Super-Earth in 6-Planet System May Have Oceans, Life

A newly discovered exoplanet joins the small but growing list of worlds other than our own that may host life.

The exoplanet is a super-Earth, having about seven times the mass of our home planet, but orbits its parent star at roughly the same distance as Earth does from the sun. The star, HD 40307, is located about 42 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pictor. It’s what’s known as an orange dwarf star, making it somewhat smaller and dimmer than our sun, but not by much.

Three exoplanets were discovered around HD 40307 in 2008, but a team of European astronomers has reanalyzed data from the star and found the system contains three more worlds. This makes it look much more like our own solar system, with its eight planets.

The farthest planet in the HD 40307 system orbits with a period of about 200 days, a little more than half as long as our year, and is located about 56 million miles from its parent star. (In comparison, Earth is 93 million miles from the sun.) This puts it right smack in the star’s habitable zone — the area around a star where liquid water might remain on the surface.

This super-Earth receives about two-thirds the amount of sunlight that our planet gets. It’s a bit on the cold side, but still warm enough to have oceans and wet weather like on Earth. While scientists can’t confirm that water exists on the planet, follow-up observations may give them more information.

About five other confirmed exoplanets have been discovered orbiting within a habitable zone but many of them are quite close to their parent star. This likely makes them suffer from a phenomenon known as tidal locking, where gravitational forces cause one side of the planet to always face the star. The same phenomenon is the reason why we always see the same face of the moon.

With exoplanets, this means that one half of the planet is probably roasting under the heat of its star while the other side is frozen in perpetual night. Because the new exoplanet around HD 40307 is far enough away from its star, it has a day/night cycle much like Earth’s and therefore is probably much more conducive to life.

A paper about this discovery will be published in an upcoming issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Video: Guillem Anglada-Escude at the University of Gottingen

Image: J. Pinfield, for the RoPACS network at the University of Hertfordshire

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UK PM warns of witch-hunt against gays in pedophile scandal

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister David Cameron warned on Thursday that speculation about the identity of an unidentified member of his ruling Conservative party accused of sexually abusing children could turn into a witch-hunt against gay people.

Cameron, who leads a troubled two-party coalition, ordered an investigation this week after a victim of child sexual abuse in Wales said a prominent Conservative political figure had abused him during the 1970s.

The claims, which follow the unmasking of late BBC star presenter Jimmy Savile as one of Britain’s most prolific sex offenders, have stoked concern that a powerful pedophile ring may have operated in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s.

“I have heard all sorts of names bandied around and what then tends to happen is of course that everyone then sits around and speculates about people, some of whom are alive, some of whom are dead,” Cameron said during an ITV television interview.

“It is very important that anyone who has got any information about any pedophile no matter how high up in the country go to the police,” he said.

Britain’s interior minister warned lawmakers this week that if they named suspected child abusers in parliament they risked jeopardizing future trials.

MPs benefit from “parliamentary privilege” – meaning they can speak inside parliament freely without fear of legal action on a host of legally sensitive issues that might otherwise attract lawsuits.

Reports of child abuse have provoked fevered speculation on the Internet about the identity of the Conservative figure from the era of Margaret Thatcher, prime minister from 1979 to 1990.

When the ITV interviewer passed Cameron a piece of paper with the names of people identified on the Internet as being alleged child abusers, Cameron said:

“There is a danger if we are not careful that this could turn into a sort of witch-hunt particularly against people who are gay.”

“I am worried about the sort of thing you are doing right now – giving me a list of names you have taken off the Internet,” Cameron said.

The BBC aired a program last week in which Steven Messham, one of hundreds of victims of sexual abuse at children’s care homes in Wales over two decades, said he had been sexually abused by a prominent Conservative political figure.

However, the BBC reporter said he could not name the figure because there was “simply not enough evidence to name names”.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

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Well: The Presidential Health Quiz

Whether it’s George Washington’s teeth or Bill Clinton’s former hamburger habit, Americans have always been fascinated by the health of the president and presidential candidates.

With help from the Web site DoctorZebra, which has compiled an exhaustive list of the medical history of American presidents, we’ve created an Election Day quiz to test your knowledge of presidential fitness and health.

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DealBook: On Wall Street, Time to Mend Fences With Obama

Del Frisco’s, an expensive steakhouse with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Boston harbor, was a festive scene on Tuesday evening. The hedge fund billionaires Steven A. Cohen, Paul Singer and Daniel Loeb were among the titans of finance there dining among the gray velvet banquettes before heading several blocks away to what they hoped would be a victory party for their presidential candidate, Mitt Romney.

The next morning was a cold, sobering one for these executives.

Few industries have made such a one-sided bet as Wall Street did in opposing President Obama and supporting his Republican rival. The top five sources of contributions to Mr. Romney, a former top private equity executive, were big banks like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Wealthy financiers — led by hedge fund investors — were the biggest group of givers to the main “super PAC” backing Mr. Romney, providing almost $33 million, and gave generously to outside groups in races around the country.

On Wednesday, Mr. Loeb, who had supported Mr. Obama in 2008, was sanguine. “You win some, you lose some,” he said in an interview. “We can all disagree. I have friends and we have spirited discussions. Sure, I am not getting invited to the White House anytime soon, but as citizens of the country we are all friendly.”

Wall Street, however, now has to come to terms with an administration it has vilified. What Washington does next will be critically important for the industry, as regulatory agencies work to put their final stamp on financial regulations and as tax increases and spending cuts are set to take effect in the new year unless a deal to avert them is reached. To not have a friend in the White House at this time is one thing, but to have an enemy is quite another.

“Wall Street is now going to have to figure out how to make this relationship work,” said Glenn Schorr, an analyst who follows the big banks for the investment bank Nomura. “It’s not impossible, but it’s not the starting point they had hoped for.”

Traditionally, the financial industry has tended to support Republican candidates, but, being pragmatic about power, has also donated to Democrats. That script got a rewrite in 2008, when many on Wall Street supported Mr. Obama as an intelligent leader for a country reeling from the financial crisis. Goldman employees were the leading source of campaign donations for Mr. Obama, who reaped far more contributions — roughly $16 million — from Wall Street than did his opponent, John McCain.

The love affair between Wall Street and Mr. Obama soured soon after he took office and championed an overhaul in financial regulations that became the Dodd-Frank Act.

Some financial executives complained that in meetings with the president, they found him uninterested and disengaged, while others on Wall Street never forgave Mr. Obama for calling them “fat cats.”

The disillusionment with the president spawned reams of critical commentary from Wall Street executives.

“So long as our leaders tell us that we must trust them to regulate and redistribute our way back to prosperity, we will not break out of this economic quagmire,” Mr. Loeb wrote in one letter to his investors.

The rhetoric at times became extreme, like the time Steven A. Schwarzman, co-founder of the private equity firm Blackstone Group, compared a tax proposal to “when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” (Mr. Schwarzman later apologized for the remark.)

Mr. Loeb was not alone in switching allegiances in the recent presidential race. Hedge fund executives like Leon Cooperman who had supported Mr. Obama in 2008 were big backers of Mr. Romney in 2012. And Wall Street chieftains like Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, who have publicly been Democrats in the past, kept a low profile during this election. But their firms’ employees gave money to Mr. Romney in waves.

Starting over with the Obama White House will not be easy. One senior Wall Street lawyer who spoke on condition of anonymity said Wall Street “made a bad mistake” in pushing so hard for Mr. Romney. “They are going to pay a price,” he said. “It will soften over time, but there will be a price.”

Mr. Obama is not without supporters on Wall Street. Prominent executives like Hamilton James of Blackstone, and Robert Wolf, a former top banker at UBS, were in Chicago on Tuesday night, celebrating with the president.

“What we learned is the people on Wall Street have one vote just like everyone else,” Mr. Wolf said. Still, while the support Wall Street gave Mr. Romney is undeniable, Mr. Wolf said, “Mr. Obama wants a healthy private sector, and that includes Wall Street.

“If you look at fiscal reform, infrastructure, immigration and education, they are all bipartisan issues and are more aligned than some people make it seem.”

Reshma Saujani, a former hedge fund lawyer who was among Mr. Obama’s top bundlers this year and is planning to run for city office next year, agreed.

“Most people in the financial services sector are social liberals who support gay marriage and believe in a woman’s right to choose, so I think many of them will swing back to Democrats in the future,” she said.

---

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 8, 2012

An earlier version of this article misidentified Reshma Saujani as a male.

A version of this article appeared in print on 11/08/2012, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: On Wall Street, Time to Mend Fences With Obama.

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Former Penn State president Graham Spanier arraigned; out on bail

Graham Spanier, former president of Penn State University, was arraigned and released on bail Wednesday on charges that he had hid allegations that former football coach Jerry Sandusky had sexually abused boys.

Spanier, 64, was charged last week with perjury, obstruction, endangering the welfare of children, failure to properly report suspected abuse and conspiracy in connection with the Sandusky scandal. Two  former university officials,  athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz, face the same charges.

They are accused of acting together and avoiding taking any action on reports that Sandusky had molested boys, who were clients of a charity that Sandusky had founded. The sexual abuse took place in Sandusky’s home and in the showers at the football training facility at Penn State, among other venues.

Sandusky, 68, is in prison after he was convicted of 45 counts of abusing 10 boys over 15 years. He was sentenced to minimum of 30 years in prison, effectively a life sentence. Sandusky is appealing the case.

At his appearance, Spanier’s bail was set at $125,000. He signed paperwork and was released. He did not enter a plea.

When the charges were announced, Spanier, through his attorneys, insisted he was innocent and was being framed for political reasons. In a statement last week, Spanier's lawyers accused Gov. Tom Corbett, who was attorney general when the Sandusky investigation began, of orchestrating the charges against Spanier to divert attention from why it took prosecutors three years to bring charges against the former football coach.

On Wednesday, defense attorney Elizabeth Ainslie repeated that position, telling reporters that Spanier was “not guilty, absolutely.”

 “This wasn't a conspiracy of silence,” she said. “That is ridiculous.”

Spanier was president of the school for 16 years until he was forced out along with head football coach Joe Paterno after Sandusky was arrested last November. Spanier has continued on the university faculty.

Curley and Schultz were arraigned last week. Both have insisted that they are not guilty and are scheduled for trial on some of the charges in January.

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HoloHands Lets Users Control Laser Tweezers With a Microsoft Kinect

Scientists and hackers continue to show that Microsoft’s Kinect platform is a boundless source of both creative and useful applications. The latest, a project called HoloHands, seems like something straight out of Minority Report.

David McGloin and his team at Scotland’s University of Dundee perform research in optical manipulation, a field that involves using highly focused laser beams to transport, trap, or rotate small particles, all the way down to the cellular level. These “laser tweezers” were first developed in the ’70s and ’80s and are now used in a number of laboratory applications.

Unfortunately, these laser tweezers are difficult to wield. But McGloin’s team has come up with a new solution: using Windows 7 and the Kinect for full-body control over these tiny particles. They can be picked up or pushed using body, hand and arm movements. The operator can see the particles on a computer display. Previously, researchers have used mice, trackpads, and touch controls like the iPad to try to control the laser tweezers.

In the future, the HoloHands could be a useful teaching aid. There could even be games for the system.

The setup does suffer a few problems, though, specifically the lag users may experience with normal Kinect use, and the fact that manipulating particles for long periods of time can be tiring. For now, there’s also no way to make precise, quantitative movements, which can make things challenging when you’re talking about manipulating particles just a few micrometers in diameter. There’s also no way to feel resistance while pushing an object, so that prevents it from being applied to more serious research.

You can catch a video of the system in action below.

via Technology Review

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“Dad’s Army” star Clive Dunn dies aged 92

LONDON (Reuters) – British actor Clive Dunn, best known as a bumbling old butcher in the popular World War Two sitcom “Dad’s Army”, has died, his agent said on Wednesday.

Dunn passed away on Tuesday, Peter Charlesworth said, adding that he believed the actor died in Portugal where he has lived for many years. He was 92.

As Lance-Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army – a hit television series in the 1960s and 1970s about a group of local volunteer members of the Home Guard – Dunn was famous for catchphrases such as “Don’t panic!” and “They don’t like it up ‘em.”

He also had a No. 1 hit song with “Grandad” in 1971, which he performed several times on TV music show “Top of the Pops”.

Dunn was born in London in 1920 and enrolled in an acting academy after leaving school.

He played several small roles in films in the 1930s before serving in the army in World War Two, ending up in prisoner-of-war and labor camps for four years.

After the war he worked in music halls before enjoying success as Jones in Dad’s Army.

Underlining his ability to play characters far older than his real age, he followed Dad’s Army with a five-year run in children’s comedy series “Grandad” as an elderly caretaker.

According to the BBC, he is survived by his wife Priscilla Morgan and two daughters, Jessica and Polly.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

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The Doctor’s World: Doctors Chased Clues to Identify Meningitis Outbreak

The e-mail Dr. Marion A. Kainer received on Sept. 18 suggested an investigation of a case of fungal meningitis and stroke in a man whose immune system was normal and whose only risk for the infection was a spinal injection of a steroid.

“Alarm bells went off” because of its rarity, Dr. Kainer, an epidemiologist at the Tennessee health department, said in an interview.

She immediately began what became a national investigation that has now identified 409 cases, including 30 deaths, from a fungus so unusual that it is not in medical textbooks. The fungus was transmitted through injections of a contaminated steroid drug prepared by the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass.

Dr. Kainer’s investigation led Tennessee to take extraordinary measures to track down 1,009 people at risk of the fungal infection. The state is credited as the driving force in discovering one of the most shocking outbreaks in the annals of American medicine.

The discovery came in large part because of Dr. Kainer’s diligence and expertise in infectious diseases, neurology and public health. It came, too, from the clinical acumen of Dr. April C. Pettit, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University who sent the e-mail to the health department.

The still-evolving findings also illustrate the strengths of the government’s response to a public health crisis.

Dr. Kainer, like other physicians in hospitals and clinics, often detect the initial cases. But usually only health departments and other government agencies have the ability and authority to track down additional cases to document disease outbreaks and warn those at risk. It is work that private groups seldom can do, in part for lack of funds and the authority to examine patient records.

The national surveillance system for outbreaks of infectious and other communicable diseases relies on reports that physicians are required to send to local and state health departments and that are then relayed to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At the federal agency in Atlanta, epidemiologists identify outbreaks by studying trends.

At the same time, the fungal meningitis cases have exposed weaknesses in government. A dispute surrounds the Food and Drug Administration’s failure to act earlier to prevent the outbreak. The federal agency has been attacked for failing to use its authority to protect the public from the dangerous practice of large-scale drug compounding that led to the outbreak. But the agency, whose top officials have remained relatively silent, says Congress has not given it the clear authority needed to have taken action.

Dr. Kainer’s investigation progressed in steps similar to peeling the layers of an onion.

Within two days of receiving Dr. Pettit’s e-mail, Dr. Kainer learned that the steroid had come from the New England Compounding Center.

“That got me very concerned,” Dr. Kainer said, because she had taken part in epidemiologic investigations involving different infections linked to compounding centers. Inquiries determined that the New England center had received no reports of infections linked to its steroid, and the C.D.C. knew of no additional recent cases of fungal meningitis and stroke.

An inspection by Dr. Kainer’s staff and from the clinic that administered the injection showed no obvious source of local fungal contamination, like recent construction or water leaks.

Then Dr. Kainer learned of three additional suspect cases of meningitis and stroke linked to the clinic. But fungi had not yet been identified in those patients’ spinal fluid. Also, her team could find no correlations in factors like time of day or week when the patients received the injections. One patient had a particular kind of stroke known as posterior circulation, which attracted Dr. Kainer’s attention because she had learned in neurology that fungal infections can cause such strokes.

“What didn’t make sense was that two patients appeared to be improving without antifungal treatment, and that didn’t fit the clinical picture,” Dr. Kainer said.

So she and her team took additional steps. One was to issue a statewide alert to identify similar cases; none were reported.

“We tell doctors and health workers we would rather have 15 false alarms than miss one case,” Dr. Kainer said.

Then she learned that the two patients who had been improving had taken a turn for the worse.

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Fiscal Impasse and Europe Woes Weigh on Markets

Henny Ray Abrams/Associated Press

A trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday. A day after the election, the outlook of continued divided government in Washington and little prospect for compromise unnerved traders.

Business leaders and investors on Wall Street reacted nervously to President Obama’s re-election Wednesday, as the focus shifted quickly from electoral politics to the looming fiscal uncertainty in Washington. A gloomy economic outlook in Europe also prompted selling in markets worldwide.

Stocks were sharply lower in afternoon trading in New York, with both the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and the Dow Jones industrial average down 2.2 percent, as European shares sank and Asian stocks were mixed. While many executives on Wall Street and in other industries favored Mitt Romney, many had already factored in the likelihood of Mr. Obama winning a second term.

Still, continued divided government in Washington and little prospect for compromise unnerved traders.

“The bottom line is that this looks like a status quo election,” said Dean Maki, chief United States economist at Barclays. “The problem with that is that it doesn’t resolve some of the main sources of uncertainty that are hanging over the economy.”

Companies in some sectors, like hospitals and technology, could see a short-term pop, said Tobias Levkovich, chief United States equity strategist with Citi. Other areas, like financial services as well as coal and mining, could be hurt as investors contemplate a tougher regulatory environment.

Shares of Alpha Natural Resources, a coal giant, were down 11.8 percent, while Arch Coal was off 11 percent. But HCA Holdings, a hospital operator, was up 8 percent, to $33.39 a share. As a result of Mr. Obama’s victory, Goldman Sachs said it upgraded its rating on HCA to buy from neutral, and raised its price target to $39 from $31. It also raised price targets for Tenet Healthcare and Community Health Systems, although both are still rated neutral.

Goldman downgraded shares of Humana, a leading managed care company, to sell, and its shares fell 9.9 percent. Goldman warned that Humana and other managed care providers could be hurt as health care reform moves forward, especially new rules for health insurers that become effective in 2014.

Mr. Levkovich predicted that the market would remain volatile between now and mid-January. If Congress and the president cannot come up with a plan to cut the deficit, hundreds of billions in Bush-era tax cuts are set to expire at the beginning of 2013 while automatic spending cuts will sharply cut the defense budget and other programs.

Known as the fiscal cliff, this simultaneous combination of dramatic reductions in government spending and tax increases could push the economy into recession in 2013, economists fear.

But it was not just the election results driving shares lower — there was more gloomy economic news out of Europe.

The European Union will experience only a very weak economic recovery during 2013 while unemployment will remain at “very high” levels, according to a set of forecasts issued Wednesday by the European Commission.

This year, gross domestic product will shrink by 0.3 percent for the 27 members of the union as a whole and by 0.4 percent for the 17 European Union countries that use the euro, the commission predicted. Growth in 2013 will be a meager 0.4 percent across the union and only 0.1 percent in the euro area, it said.

Not only is that level of growth far slower than even the tepid pace of the recovery in the United States, it also makes it more difficult for debt-burdened European economies to get their financial house in order. As markets neared the close in Europe, the Euro Stoxx 50 index, a barometer of euro zone blue chips, fell 2.2 percent, while the FTSE 100 index in London was 1.5 percent lower.

The S.&P./ASX 200 in Australia closed up 0.7 percent, as did the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong. The Nikkei 225 stock average in Japan ended trading little changed.

“There’s a huge question mark hanging over what happens in the next few weeks,” said Aric Newhouse, senior vice-president of policy and government relations at the National Association of Manufacturers. “The fiscal cliff is the 800-pound gorilla out there.”

“We can’t wait,” he said. “We think the idea of going over the cliff has to be taken off the table. We’ve got to get to the middle ground.”

For all the anticipation, some observers said the election still left plenty of unanswered questions.

“While we have clarity on the players now, we don’t have any more clarity on what will happen in terms of the fiscal cliff,” Mr. Maki said. “We still have a divided government and they haven’t been able to agree on what to do.”

If the full package of tax increases and spending cuts go into effect, that would equal a $650 billion blow to the economy, Mr. Maki said, equivalent to 4 percent of the gross domestic product.

Mr. Maki envisions a partial compromise, with $200 billion in tax increases and spending cuts. Partly because of that, he estimates, the annual rate of economic growth will dip to 1.5 percent in the first quarter of 2013 from 2.5 percent in the fourth quarter. He predicted that if the full fiscal cliff were to hit, the economy would contract in the first half of 2013.

James Kanter contributed reporting.

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State agency says PG&E seismic surveys would hurt marine mammals

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. was scrambling Monday to salvage plans to conduct seismic surveys using sonic blasts off the coast near the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant after a state regulatory agency staff report concluded it would disturb more than 7,000 marine mammals.

The California Coastal Commission staff, in a report released Friday, recommended that the commission deny PG&E's application for a coastal development permit needed to begin the project. The staff cited "significant and unavoidable impacts to marine resources," including threatened and endangered whales, porpoises and sea otters.

The commission plans to vote Nov. 14 on PG&E's request to survey 130 square miles off the coast of Morro Bay in San Luis Obispo County with acoustic pulses capable of penetrating as much as nine miles into the seafloor.

The utility believes the seismic survey is the best way to define the amount of movement that faults in the area are capable of producing, and to develop emergency preparedness plans.

Analysis of the sonic reflections would provide detailed 3-D images of the geometry, relationships and ground motions of several fault zones near the plant, which generates enough energy to meet the needs of more than 3 million residents of Northern and Central California.

"PG&E is committed to conducting this proposed seismic research safely and in an environmentally responsible manner," spokesman Blair Jones said. The utility's plan was developed carefully in consultation with state and federal agencies, he said.

Coastal Commission staff, however, said it could not determine whether alternative, less harmful technologies are available for the survey — or whether it is needed at all.

"The staff is saying that the potential impacts of this project are so severe that a seismic survey should be the last alternative," said Alison Dettmer, the commission's deputy director of ocean resources. "Theoretically, they could come back later and apply again."

The staff's major concerns are the survey's potential effects on the basic biological functions of sea creatures in marine sanctuaries, and on a population of about 2,000 harbor porpoises that reside in and around scenic Morro Bay.

Harbor porpoises are acutely sensitive to man-made sounds. It is the species that would be most vulnerable to hearing loss and injury during the survey, which calls for a 235-foot vessel to tow a quarter-mile-wide array of submerged 250-decibel "air cannons" that would discharge every 15 seconds, night and day, for 17 days.

The entire population of harbor porpoises in Morro Bay would experience multiple disturbances and possibly be forced to move far outside their normal foraging grounds, which could threaten their survival, according to the staff report.

Overall, "more than 7,000 individual marine mammals from 17 species would be exposed to sound levels sufficient to result in some level of disturbance and behavioral disruption," the report said. In addition, the project would "result in mortality to about 5 million fish and invertebrate larvae in the project area and an unknown number of fish eggs."

PG&E said it plans to station observers certified in monitoring protected species on vessels and in airplanes to check for injured animals and carcasses. The utility said it would halt the testing if marine mammals, which rely on communication and sensing of their environment for a variety of critical life functions, venture close to the operation.

But commission staffers said that potentially high seas, windy conditions and poor night visibility "would cause these measures to be ineffective much of the time."

Michael Jasny, director of the Natural Resources Defense Counsel's marine mammal protection project, said the staff report "reflects a thorough understanding of the issues involved."

"Fundamentally, this project has not been justified along the coast where the impacts would be significant," Jasny said. "If you are going to impact the coast, you better make sure it is essential to the public welfare and there is no safer way to do it."

louis.sahagun@latimes.com

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