Smart Economy

Raising a child doesn't take a village, U-M research shows

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---It doesn't take a village to raise a child after all, according to University of Michigan research.

"In the African villages that I study in Mali, children fare as well in nuclear families as they do in extended families," said U-M researcher Beverly Strassmann, professor of anthropology and faculty associate at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). "There's a naïve belief that villages raise children communally, when in reality children are raised by their own families and their survival depends critically on the survival of their mothers."

Strassmann's recently published studies provide the first empirical data on two theoretical pillars of the belief that it takes a village to raise a child. One of these is the grandmother hypothesis---the idea that a child is more likely to survive if a grandmother is nearby.

The other is cooperative breeding theory, based on animal behavior studies that have shown that in a wide variety of birds, including scrub jays, and many mammals, such as the mongoose, adults may delay their own reproduction to help raise the offspring of others.

"Some researchers have suggested that humans may also be a cooperatively breeding species," said Strassmann, who views human behavior from the perspective of evolutionary biology. "But the evidence I found shows that this is not always the case and there can be quite a lot of competition and coercion within families."

In a study published this summer in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Strassmann analyzed data on child survival in various family structures from her ongoing, 25-year study of the Dogon people of Mali, West Africa, a traditional, agricultural society in which resources are scarce and mortality is high. Like many human groups in the past, Dogon society is patrilineal, with a tight-knit web of kinship established through fathers. The Dogon practice polygyny and do not use contraception; Dogon women give birth to 9 children, on average, over their lifetimes.

Strassmann's study is the only research on the subject to date that is both prospective in nature and that controls for confounding variables, such as family wealth and family structure, that could affect child survival.

In the 1,700 Dogon children she followed, Strassmann found that children were over four times more likely to die by age 5 if their mothers were dead.

"In the Dogon, it is mothers alone who are critical for getting children past the early-life bottleneck in survival," Strassmann said. "Adding an extra adult to the family did not improve a child's survival. Although it's important to note that these findings are about child survival up to age 5, they don't speak to the value of having grandparents later on.

"Children were 52 percent less likely to die if their paternal grandparents were dead. Why? Because in a patrilineal society, the paternal grandparents are likely to live with the child, competing for scarce resources."

In another study, published this summer in Human Nature, Strassmann and ISR researcher Wendy Garrard further investigated the validity of the grandmother hypothesis. This study involved a meta-analysis of published studies done over several centuries in 17 patrilineal societies in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America.

"Our analysis showed that the grandparents who actually lived with their grandchildren did not have a beneficial effect on the grandchildren's survival," Strassmann said. "Grandparents who did not live with the grandchildren sometimes did have a positive effect because they were not competing for scarce resources.

"Cooperative breeding is not the universal, evolved pattern. Instead there is huge diversity in the array of successful family systems in humans. For example, in the U.S., there are a huge proportion of nuclear families and single moms. Certainly many children of single mothers not only survive but thrive. Look at Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

"Cooperative breeding does help to understand 19th century European societies, for example, in Ireland, where marriage was postponed to the late 20s or even 30s due to the scarcity of farms to inherit. In these societies, celibate individuals often worked on the farms of siblings as helpers and can be compared to cooperatively breeding birds that delay reproduction and act as helpers at their parents' nest when the habitat is saturated and all nest sites are taken. However, cooperative breeding does not fit many other societies, such as the one I study in Africa."

In her study of the Dogon, Strassmann found that children's risk of death is higher in polygynous than in monogamous families. This reflects the hazard of living with unrelated females whose own children are competing with the children of co-wives for limited resources.

Supporting this finding, Strassmann cites "Hamilton's Rule," established by British evolutionary biologist W.D. Hamilton in the 1960s. It is the first formal, mathematical description of kin selection theory, the idea that the degree to which we are willing to invest our resources in another person depends, in part, on the degree of genetic kinship we share with them.

But kinship cuts both ways, according to Strassmann.

"Our results also suggest that kin competition is an important aspect of human family systems," she said. "Genetic conflicts of interest occur even within the family. This competition starts before birth, with maternal genes allocating resources strategically between present and future offspring. The competition extends throughout childhood with sibling rivalry.

"At reproductive maturity, kin compete for the resources needed for mating and parental effort. And finally, in old age, net producers eventually become net consumers who compete with other family members for food and shelter.

"The grandmother hypothesis does not take into account that grandmothers may need help themselves, not just among the groups like the Dogon but in societies like our own."

 

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Established in 1949, the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research is the world's largest academic social science survey and research organization, and a world leader in developing and applying social science methodology, and in educating researchers and students from around the world. ISR conducts some of the most widely cited studies in the nation, including the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers, the American National Election Studies, the Monitoring the Future Study, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Health and Retirement Study, the Columbia County Longitudinal Study and the National Survey of Black Americans. ISR researchers also collaborate with social scientists in more than 60 nations on the World Values Surveys and other projects, and the institute has established formal ties with universities in Poland, China and South Africa. ISR is also home to the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, the world's largest digital social science data archive. Visit the ISR website at www.isr.umich.edu for more information.

EDITORS: Watch/download video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=P29h491Z8yQ

Freeze and desist: Disabling cardiac cells that can cause arrhythmia

Majority of cryoballoon ablation patients show no signs of a-fib year after procedure
Chicago – Many patients are responding to a new, minimally invasive way of treating irregular heartbeats by freezing out the bad cells. Atrial fibrillation (A-Fib) is one such heart rhythm disorder, and it's the most common arrhythmia affecting Americans. However, new research shows that 70 percent of patients with the disorder who were treated with cryoballoon ablation, the freezing technique, are free of any heart rhythm irregularities one year out from having the procedure. These results suggest that this minimally invasive procedure may be faster, safer and more effective than the commonly used approach of burning the cells in order to put the heart back into a normal rhythm pattern. Northwestern Memorial Hospital is the only hospital in the city of Chicago, and one of only three in the state of Illinois, performing this procedure. According to cardiologist, Bradley Knight, MD, the switch from "hot" to "cold" has been good for patients.

"This novel technology has the potential to help a large number of patients with symptomatic atrial fibrillation," said Knight, director of electrophysiology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital's Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute. "It represents the first major advance in the tools available to us to perform catheter ablation for patients with intermittent atrial fibrillation in over a decade."

Not only is A-Fib the most common heart rhythm disorder, it's one of the most undertreated. Approximately three million Americans are estimated to have the disease. A-Fib results from abnormal electrical impulses in the heart. The irregularity can be continuous, or it can come and go. Some people can become light-headed or faint, and other symptoms include weakness, lack of energy or shortness of breath and chest pain. A big concern for patients with atrial fibrillation is preventing blood clots or stroke. Half of all diagnosed atrial fibrillation patients fail drug therapy, and if left untreated, have up to five times higher risk of stroke and increased chance of developing heart failure.

Catheter ablation procedures for patients with A-Fib are typically performed by delivering radiofrequency energy (heat) through an electrode at the tip of a catheter to cauterize small amounts of heart tissue responsible for A-Fib. The tissue that is targeted is in the left atrium, near the entrance to the pulmonary veins, while using a point-to-point treatment.

"This new technology called cryoballoon, represents a way to perform ablation in two important ways," says Rod Passman, MD, medical director of the program for atrial fibrillation at Northwestern Memorial Hospital's Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute. "The first is that it freezes the heart tissue rather than using heat. Freezing may lead to less disruption of the lining of the heart chamber and might cause less damage to nearby structures like the esophagus compared to heating the tissue. The second way is that the large balloon allows for a much larger area of heart tissue to be ablated at one time. This should prevent gaps in the ablation lines that can occur with point-to-point radiofrequency ablation."

The FDA's approval of the technology used to do this procedure was based on a trial that demonstrated the safety and efficiency of the device in treating A-Fib. The study showed that 70 percent of patients treated with this freezing technique were free of A-fib at one year, compared to 7 percent of patients treated with drug therapy only. The study also demonstrated that patients enrolled in the study displayed a significant reduction of symptoms, a decrease in the use of drug therapy and great improvement in both physical and emotional quality-of-life factors.

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For more information about heart care at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, visit our website. To schedule an appointment please call 312-926-0779.

About Northwestern Memorial HealthCare

Northwestern Memorial HealthCare is the parent corporation of Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital, an 854-bed academic medical center hospital and Northwestern Lake Forest Hospital, a 205-bed community hospital located in Lake Forest, Illinois.

About Northwestern Memorial Hospital

Northwestern Memorial is one of the country's premier academic medical center hospitals and is the primary teaching hospital of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Along with its Prentice Women's Hospital and Stone Institute of Psychiatry, the hospital comprises 854 beds, 1,603 affiliated physicians and 7,144 employees. Northwestern Memorial is recognized for providing exemplary patient care and state-of-the art advancements in the areas of cardiovascular care; women's health; oncology; neurology and neurosurgery; solid organ and soft tissue transplants and orthopaedics.

Northwestern Memorial possesses nursing Magnet Status, the nation's highest recognition for patient care and nursing excellence. It is also listed in 13 clinical specialties in U.S. News & World Report's 2011 "America's Best Hospitals" guide and ranks No. 1 in Chicago in the 2011 U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals metro area rankings. For 10 years running, Northwestern Memorial has been rated among the "100 Best Companies for Working Mothers" guide by Working Mother magazine. The hospital is a recipient of the prestigious National Quality Health Care Award and has been chosen by Chicagoans as the Consumer Choice according to the National Research Corporation's annual survey for 11 years.

 

 

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Novel alloy could produce hydrogen fuel from sunlight

Using advanced theoretical computations, a team of Kentucky scientists has derived a means to "tweak" an inexpensive semiconductor to function as photoelectrochemical catalyst.

Scientists from the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville have determined that an inexpensive semiconductor material can be "tweaked" to generate hydrogen from water using sunlight.

The research, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, was led by Professors Madhu Menon and R. Michael Sheetz at the UK Center for Computational Sciences, and Professor Mahendra Sunkara and graduate student Chandrashekhar Pendyala at the UofL Conn Center for Renewable Energy Research. Their findings were published Aug. 1 in the Physical Review Journal (Phys Rev B 84, 075304).

The researchers say their findings are a triumph for computational sciences, one that could potentially have profound implications for the future of solar energy.

Using state-of-the-art theoretical computations, the UK-UofL team demonstrated that an alloy formed by a 2 percent substitution of antimony (Sb) in gallium nitride (GaN) has the right electrical properties to enable solar light energy to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, a process known as photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting. When the alloy is immersed in water and exposed to sunlight, the chemical bond between the hydrogen and oxygen molecules in water is broken. The hydrogen can then be collected.

"Previous research on PEC has focused on complex materials," Menon said. "We decided to go against the conventional wisdom and start with some easy-to-produce materials, even if they lacked the right arrangement of electrons to meet PEC criteria. Our goal was to see if a minimal 'tweaking' of the electronic arrangement in these materials would accomplish the desired results."

Gallium nitride is a semiconductor that has been in widespread use to make bright-light LEDs since the 1990s. Antimony is a metalloid element that has been in increased demand in recent years for applications in microelectronics. The GaN-Sb alloy is the first simple, easy-to-produce material to be considered a candidate for PEC water splitting. The alloy functions as a catalyst in the PEC reaction, meaning that it is not consumed and may be reused indefinitely. UofL and UK researchers are currently working toward producing the alloy and testing its ability to convert solar energy to hydrogen.

Hydrogen has long been touted as a likely key component in the transition to cleaner energy sources. It can be used in fuel cells to generate electricity, burned to produce heat, and utilized in internal-combustion engines to power vehicles. When combusted, hydrogen combines with oxygen to form water vapor as its only waste product. Hydrogen also has wide-ranging applications in science and industry.

Because pure hydrogen gas is not found in free abundance on Earth, it must be manufactured by unlocking it from other compounds. Thus, hydrogen is not considered an energy source, but rather an "energy carrier." Currently, it takes a large amount of electricity to generate hydrogen by water splitting. As a consequence, most of the hydrogen manufactured today is derived from non-renewable sources such as coal and natural gas.

Sunkara says the GaN-Sb alloy has the potential to convert solar energy into an economical, carbon-free source for hydrogen.

"Hydrogen production now involves a large amount of CO2 emissions," Sunkara said. "Once this alloy material is widely available, it could conceivably be used to make zero-emissions fuel for powering homes and cars and to heat homes."

Menon says the research should attract the interest of other scientists across a variety of disciplines.

"Photocatalysis is currently one of the hottest topics in science," Menon said. "We expect the present work to have a wide appeal in the community spanning chemistry, physics and engineering."

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For more information, please contact Keith Hautala at the University of Kentucky at (859) 323-2396 or [email protected]. At the University of Louisville, please contact Judy Hughes at (502) 852-6171 or [email protected].

Engineers test effects of fire on steel structures, nuclear plant design

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Ten years after 9/11, researchers at Purdue University are continuing work that could lead to safer steel structures such as buildings and bridges and also an emerging type of nuclear power plant design.

"I want people to understand that in the last 10 years we've not been quiet," said Amit Varma, a Purdue associate professor of civil engineering. "We've been working to make structures better and safer."

The researchers are using a custom heating system and a specialized laboratory for testing large beams and other components and have created models that could be used in designs to improve fire safety.

New findings are detailed in two research papers appearing this month as part of a special 9/11 issue of the American Society of Civil Engineers' Journal of Structural Engineering. The work has been led by Varma, doctoral student Lisa Choe and graduate student Emily Wellman.

Data will be used to potentially update design codes for steel structures and to test and verify computational building-design models.

The work is funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology, the American Institute of Steel Construction, and the American Iron and Steel Institute.

Building fires may reach temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius, or more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, and the strength of steel structures drops by about 40 percent when exposed to temperatures exceeding 500 degrees Celsius.

Steel components in buildings are covered with fireproofing materials to resist the effects of extreme heating.

"So the air could be 1,000 degrees in a fire, but the insulated steel might be 500 degrees or less," Varma said. "However, once the steel gets beyond 600 degrees Celsius, there can be some major problems."

The Purdue researchers designed a system made up of heating panels to simulate the effects of fire. The heating system is being used to test full-scale steel columns at Purdue's Robert L. and Terry L. Bowen Laboratory for Large-Scale Civil Engineering Research. The panels have electrical coils, like giant toaster ovens, and are placed close to surfaces being studied. As the system is used to simulate the effects of fire, test structures are subjected to forces with hydraulic equipment to mimic the loads experienced in real structures.

"We wanted to build an experimental method that engineers can use to study the behavior of buildings in fire using a structures laboratory," he said. "Most of the previous work has been done in fire laboratories, which don't have the same experimental resources of a structures lab. We can subject the structures to failure and make more fundamental observations of behavior and failure to build models. Almost no tests or data like we have can be found in the public domain."

Doctoral student Anil Agrawal led work to create a model that shows precisely what happens to a steel member subjected to fire while forces are applied by the hydraulic cylinders. The model has been found to be accurate when compared to the experimental results from work led by Choe.

"These are very difficult experiments to perform," Varma said. "Having a dependable model to predict behavior means you don't have to do as many experiments when testing new designs."

Wellman led a portion of the work focusing on the effects of fire on a building's steel-and-concrete floor and its connections to the building. The composite design is the most common type of floor system used in steel structures.

"Conventional wisdom says the presence of concrete floors improves the fire resistance of a building," Varma said. "We found that this isn't necessarily true for the worst-case scenario, unless you set out to design the floor specifically to perform well in fire."

The aim of the research is to learn precisely what happens to the connections between a floor's steel beams and the building columns. Extreme heat causes the beams to sag.

"When it starts sagging, the question is, how do the connections perform? This has been a big question for the industry," Varma said.

The researchers analyzed critical joints after a floor system was subjected to extreme heat in a special oven at Michigan State University. Results will be used to help researchers create a model of the steel-concrete floor system.

"It is far more difficult to model a floor system than it is to model columns," Varma said. "But we will eventually be able to do that."

Another paper to be published in December in the American Institute of Steel Construction's Engineering Journal shows how to use the models to create design specifications for columns. The paper was written by Agrawal, who also is involved in modeling the steel columns and the collapse of entire building systems. The work is ongoing.

Varma also has led research to test a new type of design for nuclear power plants. The work focuses on testing structures like those to be used in the Westinghouse Electric Co. AP1000 standard nuclear power plant design. Engineers tested components of an "enhanced shield building" that will contain the plant's main system components.

The building consists of an inner steel-wall containment vessel and an outer radiation shield made using a technology called steel-concrete-composite construction. Instead of using more conventional reinforced concrete, which is strengthened with steel bars, the steel-concrete approach uses a sandwich of steel plates filled with concrete.

The new design may reduce the cost of building nuclear power plants by speeding construction time. The composite construction method was first used more than a century ago, but no codes or standards for its use in nuclear power plants yet exist, said Varma, who is vice chair of an industry committee writing a new specification for composite structures in nuclear power plants.

Findings have shown the design withstands the seismic forces that would result from strong earthquakes. Data also indicate the construction method, also called armored construction, could be used to create structures capable of withstanding aircraft or missile attacks.

"When you have steel plates on the inside and on the outside, it's a structure that would hold up against an aircraft impact or extreme weather events, such as tornados," Varma said. "Nothing can easily punch through that sort of structure."

The Bowen lab is one of a handful of facilities where testing can be performed on full-scale structures instead of smaller-scale specimens, yielding more accurate data. The 66,000-square-foot laboratory is equipped with special hydraulic testing equipment and powerful overhead cranes.

 

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Related websites:

Amit Varma:
https://engineering.purdue.edu/CE/People/view_person?group_id=1920&resource_id=2280

Bowen Lab:
https://engineering.purdue.edu/CE/Academics/Groups/Structural/BOWEN/index_html

ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering:
http://ascelibrary.org/sto/resource/1/jsendh

 

Amit Varma, a Purdue associate professor of civil engineering, is leading work that could lead to safer steel structures such as buildings and bridges and also an emerging type of nuclear power plant design. The work is based at Purdue's Robert L. and Terry L. Bowen Laboratory for Large-Scale Civil Engineering Research. (Purdue University file photo/Andrew Hancock)

A publication-quality file photo is available at http://news.uns.purdue.edu/images/2011/varma-911.jpg

Abstracts on the research in this release is available at: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2011/110901Varma911.html

PHOTO CAPTION:

A study reveals the rhythms of communications between people

A study reveals the rhythms of communications between people

 

Communication between people is produced in bursts, with intense periods of conversations and long periods of inactivity. And it happens at the same time between members of the same social group, which accelerates the spreading of information within that group, according to a scientific study carried out by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) in collaboration with Telefónica I+D.

 

This study, which has analyzed around 9,000 million calls throughout almost a year period, is the first to identify these features of the communication process and to quantify their impact in the diffusion of information. "This is something very important in the processes such as the diffusion of commercial information, viral marketing and the market trends of products, but also in situations such as the spreading of rumours, opinions, policies, etc.”, explained one of the authors of this research, Esteban Moro, from the Grupo de Investigación Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos (Interdisciplinary Research Group of Complex Systems) of the Mathematics Department at the UC3M and the Instituto de Ciencias Matemáticas ICMAT (Institute of Mathematic Sciences), a CSIC, UAM, UCM and UC3M joint center.

 

The study’s main conclusion, published in the scientific Journal, Physical Review E, is the finding that people communicate in bursts. In this way, our behaviour (in communication as well as in other activities) does not happen in a homogenous way over time, but rather there is universal behaviour in which there is no communication, followed by short intervals called bursts. "This aspect of human activity which has also been observed in other activities such as e-mail, web page visits and stock market operations governs communication between people,” , the researchers concluded. The effect of the bursts is that it slows down the information diffusion since the large periods of inactivity in the communication between two persons make it less likely that information is passed from one to the other. The study also highlights another important aspect of human communications: in group conversations, that is, although it is produced in bursts, these bursts happen at the same time among the members of the social group, which then accelerates information diffusion within these groups.

 

When, how much, and how do I communicate

 

The main objective of the research is to try to understand the temporal pattern of communication among persons in a social network. "As opposed to the static vision of a social network (who I interact with), our study seeks to understand when and how these social relations are produced,” Professor Esteban Moro elaborated. And with two purposes, the first being, to see if relations in a social network can be quantified better, that is, determine if the communication rhythm between two persons allows us to know something about the "strength" or characteristics of the relation (family member, acquaintance, friend, colleague, etc..); and the second, to investigate the impact of these rhythms on the propagation of information in social networks, in processes such as viral marketing, product recommendations, etc.

 

Static visualization of the social network of some of the persons speaking by phone (300,000 customers). Each circle is a customer and each line is a call between two customers. The network is very dense, a reflection of the small world of the social networks. .

 

 

This study, which receives funding from the Ministry of Science and Innovation through the MOSAICO Science and Innovation project, has been possible thanks to the framework agreement that the UC3M has with Telefónica I+D and a program of Becas de Formación de Doctores. (Professional Training Grants for PhD’s) In addition, the company facilitated access to totally anonymous databases of calls in a country during a period of eleven months. In all, the researchers analyzed approximately 9,000 million calls between 20 million people, around 30 percent of the population of a country. "This large volume of data and the extended time period guarantees the representiveness and universality in the results", pointed out another one of the study’s author, Giovanna Miritello, a PhD candidate in the Mathematics Department of UC3M, with a grant-contract from Telefónica I+D.

 

More info:

 

Title: Dynamical strength of social ties in information spreading

Authors: Giovanna Miritello, Esteban Moro y Lara Rubén

Source: Physical Review E. Volume: 83. Issue: 4.

ISSN: 1539-3755

Researchers investigate new mechanism for predicting how diseases spread

Northwestern University professor Dirk Brockmann and his group at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science have investigated the outcomes of a previously ignored mechanism in modeling how humans travel.

By challenging a long-held assumption, Brockmann, associate professor of engineering sciences and applied mathematics, hopes to create models that can more accurately predict the spread of disease and the spread of human-mediated bioinvasions.

"Though there are many sophisticated computer models out there to model mobility patterns, we can now expect significant differences in disease model predictions," Brockmann said.

Their work, done in collaboration with scientists at the Max-Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen, Germany and with scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was recently published on the first page of the inaugural issue of Physical Review X, a new open-source journal developed by the American Physical Society.

Previous models of how diseases spread made assumptions that human populations are like chemicals being stirred in a container: they interact and travel randomly. Each city is its own container, and when people travel there, they become part of that container.

"Most of the time that's a pretty good assumption," Brockmann said. "But it's not realistic." Most people don't randomly travel from place to place; they travel somewhere, then come back home. Travel again, then come back home.

"They have a base location," Brockmann said. "They don't wander around like a fox in the woods."

Brockmann and his collaborators created a model that used this "base location" assumption and found that it created significant differences in predicting the spread of disease.

A key result was the speed of the disease "wave," or how certain diseases (especially before the advent of air travel) spread in a giant wave across a city or country. It was previously thought that the more people travel, the faster the wave spreads. Now, using this new mechanism, Brockmann has found that the wave actually reaches a maximum speed and then levels off.

"Since you always return home, you don't carry the disease to as many places as we assumed in previous models," he said. "This has been previously overlooked in mathematical epidemiology research."

Brockmann and his group hope to incorporate this new sort of model in realistic models of specific diseases, like the H1N1 influenza, and bioinvasions.

"We've shown this basic mechanism that wasn't known before," he said. "Now we need to see just how it impacts specific diseases."

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This research was funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.

Contact: Megan Fellman

[email protected]

847-491-3115

Northwestern University

 

 

 

Flawed Strategy (Ukrainian version) By Dr Andrew Zhalko-Tytarenko and Walter Derzko

ВИ ЦЕ СЕРЙОЗНО? СПРАВДІ?

By Dr Andrew Zhalko-Tytarenko and Walter Derzko

У своїй дивно анти-російській промові у Душанбе на саміті глав держав СНД Янукович сказав, що “ існує дві головні складові в питанні перегляду газових контрактів. Перш за все мова йде про те, що відповідна угода була підписана господарюючими суб'єктами України та Росії без урахування існуючих між двома країнами угод. «А точніше — з порушенням цих угод», — зауважив він.

«Але якщо Росія з цим не погодиться, безумовно, ми будемо змушені тоді йти в міжнародний суд. Проте, я сподіваюся, у нас вистачить мудрості знайти спільне рішення — без суду. Я розглядаю суд уже як останню інстанцію, коли будуть вичерпані під час переговорів всі наші можливості», — сказав президент України.

Другою складовою, яка повинна враховуватися в питанні перегляду газових контрактів, В. Янукович назвав той факт, що «Нафтогаз Україна» укладав угоду без затверджених урядом повноважень. Правомірність дій у цьому питанні особисто Юлії Тимошенко оцінить суд, підкреслив В. Янукович. «На це питання, я сподіваюся, ми отримаємо відповідь дуже скоро».

(http://news.dt.ua/articles/87216)

 

Таким чином, cхема проста, і досить примітивна: засудити Тимошенко за зловживання владою, а потім використовувати це судове рішення, щоб почати міжнародну юридичну битву з Росією, аби анулювати контракти, які були підписані Тимошенко. Можна згадати, що вона зробила це, аби відновити газопостачання Україні, і щоб врятувати Європу від холоду взимку 2009 року. Але кого це обходить?

Загальновідомо, що Янукович і прем'єр-міністр Азаров підтвердили свою прихильність до 2009 контрактів, коли вони підписали "Харківські угоди" 2010 року. За цими угодами продовжено  перебування в Чорноморського флоту Росії на 25 років в обмін на знижки у цні природного газу. Єдина суттєва зміна, яку було зроблено по відношенню до документів 2009 року є введення штрафів за розпуск угод; Угода і контракт 2009 року таких санкцій не передбачали. За Угодою 2010 року Україна зобов”язалась забезпечити посткпове зростання імпорту Російського природного газу щорічно у порівнянні з аналогічним періодом минулого рокую За зміну обсягу імпорту - також штрафні санкції. Кінцевий обсяг імпорту природного газу в Україну був встановлений в 2010 році, як 52мільярдів. кубометрів (bcm) на рік, що приблизно Україна споживає в даний час, тоді як власне виробництво становить приблизно 20bcm. Іншими словами, в 2010 році Янукович зобов”язався поступово замінити недорогий газ вітчизняного виробництва з Полтави, Криму, і Галичини на дорогий Російський газ з-за Полярного кола. Не дивно, що опозиція використала все, що мала (включаючи яйця), щоб запобігти ратифікації "Харківських угод".

 

Наріжним каменем цій грі є вирок Тимошенко. План інакше не спрацює. Ймовірно, він не спрацює все одно, але Янукович старається. І Печерський суд України робить все можливе, щоб виконати завдання, незалежно від того, які докази представлені.

Перш за все, зловживання владою тут ні до чого. За українським законодавством, прем'єр-міністр уповноважений підписувати міжнародні угоди за посадою, і немає необхідності в затвердженні повноважень кабінетом. Прокурори також стверджують, що директиви для української газової монополії “Нафтогаз” на підписання контракту були сфальсифіковані Тимошенко, щоб виглядати, як директиви Кабінету міністрів. Позаяк вони не навели  оригіналу директиви, а документ, який вони долучили до справи був лише з факсиміле Тимошенко, і на  копії, а не на оригіналі. І це була особиста директива прем'єр-міністра, а не директива Кабінету міністрів. Інші претензії у тому ж стилі, але одна все-таки виділяється: Тимошенко буцім намагалися збільшити свою популярність, виглядаючи занадто гарною. Шо, вочевидь, є злочин, якщо навіть побіжно поглянути на портретну галерею нинішнього українського "Політбюро".

Процес також вражає. Тимошенко привозять до суду щодня за 2-3 години до слухань, і замикають в комірці 1X1 метр до початку слухань. Слухання зазвичай закінчуються після 6 вечора, так що її захист не може переговорити з нею, тому що такі правила у  в'язниці; насправді вона позбавлена ​​права належним чином захистити себе. Суд відмовився розглядати переважну більшість документів, які підтверджують невинність Тимошенко, всі документи, стосовно скандального "Росукренерго", і навіть дані офіційного аудиту "Ernst & Young", які показують, що “Нафтогаз” став прибутковим в результаті рішення про усунення "РосУкрЕнерго" від торгівлі газом у 2009 році. Слухання проходять під головуванням молодого судді Родіона Кірєєва, який все ще проходить 5-річний випробувальний термін, і який вже має догану від Апеляційного суду за відмову визнавати документи захисту, а також за незаконне і упереджене рішення у справі про корупцію в селищі Березань — у єдиний випадку корупції, який він розглядав у його житті. Кірєєв був переведений з Березані до Києва, щоб обробляти Тимошенко випадку. Щоб зробити коротше кажучи, слухання суміш глузування і цирку найнижчого гатунку. Природно, Кірєєв відхилив прохання про звільнення Тимошенко під заставу, що надійшли від сенатора США  Джона Маккейна, Далай-лами, від лауреатів Нобелівської премії, і заклики, які були підтримані Державним департаментом США. Природно, він Тимошенко засудить, у послідовності йому не відмовиш, що є, те є у хлопця.

 

Всі ці процедури є неконституційними, і несуть масові порушення процедур та українського законодавства. Президент, чия робота полягає в гарантуванні Конституції, продовжує говорити, що він не може втручатися в судовий розгляд. Позаяк він не остерігся передбачити судове рішення, виступаючи в Душанбе. Тобто: він нехтує своїми прямими обов'язками, що, безумовно, є підставою для імпічменту. Але він не звертає на те уваги. Він купує автомобілі для перевезення ув'язнених, і продовжує додавати кількість поліції та власних охоронців - пояснивши, що це все робиться для "Євро-2012». Це вже стало свого роду універсальним виправданням, що Донецький режим використовує доречно і недоречно.

Чому так? «Це є Газ», як сказано на обкладинці вічно молодого звіту "Transparency International" 2006 року про тіньові газові оборудкиі. Хімічні підприємства Дмитра Фірташа, основного спонсора Януковича, не можуть вижити, коли ціна на газ вище 280дол. США за 1000 кубометрів. Інший спонсор Януковича, Ахметов, володіє металургійними заводами і компаніями, що виробляють електрику.  Вониі також потребують дешевого газу. Коли небудь ми розповімо, як вони залишаються прибутковими, в той час як Україна купує газ по 355дол.США за 1000 кубометрів. Всі олігархи хочуть отримати більше прибутку. Фірташ більш ніж у п'ять разів своє багатство протягом року, але для нього не існує такого поняття, як розум в цій гонці. А ще й якщо отримавши дешевший газ Фірташ зможе посадити за грати особистого ворога - Юлю Тимошенко, то це буде приємний бонус для нього. Все, що з усьоло цього має Янукович — то клопоти. Його рейтинг котиться вниз, і він на шляху до отримання міжнародного статусу  Лукашенка чи Кім Чен Іра, але це включено до рахунку.

 

Отже, що ж далі? Тимошенко буде винесено вирок. Після того як вона буде засуджена, Янукович (чи, вірніше, його юристи, яким спала на думку ця "блискуча" схема) подадуть на анулювання угод 2009 року. Важко повірити, що будь-який європейський суд або трибунал буде навіть розглядати справу, яка заснована на такому рішенні, яке очікуєтся, і добутому в такий спосіб. Плюс будуть апеляції, національні і міжнародні, і важкі міжнародні наслідки. Але припустимо, добре пошукавши, і і де-інде заплативши, суд буде знайдений. Давайте навіть припустимо, що цей суд видавасть те, чого так сильно хотіла влада - рішення на користь Януковича. Що відбувається далі? Може суд, будь-який суд, змусити Росію продавати газ Україні, якщо Росії не подобається ціна? Ні. Чи буде будь-яка іноземна держава підтримувати такі правові трюки, та ще й засновані на завідомо незаконних слуханнях? Абсолютно ні. Тоді єдиний варіант, який залишається для України, є відбирати транзитний газ, змушуючи Росію припинити транзит Російського природного газу в Європу. Але в мене є погані новини для режиму в Києві. Це не 2009, це буде у 2012 році. Росія тепер може прокачати 76.5bcm природного газу до Європи без використання українських трубопроводів, Європа створила мережу інтерконекторів у газових мережах, що дозволить вивести природний газу з Північного моря в Словаччину, та ще й додала 16bcm об”ємів газосховищ. Нова газова війна буде болючою для Європи і для Росії, але це буде далеко від катастрофи 2009 року. До того ж Росія отримає залізне обгрунтування для будівництва "Південного потоку" - саме те, чого дуже не вистачає російським постачальники труб і газовим сервісним компаніям, що близькі до Путіна.

Все зводиться до того, що вся ця стратегія є неправильною. Вона не принесе нічого, крім неприємностей Януковичу, і нічого, крім втрат Україні, якщо вирок буде зупинений в останню хвилину.

І в кінці тільки одне зауваження: чи не виглядає цинічним і потворними, коли Президент країни, де лідера опозиції протизаконно судять щоб ув”язнити не зважаючи на обставини справи, планує звертатися до міжнародних судів в суперечці за газ? І коли він робить це в той час як приятель всесвітньо відомого газового спекулянта Фірташа є міністром енергетики в уряді? Він це серйозно?

Flawed Strategy

Flawed Strategy by Dr Andrew Zhalko-Tytarenko and Walter Derzko

In his strange, anti-Russian pitch at the Dushanbe CIS Summit (http://news.dt.ua/articles/87216), Victor Yanukowych said that: “ there are two main components in the question of reviewing the Ukrainian Russian gas contracts. First of all, we are talking about the fact that the corresponding agreement was signed by business entities in Ukraine and Russia, without taking into account existing agreements between the two countries. "To be exact - in violation of these agreements."
"But if Russia does not agree with this, of course, we will then have to go to international courts" he said. "However, I hope we have enough wisdom to find a common solution - without a trial. I consider the court as a last resort, when we exhaust all of our opportunities, during negotiations. " said the President of Ukraine.

The second element that must be considered in the question of reviewing gas contracts, said Victor Yanukovych - "Naftogaz Ukraine" concluded an agreement without the approval by the government authority. The legality of this matter will be decided by the court said Yanukowych. "To this question, I hope we get a response very soon"

So the scheme is simple, and fairly basic: get Tymoshenko sentenced for abuse of power, and then use this court decision to launch an international legal battle with Russia to void the contracts that were signed by Tymoshenko. Many will remember that she did so to renew the gas supply of Ukraine, and to save Europe from the winter chill of 2009.

Notoriously, Yanukowych and Prime Minister Azarov had confirmed their adherence to the 2009 contracts, when they signed the “Kharkiv deal” in 2010. The deal extended the stay of the Russian Black Sea Fleet by 25 years in exchange for discounted natural gas supplies. The only essential alteration that was made to the 2009 documents was the introduction of penalties for disbanding the Agreements; note that the 2009 Agreement and contract could be disbanded without any penalty. The 2010 Agreement also presumes the incremental growth of the imports of Russian natural gas on year-over-year basis, and also adds penalties if Ukraine declines to buy more gas this year than the year before. The import target of natural gas for Ukraine was set in 2010 at 52 bln. cubic meters (bcm) per year, which is roughly what Ukraine consumes now, while its own production is circa 20 bcm. In another words, in 2010 Yanukovych committed to replace inexpensive locally produced gas from Poltava, Crimea, and Halychina, with more expensive Russian gas from above the Arctic Circle. It’s not a surprise that the opposition used all it had at hand (including eggs) to prevent the ratification of the “Kharkiv deal”.

The cornerstone of this game plan is the sentencing of Tymoshenko. It will not work otherwise. It probably will not work anyway, but Yanukovych is still trying. And Ukraine's Pechersk court is doing its best to accomplish the task, no matter what “evidence” is presented.

First and foremost, the abuse of power claim does not hold any water. According to Ukrainian regulations, the Prime Minister was authorized to sign international agreements by her position, no need for approval by the Cabinet, that's the rule. Prosecutors also claim, that the directive to Ukrainian gas monopoly NAFTOGAZ to sign the correspondent contract was falsified by Tymoshenko, to look as if it was a Directive from the Cabinet of Ministers. They failed to produce the original directive, and the document that they produced had a rubber-stamped facsimile of Tymoshenko, which was applied to the copy of the document-not the original. And it is a personal directive of the Prime Minister, not the directive of the Cabinet.

Proceedings are also impressive. Tymoshenko is brought to court every day, 2-3 hours before hearings start, and is kept in 1x1 meter cell until hearings start. Hearings usually end after 6PM, so that her defence cannot confer with her because of the jail regulations; in fact she is deprived of the right to properly defend herself. The court has refused to consider the vast majority of the documents, that confirm the innocence of Tymoshenko, all documents that mention the scandalous “Rosukrenergo”, and even the official audit statement of “Ernst & Young”, which shows that NAFTOGAZ turned to profitability as result of the 2009 decision to eliminate “Rosukrenergo” from the gas trade. Hearings are presided by the young judge Rodion Kireyev, who is still going through a 5-year probation period, and who was already reprimanded by the Appeals Court for failing to admit documents from the defence, and for an unlawful and biased judgment in the corruption case in the township of Berezan – the only corruption case that he has ever handled in his life. Kireyev was transferred from Berezan to Kiev to handle the Tymoshenko case. To make long story short, the hearings are a mix of mockery and circus of bad-taste. Naturally, Kireyev turned down requests for bail by US Senator John McCain, by the Dalai-Lama, by Nobel Prize Laureates, and appeals that were backed by the US Department of State. And naturally he will sentence Tymoshenko – there is consistency in his actions, we shall grant him this.

All these proceedings are unconstitutional, and bear massive violations of legal procedures and of Ukrainian Law. The President, whose job is to guarantee the Constitution, keeps saying, that he cannot interfere the court proceedings. He did not mind prejudging the outcome of the court at the Dushanbe Summit though. In plain English: he neglects his direct duties, which is certainly an impeachable offense. But he doesn't mind. He keeps buying vehicles for transporting prisoners, and keeps adding to the numbers of police and bodyguards – explaining that this all is done for “Euro-2012”, a sort of universal excuse that the Donetsk regime uses.

So why? “It's a Gas”, as the 2006 report of “Transparency International” about the shady gas trader say on its cover. The chemical companies of Yanukovych's main sponsor, Dmitro Firtash cannot survive when gas prices are above US$280/1000 cu.m, and another Yanukovych's sponsor, Akhmetov, owns metallurgy and power generation assets, which also needs cheap gas. They all want to make more profits. Firtash more than quintupled his wealth during the past year, but there is no such thing as reason, in this race. If getting cheaper gas will help put Firtash ‘s personal enemy Tymoshenko behind bars, then it will be a nice bonus for him. And all the while, Yanukowych’s ratings are plunging, and he is about to gain the international standing of Lukashenko or Kim Jong Il.

So, what's next ? Tymoshenko will be sentenced. Afterwards, Yanukowych (or rather his lawyers, who came up with this “brilliant” plan) will file a court case to void the 2009 Agreements. It is hard to believe that any European court or tribunal will even take the case that is based on such a “Kangaroo court” ruling, as the expected ruling in Kyiv will be. Plus, there will be appeals, both national and international ones, and a heavy international backlash. Well, let’s assume that after looking both high and low, and after paying here and there, some “court” will be found. Let's even go wild, and assume that this court will issue the badly needed decision in favor of Yanukowych. What happens next? Can a court, any court, force Russia to sell gas to Ukraine, if Russia doesn't like the price? No. Will any foreign country support such a legal trick, which is based on such a notoriously flawed court hearing? Absolutely not. Then the only option that remains for Ukraine is to tap into transit gas, forcing Russia to cut off transit of Russian natural gas to Europe. But there is bad news for the regime in Kyiv. It is not 2009, it will be 2012 when this action may come. Russia can now pump 76.5 bcm of natural gas to Europe without using Ukrainian pipelines. Europe has built a network of gas interconnectors, that allow it to bring natural gas from the Northern Sea to Slovakia, and has added 16 bcm of storage capacity. A new gas war will be painful for Europe and for Russia, but it will be far cry from the disaster of 2009. And Russia will get an iron-clad justification to build the “South Stream” pipeline – something that Russian pipe providers and gas service companies, that are close to Putin, badly want.

The bottom line is that the whole Yanukowych strategy is wrong. It will bring nothing but trouble to Yanukovych, and nothing but losses to Ukraine, unless the Tymoshenko sentencing will be stopped at the eleventh hour.

And as a final statement, just one more remark: doesn't it  look cynical and ugly, when the president of the country, where the leader of the opposition is tried in a real illegitimate “kangaroo court” plans to turn to seek legitimate international justice in a dispute over gas? And he does this while the good pal of world-famous gas speculator Dmitro Firtash serves as the Minister of Energy in his government? Is he serious?

Microscale device made from graphene metamaterials-one atom thick

A whole new light on graphene metamaterials

Berkeley Lab scientists demonstrate a tunable graphene device, the first tool in a kit for putting terahertz light to work

		IMAGE: The graphene microribbon array can be tuned in three ways. Varying the width of the ribbons changes plasmon resonant frequency and absorbs corresponding frequencies of terahertz light. Plasmon response is... Click here for more information.

Long-wavelength terahertz light is invisible – it's at the farthest end of the far infrared – but it's useful for everything from detecting explosives at the airport to designing drugs to diagnosing skin cancer. Now, for the first time, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley have demonstrated a microscale device made of graphene – the remarkable form of carbon that's only one atom thick – whose strong response to light at terahertz frequencies can be tuned with exquisite precision.

"The heart of our device is an array made of graphene ribbons only millionths of a meter wide," says Feng Wang of Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division, who is also an assistant professor of physics at UC Berkeley, and who led the research team. "By varying the width of the ribbons and the concentration of charge carriers in them, we can control the collective oscillations of electrons in the microribbons."

The name for such collective oscillations of electrons is "plasmons," a word that sounds abstruse but describes effects as familiar as the glowing colors in stained-glass windows.

"Plasmons in high-frequency visible light happen in three-dimensional metal nanostructures," Wang says. The colors of medieval stained glass, for example, result from oscillating collections of electrons on the surfaces of nanoparticles of gold, copper, and other metals, and depend on their size and shape. "But graphene is only one atom thick, and its electrons move in only two dimensions. In 2D systems, plasmons occur at much lower frequencies."

		IMAGE: At a constant carrier density, varying the width of the graphene ribbons -- from 1 micrometer (millionth of a meter) to 4 micrometers -- changes the plasmon resonant frequency from... Click here for more information.

The wavelength of terahertz radiation is measured in hundreds of micrometers (millionths of a meter), yet the width of the graphene ribbons in the experimental device is only one to four micrometers each.

"A material that consists of structures with dimensions much smaller than the relevant wavelength, and which exhibits optical properties distinctly different from the bulk material, is called a metamaterial," says Wang. "So we have not only made the first studies of light and plasmon coupling in graphene, we've also created a prototype for future graphene-based metamaterials in the terahertz range."

The team reports their research in Nature Nanotechnology, available in advanced online publication.

How to push the plasmons

In two-dimensional graphene, electrons have a tiny rest mass and respond quickly to electric fields. A plasmon describes the collective oscillation of many electrons, and its frequency depends on how rapidly waves in this electron sea slosh back and forth between the edges of a graphene microribbon. When light of the same frequency is applied, the result is "resonant excitation," a marked increase in the strength of the oscillation – and simultaneous strong absorption of the light at that frequency. Since the frequency of the oscillations is determined by the width of the ribbons, varying their width can tune the system to absorb different frequencies of light.

The strength of the light-plasmon coupling can also be affected by the concentration of charge carriers – electrons and their positively charged counterparts, holes. One remarkable characteristic of graphene is that the concentration of its charge carriers can easily be increased or decreased simply by applying a strong electric field – so-called electrostatic doping.

The Berkeley device incorporates both these methods for tuning the response to terahertz light. Microribbon arrays were made by depositing an atom-thick layer of carbon on a sheet of copper, then transferring the graphene layer to a silicon-oxide substrate and etching ribbon patterns into it. An ion gel with contact points for varying the voltage was placed on top of the graphene.

The gated graphene microarray was illuminated with terahertz radiation at beamline 1.4 of Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source, and transmission measurements were made with the beamline's infrared spectrometer. In this way the research team demonstrated coupling between light and plasmons that were stronger by an order of magnitude than in other 2D systems.

A final method of controlling plasmon strength and terahertz absorption depends on polarization. Light shining in the same direction as the graphene ribbons shows no variations in absorption according to frequency. But light at right angles to the ribbons – the same orientation as the oscillating electron sea – yields sharp absorption peaks. What's more, light absorption in conventional 2D semiconductor systems, such as quantum wells, can only be measured at temperatures near absolute zero. The Berkeley team measured prominent absorption peaks at room temperature.

"Terahertz radiation covers a spectral range that's difficult to work with, because until now there have been no tools," says Wang. "Now we have the beginnings of a toolset for working in this range, potentially leading to a variety of graphene-based terahertz metamaterials."

The Berkeley experimental setup is only a precursor of devices to come, which will be able to control the polarization and modify the intensity of terahertz light and enable other optical and electronic components, in applications from medical imaging to astronomy – all in two dimensions.

 

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"Graphene plasmonics for tunable terahertz metamaterials," by Long Ju, Baisong Geng, Jason Horng, Caglar Girit, Michael Martin, Zhao Hao, Hans A. Bechtel, Xiaogan Liang, Alex Zettl, Y. Ron Shen, and Feng Wang, appears in Nature Nanotechnology, available in advanced online publication at http://www.nature.com/nnano/index.html.

Martin, Hao, and Bechtel are with Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source. Hao is also with the Lab's Earth Sciences Division. Liang is with the Lab's Molecular Foundry. Ju, Geng, Horng, Girit, Zettl, Shen, and Wang are with UC Berkeley's Department of Physics. Geng is also with Lanzhou University, China. Zettl, Shen, and Wang are also with Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division. This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.

The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit http://science.energy.gov.

For more about the Advanced Light Source, visit http://www-als.lbl.gov/.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 12 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov.

 

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Thinking Outside the Rocks in the Search for Ancient Earthquakes

 

 EARTH: Thinking Outside the Rocks in the Search for Ancient Earthquakes

Alexandria, VA – The eyewitness accounts, written in columns from right to left, top to bottom, testify that there was no warning of the tsunami, no shaking to drive villagers to high ground before the wave hit, drowning rice paddies and swamping a castle moat. The entries, written by merchants, peasants and samurai, all clearly mark the time and date: just after midnight on Wednesday, Jan. 27, 1700.

For centuries, it was unclear why no shaking preceded the Japanese tsunami of 1700. Now, researchers know that it’s because the tsunami was set off by an earthquake clear across the Pacific. By noting the height of the waves described in the accounts and working backward from the moment the tsunami struck, modern-day researchers detailed the magnitude and timing of the causative event: a massive magnitude-9.0 earthquake that demolished villages along North America’s Pacific Northwest coast about 9 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 26, 1700.

As EARTH details in its September feature, ―Thinking Outside the Rocks in the Search for Ancient Earthquakes,‖ modern-day scientists are getting creative in the search for information about past quakes.

Read more about how researchers are turning to old newspaper articles and photographs, folklore, petroglyphs, crumpled buildings and toppled monuments — and how learning about past quakes can help seismologists to assess future seismic risk — and read other stories on topics such as what scientists are learning from the dust from the Twin Towers’ collapse on 9/11 that might help them determine how it affects people’s health; how clean rivers are actually creating a problem with ―rock snot‖; and how CAT scans may help us find oil and gas in the September issue. And be sure to check out the travelogue about Nova Scotia’s ancient rocks.

These stories and many more can be found in the September issue of EARTH, now available digitally (http://www.earthmagazine.org/digital) or in print on your local newsstands.

For further information on the September featured article, go to http://www.earthmagazine.org/earth/article/476-7db-8-19

Keep up to date with the latest happenings in earth, energy and environment news with EARTH magazine, available on local newsstands or online at http://www.earthmagazine.org/. Published by the American Geological Institute, EARTH is your source for the science behind the headlines.

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