news20100120jt1

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[BUSINESS NEWS]
Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010
JAL files for bankruptcy in record failure
¥2 trillion in debt; carrier awaits reconstruction
By KAZUAKI NAGATA
Staff writer

Japan Airlines Corp. filed for bankruptcy Tuesday under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law in the biggest nonfinancial corporate failure in the postwar period.

The country's flagship carrier is expected to continue flying and honor tickets with government assurances for lifeline funds, while undergoing a three-year rehabilitation process that is expected to entail massive cuts in jobs and in unprofitable routes, both domestic and international.

The airline's debts are estimated at ¥2.3 trillion.

JAL President Haruka Nishimatsu resigned to take responsibility for the airline's failure.

"Today, the government, creditor banks, shareholders and Japanese people have given us a last chance (to reconstruct the company)," Nishimatsu said.

The government-backed Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp. of Japan will lead JAL's restructuring, and Kyocera Corp. founder Kazuo Inamori will be the carrier's new CEO.

ETIC officially declared it will resurrect JAL under court-supervised rehabilitation that will involve massive public funds.

"JAL plays a key role in our nation's aviation network, which is a development base of our nation, so needed supports will be provided until it will be reconstructed," transport minister Seiji Maehara said.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama also pledged the government's help.

"What's most important is that all people who are working (for the airline) devote all their energies toward its restructuring," Hatoyama said after the company filed for bankruptcy protection with the Tokyo District Court. "On that premise, the government will support their efforts" so that people can fly on a JAL plane whenever they wish to do so, he said.

JAL held a special board meeting in the afternoon and later filed for protection from creditors along with two key subsidiaries — Japan Airlines International Co. and JAL Capital Co.

The court appointed lawyer Eiji Katayama and ETIC as trustees who will be responsible for drafting and carrying out the reconstruction plan. All top JAL executives will be stepping down, and the new management team is expected to be organized in the beginning of February.

ETIC is planing to cut 15,661 jobs, or about 30 percent of JAL's workforce, by the business year ending in March 2013, and terminating 31 routes. It also plans to sell about half of the airline's affiliate companies, especially those engaged in the hotel and travel businesses, and concentrate on its core airline business.

Meanwhile, the Tokyo Stock Exchange announced that JAL shares will be delisted Feb. 20. JAL's share price dropped to ¥3 at one point during Tuesday trading before closing at ¥5.

Information from Kyodo added


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010
Ozawa ready for once-over by prosecutors
Negotiations under way for date of questioning
Kyodo News

Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa and prosecutors have begun arranging a date for him to undergo voluntary questioning over allegations that his fund management body failed to report money used to buy land in Tokyo in 2004, sources close to the case said Tuesday.

In a related development, the prosecutors have apparently confirmed that about ¥300 million was withdrawn about 10 years ago from Ozawa's account at a trust bank to which Ozawa says he had entrusted the money used for the land purchase, the sources said.

The prosecutors are expected to ask Ozawa to elaborate on such points as where he kept the ¥300 million until 2004, where he got the remaining ¥50 million or so needed to buy the land and how he can explain the differences in accounts with his former secretary, who was arrested last week.

While the prosecutors suspect the money used for the land deal included illegal donations, Ozawa said at the DPJ's annual convention Saturday he used funds he had personally accumulated and that he had told investigators the name of the trust bank's branch to which he had entrusted the money.

Ozawa's fund management body, called Rikuzankai, purchased land in Setagaya Ward, Tokyo, for about ¥352 million on Oct. 29, 2004. The money was not properly registered in the body's 2004 fund report.

DPJ lawmaker Tomohiro Ishikawa, who was arrested Friday as one of Ozawa's private secretaries at the time in charge of the land purchase, has told the prosecutors the money used to buy the land came from \400 million borrowed from Ozawa, according to investigative sources.

Ishikawa's lawyer also said the resources for the land deal, stemming from funds Ozawa inherited from his father, had been in a trust bank and withdrawn about 10 years ago.

As part of efforts to clarify the flow of funds in the land deal, the prosecutors on Tuesday searched medium-size construction companies involved in subcontracts for a project to build a dam in the city of Oshu, Ozawa's district in Iwate Prefecture, investigative sources said.

The contractors include Yamazaki Construction Co. in Tokyo and Miyamotogumi Co. in Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010
Hatoyama praises security pact deterrence on 50th anniversary
By MASAMI ITO
Staff writer

Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the revised Japanese-U.S. security treaty, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on Tuesday praised the pact for maintaining Asia-Pacific peace and stressed that U.S. forces here have been and will continue to be a deterrent amid uncertain times.

The past 50 years have witnessed significant changes, but the world continues to face danger, Hatoyama said, citing the rise of terrorism after the 9/11 attacks and Pyongyang's nuclear and missile threats.

"It can be said that the Japan-U.S. security pact will continue to be indispensable not only for our nation's defense but also for the peace and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region," he said in a prepared statement.

"Under the security environment, which continues to have unstable and uncertain factors, I think that the presence of the U.S. military based on the Japan-U.S. security treaty will continue to serve (the public good) by giving a great sense of security to the countries in the region."

Hatoyama said Japan will work with the U.S. to deepen the bilateral alliance and present the results of the discussion to the public before the end of the year.

The original security pact was signed by Tokyo and Washington in 1951 but was revised in 1960 to correct an imbalance and erase a clause permitting the U.S. to intervene against "large-scale internal riots and disturbances in Japan."

The current treaty also clarifies the U.S. role in defending Japan if it is under attack and enables the U.S. forces to use "facilities and areas in Japan."

Later in the day, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates issued a joint statement vowing to lessen the military burden on Okinawa but not the deterrence capacity of the U.S. forces.

The ministers "endorse ongoing efforts to maintain our deterrent capabilities in a changing strategic landscape, including appropriate stationing of U.S. forces, while reducing the impact of bases on local communities, including Okinawa, thereby strengthening security and ensuring the alliance remains the anchor of regional stability," the statement said.

Okinawa is home to 75 percent of all U.S. forces in Japan and people there have repeatedly urged the central government to reduce the burden.

news20100120jt2

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[EDUCATION AND BILINGUAL]
Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010
BILINGUAL
'New' hope, anxiety in Japan's Kanji of the Year
By MARY SISK NOGUCHI

As the first decade of the 21st century drew to a close, the Japanese Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation conducted its 15th annual Kanji of the Year poll, inviting the nation to decide which single kanji best symbolized 2009.

Until the call for votes went out, kanji aficionados had been biting their nails over whether this year's poll would be held — uncertain due to the indictment last May of the nonprofit foundation's former director and his son on charges of incurring huge losses in order to benefit their family businesses. But on Dec. 11, the chief priest of Kiyomizu Temple — apparently satisfied that a revamped foundation would no longer be involved in kanji criminal capers — announced the winner in the usual fashion, in bold strokes on a huge sheet of paper set up at the temple.

A record 161,000 participants voted this year. Some poll watchers had pegged 民 (MIN, citizen) as a shoo-in to win, based on the top domestic news event of 2009: the landslide Lower House victory in late August of the Democratic Party of Japan (民主党, Minshutou, citizen/master/political party) over the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). But 民 ended up in the No. 7 position, edging out No. 8, 鳩 (hato, pigeon), the first kanji in the family name of the new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama (鳩山, pigeon/mountain).

The jolt the nation felt when half a century of majority rule by the LDP was terminated was also memorialized in a number of other top-10 finishers: No. 6, 変 ( kaeru, change), No. 5, 改 (aratameru, reform), and No. 3, 政 (SEI, "government" — the first kanji in compound words 政党 [seitou, political party] and 政治 [seiji, politics]). The combination of 政 with 権 (KEN, power to rule), No. 10 交 (KOU, exchange) and No. 9 代 (TAI, substitute) forms the four-kanji compound 政権交代 (seiken koutai, regime change), announced last month as the winner of the 2009 Shingo-Ryuukougo Taishou (New Popular Word Grand Prize).

The No. 2 vote-getter in the Kanji of the Year poll, 病 (BYOU, sickness), reflected a national obsession with the spread of H1N1 influenza, beginning last spring with thousands of school closings as the first cases were confirmed — and continuing now with a snow-white sea of face masks blanketing the archipelago.

A shortage of H1N1 vaccine and a government ban on teens taking Tamiflu were flu-related events cited for the choice of No. 4, 薬 (kusuri, drugs). Other 2009 news events related to 薬 were the rash of entertainers arrested for possession of illegal drugs, the government decision to allow retail outlets to sell over-the-counter drugs (resulting in slashed prices), and the "too much cold medicine" excuse offered by now-deceased Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa to explain his slurred answers at a Group of Seven news conference in February.

And what was the Grand Kanji Champion of 2009? The top vote-getter, chosen by 9 percent of poll participants, was 新 (SHIN/atarashii, meaning "new"). The DPJ victory (新政権誕生, shinseiken tanjou, new regime's birth) and H1N1 flu (新型インフルエンザ, shingata infuruenza, new-type influenza) gave steam to 新. But a variety of groundbreaking policies and programs introduced last year also contributed to its victory: the new lay-judge system, tax breaks for eco-friendly cars and major cuts in weekend highway tolls. Finally, a new American Major League Baseball record set in September by favorite-son export Ichiro Suzuki — nine consecutive 200-hit seasons — made a deep impression even among marginal baseball fans.

A 48-year-old male poll participant summed up the ambivalent mood of the nation as it bid goodbye to one decade and prepared to face the challenges of the next: "I chose 新 because 2009 was a year mixed with hope for — and fear of — new things."

Quiz:

Match each of the following kanji with the year it was Kanji of the Year. A major news event for each year is provided as a hint.

1. 偽 (fake, nise)
2. 命 (life, inochi)
3. 変 (change, HEN)
4. 新 (new, atarashii)
5. 帰 (return, kaeru)
6. 愛 (love, AI)
7. 戦 (war, SEN)
8. 金 (gold, KIN)
9. 災 (disaster, SAI)
10. 虎 (tiger, tora)

a. 2000 (Japanese athletes took medals at the Sydney Olympics)
b. 2001 (Sept. 11 terrorist attacks)
c. 2002 (five Japanese abducted to North Korea returned to Japan)
d. 2003 (an Osaka baseball team became Central League champs)
e. 2004 (a record-breaking 10 typhoons hit the Japanese mainland)
f. 2005 (Emperor Akihito's only daughter married a commoner)
g. 2006 (the first boy was born into the Imperial family in 40 years)
h. 2007 (scandals involving falsified food labels/ingredients erupted)
i. 2008 (the U.S. sub-prime loan crisis rocked the world economy)
j. 2009 (DPJ defeated the LDP in Lower House elections)

ANSWERS:
1. h
2. g
3. i
4. j
5. c
6. f
7. b
8. a
9. e
10. d

Explore kanji-learning materials utilizing component analysis at www.kanjiclinic.com


[COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY NEWS]
Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010
IGADGET
Buffalo dock serves dual purpose; Panasonic's compact cam
By PETER CROOKES

Dock 'n' lock: Innovation and iPods go hand in hand, but the creativity rarely extends to iPod docks. Buffalo bucks that trend in the form of its unusual HDD Dualie. In essence, this is a standard docking station paired with a 500-gigabyte hard disk. Unlike run-of- the-mill iPod docks, the Dualie does not come with speakers to provide a better listening experience for your iPod. Instead, when the Dualie is connected to a computer via USB 2.0, FireWire 400 or 800 cables it allows the user to recharge their iPod and to sync it with the computer. The secondary purpose for this is to serve as a backup hard drive for the computer. Interestingly, the hard disk is formatted to work with Apple Mac computers out of the box and requires some work to pair with a PC. The hard disk is primed to work with Apple's Time Machine backup program.

The dock has all the necessary adapters enabling it to be used with the iPhones, iPod touch, iPod Classic and the fifth-generation Nano. A smart-looking device, it comes in a brushed aluminum and black soft touch, two-tone finish. The dock measures 6.9 × 10 × 9.7 cm and weighs 410 grams with the hard drive's dimensions being 13.2 × 8.4 × 2 cm with a weight of 230 grams. Despite Buffalo's credentials as a Japanese company, the Dualie will go on sale in the United States first (late this month, at a price of around $250) and will be sold solely through the Apple store. It hits the European market next month. Buffalo expects to announce a release date and pricing for Japan soon.

Shoppers looking primarily to augment the audio abilities of their iPod aren't going to give the Dualie a first perusal, there are plenty of options for them. But somebody looking for a convenient means of backing up their iPod, and boosting the storage of their computer, should keep an eye out for the Dualie's move into Japan, which Buffalo lauds as the only combination iPod docking/storage device. Hopefully it will arrive here at a price south of ¥30,000. www.buffalotech.com/products/external-storage/dualie/dualie/

Compact camcorder: High-definition camcorders are stepping on the heels of their TV counterparts in the rush to market. Panasonic is aiming for high sales with a set of new HD camcorders that combine ease of use with technical features. The prime member of the group is the HDC-HS60, which combines 160 gigabytes of internal memory with the ability to use SDXC, SDHC or SD memory cards for additional storage. Apart from recording in full HD, the other key selling points are an improved image- stabilization system, intelligent automatic zoom, face-recognition system, touch-screen operation, eco-friendly low-power mode and wind- noise canceler. The idea of the intelligent zoom is to extend the camcorder's 25× optical zoom out to 35× by automatically correcting the picture as it goes beyond the 25× limit. The face recognition can focus on up to six faces at once and the trendy 2.7-inch touch screen is intended to make using the camcorder an easy experience. The eco-mode powers down the device if it isn't used for five minutes, saving the battery. The wind-noise trick seems to be just that, removing the effects of wind noise. While this might be useful in a gale, just how effective and necessary it might be is debatable.

In what used to be the center of an optical device, the lens, Panasonic has set it up nicely with a wide-angle lens that operates in the prodigious range of 36-893 mm, with a good-for-low-light F1.8 at the wide end to F3.3 at the tele end. The lens is paired with a 3.3-megapixel sensor. One final inducement for the gadget is its svelte dimensions, tipping the scales at 330 grams, sans battery. It also measures a hand-held-suitable 54.5 × 65.5 × 112 mm. The HDC-HS60 will cost a reasonable ¥99,800 when it comes on the market next month.

Whether the benefits of HD over standard justify the greater expense compared to other camcorders is a personal choice. Those who still favor an optical viewfinder will also not admire the Panasonic product, although it is an attractively small package. panasonic.jp/dvc/

news20100120jt3

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY NEWS]
Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010
TECHNOLOGY
Apple may wipe slate clean with new tablet
By JESSICA MINTZ

SEATTLE (AP) Apple has a knack for spotting problems we didn't know we had. It can leave us wondering how we survived without vast libraries of music in our pockets or the comfort of knowing "there's an app for that."

Now, speculation is running rampant that Apple will unveil a tablet-style touch-screen computer at an event it's holding on Jan. 27. The rumored tablet is bigger than an iPhone but smaller than a standard laptop, and if it's Apple's next move — the company won't comment — it would have to show us why we ought to pay for yet another Internet-connected screen on top of the TVs, computers and smartphones we already have.

Tablets, also called slates, are one-piece computers with big screens and no keyboards, though some models can convert from a regular laptop to a tablet by flipping the screen around to hide a keyboard.

Such devices have been around since the early 1990s, including one from Toshiba Corp. that weighed 1.5 kg and cost about $3,500. But tablets haven't seen much success in the mainstream. At the peak in 2007, manufacturers shipped about 1.5 million tablets worldwide — less than 1 percent of the personal computers shipped that year, according to Massachusetts-based research firm IDC. Only about one-third of those tablets were for consumers. The rest were used in specialized settings such as doctors' offices or warehouses.

Bill Gates, cofounder of Apple nemesis Microsoft Corp., predicted repeatedly during the 2000s that tablets were about to take off. He was wrong because those tablets required people to use a pen-shaped stylus to tap buttons or write on the screen, which was attractive in workplaces where employees needed to check boxes or fill out forms. For most people, though, using a stylus for regular computer tasks such as editing a spreadsheet was more cumbersome than using a mouse and keyboard.

No one has given up on tablet computers running Windows; several cropped up last week at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, including prototypes from Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc.

But it seems it will be Apple CEO Steve Jobs who swoops in with a tablet that takes advantage of recent technology improvements and garners the most buzz.

Dell and HP didn't present a retail-ready tablet because the companies want to be able to adjust if Apple's vision turns out to be radically different, says computer industry analyst Roger Kay of Massachusetts-based Endpoint Technologies Associates.

"If Apple blows it out of the park, we know that that's what the space is going to look like for a while," he says.

While older tablets weren't pitched as Internet-surfing devices, modern ones will be able to take advantage of near-ubiquitous wireless Internet access, as well as our growing willingness to pay for monthly data plans for smartphones and little netbooks.

Touch screens and the underlying software are also dramatically better today, and we've got used to pinching, swiping and using on-screen keyboards thanks to the popularity of Apple's iPhone.

And gadgets — especially ones made by Apple — are thinner and sleeker all the time, making them more portable than clunky early tablets.

We've seen this happen before: Portable music players and "smart" phones had existed before the iPod and the iPhone came along, and yet it was Apple that redefined those categories.

Still, an Apple tablet could have a harder time becoming a mainstream success than those gadgets, if only because there is not necessarily a compelling reason for one.

In the absence of confirmation from Apple, analysts have many guesses about how Jobs would position an Apple tablet. Some think it will simply be an oversized iPod Touch, a music player that is also used to view movies, family photos and other content on the go. Others believe Apple is building the tablet with an eye to the burgeoning electronic book market (even though Jobs said in 2008 that "people don't read anymore"). Still others position it as a companion screen to use while watching television — the tablet would deliver information related to the program airing on the TV.

But the mechanics of the human body may be stronger than Jobs' charisma. We tolerate devices like smartphones with their tiny screens and awkward keyboards because they're fine for what we need them for — quick, on-the-go reading and messaging. As soon as the screen gets bigger, though, people tend to start wanting to do more with the device, such as typing longer missives, says Mark Rolston, chief creative officer for Frog Design, a firm that designed one of Apple's first computers. At that point, the limitations of small screens and the lack of a real keyboard could be intolerable, and people would move up a rung to a small laptop.

Jon Gibs, vice president for media insight at media research firm The Nielsen Co., says he can't think of a situation in which a tablet screen would be the best one for watching video. At home, the TV is the more natural choice, while on the go, a pocket-size iPhone would be more convenient.

Rolston believes Apple won't market a tablet as a replacement for a workhorse laptop. Instead, Jobs will describe a limited set of uses for the device at first, Rolston says, and later Apple may broaden how it advertises the tablet. He pointed to the way the iPhone evolved from easy-to-use phone to multipurpose pocket computer a year after its debut with the advent of the App Store, which sells add-on software of all sorts.

Some of the biggest hopes for tablets are bubbling in media companies that have failed to capture enough advertising on the Internet and now crave a new way to sell interactive content. Something like Apple's iTunes program, which lets people buy songs, TV shows and movies to put on their iPods and iPhones, could be used to distribute newspaper and magazine stories or TV programming on a tablet.

Already publishers are flocking to e-book readers such as Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle, but photo and graphics-rich magazines and video or multimedia installments from newspapers don't look very good on the e-readers' black, white and gray "e-ink" screens.

A tablet with a color screen, however, could create new opportunities. Sports Illustrated published a video online of a tablet-based digital magazine that lets readers glide through content, jump from a single photo to an entire gallery, view features and ads with embedded video segments, and play games on the tablet that tie into sporting events on TV.

Wired magazine is working on a made-for-tablet edition. While the business model isn't final, Wired will likely charge a subscription fee for some or all of the tablet version, says Editor in Chief Chris Anderson.

Smartphone screens are too small for long-form reading and high design, while PC screens require people to lean in across the keyboard to read. A tablet would have both the intimacy and the screen real estate to approximate a magazine experience, Anderson says.

"We decided this was the big one," Anderson says.

If a tablet doesn't replace a laptop or any other gadget, it would have to be inexpensive enough to feel like an accessory, not an investment. And yet it might also have to come with a speedy cellular-data plan to ensure people can access content everywhere. That could mean paying at least another $30 a month on top of what people shell out for cell phone, TV and broadband service.

Kay thinks many people would still likely be interested.

"For this jewel-encrusted status symbol," he says, "the answer is absolutely yes."

news20100120gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Glaciers]
IPCC officials admit mistake over melting Himalayan glaciers
Senior members of the UN's climate science body admit a claim that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035 was unfounded
Damian Carrington and Ian Wylie
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 January 2010 12.41 GMT Article history

Senior members of the UN's climate science body, including the vice-chair, have admitted that a claim made in 2007 that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035 was unfounded.

The admission last night followed a New Scientist article last week that revealed the source of the claim made in a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was not the peer-reviewed scientific literature – but a media interview with a scientist conducted in 1999. Several senior scientists have now said the claim was unrealistic and that the large Himalayan glaciers could not melt in a few decades.

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chair of the IPCC, said the inclusion of the claim was an error and would be reviewed. He added that the mistake did nothing to undermine the large body of evidence that showed the climate was warming and that human activity was largely to blame. He told BBC News: "I don't see how one mistake in a 3,000-page report can damage the credibility of the overall report. Some people will attempt to use it to damage the credibility of the IPCC, but if we can uncover it, and explain it and change it, it should strengthen the IPCC's credibility, showing that we are ready to learn from our mistakes."

Van Ypersele's assessment was echoed by Chris Field, a co-chair of an IPCC working group. "The origin of that material has not been traced through to its source with a high level of confidence. Based on the evidence we've seen, the estimated data comes from reports that are more like news reports rather than from a primary scientific literature."

The IPCC climate scientists began reviewing the claim on Monday with the chair of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, saying: "We are looking into the issue of the Himalayan glaciers, and will take a position on it in the next two or three days." He has made no further comment on the issue but yesterday, at an energy conference in Abu Dhabi, he responded to British newspaper articles criticising his chairmanship of the IPCC. "They can't attack the science so they attack the chairman. But they won't sink me. I am the unsinkable Molly Brown. In fact, I will float much higher," he told the Guardian.

The Indian environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, said earlier in the week: "The [glaciers] are indeed receding and the rate is cause for great concern … [but the claim is] not based on an iota of scientific evidence."

The Indian government criticised the IPCC's glaciers claim in November at the launch of its own discussion paper, written by geologist Vijay Kumar Raina, which admitted that while some glaciers in the Himalayas were retreating, it was "nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to suggest as some have said that they will disappear."

At the time, the chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, dismissed the report as not peer-reviewed and said: "With the greatest of respect this guy retired years ago and I find it totally baffling that he comes out and throws out everything that has been established years ago."

Georg Kaser, an expert in tropical glaciology at the University of Innsbruck in Austria and a lead author for the IPCC, said he had warned that the 2035 prediction was clearly wrong in 2006, months before the report was published. "This [date] is not just a little bit wrong, but far out of any order of magnitude," he said.

"All the responsible people are aware of this weakness in the fourth assessment. All are aware of the mistakes made," he said. "If it had not been the focus of so much public opinion, we would have said 'we will do better next time'. It is clear now that working group II has to be restructured."

The reports of the IPCC collate the work of thousands of scientists and are assessed through a process of peer-review and then approved by the 192 governments who are members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Its work is seen as the most comprehensive account of global warming.

The row centres on the IPCC's "fourth assessment" report in 2007, which said "glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate." The claim appears in the full report, but not in the more widely read "Summary for policymakers".

The claim was attributed to a report by the campaign group WWF, but in the New Scientist article, Guardian writer Fred Pearce noted that WWF had cited a 1999 interview in the magazine with Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain as the source of the claim. Hasnain told the magazine last week that "it is not proper for IPCC to include references from popular magazines or newspapers".


[Environment > Birds]
Police to investigate new bird-of-prey poisoning case in Angus glens
Fresh case of sea eagle poisoning with banned pesticide suspected on investment banker's Scottish estate
Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 January 2010 11.36 GMT Article histo
ry

Tayside police said today they are investigating a further suspected attack on birds of prey in the Angus glens near Dundee, after a sea eagle was found poisoned by an illegal chemical last year.

The sea eagle was killed with carbofuran, a banned pesticidenotorious for its fatal effects on wildlife, just over a year after it had been released in Fife as part of a government-backed sea eagle reintroduction programme.

The bird was one of 15 that had been donated by the Norwegian government and were welcomed to Scotland in person by the then environment minister Mike Russell.

It was found in August on the Glenogil estate near Forfar. Glenogil has been involved in a series of police raids and investigations into suspected persecution of birds of prey after the discovery of several dead birds and a number of baits contaminated with toxic chemicals on the estate.

No estate employee has been charged or prosecuted, and its owner, John Dodd, an Edinburgh-based investment banker, insists his staff are innocent of any wildlife offences.

Birds of prey are typically poisoned to preserve stocks of animals for hunting and shooting purposes.

Dodd is currently contesting a decision in 2008 by the Scottish government to dock £107,000 – the highest penalty of its type ever imposed – from his agricultural subsidies for allegedly failing to properly protect wildlife on his estate.

The bird, which had been radio tagged and was known as A989, was part of a group of 100 sea eagles which have been released or are due to be released in Scotland as part of a five-year introduction programme. Naturalists say the bird was persecuted to extinction in Scotland about 150 years ago.

Tayside police say many of the 100 sea eagles so far released in Scotland had thrived, but added that "there have been several serious incidences of wildlife crime involving this species in Tayside. The poisoned bird is likely to have ingested bait laced with banned agricultural pesticides that were deliberately set out."

Detective inspector Ally Waghorn, who is leading the investigation, said: "It is an absolute disgrace that the use of pesticides to kill what are seen by some as pest species continues in Scotland. There is also a real risk to any hill walker who might encounter and handle poisoned bait. I'd appeal to anyone who has any information about the incident, or any other illegal use of pesticides against wildlife, to contact the police."

Dodd's legal representatives have been approached for comment, but had not responded in time for this article.

news20100120gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Pollution]
Health fears over Chinese villagers clearing up toxic rocket debris
Hydrazines may cause respiratory problems, nausea and organ damage as 2,000 villagers recruited to clear up in Guangxi

Jonathan Watts
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 January 2010 17.28 GMT Article history

Questions are being asked about the environmental health impact of China's space programme amid allegations that thousands of villagers are being recruited to clear up booster rockets and other toxic debris.

According to the South China Morning Post, residents below the flight path of last Sunday's satellite launch were under financial and political pressure to collect the first-stage fallout of the Long March rocket, despite warnings of contamination by the carcinogenic rocket fuel, unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine, or UDMH.

The Hong Kong-based newspaper said the scavengers in Guangxi province were rewarded with a finders fee if they found pieces of fuselage or other items, and that the local Communist party had made retrieval a political mission.

"Many times the debris drops in a remote location in some deep forest," it quoted a member of the Civilian Air Defence in Guizhou saying. "There is no way to retrieve it with machines. We have no other choice but to rely on the hands and shoulders of farmers to transport debris to a more accessible location."

Hydrazines, which are used as a starter fuel, are highly toxic and can be absorbed through the skin. At low levels, they can induce respiratory problems and nausea. Prolonged exposure to larger quantities can damage the liver and reproductive organs, as well as causing tumours. Concerns about similar chemicals were one of the reasons why people were warned not to approach debris from the space shuttle Columbia after it exploded above Texas.

Officials in Guangxi were unavailable when the Guardian requested clarification of the clean-up measures, but the People's Daily has carried images of giant chunks of debris that landed in and around villages in the area.

According to the China News Agency, hunks of metal damaged a government office in Dadi town, fell into the kitchen of a local home and started small fires in the mountain forests near Renhe and Xiaoshui villages. It said 100,000 people had been evacuated before the launch, 2,000 personnel had been mobilised for the clear-up and compensation would be paid to farmers whose land was destroyed.

It did not specifically mention involvement by villagers in retrieving the debris, but said communist cadres and "civilian volunteer soldiers" played an important role in the operation.

More than 50 similar clear-up missions have been undertaken in the past despite calls for the launch area to be relocated away from such a densely populated area. The fallout area covers seven cities, 19 counties and more than 2 million people

Jiang Jianmin, Communist party chief of the Guizhou Civilian Air Defence Office told reporters last month that the military had handed over retrieval duties in 1987.

"The boosters and debris weigh up to several tonnes and fall from height of tens of thousands of meters. The power is just like a bomb," he told the Guizhou Daily. "We use civilian volunteer soldiers to patrol the area. Their job is to keep watch and make sure everyone have been evacuated, to look out for falling objects, fires and to listen for the explosion when the boosters start to fall from rocket."

news20100120nn1

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 20 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.17
News
NIH scrutinizes drug-company payments at Baylor
Funding agency raises 'serious concerns' about conflicts of interest.
Brendan Borrell

{{Baylor College of Medicine is revising its conflict-of-interest policy after NIH intervention.}
Baylor College of Medicine}

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, are facing increased scrutiny of their grants by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) following revelations that the university was not complying with the agency's financial conflict-of-interest policy.

It is only the second time that the NIH has ever taken such an action against a university. In 2008, the agency placed additional conditions on grants to Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

The NIH has struggled with conflict-of-interest issues since 2003, when The Los Angeles Times reported a pattern of financial conflicts of interest among its employees, which later triggered a congressional investigation. More recently, Senator Charles Grassley (Republican, Iowa) has been probing the agency's failure to police university-based grantees who fail to report payments from drug companies for consultancy work or for promoting drugs in talks to colleagues. His investigation into US$1.2 million in undisclosed payments to Emory psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff, for instance, led to the NIH suspending the university's $9.3-million clinical trial for depression, and requiring all grant applications from Emory to include details of investigators' financial conflicts.

The latest development at Baylor College of Medicine was sparked by an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education on 25 October 2009, which reported on payments that drug-maker Merck & Company, based in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, had made to physicians to promote its anti-cholesterol drug Vytorin (ezetimibe and simvastatin) in 2007 and 2008. Prodded by Grassley, the NIH examined allegations related to Baylor cardiologist Christie Ballantyne.

Ballantyne, who declined to be interviewed by Nature for this article, has several NIH grants and had disclosed to Baylor the payments of more than $34,000 he received from Merck over five months, according to a later article in The Chronicle of Higher Education. But Baylor's own conflict-of-interest rules suggested that there was no need to disclose those payments to the NIH. The university now says that its rules did not comply with NIH policies.

{{“It seems pretty clear that the whole system for 'managing' conflicts and reporting financial ties has been very lax.”}
Charles Grassley
Republican, Iowa}

The NIH reviewed the matter, and on 17 December asked Baylor to conduct a review of financial disclosures from 2004 to the present. The agency also placed special conditions on Baylor grantees, requiring assurance letters and documentation that all new grants are in compliance with NIH policies. In a letter from NIH director Francis Collins to Grassley dated 14 January 2010, Collins writes that Baylor's response to the agency has "raised serious concerns" and that "NIH has imposed special award conditions on all BCM [Baylor College of Medicine] grant awards until BCM can assure the NIH that the detected deficiencies …have been appropriately addressed." Baylor spokeswoman Lori Williams says that the university has begun recrafting its policies to comply with the current NIH standards, which NIH first put in place in 1995.

"It seems pretty clear that the whole system for 'managing' conflicts and reporting financial ties has been very lax," Grassley said in a statement to Nature. "I've been urging the National Institutes of Health to flex its muscle and send a clear message to the grantee community that those days are over."

Not alone

Several NIH-funded researchers at Baylor told Nature that they had received e-mails from the university administration requesting financial disclosures on 23 December, but they were unaware that the NIH had singled out their institution. "It doesn't surprise me when the NIH keeps asking for paperwork, we get that all the time," says Baylor immunologist Tony Eissa. "We have other problems to worry about at Baylor," he added, referring to the institution's financial troubles and its struggle to build its own hospital after severing ties with The Methodist Hospital in Houston in 2004. Baylor received $213 million of NIH funding in 2008.

The NIH action at Baylor comes at a time when the agency is considering tightening the leash on university-based researchers by lowering its annual disclosure threshold of $10,000. Above this threshold, a payment from a single company to an NIH-funded researcher is considered significant enough to be reported as a potential conflict.

In May 2009, the agency began a public consultation on updating those rules, which are expected to change this spring. The Association of American Medical Colleges, based in Washington DC, has suggested that the bar for disclosure to the NIH should be lowered to $5,000, and that all payments should be disclosed to the investigator's institution regardless of the payment size.

"This is another example of the impact that Senator Grassley and his investigations are having," says cardiologist Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, who is a frequent critic of drug-company payments to physicians. "It's not an issue that affects only Baylor, but I am certain there are other examples," he adds.

Indeed, the NIH is also looking into whether the University of California at Davis, Sacramento, properly handled the potential conflict of interest related to cardiologist Ishwarlal Jialal, who is also mentioned in the article in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Jialal, who served on Merck's advisory board and is also editor-in-chief of the journal Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders, says that he never received more than $10,000 from Merck in a single year and that he has always disclosed that to the university.

news20100120nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 20 January 2010 | Nature 463, 282 (2010) | doi:10.1038/463282a
News
'Big science' spurs collaborative trend
Complicated projects mean that science is becoming more globalized.
Eric Hand

It has never been a more fruitful time for collaborations with foreign scientists, and the European Union (EU) is leading the pack. Spurred by funding policies, half of EU research articles had international co-authors in 2007, more than twice the level of two decades ago, according to a major report released last week by the US National Science Foundation.

The EU level of international co-authorship is about twice that of the United States, Japan and India, but levels in these countries are rising — a sign of the continued allure of working across borders. "The phenomenon is across disciplines," says Loet Leydesdorff, a science-metrics expert at the University of Amsterdam. "You can find it everywhere."
{“What we really have is a breakdown of national concepts and national systems.”}

András Schubert, editor of the journal Scientometrics and a researcher at the Institute for Science Policy Research in Budapest, Hungary, says that the rise in collaborations is partly out of necessity, corresponding with the rise of 'big science'. Many scientific endeavours — whether colliding particles or sequencing genomes — have become more complicated, requiring the money and labour of many nations. But he says that collaborations have also emerged because of heightened possibilities: the Internet allows like-minded scientists to find each other, and dramatic drops in communications costs ease long-distance interactions. And there is a reward: studies of citation counts show that internationally co-authored papers have better visibility (O. Persson et al. Scientometrics 60, 421–432; 2004). "Scientists are motivated by vanity," says Schubert. "International collaboration is a way to propagate ideas in wider and wider circles."

Caroline Wagner, a research scientist at George Washington University in Washington DC and US chief executive of consulting company Science-Metrix in Alexandria, Virginia, notes that international collaborations offer additional flexibility. Whereas local collaborations sometimes persist past the point of usefulness because of social or academic obligations, international ones can be cultivated and dropped more freely.

The collaborative trend is true across scientific disciplines, although some fields have a greater tendency for it. Particle physicists and astronomers collaborate often, for example, because they congregate at shared facilities such as particle colliders and observatories. Mathematicians, by contrast, tend historically towards solitude and lag behind other disciplines in the level of co-authorship — although, Wagner says, collaborations are rising there, too.

The level of collaboration also varies by country, as shown by the report's 'international collaboration index' (see table). Scandinavians are much more apt to collaborate with each other than, for example, the French are with the Germans, according to the index. "There are overlays of history, and political reasons, as to why collaborations emerge," says Wagner. Yet even below-average penchants for partnership (shown by values less than 1) have risen over the past decade — apparently boosted by policies embedded in European Framework funding schemes that require collaboration.

The United States tends to score below average because many researchers form within-country collaborations, says Rolf Lehming, director of the programme that produces the National Science Foundation report, Science and Engineering Indicators 2010. Relatively high index values for Asian country pairs suggest the birth of an intra-Asian zone of scientific collaboration (see 'The rise of Asia') — with the exception of collaborations between China and India, which dropped in the past decade, perhaps as they formed links with other countries.

But Wagner says that these national differences will become less meaningful as individual scientists enter a globalized science system that is open, undirected and ultimately more efficient: "What we really have is a breakdown of national concepts and national systems."


[naturenews]
Published online 19 January 2010 | Nature 463, 276-277 (2010) | doi:10.1038/463276b
News
Geologists to evaluate future Haiti risks
Hunt for survey markers may reveal crucial data.
Rex Dalton

US geologists hope to arrive in Haiti next week to pick through the rubble of the earthquake that struck on 12 January, killing tens of thousands of people. The scientists will hunt for survey markers that could help them better understand the geology of what happened — and perhaps determine where future risk lies.

The stainless-steel pins, usually set in concrete bases, are crucial landmarks for measuring earth movements as small as 1 millimetre. To date, the array of 30 devices in Haiti, and 40 in the Dominican Republic — which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti — has yielded the best analysis yet of the local earthquake risk. Finding them could allow researchers to better estimate the likelihood of future fault movements.

Major earthquakes are rare in the region. But in 2008, a team led by Eric Calais, a geophysicist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, reported at a Caribbean geology conference that the geodetic markers revealed a dangerous strain build-up along Haiti's Enriquillo fault — enough to produce a magnitude-7.2 quake. Last week's quake, on that fault, was a magnitude 7.0.

Hispaniola sits on the rim of the Caribbean tectonic plate (see map). To the northeast, the North American plate pushes under the Caribbean Plate, driving it westwards along two parallel faults: the Enriquillo fault on the southern side of the island and the Septentrional fault along the north shore. These faults periodically lock, build up strain, then release it in earthquakes. Major quakes have not struck the Enriquillo fault area since 1860.

Calais's team passed its warnings on to the Haitian government, but even developed nations would struggle to set up proper earthquake preparedness in the course of just two years. For now, the focus is on helping to assess immediate geological hazards, such as landslides, and gathering data for future studies of seismic risk.

Calais will be going to the island with Paul Mann, a geologist at the University of Texas at Austin who has described the Enriquillo fault (P. Mann et al. Tectonophysics 246, 1–69; 1995). They will be working with Haitian colleagues in the bureau of mines and energy to take Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements from as many of the geodetic markers as they can, to see how much the fault slipped at different points along its length.

"These benchmarks are extremely important, representing years of data," says Calais. Mann will be looking for surface signs of the fault rupture — called mole tracks because they look like the swell along the surface sometimes produced by the burrowing mammals. Researchers can plug that information into a model to calculate where strain has now built up along the fault and where future quakes might strike.

Seismologists from the universities of Nice and Brest in France will be coming with portable seismometers. UNAVCO, a non-profit consortium in Boulder, Colorado, has provided ten additional GPS receivers to deploy, and more may be coming from other sources, says Calais. And the US Geological Survey hopes to send in a rapid-response team, working with the US Agency for International Development.

Meanwhile, other researchers are trying to get insight into the quake from afar. At the University of Miami in Florida, Tim Dixon and Falk Amelung are looking to see whether space-borne radar interferometers, such as that aboard Japan's Advanced Land Observing Satellite, detected deformation of the terrain before the quake. The satellite is expected to pass over Haiti again this week.

Yet all acknowledge that the science will do little immediate good unless countries are able to incorporate the findings into future preparedness plans.

news20100120nn3

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 20 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.20
News
GlaxoSmithKline goes public with malaria data
Company to place structures and properties of drug leads in the public domain.
Declan Butler

{{Andrew Witty, GSK's chief executive, says the drug company will make thousands of drug structures public.}
GSK}

GlaxoSmithKline is to deposit more than 13,500 structures of possible drugs against malaria into the public domain, along with associated pharmacological data. The move marks the first large-scale public release of such structures by a pharmaceutical company, and it could lead to others following suite.

The news is part of an "open innovation" strategy to be announced today by Andrew Witty, GSK's CEO, at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. The strategy also includes the creation of an "open lab" based at the company's neglected-diseases research facility at Tres Cantos in Spain, where academic researchers will be able to apply to work and access company expertise and resources.

GSK's move marks the latest development in a trend towards greater access to industry compound libraries — access that was unheard of just a few years ago. Over the past decade, new public-private partnerships such as the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development and the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) have forged deals with drug firms to give them privileged access to the companies' compound libraries.

The GSK move takes this a step further by opening up access to all academic scientists and other companies. "It's a good step," says Tido von Schoen-Angerer, head of the Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines at Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders), who says he hopes companies will open their libraries for other diseases.

Exhaustive screen

The structures were identified as inhibiting the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum in a screen of the company's 2-million-compound library — a process that took five scientists at Tres Cantos around one year to complete.

"The size of the screening is not earth-shattering news," says Timothy Wells, chief scientific officer of MMV. MMV, which collaborated with GSK on the screen, has, for example, also collaborated with Novartis to screen some 2 million compounds held by the company for activity against the parasite, and found 6,000 candidate 'hits'.

What is news, Wells says, is the public-domain aspect. "It's something everybody in pharma has talked about doing, and everybody seems to have a plan to do it some time in the future, but GSK are the first to really step into the breach and actually do it."

Instead of researchers relying on their own small, isolated and fragmented efforts, the field can now work off and build a shared data set, Wells says. It should also reduce duplication. "We often have academics coming to us and saying we have found a new structure, and we tell them that we already have ten of those," says Wells, "Now all of that data will be in public databases."

What's also important, says Bernard Pécoul, head of the Geneva-based Drugs For Neglected Diseases initiative, is that GSK intend not only to release the structures but also relevant data they hold on the 'druggable properties' of the compounds such as its solubility, absorption, metabolism or toxicological profile, which will help with weeding out compounds which would be dead-ends in terms of drug development. "This is extremely precious information," says Pécoul.

More to come

Janet Morgan, a spokesperson for GSK, says that the company does not intend to host the database of the structures itself but is under discussions with one or more existing databases accessible to scientists. The initial deposition will also likely be mirrored by other databases, as already happens for genome sequences, for example, which are mirrored in GenBank and at the European Bioinformatics Institute.

GSK may screen and publish structures for other neglected diseases for which assays are available. "We'll look at this on a case-by-case basis," Morgan says.

The assay GSK used tested which compounds inhibited the metabolism of the malaria parasite in infected red blood cells. Researchers will next need to also screen the active molecules identified against the other life cycle stages of the parasite, in particular the sexual stages that get transmitted from person to person.

The GSK announcement comes on the heels of the opening on 18 January of ChEMBLdb, a drug discovery database of more than half a million compounds, their targets, and genomic and chemical data. It originally belonged to the Belgian biotech company Galapagos NV but was transferred to the public domain with £4.7 million from the UK Wellcome Trust.


[naturenews]
Published online 19 January 2010 | Nature 463, 279 (2010) | doi:10.1038/463279a
News
Iranian academics fear more killings
Concern grows in the wake of particle physicist's death.
Declan Butler

Iran's scientific community is reeling after the assassination on 12 January of Masoud Alimohammadi, a particle physicist at the University of Tehran.

Alimohammadi was killed by a bomb as he got into his car to go to work. "Everyone is worried that this may be only the start, and that there may be more killings of academics to come," one researcher says.

Nature interviewed half a dozen scientists in Iran who knew Alimohammadi, all of whom requested anonymity. They are mystified as to why he was singled out. "I could expect that some influential political figure be assassinated, but not him," says one. Like many intellectuals in Iran, he was politically engaged, but far from being a political activist, the researchers say.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have said that the killing was perpetrated by the country's "enemies" and was designed to hamper its scientific and technological progress. State media portrayed Alimohammadi as a "martyr" (pictured) and a "committed revolutionary professor".

Scientists in Iran hotly contest the official picture of Alimohammadi as a supporter of the Ahmadinejad regime. They say that he opposed both the current regime and the violent crackdown on protests that followed the disputed presidential elections last June. They also question the regime's implication that Alimohammadi was involved in Iran's nuclear programme, making him a target.

Alimohammadi supported the 1979 Islamic Revolution from the outset and had links in the past with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But he opposed the hardline crackdown on student demonstrations in 1999. Last year, he was among hundreds of academics who signed a petition endorsing Mir Hossein Mousavi, the reformist presidential candidate.

Alimohammadi was also an organizer and first signatory of a 4 January letter by 88 academics at Tehran University to Ayatollah Khamenei, protesting against the regime's post-election repression and attacks on universities and students. Friends say that he did not endorse overthrow of the regime, but was "keen to find solutions for a way out of the crisis".

The scientists also say that, to their knowledge, Alimohammadi had nothing to do with Iran's nuclear efforts or any military programme. Although the regime last week described him as a nuclear scientist, he was a theoretical particle physicist; his PhD was on string theory, and he then moved on to the quantum effects of gravity and gauge theories, and more recently to research on dark energy and modified Newtonian dynamics.

"I can see no reason why or how Iran's military or nuclear programmes could benefit from Alimohammadi's expertise," says Moshe Paz-Pasternak, a physicist at Tel Aviv University in Israel who worked with Alimohammadi on the Middle East synchrotron SESAME (see 'Physicist was part of 'science for peace' project').

All of which leaves the killer's identity and motives a mystery. The regime has blamed Israel, the United States and "their lackeys", as well as various dissident groups. Others speculate that hardliners in the regime itself might have staged the killing as a warning to opposition supporters.

"If Alimohammadi was murdered by hardliners, then the message would be clear: that they are willing even to assassinate well-known and well-respected academics," says materials scientist Muhammad Sahimi of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, "and that other academics must think twice before they participate in political activities to support Mousavi".

Many Iranian researchers say they would like the international scientific community to speak out and condemn the assassination.

news20100120nn4

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 19 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.18
News
Health benefits of red-wine chemical unclear
Sceptics continue to ask whether resveratrol really can delay the effects of ageing.
Lizzie Buchen

Five years ago it seemed that resveratrol, a compound present most famously in red wine, could slow down the ageing process. But a study published on 8 January in The Journal of Biological Chemistry¹ deepens the divide between those who are confident in its potential and those who think it is too good to be true.

Resveratrol's health benefits are thought to result from its activation of enzymes called sirtuins, which were linked to longevity 10 years ago when Leonard Guarente from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge found that yeast with additional copies of the gene that encodes sirtuin, called sir2, lived significantly longer than did those that had the usual two copies². Four years later, Guarente's former post-doc David Sinclair published work showing that resveratrol activated sirtuins in yeast and extended the organism's lifespan³. Sinclair later went on to show that resveratrol fed to worms and flies lengthened lifespan by acting through the sirtuins⁴.

Then in 2007, Sinclair and Sirtris Pharmaceuticals — a company Sinclair had co-founded with venture capitalist Christoph Westphal in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to develop sirtuin activators — screened a large selection of small molecules to look for activators of SIRT1, the mammalian version of the yeast Sir2 enzyme. Their study, which was published in Nature⁵ found three compounds that were 1,000-fold more potent than resveratrol at activating the enzyme⁵. Furthermore, one of these compounds made obese mice and rats more sensitive to insulin, suggesting that the substances could be used to treat type 2 diabetes — a disease that gets more common with age. Less than a year later, the British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline bought Sirtris for US$720 million. Two Sirtris drugs are already in Phase II clinical trials — one for cancer, and both for the treatment of type 2 diabetes.

But the excitement over the potential health benefits was tempered by reports concluding that resveratrol does not activate SIRT1 directly^6,7 and that it works only when the substrates are linked to a fluorophore, as they were in the screen and in the study that first showed resveratrol activated SIRT1. Now, researchers led by biochemist Kay Ahn of Pfizer in Groton, Connecticut, have shown that the Sirtris compounds do not seem to activate SIRT1 when not attached to fluorophores either1.

"We can only replicate the Nature findings by using a fluorescent peptide, which [Sinclair and his colleagues] had used exclusively," says Ahn.

Only in real life

However, Guarente, who is now a scientific adviser to Sirtris, says that the latest findings are neither surprising nor worrisome. The compounds may work only with fluorophore-conjugated peptides in vitro, says Guarente, but the situation is different in cells and in animals. The Nature paper, among others, went beyond the test tube and indicated that SIRT1 was more active in cells and in animals after application of the Sirtris compounds. Furthermore, resveratrol administration made no difference to the lifespan of yeast that did not have Sir2³, indicating that the compound's action depends on this gene.

{{“I remain sceptical that SIRT1 is a key target.”}
Brian Kennedy
University of Washington in Seattle}

According to a statement from GlaxoSmithKline, Ahn's conclusion "ignores any possibility of direct activation of SIRT1 that may occur in a cellular environment that is not reproduced in vitro".

But some remain unconvinced. Another former member of Guarente's lab, Brian Kennedy, now at the University of Washington in Seattle, points out that cell-based assays are difficult to interpret, particularly because resveratrol is thought to interact with many enzymes.

"It's very nonspecific," says Kennedy, who in 2005 was the first to report that resveratrol activates SIRT1 in vitro only when the substrates are conjugated to fluorophores. Although resveratrol does seem to affect animals, he says, "It's still highly unclear what the targets are that lead to those activities. I remain sceptical that SIRT1 is a key target."

Compound controversy
In the second portion of the latest study, Ahn tried, unsuccessfully, to replicate Sirtris' findings that the compounds reduced the blood-glucose levels of obese mice. A few of the mice even died, despite receiving the same dose as that given in the Nature paper. But Ahn is quick to point out that "every in vivo experiment is a little bit different". "Under our conditions we didn't see beneficial effects, but we don't want to make a big conclusion out of those results."

A possible explanation for the discrepancy, says Sinclair, is that Ahn and her colleagues did not provide information on the characterization of the compounds, which they synthesized themselves. So there is no way of knowing how pure they were or whether they're the same as those made by Sirtris. "The fact that mice died indicates that there may be an issue with purity," says Sinclair.

Sceptics of Sinclair's findings continue to voice doubt. "The enthusiasm for resveratrol and for Sirtris activators seems to have been premature," says Richard Miller at the University of Michigan Geriatrics Center in Ann Arbor, who has found that activating a different pathway extends lifespan in mammals⁸. "They may have health benefits, but the early evidence doesn't seem very strong and all the newer evidence suggests that the system may be more complicated."

But because of the growing number of studies showing beneficial effects of sirtuins and resveratrol, no one is willing to write them off quite yet. "If I were asked to list ten proteins that deserve a lot of attention in ageing in mammals, the sirtuins would be on that list," says Miller. "They just wouldn't be at the top of the list."

References
1. Pacholec, M. et al. J. Biol. Chem. advance online publication doi:10.1074/jbc.M109.088682 (2010).
2. Kaeberlein, M., McVey, M. & Guarente, L. Genes Dev. 13, 2570-2580 (1999). | Article | PubMed | ISI | ChemPort |
3. Howitz, K. T. et al. Nature 425, 191-196 (2003). | Article | PubMed | ISI | ChemPort |
4. Wood, J. G. et al. Nature 430, 686-689 (2004). | Article | PubMed | ISI | ChemPort |
5. Milne, J. C. et al. Nature 450, 712-716 (2007). | Article | PubMed | ChemPort |
6. Kaeberlein, M. et al. J. Biol. Chem. 280, 17038-17045 (2005). | Article | PubMed | ISI | ChemPort |
7. Beher, D. et al. Chem. Biol. Drug Des. 74, 619-624 (2009). | Article | PubMed
8. Harrison, D. E. et al. Nature 460, 392-395 (2009). | Article | PubMed | ChemPort |

news20100120nn5

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 19 January 2010 | Nature 463, 276-277 (2010) | doi:10.1038/463276a
News
Glacier estimate is on thin ice
IPCC may modify its Himalayan melting forecasts.
Quirin Schiermeier

Hundreds of millions of people rely on water from the Himalayas' mighty glaciers, which experts agree are shrinking as a result of rising global temperatures. But a claim that all of the ice could be gone by 2035 — enshrined in the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — has come under fire from, among others, a coordinating lead author of the IPCC chapter that uses the questionable figure.

The dispute highlights the fact that the panel sometimes relies on 'grey' or unrefereed literature. IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri says that the panel is investigating whether its report needs to be modified — which, if it were to happen, would be highly unusual.

A hasty retreat

At issue is a statement in the portion of the 2007 IPCC report¹ compiled by its working group on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. It says that "glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate". The source cited was a 2005 overview from the conservation group WWF's Nepal Program², which, in turn, refers to non-refereed findings by glaciologist Syed Iqbal Hasnain, a senior fellow at The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi.

Hasnain recently told the magazine New Scientist that his initial conclusions, contained in a 1999 report by the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology of the International Commission on Snow and Ice, were "speculative". Nature could not reach him for comment.

Satellite observations and in situ measurements do suggest that many of the more than 45,000 glaciers in the Himalayan and Tibetan region are losing mass. But given the observed rate of decline so far, many experts doubt that even small glaciers will melt completely before the end of the century.

"The IPCC's statement is wrong and misleading," says Andreas Schild, director-general of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu, Nepal. "It was pretty clear early on that this was an error awaiting correction," adds Michael Zemp, a glaciologist with the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich, Switzerland.

{“The next IPCC report should accurately characterize the risks of water insecurity and glacial lake outburst flooding.”}

The loudest charges, however, have come from Murari Lal, director of the Climate, Energy and Sustainable Development Analysis Centre in Ghaziabad, who served as coordinating lead author for the Asia chapter in the working group report. He says that his team followed proper IPCC procedures for using non-refereed studies, which require chapter teams to review the quality of such sources before citing results. The WWF report seemed credible, he says, but he admits that the team should have looked more carefully at the secondary sources to which it refers.

Even so, Lal argues that Hasnain, rather than the IPCC reviewers, is to blame, for coming up with and continuing to talk about a speculative date. "The findings would have been of major significance to the whole region," Lal says.

IPCC representatives say that the bottom line of the Asia chapter remains the same. "There is no scientific doubt on the rapid melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas," says Pachauri, although they are very unlikely to disappear during the next few decades.

The section also includes other, smaller errors that are drawing less attention. The chapter attributes to the WWF report, for instance, a related but less drastic estimate that the total area of the Himalayan glaciers could shrink from the present 500,000 square kilometres to 100,000 square kilometres by 2035. The WWF publication gives no such number.

Christopher Field, who is overseeing the impacts working group for the next full IPCC assessment report, says that the team will carefully consider the "extremely important" future of the Himalayan glaciers. By 2014, when the next working group report is due, it should be possible to assess Himalayan glacier retreat "in a way that accurately characterizes the risks of water insecurity and glacial lake outburst flooding", says Field, of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California.

The IPCC will continue to use a combination of peer-reviewed studies and carefully selected grey literature for its next full report. But Field says the incident shows that the IPCC has an extra responsibility to thoroughly assess the quality of the underlying work.

Meanwhile, lingering uncertainty over glacier retreat has prompted India and other countries to put more emphasis on glaciological research. India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, has called the shrinking Himalayan ice a matter of national security — even though a report he commissioned last year found little evidence of drastic retreat due to climate change³. Pachauri has challenged that finding as "unsubstantiated".

Settling the issue of glacier retreat gained urgency last year with the publication of several papers^4,5 based on data from the GRACE gravity-sensing satellites, which highlighted the problem of groundwater depletion in India. As they shrink, the glaciers are expected to add melt water to Himalayan rivers. But if the glaciers disappear altogether, run-off to the headwaters of ten major rivers, including the Indus and the Ganges, will drop markedly.

Still, it is unclear whether or when this may happen. Himalayan glaciers, says glaciologist Michael Bishop of the University of Nebraska in Omaha, behave very differently in different places. "Sweeping conclusions," he says, "just don't hold water."

References
1. Cruz, R. V. et al. in Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (eds Parry, M. L., Canziani, O. F., Palutikof, J. P., van der Linden, P. J. & Hanson, C. E.) 469-506 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007); available at www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch10s10-6-2.html
2. WWF Nepal Program An Overview of Glaciers, Glacier Retreat, and Subsequent Impacts in Nepal, India and China (2005); available at http://assets.panda.org/downloads/himalayaglaciersreport2005.pdf.
3. Raina, V. Himalayan Glaciers: A State-of-Art Review of Glacial Studies, Glacial Retreat and Climate Change (2009); available at http://moef.nic.in/downloads/public-information/MoEF%20Discussion%20Paper%20_him.pdf.
4. Rodell, M., Velicogna, I. & Famiglietti, J. Nature 460, 999-1002 (2009). | Article | PubMed
5. Tiwari, V. M., Wahr, J. & Swenson, S. Geophys. Res. Lett. doi:10.1029/2009GL039401 (2009).

news20100120reut1

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Martin Roberts
MADRID
Tue Jan 19, 2010 9:41am EST
Spain power demand recovery seen in 3 to 4 years

MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish demand for power will likely take three to four years to recover to pre-crisis levels, but that will allow investment to switch from generation to distribution, an industry spokesman said on Tuesday.

Conventional power producers' group UNESA estimates demand for electricity has fallen by about 5 percent since the economic crisis began in late 2008, in a market which had previously grown by some 5 percent a year.

"As the crisis ends, our predictions are zero (growth over pre-crisis levels) for the first four to five years," UNESA President Pedro Rivero said in an interview. "We don't expect any more decreases.

"For this (period) the installed capacity we have is enough," he added. "As soon as demand revives, a new investment cycle would begin that would take us to our target for 2030."

UNESA predicts that average growth in demand for electricity between 2005 and 2030 will be 2.13 percent a year, to a total of 428.8 terawatt-hours in 2030. Demand in 2009 was 255.7 TWh.

Rivero said UNESA members aimed to keep investing a steady 6 billion euros ($8.58 billion) a year in infrastructure overall, but less than the 2 billion euros they have been spending in generators.

"We do have to invest in transport and distribution, and modernizing the grid, in measuring equipment, which are all fundamental for energy savings and efficiency," he said.

ZERO POOL PRICES

Rivero said that producers could only offset the impact of wholesale power prices being forced down to zero at times by harmonizing the way prices are calculated for each kilowatt-hour across the European Union.

Pool prices fell to zero for hours at a time, and for the first time ever in Spain during the recent festive season due to record supplies of subsidized wind power and low demand.

"We need to compete under equal conditions, not with a different Spanish kilowatt to a French or a British one, or we will have a different set of prices," he said.

Rivero said Spain needed more cross-border power lines to export surplus electricity and make generation more profitable.

Currently, Spain can only import or export 3 percent of its power output to France, so gas-fired plants have to close down whenever wind power ramps up.

"If they want a single European market, then let me export my power to Europe," he said.

Spain has made interconnection a priority for its stint as EU president in the first half of this year.

Rivero also welcomed Spanish government plans to extend nuclear power plants working lives beyond a current 40-year limit.

"As long as the regulator says they are safe, it is up to the owners to decide," he said. "It's a matter of economics. When the market no longer offsets the costs of changing parts and maintenance, the economic working life is over."

($1=.6990 Euro)

(Reporting by Martin Roberts; Editing by Hans Peters)


[Green Business]
BERLIN
Tue Jan 19, 2010 10:14am EST
German minister in favor of slashing solar tariffs

BERLIN (Reuters) - Slashing feed-in tariffs for the solar industry by 16-17 percent is feasible, German Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle said on Tuesday, dealing a blow to the sector which is still hoping for smaller cuts.

"Regarding the photovoltaic (industry), cuts of 16-17 percent can be made. This is my opinion, this is not yet the position of the government," Bruederle said.

Shares in German solar companies extended losses on the news, with Q-Cells, SolarWorld, Conergy, SMA Solar and Phoenix Solar down 1.2-3.8 percent by 1024 GMT.

The OekoDAX, a composite of Germany's biggest renewable companies, fell 2.5 percent.

"It looks as if there really will be a cut in tariffs and investors are nervous," said a Frankfurt-based trader.

Bruederle's comments came less than a week after Reuters cited sources as saying that such cuts were envisaged for April, sending solar stocks around the globe lower on fears that demand in Germany -- the world's biggest solar market -- would fall.

Markets have been awaiting plans by the German government to cut the industry's feed-in tariffs -- prices utilities pay generators of renewable energy -- which are now considered as being too high, but so far hoped for cuts of about 5-10 percent.

A double-digit reduction in solar feed-in tariffs in the middle of 2010 would ruin many German firms and end Germany's worldwide leadership in solar technology, Germany's BSW solar industry association said on Friday.

Investors' appetite for shares in the once fast growing solar sector has been curbed already by oversupply of cells and modules as well as tight credit conditions, which have thrown the sector into a prolonged crisis.

(Reporting by Peter Dinkloh, writing by Christoph Steitz; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)


[Green Business]
Anna Driver - Analysis
HOUSTON
Tue Jan 19, 2010 2:53pm EST
Is Chesapeake deal machine running out of gas?

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Chesapeake Energy Corp Chief Executive Aubrey McClendon reaped $11 billion for his company in the last 18 months by striking deals with deep-pocketed partners who want exposure to shale gas, but his unusual business model may be running out of fuel.

Those deals, with partners such as European majors BP Plc and Statoil ASA, helped Chesapeake push through a liquidity crunch as the oil companies bought stakes in shale gas production and paid part of Chesapeake's drilling costs.

With its finances more in order, Chesapeake says it can make fat profits by acquiring the right to drill in shale formations and selling the acreage at a higher price, a novel way of making money in the oil and gas business.

Chesapeake's latest $2.25 billion Barnett Shale joint venture with France's Total SA announced on January 4 was a big catalyst for the company's stock, which jumped nearly 9 percent the day the deal was announced.

But the Total venture may a tough act to follow because much of Chesapeake's choicest acreage is tied up in deals.

"It's hard to see where (McClendon) can get millions of acres in another shale play, but I understand he's trying," Mike Breard, energy analyst with Hodges Capital Management in Dallas, said.

Chesapeake holds the right to drill on nearly 3 million acres in four shale gas formations: Haynesville, Marcellus, Barnett and Fayetteville.

BIG FOUR

Chesapeake Chief Financial Officer Marc Rowland told Reuters on January 11 that additional deals in those "Big 4" shale formations are not likely.

"In our holdings, certainly, there is room for more, but I do not think that we will be pursuing, necessarily, additional joint ventures in the four areas that we have arrangements in place," Rowland said.

Those four shale plays are so far regarded as having the most potential. For example, geologists estimate the Marcellus Shale has enough natural gas to satisfy U.S. demand for a decade.

On a call to discuss the Total deal, McClendon said the two companies were eyeing a partnership in the developing Eagle Ford shale in south Texas. But so far Chesapeake has drilled only one well, so if a deal is made, it will not likely happen until late in the year, McClendon said.

Total and Chesapeake are also exploring shale gas options in Canada, where Chesapeake does not have any holdings.

This year and next, Chesapeake forecast it could raise as much as $3 billion through acreage and asset sales.

WHAT NOW?

A natural gas company that buys and sells land for profit to fund its drilling might be losing appeal with some investors. Deutsche Bank analyst Shannon Nome described Chesapeake's land deals as "somewhat controversial," in a note to clients.

"While we think it will remain tough to fully convince investors of this (model), Chesapeake's valuation on a net asset valuation basis keeps up coming back for more," the analyst wrote earlier this month.

Chesapeake maintains that its stock, which is trading around $28, does not reflect the full value of these deals.

On a call to discuss the Total deal, McClendon told analysts, "I understand that many investors do not want to give us credit for the value we create in these JVs, but at the same time that doesn't mean the value that we have created of about $13 per share should be ignored."

Still, Goldman Sachs analyst Brian Singer, who rates the stock "neutral," said in a January 6 note that the Barnett joint venture was likely the key positive catalyst for the stock in 2010, and that "going forward we see fewer company-specific catalysts."

Since the Total deal was announced, the stock has lost its gains over that period and is down about 1 percent.

But if Chesapeake is running out of acreage in the United States, it can always look overseas. As part of its venture with Statoil, the two companies are scouring the world for shale formations to develop.

And Hodges Capital Management's Breard said McClendon's ability to get deals done should not be underestimated.

"He's shown the ability to go out and lease up tens of thousands of acres in a very short period of time," Breard said.

(Reporting by Anna Driver; Additional reporting by Tom Bergin in London; Editing by Richard Chang)

news20100120reut2

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Stanley Carvalho
ABU DHABI
Tue Jan 19, 2010 9:03am EST
Masdar's first carbon capture in Abu Dhabi in 2012

ABU DHABI (Reuters) - Abu Dhabi state-owned Masdar said on Tuesday its first carbon capture and storage (CCS) project would be cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the United Arab Emirates by the end of 2012.

The UAE is one of the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gas per capita. Abu Dhabi has pumped billions into clean energy initiative Masdar as it looks to both cut emissions and prepare the world's third-largest crude exporter for a future less dependent on supply of oil.

The first CCS project would capture emissions from a new UAE steel plant, said Sam Nader, director of Masdar's carbon management unit told reporters.

"The first capture is 800,000 tonnes from the Emirates Steel plant in 2012," Nader said. "A contract will be awarded this year for the first capture."

By 2014, Masdar would have captured a total of five million tonnes of CO2, he added.

Masdar aims to set up a network of pipelines in the UAE to pump carbon from emitting sites to oilfields, where it would be injected into reservoirs to maintain pressure and increase oil recovery. The network should be completed by 2015, he said.

The first phase of the plan is to capture CO2 from industrial units such as the Emirates Steel plant and from power plants.

Masdar is working closely with state-run Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations (ADCO) to transport and inject CO2 into its oil reservoirs. ADCO runs the onshore crude fields for the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).

Other emitters that Masdar is targeting for carbon capture are the Emirates Aluminum plant, a gas-fired power station run by the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority and also a planned hydrogen power plant it is building with BP.

Carbon captured would back carbon credits sold under the UN's clean development mechanism, which allows developing countries to sell emissions reductions from energy intensive industry to help rich countries offset their own contribution to climate change.

The UAE embarked on a CO2 emission reduction programme in 2007. Abu Dhabi aims to slash the emirate's CO2 output by about one-third by 2020 and in doing so to free up more oil for exports.

(Reporting by Stanley Carvalho; editing by Simon Webb and Keiron Henderson)


[Green Business]
Laura Isensee
LOS ANGELES
Tue Jan 19, 2010 2:59pm EST
Cereplast sees major exchange listing this quarter

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Cereplast Inc, which makes bio-based plastics, sees an upgrade to a major U.S. stock exchange before the end of the quarter, its chief executive told Reuters on Friday.

CEO Frederic Scheer said the company has taken several steps -- including filing for a one-for-forty reverse stock split to boost its share price -- in order to migrate to the Nasdaq or American Stock Exchange from the over-the-counter bulletin board.

"I'm expecting this to happen by the end of this quarter," Scheer said, citing benefits like better access to liquidity.

The emerging bioplastics sector is expected to grow into a $10 billion dollar industry by 2020, Scheer said, as companies like Cereplast move to replace plastics from fossil fuels with plastics from starches like tapioca, corn and wheat.

The industry has benefited from bans on traditional plastic bags in 2011 in countries like France, but Scheer sees the economics of oil as the driver of its growth.

"We see the tipping point at $95 per barrel," he said, referring to the cost of oil at which bioplastics become competitive on price.

To cut costs, the company is moving its main operations from California to Indiana this month, but will keep its corporate headquarters in California.

Cereplast, whose investors include Sustainable Asset Management and pension fund Swisscanto, is also in talks with a large public U.S. manufacturing company to take over its manufacturing.

That move will allow Cereplast to manufacture outside of the United States, Scheer said. He cited countries like Brazil, Germany and Finland as markets with high growth potential.

With recent deals for plastics for products from infant bath tubs, margarine tubs and cups, Cereplast expects to see $10 million to $12 million in revenue in 2010, Scheer said.

ALGAE ANSWER

A concern for the bioplastics industry, however, is the use of starches, which could increase demand and push up prices for agricultural commodities.

"Algae in my mind is the answer to the problem," he said.

The executive envisions Cereplast moving to algae-based plastics -- starting as early as late 2010 or the beginning of 2011 -- and teaming up with companies that want to turn the lowly pond scum into advanced biofuels.

The company has already worked with some algae biofuel companies such as OriginOil Inc.

The move to algae-based plastics depends on how fast companies that turn algae into fuel reach commercial scale.

That sector has been building interest. Oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp last year said it would invest $600 million over the next few years to develop biofuel from algae through a partnership with Synthetic Genomics Inc. In addition, the U.S. government recently announced $564 million for biofuels, including algae projects by Solazyme and Sapphire Energy.

The two sectors could imitate how companies that drill and extract oil and the chemical industry are linked together.

"They are going to extract the oil from the algae ... and we will pick up the biomass and make chemicals. We are repeating 100 years later what was done with fossil fuels at the start of the 20th century," Scheer said.


[Green Business]
David Fogarty, Climate Change Correspondent, Asia
SINGAPORE
Wed Jan 20, 2010 3:38am EST
U.S. urged to step up to rescue climate talks

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - U.N. climate talks face a crisis unless the U.S. Senate passes a climate control bill and failure to do so further risks the future of vulnerable countries such as small island states, Tuvalu said on Wednesday.

Tuvalu, whose 12,000 people live on nine coral atolls in the Pacific Ocean about half-way between Hawaii and Australia, fears being wiped off the map by climate change and is demanding big carbon polluters sign up to deep emissions cuts.

Tuvalu's lead climate negotiator Ian Fry said the United States was partly to blame for what he said was the failed outcome at last month's climate talks in Copenhagen. He said the world had become hostage to a group of U.S. senators pushing for the climate bill's passage.

The Obama administration had six months at most to pass the bill, Fry told Reuters by e-mail and telephone Wednesday, but that looked increasing unlikely after the Democrats lost a key Senate seat in Massachusetts to the Republicans.

"Unless the U.S. passes its climate bill, the international community is at a stalemate," Fry said.

The United States, as the world's biggest historical emitter of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, must show it was going to take substantial steps to reduce its emissions, he said.

"Once they do this, it is likely that other major emitters will follow," Fry said.

The United States, which never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, has come under intense pressure to bring more to the climate bargaining table.

But the Obama administration says its hands are tied until its climate bill, which sets a limit on greenhouse gas emissions and would enshrine domestic emissions trading, is passed.

COPENHAGEN "DEATH SENTENCE"

Fry led calls in Copenhagen for the talks to end with a legally binding climate deal in which the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitters signed up to tougher emissions cuts.

He was also a leading voice for any final agreement in Copenhagen to back a limit for global average temperatures to rise a maximum 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, such as rising seas and stronger storms.

He described the Copenhagen Accord, which was only "noted" by nations at the talks and not formally adopted because of objections from several countries, as a failed exercise. Its non-binding goal of limiting warming to below 2 deg C was a "death sentence" for Tuvalu and other small island states.

"We have no interest in the Copenhagen Accord," he said, describing it as an effort to window-dress a failure.

The United States reached agreement with China, India, Brazil and a small number of other nations on the wording of the accord to break deadlock at the Copenhagen talks, but the document has been criticized as too vague.

Fry said Obama's intention with the accord was to show Congress major developing countries were willing to take on emission curbs, hoping this would lead to the bill's passage. That made others pawns in a domestic U.S. wrangle, he said.

He also criticized the accord for failing to spell out the future of the Kyoto Protocol, whose first commitment period ends in 2012.

"We have already established the architecture for an international carbon market and (an emissions) target setting process for industrialized countries. It makes no sense to trash the Kyoto Protocol."

(Editing by Paul Tait)

news20100120reut3

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Tom Doggett
WASHINGTON
Tue Jan 19, 2010 4:22pm EST
Senate not seen passing climate bill in 2010

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate is unlikely to pass climate change legislation this year after going through the contentious health care debate, and will focus on a separate energy bill that has more bipartisan support, a key Democratic senator said on Tuesday.

Democrats are seeking to iron out differences between sweeping bills passed by the Senate and House of Representatives to revamp the $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare system, President Barack Obama's top domestic priority.

"It is my assessment that we likely will not do climate change this year, but will do an energy bill instead," Senator Byron Dorgan, told reporters in a telephone conference call.

Dorgan's comments were at odds with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has said the Senate this spring would take up a climate change bill to cap and then reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions that are blamed for global warming.

Dorgan, who is in the Senate Democratic leadership, said legislation already cleared by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee would be easier to pass.

"My own sense is that in the aftermath of a very, very heavy lift on health care, I think it is unlikely that the Senate will turn next to the very complicated and very controversial subject of cap-and-trade, climate change kind of legislation," Dorgan said. "I think it is more compelling to turn to an energy bill that is bi-partisan."

That legislation would require more U.S. electricity supplies to be generated from renewable sources like wind and solar, and expand offshore drilling into the eastern Gulf of Mexico, which holds almost 4 billion barrels of oil.

Dorgan is behind the bill's drilling provision, which would allow oil and natural gas exploration 45 miles from the Florida coastline.

To support his efforts, he cited a new study released on Tuesday that concluded drilling in the eastern Gulf would not interfere with military training exercises in offshore areas, a concern opponents to drilling off Florida have raised in the past.

Dorgan said he hoped the full Senate would pass the energy bill by the end of June. That measure would still have to clear the House and be signed into law by the president before it could take effect.

(Reporting by Tom Doggett; Editing by Marguerita Choy)


[Green Business]
Luke Pachymuthu and Stanley Carvalho
ABU DHABI
Wed Jan 20, 2010 1:26am EST
Rich need to show poor CO2 deal won't hit economy

ABU DHABI (Reuters) - Developed nations must convince developing countries their economies will not be harmed by greenhouse gas emission deals before global climate talks can progress, a British government minister said on Tuesday. Another round of U.N. climate talks in Mexico at the end of this year aims to nail down what negotiators failed to achieve in Copenhagen in December, which is a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol to limit global warming from 2013.

One of the reasons for Copenhagen's failure, analysts say, was the suspicion of developing countries and, notably, top carbon emitter China that they would be expected to accept binding emissions cuts soon.

"We have a task to assure developing countries that they are not going to see their growth and development constrained by being part of a legal framework, said Ed Milliband, Minister for Energy and Climate Change in Britain.

But officials and executives at a renewable energy conference in Abu Dhabi said there was a lot of work to be done if Mexico talks were to avoid the failure of Copenhagen.

Governments would need to move beyond mutual recriminations after Copenhagen, said Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

"Mexico could produce a binding agreement but there are critical factors that need superhuman efforts," he said. "We need leadership from several countries of the world. There should be no bickering after a feeling of dismay after Copenhagen."

The 194 countries at the summit "took note" of the final outcome, a brief Copenhagen Accord which set vague targets and was non-binding.

All large economies, developed and emerging, would have to face their responsibility in limiting global warming rather than hoping they could be the exceptions to an agreement, said Lord Browne, chairman of the global energy board of Accenture Group and former chief executive of oil major BP.

"I think it's important for the very big economies to recognize that no one can take a free ride," he said. "If we're going to reduce all chances of severely damaging climate change than these five can't take a free ride on each other."

The Gulf has some of the world's largest per capita emitters of greenhouse gases, with OPEC-member, and the world's largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter, Qatar at the top of the list.

Qatar's deputy prime minister and oil minister said recrimination over the role of energy producers in emissions needed to be toned down.

"Why did Copenhagen fail?" asked oil minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah at a round table at the conference. "Because when you go there you feel that someone is trying to create scapegoats. You try to blame oil and gas producers."

Still, Attiyah himself showed how deep divisions over language are by objecting to the term "alternative energy," which he said implied the eventual replacement of oil and gas producers.

"When you have something you protect it," he said. "A few countries were against oil until they discovered it."

(Writing by Simon Webb; Editing by Amanda Cooper)


[Green Business]
BERLIN
Wed Jan 20, 2010 7:57am EST
Merkel says binding global climate targets essential

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday called on industrialized and emerging nations to agree to binding targets on cutting greenhouse gases, saying that this was the only way to fight climate change.

Merkel, who has taken a leading role in pushing other countries to fight climate change, also put the blame squarely on emerging states for a failure to secure a more ambitious agreement at a December summit on climate change in Copenhagen.

There, countries agreed to set a goal of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times but failed to say how they would achieve this.

"I think we agree the results we reached in Copenhagen were disappointing," said Merkel, adding Europe would continue to take a pioneering role in cutting carbon dioxide emissions.

"We need global cooperation and progress will only be possible with internationally binding commitments -- but for everyone," she told the Bundestag lower house of parliament.

"This is what we must work on and this is the task ahead."

Merkel vowed to continue to push other nations on the issue.

At a summit in Germany in 2007, she brokered a deal between leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations to "seriously consider" carbon emissions cuts of 50 percent by 2050 which was seen as milestone at the time.

The next planned U.N. climate meeting of officials will take place in Bonn, western Germany, from May 31 to June 11.

Merkel said the biggest disappointment in Copenhagen had been the way emerging nations had refused to tie targets into an international framework.

She pointed to Germany's goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020 and said others had to follow suit.

Germany, the world's sixth largest emitter, is focusing on saving energy and boosting its efficiency by introducing rules for new cars and buildings. It also plans a major shift to renewable power.

Germany had hoped its offer to raise its 2020 target from 30 percent to 40 percent, combined with an EU offer to raise its goals from 20 percent to 30 percent if other nations pledged substantial cuts, would spur a deal on reductions in Copenhagen.

But Merkel insisted the EU's planned reductions would only work if other world nations agreed on targets.

"I say yes to 30 percent cuts for Europe but only if other countries of the world respond with equally ambitious targets," she said.

"Otherwise, we will not help (tackle) climate change."

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers and Paul Carrel, editing by Myra MacDonald)

news20100120reut4

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Markus Wacket
BERLIN
Wed Jan 20, 2010 8:52am EST
Germany unveils 15 percent solar subsidy cut

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen proposed a 15 percent cut in support for new roof-mounted solar power, a bid to ease the industry toward free competition but a slightly smaller reduction than expected.

The cut confirmed figures earlier published by Reuters and will take effect from April. It amounts to slightly less than the 16 to 17 percent reduction to the so-called feed-in tariffs that sources said last week was being eyed. Roettgen added that the tariffs for solar energy generated from open field and farmland sites should also be cut from July, by 15 percent and 25 percent respectively.

Cuts in public support will weigh on companies like Q-Cells, Phoenix Solar and SolarWord, which depend on demand from Germany, the world's biggest market for solar energy as measured by installed capacity.

Proponents of cuts say the industry is overly subsidised. Prices for solar products have fallen by as much as 50 percent over the last year, which has increased pressure on industry players to have more efficient production and become more competitive.

"Such a step would lead to more consolidation, but this is what the sector needs," said Olaf Koester, manager of the New Energy Fund at VCH.

Additional cuts of 2.5 percent will be made from 2011 if installations exceed 3,500 megawatts (MW) in the previous 12 months. A further cut of 2.5 percent is possible once the volume surpasses the 4,500 MW mark, Roettgen said.

Feed-in tariffs will be raised from 2011 by 2.5 percent should installations fall below 2,500 megawatts.

Since Germany's new center-right coalition government was elected in September, the solar power industry has expected cuts to the country's solar aid, prompting installers to rush to build projects before they are announced.

The minister said the target for new installations was some 3,000 MW per year and just over half this had previously been achieved. However, lately the total was considerably higher than 3,000 MW, he added.

The global solar power industry has struggled over the past 15 months to secure funds for new projects as the financial crisis hit investment. Still, Germany's lucrative incentives have kept the country at the forefront of the industry.

(Writing by Christoph Steitz and Dave Graham; editing by Karen Foster and Andrew Callus)


[Green Business]
Eriko Amaha and Nathan Layne
Wed Jan 20, 2010 4:05am EST
Toyota in Argentine lithium deal for hybrid car push

SYDNEY/TOKYO (Reuters) - A sister company to Toyota Motor Corp secured a lithium supply deal in Argentina on Wednesday that could help the world's largest automaker keep its lead in gasoline-electric hybrid cars.

The deal sent shares in the lithium project's owner and operator, Australian-listed Orocobre Ltd, soaring almost 50 percent to an all-time high.

Lithium, a highly reactive and versatile metal, is expected to be in increasing demand as carmakers choose costly but more efficient lithium-ion batteries to power hybrid and electric vehicles.

"When it comes to mass production of hybrids, the main hurdle has been a shortage of batteries," said Yoshihiko Tabei, chief analyst at Kazaka Securities. "Toyota is taking a step on its own to secure the materials it needs to ensure stable production."

Toyota Tsusho Corp, a trading house and key Toyota supplier 22 percent-owned by the automaker, said it would jointly develop a new lithium project in Argentina with Orocobre.

Orocobre shares jumped to a record peak of A$2.04 in its heaviest ever trading volume. The stock has risen almost 10-fold in the past 12 months, and closed up 32 percent at

A$1.85.

Toyota Tsusho rose 6 percent, while Toyota Motor's stock ended down 0.9 percent, roughly in line with other auto shares.

STEP CHANGE IN DEMAND

The Salar de Olaroz project in Argentina is estimated to cost around $80-$100 million, with the final figure to be determined after a feasibility study, Orocobre spokesman Paul Ryan said, adding the study should be complete by end-September.

"As environmentally friendly electric car demand continues to grow, Toyota Motor will have the opportunity to become a cornerstone offtake customer," Orocobre said in a statement.

Toyota uses nickel-metal-hydride batteries for the current Prius hybrid but has decided on lithium-ion batteries for future plug-in models.

Concerns about carbon emissions and their impact on climate change plus high and volatile oil prices are increasing the popularity of hybrid and electric vehicles despite their higher costs.

Toyota aims to double its global output of gas-electric hybrid cars to 1 million units in 2011, as it fights to stay in the lead in the growing market for low-emission cars, the Nikkei business reported this month.

Orocobre went public in December 2007 and now has a current market capitalization of nearly A$150 million.

Managing Director Richard Seville said the lithium market had been growing at a compound annual growth rate of about 7 percent between 1997 and 2007, before the global financial crisis, thanks largely to demand from consumer electronics makers.

"That growth will continue, but on top of that we have the step change in demand with a new application which is in large format batteries for use in electrical vehicles," Seville told Reuters.

Houston-based James Calaway, non-executive chairman, and his family members hold an 11 percent stake in Orocombre, while other board members own a further 15-20 percent, Seville said.

JAPAN SEEKS RARE METALS

Subject to the finalization of the terms, Toyota Tsusho will acquire a 25 percent equity interest in the joint venture while Orocobre will continue to own the remaining 75 percent of the project and will operate the venture.

The Japanese government-affiliated Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp (JOGMEC) is looking to take a part of Toyota Tsuho's 25 percent stake, as part of Japan's efforts to secure stable sources of rare metals, government officials said.

"Rare metals are essential not just for the high-tech sector but for Japan's manufacturing industry overall," said Hiroshi Kuwayama, a deputy director at Japan's Agency for Natural Resources and Energy.

"With other countries, such as China, investing in mines around the world, we want to be more aggressive to support the private sector in securing stable supplies."

Boliva has around 50 percent of the world's lithium reserves, but does not yet mine the metal, while Chile, China and Brazil also hold big reserves.

(Additional reporting by Mayumi Negishi in TOKYO and Leonora Walet in HONG KONG; Editing by Mark Bendeich and Lincoln Feast)


[Green Business]
Denise Luna
JUIZ DE FORA, Brazil
Tue Jan 19, 2010 3:41pm EST
Brazil opens world's first ethanol-fired power plant

JUIZ DE FORA, Brazil (Reuters) - Brazil on Tuesday opened the world's first ethanol-fueled power plant in an effort by the South American biofuels giant to increase the global use of ethanol and boost its clean power generation.

State-run oil giant Petrobras and General Electric Co, which helped design the plant, are betting that increased use of ethanol generation by green-conscious countries will boost demand for the product.

Brazil, the top global ethanol exporter, is already in talks with Japan to develop biofuels power generation there.

"We have great expectations to show the viability and economy of generating electricity from ... an alternative feedstock to fossil fuels," Maria das Gracas Foster, head of Petrobras' natural gas division, said.

Petrobras with the help of GE upgraded the 87-megawatt power plant to switch between running on natural gas or ethanol instantaneously. Brazil primarily relies on hydroelectric power but needs backup thermoelectric generation during the dry season.

John Ingham, Latin America Products Director for GE, said tests showed switching the plant to ethanol reduced carbon dioxide emissions without lowering energy output.

GE has around 770 turbines like those used in the Juiz de Fora plant, including many in Japan, that could be converted to run on ethanol, he said.

"A plant like that consumes a lot of ethanol, so it has to be in a place that makes sense (such as) places that have no access to gas, like Japan, some islands, or places that depend heavily on diesel like the Amazon region," he said.

Brazil is expected to produce a record 27.8 billion liters of ethanol in the 2009/2010 season. It began its biofuels program 30 years ago and now mandates a minimum 20 percent of ethanol in gasoline.

Petrobras itself is only starting to enter the ethanol market. Brazil's ethanol production comes from sugar cane milled by companies such as Cosan or commodities giants including Cargill Inc, Bunge and ADM Co..

Domestic demand for ethanol is being driven by the popularity of the flex-fuel car technology that was launched in 2003 and now makes up around 90 percent of new vehicle sales.

(Writing by Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

news20100120reut5

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
James Vicini and Andrew Stern
Tue Jan 19, 2010 4:48pm EST
Michigan locks bid denied in Great Lakes carp case

WASHINGTON/CHICAGO (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a request by the state of Michigan for an injunction to force the closing of two Chicago-area waterway locks to keep Asian carp from invading the Great Lakes.

The voracious Bighead and Silver carp are considered a dire threat to the lakes' $7 billion fisheries.

Michigan last month took the unusual step of asking the high court for an order that would close the two locks and would require authorities to take all other action necessary to keep the carp from entering the lakes.

Michigan asked that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the state of Illinois and Chicago's sewer authority take more steps to block the carp during flooding and ultimately to separate the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River watershed.

The invasive carp may have already reached Lake Michigan, with authorities saying on Tuesday that water samples recently taken in an Indiana harbor contained carp DNA.

However, sampling for environmental DNA is a new technique and authorities are seeking proof that actual Asian carp are swimming in the lake.

"We would like the confirmation of a physical specimen," said Major General John Peabody of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Netting and electro-fishing are being conducted.

Closing a lock and dam and the other measures could help keep the carp from entering the lakes, but it also court hurt shippers, who transport 15 million tons of commodities through the connecting waterways each year.

Nearby Midwestern states such as Minnesota and Ohio supported Michigan's request while Illinois and the federal government opposed it.

U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan told the court that Michigan failed to show likely irreparable harm, that the state cannot prevail on the merits of its theory and Michigan cannot justify the mandatory relief it demands.

If the Army Corps makes a final decision to reject the steps Michigan wants, then the state can ask a federal judge to decide if the agency acted lawfully, Kagan said.

While the court denied the preliminary injunction, it took no action on Michigan's separate request to reopen cases dating back to the 1920s that control how much water Chicago can withdraw from Lake Michigan. Environmentalists said they remained optimistic the court would act on the other request.

A huge engineering project a century ago reversed the direction of the Chicago River and diverts lake water into a canal that connects Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River watershed. The goal was to stop sewage releases into the lake.

Kagan said Michigan was trying to use old cases about water flows and allotments to litigate an entirely different environmental protection issue involving the carp.

After the court denied the injunction, the governors of Michigan and Wisconsin sent a letter to the White House asking the administration to set up a meeting of governors from Great Lakes states to discuss the Asian carp threat.

(Editing by Eric Walsh)


[Green Business]
STRASBOURG, France
Wed Jan 20, 2010 6:01am EST
EU must curb dependence on energy imports: Zapatero

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - Europe will lose its economic advantage if it does not reduce its dependence on imported gas and oil, Spain's prime minister said on Wednesday in his role at the helm of the European Union.

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Spain would focus on economic recovery while it holds the EU's rotating presidency until the end of June.

That would be helped by further liberalizing energy grids, building links between national networks and promoting electric cars, he added.

"In the last ten years ... our energy consumption has gone up by 9 percent," Zapatero told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. "We need to reduce our dependence. If we don't reduce it we won't be able to have any economic growth."

About 58 percent of the gas used by Europe's homes and industry comes from outside the EU. Some 40 percent of those imports are Russian, followed by 24 percent from Norway and 20 percent from Algeria.

The 27-nation bloc woke up to its vulnerability last January, when a payment dispute between Moscow and transit country Ukraine cut imports of Russian gas into Europe during three weeks of freezing weather.

"We've moved from 44 to 53 percent in energy dependence," Zapatero said.

"These 9 extra percentage points represent 67 billion euros ($95 billion) we transfer to other countries from the EU -- it's almost exactly the same as what all European countries spend on public investment in research and development."

INTERCONNECTIONS

The first of two Spanish priorities is to extend liberalization of energy markets, a move the EU started last March with new laws to break up giant energy companies.

The second is achieving improved interconnections between national grid networks for transporting gas and electricity, which would promote more competition between suppliers, drive down prices, and allow countries assist each other in energy crises.

"Europe won't gain any kind of economic competitive leadership unless it tackles energy grid interconnection decisively," Zapatero said.

European policymakers also want to encourage investment in "Smart Grids" -- highly computerized power systems capable of balancing fluctuations in supply and demand for power.

"We need to promote development of renewable energies, which by their very nature will require more versatility as far as distribution is concerned," Zapatero said.

He also highlighted the need for coordination to promote electric cars, which are likely to play a big role in any future EU policy to cut emissions from transport.

"If we move forward in an integrated way as Europeans with a joint vision for electric cars, it will contribute to the climate change battle," he said.

(Writing by Pete Harrison; Editing by Amanda Cooper)


[Green Business]
Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO
Tue Jan 19, 2010 10:18am EST
Haiti's environment needs long-term help: experts

OSLO (Reuters) - Long-term efforts to help Haiti recover from the earthquake will have to reverse environmental damage such as near-total deforestation that threatens food and water supplies for the Caribbean nation, experts say.

The focus is now on emergency aid -- Haitian officials estimate that between 100,000 and 200,000 people died in the January 12 quake. But President Rene Preval urged donors on Monday also to remember the country's long-term needs.

Experts say deforestation in Haiti stretching back to the Duvalier dictatorships -- leaving the nation with less than 2 percent forest cover -- contributes to erosion that undermines food output by the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

"We need to work...to create mechanisms that reinforce better use of natural resources," said Asif Zaidi, Operations Manager of the post-conflict and disaster management branch of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

Before the quake, UNEP had decided on a two-year project from 2010 to bolster Haiti's environment, from forests to coral reefs, spokesman Nick Nuttall said.

Among quick measures for donors could be to provide propane to encourage a shift from charcoal-burning stoves. That could be backed in the longer-term by reforestation and investments in renewable energies such as solar or wind power, Zaidi said.

"If you have forest cover, when heavy rain takes place it doesn't erode the land. It doesn't result in flash floods," he said. Hurricanes are more damaging in Haiti than in neighboring Dominican Republic, largely because of Haiti's lack of forests.

LAND RIGHTS

Another big problem is that Haiti has failed to develop strong governance, such as clear laws on land rights, after misrule under dictatorship from 1957 to 1986 by Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc."

"It is crucial that the priority of boosting agricultural production in the country is not forgotten in the rubble and chaos," the U.N.'s Food and Agricultural Organization said in a statement. Most Haitians live in rural areas.

British-based risk consultancy Maplecroft lists Haiti as number two of 166 nations by their vulnerability to climate change, behind only Somalia and ahead of Afghanistan and Sierra Leone.

"What stands out most for Haiti is resource security -- food security and water security," said Fiona Place, risk analyst at Maplecroft of the ranking that rates countries according to their vulnerability to natural hazards, from droughts to floods.

Years of weak government were also a shortcoming.

Donors have long sought to help Haiti. But a project to plant trees worldwide, for instance, has largely bypassed Haiti.

A U.N.-backed campaign registers 7.8 billion planted trees -- more than one for every person on the planet. But it lists just 140,000 in Haiti which has a population of 10 million.

And Haiti, like many poor nations, has missed out on projects for promoting carbon-cutting technologies in developing nations that have channeled big investments to China and India as part of the fight against global warming.

(Editing by Charles Dick)