I had long been aware that Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, Argentina?s most powerful Roman Catholic prelate, was a priest who led a humble lifestyle that reflected his advocacy for the downtrodden. In Latin America, whose social inequality is one of the worst of any region in the world, that truly counted for something. It was refreshing, at a time when so many in the Catholic hierarchy were accused of having covered up clerical sexual abuse in order to protect their ecclesiastical fraternity, to see a prince of the church defending the underdogs of the world.
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House fire in Kentucky where two adults and five children died on Saturday, March 9, 2013.
By Becky Bratu, Staff Writer, NBC News
Five children and two adults died in a house fire Saturday morning in southeastern Kentucky.
Police received a call around 10 a.m.regarding a fire in the Gray community of Knox County.
Tracy Turner, spokeswoman for the Kentucky State Police, told NBC News that the names of the deceased have not been released and that officers at the scene are still working to investigate the cause of the blaze.
Police told NBC affiliate WLEX-TV they don't believe foul play was involved. Flames were extinguished by 12:30.
Knox County Coroner Mike Blevins told The Associated Press the deceased are a man, a woman and five children. The woman was the mother of three of the children, he said, while the other two were from another family.
Mar. 7, 2013 ? Prairie dogs pull up stakes and look for a new place to live when all their close kin have disappeared from their home territory--a striking pattern of dispersal that has not been observed for any other species. This is according to a new study published in Science by behavioral ecologist John Hoogland, Professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science's Appalachian Laboratory. He has been studying the ecology and social behavior of prairie dogs in national parks in Arizona, South Dakota, and Utah for the last 40 years.
For most animals, individuals leave a territory, or disperse, to avoid competition with nearby relatives, such as mother or sibling. For three species of prairie dogs, however, individuals are more likely to disperse in the absence of nearby close kin. Females are 12.5 times more likely to disperse when close kin are absent for one species, and 5.5 times more likely for another species.
Prairie dogs are large, burrowing rodents of the squirrel family. They live in colonies in grassland ecosystems of western North America, and forage aboveground on grasses and other plants from dawn until dusk. Within colonies, prairie dogs live in territorial, contiguous family groups called clans, which typically contain one mature male, two to five mature females, and one or two adolescent males. Hoogland has been trying to figure out which individuals disperse from the territory of birth, and why.
"The key to our research is that we live with the prairie dogs for five months of every year," says Hoogland. "Students and I climb into our observation towers at the study-colony at dawn each morning before the prairie dogs wake up, and we stay there until the last individual has submerged into its burrow for the night."
The prairie dogs all have numbered eartags (which are inserted at weaning and remain their entire lifetime), and the flank of each individual is uniquely marked with fur-dye so that it can be identified from a distance. The researchers therefore can document which prairie dogs get captured by predators, which ones mate and produce offspring, and which ones disperse to new territories.
"Prairie dogs are excellent models for a study of dispersal because they are easy to live-trap, mark, and observe," says Hoogland, "And they usually move only short distances to nearby territories."
Why are prairie dogs so different regarding dispersal? According to Hoogland, prairie dogs resemble other animals and compete with nearby kin for resources such as burrows and mates. But prairie dogs also cooperate with kin in the excavation of burrows that can be as deep as 15 feet; in defense of the home territory against prairie dogs from other territories; by giving alarm calls when a large predator such as a coyote attacks; and by helping to chase small predators such as long-tailed weasels. Another important cooperative behavior is communal nursing (the suckling of non-offspring), which can be life-saving for the unweaned offspring of close kin when the mother of those offspring dies for any reason.
Hoogland hypothesizes that the benefits of cooperation with close kin exceed the costs of competition with those same close kin. When all close kin disappear, individuals disperse because they have nobody with whom to cooperate. When the option is available, prairie dogs frequently disperse into a territory that contains close kin who dispersed there earlier -- so that benefits from cooperation are once again available.
This study is featured in the March 8 issue of Science.
Scientists at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science's Appalachian Laboratory in Frostburg actively study the effects of land-use change on terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems and how human activity may influence their health and sustainability on local, regional and global scales. The scientific results help to unravel the consequences of environmental change, manage natural resources, restore ecosystems, and foster ecological literacy.
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Journal Reference:
J. L. Hoogland. Prairie Dogs Disperse When All Close Kin Have Disappeared. Science, 2013; 339 (6124): 1205 DOI: 10.1126/science.1231689
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Contact: Lisa Merkl lkmerkl@uh.edu 713-743-8192 University of Houston
Geologic Problem Solving with Microfossils III held at UH Mar. 10-13
HOUSTON, March 6, 2013 More than 200 delegates from around the world will assemble at the University of Houston (UH) next week to share research and discoveries about oil and the environment at an international conference on the economic and environmental use of fossils.
Specifically examining microfossils, which are invisible to the naked eye, the scientists who participate in this quadrennial gathering represent leaders in various branches of stratigraphy, the branch of geology that studies rock layers in the Earth's crust. Notable presenters will include the authors of the last decade of geologic time scales, which are a system of chronological measurements that relate stratigraphy to time. These time scales are used by geologists, paleontologists and other earth scientists to describe the timing and relationships between events that have occurred throughout Earth's history.
The conference, Geologic Problem Solving with Microfossils III, will be held at UH March 10-13. Kicking off the activities will be poster sessions at the Hilton UH Sunday and Monday evening, with oral presentations taking place Monday through noon Wednesday in room 100 of the Science and Engineering Classroom building.
"We will have some of the world leaders in research on global time scales presenting at this conference. They are the keepers of the keys to time for the fossil record over the course of the last 550 million years in sedimentary rocks," said Don Van Nieuwenhuise, director of Professional Geoscience Programs at UH in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. "They also are keeping track of available age data back into the Precambrian age, extending as far back in time as 4.5 billion years ago. The work of hundreds of scientists from all over the world entails integrating data generated from the Earth, Moon, Mars and Venus."
The various presentations lined up will show how microfossils are used to understand environmental conditions, such as global warming and cooling, from prehistoric times to the present. Talks also will cover how microfossils are used to age-date rocks, as well as provide clues to finding oil and gas resources not only in conventional sand and limestone, but also unconventional shale plays.
In addition to discussions of practical applications in oil and gas exploration and production, Van Nieuwenhuise says basic science about stratigraphy and environmental monitoring will be showcased. Since microfossils are found in abundance in oil and gas well samples, scientists can then link the environmental signals of similar living microscopic organisms, flora and fauna in a region, also called microbiota, to understand the fossil and rock record.
"This has led to the use of these organisms as environmental monitors for various forms of pollution," he said. "Once researchers determine the baseline abundances and distributions of microbiota in a given habitat, we can then determine if pollutants have disrupted their habitat and populations. Some microbiota develop deformities related to pollutant influences and other environmental stresses."
Intended to reflect today's broadening application of micropaleontology, presentations will include talks on the microfossil record of major oceanic events, microfossils and unconventional resources, reconstructing past environments using microfossils, paleoclimatology and paleoceanography related to sea-level change, and new technologies and techniques in microfossil studies.
Sponsored by the North American Micropaleontology Section of the Society for Sedimentary Geology, this conference broadly focuses on the use of microfossils for solving geological problems. Initiated in 2005 and held every four years, this event has been well received and growing in attendance. Attendees of past meetings have said the open problem-solving theme of the conference and the broad participation of specialists from varied disciplines creates a rich environment for collaboration and sharing of ideas and knowledge.
###
For more information on the conference, visit http://www.sepm.org/nams/m3.htm.
For a list of presentations, visit http://www.sepm.org/nams/M3OralProg.pdf.
About the University of Houston
The University of Houston is a Carnegie-designated Tier One public research university recognized by The Princeton Review as one of the nation's best colleges for undergraduate education. UH serves the globally competitive Houston and Gulf Coast Region by providing world-class faculty, experiential learning and strategic industry partnerships. Located in the nation's fourth-largest city, UH serves more than 39,500 students in the most ethnically and culturally diverse region in the country. For more information about UH, visit the university's newsroom at http://www.uh.edu/news-events/.
About the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics
The UH College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, with 187 ranked faculty and more than 5,000 students, offers bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in the natural sciences, computational sciences and mathematics. Faculty members in the departments of biology and biochemistry, chemistry, computer science, earth and atmospheric sciences, mathematics and physics conduct internationally recognized research in collaboration with industry, Texas Medical Center institutions, NASA and others worldwide.
To receive UH science news via e-mail, sign up for UH-SciNews at http://www.uh.edu/news-events/mailing-lists/sciencelistserv/index.php.
For more information about UH, visit the university's newsroom at http://www.uh.edu/news-events/.
For additional news alerts about UH, follow us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/UHNewsEvents and Twitter at http://twitter.com/UH_News.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Lisa Merkl lkmerkl@uh.edu 713-743-8192 University of Houston
Geologic Problem Solving with Microfossils III held at UH Mar. 10-13
HOUSTON, March 6, 2013 More than 200 delegates from around the world will assemble at the University of Houston (UH) next week to share research and discoveries about oil and the environment at an international conference on the economic and environmental use of fossils.
Specifically examining microfossils, which are invisible to the naked eye, the scientists who participate in this quadrennial gathering represent leaders in various branches of stratigraphy, the branch of geology that studies rock layers in the Earth's crust. Notable presenters will include the authors of the last decade of geologic time scales, which are a system of chronological measurements that relate stratigraphy to time. These time scales are used by geologists, paleontologists and other earth scientists to describe the timing and relationships between events that have occurred throughout Earth's history.
The conference, Geologic Problem Solving with Microfossils III, will be held at UH March 10-13. Kicking off the activities will be poster sessions at the Hilton UH Sunday and Monday evening, with oral presentations taking place Monday through noon Wednesday in room 100 of the Science and Engineering Classroom building.
"We will have some of the world leaders in research on global time scales presenting at this conference. They are the keepers of the keys to time for the fossil record over the course of the last 550 million years in sedimentary rocks," said Don Van Nieuwenhuise, director of Professional Geoscience Programs at UH in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. "They also are keeping track of available age data back into the Precambrian age, extending as far back in time as 4.5 billion years ago. The work of hundreds of scientists from all over the world entails integrating data generated from the Earth, Moon, Mars and Venus."
The various presentations lined up will show how microfossils are used to understand environmental conditions, such as global warming and cooling, from prehistoric times to the present. Talks also will cover how microfossils are used to age-date rocks, as well as provide clues to finding oil and gas resources not only in conventional sand and limestone, but also unconventional shale plays.
In addition to discussions of practical applications in oil and gas exploration and production, Van Nieuwenhuise says basic science about stratigraphy and environmental monitoring will be showcased. Since microfossils are found in abundance in oil and gas well samples, scientists can then link the environmental signals of similar living microscopic organisms, flora and fauna in a region, also called microbiota, to understand the fossil and rock record.
"This has led to the use of these organisms as environmental monitors for various forms of pollution," he said. "Once researchers determine the baseline abundances and distributions of microbiota in a given habitat, we can then determine if pollutants have disrupted their habitat and populations. Some microbiota develop deformities related to pollutant influences and other environmental stresses."
Intended to reflect today's broadening application of micropaleontology, presentations will include talks on the microfossil record of major oceanic events, microfossils and unconventional resources, reconstructing past environments using microfossils, paleoclimatology and paleoceanography related to sea-level change, and new technologies and techniques in microfossil studies.
Sponsored by the North American Micropaleontology Section of the Society for Sedimentary Geology, this conference broadly focuses on the use of microfossils for solving geological problems. Initiated in 2005 and held every four years, this event has been well received and growing in attendance. Attendees of past meetings have said the open problem-solving theme of the conference and the broad participation of specialists from varied disciplines creates a rich environment for collaboration and sharing of ideas and knowledge.
###
For more information on the conference, visit http://www.sepm.org/nams/m3.htm.
For a list of presentations, visit http://www.sepm.org/nams/M3OralProg.pdf.
About the University of Houston
The University of Houston is a Carnegie-designated Tier One public research university recognized by The Princeton Review as one of the nation's best colleges for undergraduate education. UH serves the globally competitive Houston and Gulf Coast Region by providing world-class faculty, experiential learning and strategic industry partnerships. Located in the nation's fourth-largest city, UH serves more than 39,500 students in the most ethnically and culturally diverse region in the country. For more information about UH, visit the university's newsroom at http://www.uh.edu/news-events/.
About the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics
The UH College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, with 187 ranked faculty and more than 5,000 students, offers bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in the natural sciences, computational sciences and mathematics. Faculty members in the departments of biology and biochemistry, chemistry, computer science, earth and atmospheric sciences, mathematics and physics conduct internationally recognized research in collaboration with industry, Texas Medical Center institutions, NASA and others worldwide.
To receive UH science news via e-mail, sign up for UH-SciNews at http://www.uh.edu/news-events/mailing-lists/sciencelistserv/index.php.
For more information about UH, visit the university's newsroom at http://www.uh.edu/news-events/.
For additional news alerts about UH, follow us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/UHNewsEvents and Twitter at http://twitter.com/UH_News.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KBAK/KBFX) ? A stroke has been determined as the cause of an 87-year-old woman's death, and her family maintains they are satisfied with the actions of workers at a retirement community where she lived.
Full statement from the family >>
But, questions are still being raised about the 911 call where an operator couldn't convince a facility worker to provide CPR.
"From the information that's available to us, it seems clear that the employee was put in an untenable ethical position," Dr. Christopher Meyers said on Tuesday. He's director of the California State University, Bakersfield Kegley Ethics Institute.
Lorraine Bayless had collapsed in a Glenwood Gardens dining room on Feb. 26, when employees of the independent living center called 911. As the call starts, the operator is told the stricken woman is lying flat on the floor and she's possibly not breathing. Uncut 911 call >>
"We need to get CPR started," the operator's heard saying.
"We can't do CPR," she is told by a woman who identifies herself as a nurse.
"As a licensed nurse, she had a clear professional duty to provide some aid to somebody in distress," Dr. Meyers said Tuesday, a week after the woman's death. "But, she's been given a clear directive, by force, that's she's not supposed to do that."
It's not clear exactly what the duties are of the Glenwood Gardens employee on the phone, or what her nursing background is.
"Had I been the nurse on the scene, I would have done CPR," long-time nurse Audrey Cochran told Eyewitness News. "I can always get another job."
Cochran specializes in elder health issues.
Asked if nurses are required to help someone, Cochran said they are.
"Ethically, but not legally, if your employer forbids it," she said. Cochran said that happens rarely.
Meyers said more needs to be known about Glenwood Gardens' policies, but he also weighed in on whether companies have an ethical obligation to provide aid.
"It seems surprising that they would have a blanket policy that their employees could not render that kind of assistance," he said.
Asked if companies may feel compelled to take a hands-off policy because of their insurers, Meyers said there's an answer to that: "If some insurance company has a prohibition, then find another company."
Eyewitness News made several unsuccessful requests for clarification of the company policies both to administrators at the Bakersfield facility, and to the parent company, "Brookdale Senior Living."
State Assemblyman Rudy Salas, D-Bakersfield, said he's looking for ways to respond. Salas told Eyewitness News a bill he's already introduced can be amended, it's AB 633, a proposal for veterans' access to health care.
Salas said if it seems that laws needs to be clarified or strengthened so people are not afraid of being sued if they help someone, AB 633 could be a vehicle.
Kern County Sheriff's spokesman Ray Pruitt said Bayless' cause of death is now ruled to be a stroke. Pruitt said that was the determination of her personal physician. The doctor who signed the death certificate also called this a natural death.
The Bayless family issued a full statement that they are satisfied with the response by Glenwood Gardens.
Bayless had been pronounced dead at Mercy Southwest Hospital when she was taken there by the ambulance that responded to the 911 call. Bakersfield Fire Department reports show Bayless had no order not to resuscitate her.
Cochran said incidents like this highlight the need for families to communicate clearly what they want as far as health intervention and end of life.
"People (should) talk within families about what they want done in such circumstances," she said. "Our society does not talk about death."
Meyers hopes scrutiny of this incident will lead to more review of company policies, and he expects that will happen with Glenwood Gardens.
"I'm sure that both that individual institution and the corporate entity that owns them is going to be carefully looking at that blanket policy," the CSUB official said.
__
Here is the statement from the family of 87-year-old Lorraine Bayless, who died last week of a heart attack after being denied CPR at a Bakersfield elder home:
Our mother and grandmother was a remarkable and intelligent woman who was blessed to have a great life of 87 years. It is the wish of our family to honor and celebrate her life at this personal time. Like so many Seniors, it was our mother's wish to live independently. She was fully-aware that Glenwood Gardens did not offer trained medical staff. Even so, she personally-selected the senior living community, and our family has come to know the staff and been very pleased with Glenwood Gardens as her home. It was our beloved mother and grandmother's wish to die naturally and without any kind of life-prolonging intervention. Our family respects the right of all people to make their own life choices in such cases.
We regret that this private and most personal time has been escalated by the media. Caregivers, nurses and other medical professionals have very difficult waters to tread in the legal and medical landscape of our country today. We understand that the 911 tape of this event has caused concern, but our family knows that mom had full knowledge of the limitations of Glenwood Gardens, and is at peace. We also have no desire, nor is it the nature of our family, to seek legal recourse or try to profit from what is a lesson we can all learn from.
We wish to focus on our family at this time, and this will be our final comment on this personal matter.
Dining on field grasses would be ruinous to human teeth, but mammals such as horses, rhinos and gazelles evolved long, strong teeth that are up to the task.
New research led by the University of Washington challenges the 140-year-old assumption that finding fossilized remains of prehistoric animals with such teeth meant the animals were living in grasslands and savannas. Instead it appears certain South American mammals evolved the teeth in response to the gritty dust and volcanic ash they encountered while feeding in an ancient tropical forest.
The new work was conducted in Argentina where scientists had thought Earth's first grasslands emerged 38 million years ago, an assumption based on fossils of these specialized teeth. But the grasslands didn't exist. Instead there were tropical forests rich with palms, bamboos and gingers, according to Caroline Str?mberg, UW assistant professor of biology and lead author of an article in Nature Communications.
"The assumption about grasslands and the evolution of these teeth was based on animal fossils," Str?mberg said. "No one had looked in detail at evidence from the plant record before. Our findings show that you shouldn't assume adaptations always came about in the same way, that the trigger is the same environment every time."
To handle a lifetime of rough abrasion, the specialized teeth ? called high-crowned cheek teeth ? are especially long and mostly up in the animals' gums when they are young. As chewing surfaces of the teeth wear away, more of the tooth emerges from the gums until the crowns are used up. In each tooth, bone-like dentin and tough enamel are complexly folded and layered to create strong ridged surfaces for chewing. Human teeth have short crowns and enamel only on the outside of each tooth.
In Argentina, mammals apparently developed specialized teeth 20 million years or more before grasslands appeared, Str?mberg said. This was different from her previous work in North America and western Eurasia where she found the emergence of grasslands coincided with the early ancestors of horses and other animals evolving specialized teeth. The cause and effect, however, took 4 million years, considerably more lag time than previously thought.
The idea that specialized teeth could have evolved in response to eating dust and grit on plants and the ground is not new. In the case of Argentine mammals, Str?mberg and her co-authors hypothesize that the teeth adapted to handle volcanic ash because so much is present at the study site. For example, some layers of volcanic ash are as thick as 20 feet (six meters). In other layers, soils and roots were just starting to develop when they were smothered with more ash.
Chewing grasses is abrasive because grasses take up more silica from soils than most other plants. Silica forms minute particles inside many plants called phytoliths that, among other things, help some plants stand upright and form part of the protective coating on seeds.
Phytoliths vary in appearance under a microscope depending on the kind of plant. When plants die and decay, the phytoliths remain as part of the soil layer. In work funded by the National Science Foundation, Str?mberg and her colleagues collected samples from Argentina's Gran Barranca, literally "Great Cliff," that offers access to layers of soil, ash and sand going back millions of years.
The phytoliths they found in 38-million-year-old layers ? when ancient mammals in that part of the world developed specialized teeth ? were overwhelmingly from tropical forests, Str?mberg said.
"In modern grasslands and savannas you'd expect at least 35 to 40 percent ? more likely well over 50 percent ? of grass phytoliths. The fact we have so little evidence of grasses is very diagnostic of a forested habitat," she said.
The emergence of grasslands and the evolution of specialized teeth in mammals are regarded as a classic example of co-evolution, one that has occurred in various places around the world. However, as the new work shows, "caution is required when using this functional trait for habitat reconstruction," the co-authors write.
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University of Washington: http://www.uwnews.org
Thanks to University of Washington for this article.
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Public release date: 6-Mar-2013
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