Police cite privacy concerns over their own DNA (AP)

HARTFORD, Conn. ? When police in southern Louisiana were investigating the deaths of eight women in 2009, the sophistication of the crimes set off rumors that the serial killer was a police officer ? speculation that became so pervasive that officials ordered DNA testing of law enforcement personnel to rule it out.

All local officers agreed to the testing and were eliminated as suspects, but the killer remains at large, said Jefferson Davis Parish Sheriff Ricky Edwards.

Having officers' DNA samples on file is important for saving time in investigations and fending off doubt about evidence at trials because it allows authorities to identify unknown genetic material found at crime scenes, Edwards and other police and crime lab officials say.

Police in other parts of the country, however, are not as willing to hand over their DNA. Rank-and-file police from Connecticut to Chicago to Los Angeles have opposed what some experts say is a slowly emerging trend in the U.S. to collect officers' DNA.

"From a civil liberties standpoint, there are a lot of red flags," said Connecticut Trooper Steven Rief, former president of the state police union.

"It's not that the law enforcement officers are opposed to giving up their DNA," he said. "You need to have safeguards in place. Something that can tell you ... something intimate about someone needs to be treated with the utmost care."

Rief and officers in other states say their concerns include management using the DNA information to see if employees are predisposed to diseases and to predict workers' future health problems. The rank-and-file also don't want their DNA placed onto a national database that holds criminals' genetic data.

Connecticut state police officials tried to get the legislature to approve a law requiring officers to provide DNA samples in 2009, but the bill died during the session after Rief and others spoke out against it at a public hearing at the Capitol.

In Chicago, police officers rebelled with a work slowdown in 2008 because of resentment toward their new chief over several issues, including a new policy to collect DNA from officers working at crime scenes.

In a still-unresolved dispute in Los Angeles, the police union and top brass have traded salvos over a requirement that officers give DNA samples in shootings involving police and other use-of-force incidents. Union leaders say management won't restrict how the DNA information is used and stored, and the union cautioned officers in 2009 about potential privacy and misuse problems.

The union, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, has been waiting for the department to force an officer to provide his or her DNA, which it hasn't done yet, so it can challenge the policy in court, a union spokesman said.

A small number of police departments across the country have limited policies on collecting officers' DNA. New York and Las Vegas, for example, require samples from crime scene investigators.

Louisiana appears to be the only state with a law requiring officers to provide genetic samples. The law was enacted in 2003 and applies only to officers hired on or after Aug. 15 of that year.

During the investigation of the serial killings in Jefferson Davis Parish, about 70 miles east of the Texas line, Edwards said officers in his agency and the Jennings Police Department who were hired before the DNA law took effect voluntarily gave samples of their DNA.

"I think it's a good tool that we're utilizing," Edwards said. "I see it as potentially going all the way across the country.

"I realize that there may be some privacy concerns," he said. "We should be leaders in saying we don't have a problem doing it."

Police in other parts of the world, including the United Kingdom and Australia, have been keeping officers' DNA on file for several years. The U.K. is also known for starting the world's first government DNA database of criminal suspects in 1995. The U.S. followed suit and now has the world's largest DNA database of criminals with 10 million profiles.

Some experts say policies requiring police officers' to give samples of their DNA have been slower to catch on in the U.S. because police unions have more power here.

Lisa Hurst, a senior consultant with the lobbying firm of Gordon Thomas Honeywell, said that as DNA technology advances, it's more important that officers' DNA is on file to eliminate unknown samples found at crime scenes.

"Today's tests pick up a high amount of samples," said Hurst, whose firm lobbies for the DNA industry and advises governments on DNA legislation. "They need to make sure that this unknown (DNA) profile isn't from a detective or patrol guy who accidentally sneezed while walking through the room."

It's especially important, she said, for eliminating reasonable doubt at criminal trials.

"If there's one unknown sample at the scene, the jury may give the defendant the benefit of the doubt," Hurst said.

Unknown DNA samples have caused problems in some criminal investigations, especially in the case of the so-called "phantom killer" in Europe. DNA from that woman was found at the scenes of about 40 crimes in Germany, Austria and France in recent years, ranging from burglaries to the shooting of a policewoman.

But the search for the woman ended with an embarrassing discovery in 2009: the DNA came from an innocent worker at a company that made the cotton swabs used to collect evidence.

Rief, the Connecticut trooper, said that while collecting DNA can be a good thing for criminal investigations, it also presents a host of problems.

"If we're just having a philosophical discussion about solving crimes and collecting DNA, why not collect DNA from everybody when they're born?" he said. "But I don't think we're ready to have that discussion as a society."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/crime/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111016/ap_on_re_us/us_police_dna

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Occupy Wall Street protests in China? Not for now, anyway.

Occupy Wall Street protests spread to four continents over the weekend, but China's major involvement was conspicuously absent.

As the ?Occupy Wall Street? movement spread to four continents over the weekend, guess which major world capital did not see any protesters?

Skip to next paragraph

Unsurprisingly, since unofficial public gatherings of any kind are taboo in China, Tiananmen Square was not teeming with anticapitalist demonstrators on Saturday.

Not that China might not be ripe for the spreading movement: A growing gulf between rich and poor here would make this fertile ground for the 99-percenters.

And the government knows it, which is why it is censoring any effort to organize protests in China. Type ?Occupy Beijing? into Internet search engines here and you get either completely irrelevant results, or references to protests in America, Japan, Singapore ? anywhere but China.

There is an ?Occupy Beijing? group on Facebook, but you can only get onto Facebook ? which is blocked by the Great Firewall ? if you have censorship-evading software, a comparative rarity in China. That makes the social networking site a poor organizing tool here.

A group of older men did mount a brief demonstration last week in a park in Zhengzhou, the capital of the central province of Henan, but it had a very different feel to it from the youthful tent cities that have sprung up in European capitals, to judge by a video that made it onto the Chinese web.

?Proletarians of the world, Unite!? read their red armbands, reminiscent of Mao?s days. ?At least 700 arrested in New York, democracy and liberty trampled on,? explained a flyer that organizers were handing out.

Even the video of this event proved too inflammatory for the Chinese authorities. It was taken down from the Sina.com website within a day or so.

A pop-up demonstration of some sort does seem to have taken place in the heartland of Chinese capitalism, to judge by photos linked to from the ?Occupy Shanghai? Facebook page. Pictures show a man in a panda mask in a number of different locations in Shanghai holding up a sign reading ?We are the 99 percent. We do not need greedy financial system. We need to move forward mankind? in Chinese and English.

Another man held up a similar sign in the university city of Nanjing. But those two men and their photographer accomplices appear to constitute the full extent of Chinese mainland public participation on the day ?Occupy Wall Street? went global.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/pyPLSgZFXT8/Occupy-Wall-Street-protests-in-China-Not-for-now-anyway

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Can 'Occupy' protests last without leaders? (AP)

NEW YORK ? They were out to change the world, overthrow the establishment and liberate the poor. But first somebody would have to do something about those bongo drums.

At the Occupy Wall Street protest camp in Manhattan, protesters agonized over what to do about drum players who had turned part of the site into an impromptu dance floor. The neighbors were complaining about the racket. The protesters had tried to put a time limit on the noise, but the drummers were refusing to obey.

"It's an issue, definitely," sighed protester Kanene Holder, 31, on Friday night. "We'll have to work it out."

Reining in a few pesky percussionists would seem to be an easy task for a movement seemingly on the verge of becoming a political force. But one month after it burst onto the scene and inspired similar protests across the country, the Occupy Wall Street protest remains stubbornly decentralized, complicating everything from enforcing camp rules to writing a national platform.

On Saturday the protesters planned to march on bank offices and into Times Square. But while their message against corporate greed has struck a nerve with many Americans, the lack of leaders in Manhattan and at other protest camps has baffled many.

In Minneapolis, Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek has been meeting every morning with a delegation of protesters ? "at least, the ones who come forward and say they are the organizers," Stanek said. "It's a little difficult because it seems like each day it's been a completely different group of folks."

Protesters say the decentralization is deliberate and note that other movements, like the 1960s civil rights effort, began in a similarly disorganized way. It also calls to mind the Arab Spring, which had influential protesters but no clear leaders, at least initially.

And some academics who have studied dissent movements say that while being "leaderless" has some drawbacks, it could also have great advantages. Chief among them: It has allowed people with very different backgrounds ? like union workers and anarchists ? to rally behind the same broad message against corporate greed, without actually agreeing much on where the country should go from here.

"They have achieved popular support so much quicker than anti-war movement, or civil rights movement," said Todd Gitlin, an expert on political dissent at Columbia University.

From its earliest days, the people at the heart of Occupy Wall Street have worked hard to make it a movement without leaders.

The original call for the demonstration came from the editors of the Canadian anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters in mid-July. But since then, no one on the publication's staff has been actively involved in organizing or leading the protests.

The two men who came up with the idea, 69-year-old Adbusters co-founder Kalle Lasn and 29-year-old editor Micah White, have yet to go to New York to see the demonstration.

The large group of activists who began meeting to plan the occupation in midsummer came from a variety of groups and backgrounds, and resolved from the start that they wouldn't elect leaders, appoint a central planning council, or even name lead negotiators to deal with New York's police or City Hall.

"A lot of people can't handle that ? it goes to their head," said Joey Pearson, 29, a laid-off auto worker from Cincinnati.

Instead, decisions at the camp in lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park are made at a General Assembly of protesters that sometimes numbers in the thousands, while the nitty-gritty work of organizing the encampment is carried out by a large number of autonomous work teams that largely function without central oversight.

New York police have prohibited protesters from using a public address system because they do not have a permit for their demonstration. So the protesters have adopted a system of hand signals ? fingers up for agreement, down for disagreement ? and a "human microphone" in which the crowd repeats each word so that everyone can hear.

On Friday night the General Assembly meeting lurched along through this call-and-response system.

"The GA ..." shouted a member of the Facilitation Committee.

"THE GA!" bellowed the crowd.

"... is now ..."

"IS NOW!"

"... in session."

"IN SESSION!"

A member of the Community Relations Committee outlined the drum problem, summarizing the neighbors' concerns a few words at a time.

The General Assembly had already decided during Thursday night's meeting to limit drum playing, but to no avail.

On Friday, the body failed to reach a consensus. But a smaller group of drummers and mediators later agreed to limit the music to noon to 2 p.m. and 5-7 p.m., said Andrew Smith, 26, of Portland, Ore., who sat in on the negotiations.

The slow pace of decisions has also led to other problems, like keeping the site clean.

Bobby Cooper, who is on the sanitation working group, said volunteers had been planning a mass cleaning of the park for about a week but no decision had been made on their proposals because of drawn-out discussions.

Finally, on Thursday, with the threat of the park's owner evicting protesters to do its own cleaning, the sanitation group got some attention ? and some plastic bins to distribute to the occupiers.

"I would have wanted these bins a week ago," said Cooper, 30, of Brooklyn.

In other areas, though, the independent nature of the work teams has allowed them to act efficiently and quickly. From its first days, the protesters have had an aggressive media outreach program. The finance committee worked out an agreement with a nonprofit group in Washington, D.C., that has begun allowing the movement to accept credit card donations online.

To date, some of the biggest events associated with the demonstration have been put in motion by the work teams, rather than the assembly. For example, the group's march several weeks ago to the Brooklyn Bridge ? a demonstration that ended in hundreds of arrests and raised the movement's profile ? was planned by the direct action working group, said Brooklyn schoolteacher Matt Presto, one of a few dozen "facilitators" who specialize in moderating general assembly meetings, and other large discussion groups.

And people are demonstrating leadership, even if they don't have a formal title, activists said.

"There is not a classification in leaders. But there are people whose voices are respected, and who people want to listen to," said one organizer, Marina Sitrin.

The commitment to consensus on big issues has prevented the group from settling upon a single list of demands to present to the public, protesters say. But they insist that's OK.

"When the civil rights movement started, people didn't come out right out with a big list of demands ? they came out in the streets and just said, `We're not going to accept society the way it is,'" said Ed Needham, 43, a public relations manager from Cambridge, Mass. "That's the stage we're in right now."

A sign near the edge of the protest camp Friday echoed that sentiment.

"We're here, we're unclear, get used to it!" it said.

The movement against nuclear power in the 1970s eschewed big-name leaders or national organizations. So did the early feminist movement, where organizational meetings favored consensus over strong leadership. Quakers have been using the consensus model for hundreds of years.

But political experts say there are drawbacks.

With outsiders not quite certain who is in charge, or who has authority to speak for the group, there is a possibility that the press or public could become confused about what the demonstrations stand for, said John Krinsky, a political science professor at the City University of New York.

Core groups of leaders will eventually emerge, said Gabriella Coleman, an assistant professor in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University who has been studying Occupy Wall Street and also participated in some of its early planning meetings.

"What happens often is that, sometimes when a tight-knit working group gets to know each other quite well, newcomers, like six months down the line, have a harder time getting involved. There is already a culture, friendship, and it is hard to break into that core group," Coleman said.

The bigger hurdle for the Occupy movement may not be the lack of strong leaders but the large philosophical differences between the small group of demonstrators and the much larger ? but less radical ? group of outsiders who have been supportive of the protests from afar, Gitlin said.

The young people at Zuccotti Park "really think they are headed for no future. No jobs. Ice caps are melting. Misery in the offing ... You want a new civilization," Gitlin said.

"But most of the people who support you ... they don't want a new civilization. They want to be middle class."

___

Associated Press Writers Cristian Salazar in New York and Patrick Condon in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/stocks/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111015/ap_on_re_us/us_wall_street_protest_who_s_in_charge

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AP Source: Philadelphia 76ers sale is approved (AP)

PHILADELPHIA ? A person familiar with the deal says the sale of the Philadelphia 76ers has been approved by the NBA Board of Governors.

The person spoke on the condition of anonymity Friday because the sale has not yet closed. That could happen early next week.

The sale was approved by the board this week, paving the way for New York-based leveraged buyout specialist Joshua Harris to take control of the franchise. It ends Comcast-Spectacor's 15-year run of ownership that included a trip to the NBA finals.

Comcast-Spectacor, led by chairman Ed Snider, purchased the Sixers from Harold Katz on April 24, 1996. Comcast-Spectacor also owns the NHL's Philadelphia Flyers.

Harris buys the Sixers with the NBA in the midst of a lockout. The first two weeks of the regular season have already been canceled.

Harris is one of three founders of Apollo Global Management, a publicly listed alternative investment manager. He leads a group that includes former NBA player agent and Sacramento Kings executive Jason Levien.

The 76ers were valued this year by Forbes at $330 million, 17th in the NBA, and have a television deal with cable station Comcast SportsNet through 2029.

Harris co-founded Apollo Global Management in 1990. He has a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business and a master's degree from the Harvard Business School.

His group is purchasing a team that hasn't won a championship since 1983. Under Snider's ownership, the 76ers lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2001 NBA finals.

Snider said last month that sagging crowds and massive financial losses led Comcast-Spectacor to pitch a "for sale" sign and strike a tentative deal to sell in July.

"It was mostly economics," Snider said of the decision.

Losing money?

"A lot," Snider said, declining specifics. "We felt that we had given it our best shot and it was time for someone else to take over."

The deal did not include ownership of their building, the Wells Fargo Center.

The Sixers have won only one playoff series since 2001 and have been stuck in mediocrity for most of the last decade. They haven't had a winning record since 2004-05, but have made the playoffs three times since.

This past season, the Sixers won 41 games and stretched the Miami Heat to a five-game playoff series in Doug Collins' first season as coach.

Harris didn't return an interview request through Apollo on Friday. Coach Doug Collins said recently he had not met his new boss.

"I think they want to feel that they own the team before they get front and center," Collins said. "They've been very adamant in the fact that they want to keep a very low profile until they own the team."

Before the lockout, the Sixers would have had about $55 million in payroll committed to next season, led by Elton Brand's $17 million and Andre Iguodala's $13.5 million. The Sixers spent the summer in trade talks involving Iguodala ? plans that have been put on hold because of the lockout.

___

Follow Dan Gelston at http://twitter.com/APgelston

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111015/ap_on_sp_bk_ne/bkn76ers_sale

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New study finds 400,000 farmers in southern Africa using 'fertilizer trees' to improve food security

ScienceDaily (Oct. 14, 2011) ? On a continent battered by weather extremes, famine and record food prices, new research released October 14 from the World Agroforestry Centre documents an exciting new trend in which hundreds of thousands of poor farmers in Southern Africa are now significantly boosting yields and incomes simply by using fast growing trees and shrubs to naturally fertilize their fields.

The analysis of two decades of work to bring the soil-enriching benefits of so-called "fertilizer trees" to the nutrient-depleted farms of Africa was published in the most recent issue of the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability.

"In only five African countries, there are now some 400,000 smallholder farmers using fertilizer trees to provide critically needed soil nutrients -- and many report major increases in maize yields -- which shows that it is possible to rapidly introduce innovations in Africa that can have an immediate impact on food security," said Oluyede Ajayi, Senior Scientist at the World Agroforestry Centre and the paper's lead author.

The study focuses on the rapid adoption of fertilizer trees by farmers targeted in research, training and extension programs in Malawi, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In eastern Zambia alone, the study reports the use of fertilizer trees grew from a pilot project in the early 1990s that involved only 12 farmers to adoption by 66,000 farmers as of 2006. In Malawi, there are now 145,000 farmers using fertilizer trees.

In addition, across the region, researchers have documented a doubling of maize yields on farms employing fertilizer trees compared to those that did not, which has dramatically increased both incomes and food security. In Zambia, for example, incomes for farmers using the fertilizer trees averaged from $233 to $327 per hectare, compared to only $130 for unfertilized fields. And the increased yields provided between 57 to 114 extra days of food.

"We also found that when farmers plant these trees, water efficiency improves," Ajayi said. "Farmers are getting higher yields from the same amount of rainwater. And the trees are helping reduce the run-off and soil erosion that is a key factor behind food production shortfalls in Africa."

Fertilizer trees enhance soil health by drawing nitrogen from the air and transferring it to the soil through their roots and leaf litter, replenishing exhausted soils with rich sources of organic nutrients. Scientists at the World Agroforestry Centre have been working since the 1980s to identify indigenous tree species, such as a fast growing variety of acacia that can be planted alongside crops to improve soil fertility. Among the many burdens facing African farmers are soils that are among the most depleted in the world. Yet for two-thirds of farmers on the continent, mineral supplements are either too expensive or simply unavailable.

In recent years, the Centre's work has focused on partnerships, particularly with national agriculture extension programs, that can help more smallholder farmers integrate fertilizer trees into their crop production systems. Ajayi said the rapid adoption of the fertilizer tree approach is partly due to the fact that researchers have turned over much of the project design and testing to farmers.

"Initially, these fertilizer tree projects were controlled mostly by researchers," Ajayi said. "But in the final phases of development, all of the testing in the field was completely designed and fully managed by the farmers themselves."

Ajayi also credited initiatives that focused on integrating the fertilizer tree approach with national agriculture policies and priorities.

Researchers believe wider use of fertilizer trees in Africa will require a two-track strategy that involves simultaneously engaging policy makers and farmers.

Ajayi cautioned that, while they are a natural way of supplementing the soil, fertilizer trees should not become entangled in the divisive "organic versus inorganic" debate over how to boost to increase crop yields in Africa. It is important to increase the use of both types of nutrient sources in complementary ways. For example, research has shown that coupling fertilizer trees with small doses of mineral fertilizer often results in generating the highest productivity and financial returns.

"We need to provide farmers in Africa with a wide range of soil fertility options and not focus on one type or another as being somehow superior," he said.

Researchers also say future work should focus on the potential for fertilizer trees to improve yields of high value crops, such as coffee and cocoa.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Burness Communications, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Oluyede Clifford Ajayi, Frank Place, Festus Kehinde Akinnifesi, Gudeta Weldsesemayat Sileshi. Agricultural success from Africa: the case of fertilizer tree systems in southern Africa (Malawi, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe). International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability, 2011; 9 (1): 129 DOI: 10.3763/ijas.2010.0554

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/~3/PAtEBLKBvqI/111014122317.htm

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Nigeria's Access Bank completes Intercon takeover (Reuters)

LAGOS (Reuters) ? Nigeria's Access Bank (ACCESS.LG) said on Sunday it had completed the acquisition of its 75 percent majority interest in rescued lender Intercontinental Bank (INTERCO.LG).

Intercontinental was one of nine banks rescued in a $4 billion 2009 bailout. All rescued lenders have now agreed recapitalization deals, bringing to a close a reform program set-up two years ago to end the country's banking crisis.

(Reporting by Oludare Mayowa; Writing by Joe Brock)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/africa/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111016/bs_nm/us_nigeria_banks

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Researchers explore plankton's shifting role in deep sea carbon storage

Friday, October 14, 2011

The tiny phytoplankton Emiliania huxleyi, invisible to the naked eye, plays an outsized role in drawing carbon from the atmosphere and sequestering it deep in the seas. But this role may change as ocean water becomes warmer and more acidic, according to a San Francisco State University research team.

In a study published this week in the journal Global Change Biology, SF State Assistant Professor of Biology Jonathon Stillman and colleagues show how climate-driven changes in nitrogen sources and carbon dioxide levels in seawater could work together to make Emiliania huxleyi a less effective agent of carbon storage in the deep ocean, the world's largest carbon sink.

Changes to this massive carbon sink could have a critical effect on the planet's future climate, Stillman said, especially as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to rise sharply as a result of fossil fuel burning and other human activities.

While floating free in the sunny top layers of the oceans, the phytoplankton develop elaborate plates of calcified armor called coccoliths. The coccoliths form a hard and heavy shell that eventually sinks to the ocean depths. "About 80 percent of inorganic carbon trapped down there is from coccoliths like these," said Stillman.

Stillman and his colleagues wanted to discover how ocean acidification and changes in the ocean's nitrogen cycle?both hallmarks of climate warming?might effect coccolith development. So they raised more than 200 generations of Emiliania huxleyi in the lab, adjusting carbon dioxide levels and the type of nitrogen in the phytoplankton's seawater bath.

They found that high levels of carbon dioxide?which make the water more acidic?along with a shift in the prevailing nitrogen type from nitrates to ammonium?"had a synergistic effect" on the phytoplankton's biology and growth.

In particular, coccoliths formed under conditions of high carbon dioxide and high ammonium levels were incomplete or hollow, and contained less than the usual amount of inorganic carbon, the researchers noted.

"The ratio of inorganic to organic carbon is important," Stillman explained. "As inorganic carbon increases, it adds more ballast to the hard shell, which makes it sink and makes it more likely to be transported to the deep ocean. Without this, the carbon is more likely to be recycled into the Earth's atmosphere."

"Our results suggest in the future there will be overall lower amounts of calcification and overall lower amount of transport of carbon to the deep ocean," he added.

Emiliania huxleyi typically use nitrates to make proteins, but this form of nitrogen may be in shorter supply for the phytoplankton as the world's oceans grow warmer and more acidic, Stillman and colleagues suggest. In the open ocean, nitrates are upwelled from deep waters, but a thickening layer of warmer surface water could inhibit this upwelling. At the same time, the warmer temperatures favor bacteria that turn recycled nitrogen from surface waters and the atmosphere into ammonium, and acidification inhibits the bacteria that turn ammonium into nitrate.

"It is likely that in the future, the ocean surface will contain more ammonium," which the phytoplankton will assimilate instead of nitrates, Stillman suggested. "Metabolizing nitrogen as ammonium versus nitrates requires different biochemical constituents that impact how well the cells make their coccoliths. They will survive just fine, but their biology will be different as a result."

The study by Stillman and colleagues is the first to look at the intertwined effects of ocean acidification and changes in nitrogen on phytoplankton like Emiliania huxleyi. It's also one of the first studies to observe these effects continuously over a long time scale, "so the responses of the phytoplankton are likely what we'll see in the ocean itself," Stillman said.

Stephane Lefebrve, the SF State postdoctoral student who developed the experiments for the study, said he is now looking for phytoplankton genes that "will help us to build the genetic blueprint of their responses to elevated carbon dioxide and a nitrogen source"

###

San Francisco State University: http://www.sfsu.edu

Thanks to San Francisco State University for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/114316/Researchers_explore_plankton_s_shifting_role_in_deep_sea_carbon_storage

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