news20090910gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Climate change]
Gardens of 2050: January cherry blossom and winter buttercup blooms
Spring will arrive a month earlier in 40 years' time thanks to the warming oceans around British Isles, new study predicts
Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
The Guardian, Thursday 10 September 2009 A

It is a discovery which should delight Britain's gardeners: by 2050, spring will start before Valentine's day. Cherry and pear trees will blossom in late January, while flower beds will be crowded with blooming buttercups, iris and geraniums long before winter has officially ended.

A new study on the impact of our warming climate has found that across most low-lying, coastal areas of the globe, spring will begin for many plants at least a month earlier than it does now and will end several weeks later in 40 years time.

The predictions are based on a detailed study of plant records from the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh (RGBE) from 1850 and weather records for Edinburgh dating back to 1775, by two scientists, Malcolm Clark of Monash university in Australia and Roy Thompson, at the University of Edinburgh.

They have confirmed that the "botanical calendar" has changed for scores of plants in the RBGE collection, which for more than 150 years has gathered plants from across the globe, are now flowering earlier as average air temperatures slowly but steadily rise. The most affected are plants such as ornamental cherry, peach and pear trees, anemones, saxifrage, irises and perennials such as three-leaved bittercress.

But Clark and Thompson warn that an ever-earlier spring is likely to create significant problems for the plants affected, for farmers and for many of the bird and insect species which rely on them.

As flowering plants move out of step, or "desynchronise", with normal seasons, serious problems may emerge with the pollination of the plants involved. They may flower before the birds and insects that feed on them, or the mammals that carry their pollen, are at large. Most animal behaviour is guided by the length of the day rather than temperature.

They believe the worst-affected places will be low-lying coastal regions of the world and places with maritime climates like the British Isles and western Europe, the Atlantic coast of north America as far south as Florida, New Zealand, Chile and north Africa.

The true start of spring is already a controversial subject. Traditionally, spring starts with the vernal equinox on about 20 or 21 March and ends with the summer solstice on 21 June, but for statistical and record-keeping purposes, the Met Office officially records spring as starting on 1 March and ending on 31 May.

But with continued global warming , these dates are likely to become even less meaningful.

In maritime areas, for every 1C of warming, flowers will bloom as if spring had begun 16 days earlier and ended 11 days later.

Using widely accepted predictions that the world's climate will warm by at least 2C by 2050, leading to warmer winters, this would mean that spring in the British Isles will no longer start on 1 March, but in late January, and end in late June.

In continental regions, further from the warming effects of the oceans, the impact will be lessened but still significant, with the flowering starting seven days sooner and ending 11 days later for every degree of warming.

"Already there is a great deal of observational evidence of regional changes in climate associated with global warming," said Clark. "We have not only seen an earlier break up of ice on rivers and melting glaciers, but also the early emergence of insects, egg laying by birds and the flowering of plants. This new model allows us to refine predictions of the future impact of warming on plant and animal life across much of the world.

"Although the study is based on plant life in Scotland, our models apply across regions spanning hundreds of thousands of square kilometres," said Clark.

But the full impact this will have on the environment is still very difficult to predict. Some plants are more sensitive to temperature changes than others; in some regions, there will be plants and trees that are not heavily affected growing alongside other plants flowering weeks earlier than normal.

Thompson also fears that the pace of climate warming is faster than the ability of plants – particularly long-lived trees - to adapt and evolve, leaving some at risk of dying out in many areas. "We're predicting very fast rates of change. In the past, plants have kept pace with the climate and after the last ice age thawed had lots of time to migrate. In the future, that's most unlikely to happen," he said. "It seems to me inevitable that they're going to be many extinctions."

He is also highly pessimistic about how much warming the world faces, which could see temperatures rising by as much as 5C by 2100 . By then, some plants will be flowering shortly after Christmas.

"I'm a geophysicist, and I've trained my students to find oil. I think they're going to find every last drop of it, and that the Chinese and Indians will extract all the world's oil and that the world's population will increase. If you believe that, the world will continue warming."

Other climate changes
Fish

Cod and haddock are just two of the North Sea fishes that have had to move scores of miles north in search of cooler waters. Sea temperatures have risen by 1C in the past 25 years and more exotic southern species have entered North Sea waters. Scientists at the University of East Anglia found that 21 species had shifted their distributions in line with the rise in sea temperature, and 18 species had moved much further north.

Trees

As climate change affects rainfall around the world, many species of trees are not able to adapt quickly enough. The dimb tree in Senegal is struggling to survive the drier and hotter conditions there and, closer to home, scientists have warned that oak trees will be severely affected if nothing is done to stem temperature rises..

Birds

The British Trust for Ornithology found that, in the period 1971-1995, 51 species of birds tended to nest and lay eggs earlier (around a week or more on average) as background temperatures increased. The species included the wren, nuthatch, starling and also waterbirds such as the oystercatcher, curlew and redshank.

Mosquitoes

The average temperature in Europe has increased by almost 1C in the past century and could rise by a further few degrees by the end of this century. The World Health Organisation has warned that malaria-carrying mosquitoes will find their way out of the tropics as the world warms and could even end up in southern England at some point.

Wine

Global warming is threatening to play havoc with the carefully managed crops in the vineyards of California and France. The warmer temperatures can mean that the grapes make their sugar too early, before the fruit is ready to be picked - this can affects the final taste and alcohol content of the wine.

Alok Jha

news20090910gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment >Greenwash]
Series: Greenwash
Fred Pearce's Greenwash
Exposing false environmental claims
BMW's hybrid X6 accelerates nonsense about fast low-emission carsBMW is launching the 'world's most powerful hybrid' at Frankfurt motor show but its eco-friendly claims are weak
Fred Pearce
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 10 September 2009 07.00 BST Article history

It's the holy grail for motorists with a green conscience – a high-performance eco-friendly hybrid car. Well, that is what BMW will have us believe when it unveils its latest model at the Frankfurt motor show in Germany next week.

The show is likely to see a stream of new hybrids, cars that combine a combustion engine with an electric motor for improved fuel efficiency. And pole position is likely to be taken by BMW's ActiveHybrid X6, which it styles the "world's most powerful hybrid".

The new X6 goes from 0-60 mph in under six seconds and has a top speed of 130 mph.

But the company gives equal prominence to its pitch that the new hybrid is "eco-friendly", because its carbon emissions are 20% less than those of a regular X6.

For a few days last month you could read the same claim on the website of the Energy Saving Trust, the "impartial" adviser on energy efficiency set up by the British government.

But is it too good to be true? Of course. As one incredulous reader who spotted the story on the Trust's website pointed out: "The Trust is promoting a car as eco-friendly with emissions TWICE that of my 6 year old Honda Civic hybrid!"

The ActiveHybrid X6's official CO2 emissions rating with the European Union is 231 grams per kilometre. That compares badly with the EU's 2012 target for average emissions from new cars of 120 grams. It is also higher than the emissions from most of the new Lexus hybrid range and more than twice the emissions of a Toyota Prius, for instance.

The fact that it is better than the regular X6's rating of 299 grams per kilometre does not make it eco-friendly, I am afraid. The claim is greenwash.

I suspect we are going to see a rash of these high-performance high-emission hybrids masquerading as green. Back in the lab, BMW is developing a hybrid "supercar" that will reach 155 mph and 0-60 mph in less than five seconds.

Sure, hybrids are more fuel-efficient than the equivalent old models. The key is that the fuel does not have to be burned in inefficient surges as the car accelerates and brakes. It can be burned efficiently in a smooth flow, and the energy transferred to a battery that supplies the electric motor that drives the car itself. The battery can also make use of energy generated during braking.

But to call these high-performance models eco-friendly, or low-emissions as they burn up the autobahn is nonsense. They are, in reality, slightly less polluting gas-guzzlers.

The Energy Saving Trust seems to take a similar view. When my correspondent pointed out the dodgy nature of the car's green credentials, the offending story swiftly disappeared from its site. "Once we noticed it, we removed it straight away," a spokesman told me.

The rise of these new hybrids has important implications for green-minded legislators. For instance, it should increase the pressure on London's mayor to reconsider his blanket exemption from congestion charges for hybrid cars. Surely, only truly low-emitters should qualify.

Interestingly, the BMW PR promotes the idea that the driver of the hybrid X6 can "experience silence without coming to a stop", while the electric motor is running alone.

It sounds fun. But speaking as a pedestrian, I'm a bit scared at the idea of a car that can go from 0 to 60mph in less than six seconds without making any noise. Green or not, it sounds like a stealth killer.


[Environment > Drought]
Kenya's wildlife threatened by droughtSerious threat to elephants as rivers dry up and grasslands shrivel in parched game reserves
Associated Press guardian.co.uk, Thursday 10 September 2009 13.27 BST Article history

A drought in Kenya has become so bad that the country's famed elephants are dying, as rivers dry up and grasslands shrivel in parched game reserves.

The drought has killed hundreds of cattle and many hectares of crops, threatening the lives of the people who depend on them for food. There is no human death toll for the drought, but the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) has said that 3.8 million Kenyans are at risk and in need of emergency food aid.

The zoologist Iain Douglas-Hamilton, who founded Save the Elephants, said the drought is the worst he has seen in 12 years and poses a serious threat to the animals, whose presence in Kenya's broad savannah help draw a million tourists each year.

"It may be related to climate change, and the effect is elephants, particularly the young and the old, have began to die," he told AP Television News. "When they do not have enough food they also seem to be vulnerable to disease, their immune system weakens and they catch all sorts of diseases."

Elephants, which have no predators, must roam widely to get their daily ration of as much as 52 gallons (200 litres) of water and about 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of grass, leaves and twigs. But the water is disappearing and the grass is all but gone.

In the past two months, over 40 elephants have died in Laikipia, Isiolo and Samburu districts, the Daily Nation newspaper reported. It was initially thought to be a disease outbreak but laboratory tests failed to detect disease. The only probable reason the animals are dying is drought, Moses Litoloh, a senior scientist with the Kenya Wildlife Service, told the newspaper.

"Preliminary investigations reveal that the elephants have not been getting enough fodder, especially the young ones," he said. "Young elephants are unable to keep up the pace with their mothers while grazing. They are also not able to browse tall trees which are the only source of food left."

The species is hardly at the brink of extinction: there are 23,000 elephants in Kenya and fewer than 100 have died from the drought but wildlife experts say they are concerned.

Making matters worse, herders are driving their livestock into the elephants' domain in search of fresh pasture and competing for forage.

The prime minister, Raila Odinga, last month warned of a "catastrophe" if seasonal rains don't come in October and November. Kenya's grain harvest is expected to be 28% lower. Food prices have jumped by as much as 130%.

The WFP has called for $230m (£138m) in donations to feed hungry Kenyans.

news20090910sn1

[SN Today] from [ScienceNews]

[SN Today]
New images and spectra from a rejuvenated Hubble
Scientists rejoice in stunning portraits of space from the revamped telescope
By Ron Cowen
Web edition : Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Five grueling space walks in May ("Healing Hubble", SN Online: 5/26/09) have transformed the aging — and ailing — Hubble Space Telescope into a brand new observatory.

Images and spectra released by NASA on September 9 confirm that two new instruments and two old, revived instruments are working properly. The portraits include a penetrating infrared view inside the dusty cocoon of a Milky Way starbirthing region, a butterfly-shaped nebula surrounding a dying star and a massive cluster of galaxies that acts like a gravitational lens, distorting the light of background galaxies. Spectra include an analysis of ultraviolet light from a distant quasar that illuminates the universe’s weblike architecture and an analysis of the chemical elements expelled by a temperamental star.

In addition to the portraits released on September 9, several astronomers have begun making early scientific observations with Hubble’s instruments. Images taken with Wide Field Camera 3 “are nothing short of spectacular,” says Hubble astronomer Rogier Windhorst of Arizona State University in Tempe. “For the first time, Hubble is reaching its full potential at the widest possible wavelength range, the highest possible sensitivity and the best achievable pixel resolution over the widest possible field-of-view.”

Another team, led by Garth Illingworth of the University of California, Santa Cruz, has also begun observations with Wide Field Camera 3. “The images we are looking at already are the deepest infrared images ever taken of the sky, and the program is not yet complete,” he says. Illingworth says he is certain that over the next few months infrared observation with Wide Field Camera 3 will unearth a plethora of extremely distant galaxies, from a time when the universe was only 700 million years old.

In combination with Hubble’s revived Advanced Camera for Surveys, primarily a visible-light instrument, the new camera will find galaxies “far, far beyond anything that we have ever had before,” he says.

The newly released images can be viewed at the Hubble Space Telescope website at
http://www.hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/25/image/.

[SN Today]
Atmospheric rollercoaster followed Great Oxidation Event
Ancient minerals hint that oxygen levels rose, then fell sharply before rising permanently
By Sid Perkins 　
Web edition : Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

The concentration of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere dropped for an extended time about 1.9 billion years ago, following the Great Oxidation Event, researchers now report.

Evidence for the drop in oxygen levels comes from the analyses of minerals taken from banded iron formations, large repositories of iron oxide that accumulated billions of years ago (SN: 6/20/09, p. 24). Those minerals contain large amounts of trace elements, which can provide details about environmental conditions at the time, says Don Canfield, a geobiologist at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. In particular, he and his colleagues argue in the Sept. 10 Nature, the ratio of stable isotopes of chromium reveal the level of oxygenation in the ancient atmosphere.

Analyses of chromium isotopes in samples from banded iron formations that accumulated during various intervals between 3.7 billion and 570 million years ago show oxygen trends generally consistent with those seen in previous studies. But levels unexpectedly differ during one interval, the time around 1.9 billion years ago. Chromium ratios seen in samples of minerals deposited around that time — and particularly in those from a banded iron formation in Ontario, Canada — are similar to those seen in deposits that formed well before Earth’s atmosphere became well oxygenated about 2.5 billion years ago, during what’s called the Great Oxidation Event.

The new findings are a sign that oxygen concentrations in the atmosphere 1.9 billion years ago dropped substantially for an extended period, the researchers say. The environmental circumstances behind this decline in atmospheric oxygen aren’t clear, however.

Although researchers debate the exact cause and timing of the Great Oxidation Event, the evolution of photosynthetic microorganisms almost certainly was required to generate large amounts of oxygen. Scientists have long thought that once the Great Oxidation Event occurred, atmospheric oxygen levels never dropped back, says Timothy Lyons, a biogeochemist at the University of California, Riverside. But, he notes, the team’s new findings “are compelling evidence that oxygen made a dip again about 1.9 billion years ago. … That’s an observation that’ll have legs.”

The new technique for inferring atmospheric oxygen levels works like this: When rocks bearing manganese and chromium are exposed to an oxygenated atmosphere, a series of chemical reactions releases the chromium, which makes its way to the sea via rivers. The higher the concentration of oxygen in the air, the higher the ratio of chromium-53 to chromium-52 is in the river water. When those waters flow into an iron-rich sea where banded iron formations are accumulating, the chromium —which has a strong affinity for iron — gets locked away in the mineral formations.

For now, Lyons isn’t concerned by the fact that the team’s chromium-isotope data disagree with other proxies, such as the ratios of various sulfur isotopes used in other studies, that don’t show the dip. Future work may show that other techniques for inferring oxygen concentrations work only within certain ranges of oxygen levels and therefore results obtained using those techniques may not be valid in all cases.

But other researchers suggest caution. “It’s a bit premature to make a big deal of this [chromium-isotope] proxy because we don’t understand a lot about it,” says Kurt Konhauser, a geobiologist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. “If the new findings are true, we’d have to reinterpret everything we know about environmental conditions” 1.9 billion years ago, he adds.

The team’s data also hint that oxygen concentrations were low but on the rise for at least 300 million years before increasing sharply during the Great Oxidation Event. That finding may reinvigorate debate about whether oxygen-making organisms had evolved as early as 2.7 billion years ago, as suggested by biomarkers in Australian rocks (SN: 11/22/08, p. 5).

news20090910sn2

[SN Today] from [ScienceNews]

[SN Today]
The eyes remember
Movement may reveal memories that the brain recalls even when a person isn’t aware of them
By Tina Hesman Saey
Web edition : Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Eyewitness testimony is notoriously flaky, but new research suggests that eye movements can accurately reveal what a person remembers, even if the person isn’t aware of the memory.

In a memory test, participants’ eye movements picked the right answer even when the participant failed to, Deborah Hannula and Charan Ranganath, both of the University of California, Davis, report in the Sept. 10 Neuron. The eye movements corresponded to activity in the hippocampus, an important learning and memory center in the brain. The results suggest that eye movements can reveal unconscious memories activated in the hippocampus, the authors say.

Some neuroscientists have believed that the hippocampus is involved only in conscious or “declarative” memories, such as of people, facts or events. People who have damage to the hippocampus aren’t able to form or recall declarative memories. These amnesiac patients can, however, learn new skills that require unconscious “procedural” memories, such as riding a bike — leading to the belief that an intact hippocampus is not needed for unconscious recall.

But the new study suggests that the hippocampus actually is involved in memories of relationships that a person does not consciously recollect. Hannula and Ranganath showed volunteers in a functional MRI scanner pictures of faces paired with an outdoor scene. After presenting about 50 such pairs, the researchers showed the landscape picture followed by three faces. Participants were then asked to choose which face had previously been matched with the landscape.

When the scene was shown, activity in the hippocampus increased, followed 500 to 750 milliseconds later by eye movements directed toward one of the three faces. When the hippocampus was more active, the eyes lingered on the correct face. Less hippocampus activity occurred when the eyes dwelled on an incorrect face.

Even when participants ultimately selected an incorrect choice, the hippocampus activity accurately predicted whether the eyes focused on the correct face. However, communication between the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex —the brain’s executive control region — was reduced compared with trials in which the volunteers made the right choice. That result could mean that the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex must communicate properly for a person to remember correctly.

This finding is a clue that something beyond the hippocampus is needed to make a memory conscious, Ranganath says. Even if you don’t remember learning a relationship between two objects, “your hippocampus and eyes might have some of that information left over,” he says.

It’s still an open question whether the volunteers were conscious of the right choice at the time their eyes lingered on the correct matching face, say Dharshan Kumaran and Anthony Wagner, both cognitive neuroscientists at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., in a commentary in the same issue of Neuron. The volunteers may have been immediately aware of the right choice but then second-guessed themselves in the brief time between seeing the pictures and making a selection.

“There are undoubtedly instances in which first impressions will lead to the correct answer,” Wagner says. “Our attention gets sucked in to what is the right answer, but when we linger on the choices we sometimes get tricked and ultimately embrace the wrong answer.”

Regardless of whether they reveal unconscious or conscious memories, eye movements could be used to help scientists understand how much patients with disorders such as dementia or schizophrenia remember. People with such disorders may remember more than they are able to say, Hannula says. Eye movements might also help researchers learn about memory in animals and children who are too young to talk.

One day, eye movements may be used to help assess the accuracy of eyewitness testimony or reveal memories people aren’t aware of or would rather not admit having, Ranganath says.

“It is, at the very least, another measurement of memory,” Kumaran says.


[SN Today]
Potato famine pathogen packs unusual, sneaky genome
Quick-changing zones may be key to the microbe’s vexing adaptability
By Susan Milius
Web edition : Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

{Resistance fighter
A potato plant faces a tough adversary in an adaptable microbe that causes late blight. The pathogen adapts quickly to overwhelm pesticides or bred-in plant resistance, and now the newly sequenced genome of the pathogen helps explain the swift adaptability.
Scott Bauer/ARS}

No cheese, but there’s extra stuffing in a potato pathogen’s genome.

A supersized, unusual arrangement of DNA could help explain why the microbe that caused the Irish potato famine continues to overwhelm plants bred to resist it, says Sophien Kamoun of Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, England. He and 94 other researchers from around the world unveil the genome of Phytophthora infestans online September 9 in Nature.

{Attack
On the magnified surface of a plant, the funguslike microbe Phytophthora infestans begins its attack. This infection, called late blight, can wipe out a potato or tomato crop within days.
Sophien Kamoun}

This funguslike microbe causes a fatal crop disease called late blight in potatoes and tomatoes. In the 1840s, the blight began destroying Ireland’s mainstay potato crops, eventually leaving some million people to starve and driving others to migrate in history-making waves. Potatoes remain important worldwide, now the fourth largest food crop, and late blight continues to give farmers nightmares, destroying some $6.7 billion of harvest a year.

At about 240 megabases, the P. infestans genome dwarfs the 95-megabase genome of P. sojae, which attacks soybeans, and the 65-megabase genome of P. ramorum, which causes sudden oak death, the researchers report. But the late-blight pest doesn’t have extra genes compared with the other two.

Instead, regions of DNA packed tightly with genes alternate in the pest with long stretches of repetitive DNA (once thought to be a kind of “junk”) dotted with only a few genes, the team reports. Within these repetitive stretches lie most of the microbe’s effector genes, which encode proteins that help attack plants. Geneticists already know that long strings of repetitive DNA typically change readily, thus the researchers propose that these nimble regions in P. infestans may help the pathogen keep up in the arms race against plants and farmers.

“I’m a plant pathologist — I want to know the enemy,” Kamoun says. “This knowledge is really important in helping us know where to go in breeding resistance.”

news20090910sn3

[SN Today] from [ScienceNews]

[SN Today]
One coral alga explodes with temperature increase
Unlike its neighbors, this rare species thrives in warmer waters
By Jenny Lauren Lee
Web edition : Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

{Some like it hot
The heat-tolerant alga Symbiodinium trenchi, a rare species in coral reefs in the Caribbean Sea, had a population boom when the water temperature rose in 2005. The alga inhabited both bleached (shown center) and unbleached (far right) corals.
LaJeunesse et al./Proceedings of the Royal Society B 2009.}

When Caribbean coral reefs are in hot water, one alga takes advantage of the situation — and possibly comes to the rescue.

A rare type of alga proliferated in several species of coral in the Caribbean Sea while warming waters were killing other algal inhabitants, researchers report in the Sept. 8 Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The authors say that their two-year study raises questions about how opportunistic algae might affect coral colonies dealing with the physical stress of increasing ocean temperatures.

“I think it’s a pretty compelling paper,” says coral reef biologist Andrew Baker of the University of Miami.

Many coral species rely on particular algae for nourishment. These one-celled organisms squat in the coral polyps’ cells, making energy from sunlight and passing it on.

A temperature increase of just a few degrees can kill these beneficial algae, bleaching the coral and starving it in the process, says coauthor Todd LaJeunesse of Pennsylvania State University in University Park. But a few years ago scientists discovered that some species of algae thrive in warmer waters, taking over the dying coral and potentially protecting it from starvation (SN: 8/28/04, p. 142)

Now researchers have found one species that begins proliferating before the coral is bleached. During a period of unusually warm water near Barbados in 2005, LaJeunesse and his colleagues found that Symbiodinium trenchi, a rare alga species normally present in about one percent of the team’s samples, appeared in much higher concentrations than usual in some coral types. The authors say the alga’s early proliferation could mean the species is able to save some types of coral from bleaching and may be useful as an indicator of stress in a reef.

By monitoring the colonies, the scientists found that the heat-tolerant S. trenchi thrived while more heat-sensitive algae died back. When the team tested samples six months after the ocean had returned to its normal temperature, the rare alga had become the dominant algae in eight different coral species. The most bleached coral also had the highest concentrations of S. trenchi, suggesting that more stressed colonies were more accessible to the opportunistic algae.

But two years after the ocean’s hot flash, the S. trenchi population had shrunk again, and the more typical algae populations had returned.

Baker says the rare alga’s population boom likely helps keep the corals alive and offers hope that some corals may be able to survive warming waters, at least in the short term.

But LaJeunesse says it is not yet clear if and how the alga benefits these coral species. The scientists didn’t expect S. trenchi to take over before the corals were bleached and were surprised that typical populations returned when the water cooled back down. These findings raise questions about how heat-loving algae interact with corals, he says.

news20090910sn4

[SN Today] from [ScienceNews]

[SN Today > for Kids]
FOR KIDS: Making good, brown fat
Researchers find a way to make energy-burning fat out of other cells
By Stephen Ornes
Web edition : Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Energy-burning fatThe energy-burning brown fat cells shown here were made by the skin cells of mice. Green dots are oil droplets, red dots are mitochondria and each blue sphere is the nucleus of a cell. Shingo Kajimura Not all fats are created equal: There’s white fat, which stores energy. There’s also another kind of human body fat that actually burns energy and heats up. Babies have this kind of fat, and earlier this year, scientists found that adults have it too. Called brown fat, this substance is stored mainly in the upper body.

According to a new study, it may be possible to make brown fat out of other kinds of cells in the body, such as skin cells. A team of researchers, led by Bruce Spiegelman of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass., made brown fat tissue from the skin cells of mice and mouse myoblasts. (A myoblast is a cell that will develop into muscle.)

Because brown fat can burn excess energy, researchers hope it may be used to treat obesity and diabetes. Obesity, which is the condition of being overweight, can lead to other major health problems. Diabetes is a general name given to several different types of illnesses, all of which relate to the body’s ability to manage energy.

In order to make the brown fat cells, Spiegelman and his team started with mouse myoblasts and focused on two proteins. Proteins are the cell’s building blocks and help the cell do its job. The researchers knew that a protein called PRDM16 played some part in converting a myoblast into a brown fat cell, but they had a problem. When they tricked the cell into making more of the protein in a petri dish, nothing changed, and the myoblast cells only formed more myoblasts.

So the scientists looked at another protein, called C/EBP-beta. Just like the first protein, this protein did nothing on its own. But when the scientists added both proteins to the myoblast, the cell created both myoblasts and brown fat cells. They had discovered that the two proteins have to work together.

Even though they were grown in a lab, from other cells, they burn energy similar to normal brown fat cells. “They certainly look like they are brown adipose tissue,” meaning brown fat tissue, Spiegelman says.

There was a difference, however. Normal brown fat cells are able to regulate their energy-burning activity so the human body doesn’t get too hot. The new lab-grown cells, however, are always running on high, which means they’re burning as much energy as possible—which could cause a fever in a person.

The new technique could be used in a number of different ways to help people, says Spiegelman. For example, scientists could remove cells from an obese person, change the cells so they produce brown fat, and return them to the body. Once these altered cells are back in the body, they can produce more brown fat, which would burn energy. Another method may involve injecting an obese person with a compound that could boost his or her production of brown fat cells.

Right now, it’s too early to say whether or not these new brown fat cells will be able to help a person with a weight problem—but the early results are promising.


POWER WORDS (adapted from the Yahoo! Kids Dictionary)

adipose tissue: fat

embryo: An organism in its early stages of development, before birth or hatching

mitochondria: a small organelle, or part of a cell, that converts energy from food into energy that the cell can use

myoblast: An undifferentiated cell in an embryo that is a precursor of a muscle cell.

nucleus: A large structure enclosed in a membrane within a living cell. The nucleus contains the cell's hereditary material and controls its metabolism, growth, and reproduction.

proteins: Molecules that contain carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and usually sulfur and are composed of one or more chains of amino acids. Proteins are fundamental components of all living cells and include many substances that are necessary for the proper functioning of an organism


[SN Tday > for Kids]
FOR KIDS: Worm glue
A glue similar to the one made by sandcastle worms may one day paste together bones in the human body
By Stephen Ornes
Web edition : Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

{Worm glue
This sandcastle worm lives in the laboratory where scientists can study it. The worm built its house in the lab from small white beads instead of bits of shell and sand. Scientists have created a glue similar to the worm’s glue that may one day be used in bone surgery.
Russell Stewart}

Scientists often look to the natural world for inspiration and ideas. Now, we may be able to thank an unusual worm for a new kind of superglue.

At the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, scientists have created a powerful adhesive that works underwater and hardens quickly, which means it may be useful inside the human body. Most glues don’t work well inside the body, where everything is wet. When surgeons operate on a person to repair broken bones, for example, they may be able to use the new glue to hold the bones together.

The Utah scientists were inspired to make the new glue by a little sea animal called the sandcastle worm. It lives on the coast in an area between the water levels for high and low tides. During high tide, their homes are underwater; when the tide goes out, their homes are left high and dry.

This sea creature gets its name from its house. A sandcastle worm builds its own house by collecting grains of sand, broken shells and other debris and stacking these bits all around. The worm also produces a glue that is used to stick all these pieces together, forming a solid tube. The worm’s glue hardens underwater in less than 30 seconds, and within a few hours the glue gets tough like leather.

Russell Stewart, one of the scientists who worked on the new glue, says that in the same way the sandcastle worm glues together grains of sand, surgeons may be able to glue together broken bones. The worm “literally glues skeletons together underwater, so we thought it would be a good model for wet surgery,” he says.

Stewart, who is a bioengineer at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and his colleagues set out to understand the worm’s adhesive, so they could then make their own. First, they studied the sandcastle worm’s glue in the laboratory. They found many proteins, which are tiny molecules that are the construction material of most living things. The researchers learned which proteins give the glue its super-sticking power by studying the proteins’ structures. Half the proteins had strong positive or negative electric charges. Positive and negative charges are attracted to each other and stick together, and this helped make the glue extra sticky.

Once they identified and understood the proteins, the scientists made their own version of the glue in the laboratory. They tested their creation and found that it worked underwater—and was about twice as strong as the worm glue. Further tests showed that the glue isn’t poisonous to human cells.

At the end of the experiment, the scientists had invented a new superstrong glue that worked underwater and was not toxic, which means it didn’t cause harm. These three qualities—strong, working underwater, nontoxic—could make the glue an important part of surgeries in the future. Plus, researchers are now looking at ways to make the glue able to dissolve, which means that over time, as the bones healed, the glue would disappear.

Stewart and his team may have found a new way to help bones heal—all because of a funny little worm on the beach.


POWER WORDS (adapted from Yahoo! Kids dictionary)

cell: The smallest structural unit of an organism that is capable of independent functioning. It consists of one or more nuclei, cytoplasm, and various organelles, all surrounded by a cell membrane.

dissolve: To become liquid or to disappear.

electric charge: The property of matter responsible for all electric phenomena. It occurs in two forms, negative and positive.

proteins: Molecules that contain carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and usually sulfur and are composed of one or more chains of amino acids. Proteins are fundamental components of all living cells and include many substances that are necessary for the proper functioning of an organism.

toxic: Of, relating to, or caused by poison.

news20090910nn1

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 9 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.901
News
Chromium isotopes track oxygen's rise
Early debut for essential gas was followed by an unexpected dip.
By Naomi Lubick

{When did oxygen flood into the Earth's atmosphere?}

NASAHow quickly did oxygen build up in Earth's early atmosphere? An analysis using chromium isotopes trapped in ancient ocean deposits has now provided an unexpected insight into this longstanding puzzle.

The usual geochemical tale is a one-two punch of oxygen molecules flooding the atmosphere, first around 2.45-2.2 billion years ago in what geologists call the Great Oxidation Event (GOE), followed by another steep rise around 750 million years ago. But details have been elusive. Attempts to use molybdenum, rhenium and other metal isotopes to understand oxygen's earlier rise have given a range of results about when the oxygenation began, how quickly it progressed and whether it was continuous. That leaves the rise of oxygen at the GOE as "one of the two or three big questions about the early Earth", says Tim Lyons of the University of California, Riverside.

The latest finding comes from a team led by Robert Frei of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, who sampled banded iron formations — an iron-rich sedimentary rock — dating from around and in between the two main periods of intense oxygen increases. They show that oxygen snuck into surface ocean waters 2.8–2.6 billion years ago — at least 200 million years earlier than predictions based on analyses of other metal isotopes.

More surprisingly, they also claim that around 1.9 billion years ago, oxygen levels actually dipped back down to almost where they were before the GOE, at less than 1% of today's levels. That's "the most interesting part of the story", says Don Canfield of the University of Southern Denmark in Odense and part of the research team who publish their conclusions in Nature¹.

Heavy stuff

The team's method relies on how chromium responds to changing levels of oxygen in the air. Without much oxygen in the atmosphere, chromium is locked into rocks in a form where each atom has three fewer electrons than elemental chromium metal — a reduced, or +3, oxidation state.

{“Were there pulses of life associated with these pulses of oxygen?”
Robert Frei
University of Copenhagen, Denmark}

But as oxygen levels rise, metallic manganese in the same rocks is converted into manganese oxide, which then steals electrons from the landlocked chromium. The result is an oxidized +6 form of chromium which is much more likely to be dissolved by rainwater and washed into the ocean. Once there, chromium reacts with iron metal and is incorporated into the banded iron formations in its +3 form.

Crucially, the heavy chromium isotope, chromium-53, is more likely to be oxidized and washed into the ocean than its lighter cousin chromium-52. This means that measuring the relative amounts of heavier and lighter chromium isotopes in the banded iron formations indicates how much oxygen was in the atmosphere at the time they were locked into the rocks.

"The technique is terrific," says Robert Hazen of the Geophysical Laboratory, the Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington DC, adding that it seems more sensitive to oxygen shifts than other metal proxies. But he adds that the chromium ions may be reacting with more than just manganese oxide and iron, which may make the picture even more complex. "What we need to understand much better is the weathering process of chromium," agrees Canfield.

Lyons, who did not work on the research, says he is particularly pleased to see that the new proxy continues to work long after the GOE, when the signals of other metal isotopes get swamped by the growing amounts of oxygen present. He adds that wavering oxygen levels, rather than a simple upward trend, has big implications for the development of life at the time.

"Were there pulses of life associated with these pulses of oxygen?" wonders Frei, who hopes that the new findings will foster discussion about whether life forms were photosynthesizing long before the GOE to create these early "whiffs" of oxygen^2,3. Whether primitive life was responsible for giving the Earth's atmosphere its first taste of oxygen is "a whole different issue that needs to be investigated", says Frei. For now, he adds, both the new chromium isotope method and the team's findings need to be confirmed by testing more rocks.

References
1. Lyons, T. & Reinhard, C. Nature 461, 250–253 (2009). | Article
2. Rasmussen, B. et al. Nature 455, 1101–1104 (2008). | Article | PubMed | ChemPort |
3. Anbar, A. et al. Science 317, 1903-1906 (2007). | Article | PubMed | ChemPort |


[naturenews]
Published online 9 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.897
News
Darwin Centre takes doors off museum
Scientists are on display at a new Natural History Museum facility.
By Natasha Gilbert

{The new Darwin Centre and neighbouring Natural History Museum.}

Gazing up at the eight-story-high, 65–metre long Cocoon building, you could be forgiven for feeling like one of the 17 million insect specimens it houses. The white concrete structure is the heart of the new Darwin Centre at the Natural History Museum in London, which opens to the public, free of charge, on 15 September.

The £78-million centre houses state-of-the-art research labs for the museum's 350 scientists, as well as its vast collection of specimens — including 3 million plant specimens — and a high-tech interactive visitor space where the public can talk with the scientists and watch them at work (see slideshow).

In a preview for the media yesterday, Richard Lane, the museum's director of science, said the centre is an experiment both in communicating science to the public and in new ways of working for the museum's researchers. "We will have to wait and see if it inspires people," Lane says.


Read more in Nature's Darwin 200 special.The aim is to open up to the public those parts of the museum and its work that until now have been behind closed doors, says Lane.

A public exhibition gallery winds its way through the top three floors of Cocoon, with interactive displays that explain the museum's research, such as its project to analyse the DNA of the 3,500 species of mosquitoes.

Visitors can watch scientists at work in Cocoon's molecular biology lab through windows. They can also talk to staff in other departments through an intercom as they pin insects and press botany specimens. Peepholes in the walls expose the collection vaults. Video diaries from museum scientists in the field and computer games on preparing for a field trip give visitors a sense of what the scientists do outside the lab.

Futuristic facilities

"Science as a process needs to be understood, and we have a duty to broker this," says Johannes Vogel, head of the museum's botany department. Museum scientists are expected to spend 20% of their time on "corporate" activities, which could include public communication as well as sitting on committees, and 80% of their time on research.

The botany collections housed in Cocoon's new facilities are kept at a steady 17 °C and 45% relative humidity — optimum conditions for their preservation and for preventing beetle infestations from destroying them.

The old facilities had a lower-tech approach to controlling infections: sticky traps were placed along window sills to catch insects when scientists opened the windows in hot weather, says Lane.

The building is also designed to foster discussion and the exchange of ideas between scientists. Vogel says the museum scientists were at first resistant to the new layout and working ethos, which has moved away from its traditional structure of small teams working in isolation to larger, more flexible groups working side by side. "At first it was a culture shock, but once we moved in people really liked it," Vogel says.

The increase in available lab space also means researchers no longer have to fit their project into a designated working area but can request more space if they need it, says Lane. The labs can now also better accommodate the 8,000 or so overseas scientists that come to use the museum's collections each year, he adds.

Scott Miller, an entomologist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, has visited the new centre.
"It's certainly a spectacular building," he told Nature. "The cultural aspects of how staff respond will be very interesting to watch — it's designed along the lines of a university or biomedical lab, which is novel in the natural history museum world."

news20090910nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 9 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.893
News
Potato blight's gene weaponry revealed
Jumping genes may hold key to defeating mould that caused Irish famine.
By Emma Marris

{The genome of the potato blight pathogen has been sequenced.}

The blight that caused the infamous Irish potato famine of the 1840s has yielded its genetic secrets. An international team has sequenced the DNA of the microorganism that was to blame.

Phytophthora infestans, the water mould that causes late blight in potatoes, consumes and rots the leaves and tubers of the plant. The mould still afflicts potatoes, tomatoes and related plants, and costs farmers around the world an estimated $6.7 billion a year¹.

Now Chad Nusbaum, co-director of the Broad Institute's genome sequencing and analysis programme in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and co-workers from numerous labs in the United States and Europe have sequenced the pest, using techniques honed on other organisms, plus a few tweaks².

In doing so, they've identified a number of genes that might be responsible for the blight's destructive powers — and keys to its undoing.

Costly weapons

When comparing P. infestans with similar organisms in the same genus, stretches of the genome stood out as being highly variable, unusually large and full of transposons — sequences that make copies of themselves and jump around in the genome. The researchers believe that the transposons, which make up about 74% of this unusually unwieldy genome, code for the blight's 'weapons' against potatoes.

"That is an insane number. For microbes, 25% is a lot," says Nusbaum.

{“After taking 15 years to incorporate this resistance in a cultivar, it would take Phytophthora infestans only a couple of years to defeat it.”
John Bradshaw
Scottish Crop Research Institute}

The variability of these regions suggest that they are quickly evolving, perhaps as the blight and its targets evolve countermeasures against one another.

"The pathogen has learned to live with these transposable elements, which could be a problem [for it] because it is expensive to copy all this DNA," Nusbaum says. The mould could be using the transposons to maintain the diversity of its weapons arsenal, he suggests.

The sequence, Nusbaum adds, will provide "a comprehensive list of these weapons genes. Researchers can now give them the individual treatment that they deserve to figure out what they are doing."

The paper is published online today before its publication in print in Nature².

Battling blight

In the arms race between plant and pathogen, potatoes have long had an ally: human plant breeders, who have struggled to develop blight-resistant spuds. The breeders have been working in the genetic dark, however, not knowing exactly what genes they are promoting or what genetic changes keep the blight nimbly adapting to their new varieties.

"At the moment, the breeding strategy has been based on screening the wild relatives from the highlands of Mexico and parts of the Andes such as Bolivia that have resistance," says potato breeder John Bradshaw of the Scottish Crop Research Institute in Dundee, UK. "What has happened is after taking 15 years to incorporate this resistance in a cultivar, it would take Phytophthora infestans only a couple of years to defeat it."

But now that the sequence is complete, he says, plant pathologists will be working flat out on new strategies for breeders based on how the blight operates and its potential weaknesses. "With all this knowledge about how the pathogen attacks the host on the biochemical level, I would hope that some clever plant pathologist would be able to genetically engineer resistance."

References
1. Haverkort, A. J. et al. Potato Res. 51, 47-57 (2008). | Article
2. Hass, B. et al. Nature advance online publication, doi:10.1038/nature0835 (2009).

news20090910bb1

[One-Minute World News] from [BBC NEWS]

[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 07:10 GMT, Thursday, 10 September 2009 08:10 UK
Japan town continues dolphin hunt
A Japanese coastal town has gone ahead with its annual dolphin hunt, despite protests from animal rights activists.

Fishermen in Taiji caught about 100 bottlenose dolphins and 50 pilot whales - their first catch since the fishing season began on 1 September.

But in what appears to be a concession to international opinion, some of the dolphins will be released rather than killed and sold for meat.

The dolphin hunt was criticised in the recent award-winning film The Cove.

After the film's release earlier this year, the Australian coastal city of Broome ended its sister-city relationship with Taiji.

Way of life

Of the 100 dolphins caught in the hunt, 50 will be sold to aquariums nationwide and the rest will be returned to the ocean, officials from Wakayama prefecture said.

The whale meat will be sold for human consumption.

Hunting dolphins and small whales is legal under the terms of the International Whaling Commission's ban on commercial whaling, but many activists still object to the practice.

Dolphin and whale meat is seen as a delicacy in Japan, and Taiji residents say they have killed them for hundreds of years as part of their fishing lifestyle.


[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 11:16 GMT, Thursday, 10 September 2009 12:16 UK
Japan death row 'breeds insanity'
Prisoners on death row in Japan are being driven towards insanity by harsh conditions, according to human rights group Amnesty International.

{Criminal trials in Japan have more than a 99% conviction rate}

The group is calling for an immediate moratorium on all further executions and for police interrogation reform.

A total of 102 prisoners face execution in Japan. Many of them are elderly and have spent decades in near isolation.

International human rights standards prohibit the imposition of the death penalty on the mentally ill.

In Japan, where criminal trials have a 99% conviction rate, the death penalty has wide public support.

But Amnesty's UK director Kate Allen called on the government to immediately halt executions.

"Rather than persist with a shameful capital punishment system, the new Japanese government should immediately impose a moratorium on all further executions," she said.

Ms Allen called the death-row system a "regime of silence, isolation and sheer non-existence".

She said that the Japanese practice of informing prisoners that they would be killed with only a few hours notice was "utterly cruel".

Isolation

According to the report - which researchers said had been challenging to compile due to the secrecy of the country's justice system - the conditions faced by many death row prisoners are making them mentally ill.

{ JAPANESE EXECUTIONS
102 prisoners currently on death row
15 people executed last year
Hakamada Iwao has been on death row for more than 40 years
According to Amnesty, some death row prisoners have no visitors for years}

Death row prisoners, according to Amnesty, are not allowed to speak to other inmates and are held in isolation.

Apart from twice or thrice-weekly exercise sessions, they are not even allowed to move around their cells but must remain seated, the group says.

As a result, many are now suffering from mental illnesses and are delusional.

According to Japan's code of criminal procedure, if a person condemned to death is in a state of insanity, the execution shall be stayed by the justice minister.

But, Amnesty says, executions of inmates who exhibit signs of mental illness - caused by the extreme conditions and the sheer length of their detention - continue.

Between January 2006 and January 2009, the group says, 32 men were executed - including 17 who were older than 60. Five of this group were in their seventies, making them among the oldest executed prisoners in the world.


[Business]
Page last updated at 06:46 GMT, Thursday, 10 September 2009 07:46 UK
Australia agrees $60bn gas deal
US oil firm Chevron has signed $60bn (£36bn) worth of deals to supply natural gas to Japan and South Korea from its Gorgon project in Australia.

Chevron Australia said it would supply Osaka Gas with 1.375 million tonnes of natural gas a year over 25 years.

Tokyo Gas would receive 1.1 million tonnes and South Korea's GS Caltex would get 0.5 million tonnes.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd described the deals as a "shot in the arm" for the Australian economy.

Last month, PetroChina signed a deal to buy $50bn worth of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Gorgon - the largest trade deal in Australia's history.

Separately, India's Petronet signed a $25m deal.

Controversial site

Mr Rudd said the latest deals "will deliver in the order of A$70bn worth of exports to Australia over the next 25 years".

He told parliament it had been a "great month" for Australia's LNG export industry.

"These are massive projects that will generate economic growth, income, jobs and prosperity for the nation for decades to come.''

The yet-to-be-developed Gorgon gas field on Barrow Island off western Australia is expected to generate 6,000 jobs and make Australia a leading LNG supplier in the region.

But the A$50bn ($42bn; £25.6bn) project has met opposition from environmentalists as Barrow Island is home to a number of endangered, rare and endemic species.

Chevron and its partners in the project, Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil, are expected to give the go ahead for production in the coming weeks.


[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 09:39 GMT, Thursday, 10 September 2009 10:39 UK
Samoans stranded in road switch
Samoans reliant on bus travel have been stranded by the country's switch earlier this week to driving on the left of the road instead of the right.

{Bus owners are angry they will have to convert their vehicles}

All but about 18 of the Pacific island nation's buses are banned from driving because their doors now open onto the middle of the road.

Bus operators want state aid to modify their vehicles, but talks with the prime minister have so far failed.

Samoa is the first country to make such a change since the 1970s.

Reports from Samoa said there had been no accidents since the switch on Monday, despite widespread predictions of road mayhem from opponents.

Before the switchover, bus drivers had been reluctant to go to the expense of converting their vehicles.

"A few of the bus owners did not believe that we would proceed [with the change]," Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said after meeting a group of them on Wednesday.

He said was considering a request to grant them an extension of three to six months, so they could continue driving while completing the necessary modifications.

He said he would give an answer to their request on Thursday.

The Samoan government introduced the change to end its reliance on expensive, left-hand-drive imports from America.

It hopes that the large Samoan expatriate communities in Australia and New Zealand will now ship used, more affordable vehicles back to their homeland.

The change will also allow imports of used cars from Japan and Singapore.

news20090910bbc2

[One-Minute World News] from [BBC NEWS]

[South Asia]
Page last updated at 13:14 GMT, Thursday, 10 September 2009 14:14 UK
Afghan fraud ballots invalidated
The Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) has for the first time invalidated some ballots from the presidential election because of frau
d.

{Questions about the fairness of last month's vote have persisted}

It said that there was "clear and evidence of fraud" in a number of polling stations in the provinces Paktika, Kandahar and Ghazni.

Earlier this week results from 600 stations where there were suspected irregularities were "quarantined".

Correspondents say that there could now be months of arguments about the vote.

Afghanistan's second direct presidential election on 20 August was marred by low turnout and widespread allegations of vote-rigging, intimidation and other fraud.

According to partial results, Mr Karzai has passed the 50% mark, which means he does not have to face a second round run-off.

'Miscounted ballots'

Announcing the commission's decision, a statement on the ECC website said that all ballots in five polling stations in Paktika were invalidated.

In Ghazni the ECC ordered that ballots cast in 27 stations be invalidated, while in Kandahar ballots in 51 polling station were invalidated.

Afghanistan's 25,450 polling stations had 600-700 ballot papers each.

The ECC said in a statement that its investigations in Ghazni found "a number of indicators of fraud".

Those included unfolded ballots, votes for candidates inserted inside bundles for other candidates, miscounted ballots, missing material, uniformity of markings, seal numbers which did not match numbers on the record of seals and lists of voters with numerous fictitious card numbers, the statement said.

In Kandahar and Paktika the ECC said that "ballots were not legally cast, or were not legally counted".

The BBC's Chris Morris, in Kabul, says that although this is the first time any votes have been thrown out altogether there will be more to come.

A source at the ECC said this was just the start of a process, our correspondent says.

The organisation has received many complaints and has a large number of suspicious voting patterns to work through.

The whole process could take weeks or even months, some have suggested.

Fifteen of the polling stations invalidated by the ECC are in one Kandahar district from which the BBC reported widespread fraud allegations in the aftermath of the election, our correspondent reports.

The ECC's move follows complaints earlier on Thursday by Abdullah Abdullah, the main challenger in the election, who said that the count was being manipulated by President Karzai.

Speaking exclusively to the BBC, Mr Abdullah said the election commission was on the president's side.


[Business]
Page last updated at 13:40 GMT, Thursday, 10 September 2009 14:40 UK
Opel and Vauxhall to go to Magna
General Motors (GM) has chosen the Canadian car parts manufacturer Magna to buy Opel and sister firm Vauxhall, German Chancellor Angela Merkel says.

{Opel and Vauxhall employ 54,500 people in Europe}

But full details of the terms of the sale have yet to be released.

Earlier, there had been rumours that GM could be planning to try to keep control of its European arm.

Magna was the German government's preferred bidder. The decision must be approved by the Opel Trust, which is due to hold a press conference shortly.

Magna has pledged to keep all German plants open.

"I am very pleased about the decision that's been made and it is along the lines that the federal government has been advocating," Chancellor Merkel said.

"But it's also along the lines that the employers and the employees of Opel wanted."

Rival offer

BBC business correspondent Martin Shankleman said that this was the option that the GM board appeared to be resisting.

The UK unions were also against it as they feared the UK could be at the forefront of any job losses, he said.

UK unions favoured GM keeping control of Vauxhall - saying this would be the best news for British jobs.

Chancellor Merkel said that "patience" during discussions had led to a decision being reached.

The German-led Opel Trust has controlled the European operations since GM sought bankruptcy protection in the US.

It contains representatives from GM, the German federal government and the German states that contain Opel plants.

The rival offer came from the Belgian investment group RHJ.

Opel employs a total of 54,500 workers across Europe, with 25,000 based in Germany.

Its Vauxhall brand employs 5,500 people in the UK, primarily at its two British plants in Luton and Ellesmere Port.

GM in the US emerged from 40 days of bankruptcy protection in July, based on a plan involving disposing of many of its brands. It is now 61% owned by the US government.


[Europe]
Page last updated at 12:00 GMT, Thursday, 10 September 2009 13:00 UK
France set to impose carbon tax
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced plans for a new carbon tax aimed at combating global warming.

{Mr Sarkozy says the French must cut their energy consumption}

The tax will be introduced next year and will cover the use of oil, gas and coal, he said.

The new tax will be 17 euros (£15) per tonne of emitted carbon dioxide (CO2). It will be phased in gradually.

It will apply to households as well as enterprises, but not to the heavy industries and power firms included in the EU's emissions trading scheme.

Most electricity in France - excluded from the new carbon tax - is nuclear generated.

Mr Sarkozy said revenues from the new tax would be ploughed back into taxpayers' pockets through cuts in other taxes and "green cheques".

The carbon tax plans have already encountered stiff opposition across the political spectrum.

France's Le Monde newspaper says the tax will cover 70% of the country's carbon emissions and bring in about 4.3bn euros (£3.8bn) of revenue annually.

Mr Sarkozy insists the new tax is all about persuading the French to change their habits and cut energy consumption, the BBC's Emma Jane Kirby reports from Paris.

Critics say it is just a ploy to boost ailing state finances.

Two-thirds of French voters say they are opposed to the new levy, fearing they will struggle to pay higher bills.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon had previously set the new tax rate at 14 euros per tonne of CO2.