New Zeland police hunt giant killer great white shark

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A New Zealand man was attacked and killed by a great white shark on Wednesday in a rare fatal shark incident in the country, prompting police to open fire.

Police said they fired shots at the shark after a man was fatally bitten at Muriwai beach located around 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of Auckland, one of many beaches dotted along the North Island's west coast that are known for their wild surf.

Rescue crews were quoted by local media as saying the shark was a "white pointer", commonly known as a great white, measuring roughly 4 meters (13 feet) long. Witnesses said a rescue helicopter also fired shots at the shark.

"We saw the shark fin, and the next minute, boom, the attack came. There was blood everywhere on the water," eye witness Pio Mosie was quoted by local news website Stuff.co.nz as saying.

"They fired six or seven shots to the shark, three from the police helicopter and a few shots from the lifeguard. I don't know if they killed the shark or not," he added.

The head of the local volunteer lifeguard service was quoted as saying they had confirmed that "one or two" sharks were spotted, but none had been seen since the man's body was removed from the water.

Shark attacks are rare in New Zealand, where water sports and beach holidays are a rite of summer. More than 60 shark species are known to swim in the country's waters.

Fourteen fatal attacks have been reported since records began around 1837, according to the country's Department of Conservation, which added that non-fatal shark attacks average roughly two each year.

The last attack linked with a death was in 2009, when a kayaker was mauled by a great white in the nearby Coromandel Peninsula, although whether the victim drowned before the attack has been disputed.

According to the International Shark Attack File, 11 shark fatalities were reported last year, including three in Australia and South Africa, nearly tripling the average annual number of fatalities for 2001 to 2010.

(Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu, editing by Elaine Lies)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/zealand-man-fatally-attacked-shark-police-open-fire-111439376.html

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Luxury health, fitness and weight loss retreats launched by LHR and ...

(Forimmediaterelease.net) Centara Hotels&Resorts has partnered with Luxury Health Retreats (LHR), a division of Fitcorp Asia, to offer a range of inspiring educational and recreational retreats for those wanting to combine health, fitness and weight loss with an enjoyable getaway break or holiday experience.

The program will include daily seminars delivered by motivational wellness specialists along with structured movement and exercise sessions, and instruction on how to design meal plans and adjust lifestyles at home.

The inaugural retreat in this new initiative will be held at Away Suansawan Chiang Mai, Centara Boutique Collection between March 2 to 8 and 8 to 10.

Founder of Fitcorp Asia and LHR Daniel Remon said that health and fitness has huge potential for hotels with their own spa and fitness center facilities when they partner with wellness specialists.

?Health savvy consumers are aware of the difference in quality of services and are looking for credible programs delivered by industry experts,? he said.

Operations manager of Centara Hotels&Resorts Paul Snow said that spa, fitness and other leisure activities that promote wellness have always been a core part of the Centara brand.

?In today?s competitive and ever stressful environment in which we all work and live, it is satisfying that we are able to offer our guests an opportunity to improve their health, wellness and quality of life,? he said.

?This partnership is a perfect match, allowing guests the dynamics of luxury and travel to destinations both within Thailand and internationally while at the same time reaping the rewards of a solid and structured educational program.?

Emphasis is placed on the four essentials, namely education, motivation, planning and implementation, leading to the achieving of early results in a comfortable, relaxed and encouraging environment.

?The growing need of consumers to not only experience fantastic destinations in luxury and be pampered is now shifting,? said Mr. Remon.

?Those who have already achieved certain goals and financial status in life are turning to education and knowledge with specific ways to improve their quality of life, increase their longevity, have more energy and perform better physically and mentally.?

Mr. Snow said that the response from the tourism, hotel and travel industry has been very positive.

?Centara is Thailand?s largest operator of hotels and resorts, and is also fast expanding overseas,? he said, ?In conjunction with LHR we can offer retreats and programs that are both unique and rewarding.?
Full details may be had by emailing info@lhretreats.com or visiting www.lhretreats.com or www.centarahotelsresorts.com

PHOTO: Daniel Remon (left), Founder of Fitcorp Asia and LHR is training Paul Snow (right), Corporate Operation Manager of Centara Hotels and Resorts to combine health, fitness and weight loss during Paul?s break time at Fitness Center, Centara Grand at CentralWorld. / Image via centarahotelsresorts.com

MEDIA CONTACT: Centara Hotels & Resorts, 999/99 Rama 1 Road, Pathumwan Bangkok 10330, Thailand, Tel: +66 (0) 2 769 1234, Fax: +66 (0) 2 769 1235, Email: centara@chr.co.th

Source: http://www.forimmediaterelease.net/pm/8424.html

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6 tanks at Hanford nuclear site in Wash. leaking

FILE -- In this March 23, 2004 file photo, workers at the tank farms on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Wash., measure for radiation and the presence of toxic vapors. Six underground radioactive waste tanks at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site are leaking, Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday, Feb. 22, 2013. Inslee made the announcement after meeting with federal officials in Washington, D.C. Last week it was revealed that one of the 177 tanks at south-central Washington's Hanford Nuclear Reservation was leaking liquids. Inslee called the latest news "disturbing." (AP Photo/Jackie Johnston, File)

FILE -- In this March 23, 2004 file photo, workers at the tank farms on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Wash., measure for radiation and the presence of toxic vapors. Six underground radioactive waste tanks at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site are leaking, Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday, Feb. 22, 2013. Inslee made the announcement after meeting with federal officials in Washington, D.C. Last week it was revealed that one of the 177 tanks at south-central Washington's Hanford Nuclear Reservation was leaking liquids. Inslee called the latest news "disturbing." (AP Photo/Jackie Johnston, File)

FILE - In this July 14, 2010 photo, workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation work around a a tank farm where highly radioactive waste is stored underground near Richland, Wash. Six underground radioactive waste tanks at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site are leaking, Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday, Feb. 22, 2013. Inslee made the announcement after meeting with federal officials in Washington, D.C. Last week it was revealed that one of the 177 tanks at south-central Washington's Hanford Nuclear Reservation was leaking liquids. Inslee called the latest news "disturbing." (AP Photo/Shannon Dininny, File)

FILE -- In this Feb. 19, 2013 file photo, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., right, tours a facility to treat contaminated groundwater with Energy Department manager Matt McCormick on the Hanford nuclear reservation near Richland, Wash. The facility is a key to cleaning up the highly contaminated site. Six underground radioactive waste tanks at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site are leaking, Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday, Feb. 22, 2013. Inslee made the announcement after meeting with federal officials in Washington, D.C. Last week it was revealed that one of the 177 tanks at south-central Washington's Hanford Nuclear Reservation was leaking liquids. Inslee called the latest news "disturbing." (AP Photo/Shannon Dininny, File)

FILE -- This photo provided by the U.S. Dept. of Energy, shows the construction of a "tank farm" to store nuclear waste in 1944 on the Hanford nuclear reservation near Richland, Wash. It is one of collection of photos documenting life in and around the reservation from 1943-1967. Six underground radioactive waste tanks at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site are leaking, Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday, Feb. 22, 2013. Inslee made the announcement after meeting with federal officials in Washington, D.C. Last week it was revealed that one of the 177 tanks at south-central Washington's Hanford Nuclear Reservation was leaking liquids. Inslee called the latest news "disturbing." (AP Photo/U.S. Department of Energy, File)

FILE -- In this Sept. 18, 2012 file photo, then-Gov. Chris Gregoire makes her way down a set of stairs at the Hanford Vitrification Plant in Richland, Wash. Six underground radioactive waste tanks at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site are leaking, Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday, Feb. 22, 2013. Inslee made the announcement after meeting with federal officials in Washington, D.C. Last week it was revealed that one of the 177 tanks at south-central Washington's Hanford Nuclear Reservation was leaking liquids. Inslee called the latest news "disturbing." (AP Photo/The Tri-City Herald, Richard Dickin, File) LOCAL TV OUT; LOCAL RADIO OUT KONA

YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) ? Six underground tanks that hold a brew of radioactive and toxic waste at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site are leaking, federal and state officials said Friday, prompting calls for an investigation from a key senator.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said the leaking material poses no immediate risk to public safety or the environment because it would take a while ? perhaps years ? to reach groundwater.

But the leaking tanks raise new concerns about delays for emptying them and strike another blow to federal efforts to clean up south-central Washington's Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where successes often are overshadowed by delays, budget overruns and technological challenges.

Department of Energy spokeswoman Lindsey Geisler said there was no immediate health risk and said federal officials would work with Washington state to address the matter.

Regardless, Tom Towslee, a spokesman for Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said the senator will be asking the Government Accountability Office to investigate Hanford's tank monitoring and maintenance program.

Wyden is the new chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

State officials just last week announced that one of Hanford's 177 underground tanks was leaking 150 to 300 gallons a year, posing a risk to groundwater and rivers. So far, nearby monitoring wells haven't detected higher radioactivity levels.

Inslee traveled to Washington, D.C., this week to discuss the problem with federal officials. He said Friday that he learned in meetings that six tanks are leaking waste.

"We received very disturbing news today," the governor said. "I think that we are going to have a course of new action and that will be vigorously pursued in the next several weeks."

The federal government built the Hanford facility at the height of World War II as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. The remote site produced plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, and continued supporting the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal for years.

Today, it is the most contaminated nuclear site in the country, still surrounded by sagebrush but with Washington's Tri-Cities of Richland, Kennewick and Pasco several miles downriver.

Hanford's tanks hold some 53 million gallons of highly radioactive waste ? enough to fill dozens of Olympic-size swimming pools ? and many of those tanks are known to have leaked in the past. An estimated 1 million gallons of radioactive liquid already leaked there.

The tanks also are long past their intended 20-year life span ? raising concerns that even more tanks could be leaking ? though they were believed to have been stabilized in 2005.

Inslee said the falling waste levels in the six tanks were missed because only a narrow band of measurements was evaluated, rather than a wider band that would have shown the levels changing over time.

"It's like if you're trying to determine if climate change is happening, only looking at the data for today," he said. "Perhaps human error, the protocol did not call for it. But that's not the most important thing at the moment. The important thing now is to find and address the leakers."

There are legal, moral and ethical considerations to cleaning up the Hanford site at the national level, Inslee said, adding that he will continue to insist that the Energy Department completely clean up the site.

He also stressed the state would impose a "zero-tolerance" policy on radioactive waste leaking into the soil.

Cleanup is expected to last decades and cost billions of dollars.

The federal government already spends $2 billion each year on Hanford cleanup ? one-third of its entire budget for nuclear cleanup nationally. The Energy Department has said it expects funding levels to remain the same for the foreseeable future, but a new Energy Department report released this week includes annual budgets of as much as $3.5 billion during some years of the cleanup effort.

Much of that money goes toward construction of a plant to convert the underground waste into glasslike logs for safe, secure storage. The plant, last estimated at more than $12.3 billion, is billions of dollars over budget and behind schedule. It isn't expected to being operating until at least 2019.

Given those delays, the federal government will have to show that there is adequate storage for the waste in the meantime, Inslee said.

"We are not convinced of this," he said. "There will be a robust exchange of information in the coming weeks to get to the bottom of this."

Inslee and Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, both Democrats, have championed building additional tanks to ensure safe storage of the waste until the plant is completed.

Wyden, who toured the site earlier this week, said he shares their concerns about the integrity of the tanks but that he wants more scientific information to determine it's the correct way to spend scarce money.

Wyden noted the nation's most contaminated nuclear site ? and the challenges associated with ridding it of its toxic legacy ? will be a subject of upcoming hearings and a higher priority in Washington, D.C.

Tom Carpenter of Hanford Challenge, a Hanford watchdog group, said Friday it's disappointing that the Energy Department is not further along on the waste treatment plant and that there aren't new tanks to transfer waste into.

"None of these tanks would be acceptable for use today. They are all beyond their design life. None of them should be in service," he said. "And yet, they're holding two-thirds of the nation's high-level nuclear waste."

___

Associated Press writer Dina Cappiello in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-02-22-Hanford%20Leak/id-59f320443618479a9820357a6e864335

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Annie Leibovitz: Pilgrimage Exhibit in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Welcome to our Santa Fe Blog.? We've created a place for our guests to share their favorite Santa Fe and Inn and Spa at Loretto memories.? In addition, they can catch up on Santa Fe events, enjoy restaurant recipes from The Living Room and Luminaria Restaurant, read about spa innovations, and much more.

February 21st, 2013 | 3:59pm

Annie Leibovitz: Pilgrimage Exhibit in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Currently housed in Santa Fe, New Mexico at The Georgia O?Keeffe Museum and established by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Annie Leibovitz: Pilgrimage Exhibit portrays a fresh outlook for one of America?s best-known living photographers.? Recognized for staged and cautiously lit portraits for Rolling Stones and Vanity Fair, Leibovitz?s Pilgrimage Exhibit displays images that were taken modestly due to her connection with the subjects.?

Leibovitz traveled to Santa Fe and Abiquiu a handful of times to photograph Georgia O?Keeffe?s home and countryside at the famed Ghost Ranch.? Leibovitz also visited to capture O?Keeffe?s Black Place, in the Santa Fe Museum?s vault.?

While not containing people, the photographs in Leibovit?s Santa Fe exhibit have molded the viewpoint of cultural inheritance, hence the title.? Visiting the homes of iconic figures, including O?Keeffe?s, she acceptable her intuitions and perceptions to lead her to connecting focuses.? Her photographs express curiosity of the world by spanning landscapes, interiors, and objects that are amulets of historical existences.?

Sponsored by local business and hotels, including The Inn and Spa at Loretto, this Santa Fe exhibit celebrates the current O?Keeffe display Faraway: Nature and Image, which contains artifacts of O?Keeffe?s cherished Southwest landscapes.

This exhibit is organized by The Smithsonian American Art Museum.? The Georgia O?Keeffe Museum is the fourth stop on a national tour of this exhibition.? During the run of this presentation (February 15 through May 5, 2013) this Santa Fe exhibit will be available seven days a week, when the museum opens at 10:00 a.m.? The Inn and Spa at Loretto is approximately a half mile from The Georgia O?Keeffe Museum, estimating a ten minute walk through The Plaza.? For more information on Annie Leibovitz and The Georgia O?Keeffe Museum, click HERE.

Posted by Sandra Morello, Marketing Coordinator

Source: http://www.innatloretto.com/loretto-blog/genuine-santa-fe.php?rssid=e917136043ab6bd05c92a52f27cc6335&src=fromrss

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The UK will contribute 40 civilians and troops, in non-combat roles, to the Euro...

The UK will contribute 40 civilians and troops, in non-combat roles, to the European Union Training Mission in Mali, Africa. British troops will work with Malian armed forces, teaching infantry, mortar and artillery disciplines.

Read more here: http://www.army.mod.uk/news/24747.aspx

Source: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152577785115615&set=a.10150214602630615.444131.318319690614&type=1

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In lurid Ariz case, woman describes victim as liar

FILE --In a Feb. 13, 2013 file photo Jodi Arias answers a question from one of her attorneys in Maricopa County Superior Court during her murder trial in Phoenix. Jodi Arias has been on the witness stand for more than a week, recounting one intimate detail of her sex life after another. But she still hasn?t mentioned the killing of her boyfriend in 2008. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)

FILE --In a Feb. 13, 2013 file photo Jodi Arias answers a question from one of her attorneys in Maricopa County Superior Court during her murder trial in Phoenix. Jodi Arias has been on the witness stand for more than a week, recounting one intimate detail of her sex life after another. But she still hasn?t mentioned the killing of her boyfriend in 2008. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)

PHOENIX (AP) ? Jodi Arias has been on the witness stand for more than a week, recounting one intimate detail of her life after another. Salacious revelations of sexual antics. Tales of deviance, betrayal and bad decisions. An abusive childhood. Dead-end restaurant jobs, high school boyfriends, movies and cooking.

But after six days, she still hasn't mentioned the killing of her one-time boyfriend Travis Alexander in 2008, how she repeatedly stabbed and slashed him, slit his throat, then shot in him the head. And for good reason, experts say.

Defense attorneys want to elicit sympathy from jurors in hopes they spare Arias a first-degree murder conviction that could lead to the death penalty. At the same time, they are working to portray Alexander as a philanderer and hypocrite who in public led friends and family to believe he was a devout Mormon saving himself for marriage while simultaneously having sex with multiple women.

So while the seemingly redundant and irrelevant testimony may be lost on the casual observer, veteran criminal defense lawyer Michael Cardoza says there's a reason: Make the jury feel sorry for Arias and disgusted by the victim's antics.

"They're making it very difficult for the jury to put her to death because they're getting to know her," Cardoza said. "The job of the defense at this point isn't to walk her out of the courtroom. Their job is to keep her from getting the death penalty."

The result has been a provocative courtroom drama made for tabloid headlines as the public watches the trial through real time web feeds that have seen huge spikes in traffic, especially on a day when jurors heard a lurid phone sex chat between Arias and Alexander.

"It really taxed our servers. We got an incredible amount of traffic that day," said Michael Williams, chief technology officer at www.wildabouttrial.com, a website and mobile app devoted to criminal trial coverage.

Arias, 32, claims Alexander battered her into submission, and finally, forced her to fight for her life in self-defense. Prosecutors say she killed Alexander in a jealous rage.

In graphic detail, Arias has described for jurors instances of physical abuse at the hands of Alexander. She said he belittled her and admitted to having sexual desires for young boys. She has spent an equal amount of time detailing her own troubled life, from an abusive childhood to her religious beliefs to the minutia of ex-boyfriends and car problems.

She broke down in tears, her head slumped over, as she sat on the witness stand and listened to the hour-long phone sex recording played for jurors in open court, as Alexander's family winced in the gallery and her own mother sat emotionless across the room. The judge warned observers of the explicit nature of the tape prior to playing it, and offered everyone a chance to leave. No one did.

Cardoza said he's never heard anything so salacious in a courtroom.

"This tops it all, absolutely tops it all," he said.

The trial has been crawling along as each day is interrupted by multiple objections and private bench conferences, something experts say is by design as Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sherry Stephens, a former Arizona assistant attorney general, wants to be certain the record is clean of anything that could be used on appeal.

"The ferocity of the killing is just so staggering," said Phoenix defense attorney Mel McDonald, a former judge and federal prosecutor. "It's just so poisonous, the acts of the killing, that I think the judge is doing everything to give Jodi Arias' attorneys great latitude, and I think it's an absolutely savvy decision. ... The state is asking for the ultimate penalty of death, after all."

But as Arias demonizes the victim, there's been little more than her words to back up anything.

She never called police or went to a hospital for injuries she claims she suffered at Alexander's hands, and jurors have yet to hear from any witnesses or view any evidence establishing a history of the victim's violence or supposed interest in child pornography. She is likely to face a withering cross-examination from the prosecution next week.

The trial began in early January with the prosecution making quick work of its case, a seamless and largely chronological story laid out for jurors in simple detail: Arias is a murderer, a jilted lover who planned the attack on Alexander in a jealous rage. She stabbed and slashed him 27 times, slitting his throat and shooting him in the head in a final salvo of savagery.

The sheer brutality of the attack is difficult enough for defense lawyers to explain away in a case where the defendant claims self-defense. There are also the lies. Arias initially told authorities she wasn't there. She later blamed it on masked intruders. Eventually, she settled on self-defense, claiming Alexander attacked her in his suburban Phoenix home.

Investigators also say Alexander was shot in the head with a .25 caliber gun, the same caliber Arias' grandparents reported stolen from their Northern California home about a week before the killing. No weapons have been recovered, and Arias hasn't explained what she did with them.

"She can say whatever she wants, but Travis isn't here to speak for himself," said Julie Haslem, a friend of Alexander who has been watching the trial. "It's bad enough that she took his life. Now she's trying to take his reputation, too."

Testimony resumes Tuesday.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-02-18-Boyfriend%20Slaying/id-005572e6742d4c4e990dfe16e85a6985

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Video: Florio: NFL doesn't really care about SB 48 weather

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/21134540/vp/50785289#50785289

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Plant scientists demonstrate new means of boosting maize yields

Feb. 3, 2013 ? A team of plant geneticists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has successfully demonstrated what it describes as a "simple hypothesis" for making significant increases in yields for the maize plant.

Called corn by most people in North America, modern variants of the Zea mays plant are among the indispensable food crops that feed billions of the planet's people. As global population soars beyond 6 billion and heads for an estimated 8 to 9 billion by mid-century, efforts to boost yields of essential food crops takes on ever greater potential significance.

The new findings obtained by CSHL Professor David Jackson and colleagues, published online February 3 in Nature Genetics, represent the culmination of over a decade of research and creative thinking on how to perform genetic manipulations in maize that will have the effect of increasing the number of its seeds -- which most of us call kernels.

Plant growth and development depend on structures called meristems -- reservoirs in plants that consist of the plant version of stem cells. When prompted by genetic signals, cells in the meristem develop into the plant's organs -- leaves and flowers, for instance. Jackson's team has taken an interest in how quantitative variation in the pathways that regulate plant stem cells contribute to a plant's growth and yield.

"Our simple hypothesis was that an increase in the size of the inflorescence meristem -- the stem-cell reservoir that gives rise to flowers and ultimately, after pollination, seeds -- will provide more physical space for the development of the structures that mature into kernels."

Dr. Peter Bommert, a former postdoctoral fellow in the Jackson lab, performed an analytical technique on several maize variants that revealed what scientists call quantitative trait loci (QTLs): places along the chromosomes that "map" to specific complex traits such as yield. The analysis pointed to a gene that Jackson has been interested in since 2001, when he was first to clone it: a maize gene called FASCIATED EAR2 (FEA2).

Not long after cloning the gene, Jackson had a group of gifted Long Island high school students, part of a program called Partners for the Future, perform an analysis of literally thousands of maize ears. Their task was to meticulously count the number of rows of kernels on each ear. It was part of a research project that won the youths honors in the Intel Science competition. Jackson, meantime, gained important data that now has come to full fruition.

The lab's current research has now shown that by producing a weaker-than-normal version of the FEA2 gene -- one whose protein is mutated but still partly functional -- it is possible, as Jackson postulated, to increase meristem size, and in so doing, get a maize plant to produce ears with more rows and more kernels.

How many more? In two different crops of maize variants that the Jackson team grew in two locations with weakened versions of FEA2, the average ear had 18 to 20 rows and up to 289 kernels -- as compared with wild-type versions of the same varieties, with 14 to 16 rows and 256 kernels. Compared with the latter figure, the successful FEA2 mutants had a kernel yield increase of some 13%.

"We were excited to note this increase was accomplished without reducing the length of the ears or causing fasciation -- a deformation that tends to flatten the ears," Jackson says. Both of those characteristics, which can sharply lower yield, are prominent when FEA2 is completely missing, as the team's experiments also demonstrated.

Teosinte, the humble wild weed that Mesoamericans began to modify about 7000 years ago, beginning a process that resulted in the domestication of maize, makes only 2 rows of kernels; elite modern varieties of the plant can produce as many as 20.

A next step in the research is to cross-breed the "weak" FEA2 gene variant, or allele, associated with higher kernel yield with the best maize lines used in today's food crops to ask if it will produce a higher-yield plant.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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. Peter Bommert, Namiko Satoh Nagasawa & David Jackson. Quantitative variation in maize kernel row number is controlled by the FASCIATED EAR2 locus. Nature Genetics, 03 February 2013 DOI: 10.1038/ng.2534

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/top_news/top_environment/~3/33u3yq3NI_4/130203145600.htm

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Nebraska Lieutenant Governor Sheehy resigns over phone scandal

(Reuters) - Nebraska Lieutenant Governor Rick Sheehy, the leading candidate to replace the current governor in the next election, resigned on Saturday after a newspaper investigation raised questions about improper cell phone calls made to women.

The Omaha World-Herald investigation found that the 53-year-old Republican made about 2,000 late-night calls to four women, other than his wife, on his state-issued cell phone over four years. The newspaper plans to publish results of the investigation on Sunday.

Colleen Sheehy, his wife of 28 years, filed for divorce in July 2012, according to the newspaper.

Governor Dave Heineman announced the resignation of Sheehy, a rising star in state politics, at a news conference. The governor said he was "deeply disappointed" and that Sheehy had done good work, but "trust was broken."

"Public officials are rightly held to a higher standard," Heineman said at the news conference, provided on the Omaha World-Herald website.

Heineman will leave office in 2015 and Sheehy had announced that he would run for governor. He was considered a leading candidate. Heineman selected Sheehy as lieutenant governor in 2005 after moving into the governor's office to replace Mike Johanns, who was tapped as U.S. agriculture secretary.

Heineman and Sheehy were elected to their first full term in 2006 and re-elected to a second term in 2010.

(Reporting by Mary Wisniewski; editing by Gunna Dickson)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nebraska-lieutenant-governor-sheehy-resigns-over-phone-scandal-222053265.html

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Efforts on Ala. hostage situation shrouded in secrecy

MIDLAND CITY, Alabama (Reuters) - Efforts to free a 5-year-old boy from a gunman in an underground bunker, where the man took him after killing the boy's school bus driver, were shrouded in secrecy on Saturday as the standoff in rural Alabama dragged into a fifth straight day.

Police sources said the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team was leading negotiations aimed at securing the boy's safe release.

But FBI officials have declined to comment, referring calls to local authorities who have been extremely tight-lipped, providing few official updates on the situation.

Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson, chief spokesman for local law enforcement officials in Midland City, told a brief news conference on Saturday that authorities had been in constant communication with the suspect, who was officially identified on Friday as 65-year-old Jimmy Lee Dykes.

Police believe Dykes, a retired trucker and Vietnam War veteran, fatally shot bus driver Charles Albert Poland, 66, on Tuesday and then took one of Poland's more than 20 child passengers hostage during their ride home from school.

The incident came against the backdrop of a debate about gun control that has galvanized the nation since the shooting deaths of 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school in December.

Olson declined to disclose any specific demands made by Dykes, saying only that he had allowed authorities to provide coloring books, toys and medication for the kindergartner, who reportedly suffers from autism or Asperger's syndrome.

Dykes also assured authorities he had blankets and electric heaters in the bunker to protect the boy from cold overnight temperatures, Olson said.

"I want to thank him for taking care of our child. This is very important," Olson said.

He offered no further comment but one law enforcement source, explaining perhaps why so little information is being shared with reporters, told Reuters that Dykes has access to television news inside his bunker.

According to his neighbors, Dykes moved into the Midland City area about two years ago and often was seen patrolling his property at night with a gun and a flashlight.

He kept mostly to himself and had spent a lot of time building the subterranean bunker near the trailer where he lived, several neighbors have told reporters.

Ronda Wilbur, a neighbor who has described Dykes as a "mean man" who beat one of her dogs to death with a lead pipe, said she thought he had been planning something for a long time.

"I had always figured he was more or less a wacko survivalist but it's obvious that this had been very well thought out and arranged," Wilbur told an ABC television news affiliate.

About 50 people gathered on Saturday near Midland City United Methodist Church to pray for the boy, his family and the Poland family.

Michelle Riley, a participant in the vigil, said the killing and hostage taking was the kind of tragedy residents never expected in their small town.

"I mean this is the community where our kids ride up and down the street" on bicycles, she said.

Dykes had been scheduled to appear for a bench trial on Wednesday after his arrest last month on a menacing charge involving one of his neighbors.

Poland's funeral is scheduled for Sunday afternoon at the Ozark Civic Center, which is about 12 miles from Midland City.

A sign posted in Midland City on Saturday read, "RIP Mr. Poland. Once a warrior always a warrior."

Pastor Ray Kelly said Poland is a hero.

"But he's also gone," he said. "And, people have a broken heart."

(Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Writing by Tom Brown; Editing by Gunna Dickson and Bill Trott)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/efforts-end-alabama-hostage-situation-shrouded-secrecy-045724729.html

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Solar development absorbing Calif. farmland

FILE - In this Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2011 file photo, solar panels are seen at the NRG Solar and Eurus Energy America Corp.?s 45-megawatt solar farm in Avenal, Calif. There?s a land rush of sorts going on across the nation?s most productive farming region, but these buyers don?t want to grow crops. Instead developers are looking to plant solar voltaic cells to generate electricity for a state mandated to get 33 percent from renewables by the end of the decade. (AP Photo/The Sentinel, Apolinar Fonseca, File)

FILE - In this Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2011 file photo, solar panels are seen at the NRG Solar and Eurus Energy America Corp.?s 45-megawatt solar farm in Avenal, Calif. There?s a land rush of sorts going on across the nation?s most productive farming region, but these buyers don?t want to grow crops. Instead developers are looking to plant solar voltaic cells to generate electricity for a state mandated to get 33 percent from renewables by the end of the decade. (AP Photo/The Sentinel, Apolinar Fonseca, File)

FILE - In this Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2011 file photo, a worker looks over solar panels at the NRG Solar and Eurus Energy America Corp.?s 45-megawatt solar farm in Avenal, Calif. There?s a land rush of sorts going on across the nation?s most productive farming region, but these buyers don?t want to grow crops. Instead developers are looking to plant solar voltaic cells to generate electricity for a state mandated to get 33 percent from renewables by the end of the decade. (AP Photo/The Sentinel, Apolinar Fonseca, File)

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) ? There's a land rush of sorts going on across the nation's most productive farming region, but these buyers don't want to grow crops. They want to plant solar farms.

With California mandating that 33 percent of electricity be generated from renewables by the end of the decade, there are 227 proposed solar projects in the pipeline statewide. Coupled with wind and other renewables they would generate enough electricity to meet 100 percent of California's power needs on an average summer day, the California Independent System Operator says.

And new applications for projects keep arriving.

Developers are flocking to flat farmland near power transmission lines, but agriculture interests, environmental groups and even the state are concerned that there is no official accounting of how much of this important agricultural region's farmland is being taken out of production.

""We've been trying to get a handle on the extent of this for quite a while now," said Ed Thompson of American Farmland Trust, which monitors how much of the nation's farmland is absorbed by development.

The California Department of Conservation, which is supposed to track development on privately held farmland, has been unable to do so because of staff and funding reductions, officials say.

"I'd love to say we have all of that information, but we really don't," said Molly Penberth, manager of the land resource protection division. "We're going to play catch up getting that information, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley."

Planning department records in four of the valley's biggest farming counties show about 100 solar generation plants already proposed on roughly 40,000 acres, or about the equivalent of 470 Disneyland theme parks. Planners in Fresno County say their applications for solar outnumber the ones they received for housing developments during the boom days.

Solar developers have focused on the southern San Joaquin Valley over the past three years for the same reason as farmers: flat expanses of land and an abundance of sunshine. Land that has been tilled most often has fewer issues with endangered species than places such as the Mojave Desert, where an endangered tortoise slowed solar development on federal land.

Much of the solar development is proposed for Kern, Tulare, Fresno and Kings counties, which are home to more than 400 crops that pump $30 billion into the economy and help sustain U.S. food security.

In January, the farmland trust released a report projecting that by 2050 more than 570,000 acres across the region could be lost to development as the Central California population explodes. Farmland losses due to housing, solar development, a warming climate, cyclical drought and ongoing farm water rationing to protect endangered fish, plus the state's signature transportation project ? the High Speed Rail ? are all issues the trust is trying to monitor.

"These are things that don't make headlines, but come under the category that you don't know what you've got until it's gone," Thompson said.

No statewide plan or policy exists to direct projects to areas where land is marginal for farming and power transmission lines exist or can be easily routed, though groups as diverse as the Defenders of Wildlife and the independent state oversight agency Little Hoover Commission have issued studies calling for one.

Projects are approved by elected county boards of supervisors, or if larger than 50 MW, the California Energy Commission.

"There's no consistent approach" county to county in deciding what gets approved on farmland, said Kate Kelly, a planning consultant who is studying the environmental impact of valley projects for Defenders of Wildlife.

While one of the nation's leading solar trade groups has not taken an official position on conversion of farmland to solar, Katherine Gensler of the Solar Energy Industries Association says more thought must go into location.

The largest solar facility operating so far covers 500 acres 60 miles northwest of Bakersfield and produces enough electricity for 36,000 homes.

Just three weeks into 2013, five valley farmers have told the Department of Conservation that they want to cancel low agriculture tax rate contracts to develop solar on their property. None takes advantage of a year-old law making it easier to cancel on marginal land, Penberth said.

County boards of supervisors are attracted to the promise of clean energy construction jobs. Some of the projects are on prime land as small as 20 acres, some on habitat shared by threatened or endangered species such as the kit fox, Swainson's hawk and blunt nose lizard. The 9,000-acre Maricopa Sun project in western Kern County is on prime land that the county says lacks a reliable water supply.

Almost always developers chose sites because there's a willing seller in the vicinity of existing transmission lines, experts say.

Transmission is the biggest reason for the holdup of a massive project that energy planners, agriculture interests and environmentalists agree is perfectly situated ? the Westlands Solar Park in remote Kings and Fresno counties. It's planned for 47 square miles of farmland fallowed because of high levels selenium in the soil.

Developers say the project ultimately could provide 2.7 gigawatts of electricity ? enough for 2.7 million homes. But the wait for approval from the California Independent System Operator to tap into transmission lines for a large project proved too long so they got out. For now.

"We realized it would be a seven-to-10 year process," said Joshua Martin, the solar company's chief financial officer. "We could easily have spent $7 million in fees to stay in line, but it doesn't make good business sense. It's a messy market right now and things need to calm down."

Ten years might be wishful thinking. An email the ISO sent to stakeholders on Jan. 18 said that it could be 12 years or longer before the needed upgrades in transmission infrastructure could be complete for solar projects currently waiting for transmission hookups in the Fresno area.

Westlands Solar Park is betting that environmental obstacles and connection costs will force many of the projects in the pipeline statewide to be abandoned. But what they're hoping in the meantime is that state regulators eventually will direct solar development away from prime farmland.

Next month the California Energy Commission is set to make a move in that direction with adoption of a report that will recommend a coordinated approach placing solar in "zones with minimal environmental or habitat value," near existing or planned electric system infrastructure. The agency would also collaborate with the Department of Conservation to identify areas of the state with marginal land.

Martin says the move likely is too late to help the projects that are stalled and in danger of missing out on federal tax incentives that expire in 2016.

"Someone needs to take a role and say what lines should be built and which aren't in the state's best interest," said Martin. "So far we have been underwhelmed."

____

Reach Tracie Cone on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/TConeAP

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-02-02-Solar%20Land%20Rush/id-aeffc0d7d88a4d03a50ed74d5206f680

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