Permian mass extinction triggered by humble microbe

AROUND 251 million years ago, over 90 per cent of the species on Earth suddenly went extinct. Their killer may not have been a devastating meteorite or a catastrophic volcanic eruption, but a humble microbe.

The prevailing theory is that the mass extinction at the end of the Permian period was triggered by volcanic eruptions over a vast area of what is now Siberia. This led, among other things, to a dramatic rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

But the scenario just doesn't fit the facts, says Daniel Rothman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From his analysis of an end-Permian sediment sample from China, Rothman says carbon levels surged much too quickly for geological processes to be at work.

Microbes can generate carbon compounds that fast, though. When Rothman's group analysed the genome of Methanosarcina - a methanogen responsible for most of Earth's biogenic methane today - they discovered that the microbe gained this ability about 231 million years ago. The date was close to that of the mass extinction, but not close enough to suggest a link.

But Methanosarcina needs large amounts of nickel to produce methane quickly. When the team went back to their sediment cores, they discovered that nickel levels spiked almost exactly 251 million years ago - probably because the Siberian lavas were rich in the metal. That suggests Methanosarcina did trigger the extinction, Rothman told the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco last week.

Other geologists remain to be convinced. "[But] it's a fascinating idea that the evolution of a new life form led to an extinction," says Anthony Barnosky of the University of California, Berkeley. Today's mass extinction of biodiversity is similar, says Barnosky, because it is largely driven by our species.

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Enough blood for injured Navy serviceman & others in need

SINGAPORE: Singapore Red Cross and the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) said injured Navy serviceman Jason Chee is well supported by the National Blood Programme.

In a joint statement, they assured well wishers that there is sufficient blood for his surgeries.

The statement revealed that the Singapore Red Cross has already been recalling donors who are due for donation and blood donors of O+ type to ensure sufficient stock.

SRC and HSA thanked donors who have been prompted by Mr Chee's incident to come forward to donate blood.

They clarified that directed and replacement donations -- where families and friends are obliged to donate blood for the patient or to replace blood used by the patient -- are not practised in Singapore.

The statement said blood collected at the blood banks is available to all patients who need it.

It added that voluntary and non-remunerated blood donation is key to the safety and quality of Singapore's blood supply.

It noted that because of the regular contribution of donors, there was sufficient blood for Mr Chee and others when they needed transfusions.

Mr Chee, a regular serviceman, was injured on Monday after he got caught between a motorised winch and a rope on Landing Ship Tank RSS Endeavour.

His elderly father has been shaken by the news, and has been taken care of by relatives.

Mr Chee is the family's only child and sole breadwinner.

He recently lost his mother, who was a kidney dialysis patient.

Mr Chee had been working on board the ship in the Gulf of Aden on anti-piracy patrol when he received news of his mother's worsening condition.

The Navy had flown him home to be with his mother. He was in Singapore when she died.

- CNA/xq

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Crave giveaway: Sprint LG Optimus G smartphone

Congrats to Oliver M. of Anaheim, Calif., for winning a copy of Symantec's Norton 360 Multi-Device security suite in last week's giveaway. Now, for this week's prize... Is your smartphone starting to look (and act) a bit shabby? You're in luck! We're offering up a free LG Optimus G from Sprint (please note: you'll be responsible for your own voice and data plan; Sprint includes an unlimited data plan among its choices).

CNET reviewers love this quad-core Android smartphone, calling it "undoubtedly the best phone LG has ever offered." In particular, they're fond of the phone's zippy Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor, attractively bright 4.7-inch display, and 13-megapixel camera. The device is also 4G LTE-enabled.

The phone sports a 13-megapixel camera.

(Credit:
Josh Miller/CNET)

Normally, the LG Optimus G would run you $549.99 without a contract, but you have the chance to get one gratis. How do you go about doing that? There are a few rules, so please read carefully.

• Register as a CNET user. Go to the top of this page and hit the Join CNET link to start the registration process. If you're already registered, there's no need to register again.


• Leave a comment below. You can leave whatever comment you want. If it's funny or insightful, it won't help you win, but we're trying to have fun here, so anything entertaining is appreciated.


• Leave only one comment. You may enter for this specific giveaway only once. If you enter more than one comment, you will be automatically disqualified.
  


• The winner will be chosen randomly. The winner will receive one (1) Sprint LG Optimus G, with a retail value of $549.99.


• If you are chosen, you will be notified via e-mail. The winner must respond within three days of the end of the sweepstakes. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen.


• Entries can be submitted until Monday, December 17, at 12 p.m. ET.

And here's the disclaimer that our legal department said we had to include (sorry for the caps, but rules are rules):

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. YOU HAVE NOT YET WON. MUST BE LEGAL RESIDENT OF ONE OF THE 50 UNITED STATES OR D.C., 18 YEARS OLD OR AGE OF MAJORITY, WHICHEVER IS OLDER IN YOUR STATE OF RESIDENCE AT DATE OF ENTRY INTO SWEEPSTAKES. VOID IN PUERTO RICO, ALL U.S. TERRITORIES AND POSSESSIONS AND WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW. Sweepstakes ends at 12 p.m. ET on Monday, December 17, 2012. See official rules for details.

Good luck.

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Global Checkup: Most People Living Longer, But Sicker

If the world's entire population went in for a collective checkup, would the doctor's prognosis be good or bad? Both, according to new studies published in The Lancet medical journal.

The vast collaborative effort, called the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010, includes papers by nearly 500 authors in 50 countries. Spanning four decades of data, it represents the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken of health problems around the world.

It reveals that, globally, we're living longer but coping with more illness as adults. In 1990, "childhood underweight"—a condition associated with malnutrition, measles, malaria, and other infectious diseases—was the world's biggest health problem. Now the top causes of global disease are adult ailments: high blood pressure (associated with 9.4 million deaths in 2010), tobacco smoking (6.2 million), and alcohol use (4.9 million).

First, the good news:

We're living longer. Average life expectancy has risen globally since 1970 and has increased in all but eight of the world's countries within the past decade.

Both men and women are gaining years. From 1970 to 2010, the average lifespan rose from 56.4 years to 67.5 years for men, and from 61.2 years to 73.3 years for women.

Efforts to combat childhood diseases and malnutrition have been very successful. Deaths in children under five years old declined almost 60 percent in the past four decades.

Developing countries have made huge strides in public health. In the Maldives, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Iran, and Peru, life expectancy has increased by more than 20 years since 1970. Within the past two decades, gains of 12 to 15 years have occurred in Angola, Ethiopia, Niger, and Rwanda, an indication of successful strategies for curbing HIV, malaria, and nutritional deficiencies.

We're beating many communicable diseases. Thanks to improvements in sanitation and vaccination, the death rate for diarrheal diseases, lower respiratory infections, meningitis, and other common infectious diseases has dropped by 42 percent since 1990.

And the bad:

Non-infectious diseases are on the rise, accounting for two of every three deaths globally in 2010. Heart disease and stroke are the primary culprits.

Young adults aren't doing as well as others. Deaths in the 15 to 49 age bracket have increased globally in the past 20 years. The reasons vary by region, but diabetes, smoking, alcohol, HIV/AIDS, and malaria all play a role.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic is taking a toll in sub-Saharan Africa. Life expectancy has declined overall by one to seven years in Zimbabwe and Lesotho, and young adult deaths have surged by more than 500 percent since 1970 in South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

We drink too much. Alcohol overconsumption is a growing problem in the developed world, especially in Eastern Europe, where it accounts for almost a quarter of the total disease burden. Worldwide, it has become the top risk factor for people ages 15 to 49.

We eat too much, and not the right things. Deaths attributable to obesity are on the rise, with 3.4 million in 2010 compared to 2 million in 1990. Similarly, deaths attributable to dietary risk factors and physical inactivity have increased by 50 percent (4 million) in the past 20 years. Overall, we're consuming too much sodium, trans fat, processed meat, and sugar-sweetened beverages, and not enough fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, fiber, calcium, and omega-3 fatty acids.

Smoking is a lingering problem. Tobacco smoking, including second-hand smoke, is still the top risk factor for disease in North America and Western Europe, just as it was in 1990. Globally, it's risen in rank from the third to second leading cause of disease.

To find out more and see related charts and graphics, see the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which led the collaboration.

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What Is a Right-to-Work Law?

This week Michigan became the 24th state in the country to adopt a right-to-work law. The passage of the bill by the state legislature, and eventual signing by Rick Snyder, the state's Republican governor, brought a huge wave of protests in a state with deep union roots.

Right-to-work laws have garnered a lot of national attention in recent years as more states have implemented this legislation that prohibits unions from requiring workers to pay dues as a condition of their employment. The laws are meant to regulate agreements between employers and labor unions that would prohibit the employer from hiring non-union workers.

The laws are particularly divisive--proponents argue that businesses will be more likely to set up shop in the state, while opponents argue that weakening union power will lead to lower wages. Because each state has a variety of factors that must be considered individually when assessing its overall economic standing, it's difficult to fully assess the validity of each side's argument, since you can't isolate the direct effect of these laws on the state's economy.

However, a study conducted in 2007 by Lonnie Stevans of Hofstra University suggested that both sides of the argument are, to some degree, accurate.

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"Findings are that the number of businesses and self-employed are greater on average in right-to-work states, but employment, wages, and per-capita personal income are all lower on average in right-to-work states," Stevans wrote.

But he noted that there was little "trickle down" from the business owners to the workers--the laws benefitted the business owners who did not have to contend with union contracts, but business employees didn't get those same positive effects--as evidenced by the lower salaries on average.

An analysis by ABC News of the most recent seasonally adjusted unemployment rates in states with right-to-work laws vs. those without such laws found that on average, the unemployment rate in states with right to work laws was slightly lower than those without. The average unemployment rate in the 24 states with right-to-work laws was 7 percent, while the average rate in the 26 states plus D.C. that do not have right-to-work laws was just under 7.6 percent--a difference of just under .6 percent.

The state with the lowest unemployment rate in the country--Nebraska at just 3.8 percent unemployment--has such a law in place, as does the state with the highest unemployment rate, Nevada at 11.5 percent.

Support for the laws has often tended to fall along party lines, with Democrats opposing and Republicans supporting. The vast majority of states with right-to-work laws are Republican led, the majority of states without are led by Democrats.

Below is the list of the 24 states with right-to-work laws.

Alabama

Arizona

Arkansas

Florida

Georgia

Idaho

Indiana

Iowa

Kansas

Louisiana

Michigan

Mississippi

Nebraska

Nevada

North Carolina

North Dakota

Oklahoma

South Carolina

South Dakota

Tennessee

Texas

Utah

Virginia

Wyoming

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Robot apps get a cash boost

APPS aren't just for your smartphone. The one-year-old Robot-App Store got a cash boost this week in the form of $250,000 from the first company dedicated to investing in consumer robotics.

Dmitry Grishin, founder of Grishin Robotics, already spent $250,000 on a telepresent robotics company called Double Robotics in September, and plans to invest a total of $25 million in the field.

Grishin says software like the apps on offer at the Robot-App Store is the key to creating a vibrant market in household robots. "Once you find a cool app, it will help to sell robots." He compares robots to computers. "A good application, like a spreadsheet, helped to sell PCs and to grow the PC market."

One app from the Robot-App Store makes the NAO robot (pictured) whistle and say "Hello, gorgeous" whenever it detects a face. Another allows you to steer the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner using your keyboard.

No killer app yet perhaps, but Grishin says that will come with the establishment of a "robot ecosystem", in which more developers create apps for a growing pool of consumers, who are in turn encouraged by the number of apps to choose from.

The world of robot software is certainly maturing. The open source Robot Operating System celebrated its fifth birthday in November.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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Fare increases needed to improve service to commuters, says Lui Tuck Yew

SINGAPORE: Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew has said fare increases are needed to improve service to commuters while keeping public transport operations commercially viable.

In a Facebook post, Mr Lui said fare increases are not to boost the short-term profits of Public Transport Operators (PTOs) or improve the salaries of bus drivers.

He said that's why the government must work with the PTOs to ensure that when granted any fare increase, they would re-invest part of this revenue to improve the public transport system to benefit commuters.

This can be in hardware, like more buses and trains and upgrading the signalling systems.

It can also be in software, like better terms and salaries for staff. This includes bus drivers and train operators, as well as the maintenance and service personnel.

Mr Lui said as fares increase, the government will have to play a larger role to keep the public transport system affordable.

He said there must be a concerted and sustained effort to upgrade the bus driving profession.

Employment terms and conditions must also be improved further to recruit new drivers and retain existing ones in order to ramp up bus capacity over the next few years.

On who pays for the increased costs, Mr Lui said there must be a proper balance among commuters in fares, or taxpayers in government subsidies, or the PTOs.

He said the government is fully committed to an affordable public transport system for the middle-income groups, the lower-income groups, the disabled community, and other vulnerable groups.

He said the bottom line is this. It is a matter of all the stakeholders - the PTOs, the government, and commuters - coming together to ensure everyone enjoys a reliable, high-quality and affordable public transport system.

- CNA/de

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Social media notes on the 12-12-12 Concert

A screen shot of 121212concert.org, featuring the night's last act, Sir Paul McCartney. As you can see, one of the author's tweets

12-12-12 was a day tailor-made for social media and there was a lot going on timed to the date. Here are some notes from the serious to the ridiculous:

12-12-12, THE DATE: Millions of people spent the days talking about the rare confluence of numbers (won't happen again till 01/01/01 in 2101), starting with 12:12:12 am local time, on Facebook and Twitter and continued around the world, hitting a peak at 12:12:12 pm local time. I, too, gave into the hype and posted a screen grab of the official US atomic clock at Time.gov turning 12:12:12 pm.

There were, of course, thousands of others making fun of all the 12-12-12 obsessed. Among them, Frank Conniff (@FrankConniff), who tweeted:
"Did you know that today is 12-12-12? Amazing! This is the only chance I'll ever have to share this incredibly dull fact!"

Here's a collection by BuzzFeed of how various corporations from McDonald's to UPS handled 12-12-12.

No one took the 12:12:12 idea more seriously than India-based entrepreneur Sharik Currimbhoy, who donated $12.12 million to his alma mater and my employer, Columbia University. The press release said, "The gift is timed to coincide with the auspicious moment of 12:12 p.m. on Wednesday, December 12, 2012--12:12 on 12-12-12."

RIP, RAVI SHANKAR: The first unusual thing I noticed after the date business was the fact that the name Ravi Shankar was trending worldwide. You wouldn't expect the passing of a 92-year-old sitar player from India to be that widely noted, but it certainly was. I tweeted a screen grab of the trending chart, saying: "Nice to see Ravi Shankar trending, thx in part to tweets from folks as different as @MarioBatali & @CoryBooker." 

Shankar became famous in the U.S. because of his work with the Beatles (though Slate's Geeta Dayal - @GeetaDayal - reminds us "Ravi Shankar wasn't just the Indian guy who hung out with the Beatles." The fact that he was the father of superstar Norah Jones (@NorahJones) and her half-sister, sitarist Anoushka Shankar (@ShankarAnoushka), who was nominated for a Grammy this week, played a role in younger folks' interest.

12-12-12, THE CONCERT: The day ended with an all-star benefit concert along the lines of what's been done for the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the Asian tsunami in 2004, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the Haiti earthquake in 2010. The "12-12-12" concert, for Superstorm Sandy relief in New York and New Jersey, had a lot of hype built into it, starting with its memorable date, the brand-name performers and the fact that it was being broadcast live on 37 networks in the US and more than 100 overseas and streamed live on many major sites (the night's quasi emcee, Billy Crystal, promised an audience of 2 billion). There were also many celebrities manning the phone banks and brought attention to the festivities.

The concert was held at Madison Square Garden, which was also the site, in 1971, of the first of these massive benefit concerts, created, of all people, by Ravi Shankar and George Harrison. The Concert of Bangladesh (here's the Wikipedia entry; and here are several video excerpts), has quite the legacy. It inspired Bob Geldof's 1995 Live Aid concert and continues to have an impact as proceeds from the concert album and DVD benefit the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF, which has programs in Bangladesh today.

Alas, no mention of the 1971 concert or Shankar's passing was made at the 12-12-12 concert, though that would have been timely and the right thing to do (below a quick video remembering Shankar and Harrison by video news newcomer Now This News). Eric Clapton was the only star at both concerts.

Social media was baked into many parts of the evening. The #121212concert hashtag was constantly plugged on the air (see my earlier post on the right way and wrong way to do hashtags on TV). Many of the celebrities used their Twitter accounts to promote the concert before and during the gathering. Examples: Here's Cold Play (@ColdPlay), tweeting about it's lead singer Chris Martin's performance: "Don't forget, Chris plays at tomorrow's @121212Concert for Hurricane Sandy victims. Live stream info: http://bit.ly/121212Watch #121212Concert." Here's Alicia Keys (@AliciaKeys), who tweeted an Instagram of herself at the piano: "Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, and ME?! WTF?! ;-) #121212Concert"

The 121212concert.org site has prominent links to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Google+ and GetGlue (a mobile-based social network that let's users check-in to TV shows, films, concerts, etc). There were electronic signs around the stage promoting highlighted tweets, encouraging those in the audience to tweet, too. And the

The site also highlighted tweets from such high-profile accounts as @MickJagger, @GQMagazine, @NYRangers and @KimKardashian. Into that mix, somehow, one of my tweets sneaked in, as you can see from the screen shot at the top of this post: "Almost entire cast of Sopranos is working the phone bank right now, so some of you may want to call 1-855-465-4357 & donate #121212concert" (this generated 63 retweets and 20 favorites as I write this).

Some of my other tweets got more than 10 retweets:
* At 9:16 pm ET, I tweeted this: #121212concert hasn't had any women or people of color sing yet - 105 minutes and counting. Great acts so far, but... [It was almost 180 before Alicia Keys took the stage. In a sign of the times, she kept telling the audience to "put your cellphones in the air" as she sang her hit "No One."]

* At 10:06 pm, I tweeted this: #121212concert needs on-screen listings of who's who & what they're performing. My kids don't know the old stuff and I don't know the new.

* At 12:23 am, I tweeted this: "I know that you really wanted @OneDirection, but it's way past their bedtime" - Chris Martin of @ColdPlay apologizing at #121212concert [Martin had a great line, reflecting on being the youngest person on the show. He said if everything donated the average age of the performers, we'd raise billions."]

Rapper Kanye West (@KanyeWest) trended during his performance, though it wasn't necessarily for his music. He was wearing something that looked like a cross between a kilt and skirt, and, sure enough, people were talking about #kanyeskilt.

The six-hour concert ended with Sir Paul McCartney (@PaulMcCartney) performing with a variety of musicians, including a rare appearance by the remaining members of Nirvana, which set Twitter abuzz.

The fundraising, through the Robin Hood Foundation, carries on and you can still donate at 121212concert.org.

Did you catch the concert on TV, the web or just via glancing blows on social media? Share your thoughts in the comments below, please.

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Hubble Discovers Oldest Known Galaxy

The Hubble space telescope has discovered seven primitive galaxies formed in the earliest days of the cosmos, including one believed to be the oldest ever detected.

The discovery, announced Wednesday, is part of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field campaign to determine how and when galaxies first assembled following the Big Bang.

"This 'cosmic dawn' was not a single, dramatic event," said astrophysicist Richard Ellis with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Rather, galaxies appear to have been formed over hundreds of millions of years.

Ellis led a team that used Hubble to look at one small section of the sky for a hundred hours. The grainy images of faint galaxies include one researchers determined to be from a period 380 million years after the onset of the universe—the closest in time to the Big Bang ever observed.

The cosmos is about 13.7 billion years old, so the newly discovered galaxy was present when the universe was 4 percent of its current age. The other six galaxies were sending out light from between 380 million and 600 million years after the Big Bang. (See pictures of "Hubble's Top Ten Discoveries.")

Baby Pictures

The images are "like the first ultrasounds of [an] infant," said Abraham Loeb, a specialist in the early cosmos at Harvard University. "These are the building blocks of the galaxies we now have."

These early galaxies were a thousand times denser than galaxies are now and were much closer together as well, Ellis said. But they were also less luminous than later galaxies.

The team used a set of four filters to analyze the near infrared wavelengths captured by Hubble Wide Field Camera 3, and estimated the galaxies' distances from Earth by studying their colors. At a NASA teleconference, team members said they had pushed Hubble's detection capabilities about as far as they could go and would most likely not be able to identify galaxies from further back in time until the James Webb Space Telescope launches toward the end of the decade. (Learn about the Hubble telescope.)

"Although we may have reached back as far as Hubble will see, Hubble has set the stage for Webb," said team member Anton Koekemoer of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "Our work indicates there is a rich field of even earlier galaxies that Webb will be able to study."

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Workers' Party ready to offer voters a choice again

SINGAPORE: The Workers' Party (WP), which contested the 2011 general election in the Punggol East Single Member Constituency (SMC), said it is ready to offer voters a choice again in a by-election.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the WP said it has noted the announcement that the Speaker of Parliament, Mr Michael Palmer, has resigned from the People's Action Party and, by virtue of Article 46 of the Constitution, Mr Palmer's Parliamentary seat for Punggol East SMC has become vacant.

It added, that for the residents of Punggol East to be properly represented, the Workers' Party urges the Prime Minister to call a by-election in the constituency as soon as possible.

The WP statement came shortly after Mr Michael Palmer, the Speaker of Singapore Parliament and MP for Punggol East SMC, resigned over a "grave mistake" of having an improper relationship with a staff member of the People's Association.

- CNA/ck/sf

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