing glass (55x), Reflected Light, Nomarski Differential Interference Contrast. / David Gnizak, Ferro Corp., Independence, Ohio. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Larvacean within its feeding structure dyed with red organic carmine which the larvacean syphoned in while filter feeding (20x), Underwater camera with multiple extension tubes. / James M. King, Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Stalked protozoan attached to a filamentous green algae with bacteria on its surface (160x), Nomarski Differential Interference Contrast. / Paul W. Johnson, University of Rhode Island. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Gold, vaporized in a tungsten boat, in a vacuum evaporator (55x), Vertical Illumination - Normarski Differential Interference. / David Gnizak, Independence, Ohio. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Crystals of rutile (titanium dioxide) and tridymite (a polymorph of quartz) in a cobalt-rich glass (350x), Combined oblique illumination and reflected light. / James W. Smith, Independence, Ohio. Courtesy of Nikon Small World.

From a collection of photos assembled in WIRED SCIENCE

A Conservative With A Conscience

2009-10-11T23:52:00.003-04:00

I am including David Brooks New York Times Column from Friday October 8, 2009 to demonstrate that even dedicated Republicans of the Conservative stripe get it about the need for health care reform and the following text illustrates an often overlooked intra-party squabble going on within the conservative wing of the GOP.

Op-Ed Columnist

The Baucus Conundrum

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: October 8, 2009

"The longer the health care debate goes on, the more I become convinced that the American system needs fundamental reform. We need to transition away from a fee-for-service system to one that directs incentives toward better care, not more procedures. We need to move away from the employer-based system, which is eroding year by year. We need to move toward a more transparent system, in which people see the consequences of their choices.

"I’ve also become convinced that the approach championed by Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, is the best vehicle for this sort of change. The Wyden approach — first introduced in a bill with Robert F. Bennett, Republican of Utah, and now pared down to an amendment to the current bills—would combine choice with universal coverage.

"People with insurance could stay with their existing health plans. But if they didn’t like the plans their employer offered, they could take the money their employer spends, add whatever they wanted to throw in, and shop for a better option on a regulated exchange. People without insurance would get subsidies to shop at the exchanges.

"Americans would have real choices. The vigorous exchanges would reward providers and insurers that are efficient, creative and innovative.

"But barring a legislative miracle, the Wyden approach was effectively killed in committee last week. The business and union lobbies worked furiously against it. They want to control their employees’ and members’ benefit packages. Many politicians support it in principle but oppose it in practice. They fear that if they try to fundamentally reform the system, voters will revolt.

"So what we are going to get is health insurance reform, not health care reform. We’ll be adjusting and expanding the current system, not essentially changing it.

"At this point people like me could throw up our hands and oppose everything. But that’s not what adulthood is about. In the real world, you often don’t get to choose what your options will be. You have to choose from a few bad options. The real health care choice now is between the status quo and the bill primarily authored by Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, that is emerging from the Senate Finance Committee.

"The Baucus bill centralizes power, in contrast to the free choice approach, which decentralizes it. The Baucus approach aims to reduce costs, expand coverage and improve efficiency by empowering regulators to write a better set of rules. It aims to rationalize the current system from the top down.

"This approach has many weaknesses. It entrenches a flawed system. It creates greater uniformity and rigidity. It redistributes income from the politically disorganized young to the politically organized old. It squeezes people into a Rube Goldberg complex of bureaucracies based on their income level. It will impose huge costs on people as they rise up the income ladder, distorting the whole economy.

"The biggest problem is that it will retard innovation. Top-down systems just don’t innovate well, no matter how many Innovation Centers you put in the Department of Health and Human Services. The bill will retard innovation by using monopoly power to squeeze costs. It will also retard innovation by directing resources toward current care (and current voters) and away from future technologies and future beneficiaries.

"But the Baucus bill has some advantages over the status quo as well. It would insure an additional 29 million people, a social benefit critics never grapple with.

"It is also more fiscally responsible than any other committee bill. It courageously cuts Medicare benefits by hundreds of billions. It raises taxes on the upper and middle classes in many necessary (and covert) ways. The bill will not really be budget neutral, but the authors have taken fiscal responsibility seriously. They’ve earned that good score from the Congressional Budget Office.

"Most impressively, the Baucus bill includes many provisions to make government-run health care more rational. It would bundle payments to hospitals and encourage doctors to work in efficient teams. It would punish hospitals that have to readmit patients. It would create a commission to perpetually squeeze costs. It would improve information technology. It would measure the comparative effectiveness of different treatments. No one knows how much savings would be produced by these changes in payment method, but they could be significant.

"If you asked me to compare the Baucus approach with the Wyden approach, the answer is easy. But if you asked me to compare it with the status quo, the answer is hard. The Baucus bill contains hidden bombs that could lead to a rigid bureaucratic system that still doesn’t address the fundamental problems. On the other hand, it contains hidden experiments that could lead to new models that might spread across the system.

"If I were in Congress, I’d figure there’s an 80 percent chance of something like this passing anyway. I might as well get engaged as a provisional supporter to fight to make it better, or at least to fight off the coming onslaught to make it worse."

10/10/09 President Barack Obama Weekly Radio Address

2009-10-10T20:27:00.002-04:00

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10TH, 2009 AT 12:01 AM
Weekly Address: New Momentum for Health Reform
Posted by Jesse Lee
"The President goes through the leading conservative and Republican figures who have come out one after another urging passage of health insurance reform. After a summer of intense debate, cooler heads begin to prevail to make progress for the American people."

read the transcript

Obama sees consensus outside Congress on health care overhaul, obstructionism on Capitol Hill

By WILL LESTER
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- "President Barack Obama sees both "unprecedented consensus" from outside Congress on his drive to remake the nation's health care system and obstructionism by some on Capitol Hill.

"The historic movement to bring real, meaningful health insurance reform to the American people gathered momentum this week as we approach the final days of this debate," Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet video address.

"The consensus "includes everyone from doctors and nurses to hospitals and drug manufacturers" - even Republican governors and former GOP lawmakers, Obama said.

"It does not extend to congressional Republicans, however, as nearly all of them oppose the Democrats' health care proposals.

"The president noted that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Senate Majority Leaders Bob Dole and Bill Frist, all Republicans, and former Health and Human Service chiefs Louis Sullivan and Tommy Thompson, who both served in Republican administrations, have all come out in favor of overhauling health care, even though they differ on some specifics.

"Dole said in an interview on the Fox News Channel late in the week that he has not endorsed any plan but is recommending that congressional Republicans "stay in the game" so they can have more impact on the final legislation through compromise and amendments.

"These distinguished leaders understand that health insurance reform isn't a Democratic issue or a Republican issue, but an American issue that demands a solution," Obama said.

"Democrats have made significant strides since Labor Day, when they returned to the Capitol after an August spent absorbing attacks from noisy conservative critics over health care.

"A health care bill soon to emerge from the Senate Finance Committee is the only one judged to meet Obama's conditions for expanding insurance coverage without raising the federal deficit, while also slowing the rise in medical costs.

"Yet Obama said he recognized the issue remains divisive among members of Congress.

"There are some in Washington today who seem determined to play the same old partisan politics, working to score political points, even if it means burdening this country with an unsustainable status quo," Obama said. That "status quo" includes rising health care costs, diminishing coverage and arbitrary decisions by big insurance companies, he said.

"Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell differs with Obama's views on cooperation.

"I've spoken about reform 44 times on the Senate floor on the need for health care reform," McConnell said. "But higher premiums, higher taxes, and more government? That's not reform. And this is precisely the problem Americans have identified with advocates of the administration's health care plans."

"In the the Republican radio address, Sen. George LeMieux of Florida acknowledged deep problems with the health care system, but cautioned "the solution should not be worse than the problem we are trying to solve."

"We in the Congress have a duty to tackle this problem, but the solution we settle upon should not be rushed," LeMieux said in the GOP's weekly address. Democrats maintain Republicans are simply trying to delay action.

"LeMieux said the Democrats' approach would:

-cost $1.8 trillion over 10 years, more than twice the total for the Senate Finance Committee's bill, as projected by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

-add a new tax burden by penalizing those who do not buy health insurance.

-deny millions of people the choice of health plans that best suit their needs by forcing them onto Medicaid.

-take about $500 billion out of Medicare.

"Taking money from a program already in financial trouble is not responsible," LeMieux said. "It's not fair to our seniors who paid into the program, and it's not fair to our children and grandchildren who will be burdened with massive debt obligations."

The preceeding Associated Press story appeared in mywesttexas.news, 10-10-09

White House Photo Chuck Kennedy 10-10-09

"The President goes through the leading conservative and Republican figures who have come out urging passage of health reform. After a summer of intense debate, consensus begins to emerge. "

'Is Conservatism Brain-Dead?' - Steven F. Hayward Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

2009-10-09T03:31:00.001-04:00

Steven F. Hayward (American Enterprise Institute)

Steven F. Hayward, F.K. Weyerhaeuser fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of "The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution, 1980-1989," has taken on the question: "Is Conservatism Brain-Dead?"

I would certainly find it very difficult to disagree with Hayward's contention that conservatism is brain-dead because of the plethora of instances that the right has had to prove the assertion correct.

Hayward reinforces my belief by lamenting that: "During the glory days of the conservative movement, from its ascent in the 1960s and '70s to its success in Ronald Reagan's era, there was a balance between the intellectuals, such as Buckley and Milton Friedman, and the activists, such as Phyllis Schlafly and Paul Weyrich, the leader of the New Right. The conservative political movement, for all its infighting, has always drawn deeply from the conservative intellectual movement, and this mix of populism and elitism troubled neither side.

"Today, however, the conservative movement has been thrown off balance, with the populists dominating and the intellectuals retreating and struggling to come up with new ideas. The leading conservative figures of our time are now drawn from mass media, from talk radio and cable news. We've traded in Buckley for Beck, Kristol for Coulter, and conservatism has been reduced to sound bites."

William F. Buckley

Hayward pines for the old days; the era dominated by the likes of the omnifarious "columnist, lecturer, TV host and debater," William F. Buckley Jr, who used "his weekly "Firing Line" show on PBS" to become a well known television personality who showed himself to be a "man of style and ideas who inspired two generations of conservative thinkers and more just a populist shock jock with a funny prep-school accent."

But the contemporary state of what describes itself as conservatism in Hayward's opinion is a mediascape in which the best that its nascent era provided; now dominated by a a group of conservative movement imitators who have "thrown off" the "balance" struck by the founders of the early years "with the populists dominating and the intellectuals retreating and struggling to come up with new ideas. The leading conservative figures of our time are now drawn from mass media, from talk radio and cable news. We've traded in Buckley for Beck, Kristol for Coulter, and conservatism has been reduced to sound bites."

I cannot disagree with Hayward's observation of conservatism thrown into disarray by its present generation of representatives who may be engaged in activities that are "authentic and laudatory, it is unfocused, lacking the connection to a concrete ideology".

And I agree with Hayward's assessment of the trashy tombs that promote conservatism today: "The best-selling conservative books these days tend to be red-meat titles such as Michelle Malkin's "Culture of Corruption," Glenn Beck's new "Arguing with Idiots" and all of Ann Coulter's well-calculated provocations that the left falls for like Pavlov's dogs. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with these books. Politics is not conducted by Socratic seminar, and Henry Adams's dictum that politics is the systematic organization of hatreds should remind us that partisan passions are an essential and necessary function of democratic life. The right has always produced, and always will produce, potboilers."

Ann Coulter

Hayward contrasts the "frivolous paranoia as the face of conservatism" with what is: "Conspicuously missing, however, are the intellectual works. The bestseller list used to be crowded with the likes of Friedman's "Free to Choose," George Gilder's "Wealth and Poverty," Paul Johnson's "Modern Times," Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind," Charles Murray's "Losing Ground" and "The Bell Curve," and Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History and the Last Man." There are still conservative intellectuals attempting to produce important work, but some publishers have been cutting back on serious conservative titles because they don't sell. (I have my own entry in the list: a two-volume political history titled "The Age of Reagan." But I never expected the books to sell well; at 750 pages each, you can hurt yourself picking them up.)

"About the only recent successful title that harkens back to the older intellectual style is Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism," which argues that modern liberalism has much more in common with European fascism than conservatism has ever had. But because it deployed the incendiary f-word, the book was perceived as a mood-of-the-moment populist work, even though I predict that it will have a long shelf life as a serious work. Had Goldberg called the book "Aspects of Illiberal Policymaking: 1914 to the Present," it might have been received differently by its critics. And sold about 200 copies.

Jonah Goldberg

Of course, it's hard to say whether conservative intellectuals are simply out of interesting ideas or if the reading public simply finds their ideas boring. Both possibilities (and they are not mutually exclusive) should prompt some self-criticism on the right. Conservatism has prospered most when its attacks on liberalism have combined serious alternative ideas with populist enthusiasm. When the ideas are absent, the movement has nothing to offer -- except opposition. That doesn't work for long in American politics."

Hayward correctly summarizes his discontent with conservatism's present dilemma: "The single largest defect of modern conservatism, in my mind, is its insufficient ability to challenge liberalism at the intellectual level, in particular over the meaning and nature of progress. In response to the left's belief in political solutions for everything, the right must do better than merely invoking "markets" and "liberty." Hayward admits that conservatives lack the gravitas of the next William F. Buckley when he admits: "The single largest defect of modern conservatism, in my mind, is its insufficient ability to challenge liberalism at the intellectual level, in particular over the meaning and nature of progress. In response to the left's belief in political solutions for everything, the right must do better than merely invoking "markets" and "liberty." And who does Hayward end up pinning his hopes on for a conservative resurgence? Glenn Beck.

Hayward admits: "Beck may lack Buckley's urbanity, and his show will never be confused with "Firing Line." But he's on to something with his interest in serious analysis of liberalism's patrimony. The left is enraged with Beck's scandal-mongering over Van Jones and ACORN, but they have no idea that he poses a much bigger threat than that. If more conservative talkers took up the theme of challenging liberalism's bedrock assumptions the way Beck does from time to time, liberals would have to defend their problematic premises more often."

Somehow this line of Hayward's argumentation fails to convince that America is sitting on the cusp of a conservative resurgence. Glenn Beck?

Glenn Beck Ranting

Nobel Prize in Chemistry Awarded to Three Molecular Biologists

2009-10-08T00:22:00.002-04:00

A ribosome reads an mRNA sequence and produces protein according to its genetic code.

"Two Americans and an Israeli won a Nobel Prize in chemistry; Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz and Israeli Ada Yonath, Wednesday for creating detailed blueprints of the protein-making machinery within cells, research that's being used to develop new antibiotics."

From left, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England; Thomas A. Steitz of Yale University; and Ada E. Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel will share the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

"Ribosomes are key to life," Malcolm Ritter of The Associated Press explained: "They use instructions from genes to make thousands of different proteins that control what happens in the body. Many antibiotics kill bacteria by attacking their ribosomes, and the detailed descriptions by new Nobelists are being used to develop new drugs."

"The chemistry prize was awarded for research into how information on strands of DNA is translated into proteins."

"Ribosomes were discovered in the 1950’s by George Palade, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the makeup of cells, but scientists weren’t able to take a close look at those organelles till the end of the century. Thomas Steitz, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, and Ada Yonath developed tricks for examining the tiny structures with x-rays and electron beams. The high-resolution 3D images they acquired will help chemists develop a host of better medications."

“Scientists around the world are using the winners’ research to develop new antibiotics that can be used in the ongoing battle against antibiotic-resistant microbes that cause so much illness, suffering and death.” said Thomas Lane, president of the American Chemical Society, in a press release."

"Dozens of antibiotics — including tetracycline and clindamycin — work by gumming up the ribosomes inside bacteria. Each of those medications is made up of relatively small molecules that can wedge themselves into crevices in the ribosome, destroying the microbes’ ability to make protein, and thus rendering them helpless.

"Armed with 3D images of antibiotic molecules wedged into ribosomes, medicinal chemists can refine their strategy for fighting bacteria. They can find new weak spots in bacterial ribosomes.

"That approach is a lot like the way that the Rebel Alliance destroyed the first Death Star: by looking at its blueprint and finding a weak spot. Except, in this case the researchers are looking for vulnerable nooks and crannies in a blob of RNA and protein, rather than a thermal exhaust port.

"Dozens of 3D images that show antibiotics sticking to ribosomes are available in the Protein DataBank, and you can look at them yourself with a tool called First Glance.

"Just type the Protein DataBank ID number for the ribosome that you want to look at, and then start exploring.

"Here are some of the best structures:

Ribosome with Clindamycin: 1YJN
Ribosome with Azithromycin: 1NWY
Ribosome with Erythromycin: 1JZY"

Following the announcement, Professor Gunnar von Heijne told senior editor Simon Frantz how the achievements awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry not only provided insights into life at the atomic level, but also provided insights into how to save lives.

Hofstadter's Paranoid Style at Work in Today's GOP?

2009-10-07T01:09:00.003-04:00

Yesterdays post took a look at two real life examples of how Republicans, since the 1980s, have built their party on fear and intolerance of the 'other' to fragment the American electorate and use the slim majorities their tactics fostered to shape the direction of political discourse for some three decades. As the nation has entered a new century, the GOP has held on to their political playbook but have been forced to face new electoral realities as the party has fallen from power and the Democratic Party has ascended to controlling both the presidency and the congress. With so few elected political leaders in positions of power, a power vacuum has confronted the Republican's leadership apparatus. The party is still controlled by the conservative-business-evangelical triad that has held power since Reagan; but having been subjected to crushing electoral defeats in the 1998 and 2000 election cycles, a new type of 'public' leadership has emerged to assume the face of the Republican Party.

A number of recent political commentators have drawn on historian Richard Hofstadter's essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" that highlighted the effects of fringe groups that influence American politics to compare present day affairs with those that invoked "...the ghosts of McCarthyism and the more immediate significance of Barry Goldwater's candidacy for president of the United States. The Hofstadter commentary "was particularly concerned about assessing "how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority."

Rush Limbaugh

Of course, today "... right-wing radio hosts and cable news commentators like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh give voice to the new millennium's paranoid impulse, "many observers of the American political scene readily suggest. A great deal of attention has gone into examining "the competing forces in American political discourse and how fringe groups can influence — and derail — the larger agendas of a political party. He investigates the politics of the irrational, shedding light on how the behavior of individuals can seem out of proportion with actual political issues, and how such behavior impacts larger groups."

Glenn Beck

Geoffrey Dunn has commented: "Indeed, the paranoid style often rears its ugly head during transformative moments in American history - from the advent of Jeffersonian democracy and the onset of the Civil War, on through to the New Deal presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt and, a generation later, the election of John F. Kennedy. Come now the transformative election of Barack Obama, and the paranoid style has once more found fertile soil in America's political landscape."

Dunn further observed that: "In his essay, Hofstadter was careful to distinguish clinical paranoia in an individual from "paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people." ... The paranoid tendency, Hofstadter contended, is "aroused by a confrontation of opposed interests which are (or are felt to be) totally irreconcilable, and thus by nature not susceptible to the normal political processes of bargain and compromise."

Members of the John Birch Society

Drawing further attention to the influence of fringe groups in American politics Arthur Goldwag observed: “More than half a century ago, the John Birch Society raised an alarm that Dwight Eisenhower wasn't the genial war hero and popular president he seemed, but rather "a conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist conspiracy." Bill Clinton, we were told in the 1990s, ran illicit drugs out of an airport in Mena, Ark., when he wasn't bumping off a long list of enemies and associates who knew too much about his other nefarious activities (Monica Lewinsky accepted, of course). The so-called 9/11 Truth Movement accuses George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Israel, the Federal Reserve and the real estate industry -- virtually anyone except Al-Qaida -- of orchestrating the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, much as conservative journalist John T. Flynn indicted Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940s for treasonously sacrificing Pearl Harbor. A not inconsiderable slice of today's electorate (and many of its elected representatives) believe President Barack Obama not only harbors an implacable hatred for white people -- and is seeking to euthanize their grandparents -- but that he's not even an American citizen.”

David Greenberg

David Greenberg, a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers has a different take on the 'paranoid over usage phenomenon.' Greenberg contends: "Richard Hofstadter's classic essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." ... "is often invoked without giving much attention to the essay's actual content" ... "It's hard to deny that the title recommends itself"... "Lately, from the rise of Sarah Palin to the spring's "tea parties" to the "birther" frenzies and health care town halls of this summer to the Joe Wilson contretemps, allusions to Hofstadter have never seemed more widespread... Today's ultraconservative activists exhibit many core elements of the style that Hofstadter identified: the penchant for 'conspiratorial fantasy,' the apocalyptic stakes imagined to be involved in policy debates, the imperiousness to rational persuasion. Nonetheless, Hofstadter's thesis ought to be used carefully and sparingly, Greenberg contends ... "Hofstadter's contribution to The New American Right was "The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt," which actually makes more of an effort than does "The Paranoid Style" to identify the sources and hallmarks of ultraconservative thought that is "situated these individuals within a rapidly shifting culture. Contributing to their frightened, aggressive, and bitter disposition were, among other factors, the "the growth of the mass media of communication," the "long tenure in power" of liberals, and the feeling during the Cold War of "continued crisis" rather than the periodic involvement in world affairs that the United States had enjoyed before 1939."

Greenberg cogently adds: "Ironically, the historical portion of Hofstadter essay, though seldom cited these days by journalists, was groundbreaking, though not very controversial. It traced the tendency in our political culture, on the left and right, to see all-powerful conspiracies devoted to subverting the American way."

Greenberg continues discussing Hofstadter's most valuable insights raised by his essay: "Hofstadter identifies real aspects of a familiar right-wing type, from the hyper-competence he ascribes to his conspiring enemies ("he is a perfect model of malice; a kind of amoral superman") to his taste for pseudo-pedantry ("McCarthy's 96-page pamphlet McCarthyism contains no less than 313 footnote references, and Mr. Welch's fantastic assault on Eisenhower, The Politician, is weighed down by a hundred pages of bibliography and notes"). And as countless admirers have noted, some of Hofstadter's language about the right of that era—from anti-fluoridation cranks to John Birch Society members—perfectly describes today's extremists. To wit: "The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialist and communist schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners but major states—men seated at the very centers of American power." Direct links between the Goldwater-era conspiracism and today's are easy to find: the right's criticisms of President Obama's health care reform, for example, carries the distinct whiff of Ronald Reagan's early-1960s alarums against "socialized medicine."

Greenberg chastens: "Those who talk about being frightened today or act as if Obama is the first president to suffer the slings of what Franklin Roosevelt called "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror" would do well to note that on the back cover of my 1996 reissue of The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays is a quote from Hofstadter's sole equal among his generation of political historians, Arthur Schlesinger:

"Recent months have witnessed an attack of

unprecedented passion and ferocity against the

national government. … Unbridled rhetoric is having

consequences far beyond anything that

antigovernment politicians intend. The flow of

angry words seems to have activated and in a

sense legitimized what the historian Richard

Hofstadter called the "paranoid strain" in American

politics."

"Schlesinger," Greenberg explains "published his comment in the Wall Street Journal on June 7, 1995.

"The "paranoid" style did not return suddenly this summer," Greenberg correctly observes: "On the contrary, Hofstadter was surely correct when he wrote that while "it comes in waves of different intensity, it appears to be all but ineradicable."

Richard J. Hofstadter

The Truth Lies Before Us If We Only Take the Time to Accept It

2009-10-06T00:54:00.009-04:00

This past Saturday morning at a gathering of Georgia Republicans; congressman and candidate for governor Nathan Deal introduced the GOP's latest 'hate speech' when he spoke of "Ghetto grandmothers," who lack birth certificates as just another cynically framed phrase that easily traces it's lineage back to the Reagan era and it's holier than thou reference to "welfare queens."

Ronald Reagan, the godhead of modern conservative politicians

Both terms are despicably aligned to sustain a politics of an us versus them mentality that fractures the American public and employs all of the sophistication of a club indiscriminately used against the Democratic opposition.

But lets return to our latest purveyor of hit and run hate speech, Nathan Deal, who said just a few days ago: “We got all the complaints of the ghetto grandmothers who didn’t have birth certificates and all that. We wrote some very liberal language as to how you can verify it. My mother was born in 1906 and she didn’t have a birth certificate. They didn’t give birth certificates back then. But we got her one, because you can do it under the proper procedures of your state.”

Republican hate speech extends beyond bashing ghetto grandmothers and regularly seeks out opportunities to attack gays. Oklahoma State Representative, Sally Kern has made her contempt well known

and identifies with the true Republican party, also known as the Party of Jesus.

Perhaps Paul Krugman sums it up best when he reflects on today's Republican Party and its all out war against President Obama as he remarks: "How did one of our great political parties become so ruthless, so willing to embrace scorched-earth tactics even if so doing undermines the ability of any future administration to govern?

"The key point is that ever since the Reagan years, the Republican Party has been dominated by radicals — ideologues and/or apparatchiks who, at a fundamental level, do not accept anyone else’s right to govern.

"Anyone surprised by the venomous, over-the-top opposition to Mr. Obama must have forgotten the Clinton years. Remember when Rush Limbaugh suggested that Hillary Clinton was a party to murder? When Newt Gingrich shut down the federal government in an attempt to bully Bill Clinton into accepting those Medicare cuts? And let’s not even talk about the impeachment saga.

"The only difference now is that the G.O.P. is in a weaker position, having lost control not just of Congress but, to a large extent, of the terms of debate. The public no longer buys conservative ideology the way it used to; the old attacks on Big Government and paeans to the magic of the marketplace have lost their resonance. Yet conservatives retain their belief that they, and only they, should govern.

"The result has been a cynical, ends-justify-the-means approach. Hastening the day when the rightful governing party returns to power is all that matters, so the G.O.P. will seize any club at hand with which to beat the current administration.

"It’s an ugly picture. But it’s the truth. And it’s a truth anyone trying to find solutions to America’s real problems has to understand."

Reduviasporonites, an Ancient Fungus that Flourished About 250 Million Years Ago Capitalised on a World-Wide Disaster and Thrived on Early Earth

2009-10-05T01:50:00.213-04:00

The Original landmass of the Earth; the supercontinent known as Pangaea shown in one of it's configurations.

Long before dinosaurs ruled over the Earth; one large continuous area of land, known as Pangaea that existed during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras about 250 million years ago encompassed the largest portion of the world's landmass. A single enormous ocean surrounded Pangaea and was known as Panthalassa.The Pangaea theory states that all present continents were once amassed together and collectively known as a 'supercontinent' called Pangaea. The word 'Pangaea' means 'all lands' in Greek, accurately defining the way the continents were 200 millions years ago before it split up.

It was during this period of Earth's past that "geological records show that the Earth experienced a global catastrophe.... "A huge Siberian volcano destroyed the world's forests 250 million years ago in what scientists say was the worst extinction event the planet has ever witnessed, new research has disclosed... It rained fire and acid rain for hundreds of thousands of years and killed 90 percent of all life, including plants and vegetation.... Earth scientist, Prof Mark Sephton, of Imperial College London, said:: "Ironically, the worst imaginable conditions for plant and animal species provided the best possible conditions for the fungi to flourish."

"It created the perfect storm."

He added: "Acid rain fell on Earth for hundreds of thousands of years which killed the trees and plants and allowed the fungus to take over the planet."

"It has been conjectured that "basalt lava flows were unleashed on the continent from a location centred on what is present day Siberia. Up to 96 per cent of all marine species and 70 per cent of land species became extinct. Traditionally, scientists had thought that land plants weathered the catastrophe without much loss.

"Today's findings suggest that much of the vegetation on Pangaea did not survive and that the world's forests were wiped out, according to the researchers. Geological records show that there was a massive spike in the population of Reduviasporonites across Pangea as the Permian period came to an end. The scientists suggest that this means that there was in increase in the supply of wood for them to decay.

"The tiny organisms that covered the planet more than 250 million years ago appear to be a species of ancient fungus that thrived in dead wood, according to new research published October 1 in the journal Geology.

"The researchers behind the study, from Imperial College London and other universities in the UK, USA and The Netherlands, believe that the organisms were able to thrive during this period because the world's forests had been wiped out. This would explain how the organisms, which are known as Reduviasporonites, were able to proliferate across the planet.

"Researchers had previously been unsure as to whether Reduviasporonites were a type of fungus or algae. By analysing the carbon and nitrogen content of the fossilised remains of the microscopic organisms, the scientists identified them as a type of wood-rotting fungus that would have lived inside dead trees."

"The team reached their conclusions by analysing the carbon and nitrogen content of Reduviasporonites under state of the art microscopes and comparing the results with those from modern fungi.

They discovered that Reduviasporonites and modern fungi show similar chemical characteristics."

"Fossil records of Reduviasporonites reveal chains of microscopic cells and reflect an organism that lived during the Permian-Triassic period."

An enlarged image of Reduviasporonites. Scientists believe extinct fungus species capitalised on a world-wide disaster and thrived on early Earth.

(Credit: Image courtesy of Imperial College London)

"Professor Mark Sephton, one of the authors of the study from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, comments: "Our study shows that neither plant nor animal life escaped the impact of this global catastrophe. Ironically, the worst imaginable conditions for plant and animal species provided the best possible conditions for the fungi to flourish."

"The team suggest that the basalt lava, which flowed during Permian-Triassic catastrophe, unleashed toxic gases into the air. The gases had a dual effect, producing acid rain and depleting the ozone layer. The outcome was the destruction of forests, providing enough rotting vegetation to nourish Reduviasporonites so that they could proliferate across Pangaea.

"The team reached their conclusions by analysing the carbon and nitrogen content of Reduviasporonites using a High Sensitivity Mass Spectrometer and comparing the results with those from modern fungi. They discovered that Reduviasporonites and modern fungi show similar chemical characteristics."

Although there are a number of scientists who do not agree and remain skeptical of scientists who claim that they have identified an ancient fungus that flourished about 250 million years ago, feeding on dead trees as it spread across the planet. Those remains point to a crucial clue that some believe to equate with the identity of what killed off much of Earth's plant and animal life at the time.

Scientists Mark A. Sephton, Henk Visscher, Cindy V. Looy, Alexander B. Verchovsky, and Jonathan S. Watson.believe: "One of the most controversial biological proxies of environmental crisis at the close of the Permian is the organic microfossil Reduviasporonites. The proliferation of this disaster species coincides with the mass extinction and numerous geochemical disturbances. Originally Reduviasporonites was assigned to fungi, opportunistically exploiting dying end-Permian forests, but subsequent geochemical data have been used to suggest an algal origin. We have used high-sensitivity equipment, partly designed to detect interstellar grains in meteorites, to reexamine the geochemical signature of Reduviasporonites. Organic chemistry, carbon and nitrogen isotopes, and carbon/nitrogen ratios are consistent with a fungal origin. The use of this microfossil as a marker of terrestrial ecosystem collapse should not be merely discounted. Unequivocally diagnostic data, however, may have been precluded by post-burial replacement of its organic constituents."

"The team analyzed carbon and nitrogen isotopes from samples of Reduviasporonites. As the researchers report today in Geology, those analyses identified chemicals unique to Reduviasporonites, whose reign spanned the Permian and Triassic periods, and other compounds associated with dead tree matter, within the same microfossils. Astrobiologist and lead author Mark Sephton of Imperial College London says the analyses show that the organism fed on dead wood. In addition, he notes, the Reduviasporonites microfossils have been found in sediments deposited at the P-Tr boundary all across what was then Pangaea. "This suggests that we are looking at something truly global in effect."

"Sephton explains that for Reduviasporonites to be so common at the P-Tr boundary, they must have thrived on a disaster that brought about "a dramatic change in the environment." The most likely cause, he says, is a massive release of sulfur dioxide and other noxious gases from volcanic eruptions. Those gases would have caused highly acidified rain, enough to poison most of the planet, killing trees and creating a global feast for Reduviasporonites. "When things turned really bad," Sephton says, "they were most at home."

"It's a good story if it turns out to be true, says paleontologist C. Kevin Boyce of the University of Chicago in Illinois. The analyses of the carbon isotopes provide the "strongest evidence" of a fungal lifestyle for Reduviasporonites, he says. They do "a much better job than previous work" in identifying components of Reduviasporonites versus bits of organic matter from fossilized dead trees. So was Reduviasporonites a fungus? "Maybe," Boyce says. "What [the team's] work does is at least reopen that door."

Citations: Mark A. Sephton, Henk Visscher, Cindy V. Looy, Alexander B. Verchovsky, and Jonathan S. Watson. Chemical constitution of a Permian-Triassic disaster species. Geology, October 2009; v. 37; no. 10; DOI: 10.1130/G30096A.1; Geology, October 2009 v. 37 no. 10 p. 875-878. Telegraph.co.uk: Published: 12:08PM BST 01 Oct 2009.

The God Spot, Biology, Evolution, and Religious Belief

2009-10-04T02:51:00.002-04:00

Linköpings domkyrka, the Medieval cathedral at Linköping, Sweden.

Brandon Keim writes on David Barash's perspective that "religion should not be immune from evolutionary analysis," and "whether or not one is a believer," Barash "(that) the popularity of religious belief should be considered in terms of the benefits such convictions have historically conveyed. Weighing the pros and commons, however, is a difficult task," Barash freely admits.

"On the one hand, religious belief of one sort or another seems ubiquitous, suggesting that it might well have emerged, somehow, from universal human nature, the common evolutionary background shared by all humans. On the other hand, it often appears that religious practice is fitness-reducing rather than enhancing — and, if so, that genetically mediated tendencies toward religion should have been selected against. Think of the frequent advocacy of sexual restraint, of tithing, of self-abnegating moral duty and other seeming diminutions of personal fitness, along with the characteristic denial of the “evidence of our senses” in favor of faith in things asserted but not clearly demonstrated. What fitness-enhancing benefits of religion might compensate for those costs? [...]" Keim summarizes Barash.

Keim contrasts Barash's perspective with that of noted evolutionary biologist, David Sloan Wilson. "Not all biologically based hypotheses for the evolution of religion are negative, however. In Darwin’s Cathedral, David Sloan Wilson explored the possibility that religious belief is advantageous for its practitioners because it contributes to solidarity — including but not limited to moral codes — that benefits the group and wouldn’t otherwise be within reach. That notion, appealing as it might be, is actually a logical and mathematical stretch for most biologists, relying as it does upon group selection. The problem is that even if groups displaying a particular trait do better than groups lacking it, selection acting within such groups should favor individuals who “cheat.” Mathematical models have shown that group selection can work in theory, but only if the differential survival of religious groups more than compensates for any disadvantage suffered by individuals within each group. It is at least possible that human beings meet this requirement, especially when it comes to religion, since within-group self-policing could maintain religiosity; it certainly did during the Inquisition.".

"Barash makes some interesting points," Keim contends, "though glib comments like "it certainly did during the Inquisition" make it difficult to read him without suspicion.".

"A more interesting example of self-policing religious groups," Keim explains, "is American evangelicals, many sects of which have maintained internal order in the absence of thumbscrews and racks.".

Keim believes: "Barash is quick to dismiss the supposed benefits of religion or the possibility that many people need it. But is it so difficult to imagine the appeal of worldviews capable of explaining life and death and right and wrong? Or so difficult to see the social framework — both in terms of human interaction and the provision of goods and services — that religious communities provide, particularly in poor and undeveloped regions?"

"Finally, Keim explains that "group selection is hardly a theoretical: the animal world is full of species that have developed characteristics that operate on the group rather than individual, and are thus selected at that level. Bacteria and parasites, for instance, often produce effects in their hosts that are only seen when the invaders are present in large numbers."

"Religion can and should be studied in scientific terms," according to Keim's "reading but those studies need to operate on many scales and be framed in a way that doesn’t predetermine the answer according to already-held sentiments. If framed by narrow perspectives like Barash’s, they will not likely illuminate either religion or ourselves."

Neural activation produced by God’s perceived love (left) and anger (right)/PNAS

"Whether or not God exists, thinking about Him or Her doesn’t require divinely dedicated neurological wiring," writes Brandon Keim.

"Instead, religious thoughts run on brain systems used to figure out what other people are thinking and feeling."

"The findings, based on brain scans of people contemplating God, don’t explain whether a propensity for religion is a neurobiological accident. But at least they give researchers a solid framework for exploring the question."

“In a way, this is a very cold look at religious belief,” said National Institutes of Health cognitive scientist Jordan Grafman, co-author of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “We’re only trying to understand where in the brain religious beliefs seem to be modulated.”

"Though scientific debate about God’s existence has transfixed the public, Grafman’s findings fit into a lesser known argument over why religion exists."

"Some scientists think it’s just an accidental byproduct of social cognition. They say humans evolved to imagine what other people are feeling, even people who aren’t present — and from there it was a short step to positing supernatural beings."

"Others argue that religion is too pervasive to be just a byproduct. Historically, at least, it must have provided believers and their communities some sort of advantage, or else it would have disappeared."

"The argument breaks down into the so-called byproduct and adaptation camps. Of course, they might both be right."

“Religious beliefs might have arisen as a byproduct,” said Justin Barrett, an Oxford University specialist in the cognitive neuroscience of religion, “but once in place, they’re pretty handy.”

"Grafman started by interviewing 26 people of varying religious sentiments, breaking down their beliefs into three psychological categories: God’s perceived level of involvement in the world, God’s perceived emotions, and religious knowledge gained through doctrine or experience. Then they submitted statements based on these categories to 40 people hooked to fMRI machines."

"Statements based on God’s involvement — such as “God protects one’s life” or “Life has no higher purpose” — provoked activity in brain regions associated with understanding intent. Statements of God’s emotions — such as “God is forgiving” or “the afterlife will be punishing” — stimulated regions responsible for classifying emotions and relating observed actions to oneself. Knowledge-based statements, such as “a source of creation exists” or “religions provide moral guidance,” activated linguistic processing centers."

"Taken together, the neurological states evoked by the questions are known to cognitive scientists as the Theory of Mind: They underlie our understanding that other people have minds, thoughts and feelings."

"The advantages of a Theory of Mind are clear. People who lack one are considered developmentally challenged, even disabled. Anthropologist Scott Atran, a proponent of the byproduct hypothesis, has suggested that it let our ancestors quickly distinguish between friends and enemies. And once humans were able to imagine someone who wasn’t physically present, supernatural beliefs soon followed."

"But just as a Theory of Mind provided benefits, so might its supernatural byproducts and the religions that grew from them."

"Unlike other animals, humans can imagine the future, including their own death. The hope given by religious beliefs to people confronting their own mortality might provide motivation to care for their offspring."

"Supernatural beliefs may also have produced group-level advantages that then conferred benefits to individuals."

“You get some selective advantages, such as inter-group cooperation and self-policing morality,” said Barrett. “And maybe the entire network of belief practices, and whatever is behind them, gets reinforced.”

"According to Barrett, religion may even have created a feedback loop, refining the Theory of Mind that produced it."

“It could be that when you’re in a religious community, it improves what psychologists call perspective-taking,” he said. “Exercising your Theory of Mind could be good for developing it, making your reasoning more robust.”

"David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist at Binghamton University, said the findings fit with the idea that religion started as a cognitive byproduct and became a cultural adaptation, but cautioned against over-interpreting them."

“It’s tremendous to see religious belief manifested at the neurological level,” he said. “But there’s a sense that when you bring things down to that level, that trumps other kinds of understanding. That’s not true in this case.”

"Grafman declined to speculate, instead concentrating on what he hopes to achieve with future research: studying other kinds of religions than were represented in his small sample size, and comparing religious cognition to legal and political certainties."

“The differences and nuances between these types of belief systems will be important to understanding the deliberation that goes on,” he said.

"Grafman also stressed that the study examined only the nature of religion, not the existence of God."

“He, or She, didn’t come in for the evaluation,” he said.

Citation: “Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief.” By Dimitrios Kapogiannis, Aron Barbey, Michael Su, Giovanna Zamboni, Frank Krueger, and Jordan Grafman. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106, No. 10, March 9, 2009.

Possible "God regions" in the human brain denoted by blue dots

"Brain scans of people who believe in God have found further evidence that religion involves neurological regions vital for social intelligence."

"In other words, whether or not God or Gods exist, religious belief may have been quite useful in shaping the human mind’s evolution."

“The main point is that all these brain regions are important for other forms of social cognition and behavior,” said" Jordan Grafman, a National Institutes of Health cognitive scientist.

"In a study published Monday in Public Library of Science ONE, Grafman’s team used an MRI to measure the brains areas in 40 people of varying degrees of religious belief."

"People who reported an intimate experience of God, engaged in religious behavior or feared God, tended to have larger-than-average brain regions devoted to empathy, symbolic communication and emotional regulation. The research wasn’t trying to measure some kind of small “God-spot,” but looked instead at broader patterns within the brains of self-reported religious people."

"The results are full of caveats, from a small sample size to the focus on a western God. But they fit with Grafman’s earlier work on how religious sentiment triggers other neural networks involved in social cognition."

That research, published in March in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, suggested that the capacity for religious thought may have bootstrapped a primitive human brain into its current, socially sophisticated form.

"Grafman suspects that the origins of divine belief reside in mechanisms that evolved in order to help primates understand family members and other animals. “We tried to use the same social mechanisms to explain unusual phenomena in the natural world,” he said.

"The evolution of our brains continues," said Grafman. “The way we think now is not the way we thought 3,000 years ago,” he said. “The nature of how we believe might change as well.”

Find the God Spot!

"You can forget about the "God spot" that headline writers love to highlight (as in "‘God spot' is found in Brain" or "Scientists Locate ‘God Spot' in Human Brain"). There is no one place in the brain responsible for religion, just as there is no single location in the brain for love or language or identity. Most popular articles these days actually say that, but the headline writers continue to speak of a single spot."

"There isn't a separate religious area of the brain, from what we can tell from the data," said Dr. Andrew Newberg, an associate professor of radiology and psychiatry at the Penn university hospital and author of several books on neuroscience and religion. "It's not like there's a little spiritual spot that lights up every time somebody thinks of God. When you look at religious and spiritual experiences, they are incredibly rich and diverse. Sometimes people find them on the emotional level, sometimes on an ideological level, sometimes they perceive a oneness, sometimes they perceive a person. It depends a lot on what the actual experience is."

"The image above shows two different brain scans, one from someone who is singing, and the other one from someone who is speaking in tongues. They look almost entirely identical, but you can just about glimpse a slight difference in blood flow to the frontal lobe, and specifically to the left caudate, among the "speaking in tongues" brains."

Citation: “Neuroanatomical Variability of Religiosity.” By Dimitrios Kapogiannis, Aron K. Barbey, Michael Su, Frank Krueger, Jordan Grafman. Public Library of Science ONE, Vol. 4 No. 9, September 28, 2009. Reuters News Agency and The NeuroCritic Blog that provided the brain scan imagery.

10/03/09 President Barack Obama Weekly Radio Address

2009-10-03T17:31:00.008-04:00

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release October 3, 2009

WEEKLY ADDRESS: President Obama Explains

How Health Insurance Reform Will Strengthen America’s Small Businesses

WASHINGTON – "In this week’s address, President Barack Obama spoke of how the rising costs of health care are stifling America’s small businesses, and how reform will strengthen these businesses and the economy. Small businesses create roughly half of all new jobs, but they also pay up to 18 percent more for the very same insurance plans as larger businesses. Too many have been forced to cut benefits, drop coverage, shed jobs, or shut their doors entirely. Health insurance reform is integral to laying a new foundation for our economy so that small businesses can grow and create new jobs."

read the transcript

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3RD, 2009 AT 12:00 AM
Weekly Address: Health Reform Urgent for the Economy
Posted by Jesse Lee

"The President discusses ongoing efforts to spur job creation. He also explains why health insurance reform is needed not just for long-term economic stability, but in the immediate future, discussing statistics on how costs will continue to skyrocket and hurt small businesses even next year."

President Obama shown waiting to give his 10/03/09 Weekly Radio Address

White House Photo, Samantha Appleton

All material used in this post provided by The White House

The Anemic Left Gets a Hero: Rep. Alan Grayson (D FL)

2009-10-02T02:20:00.002-04:00

With the Congressman Alan Grayson "controversy" still the talk around Washington, the 'left wing' media; namely the corporate controlled MSNBC cable network, continues to talk about the 'spinning story' around Representative Grayson's comments on the House floor as the vast right wing echo chamber drills its talking points into the minds of anyone who will listen

"Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed calls for Representative Alan Grayson to apologize for his recent “die quickly” remarks on the House floor, though she did say both Republicans and Democrats could do their part to elevate the discussion in the health care debate.

"At her weekly news conference on Thursday, Ms. Pelosi also pointed out that Republicans in the House had used the death theme in criticizing the Democrats’ health care proposals.

“There’s no more reason for Mr. Grayson to apologize. If anybody is going to apologize, everybody should apologize,” Mrs. Pelosi said. “But let’s — the point has been made. It’s time for us to talk about health care.”

"Meanwhile, House Republicans announced that no resolution admonishing Mr. Grayson would be introduced on Thursday. At his weekly news conference, the House Republican leader, John Boehner, said, “I think it’s time for Democrat leaders and the Speaker of the House herself to rein in some of the rhetoric that she decried just several weeks ago. And if he’s not going to apologize to the American people and to Republicans as he should, really, the Democrat leadership’s responsibility to have a conversation with her own member. ”

"The row over Mr. Grayson began on Tuesday night, when the Democrat took to the House floor to say “If you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly.”

"In the aftermath of the recent admonishment of Republican Representative Joe Wilson for his outburst against President Obama, Republicans quickly called on Mr. Grayson to apologize. But the freshman from Florida not only refused, he kept the provocative comments coming.

"On a Wednesday appearance with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, for example, Mr. Grayson said, “We’re dealing with people on the other side who are utterly unscrupulous. These are foot-dragging, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who know nothing but ‘no.’”

"In a statement announcing that no resolution was forthcoming, a spokesman for Representative Tom Price, a Georgia Republican, said that Mr. Grayson’s remarks on the floor “were an embarrassment to this Congress.” But, the statement added, “any future decision on a resolution will rest on the ability of the Speaker to control her members.”

"For their part, Democrats have also pointed to similar comments made by Republicans in discussing the health care proposals. Over the summer, for example, Representative Ginny Brown-Waite, another member of the Florida delegation, said that the Democrats’ health care bill “essentially said to America’s seniors: ‘drop dead.’ ”

On Thursday, in assessing Representative Alan Grayson's remarks, Hardball's Chris Matthews kept the story spinning when he invited Representatives Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D FL) and Dan Lungren (R CA)to go tit for tat.

Also on Thursday, MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann invited Ariana Huffington to reprise the last days events involving Rep. Alan Grayson's comments on the Republican health care plan on 9/30/09.

Will there be another day's worth of story spinning left for Friday? And have the Democrats found a hero who might give them some pugnaciousness as they attempt to bring health care reform?

Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL) Describes Republican Health Care Plan: 1. Don't Get Sick; 2. And if you do get sick... 3. Die Quickly. He also Crtically Offers an Apology not to Republicans but "to the dead and their families that we haven't voted sooner to end this holocaust in America,"

2009-10-01T02:08:00.001-04:00

CBSNEWS reported that: "Democratic Representative Alan Grayson of Florida, who has come under fire from Republicans for suggesting on the House floor Tuesday night that "Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick," said in an interview with CBSNews.com Wednesday that the response to his comments has been "overwhelmingly positive."

"People are calling us from all over the country to congratulate us for telling the truth," he said. "People are happy to see a Democrat with guts."

"Asked if he expected Republicans to put forward a resolution of disapproval criticizing him for his comments, Grayson said he expected that it would happen, though he is "quite sure it won't pass." Rep. Tom Price of Georgia has drafted a resolution rapping Grayson for "a breach of decorum and degraded the integrity and proceedings of the House," though he has not yet introduced it.

"A resolution like that doesn't save one human being's life," Grayson said, arguing that it instead will give people reason to focus "yet again on the fact that the other side is incapable of even coming up with an alternative" to Democrats' health care reform efforts.

"A similar resolution of disapproval criticizing Republican Rep. Joe Wilson for yelling "you lie!" during President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress was passed earlier this month.

"Asked his position on that resolution, Grayson said the two situations are "not the same thing."

"I don't know how anybody can equate what I said on the floor…with rudely interrupting the president," he said.

"In response to Republican calls for him to apologize for his initial comments, Grayson was defiant on the House floor Wednesday afternoon, offering an apology not to Republicans but "to the dead and their families that we haven't voted sooner to end this holocaust in America," a reference to Congress' inability to pass a health care reform bill." But Grayson's 'apology' pointedly based his remorse for his statement against the GOP not in the form of an olive branch to his political rivals but as a way to highlight and cast even more blame against Republican insensitivity for health care reform that has been brought to light by the results of "a Harvard study," that devastatingly makes it known to the American people that "more than 44,000 Americans die every year because they lack health insurance."

"Grayson said in the interview Wednesday that "no one, other that these Republicans who are desperate to change the subject, has asked me to apologize."

"The freshman Orlando-area representative, who hails from a swing district and is reportedly being targeted by Republicans in the 2010 election, said he is not worried that his opponents will use the controversy against him.

"No one's drumming me out of office. I beat a forth-term Republican incumbent [in 2008]," he said.

"I'm not going anywhere," Grayson added. "I don't even have an opponent yet."

Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL)

Economy Takes Another Hit: Home Foreclosures Go Up Nearly 17% Second Quarter Figures Reveal

2009-09-30T14:23:00.002-04:00

The nation's economy suffered home foreclosure rates "jumped 16 percent to 2.9 percent of serviced mortgages;" results from the 2nd quarter of 2009 the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) publicized in newly released figures from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision.

The Washington Post reported that: "Completed foreclosures reached 106,007 during the second quarter, compared with 90,696 during the first three months of the year, according to the report by the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates banks. Their quarterly report examines 64 percent of outstanding mortgages in the country.

"The increase was primarily the result of various government and industry foreclosure moratoriums," The Washington Post explained that the report said.

“The mortgage data reported for the second quarter of 2009 continued to reflect negative trends influenced by weakness in economic conditions, including high unemployment and declining home prices in weak housing markets,” the federal report explained.

Reuters explained that: "The report covers mortgages serviced by most of the industry’s largest mortgage servicers, whose loans make up about 64 percent of all mortgages outstanding in the United States.

"The regulators said there was a lull in newly initiated foreclosures during the second quarter as mortgage servicers worked to implement the federal “Making Home Affordable” program.

"The $50 billion program, launched in March, is designed to stabilize the housing market by helping up to 9 million Americans reduce their monthly mortgage payments to more affordable levels.

"The OCC and OTS said the emphasis on the program contributed to a dramatic shift in the composition of home retention actions toward lowering payments. Previously, the vast majority of loan modifications either did not change or increased monthly payments."

It is no secret that the Obama economic team has been fighting a difficult battle to right a situation that originated because of lax involvement of the Bush administration to address the housing credit situation that arose during Bush's presidential terms. [E]xperts, from both political parties, say Mr. Bush’s early personnel choices and overarching antipathy toward regulation created a climate, that, if it did not set off the turmoil, almost certainly aggravated it." Many of the same "experts say the administration could have done even more to curb excesses in the housing market."

"Today, even some sympathetic to Mr. Bush say he cannot disentangle himself from a home-lending industry that ran amok or a banking industry that mortgaged its future on toxic loans.

“The crisis definitely happened on their watch,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard... This is eight years into the Bush administration. There was a lot of time to deal with it.” Some of the primary effects of the home foreclosure crisis has been an overall erosion of consumer wealth, the stability of bank balance sheets, plummeting home prices, and a deterioration of consumer confidence."

The Obama administration has made keeping families in their homes and the Making Home Affordable plan has been a centerpiece of their efforts to stabilize the housing sector of the economy. "Under that plan, lenders are paid to lower a borrower's monthly payments. Government data has shown that since the program was launched in March, nearly 400,000 borrowers have been helped. The Obama administration aims to complete 500,000 loan modifications by November.

"But even as that program ramps up, rising unemployment continues to hamper foreclosure prevention efforts. The level of foreclosure actions started during the quarter stayed steady, while the number of seriously delinquent borrowers -- those who had missed at least two payments -- increased 10 percent, according to the report.

"The mortgage data "continued to reflect negative trends influenced by weakness in economic conditions including high unemployment and declining home prices in weak housing markets," the report said.

"The report also reflected the risks still posed by hundreds of thousands of risky home loans known as option adjustable-rate mortgages, which reset to significantly higher payments. With these "option ARMs," also known as pick-a-pay loans, a borrower chooses how much to pay each month, often less than the interest due. But the payments on these mortgages eventually rise significantly, putting the borrower at risk of losing the home.

"The report also reflected the risks still posed by hundreds of thousands of risky home loans known as option adjustable-rate mortgages, which reset to significantly higher payments. With these "option ARMs," also known as pick-a-pay loans, a borrower chooses how much to pay each month, often less than the interest due. But the payments on these mortgages eventually rise significantly, putting the borrower at risk of losing the home.

"More than 15 percent of these types of loans were seriously delinquent during the second quarter, compared with 5.3 percent of all mortgages, according to the report, and 10 percent were in the process of foreclosure. "The risks of these loans and geographic concentration caused them to perform significantly worse than the overall portfolio," the report said.More than 15 percent of these types of loans were seriously delinquent during the second quarter, compared with 5.3 percent of all mortgages, according to the report, and 10 percent were in the process of foreclosure. "The risks of these loans and geographic concentration caused them to perform significantly worse than the overall portfolio," the report said.

Global Climate Change Threatens The Health of the Earth As Resource Depletion Caused by Human Consumption of Natural Material Wealth Increases the Rate of the Degradation of the Biosphere

2009-09-29T20:44:00.000-04:00

Drawing on a blueprint provided in a recent article of the journal Nature that lists 9 interrelated environmental warning signs that are driving global climate change that has been exacerbated by human activities; has been predicted by a group of over two dozen leading scientific experts to pose a serious threat to the future of life on the Earth.

The often acknowledged difficulty with the recognition of warning signs or tipping points, as they are more popularly referred to today, is that they are rarely if ever identified until after they have taken place. But recently, scientists have noticed mathematical indicators that have demonstrated an unerring tendency of consistent results that points toward a possible emerging pattern in numerous models that demonstrate a comprehensive coalescence characteristics.

With the mathematical models that are being used to investigate global warming displaying an increasing reliance on a fundamental set of benchmark data. Scientists are well aware that ecological equilibrium is being stressed by greater pressure created by increasing consumption to acquire diminishing natural resources. They also realize that systems under stress first display a longer time to recover before a point is reached when regenerative events cease to exhibit an ability to recuperate.

Some of the leading mathematical and scientific experts who are investigating for indicators of tipping points having been reached, point to paying particular attention to factors involving desertification. These researchers have paid particular attention to grasslands, and the U.S. Geological Survey has been concentrating on "two sites in the Southwest" that they are investigating "by painstakingly measuring local conditions and experimentally setting fires, removing grasses and controlling the fall of water. But so far, the vegetation patterns that indicated tipping points in the Kalahari haven’t shown up here, though this may be due to poor image quality rather than bad theory. The researchers are now looking for signals in on-the-ground measurements of vegetation changes."

Summarizing the Nature account on the environmental warning signs behind global climate change, WIRED SCIENCE writer Brandon Keim reported that: "Climate change threatens to turn the planet into a stormy, overheated mess: That much we know. But according to 28 leading scientists, greenhouse gas pollution is but one of nine environmental factors critical to humanity’s future. If their boundaries are stretched too far, Earth’s environment could be catastrophically altered — and three have already been broken, with several others soon to follow.

"This grim diagnosis, published Wednesday in Nature, is the most ambitious assessment of planetary health to date. It’s a first-draft users’ manual for an era that scientists dub the “anthropocene,” in which nearly seven billion resource-hungry humans have come to dominate ecological change on Earth. The scientists’ quantifications are open to argument, but not the necessity of their perspective.

“It’s a crude attempt to map the environmental space in which we can operate,” said Jon Foley, director of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment and one of the paper’s lead authors. “We need to keep our activities in a certain range, or the planet could tip into a state we haven’t seen in the history of our civilization.”

"Thresholds for atmospheric carbon dioxide and ozone have already been described, and are widely known to the public. But the scientists say five other factors are just as important: ocean acidification, nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, land use, freshwater use and biodiversity. They say chemical pollution and atmospheric aerosols may also be essential, but can’t yet be quantified.

"Values for the proposed boundaries are still just estimates, and don’t account for how pushing one could affect another — how, for example, acidification that kills plankton could make it harder for the ocean to absorb CO2 and rebound from nitrogen pollution. Ecological models still can’t capture the entirety of Earth’s biological, geological and chemical processes, and it’s impossible to run whole-Earth experiments — except, arguably, for the experiment that’s going on now.

"Despite those uncertainties, one aspect of Earth’s behavior is becoming clear. Records of global transitions between geological ages, and of regional changes between environmental stages, suggest that planet-wide change could happen relatively quickly. It might not take thousands or millions of years for Earth’s environment to be altered. It could happen in centuries, perhaps even decades.

"Exactly what Earth would look like is difficult to predict in detail, but it could be radically different from the mild environment that has prevailed for the last 10,000 years. It was temperate stability that nurtured the rise of civilization, and it should continue for thousands of years to come, unless humanity keeps pushing the limits.

“The Earth of the last 10,000 years has been more recognizable than the Earth we may have 100 years from now. It won’t be Mars, but it won’t be the Earth that you and I know,” said Foley. “This is the single most defining problem of our time. Will we have the wisdom to be stewards of a world we’ve come to dominate?”

"Foley’s team put the atmospheric carbon dioxide threshold at 350 parts per million, a level the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change says should keep Earth’s average temperature from rising by more than four degrees Fahrenheit. Current atmospheric CO2 levels are already approaching 400 parts per million.

"Also exceeded are limits for species loss, which the scientists set at 10 per year per million species, and nitrogen use, pegged at 35 million tons per year. The current extinction rate is ten times higher than advised, ostensibly compromising the ability of ecosystems to process nutrients. The use of nitrogen — which is needed for fertilizer, but causes oxygen-choking algae blooms — is nearly four times higher than recommended.

"On the positive side, atmospheric levels of ultraviolet radiation-blocking ozone are safe, thanks to a 1987 ban on ozone-destroying chemicals. Total rates of ocean acidification, freshwater consumption and land use are also acceptable, but those thresholds are expected to be exceeded in coming decades.

"The seven boundary points are certain to be controversial, and Nature commissioned seven separate critiques by leading experts in each field.

"William Schlesinger, president of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, said the recommended nitrogen limit “seems arbitrary.” Echoing his words was Steve Bass of the International Institute for Environment and Development, who said the 15 percent cap on land devoted to agriculture could as easily be 10 or 20 percent.

"International Water Management Institute researcher David Molden said the 4,000 cubic kilometer ceiling on freshwater use — roughly one-third of all freshwater — “may be too high.” Myles Allen, an Oxford University climatologist, argued that CO2 emissions should be counted in a different way. Cristian Samper, director of the U.S. Natural History Museum, said that taxonomic family loss is a more relevant measure than species loss.

"According to Foley, who called his team’s threshold values a “cave painting” version of the true limits, the paper is less important for its details than its approach. And though the critics argued over the numbers, all agreed that exceeding them will be disastrous.

“Planetary boundaries are a welcome new approach,” wrote Molden. “It is imperative that we act now on several fronts to avert a calamity far greater than what we envision from climate change.”

"Peter Brewer, an ocean chemist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, criticized the paper’s lack of proposed solutions. Given the ongoing failure of governments and citizens to follow their scientists’ advice on climate change, more than dire warnings is clearly needed.

“Is it truly useful to create a list of environmental limits without serious plans for how they may be achieved?” Brewer wrote. “Without recognition of what would be needed economically and politically to enforce such limits, they may become just another stick to beat citizens with.”

“It’s unsatisfactory, I agree. We don’t answer the question of how to keep humanity from crossing the boundaries,” said Johan Rockstrom, director of the Stockholm Environment Institute and a lead author of the Nature paper. “That’s the next challenge. To stay within planetary boundaries, we need tremendous social transformation.”

Note: The Nature paper is an edited version of the full article, which is available from the Stockholm Resilience Institute.

Citations: “A safe operating space for humanity.” By Johan Rockström, Will Steffen, Kevin Noone, Asa Persson, F. Stuart Chapin, III, Eric F. Lambin, Timothy M. Lenton, Marten Scheffer, Carl Folke, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Björn Nykvist, Cynthia A. de Wit, Terry Hughes, Sander van der Leeuw, Henning Rodhe, Sverker Sörlin, Peter K. Snyder, Robert Costanza, Uno Svedin, Malin Falkenmark, Louise Karlberg, Robert W. Corell, Victoria J. Fabry, James Hansen, Brian Walker, Diana Liverman, Katherine Richardson, Paul Crutzen, Jonathan A. Foley. Nature, Vol. 461 No. 7263, September 24, 2009. “Early-warning signals for critical transitions.” By Marten Scheffer, Jordi Bascompte, William A. Brock, Victor Brovkin, Stephen R. Carpenter, Vasilis Dakos, Hermann Held, Egbert H. van Nes, Max Rietkerk & George Sugihara. Nature, Vol. 461, No. 7260, September 2, 2009.

Anchiornis huxleyi, Chinese Fossil Discovery Adds to the Understanding of the Relationship Between Form and Function in Dinosaurs and the Evolution of Flight

2009-09-28T11:24:00.312-04:00

The lithe creature, Anchiornis huxleyi which stood about 28 centimeters tall at the hip, is the oldest known to have sported feathers.-artist's representation

Recent fossil analysis of dinosaurs with feathers, often speculated to have been capable of flight , indicates an important discovery for the scientific "understanding of bird and flight evolution.that speculates that feathered dinosaurs were tree dwellers and consequently has "bolstering the notion that flight developed from the trees down, not from the ground up." Such is the opinion of Larry D. Martin, a paleontologist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, who provided his opinion on Anchiornis huxleyi and said: : “No dinosaur could walk well with feathers on its feet like that.”

Anchiornis huxleyi -artist's representation

Anchiornis huxleyi was discovered in a region of northeastern China and has been estimated to be between 151 to 161 million years old or approximately "between 1 million and 11 million years older than Archaeopteryx, which scientists regularly refer to as the original bird of antiquity.

Archaeopteryx (meaning "ancient wing") is a very early prehistoric bird, dating from about 150 million years ago during the Jurassic period, when many dinosaurs lived. It is one of the oldest-known birds.-artist's representation

"Archaeopteryx seemed to be part bird and part dinosaur. Unlike modern-day birds, it had teeth, three claws on each wing, a flat sternum (breastbone), belly ribs (gastralia), and a long, bony tail. Like modern-day birds, it had feathers, a lightly-built body with hollow bones, a wishbone (furcula) and reduced fingers. This crow-sized animal may have been able to fly, but not very far and not very well. Although it had feathers and could fly, it had similarities to dinosaurs, including its teeth, skull, lack of a horny bill, and certain bone structures. Archaeopteryx had a wingspan of about 1.5 feet (0.5 m) and was about 1 foot ( 30 cm) long from beak to tail. It probably weighed from 11 to 18 ounces (300 to 500 grams).

Archaeopteryx were highly non symmetrical; and their tail feathers were rather broad. "This implies that the wings and tail were used for lift generation. In 1868, Thomas Henry Huxley interpreted the Archaeopteryx fossil to be a transitional bird having many reptilian features. Using the fossils of Archaeopteryx , Huxley argued that birds and reptiles were descended from common ancestors. Decades later, Huxley's ideas fell out of favor, only to be reconsidered over a century later (after much research and ado) in the 1970's.

Researchers have also determined that feathers have had non-flight purposes and according to an article that appeared in Nature and reported on by Alexis Madrigal of WIRED SCIENCE have elaborated that: "Form can precede function, at least when it comes to mate-attracting feathers."

Madrigal explained: "A part-bird, part-dinosaur described in the journal Nature this week didn’t have feathers for flying, but did possess ostentatious ornamental plumage, including four tailfeathers three times longer than its pigeon-sized body.

"Epidexipteryx ("display" + "wing, feather") lived during the middle-to-late Jurassic, predating the famed Archaeoptryx, and represents an alternative evolutionary pathway from dinosaurs to birds," Madrigal continued.

"The discovery by the Chinese Academy of Sciences adds complexity to the presumed road from T-rex to turkey vulture because the creature looks like a mythological chimera." Madrigal discusses. "And that, in the words of the authors of the paper, is "bizarre".

"In 1986, J. A. Gauthier looked at over 100 characteristics of birds and dinosaurs and showed that birds belonged to the clade of coelurosaurian dinosaurs. [Gauthier, J.A., 1986. Saurischian monophyly and the origin of birds, in: The Origin of Birds and the Evolution of Flight, California Academy of Sciences Memoir No. 8]"

"Paleontologists think that Archaeopteryx was a dead-end in evolution and that coelurosaurian theropods (a group of dinosaurs that included the Dromaeosaurs Deinonychus, Utahraptor, and Velociraptor) led to the birds," Sid Perkins of ScienceNews has written.

Dromaeosaurs Deinonychus-artist's representation

Dromaeosaurs Utahraptor-artist's representation

Dromaeosaurs Velociraptor-artist's representation

The Anchiornis huxleyi has been described as being covered abundantly with two types of feather materials; “dino-fuzz,” resembles a frayed bundle of filaments. The other type, similar in overall structure to the feathers of modern-day birds, consists of small filaments that branch from a larger shaft-like filament."

Sid Perkins writes: "The "dino-fuzz" decorates the creature’s head and neck" an occurrence that was quite common among dinosaurs and suggests "that feathers evolved for purposes unrelated to flight." About two dozen of the shafted feathers adorn each forelimb, and a similar number embellish each lower leg and foot, the researchers report. Unlike most feathered dinosaurs described previously, which have the longest forelimb feathers near the tip of the limb.

"Anchiornis’ longest forelimb feathers are on the wrist, Xing Xu of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing said. Feathers on the legs and feet appear to have overlapped each other, creating aerodynamic surfaces that would have, in essence, given Anchiornis a wing on each of its four limbs. A similar configuration has been seen in other feathered dinosaurs, including Microraptor (SN: 1/27/07, p. 53) and Archaeopteryx (SN: 9/23/06, p. 197)."

Perkins, summarized remarks made by vertebrate paleontologist James M. Clark of George Washington University in Washington, D.C.:"With so many species with this arrangement, the four-winged configuration must have been an important phase in the evolutionary transition from dinosaurs to birds."

Writer, Perkins provided a summary of the prevalent view among many researchers who "scoff at the suggestion that the filamentary structures found on some dinosaurs, especially those unearthed in China in recent years, represent nascent feathers. But those creatures lived many millions of years after Archaeopteryx, which had feathers indistinguishable from those on modern-day birds."

Vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Bristol in England, Mike Benton is paraphrased by Perkins: "The new find is important because it undoubtedly includes the oldest known feathers on any creature."

“These exceptional fossils provide us with evidence that has been missing until now,” Xu said. “Now it all fits neatly into place, and we have tied up some of the loose ends.”

New Study Supported by Aarhus University, The Danish Polar Center and the U.S. National Science Foundation Finds the Changes That Have Taken Place in the Arctic May be Irreversible

2009-09-27T20:17:00.000-04:00

An adult female caribou and her newborn calf in Greenland during 2008-2009. Caribou numbers have been declining as a result of climate change. Credit: Eric Post, Penn State University. Source: LiveScience.

Arctic fox near Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. Arctic foxes are being displaced by red foxes, previously confined to lower, warmer latitudes. Credit: Eric Post, Penn State University. Source: LiveScience.

Cotton grass near Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. Grasses are expanding in some areas of the Arctic as a result of climate change. Credit: Eric Post, Penn State University. Source: LiveScience.

"Andrea Thompson, of LiveScience has written: "The dramatic changes sweeping the Arctic as a result of global warming aren't just confined to melting sea ice and polar bears — a new study finds that the forces of climate change are propagating throughout the frigid north, producing different effects in each ecosystem with the upshot that the face of the Arctic may be forever altered.

"The Arctic as we know it may be a thing of the past," said Eric Post of Penn State, who led an international team that brought together research on the effects of climate change from ecosystems across the Arctic.

"The study, detailed in the Sept. 11 issue of the journal Science, is one of the first to knit together and bring light to the details of the multitude of changes from across the region.

"Usually, when people talk about declines in the Arctic, they show a figure with declining sea ice extent and then show a picture of a polar bear. This study tries to move beyond such recourse by citing the wide array of papers that quantify ecological decline in the Arctic," said Ken Caldeira of Stanford University, who was not involved in the study. "I know of no similar paper that brings together such a wealth of scholarship on the state of Arctic ecosystems."

Arctic amplification

"While the Earth on average has warmed by about 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit (0.4 degrees Celsius) over the past 150 years, the Arctic has warmed by two to three times that amount.

"This amplification of the global warming signal in the Arctic is partly the result of a self-feeding cycle: As sea ice melts, the oceans absorb more heat from the sun's rays, causing less ice to re-form come winter.

"In the last two to three decades alone, the amount of ice covering the Arctic at the summer minimum has declined by about 17,000 square miles (45,000 square kilometers, or about the size of Vermont and New Hampshire combined) a year, the researchers say, in addition to breaking up earlier in the season and freezing back later.

"Snow cover over land has also decreased in the northernmost latitudes, as well as melting earlier come spring.

"These physical changes to the environment are having a profound impact on the flora and fauna that dwell in the Arctic.

"Species on land and at sea are suffering adverse consequences of human behavior at latitudes thousands of miles away," Post said. "It seems that no matter where you look — on the ground, in the air or in the water — we're seeing signs of rapid change."

Ice melt and migrations

"Arctic species that are dependent on the stability and persistence of the ice sheet — of which the polar bear is the most widely-recognized example — are particularly feeling the brunt of climate change. The loss of sea ice is causing a rapid decline in the number of ivory gulls, Pacific walrus, ringed seals, hooded seals, narwhals, and of course, polar bears.

"Polar bears and ringed seals both give birth in lairs or caves under the snow. If these refuges collapse in unusually early spring rains, the newborn pups end up lying exposed on the ice, where they die from hypothermia or predation.

"Other species are being threatened by the northward migrations of species once confined to more hospitable lower latitudes. One of the most visible invaders is the red fox, which is displacing the native Arctic fox.

"The winter moth, which defoliates mountain birch forests, has also been marching poleward, as have Low Arctic trees and shrubs, which affect the dynamics of an ecosystem. Adding more shrubs and trees to the landscape promotes deeper snow accumulation, which increases winter soil temperatures. Warmer soils mean more microbial activity, which makes the habitat even more suitable for shrubs.

"The addition of shrubs also propagates changes throughout the ecosystem and affects the ability of the tundra (or frozen soil) to store carbon: While more shrubs may lengthen the period of the growing season when the soil acts as a carbon sink, it also provides more food for grazing musk oxen and reindeer, who limit the carbon-soaking ability as they trim the plants. Grazing, trampling and defecation by herbivores also promote the growth and spread of grasses, which attract geese. Geese, in turn, can influence the productivity of lakes where they rest and graze.

Good for me, bad for you

"The changes in Arctic ecosystems can have opposing impacts on different species, with some even benefiting from them.

"The study found that wild reindeer on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard benefit from earlier snow melt. With less snow on the ground and a longer growing season, the nonmigratory reindeer can take advantage of an explosion in plant abundance. The result is more reindeer, as they are more able to reproduce and less likely to die.

"On the losing side of the equation are migratory caribou in Low Arctic Greenland, whose numbers the researchers find are declining. The caribou haven't been able to adjust their calving season to keep in step with the change in plant season, so new mothers in need of more food have less available and more calves die. Hotter summers may also bring more insects and parasites to prey on the caribou.

"The reduction in caribou numbers in turn impacts the local indigenous human populations: "Inuit hunters at my study site in Greenland have all but given up on hunting caribou there," Post said.

Forecasting the future

"Understanding why some ecosystems benefit or are less impacted by climate change while others are on the brink of collapse is one area that the researchers say needs more attention.

"Documenting the changes in this region is also key to developing any conservation plans, particularly because there are relatively few species in the Arctic.

"There is little functional redundancy among species in Arctic ecosystems," Post said. "Therefore, relatively small shifts in species ranges or abundances may cause fundamental changes in a unique ecosystem that also is important for tourism and traditional cultures."

"The rapid changes in the Arctic also provide a way for scientists to tackle a long-standing problem in climate research, predicting what will happen to ecosystems in a warming world, Caldeira said. While some predictions, such dipping polar bear numbers from sea ice melt, are more predictable, others, such as the dynamics between shrub growth and grazing, are harder to predict.

"The Arctic is, unfortunately, a good early laboratory in which to test our predictions of ecosystem response to global change," Caldeira told LiveScience.

"To better understand the changes taking place in the Arctic — and the Earth as a whole — the team proposes a series of studies across the region to monitor the drivers of climate change and the biological responses to them over the long term.

"We've seen a great deal of emphasis recently on the melting of Arctic ice," Post said. "The broad, rapid, and in some cases devastating changes documented in this paper remind us of why it's important to give consideration to the consequences of rising temperatures."

"The study was supported by Aarhus University, The Danish Polar Center and the U.S. National Science Foundation."

* Arctic News, Images and Information

* North vs. South Pole: 10 Wild Differences

* The Science of Global Warming

09/26/09 President Barack Obama Weekly Radio Address

2009-09-26T20:14:00.026-04:00

Recorded on his way back from the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh, the President discusses how engagement produced tangible results in several areas.

read the transcript

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26TH, 2009 AT 12:30 AM
Weekly Address: Progress with the G-20 in Pittsburgh

Posted by Jesse Lee
"Recorded literally on his way back from the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh, the President uses his Weekly Address to recap the progress made during the intensive discussions with world leaders. From an historic agreement to reform the global financial system, to groundbreaking commitments on reducing subsidies to fossil fuels worldwide, to unity in standing against threats to world peace -- engagement produced tangible results in several areas."

President Obama also addressed the reduction of nuclear weapons: "The United States is meeting our responsibilities by pursuing an agreement with Russia to reduce our strategic warheads and launchers. And just as we meet our responsibilities, so must other nations, including Iran and North Korea.

"Earlier this year, we imposed tough, new, sanctions on North Korea to stop their efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. And we will continue to stand with our allies and partners to press North Korea to move in a new direction.

"This week, we joined with the United Kingdom and France in presenting evidence that Iran has been building a secret nuclear facility to enrich uranium. This is a serious challenge to the global nonproliferation regime, and continues a disturbing pattern of Iranian evasion. That is why international negotiations with Iran scheduled for October 1st now take on added urgency.

"My offer of a serious, meaningful dialogue to resolve this issue remains open. But Iran must now cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and take action to demonstrate its peaceful intentions.

"On this, the international community is more united than ever before. Yesterday, I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with our European allies in condemning Iran’s program. In our meetings and public statements, President Medvedev of Russia and I agreed that Iran must pursue a new course or face consequences. All of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, and Germany, have made it clear that Iran must fulfill its responsibilities.

"Iran’s leaders must now choose – they can live up to their responsibilities and achieve integration with the community of nations. Or they will face increased pressure and isolation, and deny opportunity to their own people.

"These are the urgent threats of our time. And the United States is committed to a new chapter of international cooperation to meet them. This new chapter will not be written in one week or even one year. But we have begun. And for the American people and the people of the world, it will mean greater security and prosperity for years to come."

The Associated Press reported that: "The White House responded to the development by urging Iran's complete and immediate cooperation with the IAEA. ''After hiding this site from the international community for years, full transparency is essential, and it is time for Iran to play by the rules like everyone else,'' White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said.

Obama said in his address that evidence of Iran's building the underground plant ''continues a disturbing pattern of Iranian evasion'' that jeopardizes global nonproliferation.

"Ahead of Thursday's international talks with Iran in Geneva, Obama said the world ''is more united than ever before'' on this issue. Those negotiations, he said, ''now take on added urgency.''

Iran's failure to comply with international inspectors raised the potential of tougher economic penalties, although Obama and administration officials did not rule out military action.

''My offer of a serious, meaningful dialogue to resolve this issue remains open,'' Obama said, urging Tehran to ''take action to demonstrate its peaceful intentions.''

"Evidence of the clandestine facility was presented Friday by Obama and the leaders of Britain and France at the G-20 economic summit in Pittsburgh. The news overshadowed developments on regulating financial markets and reducing fossil fuel subsidies.

"Soon after, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, at his own news conference, urged Iran to cooperate, as did Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei. He, however, did not endorse penalties against Tehran.

"At a news conference in New York, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country had done nothing wrong and Obama would regret his actions.

''What we did was completely legal, according to the law. We have informed the agency, the agency will come and take a look and produce a report and it's nothing new,'' he said.

"Ahmadinejad said the plant -- which Iranian officials say was reported to nuclear authorities as required -- wouldn't be operational for 18 months. But he sidestepped a question about whether Iran had sufficient uranium to manufacture a nuclear weapon."

Vice President Biden Increases His Involvement in Advocating Health Care Reform

2009-09-25T01:46:00.001-04:00

Vice President Biden has increased active involvement with administration attempts to reform health care. This past Tuesday Mr. Biden met with state insurance commissioners to advocate tighter regulation of the health care must be implemented "to protect consumers and slow the spiraling cost of medical coverage."

Biden explained to the commissioners that the Obama plan will increase efficiency within the health care industry and in turn would have two immediate, positive effects; bringing about more competition and give consumers a wider range of choices, and in addition, would bring more consumers into the health care marketplace by tapping into the large number of Americans who do not currently have health insurance coverage.

Speaking to the overall positive effect of the Obama plan, Biden explained: "So, the profits might not be as high per person they cover, but there will be a much larger pool of paying customers."

Biden made his remarks advocating change in the current way that the health care industry operates based on the administration's contention that the nation faces an explosion in health care costs that threatens the ability of Americans to keep pace with escalating health care costs to the "National Association of Insurance Commissioners at National Harbor in Prince George's County," Maryland.

The next day, Biden spoke to senior citizens at a town hall meeting in Silver Spring, Maryland.

At the town hall meeting, Vice President Joe Biden joined with Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to tout the administration's issuance of a new document, "Health Insurance Reform and Medicare: Making Medicare Stronger for America's Seniors."

The Vice President tells seniors that the myths they've heard about health reform are "malarkey," as a new report shows how seniors and Medicare will benefit.

Biden was relaxed and at ease with the assembled crowd of seniors at Leisure World, a suburban Maryland retirement community, to reassure seniors about their Medicare coverage. He even took time to explain "about having to disabuse his own mother of myths being spread around about "death panels" and reduced Medicare benefits, getting laughs at the line: "I said, 'Mom, I'm trying to kill you," before explaining to her that it was a "bunch of malarkey."

Vice President Joe Biden speaks to seniors during a healthcare town hall meeting at Leisure World in Silver Springs, Maryland, Wednesday, September 23, 2009. Also in attendance were Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, and Director of the White House Office of Health Reform Nancy Ann De Parle.

“Nobody is going to mess with your benefits,” said Biden, who was joined by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and White House health adviser Nancy-Ann DeParle. “All we do is make it better for people on Medicare.”

White House health adviser Nancy-Ann DeParle (l.), Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (c.) and Vice President Joe Biden, answer questions from seniors about the proposed health care reforms on Wednesday, at Leisure World in Silver Spring, Maryland.
(Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

The White House announced that: "The new report out of HHS addresses some of the common questions American seniors have about health insurance reform: How will reducing subsidies to Medicare Advantage plans affect me? How will health insurance reform make my care more affordable? Will health insurance reform actually improve my care? Will I have a choice of doctor? Will Medicare be there for me in the future?

"For each of these questions," the report details "the problems with the status quo and discusses the solutions provided by the President’s health insurance reform plan. Some of the solutions listed in the report include:

    * Preserving and strengthening Medicare
    * Cutting high prescription drug costs
    * Making preventive services free
    * Ending overpayments to private insurance companies that cost all Medicare beneficiaries
    * Improving quality and patient safety
    * Making long term care services more affordable"

Vice President Joe Biden greets seniors after holding a healthcare town hall meeting at Leisure World in Silver Springs, Maryland, Wednesday, September 23, 2009. Also in attendance were Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, and Director of the White House Office of Health Reform Nancy Ann De Parle.

President Barack Obama Makes His First Address to the United Nations General Assembly

2009-09-24T02:08:00.000-04:00

In his first address to the UN General Assembly, the President denounces reflexive anti-Americanism and calls on the world's leaders to recognize the common challenges we face.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23RD, 2009 AT 1:23 PM
"Real Change is Possible"
Posted by Jesse Lee

"In this morning's speech to the United Nations General Assembly, President Obama covered a range of topics—all under the umbrella of his desire for leaders to recognize the "common future" of a world in which "the interests of peoples and nations are shared."

(President Barack Obama addresses the General Assembly of the UN in New York, Wednesday,
September 23, 2009. Official White House photo by Samantha Appleton.)

"He took the opportunity to reflect upon his first nine months in office, highlighting his administration's priorities and looking forward to challenges ahead:

"On my first day in office, I prohibited -- without exception or equivocation -- the use of torture by the United States of America. (Applause.) I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed, and we are doing the hard work of forging a framework to combat extremism within the rule of law. Every nation must know: America will live its values, and we will lead by example.

"We have set a clear and focused goal: to work with all members of this body to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and its extremist allies -- a network that has killed thousands of people of many faiths and nations, and that plotted to blow up this very building. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, we and many nations here are helping these governments develop the capacity to take the lead in this effort, while working to advance opportunity and security for their people.

"In Iraq, we are responsibly ending a war. We have removed American combat brigades from Iraqi cities, and set a deadline of next August to remove all our combat brigades from Iraqi territory. And I have made clear that we will help Iraqis transition to full responsibility for their future, and keep our commitment to remove all American troops by the end of 2011.

"I have outlined a comprehensive agenda to seek the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. In Moscow, the United States and Russia announced that we would pursue substantial reductions in our strategic warheads and launchers. At the Conference on Disarmament, we agreed on a work plan to negotiate an end to the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons. And this week, my Secretary of State will become the first senior American representative to the annual Members Conference of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

"Upon taking office, I appointed a Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, and America has worked steadily and aggressively to advance the cause of two states -- Israel and Palestine -- in which peace and security take root, and the rights of both Israelis and Palestinians are respected.

"To confront climate change, we have invested $80 billion in clean energy. We have substantially increased our fuel-efficiency standards. We have provided new incentives for conservation, launched an energy partnership across the Americas, and moved from a bystander to a leader in international climate negotiations.
To overcome an economic crisis that touches every corner of the world, we worked with the G20 nations to forge a coordinated international response of over $2 trillion in stimulus to bring the global economy back from the brink. We mobilized resources that helped prevent the crisis from spreading further to developing countries. And we joined with others to launch a $20 billion global food security initiative that will lend a hand to those who need it most, and help them build their own capacity.

"We've also re-engaged the United Nations. We have paid our bills. We have joined the Human Rights Council. (Applause.) We have signed the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. We have fully embraced the Millennium Development Goals. And we address our priorities here, in this institution -- for instance, through the Security Council meeting that I will chair tomorrow on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, and through the issues that I will discuss today.

"This is what we have already done. But this is just a beginning. Some of our actions have yielded progress. Some have laid the groundwork for progress in the future. But make no mistake: This cannot solely be America's endeavor. Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world's problems alone. We have sought -- in word and deed -- a new era of engagement with the world. And now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.

"The President also outlined the "Four Pillars" he believes are "fundamental to the future that we want for our children": "non-proliferation and disarmament; the promotion of peace and security; the preservation of our planet; and a global economy that advances opportunity for all people."

(President Barack Obama addresses the General Assembly of the UN in New York, Wednesday,
September 23, 2009. Official White House photo by Samantha Appleton.)

"In closing, the President offered a fresh take on the crucial choice that faces the international body:

"In short, the United Nations can be an institution that is disconnected from what matters in the lives of our citizens, or it can be an indispensable factor in advancing the interests of the people we serve.

"We have reached a pivotal moment. The United States stands ready to begin a new chapter of international cooperation -- one that recognizes the rights and responsibilities of all nations. And so, with confidence in our cause, and with a commitment to our values, we call on all nations to join us in building the future that our people so richly deserve."

All text and photos provided by the White House

The White House on Health Care Reform: The "Obama Plan in Four Minutes"

2009-09-23T20:07:00.000-04:00

The White House has unveiled a new video, culled from President Obama's recent address before Congress that is claimed to explain the president's health care reform plan in four minutes:

"In an address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama explained how health insurance reform will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance, coverage for those who don’t, and will lower the cost of health care for our families, our businesses, and our government."

"I suffer no illusions that this will be an easy process. It will be hard. But I also know that nearly a century after Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform, the cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough. So let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year."

– President Barack Obama, February 24, 2009

Progress

The President signed the Children’s Health Insurance Reauthorization Act on February 4, 2009, which provides quality health care to 11 million kids – 4 million who were previously uninsured.
The President’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act protects health coverage for 7 million Americans who lose their jobs through a 65 percent COBRA subsidy to make coverage affordable.
The Recovery Act also invests $19 billion in computerized medical records that will help to reduce costs and improve quality while ensuring patients’ privacy.
The Recovery Act also provides:
- $1 billion for prevention and wellness to improve America’s health and help to reduce health care costs;
- $1.1 billion for research to give doctors tools to make the best treatment decisions for their patients by providing objective information on the relative benefits of treatments; and
- $500 million for health workforce to help train the next generation of doctors and nurses.

Guiding Principles

"President Obama is committed to working with Congress to pass comprehensive health reform in his first year in order to control rising health care costs, guarantee choice of doctor, and assure high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans."

Learn about the fundamental health insurance consumer protections included in reform.

"Comprehensive health care reform can no longer wait. Rapidly escalating health care costs are crushing family, business, and government budgets. Employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have doubled in the last 9 years, a rate 3 times faster than cumulative wage increases. This forces families to sit around the kitchen table to make impossible choices between paying rent or paying health premiums. Given all that we spend on health care, American families should not be presented with that choice. The United States spent approximately $2.2 trillion on health care in 2007, or $7,421 per person – nearly twice the average of other developed nations. Americans spend more on health care than on housing or food. If rapid health cost growth persists, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2025, one out of every four dollars in our national economy will be tied up in the health system. This growing burden will limit other investments and priorities that are needed to grow our economy. Rising health care costs also affect our economic competitiveness in the global economy, as American companies compete against companies in other countries that have dramatically lower health care costs.

"The President has vowed that the health reform process will be different in his Administration – an open, inclusive, and transparent process where all ideas are encouraged and all parties work together to find a solution to the health care crisis. Working together with members of Congress, doctors and hospitals, businesses and unions, and other key health care stakeholders, the President is committed to making sure we finally enact comprehensive health care reform.

"The Administration believes that comprehensive health reform should:

Reduce long-term growth of health care costs for businesses and government
Protect families from bankruptcy or debt because of health care costs
Guarantee choice of doctors and health plans
Invest in prevention and wellness
Improve patient safety and quality of care
Assure affordable, quality health coverage for all Americans
Maintain coverage when you change or lose your job
End barriers to coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions

"Please visit www.HealthReform.gov http://www.HealthReform.govto learn more about the President’s commitment to enacting comprehensive health reform this year."

The Obama Plan: Stability & Security

for all Americans

"It will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance. It will provide insurance to those who don’t. And it will lower the cost of health care for our families, our businesses, and our government."

– President Barack Obama

If You Have Health Insurance

More Stability and Security

Ends discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions. Over the last three years, 12 million people were denied coverage directly or indirectly through high premiums due to a pre-existing condition. Under the President’s plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny coverage for health reasons or risks.
Limits premium discrimination based on gender and age. The President’s plan will end insurers’ practice of charging different premiums or denying coverage based on gender, and will limit premium variation based on age.
Prevents insurance companies from dropping coverage when people are sick and need it most. The President’s plan prohibits insurance companies from rescinding coverage that has already been purchased except in cases of fraud. In most states, insurance companies can cancel a policy if any medical condition was not listed on the application – even one not related to a current illness or one the patient didn’t even know about. A recent Congressional investigation found that over five years, three large insurance companies cancelled coverage for 20,000 people, saving them from paying $300 million in medical claims - $300 million that became either an obligation for the patient’s family or bad debt for doctors and hospitals.
Caps out-of pocket expenses so people don’t go broke when they get sick. The President’s plan will cap out-of-pocket expenses and will prohibit insurance companies from imposing annual or lifetime caps on benefit payments. A middle-class family purchasing health insurance directly from the individual insurance market today could spend up to 50 percent of household income on health care costs because there is no limit on out-of-pocket expenses.
Eliminates extra charges for preventive care like mammograms, flu shots and diabetes tests to improve health and save money. The President’s plan ensures that all Americans have access to free preventive services under their health insurance plans. Too many Americans forgo needed preventive care, in part because of the cost of check-ups and screenings that can identify health problems early when they can be most effectively treated. For example, 24 percent of women age 40 and over have not received a mammogram in the past two years, and 38 percent of adults age 50 and over have never had a colon cancer screening.
Protects Medicare for seniors. The President’s plan will extend new protections for Medicare beneficiaries that improve quality, coordinate care and reduce beneficiary and program costs. These protections will extend the life of the Medicare Trust Fund to pay for care for future generations.
Eliminates the "donut-hole" gap in coverage for prescription drugs. The President’s plan begins immediately to close the Medicare "donut hole" - a current gap in its drug benefit - by providing a 50 percent discount on brand-name prescription drugs for seniors who fall into it. In 2007, over 8 million seniors hit this coverage gap in the standard Medicare drug benefit. By 2019, the President’s plan will completely close the "donut hole". The average out-of-pocket spending for such beneficiaries who lack another source of insurance is $4,080.

If You Don't Have Insurance

Quality, Affordable Choices for All Americans

Creates a new insurance marketplace – the Exchange – that allows people without insurance and small businesses to compare plans and buy insurance at competitive prices. The President’s plan allows Americans who have health insurance and like it to keep it. But for those who lose their jobs, change jobs or move, new high quality, affordable options will be available in the exchange. Beginning in 2013, the Exchange will give Americans without access to affordable insurance on the job, and small businesses one-stop shopping for insurance where they can easily compare options based on price, benefits, and quality.
Provides new tax credits to help people buy insurance. The President’s plan will provide new tax credits on a sliding scale to individuals and families that will limit how much of their income can be spent on premiums. There will also be greater protection for cost-sharing for out-of-pocket expenses.
Provides small businesses tax credits and affordable options for covering employees. The President’s plan will also provide small businesses with tax credits to offset costs of providing coverage for their workers. Small businesses who for too long have faced higher prices than larger businesses, will now be eligible to enter the exchange so that they have lower costs and more choices for covering their workers.
Offers a public health insurance option to provide the uninsured and those who can’t find affordable coverage with a real choice. The President believes this option will promote competition, hold insurance companies accountable and assure affordable choices. It is completely voluntary. The President believes the public option must operate like any private insurance company – it must be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects.
Immediately offers new, low-cost coverage through a national "high risk" pool to protect people with preexisting conditions from financial ruin until the new Exchange is created. For those Americans who cannot get insurance coverage today because of a pre-existing condition, the President’s plan will immediately make available coverage without a mark-up due to their health condition. This policy will offer protection against financial ruin until a wider array of choices become available in the new exchange in 2013.

For All Americans

Reins In the Cost of Health Care for Our Families, Our Businesses, and Our Government

Won’t add a dime to the deficit and is paid for upfront. The President’s plan will not add one dime to the deficit today or in the future and is paid for in a fiscally responsible way. It begins the process of reforming the health care system so that we can further curb health care cost growth over the long term, and invests in quality improvements, consumer protections, prevention, and premium assistance. The plan fully pays for this investment through health system savings and new revenue including a fee on insurance companies that sell very expensive plans.
Requires additional cuts if savings are not realized. Under the plan, if the savings promised at the time of enactment don’t materialize, the President will be required to put forth additional savings to ensure that the plan does not add to the deficit.
Implements a number of delivery system reforms that begin to rein in health care costs and align incentives for hospitals, physicians, and others to improve quality. The President’s plan includes proposals that will improve the way care is delivered to emphasize quality over quantity, including: incentives for hospitals to prevent avoidable readmissions, pilots for new "bundled" payments in Medicare, and support for new models of delivering care through medical homes and accountable care organizations that focus on a coordinated approach to care and outcomes.
Creates an independent commission of doctors and medical experts to identify waste, fraud and abuse in the health care system. The President’s plan will create an independent Commission, made up of doctors and medical experts, to make recommendations to Congress each year on how to promote greater efficiency and higher quality in Medicare. The Commission will not be authorized to propose or implement Medicare changes that ration care or affect benefits, eligibility or beneficiary access to care. It will ensure that your tax dollars go directly to caring for seniors.
Orders immediate medical malpractice reform projects that could help doctors focus on putting their patients first, not on practicing defensive medicine. The President’s plan instructs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to move forward on awarding medical malpractice demonstration grants to states funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality as soon as possible.
Requires large employers to cover their employees and individuals who can afford it to buy insurance so everyone shares in the responsibility of reform. Under the President’s plan, large businesses – those with more than 50 workers – will be required to offer their workers coverage or pay a fee to help cover the cost of making coverage affordable in the exchange. This will ensure that workers in firms not offering coverage will have affordable coverage options for themselves and their families. Individuals who can afford it will have a responsibility to purchase coverage – but there will be a "hardship exemption" for those who cannot.

All information provided by the White House

Extraordinary Images of Glaciers Photographed by Astronauts and Satellites Impressively Detail the Effects of Global Warming

2009-09-22T17:38:00.000-04:00

From time to time, WIRED SCIENCE provides its readers with an impressive array of photos that visually present a compelling scientific issue. In the case concerning glaciers, they have a very important role in carving out and shaping the surface landscape features of the Earth. Because they are thousands of years old, glaciers provide scientists with access to the actual conditions of Earth's ancient atmospheres. Contemporary issues of global warming are witnessed by scientists who monitor the melting of glacial formations. Such is the case with the presentation on glaciers that follows:

Bear Glacier, Alaska

"This image taken in 2005 of Bear Glacier highlights the beautiful color of many glacial lakes. The hue is caused by the silt that is finely ground away from the valley walls by the glacier and deposited in the lake. The particles in this “glacial flour” can be very reflective, turning the water into a distinctive greenish blue. The lake, eight miles up from the terminus of the glacier, was held in place by the glacier, but in 2008 it broke through and drained into Resurrection Bay in Kenai Fjords National Park.

"The grey stripe down the middle of the glacier is called a medial moraine. It is formed when two glaciers flow into each other and join on their way downhill. When glaciers come together, their lateral moraines, long ridges formed along their edges as the freeze-thaw cycle of the glacier breaks off chunks of rock from the surrounding walls, meet to form a rocky ridge along the center of the joined glaciers."

Image: GeoEye/NASA, 2005

Heiltskuk Ice Field, British Columbia

"Covering nearly 1,400 square miles, the vast Heiltskuk Ice Field lies in the southern Coast Mountains of British Columbia. Taken by an astronaut on the International Space Station, this photo captures the snow-covered mountain slopes as well as several of the ice field’s valley glaciers, which are wide swaths of slowly flowing ice and debris. As these glaciers creep downhill, they carve out large U-shaped valleys that will remain long after the glacier melts. In fact, scientists use these characteristic valleys to identify regions that were once covered in ice but are now glacier-free.

"The two largest valley glaciers shown here are the Silverthrone Glacier and the Klinaklini Glacier, which merge with each other at the top of the photo. The dark lines of rock and detritus of the lateral and medial moraines along the edges and middle of the glaciers are clearly visible."

Image: NASA, 2009.

Erebus Ice Tongue, Antarctica

"The saw-shaped projection jutting out from this glacier is known as the Erebus Ice Tongue, a long, narrow sheet of ice almost 7 miles long and 33 feet high. This peculiar structure is formed as the Erebus glacier in Antarctica flows rapidly down Mount Erebus and into the McMurdo Sound. During the summer, when the rest of the sea ice in McMurdo melts, the ice tongue floats on the water without thawing. As waves of sea water crash over the sides of the tongue, they carve elaborate shapes and sometimes create deep caves along the edges of the ice sheet. Occasionally, sections of the ice tongue calve off to form small icebergs.

"Data for this false-color landscape was captured by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite, and the image was created by combining data in various wavelengths."

Image: NASA/ASTER, 2001

Western Greenland Valley

"This natural-color image captured in August shows several small glaciers spilling into a mostly dry valley in western Greenland that itself was formed by a glacier in the past. Ground up rock from past glaciations has collected in the valley, giving the pools of water at the snouts of the current glaciers a turquoise color.

"The photo was aqcuired by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite."

Image: NASA, 2009

Grey Glacier, Chile

"Part of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field of Chile and Argentina, Grey Glacier covered 104 square miles when it was measured in 1996. By 2007, when this photograph was taken by astronauts from the International Space Station, the glacier had shrunk considerably, as seen in a comparative false-color image. Scientists think increased regional temperatures and changes in the amount of precipitation have led to more ice calving off as free-floating chunks, and less ice being replenished each year.

"In the natural-color image above, Grey Glacier looks pale blue because ice absorbs red wavelengths of light and scatters blue. The rough surface of this part of the glacier is caused by vertical cracks in the surface called crevasses, which are formed near the ends of glaciers as the flow of ice at the bottom speeds up relative to the brittle ice on top."

Image: NASA, 2007.

Eugenie Glacier, Dobbin Bay in the Canadian Arctic

"This stunning shot of the Eugenie Glacier in the Canadian Arctic was taken by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) satellite, which takes high-resolution images designed to detect even minute changes in the extent and features of the world’s glaciers.

"This image highlights the fact that glaciers are flowing much like water but at a far slower pace. Smaller glaciers flow down valleys like river tributaries into larger glaciers. The bottom of Eugenie Glacier is floating on the surface of Dobbin Bay; a close-up of the tongue shows extensive surface cracks and calving of small icebergs into the bay."

Image: NASA/ASTER, 2000

Retreat of the Helheim Glacier, Greenland

"Glaciers stay intact as long as the ice thickness and water depth allow them to stay firmly attached to the ground. But when the ice becomes too thin or the water gets too deep, the tip of a glacier starts to float and rapidly cracks into icebergs, creating what’s called a “calving edge.” This photograph, captured by NASA’s Terra satellite in 2003, shows the calving edge of the Helheim Glacier in Greenland. Comparing similar images from 2001 and 2005 reveals that the solid portion of the glacier has been shrinking rapidly. Measurements from NASA reveal that in just four years, the glacier’s margin retreated 4.7 miles and its flow speed increased from 5 to 7.5 miles per year. Between 2001 and 2003, the thickness of the glacier also shrunk by about 131 feet.

"Unfortunately, the entire Greenland Ice Sheet has been undergoing similar shrinkage, thinning by tens of yards in the past decade. While warmer temperatures have certainly caused some of the thinning, scientists also think that the retreat of the ice margin has played a role: With less grounded ice to slow the ice sheet down, it’s moving out to sea at a faster rate."

Image: NASA ASTER, 2003.

Ellesmere Island National Park Reserve

"This false-color composite image shows a tidewater glacier in the Greely Fjord that extends out over the sea water for a short distance and breaks off into icebergs, which can be seen floating away. The dark spots on the glaciers are likely melt ponds. The pond water is darker than the surface of the glacier and consequently absorbs more heat, which melts more ice and causes the ponds to grow. Sometimes, water from glacial melt ponds will flow through cracks in the glacier to the base, lubricating the surface and causing the glacier to flow more quickly."

Image: NASA/ASTER, 2003.

Mt. Rainier, Washington

"At 14,411 feet, Mt. Rainier is the tallest volcano in the Cascade Range and has a 1,280 foot-wide summit crater. On its eastern slope, it hosts Emmons Glacier, the largest glacier in the lower 48 states. Rainier is an active volcano that is continuously monitored by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Cascade Volcano Observatory. And though it last erupted in 1840, it is considered the most hazardous volcano in the country, in part because of the risk of flooding from melting glaciers in the event of an eruption. This photo was captured on a rare clear day by astronauts on the International Space Station."

Image: NASA, 2005

Upsala Glacier, Patagonian Argentina

"Upsala Glacier is the third largest glacier of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field at around 300 square miles and ends in Lake Argentino. Patagonian glaciers have been retreating rapidly in recent decades, some as much as 2.5 miles between the late 1960s and mid 1990s, making them a target for International Space Station crew observations. Upsala appears to still be retreating with visible changes between this photo taken in 2004 and another from 2000."

Image: NASA, 2004

Byrd Glacier, Antarctica

"The Byrd Glacier near McMurdo Station in Antarctica runs 100 miles through a steep 15-mile-wide valley in the Transatlantic Mountains. This fast-flowing glacier moves ice toward the Ross Ice Shelf at the rate of one half mile a year and adds more ice to the ice sheet than any other glacier. Images such as this one from the U.S. Geological Survey’s Landsat-7 satellite have been combined to form the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica. The mosaic incorporates more than 1,000 images."

Image: USGS, 1999

Pasterze Glacier, Austria

European glaciers have been rapidly retreating in recent years, due to higher summer temperatures and lower winter precipitation. Pasterze Glacier has been shrinking since 1856. Satellite data such as this image is used by scientists to keep track of the movement of glaciers around the world.

Image: NASA, 2001.

Bering Glacier, Alaska

Bering Glacier, combined with the ice field that feeds it, is the largest glacier in North America at 2,000 square miles, as well as the longest at 118 miles. This glacier has retreated around 7.5 miles and thinned by several hundred yards over the last century, though it is still around 2,500 feet thick in some places. Scientists think the shrinking of Alaskan glaciers such as Bering has reduced the pressure on the boundary between tectonic plates beneath them and consequently increased the number of earthquakes in the region.

Image: NASA/USGS, 2002

Composite Image of the Center of the Milky Way Galaxy is Released on September 21st 2009

2009-09-21T21:20:00.001-04:00

A Collection of More Than a Thousand Photographic Images Produced This View of the Center of Our Galaxy

Have you ever wondered what the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy might look like?

Only a week ago, on September 14th, the human race was presented with a panoramic view of the Milky Way, so today's image significantly adds to our perspective on the vastness of our home galaxy.

Panoramic View of the Milky Way Galaxy Was Made Available to the Public on September 14th 2009

Researchers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile have established a web site, Gigagalaxy zoom that allows visitors an opportunity to select and observe much larger images of portions of the Milky Way. French photographers Serge Brunier and Frédéric Tapissier did the considerable amount of work that made the panoramic view a reality.

The project addressed a dual concern: to provide "a human-eye view of the sky." and: "The ESO developed the project, which features this and other images by Stéphane Guisard to celebrate the 400th aniversary of Galileo’s first use of the telescope to view the heavens.

Why is Mars Red When it Should be Black: A Chemical Reaction with the Eroded Sand Contributes to Mars Red Color

2009-09-20T17:53:00.000-04:00

Mars

Katrina Cain provides a concise answer to the question of why Mars s red in Universe Today: "For most of the planet, the red layer only covers a couple of millimeters and at its deepest, two meters.

"The red color comes from various oxides of iron (hematite mostly) in very, very fine particles, and trace amounts of other elements including titanium, chlorine and sulfur.

"One possible way the dust was created was by harder basalt rocks, which contain more feldspar, grinding against the softer basalt to create fine dust particles.

"All of that iron had to come from somewhere: volcanoes. The best information that we have is that the surface of mars below the red layer is made up of hardened, low viscose lava: basalt. The concentration of iron in Mars' basalt is higher than that of Earth, which is why Earth is much less red.

"And that is why Mars is red."

Nancy Atkinson, also writing in Universe Today explains that the photography provided by the Mars Exploration Rovers is as much a work of artistry as it is of science: ..."scientists try and calibrate the rovers to see in "true color", but mostly, colors are chosen to yield the most science.

"Here's how scientists calibrate their amazing instruments, and the difference between true and false colors.
Atkinson poses the question: True or false: When we see the gorgeous, iconic images from" the rovers on Mars "those pictures represent what human eyes would see if they observed those vistas first hand."

Atkinson's answer: "The rovers provide a combination of so-called "true" and "false" color images. But, it turns out, the term "true color" is a bit controversial, and many involved the field of extraterrestrial imaging are not very fond of it.

"We actually try to avoid the term 'true color' because nobody really knows precisely what the 'truth' is on Mars," said Jim Bell, the lead scientist for the Pancam color imaging system on the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER). In fact, Bell pointed out, on Mars, as well as Earth, color changes all the time: whether it's cloudy or clear, the sun is high or low, or if there are variations in how much dust is in the atmosphere. "Colors change from moment to moment. It's a dynamic thing. We try not to draw the line that hard by saying 'this is the truth!'"

Bell likes to use the term "approximate true color" because the MER panoramic camera images are estimates of what humans would see if they were on Mars. Other colleagues, Bell said, use "natural color."

"True color would be an attempt to reproduce visually accurate color. False color, on the other hand, is an arbitrary selection of colors to represent some characteristic in the image, such as chemical composition, velocity, or distance. Additionally, by definition, any infrared or ultraviolet image would need to be represented with "false color" since those wavelengths are invisible to humans," Atkinson explained.

The cameras on ... MER do not take color pictures, however. Color images ... are assembled from separate black & white images taken through color filters. For one image, the spacecraft" must "take three pictures, usually through a red, a green, and a blue filter and then each of those photos gets downlinked to Earth. They are then combined with software into a color image. This happens automatically inside off-the-shelf color cameras that we use here on Earth. But the MER Pancams have 8 different color filters." Atkinson continues. "This gives the imaging teams infinitely more flexibility and sometimes, artistic license. Depending on which filters are used, the color can be closer or farther from "reality."

The same rock imaged in true and false color by the Mars Rover, Opportunity.

"(W)hen the MER Pancam team wants to produce an image that shows what a human standing on Mars would see," Atkinson asks; "how do they get the right colors? The rovers both have a tool on board know as the MarsDial which has been used as an educational project about sundials. "But its real job is a calibration target," said Bell. "It has grayscale rings on it with color chips in the corners. We measured them very accurately and took pictures of them before launch and so we know what the colors and different shades of grey are."

"One of the first pictures taken by the rovers was of the MarsDial. "We take a picture of the MarsDial and calibrate it and process it through our software," said Bell. "If it comes out looking like we know it should, then we have great confidence in our ability to point the camera somewhere else, take a picture, do the same process and that those colors will be right, too."

The rover Pancams are configured to produce the most scientific information as possibe.

""It turns out there is a whole variety of iron-bearing minerals that have different color response at infrared wavelengths that the camera is sensitive to," said Bell, "so we can make very garish, kind of Andy Warhol-like false color pictures." Bell added that these images serve double duty in that they provide scientific information, plus the public really enjoys the images.

And so, ...in "MER, color is used as a tool, to either enhance an object's detail or to visualize what otherwise could not be seen by the human eye. Without false color, our eyes would never see (and we would never know) what ionized gases make up a nebula, for example, or what iron-bearing minerals lie on the surface of Mars.

"As for "true color," there's a large academic and scholarly community that studies color in areas such as the paint industry that sometimes gets upset when the term "true color" is used by the astronomical imaging group. "They have a well-established framework for what is true color, and how they quantify color. But we're not really working within that framework at that level. So we try to steer away from using the term 'true color'," Atkinson further explains.

"Levay noted that no color reproduction can be 100% accurate because of differences in technology between film and digital photography, printing techniques, or even different settings on a computer screen. Additionally, there are variations in how different people perceive color.

"Bell concluded, "What we're doing on Mars is really just an estimate, it's our best guess using our knowledge of the cameras with the calibration target. But whether it is absolutely 100% true, I think it's going to take people going there to find that out."

Hadley Legget contributes a posting in WIRED NEWS that provides more detailed current scientific thought on why Mars appears red when it should actually be black in over all color..

Leggett writes: "Recent experiments show that regular sand, when combined with black Martian basalt, takes on a reddish hue as it’s crushed into dust, whether or not water or oxygen is present. Researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark claim that Mars’ red dust could have formed without the water that current hypotheses hold once covered the planet.

Panorama of Mars captured by Mars Pathfinder.

“Mars should really look blackish between its white polar caps, because most of the rocks at mid-latitudes are basalt,” said physicist Jonathan Merrison in a press release. “For decades we assumed that the reddish regions on Mars are related to the water-rich early history of the planet and that, at least in some areas, water-bearing, heavily oxidized iron minerals are present.”

"But when Merrison and his team mixed sand with a mineral called magnetite, found in Martian basalt, they found that mechanical stimulation alone produced a fine red dust. To simulate sand transport on Mars, the scientists tumbled pure quartz in a hermetically sealed flask for seven months, flipping each flask 10 million times. By the end of the experiment, 10 percent of the sand had turned to dust, and it became redder and redder with the addition of magnetite.

“Subsequent analysis of the flask material and dust has shown that the magnetite was transformed into the red mineral hematite, through a completely mechanical process without the presence of water at any stage of this process,” said Merrison, who presented the work yesterday at the European Planetary Science Congress in Germany.

"Although the scientists don’t understand how the black mineral converts into the red one, they think it’s due to a chemical reaction with the eroded sand. Because the experiment works not only in air, but also in a dry carbon dioxide atmosphere like the one on Mars, the researchers say simple grinding is a plausible explanation for how Mars got its striking color."

Scientists say Mars should look black like the planet on the right, but may have turned red through a mechanical grinding process.
NASA/ESA/Hubble Team.

09/19/09 President Barack Obama Weekly Radio Address

2009-09-19T14:59:00.046-04:00

read the transcript

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19TH, 2009 AT 12:01 AM
Weekly Address: Progress in the Global Economy
Posted by Jesse Lee
With the next G20 Summit approaching in Pittsburgh, the President goes over the progress in stemming a global economic crisis. He discusses the impact of the Recovery Act, and pledges that "lobbyists for big Wall Street banks" will not prevent real reform for the future, including a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

Courtesy The White House-THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG

Obama Lays Out G-20 Economic Goal

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 19, 2009

Filed at 7:22 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- "President Barack Obama says the world's leading economic powers have made progress in stabilizing the global financial system but much work remains to produce needed jobs and growth.

"'The good news is that we've made real progress since last time we met -- here at home and around the world,'' Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday. The G-20 summit in Pittsburgh next week comes five months after the group of 20 nations with the world's leading and emerging economies met in London.

"Obama said it will offer a good chance for a ''checkup to review the steps each nation has taken -- separately and together -- to break the back of this economic crisis.'' He recalled that the April meeting came at the height of the crisis.

"Obama noted several steps have been taken to spur the U.S. economy, pointing to the stimulus package, efforts to unlock frozen credit markets and free more loans for people investing in homes, cars, education or financing small businesses. And he said other nations have been challenged to address underlying problems that caused a deep global recession.

"But Obama said his administration knows that ''stopping the bleeding isn't nearly enough. We know we still have a lot to do here at home to build an economy that is producing good jobs for all those who are looking for work today.

''"And we know we still have a lot to do, in conjunction with nations around the world, to strengthen the rules governing financial markets and ensure that we never again find ourselves in the precarious situation we found ourselves in just one year ago.''

"He said it's essential that the U.S. government update the rules governing financial firms and markets.

''"At next week's G-20 summit, we'll discuss some of the steps that are required to safeguard our global financial system and close gaps in regulation around the world -- gaps that permitted the kinds of reckless risk-taking and irresponsibility that led to the crisis,'' he said.

"He said another important step for the U.S. is establishment of a consumer protection agency that would be intended to protect people from signing up for mortgages they can't afford and contracts they can't understand.

"Lobbyists for big financial institutions are working to stop these changes, said Obama, who added that it's critical to follow through on the changes.

''"We cannot let the narrow interests of a few come before the interests of all of us,'' he said. ''We cannot forget how close we came to the brink, and perpetuate the broken system and breakdown of responsibility that made it possible.''"

President Barack Obama During his Weekly Radio Address of September 19th 2009: White House Photo, Pete Souza

Karl Rove: Just Another Well Paid Peon for the American Un-Health Insurance Industry

2009-09-18T01:48:00.003-04:00

Karl Rove, A Leading Member of the GOP Cognoscenti: Late 1900 Beliefs for the 21st Century

How quick witted those traditionalist, status quo supporting headline writers for the Wall Street Journal really are: The cons are afraid to admit how anxious everyday people are for serious health care reform so they use the tern "Obama Care" to thumb their noses at the overwhelming majority of Americans who want to see the failed health care system that is running our economy into the ground fixed once and for all time.

Delivering the cons message; whose sole purpose is to misinform and scare the American people to be thankful for the outlandishly expensive and unresponsive system that the un-health insurance industry has entrenched into the U S economy and into the accepting consciousness of a small but vocal portion of the American people is none other than un-health industry windbag, Karl Rove.

Karl Rove is a simple minded mouthpiece.whose sole purpose is to spread the propaganda crafted by the puppet masters of the un-health insurance industry. His sole job is to keep the lies coming for the corporate interests and plutocrats that control the GOP, which is nothing more than a sham creation of the powerful interests that steer the course of public policy in our nation.

Today's specific task for Rove is to portray President Obama as a weak, conniving leader, whose health care reform is intended to turn the U S into a socialist country. Furthermore, Rove ridicules Obama as a president who is even unable to preside over his own party let alone the nation. The well-established backdrop from which Rove ply's his ad hominin attacks against Obama has already been established by the scores of other peons used by the plutocrats to such an extent that even the most outlandish claims against the president find believers throughout the lunatic right wing fringe constantly cultivated by the cons.

Obama outlandishly shown in white face paint - Joker style with socialism written across bottom of the poster to reinforce the cons intended discrediting attacks on the president: Santi Tafarella’s blog on books, culture, and politics

What the nay saying cons are failing to perceive as they mount their election style activities against the reform of health care, is that typical Americans have grown weary of the perpetual political campaign that promotes divisiveness by relying on the promotion of distortion, negative attacks and hyped up name calling. The common theme behind the cons use of their attack, attack, attack strategy is that it lacks any positive or uplifting themes for the general population to rally around.

President Obama as been quick to pick up on the cons overbearing negative style. When the president spoke before Congress last week he made it a point to denounce "the same partisan spectacle that only hardens the disdain many Americans have toward their own government. "

President Obama giving his health care speech before Congress in early September 2009.

Since the speech, the Obama team has raised the intensity of their own campaign before the nation. Included in the administration's strategy is the inclusion of more presidential speeches, rallies, town hall meetings, the application of greater pressure tactics on up until now balking Congressional Democrats.

Meanwhile, Rove, like other Republicans, has no compelling, competitive vision to bring to the attention of Americans. Instead he is engaging his 'expertise' to issue critiques of the president's performance in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that focuses on Obama's appearance before Congress last week. Rove cites a Gallup Poll that "found that 38% of Americans say their representative should vote for ObamaCare--40% want their member to vote against it." Rove continued: "It was 37%-39% on the same question the day before Mr. Obama spoke."

Rove then missed a chance to excoriate the president on his polling numbers and instead went off on a tangent and complained: "Part of Mr. Obama's problem is his language. His speech contained little new information and his tone was unpresidential. Instead of binding Americans to his cause, he called legitimate concerns "misinformation," "false," "demagoguery," "distortion" or "tall tales." Earlier in the week he declared them "lies." This was like calling people with concerns stupid, and it's not the way to win them over."

Rove then wasted several paragraphs of commentary to recite polling information that he believes should concern Obama and his Democratic colleagues. He then misrepresented last Sundays 9-12 con activist tea bag rally in Washington as some kind of ominous demonstration against health care reform. Then Rove boldly predicted of the rally; that: "If it keeps up, middle-class anxiety about the national debt could make 2010 a tough year for any Democrat up for re-election." Rove then adjusts his Wizard of Oz black top hat.

The striking similarity between a wax statue of the character who portrayed the Wizard of Oz and Karl Rove the character who works tirelessly to create disinformation and fear!

and declares with the type of dead reckoning precision that only Karl Rove possesses: "Mr. Obama will appear on five news shows on Sunday. His time might be better spent praying for more public support." Wow! Talk about bold predictions and devastating attacks! Rove once again proves himself without equal in the universe of political punditry!

When one of the top guns for hire available to the GOP takes such a bland tact against Obama; it leaves political observers to ponder just how little ammunition the cons have left to battle Obama and the Democrats on the national health care initiative.

Turdblossom

"A Molecular Mechanism" Has Been Verified by Yale University Neuroscientists to be Essential to the Operation of the Cerebral Cortex

2009-09-17T00:36:00.000-04:00

Neurons in green are over expressing a key gene that abnormally segregates them from other neurons (red and blue) within a developing column in the cerebral cortex. Credit: Yale University

"A molecular mechanism" has been identified by researchers at Yale University, according to Bill Hathaway of Yale University , who was publicizing an article in the Sept. 16th online issue of the journal Nature about the Yale researchers accomplishment. The molecular mechanism has been determined to regulate the correct blending of neurons - brain cells that carry out the properties of the mind; during the structural arrangement of columns that are necessary for the functioning of the cerebral cortex, or as it is more commonly referred to as the Cerebrum. The outermost portion of the Cerebrum measures 2-6 mm in depth and is often referred to as the gray matter of the brain.

The Outer Area of the Human Brain: Google Images

"The principle unit of organization is the cortical column. Within each column, neurons located in each of the layers within a given column respond best to a single class of receptors, and all of the neurons respond to stimulation applied to the same local region of the body surface. Adjoining columns representing the same body surface have different physiological properties, such as being rapidly adapting or slowly adapting to sensory stimulation."

Neuroscientists have long suspected that the ability of the cerebral cortex to process information relies on groupings of neurons that form vertical columns whose proper functioning is critically dependent on results obtained from the correct amalgamation of neurons.

Brain neurons: flickr.com

"The cortical column, also known as the minicolumn, is the basic functional unit of the cerebral cortex. The column is oriented perpendicular to the cortical surface, and consists of six distinct layers of neurons. Each cortical column consists of about 100 neurons. All neurons inside the column are tightly connected, although neurons connections extend to adjacent columns and columns far across the cortex and into subcortical areas, particularly the thalamus. Cortical columns are capable of memorizing relations and performing more complex operations than individual neurons; to extend the information processing analogy, if a neuron is analogous to a logic gate, a cortical column is more analogous to a small subroutine."

Neuroscientists suspect that if the mixture of neurons in the column is imprecise, the most likely outcome would be the appearance of severe cognitive problems including types of autism and mental retardation. To date, researchers have been unable to find the particular molecular mechanism that controls the intermixing of neurons that is intended to prevent cognitive difficulties.

The Yale group of researchers was "led by Pasko Rakic, professor and chairman of the Department of Neurobiology and head of the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience."

Yale spokesman, Bill Hathaway, in his press release, elaborated on the researchers' description of their approach to investigating the molecular mechanism: "Using the most advanced molecular technology, the Yale team showed that during neuronal migration, the intermixing of neurons within column depends on the expression levels of two genes - A-type Eph receptor and ephrin-As, a ligand, or molecule that binds to the receptor. Neuronal cells failed to move laterally into proper columns in mice lacking the ligands or receptors."

The Yale press release elaborated that: "Masaaki Torii, the first author of the paper, said he was surprised to find that the tiny lateral shift of migrating neurons controlled by these molecules plays such a pivotal role in the normal cortical development."

"This so far unrecognized mechanism for lateral neuronal dispersion seems to be essential for the proper intermixing of neuronal types in the cortical columns, which, when disrupted, might contribute to neuropsychiatric disorders " explained team leader Rakic.

Many scientists and researchers have expressed their temptation "to think of the cortical column as a basic universal computational unit of the cortex."

America's Liberal Progressive Idea

An Introductory Approach to Physical Cosmology as a Means of Understanding the Universe

Primordial Earth Most Likely Was Populated by Numerous Colonies of Arsenic-Eating Bacteria

NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer satellite, IBEX, Provides Evidence That a Narrow Ribbon Structure of Densely Packed Neutral Atoms Bounds our Solar System

10/17/09 President Barack Obama Weekly Radio Address

The Saturday Word: Health Care Battles

Obama Chastises "Dishonest" Health Insurers By REUTERSPublished: October 17, 2009

Obama Praises Senate Committee's Health Care Vote

Researchers Investigate the Connection Between the Diminishment of Biodiversity and the Weakening of Global Economic Development

Scientists Feel Confident That They Have Finally determined that the flatworm Acoelomorpha Belongs as a Sister Clade to Other Bilateral Animals

A Thick, Misty Haze of Organically Rich Compounds Filled the Atmosphere of a Young Earth and Contributed to the Development of Terrestrial Life Forms on the Surface of our Home Planet

Recent Research in Humanity's Migration Out of Africa Took Place More Recently Than Previously Believed

Nature's Eye Candy

A Conservative With A Conscience

The Baucus Conundrum

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: October 8, 2009

10/10/09 President Barack Obama Weekly Radio Address

'Is Conservatism Brain-Dead?' - Steven F. Hayward Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

Nobel Prize in Chemistry Awarded to Three Molecular Biologists

Hofstadter's Paranoid Style at Work in Today's GOP?

The Truth Lies Before Us If We Only Take the Time to Accept It

Reduviasporonites, an Ancient Fungus that Flourished About 250 Million Years Ago Capitalised on a World-Wide Disaster and Thrived on Early Earth

The God Spot, Biology, Evolution, and Religious Belief

10/03/09 President Barack Obama Weekly Radio Address

The Anemic Left Gets a Hero: Rep. Alan Grayson (D FL)

Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL) Describes Republican Health Care Plan: 1. Don't Get Sick; 2. And if you do get sick... 3. Die Quickly. He also Crtically Offers an Apology not to Republicans but "to the dead and their families that we haven't voted sooner to end this holocaust in America,"

Economy Takes Another Hit: Home Foreclosures Go Up Nearly 17% Second Quarter Figures Reveal

Global Climate Change Threatens The Health of the Earth As Resource Depletion Caused by Human Consumption of Natural Material Wealth Increases the Rate of the Degradation of the Biosphere

Anchiornis huxleyi, Chinese Fossil Discovery Adds to the Understanding of the Relationship Between Form and Function in Dinosaurs and the Evolution of Flight

New Study Supported by Aarhus University, The Danish Polar Center and the U.S. National Science Foundation Finds the Changes That Have Taken Place in the Arctic May be Irreversible

09/26/09 President Barack Obama Weekly Radio Address

Vice President Biden Increases His Involvement in Advocating Health Care Reform

President Barack Obama Makes His First Address to the United Nations General Assembly

The White House on Health Care Reform: The "Obama Plan in Four Minutes"

Progress

Guiding Principles

The Obama Plan: Stability & Security

for all Americans

If You Have Health Insurance

More Stability and Security

If You Don't Have Insurance

Quality, Affordable Choices for All Americans

For All Americans

Reins In the Cost of Health Care for Our Families, Our Businesses, and Our Government

Extraordinary Images of Glaciers Photographed by Astronauts and Satellites Impressively Detail the Effects of Global Warming

Composite Image of the Center of the Milky Way Galaxy is Released on September 21st 2009

Why is Mars Red When it Should be Black: A Chemical Reaction with the Eroded Sand Contributes to Mars Red Color

09/19/09 President Barack Obama Weekly Radio Address

Karl Rove: Just Another Well Paid Peon for the American Un-Health Insurance Industry

"A Molecular Mechanism" Has Been Verified by Yale University Neuroscientists to be Essential to the Operation of the Cerebral Cortex

Obama Chastises "Dishonest" Health Insurers
By REUTERS
Published: October 17, 2009