plantsdoitsocanwe writes “An international team of researchers led by Monash University has used chemicals found in plants to copy a key process in photosynthesis, paving the way to a new approach that uses sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The breakthrough could revolutionize the renewable energy industry by making hydrogen — touted as the clean, green fuel of the future — cheaper and easier to produce on a commercial scale.” This was a laboratory demonstration only and the researchers say they need to bring up the efficiency.

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A commonplace of cosmologists who argue the anthropic principle is the assumption that if any or a few of the constants of nature took on an even slightly different value, life couldn’t have evolved — perhaps even stars and galaxies would not form. Science News reports on a new calculation showing that, to the contrary, star formation could happen in up to one-quarter of universes with different values of three important constants. “In fact, all universes can support the existence of stars, provided that the definition of star is interpreted broadly,” said the researcher, Fred Adams. “…calculations advocate that, contrary to some previous claims, stars are not only common in our cosmos but are also ablaze in myriad other universes, where the laws of physics may be drastically different… Had Adams found that the range of parameters that granted for stars was very small, that would have recommended that the laws of physics in our universe have been ‘fine-tuned’ to grant for star formation… Instead, Adams’ study shows that our universe doesn’t seem particularly special in that regard.”

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Hugh Pickens writes “The way bumblebees search for food could help detectives hunt down serial killers — because just as bees forage some distance away from their hives, so murderers avoid killing near their homes, says a University of London research team. The researchers’ analysis describes how bees create a ‘buffer zone’ around their hive where they’ll not forage, to reduce the risk of predators and parasites locating the nest. This behavior pattern is similar to the geographic profile of criminals stalking their victims. ‘Most murders happen close to the killer’s home, but not in the area directly surrounding a criminal’s home, where crimes are less apt to be committed because of the fear of getting caught by someone they know,’ says Dr. Nigel Raine. Criminologists will fold this insight into their models using details about crime scenes, robbery locations, abandoned vehicles, even dead bodies, to hone the search for a suspect.”

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Proposed Macomb Co. tax hike surprises residents - Detroit Free Press
Hippies still were flashing peace signs. The VCR was just invented. And it was the last time Macomb County raised taxes. So it shocked many residents when commissioners last week said they were considering a tax hike of up to 25% on all property. How

Finance Director, Fashion, Bucks, C£75k - Retail Bulletin
Finance Director, Leading fashion and outdoors adventure retailer, BucksC£75k My client is a leading retailer specialising in travel clothing, trading from over 30 stand alone stores. Due to exciting developments within the business a Finance

School finance system breaking districts’ budgets - Galveston County Daily News
At least three of the county’s nine school districts are facing budget shortfalls, and they’re laying the blame on what officials call a broken school finance system. Public school districts in Galveston, Santa Fe and Dickinson will likely have

BRETT FOR VEEP? - New York Post
WHITE Home wannabe John McCain , at a bash for top fund-raisers in Aspen, Colo., personally congratulated Jets owner Woody Johnson for reeling in legendary quarterback and future NFL Hall of Famer Brett Favre . “Brett was a huge topic of conversation

Executive Search: Laid-Off Wall Street Workers Branch Out - Washington Post
People wait outside a job fair in New York. The city will have lost 7 percent of its finance jobs by June, the Independent Budget Office states. (By Mark Lennihan — Associated Press) NEW YORK — Jessica Walter didn’t go to Harvard University to study

Finance goals can help you resist overspending - Baltimore Sun
W hen economic times are tough, returning to spending basics can help. And nothing is more fundamental than setting goals. As the saying goes, “If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it each time.” Personal finance experts will tell you having goals is

Gov. Kaine to address joint meeting of Senate, House finance - HamptonRoads.com
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine will talk at the joint meeting of the Senate Finance, Home Appropriations and House Finance Committees at the General Assembly on Monday. The meeting will happen at 9:30 a.m. in Home Room D of the General Assembly Building in

Scandal of vital exam that none of our children has passed - Guardian Unlimited
A frosted glass of champagne to last week’s A-level successes, and a warm half-pint of shandy for those who didn’t quite make it: you’ll need a clear head for the retakes. As another wave of 18-year-olds marches from school to student life, I wish

Wall Street’s unemployed look to cupcakes, Omaha - Boston Globe
NEW YORK - Jessica Walter didn’t go to Harvard University to study cupcakes, but they’re what she does since losing her job as a vice president in credit strategy at Bear Stearns Cos. “I want to teach children to cook,” stated Walter, 27, who founded

Asking more of a senator - Boston Globe
Dianne Wilkerson’s supporters are a mighty forgiving bunch. When the Boston Democrat failed to pay state and federal income taxes for years during the early 1990s, leading to a 30-day sentence in a halfway house, they did not conclude that a state

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ghostlibrary sends a note about Sean Tevis, an information architect in Kansas, who is running for say representative with the help of an xkcd lookalike cartoon and grassroots Net-based fundraising. Tevis had garnered more than 6,000 contributions, most of them small, from around the country, far out-fundraising his opponent. Major news outlets have picked up the story as a harbinger of 21st-century Net-based political campaigning. Reader ghostlibrary adds, “As a bonus, Tevis cites xkcd intentionally (rather than just ripping it off without crediting it) and, well, it’s actually funny.”

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iminplaya sends along a New Scientist article that begins: “One of the driest deserts in the world, the Saharan Tenere Desert, hosted at least two flourishing lakeside populations during the Stone Age, a discovery of the largest graveyard from the era reveals. The archaeological site in Niger [is] called Gobero… It had been used as a burial site by two very different populations during the millennia when the Sahara was lush… ‘The first people who used the Gobero cemetery were Kiffian, hunter-gatherers who grew up to two meters tall,’ states Elena Garcea of the University of Cassino in Italy and one of the scientists on the team. The big stature of the Kiffian suggests that food was plentiful during their time in Gobero, 10,000 to 8,000 years ago… All traces of the Kiffian vanish abruptly around 8,000 years ago, when the Sahara became very dry for a thousand years. When the rains returned, a different population, the Tenerians, who were of a shorter and more gracile build, based themselves at this site… ‘The most amazing find so far is a grave with a female and two kids hugging each other. They were carefully arranged in this position. This strongly indicated they’d spiritual beliefs and cared for their dead,’ says Garcea.” The research article is at PLoS One.

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