Metabolic fingerprinting: Using proteomics to identify proteins in gymnosperm pollination drops

Apr. 10, 2013 ? Proteins are vital parts of living organisms, performing a variety of essential functions such as DNA replication, catabolizing reactions, and responding to stimuli. The complete set of proteins expressed in an organism at a given time, under defined conditions, is known as the proteome. While the genome of an organism remains relatively stable, the proteome is remarkably dynamic, varying from cell to cell and even within a single cell and changing rapidly in response to developmental and environmental cues.

Proteomics is a powerful technique for examining the structure and function of the proteome. For some organisms, proteomics can uncover the relationship between DNA, RNA, and the production of proteins -- enabling the comparison of the genome to the proteome. For those organisms that have not yet been sequenced, proteomics facilitates the discovery and identification of proteins. In a new study published in the April issue of Applications in Plant Sciences, graduate student Natalie Prior and her colleagues demonstrate the suitability of proteomics in determining the composition of gymnosperm pollination drops.

"The biggest limitation in what we are doing is that there is no published gymnosperm genome," says Prior. "Most of the work on gymnosperms has been anatomical, histological, or morphological. The biochemical perspective is really lacking."

Mediating signaling between the pollen and the ovule, one role of the pollination drop is to provide a germination medium, which can be species specific. Additionally, in some species, anti-microbial proteins have been identified, suggesting that pollination drops provide protection in addition to acting as a landing spot for pollen grains.

"The proteins we are finding are really starting points for other research," says Prior. "We can identify these proteins, but there is a lot more research that can be done once we know what proteins are there."

Identification of the proteins found in pollination drops provides a metabolic fingerprint and thereby informs understanding of seed plant evolution. Comparing the proteomes of different species allows for identification of proteins, elucidating pollen-ovule interactions in gymnosperms.

"We are using proteomics to examine the biological relevance of the proteins that the pollen grain is exposed to in the drop," comments Prior. "It's fascinating to know if any of those proteins are consistent among groups of gymnosperms and what we can learn from that."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Journal of Botany, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Natalie Prior, Stefan A. Little, Cary Pirone, Julia E. Gill, Derek Smith, Jun Han, Darryl Hardie, Stephen J. B. O'Leary, Rebecca E. Wagner, Tyra Cross, Andrea Coulter, Christoph Borchers, Robert W. Olafson, Patrick von Aderkas. Application of Proteomics to the Study of Pollination Drops. Applications in Plant Sciences, 2013; 1 (4): 1300008 DOI: 10.3732/apps.1300008

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/-sCZFEGftUE/130410141545.htm

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How to Disable Chrome?s Annoying New Right-Click Menu Style

If you've updated Chrome recently, you may have noticed that context menus?the ones you see when you right-click anything?have changed. Instead of being just like any other right-click menu, they're now stylized with white backgrounds and smaller text in the center. Personally, I hate them. If you hate them too, here's how to get the old menus back.

The new menus only appear in Chrome for Windows, and only then in beta, dev, and Canary. You'll need to add a flag to the shortcut you use to launch Chrome to get the old menus back:

1. Right-click your Google Chrome shortcut (if it's in the taskbar, right-click the icon, then right-click "Google Chrome" in the popup menu).
2. Select "Properties."
3. Click the "Shortcut" tab if it's not already highlighted.
4. In the "Target" field, add this to the end of whatever's already there (with two hyphens before "disable"):

   ?disable-new-menu-style

5. Click Apply, then OK.

That's all there is to it. Now, whenever you launch Chrome from that shortcut, you'll see the old right-click menu style. Yes, "hate" is a strong word (and I obviously don't mean it), but I certainly don't think the look of the right-click menu is something that needed to be changed, and I preferred the old look better. Thankfully, this flag fixes the "improvement," at least until Google removes the flag entirely.

Don't like Chrome's New Menus? Here is how to Disable Them | Techdows

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/SlFIibo7a2s/how-to-disable-chromes-annoying-new-right+click-menu-style

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Man kills 13 people in Serbian shooting rampage

Radmilo Bogdanovic, brother of Ljubisa Bogdanovic cries in village of Velika Ivanca, Serbia, Tuesday, April 9, 2013. Ljubisa Bogdanovic a 60-year-old man gunned down 13 people, including a baby, in a house-to-house rampage in a quiet village on Tuesday before trying to kill himself and his wife, police and hospital officials said. Belgrade emergency hospital spokeswoman Nada Macura said the man, identified as Ljubisa Bogdanovic, used a handgun in the shooting spree at five houses. The dead included six women. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

Radmilo Bogdanovic, brother of Ljubisa Bogdanovic cries in village of Velika Ivanca, Serbia, Tuesday, April 9, 2013. Ljubisa Bogdanovic a 60-year-old man gunned down 13 people, including a baby, in a house-to-house rampage in a quiet village on Tuesday before trying to kill himself and his wife, police and hospital officials said. Belgrade emergency hospital spokeswoman Nada Macura said the man, identified as Ljubisa Bogdanovic, used a handgun in the shooting spree at five houses. The dead included six women. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

This undated photo provided by Stanica Kostadinovic shows Ljubisa Bogdanovic who, according to police, gunned down 13 people, including a baby, in a house-to-house rampage in the quiet Serbian village of Velika Ivanca Tuesday, April 9, 2013. Belgrade emergency hospital spokeswoman Nada Macura said Bogdanovic, 60, used a handgun in the shooting spree at five houses, then tried to kill himself and his wife. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Stanica Kostadinovic)

Police officers carry a body in village of Velika Ivanca, Serbia, Tuesday, April 9, 2013. A 60-year-old man gunned down 13 people, including a baby, in a house-to-house rampage in the quiet village on Tuesday before trying to kill himself and his wife, police and hospital officials said. Belgrade emergency hospital spokeswoman Nada Macura said the man, identified as Ljubisa Bogdanovic, used a handgun in the shooting spree at five houses. The dead included six women. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

Serbian police officers guard houses in the village of Velika Ivanca, Serbia, Tuesday, April 9, 2013. A 60-year-old man gunned down 13 people, including a baby, in a house-to-house rampage in the quiet village on Tuesday before trying to kill himself and his wife, police and hospital officials said. Belgrade emergency hospital spokeswoman Nada Macura said the man, identified only as Ljubisa B., used a handgun in the shooting spree at five houses. The dead included six women. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

A police tape is seen on the road near a house in village of Velika Ivanca, Serbia, Tuesday, April 9, 2013. A 60-year-old man gunned down 13 people, including a baby, in a house-to-house rampage in a quiet village on Tuesday before trying to kill himself and his wife, police and hospital officials said. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

VELIKA IVANCA, Serbia (AP) ? He went from house to house in the village at dawn, cold-bloodedly gunning down his mother, his son, a 2-year-old cousin and 10 other neighbors. Terrified residents said if a police patrol car hadn't shown up, they all would have been dead.

Police said they knew of no motive yet in the carnage Tuesday that left six men, six women and a child dead in Velika Ivanca, a Serbian village 50 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of Belgrade.

After the rampage, police said suspect Ljubisa Bogdanovic, a 60-year-old who saw action in one of the bloodiest sieges of the Balkan wars, turned his gun on himself and his wife as authorities closed in. Both were in grave condition at a hospital in the Serbian capital.

In the small lush village surrounded by fruit trees, the suspect's older brother Radmilo broke down in tears, unable to explain why the massacre had happened.

"Why did he do it? ... I still can't believe it," he said sobbing, covering his face with his hands. "He was a model of honesty."

"As a child, he was a frightened little boy. I used to defend him from other children. He couldn't even slaughter a chicken," he said.

But he said his brother had changed after serving in the army during a brutal Serb-led offensive against the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar in 1992 ? the worst bloodshed during Croatia's 1991-95 war for independence.

"The war had burdened him," Radmilo, 62, told The Associated Press in an interview. "He used to tell me: God forbid you live through what I went through ... Something must have clicked in his head for him to do this."

Twelve people in the village were killed immediately between 5 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. and one person died later in a Belgrade hospital, Serbian police chief Milorad Veljovic said.

"Most of the victims were shot while they were asleep," Veljovic told reporters. "The most harrowing scene discovered by police was the dead bodies of a young mother and her 2-year-old son."

Although such mass shootings are relatively rare in Serbia, weapons are readily available, mostly from the 1990s wars in the Balkans. Media reports said the suspect had a license for the handgun and police said he had lost his job last year at a wood-processing factory.

Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic said the killings showed that the government must pay more attention to gun control and other social problems facing the Balkan nation, which is still reeling from the 1990s wars. His government held an emergency session and proclaimed Wednesday a national day of mourning.

Residents said Bogdanovic first killed his son and his mother before leaving his house and then began shooting his neighbors. They expressed deep shock, describing the suspect as a quiet, helpful man.

"He knocked on the doors and as they were opened he just fired a shot," said villager Radovan Radosavljevic. "He was a good neighbor and anyone would open their doors to him. I don't know what happened."

"I never saw him angry, ever," said Milovan Kostadinovic, another resident. "He was helping everybody, he had a car and drove us everywhere."

Still, neighbors said an entire five-member family was shot dead in one house, including the small boy who was the suspected killer's cousin.

Kostadinovic said the suspect was confronted by police while en route to his house.

"If they didn't stop him, he would have wiped us all out," Kostadinovic said, standing in front of his two-story, red tile- roofed house. "He shot himself when police stopped him."

His wife Stanica said their small white-and-brown dog Rocky had gotten very nervous early in the morning and was barking and jumping up and down. She said when her husband opened their door, a policewoman shouted: "Get back in!"

"He was shooting everybody. Police saved us," she said.

The suspected killer owned a gun but neighbors and his brother said he never hunted or shot weapons, even at weddings or celebrations as is traditional in the Balkans.

"He was quiet as a bug," Stanica Kostadinovic said.

Nada Macura, a Belgrade hospital spokeswoman, said the suspect had no known history of mental illness. Stanica Kostadinovic said the man's father had hanged himself when he was a young boy.

Aleksandar Stekic, 29, was fast asleep when his mother was killed. He heard the shots but "thought I was dreaming."

"When I got up about half an hour later, I found her dead on the doorstep," he told the AP.

Stekic said he went to the next house and found the same scene there, and then again in the next one.

"At that moment, I no longer knew where I was," Stekic said, adding that a policeman had handcuffed him while he roamed outside, thinking that he was the shooter.

Radoslav Stekic, 52, lives in a small white house where his mother Danica was shot dead in her bed Tuesday.

"He broke the door open and shot my mother, she was asleep," he said.

"This is where the bullet hit," he added, pointing to the bed with a brown blanket inside a small kitchen-turned-bedroom.

"She loved him more than me," he said of the shooter, who was his cousin.

Police blocked off the village while forensic teams and investigators in white protective robes took evidence from homes where the shootings took place.

Doctors said later Tuesday that the suspect's condition was critical but his wife ? who had called the police before she was shot ?was able to communicate with the hospital staff.

Serbia's last big shooting spree occurred in 2007, when a 39-year-old man gunned down nine people and injured two others in the eastern village of Jabukovac.

__

Sabina Niksic contributed from Bosnia.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-04-09-Serbia-Shooting%20Spree/id-e4dce91fa96a4c1288c3d314a4f4eb55

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Hooters allegedly forces out waitress because brain-tumor scar is ugly

A woman is suing Hooters for employment discrimination based on disability status for allegedly being forced out of her job as a waitress at the racy restaurants after she underwent cancer surgery, lost her hair and had a large scar on her head.

Hooters reportedly wanted her to wear a wig. ?The woman tried, but it hurt her scar, which was still healing. ?She says her hours were then cut back until she eventually was forced to quit.

Imagine a place like Hooters being so superficial.

Hooters, for anyone unaware, is a chain-restaurant where the waitresses wear very skimpy clothes in order to show off their usually-large breasts, which are known as ?hooters? in American slang.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch?does a good job walking through the legal issues here (media doesn?t always do so well on that). ?But in a nutshell, disability rights laws protect you from discrimination based on your disability or your perceived disability (meaning, someone refuses to hire you because they think you have AIDS, even if you don?t). ?In this case, allegedly pushing a waitress out because her cancer has made her less attractive (in the management?s eyes), is a tough sell. ?As the paper points out, the plaintiff needs to be able to prove that she was able to do her job. ?But the question arises ? or it?s one that Hooters will try to sell to the court ? as to whether being a ?hot chick? is essential to doing your job at Hooters.

While, sure, being a hot woman is essential working at HootersI?m not sure how a judge rules in favor of Hooters on this one, lest every business start alleging that its ?public face? is important, and thus they discriminate against people with disabilities, and even minorities and women, because it?s ?what the customers want.?

Now granted, we?re dealing with Hooters here. ?But as FindLaw explains, it?s really not enough to simply say ?our customers like pretty girls.?

Title VII?prohibits employers from discriminating in employment decisions based on gender, race, national origin, religion or age. Many states make it illegal? to discriminate based on sexual orientation or transgender status.

Title VII also, however, allows for discrimination based on protected characteristics (except race), when that characteristic is what is called a ?Bona Fide Occupational Qualification? (BFOQ). To be a BFOQ, being a member of that group is essential to the job.

To use this exception to the rule against discrimination, an employer must be able to prove that no member outside the desired group could perform the job. A simple example would be a job for a women?s bathroom attendant.

Employers can, and often do, however, go too far. For example, airlines have been prohibited from hiring only female flight attendants because men too can perform the basic function of the job.

Hooters went on to settle that other case. ?So it?s still not entirely clear what would happen if they hadn?t settled. ?But I?m not sure what the difference is between saying Hooters? customers find cancer scars disturbing and saying every restaurant customer finds cancer scars disturbing. ?Cancer is disturbing. ?And too bad. ?You don?t get to end someone?s career over it. ?That?s kind of the whole point of disability laws.

I?m not entirely convinced that it should be legal for Hooters to exist at all. ?But to the degree we want to make an exception for quasi-sexual jobs like Hooters, I think you have a much harder sell saying that we should now start making exceptions to disability laws as well. ?At some point, a judge is going to say ?enough.? ?How much you want to bet Hooters settles this one too, rather than risk a defeat that could impact its restaurants nationwide?

Source: http://americablog.com/2013/04/hooters-allegedly-forces-out-waitress-with-cancer-because-her-scar-was-ugly.html

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Byrd came oh-so-close, but probably didn't reach North Pole

Apr. 8, 2013 ? When renowned explorer Richard E. Byrd returned from the first-ever flight to the North Pole in 1926, he sparked a controversy that remains today: Did he actually reach the pole?

Studying supercomputer simulations of atmospheric conditions on the day of the flight and double-checking Byrd's navigation techniques, a researcher at The Ohio State University has determined that Byrd indeed neared the Pole, but likely only flew within 80 miles of it before turning back to the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen.

Gerald Newsom, professor emeritus of astronomy at Ohio State, based his results in part on atmospheric simulations from the 20th Century Reanalysis project at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The study appears in a recent issue of the journal Polar Record.

"I worked out that if Byrd did make it, he must have had very unusual wind conditions. But it's clear that he really gave it a valiant try, and he deserves a lot of respect," Newsom said.

At issue is whether Byrd and pilot Floyd Bennett could have made the 1,500-mile round trip from Spitsbergen in only 15 hours and 44 minutes, when some experts were expecting a flight time of around 18 hours.

Byrd claimed that they encountered strong tail winds that sped the plane's progress. Not everyone believed him.

"The flight was incredibly controversial," Newsom explained. "The people defending Byrd were vehement that he was a hero, and the people attacking him said he was one of the world's greatest frauds. The emotion! It was incredibly vitriolic."

Newsom was unaware of the debate, however, until Raimund Goerler, now-retired archivist at Ohio State, discovered a flight journal within a large collection of items given to Ohio State by the Byrd family at the naming of the university's Byrd Polar Research Center. In 1995, Goerler opened a previously overlooked cardboard box labeled "misc." In it, he found a smudged and water-stained book containing hand-written notes from Byrd's 1926 North Pole flight and his historic 1927 trans-Atlantic flight, as well as an earlier expedition to Greenland in 1925.

Goerler looked to Newsom for help interpreting the navigational notes. "Given the strong opinions on both sides from people in the polar research community, we thought an astronomer who had no prior opinion about the flight would have the skills to do an assessment, and the neutrality to do it in an unbiased way," he said.

In fact, Newsom had helped teach celestial navigation during his early days as a graduate student, and still had an interest in the subject. With the help of current Byrd Polar archivist Laura Kissel, he pored over copies of the notebook and other related writings, including the post-flight report by Byrd's sponsors at the National Geographic Society.

Newsom was particularly curious about the solar compass that Byrd used to find his way to and from the pole. The compass was state-of-the-art for its time, with a clockwork mechanism that turned a glass cover to match the movement of the sun around the sky. By peering at a shadow in the sun compass, Byrd gauged whether the plane was heading north.

Among the artifacts in the Byrd Polar Research Center is a copy of the barograph recording made during the flight, showing atmospheric pressure. A small calibration graph was labeled with altitudes for different pressures, allowing Byrd to determine how high the plane flew throughout the flight. Byrd used the altitude to set a device mounted over an opening in the bottom of the plane, and with a stopwatch he timed how long it took for features on the ice below to move in and out of view. The stopwatch reading then gave the plane's ground speed.

Byrd could then calculate the distance traveled, and know when he and Bennett had traveled far enough to reach the pole. He would also be able to tell if a crosswind was nudging the plane off course. And he would have had to repeat the calculations every few minutes for the entire trip north.

The partially open cockpit would have been very loud, Newsom explained, so Byrd wrote messages in the book so Bennett could read his suggested course corrections. For example, there was a note from Byrd to Bennett asking for a three-degree correction to the west, to counter a crosswind.

The problem, Newsom quickly found, is that the notebook didn't contain any calculations of ground speed, only the results of the calculations. "I would have thought he'd have pages and pages of calculations," Newsom said. "Without that, there's no way of knowing for sure, but deep down there's a worry I have -- that he did it all in his head."

Newsom found that the barograph recording and calibration graph were remarkably small. A change of atmospheric pressure of one inch of mercury would equal only one quarter of an inch on the barograph record. "That's tiny," he said. "If Byrd was off by even a tenth of an inch on the barograph recording, then his altitude would be off 18 percent, and that means his ground speed would be off by 18 percent. And he had the same chance for error every time he took a reading throughout the flight."

Changes in the atmosphere at different latitudes meant that Byrd's calibration graph lost accuracy during the duration of the flight. Newsom calculated that this could have led Byrd to believe that he had reached the pole when he was still as much as 78 statute miles away, or caused him to overshoot the pole by as much as 21 statute miles.

As he wrote in the Polar Record paper: "This type of analysis by itself will not resolve any controversy over whether Byrd reached the pole. But it does indicate that he was considerably more likely to have ended up short of his goal than to have exceeded it."

Next, Newsom decided to test whether Byrd could have experienced strong tailwinds as he claimed, and to do that, the astronomer turned to an unbiased resource of his own: NOAA's 20th Century Reanalysis dataset.

Using U.S. Department of Energy supercomputers, NOAA calculated likely atmospheric conditions all over Earth for every six hours between 1870 and 2010. The data used a computer model that calculated 56 plausible scenarios for every six-hour interval, and the results of the 56 model atmospheres were averaged together to arrive at the most likely conditions.

The model winds did not appear consistent with what Byrd said, so Newsom examined each of the 56 scenarios individually, to see if even one of them allowed for strong tailwinds during the trip. They didn't.

"For the most part, he probably had a headwind going north, and a tailwind going south. But there's no evidence of the winds shifting as much as he described. Of course, the models are NOAA's best guesses for what the conditions were that day, not an actual measurement, so Byrd could have had strong tailwinds just like he said. But the simulations suggest that if he did have strong tailwinds that day, he was very lucky."

It's easy to forget, he continued, how difficult and dangerous navigation was before modern altimeters and GPS. Byrd was under a tremendous amount of pressure: he'd overloaded the plane with fuel to make sure he and Bennett wouldn't run out over the Arctic (they would likely have died in that circumstance), but the extra load made the plane hard to control; he had to calculate the plane's location constantly for nearly sixteen hours, in a screaming-loud cockpit while worried about frostbite; and partway through the trip, one of the plane's engines sprang an oil leak and seemed likely to stop working.

"That they returned at all is a major accomplishment, and the fact that they arrived back where they were supposed to -- that shows that Byrd knew how to navigate with his solar compass correctly," Newsom said.

And, since the plane was theoretically high enough to see nearly 90 miles to the horizon, Byrd may not have reached the pole, but even in the worst-case scenario, he almost certainly saw it through his cockpit window.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Ohio State University. The original article was written by Pam Frost Gorder.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. G.H. Newsom. Byrd's Arctic flight in the context of model atmospheres. Polar Record, 2012; 49 (01): 62 DOI: 10.1017/S0032247412000058

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/LD-EWzV1Qaw/130408142642.htm

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Seneca Valley Track and Field Strong Out of the Blocks - Cranberry ...

The temperatures have been downright cold this season, but that hasn?t stopped Seneca Valley Track and Field from getting off to a hot start.

The girls team is 1-1 with a win at North Hills and a loss to a tough Shaler team while he boys are 2-0 with wins against these opponents.?

The boys and girls combined their talents to win the Moon Mixed Relays for an impressive fourth consecutive year. The mixed relays feature co-ed relay teams from a number of schools.

Coach Ray Peaco , now in his 30th year coaching at Seneca Valley, is preparing the team to continue its winning ways.

The girls have 30 years of consecutive winning seasons and the boys have been winning for 35 years.

?Each year, we have a number of seniors who graduate, but are fortunate to have a continual flow of talented athletes to keep our program moving forward? Peaco said. ?This is a great problem to have.?

While Peaco has his sights set on winning the WPIALs ?and sending several students to the state championships, it is just as important that the athletes achieve personal bests, have fun and enjoy their high school track and field career.

Next up for the Raiders is a home meet against Butler, followed by an invitational at Butler and a 9-10 invitational meet at Seneca Valley.

Source: http://cranberry.patch.com/articles/seneca-valley-track-field-strong-out-of-the-blocks

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NASA to get $100 million for asteroid mission, senator says

Rick Sternbach / Keck Institute for Space Studies

An artist's illustration of an asteroid retrieval spacecraft capturing a 500-ton asteroid that's 7 meters wide.

By Mike Wall
Space.com

NASA will likely get $100 million next year to jump-start an audacious program to drag an asteroid into orbit around the moon for research and exploration purposes, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.,?says.

The $100 million will probably be part of President Barack Obama's federal budget request for 2014, which is expected to be released next week, Nelson said. The money is intended to get the ball rolling on the asteroid-retrieval project, which also aims to send astronauts out to the captured space rock in 2021.

"This is part of what will be a much broader program," Nelson said Friday during a visit to Orlando. "The plan combines the science of mining an asteroid along with developing ways to deflect one, along with providing a place to develop ways we can go to Mars."

NASA's plan involves catching a near-Earth asteroid (NEA) with a robotic spacecraft, then towing the space rock to a stable lunar orbit, Nelson said. Astronauts would then be sent to the asteroid in 2021 using NASA's Orion capsule and Space Launch System rocket, both of which are in development.

The idea is similar to one proposed last year by researchers based at Caltech's Keck Institute for Space Studies in Pasadena.

"Experience gained via human expeditions to the small returned NEA would transfer directly to follow-on international expeditions beyond the Earth-moon system: to other near-Earth asteroids, (the Mars moons) Phobos and Deimos, Mars and potentially someday to the main asteroid belt," the Keck team wrote in a feasibility study of their plan.

NASA will need much more than this initial $100 million to make the asteroid-retrieval mission happen. The Keck study estimated that it would cost about $2.6 billion to drag a 500-ton space rock back near the moon.

Nelson said he thinks the Obama administration is in favor of the asteroid-retrieval plan. In 2010, the president directed NASA to work to get astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, then on to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s.

News of the potential $100 million allocation is not a complete surprise, as Aviation Week reported late last month that NASA was seeking that amount in 2014 for an asteroid-retrieval program.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter?@michaeldwall.?Follow us?@Spacedotcom,?Facebook?or?Google+. Originally published on?Space.com.

Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653381/s/2a63e332/l/0Lscience0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A40C0A50C17620A570A0Enasa0Eto0Eget0E10A0A0Emillion0Efor0Easteroid0Emission0Esenator0Esays0Dlite/story01.htm

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Keep Your Paper Insurance Card in Your Wallet, Most States Don?t Accept Electronic Ones Yet

You've probably seen the auto insurance commercial where a pig gets stopped by police, and when asked for his insurance card, he hands over his phone, which conveniently displays an electronic version of his insurance card. Sounds great, right? One less card to carry in your wallet. Sadly, most states don't allow electronic proof of insurance or registration when you're pulled over by the cops, so keep that paper card nearby.

Our friends at The Consumerist note that the laws allowing you to present electronic proof of registration and insurance coverage are a patchwork across the United States, and currenlty only 11 have laws on the books that expressly allow it:

According to the folks at Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, 11 states now have laws or regulations on the books that allow for electronic insurance cards to be used for both vehicle registration and when being pulled over by the police - Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Virginia, and Wyoming.

In Colorado, drivers can use the e-cards for registration, but will not for police pull-overs.

PCIAA says that the governors of Kansas and Indiana are expected to sign legislation in their states, while several other states - Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin - have pending legislation on the matter.

The legality of flashing your phone as a way to prove you have insurance is still in question, even if some insurance companies want you to think it's just that easy if you get pulled over by the police. Plus, while it definitely looks like more states are moving to allow electronic insurance cards, right now it's probably not a good idea to leave home without your paper one, just in case.

The piece also goes into some of the privacy rights involved with handing your phone to the police when they ask for insurance (do you give them the right to search your phone by doing so?) and touches on how police are supposed to know an electronic card is a valid one and not an elaborate photoshop. Hit the link below to read more.

If You're Not The GEICO Pig, You Should Probably Have Your Paper Insurance Card Handy | The Consumerist

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/QMdjHtcMXnA/keep-your-paper-insurance-card-in-your-wallet-most-states-dont-accept-electronic-ones-yet

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