NASA has smashed its record for transmitting data to and from the moon. Now, it boasts a frankly amazing 622Mbps transfer speed to the rock that circles our little planet.
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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/0HvVuV27EAY/nasa-has-a-622-mbps-data-connection-to-the-moon-1450623457TrueCrypt is one of the most widely used disk-encryption applications in the world. But though it's open source, it's never had its security or features -- or its precompiled binaries -- audited thoroughly.
But now cryptography researchers Kenneth White and Matthew Green have decided to raise the money to have TrueCrypt's source code thoroughly audited by disinterested third parties. The results of the audit will be tracked on the website IsTrueCryptAuditedYet.com. (The answer thus far: No.)
Kicking off with a fundraiser on Indiegogo and a complementary one on FundFill, the two have thus far raised some $46,000 -- with 53 days left to go in the Indiegogo campaign.
Of all the encryption or security software out there with source code available, why audit TrueCrypt? Green puts it this way: "There's a shortage of high-quality and usable encryption software out there. TrueCrypt is an enormous deviation from this trend. It's nice, it's pretty, it's remarkably usable."
But the problems with TrueCrypt, especially in the post-Snowden age, are many and unnerving. For one, while some folks have looked at the source code, there's never been a really systematic, rigorous analysis of the program by professional cryptographers.
The Ubuntu Privacy Group did conduct its own analysis of the program's behavior, and while it didn't find anything that looked like an obvious backdoor, the group did find strange discrepancies in the way TrueCrypt works on different platforms, along with a possible attack on the way keyfiles are used. (They didn't find anything that looked like a backdoor, though.)
Second, since most people use the precompiled binaries of the program rather than generating the program from source code, there's speculation about whether the binaries offered at TrueCrypt's site are trustworthy. The program is also not easy to compile from its source code, as a number of people have discovered.
Finally, and maybe most important, no one knows who actually wrote the program.
The creators might well be taking pains to hide their identities to avoid being harassed, which makes sense. There might well be people foolish enough to think that threatening the creators of the program would be a way to get them to disclose a weakness in the software and thus compromise every TrueCrypt volume on the planet. (Unlikely.)
Still, as Green puts it, "I would feel better if I knew who the TrueCrypt authors were."
The audit proposed by Green and White covers four points: Have the source code audited by a professional outfit qualified to do such work; have a lawyer analyze the terms of the source code license used by TrueCrypt, which is not considered to be a true open source license due to some of its terms; pay out bounties for any bugs found in the code; and create binaries that can be verified against the source code.
Open source code is generally considered easier to secure than closed source code, but that doesn't mean open source code is automatically more secure -- it just means the auditing process is easier to conduct. Expertise is still needed -- and in the real world, expertise worth having is worth buying.
This story, "Is TrueCrypt truly secure? Let's have a fundraiser to find out," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.
Catalina Sandino Moreno will star opposite Aaron Eckhart in Incarnate, the new franchise hopeful from Jason Blum's Blumhouse Productions.
The role was initially to be played by Rosario Dawson, but the Sin City and Seven Pounds actress left the project due to scheduling reasons. The movie is due to begin production in November in Los Angeles.
PHOTOS: 15 Horror Movies That Offered the Most Bang for the Buck
Brad Peyton is directing the micro-bugdet pic, which tells of "an unconventional exorcist -- with the ability to tap into the subconscious of the possessed -- who meets his match when a 9-year-old boy is possessed by a demon from his past," according to Blumhouse.
Blumhouse and IM Global are co-financing, while Blumhouse International is handling international sales.
Blum is producing. Exec producing are Blumhouse's Couper Samuelson, Stuart Ford, Charles Layton, Michael Seitzman, Trevor Engelson and Peyton.
Moreno broke into the industry with her acclaimed performance in 2004’s Maria Full of Grace, a role for which she earned an Oscar nomination. She most recently was one of the stars of FX’s crime show The Bridge and counts, among her feature credits, Steven Soderbergh’s two-part Che films.
She is repped UTA and Estelle Lasher at Principal Entertainment.
By Kathryn Doyle
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - After a heart attack, patients are often given four or more medicines and directed to take them for life. Those medicines only work to prevent another attack if the patient takes them all consistently and correctly, a new study shows.
"You really have to take your medications all the time to derive any benefit," said Dr. Niteesh K. Choudhry. He led the study at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
That may seem obvious. But drugs that appear to work in clinical trials aren't always as effective in the real world, where nobody is making sure you take your meds on time, he said.
Heart attack survivors are often prescribed beta-blockers to slow heart rate, statins to lower cholesterol and other drugs to keep blood pressure down.
In an earlier trial, Choudhry and his coauthors compared a group of heart attack survivors given free prescriptions to people who had to pay for their medicines as most real-world patients do.
In that trial, people in the free prescription group were about five percent more likely to take their medications at least 80 percent of the time, compared to people with copays. But there was no difference between the groups when it came to later hospital admissions for heart problems.
For the new study, the researchers divided people who got free prescriptions into three smaller groups based on how often they took all their medicines: at least 80 percent of the time, 60 to 79 percent of the time or less than 60 percent of the time.
Study participants who took their free medicines most often were 24 percent more likely to never be readmitted to the hospital for another heart attack or a stroke, chest pain or heart failure than those in the comparison group with copays. Those people varied widely in how often they took their medications.
Taking some, but not all, of the medications regularly was not linked to any benefit, according to results published in the American Heart Journal.
"It's difficult to determine which medications are most important," Choudhry said.
"They all appear to be important," he told Reuters Health. "It's not like patients can take one and not another."
That's too bad, because being saddled with so many prescriptions can be a drain on patients, he said. That's why some may not take their medications consistently, even though they help protect the heart.
"If anyone is going to be motivated to take their blood pressure and cholesterol medications, it will be patients who have just had a heart attack," Dr. Walid Gellad said.
Gellad is a physician at the Pittsburgh VA Medical Center and Co-Director of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Pharmaceutical Policy and Prescribing. He was not involved in the new study.
There are lots of reasons people may skip doses, including cost, forgetfulness, side effects, attitudes and beliefs, the experts agreed.
Text messages or electronic pill bottles may help remind patients to take their medications, but that too is unlikely to completely solve the problem.
People who have serious side effects should talk to their doctors and look into alternative treatments, Choudhry said.
He said doctors and researchers can improve health by getting people to correctly take current drugs, not just by developing new drugs.
"For patients, providers and policymakers this is a really critical message," Dr. Nihar Desai, a cardiologist at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, told Reuters Health. He also didn't participate in the new research.
"Perhaps, we should be investing more in interventions aimed at improving adherence to currently available therapies rather than finding additional therapies that may be of only marginal benefit," Desai said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/GYtWqM American Heart Journal, online October 17, 2013.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A year after Superstorm Sandy tore through New York and New Jersey, displacing tens of thousands of people and racking up billions in property damage, the Red Cross is still facing criticism for its relief efforts.
Many storm victims and their elected officials slammed the nation’s leading relief agency just after Sandy’s landfall last Oct. 29 for being too slow to get volunteers and supplies out to the hardest-hit areas. Now, nearly 200 Sandy survivors say the Red Cross is denying funds they were promised last year to help them fix their homes.
The 132-year-old agency had raised $308 million for Sandy relief as of last month, and a spokeswoman says it has spent 90 percent of it so far, most in direct donations to victims and community organizations. While that figure pales in comparison to the more than $60 billion in federal funds approved for Sandy relief, the Red Cross is by far the biggest nongovernment player in relief efforts and is where most people go to donate if they want to help after any disaster. Even President Barack Obama urged people to contribute to the Red Cross to help with Sandy recovery efforts, calling it the "best" option for those who want to help storm victims. Click image above for: Portraits of Hurricane Sandy slideshow. (Photos by Gordon Donovan/Yahoo News)
But many of those affected by the storm said the Red Cross took too long to get volunteers, staff and supplies to the hardest hit areas. James Molinaro, president of the Staten Island borough of New York City, flatly said people shouldn’t donate to the agency if they wanted to help survivors . The agency countered that it hadn’t been able to pre-position supplies and other assistance before the storm made landfall since that would have put staff in danger, and Molinaro later praised the Red Cross for their relief work on the island.
Last summer, a different set of complaints surfaced from a watchdog organization called the Disaster Accountability Project. The group filed a complaint in July signed by more than 150 Sandy survivors with the New York attorney general’s office over the Red Cross’s Move-In Assistance Program. The group claims victims were told by Red Cross caseworkers that they had qualified to receive up to $10,000 to repair their homes, only to find out later they no longer qualified. The mix-up led to crushing disappointment and added financial hardship for those attempting to put their lives back together, the complaint argues.
A total of 185 people had signed onto the petition as of mid-October, and Disaster Accountability Project founder Ben Smilowitz says he believes hundreds more were also denied the help after initially being told they qualified. Some who signed the petition, told by Red Cross representatives that a check was in the mail, hired contractors or made other financial decisions before the funding was revoked, Smilowitz said.
A spokeswoman for the attorney general, Melissa Grace, said the office would not comment on the Red Cross complaint, which is still pending. Meanwhile, the Red Cross says that it never changed its requirements for the program, but last summer said that some caseworkers had been misinformed and may have given out the wrong information to applicants.
One such applicant is Denise Rinzivillo, 44, who is currently living in her car after she lost a court case against her landlord, who evicted her from her Staten Island home last month. Rinzivillo was told in April by a Red Cross caseworker that she qualified for up to $10,000 in assistance because the house she was renting appeared infested with mold. Rinzivillo said she needed money for a deposit and first month’s rent to move into a new apartment.
Rinzivillo and her family had stayed in the rented house during Sandy, watching the water rise up to the stairs as if they were in a fishbowl. They continued to live in a few rooms upstairs for months after that, unable to leave and find a new place to rent because Rinzivillo’s husband, a butcher, had lost his job. Rental prices also went up on the island after the storm, making things more difficult still.
“The Red Cross came to my house and interviewed me, and wouldn’t come into the house because they smelled the mold from outside,” Rinzivillo said. “They handed me the paperwork right there and then. They told me I’m entitled to it.”
She filled out the paperwork, but learned later the criteria had changed for the rental assistance. She was told that she had to have stayed at a hotel funded by FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to qualify. Rinzivillo said she felt punished for choosing to stay at her house rather than relying on government assistance.
“I mean it’s ridiculous that they make me go through all this paperwork, running around and getting all this stuff, just to deny me,” she said. “I can’t keep doing it.”
Rinzivillo stayed at a city-funded hotel after she was evicted, and then spent her remaining savings on the hotel room before she ran out of money and moved into her car. She had to send her three dogs to a shelter in Brooklyn, where she’s worried they will be euthanized.
“Thanks to the Red Cross, I’m homeless,” she said.
The agency says it reviewed Rinzivillo's case and let her and her case manager know that she was eligible for assistance if she provided documentation. "To our knowledge, to date, she has not provided that documentation," spokeswoman Anne Marie Borrego said.
The Red Cross also insists the agency’s eligibility requirements for the Move-In Assistance Program have always been the same: that a person’s primary home had to have been destroyed, and that they had to have been living in a government-provided hotel or received the FEMA maximum grant for their home after the storm.
Borrego said that the program provided $16 million to 3,000 households affected by Sandy. They expect to give out another $5 million in move-in assistance before the program is over.
“We are reviewing the names of those who signed the petition,” Borrego said. “If there were errors made, we’re going to correct them.”
Borrego said that the program’s guidelines are important to prevent people who don’t actually need help from getting aid.
“When folks were texting $10 to Hurricane Sandy victims, they wanted to be sure we were going to spend those dollars wisely,” she said. “A vast majority of those who are applying to us are well-meaning, but we do occasionally find examples of fraud.”
Out of $308 million the Red Cross raised from donations, $280 million has been committed or spent already.
The organization says it learned important lessons from Sandy that it hopes to use to improve next time.
“Responding to disasters in large urban areas provides really unique challenges,” Borrego said. “We need to pre-position more supplies inside urban areas like New York City to ensure they’re more mobile.”
The group is now putting dozens of mobile trailers around the city with bulk relief supplies like blankets, chargers and flashlights so that if another huge storm strikes, those necessities will already be there.
Sandy also drove home to the Red Cross just how extreme certain weather events can be. “We can have a hurricane followed by a snowstorm in a week,” Borrego said. “This is actually something that can happen.”
Update: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that the Red Cross has informed Rinzivillo that she is eligible for assistance and that James Molinaro praised the agency for its relief efforts a year after his initial criticism.
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, left, rehearses with Holocaust survivor George Horner at Symphony Hall Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 22, 2013, in Boston. The 90-year-old pianist will make his orchestral debut with Ma Tuesday night, where they will play music composed 70 years ago at the Nazi prison camp where Horner was imprisoned. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, left, rehearses with Holocaust survivor George Horner at Symphony Hall Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 22, 2013, in Boston. The 90-year-old pianist will make his orchestral debut with Ma Tuesday night, where they will play music composed 70 years ago at the Nazi prison camp where Horner was imprisoned. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, right, greets Holocaust survivor George Horner in a rehearsal room at Symphony Hall Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 22, 2013, in Boston. The 90-year-old pianist will make his orchestral debut with Ma Tuesday night, where they will play music composed 70 years ago at the Nazi prison camp where Horner was imprisoned. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, right, greets Holocaust survivor George Horner in a rehearsal room at Symphony Hall Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 22, 2013, in Boston. The 90-year-old pianist will make his orchestral debut with Ma Tuesday night, where they will play music composed 70 years ago at the Nazi prison camp where Horner was imprisoned. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, left, rehearses with Holocaust survivor George Horner on stage at Symphony Hall Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 22, 2013, in Boston. The 90-year-old pianist will make his orchestral debut with Ma Tuesday night, where they will play music composed 70 years ago at the Nazi prison camp where Horner was imprisoned. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, right, follows Holocaust survivor George Horner for a rehearsal at Symphony Hall Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 22, 2013, in Boston. The 90-year-old pianist will make his orchestral debut with Ma Tuesday night, where they will play music composed 70 years ago at the Nazi prison camp where Horner was imprisoned. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
BOSTON (AP) — A 90-year-old Holocaust survivor will make his orchestral debut with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma on Tuesday to benefit a foundation dedicated to preserving the work of artists and musicians killed by the Nazis.
Ma and George Horner, a retired doctor who lives near Philadelphia, embraced warmly in a small room at Boston's Symphony Hall on Tuesday afternoon before a brief rehearsal.
Ma thanked Horner for helping the Terezin Music Foundation, named for the town of Terezin, site of an unusual Jewish ghetto in what was then German-occupied Czechoslovakia. Even amid death and hard labor, Nazi soldiers there allowed prisoners to stage performances.
On Tuesday night, they will play music composed 70 years ago when Horner was incarcerated.
"It's an extraordinary link to the past," said concert organizer Mark Ludwig, who leads the foundation.
Horner played piano and accordion in the Terezin cabarets, including tunes written by fellow inmate Karel Svenk. On Tuesday, Horner will play two of Svenk's works solo — a march and a lullaby — and then team up with Ma for a third piece called "How Come the Black Man Sits in the Back of the Bus?"
Svenk did not survive the genocide. But his musical legacy has, due in part to a chance meeting of Ludwig, a scholar of Terezin composers, and Horner, who never forgot the songs that were written and played in captivity.
Still, Ludwig found it hard to ask Horner to perform pieces laden with such difficult memories.
"To ask somebody who ... played this in the camps, that's asking a lot," said Ludwig.
Yet Horner readily agreed to what he described as a "noble" mission. It didn't hurt that he would be sharing the stage with Ma — even if he thought Ludwig was joking at first.
"I told him, 'Do you want me to swallow that one?'" Horner recalled with a laugh. "I couldn't believe it because it's a fantastic thing for me."
Ma said before the performance that he hoped it will inspire people to a better future.
"I grew up with the words, 'never again,'" said Ma, who was born 10 years after the end of World War II revealed the scope of the Holocaust. "It is kind of inconceivable that there are people who say the Holocaust didn't exist. George Horner is a living contradiction of what those people are saying."
He said Horner was able to survive "because he had music, because he had friends, because the power of music could fill in the empty spaces."
"To me George Horner is a huge hero, and is a huge inspiration," Ma said. "He is a witness to a window, and to a slice of history, that we never want to see again, and yet we keep seeing versions of that all over the world. I hope we are inspired by that and we keep that memory forever."
The program features additional performances by Ma and the Hawthorne String Quartet. In a statement, Ma said he's glad the foundation is "giving voice through music to those whose voices have been tragically silenced."
Horner was 21 when he was freed by Allied soldiers in 1945 after serving time at Terezin, Auschwitz and Buchenwald. His parents and sister perished in the camps.
And though his back still bears the scars of a Nazi beating, he remains spry and seems much younger than his 90 years.
When Horner found out about the duet with Ma, Ludwig said, "He was so excited, to me he sounded like a teenager."
___
Matheson reported from Newtown Square, Pa. AP photographer Senne reported from Boston.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-10-22-Holocaust%20Survivor-Concert/id-3ac2e974df48458185fa34933ee07852![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uiUfZTlkeC0plMCu-J0JdARAECi77tUTAExeRJO3ST1p43tj1BXsqpLYTbZ0_FBNTuFh9wtGr6k8rDMiFcAFgHNl5p9TNwdhmAoiVLAhY=s0-d){kind=small}
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 22-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Dr. Patrick Meistser
pmeister@mpi-bremen.de
49-421-202-8832
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
This news release is available in German.
Traces of past microbial life in sediments off the coast of Peru document how the microbial ecosystem under the seafloor has responded to climate change over hundreds of thousands of years. For more a decade scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology and their colleagues at MARUM and the University of Aarhus have investigated microbial life from this habitat. This "Deep Biosphere", reaching several hundred metres below the seafloor, is exclusively inhabited by microbes and is generally considered as stable.
Nevertheless, only little is known about how this system developed over millennia and how this microbial life influences the cycling of carbon in the oceans. In a new study appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Dr. Sergio Contreras, a palaeoceanographer, and his Bremen colleagues use a careful examination of drill-cores from the continental shelf of Peru to actually show how surprisingly dynamic this deeply buried ecosystem can be.
Below the sea floor, consortia of two different domains of microorganisms (archaea and bacteria) tap the energy of methane, which they oxidize by using sulfate. This process is known as the anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM) and has been intensively studied by Bremen researchers. Methane, also produced by archaea, emerges from deeper layers of the sediment, while sulfate diffuses slowly from the water column into the sediment. Both reactants meet at the so-called methane oxidation front. Only at this front are concentrations of sulfate and methane high enough for the microbial turnover to take place, and here the AOM process leaves behind mineral and biological fossil signatures. For example, archaeol, a constituent of the archaeal cell membrane, is an extremely stable molecule that is preserved over thousands to millions of years. Minerals such as barite (barium sulfate) and dolomite (magnesium calcium carbonate) also precipitate at this methane oxidation front due to microbial activity.
Migration of the methane oxidation front
In order to trace the migration of the methane oxidation front back over the last half million years, Dr. Contreras and his colleagues measured the barite, dolomite and archaeol content at high resolution in drill cores from the coast off Peru. These up to 200-meter-long cores from the Peruvian continental shelf were obtained during an expedition with the scientific drill ship JOIDES Resolution as part of the Ocean Drilling Program in 2002. To their surprise, Contreras and his colleagues detected a layer that was strongly enriched in archaeol, barite and dolomite, located 20 meter above the present-day methane oxidation front. They estimated that this layer was formed during the last interglacial time period about 125000 years ago and that the methane front must have rapidly migrated downwards during the last glacial period. Our data demonstrate how fast the microbial communities respond to changes in the oceanographic conditions, at least on a geological time scale", explains the biogeochemist Dr. Tim Ferdelman.
Exploring the past with mathematical modeling
To reconstruct the rapid shifts in the depth of the methane front, Contreras and his colleagues used a mathematical model for simulating the deep microbial activity and its dependence on climate change. The simulations clearly show that the amount of organic detritus raining out from the highly productive Peruvian surface waters is the crucial factor determining the relative position of the methane front. The amount of carbon deposited on the Peruvian shelf strongly depends on the global climate; thus the methane oxidation front moved upwards during warm periods due to intensified organic carbon deposition, and migrated downwards with the onset of cold, glacial periods due to low organic carbon deposition. "We can incorporate these new findings into models for the development of past or future Deep Biospheres", concludes Dr. Bo Liu who developed the model for this study.
The geologist Dr. Patrick Meister highlights the implications of this finding: The detected traces provide the key to the history of the sub-seafloor microbial activity and its dynamic interaction with climate and oceanography for of the past 100,000 years. If we look further back in time, such as over the past million years" speculates Meister, "we might find even more drastic changes of microbial activity in the deep biosphere". Such ongoing research efforts between geologists and microbiologists, along with access to deep sediment samples within the framework of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), should continue to provide insight into the interactions between climate and the deep biosphere.
###
Original publication
Sergio Contreras, Patrick Meister, Bo Liu, Xavier Prieto-Mollar, Kai-Uwe Hinrichs, Arzhang Khalili, Timothy G. Ferdelman, Marcel M. M. Kuypers, Bo Barker Jrgensen
Cyclic 100 ka (glacial-interglacial) migration of sub-seafloor redox zonation on the Peruvian shelf
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013; doi/10.1073/pnas.1305981110
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 22-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Dr. Patrick Meistser
pmeister@mpi-bremen.de
49-421-202-8832
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
This news release is available in German.
Traces of past microbial life in sediments off the coast of Peru document how the microbial ecosystem under the seafloor has responded to climate change over hundreds of thousands of years. For more a decade scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology and their colleagues at MARUM and the University of Aarhus have investigated microbial life from this habitat. This "Deep Biosphere", reaching several hundred metres below the seafloor, is exclusively inhabited by microbes and is generally considered as stable.
Nevertheless, only little is known about how this system developed over millennia and how this microbial life influences the cycling of carbon in the oceans. In a new study appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Dr. Sergio Contreras, a palaeoceanographer, and his Bremen colleagues use a careful examination of drill-cores from the continental shelf of Peru to actually show how surprisingly dynamic this deeply buried ecosystem can be.
Below the sea floor, consortia of two different domains of microorganisms (archaea and bacteria) tap the energy of methane, which they oxidize by using sulfate. This process is known as the anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM) and has been intensively studied by Bremen researchers. Methane, also produced by archaea, emerges from deeper layers of the sediment, while sulfate diffuses slowly from the water column into the sediment. Both reactants meet at the so-called methane oxidation front. Only at this front are concentrations of sulfate and methane high enough for the microbial turnover to take place, and here the AOM process leaves behind mineral and biological fossil signatures. For example, archaeol, a constituent of the archaeal cell membrane, is an extremely stable molecule that is preserved over thousands to millions of years. Minerals such as barite (barium sulfate) and dolomite (magnesium calcium carbonate) also precipitate at this methane oxidation front due to microbial activity.
Migration of the methane oxidation front
In order to trace the migration of the methane oxidation front back over the last half million years, Dr. Contreras and his colleagues measured the barite, dolomite and archaeol content at high resolution in drill cores from the coast off Peru. These up to 200-meter-long cores from the Peruvian continental shelf were obtained during an expedition with the scientific drill ship JOIDES Resolution as part of the Ocean Drilling Program in 2002. To their surprise, Contreras and his colleagues detected a layer that was strongly enriched in archaeol, barite and dolomite, located 20 meter above the present-day methane oxidation front. They estimated that this layer was formed during the last interglacial time period about 125000 years ago and that the methane front must have rapidly migrated downwards during the last glacial period. Our data demonstrate how fast the microbial communities respond to changes in the oceanographic conditions, at least on a geological time scale", explains the biogeochemist Dr. Tim Ferdelman.
Exploring the past with mathematical modeling
To reconstruct the rapid shifts in the depth of the methane front, Contreras and his colleagues used a mathematical model for simulating the deep microbial activity and its dependence on climate change. The simulations clearly show that the amount of organic detritus raining out from the highly productive Peruvian surface waters is the crucial factor determining the relative position of the methane front. The amount of carbon deposited on the Peruvian shelf strongly depends on the global climate; thus the methane oxidation front moved upwards during warm periods due to intensified organic carbon deposition, and migrated downwards with the onset of cold, glacial periods due to low organic carbon deposition. "We can incorporate these new findings into models for the development of past or future Deep Biospheres", concludes Dr. Bo Liu who developed the model for this study.
The geologist Dr. Patrick Meister highlights the implications of this finding: The detected traces provide the key to the history of the sub-seafloor microbial activity and its dynamic interaction with climate and oceanography for of the past 100,000 years. If we look further back in time, such as over the past million years" speculates Meister, "we might find even more drastic changes of microbial activity in the deep biosphere". Such ongoing research efforts between geologists and microbiologists, along with access to deep sediment samples within the framework of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), should continue to provide insight into the interactions between climate and the deep biosphere.
###
Original publication
Sergio Contreras, Patrick Meister, Bo Liu, Xavier Prieto-Mollar, Kai-Uwe Hinrichs, Arzhang Khalili, Timothy G. Ferdelman, Marcel M. M. Kuypers, Bo Barker Jrgensen
Cyclic 100 ka (glacial-interglacial) migration of sub-seafloor redox zonation on the Peruvian shelf
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013; doi/10.1073/pnas.1305981110
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
It all seemed so easy then. Back in June, the Supreme Court declared the Affordable Care Act constitutional. Waiting for that decision may have cost the administration precious time.
It all seemed so easy then. Back in June, the Supreme Court declared the Affordable Care Act constitutional. Waiting for that decision may have cost the administration precious time.
Since the Affordable Care Act's health care exchanges launched to a long series of error messages Oct. 1, most of the "what went wrong" fingers have been pointing at software developers.
But some say there's more to it than that — that politics has played a role as well.
"It is a mess and there's no sugarcoating it, and people shouldn't sugarcoat that," says Jay Angoff, who formerly ran the health exchange program for the Department of Health and Human Services. "On the other hand, people should remember that those who are in charge of the money HHS needs to implement the federal exchange are dedicated to the destruction of the federal exchange, and the destruction of the Affordable Care Act."
Which led to the first big problem — money. When it became clear that HHS would need more money to build the federal exchange than had been allocated in the original law, Republicans in Congress refused to provide it.
As a result, says Angoff, officials "had to scrape together money from various offices within HHS to build the federal exchange."
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney campaigned to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Did that further delay implementation of the law?
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney campaigned to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Did that further delay implementation of the law?
Then there was the timing issue. Technically, department officials have had 3 1/2 years since the law passed. But much of that time was spent in limbo. First there was waiting to see if the Supreme Court would overturn the law in the summer of 2012. (It didn't.) Then there was waiting to see if Mitt Romney and a Republican Senate would be elected that November to repeal it. (They weren't.)
Then it was another month waiting for states to decide if they wanted to build their own health exchanges or let the federal government do it for them.
"The administration bent over backward to accommodate the states; the administration begged states to cooperate," Angoff says.
And in the end, the administration made a major miscalculation. Officials figured that even Republican states would both create their own exchanges and expand their Medicaid programs because both came with so much federal money attached.
"The thought was that ultimately money trumps everything," says Angoff. "And that no matter what the rhetoric was of some of the elected officials against the Affordable Care Act, ultimately they would take the money. And I think what surprised most people was that in this case, money didn't trump everything."
So what now? Even some of the administration's strongest backers think it needs to change course. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and himself an architect of the health law, took the administration to task on Monday for not being more forthcoming about the website's problems and how it's fixing them.
"I think they need to have daily briefings, and they need to give us milestones over the next four weeks as to what we should look for improvement," he said Monday on MSNBC. "Reassurance verbally is not worth much at this point, and we need to see weekly what's improved; but we need a daily briefing."
So far, though, that's not happening. And no timetables are being given for any final fix.
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Source: http://www.wwe.com/shows/raw/2013-10-21/wwe-raw-resultsA worker from Doctors Without Borders speaks with a sick child in Gao, in the north of Mali, on Feb. 4.
A worker from Doctors Without Borders speaks with a sick child in Gao, in the north of Mali, on Feb. 4.
There's one area of the economy that's growing faster than business or government.
According to the Urban Institute, in the 10 years between 2001 and 2011, the number of nonprofits increased 25 percent. But most of them aren't very good at measuring their effectiveness — at least, that's the conclusion of the nonprofit watchdog Charity Navigator, which rates thousands of nonprofits to help donors make decisions on their giving.
Now, Charity Navigator is planning to change its ratings system. President and CEO Ken Berger says donors deserve to know if the money they're giving is going to programs that work.
"Think about the fact that [in] the largest nonprofit sector in the history of the world, we do not know whether or not we're having meaningful results and to what extent," Berger says. "It's not to say that they're not having results, but they often just don't know what the heck they are."
So Berger is shaking up Charity Navigator's ratings system. At the moment, Charity Navigator compares how much money a nonprofit spends on its programs with how much it spends on overhead. But beginning in 2016, the rating will also factor in results.
"How clearly do you identify the problem that you're trying to solve and how well do you have measures to know that you're on the road to solving that problem?" Berger says.
Give People A New Outlook, Then Measure It
But what if the problem you're trying to solve is in the middle of a war zone? Doctors Without Borders Executive Director Sophie Delaunay says she's leery about a system that would grade a nonprofit based on its results.
"I mean, it really depends on how they're going to use their results and what is their own understanding of what they're trying to analyze," she says.
Dennis Chestnut stands next to a stretch of the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 2. Chestnut, who has been working to clean up the Anacostia for decades, says it can take a long time for a nonprofit to see an end result.
Dennis Chestnut stands next to a stretch of the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 2. Chestnut, who has been working to clean up the Anacostia for decades, says it can take a long time for a nonprofit to see an end result.
Charity Navigator has suggested that one way nonprofits can evaluate their effectiveness is to ask the people they serve how they're doing. But Delaunay says that's "totally unrealistic" for doctors performing surgery in a war zone: "There is no way we're going to send a questionnaire to our patients, who are displaced and in a dramatic state, about whether they are satisfied with our care."
For other nonprofits, surveys are no big deal. Surale Phillips, a consultant to arts groups around the country, says many theaters and dance companies already ask their audiences for feedback.
"You probably get a questionnaire about what you thought of the show and the questions will be about the artistic process," she says.
Still, lots of nonprofit arts groups say their goal is to use theater or music to bring people together, or to make people think differently about the world. Those results are hard for arts organizations to measure, Phillips says.
"In the medical industry or environmental industry, or things that are not the arts, there are often standards that are across the board," she says. "We don't have those kinds of standards [in] the arts. We don't have, you know, CO2 levels to measure change."
But Dennis Chestnut does. He's executive director of the environmental nonprofit Groundwork Anacostia River DC, which measures change in the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. Their mission is both restoration and education: Chestnut says they're trying to get people to care more about the environmental health of their community, learn how to improve it and then make it part of their daily lives.
"It might take ... a period of years to measure the impact," he says, "for us to, you know, actually see that end result, that outcome."
The Price Of Surveying Results
Another obstacle many nonprofits could face is how to pay for evaluations. Charity Navigator is asking for a fairly sophisticated process. With nonprofit jargon like "causal logic" and "pre-defined outputs," you need a glossary to get through the description. Phillips, the arts consultant, says it takes training to do the kind of evaluation they're asking for.
"It's not necessarily about sending one staff person to a workshop," she says. "It's a really intense process."
But Charity Navigator's Berger says nonprofits complained about the ratings formula way back when they first started doing them, 11 years ago.
"The outcry from the sector was: 'You're not measuring what matters most,' 'You need to evaluate us on our results.' That's what we were told until 2011," he says. "Now that we've got this, now we're being told, 'No, wait. It's too hard; it's too complicated; it's too expensive.' It's this, that and the other thing."
If nonprofits are going to ask people for money, Berger says, they should be able to show them their results.
"White Jesus, is that you?
Last month Kanye West announced that he is going on tour with Kendrick Lamar here in the US. Over the weekend, Kanye played a show in Seattle, WA where he brought out on stage a very special guest. Kanye decided to name his tour after his new album Yeezus and, as such, saw fit to invite a man dresses like Jesus to appear on stage with him. HMMM. Click below to see a photo of Yeezus and Jesus together on stage in Seattle and then watch video of the two interacting.
[Source]
A Sparks Middle School student cries and is comforted after being released from Agnes Risley Elementary School, where some students were evacuated to after a shooting at SMS in Sparks, Nev. on Monday, October 21, 2013 in Sparks, Nev. A middle school student opened fire on campus just before the starting bell Monday, wounding two boys and killing a staff member who was trying to protect other children, Sparks police said Monday. The lone suspected gunman was also dead, though it's unclear whether the student committed suicide. (AP Photo/Kevin Clifford)
A Sparks Middle School student cries and is comforted after being released from Agnes Risley Elementary School, where some students were evacuated to after a shooting at SMS in Sparks, Nev. on Monday, October 21, 2013 in Sparks, Nev. A middle school student opened fire on campus just before the starting bell Monday, wounding two boys and killing a staff member who was trying to protect other children, Sparks police said Monday. The lone suspected gunman was also dead, though it's unclear whether the student committed suicide. (AP Photo/Kevin Clifford)
A Sparks Middle School student cries with family members after being released from Agnes Risley Elementary School, where some students were evacuated to after a shooting at Sparks Middle School in Sparks, Nev. on Monday, Oct. 21, 2013 in Sparks, Nev. A student at the Sparks Middle School opened fire on campus, killing a staff member who was trying to protect other children, police said Monday. (AP Photo/Kevin Clifford)
Swat team members secure the scene near Sparks Middle School in Sparks, Nev., after a shooting there on Monday, Oct. 21, 2013. Authorities are reporting that two people were killed and two wounded at the Nevada middle school. (AP Photo/Kevin Clifford)
Map locates Sparks, Nev., where at least 2 people are killed in a shooting at Sparks Middle School.; 1c x 2 inches; 46.5 mm x 50 mm;
A Sparks Middle School student, back to camera, cries with family members after being released from Agnes Risley Elementary School Monday Oct. 21, 2013, in Sparks Nev., after a shooting at Sparks Middle School. A student at the Sparks Middle School opened fire on campus, killing a staff member who was trying to protect other children, police said Monday. (AP Photo/Kevin Clifford)
SPARKS, Nev. (AP) — A student at a Nevada middle school opened fire on campus just before the starting bell Monday, wounding two boys and killing a math teacher who was trying to protect children from their gun-wielding classmate.
Teacher Michael Landsberry was being hailed for his actions outside Sparks Middle School, where 20 to 30 horrified students witnessed the shooting as they returned to classes from a weeklong fall break.
"In my estimation, he is a hero. ... We do know he was trying to intervene," Reno Deputy Police Chief Tom Robinson said.
The unidentified shooter was killed along with Landsberry, a 45-year-old military veteran who leaves behind a wife and two stepdaughters. The motive for the shooting is still unknown. One of the wounded students is out of surgery and the other is doing well, police said.
It's unclear whether the student committed suicide, but authorities say no shots were fired by law enforcement. Police said between 150 and 200 officers, including some from as far as 60 miles away, responded to the shooting.
The violence erupted nearly a year after a gunman shocked the nation by opening fire in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., leaving 26 dead. The Dec. 14 shooting ignited debate over how best to protect the nation's schools and whether armed teachers should be part of that equation.
On his school website, Landsberry posted a picture of a brown bear and took on a tough-love tone, telling students, "I have one classroom rule and it is very simple: 'Thou Shall Not Annoy Mr. L.'"
"The kids loved him," said his sister-in-law Chanda Landsberry.
She added his life could be summed up by his love of his family, students and country.
"To hear that he was trying to stop that is not surprising by any means," she said.
Students from the middle school and neighboring elementary school were evacuated to the nearby high school, and classes were canceled. The middle school will remain closed for the week.
"As you can imagine, the best description is chaos," Robinson said. "It's too early to say whether he was targeting people or going on an indiscriminate shooting spree."
At the evacuation center, parents comforted their children.
"We came flying down here to get our kids," said Mike Fiorica, whose nephew attends the school. "It's really chaotic. You can imagine how parents are feeling. You don't know if your kid's OK."
The shooting happened on the school's campus and ended outside the school building itself, according to police.
"I was deeply saddened to learn of the horrific shooting at Sparks Middle School this morning," Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval said in a statement extending his thoughts and prayers to those affected.
About 700 students in 7th and 8th grades are enrolled at the school, located in a working class neighborhood.
"It's not supposed to happen here," Chanda Landsberry said. "We're just Sparks — little Sparks, Nev. It's unreal."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, offered his condolences to those who experienced a "traumatic morning."
"No words of condolence could possibly ease the pain, but I hope it is some small comfort that Nevada mourns with them," Reid said in a statement.
In a statement on the website of Sandy Hook Promise, a gun control advocacy group, Nicole Hockley, whose son Dylan was killed in the shooting said, "It's moments like this that demand that we unite as parents to find commonsense solutions that keep our children — all children — safe, and prevent these tragedies from happening again and again."
The Washoe County School District held a session in the spring in light of the Connecticut tragedy to educate parents on what safety measures the district takes.
Sparks, a city of roughly 90,000 that sprung out of the railway industry, lies just east of Reno.
Mayor Geno Martini spoke at a morning press conference to assure residents that the community was safe.
"It's a tragic day in the city of Sparks," he said. "This is just an isolated incident."
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Associated Press writer Michelle Rindels in Las Vegas and news researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-10-21-US-Middle-School-Shooting-Nevada/id-c0810555d2a7497b98271bdb751c31cc
AT&T's live U-Verse TV streaming has at last reached Android. Subscribers can now watch over 100 live channels from their Google-powered hardware, including more than 20 channels that are available away from home. The U-Verse app also supports Android tablets for the first time, the carrier says. ...
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/-VqYsUVyYMU/Amidst the brouhaha over defunding Obamacare, the government shutting down, the Republican brand plummeting as the party fractures, etc., etc., the GOP is being presented with a golden opportunity that they would be extremely wise to consider and exploit carefully — Obamacare is about to defund itself.
DETROIT (AP) — Mike Napoli's majestic homer began the early breakthrough Boston needed.
Now, the Red Sox are a win away from the World Series — with a bullpen that Miguel Cabrera and the Detroit Tigers still can't seem to solve.
Napoli opened the scoring with another big long ball, Junichi Tazawa again bested Cabrera in a crucial spot and the Red Sox edged Detroit 4-3 on Thursday night.
Boston returns to Fenway Park with a 3-2 lead in the AL championship series. Game 6 is Saturday with the Tigers' Max Scherzer facing the Red Sox's Clay Buchholz.
"Our guys are well aware of where we are," manager John Farrell said. "But at the same time the beauty of them is to not get ahead of themselves, and that will be the case once that first pitch is thrown on Saturday."
Cabrera was thrown out at the plate in the first inning, halting an early Detroit rally, and he hit into a double play against Tazawa with runners at the corners in the seventh. The Tigers scored a run on the grounder, but it was a trade-off the Red Sox were willing to make.
Napoli led off a three-run second with a drive off Anibal Sanchez into the ivy beyond the wall in center field.
Detroit's starters had allowed only three runs in 27 innings through the first four games of the series. After pitching six no-hit innings in Game 1, Sanchez allowed four — three earned — in six innings Thursday.
Jon Lester allowed two runs and seven hits in 5 1-3 innings. He walked three and struck out three, and the Boston bullpen held on to finish off the fourth game of the series to be decided by one run.
"There's probably a reason I don't have any hair," Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia said. "It's stressful."
Down 4-2 in the seventh, the Tigers put runners on first and third with nobody out when Jose Iglesias and Torii Hunter singled. Cabrera, who struck out with runners at the corners against Tazawa in the eighth inning of a 1-0 loss in Game 3, hit a soft grounder to second for a double play this time.
That was Detroit's last stand in this one. Craig Breslow retired slumping Prince Fielder to end the seventh and got the first out of the eighth. Then Koji Uehara retired five straight for the save.
Now Detroit turns to Scherzer, a 21-game winner, to try to extend the season. The Tigers will have Justin Verlander ready to pitch Game 7 if there is one.
Detroit may be without catcher Alex Avila in Boston. He left after the top of the fourth with a strained left knee.
Boston led in only four of 36 innings in the first four games, but the Red Sox won two of them. They struck early in Game 5 when Napoli's drive easily cleared the 420-foot marker in center and landed in the ivy above two rows of bushes. That was the start of a three-run second inning, and it was Napoli's second homer of the series. His solo shot accounted for the only run of Game 3.
Detroit revamped its lineup before its Game 4 win — dropping Austin Jackson from the leadoff spot to eighth and moving almost everyone else up a place. The Tigers went with that same general framework Thursday, but it was Boston manager John Farrell's adjustments that paid off.
After Napoli's homer, Jonny Gomes — starting in left field instead of Daniel Nava — reached on an error by Cabrera at third base. One out later, 21-year-old Xander Bogaerts — he started at third instead of Will Middlebrooks — hit a double.
David Ross, catching in place of Jarrod Saltalamacchia, doubled with men on second and third. Only one run scored on the play because Bogaerts didn't get a good jump from second, but he came home anyway when Sanchez couldn't handle Jacoby Ellsbury's line drive back to the mound. It went off Sanchez's glove for an infield single and a 3-0 lead.
Boston missed out on another run that inning when Ross was thrown out at home on Shane Victorino's grounder. Ross plowed through Avila at the plate — then gave Avila a pat on the backside after he held onto the ball.
Ross and Avila have both dealt with concussion problems this year, and Avila was later hit in the mask by a foul ball.
In the third, shortstop Jose Iglesias gave the Detroit fans something to cheer about with a terrific catch on a shallow flyball by David Ortiz. Iglesias, who was shifted over to the right of second base, ran all the way out to short left field, finally catching the ball with a quick snatch of his glove hand.
But Napoli followed with a double, went to third on a groundout and scored on a two-out, two-strike wild pitch by Sanchez to make it 4-0.
Sanchez allowed nine hits and struck out five.
Lester worked in and out of trouble. He was helped in the first inning when Cabrera was thrown out at home for the third out. Cabrera has been slowed by a number of injuries over the last couple months, and when Jhonny Peralta singled to left, it appeared the Tigers would have the bases loaded with two outs and Omar Infante batting.
But coach Tom Brookens started waiving Cabrera around third, and when Brookens changed course and put up the stop sign, the Detroit slugger ran through it and was out at home on a play that wasn't close.
The Tigers had two on and one out in the fourth when Brayan Pena pinch-hit for the injured Avila. Pena hit a grounder to the pitcher, and the Red Sox turned a double play with a nifty catch-and-relay at second by shortstop Stephen Drew.
Cabrera managed an RBI single in the fifth. With two on and one out in the sixth, the Red Sox pulled Lester, bringing in Tazawa. Pena immediately singled home a run, but Jackson hit into an inning-ending double play.
NOTES: At 21 years and 16 days old, Bogaerts became the youngest Red Sox player to start a postseason game. The previous record holder was Babe Ruth, who was the starting pitcher at 21 years and 246 days old in Game 2 of the 1916 World Series. ... Thursday's game was played under a misty rain at times, but was never delayed. ... There was an odd play in the Boston ninth when Middlebrooks, in the game as a pinch-runner, went from first to third on a sacrifice bunt by Ross. Cabrera came charging in to field the bunt, and Pena was slow to get to third and cover the base. Pena caught Fielder's throw on the foul side of third base and, when he spun to attempt a tag, he first made contact with umpire Rob Drake, who was very close to the bag.
