news20090901lat

[Today's Newspaper] from [Los Angeles Times]

[World > Asia]
EDITORIAL
Japan's new rulers
The long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party is out; can the wnning Democratic Party of Japan live up to its leaders' campaign promises?

How do you say "throw the bums out" in Japanese? That's what Japanese voters did on Sunday, booting the Liberal Democratic Party that has ruled almost continuously for more than half a century and leaves now with the world's second-largest economy in sorry shape. The newly elected Democratic Party of Japan is an eclectic mix of leftists and defectors from the ruling party. Its ability to run the country is untested, and its leaders have yet to explain how to pay for their populist campaign promises.

Nevertheless, this page sees the election upset as a potentially positive development. A one-party state is bound to grow stale; competition is as important in politics as it is in business.

The outgoing Liberal Democratic Party helped turn Japan from a post-World War II wreck into a global powerhouse. In league with industry and a powerful government bureaucracy, the ruling party oversaw decades of growth that offered its citizens lifelong jobs with housing and healthcare. But that system has been unraveling since the Japanese economy collapsed in the 1990s. Now, government scandals, recession, unemployment and an aging population's deep anxiety about the future have prompted voters who normally value stability to reject the known and embrace the promise of change.

Although the Democratic Party has never held power, key members come from the political elite, starting with leader Yukio Hatoyama, who is expected to be named prime minister. His grandfather is a founder of the just-defeated Liberal Democratic Party, and Hatoyama himself was a legislator. Other party members also have served in the Legislature or held Cabinet posts. At the same time, the party and the country should benefit from an infusion of new political blood, including many first-time legislators and more women. About a third of the 480 seats in the lower house will be filled by newcomers.

This kind of change is necessary but not sufficient to fix Japan's problems. During the campaign, the Democratic Party promised support for families with children as well as reduced taxes and highway tolls. Some of the policies suggested a return to the past, such as offering subsidies for farmers. Hatoyama must now explain how, with a public debt of 180% of gross domestic product, he hopes to expand the social safety net without bankrupting the country.

Hatoyama has said that Japan must strengthen its economic and security ties with East Asia. Americans should not be alarmed. China is Japan's largest trading partner, and the countries share a neighborhood. Such integration can help Japan's economic recovery without harming its ties to the U.S. A healthy Japanese economy is in everyone's interest.

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[Today's Newspaper] fom [The Washington Post]

[Asia/Pacific > Editorial Pages]
EDITORIAL
Shake-Up in Japan
Two parties are better than one.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009

THERE CAN BE no democracy without political competition: For that reason alone, the landslide victory by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in Sunday's national election is cause for celebration.

The DPJ defeated the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which had ruled Japan with only 11 months of interruption since 1955. Japan under the LDP was hardly a dictatorship, but its political machine and its unelected allies in the bureaucracy had run out of ideas and energy. Japan's once-dynamic economy has been in stagnation pretty much since 1989. With its falling birthrate, even Japan's population of 125 million is not only aging but actually shrinking.

Can the Democratic Party of Japan, a mix of former LDP politicians, ex-socialists and civic activists, succeed where the LDP has failed? One irony of the party's reform message is that its behind-the-scenes leader is Ichiro Ozawa, a former LDP boss with a knack for power politics. Yet its proposed governance reforms, such as transferring budget authority from bureaucrats to elected officials, could make Japanese policymaking more transparent. Japan needs further restructuring of an economy that depends heavily on exports to support less-efficient sectors such as construction and agriculture. Greater reliance on domestic demand would help both hard-pressed Japanese families and the United States, insofar as such a policy might reduce Japan's trade surplus: The DPJ has several pro-consumption proposals, from lower highway tolls to increased support for couples with children. Alas, the party has been less clear about how it will pay for these goodies, no small omission given that the national debt is already almost twice Japan's gross domestic product. Unfortunately, too, the DPJ bought the votes of Japan's farmers with promises of money and protection.

The LDP stood for close U.S.-Japan relations, while Yukio Hatoyama, the inexperienced politician who leads the DPJ and will probably be Japan's next prime minister, has called for a more Asia-centered foreign policy, sometimes dressing this up with assaults on American "market fundamentalism" and other ills of globalization. There will no doubt be room for negotiation with the Obama administration, perhaps over such issues as the basing of U.S. Marines in Okinawa. But the threat of a nuclear North Korea makes Japan's neighborhood too dangerous, we think, for the government in Tokyo to seek a rupture with Washington or for the Obama administration to let one develop.

news20090901wsj

[Today's Paper] from [The Wall Street Journal]

[ASIA NEWS]
ASIA NEWS SEPTEMBER 1, 2009
Japan's Next Leader Targets Bureaucracy
Hatoyama Wants to Streamline Government, While Handing More Decisions to Political Appointees
By ALISON TUDOR and YUKA HAYASHI

Likely future Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama will soon select his cabinet, which includes a new and crucial position: a top official to take on the government's bloated bureaucracy.

Mr. Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan says its proposed National Strategy Bureau will set budget guidelines and other policies, wresting decisions away from government functionaries and putting them in the hands of elected leaders.

Mr. Hatoyama, fresh off his party's landslide victory in weekend elections, said late Sunday that the finance and strategy bureau jobs are among his top priorities, as the party looks for ways to finance an expensive domestic spending plan in part by cutting bureaucratic positions.

He said he would likely fill the positions this month, after he officially becomes prime minister. Speculation abounds over which DPJ officials will take the strategy bureau job and other posts. Mr. Hatoyama said Sunday it was too early to talk about his cabinet lineup.

Given the party's agenda to increase spending for families and consumers, revamping the national budget to find funds is a crucial task.

DPJ Secretary-General Katsuya Okada said Monday that when government ministries submitted budgets at the end of August as scheduled for the fiscal year beginning in April, party officials immediately began scrutinizing them. For the next fiscal year alone, the DPJ must find 7.1 trillion yen, or about $76 billion, to cover its social-spending program that includes a child allowance and elimination of highway tolls.

"This is the first hurdle we have to overcome," Mr. Okada said on public broadcaster NHK.

The party is also reviewing the 14-trillion-yen supplementary budget that departing Prime Minister Taro Aso has already implemented to cover his economic-stimulus plan with an eye toward revising it by canceling some projects.

The DPJ trounced the Liberal Democratic Party in the election for the Japanese parliament's lower house, giving it broad sway to remake the government. Final voting statistics Monday showed 72 million people, or 69% of eligible voters, participated, the highest percentage since the current voting system was enacted 13 years ago.

The finance and strategy-bureau positions might be the most important for a future Hatoyama administration as it looks for ways to pay for its social-spending program, which could cost 16.8 trillion yen a year by the fiscal year beginning in 2013.

The DPJ campaigned on a promise it could pay for the package in part by cutting and shaking up Japan's ranks of powerful bureaucrats. "The ministries have too much power. They are more powerful than bureaucracies in other countries generally," said Kan Suzuki, vice chairman of DPJ's policy committee, in an interview.

Still, paring the bureaucracy could be a difficult task. "Politicians have been keen to cut back big government before," said one midranking bureaucrat in Kasumigaseki, the nexus of cabinet ministries in Tokyo. "I don't think there will be a revolution," the person added.

The DPJ, which has never held power in its 12-year existence, may need bureaucrats' institutional knowledge to get things done. "You're going to have a lot of new politicians who don't know their way from the prime minister's office to their own ministry making policy," said Gerald Curtis, professor of Japanese politics at Columbia University.

Japan is heavily regulated, with red tape damping all kinds of activity from setting up a business to parking a bicycle. DPJ politicians say an "iron triangle" has developed among bureaucrats, big business and the LDP, which is stifling innovation. To break up these relationships, the DPJ proposes to decentralize the bureaucracy and fill high-ranking civil-service posts with political appointments. The DPJ also has promised to outlaw the practice of "amakudari," meaning "descent from heaven," whereby government officials after retirement take up senior positions in the companies they oversaw.

An effort by former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi to centralize power recorded initial success but faltered when successive administrations lost interest.

"The DPJ needs to make sure they have the right expertise as quickly as possible because the expectations of Japanese citizens are high," said Paige Cottingham-Streater, deputy executive director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, a Washington-based policy organization focused on U.S.-Asia relations.
—Daisuke Wakabayashi contributed to this article.


[ASIA NEWS]
SEPTEMBER 1, 2009
Can DPJ Rein In Japan's Deficits?
By DITAS LOPEZ and TOMOYUKI TACHIKAWA

The Democratic Party of Japan is sounding a tough note on the country's budget deficit, but credit-rating agencies and investors are skeptical about whether the newcomers to power can curb the industrial world's worst debt binge.

The DPJ, after ousting the Liberal Democratic Party from more than half a century of almost-uninterrupted rule in Sunday's election, stuck to its promise to rein in Japan's budget deficit by cutting waste, even as it ramps up spending for populist programs such as handouts to families.

"We must make efforts to limit government-bond issuance as much as possible," said party leader Yukio Hatoyama, who is set to become prime minister. "We need to do some soul-searching about the past practice of spending freely without limit and then selling bonds if there was a budget shortfall."

The bond market showed little reaction Monday to the landslide victory, which had been widely forecast, and analysts predicted little short-term impact. But there is plenty of wariness over whether the DPJ can live up to the vague promises of its platform.

Japan's credit rating doesn't face "a very significant immediate implication" as a result of the new leadership in Tokyo, "because it will take time for that government to take off and start implementing its policy," said Takahira Ogawa, a senior analyst at Standard & Poor's.

Moody's Investors Service's position on the DPJ's fiscal program "is essentially one of wait-and-see" because there is only the party's manifesto to go by, said senior analyst Tadashi Usui.

But Moody's said "a prominent rating concern is whether the DPJ can reconcile its policy priorities with the challenges facing the economy, maintain market confidence, and thereby squarely place the economy back on a path of fiscal consolidation."

S&P rates Japan as double-A, Moody's rates the debt Aa2; both ratings have stable outlooks.

The party more than doubled its size in the Lower House of Japan's parliament, seizing 308 of the 480 seats, while the LDP withered by almost two-thirds to 119. The DPJ already rules the Upper House in a coalition and is expected to bolster its dominance in the more powerful lower chamber by allying with smaller, leftist parties.

The DPJ campaigned on a platform of people-first social services, promising to boost domestic demand by easing the financial burden on households with a child-care allowance, health-care changes and the elimination of highway tolls.

The proposals are expected to cost some seven trillion yen, or around $75 billion, in the fiscal year starting April 2010, rising to 16.8 trillion yen in the fiscal year ending March 2014.

To pay for this, the party vows to trim fat from the existing budget, reallocate money for better uses, sell state assets and tap the "buried treasure" of 4.3 trillion yen in special government accounts.

As it stands, next year's initial budget is on track to require 21.9 trillion yen to finance Japan's public debt, or about 170% of gross domestic product, the highest among industrialized nations, the Finance Ministry said Monday.

Japanese government bonds were little changed Monday. The benchmark 10-year yield was flat at 1.305%. Attention will shift Tuesday to the government's planned sale of 2.1 trillion yen ($22.44 billion) of 10-year bonds.

—Takashi Nakamichi contributed to this article.
Skepticism Greets Promises to Cut Debt; New Spending Plans

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[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[World news > Japan]
Japan's change of regime won't mean a change of direction
Although a historic victory for Japan's Democratic party, Sunday's election result will mean little in practice
Martin Jacques guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 1 September 2009 10.00 BST Article history

Measured by the yardstick of Japanese politics since 1955, the result of Sunday's general election is extraordinary. Only once since 1955 have the ruling Liberal Democrats been ousted from office and that was in 1993, when an eight-party coalition took office for a brief and highly unstable period of rule; and even then the Liberal Democrats remained the largest single party. This is quite different. The Democratic party now enjoys a big majority and the Liberal Democrats have suffered a huge electoral defeat.

But what will the victory of the Democratic party and the defeat of the Liberal Democrats mean in practice? Is it likely to mark a decisive change in Japanese politics? This seems improbable for three reasons.

First, power in Japan does not really reside in the elected government, but rather in the permanent bureaucracy; it is this rather than the Liberal Democrats that has provided the direction for Japan since the end of the American occupation. Indeed, this has been a characteristic of Japanese political culture for many centuries. For this election to mark a decisive shift, a Democratic government would have to replace the Liberal Democrats as the main party of government and also supplant the bureaucracy as the country's centre of power. There is little likelihood of this happening. This is not what the country voted for, or indeed wants; and the Democratic party has given little indication that it has this kind of ambition. However stunning the electoral shift, the Japanese have not embraced such radicalism.

Second, the Democratic party is a relatively recent creation, having been founded in 1998 by five disparate parties, and largely consists of mild leftists and disillusioned former Liberal Democrats. Its programme is somewhat vague and indeterminate. On this basis, it would be surprising if the new government proved strong and independent enough to undertake radical innovations in policy. Its leader, Yukio Hatoyama, has spoken of the decline of American power, the rise of multi-polarity and the need for Japan to reorient itself to its east Asian neighbours. Could this be the prelude to a long overdue shift in Japanese policy that seeks a new kind of relationship with its neighbours, and especially China? After all, last year China replaced the United States as the country's largest trading partner. Desirable as it might be, it seems highly unlikely; the most one should probably expect is a minor recalibration of policy.

Third, Japan is a country that finds major strategic reorientations extremely difficult. Arguably, there have only been two since 1868. The first was the Meiji Restoration in 1868, which resulted in the decision to modernise the country on European lines in order to forestall imminent colonisation by the western powers. The second was the post-1945 modernisation of the country following defeat and the American occupation; this, like 1868, it should be noted, was a result of external forces. Both of these periods were in many respects hugely successful. Once a new strategic goal has been decided upon, the Japanese have proved highly resourceful and remarkably tenacious at pursuing it. But short of such epochal shifts, the Japanese find major change extremely difficult and elusive.

There is no doubt that the postwar era has now effectively come to an end. The remarkable period of growth has given way to a sclerotic performance since the end of the 1980s. Japan's hinterland has been transformed with the rise of the Asian tigers, especially China, and yet Japanese foreign policy instincts remain mired in the past. The fundamental assumptions that informed the strategy pursued by the ruling elite since 1955, namely "catching the west" and a pro-US foreign policy, have been undermined, and yet Japan, whatever the result of the election, still seems unable to confront these challenges and to articulate a new strategic orientation.

No doubt in time this will happen; but Japanese history suggests that change will only come when the pressures are truly exceptional. Notwithstanding Sunday's electoral earthquake, Japan's existential crisis is likely to continue for some time to come. Neither the ruling elite, most importantly the bureaucracy, or the electorate is yet prepared to countenance that kind of change.


[World news > Japan]
Japan: Land of the rising voter
Editorial
The Guardian, Tuesday 1 September 2009 Article history

Japanese people know all about earthquakes. So when commentators there describe Sunday's general election result as the political equivalent of one, they are not indulging in hyperbole. Sunday's results have utterly transformed the political landscape of a country which, with one brief interruption, has been governed by the conservative Liberal Democrats since 1955. The LDP went into the election with 296 seats in the 480-seat parliament, against the opposition centre-left Democratic Party of Japan's 113. After Sunday, under Japan's part constituency-based, part proportional-representation system, the tables have been well and truly turned. Now the DPJ has 307 seats to the Liberal Democrats' 119. The DPJ and its leader Yukio Hatoyama, could hardly have asked for a larger or more emphatic mandate.

Like Barack Obama in the most recent election in a G7 nation before Japan's, Mr Hatoyama campaigned as the candidate of change in the aftermath of recession and financial collapse. Like Mr Obama, he also promised to put people first, with a series of big government intervention pledges to support consumers, low-income households and the unemployed. And like Mr Obama, Mr Hatoyama ran on a strong commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions; whatever else happens as a result of the DPJ's win, it is certainly good for the chances of a stronger rather than a weaker agreement in December's climate change talks in Copenhagen.

Yet it would be a mistake to exaggerate the extent to which Japanese or US voters are part of some worldwide radicalisation against economic globalisation. Japan's problems, like those of the US, are specific to its own system. Japan's downturn also long predates the credit crunch. The system of de facto one-party LDP rule of the postwar era worked well as long as it delivered an uninterrupted rise in living standards. That ended in the recession of the early 1990s. Since then, the voters have given the LDP several chances to reform itself, which the party has spurned or failed to seize. Those failures have now caught up with the LDP.

Mr Hatoyama will bring a more independent approach to Japan's international role. There will be a regional wind of change in East Asia. In the end, though, the real test for the DPJ will be whether it can supply the healthcare, pension and job security that Japanese voters crave. This groundbreaking election was, in many respects, a revolt against the LDP's failure to reverse Japan's economic stagnation and decline rather than an uprising in favour of the DPJ's not always consistently argued alternatives. It is a new political dawn for Japan, but as British voters know, yesterday's landslide can eventually become tomorrow's disillusion.

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[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > 10:10 climate change campaign]
Public figures and business sign up to 10:10 climate campaign
David Adam, environment correspondent
The Guardian, Tuesday 1 September 2009 Article history

An unprecedented coalition of scientists, companies, celebrities and organisations spanning the cultural and political spectrum will today commit to slashing their carbon emissions as part of an ambitious campaign to tackle global warming.

The 10:10 campaign, which will be launched at London's Tate Modern this afternoon, aims to bolster grassroots support for tough action against global warming ahead of the key global summit in Copenhagen in December.

Those signing up for the campaign, which is supported by the Guardian, pledge to make efforts to reduce their carbon footprints by 10% during the year 2010.

Groups committed to the 10:10 cause range from Tottenham Hotspur football club, online grocer Ocado, the Tate galleries and the Women's Institute to dozens of schools, universities and NHS trusts. Four of the major energy companies, British Gas owner Centrica, E.ON, EDF and Scottish and Southern, have promised to help customers hit their 10:10 targets by providing information on how their energy use compares with past consumption.

The campaign is backed by public figures ranging from the climate change expert Lord Stern to Radio 1 DJ Sara Cox, chefs Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Delia Smith, screenwriter Richard Curtis, directors Richard Eyre and Mike Figgis, designers Nicole Farhi and Vivienne Westwood, TV presenter Kevin McCloud and actors including Samantha Morton, Jason Isaacs, Pete Postlethwaite, Colin Firth and Tamsin Greig.

A clutch of Britain's most eminent artists including Anish Kapoor, who has produced a special cover for today's G2, Anthony Gormley and Gillian Wearing, have pledged to cut their emissions as have several literary heavyweights including Ian McEwan, Sarah Waters, Irvine Welsh, Anthony Horowitz, Antony Beevor, Ali Smith, Carol Ann Duffy and Andrew Motion.

The campaign organisers, led by Franny Armstrong, the film-maker behind The Age of Stupid, hope 10:10 could replicate the way the 2005 Make Poverty History (MPH) movement captured the public imagination and helped to drive political change on debt relief. The 10:10 campaigners will distribute signature metal tags made from melted-down aircraft.

Armstrong said: "After every screening of The Age of Stupid people came up to me and asked what they could do. I was saying very generic stuff and I thought we needed a better 'here's what you can do'. Hence 10:10."

She said the campaign aimed to convince Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change secretary, to take the significant step of committing Britain to slash its emissions by as close to 10% as possible by the end of next year. The campaign will be officially launched with a massive sign-up event and free concert at the Tate Modern gallery in London.

Armstrong said: "Once we've got a critical mass of support we will go to the government and say the people of Britain are ready to cut by 10%, now we need you to move. If Ed Miliband could go to Copenhagen and say Britain is going to step forward and start cutting as quickly as the science demands, that could potentially break the deadlock in the international negotiations."

The December talks in Copenhagen aim to agree a successor to the Kyoto protocol and are widely viewed as the last chance for humanity to get to grips with soaring greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists warn that temperatures could soar across the globe by a catastrophic 6C or more by the end of the century.

Kevin Anderson, the head of the Tyndall Centre on Climate Change Research, one of the leading scientists backing the campaign said: "A widespread acknowledgment of the scale of the challenge coupled with meaningful actions will provide a political mandate for effective low-carbon polices that it is difficult for decision-makers to ignore."

Chris Rapley, the head of the Science Museum in London, said: "What's unprecedented about this is that it's an attempt at an harmonious coalition between people, politicians and organisations. We know Copenhagen is going to be really, really tough and we can't leave this all to the politicians."

Some experts warned it was not realistic for Britain to aim for a 10% emissions cut by 2010.

Brian Hoskins, the head of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change, who sits on the government's climate change committee, said: "This is a good idea for individuals, but 10% cuts by next year would be very difficult for Britain and could be problematic. It could encourage short-term measures rather than proper long-term planning."

Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, said: "The Guardian is backing 10:10 because it offers us a way to take small actions that together add up to something meaningful and significant."

news20090901sa

[Environment] from [scientificamerican.com]

[Environment]
August 31, 2009
California wildfire more than doubles on sixth day
REUTERS
By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A massive wildfire roaring through mountains north of Los Angeles forced some firefighters to retreat on Monday as the toll of engulfed homes rose sharply and flames menaced Mount Wilson, a broadcasting hub and site of a historic observatory.

Fire officials said at least 71 dwellings had been destroyed since the blaze erupted last Wednesday -- 53 clustered in the foothill community of La Crescenta on the northern fringe of suburban Los Angeles and 18 others first reported as lost on Sunday.

As of Monday evening, a total of 6,300 homes throughout the fire zone were under evacuation orders, authorities said.

The so-called Station Fire more than doubled in size as it burned out of control for a sixth day, charring 105,000 acres, up from 42,000 acres late on Sunday, and sending up towering palls of smoke that fouled the air for miles (km) around.

Two firefighters died on Sunday when they were overrun by flames in the Angeles National Forest and rugged San Gabriel Mountains. Nearly 2,600 firefighting personnel, some from as far away as Montana and Wyoming, were battling the blaze.

With no forecast for an immediate break in the triple-digit temperatures and very low humidity that has helped energize the fire, officials pushed back their projected date for full containment of the blaze by one week to September 15.

"This is a very angry fire that we're fighting right now," Fire Commander Mike Dietrich told a news conference. "Until we get a change in the weather, I'm not overly optimistic."

BATTLE FOR A MOUNTAINTOP

Fire crews fought to protect the slopes around the 5,700-foot (1,740-meter) peak of Mount Wilson, home to 50 buildings plus a famous array of telescopes and a critical cluster of transmission towers for broadcasters.

After dousing the area in fire retardant and laboring to clear brush away from structures on the site, they fell back early on Monday to avoid flames expected to sweep the summit.

"They've done everything they can do and it's unsafe for them to be there when the fire hits," Los Angeles County Fire Captain Mark Whaling said.

Elsewhere in the forest, 65 firefighters retreated from a wall of flames advancing on their positions, he said.

Rescue teams were standing by to save five people who became trapped in the forest after they disregarded evacuation orders, authorities said.

The fire threat eased in some foothill communities that were menaced over the weekend. Other neighborhoods were now at risk, including about 300 homes on the southwest flank of the blaze just inside Los Angeles city limits.

At the end of one cul de sac in the community of Tujunga, residents stood outside their homes, their cars and trucks packed with belongings and pointed out of their driveways, nervously eyeing smoke billowing from over the steep hillsides that flanked their neighborhood. Police in patrol cars cruised up and down the streets, urging residents to leave.

"If flames start coming down (the hills), we're out," said Jodi Befu, 49.

"Waiting is the hardest part," said David Jones, 44. "I'm all packed. I've had my wife and my baby in a hotel for the last two nights." He insisted everyone in the neighborhood would go if the flames drew much closer.

"Nobody here is going to be a hero," he said.

The first day of classes for two school districts were canceled due to heavy smoke, and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power asked customers to curb electric use in case of potential fire damage to a pair of 500-kilovolt transmission lines northeast of the town of Acton.

The blaze was being fueled by dense, tinder-dry vegetation that had not burned in decades. So far, the Santa Ana winds that fanned many of Southern California's worst wildfires in recent years were absent.

Three civilians were reported injured over the weekend, including two who defied evacuation orders and sought shelter in a hot tub when the flames arrived.


[Environment]
August 31, 2009
How Sunlight Controls Climate
New computer models begin to suggest how changes in the sun's strength might change weather patterns
By David Biello

Small changes in the sun's brightness can have big impacts on our planet's weather and climate. And now scientists have detailed how that process might work, according to a new study published August 28 in Science.

For decades some scientists have noted that certain climate phenomena—warmer seas, increased tropical rainfall, fewer clouds in the subtropics, stronger trade winds—seem to be connected to the sun's roughly 11-year cycle, which causes ebbs and flows in sunspots that result in variations in solar output.

That variation is roughly equal to 0.2 watt per meter squared—far too little to explain, for instance, actual warming sea-surface temperatures. A variety of theories have been proposed to explain the discrepancy: ozone chemistry changes in the stratosphere, increased sunlight in cloudless areas, even cosmic rays. But none of these theories, on its own, explains the phenomenon.

Now, using a computer model that pairs ozone chemistry with the fact that there are fewer clouds in the subtropics when the sun is stronger, climate scientist Gerald Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., and colleagues have reproduced all the observed cyclical climate phenomena as sunlight waxed and waned in intensity over the course of the last century. "Even though [sunlight variability] is a very small number on a global average, regionally or locally it can be much bigger," Meehl explains. Changes to stratospheric ozone chemistry and cloud cover in the subtropics "kind of add together and reinforce each other to produce a bigger amplitude of this small solar forcing signal," he says.

If the model is correct, the mechanism works like this when the sun is at maximum strength: Ozone in the tropical stratosphere traps slightly more heat under the increased ultraviolet sunlight, warming its surroundings and, in turn, allowing increased ozone production. (Warmer temperatures make it easier for ultraviolet light to break up O2 molecules, thereby allowing the resulting free oxygen ions to hook up with other molecules of their kind to create ozone.) That ozone also warms and the cycle continues, resulting in roughly 2 percent more ozone globally. But this change also begins to affect the circulation of the stratosphere itself, which then alters the circulation in the lowest layer of the atmosphere, known as the troposphere, by reinforcing certain wind patterns that then affect the weather we experience.

Meanwhile, the increased radiance during the solar max also adds slightly more heat to the ocean in areas that are already relatively cloudless because of sinking, cooler air. That produces a little more evaporation, which is carried by the trade winds back into the tropics where it comes down again as increased rainfall, but also helps strengthen the upward convection that causes the subtropical cloudless skies. That, in turn, further increases downward pressure back in the subtropics, resulting in even fewer clouds—again roughly 2 percent less clouds over these parts of the Pacific. "You basically spin up this whole system," Meehl says.

But the model did not exactly reproduce real-world conditions. Whereas sea-surface temperatures in the actual eastern Pacific typically decline by roughly 0.8 degree Celsius under a stronger sun, the model could only replicate about 0.6 degree C of cooling. Nor did the model predict changes where they actually occur on the planet. Other factors are likely at work, Meehl says, and even the best computer model can only begin to approximate the complexity of the actual climate.

Right now, the sun is stuck in a period of extremely low sunspot activity, not unlike the "Maunder Minimum" that may have been responsible for the Little Ice Age that cooled Europe in the late 17th century as well as the fall of imperial dynasties in China. And, for the latter half of the 20th century, the sun's output remained relatively constant as global temperatures rose—ruling out our star itself as the direct source of global warming.

Nevertheless, the research begins to explain the physical mechanisms by which changes in the sun's radiance can have outsized impacts on the planet. And that means that the next uptick in the solar cycle, and thereby the sun's brightness, might bring La Niña conditions—unusually cold surface waters—in the equatorial Pacific. "Whenever it happens," Meehl predicts, "chances are it would behave like a weak La Niña–like pattern."

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[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 31 August 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/461023a
News
Stem-cell projects falter
Ailing economy leaves California struggling to build research labs.
Rex Dalton

California's troubled economy has hit the state's ambitious stem-cell research programme, delaying the construction of facilities and disrupting recruitment.

At least three of the dozen groups that received a share of US$271 million in building grants from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) won't make the construction deadline of the end of 2010. And efforts to recruit stem-cell researchers have stalled at some institutions, because of the delays in setting up lab space and because of university hiring freezes.

At the University of California, Berkeley, administrators had hoped to recruit 15 principal investigators for a new $160-million building, including two floors paid for with $20 million from the CIRM. The building is on track to open in January 2011, "but we have no recruitments under way", says Mark Schlissel, the university's dean of biological sciences. "My real fear is that the University of California system and California will recover slower than the United States."

The CIRM was created by a statewide vote in 2004 to pump $3 billion into stem-cell research when President George W. Bush had restricted federal funding for work in the field. The initiative called for spending the money over a decade, so to help keep things on track, when the CIRM handed out building grants in May 2008, it required the projects to be completed within two years. That schedule is now in doubt for some.

In San Diego, the delay may stem from a decision by institutions to join forces. The CIRM gave $43 million to the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, which is made up of the historically competing Salk Institute for Biological Studies, the Scripps Research Institute, the Burnham Institute and the University of California, San Diego.

But because the consortium doesn't have a financial track record, officials say that it couldn't get a cost-effective loan to help finance its $110-million building, and construction stalled. The group is now seeking a University of California guarantee for a $60 million tax-exempt bond to underwrite construction so the facility can open in 2011. However, the university system is also experiencing its worst-ever financial stress (see Nature 460, 441; 2009).

Sanford consortium officials also negotiated with their major donor, South Dakota philanthropist Denny Sanford, to provide more money upfront. The group arranged to receive a promised gift from Sanford in a lump sum of $7.25 million now instead of $10 million later.

In Novato, the CIRM facility at the Buck Institute for Age Research has also run into delays. The institute was supposed to match $20.5 million provided by the CIRM. But it couldn't raise the money and is now hoping to get the money from economic stimulus funds from the US National Institutes of Health. If that fails, the institute plans to seek a tax-exempt bond. The CIRM has given the institute a deadline of March 2010 to break ground or risk losing its grant.

As plans crawl along, university partners are gauging how this might affect recruitment. Lawrence Goldstein, stem-cell research programme director at the University of California, San Diego, says that the roughly 15 stem-cell researchers recruited in recent years are becoming "landlocked". "Our young people need to expand their labs," he says.

In Santa Cruz, the University of California regents last month bailed the local campus out with $64 million. That will help to pay for a bioscience building to include a stem-cell research floor partly funded by the CIRM. It, too, is behind schedule.

At the University of California, Irvine, administrators called for bids for a new $61-million facility, which involved reusing a plan from an already constructed building. The competition for work was intense and, because it didn't involve new designs, the university ended up getting an extra, incomplete floor added to its building for no extra cost. Peter Donovan, co-director of the campus stem-cell programme, says he'd like to finish the floor and recruit for it too, but can't. "We committed to five stem-cell faculty hires," he says, "but recruitments now are frozen."

Nevertheless, the CIRM is pushing ahead to try to lure recruits in the tight fiscal environment. On 20 August its governing board approved $44 million to bring new scientists to the state.

news20090901nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 31 August 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/461022a
News
Keeping genes out of terrorists' hands
Gene-synthesis industry at odds over how to screen DNA orders.
Erika Check Hayden

Low standards could mean that hazardous genes get through screening more easily.W. PHILPOTT/REUTERSA standards war is brewing in the gene-synthesis industry. At stake is the way that the industry screens orders for hazardous toxins and genes, such as pieces of deadly viruses and bacteria. Two competing groups of companies are now proposing different sets of screening standards, and the results could be crucial for global biosecurity.

"If you have a company that persists with a lower standard, you can drag the industry down to a lower level," says lawyer Stephen Maurer of the University of California, Berkeley, who is studying how the industry is developing responsible practices. "Now we have a standards war that is a race to the bottom."

For more than a year a European consortium of companies called the International Association of Synthetic Biology (IASB) based in Heidelberg, Germany, has been drawing up a code of conduct that includes gene-screening standards. Then, at a meeting in San Francisco last month, two of the leading companies — DNA2.0 of Menlo Park, California, and Geneart of Regensburg, Germany — announced that they had formulated a code of conduct that differs in one key respect from the IASB recommendations.

Both codes involve an automated step, in which the genes in a customer's order are compared against those from organisms on lists such as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 'select agents' list. This step uses computer programs such as the US National Center for Biotechnology Information's Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST), which searches for similarities between gene sequences.

But although the IASB standard specifies that a human expert will follow up on possible 'hits' identified in the automated screening step, the DNA2.0/Geneart code ends with the automated screening step. The two firms are now merging their databases of genes of concern. This worries some observers, because it is difficult to translate the list of select-agent organisms into lists of dangerous genes (although a panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences is meeting in Washington DC on 3 September to grapple with this problem). And no one believes that such lists will catch every dangerous gene. For instance, they might not identify genes from harmless organisms that had been modified in some new and deadly way, so many companies use human expertise to review the results.

Lowest common denominator
But human expertise costs money, and competition is fierce in the gene-synthesis field, with roughly 50 dedicated companies fulfilling some 50,000 gene orders per year. And some observers think that the industry as a whole might now adopt the cheaper DNA 2.0/Geneart standard. That concerns Markus Fischer, a member of the IASB board and a managing director of Entelechon of Regensburg.

"The proposal from DNA2.0 and Geneart is a kind of lowest-common-denominator idea," Fischer says. "Simply taking a list of genes, performing a BLAST against them and taking a sort of threshold cut-off and saying everything below that cut-off is not of interest to us is frankly a little bit naive and dangerous."

Claes Gustafsson, vice-president of sales and marketing for DNA2.0, counters that human screening is also not perfect. "There's no way to standardize it," he explains. And as for the incomplete nature of databases of select-agent genes, "we're just going to deal with the stuff that we know something about", he says. "How do you deal with the unknown? It's outside the scope of science."

{“Now we have a standards war that is a race to the bottom.”
Stephen Maurer
University of California, Berkeley}

He also says that discussions on governance of gene synthesis have been going on among policy experts and governments for many years, with no definitive conclusion. "We decided to standardize everything, make it consistent, and move on," he says.

Other companies have not yet decided where they stand on the issue. In November, the IASB will convene a meeting in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to discuss adopting its code of conduct. But already, some companies are intrigued by the DNA2.0/Geneart proposal.

"Our intention is to review the [DNA2.0/Geneart] process and seriously consider switching to that," says John Mulligan, founder and chief scientific officer of Blue Heron Biotechnology, a gene-synthesis company in Bothell, Washington. His company might, however, still keep some of its manual scrutiny. "What I see may come out of this is a standardized minimum across the industry with some companies choosing to augment that," he says.

Maurer says he hopes that government officials in the United States, the country most concerned about biosecurity, will step in and communicate with industry about its preferred standard. So far, many branches of the government have been involved in working on potential regulations, but none has offered opinions on concrete issues such as screening standards.

"I think if the government expressed an opinion, DNA2.0 would blink," Maurer says. "A little bit of effort now would steer them towards the top of existing practice rather than near the bottom."