Wednesday, December 4, 2013
CONTACT ME AT: manessmorrison2@yahoo.com


News Clips For The Day


Pet dog takes the rap for fire that displaces Arizona family
By M. Alex Johnson, Staff Writer

A dog left alone at home struck the knob on a gas range Tuesday, lighting a burner that ignited flammable materials on the stove, firefighters said.

A fire that severely damaged an apartment Tuesday in Tucson, Ariz., was blamed on the family dog.
It took nine fire units to put out the blaze, which left the family of three at least temporarily homeless, fire officials said.

The family wasn't home Tuesday morning, but the dog was, Tucson fire Capt. Barrett Baker told NBC station KVOA of Tucson.

Some time before 9 a.m., the dog — whose breed and name weren't disclosed — got curious and began trying to jump up on the kitchen counter, fire officials said. Its paw hit a knob on the family's gas stove, lighting one of the burners. That, in turn, ignited flammable materials on the stove, which family members told investigators they rarely used.

There was no immediate damage assessment, and no one — including the dog or any of the 23 firefighters who put out the fire in less than 15 minutes — was injured. The Red Cross was trying to find a new home for the family.

It's not the first time a dog has been fingered as a firebug. In October, a Labrador trying to get at some snacks on the stove ignited a kitchen fire exactly the same way in Wenatchee, Wash., causing $10,000 in damage.


Dogs, when left at home alone, should probably be blocked out of the kitchen or other area where food is kept. When their humans are around they tend to behave themselves and not get destructive, but when alone they get lonely and bored. Some dogs chew furniture, rugs or their master's shoes, and any of them could become rambunctious and knock over a lighted Christmas tree, so the Christmas tree should never be left plugged in when no one is home. My mother used to get on my case when I laid anything at all on a stove burner, and this is the reason why.




Crews Try to "Push" Dozens of Stranded Whales Into Deeper Waters – NBC

Rescue crews tried help a pod of 20 to 30 pilot whales stranded in shallow waters in a remote area of Everglades National Park on Wednesday, officials said.
The goal is to keep the whales alive during low tide, and then when high tide comes in, crews will try to get them back into the sea, Linda Friar, Everglades National Park spokeswoman said.

Four boats and a crew of 15 headed to the remote spot, Friar said.
The whales, who scientists say appeared confused, were originally spotted around 2:30 p.m. Tuesday near Highland Beach, according to Friar.

Friar said rangers and workers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration responded and found 10 beached whales and the others in shallow waters nearby.

Four of the whales died but the workers were able to get six back into the water, Friar said. Workers left for the night but returned Wednesday to try to assist the remaining whales.

The shallow water was making it difficult to get the whales back out to sea, she said.
"It's so shallow at low tide for such a long distance it makes it more difficult to get the whales to an area where they can swim away," Friar said.
It's not unusual for the whales to end up in the shallow waters, which stretch for hundreds of yards, Friar said.

"The thing about these whales, as the day heats up they'll have to keep them wet," she said.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is assisting the rangers and NOAA in the rescue effort.
"The agencies are coming together to do what they can," Friar said.

NOAA Marine Mammal Scientist Blair Mase said people need to be "realistic about the options for these animals.
"Euthanasia might be the most humane option. The animals could be compromised," Mase said.

The Gulf of Mexico has a very strong pilot whale population and this pod is very far from where they normally would be. They are very far from their deep water habitat and this makes it difficult for rescuers to "push" them back out to sea, Mase said.
"If we did push the healthy ones out, if they see one dead one they will come back again," Mase said.

The last mass stranding happened in 1995, Mase said. Pilot whles are susceptible to strandings because they are tight knit.


Some whales are endangered. I don't know that Pilot whales are, but it's a shame to lose so many of them. I didn't know whales would go into fresh or brackish water, as I assume that water is. The article said they appeared “confused,” as in disoriented, I wonder? It also said that this kind of whale stays with the group, even going back if they were to see a dead one. This is one of those sad things that can't be helped. If the workers are lucky they will be able to push the whales back out to sea. Otherwise they will all die.



Bizarre microbes discovered in desert cave in Arizona – NBC
Denise Chow LiveScience

Scientists at the University of Arizona have discovered diverse communities of bacteria, fungi and archaea on the surface of stalactites in Kartchner Caverns, a limestone cave system in Arizona. These microbes live off the limited nutrients from water runoff that drips into the cave.

Tucked beneath the desert in southern Arizona is Kartchner Caverns, a maze of remote, largely uninhabited underground passages and caverns that are cloaked in perpetual darkness. But this seemingly desolate cave system actually plays host to a surprisingly diverse array of microbes that survive underground despite the extreme dearth of light and nutrients, according to a new study.

A team of researchers led by scientists at the University of Arizona in Tucson discovered communities of microorganisms that live in the limestone caves of Kartchner Caverns State Park. These microbial ecosystems thrive by teasing out the limited nutrients in water runoff that drips into the cave through cracks in the cave's rocky exterior, the researchers said.

The unexpected discovery, published online Sept. 12 in the journal of the International Society for Microbial Ecology, could help scientists understand how bacteria, fungi and other microbes survive in extreme environments.

Antje Legatzki, a former research scientist in the University of Arizona's department of soil, water and environmental science, collects samples from inside the Kartchner Caverns cave system.

"We didn't expect to find such a thriving ecosystem feasting on the scraps dripping in from the world above," Julie Neilson, an associate research scientist in the University of Arizona's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, said in a statement. "What is most interesting is that what we found mirrors the desert above: an extreme environment starved for nutrients, yet flourishing with organisms that have adapted in very unique ways to this type of habitat."

A different environment
Living in darkness, the underground microbes are unable to carry out photosynthesis — the process that plants and other organisms use to convert sunlight into energy. Still, the types of microorganisms found in Kartchner Caverns shared similarities to the more familiar types found on the Earth's surface, the researchers said.
"We discovered all the major players that make up a typical ecosystem," Neilson explained. "From producers to consumers, they're all there, just not visible to the naked eye."

Even without such biodiversity, simply living off the water dripping into Kartchner Caverns is an impressive feat, as there is a shortage of organic carbon — one of the building blocks of life on Earth — within the cave.

"Kartchner is unique because it is a cave in a desert ecosystem," Neilson said. "It's not like the caves in temperate areas such as in Kentucky or West Virginia, where the surface has forests, rivers and soil with thick organic layers, providing abundant organic carbon. Kartchner has about a thousand times less carbon coming in with the drip water."

These cave-dwelling microorganisms cultivate what little nutrients and energy are locked in the water molecules from decaying organic matter in the soil above ground, or from minerals dissolved in the rock fissures, the researchers said. The microbes have adapted means of using the chemical compounds present in the cave — in some cases, even eating rock to get energy from compounds such as manganese or pyrite, Neilson said.

"Instead of relying on organic carbon, which is a very scarce resource in the cave, they use the energy in nitrogen-containing compounds like ammonia and nitrite to convert carbon dioxide from the air into biomass," she said.

Finding microbes underground
To reveal the cave's hidden microbial communities, the researchers swabbed stalactites and other formations hanging from the ceiling of Kartchner Caverns for DNA analysis. The genes found in these samples were used to reconstruct bacteria and archaea — single-celled microorganisms without a cell nucleus — that live in the limestone recesses.

Earlier studies indicated that stalactites act as islands for cave microbes, meaning there is little mixing between populations of microorganisms on different cave formations.

From their DNA analysis, the researchers not only encountered a diverse range of organisms that make up a complex food web within the cave, they also stumbled on some microbes that were likely previously unknown to science.

"Twenty percent of the bacteria whose presence we inferred based on the DNA sequences were not similar enough to anything in the database for us to be able to identify them," Neilson said. "On one stalactite, we found a rare organism in a microbial group called SBR1093 that comprised about 10 percent of the population on that stalactite, but it represented less than 0.5 percent of the microbes on any of the others."

The organism's DNA sequence has been found only three times in history: in a type of sedimentary rock in the salty waters of Shark Bay in Australia; in a site contaminated with hydrocarbons in France; and in a sewage treatment plant in Brisbane, Australia, Neilson said.

"This suggests there are many microbes out there in the world that we know almost nothing about," she added. "The fact that these organisms showed up in contaminated soil could mean they might have potential for application such as environmental remediation."

Studying these types of microbes can help scientists understand their resilience in extreme environments, which could have applications in the search for life on other planets as well.

"When you think about exploring Mars, for example, and you look at all those clever strategies that microbes have evolved and tweaked over the past 4 billion years, I wouldn't be surprised if we found them elsewhere if we just keep looking," study principal investigator Raina Maier, a professor in the University of Arizona's department of soil, water and environmental science, said in a statement


One of my favorite theories on the origin of life is that the process of forming living entities is ongoing to this day, occurring spontaneously wherever there is water and the right assortment of chemicals. I believe that evolution is nature's plan and that it happens constantly. Those little critters called archaea (having no nucleus to their cells) are in the boiling water at Yellowstone, in the deep oceans where lava breaks through the surface forming “black smokers”, and now in a cave where there is no hot water.

Two things are common to those three environments, and that is the presence of rock crevices and water. Could they have been formed shortly after the crust of the earth's surface hardened as soon as water was present all over the earth, and simply have survived in some places since that time? If not, they may have evolved over and over in different places, or have been spread by continental drift. For all of the occurrences of archaea so widely removed from each other to have similar DNA, though, it would seem that they probably evolved early and populated the earth from that time.

It's good to see that the archaea may be useful in cleaning up contaminated soil, or in sewage treatment plants. I will clip more articles about this if I find them.




­ ­Even Disconnected Computers May Face Cyberthreats – NPR
by Avie Schneider
­
German computer scientists were able to transmit data using computers' speakers and microphones.

If your computer is infected with a virus or other forms of malware, disconnecting the machine from the Internet is one of the first steps security experts say you should take. But someday, even physically separating your laptop from a network may not be enough to protect it from cyber evildoers.

German computer scientists have come up with a prototype for building "covert channels" between computers using the machines' speakers and microphones, potentially defeating high-security measures that rely on placing an "air gap" between computers.
The scientists said their network was based on a system originally designed for underwater communication.

"We adapt the communication system to implement covert and stealthy communications by utilizing the near ultrasonic frequency range," Michael Hanspach and Michael Goetz, of the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics, wrote in a paper published in the November issue of the Journal of Communications.
As Dan Goodin explains in Ars Technica:
"The proof-of-concept software — or malicious trojans that adopt the same high-frequency communication methods — could prove especially adept in penetrating highly sensitive environments that routinely place an 'air gap' between computers and the outside world. Using nothing more than the built-in microphones and speakers of standard computers, the researchers were able to transmit passwords and other small amounts of data from distances of almost 65 feet. The software can transfer data at much greater distances by employing an acoustical mesh network made up of attacker-controlled devices that repeat the audio signals."

And such off-network intrusions may be more than theoretical. Ars Technica reported that a mystified security researcher determined his computers, which were unplugged from networks and had their Wi-Fi and Bluetooth cards removed, were infected with malware that used high-frequency transmissions.

The idea of hackers "jumping the air gap" has military officials worried, Geoffrey Ingersoll of Business Insider reported.

"If you take a cybernetic view of what's happening [in the Navy], right now our approach is unplug it or don't use a thumb drive," retired Navy Capt. Mark Hagerott, a cybersecurity professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, said at a recent defense conference. But if hackers "are able to jump the air gap, we are talking about fleets coming to a stop."

As Ingersoll explained in his post, "Ships would find their targeting software exploited and shut down, possibly even hijacked."

Hanspach and Goetz, the German scientists, said their concept poses dangers but added that safeguards could be implemented.

"Acoustical networking as a covert communication technology is a considerable threat to computer security," the scientists wrote in their paper. However, they said such audio snooping could be prevented using "a software-defined lowpass filter" or a "detection guard" that analyzes audio to identify hidden messages.
But to go through the trouble of putting up such countermeasures, computer owners would have to suspect they were being snooped on first.


I assume private citizens are unlikely to be spied upon by such a technique. In my case, if my computer were offline there is no other source that could be reached by the hackers, because I only have one computer. This is startling, however, and our secret government data could be compromised, plus large sensitive companies like banks and insurance companies. We have a world of technology that has become too complicated and powerful to control, and innovations keep emerging as time goes on. I could worry about it, but I have no control over any of it, and simply hope for the best.





Post-fix, HealthCare.gov signups exceed first month's total – CBS
ByStephanie Condon CBS News December 4, 2013

Around 29,000 people signed up for private health insurance plans on HealthCare.gov Sunday and Monday, a source with knowledge of the process confirmed to CBS News.
The unofficial tally for those two days is greater than the number of people who enrolled in the entire month of October, illustrating how much the user experience on the federal Obamacare website has improved.

At the same time, it's unclear at this point whether enrollee applications are successfully getting through to insurers. The 29,000 who signed up on HealthCare.gov successfully opened an account on the site and chose a plan. However, as recently as Monday, insurers were complaining they are in some cases receiving inaccurate or incomplete information from HealthCare.gov -- or in some cases, no information at all. The administration this week said it has fixed the bug primarily responsible for that problem.

Open enrollment on the new Obamacare marketplaces started on Oct. 1, but enrollment has been much slower than expected due to all the technical problems with HealthCare.gov (the portal to the marketplaces for 36 states) and some state-run Obamacare websites. The government reported that in the month of October, just about 26,000 people signed up for plans on HealthCare.gov.

Open enrollment lasts through March, but consumers have until Dec. 23 to enroll if they want coverage beginning Jan. 1. There's concern that if there isn't sufficient enrollment in the marketplaces -- particularly among younger, healthier people -- it could destabilize the new market.

Now that the "user experience" on HealthCare.gov is dramatically improved -- though, as mentioned earlier, significant concerns about the back-end of the website persist -- President Obama and his supporters are renewing efforts to get uninsured Americans to sign up. That continues Wednesday with a "Youth Summit" at the White House bringing together more than 160 young leaders with influence in their communities.
However, as these efforts get off the ground, new polls show that the uninsured -- including uninsured youth -- remain skeptical about the new marketplaces.

Among the estimated 17 percent of Americans without health insurance, 28 percent don't plan on getting insurance next year, a new Gallup poll shows.
The poll, conducted Nov. 20-Dec. 2, has a 5 percent margin of error. It shows that 81 percent of the uninsured say they are aware that if they don't have insurance next year, they'll have to pay a fine. (The fine, which the IRS will impose through a person's tax returns, will in 2014 be either $95 or 1 percent of a person's income.)
The biggest difference between those who plan to get insurance and those who will pay the fine, according to Gallup is party identification -- 45 percent of uninsured Republicans plan to pay the fine, while 31 percent of independents and 15 percent of Democrats are choosing that option.

A separate Harvard poll of young adults between 18 and 29 years old, conducted October 30 - November 11, shows that just 29 percent of uninsured young adults are likely to enroll in the new Obamacare marketplaces. Another 41 percent say they are undecided. The poll has a 2.1 percent margin of error.

As the president is stepping up his efforts to encourage enrollment, so are outside groups and insurers. Organizing for Action, the nonprofit that evolved from Mr. Obama's campaign organization Obama for America, began a campaign on Tuesday that it says will "create urgency" during the open enrollment period. Some groups like the Young Invincibles and Enroll America are reaching out specifically to young people. Meanwhile, Humana, which is offering plans on the Mississippi marketplace, is launching two buses equipped with Internet access and insurance agents that will encourage people in the state to enroll.


So now, after shutting down the government to defeat Affordable Care, the Republicans are going to try to destroy it by boycotting it. Luckily I don't have to worry about it. I have Medicare. I don't think $95.00 is a sufficiently high fine to cause people to enroll if they don't want to, so we will still have uninsured people running to the emergency room whenever they need to see a doctor. Even if people are healthy there are accidents that cause admission to the hospital. This does remind me of a two year old lying down on the floor kicking and screaming when he is unhappy.





China cuts homework assignments despite high test scores – CBS
BySeth Doane CBS News December 3, 2013

BEIJING -- We got the results on Tuesday from a test given to 15-year-olds all over the world.
Students in Shanghai, China, scored the highest in math, reading and science. American teens did not make the top 20.

So we were surprised to learn that the Chinese are trying something revolutionary. They're cutting back on homework.

Ask a group of second-graders whether they're happy about not having homework and the reaction is not surprising.
All raise their hands – a resounding show of support.

The proposed changes mean students in grades one through three would not be assigned homework. Those in grades four through six would have less than an hour of homework a day.

Liu Xiaojing teaches math and Chinese at Beijing's Haite Garden Elementary School which is testing out the new rules.

"Not giving homework leaves more space for kids to grow," she told us. "(Students can) develop freely and do what they enjoy doing."

Ten-year-old Daisey might read books, dance or draw. Twelve-year-old Charlie had something else in mind.

 "I play football and play basketball with my classmates," he said.
China puts heavy emphasis on standardized tests - which prize memorization over creativity. Under the new proposals, those would be eliminated in lower grades.
High school seniors Emma Jiang and Jessie Li, both 17, told us the academic pressure is intense.

"When I was in junior high school, sometimes I cried in the middle of the night because I dropped some grades in my test," Emma said. "I cried."

From an American perspective, it seems that Chinese students are doing very well. Test scores are high. Why would China make this change?
"I feel like, you know, we miss out on the more important things," Jessie said. "When you tell people that 'I got a 2400 on my SAT,' that's not really convincing that you're a well-rounded person."

And with China's pride so intertwined with its students' top rankings, the education ministry has so far been silent on when its "no homework" rule may be applied across the country.


I think homework to practice what has been explained in class and work out questions which might remain in the student's mind is basically a good thing. Of course, I grew up with it. I compromised by doing my homework some of the time in front of the TV set, which makes it less effective, but I usually got it done. A pop quiz every day or two would also happen in certain teacher's classes just to keep us on our toes.

Early reading and arithmetic improve with the extra practice of working outside of class, and the later lessons build on the first three years. I didn't take to arithmetic like a duck to water. I had to work at it to learn it. Reading came easily, though I did read for fun, getting books from the school library. I hope the Chinese don't set their students back in their learning by not requiring homework. I'd hate to see them fall behind South Vietnam and Japan. They probably won't fall behind us. I wish we were a close competitor, but we aren't.