Mathematics: The only true universal language

by Martin Rees

IF WE ever establish contact with intelligent aliens living on a planet around a distant star, we would expect some problems communicating with them. As we are many light years away, our signals would take many years to reach them, so there would be no scope for snappy repartee. There could be an IQ gap and the aliens might be built from quite different chemistry.

Yet there would be much common ground too. They would be made of similar atoms to us. They could trace their origins back to the big bang 13.7 billion years ago, and they would share with us the universe's future. However, the surest common culture would be mathematics.

Mathematics has been the language of science for thousands of years, and it is remarkably successful. In a famous essay, the great physicist Eugene Wigner wrote about the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics". Most of us resonate with the perplexity expressed by Wigner, and also with Einstein's dictum that "the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible". We marvel at the fact that the universe is not anarchic - that atoms obey the same laws in distant galaxies as in the lab. The aliens would, like us, be astonished by the patterns in our shared cosmos and by the effectiveness of mathematics in describing those patterns.

Mathematics can point the way towards new discoveries in physics too. Most famously, British theorist Paul Dirac used pure mathematics to formulate an equation that led to the idea of antimatter several years before the first antiparticle was found in 1932. So will physicists' luck hold as they aim to probe still deeper levels of structure in the cosmos? Are limits set by the intrinsic capacity of our brains? Can computers offer insights, rather than just crunch numbers? These are some of the questions that exercise me.

The precedents are encouraging. The two big breakthroughs in physics in the 20th century owed much to mathematics. The first was the formulation of quantum theory in the 1920s, of which Dirac was one of the great pioneers. The theory tells us that, on the atomic scale, nature is intrinsically fuzzy. Nonetheless, atoms behave in precise mathematical ways when they emit and absorb light, or link together to make molecules.

The other was Einstein's general relativity. More than 200 years earlier, Isaac Newton showed that the force that makes apples fall is the same as the gravity that holds planets in their orbits. Newton's mathematics is good enough to fly rockets into space and steer probes around planets, but Einstein transcended Newton. His general theory of relativity could cope with very high speeds and strong gravity, offering deeper insight into gravity's nature.

Yet despite his deep physical insights, Einstein was not a top-rate mathematician. The language needed for the great conceptual advances of 20th-century physics was already in place and Einstein was lucky that the geometrical concepts he needed had already been developed by German mathematician Bernhard Riemann a century earlier. The cohort of young quantum theorists led by Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and Dirac were similarly fortunate in being able to apply ready-made mathematics.

Einstein was not a top-rated mathematician. The concepts he needed had already been developed

The 21st-century counterparts of these great figures - those seeking to mesh general relativity and quantum mechanics in a unified theory - are not so lucky. A unified theory is key unfinished business for science today.

The most favoured theory posits that the particles that make up atoms are all made up of tiny loops, or strings, that vibrate in a space with 10 or 11 dimensions. This string theory involves intensely complex mathematics that certainly cannot be found on the shelf, and the challenges it poses have been a stimulus for mathematics. Ed Witten, the acknowledged intellectual leader of string theory, ranks as a world-class mathematician, and several other leading mathematicians have been attracted by the challenge.

String theory is not the only approach to a unified theory, but it is by far the most intensively studied one. This endeavour is surely good for mathematics, but there is controversy about how good it is for physics. Arguments rage over whether string theory is right, whether it will ever engage with experiment, and even whether it is physics at all. There have even been commercially successful books rubbishin g the idea.

To me, criticisms of string theory as an intellectual enterprise seem to be in poor taste. It is presumptuous to second-guess the judgement of people of acknowledged brilliance who choose to devote their research career to it. However, we should be concerned about the undue concentration of talent in one speculative field.

Finding a unified theory would be the completion of a programme that started with Newton. String theory, if correct, would also vindicate the vision of Einstein and the late American physicist John Wheeler that the world is essentially a geometrical structure.

An interesting possibility, which I think should not be dismissed, is that a "true" fundamental theory exists, but that it may just be too hard for human brains to grasp. A fish may be barely aware of the medium in which it lives and swims; certainly it has no intellectual powers to comprehend that water consists of interlinked atoms of hydrogen and oxygen. The microstructure of empty space could, likewise, be far too complex for unaided human brains to grasp.

String theory involves scales a billion billion times smaller than any we can directly probe. At the other extreme, our cosmological theories suggest that the universe is vastly more extensive than the patch we can observe with our telescopes. It may even be infinite. The domain that astronomers call "the universe" - the space, extending more than 10 billion light years around us and containing billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars, billions of planets (and maybe billions of biospheres) - could be an infinitesimal part of the totality.

There is a definite horizon to direct observations: a spherical shell around us, such that no light from beyond it has had time to reach us since the big bang. However, there is nothing physical about this horizon. If you were in the middle of an ocean, it is conceivable that the water ends just beyond your horizon - except that we know it doesn't. Likewise, there are reasons to suspect that our universe - the aftermath of our big bang - extends hugely further than we can see.

That is not all: our big bang may not be the only one. An idea called eternal inflation developed largely by Andrei Linde at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, envisages big bangs popping off, endlessly, in an ever-expanding substratum. Or there could be other space-times alongside ours - all embedded in a higher-dimensional space. Ours could be but one universe in a multiverse.

Other branches of mathematics then become relevant. We need a rigorous language to describe the number of possible states that a universe could possess and to compare the probability of different configurations. A clearer concept of infinity itself is also required (see "The enigma of infinity").

The multiverse confronts us with infinities, multiplied by other infinities - perhaps repeatedly. To bring sense to these concepts, we must deploy the mathematics of transfinite numbers, which date back to Georg Cantor in the 19th century. He showed that there was a rigorous way to discuss infinity and that in a well-defined sense there are infinities of different sizes. Without these exotic concepts, cosmologists will not be able to firm up the concept of the multiverse theory and decide, without paradoxes or ambiguities, what is probable and what is improbable within it.

At its deepest level, physical reality may have a geometric intricacy that would be satisfying to any intelligences on Earth or beyond, just as it would have delighted the Pythagoreans. Provided we could understand it, a unified theory that revealed this would be an intellectual triumph. Calling it a "theory of everything", though, is hubristic and misleading as it would offer no help to 99 per cent of scientists. Chemistry and biology are not held up through ignorance of subnuclear physics; still less are they dependent on the deepest structure of space-time. String theory might unify two great scientific frontiers, the very big and the very small, but there is a third frontier - the very complex. That is perhaps the most challenging of all, and it is the frontier on which most scientists work.

Finding a theory of everything would offer no help to 99 per cent of scientists

There are nonetheless reasons to hope that simple underlying rules might govern some seemingly complex phenomena. This was intimated in 1970 by the mathematician John Conway who invented the "game of life". Conway wanted to devise a game that would start with a simple pattern and use basic rules to evolve it again and again. He began experimenting with the black and white tiles on a Go board and discovered that by adjusting the simple rules of his game, which determine when a tile turns from black to white and vice versa, and the starting patterns, some arrangements produce incredibly complex results seemingly from nowhere. Some patterns can emerge that appear to have a life of their own as they move round the board.

The real world is similar: simple rules allow complex consequences. While Conway only needed a pencil and paper to devise his game, it takes a computer to fully explore the range of complexity inherent in it.

Computer simulations have given science an immense boost. And there is no reason why computers cannot actually make discoveries, albeit in their own distinctive way. IBM's chess-playing computer Deep Blue didn't work out its strategy like a human player. Instead, it took advantage of its computational speed to explore millions of alternative series of moves and responses before deciding an optimum move. This brute force approach overwhelmed a world champion.

The same approach could be put to good use to solve problems that have us so far eluded us. For example, scientists are currently looking for new superconductors that, rather than requiring low temperatures to conduct electricity as they do now, will work at ordinary room temperatures. This search involves a lot of trial and error, because nobody understands exactly what makes the electrical resistance disappear more readily in some materials than in others. Suppose that a machine came up with a recipe for such a superconductor. While it might have succeeded in the same way that Deep Blue defeated Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov, rather than by having a theory or strategy, it would have achieved something that would deserve a Nobel prize.

Simulations using ever more powerful computers will, in a similar way, help scientists to understand processes that we neither study in our laboratories nor observe directly. In my own subject of astronomy, researchers can already create a virtual universe in a computer and carry out experiments in it, such as calculating how stars form and die.

Some day, perhaps, my biological colleagues will be using them to simulate many processes including the chemical complexities within living cells, how combinations of genes encode the intricate chemistry of a cell, and the morphology of limbs and eyes. Perhaps they will be able to simulate the conditions that led to the first life, and even other forms of life that could, in principle, exist.

However there is a long way to go before real machine intelligence is achieved. A powerful computer can be a world chess champion, but not even the most advanced robot can recognise and move the pieces on a real chessboard as adeptly as a five-year-old child.

Maybe in the far future, though, post-human intelligence will develop hypercomputers with the processing power to simulate living things - even entire worlds. Perhaps advanced beings could even simulate a "universe" that goes far beyond mere patterns on a chequer-board and the best movie special effects. Their simulated universe could be as complex as the one we perceive ourselves to be in. This raises a disconcerting thought: perhaps that is what our universe really is.

It is fascinating to speculate whether hyper-intelligent aliens already exist in some remote part of our cosmos. If so, would their brains "package" reality in a mathematical language that would be comprehensible to us or our descendents?

$3 trillion! — Senate, Fed, Treasury attack crisis

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent

WASHINGTON – On a single day filled with staggering sums, the Obama administration, Federal Reserve and Senate attacked the deepening economic crisis Tuesday with actions that could throw as much as $3 trillion more in government and private funds into the fight against frozen credit markets and rising joblessness.

"It's gone deep. It's gotten worse," President Barack Obama said of the recession at a campaign-style appearance in Fort Myers, Fla., where unemployment has reached double digits. "The situation we face could not be more serious."

If any more emphasis were needed, Wall Street investors sent stocks plunging, objecting that new rescue details from the government were too sparse. The Dow Jones industrials dropped 382 points.

The president spoke shortly after Senate passage of an $838 billion emergency economic stimulus bill cleared the way for talks with the House on a final compromise. In a display of urgency, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel traveled to the Capitol for meetings that stretched into the night with Democratic leaders as well as moderate senators whose views — and votes — will be key to any deal.

Separately, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner outlined plans for spending much of the $350 billion in financial bailout money recently cleared by Congress, and the Federal Reserve announced it would commit up to $1 trillion to make loans more widely available to consumers.

Taken together, the events marked at least a political watershed if not an economic turning point — the day the three-week old administration and its congressional allies assumed full control of the struggle against the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The vote was 61-37 in the Senate to pass the stimulus, with moderate Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania joining Democrats in support.

Even before the vote, Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with Obama at the White House to go over the task ahead.

The Democratic leaders have long pledged to have legislation on Obama's desk by mid-month, and some Democrats said there was an informal target of Wednesday for agreement on a bill that would likely wind up in the range of $800 billion.

The political urgency bumped up against other obstacles, though.

The House measure includes roughly $70 billion more spending than the Senate's, but it lacks Senate-approved tax breaks totaling more than $100 billion for new car buyers, home purchasers and upper middle income families.

In a further obstacle, Collins and other Senate moderates — in both parties — signaled they will work to hold the cost of the final bill below $800 billion. That's less than the $820 billion in spending and tax cuts combined in the bill that cleared the House as well as the $838 billion legislation the Senate wrote.

Additionally, Obama has campaigned particularly energetically to include funds for school construction in the bill. At the insistence of Collins, the Senate measure omitted money for that purpose, and it wasn't clear whether she had eased her position on the presidential priority.

Whatever the cost of the final bill, it will add to the deficit, and that created another little-mentioned dilemma for the administration and Democrats.

Future spending bills on domestic programs or tax cuts will probably have a far more difficult time gaining the support necessary to pass without offsetting spending cuts or tax increases that would hold the deficit level.

Obama has campaigned energetically in recent days for passage of the stimulus bill, at the White House, on visits to other federal agencies, in his trip to Florida and a similar appearance Monday in a high-unemployment area of Indiana.

Reid depicted a president deeply involved in the compromise effort as well. He said Obama had "certain set ideas as to what he thinks should be done" but declined to elaborate.

The president set the context for the unfolding events Monday night at his first presidential news conference when he said, "With the private sector so weakened by this recession, the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back into life."

Geithner outlined some of the details, although he and aides left numerous questions unanswered.

"We have to both jump-start job creation and private investment, and we must get credit flowing again to businesses and families," Geithner said at a news conference. He pledged to "fundamentally reshape" the financial industry bailout that began last fall under the Bush administration, and he announced that at least $50 billion would be spent helping homeowners facing foreclosure. He also said new steps would hold banks accountable for their use of bailout funds.

One element of the administration's approach calls for using as much as $100 billion in federal bailout funds to give banks, hedge funds or other investors the incentive to purchase so-called toxic assets carried on the books of other financial institutions. The goal is to return struggling banks to health so they can resume making loans, and an administration fact sheet said the amount of government and private funds combined will be "on an initial scale of up to $500 billion, with the potential to expand up to $1 trillion."

The Federal Reserve announced it would commit up to $1 trillion to purchase bonds or other assets backed by consumer loans. The Treasury will guarantee a portion of the Fed investment by putting up $100 billion, an increase from a $20 billion commitment that Bush administration had announced.

The goal of this program is to make it easier for consumers to buy cars or obtain student loans, small business loans or other types of credit that have dried up in recent months.

Geithner said $50 billion in bailout funds would be dedicated to an effort to prevent mortgage foreclosure of "owner-occupied middle class homes." Few details were provided.

Amazon Indians accused of cannibalizing farmer

By Helena DeMoura
CNN

(CNN) -- A city official in the remote Brazilian Amazon village of Envira told CNN that five members of the Kulina tribe are on the run after being accused of murdering, butchering and eating a farmer in a ritual act of cannibalism.

The village's chief of staff, Maronilton da Silva Clementino, said Kulina tribesmen took the life of Ocelio Alves de Carvalho, 19, last week on the outskirts of Envira, which is in the far western part of Brazil that bumps up against Peru.

Portal Amazonia newspaper reported that the Indians escaped after being held for a few hours in the city's police station.

No arrest warrants were issued. Brazilian law does not allow the military or civil police to enter Indian lands, Portal Amazonia reported.

It is still unknown how many people took part in the alleged cannibalistic ritual, although several Indians have fled into the jungle fearing prosecution, the newspaper Diario do Amazonas reported.

Clementino said the victim was herding cattle when he met with a group of Indians who invited him back to their village.

"They knew each other and they sometimes helped one another. They invited him to their reservation three days ago and he was never seen again," Clementino said.

"The family decided to go into the reservation and that's when they saw his body quartered and his skull hanging on a tree. It was very tragic for the family," he said.

The news of the incident came from the Indians themselves, who apparently bragged about eating the man's organs, Clementino said.

Members of the tribe told residents of Envira -- where 190 Kulina families brush shoulders with non-tribal Brazilians -- that they held a cannibalistic ritual in which they cooked the victim's organs, Clementino said.

He said Kulina Indians began surrounding the police station where the suspects were briefly interrogated.

Villagers told authorities they are incensed by the lack of response from FUNAI, Brazil's National Indian Foundation.

"The family is very frustrated with the law here, which protects the Indians and doesn't help protect us," he said. "They start drinking and local farmers here are afraid who could be next."

Clementino said groups Indians -- often outnumbering police -- pose a security threat to locals.

He said the man's family are upset that authorities did not arrive until three days later. But a FUNAI official told the newspaper Voz do Acre that access to Envira is very difficult, requiring long boat or helicopter rides.

According to FUNAI, about 2,500 Kulina live in Brazil's Acre state, which borders with Peru, where 450 Kulina live. This remote jungle corridor is known for its isolated tribes.

The Kulina are classified as an "isolated" tribe but some have contact with the non-indian population.

The Kulina are also known for their complex language. FUNAI studies show that Kulina women speak a completely different language from the men.

According to FUNAI, there are 460,000 Indians in Brazil and 1,300 indian languages. There are 55 groups considered to live in isolation.

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Iraqi builds a shoe-throwing monument to Bush

From CNN.com

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- For the war-beaten orphans of the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit, this big old shoe fits.
A monument to a shoe thrown at former President Bush is unveiled at the Tikrit Orphanage complex.

A monument to a shoe thrown at former President Bush is unveiled at the Tikrit Orphanage complex.

A huge sculpture of the footwear hurled at President Bush in December during a trip to Iraq has been unveiled in a ceremony at the Tikrit Orphanage complex.

Assisted by children at the home, sculptor Laith al-Amiri erected a brown replica of one of the shoes hurled at Bush and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki by journalist Muntadhir al-Zaidi during a press conference in Baghdad.

Al-Zaidi was jailed for his actions, and a trial is pending. But his angry gesture touched a defiant nerve throughout the Arab and Muslim world. He is regarded by many people as a hero. Demonstrators in December took to the streets in the Arab world and called for his release.

The shoe monument, made of fiberglass and coated with copper, consists of the shoe and a concrete base. The entire monument is 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) high. The shoe is 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) long and 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) wide.

The orphans helped al-Amiri build the $5,000 structure -- unveiled Tuesday -- in 15 days, said Faten Abdulqader al-Naseri, the orphanage director.

"Those orphans who helped the sculptor in building this monument were the victims of Bush's war," al-Naseri said. "The shoe monument is a gift to the next generation to remember the heroic action by the journalist."
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"When the next generation sees the shoe monument, they will ask their parents about it," al-Naseri said.

"Then their parents will start talking about the hero Muntadhir al-Zaidi, who threw his shoe at George W. Bush during his unannounced farewell visit."

Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi leader toppled by the United States in 2003, was from the Tikrit region.

Al-Zaidi marked his 30th birthday in jail earlier this month. One of his brothers said he is "in good health and is being treated well."

Al-Zaidi's employer, TV network al-Baghdadia, keeps a picture of him at the top left side of the screen with a calendar showing the number of days he has spent in detention. The network has been calling for his release.

By tradition, throwing a shoe is the most insulting act in the Arab world.

Lobbyists Skirt Obama's Earmark Ban

From the New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama's ban on earmarks in the $825 billion economic stimulus bill doesn't mean interest groups, lobbyists and lawmakers won't be able to funnel money to pet projects.

They're just working around it -- and perhaps inadvertently making the process more secretive.

The projects run the gamut: a Metrolink station that needs building in Placentia, Calif.; a stretch of beach in Sandy Hook, N.J., that could really use some more sand; a water park in Miami.

There are thousands of projects like those that once would have been gotten money upfront but now are left to scramble for dollars at the back end of the process as ''ready to go'' jobs eligible for the stimulus plan.

The result, as The Associated Press learned in interviews with more than a dozen lawmakers, lobbyists and state and local officials, is a shadowy lobbying effort that may make it difficult to discern how hundreds of billions in federal money will be parceled out.

'''No earmarks' isn't a game-ender,'' said Peter Buffa, former mayor of Costa Mesa, Calif. ''It just means there's a different way of going about making sure the funding is there.''

It won't be in legislative language that overtly sets aside money for them. That's the infamous practice known as earmarking, which Obama and Democratic congressional leaders have agreed to nix for the massive stimulus package, expected to come up for a House vote this week.

Instead, the money will be doled out according to arcane formulas spelled out in the bill and in some cases based on the decisions of Obama administration officials, governors and state and local agencies that will choose the projects.

''Somebody's going to earmark it somewhere,'' said Howard Marlowe, a consultant for a coalition working to preserve beaches.

Lobbyists are hard at work figuring out ways to grab a share of the money for their clients, but the new rules mean they're doing so indirectly -- and sometimes in ways that are impossible to track.

Congressional earmarks have had a bad name since the 2004 scandal that sent superlobbyist Jack Abramoff to prison and earned the congressional spending committees a new nickname: ''The Favor Factory.''

Obama, who campaigned promising a more transparent and accountable government, is advocating a system that will eventually let the public track exactly where stimulus money goes through an Internet-powered search engine. In addition, Democratic lawmakers have devised an elaborate oversight system, including a new board to review how the money is spent.

But none of that will happen until after the bill becomes law. Even critics of the earmarks system acknowledge that specifying projects upfront offers some measure of transparency.

''We hate earmarks, but at least it's a way of tracking where influence is had,'' said Keith Ashdown of the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. ''There is a challenge now that projects will be added behind closed doors without a paper trail.''

Indeed, some lawmakers hearing from local groups say they're doing their own lobbying of governors and state and local officials who could have say-so over the funds.

''I've talked to my governor and suggested some things I think are important in our area,'' said Republican Rep. C.W. Bill Young, who represents St. Petersburg, Fla. ''He knows what the needs are.''

Democratic Rep. Ed Pastor of Arizona suggested it's not entirely accurate to say there will be no earmarks in the measure. ''There are and there aren't,'' Pastor said. ''A lot of it depends on what the formula looks like.''

For instance, the House measure, which includes $358 billion for road, water and energy programs among others, gives priority to transportation projects in high-unemployment areas that could be begun and completed quickly and that state and metropolitan transportation authorities have included in their long-term plans.

In California, Buffa, now board chairman of the Orange County Transportation Authority, said he's changed his strategy from asking for specific projects to pleading for more favorable general guidelines, including more money for infrastructure projects overall and a formula that lets cities -- not states -- decide how to spend it.

His organization has enlisted Potomac Partners, a large firm that specializes in lobbying for project spending, to help.

In most cases, lawmakers know exactly which projects in their districts can benefit from the money, even though the legislation won't spell them out. State and local officials have released lists of projects that could start quickly and be completed within a few years.

In Orange County, they include freeway improvements and the Placentia Metrolink station. The American Shore and Beach Preservation Association, which is pushing for more water projects to be funded, wants repair and restoration of beaches from Sandy Hook, N.J., to Newport Beach, Calif.

Members of Congress are privately outlining their priorities, too.

''Everybody's making their list and checking it twice,'' said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the minority leader. ''You are inevitably going to have a lot of projects that are not going to pass the smell test.''

Some groups are careful not to get too specific, fearing that public scrutiny could draw unwelcome attention to projects easily caricatured as special-interest goodies, such as a 2007 earmark for spinach growers that found its way into an Iraq war spending bill or the now-infamous ''Bridge to Nowhere'' in Alaska.

The United States Conference of Mayors released a 300-plus-page list of some $150 billion in ''ready-to-go'' projects that quickly became fodder for criticism. It included money for the Miami water park, which McConnell has ridiculed publicly, and a skate park in Portland, Maine.

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials was more guarded about its list of 5,000 projects totaling $64 billion. No specific projects were mentioned -- just the number in each state and an overall dollar amount -- making it impossible for lawmakers, advocacy groups or members of the public to criticize any one item.

Peter J. ''Jack'' Basso, an association executive, said it's up to states to decide what goes on their ''ready-to-go'' wish lists, but that the projects must meet rigorous tests including clearing environmental reviews.

''We really rely on them to pick things that, frankly, are not bridges to nowhere,'' Basso said.

In Final Legal Act, Bush Appeals Spy Ruling

By David Kravets

With just 64 minutes left in its last full day in office, the Bush administration asked a San Francisco federal judge late Monday to stay enforcement of a court ruling that keeps alive a lawsuit testing whether a sitting president may bypass Congress and eavesdrop on Americans without warrants.

The request was lodged with U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker of San Francisco at 10:56 p.m. EST on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

The filing was among now former President George W. Bush's final legal acts in office. President Barack Obama was sworn in as Bush's successor early Tuesday.

The Bush administration asked Walker's permission to appeal his Jan. 5 decision to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Walker had ruled that "sufficient facts" exist that two U.S.-based lawyers for an Islamic charity might have been spied upon for the case to proceed to the next stage.

The case seeks the courts to rule on the constitutionality of the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program the president approved in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

Congress authorized the spy program last year as part of legislation immunizing participating telecommunication companies from lawsuits accusing them of violating their customers' civil liberties, but the spying in this case allegedly happened in 2004. Eric Holder, the incoming U.S. attorney, said the Obama administration supported the spy legislation and would defend it in a separate challenge.

On Monday, the Bush administration sought to prevent the disclosure of a Top Secret document at the center of a closely watched spy case, a document Walker ruled could be admitted.

The suit involves two American lawyers who the Treasury Department accidentally gave a Top Secret document in 2004 showing they were illegally eavesdropped on by the government when working for a now-defunct Islamic charity that year.

Their suit looked all but dead in July when they were initially blocked from using the document to prove they were spied on. They were forced to return it to the government.

But two weeks ago, Walker said the document could be used in the case because there was sufficient, anecdotal evidence unrelated to the document that suggests the lawyers for the Al-Haramain charity were spied upon. Without the document, the lawyers — Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoo — don't likely have a case.

In its Monday filling, (.pdf) the government repeated its assertion that the use of the document in the case would jeopardize national security. The administration said the document was protected by the so-called state secrets privilege and objected to even Walker reviewing it — yet alone the lawyers for Belew and Ghafoo — who Walker said could see it in private.

"If the court were to find … that none of the plaintiffs are aggrieved parties, the case obviously could not proceed, but such a holding would reveal to plaintiffs and the public at large information that is protected by the state secrets privilege — namely, that certain individuals were not subject to alleged surveillance," the administration wrote.

By the same token, the administration argued, if Walker allowed the case to proceed after reviewing the document, it "would confirm that a plaintiff was subject to surveillance."

The government continued: "Indeed, if the actual facts were that just one of the plaintiffs had been subject to alleged surveillance, any such differentiation likewise could not be disclosed because it would inherently reveal intelligence information as to who was and was not a subject of interest, which communications were and were not of intelligence interest, and which modes of communication were and were not of intelligence interest, and which modes of communication may or may not have been subject to surveillance."

A hearing is scheduled in Walker's courtroom on Friday.

"We filed this lawsuit to establish a judicial precedent that the president cannot disregard Congress in the name of national security," said Jon Eisenberg, the lawyer for Belew and Ghafoo. "Plaintiffs have a right to litigate the legality of the surveillance."

16-year-old Chinese boy dies from H5N1 bird flu

By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer Audra Ang, Associated Press Writer

BEIJING – A 16-year-old boy infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus died Tuesday in central China, the country's third fatality from the disease this month.

Authorities also stepped up bird flu precautions on fears the virus can survive longer in cold weather as tens of millions of people travel between cities and rural hometowns for the Lunar New Year holiday, which typically includes feasts with poultry.

The student surnamed Wu, who had been in critical condition, died Tuesday morning in Huaihua, a city in Hunan province, the official Xinhua News Agency said. He fell ill on Jan. 8 in his hometown in the neighboring province of Guizhou and was transferred to a hospital in Huaihua on Jan. 16, when his condition worsened.

He had contact with dead poultry, the report said without giving other details.

The two other bird flu deaths were a 27-year-old woman in Shandong province in the country's east who died on Saturday and a 19-year-old woman who died in Beijing on Jan. 5.

Also Tuesday, a 2-year-old girl who had been critically ill with the H5N1 virus in Hunan was in stable condition and returned to her home in the north, China Central Television said in its noon newscast. The state television report said the girl had been to live poultry markets "many times" but did not elaborate.

The girl's mother died earlier this month from pneumonia after being exposed to poultry, a Hunan health bureau official said in an interview published Tuesday in the state-run China Business News newspaper. However, the official surnamed Peng could not confirm a link to H5N1.

Most bird flu cases stem from exposure to sick birds, but human-to-human transmission of bird flu has happened about a dozen times in the past in countries including China, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Turkey. In nearly every case, transmission has occurred among blood relatives who have been in close contact, and the virus has not spread into the wider community.

"Whenever there is a case of humans contracting the H5N1 virus, there is a concern," said Nyka Alexander, a Beijing-based spokeswoman for the World Health Organization. "As long as H5N1 continues to circulate in poultry, there is the risk of human infection. This is why it is so important to treat each case seriously."

While the disease remains hard for humans to catch, scientists have warned if outbreaks among poultry are not controlled, the virus may mutate into a form more easily passed between people. A new influenza virus could quickly turn into a pandemic, infecting millions of people with no immunity.

No sick poultry has been found in the areas where the four people fell ill this year, despite officials inspecting hundreds of thousands of birds. This could mean that surveillance needs to be tightened or that poultry may be carrying the virus but not showing symptoms or falling sick. Vaccinations also reduce the amount of virus circulating, but low levels of H5N1 may still be causing outbreaks — without the obvious signs of dying birds.

Until this month, no new human cases had been reported in China since February 2007. Shu Yuelong, a flu expert at China's National Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said a spike in infections was likely because the H5N1 virus is more active in lower temperatures.

The cases come as an estimated 188 million people travel between cities and rural hometowns for Lunar New Year, the country's biggest holiday, which begins next week.

Celebratory family meals often include dishes made from freshly slaughtered chicken and duck feature, meaning a potentially greater risk of exposure to sick birds as people shop in markets for poultry or when the birds are transported to be sold.

The Agriculture Ministry has ordered tighter monitoring of disease outbreaks at all levels and proper vaccination of all poultry. It would also increase checks across the country and at borders.

According to the WHO, bird flu has killed 249 people worldwide since 2003. The tally does not include Tuesday's death in China, where a total of 34 infections have been reported.

UPS man delivers daughter

From UPI.com

Craig Ramirez, 34, of Carol Stream and his wife Lisa, 31, already have four children, so he thought it would be another routine labor when she woke him Saturday at 3:30 a.m. to go to the hospital, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Sunday.CAROL STREAM, Ill., Jan. 18 (UPI) -- A UPS deliveryman in Illinois says he handled his most unusual -- and most precious -- package when his wife unexpectedly gave birth in their living room.

By the time they reached the front door, however, the baby's head was coming out. "I said, 'No, it can't be coming," Craig recalled. "It can't. That's not even in the realm of reality.'"

Craig called 911 as Lisa stood and leaned on a sofa. Craig then got on his knees, put his hands on the baby's head and with a push from Lisa, the infant slid into her father's arms. The birth happened so quickly there was no time even to turn the lights on.

The parents and little Amelia Yvonne Ramirez were reported doing well, with Craig saying he was prepared to be peppered with delivery jokes when he returned to work at UPS.

Crazy Credit Loophole

Life on Mars?

By PAUL SUTHERLAND

From The Sun.com

ALIEN microbes living just below the Martian soil are responsible for a haze of methane around the Red Planet, Nasa scientists believe.

The gas, belched in vast quantities in our world by cows, was detected by orbiting spacecraft and from Earth using giant telescopes.

Discovery ... gas around Mars

Nasa are today expected to confirm its presence during a briefing at their Washington HQ.

And the find is seen as exciting new evidence that Martian microbes are still alive today.

To read more of our exclusive UFO stories click here.

Some scientists reckon methane is also produced by volcanic processes. But there are NO known active volcanoes on Mars.

Furthermore, Nasa has found the gas in the same regions as clouds of water vapour, the vital “drink” needed to support life.

Mission ... probe on the surface of Mars

Experts speculate that the methane is being emitted as a waste product by organisms called methanogens living in water beneath underground ice.

And they would have to be alive today because the methane would otherwise have been lost from the Martian atmosphere.

What a scoop ... Phoenix lander dug up chunks of ice last year

John Murray — a member of the Mars Express European space probe team — believes the mini-Martians may be in a form of suspended animation and could even be REVIVED.

He has found overwhelming evidence of a vast frozen ocean beneath the dust near the Martian equator where simple life could have thrived as microbes.

Today’s briefing will feature a star panel of Mars experts headed by Michael Meyer, chief scientist for Nasa’s Mars programme.

UK Mars expert Professor Colin Pillinger believes the methane can only point to the presence of life on the planet.

Space neighbours ... Earth and Venus rise over Mars in mock-up

His ill-fated Beagle 2 probe was carrying a laboratory that would have looked directly for such signs of life when it crashed on Christmas Day 2003.

Prof Pillinger told The Sun last night: “Methane is a product of biology. For methane to be in Mars’ atmosphere, there has to be a replenishable source.

“The most obvious source of methane is organisms. So if you find methane in an atmosphere, you can suspect there is life.

“It’s not proof, but it makes it worth a much closer look.”

Nasa’s findings confirm studies by Europe’s Mars Express probe, which has been orbiting the planet for five years and also reported signs of methane in 2004.

Britain’s top space expert Nick Pope last night hailed the new evidence of life as “the most important discovery of all time”.

He said: “What could be more profound than to know it’s not just us out there?

Expert ... Colin Pillinger

"We’ve really only scratched the surface — it’s an absolute certainty that there is life out there and we are not alone.

“If there is life on Mars then the logical conclusion is that there must be life elsewhere too.

“If it’s happened here on Earth, then why shouldn’t it happen anywhere? The implication is this is a universal law.

“Mars is very similar to Earth. It’s about the same size, it’s a rocky inner planet.

“Most scientists believe it probably has liquid water which is almost universally agreed as the pre-requisite for life. I am certain there is other life in the Universe and, most likely, intelligent life.”

The Red Planet has gripped the public imagination for more than a century as a possible home for aliens.

But life could not survive on its surface because, unlike the Earth, Mars has no magnetic shield to protect it against deadly sun radiation.

The planet resembles our own in many ways. It is made of rock, it has an atmosphere and weather systems.

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Although much smaller with a diameter of around 4,222 miles, Mars’ day is just 40 minutes longer than ours and its tilted axis gives it seasons.

Water has been found in the form of buried ice and scientists believe that two billion years ago, Mars was covered with liquid oceans.

Proof that water is still on Mars came in 2007 when Mars Express used ground-piercing radar to study the region around the planet’s South Pole.

Nasa’s latest lander Phoenix dug up chunks of Martian ice last year. It swiftly evaporated into the thin atmosphere.

Nasa have controversially hit the headlines before for claiming evidence for Martians.

In 1996, they said they had discovered fossilised organisms in a meteorite from the planet.

But other scientists were sceptical.

Today’s conference will be broadcast live online by NASA TV (www.nasa.gov/ntv) at 7pm.

We're Borrowing Like Mad. Can the U.S. Pay It Back?

By Greg Ip at the washingtonpost.com

In its battle against the financial crisis, the U.S. government has extended its full faith and credit to an ever-growing swath of the private sector: first homeowners, then banks, now car companies. Soon, President-elect Barack Obama will put the government credit card to work with a massive fiscal boost for the economy. Necessary as these steps are, they raise a worry of their own: Can the United States pay the money back?

The notion seems absurd: Banana republics default, not the world's biggest, richest economy, right? The United States has unparalleled wealth, a stable legal tradition, responsible macroeconomic policies and a top-notch, triple-A credit rating. U.S. Treasury bonds are routinely called "risk-free," and the United States has the unique privilege of borrowing in the currency that other countries like to hold as foreign-exchange reserves.

Yes, default is unlikely. But it is no longer unthinkable. Thanks to the advent of credit derivatives -- financial contracts that allow investors to speculate on or protect against default -- we can now observe how likely global markets think it is that Uncle Sam will renege on America's mounting debts. Last week, markets pegged the probability of a U.S. default at 6 percent over the next 10 years, compared with just 1 percent a year ago. For technical reasons, this is not a precise reading of investors' views. Nonetheless, the trend is real, and it is grounded in some pretty fundamental concerns.

The most important is the coming surge in the federal debt. At the end of the last fiscal year, in September, the total public debt held by the American people (excluding debt issued to the Social Security Trust Fund or held by the Federal Reserve) stood at $5.8 trillion, or 41 percent of gross domestic product -- about what the debt-to-GDP ratio has averaged since 1956. But the Congressional Budget Office projects deficits of $1.9 trillion over the next two years. Add almost $800 billion of stimulus spending, and U.S. debt soars to 60 percent of GDP by 2010 -- the highest level since the early 1950s, when the nation was working off its World War II and Korean War debts.

The other major cause for concern is that the federal government has taken on massive "contingent liabilities" -- loans and guarantees that don't become actual costs until the borrower defaults and the federal guarantee has to be honored. For example, Washington has purchased $45 billion of preferred stock of Citigroup but has also agreed to backstop up to about $240 billion of its losses. Bianco Research, a Chicago financial research firm, puts the total of such contingent liabilities (as of Dec. 29) at more than $8 trillion. The U.S. government won't shell out anything close to that, of course; it may not pay out any money and might even turn a profit. But the worse the economy gets, the more likely it is that some of those contingent liabilities will become actual liabilities.

How unprecedented would default be? The United States has never failed to repay a debt in its history. But it has twice altered the repayment terms, notes a study by Carmen M. Reinhart of the University of Maryland and Kenneth S. Rogoff of Harvard University. In 1790, when the infant republic took over the states' colonial-era debts, it deferred some interest for 10 years. A more pertinent case occurred during the Great Depression. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt devalued the dollar by 41 percent against gold. This helped end the vicious cycle of bank failures, deflation and default that had worsened the economic downturn, but it created another dilemma. Since the Civil War, borrowers in the United States, including the government, had routinely issued bonds that allowed the holder to demand repayment in gold or its dollar equivalent, based on the price of gold when the bond was issued. Devaluation would have dramatically raised, in dollar terms, the burden of repayment. So in 1933, Congress repealed the gold clause, a decision the Supreme Court upheld in 1935.

Reinhart argues that these episodes show that there are many forms of default other than the outright failure to redeem a bond. She thinks it exceedingly unlikely that the United States would ever default on its Treasury debt but says that a default is more likely to happen on the "periphery": A state government or a federally backed entity might renege. Reinhart notes that Washington has issued a lot of guarantees recently, such as the Treasury Department's declaration that it "effectively" backs the debts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Future governments could balk at honoring those guarantees.

Now, one reason the United States should not have to default is that, in a pinch, it can print the money it needs to pay off its debt. In practice, it would not literally print dollar bills; rather, the Federal Reserve would purchase its bonds. Still, the effect is the same: The Fed, by "monetizing" government debt, would create vast new supplies of dollars to chase the same goods and services and thus also create inflation. This money-printing option is not available to countries that issue debt payable in foreign currencies or to countries that have adopted the euro, which is controlled by the independent European Central Bank.

All the same, a country may not always prefer inflation to default. Reinhart and Rogoff found numerous instances of countries defaulting on their domestic currency debts, such as Russia, which did so in 1998. "Why would a government refuse to pay its domestic public debt in full when it can simply inflate the problem away?" they ask. "Sometimes, the government may view repudiation as the lesser evil." Default would certainly seem preferable to the social and economic unrest that hyperinflation has visited on Zimbabwe today or on Latin America in the 1980s.

Of course, it would be ridiculous to put the United States in the same company as Russia, much less Zimbabwe. Nonetheless, even if Washington never defaults, it can still suffer if questions about its ability to repay its debts affect its creditworthiness and thus its cost of borrowing.

Consider Japan, which spent the 1990s running up enormous budget deficits in an effort to kick-start economic growth. It failed, and gross government debt rose from 71 percent of GDP in 1990 to 115 percent in 1998, when Moody's Investors Service stripped Japan of its triple-A credit rating. Moody's figured that Japan's probability of default, while still low, had nonetheless risen -- even though that debt was owed almost entirely in yen. Japan's rating continued to slide until 2002, at which point its gross debt had reached 154 percent of GDP. Having its credit rating slashed was a stunning comedown for the world's second-largest economy and largest creditor nation. Nonetheless, Japan's borrowing costs weren't much affected, in part because almost all its debt was held by Japanese investors, who were not much inclined to sell it. The U.S. government might not have the same good fortune: More than half of its publicly held debt is owned by foreigners. (Of course, many of those foreigners are central banks with no attractive alternatives to the dollar.)

One key lesson of Japan's experience: It's not just the level of debt that affects a country's creditworthiness but the performance of the underlying economy. The size of the economy determines the resources the government can call on to repay its debts.

Economic growth was critical to the decline in America's debt-to-GDP ratio from its two previous peaks. The cost of World War II drove U.S. debt to an unnerving 109 percent of GDP in 1946, but the peace dividend and the postwar economic boom steadily brought the ratio down. Between 1981 and 1993, that ratio rose again, from 26 percent of GDP to 49 percent. It subsequently declined, thanks to the peace dividend from the end of the Cold War, the Clinton-era tax increases and a long economic boom.

It could, and probably will, happen again. But it's going to look a lot worse before it looks better. In another paper, Reinhart and Rogoff found that banking crises worldwide are typically followed by skyrocketing debt: It went up by 86 percent on average, after inflation, over three years, largely because the recessions that usually follow financial meltdowns devastate tax revenues and spur governments to spend aggressively.

So what's the moral of the story? The Obama administration should not focus on debt reduction now, which could actually undermine the prospects for a recovery in the real economy. With households and businesses trying to spend less and save more, the federal government must spend more and save less -- that is, borrow more -- in order to prevent a self-feeding downward spiral in economic activity. Once the recession is over, getting our debt burdens down will hinge on Obama's and Congress's willingness to confront the looming cost of Social Security and Medicare benefits for the aging U.S. population.

The chances of default remain pretty remote. But remote does not mean impossible. The best way to keep those chances remote is for policymakers to vow to get the deficit down once the recession is over -- and mean it.

China says 19-year-old woman dies from bird flu

From Newsvine.com

BEIJING — A Chinese woman has died from bird flu in a Beijing hospital after contracting the disease last month, the government said Tuesday.

The Ministry of Health said Huang Yanqing, 19, died Monday. The official Xinhua News Agency said Huang became ill after buying and cleaning nine ducks in December at a market in Hebei province, which borders Beijing.

The ministry said tests showed Huang had the H5N1 bird flu virus.

Xinhua quoted the Beijing Health Bureau as saying 116 people had been in close contact with Huang. One nurse fell ill with a fever but has since recovered, the report said.

The ministry said it reported the case to the World Health Organization. A spokeswoman for the organization in Beijing said Tuesday that it did not have any further details.

In northern Vietnam, meanwhile, an 8-year-old girl has tested positive for the disease — the first human case reported in the country in nearly a year, health officials said Tuesday.

The girl from Thanh Hoa province was admitted to a hospital on Dec. 27 with a high fever and other symptoms after eating a sick goose raised by the family, said Nguyen Ngoc Thanh, acting director of the provincial health department. Thanh Hoa is 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of Hanoi. The girl is recovering.

Nguyen Huy Nga, director of the Preventive Medicine Department at the Ministry of Health, said the girl tested positive for the H5N1 virus.

Bird flu has killed 247 people since 2003, according to WHO, including 20 in China and 52 in Vietnam.

The H5N1 bird flu virus continues to devastate poultry stocks around the world, and officials worry the virus could mutate into a much-feared form that could spread easily among people. It remains hard for people to catch, with most human cases linked to contact with infected birds.

China, which raises more poultry than any other country, has vowed to aggressively fight the virus.

Diamonds Linked to Quick Cooling Eons Ago

From The New York Times

At least once in Earth’s history, global warming ended quickly, and scientists have long wondered why.

Now researchers are reporting that the abrupt cooling — which took place about 12,900 years ago, just as the planet was emerging from an ice age — may have been caused by one or more meteors that slammed into North America.

That could explain the extinction of mammoths, saber-tooth tigers and maybe even the first human inhabitants of the Americas, the scientists report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

The hypothesis has been regarded skeptically, but its advocates now report perhaps more convincing residue of impact: a thin layer of microscopic diamonds found in rocks across America and in Europe.

“We’re up over 30 sites, as far west as offshore California, as far east as Germany,” said Allen West, a retired geology consultant who is one of the scientists working on the research.

The meteors would have been smaller than the six-mile-wide meteor that struck the Yucatán peninsula 65 million years ago and led to the mass extinctions of the dinosaurs. The killing effects of the hypothesized bombardment 12,900 years ago would have been more subtle.

Climatologists believe that the direct cause of the 1,300-year cold spell, known as the Younger Dryas, was a sudden rush of fresh water from a giant lake in central Canada to the North Atlantic.

Usually a surface current of warm water flows northward in the Atlantic toward Greenland and Europe, then cools and sinks, returning south in the deep ocean. But the fresh water, which is less dense, blocked the sinking of the cold, salty water in the North Atlantic, disrupting the currents.

That sudden change in plumbing has long been known, but what caused it has never been satisfactorily explained.

The authors of the paper in Science say it was meteors.

At each site the scientists looked at, the diamond layer in the rocks correlates to the date of the hypothesized impact. Within the layer, the scientists report finding a multitude of diamond particles, all encased within carbon spheres. “We’ve yet to find a single diamond above it,” Dr. West said. “We’ve yet to find a single diamond below it.”

Perhaps more telling, the scientists reported last month at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, the carbon atoms inside some of the diamonds are lined up in a hexagonal crystal pattern instead of the usual cubic structure. The hexagonal diamonds, formed by extraordinary heat and pressure, have been found only at impact craters and within meteorites and cannot be formed in forest fires or volcanic eruptions, Dr. West said.

Last year the scientists presented other evidence of an impact, including elevated levels of the element iridium.

At least some skeptics are not convinced. “The whole thing still does not make sense, and there are lots of contradictions,” said Christian Koeberl, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Vienna in Austria.

His chief reservation is that there is no crater. “A body of this size does not just blow up without a trace in the atmosphere,” Dr. Koeberl said. “Physics won’t have it.”

Proponents have suggested that the meteor hit an ice sheet a couple of miles thick or that there was a series of smaller objects that exploded in the air. But Dr. Koeberl said something hitting an ice sheet would still generate a hole in the ground underneath, and he questioned whether smaller impacts or air explosions would produce the shock waves needed to make diamonds.

An impact should also have left remnants of melted rocks and shocked minerals, Dr. Koeberl said.

But if true, the hypothesis could explain the disappearance of ice age mammals like mammoths and argue against the alternative idea that the animals were hunted to extinction by humans.

It might also help explain the disappearance of the Clovis people, a culture named after a distinctive arrow point discovered in a mammoth skeleton in Clovis, N.M., who are believed to have arrived in the Americas more than 13,000 years ago.

Douglas J. Kennett, a University of Oregon archaeologist who is the lead author of the Science paper, said no Clovis points or bones of the extinct animals had been found above the diamond layer. “It seems those two things synchronously end,” he said.

Dr. Kennett said there also appeared to be a gap of several centuries between the disappearance of the Clovis and the resettlement by other people.

Gary Huss, a scientist at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, who was one of the early reviewers of the paper in Science, said though the scientists had not proved their case, they had offered enough evidence that the idea warranted a closer look by others.

“They have a hypothesis that explains several things that hard to explain any other way,” Dr. Huss said. “Diamonds are less convincing by themselves, but they strengthen their case considerably.”

Scientists eye unusual swarm of Yellowstone quakes

By MEAD GRUVER, Associated Press Writer

CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Yellowstone National Park was jostled by a host of small earthquakes for a third straight day Monday, and scientists watched closely to see whether the more than 250 tremors were a sign of something bigger to come. Swarms of small earthquakes happen frequently in Yellowstone, but it's very unusual for so many earthquakes to happen over several days, said Robert Smith, a professor of geophysics at the University of Utah.

"They're certainly not normal," Smith said. "We haven't had earthquakes in this energy or extent in many years."

Smith directs the Yellowstone Seismic Network, which operates seismic stations around the park. He said the quakes have ranged in strength from barely detectable to one of magnitude 3.8 that happened Saturday. A magnitude 4 quake is capable of producing moderate damage.

"This is an active volcanic and tectonic area, and these are the kinds of things we have to pay attention to," Smith said. "We might be seeing something precursory.

"Could it develop into a bigger fault or something related to hydrothermal activity? We don't know. That's what we're there to do, to monitor it for public safety."

The strongest of dozens of tremors Monday was a magnitude 3.3 quake shortly after noon. All the quakes were centered beneath the northwest end of Yellowstone Lake.

A park ranger based at the north end of the lake reported feeling nine quakes over a 24-hour period over the weekend, according to park spokeswoman Stacy Vallie. No damage was reported.

"There doesn't seem to be anything to be alarmed about," Vallie said.

Smith said it's difficult to say what might be causing the tremors. He pointed out that Yellowstone is the caldera of a volcano that last erupted 70,000 years ago.

He said Yellowstone remains very geologically active — and its famous geysers and hot springs are a reminder that a pool of magma still exists five to 10 miles underground.

"That's just the surface manifestation of the enormous amount of heat that's being released through the system," he said.

Yellowstone has had significant earthquakes as well as minor ones in recent decades. In 1959, a magnitude 7.5 quake near Hebgen Lake just west of the park triggered a landslide that killed 28 people.

MP3 player saves skiers lost on Alps

From Telegraph.co.uk

The 22-year-old men, one a skier and the other a snowboarder, were suffering from mild hypothermia as they endured overnight temperatures as low as minus 15 degrees Celsius.

Both had set off from the resort of Savognin, in south east Switzerland, on Friday, but could not find their way back.

They were able to alert the authorities using a mobile phone, but it when it ran out of battery power all they had left was an MP3 player, which the snowboarder had been using to listen to music.

Airborne rescuers were eventually able to reach the pair high on a wooded slope after being guided by the light of the digital music player.

Gery Baumann, spokesman for mountain rescue service Rega, said: "The two winter sports enthusiasts were found by the crew of the Rega helicopter shortly after midnight – thanks to the faint light of their MP3 player.

"Apart from mild hypothermia, they were safe and well."

The rescued pair, who have not been named, were both French.

Scientists discover new forest with undiscovered species on Google Earth

By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent


The pygmy chameleon: Conservationists have found a host of new species after discovering uncharted new territory on the internet map Google Earth.
The pygmy chameleon Photo: Julian Bayliss/RBG Kew
Driving up to Mount Mabu in the distance: Scientists discover new forest on Google Earth
Mount Mabu itself is under threat as Mozambique's economy grows and people use the wood for fuel Photo: Julian Bayliss/RBG Kew

The mountainous area of northern Mozambique in southern Africa had been overlooked by science due to inhospitable terrain and decades of civil war in the country.

However, while scrolling around on Google Earth, an internet map that allows the viewer to look at satellite images of anywhere on the globe, scientists discovered an unexpected patch of green.

A British-led expedition was sent to see what was on the ground and found 7,000 hectares of forest, rich in biodiversity, known as Mount Mabu.

In just three weeks, scientists led by a team from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew found hundreds of different plant species, birds, butterflies, monkeys and a new species of giant snake.

The samples which the team took are now back in Britain for analysis.

So far three new butterflies and one new species of snake have been discovered but it is believed there are at least two more new species of plants and perhaps more new insects to discover.

Julian Bayliss, a scientist for Kew based in the region, discovered Mount Mabu while searching on Google Earth for a possible conservation project. He was looking at areas of land 5,400ft (1,600m) above sea level where more rainfall means there is likely to be forest.

To his surprise he found the patches of green that denote wooded areas, in places that had not previously been explored. After taking a closer look on more detailed satellite maps, he went to have a look.

An expedition was organised for this autumn with 28 scientists from the UK, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania and Switzerland. The group was able to stay at an abandoned tea estate but had to hack through difficult terrain and use 70 porters in order to carry out their investigations.

Within weeks they had discovered three new species of Lepidoptera butterfly and a new member of the Gaboon viper family of snakes that can kill a human in a single bite. There were also blue duiker antelope, samango monkeys, elephant shrews, almost 200 different types of butterflies and thousands of tropical plants.

Jonathan Timberlake, expedition leader, said digital imagery has helped scientists to discover more about the world. He believes there may be other small pockets of biodiversity around the world that are yet to be discovered that could be stumbled upon by searching on Google Earth, especially in areas like Mozambique or Papua New Guinea which have not been fully explored yet.

Mr Timberlake said discovering new species is not only important to science but helps to highlight conservation efforts in parts of the world threatened by logging and development.

Mount Mabu itself is under threat as Mozambique's economy grows and people use the wood for fuel or clear the land to grow crops.

"We cannot say we have discovered all the biodiversity areas in the world, there are still ones to discover and it helps to find new species to make people realise what is out there," he said.

Where'd the bailout money go? Shhhh, it's a secret

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – It's something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where's the money going? But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they can't track exactly how they're spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it.

"We've lent some of it. We've not lent some of it. We've not given any accounting of, 'Here's how we're doing it,'" said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. "We have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to."

The Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what's the plan for the rest?

None of the banks provided specific answers.

"We're not providing dollar-in, dollar-out tracking," said Barry Koling, a spokesman for Atlanta, Ga.-based SunTrust Banks Inc., which got $3.5 billion in taxpayer dollars.

Some banks said they simply didn't know where the money was going.

"We manage our capital in its aggregate," said Regions Financial Corp. spokesman Tim Deighton, who said the Birmingham, Ala.-based company is not tracking how it is spending the $3.5 billion it received as part of the financial bailout.

The answers highlight the secrecy surrounding the Troubled Assets Relief Program, which earmarked $700 billion — about the size of the Netherlands' economy — to help rescue the financial industry. The Treasury Department has been using the money to buy stock in U.S. banks, hoping that the sudden inflow of cash will get banks to start lending money.

There has been no accounting of how banks spend that money. Lawmakers summoned bank executives to Capitol Hill last month and implored them to lend the money — not to hoard it or spend it on corporate bonuses, junkets or to buy other banks. But there is no process in place to make sure that's happening and there are no consequences for banks who don't comply.

"It is entirely appropriate for the American people to know how their taxpayer dollars are being spent in private industry," said Elizabeth Warren, the top congressional watchdog overseeing the financial bailout.

But, at least for now, there's no way for taxpayers to find that out.

Pressured by the Bush administration to approve the money quickly, Congress attached nearly no strings on the $700 billion bailout in October. And the Treasury Department, which doles out the money, never asked banks how it would be spent.

"Those are legitimate questions that should have been asked on Day One," said Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., a House Financial Services Committee member who opposed the bailout as it was rushed through Congress. "Where is the money going to go to? How is it going to be spent? When are we going to get a record on it?"

Nearly every bank AP questioned — including Citibank and Bank of America, two of the largest recipients of bailout money — responded with generic public relations statements explaining that the money was being used to strengthen balance sheets and continue making loans to ease the credit crisis.

A few banks described company-specific programs, such as JPMorgan Chase's plan to lend $5 billion to nonprofit and health care companies next year. Richard Becker, senior vice president of Wisconsin-based Marshall & Ilsley Corp., said the $1.75 billion in bailout money allowed the bank to temporarily stop foreclosing on homes.

But no bank provided even the most basic accounting for the federal money.

"We're choosing not to disclose that," said Kevin Heine, spokesman for Bank of New York Mellon, which received about $3 billion.

Others said the money couldn't be tracked. Bob Denham, a spokesman for North Carolina-based BB&T Corp., said the bailout money "doesn't have its own bucket." But he said taxpayer money wasn't used in the bank's recent purchase of a Florida insurance company. Asked how he could be sure, since the money wasn't being tracked, Denham said the bank would have made that deal regardless.

Others, such as Morgan Stanley spokeswoman Carissa Ramirez, offered to discuss the matter with reporters on condition of anonymity. When AP refused, Ramirez sent an e-mail saying: "We are going to decline to comment on your story."

Most banks wouldn't say why they were keeping the details secret.

"We're not sharing any other details. We're just not at this time," said Wendy Walker, a spokeswoman for Dallas-based Comerica Inc., which received $2.25 billion from the government.

Heine, the New York Mellon Corp. spokesman who said he wouldn't share spending specifics, added: "I just would prefer if you wouldn't say that we're not going to discuss those details."

The banks which came closest to answering the questions were those, such as U.S. Bancorp and Huntington Bancshares Inc., that only recently received the money and have yet to spend it. But neither provided anything more than a generic summary of how the money would be spent.

Lawmakers say they want to tighten restrictions on the remaining, yet-to-be-released $350 billion block of bailout money before more cash is handed out. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the department is trying to step up its monitoring of bank spending.

"What we've been doing here is moving, I think, with lightning speed to put necessary programs in place, to develop them, implement them, and then we need to monitor them while we're doing this," Paulson said at a recent forum in New York. "So we're building this organization as we're going."

Warren, the congressional watchdog appointed by Democrats, said her oversight panel will try to force the banks to say where they've spent the money.

"It would take a lot of nerve not to give answers," she said.

But Warren said she's surprised she even has to ask.

"If the appropriate restrictions were put on the money to begin with, if the appropriate transparency was in place, then we wouldn't be in a position where you're trying to call every recipient and get the basic information that should already be in public documents," she said.

Garrett, the New Jersey congressman, said the nation might never get a clear answer on where hundreds of billions of dollars went.

"A year or two ago, when we talked about spending $100 million for a bridge to nowhere, that was considered a scandal," he said.

Sun Induces Strange 'Breathing' of Earth's Atmosphere

From Wired.com

SAN FRANCISCO, California — New satellite observations have revealed a previously unknown rhythmic expansion and contraction of Earth's atmosphere on a nine-day cycle.

This "breathing" corresponds to changes in the sun's magnetic fields as it completes rotations once every 27 days, NASA and University of Colorado, Boulder, scientists said Monday at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting.

The sun's coronal holes, seen as dark regions in the image above, direct plasma away from the sun and out into the solar system. When these particles get to the Earth, they heat the upper atmosphere, causing the outer atmosphere to expand and contract.

"What's going on in the solar side is indeed mysterious and challenges the solar physics understanding," said Stan Solomon, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research who was not involved in the research.

The finding emphasizes the many ways that solar activity impacts the Earth — and its increasingly space-utilizing humans.

"From the Earth's perspective, we're in the sun's outer atmosphere," said Jeffrey Thayer, an aerospace engineer at UC-Boulder.

The new discovery could help scientists and engineers design better satellites that account for the changing conditions in the ionosphere. Eventually, it might be possible to predict the severity of ionospheric storms and protect the world's communication infrastructure.

The scientists used changes in the density of the Earth's atmosphere to pinpoint this previously unknown pattern. As the atmosphere contracts or expands, it also gets more or less dense, respectively. In response to the "hills and valleys of density," satellites subtly speed up or slow down, recording those motions with on-board accelerometers. And that's the data that allowed the scientists to back into the discovery of this new atmospheric cycle.

Solomon said that while the cycle on Earth is interesting, the really strange aspect of this work is what it says about our local star.

"What's going on in the sun that's causing all this?" Solomon said. "It's not entirely clear. That part of it is quite mysterious."

See Also:

• High-Resolution Image of the Sun's Jets
• And the Sun Isn't Causing Global Warming Either
• Get Your Own Three-Dimensional Sun!
• Sun's Plasma Bursts Use Earth as "Magnetic Slingshot"
• Astronomers Find Rare Twin of Sun
• Planet Survives Its Sun's Explosion. But Don't Get Any Ideas ...

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter , Google Reader feed, and project site, Inventing Green: the lost history of American clean tech; Wired Science on Facebook.

Image: Credit, NASA, Solar and Heliospheric Observatory

Bush attacked by shoe

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Water found in hot planet's orbit

By Julian Siddle
Science Reporter, BBC News

The atmosphere of the fiery planet was analysed by measuring heat radiation

Scientists say they have found evidence for water vapour in the atmosphere of a planet 63 light-years from Earth.

The "hot Jupiter" planet's surface temperatures exceed 900C.

Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists say their discovery may help find planets that can support life.

In a separate study, the US space agency (Nasa) says it has found carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the same planet.

Molten core

The planet known as HD 189733b is classed as a hot Jupiter due to its fiery molten centre and heavily gaseous atmosphere, which mimics the atmosphere of Jupiter, the gas giant in our own solar system.

The generation of heat by the planet's core provides the key to why scientists have been able to identify water vapour in its atmosphere.

Gases in the planet's atmosphere modify the wavelengths of heat radiation coming from the planet's hot surface. These wavelengths can be detected by space telescopes such as Hubble or the Sun-orbiting Spitzer telescope used in this study.

The type of gas present in the planet's atmosphere can be determined by looking at the spread of infrared radiation reaching the telescope, each gas producing a different wavelength.

Dr Drake Deming from Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland, US, has looked for signs of water on similar gas giants in the past. He says water vapour in the atmosphere leaves an unmistakeable signal.

"It produces a unique fingerprint, water vapour modulates the shape of the radiation in a very characteristic way," he said.

As the planet is so far away it is hard to determine how much of the radiation detected by the telescope comes from this gas giant and how much from the star it orbits.

The scientists solved this problem by studying its orbit.

"There is a time when we know the planet is not visible, so we know the light comes only from the star," says Dr Carl Grillmair from the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, who led the research.

They found HD 1897733b goes round its star every 2.2 days, by taking measurements over several orbiting cycles and deducting the radiation produced during the time when they couldn't see the planet - when it was behind its star - they were able to see how much radiation the planet emitted on its own.

"The key to these measurements is the eclipse geometry, we have a unique moment in which to observe the star in isolation," said Dr Deming.

Carbon Dioxide

The scientists were puzzled by earlier observations of HD 189733b and similar gas giants. They expected to see water vapour, but the telescopes did not detect any.

"We concluded there was no water a couple of years ago, the theoreticians were upset, they'd predicted it would be there. We didn't understand it. We looked much harder we watched it for over 120 hours, and sure enough there was the signature matching brilliantly with the models," said Dr Grillmair.

He suggests the planet's proximity to the star means its atmosphere is constantly changing.

"With planets this close to their star, the star covers perhaps half the planet, you're going to get enormous heat loads that create storms, perhaps clouds one year and none the next - this thing is changing right before our eyes" said Dr Grillmair.

The scientists suggest high clouds created by the storms may have hidden the water vapour in the earlier observations, they are confident that the latest findings are correct.

"What's new about this is it's unequivocal," says Dr Deming.

In a separate development, Nasa says the Hubble space telescope has detected carbon dioxide in HD189733's atmosphere.

Although the agency is keen to stress the planet is far too hot to support life, it says the finding represents an important proof of concept, showing that it is possible to detect CO2 in the atmospheres of distant planets orbiting other stars, and that the same method could be used to look at planets which might support life.

"The very fact we are able to detect it and estimate its abundance is significant for the long-term effort of characterising planets to find out what they are made of and if they could be a possible host for life," said Mark Swain, a research scientist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who analysed the Hubble images.

Hiroshima Atomic Drop

Hedge Funds to Cancer Patients: “Die.”

by RoryKearney

It is just what we have been saying all along.

The thugs on wall street have been crushing the stocks of certain companies that do cancer research. Here is the undisputed proof of what has been going on with Dendreon, a company that makes Provenge, a prostate cancer immunotherapy, that was voted 17-0 safe and 13-4 efficacious, by an FDA hand picked panel of experts and then delayed by the FDA for reasons I believe had nothing to do with the science and everything to do with profiteering and power mongering by those inside the FDA, NCI and Wall Street.

1 out of every 6 men gets prostate cancer and since that terrible FDA decision almost 50,000 American men, including thousands of men around the world, have died without access to this non toxic, non invasive treatment. We were so incensed about this FDA failure to address the health needs of these men, that we formed CareToLive, a not for profit group, and sued the FDA to gain access to this treatment.

Unfortunately we are caught in a catch 22, as the courts to date have said that the FDA has not denied the treatment, but has only delayed it. It is almost 2 years since the delay, and in the meantime CareToLive has lost 3 members who sought access to Provenge. Tell Stephen Study, John Fish and Richard Ripp, that Provenge was just delayed and not denied. We have several members desperate for access. The FDA continues along in la la land as they feed at the public trough and gather fat Federal salaries, pensions and perks, without a care in the world for the men and their families who are suffering.

Wall street, conflicted doctors on the panel, and who knows what conflicts the FDA & NCI had, cashed out some enormous payoffs. One of the NCI doctors, Dr. Alison Martin, was quickly transferred out the Federal Agency, and landed a cushy job at a new Michael Milken healthcare "charitable" organization. Although he runs the largest prostate cancer foundation in the world, he is still, strangely silent on the Provenge debacle. He was, and probably still is, invested in Proquest Investments, who had significant money in other prostate cancer treatments. I assume his pardon by George Bush will be forthcoming. What a guy. Faster Cures, but only for the "chosen ones". Chemotherapy and radiation are huge money makers for the industry.

We currently have a writ in front of the Supreme Court pending. We remain cautiously hopeful, that they will hear our case and get to the bottom of all this.

Visit http://www.CareToLive.com to see more about this story.

Man attacks father with Christmas tree

From the AP

PARRISH, Fla. (AP) — Authorities say a west Florida man who lives with his parents has been arrested on a felony assault charge after he used a Christmas tree as a weapon to attack his father.

According to the Manatee County sheriff's report a 37-year-old man was arrested last week after he threw a 3-foot Christmas tree at his father. The tree missed, but the man then tried to use the steel base from the tree to strike his father.

His father and mother were able to grab his arms to prevent the attack. Deputies say the tree could have caused serious injuries because the metal base weighs about five pounds.

The man was charged with felony assault. He denied trying to strike his father.