A saber-toothed squirrel-like mammal from the Age of Dinosaurs is shedding light on just how diverse our distant ancestors might have been, researchers said.
With its superlong fangs, long snout and large eyes, the mouse-size animal bears an oddly striking resemblance to the fictional saber-toothed squirrels depicted in the computer-animated "Ice Age" films, scientists added.
This newfound creature is named Cronopio dentiacutus ? Cronopio after the bizarre, fictional beasts central to many stories by Argentine writer Julio Cort?zar, and dentiacutus from Latin, meaning "sharp, acute teeth."
The animal's fangs would've been about 0.2 inches (5 millimeters) long, about one-fifth the length of its head.
"It looks somewhat like Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel from 'Ice Age,'" said researcher Guillermo Rougier, an anatomist and vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. "The comparison with Scrat is superficial, but it just goes to show how diverse ancient mammals are, that we can just imagine some bizarre critter and later find something just like it."
It remains uncertain what Cronopio might have used its oversized fangs for, but long canine teeth in mammals nowadays are found mostly in insect-eaters.
"Modern-day insectivores use long canines mostly to just grab and hold prey," Rougier said. "Still, we don't have living parallels with any canines quite as long as seen in Cronopio ? it's just beyond the scales we know."
The scientists discovered the previously unknown 100-million-year-old species in a very arid, remote part of southwestern Argentina, which has yielded abundant skeletons of dinosaurs and small vertebrates in the past.
"It looks like another planet," Rougier said of the site in Argentina. "The white bones are quite visible against the bright red sandstone we find here."
In contrast, when Cronopio was alive, "the area was a river floodplain with numerous other animals, including large carnivorous dinosaurs, large herbivores, terrestrial crocodiles, turtles, lizardlike sphenodontians and snakes," Rougier said. "We do not know much about the flora, but there were at least some tall conifers."
"The area had periodic floods," he added. "This is probably what originally buried the animals."
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Rougier suggested Cronopio was likely prey for crocodiles and carnivorous dinosaurs. In turn, it probably ate insects, grubs, other kinds of invertebrates and perhaps some small vertebrates.
"Cronopio's skull was not designed to support large forces, so it could not use its saber-teeth to wrestle down prey like lions can with their canines," Rougier observed.
The mammals that lived in South America during the Age of Dinosaurs remain largely a mystery. Until now, researchers had only found one mammal skull in South America that dated back to the Age of Dinosaurs, a 130-million-year-old creature the size of a small opossum named Vincelestes neuquenianus. Cronopio is now the only other mammal known from this time, helping fill in an enigmatic 60-million-year gap in the continent's prehistory of mammals.
"The amount of information we have about mammals that lived during this time in South America is extremely meager ? the new finds represent by far the best specimens known from that time and place," Rougier told LiveScience.
Cronopio belonged to a group of primitive, extinct beasts known as dryolestoids, which once were part of the lineage leading to marsupials and mammals with placentas such as humans. Dryolestoid remains have been found before, mainly in the northern continents ? this new discovery, which is significantly different from past findings, reveals this group of animals reached unsuspected levels of variety.
The scientists have found two partial skulls and jaws so far. The first specimen, unearthed in 2002, was discovered by the expedition's mechanic. These fossils present the first time scientists could reconstruct the whole shape of a dryolestoid skull ? they have features previously seen in primitive mammals that paved the way for the evolution of marsupials and placentals, such as the development of certain key networks of blood vessels.
"Now we have a mammal as a starting point for further study of the lineage of all mammals, humans included," Rougier said.
The scientists detailed their findings in the Nov. 3 issue of the journal Nature.
The following post is a summary taken from Judicial Ghostwriting: Authorship on the Supreme Court, an article written by University of Toronto Professors Jeffrey Rosenthal and Albert Yoonpublished in the Cornell Law Review.?
Imagine a job where each year one is required to evaluate over seven thousand files, closely evaluate approximately sixty to eighty cases, and write seven to ten lengthy published documents, all of which will become established law and be scrutinized by countless judges, lawyers, academics, and law students. Add one additional requirement: do this job well past retirement age into your seventies and eighties. Incredible as it sounds, the above describes the job of a Supreme Court Justice.
In contrast to the other branches of the federal government, the Court is a small and closed environment. It consists of only nine Justices, who are collectively responsible for deciding which cases to hear and ultimately deciding those cases in the form of written opinions. Unlike the President or Congress, the Court operates with lean staffing. The Justices are each responsible for their own writing; their only assistance comes from their law clerks, for whom each Justice is currently allowed four.? Within each Justice?s chambers, law clerks assist in evaluating certiorari (cert) petitions, preparing the Justices for oral argument, and ultimately producing written opinions. The law clerks are recent law graduates, typically among the top of their classes from a handful of elite law schools. ?Given the demands of the job, it is understandable that Justices seek to ease their work burdens.
They have already taken some steps.? For example, in 1972 the Court created a ?cert. pool.?? Whereas previously each Justice evaluated the entire docket of cases on their own, participating Justices in the cert pool now review petitions collectively, meaning that they share work across chambers. This division of labor dramatically reduces the number of petitions each chamber has to process. Moreover, in the cert. process, it is widely accepted that the law clerks now are largely responsible for providing the initial assessment of the cases.
But anecdotes abound that Justices have also increasingly delegated the responsibility of writing opinions to their clerks. One former clerk of Justice John Paul Stevens estimated that clerks generate ?well over half? of the text in published opinions.? A 2006 historical account of Supreme Court clerks stated, ?one can safely conclude that no other set of sitting Supreme Court Justices have delegated as much responsibility to their law clerks as those on the Rehnquist Court.?
The purported degree to which Justices rely on clerks varies considerably. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote his opinions in longhand, relegating his clerks to primarily nonlegal tasks akin to those of an administrative assistant. ?Justice William Douglas maintained he wrote his own opinions. ?Justice Stevens is reputed to draft his own opinions, as is Justice Antonin Scalia.? Other Justices, such as Justice Thurgood Marshall, were known to rely more on their clerks. He was not alone; Chief Justice William Rehnquist confirmed that his clerks did ?the first draft of almost all cases,? and in some instances the published decision was ?relatively unchanged? from the draft. Justice Harry Blackmun, in the words of one historian, ?ceded to his law clerks much greater control over his official work than did any of the other 15 Justices from the last half-century whose papers are publicly available.?
Should we care if Justices delegate the opinion-writing process to their clerks? The answer may depend on the degree to which it occurs. The import of an opinion, particularly from the Supreme Court, stems less from the identity of the prevailing party than from the reasoning that accompanies the decision.? Even those who defended delegation of work to law clerks, such as Chief Justice Rehnquist, cautioned that each ?Justice must retain for himself control not merely of the outcome of the case, but of the explanation of the outcome.?? Delegation, if taken too far, can threaten the integrity of the Court.
Judicial authorship raises important questions about the relative roles of Justices and their clerks. The extent to which this principal?agent relationship advances the Justice?s interests depends both on the clerk?s competence and preferences. Clerks, while typically excellent law students from elite law schools, are also usually recent graduates. This bimodal age composition on the Court ? well-seasoned Justices and inexperienced law clerks ? lacks a middle cohort with work experience in the government or the private sector. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that while clerks ?save us hours upon hours of labor[,] . . . most of them are also young and in need of the seasoning that experiences in life and in law practice afford.?? ?This staffing structure stands in stark contrast to those of the executive and legislative branches, which are both replete with experienced staff.
The ideological preferences of the Justice and her clerks may also diverge. While liberal and conservative Justices generally hire likeminded clerks, the clerkship process, in which applicants apply to all nine Justices and are expected to accept the first offer, may bring clerks of different ideologies within the same chambers.
Thus, even when the Justice dictates the broad direction of an opinion, such as the prevailing party and the general reasoning, the clerk may still exercise considerable influence.? Any meaningful discussion of judicial delegation, however, first requires a deeper understanding of judicial authorship. Questions of authorship itself are nothing new, addressing works as old as those of William Shakespeare. ?Much of this earlier work is based on close textual, but ultimately subjective, impressions of his writing. In the last fifty years, scholars have turned to statistical analysis. Perhaps most famously, Frederick Mosteller and David L. Wallace, in their seminal 1964 study of the unsigned Federalist Papers, concluded that James Madison, not Alexander Hamilton, was the likely author.
Recent scholarship has examined questions of authorship in judicial opinions. A study comparing the first-draft opinions of Justice Lewis Powell and Justice Marshall found that Justice Marshall?s clerks? writing styles were more identifiable than those of Justice Powell?s clerks. ?In a study of federal appellate judges, legal scholars using judges? citations to their own earlier opinions as a measure of their own writing found a modest relationship between the two.? While these studies advance our understanding of the judiciary, neither offer a convincing approach to evaluating judicial authorship. Comparing initial drafts may reflect more the collaboration across clerks than the Justices? reliance on them, while self-citations are a weak proxy for judges writing their own opinions if their own clerks are also more inclined to cite their judges? opinions.
Our approach differs from these earlier attempts because we explore judicial authorship based on a comprehensive evaluation of the jurists? writing style. ?The central intuition here is that the more participants in the opinion-writing process, the more heterogeneous the writing style of the Justice?s opinions. Justices who write their own opinions would presumptively possess less variable writing styles than Justices who relied heavily on their law clerks.
The Court?s institutional design also provides a compelling identification strategy for our hypothesis. Supreme Court clerkships are typically for a single term, running from October through August. Justices who rely more on their clerks to write opinions would likely have a more variable writing style both within and across years than their less reliant colleagues. In addition, historical accounts of the Court suggest that the responsibilities of clerks have grown over time: from stenographer at their inception in the late nineteenth century to legal assistant in the 1920s to law firm associate beginning in the 1950s. ?If true, we should expect increasingly variable writing styles over time.
In our Article, we analyze the text of majority opinions of all Supreme Court Justices. Using a parsimonious model based on the Justices? use of common function words (such as ?the,? ?also,? and ?her?), we construct a variability measure for writing style. In most instances, Justices have variability scores that are distinguishable from one another. Moreover, even Justices with comparable or identical variability scores exhibit distinct writing styles based on their different use of function words. Our analysis then allows us to accurately predict authorship in pairwise comparisons of Justices.
More importantly, our model also allows us to evaluate how Justices vary in their writing over their tenure on the Court and in comparison with other Justices. We find that current and recent Justices report significantly higher variability scores than their predecessors, supporting the anecdotal evidence that Justices on average are relying more on their clerks in the opinion-writing process. Moreover, some Justices ? most notably Justice Sandra Day O?Connor and Justice Anthony Kennedy ? produce variability scores that are not only higher but also vary considerably from year to year, suggesting an even greater reliance on clerks. We test the validity of our model by analyzing the opinions of two judges known to write their own opinions, Richard A. Posner and Frank Easterbrook. ?The variability of Judge Posner?s and Judge Easterbrook?s writing were markedly lower and more consistent than any current or recent Justices on the Court.
Posted in Academic Round-up
Recommended Citation: Aaron Tang, Legal scholarship highlight: Judicial ghostwriting and the Court, SCOTUSblog (Nov. 4, 2011, 11:07 AM), http://www.scotusblog.com/2011/11/legal-scholarship-highlight-judicial-ghostwriting-and-the-court/
Study reveals details of alternative splicing circuitry that promotes cancer's Warburg effect
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Cancer cells maintain their life-style of extremely rapid growth and proliferation thanks to an enzyme called PK-M2 (pyruvate kinase M2) that alters the cells' ability to metabolize glucose ? a phenomenon known as the Warburg effect.
Professor Adrian Krainer, Ph.D., and his team at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), who seek to reverse this effect and force cancer cells to regain the metabolism of normal cells, have discovered details of molecular events that cause cancer cells to produce PK-M2 instead of its harmless counterpart, an isoform called PK-M1. Their study, performed in collaboration with Professor Lewis Cantley, Ph.D., and his colleagues at Harvard Medical School and The Koch Institute, in Cambridge, Mass, appears on November 1 in the Journal of Molecular Cell Biology.
Both protein isoforms?PK-M2 and PK-M1, the latter of which is found only in normal cells?are both encoded by the same gene, PK-M, in a mutually exclusive fashion via a process called alternative splicing. After the gene is transcribed to produce RNA, unneeded bits called introns are first spliced out. How the remaining bits, called exons, are stitched back together by the cell's splicing machinery decides which protein version is produced. In the case of the RNA transcript for PK-M RNA, the choice is between two exons: exon 9, found in PK-M1; and exon 10, whose inclusion results in PK-M2 production.
"In this study, our goal was to determine what exactly the splicing machinery looks for when it's trying to decide which exon to include and which exon to exclude," specifies Krainer. Following a series of experiments in which the team manipulated the two exons within a precursor form of the RNA PK-M by duplicating them, swapping their positions, etc., the scientists discovered that the signals for mutually exclusive splicing reside within the two exons themselves.
The exon 10-inclusion signal is a potent splicing "enhancer" ? a sequence of nucleotides or "bases" that differs from its counterpart in exon 9 by a mere two nucleotides. These two so-called "wobble bases" are responsible for recruiting a splicing protein called SRSF3, the team has found. "Our discovery that SRFS3 plays a role in promoting the Warburg effect is consistent with other studies that recently identified this protein as having oncogenic properties and found it to be produced at high levels in ovarian and cervical cancer cells," says Krainer.
SRSF3 itself might not make for a good therapeutic target, as it oversees splicing in numerous other genes unrelated to cancer. But Krainer's team is focusing on finding ways to redirect splicing to force cancer cells to preferentially include exon 9 and thereby produce PK-M1 instead of PK-M2. The team has previously been successful in correcting a splicing defect that causes the neuromuscular disease, spinal muscular atrophy, using "antisense" technology?which involves synthetic nucleotide sequences?to redirect splicing to force the inclusion of a single exon.
"The task at hand is more challenging because it involves mutually exclusive splicing in which one exon has to be included while the inclusion of the other exon has to be prevented," explains Krainer.
###
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory: http://www.cshl.org
Thanks to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for this article.
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News tips from the journal mBioPublic release date: 2-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jim Sliwa jsliwa@asmusa.org 202-942-9297 American Society for Microbiology
Volume 2, issue 5
Antibodies Trick Bacteria into Killing Each Other
The dominant theory about antibodies is that they directly target and kill disease-causing organisms. In a surprising twist, researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine have discovered that certain antibodies to Streptococcus pneumoniae actually trick the bacteria into killing each other.
Pneumococcal vaccines currently in use today target the pneumococcal capsular polysaccharide (PPS), a sort of armor that surrounds the bacterial cell, protecting it from destruction. Current thought hold that PPS-binding antibodies protect against pneumococcus by inducing opsonic killing, a process in which pathogens are coated with a substance called opsonin, marking the pathogen out for destruction by the immune system.
While such antibodies are an important part of how pneumococcal vaccines protect against disease, there are PPS-specific antibodies that do not promote opsonic killing but are protective nonetheless. In the study, Masahide Yano and his colleagues identify one of mechanisms these non-opsonic antibodies use. They increase the rate of communication between the bacterial cells as well as competence-induced killing, or fratricide, where the bacteria naturally kill each other off because of overconcentration.
"These findings reveal a novel, previously unsuspected mechanism by which certain PPS-specific antibodies exert a direct effect on pneumococcal biology that has broad implications for bacterial clearance, genetic exchange and antibody immunity to pneumococcus," says Yano.
http://mbio.asm.org/content/2/5/e00176-11
Why Do Some Influenza Virus Subtypes Die Out?
Every so often we hear about a new strain of influenza virus which has appeared and in some cases may sweep across the globe in a pandemic, much as the H1N1 virus did last year. What happens to the old seasonal viruses? In an opinion piece in the current issue of mBio Peter Palese and Taia Wang of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City postulate one theory.
"The emergence of novel viruses, historically, has often been coupled with the disappearance of existing seasonal virus strains," they write. "Here, we propose that the elimination seasonal strains during virus pandemics is a process mediate, at the population level, by humoral immunity."
Specifically, Palese and Wang think the reason may be that the new strain retains a critical characteristic of the old strains: the stalks that holds up the hemagglutinin blobs on the surface of the virus (i.e. the 'H' in H1N1).
They suggest that infection with the new influenza virus in people who have been previously infected with influenza virus elicits an anti-stalk antibody response. These antibodies are not strong enough to prevent infection but can recognize a wide variety of influenza viruses. When the immune system confronts the new flu virus, these broadly-neutralizing anti-stalk antibodies are deployed to fight it, lessening the severity of the novel virus, but also eliminating the old virus. Palese and Wang say antibodies against another surface protein, viral neuraminidase (i.e. the 'N' in H1N1), can act in much the same way.
"The present discussion suggests that the induction of a large-scale humoral immune response against conserved hemagglutinin stalk epitopes and/or against the neuraminidase protein results in the clearance of old seasonal influenza virus strains," they write.
http://mbio.asm.org/content/2/5/e00150-11
Triple Threat: One Bacterium, Three Plasmids
Researchers from Australia found something completely new while conducting a genetic study of the pathogenesis of an enteric disease in birds. They report what is believed to be the first bacterial strain to carry three closely related but independently conjugative plasmids.
The authors were researching the pathogensis of avian necrotic enteritis, a disease caused by the bacterium Clostridium perfringens which causes necrotic lesions in the small intestines of infected birds. This disease is economically important to the poultry industry as acute clinical disease leads to increased mortality of birds and subclinical disease leads to decreased weight and loss of productivity.
In order to cause disease, the bacterium must be capable of producing the toxin netB. In this study the researchers examined the location of netB gene within the Australian necrotic enteritis isolate EHE-NE18, a strain that was also resistant to tetracycline. They found the gene was encoded on a plasmid, a piece of DNA which exists inside the bacterium but is separate from the chromosomal DNA. Plasmids can also replicate independently and can be transferred to other bacteria.
Additional research identified two other plasmids that shared a similar DNA sequence but coded for different processes. One encoded a different toxin, called beta2, and the other coded for the tetracycline resistance.
"To our knowledge, this is the first report of a bacterial strain that carries three closely related by different independently conjugative plasmids. These results have significant implications for our understanding of the transmission of virulence and antibiotic resistance genes in pathogenic bacteria," write the authors.
http://mbio.asm.org/content/2/5/e00190-11
###
mBio is an open access online journal published by the American Society for Microbiology to make microbiology research broadly accessible. The focus of the journal is on rapid publication of cutting-edge research spanning the entire spectrum of microbiology and related fields.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
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.
News tips from the journal mBioPublic release date: 2-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jim Sliwa jsliwa@asmusa.org 202-942-9297 American Society for Microbiology
Volume 2, issue 5
Antibodies Trick Bacteria into Killing Each Other
The dominant theory about antibodies is that they directly target and kill disease-causing organisms. In a surprising twist, researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine have discovered that certain antibodies to Streptococcus pneumoniae actually trick the bacteria into killing each other.
Pneumococcal vaccines currently in use today target the pneumococcal capsular polysaccharide (PPS), a sort of armor that surrounds the bacterial cell, protecting it from destruction. Current thought hold that PPS-binding antibodies protect against pneumococcus by inducing opsonic killing, a process in which pathogens are coated with a substance called opsonin, marking the pathogen out for destruction by the immune system.
While such antibodies are an important part of how pneumococcal vaccines protect against disease, there are PPS-specific antibodies that do not promote opsonic killing but are protective nonetheless. In the study, Masahide Yano and his colleagues identify one of mechanisms these non-opsonic antibodies use. They increase the rate of communication between the bacterial cells as well as competence-induced killing, or fratricide, where the bacteria naturally kill each other off because of overconcentration.
"These findings reveal a novel, previously unsuspected mechanism by which certain PPS-specific antibodies exert a direct effect on pneumococcal biology that has broad implications for bacterial clearance, genetic exchange and antibody immunity to pneumococcus," says Yano.
http://mbio.asm.org/content/2/5/e00176-11
Why Do Some Influenza Virus Subtypes Die Out?
Every so often we hear about a new strain of influenza virus which has appeared and in some cases may sweep across the globe in a pandemic, much as the H1N1 virus did last year. What happens to the old seasonal viruses? In an opinion piece in the current issue of mBio Peter Palese and Taia Wang of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City postulate one theory.
"The emergence of novel viruses, historically, has often been coupled with the disappearance of existing seasonal virus strains," they write. "Here, we propose that the elimination seasonal strains during virus pandemics is a process mediate, at the population level, by humoral immunity."
Specifically, Palese and Wang think the reason may be that the new strain retains a critical characteristic of the old strains: the stalks that holds up the hemagglutinin blobs on the surface of the virus (i.e. the 'H' in H1N1).
They suggest that infection with the new influenza virus in people who have been previously infected with influenza virus elicits an anti-stalk antibody response. These antibodies are not strong enough to prevent infection but can recognize a wide variety of influenza viruses. When the immune system confronts the new flu virus, these broadly-neutralizing anti-stalk antibodies are deployed to fight it, lessening the severity of the novel virus, but also eliminating the old virus. Palese and Wang say antibodies against another surface protein, viral neuraminidase (i.e. the 'N' in H1N1), can act in much the same way.
"The present discussion suggests that the induction of a large-scale humoral immune response against conserved hemagglutinin stalk epitopes and/or against the neuraminidase protein results in the clearance of old seasonal influenza virus strains," they write.
http://mbio.asm.org/content/2/5/e00150-11
Triple Threat: One Bacterium, Three Plasmids
Researchers from Australia found something completely new while conducting a genetic study of the pathogenesis of an enteric disease in birds. They report what is believed to be the first bacterial strain to carry three closely related but independently conjugative plasmids.
The authors were researching the pathogensis of avian necrotic enteritis, a disease caused by the bacterium Clostridium perfringens which causes necrotic lesions in the small intestines of infected birds. This disease is economically important to the poultry industry as acute clinical disease leads to increased mortality of birds and subclinical disease leads to decreased weight and loss of productivity.
In order to cause disease, the bacterium must be capable of producing the toxin netB. In this study the researchers examined the location of netB gene within the Australian necrotic enteritis isolate EHE-NE18, a strain that was also resistant to tetracycline. They found the gene was encoded on a plasmid, a piece of DNA which exists inside the bacterium but is separate from the chromosomal DNA. Plasmids can also replicate independently and can be transferred to other bacteria.
Additional research identified two other plasmids that shared a similar DNA sequence but coded for different processes. One encoded a different toxin, called beta2, and the other coded for the tetracycline resistance.
"To our knowledge, this is the first report of a bacterial strain that carries three closely related by different independently conjugative plasmids. These results have significant implications for our understanding of the transmission of virulence and antibiotic resistance genes in pathogenic bacteria," write the authors.
http://mbio.asm.org/content/2/5/e00190-11
###
mBio is an open access online journal published by the American Society for Microbiology to make microbiology research broadly accessible. The focus of the journal is on rapid publication of cutting-edge research spanning the entire spectrum of microbiology and related fields.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
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.
Reading, math scores for fourth-graders - Yahoo! News Skip to navigation ? Skip to content ? By The Associated Press The Associated Press ? Tue?Nov?1, 11:01?am?ET
A state-by-state look at the percentage of fourth-graders who scored at or above reading and math proficiency levels on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, NAEP, which is administered by the Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics. Proficiency levels in both subjects are shown for both 2009 and 2011, with reading scores in the first two columns and math scores in the next two.
2009 2011 2009 2011
Jurisdictions at or above proficient in reading at or above proficient in reading at or above proficient in math at or above proficient in math
National public 32 32 38 40
Alabama 28 31 24 27
Alaska 27 26 38 37
Arizona 25 26 28 34
Arkansas 29 30 36 37
California 24 25 30 34
Colorado 40 39 45 47
Connecticut 42 42 46 45
Delaware 35 36 36 39
District of Columbia 17 19 17 22
Florida 36 35 40 37
Georgia 29 32 34 37
Hawaii 26 27 37 40
Idaho 32 33 41 39
Illinois 32 33 38 38
Indiana 34 33 42 44
Iowa 34 33 41 43
Kansas 35 36 46 48
Kentucky 36 35 37 39
Louisiana 18 23 23 26
Maine 35 32 45 45
Maryland 37 43 44 48
Massachusetts 47 50 57 58
Michigan 30 31 35 35
Minnesota 37 35 54 53
Mississippi 22 22 22 25
Missouri 36 34 41 41
Montana 35 36 45 45
Nebraska 35 36 38 39
Nevada 24 25 32 36
New Hampshire 41 43 56 57
New Jersey 40 44 49 51
New Mexico 20 21 26 30
New York 36 35 40 36
North Carolina 32 34 43 44
North Dakota 35 36 45 46
Ohio 36 34 45 45
Oklahoma 28 27 33 33
Oregon 31 30 37 37
Pennsylvania 37 41 46 48
Rhode Island 36 35 39 43
South Carolina 28 28 34 36
South Dakota 33 31 42 40
Tennessee 28 26 28 30
Texas 28 28 38 39
Utah 31 33 41 43
Vermont 41 41 51 49
Virginia 38 39 43 46
Washington 33 34 43 45
West Virginia 26 27 28 31
Wisconsin 33 34 45 47
Wyoming 33 34 40 44
DoDEA 39 39 38 39
Notes: DoDEA stands for Department of Defense Education Activity, which supervises schools on overseas military bases. Details may not sum to totals because of rounding. Some apparent differences between estimates may not be statistically significant.
Source: National Center for Education Statistics of the Education Department.
Copyright ? 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Watching the birth of an icebergPublic release date: 2-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Adam Voiland adam.p.voiland@nasa.gov 301-352-4631 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
PUNTA ARENAS, CHILE After discovering an emerging crack that cuts across the floating ice shelf of Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, NASA's Operation IceBridge has flown a follow-up mission and made the first-ever detailed airborne measurements of a major iceberg calving in progress.
NASA's Operation Ice Bridge, the largest airborne survey of Earth's polar ice ever flown, is in the midst of its third field campaign from Punta Arenas, Chile. The six-year mission will yield an unprecedented three-dimensional view of Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, ice shelves and sea ice.
Pine Island Glacier last calved a significant iceberg in 2001, and some scientists have speculated recently that it was primed to calve again. But until an Oct. 14 IceBridge flight of NASA's DC-8, no one had seen any evidence of the ice shelf beginning to break apart. Since then, a more detailed look back at satellite imagery seems to show the first signs of the crack in early October.
While Pine Island has scientists' attention because it is both big and unstable scientists call it the largest source of uncertainty in global sea level rise projections the calving underway now is part of a natural process for a glacier that terminates in open water. Gravity pulls the ice in the glacier westward along Antarctica's Hudson Mountains toward the Amundsen Sea. A floating tongue of ice reaches out 30 miles into the Amundsen beyond the grounding line, the below-sea-level point where the ice shelf locks onto the continental bedrock. As ice pushes toward the sea from the interior, inevitably the ice shelf will crack and send a large iceberg free.
"We are actually now witnessing how it happens and it's very exciting for us," said IceBridge project scientist Michael Studinger, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "It's part of a natural process but it's pretty exciting to be here and actually observe it while it happens. To my knowledge, no one has flown a lidar instrument over an actively developing rift such as this."
A primary goal of Operation IceBridge is to put the same instruments over the exact same flight lines and satellite tracks, year after year, to gather meaningful and accurate data of how ice sheets and glaciers are changing over time. But discovering a developing rift in one of the most significant science targets in the world of glaciology offered a brief change in agenda for the Oct. 26 flight, if only for a 30-minute diversion from the day's prescribed flight lines.
The IceBridge team observed the rift running across the ice shelf for about 18 miles. The lidar instrument on the DC-8, the Airborne Topographic Mapper, measured the rift's shoulders about 820 feet apart (250 meters) at its widest, although the rift stretched about 260 feet wide along most of the crack. The deepest points from the ice shelf surface ranged 165 to 195 feet (50 to 60 meters). When the iceberg breaks free it will cover about 340 square miles (880 square kilometers) of surface area. Radar measurements suggested the ice shelf in the region of the rift is about 1,640 feet (500 meters) feet thick, with only about 160 feet of that floating above water and the rest submerged. It is likely that once the iceberg floats away, the leading edge of the ice shelf will have receded farther than at any time since its location was first recorded in the 1940s.
Veteran DC-8 pilot Bill Brockett first flew the day's designed mission, crisscrossing the flow of the glacier near the grounding line to gather data on its elevation, topography and thickness. When it came time to investigate the crack, Brockett flew across it before turning to fly along the rift by sight. The ATM makes its precision topography maps with a laser than scans 360 degrees 20 times per second, while firing 3,000 laser pulses per second. When flying at an altitude of 3,000 feet, as during this flight, it measures a swath of the surface about 1,500 feet wide. As the crack measured at more than 800 feet wide in places, it was important for Brockett to hold tight over the crevasse.
"The pilots did a really nice job of keeping the aircraft and our ATM scan swath pretty much centered over the rift as you flew from one end to the other," said Jim Yungel, who leads the ATM team out of NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia. "It was a real challenge to be toldwe're going to attempt to fly along it and let's see if your lidar systems can map that crack and can map the bottom of the crack.
"And it was a lot of fun on a personal level to see if something that you built over the years can actually do a job like that. So, yeah, I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed seeing the results being produced."
While the ATM provided the most detailed measurements of the topography of the rift, other instruments onboard the DC-8 also captured unique aspects. The Digital Mapping System, a nadir-view camera, gathered high-definition close-ups of the craggy split. On the flight perpendicular to the crack, the McCORDS radar also measured its depth and the thickness of the ice shelf in that region.
Catching the rift in action required a bit of luck, but is also testimony to the science benefit of consistent, repeated trips and the flexibility of a manned mission in the field.
"A lot of times when you're in science, you don't get a chance to catch the big stories as they happen because you're not there at the right place at the right time," said John Sonntag, Instrument Team Lead for Operation IceBridge, based at Goddard Space Flight Center. "But this time we were."
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Watching the birth of an icebergPublic release date: 2-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Adam Voiland adam.p.voiland@nasa.gov 301-352-4631 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
PUNTA ARENAS, CHILE After discovering an emerging crack that cuts across the floating ice shelf of Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, NASA's Operation IceBridge has flown a follow-up mission and made the first-ever detailed airborne measurements of a major iceberg calving in progress.
NASA's Operation Ice Bridge, the largest airborne survey of Earth's polar ice ever flown, is in the midst of its third field campaign from Punta Arenas, Chile. The six-year mission will yield an unprecedented three-dimensional view of Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, ice shelves and sea ice.
Pine Island Glacier last calved a significant iceberg in 2001, and some scientists have speculated recently that it was primed to calve again. But until an Oct. 14 IceBridge flight of NASA's DC-8, no one had seen any evidence of the ice shelf beginning to break apart. Since then, a more detailed look back at satellite imagery seems to show the first signs of the crack in early October.
While Pine Island has scientists' attention because it is both big and unstable scientists call it the largest source of uncertainty in global sea level rise projections the calving underway now is part of a natural process for a glacier that terminates in open water. Gravity pulls the ice in the glacier westward along Antarctica's Hudson Mountains toward the Amundsen Sea. A floating tongue of ice reaches out 30 miles into the Amundsen beyond the grounding line, the below-sea-level point where the ice shelf locks onto the continental bedrock. As ice pushes toward the sea from the interior, inevitably the ice shelf will crack and send a large iceberg free.
"We are actually now witnessing how it happens and it's very exciting for us," said IceBridge project scientist Michael Studinger, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "It's part of a natural process but it's pretty exciting to be here and actually observe it while it happens. To my knowledge, no one has flown a lidar instrument over an actively developing rift such as this."
A primary goal of Operation IceBridge is to put the same instruments over the exact same flight lines and satellite tracks, year after year, to gather meaningful and accurate data of how ice sheets and glaciers are changing over time. But discovering a developing rift in one of the most significant science targets in the world of glaciology offered a brief change in agenda for the Oct. 26 flight, if only for a 30-minute diversion from the day's prescribed flight lines.
The IceBridge team observed the rift running across the ice shelf for about 18 miles. The lidar instrument on the DC-8, the Airborne Topographic Mapper, measured the rift's shoulders about 820 feet apart (250 meters) at its widest, although the rift stretched about 260 feet wide along most of the crack. The deepest points from the ice shelf surface ranged 165 to 195 feet (50 to 60 meters). When the iceberg breaks free it will cover about 340 square miles (880 square kilometers) of surface area. Radar measurements suggested the ice shelf in the region of the rift is about 1,640 feet (500 meters) feet thick, with only about 160 feet of that floating above water and the rest submerged. It is likely that once the iceberg floats away, the leading edge of the ice shelf will have receded farther than at any time since its location was first recorded in the 1940s.
Veteran DC-8 pilot Bill Brockett first flew the day's designed mission, crisscrossing the flow of the glacier near the grounding line to gather data on its elevation, topography and thickness. When it came time to investigate the crack, Brockett flew across it before turning to fly along the rift by sight. The ATM makes its precision topography maps with a laser than scans 360 degrees 20 times per second, while firing 3,000 laser pulses per second. When flying at an altitude of 3,000 feet, as during this flight, it measures a swath of the surface about 1,500 feet wide. As the crack measured at more than 800 feet wide in places, it was important for Brockett to hold tight over the crevasse.
"The pilots did a really nice job of keeping the aircraft and our ATM scan swath pretty much centered over the rift as you flew from one end to the other," said Jim Yungel, who leads the ATM team out of NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia. "It was a real challenge to be toldwe're going to attempt to fly along it and let's see if your lidar systems can map that crack and can map the bottom of the crack.
"And it was a lot of fun on a personal level to see if something that you built over the years can actually do a job like that. So, yeah, I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed seeing the results being produced."
While the ATM provided the most detailed measurements of the topography of the rift, other instruments onboard the DC-8 also captured unique aspects. The Digital Mapping System, a nadir-view camera, gathered high-definition close-ups of the craggy split. On the flight perpendicular to the crack, the McCORDS radar also measured its depth and the thickness of the ice shelf in that region.
Catching the rift in action required a bit of luck, but is also testimony to the science benefit of consistent, repeated trips and the flexibility of a manned mission in the field.
"A lot of times when you're in science, you don't get a chance to catch the big stories as they happen because you're not there at the right place at the right time," said John Sonntag, Instrument Team Lead for Operation IceBridge, based at Goddard Space Flight Center. "But this time we were."
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Public release date: 2-Nov-2011
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By The Associated Press 
