A $20,000 diamond ring found in a tanning salon in St. Charles, Mo., appears to be at the center of a legal dispute over "finders keepers." The St. Louis Post-Dispatch attempts to explain murky statutes revolving around found property versus stealing. After Bonnie Land found the expensive ring and agreed to return it weeks later, she was arrested. She subsequently sued the ring's owner for $66,500 alleging breach of contract as Land wasn't given the posted $3,000 reward money.
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Showing posts with label World. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World. Show all posts
‘Exocomets’ Common Across Milky Way Galaxy
Labels: WorldComets may be as common as alien planets in star systems throughout the Milky Way galaxy, scientists say.
Astronomers have spotted likely comets around six faraway stars, bringing the total number of systems now thought to host the so-called “exocomets” to 10. It’s likely that all 10 of these systems also harbor alien planets, suggesting that comets and exoplanets are often found together, as they are in our own solar system, the new study found.
The number of exocomet-hosting systems could thus number in the billions across the Milky Way, as astronomers think our galaxy harbors at least 100 billion alien planets.
“This is sort of the missing link in current planetary formation studies,” lead author Barry Welsh, of the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement. [A Sky Full of Alien Planets: Infographic]
“We see dust disks — presumably the primordial planet-forming material — around a whole load of stars, and we see planets, but we don’t see much of the stuff in between: the asteroid-like planetesimals and the comets,” Welsh added. “Now, I think we have nailed it. These exocomets are more common and easier to detect than people previously thought.”
Welsh presented the findings today (Jan. 7) duing a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, Calif.
The researchers discovered the six new exocomet systems using the 2.1-meter telescope of the McDonald Observatory in Texas.
The telescope picked up faint absorption lines that varied from night to night. The astronomers determined these features were caused by large clouds of gas emanating from comets as they drew close to their host stars and heated up.
In our own solar system, comets usually stay far from the sun, only venturing close after a gravitational disturbance sends them veering off on a new course. It’s likely that alien planets caused the newly discovered exocomets to plunge toward their stars, Welsh said.
The newfound exocomets all orbit very young and bright stars that are about 5 million years old, because the team’s detection technique works best with such stars. But higher-resolution instruments may reveal comets around older, more sun-like stars — the type around which most exoplanets have been found to date, researchers said.
The first exocomet system was discovered in 1987, and three more were spotted over the years.
“But then, people just lost interest. They decided that exocomets were a done deal, and everybody switched to the more exciting thing, exoplanets,” Welsh said. “But I came back to it last year and thought, ‘Four exocomets is not all that many compared to the couple of thousand exoplanets known — perhaps I can improve on that.’”
Follow SPACE.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We’re also on Facebook & Google+.
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"Cliff" concerns give way to earnings focus
Labels: WorldNEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors' "fiscal cliff" worries are likely to give way to more fundamental concerns, like earnings, as fourth-quarter reports get under way next week.
Financial results, which begin after the market closes on Tuesday with aluminum company Alcoa , are expected to be only slightly better than the third-quarter's lackluster results. As a warning sign, analyst current estimates are down sharply from what they were in October.
That could set stocks up for more volatility following a week of sharp gains that put the Standard & Poor's 500 index <.spx> on Friday at the highest close since December 31, 2007. The index also registered its biggest weekly percentage gain in more than a year.
Based on a Reuters analysis, Europe ranks among the chief concerns cited by companies that warned on fourth-quarter results. Uncertainty about the region and its weak economic outlook were cited by more than half of the 25 largest S&P 500 companies that issued warnings.
In the most recent earnings conference calls, macroeconomic worries were cited by 10 companies while the U.S. "fiscal cliff" was cited by at least nine as reasons for their earnings warnings.
"The number of things that could go wrong isn't so high, but the magnitude of how wrong they could go is what's worrisome," said Kurt Winters, senior portfolio manager for Whitebox Mutual Funds in Minneapolis.
Negative-to-positive guidance by S&P 500 companies for the fourth quarter was 3.6 to 1, the second worst since the third quarter of 2001, according to Thomson Reuters data.
U.S. lawmakers narrowly averted the "fiscal cliff" by coming to a last-minute agreement on a bill to avoid steep tax hikes this weeks -- driving the rally in stocks -- but the battle over further spending cuts is expected to resume in two months.
Investors also have seen a revival of worries about Europe's sovereign debt problems, with Moody's in November downgrading France's credit rating and debt crises looming for Spain and other countries.
"You have a recession in Europe as a base case. Europe is still the biggest trading partner with a lot of U.S. companies, and it's still a big chunk of global capital spending," said Adam Parker, chief U.S. equity strategist at Morgan Stanley in New York.
Among companies citing worries about Europe was eBay
REVENUE WORRIES
One of the biggest worries voiced about earnings has been whether companies will be able to continue to boost profit growth despite relatively weak revenue growth.
S&P 500 revenue fell 0.8 percent in the third quarter for the first decline since the third quarter of 2009, Thomson Reuters data showed. Earnings growth for the quarter was a paltry 0.1 percent after briefly dipping into negative territory.
On top of that, just 40 percent of S&P 500 companies beat revenue expectations in the third quarter, while 64.2 percent beat earnings estimates, the Thomson Reuters data showed.
For the fourth quarter, estimates are slightly better but are well off estimates for the quarter from just a few months earlier. S&P 500 earnings are expected to have risen 2.8 percent while revenue is expected to have gone up 1.9 percent.
Back in October, earnings growth for the fourth quarter was forecast up 9.9 percent.
In spite of the cautious outlooks, some analysts still see a good chance for earnings beats this reporting period.
"The thinking is you need top line growth for earnings to continue to expand, and we've seen the market defy that," said Mike Jackson, founder of Denver-based investment firm T3 Equity Labs.
Based on his analysis, energy, industrials and consumer discretionary are the S&P sectors most likely to beat earnings expectations in the upcoming season, while consumer staples, materials and utilities are the least likely to beat, Jackson said.
Sounding a positive note on Friday, drugmaker Eli Lilly and Co
(Reporting By Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)
Double-Star Systems Can Be Dangerous for Exoplanets
Labels: WorldAlien planets born in widely separated two-star systems face a grave danger of being booted into interstellar space, a new study suggests.
Exoplanets circling a star with a far-flung stellar companion — worlds that are part of “wide binary” systems — are susceptible to violent and dramatic orbital disruptions, including outright ejection, the study found.
Such effects are generally limited to sprawling planetary systems with at least one distantly orbiting world, while more compact systems are relatively immune. This finding, which observational evidence supports, should help astronomers better understand the structure and evolution of alien solar systems across the galaxy, researchers said.
“The fact that planets observed within wide binaries tend to have more eccentric (or ‘excited’) orbits than those around isolated stars tells us that wide binaries do often disrupt planetary systems,” lead author Nathan Kaib, of Northwestern University and the University of Toronto, told SPACE.com via email. [The Strangest Alien Planets (Gallery)]
“Thus, we believe most planetary systems are extended, with outer planets orbiting at tens of AU from their host stars,” Kaib added. (One AU, or astronomical unit, equals the distance from Earth to the sun — about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)
The study was published today (Jan. 6) in the journal Nature and will be presented by Kaib at the 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, Calif., on Monday (Jan. 7).
Shifting stellar orbits
Two-star systems occur commonly throughout our galaxy; indeed, astronomers think the Milky Way harbors about as many binary systems as single stars. Recently, astronomers have begun discovering planets in binary systems, some of them “Tatooine” worlds with two suns in their skies, like Luke Skywalker’s home planent in the “Star Wars” films.
Many double-star systems throughout the galaxy are wide binaries, in which 1,000 AU or more separate the stellar companions on average.
The distance between stars in a wide binary often changes dramatically over time, however, since their orbits around a common center of mass can be far from circular.
“The stellar orbits of wide binaries are very sensitive to disturbances from other passing stars as well as the tidal field of the Milky Way,” Kaib said in a statement. “This causes their stellar orbits to constantly change their eccentricity, their degree of circularity. If a wide binary lasts long enough, it eventually will find itself with a very high orbital eccentricity at some point in its life.”
Eccentric orbits bring the two stars quite close together from time to time, even if the wide binary has a large average separation distance. And these close encounters can wreak havoc on planetary systems, the researchers found after performing about 3,000 computer simulations.
In one set of runs, for example, the team added a wide-binary companion to our own solar system. In nearly half of the simulations, at least one giant planet — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus or Neptune — got booted out into space.
Signficant orbital disruption generally takes hundreds of millions or billions of years to manifest, Kaib and his colleagues calculated.
“Consequently, planets in these systems initially form and evolve as if they orbited an isolated star,” Kaib said. “It is only much later that they begin to feel the effects of their companion star, which often times leads to disruption of the planetary system.”
Shedding light on extrasolar systems
Such destabilization, which is more dramatic in wide binaries than in more tightly orbiting two-star systems, does not always take the form of planetary ejection. Often, exoplanets just get tugged from their orginal, near-circular orbits into more eccentric ones, the simulations showed.
The researchers also looked at orbital eccentricities of actual exoplanets. The team found that planets in wide binaries have more eccentric orbits than worlds that circle single stars, suggesting the computer models are on the money.
“The eccentric planetary orbits seen in these systems are essentially scars from past disruptions caused by the companion star,” co-author Sean Raymond, of the University of Bordeaux and the National Center for Scientific Research in France, said in a statement.
The team’s computer simulations further suggest that these disruptions generally happen only in planetary systems that extend at least 10 AU or so from the host star.
Taken together, the observational and modeling results imply that many extrasolar systems harbor distantly orbiting worlds, though such planets are tough for astronomers to detect at the moment, researchers said.
“Given that most planet-detection campaigns cannot detect planets beyond 5-10 AU from their host stars, our results provide new clues about the characteristics of planetary systems in a regime that is poorly constrained by current observations,” Kaib told SPACE.com. “We believe that planets orbiting at distances of 10 AU or further from their host stars are common.”
Follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We’re also on Facebook and Google+.
Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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"Cliff" concerns give way to earnings focus
Labels: WorldNEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors' "fiscal cliff" worries are likely to give way to more fundamental concerns, like earnings, as fourth-quarter reports get under way next week.
Financial results, which begin after the market closes on Tuesday with aluminum company Alcoa , are expected to be only slightly better than the third-quarter's lackluster results. As a warning sign, analyst current estimates are down sharply from what they were in October.
That could set stocks up for more volatility following a week of sharp gains that put the Standard & Poor's 500 index <.spx> on Friday at the highest close since December 31, 2007. The index also registered its biggest weekly percentage gain in more than a year.
Based on a Reuters analysis, Europe ranks among the chief concerns cited by companies that warned on fourth-quarter results. Uncertainty about the region and its weak economic outlook were cited by more than half of the 25 largest S&P 500 companies that issued warnings.
In the most recent earnings conference calls, macroeconomic worries were cited by 10 companies while the U.S. "fiscal cliff" was cited by at least nine as reasons for their earnings warnings.
"The number of things that could go wrong isn't so high, but the magnitude of how wrong they could go is what's worrisome," said Kurt Winters, senior portfolio manager for Whitebox Mutual Funds in Minneapolis.
Negative-to-positive guidance by S&P 500 companies for the fourth quarter was 3.6 to 1, the second worst since the third quarter of 2001, according to Thomson Reuters data.
U.S. lawmakers narrowly averted the "fiscal cliff" by coming to a last-minute agreement on a bill to avoid steep tax hikes this weeks -- driving the rally in stocks -- but the battle over further spending cuts is expected to resume in two months.
Investors also have seen a revival of worries about Europe's sovereign debt problems, with Moody's in November downgrading France's credit rating and debt crises looming for Spain and other countries.
"You have a recession in Europe as a base case. Europe is still the biggest trading partner with a lot of U.S. companies, and it's still a big chunk of global capital spending," said Adam Parker, chief U.S. equity strategist at Morgan Stanley in New York.
Among companies citing worries about Europe was eBay
REVENUE WORRIES
One of the biggest worries voiced about earnings has been whether companies will be able to continue to boost profit growth despite relatively weak revenue growth.
S&P 500 revenue fell 0.8 percent in the third quarter for the first decline since the third quarter of 2009, Thomson Reuters data showed. Earnings growth for the quarter was a paltry 0.1 percent after briefly dipping into negative territory.
On top of that, just 40 percent of S&P 500 companies beat revenue expectations in the third quarter, while 64.2 percent beat earnings estimates, the Thomson Reuters data showed.
For the fourth quarter, estimates are slightly better but are well off estimates for the quarter from just a few months earlier. S&P 500 earnings are expected to have risen 2.8 percent while revenue is expected to have gone up 1.9 percent.
Back in October, earnings growth for the fourth quarter was forecast up 9.9 percent.
In spite of the cautious outlooks, some analysts still see a good chance for earnings beats this reporting period.
"The thinking is you need top line growth for earnings to continue to expand, and we've seen the market defy that," said Mike Jackson, founder of Denver-based investment firm T3 Equity Labs.
Based on his analysis, energy, industrials and consumer discretionary are the S&P sectors most likely to beat earnings expectations in the upcoming season, while consumer staples, materials and utilities are the least likely to beat, Jackson said.
Sounding a positive note on Friday, drugmaker Eli Lilly and Co
(Reporting By Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)
Famed Roman Shipwreck Could Be Two
Labels: WorldSEATTLE — A dive to the undersea cliff where a famous Roman shipwreck rests has turned up either evidence that the wreck is enormous — or a suggestion that, not one, but two sunken ships are resting off the Greek island of Antikythera.
“Either way, it’s an exciting result,” said study researcher Brendan Foley, an archaeologist at Woods Hold Oceanographic Institution who presented the findings here today (Jan. 4) at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America.
The Antikythera wreck is famed for the massive number of artifacts pulled from the site over the past century. First discovered in the early 1900s by local sponge divers, the wreck is most famous for the Antikythera mechanism, a complex bronze gear device used to calculate astronomical positions (and perhaps the timing of the Olympic games). Numerous bronze and marble statues, jars and figurines have also been pulled from the wreck. The ship went down in the first century B.C.
Remote wreck
The wreck is perched on a steep undersea cliff in water too deep for standard scuba gear. The undersea landscape also makes deploying remotely operated submersibles impossible, Foley said. In 1976, Jacques Costeau led a diving expedition to the site. Since then, it has been unexplored, thanks in part to its remote location in the strait between Crete and Peloponnese.
“This place is absolutely unspoiled,” Foley said.
Led by Aggeliki Simossi, the director of the Greek Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, Foley and colleagues from Greece and Woods Hole watched footage and pored over logs from the 1976 dive. With so many artifacts already taken from the site, they knew there would be little evidence of the shipwreck exposed on the ocean floor. They’d have to match the underwater geology to find the wreck.
In October, diving with technical scuba gear and diver propulsion vehicles that look like underwater fans, the team found the sweet spot, marked by a scattering of amphora, or large curved jars. [See Photos of the Antikythera Shipwreck]
Intact artifacts from the wreck were spread over a huge area, about 197 feet (60 meters) long at depths ranging from 114 feet to 197 feet (35 to 60 m), Foley said. That’s large for an ancient shipwreck, Foley said, suggesting either a huge ship or perhaps more than one wreck. The findings are preliminary, Foley said, but the team may have ultimately been excavating 984 feet (300 m) away from the site explored by Cousteau. If that’s the case, he said, they may have found a separate wreck — likely part of the same fleet as the original wreck that went down in the same storm.
More secrets
One reason for the researchers’ uncertainty is the fact that they used Costeau’s Antikythera expedition videos to gauge where to anchor their boat. Since some of the shots in the video were almost certainly staged, the researchers can’t be sure they weren’t diving at a site hundreds of yards away from the site explored in 1976.
Either way, the wreck site has many more artifacts to offer, the researchers found. They pulled one jar to the surface, which will undergo DNA testing to determine its contents. They also recovered two components of a lead anchor, which itself was resting on top of other artifacts, suggesting it was on deck when the ship went down.
“What else could be down there?” Foley said. “Are there more pieces of the known Antikythera mechanism? Is there another mechanism down there?”
The researchers plan to return to the area next year and will use metal detectors to check the site almost 1,000 feet away where Costeau’s team may have really been, he said. There are no artifacts visible on the ocean floor other than the spot that Foley and his colleagues explored, but metal detectors should pick up on any remnants under the sand at the other site if there are in fact two wrecks. [The 7 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds]
What’s more, the technical scuba gear may also allow archaeologists to dive deeper and more extensively in the future, Foley added. The dream, he told LiveScience, is to find an “undisturbed Antikythera,” or a significant wreck that hasn’t been disrupted for decades.
“Because the site has been so intruded upon for more than a century it gets really hard to disambiguate what’s myth and what’s fact,” Foley said.
Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas or LiveScience @livescience. We’re also on Facebook & Google+.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Data helps pace Wall Street higher, but Apple drags
Labels: WorldNEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks advanced on Friday, putting the S&P 500 on track for its biggest weekly gain in over a year after a jobs report showed employers kept the pace of hiring steady in December.
The Labor Department said payrolls outside the farming sector grew by 155,000 jobs last month, slightly below November's level. Gains in employment were distributed broadly throughout the economy, from manufacturing and construction to healthcare.
Also helping to keep equities afloat was data from the Institute for Supply Management showing U.S. service sector activity expanding the most in 10 months.
"It feels like the economy, we're not burning the barn down, but we are doing fine - we seem to be growing and the fiscal cliff does not seem to have weighed too much on December employment," said Paul Mendelsohn, chief investment strategist at Windham Financial Services in Charlotte, Vermont.
The S&P 500 index's weekly gain would be its largest since December 2011. The majority of the gains were achieved earlier in the holiday-shortened week, including the largest daily gain for the benchmark S&P index in more than a year on Wednesday, after a deal was struck in Washington to avert the "fiscal cliff."
"So far there is nothing that has come out that has been negative following the push, they tried to read into the Fed minutes yesterday and take it down but so far they haven't had much success," Mendelsohn said.
But a drag on Apple Inc shares, down 2.6 percent to $528.36, kept the Nasdaq near the uchanged mark, as the iPhone maker continued its downward path of recent months.
Adding to concerns about Apple's ability to produce more innovative products, rival Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is expected to widen its lead over Apple in global smartphone sales this year with growth of 35 percent. Market researcher Strategy Analytics said Samsung had a broad product lineup.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 28.46 points, or 0.21 percent, to 13,419.82. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 5.47 points, or 0.37 percent, to 1,464.84. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> added 2.50 points, or 0.08 percent, to 3,103.07.
The CBOE Volatility index <.vix>, a measure of investor anxiety, was on pace for its fourth straight decline, a drop of nearly 40 percent which has pushed the index to its lowest level since September.
Eli Lilly and Co
Fellow drugmaker Johnson & Johnson
Shares of Mosaic Co
The rise in payrolls shown by the jobs data did not make a dent in the still-high U.S. unemployment rate, but it calmed fears about the possibility of the U.S. Federal Reserve ending its highly stimulative monetary policy.
Concerns about the duration of the Fed's stimulus program prompted a pull-back from the market Thursday after a rally.
Minutes from the Fed's December policy meeting, released Thursday, showed Fed officials were increasingly worried about the risks of asset purchases to financial markets, though they looked set to continue with the open-ended stimulus program for now.
(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
Google’s original Android mascot would have given children everywhere horrible nightmares
Labels: World
Wall Street ends down on Fed concern
Labels: WorldNEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks dipped on Thursday after minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting showed growing concern about the risks of the Fed's stimulative monetary policy, giving investors reason to pull back after a strong two-day run.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> slipped 21.35 points, or 0.16 percent, to 13,391.20, according to the latest figures. The S&P 500 <.spx> dipped 3.09 points, or 0.21 percent, to 1,459.33. The Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> fell 11.70 points, or 0.38 percent, to 3,100.57.
(Editing by Kenneth Barry)
Mars Meteorite May Be Missing Link to Red Planet’s Past
Labels: WorldA Martian meteorite recently found on Earth may represent a missing link between Mars’ warm, wet past and its present cold and dry state, a new study shows.
The rock, which was discovered in Morocco in 2011, is of a previously unknown class that could fill in gaps in scientists’ understanding of the Red Planet‘s geological history, researchers said.
The meteorite — named NWA 7034 — is markedly dissimilar from other meteorites from Mars that scientists have studied on Earth.
Rare type
NWA 7034 has about 10 times more water content (about 6,000 parts per million) than any of the 110 other known meteorites that have fallen to Earth from Mars, suggesting that the meteorite probably came from the Martian surface, as opposed to deeper inside, said University of New Mexico planetary scientist Carl Agee, lead author of a paper describing the findings published in the Jan. 3 issue of the online journal Science Express.
Previously studied Martian meteorites, known as the SNC samples, appear to come from a different, less explored part of the Martian landscape. They probably broke away from Mars after a large asteroid impacted a certain region of the planet. But this newest sample is more representative of Mars’s surface, Agee told SPACE.com. [Mars Meteorites: Pieces of the Red Planet on Earth (Photos)]
The researchers think NWA 7034 represents the remains of a volcanic eruption on the Martian surface that occurred about 2.1 billion years ago. The meteorite was once lava from the eruption that cooled and hardened on the surface of the planet. The rock’s cooling was probably aided by water on Mars’ surface that was eventually imprinted on the chemical composition of the meteorite.
Middle-aged rock
The meteorite’s age is also of interest to scientists. Most of the SNC meteorite samples date to only around 1.3 billion years ago, with the oldest being about 4.5 billion years old. NWA 7034 represents a transition between the oldest and youngest Martian meteorite samples found on Earth, Agee said.
“Many scientists think that Mars was warm and wet in its early history, but the planet’s climate changed over time,” Agee said. Eventually, the Red Planet lost its atmosphere and became the cold, dry desert it is today. The new meteorite comes from the transitional period between these extremes, making it an important find for scientists hoping to learn how the Martian climate change occurred.
Agee’s conclusions are supported by data collected by the Mars rover missions and spacecraft in orbit around the planet, he said. The geochemical composition of the new meteorite falls in line with the rocks that rovers have analyzed on the surface of the Red Planet.
The researchers confirmed the meteorite’s Martian origins using a process of elimination. It took six months for Agee and his team to confidently report that the piece of space rock came from Mars. Because of the meteorite’s age, they knew it couldn’t come from an asteroid: All asteroids are much older than 2.1 billion years — most are probably at least 4.5 billion years old.
“We knew that it had to be from a planet,” Agee said. Mercury wasn’t an option: the composition of the volcanic meteorite didn’t match the surface of the closest planet to the sun. Venus didn’t fit either. Scientists hypothesize that that planet’s surface is too dry to produce a meteorite with NWA 7034′s water content, Agee added.
Mars was the only viable option, and with mounting evidence suggesting that the meteorite was similar in composition to the rocks analyzed by rovers, Agee’s hypothesis fit.
Follow Miriam Kramer on Twitter @mirikramer or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We’re also on Facebook & Google+.
Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Wall Street rallies on "fiscal cliff" agreement
Labels: WorldNEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks began the new year with a broad rally on Wednesday, sparked by a last-minute deal in Washington to avert the "fiscal cliff" of tax hikes and spending cuts that threatened to derail the economy.
In 2013's first trading session, the S&P 500 was on target for its best percentage gain since November 19 and highest close since October 19.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 229.64 points, or 1.75 percent, to 13,333.78. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 26.53 points, or 1.86 percent, to 1,452.72. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> jumped 74.26 points, or 2.46 percent, to 3,093.77.
U.S. markets were closed on Tuesday for New Year's Day.
Nine stocks rose for every one falling on the New York Stock Exchange and all 10 of the S&P 500 industry sector indexes gained at least 1 percent. The S&P financial index <.gspf> was up 2.2 percent.
The S&P Information Technology index <.gspt> gained 2.1 percent, including Hewlett-Packard
Congress passed a bill to prevent huge tax hikes and delay spending cuts that would have pushed the world's largest economy off a "fiscal cliff" and possibly into recession.
The vote avoided steep income-tax increases for a majority of Americans but failed to resolve a major showdown over cutting the budget deficit, leaving investors and businesses with only limited clarity about the outlook for the economy. Spending cuts of $109 billion in military and domestic programs were temporarily delayed, and another fight over raising the U.S. debt limit also looms.
"We got through the fiscal cliff. The next big thing, and probably more contentious thing, is negotiating the debt ceiling and possibly entitlement reform in early 2013," said Jim Russell, senior equity strategist for U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Cincinnati.
Hard choices about budget cuts and the critical need to raise the debt ceiling will confront Congress about the same time in two months "so the fur will be flying," Russell said.
U.S. stocks ended 2012 with the S&P 500 up 13.4 percent for the year, as investors largely shrugged off worries about the fiscal cliff. For the year, the Dow gained 7.3 percent and the Nasdaq jumped 15.9 percent.
Bank shares rose following news that U.S. regulators are close to securing another multibillion-dollar settlement with the largest banks to resolve allegations that they unlawfully cut corners when foreclosing on delinquent borrowers.
Bank of America Corp
Shares of Zipcar Inc
Shares of Apple rose 2.5 percent to $545.56, helping to lift the S&P technology index <.gspt> up 2.3 percent following a report that the most valuable tech company has started testing a new iPhone and a new version of its iOS software.
Economic data showed U.S. manufacturing ended 2012 on an upswing despite fears about the fiscal cliff, but construction spending fell in November for the first time in eight months.
(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry)
Cosmic Pancake Spotted Around Andromeda Galaxy
Labels: WorldA giant pancake-like structure made of dwarf galaxies has been spotted orbiting the Andromeda galaxy, the nearest neighbor of our own Milky Way, researchers say.
A similar galactic disk, which current galaxy formation models have trouble explaining, may even exist around the Milky Way, too, scientists added.
The Andromeda galaxy, named after a mythological princess, is a spiral galaxy much like the Milky Way. At about 2.5 million light-years away in the Andromeda constellation, it is the nearest spiral galaxy, and is the most distant object in the sky that one can see with the unaided eye.
Andromeda and Milky Way are each surrounded by a swarm of smaller galaxies. These dwarf galaxies, which seem rich in mysterious, invisible dark matter, appear to each be about 10 million to 100 million times the mass of the sun, while the Andromeda and Milky Way each total nearly 1 trillion (that’s 1 million million) times the mass of the sun.
“These dwarf galaxies shine from a few hundred to millions of times fainter than large spiral galaxies like Andromeda or the Milky Way,” said study author Nicolas Martin, an astronomer at the Astronomical Observatory of Strasbourg in France. [Andromeda's Collision With Our Milky Way (Gallery)]
Now Martin and his colleagues find that about half of Andromeda’s 27 known dwarf galaxies are apparently arranged in a disk around it spinning in the same direction as Andromeda. These 13 ball-shaped dwarf galaxies make up a pancake-like structure less than 42,000 light-years thick that extends at least 1.3 million light-years away from Andromeda.
Satellites of Andromeda
The astronomers detected the disk using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii as part of the Pan-Andromeda Archaeological Survey.
So far, it remains uncertain if current models of galaxy formation and evolution can explain the existence of this vast disk.
Dwarf satellite galaxies are thought to be remnants of the material that came together to form the giant galaxies they surround. While it makes sense that a disk of such dwarfs might emerge early after they formed, after a few orbits these dwarfs should veer off and live relatively independently, dispersing the disk in the process.
“Either something about how these galaxies formed or subsequently evolved must have led them to trace out this peculiar, coherent structure,” Martin told SPACE.com. “Either way, we do not understand the reason for this structure, making it very exciting.”
“The presence of this thin, rotating disk of dwarf galaxies around Andromeda suggests a strong connection between the host galaxy Andromeda and its satellites,” Martin added. “There is currently no satisfactory scenario that can explain all the properties of the satellites in the disk, but they all require a strong interplay between Andromeda and the satellites themselves.”
Astronomical illusion or reality?
Critics might wonder if these dwarf galaxies are coincidentally moving together, and only seem to make up a disk.
“It could be argued that we are seeing a statistical fluke, but this would be an exceedingly rare statistical fluke indeed — about one chance in 10,000,” Martin said.
Other mysteries abound regarding this new discovery. For instance, this disk of dwarves appears tilted at about a 50-degree angle in relation to Andromeda’s disk. It is unknown why that is.
“It may relate to the dynamics of the process responsible for the creation of this rotating disk,” Martin said.
Intriguingly, the Milky Way’s pole apparently lines up with Andromeda’s disk of dwarf galaxies. It remains unclear why that is as well.
“It may indicate that the Milky Way is somehow involved in the shaping of this plane of dwarf galaxies, but it could also be a chance alignment,” Martin said.
In addition, about half the remaining dwarfs orbiting Andromeda, which lie above the spiral galaxy, also seem to make up another disk. This one seems tilted by about 13 degrees in relation to Andromeda’s disk, said Brent Tully at the University of Hawaii, who did not participate in this study.
The researchers now hope to investigate the properties of dwarf galaxies in this disk to look for any differences from dwarf galaxies outside the disk that could enlighten them on the disk’s origin. They would also like to see if similar disks exist around other galaxies to check if they are common features of galaxy formation.
The scientists detailed their findings in the Jan. 3 issue of the journal Nature.
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"Fiscal cliff" moves to House, timing and outcome uncertain
Labels: WorldWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington's last-minute scramble to step back from a "fiscal cliff" ran into trouble on Tuesday as Republicans in the House of Representatives balked at a deal to avert a budget crisis.
Republican leaders in the House said they might try to change the bill approved by the Senate which voted to raise taxes on the wealthy in a late-night show of unity.
That would set up a high-stakes game of chicken between the two chambers and risk a stinging rebuke from financial markets that are due to open in Asia in six hours.
The bill drew overwhelming support from Republicans and Democrats alike in the Senate when it passed by a vote of 89 to 8. But Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, told reporters after huddling with other Republicans that he does not support the measure.
Republicans said they might try to add more spending cuts to the bill, which contains over $600 billion in tax increases but only around $12 billion in spending cuts.
With the Senate adjourned until Thursday, it appeared possible that Congress could push the country over the "fiscal cliff" after all, despite months of effort.
Republicans could face a backlash if they scuttle the deal. Income tax rates technically rose back to 1990s levels for all Americans at midnight, and across-the-board spending cuts on defense and domestic programs are due to kick in on Wednesday.
Economists say the $600 billion combination of tax cuts and spending cuts could push the economy into recession, and public opinion polls show Republicans would shoulder the blame.
Lingering uncertainty over U.S. fiscal policy has unnerved investors and depressed business activity for months.
Financial markets have staved off a steep plunge on the assumption that Washington would ultimately avoid pushing the country off the fiscal cliff into a recession.
With financial markets closed for the New Year's Day holiday, lawmakers have only Tuesday to close the deal before Wall Street has time to weigh in.
"My district cannot afford to wait a few days and have the stock market go down 300 points tomorrow if we don't get together and do something," Representative Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Tennessee, said on the House floor.
The bill passed by the Democratic-led Senate at around 2 a.m. would raise income taxes on families earning more than $450,000 per year and limit the amount of deductions they can take to lower their tax bill.
Low temporary rates that have been in place for less affluent taxpayers for the past decade would be made permanent, along with a range of targeted tax breaks put in place by President Barack Obama in the depths of the 2009 recession.
However, workers would see up to $2,000 more taken out of their paychecks annually as a temporary payroll tax cut was set to expire.
(Additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Alistair Bell and Jackie Frank)
Europe Tackling Big Space Projects in 2013
Labels: WorldLONDON — The European Space Agency has some ambitious resolutions for the New Year. The year 2013 will include the agency’s first spaceflight for its newest class of astronauts, the launch of its latest robot cargo ship Albert Einstein, and the development of new rockets and spacecraft, including a reusable space plane and work on NASA’s new Orion spacecraft.
January and February should see agreements and contracts signed for the new rockets, Ariane 5 Mid-Life Evolution (ME) and Ariane 6, and for ESA’s participation in NASA’sOrion space capsule. ESA is providing the service module for the Orion capsule, which NASA plans to use to fly astronauts on future deep-space missions.
With deadlines in 2014 for the rocket work, and 2017 for an unmanned Orion test flight, ESA officials know 2013 will see lots of activity right from the start.
“The Orion service module funding has been approved, so now the usual work process starts. I think [the NASA-ESA agreement signing] is in January. It should be rather early from what I’ve heard, it is something to be done towards the beginning of the year,” Franco Bonacina, spokesman for ESA’s director-general, Jean-Jacques Dordain, told SPACE.com. [Meet the European Space Agency (Video)]
Powerhouse for NASA’s Orion
ESA will provide one service module for Orion’s 2017 test launch. The module’s preliminary design review, or PDR, is planned for July 2013. The PDR is a major milestone for spaceflight projects, allowing managers to check a spacecraft’s design progress.
The ESA service module’s previous review, the system design review, occurred in September 2012, and the next major design review is not until 2015. The service module will provide propulsion, avionics, heat control and energy from solar arrays. It will also store water, oxygen and nitrogen for life support.
ESA’s Orion module is being delivered as an in-kind contribution for International Space Station (ISS) operations, for the period 2017 to 2020. The module is expected to cost ESA several hundred million dollars.
Europe’s new rockets
Before the Orion work shifts into gear, a pair of two-year studies is due to begin at the start of 2013 for the agency’s Ariane 5ME and Ariane 6 rockets. This is so ESA can make a decision about the future of its launchers in late 2014.
Operated by the company Arianespace, the workhorse Ariane 5 rocket launches ESA missions and commercial satellites. The rocket launches from the South American territory of French Guiana and is able to launch two spacecraft at a time. It first flew in 1997 and can launch up to 22,000 pounds (10,000 kilograms) into orbit.
The new Ariane 5 version, the Ariane 5ME, has already been in development for many years and it had been planned to be operational from 2016. It will be the same height, excluding the nose cone, and weight as its predecessor, but will be able launch an additional 2,540 pounds (1152 kg) of payload, with a maximum payload of 24,640 pounds (11,176 kg) for geostationary orbits.
The Ariane 5ME will use a new upper stage and rocket engine, the Vinci, and has a larger nose cone. If approved in 2014, the Ariane 5ME could be operational towards the end of this decade.
However, ESA has concluded that it needs a simpler rocket that can launch more frequently with only one payload onboard. This is the planned Ariane 6, which was originally called Next Generation Launcher (NGL).
The Ariane 6 rocket has been the subject of numerous studies that have evaluated NGL versions that either only have solid rocket motors or only liquid fuel engines. According to Bonacina, for Ariane 6, the two year studies will determine, “what shape and configuration it will have and what kind of money will be needed over what timeframe”. Neither Ariane 5ME nor Ariane 6 will launch astronauts.
A decision on Ariane 6 was supposed to take place in 2012, but disagreement between France and Germany, the largest ESA budget contributors, saw a compromise. France was in favor of Ariane 6, while Germany wanted Ariane 5ME to go ahead.
“It was a heavy compromise between Germany and France. They all had their interesting points of view and a solution has been found,” Bonacina said. “The good thing is that Ariane 6 has started and Ariane 5ME continues in parallel.”
In April of this year, ESA expects to hit two rocket milestones. They include second launch of its latest rocket, Vega, which uses solid rocket motors for its first, second and upper stages. The Vega rocket will launch the Earth observation satellite, Proba-V. The V in Proba-V stands for vegetation because the satellite will monitor the Earth’s plant life. [Europe’s Vega Rocket 1st Launch (Photos)]
Then in mid or late April, the latest version of the Ariane 5 — the Ariane 5 ES — is due make its next launch. The Ariane 5 ES has an upper stage whose engine can reignite. This allows it to launch ESA’s robotic Automated Transfer Vehicle cargo ships.
Europe’s ATV spacecraft deliver supplies to the International Space Station and propellant to raise the station’s orbit when needed. The ATV to be launched in April, called Albert Einstein, will be the fourth ESA’s five planned ATV missions to the space station.
Satellites galore
Europe’s other launches in the second half of 2013 include satellites for the European Union’s space-based navigation system, Galileo. The Galileo satellites will be launched by a Russian Soyuz 2 rocket from the Soyuz launch site in French Guiana.
Also launched in the latter half of 2013 by Soyuz rockets will be ESA’s Gaia mission and the Sentinel-1A satellite. The Gaia spacecraft will operate beyond the Moon, over 600,000 miles (965,606 kilometers) from Earth, and its goal is to create the largest and most precise three-dimensional map of the galaxy.
The Sentinel-1A is a polar orbit satellite that uses synthetic aperture radar. It is the first dedicated satellite for the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security constellation, a joint venture between ESA and the European Union. A constellation of two satellites, GMES’ Sentinel-1B is expected to launch in 2015.
An Ariane 5 will also launch Alphasat this year. This high bandwidth telecommunications satellite will provide commercial services and test various communications technologies including lasers.
Europe’s astronauts and robot arm
In May, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft will launch ESA’s Italian born astronaut Luca Parmitano from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Parmitano is launching on a six-month mission to the International Space Station and is slated to return to Earth in November.
Parmitano was selected to join ESA’s astronaut corps in May 2009 as one of six candidates. The five others hailed from France, Germany, Italy, Denmark and the United Kingdom. Of those, Parmitano is the first bound for the space station.
The 35-year old former Italian Air Force test pilot will be a flight engineer on the station crew. While Albert Einstein and Parmitano are headed to the orbiting laboratory in 2013, a new robotic arm for the orbiting laboratory will likely slip to 2014.
The station’s new European Robotic Arm, or ERA, will launch on a Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, ESA’s ERA will be attached to Russia’s multipurpose laboratory module.
The robotic arm consists of two end-effectors, two wrists, two limbs and one elbow joint, together with electronics and cameras. Both end-effectors act as either a hand or the base from which it can operate. ERA will be used in the assembly and servicing of the Russian segment of the station, and its infrared cameras will allow it to carry out inspections of the station’s exterior.
The arm will also be able to transport astronauts, like a cherry picker crane, from one external location to another. This saves time and effort during spacewalk activities. ERA is also compatible with the new Russian airlock, so it can transfer small payloads between the station’s interior and the vacuum of space quickly. This will also reduce the crew’s space walk set-up time and allow ERA to work with astronauts outside the station.
Space plane under development
Like ERA, ESA’s space plane prototype, the Intermediate Experimental Vehicle (IXV), was to have been launched in 2013. It will now fly on ESA’s Vega rocket in 2014. The IXV vehicle is designed to test re-entry technologies during a suborbital flight launching from French Guiana and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean using parachutes.
ESA has now approved funds for IXV’s possible follow-on, Innovative Space Vehicle (ISV), under the Program for Reusable In-orbit Demonstrator in Europe.
The ISV would be Europe’s civilian equivalent of the U.S. Air Force’s unmanned X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, a robotic miniature space shuttle that has flown on three missions since 2010. The unmanned European space plane would be much smaller than the Air Force vehicle, however.
Giorgio Tumino, IXV program manager told SPACE.com: “We did not get all what we asked, but enough to go ahead and keep the planning.”
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Wall Street rallies in choppy day after Obama's "cliff" talk
Labels: WorldNEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks advanced on Monday in a choppy session after comments from President Barack Obama suggesting a deal on the "fiscal cliff" was drawing closer.
The S&P 500 jumped above 1 percent after Obama said it appeared a deal was within sight, but quickly cut some gains when the president noted an agreement was not complete yet. With just an hour left in the final session of 2012, though, the S&P 500 resumed its climb and shot above 1 percent.
A source familiar with the matter said an emerging deal, if adopted by Congress and President Barack Obama, would raise $600 billion in revenue over the next 10 years by increasing tax rates for individuals making more than $400,000 and households earning above $450,000 annually.
A plan is needed in order to avert a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts that many believe could push the U.S. economy into recession.
"There is positive momentum in the market, and we are building up to a deal - markets are definitely starting to price in a deal sometime before tomorrow," said Peter Kenny, managing director at Knight Capital in Jersey City, New Jersey.
"This sounds counterintuitive, but if that doesn't happen, even if we don't get a bridge deal done, that is just going to increase the pressure on a deal getting done."
The gains put the S&P 500 on track to snap a five-day losing skid, its longest losing streak since September.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 136.08 points, or 1.05 percent, to 13,074.19. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 19.82 points, or 1.41 percent, to 1,422.25. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> climbed 59.89 points, or 2.02 percent, to 3,020.20.
The S&P 500 is now up 13.1 percent for the year, compared with a flat performance in 2011. The Dow is up 7 percent and the Nasdaq is up 15.9 percent.
Gains in Apple Inc , the most valuable U.S. company, helped lift the Nasdaq. The stock rose 4.4 percent to $531.85, lifting the S&P information technology sector index <.gspt> up 1.9 percent. For the year so far, Apple is up 31.3 percent.
The Dow was bolstered by Caterpillar Inc
While a deal on the cliff is not yet official, investors may be ready to take on more risk next year in hopes of a greater reward.
Bank stocks rose after a New York Times report that U.S. regulators are nearing a $10 billion settlement with several banks that would end the government's efforts to hold lenders responsible for faulty foreclosure practices.
Bank of America Corp
Financial stocks were among the strongest of the year, with the S&P financial index <.gspf> surging 25.2 percent for 2012 so far. Bank of America is the top-performing Dow component, with its stock price more than doubling over the past 12 months.
(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Jan Paschal)
Gals Down Alcohol Faster Than Guys
Labels: WorldWho’s partying the hardest this New Year’s? In some places, it may be the ladies.
Male university students in Spain down more booze overall than their female counterparts, but in drinks-per-hour, the ladies are out-quaffing the guys, new research finds.
The study researchers, who interviewed 985 students at the University of Vigo in Spain, also found that women were more sedentary than men, and surprisingly high proportions of both sexes used illegal drugs.
American bingers
Estimates vary on how many American college students binge drink, defined by drinking five or more drinks in two hours for men and four or more drinks for women. However, one in six U.S. adults reports binge drinking about four times a month, with an average of eight drinks consumed per episode, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Binge drinking is most common among 18- to 34-year-olds.
In the United States, mixed-gender housing fuels binge drinking, according to research published in 2009 in the Journal of American College Health. Students in co-ed housing were 2.5 times more likely to binge drink weekly than students in single-gender housing. Other research suggests that binging may be a way to feel a sense of belonging in schools where getting smashed is the norm. In one study presented in August 2012 at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, students at a liberal arts college in the Northeast often reported that they didn’t want to binge, but felt it was linked with high status in the campus culture.
Booze and gender
In the new study of Spanish students, University of Vigo researchers found that 56.1 percent of women were binge drinkers, compared with 41.3 percent of men. The men still downed more drinks, on average, than women, but they did so at a slower rate.
Other health red flags among women included the finding that 51.2 percent were sedentary, or did not get the recommended amount of physical activity each day, compared with 41.7 percent of men. Among the students who managed to move the recommended amount of time each day, 38.6 percent of men deliberately made time to exercise, compared with only 20.9 percent of women.
Men were heavier drug users than women, however, with 44.9 percent of males and 30.9 percent of females reporting the use of illegal drugs. [10 Easy Paths to Self Destruction]
In most cases, the students’ program of study did not make a difference in their health. However, women studying for education careers were much more likely to have disordered attitudes toward food than women in health-related fields, the researchers found. About 19 percent of women in education had attitudes associated with eating disorders, compared with only 6.3 percent of women in health. Overall, 8.8 percent of men reported disordered attitudes toward food.
The researchers first reported their results in August in the Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
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Fiscal deal stalls as clock ticks to deadline
Labels: WorldWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Efforts to prevent the economy from tumbling over a "fiscal cliff" stalled on Sunday as Democrats and Republicans remained at loggerheads over a deal that would prevent taxes for all Americans from rising on New Year's Day.
One hour before they had hoped to present a plan, Democratic and Republican leaders said were still unable to reach a compromise that would stop the automatic tax hikes and spending cuts that could push the economy into recession.
"There are still serious differences between the two sides," Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said.
A sticking point appeared to be a Republican proposal floated late on Saturday, which would slow the growth of Social Security retirement benefits in an effort to narrow trillion-dollar budget deficits. Many Democrats, including Reid, have said Social Security should not be touched.
With negotiations at an apparent standstill on Capitol Hill, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said he would now try to hammer out an agreement with Vice President Joe Biden.
"I'm willing to get this done, but I need a dance partner," McConnell said.
Any agreement needs to be rushed through both chambers of Congress before midnight on Monday. Even if the two sides reach an agreement, procedural barriers in the Senate and the House of Representatives make quick action difficult.
If the politicians cannot agree, then tax increases and across-the-board government spending cuts will begin on January 1. That would take $600 billion out of the economy, push unemployment up and curb federal spending.
Another major disagreement was over tax hikes on the wealthy, an increase sought by President Barack Obama but opposed by Republicans, particularly fiscal conservatives in the House of Representatives.
Republicans aim to pair any tax increase with spending cuts to benefit programs that are projected to grow ever more expensive as the population ages in coming decades.
But their proposal to slow the growth of Social Security benefits by changing the way they are measured against inflation met fierce resistance from Democrats. Obama included the proposal, known as "chained CPI," in an earlier proposal, but many of his fellow Democrats remain opposed.
"POISON PILL"
"We consider it a poison pill - they know we can't accept it. It is a big step back from where we were on Friday," a Senate Democratic aide said.
Obama made a rare appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" to pressure lawmakers into forging a deal.
Senators appearing on other Sunday morning shows expressed optimism that an agreement could be reached.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham conceded that an agreement would end up raising income taxes on the wealthy, thus sparing the rest of the country from the looming income tax hikes.
"President Obama is going to get tax rate increases. The president won," Graham tweeted, echoing earlier comments he made on "Fox News Sunday." He told the show that the chances of a bipartisan deal before the New Year's deadline were "exceedingly good."
Obama has alternatively offered Republicans a deal to increase income taxes for households earning over $250,000 a year, and over $400,000 a year.
A White House aide said the president and his staff had been in touch with congressional leaders through the weekend.
Any deal on taxes in the Senate might meet resistance in the House from conservative Republicans.
On NBC, Obama warned of the fallout in financial markets if the two sides did not reach an agreement.
"If people start seeing that on January 1st this problem still hasn't been solved, that we haven't seen the kind of deficit reduction that we could have, had the Republicans been willing to take the deal that I gave them ... then obviously that's going to have an adverse reaction in the markets," Obama said, adding that he had offered Republicans significant compromises that had been rejected repeatedly.
He said he would avoid tax increases for most Americans, even if the talks fall apart.
"If Republicans do in fact decide to block it, so that taxes on middle class families do in fact go up on January 1st, then we'll come back with a new Congress on January 4th and the first bill that will be introduced on the floor will be to cut taxes on middle class families," Obama said.
John Boehner, the speaker of the House of Representatives, rejected Obama's accusations that Republicans were not being amenable to compromise.
"The president's comments today are ironic, as a recurring theme of our negotiations was his unwillingness to agree to anything that would require him to stand up to his own party," Boehner, who has had trouble convincing his Republican colleagues to support his own proposals, said in a statement.
(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria, Rachelle Younglai, David Lawder, Fred Barbash and Richard Cowan. Writing by Andy Sullivan, Editing by Alistair Bell and Jackie Frank)
Nobel scientist Rita Levi-Montalcini dies in Rome
Labels: WorldROME (AP) — Rita Levi-Montalcini, a biologist who conducted underground research in defiance of Fascist persecution and went on to win a Nobel Prize for helping unlock the mysteries of the cell, died at her home in Rome on Sunday. She was 103 and had worked well into her final years.
Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno, announcing her death in a statement, called it a great loss “for all of humanity.” He praised her as someone who represented “civic conscience, culture and the spirit of research of our time.”
Italy‘s so-called “Lady of the Cells,” a Jew who lived through anti-Semitic discrimination and the Nazi invasion, became one of her country’s leading scientists and shared the Nobel medicine prize in 1986 with American biochemist Stanley Cohen for their groundbreaking research carried out in the United States. Her research increased the understanding of many conditions, including tumors, developmental malformations, and senile dementia.
Italy honored Levi-Montalcini in 2001 by making her a senator-for-life.
A petite woman with upswept white hair, she kept an intensive work schedule well into old age. “At 100, I have a mind that is superior — thanks to experience — than when I was 20,” she said in 2009.
“A beacon of life is extinguished” with her death, said a niece, Piera Levi-Montalcini, who is a city councilwoman in Turin. She told the Turin daily newspaper La Stampa that her aunt passed away peacefully “as if sleeping” after lunch and that the scientist had kept up her research studies several hours a day “right up until the end.”
Levi-Montalcini was born April 22, 1909, to a Jewish family in the northern city of Turin. At age 20 she overcame her father’s objections that women should not study and obtained a degree in medicine and surgery from Turin University in 1936.
She studied under top anatomist Giuseppe Levi, whom she often credited for her own success and for that of two fellow students and close friends, Salvador Luria and Renato Dulbecco, who also became separate Nobel Prize winners. Levi and Levi-Montalcini were not related.
After graduating, Levi-Montalcini began working as a research assistant in neurobiology but lost her job in 1938 when Italy’s Fascist regime passed laws barring Jews from universities and major professions.
Her family decided to stay in Italy and, as World War II neared, Levi-Montalcini created a makeshift lab in her bedroom where she began studying the development of chicken embryos, which would later lead to her major discovery of mechanisms that regulate growth of cells and organs.
With eggs becoming a rarity due to the war, the young scientist biked around the countryside to buy them from farmers. She was soon joined in her secret research by Levi, her university mentor, who was also Jewish and who became her assistant.
“She worked in primitive conditions,” Italian astrophysicist Margherita Hack told Sky TG24 TV in a tribute to her fellow scientist. “She is really someone to be admired.”
Italy’s premier, Mario Monti, paid tribute to Levi-Montalcini’s “charismatic and tenacious” character and for her lifelong battle to “defend the battles in which she believed.”
Only a few months ago, she helped sponsor an appeal to the government for more attention of fund-strapped young scientists in Italy.
Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi praised Levi-Montalcini’s civil and moral efforts, saying she was an “inspiring” example for Italy and the world, the ANSA news agency said.
An Italian scientist, who worked for some 40 years with Levi-Montalcini, including in the United States, said the work the Nobel laureate did on nerve growth factor was continuing. The protein assists portions of the central nervous system that have been damaged by disease or injury.
“Over the years, this field of investigation has become ever more important in the world of neuroscience,” Pietro Calissano was quoted by ANSA as saying. Calissano began studying under Levi-Montalcini in 1965 and recalled her ability to relate to students on a very human level, with none of the elite airs that often characterize Italian professors.
“I remember we were in a closet with cell cultures when she offered me a fellowship,” Calissano said. He added that research building on Levi-Montalcini’s pioneering achievements continues. “We are working on a possible application in the treatment of Alzheimer’s,” he added.
The 1943 German invasion of Italy forced the Levi-Montalcini family to flee to Florence and live underground. After the Allies liberated the city, she worked as a doctor at a center for refugees.
In 1947 Levi-Montalcini was invited to the United States, where she remained for more than 20 years, which she called “the happiest and most productive” of her life. She held dual Italian-U.S. citizenship.
During her research at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, she discovered nerve growth factor, the first substance known to regulate the growth of cells. She showed that when tumors from mice were transplanted to chicken embryos they induced rapid growth of the embryonic nervous system. She concluded that the tumor released a nerve growth-promoting factor that affected certain types of cells.
The research increased the understanding of many conditions, including tumors, developmental malformations, and senile dementia. It also led to the discovery by Stanley Cohen of another substance, epidermal growth factor, which stimulates the proliferation of epithelial cells. The two shared the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1986.
Levi-Montalcini returned to Italy to become the director of the laboratory of cell biology of the National Council of Scientific Research in Rome in 1969.
After retiring in the late 1970s, she continued to work as a guest professor and wrote several books to popularize science. She created the Levi-Montalcini Foundation to grant scholarships and promote educational programs worldwide, particularly for women in Africa.
In 2001 Levi-Montalcini was made a senator for life, one of the country’s highest honors.
She then became active in Parliament, especially between 2006 and 2008, when she and other life senators would cast their votes to back the thin majority of center-left Premier Romano Prodi.
Levi-Montalcini had no children and never married, fearing such ties would undercut her independence.
“I never had any hesitation or regrets in this sense,” she said in a 2006 interview. “My life has been enriched by excellent human relations, work and interests. I have never felt lonely.”
Italian mathematician Piergiorgio Odifreddi said he was always struck by the contrast of this “petite, frail woman and the power of her mind.” He recalled comments that Levi-Montalcini made when she turned 100. She mentioned that she would sleep no more than two or three hours a night because “I have no time to lose,” Odifreddi told Sky TG24.
There was no immediate announcement of funeral or memorial services.
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Wall Street extends losses, Dow slides 1 percent
Labels: WorldWhen Mommy is away, Dad and son will play. And if your dad works in the video production business, that playtime gets filmed, turned into a time-lapse video and instantly goes viral. Emio Tomeoni, 30, of Kansas City, Mo., works odd hours and often finds...
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Caribbean Beauties: Two New Orchid Species Found
Labels: WorldOne of the world’s newest orchid species is also its most delicate, with tiny white flowers smaller than a dime. Yet the flower finds its home amid boulders near the banks of rushing streams in Cuba‘s remote eastern mountains.
The orchid is one of two new species identified by botanists in Cuba, a hotbed for orchids — the largest and most diverse plant family in the world. The islands of the Caribbean have more the 25,000 species of orchids tucked into their forests and rivers.
The new species was named Tetramicra riparia, a nod to its discovery along stony streams in the mountains of Baracoa, one of the rainiest and least explored areas in Cuba, Ángel Vale, a researcher at the University of Vigo in Spain, said in a statement. The plant has an unusually broad, sturdy base: Its pedicel is almost four times as large as its column, Vale and his co-authors report.
The second new orchid, from the western tip of the island, dwarfs its neighbor in size. The flower’s showy purple and green petals are similar to a daffodil in appearance, spreading more than 2.5 inches (7 centimeters), with up to 20 blooms on one plant.
Like many orchids, the flower, dubbed Encyclia navarroi, is epiphytic, meaning it grows on other plants for support, but not for nutrients. Along the western coast, the species preferred to perch on plumeria and ficus, the researchers discovered.
Both new species are deceit pollinators, Vale said, enticing bees to spread their pollen without a reward. “Contrary to most plants, many orchids do not produce nectar or other substances to compensate insects and birds that visit them,” he said.
Vale and his colleagues are studying orchids throughout the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico) to reconstruct their evolutionary history and analyze the effect of pollinators in their development. One of the mysteries they aim to solve is whether deceit orchids have greater diversity than other nectar-producing species.
“Despite the fact that T. riparia‘s flowers have a complete central petal, just like other species that make up a subgenre endemic to Cuba; the way they grow is very similar to a more widespread group that seems to have diverged on the neighboring island of Hispaniola,” Vale said. “Our work provides molecular evidence of the greater relationship of T. riparia with these species on the neighboring island.”
The findings were detailed in the October 2012 issue of the journal Systematic Botany and the April 2012 issue of the journal Annales Botanici Fennici.
Reach Becky Oskin at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @beckyoskin. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter @OAPlanet. We’re also on Facebook and Google+.
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