So when it wound up with a parachute I thought, "Ahh, Lazarus was exaggerating, this ain't so bad."
Then it deployed a rocket lander and I thought, "Oh, maybe he's right."
Then it popped the rover out on a Mars yo-yo, and I said, "Oh, come on!"
Then it gently releases the rover and goes shooting off over the horizon and I just started chuckling.
If this thing works, NASA rules.
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International Monetary Fund, IMF, chief Christine Lagarde speaks during her visit to the social media corner at the 42nd annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. The meeting lasts until Jan. 29. (AP Photo/Keystone, Laurent Gillieron)
International Monetary Fund, IMF, chief Christine Lagarde speaks during her visit to the social media corner at the 42nd annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. The meeting lasts until Jan. 29. (AP Photo/Keystone, Laurent Gillieron)
DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) ? The head of the International Monetary Fund appeared to be making headway Saturday in her drive to boost the institution's financial firepower so that it can help Europe prevent its crippling debt crisis from further damaging the global economy.
Christine Lagarde, who replaced Dominique Strauss-Kahn as managing director of the fund six months ago, is trying to ramp up the IMF's resources by $500 billion so it can help if more lending is needed in Europe or elsewhere. The IMF is the world's traditional lender-of-last-resort and has been involved in the bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal.
Insisting that the IMF is a "safe bet" and that no country had ever lost money by lending to the IMF, Lagarde argued that increasing the size of the IMF's resources would help improve confidence in the global financial system. If enough money is in the fund the markets will be reassured and it won't be used, she said, using arguments similar to those that France has made about increasing Europe's own rescue fund.
"It's for that reason that I am here, with my little bag, to collect a bit of money," she said at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alps town of Davos.
Her plea appeared to find a measure of support from ministers of Britain and Japan, sizable IMF shareholders that would be expected to contribute to any money-raising exercise.
George Osborne, Britain's finance minister, said there is "a case for increasing IMF resources and ... demonstrating that the world wants to help together to solve the world's problems," provided the 17 countries that use the euro show the "color of their money."
Osborne said he would be willing to argue in Parliament for a new British contribution, though he may encounter opposition from some members from his own Conservative Party.
Japan's economy minister, Motohisa Furukawa, said his country would help the eurozone via the IMF, too, even though Japan's own debt burden is massive. Unlike Europe's debt-ridden economies, Japan doesn't face sky-high borrowing rates, partly because there's a very liquid domestic market that continues to support the country's bonds.
Europe once again dominated discussions on the final full day of the forum in Davos. Despite some optimism about Europe's latest attempts to stem the crisis, fears remain that turmoil could return.
Whether the markets remain stable could rest for now on if Greece, the epicenter of the crisis, manages to conclude crucial debt-reduction discussions with its private creditors. It's also seeking to placate demands from its European partners and the IMF for deeper reforms.
A failure on either front could force the country, which is now in its fifth year of recession, to default on its debt and leave the euro, potentially triggering another wave of mayhem in financial markets that could hit the global economy hard.
One German official even said Saturday that Greece should temporarily cede sovereignty over tax and spending decisions to a powerful eurozone budget commissioner to secure further bailouts. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because talks on the idea are confidential.
"The fact that we're still, at the start of 2012, talking about Greece again is a sign that this problem has not been dealt with," Britain's Osborne said.
For Donald Tsang, the chief executive of Hong Kong, efforts to deal with the 2-year-old debt crisis have fallen short of what is required. The failure to properly deal with the Greek situation quickly has meant the ultimate cost to Europe has been higher, he said.
"I have never been as frightened (about the global economy) than I am now," he said.
Most economic forecasters predict that the global economy will continue to grow this year, but at a fairly slow rate. The IMF recently reduced its forecasts for global growth in 2012 to 3.3 percent, from the 4 percent pace that the IMF projected in September.
Lagarde sought to encourage some countries that use the euro to boost growth to help shore up the ailing eurozone economy, which is widely expected to sink back into recession, adding that it would be counterproductive if all euro countries cut their budgets aggressively at the same time.
"Some countries have to go full-speed ahead to do this fiscal consolidation, but other countries have space and room," Lagarde said.
Though conceding that there aren't many such countries, Lagarde said it is important that those that have the headroom explore how they can boost growth. She carefully avoided naming any countries, but likely had in mind Germany, Europe's largest economy and a major world exporter. She didn't specify how to boost growth or how one eurozone country could help others grow.
Lagarde said members of the eurozone should continue the drive to tie their economies closer together. On Monday, European leaders gather in Brussels in the hopes of agreeing on a treaty that will force member countries to put deficit limits into their national laws.
Britain's Osborne said eurozone leaders should be praised for the "courage" they have shown over the past few months in enacting austerity and setting in place closer fiscal ties, but said more will have to be done if the single currency is to get on a surer footing.
Fiscal transfers from rich economies to poorer ones will become a "permanent feature" of the eurozone, Osborne predicted.
While politicians and business people were discussing the state of the global economy within the confines of the conference center, protesters questioned the purpose of the event as income inequalities grow worldwide.
Protesters from the Occupy movement that started on Wall Street have camped out in igloos at Davos and were demonstrating in front of City Hall to call attention to the needs of the poor and unemployed.
In a separate protest, three Ukrainian women were arrested when they stripped off their tops ? despite temperatures around freezing ? and tried to climb a fence surrounding the invitation-only gathering of international CEOs and political leaders.
"Crisis! Made in Davos," read one message painted across a protester's torso.
Davos police spokesman Thomas Hobi said the three women were taken to the police station and told they weren't allowed to demonstrate. He said they would be released later in the day.
___
Associated Press writers Frank Jordans and Edith M. Lederer contributed to this report from Davos, Switzerland. Juergen Baetz in Berlin also contributed.
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Ecologists are still arguing about the nature of the factors that determine the species composition of ecological communities. On the one hand, there are those who view interspecies competition as the key element. A second group of influential ecologists postulates that random fluctuations in population structure and rates of species dispersal play the dominant role, particularly in the biological communities found in species-rich tropical rainforests. LMU biologist Professor Susanne Renner, who is Director of the Botanic Garden and herbaria in Munich, and Professor Robert E. Ricklefs of the University of Missouri in St. Louis have now analyzed data from censuses of tree species in rainforests around the globe and also taken advantage of fossil evidence, allowing them to chart diversity in both space and time. Their findings show that variation in species richness among families is very similar in all tropical forests in spite of millions of years of independent evolution and diversification. This correspondence strongly suggests that community structure in rainforests cannot be attributed to the action of stochastic factors. "The high degree of similarity was a surprise even to us," says Renner. "The results can be regarded as a nail in the coffin of the neutral theory." (Science online, 26. January 2012)
In even the best habitats, resources are inevitably limited. This means that species must compete with each other for access to them. And for many ecologists, interspecies competition for resources is the critical factor that determines the composition of the community found in a given environment. According to the principle of competitive exclusion, two species that depend on the same vital resource or ecological niche for their survival cannot stably coexist. The better adapted species will ultimately displace its competitor.
In contrast, what is known as "neutral" theory postulates that stochastic variations in factors such as the rate of dispersal and extinction of species determine the patterns of species abundance in different communities. The American ecologist Stephen Hubbell is the leading proponent of neutral theory, which he developed to explain species-rich communities, such as tropical rainforests.
In these environments it is not uncommon to find hundreds of tree species growing close together. Hubbell contends that this makes it very unlikely that segregation of ecological niches and the principle of competitive exclusion are the overriding forces that determine community structure. His neutral theory has received a great deal of attention in recent years.
LMU biologist Professor Susanne Renner and her American colleague Professor Robert Ricklefs have now challenged the theory with the help of quantitative data. In Central and South American, African and Asian rainforests, the two researchers compared the abundance patterns of different tree species growing in plots of between 25 and 55 hectares. In addition, they compared the relative abundance of different families of trees in a 55- to 65-year-old fossil flora from tropical Colombia with their representation there today.
On the basis of the neutral theory, which assigns a leading role to stochasticity, one would not expect to find much similarity in community structure over such a wide area and such a long span of time. However, the results of the new study show that when families are arranged in order of species richness, the rankings that emerge are very similar on all three continents.
"The correlation is statistically highly significant," says Renner. "So we have uncovered a very substantial degree of agreement between the seven forest plots; even the numbers of trees per unit area that belong to a given taxonomic family are similar in all three regions. Moreover, the families with the highest species diversity in the Colombian rainforests today were already dominant 50 million years ago. The findings are astonishingly clear-cut, and should suffice to rule out the neutral theory." (suwe/PH)
###
Global correlations in tropical tree species richness and abundance reject neutrality
Ricklefs, R. E.; and S. S. Renner
Science Express, 26. January 2012
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen: http://www.uni-muenchen.de
Thanks to Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen for this article.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/117127/Competition_is_at_the_root_of_diversity_in_rainforests
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? White House hopeful Mitt Romney widened his lead over rival Newt Gingrich to 11 percentage points in Florida, according to Reuters/Ipsos online poll results on Saturday, up from 8 points a day earlier, as he cemented his front-runner status in the Republican nomination race.
With just three days remaining before Florida's Republican primary, Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, led Gingrich, a former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, by 43 percent to 32 percent among likely voters in Florida's January 31 primary, the online poll said.
He had led Gingrich by 41 percent to 33 percent in the online tracking poll on Friday.
"The momentum in Florida ... really seems to be moving in Romney's direction," said Chris Jackson, research director for Ipsos Public Affairs.
The poll confirmed that Romney's fortunes are turning around in Florida a week after a stinging setback when Gingrich scored an upset win in South Carolina's primary.
Romney has moved ahead of Gingrich in several Florida polls, after turning in his strongest debate performance yet in the seesawing race for the Republican nomination to oppose Democratic President Barack Obama's bid for re-election in November.
The Reuters/Ipsos survey showed Romney also gained when voters were asked who they would support in a head-to-head contest with Gingrich. Saturday's results showed that 53 percent would support him, versus 45 percent for Gingrich.
In the results released on Friday, Romney had led by just 2 percentage points when voters were asked the same question.
SANTORUM GETTING SOME GINGRICH SUPPORT?
Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum trailed well behind with 16 percent support, but he had gained ground from 13 percent in Friday's results.
"It seems like some people who are leaving Gingrich are moving to the other conservative in the race, Rick Santorum," Jackson said.
Texas Congressman Ron Paul was at 6 percent, up from 5 percent. The small-government libertarian has not been campaigning in Florida.
Romney has subjected Gingrich to a blistering run of attack advertisements in Florida. He has assailed Gingrich for leaving Congress under an ethics cloud in the 1990s and for being a Washington insider and lobbyist in the two decades since.
Gingrich denies he ever worked as a lobbyist, but has yet to find an effective way to parry Romney's attacks.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, capturing many voters after the most recent debate in Jacksonville on Thursday, where Romney was seen as a clear winner.
Florida lets voters cast their ballots early at polling stations or by mail, and 30 percent of the poll respondents said they had done so, compared with 29 percent on Friday.
Romney held a 12-point lead among those who had already voted, and an 11-point lead among those who had not yet voted.
Statistical margins of error are not applicable to online surveys, but this poll of 903 likely voters has a credibility interval of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Saturday's Reuters/Ipsos survey is the second of four daily tracking polls being released ahead of Tuesday's Florida primary.
(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)
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AIKEN, S.C. (AP) ? A 26-year-old man was arrested Saturday after police say he killed his girlfriend in Georgia, and then fatally shot a South Carolina police officer responding to a report of suspicious activity, authorities said.
Police in South Carolina said Joshua Tremaine Jones faces charges of murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime in the death of Aiken police Master Cpl. Sandra Rogers.
The South Carolina law Enforcement Division said officers were responding Saturday morning to a report of suspicious activity involving two cars, and that Rogers was shot after stopping one of the vehicles.
Jones was arrested hours later at a residence in Batesburg.
Saturday evening, a visibly moved Aiken Public Safety director Charles Barranco told reporters that Rogers had died at an area hospital. The Aiken native had spent a nearly 28-year career with the department; she was 49.
In neighboring Georgia, The Augusta Chronicle reported that Jones also faces murder charges in the death of his girlfriend, 21-year-old Cayce Vice. Police found her body in her apartment Saturday morning after she didn't show up for work at a Five Guys restaurant and coworkers became concerned; she had been shot in the head.
Richmond County sheriff's Capt. Scott Peebles told the newspaper (http://bit.ly/yO5JS7 ) that the agency had obtained warrants for Jones for murder and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Peebles confirmed that Vice had sworn out a complaint against Jones for assault earlier this month.
A phone message left late Saturday for the Richmond County Sheriff's Office was not immediately returned.
James Jones, the suspect's father, told reporters that his son had past run-ins with the law and "was going through some mental problems." Jones said his son had run away from home and moved in with Vice. He said his son is from North Augusta and briefly lived in Atlanta.
Jones said that when he returned from work Friday, his son had taken his blue BMW without permission and left. Jones said he and his other son drove around searching but couldn't locate him.
Jones said his heart goes out to the victim' families, and that he's devastated as a father.
"I just went straight to God and said, 'I cannot believe this.' After all that I have taught him, I just never thought that my family would have to deal with something like this," Jones said.
The Aiken public safety department issued a statement Saturday evening praising Rogers as "an invaluable street cop who exemplified the model of a Public Safety Officer," according to WLTX-TV in Columbia, S.C.
"Master Corporal Rogers was a highly skilled investigator and senior patrol officer on her shift," the statement said. "Please keep the Rogers family and Aiken Public Safety in your prayers as once again we deal with this tragic loss."
Last month, hundreds of people gathered to mourn another Aiken police officer killed in the line of duty. Officer Scotty Richardson, 33, died in the early hours of Dec. 21 after being shot in the head during a traffic stop at an apartment complex the night before. Aiken is a city of 30,000 that's located about 20 miles northwest of Augusta.
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By Omar Sacirbey
Religion News Service
(RNS) Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus are accusing Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum of bigotry and ignorance after he said that "equality" is solely a Judeo-Christian concept.
"Where do you think the concept of equality comes from?" Santorum said on the campaign trail last Friday (Jan. 20). "It doesn't come from Islam. It doesn't come from the East and Eastern religions. It comes from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."
Not everyone agreed.
"Sen. Santorum's presidential campaign is now playing to the lowest common denominator of religious bigotry and prejudice by attacking Eastern religions and Islam," said Aseem Shukla of the Hindu American Foundation. Santorum's comments, Shukla added, "show a profound ignorance of the teachings of Dharma spiritual traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism."
Santorum's campaign did not answer repeated requests for comment.
Critics said Santorum -- a devout Catholic -- not only has his politics wrong, but also his history.
For example, in the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture, the god Krishna writes, "I look upon all creatures equally; none are less dear to me and none more dear."
"Indian religions predate Abraham, Jacob and all that Rick Santorum was talking about," said Sulekh Jain of Sugar Land, Texas, chairman of the International School for Jain Studies. "All souls are equal in every way. All feel pain and all feel pleasure. This concept is deeply embedded in the whole philosophy of Jainism."
Sikhs, who also trace their religion to India, were equally upset.
"In Sikhism, all human beings have equal status in the eyes of God. No differentiation in status or ceremonies or rights is made between men and women, rich and poor, foreigner and countryman, high caste or low caste," said Manbeena Kaur, education director for the New York-based Sikh Coalition.
"Sikhs have had this belief in and practice of equality as a spiritual mandate long before the political revolutions that brought freedom to America and much of the Western world."
Buddhism expert Toshie Kurihara argues equality was a foundational teaching of the Buddha.
"The Buddha preached against the caste system and advocated equality of all people. From the beginning, Buddhism espoused the concept of equality of all people," she wrote last year in the Journal of Oriental Studies.
The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations said it would send Santorum a copy of the Quran, Islam's holy text.
"The Quran is the best refutation of Mr. Santorum's inaccurate and offensive remarks," said Ibrahim Hooper, a CAIR spokesman.
The group cited Quran verses and sayings of Islam's Prophet Muhammad that supported equality. For example, Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said, "All people are equal as the teeth of a comb."
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