All the news please don't print

300 Astronomers Will Not Use New Planet Definition:

Author Robert Roy Britt

More than 300 astronomers have signed a petition denounced the IAU’s new planet definition that demotes Pluto. The petition states simply:

“We, as planetary scientists and astronomers, do not agree with the IAU’s definition of a planet, nor will we use it. A better definition is needed”

The petition, which began circulating right after last week’s vote, is one more sign that this whole debate is far from over. In another move today, the world’s largest group of planetary scientists issued a statement suggesting the definition would get worked over between now and the next IAU meeting in 2009.

While it might have seemed to the public and the press that Pluto’s demotion was a done deal (and I’m on record as saying the defintion should not be altered beyond minor tweaks to clarify) I would not bet against Pluto’s possible resurgence. Just as science promises to march forward, so too will all this bickering and posturing. And why not? It’s great fun, some of the best scientific theater of our generation.

You can see the petition’s signers here."

Posted on Thu, Sep. 07, 2006 House approves bill to shutter horsemeat industry By Todd J. Gillman The Dallas Morning News (MCT) WASHINGTON - Horse lovers won a huge victory Thursday when the House voted overwhelmingly to shut down the horsemeat industry. Farm and ranch groups oppose the ban, arguing that slaughterhouses in Kaufman and Fort Worth, Texas, and DeKalb, Ill., provide a valuable service by processing 90,000 unwanted, though mostly healthy, animals each year. "What we are exposing today is a brutal, shadowy, predatory shameful practice that borders on the perverse," said Rep. John Sweeney, R-N.Y., an author of the bill. "It reflects on our culture. It reflects on our priorities." Animal rights groups have worked for years to shut down the plants, which sell 18,000 tons of meat worth $61 million each year, mostly to France, Belgium and Japan. And they found allies across the political spectrum, pulling off a lopsided 263-146 win. The fate of the ban now rests in the Senate. Big majorities there have voted to shut down the industry in past years, but lawmakers have only a month before going on recess for the November elections. The industry-backed Horse Welfare Coalition expressed disappointment at the House vote but predicted the ban would fail in the Senate, thanks in part to last-minute opposition by Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. He called the slaughterhouses more humane than alternatives faced by unwanted horses. "The best interest of horses and American agriculture was lost today," said Charlie Stenholm, a former West Texas congressman who lobbies for the slaughterhouses. The anti-slaughter cause had the support of celebrities including Willie Nelson, Clint Eastwood, William Shatner and Mary Tyler Moore. Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens testified for the ban and helped bankroll an ad campaign. Actress Bo Derek watched the three-hour debate in the House gallery. Opponents of the ban included groups of horse doctors, quarter horse owners, farmers, ranchers and county officials. House energy and commerce Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, said he'd heard from hundreds of people on both sides, and concluded that banning slaughter would lead to "a miserable existence for thousands of horses" and would amount to "an outright attack on animal agriculture." Defenders of the industry emphasized that the slaughterhouses are federally inspected and regulated. They argued that horse sanctuaries and rescue organizations are stretched too thin to cope with more unwanted horses. The federal government spends $50 million a year to care for 20,000 wild horses that have been removed from public lands. Advocates of the ban called the House vote historic and noted that horse owners could still euthanize unwanted animals, personally or by paying a veterinarian. The argument fell flat with House Agriculture Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. "Apparently the alternative to death is, well, death," he said. "They're worrying about what happens to the meat once the animal is euthanized." His committee had quashed efforts for years to close down the industry. The bill was rewritten to fall under Barton's jurisdiction, and even though the Texan opposed it, he acceded to House leaders' demand for a floor debate. "The House today took us one giant step closer to halting the barbaric and needless slaughter of American horses for foreign consumers," said Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States. He predicted "a heavy lift" to get Senate approval. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, a member of the GOP leadership, said Senate action is unlikely before the recess. Spokeswoman Jamie Loftus said Hutchison hadn't decided whether to support the ban. Sen. John Cornyn, also of Texas, opposes the ban. Spokesman Brian Walsh said the lawmaker was concerned about owners' rights and believed the industry would simply shift "to foreign factories which treat horses even less humanely." In the House debate, a parade of Democrats - most of whom supported the ban - taunted Republicans for even scheduling the debate, the only substantive issue the House has dealt with since returning this week from a month-long recess. They accused Republicans of trying to divert attention from a stagnant minimum wage, high gas prices and failures in Iraq. "I'm for the horsies too. I'll vote for it," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., but "I can't believe that we are here today using the very limited time left to this Congress to deal with horsemeat." House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland alleged that the main motive was helping Sweeney, the co-author, who is in a tough race in a district that includes the Saratoga Springs horse track. With the Sept. 11 anniversary nearing, he said, the public expects Congress to tackle weightier matters. "I am concerned about horses, but I am much, much more concerned about the American people," Hoyer said. The issue broke more along urban-rural lines than by party. Republicans split almost evenly. Democrats backed the ban 5-to-1. Opponents of the ban tried unsuccessfully to kill the legislation with amendments to undermine its impact. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, offered an exemption for Indian tribes and any other culture with a history of eating horsemeat - a provision he conceded would apply to France, Belgium and Japan, effectively allowing the existing plants, all foreign-owned, to continue operating. "People in support of this bill have a romantic view of the horse," King said. "Lewis and Clark ate horses." Advocates of a ban offered horrific - and disputed - descriptions of how horses are treated en route to and at the slaughterhouses. One warned that if Congress rejected a ban, it would be signing off on "Barbaro burgers," referring to this year's Kentucky Derby winner. Another invoked the way Ferdinand, a previous Derby winner, was slaughtered several years ago in Japan, the meat marketed as the opportunity to "eat an American champion." "When you see a horse galloping gracefully across the plains, that's not a commodity. That's an inspiration," said Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va. "There's no reason to be slaughtering horses."

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© 2006 KRT Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.mercurynews.com

FDA approves artificial heart implant

The pump could benefit some of the roughly 8,000 people on waiting lists for the 2,000 donor hearts that become available each year. About 30% of those on the waiting lists die before a donor heart becomes available for transplant.

"This is the first artificial replacement organ that has achieved FDA approval," said Marvin Slepian, chief executive of Tucson-based SynCardia Systems, which makes the CardioWest mechanical heart.

"It will be popular in end-stage heart disease centers, where they see sick patients who have no other options," said Jack Copeland, a professor at the University of Arizona and a SynCardia founder. He said the company hopes to train doctors to implant the heart at four to six centers in the next year.

The CardioWest is a direct descendant of the Jarvik-7, implanted into dentist Barney Clark in 1982. That experiment and others that followed made worldwide headlines, but not for their success. Volunteers suffered strokes, bleeding, infections, clots and other catastrophic side effects, prompting the FDA to temporarily shut down the artificial heart program.

Two decades and countless prototypes later, doctors reported in August that the retooled heart had sustained 79% of 81 patients until they could obtain a transplant, compared with 46% of 35 patients who did not get the heart. The device was redesigned to reduce the risk of side effects.

"It's a laudable achievement," said Bud Frazier, chief of heart transplantation at Houston's Texas Heart Institute.

About 5 million people in the USA have hearts too weak to satisfy the body's demand for blood. Doctors diagnose 550,000 cases a year; about 300,000 people die each year. Roughly 50,000 of the most severe cases could benefit from a transplant.

To implant the CardioWest, surgeons remove the bottom half of the heart and stitch the device in its place. Patients remain in the hospital, tethered by hoses to a large, noisy pump.

Slepian says SynCardia is working on more portable hearts to serve as permanent replacements someday. Other companies are working on models, as well.

Slepian says the heart will cost $80,000 to $100,000. Medicare and insurance plans now reimburse a portion of the cost of lesser heart pumps, called ventricular assist devices. Medicare does not cover artificial hearts. Now that the CardioWest has been approved, Slepian says, that may change.

Of the top 5, I have lived in 2, of the top 25, I have lived in 6
MONEY Magazine: Best places to live 2006: Top 25 Coldest:

"1 Fargo, ND -2.3°F
2 St. Cloud, MN -1.2°F
3 Bismarck, ND -0.6°F
4 Duluth, MN 1.1°F
5 Blaine, MN 1.8°F"

After the horrible crash in my home town, I thin the FAA should be screening its own compliance.

Screening Tools Slow to Arrive in U.S. Airports - New York Times

EGG HARBOR, N.J. — Citing unexpected reliability problems, the Transportation Security Administration is suspending installation of the only airport checkpoint device that automatically screens passengers for hidden explosives.

The rollout of the devices, trace-detection portals, nicknamed puffers because they blow air while searching for residue from explosives, had already been far behind schedule. Now the transportation agency is assessing whether to modify the puffers, upgrade them or wait until better devices are available.

“We are seeing some issues that we did not anticipate,” Randy Null, the agency’s chief technology officer, said last week.

The portal problems are part of a pattern in which the federal government has been unable to move bomb-detection technologies from the laboratory to the airport successfully. While workers at the Homeland Security Department laboratory here busily build bombs to test the cutting-edge equipment, the agency still relies largely on decidedly low-tech measures to confront the threat posed by explosives at airports, particularly at checkpoints.

Members of Congress and former domestic security officials blame poor management for stumbles in research, turf fights, staff turnover and underfinancing. Some initiatives have also faced opposition from the airlines or been slowed by bureaucratic snarls. Among the troubled or delayed efforts are the following:

The agency conducted tests last year that members of Congress and a former Homeland Security Department official called “disastrous” and “stupid” because the agency had not tested the smaller, cheaper baggage-screening device in the way it was intended to be used.

After spending years assessing a document scanner that would look for traces of explosives on paper held by a passenger, the agency now realizes it may be preferable to check a passenger’s hands. But no plan is in place to do so.

The agency gave grant money to an equipment maker to find a way to speed up explosives-detection machines that screen baggage and to reduce the frequency of false positives. Though the work was completed successfully a year ago, the agency has not made the necessary software upgrades on the hundreds of machines already in the nation’s airports.

“Continuing to follow the slow, jumbled and disconnected path taken by T.S.A. and Homeland Security in the last five years is no longer acceptable,” said Representative John L. Mica, Republican of Florida and chairman of a House panel that oversees aviation security. “The whole program has been haphazard. And the result is that still today we have a series of outdated technology that does little but search for metal or guns.”

Though the transportation agency is credited with meeting a Congressional mandate to screen all checked baggage for explosives by December 2003, even security officials agree that the transportation research effort, which has cost $450 million in the last four years, must be fundamentally changed.

“This department can’t afford to not be at the cutting edge of innovative technology,” Michael P. Jackson, deputy secretary of homeland security, said in an interview. “The bad guys themselves are constantly assessing how good we are at preventing their efforts; we have to be one step ahead of them at all times.”

Conflict Between Agencies

Spread out on a table at the Transportation Security Laboratory outside Atlantic City last week, like a dim sum meal, was a collection of small dishes with samples of the explosives people here are working to defeat. They included Semtex, TNT, C4, British RDX and dynamite — several of which are popular among suicide bombers and have been used in successful airline plots — along with liquid explosives in bottles marked only “A,” “A1” and “B.”

Scientists and technicians carefully stuff these raw materials into computers, small electronic devices, shoes and cigar boxes, building every imaginable bomb and then testing them on detection equipment.

“We do our best to try to figure out all the options before someone else does,” said a laboratory technician who would identify himself only as Mr. T in accordance with a laboratory policy of not identifying staff members.