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Thursday, October 30, 2014

Ukraine looks to reform with an eye on Europe

October 27, 2014

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — As Ukraine's most ardently pro-European parties pocketed a resounding collective election triumph Monday, thoughts turned to a reform agenda that promises pain and progress in equal doses.

Although the outcome of Sunday's vote is in part fruit of a surge in anti-Russian sentiment, Moscow says it will recognize the result and urged Ukraine's new order to grapple with the country's most pressing problems.

With 72 percent of the vote counted Monday, the three main Western-leaning parties alone stood to win a combined 54 percent of the vote. Coalition negotiations were already underway. Parliament is now largely purged of the loyalists of former President Viktor Yanukovych, who sparked months of protests — and eventually his ouster in February — with his decision to deepen ties with Russia instead of the European Union.

Of the European-minded parties, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's Popular Front had 21.9 percent of the vote while President Petro Poroshenko's party had 21.5 percent. A new pro-European party based in western Ukraine was running third with 11 percent.

The Fatherland party of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who has argued strongly for NATO membership and is likely to join a pro-Europe coalition, had 5.7 percent of the vote. Poroshenko last month laid out an ambitious agenda envisioning significant changes to Ukraine's police, justice and tax systems, defense sector and health care — all to be completed by 2020. Among the tougher decisions ahead will be allowing the cost of utilities in the cash-strapped country to float in line with market dictates.

"Ukraine is pregnant with reforms," said political analyst Oleksiy Haran. "The elections showed that both the government and voters expect structural changes to bring Ukrainians closer to the European Union."

Haran said measures to simplify regulations for private enterprise and to attract investment need to be adopted first. Hopeful businessmen in Ukraine complain that if excess red tape doesn't kill their ventures at birth, corruption does so further down the road. For that reason, initiatives to curb graft and overhaul the justice system should follow suit, Haran said.

Poroshenko has also said he wants to see Ukraine become more self-reliant for its energy needs and farm out more powers to local government. The precise recipe of policies to be pursued is subject of coalition negotiations.

Messages from Western governments congratulating Ukraine on its election pressed the reform theme further. President Barack Obama said in a statement Monday that the United States would assist Ukraine "promote further democratic development, strengthen the rule of law, and foster economic stability and growth in Ukraine."

Alluding to the unrest still raging in Ukraine's east, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European President Jose Manuel Barroso said a reinvigorated reform process must include an effort to establish national dialogue.

Despite the nominal truce agreed in early September, battles between government troops and pro-Russian separatist fighters remain a daily constant. Rebel authorities spurned Ukraine's election and almost 3 million potential voters in areas under their control did not cast their ballot.

Talk of Europe is anathema to the separatists and there are some pockets of resistance to the broad consensus in Kiev too. Political analyst Mikhail Pogrebinsky described the elections as a "sad story" and said he had little trust in the government that will take shape.

"Under the guise of reforms, they will pump cash out of the West and plunder it the usual way, and then write it off as a cost of war," Pogrebinsky said. The most staunchly dissenting group in parliament will be the Opposition Bloc. That party attracted much of its votes from government-controlled areas in the east and has within its ranks several figures from Yanukovych's once-ruling Party of Regions. With its 10 percent of the vote, Opposition Bloc believes around 60 candidates on the party list will take up seats in 423-strong Verkhovna Rada.

The also-rans that didn't make it into parliament are notable. The Communist Party failed to pass the 5 percent vote threshold and finds itself unrepresented for the first time in the nation's history.

Alarmism about a major surge among far-right wing forces has also proven overstated. By late Monday, the nationalist Svoboda party looked to have scraped 4.7 percent of the vote, meaning only a handful of its deputies directly voted in first-past-the-post constituencies will make it.

Anton Shekhovtsov, an expert on radical parties in Europe, said that if Svoboda fails to exceed the 5 percent barrier, there would likely be around 11 members of parliament in total from far-right parties.

"It was quite clear after the revolution that the far-right were not doing well, despite the media focus," Shekhovtsov said. International observers hailed Sunday's election as a step forward in building democratic institutions. Kent Harstedt, who oversaw the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe observer mission, said the election offered voters a real choice and showed "respect for fundamental freedoms."

The OSCE said, however, that there were isolated security incidents on election day and instances of intimidation and destruction of campaign property ahead of the vote. Russia had criticized Ukraine's election campaign before the vote but Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday that Moscow would recognize its outcome.

"It is very important that in Ukraine, at last, there will be a government that is occupied not with ... the pulling of Ukraine either to the West or to the East, but with the real problems that are facing the country," Lavrov told Russia's Life News.

Views among Ukrainians have ranged from content to cautious. Anton Karpinsky, a 36-year-old doctor in Kiev, said he was delighted that Ukraine will now have a pro-Western government. "Our revolution and fight was not in vain," Karpinsky said. "The election shows that Ukraine sees its future in Europe and NATO, and we will get there step by step."

Stepan Burko, a 67-year-old retiree whose $140 monthly pension barely covers his food bills, worried difficult times remain ahead. "The only certain winners in Ukraine are slogans. But it is much more difficult to overcome poverty and war," Burko said. "If it weren't for my children's help, I would go hungry. These are the problems the new authorities should tackle."

Some hoped that a strong government could negotiate an end to the war in the east. "The main thing is to put a stop to the war. We are so tired of killings, shelling and weapons," said Tatyana Rublevskaya, a 48-year-old shopkeeper.

Associated Press writer Lynn Berry in Moscow contributed to this report.

2 pro-Europe parties leading Ukraine vote

October 27, 2014

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Two pro-European parties that campaigned for tough reforms to battle corruption shared the lead Monday after Ukraine's parliamentary election, according to partial results.

With more than half the votes counted, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's Popular Front was leading with 21.6 percent of the vote while President Petro Poroshenko's party had captured 21.5 percent. A recently formed pro-European party based in western Ukraine called Samopomich was running third with around 11 percent of the vote.

Negotiations on forming a broad reformist coalition are expected to begin immediately. Sunday's vote overhauled a parliament once dominated by loyalists of former President Viktor Yanukovych, who sparked months of protests that caused his ouster in February with a decision to deepen ties with Russia instead of the European Union.

Anti-Russian sentiment has spiked in Ukraine as the country battles separatists in the east whom many believe are supported by Moscow. Still, the Opposition Bloc, which pundits believe largely drew its support from Yanukovych's once-ruling Party of Regions, put in a strong showing with around one-tenth of the vote.

International observers hailed the vote as a step forward in building democratic standards despite the unrest as the government battles separatists in eastern Ukraine. Kent Harstedt of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said the ballot offered voters a real choice and showed "respect for fundamental freedoms."

Poroshenko has laid out an ambitious agenda envisioning significant changes to Ukraine's justice system, police, tax system, defense sector and health care to be completed by 2020. Among the tougher decisions ahead will be allowing costs of basic utilities in the cash-strapped country to float in line with market demands.

While around 36 million people were registered to vote Sunday, no voting was held on the Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in March, or in parts of Ukraine's easternmost regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where shelling remains a daily constant.

The OSCE said there were few disturbances and isolated security incidents on election day. It noted, however, that the days before the vote saw instances of intimidation and the targeted destruction of some campaign property.

Anton Karpinsky, a 36-year old doctor in Kiev, said he was delighted that Ukraine will now have a pro-Western government. "Our revolution and fight was not in vain," Karpinsky said. "The election shows that Ukrainian sees it future in Europe and NATO, and we will get there step by step."

Stepan Burko, a 67-year old retiree whose $140 monthly pension barely covers food bills, said difficult times remain ahead, despite Poroshenko's efforts to radiate optimism. "The only certain winners in Ukraine are slogans. But it is much more difficult to overcome poverty and war," Burko said. "If it weren't for my children's help, I would go hungry. These are the problems the new authorities should tackle."

Some hoped that a strong government could negotiate an end to the war. "The main thing is to put a stop to the war. We are so tired of killings, shelling and weapons," said Tatyana Rublevskaya, a 48-year-old shopkeeper.

Poland in defense shift as security concerns rise

October 28, 2014

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland is planning a major realignment of its military structure because of the conflict in neighboring Ukraine, the country's defense minister said Monday, a move that could shift thousands of troops to its eastern border.

"The geopolitical situation has changed. We have the biggest crisis of security since the Cold War and we must draw conclusions from that," Polish Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak told The Associated Press.

Although Poland joined NATO in 1999, most of its 120,000-member army is based along the country's western border, as a relic of its former status as a Soviet bloc member. That is going to change, Siemoniak said, adding that at least three military bases in the east will increase from the current 30 percent of capacity to almost 90 percent by the end of 2017. That's a potential increase of thousands of troops, although Siemoniak wouldn't specify a precise overall figure.

Up to 400 jobs would be filled in the air defense unit in Siedlce alone by 2017, he said. "I believe that what happened to the east of Poland does not represent a threat to us for the next months, or two or three or five years. It is a need to draw conclusions for the decades to come," he added in explaining the large scope of the plans.

The announcement follows a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama to Estonia last month in which he urged NATO members to do more to assist Ukraine. There was no immediate reaction in Moscow to the planned Polish military moves. The Russian government may be reluctant to criticize Poland since Russia had insisted on the right to position its forces as it wishes within its own country when confronted by the West over the deployment of Russian troops along the Ukrainian border.

Charles Heyman, editor of the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom publication, said Poland's eastward movement is "part and parcel" of a larger NATO re-deployment. "We'll see other NATO nations probably stationing troops in Poland on a permanent basis as well," he said. "Not large numbers, but maybe a small NATO brigade of 2,500 that would be rotated every six months."

He said this would make it clear to Russia that "there are red lines that cannot be crossed." "It gives the other side a message: You've gone far enough," he said. In a restructuring after Poland became a democracy in 1989, the number of troops was gradually cut down from some 400,000 and the draft was discontinued, basing the armed forces on career officers and enlisted troops. Ever-limited means have been spent on upgrading the units, rather than on restructuring the whole infrastructure. Poland intends to increase its spending on the army to 2 percent of its GDP starting in 2016, from the current 1.95 percent.

Wedged between Germany and Russia, Poland has been the site of invasion and warfare. It was carved up by Nazi Germany and then-Soviet Union at the start of World War II, leading to the death of some 6 million of its citizens. Liberated by the Soviet Red Army, it was put under Moscow's domination for decades of communist rule after the war.

Poles value the independence they regained after the peaceful ouster of communism in 1989 and are worried by the Russia-Ukraine conflict. "People have realized that security does matter and that you cannot forget about the army," Siemoniak said. "No one wants war."

Associated Press reporters Lynn Berry in Moscow, Peter Leonard in Kiev and Greg Katz in London contributed to this report.

Poland to move 1,000s of troops east

October 27, 2014

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland will move thousands of troops toward its eastern borders in a historic realignment of a military structure built in the Cold War, the country's defense minister told The Associated Press on Monday.

Tomasz Siemoniak said the troops are needed in the east because of the conflict in neighboring Ukraine. "The geopolitical situation has changed, we have the biggest crisis of security since the Cold War and we must draw conclusions from that," Siemoniak said.

He said that at least three military bases in the east will see their populations increase from the current 30 percent of capacity to almost 90 percent by 2017, and that more military hardware will be moved to those bases as well.

He said it was not some "nervous or radical move" but that because of this "situation of threat we would like those units in the east of Poland to be more efficient." Although Poland joined NATO in 1999, most of Poland's 120,000-member army is based along the country's western border, as a relic of its former status as a Soviet Bloc member.

The units in the east, like the air defense unit in Siedlce, have only 30 percent of jobs filled in line with a plan that calls for 100 percent of troops "only in the case of war."

France hosts talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan

October 27, 2014

PARIS (AP) — The leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia restarted a dialogue Monday during a three-way meeting in Paris with French president Francois Hollande, in an effort to ease tensions in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region of the southern Caucasus.

Armenian President Serge Sarkisian and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev agreed Monday to exchange information on the persons who disappeared during the six-year separatist war that ended in 1994. The process will be conducted under the auspices of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to a written statement released by the French presidency.

They also agreed to continue the dialogue at new meeting in September 2015 on the sidelines of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York. Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan but it and some surrounding territory have been under the control of Armenian soldiers and local Armenian forces since a 1994 cease-fire. Since then, there have been sporadic clashes, but last summer tensions rose sharply as 19 soldiers were killed in multiple confrontations.

Years of diplomatic efforts under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have made little visible progress in resolving the dispute. Earlier Monday, Hollande met separately with each leader.

During a one-to-one meeting with Aliyev, the French president evoked the situation of the prominent human right activist Leila Yunus, who is jailed in Azerbaijan. Yunus was arrested with her husband and charged with spying for Armenia last July.

Aliyev "has made commitments" on that matter, said a top French official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak publicly on the matter. He didn't give details because of the sensitiveness of the issue.

UK ends combat operations in Afghan province

October 26, 2014

LONDON (AP) — Britain has ended combat operations in the Helmand province in Afghanistan, defense officials said Sunday.

They said U.K. troops have witnessed the lowering of the Union flag for the last time at the Camp Bastion complex in Helmand. U.S. and Afghan soldiers also observed the ceremony, which marked the end of operations for the Southwest Regional Command, a U.S. and U.K. coalition operating under NATO's International Security Assistance Force, British officials said.

Camp Bastion has been the center of U.K. operations in Afghanistan since 2006. The handover of the base to Afghan control ends an important chapter in the 13-year Afghan campaign, which started after the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001.

UK Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said in a statement that the end of combat operations is being announced "with pride" and that Britain has helped give Afghanistan "the best possible chance of a stable future."

But he told BBC's Andrew Marr show that there is "no guarantee that Afghanistan is going to be stable and safe." He said the mission has succeeded in the sense that Afghanistan is no longer a safe haven for terrorists planning atrocities against Britain and the rest of Europe.

Fallon said Britain's commitment to support Afghanistan will continue "through institutional development, the Afghan National Army Officer Academy, and development aid." Britain plans to withdraw its final combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year and is planning to give Afghan forces control of a base in Kandahar, the country's second most populous city.

Military advisers and trainers are expected to stay in the capital Kabul. Brigadier Rob Thomson, senior U.K. officer in Helmand, said Afghan National Security Forces are "more than ready" to assume responsibility for the country's security.

Britain suffered 453 fatalities during the campaign. The vast majority of the fatalities happened in Helmand province.

Sweden May Become First Cashless Society

By Susanne W. Lamm, Epoch Times
October 21, 2014

GOTHENBURG, Sweden—Sweden could become one of the first cashless countries, a new report finds. Swedes already conduct four out of five transactions without involving cash.

The report, partly produced by the Royal Institute of Technology, argues that Sweden may be completely cashless in 2030. It is a long road, but Bengt Nilervall, commercial policy expert at the Swedish Trade Federation believes that cash transactions in Sweden may drop to a mere five per cent in the next ten years.

Why is it that Sweden is so far ahead of other European countries in this regard? In southern Europe for instance, three out of four consumer transactions are still paid in cash.

The Swedish curiosity for new technology is one piece of the puzzle, Nilervall says. Staff is expensive in Sweden, which drives the development of other technical solutions, such as robots instead of cashiers. Another piece is the fact that Swedes have a comparatively high trust in institutions, such as politicians, government authorities, and banks, compared to other countries.

Retail will likely be the last industry to abandon cash, Nilervall says. There is a great awareness of the fact that some groups don’t use cards, such as senior citizens, small children, and people with disabilities. In some cases, cash is more convenient.

“In retail, the margins are so small, and the competition is so fierce, that I find it hard to believe that cash would disappear completely,” he said. “We are so sensitive to the customers’ needs that we will offer them as many means of payment as they want.”

But the use of cash will likely decline, Nilervall thinks, especially as handling cash becomes more expensive. Banks, who control both cash and cards, pretty much call the shots. Once they make it too expensive and difficult to handle cash, their customers are likely to gravitate towards cards.

“It’s a natural step, from trading pearls and golden bricks and giant coins to other solutions,” he said. “Things are constantly evolving, the world is shrinking, so it’s only natural that new solutions arise.”

Sweden is already full of non-cash solutions in everyday life. You can pay for your parking, your public bathroom visit, and your cup of coffee with a text message.  Even a magazine sold by, and for the benefit of, homeless people on the street are trying out credit card readers. Even church offerings can be paid electronically in some places.

Some businesses have ditched cash entirely. One of them is the ABBA Museum in Stockholm. As it turns out, a member of Sweden’s most legendary pop music institutions, Bj?rn Ulvaeus, has a stake in the battle for a cashless Sweden. He has written opinion articles on the matter, arguing that coins and bills are expensive, support crime, and are “riddled with germs”.

The ABBA Museum declined to answer questions about their cashless operations, but their press representative confirmed that this is Ulvaeus’ own initiative. Bj?rn Ulvaeus himself was not available for a comment, but in one of his articles on the matter, he writes:

“What will a thief do with stolen goods in a cashless society? How will street drug deals work? Imagine you’re a thief, what will you do with the TV set you just stole? Neither the fence nor the supermarket wants it, and you’re all out of milk at home.”

Ulvaeus was inspired to work for a cashless society after his son was robbed a few years ago, he told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.

Digital transactions are not safe either, however, and as online crime leads to service disruptions and stolen card information, there is always a chance for a backlash.

“This can become a bump in the road for this development, so everyone must double down on security,” Bengt Nilervall said.

However, cash or no cash, Sweden is getting a whole new range of coins and bills in a few years time, so it seems they might be around for a while.

Source: The Epoch Times.
Link: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1033301-sweden-may-become-first-cashless-society/.

Hubble uses gravity lense to find extremely distant galaxy

Washington DC (SPX)
Oct 22, 2014

Peering through a giant cosmic magnifying glass, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a tiny, faint galaxy -- one of the farthest galaxies ever seen. The diminutive object is estimated to be more than 13 billion light-years away.

This galaxy offers a peek back to the very early formative years of the universe and may just be the tip of the iceberg.

"This galaxy is an example of what is suspected to be an abundant, underlying population of extremely small, faint objects that existed about 500 million years after the big bang, the beginning of the universe," explained study leader Adi Zitrin of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.

"The discovery is telling us galaxies as faint as this one exist, and we should continue looking for them and even fainter objects, so that we can understand how galaxies and the universe have evolved over time."

The galaxy was detected by the Frontier Fields program, an ambitious three-year effort that teams Hubble with NASA's other great observatories -- the Spitzer Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory -- to probe the early universe by studying large galaxy clusters.

These clusters are so massive their gravity deflects light passing through them, magnifying, brightening, and distorting background objects in a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. These powerful lenses allow astronomers to find many dim, distant structures that otherwise might be too faint to see.

The discovery was made using the lensing power of the mammoth galaxy cluster Abell 2744, nicknamed Pandora's Cluster, which produced three magnified images of the same, faint galaxy. Each magnified image makes the galaxy appear 10 times larger and brighter than it would look without the zooming qualities of the cluster.

The galaxy measures merely 850 light-years across -- 500 times smaller than our Milky Way galaxy-- and is estimated to have a mass of only 40 million suns.

The Milky Way, in comparison, has a stellar mass of a few hundred billion suns. And the galaxy forms about one star every three years, whereas the Milky Way galaxy forms roughly one star per year. However, given its small size and low mass, Zitrin said the tiny galaxy actually is rapidly evolving and efficiently forming stars.

The astronomers believe galaxies such as this one are probably small clumps of matter that started to form stars and shine, but do not yet have a defined structure. It is possible Hubble is only detecting one bright clump magnified due to the lensing. This would explain why the object is smaller than typical field galaxies of that time.

Zitrin's team spotted the galaxy's gravitationally multiplied images using near-infrared and visible-light photos of the galaxy cluster taken by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. But they needed to measure how far away it was from Earth.

Usually, astronomers can determine an object's distance based on how far its light has been stretched as the universe slowly expands. Astronomers can precisely measure this effect through spectroscopy, which characterizes an object's light. But the gravitationally-lensed galaxy and other objects found at this early time period are too far away and too dim for spectroscopy, so astronomers use an object's color to estimate its distance.

The universe's expansion reddens an object's color in predictable ways, which scientists can measure.

Zitrin's team performed the color-analysis technique and took advantage of the multiple images produced by the gravitational lens to independently confirm the group's distance estimate. The astronomers measured the angular separation between the three magnified images of the galaxy in the Hubble photos. The greater the angular separation due to lensing, the farther away the object is from Earth.

To test this concept, the astronomers compared the three magnified images with the locations of several other closer, multiply-imaged background objects captured in Hubble images of Pandora's cluster. The angular distance between the magnified images of the closer galaxies was smaller.

"These measurements imply that, given the large angular separation between the three images of our background galaxy, the object must lie very far away," Zitrin explained.

"It also matches the distance estimate we calculated, based on the color-analysis technique. So we are about 95 percent confident this object is at a remote distance, at redshift 10, a measure of the stretching of space since the big bang. The lensing takes away any doubt that this might be a heavily reddened, nearby object masquerading as a far more distant object."

Astronomers have long debated whether such early galaxies could have provided enough radiation to warm the hydrogen that cooled soon after the big bang. This process, called reionization, is thought to have occurred 200 million to 1 billion years after the birth of the universe. Reionization made the universe transparent to light, allowing astronomers to look far back into time without running into a "fog" of cold hydrogen.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASAs_Hubble_Finds_Extremely_Distant_Galaxy_through_Cosmic_Magnifying_Glass_999.html.

Argentina launches its first telecom satellite

Moscow (RIA Novosti)
Oct 21, 2014

Argentina has successfully launched its first domestically designed and developed geostationary communications satellite Thursday, USA Today reported.

"ARSAT-1 is on its way to space. What a thrill," Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner wrote on her Twitter account.

The satellite will occupy the 81 West orbital slot, 36,000 km away from earth.

ARSAT-1 is the first satellite of its type constructed and orbited by a Latin American country. It is the product of seven years of work of 500 scientists. The cost of the satellite was about $250 million, and it will be operational for the next 15 years.

The ARSAT-1 satellite is developed to provide digital television and cellphone services to Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. It will also improve telephone and Internet connections in remote regions.

Fernandez said that through ARSAT-1, Argentina joins an "elite club", able to build rockets capable of space flight, whose members include the United States, Russia, China, Japan, Israel and the European Union countries.

ARSAT-1 is the first stage of a program by Argentina's government to orbit a fleet of satellites able to transmit and relay signals to all of Latin America. A second satellite is planned to be launched in 2015.

Source: Space Mart.
Link: http://www.spacemart.com/reports/Argentina_Successfully_Launches_Its_First_Telecom_Satellite_999.html.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Studies Comet Flyby

Pasadena CA (JPL)
Oct 21, 2014

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has sent home more data about Mars than all other missions combined, is also now providing data about a comet that buzzed The Red Planet.

The orbiter continues operating in good health after sheltering behind Mars during the half hour when high-velocity dust particles from comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring had the most chance of reaching the paths of Mars orbiters. It maintained radio communications with Earth throughout the comet's closest approach, at 11:27 a.m. PDT (2:27 p.m. EDT), and the peak dust-risk period centered about 100 minutes later.

"The spacecraft performed flawlessly throughout the comet flyby," said Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project Manager Dan Johnston of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "It maneuvered for the planned observations of the comet and emerged unscathed."

Following the critical period of dust flux, the orbiter is communicating at 1.5 megabits per second with NASA's Deep Space Network. It remained on Side A of its two redundant computers, and all subsystems are working as expected.

Downlink of data has begun of the comet observations by three instruments on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The full downlink may take days. These instruments -- the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), the Compact Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), and the Context Camera (CTX) -- also observed the comet for days before the flyby and will continue to make observations of it in the next few days.

The orbiter's other three instruments are being used to study possible effects of gas and dust in the comet's tail interacting with the atmosphere of Mars. These are the Mars Climate Sounder (MCS), the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) and the Mars Shallow Radar (SHARAD).

Three NASA Mars orbiters, two Mars rovers and other assets on Earth and in space are studying comet Siding Spring. This comet is making its first visit this close to the sun from the outer solar system's Oort Cloud, so the concerted campaign of observations may yield fresh clues to our solar system's earliest days more than 4 billion years ago.

Following the comet flyby, operators of NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter are assessing the status of that orbiter and operators for NASA's Mars Odyssey are anticipating resumption of communications.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission met all its science goals for the two-year primary science phase ending in 2008. The spacecraft's overtime work since then has added to the science returns.

The mission has provided more than 240 trillion bits of data about Mars, a volume equivalent to three-and-a-half months of nonstop, high-definition video. The data it acquired during the comet's closest approach to Mars are now being transmitted to Earth, but it will take many hours before downlink is complete and processing can start.

Objectives of the observing program are to attempt to image the comet nucleus, to study its surrounding coma of dust and gas, and to search for signatures of that material interacting with the Mars atmosphere. Observations of the comet will continue for another day or so, as the comet and Mars separate, with the comet reaching its closest approach to the sun in about a week, on Oct. 25.

Source: Mars Daily.
Link: http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Mars_Reconnaissance_Orbiter_Studies_Comet_Flyby_999.html.

Heavy Metal Frost On Venus

Boulder CO (SPX)
Oct 21, 2014

Venus is hiding something beneath its brilliant shroud of clouds: a first order mystery about the planet that researchers may be a little closer to solving because of a new re-analysis of twenty-year-old spacecraft data.

Venus's surface can't be seen from orbit in visible light because of the planet's hot, dense, cloudy atmosphere. Instead, radar has been used by spacecraft to penetrate the clouds and map out the surface - both by reflecting radar off the surface to measure elevation and by looking at the radio emissions of the hot surface.

The last spacecraft to map Venus in this way was Magellan, two decades ago. One of the Venusian surprises discovered at that time is that radio waves are reflected differently at different elevations on Venus. Also observed were a handful of radio dark spots at the highest elevations. Both enigmas have defied explanation.

"There is general brightening upward trend in the highlands and then dark spots at the highest locations," explained Elise Harrington, an Earth sciences undergraduate at Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia, who revisited the Venus data during her internship at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, under the direction of Allan Treiman.

Brightening, in this case, means the radio waves reflect well. Dark means the radio waves are not reflected. In other words, the higher you go on Venus, the more radio reflective the ground gets until it abruptly goes radio black.

"Like on Earth, the temperature changes with elevation," Harrington explained. And the cooler temperatures at altitude lead to ice and snow, which create a similar pattern of brightening for Earth - but in visible light.

"Among the possibilities on Venus are a temperature dependent chemical weathering process or heavy metal compound precipitating from the air - a heavy metal frost."

Getting to the bottom of these mysteries has been very hard because Venus has not been revisited since Magellan and no better data is available.

So Harrington and Trieman made do by re-purposing the old data. They used recently-available stereo radar elevation data (from Dr. R. Herrick, University of Alaska) rather than using the lower resolution radar altimetry. That increased their altimetry resolution from seeing patches 8 by 12 kilometers to just 600x600 meters.

They also used Magellan's Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), with its 75x75-meter footprint, to look at radio reflectance, rather than the data on radio emissions from the surface, which had a coarser 15 by 23 kilometer resolution.

They applied these to two areas in the Odva Regio highlands region of Venus where they confirmed the same pattern of radar reflections brightening with increasing elevation, as was found by previous researchers. The radar reflection was low at the lower 2,400 meter (7,900 foot) elevation, then rapidly brightens up to 4,500 meters (14,700 feet). But they also found a lot more of those strange black spots, with a precipitous drop in the reflections at 4,700 meters (15,400 feet).

"The previous author saw a few dark spots," said Harrington. "But we see hundreds of them."

Years ago it was proposed that some sort of ferro-electric compound might be the cause of the brightening and the dark spots, but so far no specific compound has been identified which does the trick. Then again, with the surface of Venus being at almost 900 F (500 C) under more than 90 times the air pressure of Earth's atmosphere at sea level, with occasional showers of acid, it's not easy to test the properties of materials under Venusian conditions.

"No one knows what explains the sudden darkness," said Harrington, who will be presenting the work at the meeting of the Geological Society of America in Vancouver, B.C., on Monday, Oct. 20. "We think this might spur some more interest in Venus."

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Heavy_Metal_Frost_On_Venus_999.html.

Evidence Shows Acupuncture Helps Cancer Patients

By HealthCMi
October 21, 2014

A new meta-analysis finds evidence that acupuncture is effective in controlling cancer related symptoms. Acupuncture has now been proven to relieve cancer related pain, nausea and depression.

Studies support the use of acupuncture for the treatment of cancer related pain, nausea, fatigue, hot flashes, insomnia, vomiting, anxiety, depression and dry mouth. Based on these findings, the researchers suggest expanding studies into the beneficial clinical effects of acupuncture for cancer patients.

Further, the researchers note that acupuncture used in the field of oncology requires a “constant dialog” between acupuncturists and other treating physicians for improved clinical outcomes.

The researchers note that acupuncture promotes several biological changes.

Acupuncture activates neural, endocrine and immunological regulation. Citing modern evidence that acupuncture regulates the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, the researchers suggest that this may be a biomedical correlate for the ancient Chinese theory that acupuncture balances yin and yang.

They added that electro-acupuncture induces “serotonin release from the upper brain stem region and hypothalamus and stimulates endogenous opiate release (b endorphin, enkephalin, endomorphin, and dynorphin) which then alleviates cancer pain.”

The research team also notes that acupuncture regulates the immune system in part by stimulating leukocytes, both granulocytes and lymphocytes. This is accomplished by acupuncture’s ability to stimulate the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis.

Additional research presented demonstrated that acupuncture benefits both T-lymphocyte and Natural Killer cell (NK cell) function.

The analysis found significant positive clinical outcomes. A comparison study of sham acupuncture and true acupuncture demonstrated that only true acupuncture was effective in reducing hot flashes in breast cancer patients.

Xerostomia, dry mouth, due to radiation therapy is of major concern. The research shows that acupuncture improves salivary flow rates and decreased overall xerostomia including reductions of related pain and dysfunction.

Chemotherapy induced nausea and vomiting is also of major concern. The findings demonstrate that acupuncture reduces both nausea and vomiting for chemotherapy patients.

Many cancer patients take analgesics to reduce pain but continue to experience severe discomfort. The researchers identified a 90 patient randomized controlled study wherein cancer patients taking analgesics experienced significant additional pain reduction with the addition of acupuncture to their regime of care.

Additionally, patients taking aromatase inhibitors for the treatment of cancer experience joint pain and stiffness. This class of drugs is often used for the treatment of breast and ovarian cancer. The researchers found randomly controlled trials demonstrating that body style acupuncture and auricular acupuncture are both effective in reducing pain associated with the use of this class of cancer medication.

A comparison study of sham acupuncture with true acupuncture for the treatment of chemotherapy related fatigue concluded that only true acupuncture reduced overall fatigue and improved motivation.

This was confirmed by a phase 2 single-arm study wherein acupuncture demonstrated the same results. Another randomly controlled trial of 80 cancer patients demonstrated that acupuncture reduces depression and improves overall sleep quality.

Improvements in immunohistochemistry, CT technology and MRI imaging have led to improved studies on the effective mechanisms of acupuncture. This, combined with improvements in controlled clinical trials, has yielded important results demonstrating the ability of acupuncture to relieve suffering.

This recent meta-analysis reflects this enormous leap forward of acupuncture research on the relief of suffering associated with cancer. The next step will be to continue the acupuncture continuing education and research while expanding integrative medicine implementation for the benefit of patients.

Source: The Epoch Times.
Link: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1032233-evidence-shows-acupuncture-helps-cancer-patients/.