A discovery has been made concerning the possible inventory of molecules available to the early Earth.

Scientists led by Sandra Pizzarello, a research professor at Arizona State University, found that the Sutter’s Mill meteorite, which exploded in a blazing fireball over California last year, contains organic molecules not previously found in any meteorites. These findings suggest a far greater availability of extraterrestrial organic molecules than previously thought possible, an inventory that could indeed have been important in molecular evolution and life itself.

The work is being published in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Coincidentally, Sutter’s Mill is also the gold discovery site that led to the 1849 California Gold Rush. Detection of the falling meteor by doppler weather radar allowed for rapid recovery so that scientists could study for the first time a primitive meteorite with little exposure to the elements, providing the most pristine look yet at the surface of primitive asteroids.

“The analyses of meteorites never cease to surprise you ... and make you wonder,” explains Ms. Pizzarello. The Solar System processes that lead to its alteration seem also to have brought about novel and complex molecules of definite interest, she said.

Ms. Pizzarello and her team heated fragments of the meteorite and then detected the compounds released by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.


Lizard fossil is evidence
of convergent evolution


The lizard had a shark-like fin. That’s what Swedish researchers have discovered about the fearsome mosasaur prognathodon, which lived in the seas of the Cretaceous Period about 70 million years ago.

The discovery was based on a fossil found in Jordan in 2008. Researcher Johan Lindgren, of Lund University in Sweden, traveled to Jordan in 2011 and discovered that imprints of soft tissue had been preserved around the creature’s tail fin, which ultimately led to the conclusion about its shape. The fossil proved to be the first one of its kind that revealed the tail fin contour in its entirety. But unlike a shark fin, the mosasaur’s fin faced downward.

“After trying to reconstruct the tail fin for years, with only the skeleton to go by, I was suddenly standing in front of the definitive answer”, said Lindgren, who lead the international group of Jordanian and American researchers involved in the discovery. “It was a fantastic feeling of euphoria.”

The mosasaur, which could grow up to 17 meters in length, was previously thought to have a long, rectilinear body and a straight, elongated tail. Instead, it has a streamlined, fish-like body with a fluked tail. This is more in line with other big marine creatures, such as the extinct ichthyosaurs (250-94 million years ago) and today’s sharks and whales.

“These characteristics demonstrate in an outstanding way how organisms living in similar environments develop similar features, in a process known as convergent evolution,” said Lindgren.

He points out that the mosasaur’s evolutionary history – not just this discovery but in general – is one of the best examples of large-scale evolution and how animals change appearance in order to adapt to a new environment. In this case, mosasaurs adapted to a marine life following life on land.

 
Sept. 11 attack remembered
in multiple U.S. ceremonies


Americans gathered to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.  Solemn ceremonies have taken place near the sites of the attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

With music and prayers, friends and loved ones remembered those who perished when hijacked planes hit the towers of New York's World Trade Center.  They gathered at the site for what has become an annual event, reading of the names of the victims.

For some readers, emotions were still raw, 12 years after the attacks.

"You were more than just my daddy.  You were my best friend, and I love you more than anything.  You will be in my heart always," the daughter of a 9/11 victim said after reading the name of her father.

In Washington, President Barack Obama paid tribute to the victims.

After a bell tolled, the president, vice president and other dignitaries on the White House lawn bowed their heads for a moment of silence.

Later, the president took part in a ceremony at the Pentagon for family members of the more than 100 people killed when a jetliner struck the U.S. military headquarters.   He told the families of victims that he admired their courage.

"In the quiet moments we have spent together, and from the stories that you have shared, I am amazed at the will that you have summoned in your lives to lift yourselves up and to carry on and to live and love and laugh again," the president said.  "Even more than memorials of stone and water, your lives are the greatest tribute to those that we lost, for their legacy shines on in you."

Another observance was held in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed, killing 33 passengers and seven crew.

Participants stood near a memorial honoring the victims as the names of those who perished on the flight were read.
 
The plane crashed as passengers attempted to regain control from hijackers, who were believed to be flying toward Washington.

Relatives of the victims joined the National Park Service Tuesday in a groundbreaking ceremony for a visitor center at the Flight 93 Memorial.

Wednesday also is the first anniversary of the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.  Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed.


Chinese censors turn out
to be recent college grads


In a modern office building on the outskirts of the Chinese city of Tianjin, rows of censors stare at computer screens. Their mission: delete any post on Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter, deemed offensive or politically unacceptable.
 
But the people behind the censorship of China's most popular microblogging site are not aging Communist Party apparatchiks. Instead, they are new college graduates. Ambivalent about deleting posts, they grumble loudly about the workload and pay.
 
Managing the Internet is a major challenge for China. The ruling Communist Party sees censorship as key to maintaining its grip on power. Indeed, new measures unveiled on Monday threaten jail time for spreading rumors online.
 
At the same time, China wants to give people a way to blow off steam when other forms of political protest are restricted.
 
Four former censors at Sina Weibo, who all quit at various times this year, agreed to interviews. All declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the work they once did.
 
“People are often torn when they start, but later they go numb and just do the job,” said one former censor, who left because he felt the career prospects were poor. “One thing I can tell you is that we are worked very hard and paid very little.”
 
Sina Corp, one of China's biggest Internet firms, runs the microblogging site, which has 500 million registered users. It also employs the censors.
 
The company did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
 
The Sina Weibo censorship office in Tianjin is half an hour from Beijing by high-speed train.
 
A dozen employees, all men, could be seen through locked glass doors from a publicly-accessible corridor, sitting in cramped cubicles separated by yellow dividers, staring at large monitors.
 
They more closely resembled Little Brothers than the Orwellian image of an omniscient and fearsome Big Brother.
 
“Our job prevents Weibo from being shut down and that gives people a big platform to speak from. It's not an ideally free one, but it still lets people vent,” said a second former censor.
 
The former censors said the office was staffed 24 hours a day by about 150 male college graduates in total. They said women shunned the work because of the night shifts and constant exposure to offensive material.
 
The Sina Weibo censors are a small part of the tens of thousands of censors employed in China to control content in traditional media and on the Internet.
 
Most Sina Weibo censors are in their 20s and earn about 3,000 yuan ($490) a month, the former censors said, roughly the same as jobs posted in Tianjin for carpenters or staff in real estate firms. Many took the job after graduating from local universities.
 
“People leave because it's a stressful dead-end job for most of us,” said a third former censor.
 
Sina's computer system scans each microblog before they are published. Only a fraction are marked as sensitive and need to be read by a censor, who will decide whether to spare or delete it. Over an average 24-hour period, censors process about three million posts.
 
A small number of posts with so-called must kill words such as references to the banned spiritual group Falun Gong are first blocked and then manually deleted. Censors also have to update lists of sensitive words with new references and creative expressions bloggers use to evade scrutiny.
 
For most posts deemed sensitive, censors often use a subtle tactic in which a published comment remains visible to its author but is blocked for others, leaving the blogger unaware his post has effectively been taken down, the former censors said. Censors can also punish users by temporarily blocking their ability to make comments or shutting their accounts in extreme cases.
 
“We saw a fairly sophisticated system, where human power is amplified by computer automation, that is capable of removing sensitive posts within minutes,” said Jedidiah Crandall of the University of New Mexico, part of a team which did recent research on the speed of Weibo censorship.
 
If a sensitive post gets missed and spreads widely, government agencies can put pressure on Sina Corp to remove the post and occasionally punish the censor responsible with fines or dismissal, the former censors said.
 
On an average day, about 40 censors work 12-hour shifts. Each worker must sift through at least 3,000 posts an hour, the former censors said.
 
The busiest times are during sensitive anniversaries such as the Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy protesters which took place on June 4, 1989, and major political events.
 
The censors shifted into high gear during the downfall last year of former high-flying politician Bo Xilai, who faced trial last month on charges of bribery, graft and abuse of power. A verdict may come this month.
 
“It was really stressful, about 100 people worked non-stop for 24 hours,” the first censor said, referring to when Bo was stripped of his posts and later expelled from the Party.
 
The Communist Party keeps an iron grip on newspapers and television but has grappled to control information on social-networking platforms.
 
Internet firms are required to work with the party's propaganda apparatus to censor user-generated content.
 
Lu Wei, director of the State Internet Information Office, said in a speech this week that freedom means order and that freedom without order does not exist.
 
State media has reported dozens of detentions in recent weeks as the new government of President Xi Jinping cracks down on the spreading of rumors.
 
China's top court and prosecutor said people would be charged with defamation if online rumors they created were visited by 5,000 Internet users or reposted more than 500 times.
 
That could lead to three years in jail, state media reported Monday. China says it has a genuine need to stop the spread of irresponsible rumors.
 
When rumors that former president Jiang Zemin had died went viral on Weibo, the seemingly irrelevant words “frog” and “toad,” most likely referring to Jiang's peculiar glasses, were used to refer to Jiang and later banned.
 
Censors are told what kinds of comments are off limits.
 
“The most frequently deleted posts are the political ones, especially those criticizing the government, but Sina grants relatively more room for discussions on democracy and constitutionalism because there are leaders who want to keep the debate going,” said the first former censor.
 
“But there hasn't been any sign of loosening control on social media since Xi Jinping took power,” he added. “Not from what we could feel at work.”


U.N. food agency reporting
waste totals 1.3 billion tons


A new study says 1.3 billion tons of food are wasted or lost every year, causing significant harm to both the environment and the economy. The food losses occur as an estimated 870 million people go hungry every day.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says it has released the first study to “analyze the impacts of global food wastage from an environmental perspective.”

The report differentiates between food loss and food waste. Food loss is due to such things as poor harvesting, inadequate storage and transportation. It’s more of a supply side issue. Food waste, meanwhile, comes on the demand-side during processing, distribution and consumption.

Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva said, “Every day, consumers, especially in the rich countries, waste almost as much food as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa. The implication of this massive food waste for food security and sustainability is huge. If we reduce food loss and waste, we have more food available without the need to produce more and putting less pressure on natural resources.”

The report, "Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on Natural Resources." says the amount of food that is produced, but not eaten, “guzzles up a volume of water equivalent to the annual flow of Russia’s Volga River.” That unconsumed food, it says, is also responsible for 3.3 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

“Developing countries suffer more food losses during agriculture production. But in high income regions, food waste at the retail and consumer level tends to be higher. Up to 40 percent of total wastage compared with only 4 to 16 percent in low income regions,” he said.

Graziano da Silva added there’s also the economic cost.

“The food wastage means $750 billion every year. This impressive figure is the equivalent of the GDP of Switzerland.”

Joining in the release of the new report is Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program. He called the $750 billion figure an extraordinary wake-up call for those thinking about food security and agriculture.

“In that figure we may not even capture many of the more indirect impacts that are associated with degradation of natural resources. The impacts on climate change. The drivers that will cost perhaps not today’s consumers of food, but tomorrow’s children and grandchildren, who have to run our economies and mange these impacts in ways that are economically not yet fully captured,” said Steiner.

He emphasized the losses and waste do not only occur on land.

“We again have phenomena where in many fishing fleets – sometimes 20, 30, 50 percent of the catch is thrown back into the sea. But it is not as if fish will happily continue to swim. Many of them will be dead and essentially no longer available either for consumption or indeed for maintaining the fish stocks of the world. So, we are really trying to address a phenomenon here today that concerns each and every one of us on the planet,” he said.


More than 300 billionaires
reported to be Chinese


A Beijing-based publication says the number of billionaires in China has risen to more than 300 in the last year.
 
The Hurun Report's 2013 China Rich List says there are now 315 billionaires in the country, the first time the number has surpassed 300.
 
Rupert Hoogewerf, who publishes the Hurun Report, said the trend is impressive, considering China is going through an economic slowdown.
 
"If the economy takes off properly again, which by all intents and purposes we're hearing it might do at the end of next year, then I expect you can see these numbers grow even further," said Hoogewerf.
 
The publication said the biggest source of wealth on this year's list was the real estate industry, where prices have recently soared.
 
Highlighting that trend, the magazine named real estate developer Wang Jianlin as China's richest person, with a fortune of $22 billion.
 
Wang's company, the Dalian Wanda Group, runs hotels, movie theaters and department stores. Last year it purchased the U.S. theater chain AMC.
 
The magazine said over half of China's wealthiest 1,000 people saw their wealth grow in the past year.

 
Aesthetic dental patients need
psychological aid, study says


Dentists need the support of health psychologists to enhance patients’ satisfaction with their appearance before they embark on aesthetic dental procedures.

These are the findings of a study by Sharmila Sarin, supervised by Koula Asimakopoulou, and colleagues from King’s College London that was to be presented at the British Psychological Society’s Division of Health Psychology annual conference Wednesday in Brighton.

In the study 60 participants completed the Slade Body Satisfaction Scale and a Visual Analogue Scale assessing satisfaction with their appearance before and after their dental work. They also completed a short version of the Big Five personality test before their operation.

Irrespective of the dental procedure performed, people who were happiest about their appearance before receiving aesthetic dental treatment were those that were the happiest after treatment; dissatisfaction with one’s appearance seen in those high on neuroticism persisted after aesthetic dental work.

“We wanted to establish whether personality and the views that people have about their appearance before receiving aesthetic dental treatment would influence satisfaction with the outcomes of aesthetic dental procedures,” the researchers said.

“We found that it is in the patients’ and dentists’ interest to ensure that patients receiving aesthetic dental work start from as high a point of satisfaction with current appearance as possible. This will enhance the chances that they will be satisfied with the results of aesthetic dental treatment. Neuroticism is also likely to interfere with satisfaction with aesthetic dental work.”