SoylentNews

Megann Gannon reports that nearly 200 scientists are attending a conference, called "The Search for Life Beyond the Solar System: Exoplanets, Biosignature & Instruments," co-hosted by the Vatican Observatory with the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory. The goal of the conference is to bring together the interdisciplinary community required to address this multi-faceted challenge: experts on exoplanet observations, early and extreme life on Earth, atmospheric biosignatures, and planet-finding telescopes. "Finding life beyond Earth is one of the great challenges of modern science and we are excited to have the world leaders in this field together in Tucson," says Daniel Apai. "But reaching such an ambitious goal takes planning and time. The goal of this meeting is to discuss how we can find life among the stars within the next two decades." According to the organizers, the conference will cover the technical challenges of finding and imaging exoplanets and identifying biosignatures in the atmospheres of far-flung worlds. Other presentations will discuss the study of life forms that live in extreme environments on Earth, which could be apt analogs for life on other planets. Scientists will give more than 160 research presentations (PDF) during this week's conference and NASA's Astrobiology Institute will broadcast a live feed of the sessions. Catholic leaders say that alien life can be aligned with the Bible's teachings. 'Just as a multiplicity of creatures exists on Earth, so there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God,' says Father Jose Funes

Time Warner Cable Inc. has stirred anger over its hike in subscription rates for customers and its efforts to extract hefty fees from rivals to air the L.A. Dodgers channel. Now Meg James reports at the LA Times that the city of Los Angeles has sued the cable giant, alleging Time Warner Cable stiffed the city on franchise fees over four years through 2011. The city seeks nearly $10 million in fees, money it said could have helped ease its budget problems during the financial crisis. "Time Warner owes L.A.'s taxpayers millions of dollars for the privilege of having its franchise," says City Attorney Michael Feuer. "This is a day where we are standing up and saying enough is enough." The 24-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, contends that Time Warner Cable "blatantly refused to live up to its obligations to the city" (PDF) to pay franchise fees to operate its cable network over city-owned rights of way while collecting more than $500 million a year from customers in the city. The city is seeking $9.7 million from Time Warner Cable which includes $2.5 million in franchise and PEG (public, educational and government channel) fees and support for 2008 and 2009, plus another $7.2 million owed for 2010 and 2011.

The lawsuit comes just a few weeks after Time Warner Cable alerted its Southern California customers that it planned to hike rates by an average of about 6% a month for homes that are not covered by a promotional package. Time Warner Cable, in a statement, denied the allegation that it had cheated the city. "As a major job creator, tax contributor and service provider in the city of Los Angeles, Time Warner Cable is an active and responsible corporate citizen," the company said in a statement. "We are disappointed the city has chosen to bring this action, which we strongly believe is without merit." Jonathan Kramer, a Los Angeles-based telecom attorney and a member of the California chapter of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, said it was "inevitable that [more] of these types of lawsuits will be filed" and that other cities are considering similar action, but that "Los Angeles is first to pull the trigger." "It's the devil you know," Kramer said. "We know Time Warner. But Comcast is much more aggressive when it comes to pushing back (against) local jurisdictions."

Megan Gannon reports on Live Science that according to a new poll although most Americans believe global warming's effects will take hold during their lifetime, they don't expect these changes to pose a serious threat to their way of life. A Gallup survey found that 54 percent of Americans believe global warming is already impacting the planet; another 3 percent think these effects will occur in a few years and 8 percent think these effects will occur in their lifetime. Meanwhile, 16 percent think global warming's effects will happen sometime after they die, and 18 percent don't expect these effects to ever take hold. But the way the public perceives the reality of global warming seems to be somewhat disconnected from how they perceive the threat of a warming world. Just 36 percent of people in the United States think global warming will eventually disrupt their way of life, they survey found. Age also affected how people saw the effects of a changing climate. Among Americans ages 18 to 29, Gallup found that 78 percent thought the effects of global warming were already occurring or would occur during their lifetime. Just 47 percent of seniors (those 65 and over) said the same. Gallup officials say their poll's results could explain why Americans don't politically prioritize environmental issues; instead, their top concerns are issues that will affect them immediately, like the economy and health care. "Whatever the reasons, those who argue climate change is the top problem of our age are no doubt aghast that even now, in 2014, Americans are not more worried or concerned than they are. A lot of the efforts to raise concern levels and awareness to date have obviously not worked well. It may be that new tactics are needed. So far, however, even if it is a case of whistling past the graveyard, Americans are clearly more focused on other issues."

Everyone knows that Genghis Khan was a ruthless conqueror who founded the Mongolian Empire, which eventually became the largest contiguous empire in history. Now Matthew Stinson reports that according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Central Asia's steppe shifted from drought conditions to a warm, wet climate that coincided with and possibly aided the Great Khan's domination of massive swaths of territory. The study details that when Genghis Khan united the Mongols, he did so during an extremely dry period marked by drought. Thereafter, an incredible period of wet, warm climate change began, aiding the swelling of Khan's empire in Asia. "What makes our new record distinctive is that we can see 15 straight years of above-average moisture," says Neil Pedersen. "It falls during an important period in Mongol history and is singular in terms of persistently wet conditions." Why did warm, wet weather matter for the Mongols? One of the keys to Genghis Khan's military strategy was mobility, both in travel and battle. Mongolians are nomadic and so rely on the natural ecosystem, rather than agriculture, to survive. The wet weather allowed vegetation to grow abundantly, which was necessary as Mongols relied heavily on livestock and horses for sustenance, including mare's milk, which was a common meal in extreme situations. "The transition from extreme drought to extreme moisture right then strongly suggests that climate played a role in human events," says Amy Hessl. "It wasn't the only thing, but it must have created the ideal conditions for a charismatic leader to emerge out of the chaos, develop an army and concentrate power. Where it's arid, unusual moisture creates unusual plant productivity, and that translates into horsepower. Genghis was literally able to ride that wave."

Michael Schulson writes that if you want to write about spiritually-motivated pseudoscience in America, you can drive hundreds of miles to the Creation Museum in Kentucky but that America's greatest shrine to pseudoscience, the Whole Foods Market, is only a 15-minute trip away from most American urbanites. For example the homeopathy section at Whole Foods has plenty of Latin words and mathematical terms, but many of its remedies are so diluted that, statistically speaking, they may not contain a single molecule of the substance they purport to deliver. "You can buy chocolate with "a meld of rich goji berries and ashwagandha root to strengthen your immune system," and bottles of ChlorOxygen chlorophyll concentrate, which "builds better blood." There's cereal with the kind of ingredients that are "made in a kitchen-not in a lab," and tea designed to heal the human heart," writes Schulson. "Nearby are eight full shelves of probiotics-live bacteria intended to improve general health. I invited a biologist friend who studies human gut bacteria to come take a look with me. She read the healing claims printed on a handful of bottles and frowned. "This is bullshit," she said, and went off to buy some vegetables." According to Schulson the total lack of outrage over Whole Foods' existence, and by the total saturation of outrage over the Creation Museum, makes it clear that strict scientific accuracy in the public sphere isn't quite as important to many of us as we might believe. "The moral is not that we should all boycott Whole Foods. It's that whenever we talk about science and society, it helps to keep two rather humbling premises in mind: very few of us are anywhere near rational. And pretty much all of us are hypocrites."

Our community of Slashdot 'audience' exiles is thriving, but we still need more quality submissions.

There are some general things I try to do when submitting that may be helpful to others:

• Be neutral and factual in both Subject and Summary. You can wait until the article is posted, or if you must, include your opinion at the end of the Summary.
• Provide OC - original content. Don't just copy/paste other people's work.
• Avoid paywalled articles if possible. This is also true for sites that show an advertisement before loading the article.
• Use primary sources if possible. If a statement is made to NBC News, link to NBC News, not another site that is quoting NBC News.
• Use at least two source links if possible. This gives readers options and helps insulate against other sites' outages or page removals.
• For controversial issues, use source links from sites with opposing biases. If a wolf says he wants sheep for dinner, don't ask another wolf if that's a good idea, ask a sheep.
• If there is a study or deeper link listed in one of articles you are linking to, you should also include that direct link. Some news sites link to study abstracts, and they are primary source material.
• If the new articles you are linking to reference old articles, you may link those as well to provide background or quotes.
• Explain acronyms for most things. The first time you name something, spell it out. Then on subsequent uses, use the acronym. With our goal of being a global site, things like the US FAA or British OfCom may not be obvious to those outside those countries.
• Wikipedia links are a good source of background info and statistics.
• Check your links are timely. Nothing is worse than warning about something Snopes disproved 5 years ago.
• When quoting a sentence or less, use quotes. When using more than a sentence, use blockquotes, as this makes the text stand out more.
• Double-check your story in preview prior to submission, including opening all links. The less an editor has to edit, the more likely your submission is to being approved.

There are also some things to avoid:

• Don't grumble about rejection of your submission As the site grows, more people will submit the same story. I've also heard there is a 'reason for rejection' system in the works.
• Avoid unauthorized copying. Don't copy/pasta from Slashdot, that's setting up your editor for failure. Or a mocking on IRC.
• Avoid links to non-English sources unless you provide a Google Translate link along with the direct, native link.

Scott Smith reports at AP that 26-year-old Sergio Patrick Rodriguez has been convicted of pointing a green laser at a Fresno Police Department helicopter and sentenced to spend 14 years in federal prison. "This is not a game. It is dangerous, and it is a felony," says US Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner. "Those who aim lasers at aircraft should know that we will seek to convict them, and we will seek to send them to prison. The safety of aircraft and the people in them demands no less." According to evidence presented at trial, Rodriguez and his girlfriend, Jennifer Lorraine Coleman, 23, used a high-powered green laser pointer 13 times more powerful than common pointers to repeatedly strike the cockpit of Air 1 during a clear summer night in 2012. In imposing the sentence, Judge O'Neill considered not only the severity of the offenses but Rodriguez's criminal history, numerous probation violations, and Bulldog gang affiliation. An expert said that the laser pointer that Rodriguez used was an instrument capable of inflicting serious bodily injury and death due to a high potential for crash caused by visual interference. A jury found Rodriguez guilty of attempting to interfere with safe operation of aircraft and aiming a laser pointer at an aircraft. "Lasing aircraft is not a joke or a casual prank," says Special Agent in Charge Monica M. Miller of the FBI's Sacramento field office. "Rodriguez's sentence clearly demonstrates the seriousness of his actions and that the FBI will work with its law enforcement partners to locate and arrest those who engage in dangerous, improper use of hand-held lasers that puts us all at risk."

On February 11, 2014, in 12 cities, the FBI, in collaboration with the Air Line Pilots Association International and the FAA, announced the Laser Threat Awareness campaign, a nationwide effort to alert the public to the threat that aircraft laser illumination poses and the penalties for such activity. The FBI will offer up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of any individual who intentionally aims a laser at an aircraft. The program is being rolled out in Albuquerque, N.M.; Houston and San Antonio, Texas; Los Angeles and Sacramento, Calif.; Philadelphia; Phoenix, Ariz.; Cleveland, Ohio; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; New York; and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Bill Palmer, an Airbus A330 captain for a major airline, and author of the book "Understanding Air France 447" has an interesting read at CNN on why there have been so few clues about the fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, beginning with the lack of a distress call. According to Palmer the lack of a distress call is not particularly perplexing. "An aviator's priorities are to maintain control of the airplane above all else. An emergency could easily consume 100% of a crew's efforts. To an airline pilot, the absence of radio calls to personnel on the ground that could do little to help the immediate situation is no surprise." Reports of a possible course reversal observed on radar could be the result of intentional crew actions but not necessarily says Palmer. During Air France 447's 3-1/2 minute descent to the Atlantic Ocean, it too changed its heading by more than 180 degrees, but it was an unintentional side effect as the crew struggled to gain control of the airplane. The Malaysian flight's last telemetry data, as reported by flightaware.com, shows the airplane at 35,000 feet. Even with a dual engine failure, a Boeing 777 is capable of gliding about 120 miles from that altitude yielding a search area roughly the size of Pennsylvania, with few clues within that area where remains of the aircraft might be. "This investigation may face many parallels to Air France 447, an Airbus A330 that crashed in an area beyond radar coverage in the ocean north of Brazil in June 2009. Like the Air France plane, the Malaysia Airlines aircraft was a state-of-the-art, fly-by-wire airplane (a Boeing 777) with an excellent safety record," says Palmer. "We will know the truth of what happened when the aircraft is found and the recorders and wreckage are analyzed. In the meantime, speculation is often inaccurate and unproductive."

Ian O'Neill writes in Discovery Magazine that despite NASA's best efforts to track it down, there is no evidence for the existence of Planet X. The hypothetical world that may or may not be orbiting the sun beyond the orbit of Pluto has inspired many a doomsday theory. In the run-up to the much anticipated "Mayan Doomsday" of December 21, 2012, the marauding Planet X was scheduled to make a inner-solar system dash, sparking gravitational mayhem, triggering civilization-ending solar flares. But in spite of the doomsday nonsense, the hunt for "Planet X" actually has roots in real science. In the mid- to late-19th Century, astronomers were tracking the gravitational perturbations of the gas giant planets in an effort to track down an undiscovered world in the outermost reaches of the solar system - this hypothetical massive planet was dubbed "Planet X." However, this fascinating trail ended with the discovery of tiny Pluto in 1930. The idea that the sun may have a stellar partner has also been investigated - perhaps there's a brown dwarf going unnoticed out there. Nicknamed "Nemesis," this binary partner could be evading detection. One strong piece of evidence laid in the discovery of the "Kuiper Cliff," a sudden drop-off of Kuiper Belt objects in the region just beyond Pluto. Could the Cliff be caused by a previously overlooked world? Also, geological record has suggested there's a regularity to mass extinctions on Earth linked to comet impacts - could a distant orbiting body be perturbing comets, sending them our way on a cyclical basis?

However Kevin Luhman of the Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds at Penn State University have analyzed data from NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), a space telescope that carried out a detailed infrared survey of the entire sky from 2010 to 2011. If something big is lurking out there, WISE would easily have spotted it. According to a NASA news release, "no object the size of Saturn or larger exists out to a distance of 10,000 astronomical units (AU), and no object larger than Jupiter exists out to 26,000 AU. One astronomical unit equals 93 million miles. Earth is 1 AU, and Pluto about 40 AU, from the sun." Observations by WISE have also ruled out the Planet X-comet perturbation theory. ""The outer solar system probably does not contain a large gas giant planet, or a small, companion star."

James B. Stewart writes in the NYT that there's one major difference between now and the last time Russia invaded a neighbor (Czechoslovakia in 1968): Now Moscow has a stock market that provides a minute-by-minute referendum on Putin's military and diplomatic actions. On Monday, the Russian stock market index (RTSI) fell more than 12 percent, in what a Russian official called panic selling and the ruble plunged on currency markets, forcing the Russian central bank to raise interest rates by one and a half percentage points to defend the currency. On Tuesday, as soon as Mr. Putin said he saw no need for further Russian military intervention, the Russian market rebounded by 6 percent. With tensions on the rise once more on Friday, the Russian market may again gyrate when it opens on Monday. Russia is far more exposed to market fluctuations than many countries, since the Russian government owns a majority stake in a number of the country's largest companies and many Russian companies and banks are fully integrated into the global financial system. The old Soviet Union, in stark contrast, was all but impervious to foreign economic or business pressure, thanks in part to an ideological commitment to self-sufficiency. By contrast, today "Russia is too weak and vulnerable economically to go to war," says Anders Aslund. "The Kremlin's fundamental mistake has been to ignore its economic weakness and dependence on Europe." Almost half of Russia's exports go to Europe, and three-quarters of its total exports consist of oil and gas. The energy boom is over, and Europe can turn the tables on Russia after its prior gas supply cuts in 2006 and 2009 replacing this gas with liquefied natural gas, gas from Norway and shale gas. If the European Union sanctioned Russia's gas supply to Europe, Russia would lose $100 billion or one-fifth of its export revenues, and the Russian economy would be in rampant crisis. Other penalties might include asset freezes and the billionaire Russian elite - who are pretty much synonymous with Mr. Putin's friends and allies - are the ones who would be severely affected by visa bans, which were imposed by President Obama on Thursday. "The recent events were completely irrational, angering the West for no reason," says one Russian economist. "This is what is most scary, especially for businesses. Instead of reforming the stagnating economy, Putin scared everybody for no reason and with no gain in sight. So it is hard to predict his next actions. But I think a real Cold War is unlikely."