NICOSIA (Reuters) - Cyprus was expected to confirm on Saturday that major depositors in its biggest bank will lose around 60 percent of their savings over 100,000 euros, under a bailout that has shaken European banks but saved the island from bankruptcy for now.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble sought to reassure bank customers elsewhere in Europe, saying in an interview in Germany's Bild tabloid on Saturday that their savings were safe after the Cyprus deal.
European officials have sought to stress that the island's bailout terms were a one off - after a suggestion by Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem that the rescue would serve as a model for future crises rattled European financial markets.
Initial signs that big depositors in Bank of Cyprus would take a hit of 30 to 40 percent - the first time the euro zone has made bank customers contribute to a bailout - were already enough to unnerve investors in European banks this week.
But a source with direct knowledge of the terms told Reuters on Friday that the conditions announced on Saturday would give depositors shares in the bank worth just 37.5 percent of savings over 100,000 euros. The rest of such holdings might never be paid back.
The toughening of the terms will send a clear signal that the bailout means the end of Cyprus as a hub for offshore finance and could accelerate economic decline on the island and bring steeper job losses.
There is no sign for now, however, that ordinary customers in other struggling euro zone countries like Greece, Italy or Spain are taking fright.
"Cyprus is and will remain a special one-off case," said Schaeuble, one of the main architects of the euro zone's response to a debt crisis now in its fourth year. "The savings accounts in Europe are safe."
"Together in the Eurogroup we decided to have the owners and creditors take part in the costs of the rescue - in other words those who helped cause the crisis.
"Cyprus's economy will now go through a long and painful period of adjustment. But then it will pay back the loan when it is on a solid economic foundation."
ANGRY
Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades said on Friday that the 10-billion euro ($13 billion) bailout had contained the risk of national bankruptcy and would prevent it from leaving the euro.
Cypriots, however, are angry at the price attached to the rescue - the winding down of the island's second-largest bank, Cyprus Popular Bank, also known as Laiki, and an unprecedented raid on deposits over 100,000 euros.
Under the terms of the deal, the assets of Laiki bank will be transferred to Bank of Cyprus.
At Bank of Cyprus, about 22.5 percent of deposits over 100,000 euros will attract no interest, the source said. The remaining 40 percent will continue to attract interest, but will not be repaid unless the bank does well.
Those with deposits under 100,000 euros will continue to be protected under the state's deposit guarantee.
Banks on the island reopened to relative calm on Thursday after an almost two-week shutdown and the imposition of capital controls to prevent a run on banks by worried Cypriots and wealthy foreign depositors.
The imposition of the controls has led economists to warn that a second-class "Cyprus euro" could emerge, with funds trapped on the island less valuable than euros that can be freely spent abroad.
Under the terms of the capital controls, among other things Cypriots and foreigners are allowed to take only up to 1,000 euros in cash when they leave the island.
Anastasiades said the restrictions - unprecedented in the currency bloc since euro coins and banknotes entered circulation in 2002 - would be gradually lifted. He gave no time frame but the central bank said the measures would be reviewed daily. ($1 = 0.7788 euros)
(Additional reporting by Erik Kirschbaum in Berlin; Writing by Patrick Graham; Editing by Jon Boyle)
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HUMBLE, Texas (AP) ? Steve Wheatcroft hates going to Monday qualifiers. He was reminded Friday why they can be worth it.
Wheatcroft, who narrowly qualified for the Houston Open at the start of the week, ran off three straight birdies early in his round and kept bogeys off his card for a second straight 5-under 67. That gave him a one-shot lead over D.A. Points and Jason Kokrak going into the weekend at Redstone Golf Club.
Rory McIlroy also will be around for two more days, but just barely.
In only his 10th full round of the year, McIlroy walked onto the seventh green ? his 16th hole of the day ? and saw that he was tied for 77th. He two-putted from 85 feet on the fringe for birdie on his next hole, and then safely found the green at the par-3 ninth for a 70. By the end of the day, McIlroy made the cut on the number.
"It a weekend where I can have a couple more rounds and try and get confidence in what I'm doing," McIlroy.
His big surprise came later. McIlroy, feeling as though he needs more rounds to get ready for the Masters, decided to enter the Texas Open next week.
Phil Mickelson also made the cut on the number after a bogey on the last hole for a 71. Mickelson, who has played the Masters with two drivers in the bag, decided to play Redstone on Friday with two 3-woods in the bag, though one of them is so strong it acts like a driver.
"If I can play like I did the back nine, I'm going to give myself a lot of birdie chances," Mickelson said.
Wheatcroft can't bank on anything.
Not only does he have no status on the PGA Tour, he has only conditional status in the minor leagues. After missing out on a Web.com Tour event last week in Louisiana, he figured he might as well enter the Houston Open qualifier Monday.
"Monday qualifiers are terrible. They're just not fun, plain and simple," Wheatcroft said. "I was on the PGA Tour in '07, played terribly. I had no status. So I had to be back to Monday qualifiers and pre-qualifiers the next year. I hate them."
Wheatcroft had some good sessions with swing coach Matt Killen, felt his game was getting better in the last month, and figured it was all about timing. He made it by one shot into the field, and he's playing well against a strong field at Redstone.
He was at 10-under 134, the first time he has ever been atop the leaderboard on the PGA Tour. The tournament is only halfway over, and Wheatcroft has been around long enough to not look too far ahead. Even so, this has Cinderella ramifications.
Wheatcroft can become the first Monday qualifier to win on the PGA Tour since Arjun Atwal at the Wyndham Championship in August 2010. A win would put him into the Masters for the first time, and perhaps more importantly, give him a two-year exemption.
A pair of 67s has given him confidence. A career bouncing around tours has given him perspective that it can all change.
"If I can be on top of the leaderboard at this point, I know I can keep playing well," he said. "There's no reason to think I can't. I've never won on the PGA Tour. I've won on the Web.com Tour ? I've won by 12. I know I can keep going forward. Who knows? I could shoot 61 tomorrow. I could shoot 81 tomorrow. I really don't know. I'm not going to sit here and think about it too much. I'm going to think about the first tee ball and we'll go from there."
Points had a 71 with 17 pars and one birdie. He didn't make anything on the greens, which he attributed to his putting stroke and firm, afternoon greens instead of the old putter he once borrowed from his mother.
"I made everything yesterday and made nothing today," Points said. "To be one shot back and be right in the mix is huge."
Kokrak at a 69 and will play in the final group with Wheatcroft, whom he knows well.
"I'm happy for him," Kokrak said. "I'm happy he's doing well. Hopefully, I can go out there and overtake the lead. Hopefully, I overtake him late Sunday."
Stewart Cink, winless since the British Open in 2009, showed more signs of getting his game on track. Cink contended in the Humana Challenge on late Sunday afternoon, and feels as if he's getting closer. He had a 66 and was tied for fourth with Brian Davis (70). Two-time major champion Angel Cabrera, the Argentine who has a home at Redstone, had a 72 and was four shots behind, along with Bill Haas (70) and Cameron Tringale (73).
Also lurking was Dustin Johnson, who threw away careless shots but was still only five shots out of the lead.
McIlroy remains a work in progress. He started slowly, not giving himself many birdie chances and hitting tee shots some 20 and 30 yards short of Johnson and Keegan Bradley. But the 23-year-old from Northern Ireland made birdie on the par-5 15th, followed with an 18-foot birdie on the 16th, and then cut loose with a tee shot that was some 20 yards beyond where Johnson hit his drive.
That wasn't an accident. McIlroy tends to hold back early in his round until he gets more comfortable with his scoring.
"The game is fickle," he said. "You make a couple of birdies, a few good shots, and your confidence goes up. A few bad ones, and it goes down a bit. I hit a couple of drive, and 17 is a good example, when I let it go and it's fine. It gets out there."
McIlroy said he hasn't played enough tournaments to get into that groove, and he was at least happy to have two more chances at the Houston Open. He headed to the practice range after lunch, and then decided to make sure he played some more by signing up for the Texas Open.
There seems to be a lot of confusion on the internet over the difference between mandating health insurance and mandating auto insurance for drivers. Simply put, if you do not want to purchase auto insurance, don?t choose to operate a motor vehicle, something many people don?t do and utilize public transportation. Mandating health insurance has no such escape. Simply by being alive you would be required to purchase it through the individual mandate.
Regardless of the seemingly straight forward and easy to understand difference between the two, one can not peruse the comments section of any recent article about the health care law being declared unconstitutional without inevitably seeing the old "OMGADZORS well I guess I shoulNDT have to puchaze auto inSURANCE either!!!"
My question is this: Are the folks who repeatedly try and hammer this argument down our throats simply unable to understand the difference between the two insurances, or are they just so desperate for a talking point that they will forgo giving it some rational thought in a rapid attempt to "win" the argument for their political affiliation?
There are several differences between mandating auto insurance and mandating health insurance:
1) Auto insurance is mandated by the individual states, not the federal government.
2) Auto insurance is not required of everyone; it is only required if you are driving. Driving is a privilege, not a right.
3) But the most important difference is this: The states that require auto insurance require it only to protect the OTHER drivers on the road. There is no state law requiring anyone to insure themselves or their own vehicle. No state requires you to buy auto insurance to cover your OWN medical expenses if you are injured in an auto accident. And the states do not require you to buy insurance to cover repairs to your OWN vehicle, (although your lender might.)
The people who try to hammer the argument down our throats are trying to defend the new health care law. There is no good defense, so they use that argument and also the one that says we all need to buy insurance so the freeloaders who don?t buy insurance don?t run up every one else?s premiums. Actually that argument is no good either, because the new law exempts most of the people who have not been buying insurance. For example: illegal immigrants, low income people and people who qualify for Medicaid are exempt. These are the people who are "not paying their own way" but these are the people who are not mandated to start "paying their own way." There was a good article in the National Review about this.
In 2009, ?The Hangover? dominated the summer box office on its way to becoming the most profitable ?R? rated comedy ever. But the film, and its sequel, are certainly not without their critics.
Regardless of where you stand, you?ll probably enjoy this hilariously edited movie trailer for the film, which re-imagines The Hangover as a horror movie.
Warning, there are two spots of foul language in the trailer, so don?t this one in front of your kids.
Film student Richard W. Scott edited the footage as part of his college dissertation in order to, in Scott?s words, serve as, ?part of an experimental investigation into the power of post-production techniques on a movie's genre.?
Scott employs several editing techniques that are common in today?s horror films. For examples, the color-coding of the trailer has been saturated into sepia tones, as opposed to the actual film?s bright and welcoming colors. And the music has been replaced with sharp and harsh sound cues which put the viewer on edge.
But the real creativity lies in the way that Scott has pieced the footage together, to make the film appear to be a dark journey into a world where the character of Alan, portrayed by Zach Galifinakis, is actually a murderer on the loose in Las Vegas wreaking havoc upon the lives of his unsuspecting friends and anyone else who stumbles across his path.
As Alan declares at the end of the clip, ?I don?t care what happens. I don?t care if I kill someone.?
And if you want to see more of Scott's work, he has put together another clip for his dissertation, which re-imagines the 2005 film "Batman Begins" as a comedy.
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NEW YORK (AP) ? New York City is asking appeals judges to reinstate a ban on supersized sodas and other sugary drinks, which was struck down by a Manhattan judge the day before it was to go into effect.
The city had vowed an appeal and said Thursday that lawyers had filed it late Monday.
In his decision on March 11, State Supreme Court Justice Milton Tingling said the 16-ounce limit on sodas and other sweet drinks arbitrarily applies to only some sugary beverages and some places that sell them.
"The loopholes in this rule effectively defeat the stated purpose of this rule," Tingling wrote in his ruling, which was seen as a victory for the beverage industry, restaurants and other business groups that called the ban unfair.
In addition, the judge said the Mayor Michael Bloomberg-appointed Board of Health intruded on the City Council's authority when it imposed the rule.
In its appeal, the city disputed those points.
"The rule is designed to make consumption of large amounts of sugary drinks a conscious and informed choice by the consumer," it said. "Thus, although a consumer is free to consume more than 16 ounces by ordering a second drink, getting a refill, or going to another store, he or she will be making an informed choice."
The city also said the Board of Health had legislative authority, and "is empowered to issue substantive rules and standards in public health."
Said American Beverage Association spokesman Christopher Gindlesperger, referring to the initial decision overturning the ban, "We feel the justice's decision was strong and we're confident in the ruling."
Also on Thursday, the city announced that other organizations had filed legal briefs in support of the city's appeal. Those organizations include the National Alliance for Hispanic Health and the National Association of Local Boards of Health, as well as 30 others.
Bloomberg has made public health a cornerstone of his administration, from requiring calorie counts to be posted on menus and barring trans fats in restaurant foods.
NEW YORK (AP) ? Facebook has invited journalists to the unveiling of what it calls its "new home on Android."
Next Thursday's event will take place at the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters. Facebook isn't providing further details. There has been speculation about a "Facebook phone" for a few years. Facebook has long said it would not make its own phone. Rather, such a phone would likely integrate Facebook deeper into the phone's software.
Citing unnamed sources, the tech blog TechCrunch says Facebook Inc. will launch a modified version of Android that embeds Facebook deeply into the operating system, on a phone made by HTC Corp.
A Facebook rival, Google Inc., makes the Android software that Facebook and HTC would be using under that scenario. Google makes the software available on an open-source basis, meaning others including rivals are free to adapt it for their needs. Amazon.com Inc. does just that in modifying Android to run its Kindle tablet computers.
More than half of Facebook's 1.06 billion monthly users access it on a mobile device. A deeper integration would help Facebook with its mobile aspirations.
March 28 (Reuters) - Rory McIlroy, playing for the first time since losing his world number one ranking earlier this week, got off to a shaky start at the Houston Open on Thursday where he dropped three shots over his opening eight holes. The 23-year-old Northern Irishman, who was replaced atop the world rankings by Tiger Woods this week, struggled to find his rhythm on an ideal day for low scoring at the Redstone Golf Club in Humble, Texas. He bogeyed the par-four second hole and made a double-bogey seven on the eighth hole to limp to the turn at three-over. ...
New research into ageing processes, based on modern genetic techniques, confirms theoretical expectations about the correlation between reproduction and lifespan. Studies of birds reveal that those that have offspring later in life and have fewer broods live longer. And the decisive factor is telomeres, shows research from The University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Telomeres are the protective caps at the end of chromosomes. The length of telomeres influences how long an individual lives.
Telomeres start off at a certain length, become shorter each time a cell divides, decline as the years pass by until the telomeres can no longer protect the chromosomes, and the cell dies. But the length of telomeres varies significantly among individuals of the same age. This is partly due to the length of the telomeres that has been inherited from the parents, and partly due to the amount of stress an individual is exposed to.
"This is important, not least for our own species, as we are all having to deal with increased stress," says Angela Pauliny, Researcher from the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Gothenburg.
Researchers have studied barnacle geese, which are long-lived birds, the oldest in the study being 22 years old. The results show that geese, compared to short-lived bird species, have a better ability to preserve the length of their telomeres. The explanation is probably that species with a longer lifespan invest more in maintaining bodily functions than, for example, reproduction.
"There is a clear correlation between reproduction and ageing in the animal world. Take elephants, which have a long lifespan but few offspring, while mice, for example, live for a short time but produce a lot of offspring each time they try," says Angela Pauliny.
The geese studied by researchers varied in age, from very young birds to extremely old ones. Each bird was measured twice, two years apart. One striking result was that the change in telomere length varied according to gender.
"The study revealed that telomeres were best-preserved in males. Among barnacle geese, the telomeres thus shorten more quickly in females, which in birds is the sex with two different gender chromosomes. Interestingly, it is the exactl opposite in humans," says Angela Pauliny.
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The journalBMC Evolutionary Biology has classified the research article "Telomere dynamics in a long-lived bird, the barnacle goose" as "Highly Accessed".
Link to the article: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/12/257
University of Gothenburg: http://www.gu.se/english
Thanks to University of Gothenburg for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc has come under criticism from a Chinese marketplace regulator, which called for stronger supervision of the iPhone-maker's consumer policies within the country, according to state-run media.
On Thursday, the official China National Radio cited a Thursday notice from the State Administration for Industry and Commerce that urged authorities to protect consumers' rights in accordance with the law. According to CNR's website report, the notice mentions Apple but stops short of specifying what exactly they need to go after and how to do so.
The notice, CNR said, was in response to widespread reports since March 15 on how Apple's after-sales service had hurt Chinese consumers.
Apple was singled out on March 15 by state-run China Central Television in an annual corporate malpractice expose. Other media outlets have since taken up the baton, focusing on the company's warranty policy on Mac laptops, which critics say is shorter than in other countries.
The Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily, ran an editorial Wednesday attacking Apple for its "unparalleled arrogance".
An Apple spokesman said the company would not discuss regulatory matters.
Apple's popularity has helped offset some of the state-run attacks, which has incited strong push-back from many Chinese Internet users for what they see as unfair treatment doled out to the iPhone maker.
Apple looks to China not just as its main production base, but also to spur growth as smartphone penetration in mature markets near saturation. CEO Tim Cook sees the world's No. 2 economy as virgin expansion territory, and Apple mentions the region in every quarterly results report.
It said in a statement on Saturday that it respected Chinese consumers and that its warranty policies were roughly the same worldwide with specific adjustments to adhere to Chinese law.
(Reporting by Poornima Gupta; Editing by Alden Bentley)
Posted at 12:10 PM on March 27, 2013 by Bob Collins (2 Comments) Filed under: Crime and Justice
A sharply divided Minnesota Supreme Court today ruled that two young African American girls, born to apparent drug addicts, can be adopted by their white foster parents rather than their grandparents, despite a state law that appears to favor adoption by family members over others.
The decision appeared to hinge on one word in the law: consider.
The two girls both tested positive for cocaine upon birth and have had developmental problems since. They were removed from the home almost immediately by Hennepin County and put in the care of foster parents.
Later, the foster parents agreed to adopt the girls after the grandparents initially expressed interest in the adoption, but didn't cooperate with an in-home placement study in Mississippi. After some delay, they relented, the study was turned in, and the two competing adoption petitions went before a district court, which ruled adoption by the foster parents was in the best interest of the girls. The court said given their special needs, there could be damage by removing the girls from the only home they ever knew.
But the grandparents appealed, saying state law favors relatives over "an important friend with whom the child has resided or had significant compact." They said the district court should have ruled they were fit to adopt, and the process should have stopped there.
But in her opinion today, Justice Lori Gildea disagreed, saying the law only requires courts to consider the adoption petition of a relative first and then the foster parents. But it does not prefer a relative over a non-relative.
"It is true that the district court did not analyze the grandparents' petition in its entirety before turning to analyze the foster parents' petition," Justice Gildea wrote. "The court also did not expressly conclude in its order that it was not in the girls' best interests to be adopted by their grandparents, which would be the better practice. But the court did consider and then form a conclusion about the grandparents' petition with respect to each factor before considering the foster parents' petition on that factor."
But the grandparents are African American while the foster parents are white and the issue of tending to the "cultural needs" of adoptive children has been controversial in Minnesota and elsewhere, even though state law requires cultural needs be considered.
"The foster parents have adopted two sons who are Asian-American and African-American respectively, and an African-American friend lives with the family," Justice Gildea said in rejecting the argument. "The district court did not specifically explain how the foster parents were able to meet the cultural needs of the children other than to find that the foster parents 'believe that diversity is very important.' We share the court of appeals' concern that the district court's findings on this factor 'grossly simplify' the girls' needs... But given our deferential standard of review, we cannot say that the court's analysis of this factor renders its overall best-interests analysis an abuse of discretion."
But in his dissent, Justice Alan Page, joined by Justice David Stras, said Gildea's interpretaton of the law would require courts to consider a relative's adoption petition and a non-relative's "side by side and at the same time," and effectively makes the state statute "meaningless."
"If the Legislature had intended for us to read the statute the way the concurrence suggests, there would have been no reason to require courts to consider placement in a particular order, and absolutely no reason to distinguish between relatives and others," Justice Page wrote.
And that's important in a case like this, Page noted, because the Legislature's authors wrote the statute with race differences in mind. "The authors of the amendments were no doubt concerned that eliminating race as a consideration in adoptive and foster care placements might have the unintended effect of decreasing the likelihood that children from racial minorities would be adopted by relatives," he wrote. "One way to mitigate these potential negative effects was to strengthen the statutory emphasis on placement with relatives by requiring that placement with relatives be considered before placement with others."
Justice Wilhelmina Wright agreed with Justice Page that the district court should've considered the grandparents' petition first before moving on to the foster parents' adoption petition, but she said "the best interests of the children could not have been ascertained without consideration of the impact of the proposed move on these young children."
Here's today's full decision.
Comments (2)
So, the white majority of the MN Supreme Court overwhelmingly determined it "in the best interest" of two black kids to be placed with white foster parents, while the black minority of the Court unanimously agreed that the black kids should be placed with their black grandparents.
That about sums it up? Anybody else see anything desperately wrong with this whole picture? Bob?
Will the grandsparents have a visitation right? What do the adoptive parents say about this? I don't think about the case in the framework of race, but of larger family: even if your parents fail you, the larger family should be a place where failings are buffered and a sense of belonging established. Recent studies show that those kids deal best with adversities who have heard their larger family's story, of adversities and persistence. The court takes that away from those children. The law seems to say that the larger family is relevant, the Supreme Court that it is not - a case of legislation from the bench?
Researchers find novel way plants pass traits to next generationPublic release date: 26-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jay Hollick Hollick.3@osu.edu 614-292-9869 Ohio State University
Inheritance behavior in corn breaks accepted rules of genetics
COLUMBUS, Ohio New research explains how certain traits can pass down from one generation to the next at least in plants without following the accepted rules of genetics.
Scientists have shown that an enzyme in corn responsible for reading information from DNA can prompt unexpected changes in gene activity an example of epigenetics.
Epigenetics refers to modifications in the genome that don't directly affect DNA sequences. Though some evidence has suggested that epigenetic changes can bypass DNA's influence to carry on from one generation to the next, this is the first study to show that this epigenetic heritability can be subject to selective breeding.
Researchers bred 10 generations of corn and found that one particular gene's activity persisted from one generation to the next whether the enzyme was functioning or not meaning typical genetic behavior was not required for the gene's trait to come through.
And that, the scientists determined, was because the enzyme targets a tiny piece of DNA previously thought of as "junk DNA" that had jumped from one area of the genome to another, giving that little fragment power to unexpectedly turn on the gene.
The gene in question affects pigmentation in the corn plant. As a result of these experiments, the researchers were able to change yellow kernel corn to a blue kernel variety by compromising the activity of the enzyme in each male parent.
"This is the first example where somebody has been able to take an epigenetic source of variation and, through selective breeding, move it from an inactive state to an active state," said Jay Hollick, associate professor of molecular genetics at The Ohio State University and lead author of the study. "The gene changes its expression in an epigenetic fashion and it doesn't follow standard inheritance behaviors. Those two factors alone have pretty profound implications not only for breeding but also for evolution."
The study appears online in the journal The Plant Cell.
Plant breeders tend to expect to generate desired traits according to what is known as Mendelian principles of inheritance: Offspring receive one copy of genes from each parental plant, and the characteristics of the alleles, or alternative forms of genes, help predict which traits will show up in the next plant generation.
However, epigenetic variations that change the predictability of gene behavior have complicated those expectations.
"The breeding community searches for novel traits that will have commercial interest and they really don't care what the basis is as long as they can capture it and breed it. Epigenetic heritability throws a kink in the expectations, but our findings also provide an opportunity if they recognize the variation they're looking for is the result of epigenetics, they could use that to their advantage," said Hollick, also an investigator in Ohio State's centers for RNA Biology and Applied Plant Sciences.
"Just by knowing that this allele behaves in this epigenetic fashion, I can breed plants that either have full coloration or no coloration or anything in between, because I am manipulating epigenetic variation and not genetic variation. And color, of course, is only one trait that could be affected."
With a longtime specialization in the molecular basis for unexpected gene activity in plants, Hollick had zeroed in on an enzyme called RNA polymerase IV (Pol IV). Multiple types of RNA polymerases are responsible for setting gene expression in motion in all cells, and Pol IV is an enigmatic RNA polymerase that is known in plants to produce small RNA molecules.
Pol IV has puzzled scientists because despite its strong conservation in all plants, it appears to have no discernible impact on the development of Arabidopsis, a common model organism in plant biology. For example, when it is deleted from these plants, they show no signs of distress.
In corn, however, Hollick's lab had discovered previously that the absence of Pol IV creates clear problems in the plants, such as growing seeds in the tassel.
Hollick and colleagues observed that plants deficient in Pol IV also showed pigmentation in kernels of ears expected not to make any color at all meaning they were expected to be yellow.
"Since we knew the misplaced tassel-seed trait was due to misexpression of a gene, we hypothesized that this pigment trait might be due to a pigment regulator being expressed in a tissue where it normally is never expressed. Molecular analysis showed that that was in fact the case," Hollick said.
The researchers selected dark kernels and light kernels from multiple generations of plants and crossed the plants derived form these different kernel classes to create additional new generations of corn.
"We found that the ears developed from those plants had even more darkly colored kernels and fewer lightly colored kernels. We could segregate the extreme types and cross them together and get this continued intensification of the pigmentation over many generations," he said. "We generated more progeny that had increasing amounts of pigment. This is taking a gene that is genetically null, that doesn't have any function in this part of the plant, and turning it from a complete null to a completely dominant form that produces full coloration.
"Essentially we were breeding a novel trait, but not by selecting for any particular gene. We were just continually altering the epigenetic status of one of the two parental genomes every time."
This led the scientists to question why the affected alleles of the pigmentation gene would behave in this way. An investigation of the affected alleles revealed the nearby presence of a transposon, or transposable element: a tiny piece of DNA that has leapt from one area of the genome to another.
Because the sequence of some small RNA fragments that come from Pol IV's activity are identical to the sequence of these transposons, the finding made sense to the scientists.
"Now that we know that Pol IV is involved in regulating transposons, it's not surprising that genes that are near transposons are now regulated by Pol IV," Hollick said.
###
This work was supported by the National Research Initiative of the USDA Cooperative State
Research, Education and Extension Service and the National Science Foundation.
Hollick conducted this work at the University of California, Berkeley, before he joined Ohio State's faculty. Co-authors are former Berkeley colleagues Karl Erhard Jr., Susan Parkinson, Stephen Gross, Joy-El Barbour and Jana Lim.
Contact: Jay Hollick, (614) 292-9869; Hollick.3@osu.edu
Written by Emily Caldwell, (614) 292-8310; Caldwell.151@osu.edu
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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Researchers find novel way plants pass traits to next generationPublic release date: 26-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jay Hollick Hollick.3@osu.edu 614-292-9869 Ohio State University
Inheritance behavior in corn breaks accepted rules of genetics
COLUMBUS, Ohio New research explains how certain traits can pass down from one generation to the next at least in plants without following the accepted rules of genetics.
Scientists have shown that an enzyme in corn responsible for reading information from DNA can prompt unexpected changes in gene activity an example of epigenetics.
Epigenetics refers to modifications in the genome that don't directly affect DNA sequences. Though some evidence has suggested that epigenetic changes can bypass DNA's influence to carry on from one generation to the next, this is the first study to show that this epigenetic heritability can be subject to selective breeding.
Researchers bred 10 generations of corn and found that one particular gene's activity persisted from one generation to the next whether the enzyme was functioning or not meaning typical genetic behavior was not required for the gene's trait to come through.
And that, the scientists determined, was because the enzyme targets a tiny piece of DNA previously thought of as "junk DNA" that had jumped from one area of the genome to another, giving that little fragment power to unexpectedly turn on the gene.
The gene in question affects pigmentation in the corn plant. As a result of these experiments, the researchers were able to change yellow kernel corn to a blue kernel variety by compromising the activity of the enzyme in each male parent.
"This is the first example where somebody has been able to take an epigenetic source of variation and, through selective breeding, move it from an inactive state to an active state," said Jay Hollick, associate professor of molecular genetics at The Ohio State University and lead author of the study. "The gene changes its expression in an epigenetic fashion and it doesn't follow standard inheritance behaviors. Those two factors alone have pretty profound implications not only for breeding but also for evolution."
The study appears online in the journal The Plant Cell.
Plant breeders tend to expect to generate desired traits according to what is known as Mendelian principles of inheritance: Offspring receive one copy of genes from each parental plant, and the characteristics of the alleles, or alternative forms of genes, help predict which traits will show up in the next plant generation.
However, epigenetic variations that change the predictability of gene behavior have complicated those expectations.
"The breeding community searches for novel traits that will have commercial interest and they really don't care what the basis is as long as they can capture it and breed it. Epigenetic heritability throws a kink in the expectations, but our findings also provide an opportunity if they recognize the variation they're looking for is the result of epigenetics, they could use that to their advantage," said Hollick, also an investigator in Ohio State's centers for RNA Biology and Applied Plant Sciences.
"Just by knowing that this allele behaves in this epigenetic fashion, I can breed plants that either have full coloration or no coloration or anything in between, because I am manipulating epigenetic variation and not genetic variation. And color, of course, is only one trait that could be affected."
With a longtime specialization in the molecular basis for unexpected gene activity in plants, Hollick had zeroed in on an enzyme called RNA polymerase IV (Pol IV). Multiple types of RNA polymerases are responsible for setting gene expression in motion in all cells, and Pol IV is an enigmatic RNA polymerase that is known in plants to produce small RNA molecules.
Pol IV has puzzled scientists because despite its strong conservation in all plants, it appears to have no discernible impact on the development of Arabidopsis, a common model organism in plant biology. For example, when it is deleted from these plants, they show no signs of distress.
In corn, however, Hollick's lab had discovered previously that the absence of Pol IV creates clear problems in the plants, such as growing seeds in the tassel.
Hollick and colleagues observed that plants deficient in Pol IV also showed pigmentation in kernels of ears expected not to make any color at all meaning they were expected to be yellow.
"Since we knew the misplaced tassel-seed trait was due to misexpression of a gene, we hypothesized that this pigment trait might be due to a pigment regulator being expressed in a tissue where it normally is never expressed. Molecular analysis showed that that was in fact the case," Hollick said.
The researchers selected dark kernels and light kernels from multiple generations of plants and crossed the plants derived form these different kernel classes to create additional new generations of corn.
"We found that the ears developed from those plants had even more darkly colored kernels and fewer lightly colored kernels. We could segregate the extreme types and cross them together and get this continued intensification of the pigmentation over many generations," he said. "We generated more progeny that had increasing amounts of pigment. This is taking a gene that is genetically null, that doesn't have any function in this part of the plant, and turning it from a complete null to a completely dominant form that produces full coloration.
"Essentially we were breeding a novel trait, but not by selecting for any particular gene. We were just continually altering the epigenetic status of one of the two parental genomes every time."
This led the scientists to question why the affected alleles of the pigmentation gene would behave in this way. An investigation of the affected alleles revealed the nearby presence of a transposon, or transposable element: a tiny piece of DNA that has leapt from one area of the genome to another.
Because the sequence of some small RNA fragments that come from Pol IV's activity are identical to the sequence of these transposons, the finding made sense to the scientists.
"Now that we know that Pol IV is involved in regulating transposons, it's not surprising that genes that are near transposons are now regulated by Pol IV," Hollick said.
###
This work was supported by the National Research Initiative of the USDA Cooperative State
Research, Education and Extension Service and the National Science Foundation.
Hollick conducted this work at the University of California, Berkeley, before he joined Ohio State's faculty. Co-authors are former Berkeley colleagues Karl Erhard Jr., Susan Parkinson, Stephen Gross, Joy-El Barbour and Jana Lim.
Contact: Jay Hollick, (614) 292-9869; Hollick.3@osu.edu
Written by Emily Caldwell, (614) 292-8310; Caldwell.151@osu.edu
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Kim Jong Un looks at the latest combat and technical equipment made by unit 1501 of the Korean People's Army, during his visit to the unit on March 24, 2013.
KCNA via Reuters
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un got some hands-on experience of his military's latest high-tech equipment during a visit to a Korean People's Army unit on Sunday.
Kim, the third of his line to rule North Korea, also praised musical instruments made by the North's 1.2 million-strong army, state news agency KCNA reported.
Meanwhile, South Korean security experts say the North has been training a team of computer-savvy "cyber warriors" as cyberspace becomes a fertile battleground in the nations' rivalry.?
-- Reuters, The Associated Press
Slideshow: Glimpse into the hermit kingdom of North Korea
Slideshow: North Korea's young leader, Kim Jong Un
KCNA via Reuters
Kim Jong Un holds a gun as he inspects the second battalion under the Korean People's Army Unit 1973, honored with the title of "O Jung Hup-led 7th Regiment", on March 23, 2013.
A 21-month-old boy with a rare ailment has spent 77 days at the Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx as he waits for a new heart. His mother stays with him around the clock while his father, who himself is battling cancer, is at home looking after his twin 3-year-old sisters. Pei-Sze Cheng reports.
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A Staten Island toddler who has been living in a hospital for months with an enlarged heart received a new heart over the weekend, his family said.?
Jake Schron, who had trouble breathing and got easily fatigued because of his cardiomyopathy, has been living at Montefiore's Children Hospital in the Bronx.?
After months of uncertainty over when he might receive a new heart, he finally underwent a heart transplant on Saturday. His family said the surgery went well and Jake was recovering at Montefiore.
Sandra Schron, Jake's aunt, said she was there when he woke up and heard his parents greet him for the first time after the surgery.
"What a beautiful moment to witness and thank the donor family for giving Jake a chance at life," she said.?
Jake lived at the hospital with his mother by his side for more than three months until he received his transplant. Jake's father, Andrew, who has been sick from non-Hodgkin lymphoma, stayed at home with Jake's 3-year-old twin sisters.
Friends and family started a campaign called "Heart 4 Jake" to raise awareness and funds for the family. The campaign continues to touch hundreds across the country, including former NFL quarterback Kurt Warner.?
Sandra Schron said Jake, who was in some pain after waking up, still faces a long road to recovery and doctors will have to monitor him closely over the next several days before they can talk about letting him go home. But the family is hopeful and grateful for the community's profound outpouring of love and support.
To learn more about Jake and his condition, visit heart4jake.org.
The boom in new oil and natural gas flowing through U.S. pipelines is beginning to ripple through the wider American economy.
Just ask Edrick Smith.
In September, Smith traded temp agency jobs for full-time employment with Baltimore-based Marlin Steel Wire Products, which makes wire baskets for industrial customers. An experienced machinist, Smith is now expanding his skills by learning to set up and operate factory robots.
?Knowing each and every machine in here gives me an opportunity to make good money, and to educate myself more,? he said. ?This is my career.?
Smith?s hiring was just one of thousands of openings created indirectly by a new boom in domestic oil and natural gas drilling ? a bounty so rich that it has even caught energy industry insiders by surprise. In part 2 of our four-part ?Power Shift? special report, we examine how the explosion in drilling in places like North Dakota and West Texas is spreading through the general economy ? despite controversy over the potential environmental impact of the new industry practices.
Marlin Steel Wire, for example, has expanded its payroll and invested in high-tech equipment to keep up with a steady pick-up in orders from other U.S. manufacturers. Orders are rising, said owner Drew Greenblatt, because his customers are receiving a widening discount in the price of natural gas and electricity.
?That?s making U.S. companies that used to be at a price disadvantage now uniquely positioned to win contracts they never won in the past -- or haven?t for a while,? he said. ?Everyone talks about what?s going on in North Dakota, but it?s filtering down now to conventional factories throughout America."
Some analysts believe the energy cost savings for businesses, factories and consumers will last for decades.
?This is not going to be a one- or two-year thing,? said Ross Eisenberg, head of energy and resources policy at the National Association of Manufacturers. ?We?re going to see lower natural gas prices for a long, long way into the future.?
Booms, busts and booms Since the first gusher of oil spewed from of the ground above the Spindletop salt dome outside Beaumont, Texas, more than a century ago, the U.S. energy industry has enjoyed its share of booms and busts. After peaking in the early 1970s, U.S. oil and gas production began to decline as thousands of depleted wells were shut down. The U.S. rapidly became dependent on foreign suppliers to fuel its economy.
About a decade ago, advanced oilfield production technologies like hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," and horizontal drilling began to reverse that trend. Many of the now-bountiful fields being brought back on line were mothballed long ago when the remaining ?tight? oil and gas deposits were considered too costly or technically difficult to produce.
?It is a sizeable opportunity,? said John Larson, an economist with IHS Global Insight. ?It?s a game changer.?
Interactive map: Where US energy is produced
The economics of production have also played a role in the boom. A tripling in the market price of a barrel of crude over the past decade supports widespread use of costly extraction methods that didn't make sense when energy prices were lower.
Barring an unanticipated setback, so-called ?unconventional? oil and gas production is expected to continue to grow over the next two decades. Over that period, the industry is expected to make more than $5 trillion in new capital investment that will support more than 3.5 million jobs by 2035, according to the financial analysis firm IHS Global Insight.
That economic impact of such spending already is spreading, especially to companies that rely heavily on natural gas as a raw material or energy source and investing and hiring.
Steel makers, for example, benefit from both the lower cost of manufacturing and from strong demand for steel pipe used for oil and gas drilling. Companies in the steel rustbelt of Pennsylvania and Ohio are polishing up aging plants to replace coal with cheaper natural gas. Others are setting up shop closer to major gas distribution hubs like Louisiana, where steel giant Nucor is investing $750 million to fire up a new plant later this year.
Chemical, plastics and fertilizer makers, who rely on natural gas both as a raw material and an energy source, have also been expanding production. Last year, Dow Chemical announced a $4 billion investment in facilities, part of some $15 billion in expansion plans announced by Gulf Coast chemical makers. And Vancouver-based Methanex Corp. decided last year to spend $425 million to disassemble an idled methanol plant in Chile and move it lock, stock and pipeline to Louisiana.
In December, economists with UBS bank tallied some $65 billion in announced construction of new plants related to cheaper natural gas, and said another 11 plants had been announced worth billions more.
As groundbreaking on these projects gets under way, the dividends from the energy boom will flow even further ? to construction companies, engineering firms, materials and equipment suppliers and lenders who help finance the projects.
That, in turn, will help shore up state and federal budgets. The added revenue ? from income taxes on new jobs created, corporate taxes on added oil and gas profits and state and federal royalty payments ? could top $2.5 trillion through 2035, according to IHS Global Insight.
Though prices at the gas pump have remained stubbornly high -- primarily because stepped-up U.S. production makes up relatively small percentage of the global supply, which drives oil prices -- American households are also getting a big break on the lower cost of natural gas and electricity. Larson, the IHS economist, estimated that the energy ?dividend? amounts to about $1,000 a year per household and will double by 2035.
?It?s a fairly substantial return of wealth to the American consumer," he said.
Increased U.S. oil and natural gas production also promises to help rebalance the long-running trade gaps that have weakened the dollar. If the U.S. moves from a net importer to a net exporter of energy over the next decade, as some experts project, oil will flip from being a source of trade deficits to an important contributor on the positive side of the ledger. With China?s energy-hungry economy expected to continue to rely on imported oil, some analysts believe Beijing may soon begin swapping its huge pile of U.S. Treasury bonds for barrels of West Texas crude.
Slideshow: Drilling down and out in Texas
America?s growing energy independence also has been fueled by gains in efficiency: U.S. vehicles are squeezing more mileage from every gallon of fuel, and high-tech heating and cooling units and green building techniques and materials have cut energy bills for commercial and residential buildings by 10 percent since 2005.
Challenges remain To be sure, there are forces that could delay ? or even derail ? the ongoing energy boom. The drop in natural gas prices has already slowed production of some projects that become too costly when gas prices are too low.
Lower oil prices could have the same impact, but it?s not clear that added U.S. supplies will be sufficient to make a dent in global oil prices, especially if OPEC producers like Saudi Arabia throttle back on supplies to maintain current prices.
But some experts are more bullish on the prospects for a second energy windfall as increased U.S. supplies of oil rein in global prices. Citibank analyst Edward Morse thinks that by the end of the decade, added U.S. output will pull global crude prices back down to a range of $70 to $90 a barrel ? a savings of as much as 30 percent.
That kind of price drop would further amplify the economic boost from lower natural gas prices already flowing through the economy.
Last year, for example, the U.S. consumed roughly 7 billion barrels of oil at an average price of about $100 a barrel. A 30 percent discount on that oil bill works out to about 1.3 percent of gross domestic product. In an economy growing at roughly 2 percent a year, the impact of that dividend would be substantial.
Other factors could slow development. Widespread environmental concerns about the impact of hydraulic fracturing on water supplies have delayed drilling of the Marcellus shale field in New York, where the state Assembly recently voted to extend a moratorium for another two years. In California, the state Legislature is considering at least eight bills to regulate expanded production in the Monterey shale field, estimated to be one of the largest deposits in the country.
Oil and gas producers also face a looming labor shortage as a generation of petroleum engineers and geologists approach retirement age. Their departure is compounded by a dearth of trained younger workers to take their places. From a peak of 11,000 students enrolled in geology and petroleum engineering programs at 34 universities in 1983, only 1,500 were enrolled in 17 programs by 2004, according to a 2007 report from the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission.
Finally, transportation bottlenecks have already slowed the distribution of new energy supplies and could further slow future expansion. Expanding the existing pipeline network, which was planned and constructed decades ago, long before new drilling techniques rewrote the U.S. energy map, is already raising safety and environmental concerns.
Complete coverage: Power Shift: America's drive for energy independence
The most visible controversy ? construction of the proposed $7 billion Keystone pipeline through the nation?s heartland ? could be the opening round of ongoing local battles over the build-out of the network required to get new supplies of oil and natural gas from producer to consumer.
?We imported natural gas this winter to the Northeast because we don?t have the capacity yet to move the gas where we need it,? said Larson. ?As a country, we need to address the issue of how we develop the infrastructure we need to enable this energy to flow to where it?s needed.?
Coming next Monday: How American energy independence could change the world.
Mar. 25, 2013 ? A female great tits' (Parus major) appearance is shown to signal healthy attributes in offspring in a paper in BioMed Central's open access journal Frontiers in Zoology. The black stripe across her breast and white patches on her cheeks correlate to a chick's weight at two weeks and immune strength respectively -- though the former seems to signal a genetic benefit and the latter can affect an 'adopted' chick's health, suggesting nurture is involved.
Taking two mothers with different patterning, and swapping their chicks, researchers from Palacky University in the Czech Republic were able to investigate the growth and health of the infants and the 'ornamentation' of their mothers. They compared the offspring's weight, size and immune strength and found a correlation between the chick's weight at two weeks and the size of black breast stripe on the genetic mother.
The immaculateness of both genetic and foster mother's white cheek patch was related to the strength of chick's immune response suggesting that this was due to both nurture and genetics. In contrast the body size of a chick was related only to the body size of its genetic mother and not to ornamentation at all.
In these socially monogamous birds both the males and females are brightly coloured, however neither the cheek patch nor the stripe in males affected the health of the babies.
Talking about how the ornaments can have evolved to signal reproductive fitness, Vladim?r Reme? and Beata Matysiokov? who performed this study explained, "Bigger healthier babies are important to the reproductive success of individuals, because they are more likely to survive to adulthood -- so it is useful for birds to be able to work out which potential mates will produce the best babies. Maintaining bright colouration uses up resources which could otherwise be invested in reproduction or self-maintenance -- consequently the evolution and maintenance of ornamentation in female great tits is probably due to direct selection by males."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by BioMed Central Limited, via AlphaGalileo.
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Journal Reference:
Vladim?r Reme? and Beata Matysiokov?. More ornamented females produce higher-quality offspring in a socially monogamous bird: an experimental study in the great tit (Parus major). Frontiers in Zoology, 2013; (in press) [link]
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Public release date: 26-Mar-2013
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