2013 General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union

Public release date: 4-Mar-2013
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Contact: Brbara Ferreira
media@egu.eu
49-892-180-6703
European Geosciences Union

Media advisory 2 -- Meeting programme online, provisional press conference topics

The programme for the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU), a meeting with over 10,000 scientists that covers all disciplines of the Earth, planetary, and space sciences, is now online. This year's conference features a Great Debate on shale gas and fracking. Press conferences will include presentations on near-Earth objects and the Russian meteor, the latest results from the Curiosity Mars Rover, and the consequences of nuclear accidents, among other topics. The event will be held on 07 April 2013 at the Austria Center Vienna.

Meeting programme online

All sessions (over 700) and abstracts (over 14,000) are now available online and fully searchable. You can access the programme at http://www.egu2013.eu/programme/how_to_access_the_programme.html.

Media participants can use the meeting programme to search for abstracts or sessions they find particularly interesting. The programme is searchable by name of a scientist, keywords (e.g., volcano, L'Aquila), session topic (e.g., Energy, Resources and the Environment, Climate: Past, Present, Future), and other parameters. Further, you can select single contributions or complete sessions from the meeting programme to generate your personal programme.

Reporters may also find the list of papers of special interest, selected by session conveners, useful.

Great Debate Shale gas: to frack or not to frack?

Production of shale gas has turned the USA from a major importer of fossil fuels to, in the near future, an important exporter. Some major European countries, in contrast, have banned hydraulic fracturing, the method essential to the extraction of shale gas and other non-conventional fuels. The economy of the USA has continued to grow over the past two years, largely because of shale gas, while that of most European countries stagnates. Reports of pollution of drinking water, the use of unknown and possibly toxic chemicals, the consumption of vast amounts of water, release of radiation, and the triggering of earthquakes appear to have convinced much of the population of Europe that fracking is catastrophic for the environment. Proponents of the production of shale gas argue that fracking has been used for decades for the recovery of conventional gas or geothermal energy and that it can be conducted in an environmentally friendly manner. Opponents of shale gas and other sources of non-conventional fossil fuels argue that their exploitation will merely delay the inevitable passage to renewable energy, with major consequences for global climate. These are some of the issues discussed during the round-table discussion.

More information is available at http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2013/session/13373.

Provisional press conference topics

We are planning 10 to 12 press conferences at the EGU General Assembly, which will take place at the press centre located on the Yellow Level (Ground Floor) of the Austria Center Vienna. Provisional topics to be presented to journalists include:

Near-Earth objects and the Russian meteor
Can we undo climate warming?
Latest results from the Curiosity Mars Rover
Percursors: the search for alternative earthquake prediction methods
Consequences of nuclear accidents: Fukushima and Europe
Climate, water, soils: how do they affect human health?
Air quality and urban pollution
Impacts of climate change
Thunderstorms and terrestrial gamma-ray flashes

Please note that the list above is subject to change. A subsequent media advisory will include a full schedule of press conferences with a list of speakers and short summary of the topics covered in each media briefing.

###

Media registration

Members of the media and public information officers are invited to register online (free of charge) at the Registration page on EGU 2013 Media website: http://media.egu.eu/registration/. The online list of journalist and PIOs who have registered already is available at http://media.egu.eu/registration/who-is-coming/.

Online (pre-)registration will be available until *Friday 15 March*. The advance registration assures that your badge will be waiting for you on your arrival to the Austria Center Vienna, giving you access to the press centre and other meeting rooms. After this date, you may only register on-site during the meeting.

For information on accommodation and travel, please refer to the appropriate sections of the 2013 EGU General Assembly website at http://www.egu2013.eu.

---

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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: 4-Mar-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Brbara Ferreira
media@egu.eu
49-892-180-6703
European Geosciences Union

Media advisory 2 -- Meeting programme online, provisional press conference topics

The programme for the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU), a meeting with over 10,000 scientists that covers all disciplines of the Earth, planetary, and space sciences, is now online. This year's conference features a Great Debate on shale gas and fracking. Press conferences will include presentations on near-Earth objects and the Russian meteor, the latest results from the Curiosity Mars Rover, and the consequences of nuclear accidents, among other topics. The event will be held on 07 April 2013 at the Austria Center Vienna.

Meeting programme online

All sessions (over 700) and abstracts (over 14,000) are now available online and fully searchable. You can access the programme at http://www.egu2013.eu/programme/how_to_access_the_programme.html.

Media participants can use the meeting programme to search for abstracts or sessions they find particularly interesting. The programme is searchable by name of a scientist, keywords (e.g., volcano, L'Aquila), session topic (e.g., Energy, Resources and the Environment, Climate: Past, Present, Future), and other parameters. Further, you can select single contributions or complete sessions from the meeting programme to generate your personal programme.

Reporters may also find the list of papers of special interest, selected by session conveners, useful.

Great Debate Shale gas: to frack or not to frack?

Production of shale gas has turned the USA from a major importer of fossil fuels to, in the near future, an important exporter. Some major European countries, in contrast, have banned hydraulic fracturing, the method essential to the extraction of shale gas and other non-conventional fuels. The economy of the USA has continued to grow over the past two years, largely because of shale gas, while that of most European countries stagnates. Reports of pollution of drinking water, the use of unknown and possibly toxic chemicals, the consumption of vast amounts of water, release of radiation, and the triggering of earthquakes appear to have convinced much of the population of Europe that fracking is catastrophic for the environment. Proponents of the production of shale gas argue that fracking has been used for decades for the recovery of conventional gas or geothermal energy and that it can be conducted in an environmentally friendly manner. Opponents of shale gas and other sources of non-conventional fossil fuels argue that their exploitation will merely delay the inevitable passage to renewable energy, with major consequences for global climate. These are some of the issues discussed during the round-table discussion.

More information is available at http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2013/session/13373.

Provisional press conference topics

We are planning 10 to 12 press conferences at the EGU General Assembly, which will take place at the press centre located on the Yellow Level (Ground Floor) of the Austria Center Vienna. Provisional topics to be presented to journalists include:

Near-Earth objects and the Russian meteor
Can we undo climate warming?
Latest results from the Curiosity Mars Rover
Percursors: the search for alternative earthquake prediction methods
Consequences of nuclear accidents: Fukushima and Europe
Climate, water, soils: how do they affect human health?
Air quality and urban pollution
Impacts of climate change
Thunderstorms and terrestrial gamma-ray flashes

Please note that the list above is subject to change. A subsequent media advisory will include a full schedule of press conferences with a list of speakers and short summary of the topics covered in each media briefing.

###

Media registration

Members of the media and public information officers are invited to register online (free of charge) at the Registration page on EGU 2013 Media website: http://media.egu.eu/registration/. The online list of journalist and PIOs who have registered already is available at http://media.egu.eu/registration/who-is-coming/.

Online (pre-)registration will be available until *Friday 15 March*. The advance registration assures that your badge will be waiting for you on your arrival to the Austria Center Vienna, giving you access to the press centre and other meeting rooms. After this date, you may only register on-site during the meeting.

For information on accommodation and travel, please refer to the appropriate sections of the 2013 EGU General Assembly website at http://www.egu2013.eu.

---

[ | E-mail | 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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/egu-2ga030413.php

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Congress passes bill renewing anti-violence law

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House on Thursday passed and sent to President Barack Obama a far-reaching extension of the Violence Against Women Act. The vote came after House Republican leaders, cognizant of divisions in their own ranks and the need to improve their faltering image among women voters, accepted a bill that cleared the Senate two weeks ago on a strong bipartisan vote.

The bill renews a 1994 law that has set the standard for how to protect women, and some men, from domestic abuse and prosecute abusers. Thursday's 286-138 vote came after House lawmakers rejected a more limited approach offered by Republicans.

It was the third time this year that House Speaker John Boehner has allowed Democrats and moderates in his own party prevail over the GOP's much larger conservative wing. As with a Jan. 1 vote to avoid the fiscal cliff and legislation to extend Superstorm Sandy aid, a majority of House Republicans voted against the final anti-violence bill.

Obama, in a statement, said "renewing this bill is an important step towards making sure no one in America is forced to live in fear" and said he would sign the bill "as soon as it hits my desk."

The law has been renewed twice before without controversy, but it lapsed in 2011 as it was caught up in the partisan battles that now divide Congress. Last year, the House refused to go along with a Senate-passed bill that would have made clear that lesbians, gays, immigrants and Native American women should have equal access to Violence Against Women Act programs.

It appeared the scenario would be repeated this year when the House introduced a bill that didn't mention the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and watered down a Senate provision allowing tribal courts to prosecute non-Indians who attack their Indian partners on tribal lands.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., who has spent months working on the issue, defended the Republican plan: "Our goal in strengthening the Violence Against Women Act is simple. We want to help all women who are faced with violent, abusive and dangerous situations. ... We want them to know that those who commit these horrendous crimes will be punished."

But the House proposal encountered quick and strong opposition from women's groups, the White House, Democrats and some Republicans, and on Tuesday, the GOP leadership agreed to give the House a vote on the Senate bill. It passed immediately after the House rejected Cantor's bill, 257-166, with 60 Republicans voting against it.

The GOP decision to show the white flag came after the party's poor showing among women in last fall's election and Democratic success in framing the debate over the Violence Against Women Act as Republican policy hostile to women. President Barack Obama won 55 percent of the women's vote last November. Republican presidential candidates haven't won the women's vote since 1984, when Ronald Reagan held a 12-point lead over Walter Mondale among women.

The anti-violence bill should never have become partisan, said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a sponsor of the Senate bill. "That is why I applaud moderate Republican voices in the House who stood up to their leadership to demand a vote on the Senate bill."

The Senate passed its bill on a 78-22 vote with every Democrat, every woman senator and 23 of 45 Republicans supporting it.

A turning point in the debate came earlier this month, when 19 Republicans, led by Rep. Jon Runyan, R-N.J., wrote a letter to their leadership urging them to accept a bipartisan plan that would reach all victims of domestic violence. The letter, Runyan said, was a catalyst in showing the leadership "a willingness of people in the House to really compromise" and see that the Senate "has a pretty good bill."

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., a Native American, also wrote his Republican colleagues saying he was voting against the House alternative because "it falls short of giving tribes what they need to keep their women safe."

Indian women suffer incidents of domestic violence at rates more than double national averages, but Indian courts don't have jurisdiction over non-Indians, and federal prosecutors don't take up about half the violence cases on reservations because of lack of resources to pursue crimes on isolated Indian lands. The Senate bill would give Indian courts the ability to prosecute non-Indians for a limited set of crimes limited to domestic violence and violations of protecting orders. Opponents have said that raises constitutional issues.

The Violence Against Women Act is credited with helping reduce domestic violence incidents by two-thirds over the past two decades. The Senate bill would authorize some $659 million a year over five years to fund current programs that provide grants for transitional housing, legal assistance, law enforcement training and hotlines.

The Senate bill adds stalking to the list of crimes that make immigrants eligible for protection and authorizes programs dealing with sexual assault on college campuses and with efforts to reduce the backlog in rape kit analyses. It reauthorizes the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/congress-passes-bill-renewing-anti-181315864.html

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Pope legacy: Teacher who returned to church roots

VATICAN CITY (AP) ? On Monday, April 4, 2005, a priest walked up to the Renaissance palazzo housing the Vatican's doctrine department and asked the doorman to call the official in charge: It was the first day of business after Pope John Paul II had died, and the cleric wanted to get back to work.

The office's No. 2, Archbishop Angelo Amato, answered the phone and was stunned. This was no ordinary priest. It was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, his boss, who under the Vatican's arcane rules had technically lost his job when John Paul died.

"It tells me of the great humility of the man, the great sense of duty, but also the great awareness that we are here to do a job," said Bishop Charles Scicluna, who worked with Ratzinger before he became Pope Benedict XVI, inside the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

In resigning, Scicluna said, Benedict is showing the same sense of humility, duty and service as he did after the Catholic Church lost its last pope.

"He has done his job."

___

When Benedict flies off into retirement by helicopter on Thursday, he will leave behind a church in crisis ? one beset by sex scandal, internal divisions and dwindling numbers.

But the 85-year-old pope can count on a solid legacy: While his very resignation was his most significant act, Benedict ? in a quieter way ? also set the church back on a conservative, tradition-minded path.

He was guided by the firm conviction that many of the ills afflicting the church could be traced to a misreading of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

He insisted that the 1962-65 meetings that brought the church into the modern era were not a radical break from the past, as portrayed by many liberals, but rather a continuation of the best traditions of the 2,000-year-old church.

Benedict was the teacher pope, a theology professor who turned his Wednesday general audiences into master classes about the Catholic faith and the history, saints and sinners that contributed to it.

In his teachings, he sought to boil Christianity down to its essential core. He didn't produce volumes of encyclicals like his predecessor, just three: on charity, hope and love. (He penned a fourth, on faith, but retired before finishing it.)

Considered by many to be the greatest living theologian, he authored more than 65 books, stretching from the classic "Introduction to Christianity" in 1968 to the final installment of his triptych on "Jesus of Nazareth" last year ? considered by some to be his most important contribution to the church. In between he produced the "Catechism of the Catholic Church" ? essentially a how-to guide to being a Catholic.

Benedict spent the bulk of his early career in the classroom, as a student and then professor of dogma and fundamental theology at universities in Bonn, Muenster, Tuebingen and Regensburg, Germany.

"His classrooms were crowded," recalled the Rev. Joseph Fessio, a theology student of Ratzinger's at the University of Regensburg from 1972-74, and now the English-language publisher of his books.

"I don't recall him having notes," Fessio said. "He would stand at the front of the class, and he wasn't looking at you, not with eye contact, but he was looking over you, almost meditating."

It's a style that he's kept for 40 years.

"If you hear him give a sermon, he's speaking not from notes, but you can write it down and print it," Fessio said. "Every comma is there. Every pause."

___

Benedict never wanted to be pope and he didn't take easily to the rigors of the job. Elected April 19, 2005, after one of the shortest conclaves in history, Benedict was, at 78, the oldest pope elected in 275 years and the first German in nearly a millennium.

At first he was stiff.

Giovanni Maria Vian, editor of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, recalled that in the early days Benedict used to greet crowds with an awkward victory gesture "as if he were an athlete."

"At some point someone told him that wasn't a very papal gesture," Vian said. Benedict changed course, opting for an open-armed embrace or an almost effeminate twinkling of his fingers on an outstretched hand as a way of connecting with the crowd.

"No one is born a pope," Vian said. "You have to learn to be a pope."

And slowly Benedict learned.

Crowds accustomed to a quarter-century of superstar John Paul II, grew to embrace the soft-spoken, scholarly Benedict, who had an uncanny knack for being able to absorb different points of view and pull them together in a coherent whole.

He traveled, though less extensively than John Paul, and presided over Masses that were heavy on Latin, Gregorian chant and the silk brocaded vestments of his pre-Vatican II predecessors.

Benedict seemed genuinely surprised by the warm reception he received ? as well as the harsh criticism when things went wrong, as they did when he lifted the excommunication of a bishop who turned out to be a Holocaust-denier.

For a theologian who for decades had worked toward reconciliation between Catholics and Jews, the outrage was fierce and painful.

Benedict was also burdened by what he called the "filth" of the church: the sins and crimes of its priests.

As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict saw first-hand the scope of sex abuse as early as the 1980s, when he tried unsuccessfully to persuade the Vatican legal department to let him remove abusive priests quickly.

But it was 2001 before he finally stepped in, ordering all abuse cases sent to his office for review.

"We used to discuss the cases on Fridays; he used to call it the Friday penance," recalled Scicluna, who was Ratzinger's sex crimes prosecutor from 2002-2012.

Still, to this day, Benedict hasn't sanctioned a single bishop for covering up abuse.

"Unfortunately, Pope Benedict's legacy in the abuse crisis is one of mistaken emphases, missed opportunities, and gestures at the margin, rather than changes at the center," said Terrence McKiernan of BishopAccountability.org, an online resource of abuse documentation.

He praised Benedict for meeting with victims, and acknowledged the strides the Vatican made under his leadership. But, he said Benedict ignored the problem for too long, "prioritizing concerns about dissent over the massive evidence of abuse that was pouring into his office."

"He acted as no other pope has done when pressed or forced, but his papacy has been reactive on this central issue," McKiernan said in an email.

Benedict also gets poor grades from liberal Catholics, who felt abandoned by a pope who seemed to roll back the clock on the modernizing reforms of Vatican II and launched a crackdown on Vatican nuns, deemed to have strayed too far from his doctrinal orthodoxy.

Some priests are now living in open rebellion with church teaching, calling for a rethink on everything from homosexuality to women's ordination to priestly celibacy.

"As Roman Catholics worldwide prepare for the conclave, we are reminded that the current system remains an 'old boys club' and does not allow for women's voices to participate in the decision of the next leader of our church," said Erin Saiz Hanna, head of the Women's Ordination Conference, a group that ordains women in defiance of church teaching.

The group plans to raise pink smoke during the conclave "as a prayerful reminder of the voices of the church that go unheard."

___

But Benedict won't be around at the Vatican to see it. His work is done. "Mission Accomplished," Vian said.

And as the pope told 150,000 people in his final speech as pope: "To love the church is to have the courage to make difficult, painful choices, always keeping in mind the good of the church, not oneself."

___

Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pope-legacy-teacher-returned-church-roots-191501542.html

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iFixit Deems Microsoft Surface Pro Least Repairable Tablet ...

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A look at the adhesive Microsoft uses for its Surface Pro

iFixit has been taking apart tech-related products for years to educate us of their sweet, sweet innards, and today, they?ve released their Tablet Repairability list which scores a number of tablets based on their ease of repair.

According to their engineers, who have disassembled and analyzed each tablet on their list, the Dell XPS 10 receives a score of 9 out of 10 in its repairability due to the tablet being easy to open and even includes color-coded screws and labeled cables inside of it.

Connecting the Dots: Carrying Costs, Outsourcing, Contract Lawyers ...

Within hours of publishing my article reacting to Yahoo?s reversal of a longstanding work-from-home policy, I was engaged in a lively debate with a law firm managing partner regarding the benefits of a distributed workforce. He posed a simple question, one that I didn?t fully address in my earlier article: ?Why would a law firm allow any employees to work offsite when collaboration and, more importantly, instant availability when clients call, is so critical?

Interestingly, many of his points mirrored those of another law firm managing partner from a separate discussion last week who scoffed at the mere notion of using contract lawyers or outsourcing in his firm, for fear that quality would suffer. The two issues are very much related and I appreciate the opportunity to connect the dots.

Companies are in the business of making cars or furniture or software or bed linens or rust-resistant rivets used on ocean liners or x-ray film or lunch or ships in bottles or countless other?offerings.?Most businesses find forays into non-core areas dilutive to earnings, so they hire others to mow the lawn at the company headquarters and manage the company cafeteria or make the coating that they apply to the rivets and so on. Every business eventually encounters a need for legal advice yet few have lawyers on staff. And those companies with enough scale to have in-house lawyers generally hire quarterbacks to manage outside specialists rather than to hire one lawyer for every specialized legal need they might ever encounter. ?In a word, the legal needs are outsourced ? first to in-house counsel, when available, and then to outside counsel. The primary reason for existence for most, if not all, law firms is to serve as an outsourcing provider to clients who do not have and do not want to maintain this function as a core competency.

So the law firm leaders who immediately dismiss outsourcing as a tool in their own arsenal are short-sighted. If it weren?t for outsourcing, most would not be nearly as gainfully employed. The reason outsourcing works is a simple economics term: carrying costs. ?There is a recurring cost to establish and maintain any function, and some services are needed frequently enough that incurring this cost as overhead is more desirable than hiring one-off experts. But not every business reaches the same conclusion for each function. Some hire salespeople, others use third-party channel providers; some hire accounts receivables clerks, others rely on an outside agency to perform this task; some hire a full-time marketer, others bring in experts on an as-needed project basis. ?Sometimes this ?make vs. buy? decision is straightforward, other times the addition of an FTE (full-time employee or equivalent) is a big deal that requires deeper analysis.

Yet many law firm partners, especially in Biglaw, have become enamored with the idea of the ?instantly hot? faucet ? you know the kind, no matter which faucet or what time of day, the moment you turn it on you get hot water without hesitation. ?The ability to mobilize instantly and staff a complex project literally overnight is our greatest asset,? reported one law firm leader in an interview I conducted several years ago. ?In layman?s terms, law firms are like the supermarket with 20 checkout lanes, with every lane staffed and open at all hours, every day, all year, regardless of demand, just in case a client might call. ?Upon closer inspection, however, we might find the law firm?s checkout lanes staffed with guys who collect shopping carts in the parking lot, stockroom clerks, butchers and bakers, in addition to specially trained cashiers. This is the result of hiring untrained associates and making them available as a general resource to any partner that needs a body.

We?ve all been frustrated when forced to wait in line at a supermarket, everyone crowding into three checkout lanes while 17 remain closed. While this memory is vivid, statistically speaking we rarely face this delay at our busier stores because they employ statistical modeling called ?queuing theory? to estimate peak and slack times, and they staff accordingly. No supermarket would be profitable if it incurred the carrying costs of staffing every checkout lane at all hours, and it would be similarly unprofitable if it constantly forced buyers to wait, driving buyers to seek alternatives.

What does this mean for our law firm leaders? ?Clients do indeed call and request assistance on a moment?s notice. But why not explore a model that allows the firm to instantly access scores, even hundreds, of well-trained, specialized, experienced lawyers, some of whom are nearby, some of whom are remote, all of whom are connected via high-speed Internet access to phones, computers and possibly video, but who prefer not to embrace the daily life of a Biglaw associate? ?The carrying costs of the combined salaries, benefits, real estate, equipment, subsidized food and late night transportation of associate employees are enormous compared to the carrying cost of $0 for contract lawyers. ?In some cases there will be higher transactional costs ramping up contract lawyers, but as the outsourcing providers have demonstrated beyond any doubt to in-house counsel who regularly hire them, the higher up-front cost is more than recovered by improving the quality of the work product and the reduction in repetitive rewrites, among other factors.

Now, before the ATL crowd overreacts, I?m not advocating for the elimination of associates on the law firm payroll. But I am suggesting that many of the unhappy and unproductive associates who are on the payroll today would enjoy doing creative and challenging work from the comfort of their own home office, without the many distractions incumbent in working every day in a law firm.

It?s simple economics. Savvy law firm leaders long ago recognized the wisdom of outsourcing non-core back office functions. The progressive leaders have begun to embrace the use of work-from-home lawyers, contract lawyers and outsourcing firms to provide ?instantly hot? services with lower carrying costs, and found that this approach can provide access to greater experience and more productive lawyers too. Whether or not you embrace a work-from-home policy that reduces your overhead while increasing productivity, or establish a network of contract lawyers to serve on a moment?s notice, or contract with an outsourcing provider to fill specific needs on an ongoing basis, is a decision only you can make after reasoned analysis. You can cling to the notion that quality only results from the Ivy League-to-Biglaw-partner-track staffing model, and you can cling to the notion that 20 open checkout lanes?at 3 AM?is a wise business decision, or you can apply some established business analytics to your own enterprise and make informed decisions. The choice is yours? until your clients make the choice for you.

Source: http://www.corcoranlawbizblog.com/2013/02/carrying-costs/

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Pentagon says to resume F-35 flights

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Thursday it would resume flights of its F-35 fighter jets following a week-long precautionary grounding imposed after a crack was found on an engine blade on a test plane in California.

"F-35 flight operations have been cleared to resume," Pentagon spokeswoman Kyra Hawn said in a statement. She said flights could begin as early as Friday, depending on weather conditions.

No additional cracks were found during inspections of engines on the remaining 50 planes in the Pentagon's fleet, or any spare engines, Hawn said.

The order allowing flights to resume is good news for the $396 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Pentagon's biggest weapons program which is bracing for big cutbacks when automatic across-the-board budget cuts take effect on Friday.

It comes two days after the Pentagon's F-35 program chief blasted enginemaker Pratt & Whitney and prime contractor Lockheed Martin Corp for trying to "squeeze every nickel" out of the Pentagon and not shouldering enough risk on the program.

The order ends the program's second engine-related flight ban in less than two months. The Marines Corps version of the plane was grounded for nearly a month from mid-January because of a faulty hose in the engine, later blamed on manufacturing errors.

Matthew Bates, a spokesman for Pratt & Whitney, which supplies the engines for the planes, said the Pentagon's F-35 program office had decided to rescind the grounding order after extensive tests and analysis of the cracked turbine blade, which was discovered on February 19 during a routine inspection conducted after every 50 hours of flight time.

Bates said Pratt engineers had been working around the clock with Pentagon experts to determine the cause of the crack in the engine blade, including a "destructive" test that cracked open the blade.

The tests showed that the crack resulted from the "unique operating environment" in flight tests -- many of which tested the engine's powerful after burners -- rather than a high-cycle fatigue crack, which would have required a design change.

Bates said the engine in question had operated at high temperatures for more than four times longer than a typical F-35 flight, which led to a separation of the "grain boundary" of this particular blade.

The Navy order rescinding the flight ban, or so-called "red stripe," said that engine had experienced the most "hot engine time exposure" of all the engines in the developmental program. It said it would now require reports to monitor and limit similar damage after every 25 flight hours.

Pratt recommended the resumption of flights and ground operations of the engine earlier on Thursday after its engineers ruled out a high-cycle fatigue crack.

The Pentagon said the investigation concluded that the 0.6-inch long crack was caused by "prolonged exposure to high levels of heat and other operational stressors."

Pratt, a unit of United Technologies Corp, supplies the engine for the single-engine, single-seat fighter plane, which is built by Lockheed Martin Corp.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Stacey Joyce and Richard Pullin)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pentagon-says-resume-f-35-flights-023609209--finance.html

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After the human genome project: The human microbiome project

Public release date: 28-Feb-2013
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Contact: Cody Mooneyhan
cmooneyhan@faseb.org
301-634-7104
Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology

New research in The FASEB Journal reports the first results of a major scientific effort to understand our own ecosystem: The microbial communities that dwell within us

Bethesda, MDEarth Day may be more than a month away, but another, more personal, ecosystem has been shown to also be worth protectingwithin our bodies are communities of microbes that affect the behavior of human cells hosting them. These communities, called the "microbiome," is so crucial to our health that some consider it to be a complex "second genome." Understanding the interaction of these microbes among one another and their human hosts has the potential to yield insights into numerous diseases and complex human disorders from obesity to susceptibility to infection. In a new report appearing in the March 2013 issue of The FASEB Journal, scientists take an important step toward designing a uniform protocol for microbiome research that ensures proper controls and considerations for variations among people. By doing this, future researchers should be able to better assess how what we ingest, whether drugs or food, affects our bodies.

"While historically pre and probiotics have dominated the microbiome landscape, emerging data from numerous labs as to the impact of dietary interventions and antibiotic exposure will play formative roles in tailoring therapy," said Kjersti M. Aagaard, M.D., Ph.D., from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. "We may find that the answers to our most common and prevalent health and disease states lies not in manipulating the human genome, but rather, in utilizing subtle shifts in diet and components of the diet, efficacy trials in prophylactic or preventative antibiotic therapies, and care attention to the over prescription of steroids and antibiotics."

Aagaard and colleagues completed comprehensive body site sampling in healthy 18-40 year old adults, creating an unparalleled reference set of microbiome specimens. Researchers then screened 554 individuals to enroll 300 (149 males, 151 females, mean age 26, mean BMI 24, 20.0 percent racial minority and 10.7 percent Hispanic). Scientists obtained specimens from several body sites to evaluate the longitudinal changes in an individual's microbiome by sampling 279 participants twice (mean 212 days after first sampling, range 30-359), and 100 individuals three times (mean 72 days after second sampling, range 30-224). This sampling strategy yielded 11,174 primary specimens, from which 12,479 DNA samples were submitted to four centers for metagenomic sequencing. This clinical design and well-defined reference cohort has laid a baseline foundation for microbiome research.

"Whether it is yogurt, penicillin, or diet soda, each alters the microbial communities that live within us," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "This pioneering study promises to provide their names and numbers, so that we can understand how diet, disease or drugs affect our internal ecosystem."

###

Receive monthly highlights from The FASEB Journal by e-mail. Sign up at http://www.faseb.org/fjupdate.aspx. The FASEB Journal is published by the Federation of the American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). It is among the most cited biology journals worldwide according to the Institute for Scientific Information and has been recognized by the Special Libraries Association as one of the top 100 most influential biomedical journals of the past century. FASEB is composed of 26 societies with more than 100,000 members, making it the largest coalition of biomedical research associations in the United States. Its mission is to advance health and welfare by promoting progress and education in biological and biomedical sciences through service to its member societies and through collaborative advocacy.

Details: Kjersti Aagaard, Joseph Petrosino, Wendy Keitel, Mark Watson, James Katancik, Nathalia Garcia, Shital Patel, Mary Cutting, Tessa Madden, Holli Hamilton, Emily Harris, Dirk Gevers, Gina Simone, Pamela McInnes, and James Versalovic. The Human Microbiome Project strategy for comprehensive sampling of the human microbiome and why it matters. FASEB J March 2013 27:1012-1022, doi:10.1096/fj.12-220806 ; http://www.fasebj.org/content/27/3/1012.abstract.

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Public release date: 28-Feb-2013
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Contact: Cody Mooneyhan
cmooneyhan@faseb.org
301-634-7104
Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology

New research in The FASEB Journal reports the first results of a major scientific effort to understand our own ecosystem: The microbial communities that dwell within us

Bethesda, MDEarth Day may be more than a month away, but another, more personal, ecosystem has been shown to also be worth protectingwithin our bodies are communities of microbes that affect the behavior of human cells hosting them. These communities, called the "microbiome," is so crucial to our health that some consider it to be a complex "second genome." Understanding the interaction of these microbes among one another and their human hosts has the potential to yield insights into numerous diseases and complex human disorders from obesity to susceptibility to infection. In a new report appearing in the March 2013 issue of The FASEB Journal, scientists take an important step toward designing a uniform protocol for microbiome research that ensures proper controls and considerations for variations among people. By doing this, future researchers should be able to better assess how what we ingest, whether drugs or food, affects our bodies.

"While historically pre and probiotics have dominated the microbiome landscape, emerging data from numerous labs as to the impact of dietary interventions and antibiotic exposure will play formative roles in tailoring therapy," said Kjersti M. Aagaard, M.D., Ph.D., from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. "We may find that the answers to our most common and prevalent health and disease states lies not in manipulating the human genome, but rather, in utilizing subtle shifts in diet and components of the diet, efficacy trials in prophylactic or preventative antibiotic therapies, and care attention to the over prescription of steroids and antibiotics."

Aagaard and colleagues completed comprehensive body site sampling in healthy 18-40 year old adults, creating an unparalleled reference set of microbiome specimens. Researchers then screened 554 individuals to enroll 300 (149 males, 151 females, mean age 26, mean BMI 24, 20.0 percent racial minority and 10.7 percent Hispanic). Scientists obtained specimens from several body sites to evaluate the longitudinal changes in an individual's microbiome by sampling 279 participants twice (mean 212 days after first sampling, range 30-359), and 100 individuals three times (mean 72 days after second sampling, range 30-224). This sampling strategy yielded 11,174 primary specimens, from which 12,479 DNA samples were submitted to four centers for metagenomic sequencing. This clinical design and well-defined reference cohort has laid a baseline foundation for microbiome research.

"Whether it is yogurt, penicillin, or diet soda, each alters the microbial communities that live within us," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "This pioneering study promises to provide their names and numbers, so that we can understand how diet, disease or drugs affect our internal ecosystem."

###

Receive monthly highlights from The FASEB Journal by e-mail. Sign up at http://www.faseb.org/fjupdate.aspx. The FASEB Journal is published by the Federation of the American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). It is among the most cited biology journals worldwide according to the Institute for Scientific Information and has been recognized by the Special Libraries Association as one of the top 100 most influential biomedical journals of the past century. FASEB is composed of 26 societies with more than 100,000 members, making it the largest coalition of biomedical research associations in the United States. Its mission is to advance health and welfare by promoting progress and education in biological and biomedical sciences through service to its member societies and through collaborative advocacy.

Details: Kjersti Aagaard, Joseph Petrosino, Wendy Keitel, Mark Watson, James Katancik, Nathalia Garcia, Shital Patel, Mary Cutting, Tessa Madden, Holli Hamilton, Emily Harris, Dirk Gevers, Gina Simone, Pamela McInnes, and James Versalovic. The Human Microbiome Project strategy for comprehensive sampling of the human microbiome and why it matters. FASEB J March 2013 27:1012-1022, doi:10.1096/fj.12-220806 ; http://www.fasebj.org/content/27/3/1012.abstract.

---

[ | E-mail | 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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-02/foas-ath022813.php

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