WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider the lawfulness of an Obama administration effort to regulate air pollution that crosses state lines.
At the request of the administration, the American Lung Association and environmental groups, the justices will review an appeals court ruling that invalidated the Cross-State Air Pollution rule, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency implemented to enforce a provision of the Clean Air Act.
The rule sets limits on nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide in 28 upwind states in the eastern part of the country. Various power companies and 16 states successfully challenged the law in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The appeals court ruled in August 2012 that the EPA had exceeded its authority under the Clean Air Act by requiring states to curb air pollution to a greater extent than the statute requires. The rule was due to go into effect at the beginning of 2012 but the court issued a stay during the litigation.
The appeals court also said the EPA acted prematurely by failing to tell states what emissions reductions they had to achieve to meet their obligations under the statute before going ahead with its own federal plan.
The appeals court ordered that a rule issued by President George W. Bush's administration, which the appeals court ruled in 2008 was insufficient, should remain in effect until the EPA comes up with a revised regulation.
Oral arguments and a decision are due in the court's next term, which starts in October and ends in June 2014.
The two consolidated cases the court agreed to hear are American Lung Association v. EME Homer City Generation, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 12-1183 and EPA v. EME Homer City Generation, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 1182.
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Howard Goller and Will Dunham)
HOMER, Ill. (AP) ? Does concrete float? For the hundreds of civil engineering students at the annual National Concrete Canoe Competition, the answer is "yes."
Teams representing 23 schools vied last week to design, build and race canoes made of concrete. Some vessels were as long as 22 feet and weighed as much as 180 pounds. A wooden canoe of the same size weighs about 40 pounds.
Alicia Welling, manager of the California Polytechnic State University team, says the trick to making concrete float is to mix it with glass bubbles and other lightweight objects.
Welling says the three-day American Society of Civil Engineers event gives students practical experience in finding creative engineering solutions and working as part of a team.
L'?cole de Technologie Sup?rieure, of Montreal, took the title Saturday.
Getting to grips with migrainePublic release date: 23-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Aileen Sheehy press.office@sanger.ac.uk 44-012-234-92368 Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
Researchers identify some of the biological roots of migraine from large-scale genome study
In the largest study of migraines, researchers have found 5 genetic regions that for the first time have been linked to the onset of migraine. This study opens new doors to understanding the cause and biological triggers that underlie migraine attacks.
The team identified 12 genetic regions associated with migraine susceptibility. Eight of these regions were found in or near genes known to play a role in controlling brain circuitries and two of the regions were associated with genes that are responsible for maintaining healthy brain tissue. The regulation of these pathways may be important to the genetic susceptibility of migraines.
Migraine is a debilitating disorder that affects approximately 14% of adults. Migraine has recently been recognized as the seventh disabler in the Global Burden of Disease Survey 2010 and has been estimated to be the most costly neurological disorder. It is an extremely difficult disorder to study because no biomarkers between or during attacks have been identified so far.
"This study has greatly advanced our biological insight about the cause of migraine," says Dr Aarno Palotie, from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. "Migraine and epilepsy are particularly difficult neural conditions to study; between episodes the patient is basically healthy so it's extremely difficult to uncover biochemical clues.
"We have proven that this is the most effective approach to study this type of neurological disorder and understand the biology that lies at the heart of it."
The team uncovered the underlying susceptibilities by comparing the results from 29 different genomic studies, including over 100,000 samples from both migraine patients and control samples.
They found that some of the regions of susceptibility lay close to a network of genes that are sensitive to oxidative stress, a biochemical process that results in the dysfunction of cells.
The team expects many of the genes at genetic regions associated with migraine are interconnected and could potentially be disrupting the internal regulation of tissue and cells in the brain, resulting in some of the symptoms of migraine.
"We would not have made discoveries by studying smaller groups of individuals," says Dr Gisela Terwindt, co-author from Leiden University Medical Centre. "This large scale method of studying over 100,000 samples of healthy and affected people means we can tease out the genes that are important suspects and follow them up in the lab."
The team identified an additional 134 genetic regions that are possibly associated to migraine susceptibility with weaker statistical evidence. Whether these regions underlie migraine susceptibility or not still needs to be elucidated. Other similar studies show that these statistically weaker culprits can play an equal part in the underlying biology of a disease or disorder.
"The molecular mechanisms of migraine are poorly understood. The sequence variants uncovered through this meta-analysis could become a foothold for further studies to better understanding the pathophysiology of migraine" says Dr Kri Stefnsson, President of deCODE genetics.
"This approach is the most efficient way of revealing the underlying biology of these neural disorders," says Dr Mark Daly, from the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. "Effective studies that give us biological or biochemical results and insights are essential if we are to fully get to grips with this debilitating condition.
"Pursuing these studies in even larger samples and with denser maps of biological markers will increase our power to determine the roots and triggers of this disabling disorder."
###
Notes to Editors
Publication Details
Verneri Anttila, Bendik S. Winsvold, Padhraig Gormley et al (2013) 'Genome-wide meta-analysis identifies new susceptibility loci for migraine'
Advanced online publication in Nature Genetics 23 June Doi: 10.1038/ng.2676
Participating centres
A full list of participating centres can be found in the study
Funding
A full list of funding can be found in the study
Selected Websites
The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT was launched in 2004 to empower this generation of creative scientists to transform medicine. The Broad Institute seeks to describe all the molecular components of life and their connections; discover the molecular basis of major human diseases; develop effective new approaches to diagnostics and therapeutics; and disseminate discoveries, tools, methods and data openly to the entire scientific community.
Founded by MIT, Harvard and its affiliated hospitals, and the visionary Los Angeles philanthropists Eli and Edythe L. Broad, the Broad Institute includes faculty, professional staff and students from throughout the MIT and Harvard biomedical research communities and beyond, with collaborations spanning over a hundred private and public institutions in more than 40 countries worldwide. For further information about the Broad Institute, go to http://www.broadinstitute.org.
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is one of the world's leading genome centres. Through its ability to conduct research at scale, it is able to engage in bold and long-term exploratory projects that are designed to influence and empower medical science globally. Institute research findings, generated through its own research programmes and through its leading role in international consortia, are being used to develop new diagnostics and treatments for human disease. http://www.sanger.ac.uk
The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health. We support the brightest minds in biomedical research and the medical humanities. Our breadth of support includes public engagement, education and the application of research to improve health. We are independent of both political and commercial interests. http://www.wellcome.ac.uk
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Getting to grips with migrainePublic release date: 23-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Aileen Sheehy press.office@sanger.ac.uk 44-012-234-92368 Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
Researchers identify some of the biological roots of migraine from large-scale genome study
In the largest study of migraines, researchers have found 5 genetic regions that for the first time have been linked to the onset of migraine. This study opens new doors to understanding the cause and biological triggers that underlie migraine attacks.
The team identified 12 genetic regions associated with migraine susceptibility. Eight of these regions were found in or near genes known to play a role in controlling brain circuitries and two of the regions were associated with genes that are responsible for maintaining healthy brain tissue. The regulation of these pathways may be important to the genetic susceptibility of migraines.
Migraine is a debilitating disorder that affects approximately 14% of adults. Migraine has recently been recognized as the seventh disabler in the Global Burden of Disease Survey 2010 and has been estimated to be the most costly neurological disorder. It is an extremely difficult disorder to study because no biomarkers between or during attacks have been identified so far.
"This study has greatly advanced our biological insight about the cause of migraine," says Dr Aarno Palotie, from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. "Migraine and epilepsy are particularly difficult neural conditions to study; between episodes the patient is basically healthy so it's extremely difficult to uncover biochemical clues.
"We have proven that this is the most effective approach to study this type of neurological disorder and understand the biology that lies at the heart of it."
The team uncovered the underlying susceptibilities by comparing the results from 29 different genomic studies, including over 100,000 samples from both migraine patients and control samples.
They found that some of the regions of susceptibility lay close to a network of genes that are sensitive to oxidative stress, a biochemical process that results in the dysfunction of cells.
The team expects many of the genes at genetic regions associated with migraine are interconnected and could potentially be disrupting the internal regulation of tissue and cells in the brain, resulting in some of the symptoms of migraine.
"We would not have made discoveries by studying smaller groups of individuals," says Dr Gisela Terwindt, co-author from Leiden University Medical Centre. "This large scale method of studying over 100,000 samples of healthy and affected people means we can tease out the genes that are important suspects and follow them up in the lab."
The team identified an additional 134 genetic regions that are possibly associated to migraine susceptibility with weaker statistical evidence. Whether these regions underlie migraine susceptibility or not still needs to be elucidated. Other similar studies show that these statistically weaker culprits can play an equal part in the underlying biology of a disease or disorder.
"The molecular mechanisms of migraine are poorly understood. The sequence variants uncovered through this meta-analysis could become a foothold for further studies to better understanding the pathophysiology of migraine" says Dr Kri Stefnsson, President of deCODE genetics.
"This approach is the most efficient way of revealing the underlying biology of these neural disorders," says Dr Mark Daly, from the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. "Effective studies that give us biological or biochemical results and insights are essential if we are to fully get to grips with this debilitating condition.
"Pursuing these studies in even larger samples and with denser maps of biological markers will increase our power to determine the roots and triggers of this disabling disorder."
###
Notes to Editors
Publication Details
Verneri Anttila, Bendik S. Winsvold, Padhraig Gormley et al (2013) 'Genome-wide meta-analysis identifies new susceptibility loci for migraine'
Advanced online publication in Nature Genetics 23 June Doi: 10.1038/ng.2676
Participating centres
A full list of participating centres can be found in the study
Funding
A full list of funding can be found in the study
Selected Websites
The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT was launched in 2004 to empower this generation of creative scientists to transform medicine. The Broad Institute seeks to describe all the molecular components of life and their connections; discover the molecular basis of major human diseases; develop effective new approaches to diagnostics and therapeutics; and disseminate discoveries, tools, methods and data openly to the entire scientific community.
Founded by MIT, Harvard and its affiliated hospitals, and the visionary Los Angeles philanthropists Eli and Edythe L. Broad, the Broad Institute includes faculty, professional staff and students from throughout the MIT and Harvard biomedical research communities and beyond, with collaborations spanning over a hundred private and public institutions in more than 40 countries worldwide. For further information about the Broad Institute, go to http://www.broadinstitute.org.
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is one of the world's leading genome centres. Through its ability to conduct research at scale, it is able to engage in bold and long-term exploratory projects that are designed to influence and empower medical science globally. Institute research findings, generated through its own research programmes and through its leading role in international consortia, are being used to develop new diagnostics and treatments for human disease. http://www.sanger.ac.uk
The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health. We support the brightest minds in biomedical research and the medical humanities. Our breadth of support includes public engagement, education and the application of research to improve health. We are independent of both political and commercial interests. http://www.wellcome.ac.uk
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
DEL NORTE, Colo. (AP) ? A colossal wildfire near a popular summer retreat in southern Colorado continues to be driven by winds and fueled by dead trees in a drought-stricken area, authorities said Sunday.
The weather has prevented fire crews from making progress on the blaze, which grew overnight to 108 square miles, up from 100 on Saturday. The speed with which the fire has spread is exceptional: It was just below 50 square miles Friday evening.
No structures have been lost in the fire, and no injuries have been reported.
It is doubtful fire crews could establish any containment lines until there's a break in the weather, possibly Tuesday, officials said. They remained optimistic they can protect the town, however.
As of Sunday, officials firefighters remained focused on protecting South Fork, the Wolf Creek ski area and homes along Highway 149.
Crews hoped to get aircraft up to drop water over the fire before afternoon winds of 30 to 40 miles an hour returned Sunday. Pete Blume, a commander with the Rocky Mountain Type 1 Incident Command Team, said the wildfire is the worst ever known to hit the Rio Grande National Forest.
"It's not typical to have these kinds of fires here," said Blume. "But beetle kill and drought is also not the norm."
Firefighters are hoping for a break in the high winds as well as the anticipated July monsoons to help them fight back the flames. Until then, Blume said, "with that much beetle kill and drought we could have every resource in the country here and still not put in a containment line."
Still, fire officials believe portions of the blaze will likely burn all summer in forested, nonresidential areas, with full extinguishment probably months away.
The lightning-sparked blaze started June 5, but its rapid advance Friday prompted the evacuation of hundreds of visitors and the town's 400 permanent residents.
Residents and tourists were settling in for a long wait before they can return to their homes, cabins and RV parks.
"They just said they had no idea how long it would be before we could back in South Fork," said Mike Duffy, who owns the South Fork Lodge.
Duffy said he and his wife, Mary, were able to get their personal possessions before fleeing fast-advancing flames that officials initially feared would overtake the town. But with the fire still within three miles of South Fork, they are worried about the long-term impact of a prolong evacuation and news reports about the fire raging around the tourism-dependent town.
Summer visitors include many retirees from Texas and Oklahoma who come to the mountains to flee the heat.
South Fork Mayor Kenneth Brooke estimates that between 1,000 to 1,500 people had to flee, including the summer visitors and permanent residents.
More than 600 firefighters were battling the blaze, and more are coming every day. They also focused on newest arm of the fire as it crept through beetle kill toward the historic mining town of Creede, the last silver boom town in Colorado before the industry went bust in the late 1800s.
Elsewhere in Colorado, about a dozen fires also continued to burn. Firefighters were making progress on a 19-square-mile wildfire near Walsenburg in southern Colorado. The fire was 10 percent contained.
And a wildfire in foothills about 30 miles southwest of Denver was expected to be fully contained Sunday evening. That fire burned 511 acres and forced 100 people to leave their homes.
There have been murmurs of Facebook building a mobile reading app; tonight, that talk is getting a little louder. The Wall Street Journal claims that the social network has spent the past year working on a dedicated story browser, codenamed Reader, that would curate articles in a Flipboard-like interface. While most other details of the rumored project aren't available, it's reportedly important enough that Mark Zuckerberg is closely involved. The company isn't commenting on its plans, but there's reason to believe that Reader is more than just idle speculation: Facebook recently added hashtag support as a "first step" toward helping users track topics. Accordingly, the company's Graph API includes some unused RSS code that could prove relevant for browsing story feeds. There's no guarantee that we'll see the app soon, if at all. When mobile is becoming the cornerstone of Facebook's business, however, we wouldn't completely rule out Reader's existence.
DEL NORTE, Colo. (AP) ? A wildfire threatening a tourist region in southwestern Colorado mushroomed to about 100 square miles Saturday, but officials said that they remained optimistic they could protect the town of South Fork.
The rapid advance of the erratic blaze prompted the evacuation of hundreds of summer visitors and the town's 400 permanent residents Friday, and it could be days before people are allowed back into their homes, cabins and RV parks, fire crew spokeswoman Laura McConnell said. South Fork Mayor Kenneth Brooke estimated that 1,000 to 1,500 people were forced to flee.
Saturday night, officials provided an estimate of the size of the wildfire burning through a rugged and remote mountainous region, but said they wouldn't have a better idea of its size until infrared imaging is done overnight.
Some business owners were being allowed back into South Fork during the day Saturday to tie up issues left unattended in the rush to leave.
Officials, meanwhile, closely monitored an arm of the blaze moving toward the neighboring town of Creede.
"We were very, very lucky," said Rio Grande County Commissioner Carla Shriver. "We got a free pass yesterday."
McConnell said no structures had been lost and the fire was still about 5 miles from the town.
The blaze had been fueled by dry, hot, windy weather and a stand of dead trees, killed by a beetle infestation. The fire's spread had slowed for a while Saturday morning after the flames hit a healthy section of forest. Fire crews remained alert as more hot, dry and windy weather was forecast.
The wildfire, a complex of three blazes, remains a danger, officials said.
"The fire is very unpredictable," Shriver told evacuees at Del Norte High School, east of the fire. "They are saying they haven't quite seen one like this in years. There is so much fuel up there."
Winds picked up Saturday afternoon and a heavy black again permeated the air in Del Norte, where a Red Cross shelter was set up for evacuees. Anticipating the mandatory South Fork evacuation would last for days, the Red Cross promised more supplies and portable showers.
Ralph and Leilani Harden of Victoria, Texas, spend summers in South Fork.
"We jumped out of the South Texas hot box into the Colorado frying pan," Ralph Harden said.
Bob and Sherry Mason bought the Wolf Creek Ski Lodge on the Western Edge of South Fork about a year and a half ago.
"This (wildfire) was in our contingency plan being in Colorado, but we didn't expect it this soon," Bob Mason said.
New fire crews, meanwhile, descended from other areas to join more than 32 fire engines stationed around South Fork, with hoses and tankers at the ready. Firefighters also worked to move potential fuel, such as lawn furniture, propane tanks and wood piles, away from homes and buildings.
The town of Creede's 300 residents were under voluntary evacuation orders as officials feared the fire could reach the roads leading out of town.
The heavy black smoke, broken up only by an orange glow over the outlines of the San Juan mountains, was so thick Friday that the plume helped keep an 18-square-mile wildfire burning 100 miles to the east near Walsenburg from spreading as fast as it would have otherwise.
Susan Valente, an on-site spokeswoman for the fire near Walsenburg, said the shade helped keep the forest from drying out in the hot afternoon sun. Residents from 300 homes remain evacuated while in the city of Walsenburg and the town of Aguilar remain on pre-evacuation notice, meaning residents must be ready to flee at a moment's notice.
"Fire conditions are prime with the combination of fuels, heat, winds and low humidity," fire information officer Mike Stearly of the Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center, "It's expected to be like this through next Tuesday."
There are 12 wildfires burning in Colorado that have scorched 133 square miles, which includes the Black Forest fire that destroyed 511 homes north of Colorado Springs and is the most destructive in Colorado history.
The night sky has been illuminated by what appears to be a much bigger and brighter Moon.
The so-called "supermoon" occurs when the Moon reaches its closest point to earth, known as a perigee full moon.
The effect makes the Moon seem 14% bigger and 30% brighter than when it is furthest from the planet.
Skywatchers who miss the phenomenon this weekend because of cloudy skies will have to wait until August 2014 for the next one.
Space expert Heather Couper said "supermoons" were the result of coincidence.
"The Moon goes round in an oval orbit so it can come very close to us, and if that coincides with a full moon, then it can look absolutely enormous," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
She explained that when the Moon was high in the sky, it looked normal.
But as it got closer to the horizon, a "kind of optical illusion" occurred where it looked bigger when compared with trees or houses, she said.
She suggested it might be possible to dispel the illusion by turning away from the Moon, bending over and looking at the sky from between your legs.
Writing in Sky and Telescope about the "myth of the supermoon", Shari Balouchi said much of what we called the supermoon was just our eyes playing tricks on us.
"The supermoon might look bigger than normal if you see it in the evening when the Moon's just rising, but the real size difference isn't big enough to notice."
BBC Weather's Darren Bett said he was confident most people in the UK would have been able to see the Moon at some point on Saturday night, even if only fleetingly.
Sunday night should be better, he added, with people in south-west England and south Wales likely to have the clearest views of the Moon.
However Marek Kukula, public astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, said people should not expect the supermoon to look that much bigger than normal.
"It won't fill the sky," he said.
"It's at its most impressive when the Moon is close to the horizon, ie when it's rising or setting - people will need to check online for rising and setting times for their locality."
Dr Kukula said the US Naval Observatory and HM Nautical Almanac Office had online tools for checking the moon's rising and setting times.
Scientists have dismissed the idea that the perigee can cause strange behaviour, like lycanthropy or natural disasters.
Dr Couper said the tides this weekend would be unaffected.
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Public release date: 23-Jun-2013
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