April 24, 2015

Mammoth genome sequence completed

An international team of scientists has sequenced the complete genome of the woolly mammoth.

A US team is already attempting to study the animals' characteristics by inserting mammoth genes into elephant stem cells.

They want to find out what made the mammoths different from their modern relatives and how their adaptations helped them survive the ice ages.

The new genome study has been published in the Journal Current Biology.

more
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32432693

April 24, 2015

Amazing images of Chilean Volcano

more
http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2015/04/the-eruption-of-chiles-calbuco-volcano/391305/

April 24, 2015

Giant magma reservoir mapped deep beneath Yellowstone supervolcano

You know that supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park? The one that, three times in the last 2 million years, spewed enormous amounts of ash over the North American continent? Scientists have discovered an enormous underground reservoir deep beneath the surface and have mapped it out for the first time.

Don’t worry. There’s not a lot of actual molten rock in there and it doesn’t at all affect the likelihood of whether it will erupt anytime soon – the odds each year are still roughly 1 in 700,000. But the findings published online by the journal Science provide deeper (so to speak) insight on this mysterious supervolcano sitting in our backyard and on the inner workings of other supervolcanoes around the world.

“Now we really have a complete image of the Yellowstone plumbing system,” study co-author Jamie Farrell, a geophysicist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, said in an interview.

The Yellowstone caldera, a giant crater caused by a previous eruption, measures 40 miles by 25 miles and sits in the northwest corner of Wyoming, in Yellowstone National Park. The supervolcano erupted 2 million, 1.2 million and 640,000 years ago, fed by the movement of the North American tectonic plate. Underground, 3 to 9 miles beneath the caldera, sits a frying-pan-shaped magma chamber measuring roughly 19 miles by 55 miles.

more
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-yellowstone-supervolcano-magma-reservoir-20150423-story.html

April 23, 2015

Charges dismissed after man served 34 years of life sentence

VENTURA, Calif. (AP) — A California man who was freed after serving 34 years of a life sentence for murder had the charges formally dismissed Wednesday.

Michael Hanline, 69, was the longest-serving wrongfully incarcerated inmate in California history, according to the California Innocence Project, whose lawyers worked for 15 years to free him and persuaded prosecutors to re-examine the evidence.

Testing showed DNA found at the crime scene did not come from Hanline or his alleged accomplice. In addition, prosecutors withheld evidence that should have been disclosed to Hanline's legal team during the trial.

The conviction was based on "paper-thin evidence," said Justin Brooks, director of the California Innocence Project.

"He is 100 percent innocent," Brooks said outside court.

more

http://news.yahoo.com/man-served-34-years-murder-charges-dismissed-220944135.html

April 23, 2015

Republican Governors May Pay Price for Refusing to Expand Medicaid Under Obamacare

In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government couldn’t force states to expand eligibility for their Medicaid programs under the Affordable Care Act. Since then, the Obama administration has looked for ways to persuade Republicans who have steadfastly opposed Obamacare to participate in this key component of the act. The biggest incentive is the law’s promise of federal funds to cover the whole cost of newly qualified Medicaid patients for three years, until 2016, and at least 90 percent of the costs thereafter. Nevertheless, 20 states have refused to ease access to their Medicaid rolls. A few have been able to eat their cake and have it, too: Because of special arrangements that predate Obamacare, four states that haven’t expanded Medicaid have been getting billions each year in extra funding to pay for the care of people who are uninsured.

That’s about to change. On April 14, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which manages federal funding to the states for health programs, alerted Florida officials that CMS plans to let the $1.3 billion the state gets annually to help hospitals cover the cost of treating uninsured patients lapse at the end of June. “Uncompensated care pool funding should not pay for costs that would be covered in a Medicaid expansion,” CMS wrote in its letter, which it released to reporters.

Rick Scott, Florida’s Republican governor, responded two days later with a threat to sue the Obama administration. “It is appalling that President Obama would cut off federal health-care dollars to Florida in an effort to force our state further into Obamacare,” Scott said in a public statement. On Fox News, Scott was more animated: “This is The Sopranos. They’re using bullying tactics to attack our state.” Scott’s office declined to comment further.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott quickly joined forces with Scott. Texas’ special Medicaid funding, which accounts for about half of the state’s $3.4 billion pool to repay hospitals for treating uninsured patients, expires in September 2016. In an April 20 statement, Abbott, a former attorney general who took office in January, vowed to support Florida’s suit. (As of April 22, no lawsuit had been filed.) “The Supreme Court made it very clear that the Constitution does not allow the federal government to use these coercive tactics against the States,” Abbott said.

more

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-04-23/republican-governors-may-pay-price-for-refusing-to-expand-medicaid-under-obamacare

April 23, 2015

Support for Gay Marriage Reaches Record High (POLL)

A week before a closely watched U.S. Supreme Court hearing on the issue, public support for gay marriage reached a new high in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, with 61 percent of Americans – more than six in 10 for the first time – saying gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry legally.

Identical or similar majorities favor gay marriage on two key issues before the court: Sixty-one percent oppose allowing individual states to prohibit same-sex marriages. And 62 percent support requiring states to recognize gay marriages performed legally in other states.


These views extend a dramatic, decade-long evolution in public attitudes on gay marriage - one of the most remarkable re-evaluations of views on a basic social issue in more than 30 years of ABC/Post polling. As recently as June 2006, just 36 percent of Americans said it should be legal for gays and lesbians to marry. That advanced to 49 percent in 2009, reached a majority, 53 percent, in early 2011, and, as noted, 61 percent now.

Further, “strong” support for allowing gay marriage exceeds strong opposition by 15 percentage points in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, matching the largest pro-gay marriage margin in intensity of sentiment on record. In a similar question in 2004, by contrast, strong opposition exceeded strong support by 34 points.

more
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/support-gay-marriage-reaches-record-high/story?id=30507803

Evolution. It's a good thing...

April 23, 2015

Hillary at Watergate Impeachment Hearings

By DAVID HUME KENNERLY
During the impeachment hearings, I was shooting a story for Time about John Doar, the chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee. Hillary Rodham was a young lawyer working with him. When the Bill Clinton impeachment thing came along, I went back and looked through all the old photos, and I found all these of her—this was the best one. She wasn’t on the radar at all; she just happened to be in the frame. I probably even tried to crop her out at one point. When I look back at that picture, it was like, who knew?

many more interesting images and stories here

http://www.politico.com/magazine/gallery/2015/04/i-want-to-be-with-the-circus/002185-031143.html

April 23, 2015

The legendary David Hume Kennerly tells the story behind 50 years of campaign photography.

By DAVID HUME KENNERLY



I love being in the action. As a kid in Oregon, I distinctly remember seeing a big garage fire and watching the firemen try to put out the blaze, and then this guy with cameras dangling around his neck came along and flipped out his press pass. “Now there’s the perfect job,” I thought. You don’t have to fight the fire, but you can take pictures of it. I was the kid who always brought weird things to class to impress my friends—stuffed armadillos, live horned toads. News photography really had appeal to me. It was the ultimate show and tell.

News photographers tend to be tough, able to survive being shot at, both for real and verbally. The way I grew up in the business, the photo editors weren’t polite people. You were afraid of not getting the picture because the consequences of getting yelled at by an editor were way worse than getting attacked on the street by rioters—you could get shot at, beaten up, they didn’t care. They just wanted to see the pictures. They didn’t have HR in those days to complain to. I got better at taking photos out of sheer fear.

I started out covering the 1966 midterm elections, and, by 1970, as a young United Press International wire-service shooter, I started covering the White House. I had my first ride on Air Force One at age 23 with President Richard Nixon. Over these past 50 years, I’ve covered just about every presidential candidate and watched them work up close on the trail. The first president who understood the power of photography and what it could do for him was Abraham Lincoln, but the first modern president who knew precisely how he came across in photos was John F. Kennedy. JFK and his family were storybook people and looked great in photographs. You could study those pictures as a case history of how to do it right.

October 24, 1966: FIRST BRUSH WITH CELEBRITY
When Senator Robert Kennedy came to Portland, Oregon, in 1966, he was campaigning for the local congressional candidate, Edith Green. I’d never seen, much less photographed, anyone this famous. When I got to the labor hall, I didn’t know how to get through the crowd. I saw two photographers standing on the periphery—I didn’t know them, but it was clear they were traveling with the senator. One was Bill Eppridge of Life magazine, the other Steve Schapiro, a great civil rights photographer. I asked Eppridge, “How do you get through these crowds?” He said, “Hang on to my coat, kid.” I did, and he just sliced through the people and put me up into a good spot: “This is the best angle for you.” That photo of Senator Kennedy to this day is still one of my favorite shots of any politician.


http://www.politico.com/magazine/gallery/2015/04/i-want-to-be-with-the-circus/002185-031134.html#.VTkGw6bmHiY

April 23, 2015

FCC staff leaning against Comcast deal

By BROOKS BOLIEK

Federal Communications Committee staff want the agency to block Comcast’s $45 billion bid for Time Warner Cable, according to multiple sources with knowledge of an internal FCC briefing Wednesday.

For the agency to go that route, it would likely send the issue to an administrative law judge for a hearing, a step that could drag out the review for months or even years and is widely seen as tantamount to killing the deal.

The development marks another sign that the merger faces serious regulatory hurdles in Washington.

A report from Bloomberg News last week said staff attorneys in the Justice Department’s antitrust division are poised to recommend against the deal due to concerns it would stifle competition in the cable and broadband industries.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/fcc-staff-leaning-against-comcast-time-warner-cable-deal-117275.html#ixzz3Y8zvauVi

April 23, 2015

Bwwwaahahahah! "The coming GOP demolition-derby circular firing squad"

The Coming GOP demolition-derby circular firing squad:

1. With the announcement two weeks ago that four super-PACS — headed by the mysterious Robert Mercer from Long Island, N.Y. — had donated a stunning $31 million to Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-Texas) presidential campaign, a new era of GOP primary battles was launched.

2. In the past, the GOP establishment wing always handsomely funded their candidate.

3. It was always the conservatives who were underfunded.
4. And thus the primary outcome was preordained: After the initial dustup-up in Iowa and perhaps South Carolina, the establishment money wore the conservative(s) down and ultimately prevailed in a war of attrition.

5. That is not going to happen in the 2016 election cycle.

6. No, we are about to witness something we have never before seen: A full-on, well-funded-on-both-sides, nuclear war inside the GOP pitting the establishment (mostly former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush) versus the Tea Party (Cruz, Ben Carson and others) versus the neo-cons (Florida Sen. Marco Rubio) versus the libertarians (Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul) versus the hybrid (Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has both establishment and Tea Party support).

more

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/239779-the-coming-gop-demolition-derby-circular-firing