Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/168328868?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Wednesday, 30 November 2011
Albania's self-styled King Leka dies at 72 (AP)
TIRANA, Albania ? Leka Zogu, whose father served as Albania's king until it was occupied by fascist Italy, and who twice returned home from exile to try to claim the throne himself, died Wednesday, his family said. He was 72.
Zogu died of a heart attack at the Mother Teresa Hospital in Tirana, said the family spokeswoman, Julinda Kamberi.
Zogu's father, King Ahmet Zog, was this small Balkan country's first and only post-independence monarch, reigning from 1928 to 1939, when he fled after Albania was occupied by Italian forces.
The king died in France in 1961 and is buried at the Thiais Cemetery near Paris, but the exiled royal family always insisted that Zogu was the country's legitimate ruler.
Born just two days before Albania was occupied in 1939, Zogu spent most of his life in exile in Europe and Africa while his country was ruled by Communists who abolished the monarchy in 1946 and banned contact with the outside world.
After Albania's Communist regime fell in 1990, Zogu made two disastrous attempts to return home ? being thrown out during the first in 1993 and charged with leading an armed uprising during the second in 1997.
The six-foot, five-inch (2-meter) tall Zogu finally settled in Albania in 2002, leading a quiet life with his Australian wife and son but never relinquishing his claim to the throne. The royal family's official website listed his interests as "arms, shooting, reading and history."
While living in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1999, he was arrested ? along with four of his bodyguards ? for illegal possession of weapons and held in police custody for a week before being released on bail.
When he returned to Albania in June 2002, he brought with him 11 cases of automatic weapons, grenades and hunting arms, which authorities promptly seized. But the family got the weapons back six years later after Albania's government deemed them items of cultural heritage.
Zogu was the only son of King Ahmet Zog, a Muslim chieftain who proclaimed himself Albania's monarch in 1928 and ruled for 11 years during a time that many older Albanians now remember as prosperous and stable.
The second attempt by the monarch's son to return to Albania in 1997 came amid the anarchy that followed the collapse of shady investment schemes that cost many Albanians their life savings.
Brandishing an Uzi submachine gun and a pistol, and clad in camouflage fatigues, Zogu led a crowd of armed protesters outside the main elections building, claiming the results of a national vote had been manipulated. After a shootout with police, in which one protester was killed and several wounded, Zogu fled Albania on a private jet.
Two years later a Tirana court sentenced him in absentia to three years in prison on charges of organizing the armed uprising. An appeals court later reduced the charge to illegal firearms possession, and in 2002 Albania's president granted Zogu amnesty.
His family was given back some of its old royal properties and granted diplomatic passports. Zogu's son, also named Leka, has since served as an adviser to several Albanian governments.
Today, a small royalist party is allied to the governing Democratic Party's coalition of Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha.
Two years ago, Albania's government pledged to bring home from Paris the late king's remains, calling the monarch "one of the greatest, most distinguished personalities with a major contribution to the history of the Albanian nation."
That could be done next year when Albania celebrates the 100th anniversary of its independence.
Zogu was educated in Egypt, Switzerland and France and graduated from the military academy of Sandhurst, England. He studied economics and political science at the Sorbonne, France, and spoke English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Portuguese and Italian.
In 1975, he married Australian-born Susan Cullen-Ward, who died in 2004.
Zogu's Hungarian mother, Queen Geraldina, died in 2002.
Zogu is survived by his son, the self-styled Leka II.
___
Online: http://www.albanianroyalcourt.al
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Making a light-harvesting antenna from scratch
ScienceDaily (Nov. 29, 2011) ? Sometimes when people talk about solar energy, they tacitly assume that we're stuck with some version of the silicon solar cell and its technical and cost limitations. Not so.
The invention of the solar cell, in 1941, was inspired by a newfound understanding of semiconductors, materials that can use light energy to create mobile electrons -- and ultimately an electrical current.
Silicon solar cells have almost nothing to do with the biological photosystems in tree leaves and pond scum that use light energy to push electrons across a membrane -- and ultimately create sugars and other organic molecules.
At the time, nobody understood these complex assemblages of proteins and pigments well enough to exploit their secrets for the design of solar cells.
But things have changed.
At Washington University in St. Louis's Photosynthetic Antenna Research Center (PARC) scientists are exploring native biological photosystems, building hybrids that combine natural and synthetic parts, and building fully synthetic analogs of natural systems.
One team has just succeeded in making a crucial photosystem component -- a light-harvesting antenna -- from scratch. The new antenna is modeled on the chlorosome found in green bacteria.
Chlorosomes are giant assemblies of pigment molecules. Perhaps Nature's most spectacular light-harvesting antennae, they allow green bacteria to photosynthesize even in the dim light in ocean deeps.
Dewey Holten, PhD, professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, ard collaborator Christine Kirmaier, PhD, research professor of chemistry are part of a team that is trying to make synthetic chlorosomes. Holten and Kirmaier use ultra-fast laser spectroscopy and other analytic techniques to follow the rapid-fire energy transfers in photosynthesis.
His team's latest results were described in a recent issue of New Journal of Chemistry.
Chlorosomes
Biological systems that capture the energy in sunlight and convert it to the energy of chemical bonds come in many varieties, but they all have two basic parts: the light harvesting complexes, or antennae, and the reaction center complexes. The antennae consist of many pigment molecules that absorb photons and pass the excitation energy to the reaction centers.
In the reaction centers, the excitation energy sets off a chain of reactions that create ATP, a molecule often called the energy currency of the cell because the energy stored ATP powers most cellular work. Cellular organelles selectively break those bonds in ATP molecules when they need an energy hit for cellular work.
Green bacteria, which live in the lower layers of ponds, lakes and marine environments, and in the surface layers of sediments, have evolved large and efficient light-harvesting antennae very different from those found in plants bathing in sunlight on Earth's surface.
The antennae consist of highly organized three-dimensional systems of as many as 250,000 pigment molecules that absorb light and funnel the light energy through a pigment/protein complex called a baseplate to a reaction center, where it triggers chemical reactions that ultimately produce ATP.
In plants and algae (and in the baseplate in the green bacteria) photo pigments are bound to protein scaffolds, which space and orient the pigment molecules in such a way that energy is efficiently transferred between them.
But chlorosomes don't have a protein scaffold. Instead the pigment molecules self -assemble into a structure that supports the rapid migration of excitation energy.
This is intriguing because it suggests chlorosome mimics might be easier to incorporate in the design of solar devices than biomimetics that are made of proteins as well as pigments.
Synthetic pigments
The goal of the work described in the latest journal article was to see whether synthesized pigment molecules could be induced to self-assemble. The process by which the pigments align and bond is not well understood.
"The structure of the pigment assemblies in chlorosomes is the subject of intense debate," Holten says, "and there are several competing models for it."
Given this uncertainty, the scientists wanted to study many variations of a pigment molecule to see what favored and what blocked assembly.
A chemist wishing to design pigments that mimic those found in photosynthetic organisms first builds one of three molecular frameworks. All three are macrocycles, or giant rings: porphyrin, chlorin and bacteriochlorin.
"One of the members of our team, Jon Lindsey can synthesize analogs of all three pigment types from scratch," says Holten. (Lindsey, PhD, is Glaxo Professor of Chemistry at North Carolina State University.)
In the past, chemists making photo pigments have usually started with porphyrins, which are the easiest of the three types of macrocycles to synthesize. But Lindsey also has developed the means to synthesize chlorins, the basis for the pigments found in the chlorosomes of green bacteria. The chlorins push the absorption to the red end of the visible spectrum, an area of the spectrum scientists would like to be able to harvest for energy.
Key to pigment self-assembly are the metal atoms and hydroxyl (OH) and carbonyl (C=O) groups in the pigment molecules (the groups shown in color in the above illustration).
Doctoral student Olga Mass and coworkers in Lindsey's lab synthesized 30 different chlorins, systematically adding or removing chemical groups thought to be important for self-assembly but also attaching peripheral chemical groups that take up space and might make it harder for the molecules to stack or that shift around the distributions of electrons so that the molecules might stack more easily.
Testing for aggregation
The powdered pigments were carefully packaged and shipped by Fed Ex (because the Post Office won't ship chemicals) to Holten's lab at WUSTL and to David Bocian's lab at the University of California at Riverside.
Scientists in both labs made up green-tinctured solutions of each of the 30 molecules in small test tubes and then poked and prodded the solutions by means of analytical techniques to see whether the pigment had aggregated and, if so, how much had formed the assemblies. Holten's lab studied their absorption of light and their fluorescence (which indicated the presence of monomers, since assemblies don't normally fluoresce) and Bocian's lab studied their vibrational properties, which are determined by the network of bonds in the molecule or pigment aggregate as a whole.
In one crucial test Joseph Springer, a PhD student in Holten's lab, compared the absorption spectrum of a pigment in a polar solvent that would prevent it from self-assembling to the spectrum of the pigment in a nonpolar solvent that would allow the molecules to interact with one another and form assemblies.
"You can see them aggregate," Springer says. "A pigment that is totally in solution is clear, but colored a brilliant green. When it aggregates, the solution becomes a duller green and you can see tiny flecks in the liquid."
The absorption spectra indicated that some pigments formed extensive assemblies and that the steric and electronic properties of the molecules predicted the degree to which they would assemble.
Up next
Although this project focused on self-assembly, the PARC scientists have already taken the next step toward a practical solar device. "With Pratim Biswas, PhD, the Lucy and Stanley Lopata Professor and chair of the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering, we've since demonstrated that we can get the pigments to self-assemble on surfaces, which is the next step in using them to design solar devices," says Holten.
"We're not trying to make a more efficient solar cell in the next six months," Holten cautions. "Our goal instead is to develop fundamental understanding so that we can enable the next generation of more efficient solar powered devices."
Biomimicry hasn't always worked. Engineers often point out early flying machines that attempted to mimic birds didn't work and that flying machines stayed aloft only when nventors abandoned biological models and came up with their own designs.
But there is nothing predestined or inevitable about this. As biological knowledge has exploded in the past 50 years, mimicking nature has become a smarter strategy. Biomimetic or biohybrid designs already have solved significant engineering problems in other areas and promise to greatly improve the design of solar powered devices as well.
After all, Nature has had billions of years to experiment with ways to harness the energy in sunlight for useful work.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Washington University in St. Louis. The original article was written by Diana Lutz.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Olga Mass, Dinesh R. Pandithavidana, Marcin Ptaszek, Koraliz Santiago, Joseph W. Springer, Jieying Jiao, Qun Tang, Christine Kirmaier, David F. Bocian, Dewey Holten, Jonathan S. Lindsey. De novo synthesis and properties of analogues of the self-assembling chlorosomal bacteriochlorophylls. New Journal of Chemistry, 2011; 35 (11): 2671 DOI: 10.1039/C1NJ20611G
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://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111129142017.htm
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Pet Blog By Bocci @ Bocci's Beefs: Morton's National Keep Pets ...
Remember the brand we all grew up with, Morton Salt? With its deep blue box and iconic gal with the umbrella, Morton has been a part of our lives since its beginnings in 1848. Yeah, but what's the tie in with pets, you ask? ?Well, Morton has developed a chloride-free, non-toxic and non-irritating ice melt they've dubbed, Safe-T-Pet ice melt. This year, Safe-T-Pet is sponsoring a public service campaign focused on increasing awareness of pet safety during the winter months and to help support the ASPCA in their efforts to help keep pets safe in homes and in shelters. To that end, Morton is donating $20,000 upfront to the ASPCA and asking all of us to help them donate even more-up to $75,000!
So what about the heart of this campaign-keeping our pets safe in winter? Well, here's one idea straight from Morton's Facebook page where they'll be posting pet safety tips all winter long:
As always, thanks for your support.
Here's how it works:?
There's a big day coming up soon, and we're not talking Hanukkah or Christmas. It's?National Keep Pets Safe in Winter Day on December 22, and it's the culmination of this marvelous public service campaign.
What we're asking you (and all of your friends) to do is drop over to the Morton Salt Facebook Page and simply "Like" their page and leave a short message saying that "Bocci's Beefs sent you". This will accomplish two things:__ For every "Like" on their Facebook page, Morton Salt will donate an additional $1 to the ASPCA (this part of the campaign runs through January 31, 2012).__ Once Bocci's Beefs gets 50 "Likes", I'll be able to do a giveaway on my blog of two, Morton Safe-T-Pet Winter Kits that include a mini Safe-T-Pet jug, a fleece stadium blanket with Morton logo, an ice scrapper and a retractable leash (retail value of $30). (This part of the campaign only runs through December 22 so hurry over to the Morton FB page and tell them Bocci's Beefs sent ya!) See photo of this handy kit below.So what about the heart of this campaign-keeping our pets safe in winter? Well, here's one idea straight from Morton's Facebook page where they'll be posting pet safety tips all winter long:
__Don't leave you pet in the car when you're running errands! Most of us know by now that a car turns into a furnace in the heat of the summer, but did you know it turns it a freezer in the winter quicker than you can say, "Dogsicle"?
And my own personal favorite:
__ While your pooch should go outside daily to do his business and get some fresh air, and even take short walks (depending on the breed and severity of the weather), keep an eye on them while they're outdoors and let them in promptly-don't go upstairs, get lost in your work and perhaps forget about your furfriend. Not that Parental Unit ever did anything like that...
As always, thanks for your support.
Source: http://www.boccibeefs.com/2011/11/mortons-national-keep-pets-safe-in.html
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'Fahrenheit 451' finally out as an e-book
In this image released by Simon & Schuster, the cover of "Fahrenheit 451," by Ray Bradbury, is shown. (AP Photo/Simon & Schuster)
In this image released by Simon & Schuster, the cover of "Fahrenheit 451," by Ray Bradbury, is shown. (AP Photo/Simon & Schuster)
NEW YORK (AP) ? At age 91, Ray Bradbury is making peace with the future he helped predict.
The science fiction/fantasy author and longtime enemy of the e-book has finally allowed his dystopian classic "Fahrenheit 451" to be published in digital format. Simon & Schuster released the electronic edition Tuesday at a list price of $9.99.
First published in paperback by Ballantine in 1953 and as a hardcover by Simon & Schuster in the 1960s, "Fahrenheit 451" has sold more than 10 million copies and has been translated into 33 languages. It imagined a world in which the appetite for new and faster media leads to a decline in reading, and books are banned and burned. Bradbury himself has been an emphatic defender of traditional paper texts, saying that e-books "smell like burned fuel" and calling the Internet nothing but "a big distraction."
"It's meaningless; it's not real," he told The New York Times in 2009. "It's in the air somewhere."
A phone call to Bradbury was not immediately returned. A pre-recorded voicemail message, a woman's voice, warned that the author doesn't usually check his messages.
Bradbury's agent, Michael Congdon, said Tuesday that rights for Bradbury's book were expiring and that the growing digital market, estimated at 20 percent or higher of overall sales, made a deal for e-books inevitable. Many other former e-holdouts have changed their minds recently, notably "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling.
"We explained the situation to him (Bradbury) that a new contract wouldn't be possible without e-book rights," said Congdon, who added that six publishers had been interested. "He understood and gave us the right to go ahead."
Neither Congdon nor Simon & Schuster offered financial details, but two publishing officials with knowledge of the deal said it was worth seven figures. The officials asked not to be identified, saying they were not authorized to discuss negotiations.
In a statement released Tuesday, Simon & Schuster publisher Jonathan Karp said the new e-book was "a rare and wonderful opportunity to continue our relationship with this beloved and canonical author and to bring his works to new a generation of readers and in new formats."
Simon & Schuster also announced that a new paperback edition of "Fahrenheit 451" would go on sale in January. New paperbacks of two other Bradbury favorites, "The Martian Chronicles" and "Illustrated Man" will be available in March. Congdon said those and other Bradbury books may eventually come out electronically, but that nothing was currently planned.
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Stalin's daughter Lana Peters dies at 85 (AP)
MADISON, Wis. ? Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's daughter, whose defection to the West during the Cold War embarrassed the ruling communists and made her a best-selling author, has died. She was 85.
Lana Peters ? who was known internationally by her previous name, Svetlana Alliluyeva ? died of colon cancer Nov. 22 in Wisconsin, where she lived off and on after becoming a U.S. citizen, Richland County Coroner Mary Turner said Monday.
Her defection in 1967 ? which she said was partly motivated by the poor treatment of her late husband, Brijesh Singh, by Soviet authorities ? caused an international furor and was a public relations coup for the U.S. But Peters, who left behind two children, said her identity involved more than just switching from one side to the other in the Cold War. She even moved back to the Soviet Union in the 1980s, only to return to the U.S. more than a year later.
When she left the Soviet Union in 1966 for India, she planned to leave the ashes of her late third husband, an Indian citizen, and return. Instead, she walked unannounced into the U.S. embassy in New Delhi and asked for political asylum. After a brief stay in Switzerland, she flew to the U.S.
Peters carried with her a memoir she had written in 1963 about her life in Russia. "Twenty Letters to a Friend" was published within months of her arrival in the U.S. and became a best-seller.
Upon her arrival in New York City in 1967, the 41-year-old said: "I have come here to seek the self-expression that has been denied me for so long in Russia." She said she had come to doubt the communism she was taught growing up and believed there weren't capitalists or communists, just good and bad human beings. She had also found religion and believed "it was impossible to exist without God in one's heart."
In the book, she recalled her father, who died in 1953 after ruling the nation for 29 years, as a distant and paranoid man.
"He was a very simple man. Very rude. Very cruel," Peters told the Wisconsin State Journal in a rare interview in 2010. "There was nothing in him that was complicated. He was very simple with us. He loved me and he wanted me to be with him and become an educated Marxist."
Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin denounced Peters as a "morally unstable" and "sick person."
"I switched camps from the Marxists to the capitalists," she recalled in a 2007 interview for the documentary "Svetlana About Svetlana." But she said her identity was far more complex than that and never completely understood.
"People say, `Stalin's daughter, Stalin's daughter,' meaning I'm supposed to walk around with a rifle and shoot the Americans. Or they say, `No, she came here. She is an American citizen.' That means I'm with a bomb against the others. No, I'm neither one. I'm somewhere in between. That `somewhere in between' they can't understand."
Peters' defection came at a high personal cost. She left two children behind in Russia ? Josef and Yekaterina ? from previous marriages. Both were upset by her departure, and she was never close to either again.
Raised by a nanny with whom she grew close after her mother's death in 1932, Peters was Stalin's only daughter. She had two brothers, Vasili and Jacob. Jacob was captured by the Nazis in 1941 and died in a concentration camp. Vasili died an alcoholic at age 40.
Peters graduated from Moscow University in 1949, worked as a teacher and translator and traveled in Moscow's literary circles before leaving the Soviet Union. She was married four times ? the last time to William Wesley Peters, an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright. They were married from 1970 to 1973 and had one daughter.
Peters wrote three more books, including "Only One Year," an autobiography published in 1969.
Her father's legacy appeared to haunt her throughout her life, tough she tried to live outside of the shadow of her father. She denounced his policies, which included sending millions into labor camps, but often said other Communist Party leaders shared the blame.
"I wish people could see what I've seen," Lana Parshina, who interviewed Peters for "Svetlana About Svetlana," said Monday. "She was very gracious and she was a great hostess. She was sensitive and could quote poetry and talk about various subjects. She was interested in what was going on in the world."
Charles E. Townsend, who was on faculty at Princeton University's Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures when Peters arrived in Princeton in 1967, said she wasn't very politically active.
"She was very pleasant," Townsend said. "Unassuming would be the word for her."
After living in Britain for two years, Peters returned to the Soviet Union with Olga in 1984 at age 58, saying she wanted to be reunited with her children. Her Soviet citizenship was restored, and she denounced her time in the U.S. and Britain, saying she never really had freedom. But more than a year later, she asked for and was given permission to leave after feuding with relatives. She returned to the U.S. and vowed never to go back to Russia.
She went into seclusion in the last decades of her life. Her survivors include her daughter Olga, who now goes by Chrese Evans and lives in Portland, Ore. A son, Josef, died in 2008 at age 63 in Moscow, according to media reports in Russia. Yekaterina (born in 1950), who goes by Katya, is a scientist who studies an active volcano in eastern Siberia.
Evans said in an email that her mother died at a Richland Center nursing home surrounded by loved ones, but she declined to comment further. "Please respect my privacy during this sad time," she said.
Tom Stafford, owner of the funeral home in Richland Center, Wis., handling the arrangements, said no services were planned at this time, though one might be scheduled later.
___
Associated Press writer Ryan J. Foley, in Iowa City, Iowa, and Geoff Mulvihill in Philadelphia contributed to this report.
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Tuesday, 29 November 2011
Husain Haqqani: US, Pakistan "understand how much they need each other" (Christian Science Monitor)
Black Friday was biggest ever (Politico)
The holiday shopping season got off to a strong start on Black Friday, with retail sales up 7 percent over last year, according to one survey. Now stores just have to keep buyers coming back without the promise of door-buster savings.
Buyers spent $11.4 billion at retail stores and malls, up nearly $1 billion from last year, according to a report released Saturday by ShopperTrak. It was the largest amount ever spent on the day that marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season, and the biggest year-over-year increase since 2007. Chicago-based ShopperTrak gathers data from 25,000 outlets across the U.S., including individual stores and shopping centers.
Continue ReadingOnline shopping was strong as well, with a 24.3 percent increase in online spending on Black Friday, according to IBM, which tracks sales at 500 online retailers.
Bill Martin, who founded ShopperTrak, said he was surprised by the strong showing. He had expected the weak economy to dent consumer confidence and keep more shoppers out of the stores, or at least from spending much. Instead, he said, consumers responded to a blanket of promotions, from 60-percent-off deals to door-buster savings on electronics.
?I?m pleased to see it. You can?t have a great season without having a good Black Friday,? Martin told The Associated Press in an interview.
Still, he suspects things will quiet down this weekend, as promotions end and the buying frenzy subsides. ShopperTrak is expecting holiday sales to be up 3.3 percent overall through Christmas.
There were few shoppers at Pioneer Place Mall in Portland, Ore., on Saturday.
?This is great, I?m glad I waited,? said MaryJane Danan, who drove two hours from Corvallis, Ore., to go shopping with her teenage daughters. She stayed home on Black Friday because she thought the crowds would be huge. But she was surprised by how few people were out Saturday.
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Monday, 28 November 2011
Report: Herbicide atrazine spurs reproductive problems in many creatures
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Public release date: 28-Nov-2011[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Diana Yates
diya@illinois.edu
217-333-5802
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. An international team of researchers has reviewed the evidence linking exposure to atrazine an herbicide widely used in the U.S. and more than 60 other nations to reproductive problems in animals. The team found consistent patterns of reproductive dysfunction in amphibians, fish, reptiles and mammals exposed to the chemical.
Atrazine is the second-most widely used herbicide in the U.S. More than 75 million pounds of it are applied to corn and other crops, and it is the most commonly detected pesticide contaminant of groundwater, surface water and rain in the U.S.
The new review, compiled by 22 scientists studying atrazine in North and South America, Europe and Japan, appears in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
The researchers looked at studies linking atrazine exposure to abnormal androgen (male hormone) levels in fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals and studies that found a common association between exposure to the herbicide and the "feminization" of male gonads in many animals.
The most robust findings are in amphibians, said Val Beasley, a University of Illinois emeritus professor of comparative biosciences and co-author of the review. At least 10 studies found that exposure to atrazine feminizes male frogs, sometimes to the point of sex reversal, he said.
Beasley's lab was one of the first to find that male frogs exposed to atrazine in the wild were more likely to have both male and female gonadal tissue than frogs living in an atrazine-free environment. And in a 2010 study, Tyrone Hayes, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California at Berkeley and lead author of the review, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that atrazine exposure in frogs was associated with "genetic males becoming females and functioning as females," Beasley said.
"And this is not at extremely high concentrations," he said. "These are at concentrations that are found in the environment."
The new review describes the disruptions of hormone function and sexual development reported in studies of mammals, frogs, fish, reptiles and human cells exposed to the herbicide. The studies found that atrazine exposure can change the expression of genes involved in hormone signaling, interfere with metamorphosis, inhibit key enzymes that control estrogen and androgen production, skew the sex ratio of wild and laboratory animals (toward female) and otherwise disrupt the normal reproductive development and functioning of males and females.
"One of the things that became clear in writing this paper is that atrazine works through a number of different mechanisms," Hayes said. "It's been shown that it increases production of (the stress hormone) cortisol. It's been shown that it inhibits key enzymes in steroid hormone production while increasing others. It's been shown that it somehow prevents androgen from binding to its receptor."
The review also consolidates the evidence that atrazine undermines immune function in a variety of animals, in part by increasing cortisol.
"Cortisol is a nonspecific response to chronic stress," Beasley said. "But guess what? Wildlife in many of today's habitats are stressed a great deal of the time. They're stressed because they're crowded into little remnant habitats. They're stressed because there's not enough oxygen in the water because there are not enough plants in the water (another consequence of herbicide use). They're stressed because of other contaminants in the water. And the long-term release of cortisol causes them to be immuno-suppressed."
There also are studies that show no effects or different effects in animals exposed to atrazine, Beasley said. "But the studies are not all the same. There are different species, different times of exposure, different stages of development and different strains within a species." All in all, he said, the evidence that atrazine harms animals, particularly amphibians and other creatures that encounter it in the water, is compelling.
"I hope this will stimulate policymakers to look at the totality of the data and ask very broad questions," Hayes said. "Do we want this stuff in our environment? Do we want knowing what we know our children to drink this stuff? I would think the answer would be no."
###
Editor's notes: To reach Val Beasley, call 217-897-6209; email val@illinois.edu.
To reach Tyrone Hayes, email tyrone@berkeley.edu.
The paper, "Demasculinization and Feminization of Male Gonads by Atrazine: Consistent Effects Across Vertebrate Classes," is available online and from the U. of I. News Bureau.
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Public release date: 28-Nov-2011[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Diana Yates
diya@illinois.edu
217-333-5802
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. An international team of researchers has reviewed the evidence linking exposure to atrazine an herbicide widely used in the U.S. and more than 60 other nations to reproductive problems in animals. The team found consistent patterns of reproductive dysfunction in amphibians, fish, reptiles and mammals exposed to the chemical.
Atrazine is the second-most widely used herbicide in the U.S. More than 75 million pounds of it are applied to corn and other crops, and it is the most commonly detected pesticide contaminant of groundwater, surface water and rain in the U.S.
The new review, compiled by 22 scientists studying atrazine in North and South America, Europe and Japan, appears in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
The researchers looked at studies linking atrazine exposure to abnormal androgen (male hormone) levels in fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals and studies that found a common association between exposure to the herbicide and the "feminization" of male gonads in many animals.
The most robust findings are in amphibians, said Val Beasley, a University of Illinois emeritus professor of comparative biosciences and co-author of the review. At least 10 studies found that exposure to atrazine feminizes male frogs, sometimes to the point of sex reversal, he said.
Beasley's lab was one of the first to find that male frogs exposed to atrazine in the wild were more likely to have both male and female gonadal tissue than frogs living in an atrazine-free environment. And in a 2010 study, Tyrone Hayes, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California at Berkeley and lead author of the review, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that atrazine exposure in frogs was associated with "genetic males becoming females and functioning as females," Beasley said.
"And this is not at extremely high concentrations," he said. "These are at concentrations that are found in the environment."
The new review describes the disruptions of hormone function and sexual development reported in studies of mammals, frogs, fish, reptiles and human cells exposed to the herbicide. The studies found that atrazine exposure can change the expression of genes involved in hormone signaling, interfere with metamorphosis, inhibit key enzymes that control estrogen and androgen production, skew the sex ratio of wild and laboratory animals (toward female) and otherwise disrupt the normal reproductive development and functioning of males and females.
"One of the things that became clear in writing this paper is that atrazine works through a number of different mechanisms," Hayes said. "It's been shown that it increases production of (the stress hormone) cortisol. It's been shown that it inhibits key enzymes in steroid hormone production while increasing others. It's been shown that it somehow prevents androgen from binding to its receptor."
The review also consolidates the evidence that atrazine undermines immune function in a variety of animals, in part by increasing cortisol.
"Cortisol is a nonspecific response to chronic stress," Beasley said. "But guess what? Wildlife in many of today's habitats are stressed a great deal of the time. They're stressed because they're crowded into little remnant habitats. They're stressed because there's not enough oxygen in the water because there are not enough plants in the water (another consequence of herbicide use). They're stressed because of other contaminants in the water. And the long-term release of cortisol causes them to be immuno-suppressed."
There also are studies that show no effects or different effects in animals exposed to atrazine, Beasley said. "But the studies are not all the same. There are different species, different times of exposure, different stages of development and different strains within a species." All in all, he said, the evidence that atrazine harms animals, particularly amphibians and other creatures that encounter it in the water, is compelling.
"I hope this will stimulate policymakers to look at the totality of the data and ask very broad questions," Hayes said. "Do we want this stuff in our environment? Do we want knowing what we know our children to drink this stuff? I would think the answer would be no."
###
Editor's notes: To reach Val Beasley, call 217-897-6209; email val@illinois.edu.
To reach Tyrone Hayes, email tyrone@berkeley.edu.
The paper, "Demasculinization and Feminization of Male Gonads by Atrazine: Consistent Effects Across Vertebrate Classes," is available online and from the U. of I. News Bureau.
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Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/uoia-rha112811.php
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Sunday, 27 November 2011
Pillow Pets as low as $10.39 on Amazon! ? The Coupon Project
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Piers Morgan welcomes daughter Elise
LOS ANGELES?? Television host Piers Morgan became a father for the fourth time on Friday after his wife gave birth to a baby girl, Morgan announced on Twitter.
"It's true. I've become a dad for the 4th time, to a baby girl called Elise. She's absurdly beautiful, and utterly adorable," the CNN talk show host posted, adding that the baby arrived after Morgan's favorite soccer team Arsenal won a match.
This is the first child for Morgan and second wife Celia Walden, 34, a writer at British newspaper The Daily Telegraph. The 46-year-old TV host also has three sons with first wife Marion Shalloe, whom he married in 1991 and divorced in 2008.
Morgan, formerly an editor of British newspapers News of the World and the Daily Mirror and a judge on the TV show "America's Got Talent," replaced Larry King at CNN in 2010.
The host anchors the "Piers Morgan Tonight" show, where he has interviewed celebrities and personalities such as radio shock-jock Howard Stern, actor George Clooney and Republican Tea Party politician Christine O'Donnell.
Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45442633/ns/today-entertainment/
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Saturday, 26 November 2011
Clean air, water rules spark different responses
In this photo taken June 16, 2009, Anthony Earley Jr., then-chairman and CEO of DTE Energy, speaks at the National Summit in Detroit, Mich. Large and small utility companies have told Republican-led congressional committees what the party wants to hear: dire predictions of plant closings and layoffs if the Obama administration succeeds with plans to further curb air and water pollution. "Without the right policy, we could be headed for disaster," Early told a committee on April 16. Earley is now chairman and CEO of Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)
In this photo taken June 16, 2009, Anthony Earley Jr., then-chairman and CEO of DTE Energy, speaks at the National Summit in Detroit, Mich. Large and small utility companies have told Republican-led congressional committees what the party wants to hear: dire predictions of plant closings and layoffs if the Obama administration succeeds with plans to further curb air and water pollution. "Without the right policy, we could be headed for disaster," Early told a committee on April 16. Earley is now chairman and CEO of Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Large and small companies have told Republican-led congressional committees what the party wants to hear: dire predictions of plant closings and layoffs if the Obama administration succeeds with plans to further curb air and water pollution.
But their message to financial regulators and investors conveys less gloom and certainty.
The administration itself has clouded the picture by withdrawing or postponing some of the environmental initiatives that industry labeled as being among the most onerous.
Still, Republicans plan to make what they say is regulatory overreach a 2012 campaign issue, taking aim at President Barack Obama, congressional Democrats and an aggressive Environmental Protection Agency.
"Republicans will be talking to voters this campaign season about how to keep Washington out of the way, so that job creators can feel confident again to create jobs for Americans," said Joanna Burgos, a spokeswoman for the House Republican campaign organization.
The Associated Press compared the companies' congressional testimony to company reports submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The reports to the SEC consistently said the impact of environmental proposals is unknown or would not cause serious financial harm to a firm's finances.
Companies can legitimately argue that their less gloomy SEC filings are correct, since most of the tougher anti-pollution proposals have not been finalized. And their officials' testimony before congressional committees was sometimes on behalf of ? and written by ? trade associations, a perspective that can differ from an individual company's view.
But the disparity in the messages shows that in a political environment, business has no misgivings about describing potential economic horror stories to lawmakers.
"As an industry, we have said this before, we face a potential regulatory train wreck," Anthony Earley Jr., then the executive chairman of DTE Energy in Michigan, told a House committee on April 15. "Without the right policy, we could be headed for disaster."
The severe economic consequences, he said, would be devastating to the electric utility's customers, especially Detroit residents who "simply cannot afford" higher rates.
Earley, who is now chairman and CEO of Pacific Gas & Electric Corp., said if the EPA had its way, coal-fired plants would be replaced with natural gas ? leading to a spike in gas prices. He said he was testifying for the electric industry, not just his company.
But in its quarterly report to the SEC, Detroit-based DTE, which serves 3 million utility customers in Michigan, said that it was "reviewing potential impacts of the proposed and recently finalized rules, but is not able to quantify the financial impact ... at this time."
Skiles Boyd, a DTE vice president for environmental issues, said in an interview that the testimony was meant to convey the potential economic hardship on ratepayers ? while the SEC report focused on the company's financial condition.
"It's two different subjects," he said.
Another congressional witness, Jim Pearce of chemical company FMC Corp., told a House hearing last Feb. 9: "The current U.S. approach to regulating greenhouse gases ... will lead U.S. natural soda ash producers to lose significant business to our offshore rivals...." Soda ash is used to produce glass, and is a major component of the company's business..
But in its annual report covering 2010 and submitted to the SEC 13 days after the testimony, the company said it was "premature to make any estimate of the costs of complying with un-enacted federal climate change legislation, or as yet un-implemented federal regulations in the United States." The Philadelphia-based company did not respond to a request for comment..
California Rep. Henry Waxman, the senior Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the SEC filings "show that the anti-regulation rhetoric in Washington is political hot air with little or no connection to reality."
House Republicans have conducted dozens of hearings, and passed more than a dozen bills to stop proposed environmental rules. So far, all the GOP bills have gone nowhere in the Democratic-run Senate.
"I will see to it, to the best of my ability, to try to stop everything," California Sen . Barbara Boxer, the Democratic chairman of the Senate's environment committee, vowed in reference to GOP legislation aimed at reining in the EPA. She predicted Republicans "will lose seats over this."
The Obama administration has reconsidered some of the environmental proposals in response to the drumbeat from business groups. In September, the president scrubbed a clean-air regulation that aimed to reduce health-threatening smog. Last May, EPA delayed indefinitely regulations to reduce toxic pollution from boilers and incinerators.
James Rubright, CEO of Rock-Tenn Co., a Norcross, Ga.-based producer of corrugated-and-consumer packaging, told a House panel in September that a variety of EPA, job safety and chemical security regulations would require "significant capital investment" ? money that "otherwise go to growth in manufacturing capacity and the attendant production of jobs."
Rubright conveyed a consulting firm's conclusion that EPA's original boiler proposal before the Obama administration withdrew it in May would have cost the forest products industry about $7 billion, and the packaging industry $6.8 billion.
Another industry study, he said, warned that original boiler rule would have placed 36 mills at risk and would have jeopardized more than 20,000 jobs in the pulp and paper industries ? about 18 percent of the work force.
But a month before his testimony? and three months after EPA withdrew its boiler proposal ? Rock-Tenn told the SEC that "future compliance with these environmental laws and regulations will not have a material adverse effect on our results or operations, financial condition or cash flows." The company did not respond to a request for comment.
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Friday, 25 November 2011
Pope accepts resignation of another Irish bishop (AP)
DUBLIN ? Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday accepted the resignation of another Irish bishop, leaving seven of Ireland's 26 Catholic dioceses without one and raising expectations of major cutbacks in the size of the Irish church following child-abuse scandals.
Seamus Hegarty offered his resignation two weeks ago as bishop of Derry, a northwestern diocese that straddles Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The 71-year-old Hegarty cited an unspecified "irreversible" illness as the reason for quitting four years before the church's normal retirement age.
Hegarty also is expected to feature in an upcoming church-authorized investigation into the cover-up of clerical child abuse in Hegarty's previous diocese, Raphoe. His successor in Raphoe, Bishop Philip Boyce, has received the report but has yet to publish it.
Earlier this year senior Catholic officials visited Ireland to investigate how church structures should be reformed following a wave of abuse scandals that have battered the church's standing in once-devout Ireland. One likely step is to merge dioceses and eliminate bishops' posts.
The Irish Catholic newspaper last week reported that Vatican officials want to cut the number of Irish dioceses, arguing that fewer bishops would mean more effective enforcement of child-protection policies. Eleven of Ireland's dioceses have fewer than 100,000 Catholics.
Of the six other Irish bishops to resign since 2009, three quit after being implicated in the church's decades of cover-ups of child-abuse complaints. Three others retired after reaching age 75. The failure of the Vatican to appoint any new bishops has fueled expectations of a major shake-up in the Irish church's management.
In a statement, Hegarty thanked the pope for accepting his resignation.
"I would ask for prayers that the Holy Spirit may guide the selection of the new bishop of Derry. On a personal level, I would entrust my health to the prayers of the people of the diocese," said Hegarty, who declined to specify his illness.
Irish bishops responded to the scandals by establishing an independent investigations unit, the National Board for Safeguarding Children, that is probing the extent of cover-ups diocese by diocese. The Vatican has never officially endorsed this effort.
The board's first report in 2009 forced one bishop, former papal aide John Magee, to resign from his position in the southwest County Cork diocese of Cloyne.
This year it has completed investigations into several new dioceses, including Raphoe, but the reports can be published only with the approval of each diocese's own bishop.
The Raphoe report is expected to focus on the diocese's handling of priest Eugene Greene, who sexually assaulted dozens of boys from the 1960s onward as the church transferred him from parish to parish in rural County Donegal.
Hegarty, who was Raphoe bishop from 1982 to 1994, has denied ever being told of Greene's crimes while he was in charge there. Greene in 2000 received a 12-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to 40 of 115 criminal counts of child abuse.
Hegarty's Derry diocese in 2009 said 18 current or former priests of the diocese faced child-abuse allegations.
Boyce says he intends to publish the Raphoe report soon but declined to specify a date.
___
Online:
Irish church's Board for Safeguarding Children: http://www.safeguarding.ie/
Diocese of Derry: http://www.derrydiocese.org/
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AT&T, Deutsche Telekom withdraw FCC application for T-Mobile merger, look toward DoJ
Now that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has called for an administrative hearing on AT&T's proposed buyout of T-Mobile, the two parties have decided to formally withdraw their application to the Commission. The confirmation came today, with an announcement from AT&T and Deutsche Telekom, which owns T-Mobile USA. In a statement, the two companies reiterated their commitment to the deal, adding that they're looking to receive final approval from the DoJ: "This formal step today is being undertaken by both companies to consolidate their strength and to focus their continuing efforts on obtaining antitrust clearance for the transaction from the Department of Justice." AT&T also reaffirmed that it would incur a $4 billion hit should the deal fall through, and that it expects to take out a pretax charge for that amount during the fourth quarter of this year. Of course, Genachowski's decision must still obtain approval from the full Commission, but it certainly looks like both parties are gearing up for a courtroom battle.
AT&T, Deutsche Telekom withdraw FCC application for T-Mobile merger, look toward DoJ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Nov 2011 04:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Thursday, 24 November 2011
Vote for the greatest Science Geek Gift
Bre Pettis
Uranium marbles glow under ultraviolet light in a picture taken by MakerBot Industries co-founder Bre Pettis.
By Alan Boyle
How about a dinosaur skull for the holidays? Or a handful of glow-in-the-dark uranium marbles? Cast your vote and help us crown the geekiest gift for the holiday season.
Live Poll
Vote for the top geek gift
169026
Uranium marbles
16%
169027
Dinosaur skulls
0%
169028
Elements Vault
0%
169029
Magnifying glasses
0%
169030
Mars lunchbox
16%
169031
USB microscope
26%
169032
Plush microbes
0%
169033
Wi-Fi T-shirt
26%
169034
Star Trek pizza cutter
11%
169035
Pi plate
5%
VoteTotal Votes: 19
The gift suggestions for this year's Science Geek Guide are in line with a proud tradition here at msnbc.com. You can always find guides to Black Friday tech deals, or the top 20?toys of 2011, or the hottest holiday hostess gifts. But where else can get a line on a nuclear-powered?plaything, or a six-dimensional paperweight, or brains to fit your budget?
Even better, this is a geek gift guide created by geeks for geeks, with some geeky prizes thrown into the bargain. Last week I put out the call for?suggestions, and?it'll be up to you to select the?coolest,?most offbeat prize from the top 10. The geek who made the top-rated suggestion will be eligible to receive a pile of books, including "Science Ink," "The Cult of Lego," "The Physics Book" and "The Case for Pluto" (autographed by?yours truly).
Here are this year's 10 finalists:
Uranium marbles:?"Nothing says Merry Christmas like a little bit of radiation," says?Richard-1971294. He'd love to get his hands on some uranium marbles. Back in the old days,?pigments containing uranium oxide were used in?lots of items, including ceramic glazes, green-tinted glassware and, yes, children's marbles. Black Light World, which sells a three-pack of uranium-doped marbles for $9.95, says they're "totally safe" ? even though?radioactive caution?stickers are plastered all over the promotional images. You can also find 'em on eBay.
Dinosaur Corporation
A carnotaurus skull is flanked by a scale replica, available from the Dinosaur Corporation.
Dinosaur skulls: "Dino skull replicas are cool and geeky!" David Flowers tweeted in his response to the call for entries.?The Dinosaur Corporation offers a wide selection of skulls, molded?out of?polyurethane resin?to look like the real thing ...?only smaller. If you're looking for a real dinosaur skull, that'll cost you. A T. rex skull sold for $215,000 in March (and some?dino dung went for $1,200). Flowers also put a naked mole rat plushie on his geek-gift wish list.
The Elements?Vault: "Physics is hot these days, but for lovers of chemistry, this kit from Theodore Gray will be a real treat." says KGill. "His gorgeous book about the elements, 'The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe,' showcased the elegance of the periodic table, and the beauty of the elements. This collection incudes new text and photographs, reproductions of historic documents, a pop-up model of an atom, and samples of several elements."
Magnifying glasses and other optics: "Nothing beats a brand new magnifying glass," says?Jennifer Hancock, a Humanist author and speaker. "They get cruddy after a while, always nice to have a new one." Here's the set she has her eye on. Oh, and she wouldn't mind?getting a hand-held microscope and illuminator, plus a snazzy pair of binoculars. In her Twitter profile, Hancock calls herself a dork, but she sounds like?a bona fide geek to?me.??
NASA / JPL
Flaunt your Martian pride with a JPL lunchbox.
Mars rover lunchbox: Lights in the Dark blogger Jason Major says anything from ThinkGeek will do the trick, but he'd sure like to get a $20?Mars Exploration Rover lunchbox from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's online store. Space geeks of the female persuasion might consider some Red Planet earrings in honor of the about-to-be-launched Mars Science Laboratory mission.
USB microscope: "A USB microscope, with the ability to capture images digitally, is a great geek gift!" says Paliniasky. There's a mind-boggling selection, ranging from less than $20 to astronomical prices.
Plush microbes:?"GiantMicrobes are way awesome and super cute ? stuffed animal versions of microorganisms," says biology student?Kelsey Plesniak, a member of the Cosmic Log corps on Facebook. As we head into flu season, what better gift could you give a microbiology geek than ... a cuddly flu bug?
Wi-Fi detector shirt: This $14.99 ThinkGeek T-shirt has a?decal that glows to indicate the signal strength of wireless networks in the area. "My son the math teacher bought one of these earlier this year," George Buddy?Dow says on Facebook. "Inexpensive and practical." Just don't forget to remove the decal and the battery pack before you put it in the wash. Dow also puts in a plug for the "Ant Farm Revolution," which sounds like an entomological Occupy movement.
ThinkGeek
Cut a slice with the starship Enterprise.
Star Trek pizza cutter: Joel Davis casts his vote for a $29.99 ThinkGeek?kitchen accessory that promises to "boldly?cut pizza where no man has cut before." It's as if you're?holding a miniaturized starship Enterprise in the palm of your hand. Come to think of it, I've seen that episode.
Pi plate: "A pi plate is available. To make pies in," Jan Smith writes. "Has a large pi symbol in the center and the numbers 3.14159...?etc., all around the edge of the plate. I got one for my son." Here's an alternate design for the pi plate. Any way you slice it, this will be a good kitchen item to have around for March 14 ...?Pi Day.
Extra credit: You'll find all sorts of geeky (and not-so-geeky) gift ideas by following the links below,?and?you'll also want to check out our holiday book?roundup. You might also consider supporting The Illuminated Origin of Species, an effort by artist/naturalist Kelly Houle to create?an illuminated manuscript of Charles Darwin's masterwork in the spirit of the Book of?Kells. To support the effort, Houle is offering sets of Darwin-themed greeting cards, beetle prints and an adopt-a-beetle program.
Don't forget to cast a vote for your favorite gift among the top 10, and may the best geek win!
Previous Science Geek Gift Guides:
More science gifts:
You don't need to buy me a present. All I ask is that you connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.?
Source: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/23/8960430-cast-your-vote-for-the-geekiest-gift
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Wednesday, 23 November 2011
China may post trade deficit next year: adviser (Reuters)
TAIPEI (Reuters) ? China's trade balance faces the risk of sliding into a deficit for the first time in two decades in 2012 as export demand in Europe and the United States slumps, an academic adviser to the central bank said on Tuesday.
China needs a "very proactive" fiscal policy to spur domestic demand next year amid weakness in Western economies, Xia Bin told Reuters in an interview late on Monday during a visit to Taipei to promote his new book.
But he also said that the world's No.2 economy will not loosen monetary policy, which he said now has "about the right tone."
"The U.S. economy won't be good next year and Europe will be worse, meaning weak external demand for China. We can't rule out the possibility of a trade deficit," Xia said.
"To increase domestic demand, fiscal policy must be very proactive, reform of the tax system should be speeded up and wages raised to stimulate consumption," he added. He did not give a forecast for any deficit.
Xia, head of the financial research institute at cabinet think tank Development Research Center, sits on the 15-member monetary policy committee of the central bank but does not have real influence on key decisions on interest rates or China's yuan currency.
The People's Bank of China has loosened credit conditions recently to help small firms and promised to "fine-tune" policy if needed to support economic growth, which slowed in the third quarter to 9.1 percent, its weakest in more than two years.
But, barring a sudden and sharp blow to the economy, more aggressive policy easing such as a cut in banks' reserve ratios or interest rates is seen as months away.
Meanwhile, the cash-rich government is flexing its muscles by offering tax cuts to companies.
SLOWER YUAN RISE
Despite faltering Western demand, China's economy is still seen as on track to grow over 9 percent this year.
Xia said China expects to maintain economic growth at 8 percent to 9 percent in 2012 and sees further inflationary pressures, though Beijing will look to keep price rises to 2 percent to 3 percent next year.
Annual inflation hit a three-year high of 6.5 percent in July. Though it has eased in recent months, it remains elevated at 5.5 percent.
China's commerce ministry warned last week that the outlook for exports could be grim for the rest of this year and the early part of next, as Europe struggles to contain its debt crisis and the United States seeks to spur its fragile recovery.
China's imports surged 28.7 percent in October while exports grew at 15.9 percent, their slowest rate in months, suggesting Beijing's efforts to tilt the economy toward domestic demand may be offsetting the external weakness that has dragged on economic growth this year. That capped October's trade surplus at $17 billion.
The government expects the full-year trade surplus to narrow to around $150 billion in 2011 from last year's $183 billion, the third straight year of decline.
Despite the global gloom, Xia's view of a possible trade deficit remains a minority one.
Last month, Wei Jianguo, a former vice commerce minister and secretary general of think-tank the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, also raised the possibility [ID:nL3E7LI00G].
However, most economists say that while there is little doubt the trade surplus will continue to narrow, it might take a few more years for China to see a full-year trade deficit, unless exports collapse.
Also, there may be limited room for the government to spur domestic demand as economic growth slows.
The massive trade surplus has long been a source of friction with the United States and China's other major trading partners, many of whom complain that Beijing keeps its yuan currency undervalued to boost exports.
But U.S. trade and employment problems would not be solved by even a major appreciation of China's yuan versus the dollar, Chinese President Hu Jintao was quoted as saying last week.
The yuan has gained about 40 percent in real effective exchange terms since Beijing abandoned its peg to the U.S. dollar in 2005, and has rallied almost four percent against the dollar in nominal terms this year.
On the growing internationalization of China's yuan currency, Xia said that by 2020 the yuan will make up about 3 percent to 5 percent of the world's reserve currencies. But he saw the process only happening slowly.
(Additional reporting by Kevin Yao in BEIJING; Writing by Jonathan Standing; Editing by Jacqueline Wong & Kim Coghill)
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