Making Science More Better For You on 10/31/07

This just in from the Department of Redundancy Department
State Report: Texas Has Too Many Reports
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 29, 2007

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- State agencies issue too many reports, a new 668-page report says.

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission spent 18 months and canvassed more than 170 agencies and public colleges and universities, checking on all the reports they are assigned to do.

The commission found more than 1,600, and state records administrator Michael Heskett is pretty sure his team hasn't found them all.

Heskett's initial findings indicate more than 400 report requirements are obsolete, duplicative or not needed as frequently as currently required.

''At first, we were overwhelmed by the sheer number of reporting requirements,'' Heskett said. ''We haven't begun our evaluation yet. But I think we can reach our goal of eliminating the deadwood without compromising the need for accountability in our state agencies.''

Agencies stand to save thousands of staff hours and tons of paper, although the commission hasn't estimated yet exactly how much of either, Heskett said.

The Library and Archives Commission has only just begun assessing the report requirements one by one, which Heskett expects will take at least another year.

As for the commission's massive report on reports, Heskett predicts it won't go away.

''For the report to be effective, it must be ongoing,'' he said.

It was probably written by the Superintendent of Superfluity


Headline of the day
Pet-sitter accused of abuse as pot-bellied pig’s weight triples



Does it have to take a urine test?
Massive Black Hole Smashes Record

ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2007) — Using two NASA satellites, astronomers have discovered the heftiest known black hole to orbit a star. The new black hole, with a mass 24 to 33 times that of our Sun, is more massive than scientists expected for a black hole that formed from a dying star.

The newly discovered object belongs to the category of "stellar-mass" black holes. Formed in the death throes of massive stars, they are smaller than the monster black holes found in galactic cores. The previous record holder for largest stellar-mass black hole is a 16-solar-mass black hole in the galaxy M33, announced on October 17.

"We weren’t expecting to find a stellar-mass black hole this massive," says Andrea Prestwich of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., lead author of the discovery paper in the November 1 Astrophysical Journal Letters. "It seems likely that black holes that form from dying stars can be much larger than we had realized."

The black hole is located in the nearby dwarf galaxy IC 10, 1.8 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia. Prestwich’s team could measure the black hole’s mass because it has an orbiting companion: a hot, highly evolved star. The star is ejecting gas in the form of a wind. Some of this material spirals toward the black hole, heats up, and gives off powerful X-rays before crossing the point of no return.

In November 2006, Prestwich and her colleagues observed the dwarf galaxy with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The group discovered that the galaxy’s brightest X-ray source, IC 10 X-1, exhibits sharp changes in X-ray brightness. Such behavior suggests a star periodically passing in front of a companion black hole and blocking the X-rays, creating an eclipse. In late November, NASA’s Swift satellite confirmed the eclipses and revealed details about the star’s orbit. The star in IC 10 X-1 appears to orbit in a plane that lies nearly edge-on to Earth’s line of sight, The Swift observations, as well as observations from the Gemini Telescope in Hawaii, told Prestwich and her group how fast the two stars go around each other. Calculations showed that the companion black hole has a mass of at least 24 Suns.

There are still some uncertainties in the black hole’s mass estimate, but as Prestwich notes, "Future optical observations will provide a final check. Any refinements in the IC 10 X-1 measurement are likely to increase the black hole’s mass rather than reduce it."

The black hole’s large mass is surprising because massive stars generate powerful winds that blow off a large fraction of the star’s mass before it explodes. Calculations suggest massive stars in our galaxy leave behind black holes no heavier than about 15 to 20 Suns.

The IC 10 X-1 black hole has gained mass since its birth by gobbling up gas from its companion star, but the rate is so slow that the black hole would have gained no more than 1 or 2 solar masses. "This black hole was born fat; it didn’t grow fat," says astrophysicist Richard Mushotzky of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who is not a member of the discovery team.

The progenitor star probably started its life with 60 or more solar masses. Like its host galaxy, it was probably deficient in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. In massive, luminous stars with a high fraction of heavy elements, the extra electrons of elements such as carbon and oxygen "feel" the outward pressure of light and are thus more susceptible to being swept away in stellar winds. But with its low fraction of heavy elements, the IC 10 X-1 progenitor shed comparatively little mass before it exploded, so it could leave behind a heavier black hole.

"Massive stars in our galaxy today are probably not producing very heavy stellar-mass black holes like this one," says coauthor Roy Kilgard of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. "But there could be millions of heavy stellar-mass black holes lurking out there that were produced early in the Milky Way’s history, before it had a chance to build up heavy elements."

Adapted from materials provided by NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.




Smithers, since you’re already at the buffet, be a good chap and bring me some leaves.

Social Standing Influences Elephant Movement

ScienceDaily (Oct. 30, 2007) — When resources are scarce, who you know and where you're positioned on the social totem pole affects how far you'll go to search for food. At least that's the case with African elephants, according to a study led by ecologists at the University of California, Berkeley, who collaborated with researchers at Save the Elephants, a non-profit research organization based in Kenya, and at the University of Oxford in England.

An analysis of social dominance relationships and roaming patterns of free-ranging elephants in the Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves in northern Kenya found that elephants led by older, more dominant matriarchs tromped significantly fewer miles to seek food than those a few rungs lower on the social ladder.

During the dry season, when water and vegetation were harder to come by, dominant groups traveled an average of 4-5 kilometers per day, about half the distance of subordinate groups that would trek 8-11 kilometers per day.

Additionally, dominant groups in the study were more likely to stick to the preferred central, protected areas of the park, where fewer humans and more water can be found.

"This work shows, for the first time, the role social factors play in the dispersal of elephants in an ecosystem," said lead author George Wittemyer, a post-doctoral researcher at UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources and a National Science Foundation International Research Fellow. "The findings have significant policy implications for how elephant populations are managed."

The elephants in this study occupied an open park, but in many areas of Africa, significant tracts of land are being fenced off to keep the elephants away from agricultural communities where the pachyderms' propensity to raid crops have earned them the label of pests. For example, some 12,000 elephants are enclosed in a 7,000 square kilometer area of South Africa's Kruger National Park.

The fencing practice has generated a great deal of debate about how best to balance the needs of the elephants with those of local residents - many of whom are subsistence farmers in need of protecting their crops. But the questions currently focus on the impact of the elephants on the local vegetation.

"Elephants can feed on a wide range of vegetation, but if they can't move, they're more likely to focus on a particular species - such as a favorite tree - potentially removing it from a local area," said Wittemyer. "Being 'ecosystem engineers,' they are capable of changing wooded plains to complete grasslands. Elephants have huge space and resource needs, and are particularly impacted by land use changes. Fencing in these populations means blocking them from their normal behavior of dispersal and migration, and changing the dynamics of how they interact with their environment."

The new findings, published in the October issue of the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, suggest that fencing can have other impacts not previously known on the social behavior of the elephants.

"What happens when elephant groups are forced into close contact with each other all the time" That's not yet clear," said Wittemyer. "Current elephant management plans do not yet consider the impact on social relationships."

Elephants are known for their complex social networks, with families of six to 12 individuals ruled by a matriarch. "They're one of the very few species that have a level of complexity in their social networks comparable to humans," said Wittemyer. "Studies have shown that elephants can distinguish more than 100 individuals just by their vocalization patterns."

The researchers individually recognize in northern Kenya over 900 elephants - including seven who were fitted with GPS collars. Over the course of nine years, they carefully observed elephant interaction, taking note of the telltale behavior of social dominance, such as the flaring of the ears, a tusk poke here or a trunk slap there, to determine rank.

Three of the GPS-collared elephants were from very dominant families, two were in the middle, and two were positioned low in the social hierarchy. Elephant groups averaged nine members and were each led by a matriarch. Out of the study population, 50 groups were the focus of this paper.

"Save the Elephants' advanced satellite tracking system is enabling us a unique and fascinating insight into the hourly movements of our study elephants," said Iain Douglas-Hamilton, study co-author and founder of Save the Elephants, which supported the radio-tracking of the elephant movements. "Our collars are now revealing how complex the relationship is between elephants' social structure and their environment."

Interestingly, the differences in movement among the various groups disappeared during the wet season, when food and water are readily available.

"When resources are plentiful, there is little competition, so there is no need for socially mediated differentiation in how space is used," said Wittemyer. "Dominant groups actually increase their movements in the wet season, exploring the region and interacting socially with other groups. Elephants love to move. It's when conditions are bad that they conserve energy by restricting their movement."

Other co-authors of the study are Wayne Getz, UC Berkeley professor of environmental science, policy and management; and Fritz Vollrath, professor of zoology at the University of Oxford.




You mean things aren’t always what they seem? More groundbreaking research from the land of social science. The whole thing sounds vaguely Clintonesque—or is that Clintonian?.

Holier Than Thou? Employees Who Believe They Are 'Ethical' Or 'Moral' Might Not Be
ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2007) — Bad behavior seems rampant in business, and scholars are divided as to why people act ethically or unethically. Many have argued that ethical behavior is the result of simple judgments between right and wrong. Others suggest that the driving force behind ethical behavior is the individual's moral identity, or whether the individual thinks of him/herself as an ethical person.

New research from the University of Washington suggests that both of these forces are at play. In two separate studies, Scott Reynolds, an assistant professor in the Michael G. Foster School of Business, and Tara Ceranic, a doctoral student studying business, surveyed roughly 500 college students and managers about their ethical behaviors.

In the first study, researchers asked students if they would have cheated in college in order to score better on a test. Those who explicitly considered themselves to be moral people and considered cheating to be morally wrong were the least likely to cheat. In contrast, students who considered themselves to be moral but saw cheating as an ethically justifiable behavior were the worst cheaters.

"Our research suggests that a moral identity motivates behavior, but that accurate, ethical judgments are needed to set that behavior in the right direction," Reynolds says. "A person's moral identity can interact with his or her judgments and actually push ethical behaviors to extreme levels, as we saw with the students who decided that cheating was justifiable and OK."

According to the researchers, a moral identity specifically centers on a person's moral aspects and acts as a self-regulatory mechanism that sets parameters for individual behavior and motivates specific actions that are moral.

Previous studies implied that moral identity is "good" when it is associated with and motivates individuals toward socially desirable outcomes such as volunteering and making charitable donations.

Reynolds and Ceranic found that this motivational force needs direction, and that without proper guidance a moral identity can conceivably push individuals toward socially undesirable behaviors.

"Moral identity seems to be more motivational in nature than 'moral' in nature," Reynolds says. "Managers and organizations should not just assume that a moral identity will necessarily translate into moral behaviors."

In a second study designed to more fully illustrate the motivational power of a moral identity, Reynolds and Ceranic presented company mangers with a scenario that was morally ambiguous. In the scenario, a hard-working hourly employee completed her work and was prepared to go home early, but she needed the hours. Each manager was presented with different options for dealing with the situation.

These varied from being very accommodating (giving the employee the rest of the day off with pay) to very strict (keeping her at work and finding additional work for her to complete), with more moderate options in between. As expected, those who viewed themselves as moral people were most likely to take the most extreme alternatives, and chose either to be extremely accommodating to the employee or exceedingly strict about the rules in the workplace. This study proved that their moral identity motivated them to the most extreme behaviors.

As the first study demonstrated, sometimes these extreme behaviors may not be in the best interests of the organization. There are measures, though, that companies can take to help improve moral behavior.

First, Reynolds says, companies can focus on improving individual moral judgments. Moral development has been shown to improve with formal ethics training programs. Company leaders should provide both model moral judgment and delegate authority appropriately.

Organizations also can more effectively communicate social consensus from higher sources, such as state and federal law, and more firmly establish their own social consensus in areas such as gift-giving policies. Doing so would presumably reduce the need for individual moral judgment and remove some of the variance in individual behavior. Mechanisms for conveying social consensus would include codes of conduct and both formal (newsletters, e-mails) and informal (speeches, conversations) information channels.

Finally, companies can reward and encourage behaviors associated with the traits of a moral identity (fair, hardworking, compassionate), thereby encouraging development of moral identities within employees. Both formal and informal systems would have to be considered, and such efforts would have implications for the identity of the entire organization. Nevertheless, the research indicates that if an organization employs individuals with strong moral identities, moral behavior will follow.



Why this country needs capital punishment
More pets dressed to chill for Halloween

PETS IN COSTUME

By Laura Petrecca, USA TODAY
Looking to scare up Halloween sales, retailers have stocked up on what to some might be a scary idea: pet costumes.

More than 7.4 million households will dress up their pets this year, the National Retail Federation says. Most popular are devils, pumpkins and witches, the NRF says, but offbeat costumes, such as a peacock and a mini-Princess Leia from Star Wars, are also selling.
Stores "can't keep the costumes on the shelves this year," says Bob Vetere, president of the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association.

A survey last year by that trade group found that 7% of consumers bought a Halloween costume for their pet, up from 4% in 2004. Vetere expects demand to rise again this year as owners continue to "humanize" their pets. Already, nearly 90% of dog owners said they think of their pooches "like a child or family member," according to the American Kennel Club.

Eileen Choi, a 28-year-old from Alexandria, Va., is one of them. She says her Pomeranian, Coco, is "like my child." Coco is masquerading as a pirate Wednesday.

Not that Halloween is just for dogs and cats. At a costume contest last week at an Erie, Pa., PetSmart (PETM) store, a Clydesdale horse showed up as a poodle.

"There's no limit," says Vetere, who saw a costume for turtles at one store. "It had a fin that goes through the water so he looks like a shark."

Halloween costumes are just one example of how owners are making pet-pampering products and services a big business. To meet growing demand, retailers now offer goodies ranging from doggie facials, massages and paw-dicures (for polished nails) to high-end fashions, such as faux mink coats.

About 63% of U.S. households — 71.1 million homes — own a pet, according to the pet products trade group, and owners will spend $41 billion on their pets this year. The total is up 6% from last year and has risen steadily in the last decade.

Bloomingdale's, which carries trendy Juicy Couture doggie clothes, has added personal care products from spinoff brand Juicy Crittoure.

"This is the first time that we've carried a full line of beauty and grooming products for dogs," says Howard Kreitzman, Bloomingdale's cosmetics and fragrances vice president.

Among the most popular items: a $14 bottle of pink nail polish and a $55 set that has "Shampooch" cleanser and "Coif Fur" conditioner.

The Juicy lines don't include costumes, but that didn't stop the Bloomie's in McLean, Va., from getting into the holiday spirit. On Saturday, it hosted a pet costume fashion show to draw attention to the pet polishes and perfumes it sells that benefited the local animal society. Strutting the runway were 25 costumed dogs, including Choi's pirate Coco.

"So many people are completely devoted to their pets and (spending) money on them," says Catherine Cook, general manager of the Tysons Corner Center Bloomie's. "We thought this would be a great tie-in for our business."

Other retailers making Halloween a howl:

•Large pet-supply stores. Petco increased its Halloween assortment by nearly 75% this year, spokeswoman Rachel McLennan says. In addition to costumes, it sells dog treats in skull, pumpkin and bat shapes for $3.99 to $4.99 a pound. It also offers a Pumpkin Spice Spa Works grooming package — from $30 to $75 based on size and breed — that includes a pumpkin spice shampoo, a frilly orange-and-black "party collar" and glow-in-the-dark nail polish.

PetSmart also does a brisk Halloween business, spokeswoman Jennifer Ericsson says. Hot sellers this year are $12-to-$14 "cat hats," which include pirate, witch and cowboy versions. For canines, "The devil costume is very big," she says. "I think it's because everyone can see the devil in their dog."

•Pet boutiques. Tails in the City, a pet boutique in Chicago, has seen Halloween-related sales grow about 50% over 2006, co-owner Bruce Haas says. The store offers dozens of doggie costumes that range from $15 to $35. "Even people who don't dress up their dogs regularly like to dress them at Halloween," Haas says.

The Salty Paw in Manhattan began to get requests for costumes in early October, co-owner Randi Karmin says. The 500-square-foot sales area is filled with costumes, Halloween-themed dog treats and T-shirts that say Count Dogula. "We have everything from a turtle to a bumblebee (costumes)," she says.

•Mass merchants. The princess, witch and Dracula costumes for pets are popular at Wal-Mart (WMT), spokeswoman Deisha Galberth says. It also sells feminine frocks for pets from maker SimplyShe, including a little black-and-orange dress with a glow-in-the-dark skull on the front.

Rival Target (TGT) has sold doggie costumes since 2005, and this year it expanded its Halloween pet merchandise to include a costume line for cats.

For owners who want other opportunities to dress up their pets, Target spokeswoman Lena Michaud says the retailer will have a pet-costume line for the winter holiday season, including Hanukkah accessories and Mr. and Mrs. Claus outfits.

And they vote.....