Strengthening legumes to tackle fertilizer pollution

Apr. 23, 2013 ? The overuse of nitrogen fertilizers in agriculture can wreak havoc on waterways, health and the environment.

An international team of scientists aims to lessen the reliance on these fertilizers by helping beans and similar plants boost their nitrogen production, even in areas with traditionally poor soil quality.

Researchers from the Center of Plant Genomics and Biotechnology at the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) and the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory report as an advance article April 5 for the Metallomics journal of The Royal Society of Chemistry on how to use X-ray analysis to map a path to increasing the amount of nitrogen that legumes deposit into the soil.

Cultivation of legumes, the plant family that includes peas, beans, alfalfa, soybeans, and peanuts, is one of the main ways farmers add natural nitrogen to agricultural fields. Rotating bean and corn crops to take advantage of the nitrogen beans deposit in the soil has long been a global farming tradition. Legumes use iron in the soil to carry out a complex chemical process called nitrogen fixation, which collects atmospheric nitrogen and converts it into organic forms that help the plant grow. When the plant dies, the excess nitrogen is released back into to the soil to help the next crop.

But often legumes are grown in areas with iron-depleted soil, which limits their nitrogen fixation. That's where research can lend a hand. The Argonne-UPM team has created the world's first model for how iron is transported in the plant's root nodule to trigger nitrogen fixation. This is the first step in modifying the plants to maximize iron use.

"The long-term goal is to help sustainable agriculture practices and further diminish the environmental damage from overuse of nitrogen fertilizers," said Manuel Gonzalez-Guerrero, lead author of the paper from UPM. "This can be done by maximizing the delivery of essential metal oligonutrients to nitrogen-fixing rhizobia."

The research team, which included Lydia Finney and Stefan Vogt from the APS, used high-energy X-rays from the 8-BM and 2-ID-E beamlines of the APS to track the distribution of minute iron amounts in the different developmental regions of rhizobia-containing roots. This is the first high-energy X-ray analysis of plant-microbe interactions.

X-rays, such as those from the APS, provided a high sensitivity to elements and a high spatial resolution not attainable by other means. Full details can be found in the paper Iron distribution through the developmental stages of Medicago truncatula nodules.

In future studies at the APS, Gonzalez-Guerrero hopes to identify and characterize the key biological proteins responsible for iron transportation. That would give researchers targets to manipulate and screen for new legume varieties with increased nitrogen-fixation capabilities and higher nutritional value.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by DOE/Argonne National Laboratory. The original article was written by Tona Kunz.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Benjam?n Rodr?guez-Haas, Lydia Finney, Stefan Vogt, Pablo Gonz?lez-Melendi, Juan Imperial, Manuel Gonzalez-Guerrero. Iron distribution through the developmental stages of Medicago truncatula nodules. Metallomics, 2013; DOI: 10.1039/C3MT00060E

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/WFDVPPsK7IM/130423161911.htm

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'Mad Men' creator Weiner answers season 6 critics

NEW YORK (AP) ? "Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner has a message for critics of season six of the AMC hit: "Fans don't run the show."

After waiting nearly a year for this month's premiere some viewers have expressed disappointment with the new season. Speaking ahead of a "Mad Men" panel event at the Paley Media Center in Manhattan Tuesday night, Weiner likened fan reaction to the show to the arcade game Whac-A-Mole.

"There's not enough agency advertising. There's too much advertising," Weiner said of previous fan gripes. "There's not enough Betty. There's too much Betty. Who is Megan? Why isn't there more Megan?"

Weiner noted people are still watching and advised fans to "sit back and enjoy where we're going." He said he opened the season in 1968 because he believes it was one of the worst years in U.S. history, and while he remained tight-lipped about where the journey is headed he did promise it "might be a little salacious, but that's what the show is."

Viewers did learn that ad man Don Draper (Jon Hamm) remains tormented and brooding and is now cheating on his new wife Megan (Jessica Pare). Weiner says he believes his lead character remains redeemable despite his flaws.

"We'll have to see what the world hands him and if he's able to confront a problem that's following him around that might actually be him," he said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mad-men-creator-weiner-answers-season-6-critics-203805756.html

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Dancing With the Stars Results: Who Got 86'd in Week 6?

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/04/dancing-with-the-stars-results-who-got-86-d-in-week-6/

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Mysterious hot spots observed in cool red supergiant

Apr. 24, 2013 ? Astronomers have released a new image of the outer atmosphere of Betelgeuse -- one of the nearest red supergiants to Earth -- revealing the detailed structure of the matter being thrown off the star.

The new image, taken by the e-MERLIN radio telescope array operated from the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, also shows regions of surprisingly hot gas in the star's outer atmosphere and a cooler arc of gas weighing almost as much as the Earth.

Betelgeuse is easily visible to the unaided eye as the bright, red star on the shoulder of Orion the Hunter. The star itself is huge -- 1,000 times larger than our Sun -- but at a distance of about 650 light years it still appears as a tiny dot in the sky, so special techniques combining telescopes in arrays are required to see details of the star and the region around it.

The new e-MERLIN image of Betelgeuse -- published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, shows its atmosphere extends out to five times the size of the visual surface of the star. It reveals two hot spots within the outer atmosphere and a faint arc of cool gas even farther out beyond the radio surface of the star.

The hot spots are separated by roughly half the visual diameter of the star and have a temperature of about 4,000-5,000 Kelvin, much higher than the average temperature of the radio surface of the star (about 1,200 Kelvin) and even higher than the visual surface (3,600 Kelvin). The arc of cool gas lies almost 7.4 billion kilometres away from the star -- about the same distance as the farthest Pluto gets from the Sun. It is estimated to have a mass almost two thirds that of the Earth and a temperature of about 150 Kelvin.

Lead author Dr Anita Richards, from The University of Manchester, said that it was not yet clear why the hot spots are so hot. She said: "One possibility is that shock waves, caused either by the star pulsating or by convection in its outer layers, are compressing and heating the gas. Another is that the outer atmosphere is patchy and we are seeing through to hotter regions within. The arc of cool gas is thought to be the result of a period of increased mass loss from the star at some point in the last century but its relationship to structures like the hot spots, which lie much closer in, within the star's outer atmosphere, is unknown."

The mechanism by which supergiant stars like Betelgeuse lose matter into space is not well understood despite its key role in the lifecycle of matter, enriching the interstellar material from which future stars and planets will form. Detailed high-resolution studies of the regions around massive stars like the ones presented here are essential to improving our understanding.

Dr Richards, who is based in Manchester's School of Physics and Astronomy, added: "Betelgeuse produces a wind equivalent to losing the mass of the Earth every three years, enriched with the chemicals that will go into the next generation of star and planet formation. The full detail of how these cool, evolved stars launch their winds is one of the remaining big questions in stellar astronomy.

"This is the first direct image showing hot spots so far from the centre of the star. We are continuing radio and microwave observations to help decide which mechanisms are most important in driving the stellar wind and producing these hot spots. This won't just tell us how the elements that form the building blocks of life are being returned to space, it will also help determine how long it is before Betelgeuse explodes as a supernova."

Future observations planned with e-MERLIN and other arrays, including ALMA and VLA, will test whether the hotspots vary in concert due to pulsation, or show more complex variability due to convection. If it is possible to measure a rotation speed this will identify in which layer of the star they originate.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Manchester University.

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Journal Reference:

1. Anita Richards et al. e-MERLIN resolves Betelgeuse at wavelength 5 cm: hotspots at 5R. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2013

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/fD3_AjYgtT4/130424222432.htm

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Egypt pushes ahead with controversial law

CAIRO (AP) ? Egypt's Islamist-led parliament on Wednesday pushed ahead with a controversial judicial law, despite a rising uproar among judges and the opposition who fear Islamists' control over courts.

The judiciary, with mostly secular-minded professional judges, is seen by many Egyptians as the only remaining buffer against Islamists' monopoly of power following the ouster of authoritarian ruler Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Since then, Islamist parties have swept most polls and dominated legislative councils and the presidency, the country's top executive post.

The opposition vowed to escalate a campaign against the bill and judges called for emergency meeting later in the day.

Presidential spokesman Ihab Fahmy told reporters on Wednesday that the Islamist president respects the judges and has assured them that he won't accept an assault on the judiciary.

"The president is keen on containing the judiciary crisis," he said. He added: "The president firmly stressed that it's unacceptable to hurt or encroach on the judiciary."

Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi has been fighting with judiciary since he was elected last summer.

Last year, courts disbanded the parliament, dominated by Islamists, over unconstitutionality of the election law and last month challenged a parliamentary elections law.

Morsi has waged a campaign against the judiciary and the country's most prestigious Supreme Constitutional Court, saying judges were plotting conspiracies against his administration.

At the same time as Fahmy's remarks, the legislative committee of the upper house, which was seated as a transitional parliament, voted in favor of three draft laws on the judiciary proposed by Islamist groups and opened the floor for further debate.

One proposed by Morsi's Freedom and Justice party, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood group, drops the retirement age for judges from 70 to 60, which would affect nearly a quarter of Egypt's 13,000 judges and prosecution officials. The draft also would bar the courts from reviewing or overturning the presidential decrees issued by Morsi late last year.

The same proposal mandates that judges oversee polling stations and punish those who refuse to carry their duties ? a job that used to be voluntarily. Last year, during the vote over a controversial draft of the country's new constitution that was written by Morsi's allies many judges boycotted the vote to protest a decree that temporarily granted Morsi's decisions immunity from judicial review.

The crisis over the judiciary is a reflection of the deep-polarization that split the country into proponents and opponents of Muslim Brotherhood rule and that also prompted resignations of top Morsi's aides and advisers.

On Monday, the top legal adviser of Morsi Mohammed Fouad Gadallah resigned. In his three-page resignation letter, he said he wanted to shed light "on the extent of the danger facing the country" at a time when "personal interests are overwhelming national interests."

Two days earlier, Justice Minister Ahmed Mekki, an Islamist supporter, submitted his resignation, complaining that Morsi supporters were "trampling" on the judiciary. He too criticized the president's handling of the dispute with the judiciary and failure to reach out to critics.

Fahmy, the presidential spokesman, told reporters that Morsi accepted Gadallah resignation and refused to comment on the reasons given in the resignation saying, "this is a personal point of view that we don't comment on." He said that Morsi will form a new panel of legal advisers.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-pushes-ahead-controversial-law-143148323.html

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Oops! N.Y.'s Suffolk County accidentally defaults on debt

By Edward Krudy and Pamela Niimi

NEW YORK (Reuters) - As if Suffolk County, home of the Hamptons and playground of the rich and famous on New York's Long Island, didn't have enough financial problems already.

A regulatory filing on behalf of the county dated April 16 shows it accidentally missed an interest payment on some of its debt, including $76.1 million of public improvement bonds, putting the county technically in default. Oops.

The county is wealthy with income per capita well above the national average but it has run into difficulty recently, declaring a fiscal emergency last year after an independent task force predicted a three-year deficit of $530 million.

The county could have a budget shortfall of as much as $250 million by the end of next year, local officials said last month.

The error is more of an embarrassing glitch than anything else. The missed payment - just $722.65 - would be small change for many of the county's residents.

That will buy you fewer than 20 butter-poached lobster rolls (not the most expensive thing on the menu) at Dave's Grill in Montauk, a quaint fishing village on the island's northern tip, or just 10 bottles of Merry Edwards Sauvignon Blanc Russian River 2009 at La Plage in Wading River. A mere picnic.

The mistake was pointed out by the Depository Trust Company, a clearing firm, the day after it was missed and the filing says the error was the fault of the county's escrow agent, M&T Bank.

"The county informed M&T of its error and the escrow agent immediately wired the $722.65 payment to DTC," the regulatory filing said.

So what went wrong? The county was making the first payment in a complicated arrangement that uses $17 million in state HEAL grants for medical costs, primarily related to the Foley Nursing home, said Richard Tortora, president of Capital Markets Advisors, the county's financial adviser.

The $722.65, part of a debt payment of over $1 million, was the portion of the payment from the HEAL grants. The $17 million is being held in an escrow account at M&T.

"M&T for reasons we can't fathom just blew it: 'Oops it wasn't in our system, we missed it'", said Tortora, president of Capital Markets Advisors. Tortora said missing the payment and having to make a regulatory filing with the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board was frustrating after months spent putting the arrangement together for the county.

M&T Bank was not immediately available for comment.

Fitch Ratings, the credit ratings agency, downgraded Suffolk County's general obligation bond rating to A from A-plus last month, affecting about $1.4 billion of debt. General obligation bonds have the full faith and credit of the issuer and are the best gauge of how risky investors think the county is.

Fitch said it had concerns about the county's ability to become financially stable, let alone reduce its big deficit.

(This story was corrected to fix name of Suffolk County's financial advisers)

(Reporting by Edward Krudy, additional reporting by Pam Niimi; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/oops-yorks-suffolk-county-accidentally-defaults-debt-173732971--sector.html

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Lawmakers ask if intel blocked before Boston bombs

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., speaks with reporters following a closed-door briefing by intelligence agencies on the Boston Marathon bombing, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, April 23, 2013. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., speaks with reporters following a closed-door briefing by intelligence agencies on the Boston Marathon bombing, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, April 23, 2013. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., answers questions from reporters following a closed-door briefing by intelligence agencies on the Boston Marathon bombing, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, April 23, 2013. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, leaves following a closed-door briefing by intelligence agencies on the Boston Marathon bombing, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, April 23, 2013. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Lawmakers are again asking whether a failure to share intelligence contributed to a deadly attack on U.S. soil, after senior officials briefed them Tuesday on the investigation into last week's bombings at the Boston Marathon.

None of the lawmakers are saying ? yet? that better sharing could have stopped the bombings, as Congress did after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that prompted an overhaul of the U.S. intelligence system.

But they are asking hard questions about which federal agency was tracking alleged Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev when he traveled to Russia last year, what they knew when, and what they did about it.

"There still seem to be serious problems with sharing information, including critical investigative information ... not only among agencies but also within the same agency in one case," Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said after the Senate Intelligence Committee members were briefed by FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce.

"I don't see anybody yet that dropped the ball," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., the committee's vice chairman. But he added that he was asking all the federal agencies involved for more information to make sure enough information was shared.

"If it wasn't, we've got to fix this," he said.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Tuesday, in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on immigration legislation, that her agency knew of the suspect's trip to Russia even though his name was misspelled on a travel document. A key lawmaker had said the misspelling caused the FBI to miss the trip.

Napolitano's disclosure came as news to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who told the secretary that it contradicted what he'd been told by the FBI.

"They told me that they had no knowledge of him leaving or coming back, so I would like to talk to you more about this case," Graham told Napolitano. She said that even though Tsarnaev's name was misspelled, redundancies in the system allowed his departure to be captured by U.S. authorities in January 2012.

But she said that by the time he came back six months later, an FBI alert on him had expired and so his re-entry was not noted.

Investigators have concluded based on preliminary evidence that the Russia trip may have helped radicalize Tsarnaev, the older of the two bomber suspects, who died in a firefight with police.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was investigated by the FBI at Russia's request and his name was included in a federal government travel-screening database after that, law enforcement officials have told The Associated Press. One official told the AP that by the time of the flight Tsarnaev would have faced no additional scrutiny because the FBI had by that time found no information connecting him to terrorism.

Investigators are still searching for that kind of information, according to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. "What did he do when he went to Dagestan? Did he sit in his family's house for six months or was he ... talking with people? What happened to him when he came back? Was he radicalized? If so, how?" she said, describing a litany of questions FBI investigators were still trying to answer.

She too conceded something likely would need to be changed about how the information was shared between the agencies.

"After every one of these incidents problems are found and then studied and corrected," she said.

There are "lessons to be learned ... not necessarily failures," said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. "But certainly gaps I think can be closed."

___

Associated Press writer Erica Werner contributed to this report.

___

Follow Kimberly Dozier on Twitter: http://twitter.com/kimberlydozier

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-04-23-Boston%20Marathon-Congress/id-c7e666f41a0e487dbd30321f5c3b33ca

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