Probably the strangest story of the new year is the pattern of mass deaths around the world of birds, fish and other creatures. It is so perplexing, CNN's Anderson Cooper brought on his show noted scientist Kirk Cameron to answer questions about this wacky fad. The cases are so bizarre, Gawker.com has as a headline for it's report on the subject: "Is This the End of the World?"
Here are some of the examples:
"Up to 5,000 birds fell from the sky New Year's Eve in Beebe, Arkansas"
"500 birds found dead in southern Louisiana in seemingly separate incident"
Falling birds likely died from massive trauma
January 4, 2011
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/03/arkansas.falling.birds/index.html
"As officials worked to figure out the cause of death of some 5,000 blackbirds that fell from the Arkansas sky this weekend, some 100 miles away another disaster was unfolding: The discovery of 100,000 dead drum fish in the Arkansas River..."
100,000 dead fish join thousands of dead birds in Arkansas
Monday, January 3rd, 2011
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/2000-dead-birds-fall-sky-arkansas
Hundreds More Dead Birds Fall From Sky In Kentucky
1/5/11
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/05/hundreds-more-dead-birds-_n_804952.html
Dead Birds Found In Sweden
1/5/11
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/05/dead-birds-sweden_n_804600.html
"Thousands of dead fish were floating in Volusia County Tuesday. They were all in Spruce Creek in Port Orange. The fish kill is unusual because it is warm, according to people who live along the creek.
It's been a week since there were freezing temperatures, but there are fish lining the banks. Some said it's the worst kill they've ever seen; thousands of fish lined the twists and turns of Spruce Creek."
Thousands Of Fish Dead In Spruce Creek
January 4, 2011
http://www.wftv.com/news/26367953/detail.html
"To add more to the mystery, a report came out today that around 1,500 endangered and protected ‘Sooty Shearwater’ (Puffinus griseus) birds have been found dead in the coast of Chile."
Arkansas & Chile: Dead Birds & Fish
Javier Ortega
January 4, 2011
http://www.ghosttheory.com/2011/01/04/arkansas-chile-dead-birds-fish
"Countless turtle doves were found scattered in the streets, in flower beds and hanging tragically from trees 'like Christmas balls' in the town of Faenza. Many of the birds that fell dead from the sky were discovered with a mysterious blue stain in their beaks."
Birds Dying In Italy: Thousands Of Turtle Doves Fall Dead From Sky
Travis Walter Donovan
1-6-11
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/06/birds-dying-in-italy-thou_n_805541.html
"The Thanet shoreline is littered with the crabs, along with dead starfish, lobsters, sponges and anemones."
40,000 crabs join slew of animal-death mysteries
Jenni Dunning
Jan 6, 2011
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/916503--40-000-crabs-join-slew-of-animal-death-mysteries
2 million fish found dead in Maryland
January 7, 2011
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/01/06/maryland.fish.kill
Major, Bizarre Fish Die-Off Along Lakefront
January 11, 2011
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/01/11/major-bizarre-fish-die-off-along-lakefront
The more popular explanations for these mass deaths on the Internet have been the testing of biological weapons and/or HAARP technologies. One Website, WhatDoesItMean.com, linked the mystery death of John P. Wheeler III, an aide to Reagan and both Bushes, to the mass animal deaths. While the mainstream media focused in its obits on his fundraising for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the site noted his "military career included writing one of the most important manuals on the effectiveness of biological and chemical weapons." Wheeler certainly fits the profile of an honest whistleblower, and this may explain why he was found dead in a Delaware landfill in a style more fitting of a Mafia squealer than a Washington insider.
Top US Official Murdered After Arkansas Weapons Test Causes Mass Death
Sorcha Faal
January 4, 2011
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1435.htm
Showing posts with label Maryland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maryland. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Friday, August 28, 2009
Artificial life is only months away
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article6804599.ece
From The Times
August 21, 2009
Artificial life is only months away, says biologist Craig Venter
Mark Henderson, Science Editor
Artificial life will be created within four months, a controversial scientist has predicted. Craig Venter, who led a private project to sequence the human genome, told The Times that his team had cleared a critical hurdle to creating man-made organisms in a laboratory.
“Assuming we don’t make any errors, I think it should work and we should have the first synthetic species by the end of the year,” he said.
Dr Venter, who has been chasing his goal for a decade, is already working on projects to use synthetic biology to create bacteria that transform coal into cleaner natural gas, and algae that soak up carbon dioxide and turn it into hydrocarbon fuels. Other potential applications include new ways of manufacturing medicines and vaccines.
Dr Venter’s prediction came after scientists at his J. Craig Venter Institute, in Rockville, Maryland, announced that they had developed a new method of transplanting DNA into bacteria, promising to solve a problem that has held up the artificial life project for two years.
The team took the first step in 2007 by implanting the genome of a bacterium, Mycoplasma mycoides, into cells belonging to a close relative, Mycoplasma capricolum. This transformed the host bacteria into Mycoplasma mycoides.
Last January the team built a bacterium’s entire genetic code from scratch. The next step was to transfer this synthetic genome into a host cell, using the 2007 transplant technique, to “reboot” it with genetic instructions written by humans. This has failed so far because the synthetic genome will not work when it is transplanted into host cells.
The new research, published in Science, has identified the probable reason for this failure and developed a new approach that should address it.
Natural bacterial genomes, such as the one that was successfully transplanted, are chemically modified by a process called methylation. When they are inserted into other cells this process appears to protect them against chemicals called restriction enzymes, which defend against viruses.
The synthetic genome, however, is not methylated, as it has to be grown in yeast, which does not provide the necessary chemical modifications, thus leaving it open to attack by the restriction enzymes.
In the new study, the Venter team grew the natural M. mycoides genome in yeast, under similar conditions to the synthetic genome, so that it had no methylation. These genomes failed to take when they were transplanted into host cells.
The team then remethylated the M. mycoides genome in the laboratory before placing it into the host cell. This time the transplants worked and the cells were rebooted as M. mycoides.
The success suggests that methylating the synthetic genome before transfer should allow it to take over host cells and reboot them with its DNA. Experiments in this have now begun.
Methylation should protect the synthetic genome against the host cells’ defences, much as drugs that suppress the immune system protect transplanted organs against rejection.
Hamilton Smith, a Nobel laureate who is another leader of the research, said: “I believe this work has important implications in better understanding the fundamentals of biology to enable the final stages of our work in creating and booting up a synthetic genome. This is possibly one of the most important new findings in the field of synthetic genomics.”
Dr Venter said the research was particularly important because it opened the door to altering algae and bacteria to perform useful functions.
“This could be one of the most powerful tools in biology,” he said.
From The Times
August 21, 2009
Artificial life is only months away, says biologist Craig Venter
Mark Henderson, Science Editor
Artificial life will be created within four months, a controversial scientist has predicted. Craig Venter, who led a private project to sequence the human genome, told The Times that his team had cleared a critical hurdle to creating man-made organisms in a laboratory.
“Assuming we don’t make any errors, I think it should work and we should have the first synthetic species by the end of the year,” he said.
Dr Venter, who has been chasing his goal for a decade, is already working on projects to use synthetic biology to create bacteria that transform coal into cleaner natural gas, and algae that soak up carbon dioxide and turn it into hydrocarbon fuels. Other potential applications include new ways of manufacturing medicines and vaccines.
Dr Venter’s prediction came after scientists at his J. Craig Venter Institute, in Rockville, Maryland, announced that they had developed a new method of transplanting DNA into bacteria, promising to solve a problem that has held up the artificial life project for two years.
The team took the first step in 2007 by implanting the genome of a bacterium, Mycoplasma mycoides, into cells belonging to a close relative, Mycoplasma capricolum. This transformed the host bacteria into Mycoplasma mycoides.
Last January the team built a bacterium’s entire genetic code from scratch. The next step was to transfer this synthetic genome into a host cell, using the 2007 transplant technique, to “reboot” it with genetic instructions written by humans. This has failed so far because the synthetic genome will not work when it is transplanted into host cells.
The new research, published in Science, has identified the probable reason for this failure and developed a new approach that should address it.
Natural bacterial genomes, such as the one that was successfully transplanted, are chemically modified by a process called methylation. When they are inserted into other cells this process appears to protect them against chemicals called restriction enzymes, which defend against viruses.
The synthetic genome, however, is not methylated, as it has to be grown in yeast, which does not provide the necessary chemical modifications, thus leaving it open to attack by the restriction enzymes.
In the new study, the Venter team grew the natural M. mycoides genome in yeast, under similar conditions to the synthetic genome, so that it had no methylation. These genomes failed to take when they were transplanted into host cells.
The team then remethylated the M. mycoides genome in the laboratory before placing it into the host cell. This time the transplants worked and the cells were rebooted as M. mycoides.
The success suggests that methylating the synthetic genome before transfer should allow it to take over host cells and reboot them with its DNA. Experiments in this have now begun.
Methylation should protect the synthetic genome against the host cells’ defences, much as drugs that suppress the immune system protect transplanted organs against rejection.
Hamilton Smith, a Nobel laureate who is another leader of the research, said: “I believe this work has important implications in better understanding the fundamentals of biology to enable the final stages of our work in creating and booting up a synthetic genome. This is possibly one of the most important new findings in the field of synthetic genomics.”
Dr Venter said the research was particularly important because it opened the door to altering algae and bacteria to perform useful functions.
“This could be one of the most powerful tools in biology,” he said.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
A Human Genome in Record Time
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/08/a-human-genome.html
August 10, 2009
A Human Genome in Record Time
A new type of technology has sequenced a human genome in a month and for less than $50,000 worth of reagents, according to a report today in Nature Biotechnology. But this step toward fast, cheap genomes doesn't spell the end for large sequencing centers.
Human genomes produced to date have all required many instruments running in parallel and have cost up to $500,000 per genome, says Stephen Quake, a biophysicist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and founder of Helicos Biosciences of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The HeliScope Single Molecule Sequencer is the first commercial single-molecule sequencing instrument, so called because it does not require the production of millions of copies of the target DNA for the analysis. Instead, DNA is cut into small pieces and mounted at very high densities in a flow cell, where a very sensitive camera monitors the step by step addition of bases for each sequencing reaction.
In the new paper, Quake and colleagues report how the machine generated enough data to cover the 3-billion base human genome 28 times over. That sequence data consisted of short stretches of sequences 24 to 70 bases long, which were compared with the reference human genome sequence in public databases to piece together Quake’s own genome.
The demonstration brings “plug and play” sequencing one step closer to reality, wherein individual labs will be able to do what today is accomplished primarily in large sequencing centers. “This is the main coming out party for the Helicos machine,” says Jeffery Schloss of the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.
However, the machines cost $1 million. That’s several times the price of other sequencing machines, notes Schloss. While such machines hint at a future where individual labs sequence large genomes, Schloss emphasizes that large centers will continue to play a role in improving technologies and their uses and developing analytical tools for genome projects.
— Elizabeth Pennisi
August 10, 2009
A Human Genome in Record Time
A new type of technology has sequenced a human genome in a month and for less than $50,000 worth of reagents, according to a report today in Nature Biotechnology. But this step toward fast, cheap genomes doesn't spell the end for large sequencing centers.
Human genomes produced to date have all required many instruments running in parallel and have cost up to $500,000 per genome, says Stephen Quake, a biophysicist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and founder of Helicos Biosciences of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The HeliScope Single Molecule Sequencer is the first commercial single-molecule sequencing instrument, so called because it does not require the production of millions of copies of the target DNA for the analysis. Instead, DNA is cut into small pieces and mounted at very high densities in a flow cell, where a very sensitive camera monitors the step by step addition of bases for each sequencing reaction.
In the new paper, Quake and colleagues report how the machine generated enough data to cover the 3-billion base human genome 28 times over. That sequence data consisted of short stretches of sequences 24 to 70 bases long, which were compared with the reference human genome sequence in public databases to piece together Quake’s own genome.
The demonstration brings “plug and play” sequencing one step closer to reality, wherein individual labs will be able to do what today is accomplished primarily in large sequencing centers. “This is the main coming out party for the Helicos machine,” says Jeffery Schloss of the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.
However, the machines cost $1 million. That’s several times the price of other sequencing machines, notes Schloss. While such machines hint at a future where individual labs sequence large genomes, Schloss emphasizes that large centers will continue to play a role in improving technologies and their uses and developing analytical tools for genome projects.
— Elizabeth Pennisi
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Most affluent city might surprise you
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2008-08-26-income-side_N.htm
Most affluent city might surprise you
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
8-26-8
What's the most affluent city in the USA?
(a) San Jose
(b) San Francisco
(c) Honolulu
(d) Plano, Texas
The answer is Plano — and that surprises even the mayor of this 260,000-person Dallas suburb.
"I'd never heard that before," Plano Mayor Pat Evans says. "But it's good to know."
The Census Bureau released its annual report on income and poverty Tuesday. The results offer an interesting — and often unexpected — portrait of who's rich and who's poor in the USA.
Plano was the report's star among cities with populations of 250,000 or more. It had the highest income and lowest poverty rate.
Plano's median household income in 2007 was $84,492, up 10% from 2006. Placing a distant second: San Jose, with a median income of $76,963.
Plano is the home to corporate headquarters for Frito-Lay, JCPenney and other companies. Billionaire Ross Perot founded computer giant EDS and Perot Systems, both still based in Plano.
The city is north of Dallas at the end of a light-rail line. Gymnast Nastia Liukin, Olympic gold medalist in Beijing, trains there.
Despite its affluence, the median home price is about $225,000, Evans says. By contrast, San Jose's median home price is $744,000.
"We've got the lowest taxes and highest level of services in North Texas," the mayor says.
The poorest city in the nation was Detroit, with a median household income of $28,097. It fell to the bottom spot this year, replacing Cleveland.
The Census Bureau report also showed:
•States. Maryland remained the top state in income, and Mississippi remained the poorest.
Energy states Alaska and Wyoming had the biggest income gains. Four states lost ground: Michigan, Kentucky, New Mexico and South Dakota.
•Congressional districts. Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., who represents suburbs outside Washington, has the most affluent constituents. Their median household income was $103,664.
Rep. José Serrano, D-N.Y., who represents Harlem and the Bronx in New York City, has the district with the poorest residents. Median household income was $23,291.
•Regions. Income grew in the South and Midwest. It fell in the Northeast and did not change in the West.
Most affluent city might surprise you
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
8-26-8
What's the most affluent city in the USA?
(a) San Jose
(b) San Francisco
(c) Honolulu
(d) Plano, Texas
The answer is Plano — and that surprises even the mayor of this 260,000-person Dallas suburb.
"I'd never heard that before," Plano Mayor Pat Evans says. "But it's good to know."
The Census Bureau released its annual report on income and poverty Tuesday. The results offer an interesting — and often unexpected — portrait of who's rich and who's poor in the USA.
Plano was the report's star among cities with populations of 250,000 or more. It had the highest income and lowest poverty rate.
Plano's median household income in 2007 was $84,492, up 10% from 2006. Placing a distant second: San Jose, with a median income of $76,963.
Plano is the home to corporate headquarters for Frito-Lay, JCPenney and other companies. Billionaire Ross Perot founded computer giant EDS and Perot Systems, both still based in Plano.
The city is north of Dallas at the end of a light-rail line. Gymnast Nastia Liukin, Olympic gold medalist in Beijing, trains there.
Despite its affluence, the median home price is about $225,000, Evans says. By contrast, San Jose's median home price is $744,000.
"We've got the lowest taxes and highest level of services in North Texas," the mayor says.
The poorest city in the nation was Detroit, with a median household income of $28,097. It fell to the bottom spot this year, replacing Cleveland.
The Census Bureau report also showed:
•States. Maryland remained the top state in income, and Mississippi remained the poorest.
Energy states Alaska and Wyoming had the biggest income gains. Four states lost ground: Michigan, Kentucky, New Mexico and South Dakota.
•Congressional districts. Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., who represents suburbs outside Washington, has the most affluent constituents. Their median household income was $103,664.
Rep. José Serrano, D-N.Y., who represents Harlem and the Bronx in New York City, has the district with the poorest residents. Median household income was $23,291.
•Regions. Income grew in the South and Midwest. It fell in the Northeast and did not change in the West.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Watermen fear blue crab not coming back
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gKPhZPk1dBPUwT7Lp_DWBU3hk_CQD91V36J06
Chesapeake watermen fear blue crab not coming back
By KRISTEN WYATT
7-16-8
RIDGE, Md. (AP) — Chesapeake Bay crabber Paul Kellam has advice for the teenage boys who help tend his traps every summer: You better have a backup plan.
It's an anxious summer for watermen harvesting the Chesapeake's best-loved seafood, the blue crab. The way some see it, the crabbing business here isn't just dying. It's already dead.
Crabs have thrived in the bottom muck of the Chesapeake and its tributaries even as centuries of overfishing harmed oysters, fish and other species in the nation's largest estuary. Now blue crabs are in trouble, too, and when they go, a way of life is sure to go with them.
"There was a time when crabbers were only out here from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Now, it's about all we have left," says Kellam, 53, steering his 30-year-old rig "Christy" out of the Potomac River and onto the bay for a day of crabbing. The contradictory decor in the cabin sums up the outlook of today's waterman: a red wooden good-luck horseshoe dangles over a mud-splattered copy of "The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook."
The bay's blue crab stock is down about 65 percent since 1990 due to overfishing and water pollution, according to Virginia and Maryland fisheries managers. The states have imposed steep cuts on this year's female crab harvest, aiming to reduce the number of crabs taken by more than a third.
For Kellam and his neighbors in southern Maryland, where the working rigs and crab picking houses that sustained these communities for generations have been replaced by yachts and vacation homes, hopes are dim that the blue crabs will ever come back.
"It's looking worse every year," says Bob McKay, who at 74 is the oldest working waterman in St. Mary's County. He still sells crabs out of a shed in his yard but doubts the industry will live much longer than he does. "I don't know what the solution could be."
Watermen have turned to real estate and automobile repair. They've opened seafood restaurants and bakeries.
The best way to make money on the Chesapeake these days is taking businessmen from Washington and Philadelphia on charter fishing trips. Those who still rely on crabbing are further hurt by a double punch of higher fuel costs and an economic downturn that's meant fewer consumers dropping up to $200 on a bushel of crabs.
"People don't have the disposable income. They're just not buying," says Kellam, who spends up to $150 a day on diesel, which costs about $5 a gallon at a nearby marina.
There was a time when Chesapeake watermen made their living off the winter oyster harvest, using hand tongs and later power dredges to supply most of the world's oysters. But disease and over-harvesting nearly wiped out Chesapeake oysters in the 1980s, and despite millions invested in restoration, they've never recovered. Scientists estimate the Chesapeake now contains about 1 percent of the oysters it once did.
After the oyster industry collapsed, watermen looked to hardy blue crabs to make up the slack. But the next generation may not have another option.
"I want to make a living on the water," says Randy Plummer, a chain-smoking 19-year-old who works on Kellam's crab rig. "But there ain't no future in it. Everybody knows that."
Plummer has wanted to crab since he was a boy, but is instead headed to community college this fall, at the urging of Kellam and his parents.
Even scientists who called for the harvest reductions say overfishing isn't entirely to blame.
The main culprit is water pollution and soil runoff from development throughout a watershed that is home to 10 million people. Excess nutrients wash into the Chesapeake, causing algae blooms and choking the native plant life that crabs rely on for food and habitat. In the summer, large swaths of the Chesapeake contain so little oxygen that scientists call them "dead zones," because few critters can live there.
Watermen call it "bad water," and they track it all summer, following crabs as they skitter to shallower water that contains more oxygen. Even when watermen luck out and pull up a pot full of crabs, long-timers say the crabs are nothing like they used to be.
"Sometimes in the summer, you pull the pots up, they've got algae and mud all over them. The bad water comes in and coats everything and the crabs can't stand it," Kellam explains.
He now spends hours hauling up the same number of crabs he could catch in a few pots a decade ago. And what he catches isn't as healthy-looking as the crabs he caught as a boy. Wholesalers are buying them anyway.
"They're buying a lot of stuff that 10 years ago they would've turned away," Kellam says.
Maryland and Virginia officials have responded to the watermen's plight by asking the federal government for a disaster declaration that would free up about $20 million to subsidize crabbers and seafood processors until blue crabs rebound.
Maryland is also working on sweeping revisions to state planning laws with an eye toward protecting its 3,000 or so miles of shoreline. Already this year, the state toughened zoning laws dealing with development closest to the water, a law that aims to reduce sediment and pollution running into the Chesapeake and its tributaries.
"It's certainly getting more difficult to make a living on the water," conceded Lynn Fegley, a biologist in charge of crabs for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. But Fegley says the cynicism along the Chesapeake is unfounded. There will always be Chesapeake blue crabs, she says — as long as watermen lay off them when the stock dips.
"As the watershed gets more crowded, the face of the fishery may change. But people are always going to want seafood, right? It's healthy and it's delicious. What we have to do is find a way to harvest seafood that's sustainable for the future," Fegley says.
But Thomas Courtney, who sells Kellam the alewife fish he uses for bait, laughs when asked whether state efforts to revive blue crabs will bring them back.
"It ain't what we're pulling out of the water. It's what we're putting in the water," says Courtney, 62. "You've got a cornfield, 20 acres, you put 80 or 90 houses on it, hook 'em up to sewer pipes, put roads and ditches down. That's what's destroyed the bay. It ain't us. They let development take over and then, that's it, we're done."
Chesapeake watermen fear blue crab not coming back
By KRISTEN WYATT
7-16-8
RIDGE, Md. (AP) — Chesapeake Bay crabber Paul Kellam has advice for the teenage boys who help tend his traps every summer: You better have a backup plan.
It's an anxious summer for watermen harvesting the Chesapeake's best-loved seafood, the blue crab. The way some see it, the crabbing business here isn't just dying. It's already dead.
Crabs have thrived in the bottom muck of the Chesapeake and its tributaries even as centuries of overfishing harmed oysters, fish and other species in the nation's largest estuary. Now blue crabs are in trouble, too, and when they go, a way of life is sure to go with them.
"There was a time when crabbers were only out here from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Now, it's about all we have left," says Kellam, 53, steering his 30-year-old rig "Christy" out of the Potomac River and onto the bay for a day of crabbing. The contradictory decor in the cabin sums up the outlook of today's waterman: a red wooden good-luck horseshoe dangles over a mud-splattered copy of "The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook."
The bay's blue crab stock is down about 65 percent since 1990 due to overfishing and water pollution, according to Virginia and Maryland fisheries managers. The states have imposed steep cuts on this year's female crab harvest, aiming to reduce the number of crabs taken by more than a third.
For Kellam and his neighbors in southern Maryland, where the working rigs and crab picking houses that sustained these communities for generations have been replaced by yachts and vacation homes, hopes are dim that the blue crabs will ever come back.
"It's looking worse every year," says Bob McKay, who at 74 is the oldest working waterman in St. Mary's County. He still sells crabs out of a shed in his yard but doubts the industry will live much longer than he does. "I don't know what the solution could be."
Watermen have turned to real estate and automobile repair. They've opened seafood restaurants and bakeries.
The best way to make money on the Chesapeake these days is taking businessmen from Washington and Philadelphia on charter fishing trips. Those who still rely on crabbing are further hurt by a double punch of higher fuel costs and an economic downturn that's meant fewer consumers dropping up to $200 on a bushel of crabs.
"People don't have the disposable income. They're just not buying," says Kellam, who spends up to $150 a day on diesel, which costs about $5 a gallon at a nearby marina.
There was a time when Chesapeake watermen made their living off the winter oyster harvest, using hand tongs and later power dredges to supply most of the world's oysters. But disease and over-harvesting nearly wiped out Chesapeake oysters in the 1980s, and despite millions invested in restoration, they've never recovered. Scientists estimate the Chesapeake now contains about 1 percent of the oysters it once did.
After the oyster industry collapsed, watermen looked to hardy blue crabs to make up the slack. But the next generation may not have another option.
"I want to make a living on the water," says Randy Plummer, a chain-smoking 19-year-old who works on Kellam's crab rig. "But there ain't no future in it. Everybody knows that."
Plummer has wanted to crab since he was a boy, but is instead headed to community college this fall, at the urging of Kellam and his parents.
Even scientists who called for the harvest reductions say overfishing isn't entirely to blame.
The main culprit is water pollution and soil runoff from development throughout a watershed that is home to 10 million people. Excess nutrients wash into the Chesapeake, causing algae blooms and choking the native plant life that crabs rely on for food and habitat. In the summer, large swaths of the Chesapeake contain so little oxygen that scientists call them "dead zones," because few critters can live there.
Watermen call it "bad water," and they track it all summer, following crabs as they skitter to shallower water that contains more oxygen. Even when watermen luck out and pull up a pot full of crabs, long-timers say the crabs are nothing like they used to be.
"Sometimes in the summer, you pull the pots up, they've got algae and mud all over them. The bad water comes in and coats everything and the crabs can't stand it," Kellam explains.
He now spends hours hauling up the same number of crabs he could catch in a few pots a decade ago. And what he catches isn't as healthy-looking as the crabs he caught as a boy. Wholesalers are buying them anyway.
"They're buying a lot of stuff that 10 years ago they would've turned away," Kellam says.
Maryland and Virginia officials have responded to the watermen's plight by asking the federal government for a disaster declaration that would free up about $20 million to subsidize crabbers and seafood processors until blue crabs rebound.
Maryland is also working on sweeping revisions to state planning laws with an eye toward protecting its 3,000 or so miles of shoreline. Already this year, the state toughened zoning laws dealing with development closest to the water, a law that aims to reduce sediment and pollution running into the Chesapeake and its tributaries.
"It's certainly getting more difficult to make a living on the water," conceded Lynn Fegley, a biologist in charge of crabs for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. But Fegley says the cynicism along the Chesapeake is unfounded. There will always be Chesapeake blue crabs, she says — as long as watermen lay off them when the stock dips.
"As the watershed gets more crowded, the face of the fishery may change. But people are always going to want seafood, right? It's healthy and it's delicious. What we have to do is find a way to harvest seafood that's sustainable for the future," Fegley says.
But Thomas Courtney, who sells Kellam the alewife fish he uses for bait, laughs when asked whether state efforts to revive blue crabs will bring them back.
"It ain't what we're pulling out of the water. It's what we're putting in the water," says Courtney, 62. "You've got a cornfield, 20 acres, you put 80 or 90 houses on it, hook 'em up to sewer pipes, put roads and ditches down. That's what's destroyed the bay. It ain't us. They let development take over and then, that's it, we're done."
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Synthetic DNA on the Brink of New Life Forms
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/16/AR2007121601900.html
Synthetic DNA on the Brink of Yielding New Life Forms
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 17, 2007; A01
It has been 50 years since scientists first created DNA in a test tube, stitching ordinary chemical ingredients together to make life's most extraordinary molecule. Until recently, however, even the most sophisticated laboratories could make only small snippets of DNA -- an extra gene or two to be inserted into corn plants, for example, to help the plants ward off insects or tolerate drought.
Now researchers are poised to cross a dramatic barrier: the creation of life forms driven by completely artificial DNA.
Scientists in Maryland have already built the world's first entirely handcrafted chromosome -- a large looping strand of DNA made from scratch in a laboratory, containing all the instructions a microbe needs to live and reproduce.
In the coming year, they hope to atransplant it into a cell, where it is expected to "boot itself up," like software downloaded from the Internet, and cajole the waiting cell to do its bidding. And while the first synthetic chromosome is a plagiarized version of a natural one, others that code for life forms that have never existed before are already under construction.
The cobbling together of life from synthetic DNA, scientists and philosophers agree, will be a watershed event, blurring the line between biological and artificial -- and forcing a rethinking of what it means for a thing to be alive.
"This raises a range of big questions about what nature is and what it could be," said Paul Rabinow, an anthropologist at the University of California at Berkeley who studies science's effects on society. "Evolutionary processes are no longer seen as sacred or inviolable. People in labs are figuring them out so they can improve upon them for different purposes."
That unprecedented degree of control over creation raises more than philosophical questions, however. What kinds of organisms will scientists, terrorists and other creative individuals make? How will these self-replicating entities be contained? And who might end up owning the patent rights to the basic tools for synthesizing life?
Some experts are worried that a few maverick companies are already gaining monopoly control over the core "operating system" for artificial life and are poised to become the Microsofts of synthetic biology. That could stifle competition, they say, and place enormous power in a few people's hands.
"We're heading into an era where people will be writing DNA programs like the early days of computer programming, but who will own these programs?" asked Drew Endy, a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
At the core of synthetic biology's new ascendance are high-speed DNA synthesizers that can produce very long strands of genetic material from basic chemical building blocks: sugars, nitrogen-based compounds and phosphates.
Today a scientist can write a long genetic program on a computer just as a maestro might compose a musical score, then use a synthesizer to convert that digital code into actual DNA. Experiments with "natural" DNA indicate that when a faux chromosome gets plopped into a cell, it will be able to direct the destruction of the cell's old DNA and become its new "brain" -- telling the cell to start making a valuable chemical, for example, or a medicine or a toxin, or a bio-based gasoline substitute.
Unlike conventional biotechnology, in which scientists induce modest genetic changes in cells to make them serve industrial purposes, synthetic biology involves the large-scale rewriting of genetic codes to create metabolic machines with singular purposes.
"I see a cell as a chassis and power supply for the artificial systems we are putting together," said Tom Knight of MIT, who likes to compare the state of cell biology today to that of mechanical engineering in 1864. That is when the United States began to adopt standardized thread sizes for nuts and bolts, an advance that allowed the construction of complex devices from simple, interchangeable parts.
If biology is to morph into an engineering discipline, it is going to need similarly standardized parts, Knight said. So he and colleagues have started a collection of hundreds of interchangeable genetic components they call BioBricks, which students and others are already popping into cells like Lego pieces.
So far, synthetic biology is still semi-synthetic, involving single-cell organisms such as bacteria and yeast that have a blend of natural and synthetic DNA. The cells can reproduce, a defining trait of life. But in many cases that urge has been genetically suppressed, along with other "distracting" biological functions, to maximize productivity.
"Most cells go about life like we do, with the intention to make more of themselves after eating," said John Pierce, a vice president at DuPont in Wilmington, Del., a leader in the field. "But what we want them to do is make stuff we want."
J. Craig Venter, chief executive of Synthetic Genomics in Rockville, knows what he wants his cells to make: ethanol, hydrogen and other exotic fuels for vehicles, to fill a market that has been estimated to be worth $1 trillion.
In a big step toward that goal, Venter has now built the first fully artificial chromosome, a strand of DNA many times longer than anything made by others and laden with all the genetic components a microbe needs to get by.
Details of the process are under wraps until the work is published, probably early next year. But Venter has already shown that he can insert a "natural" chromosome into a cell and bring it to life. If a synthetic chromosome works the same way, as expected, the first living cells with fully artificial genomes could be growing in dishes by the end of 2008.
The plan is to mass-produce a plain genetic platform able to direct the basic functions of life, then attach custom-designed DNA modules that can compel cells to make synthetic fuels or other products.
It will be a challenge to cultivate fuel-spewing microbes, Venter acknowledged. Among other problems, he said, is that unless the fuel is constantly removed, "the bugs will basically pickle themselves."
But the hurdles are not insurmountable. LS9 Inc., a company in San Carlos, Calif., is already using E. coli bacteria that have been reprogrammed with synthetic DNA to produce a fuel alternative from a diet of corn syrup and sugar cane. So efficient are the bugs' synthetic metabolisms that LS9 predicts it will be able to sell the fuel for just $1.25 a gallon.
At a DuPont plant in Tennessee, other semi-synthetic bacteria are living on cornstarch and making the chemical 1,3 propanediol, or PDO. Millions of pounds of the stuff are being spun and woven into high-tech fabrics (DuPont's chief executive wears a pinstripe suit made of it), putting the bug-begotten chemical on track to become the first $1 billion biotech product that is not a pharmaceutical.
Engineers at DuPont studied blueprints of E. coli's metabolism and used synthetic DNA to help the bacteria make PDO far more efficiently than could have been done with ordinary genetic engineering.
"If you want to sell it at a dollar a gallon . . . you need every bit of efficiency you can muster," said DuPont's Pierce. "So we're running these bugs to their limits."
Yet another application is in medicine, where synthetic DNA is allowing bacteria and yeast to produce the malaria drug artemisinin far more efficiently than it is made in plants, its natural source.
Bugs such as these will seem quaint, scientists say, once fully synthetic organisms are brought on line to work 24/7 on a range of tasks, from industrial production to chemical cleanups. But the prospect of a flourishing synbio economy has many wondering who will own the valuable rights to that life.
In the past year, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been flooded with aggressive synthetic-biology claims. Some of Venter's applications, in particular, "are breathtaking in their scope," said Knight. And with Venter's company openly hoping to develop "an operating system for biologically-based software," some fear it is seeking synthetic hegemony.
"We've asked our patent lawyers to be reasonable and not to be overreaching," Venter said. But competitors such as DuPont, he said, "have just blanketed the field with patent applications."
Safety concerns also loom large. Already a few scientists have made viruses from scratch. The pending ability to make bacteria -- which, unlike viruses, can live and reproduce in the environment outside of a living body -- raises new concerns about contamination, contagion and the potential for mischief.
"Ultimately synthetic biology means cheaper and widely accessible tools to build bioweapons, virulent pathogens and artificial organisms that could pose grave threats to people and the planet," concluded a recent report by the Ottawa-based ETC Group, one of dozens of advocacy groups that want a ban on releasing synthetic organisms pending wider societal debate and regulation.
"The danger is not just bio-terror but bio-error," the report says.
Many scientists say the threat has been overblown. Venter notes that his synthetic genomes are spiked with special genes that make the microbes dependent on a rare nutrient not available in nature. And Pierce, of DuPont, says the company's bugs are too spoiled to survive outdoors.
"They are designed to grow in a cosseted environment with very high food levels," Pierce said. "You throw this guy out on the ground, he just can't compete. He's toast."
"We've heard that before," said Jim Thomas, ETC Group's program manager, noting that genes engineered into crops have often found their way into other plants despite assurances to the contrary. "The fact is, you can build viruses, and soon bacteria, from downloaded instructions on the Internet," Thomas said. "Where's the governance and oversight?"
In fact, government controls on trade in dangerous microbes do not apply to the bits of DNA that can be used to create them. And while some industry groups have talked about policing the field themselves, the technology is quickly becoming so simple, experts say, that it will not be long before "bio hackers" working in garages will be downloading genetic programs and making them into novel life forms.
"The cat is out of the bag," said Jay Keasling, chief of synthetic biology at the University of California at Berkeley.
Andrew Light, an environmental ethicist at the University of Washington in Seattle, said synthetic biology poses a conundrum because of its double-edged ability to both wreak biological havoc and perhaps wean civilization from dirty 20th-century technologies and petroleum-based fuels.
"For the environmental community, I think this is going to be a really hard choice," Light said.
Depending on how people adjust to the idea of man-made life -- and on how useful the first products prove to be -- the field could go either way, Light said.
"It could be that synthetic biology is going to be like cellphones: so overwhelming and ubiquitous that no one notices it anymore. Or it could be like abortion -- the kind of deep disagreement that will not go away."
The question, if the abortion model holds, is which side of the synthetic biology debate will get to call itself "pro-life."
Synthetic DNA on the Brink of Yielding New Life Forms
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 17, 2007; A01
It has been 50 years since scientists first created DNA in a test tube, stitching ordinary chemical ingredients together to make life's most extraordinary molecule. Until recently, however, even the most sophisticated laboratories could make only small snippets of DNA -- an extra gene or two to be inserted into corn plants, for example, to help the plants ward off insects or tolerate drought.
Now researchers are poised to cross a dramatic barrier: the creation of life forms driven by completely artificial DNA.
Scientists in Maryland have already built the world's first entirely handcrafted chromosome -- a large looping strand of DNA made from scratch in a laboratory, containing all the instructions a microbe needs to live and reproduce.
In the coming year, they hope to atransplant it into a cell, where it is expected to "boot itself up," like software downloaded from the Internet, and cajole the waiting cell to do its bidding. And while the first synthetic chromosome is a plagiarized version of a natural one, others that code for life forms that have never existed before are already under construction.
The cobbling together of life from synthetic DNA, scientists and philosophers agree, will be a watershed event, blurring the line between biological and artificial -- and forcing a rethinking of what it means for a thing to be alive.
"This raises a range of big questions about what nature is and what it could be," said Paul Rabinow, an anthropologist at the University of California at Berkeley who studies science's effects on society. "Evolutionary processes are no longer seen as sacred or inviolable. People in labs are figuring them out so they can improve upon them for different purposes."
That unprecedented degree of control over creation raises more than philosophical questions, however. What kinds of organisms will scientists, terrorists and other creative individuals make? How will these self-replicating entities be contained? And who might end up owning the patent rights to the basic tools for synthesizing life?
Some experts are worried that a few maverick companies are already gaining monopoly control over the core "operating system" for artificial life and are poised to become the Microsofts of synthetic biology. That could stifle competition, they say, and place enormous power in a few people's hands.
"We're heading into an era where people will be writing DNA programs like the early days of computer programming, but who will own these programs?" asked Drew Endy, a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
At the core of synthetic biology's new ascendance are high-speed DNA synthesizers that can produce very long strands of genetic material from basic chemical building blocks: sugars, nitrogen-based compounds and phosphates.
Today a scientist can write a long genetic program on a computer just as a maestro might compose a musical score, then use a synthesizer to convert that digital code into actual DNA. Experiments with "natural" DNA indicate that when a faux chromosome gets plopped into a cell, it will be able to direct the destruction of the cell's old DNA and become its new "brain" -- telling the cell to start making a valuable chemical, for example, or a medicine or a toxin, or a bio-based gasoline substitute.
Unlike conventional biotechnology, in which scientists induce modest genetic changes in cells to make them serve industrial purposes, synthetic biology involves the large-scale rewriting of genetic codes to create metabolic machines with singular purposes.
"I see a cell as a chassis and power supply for the artificial systems we are putting together," said Tom Knight of MIT, who likes to compare the state of cell biology today to that of mechanical engineering in 1864. That is when the United States began to adopt standardized thread sizes for nuts and bolts, an advance that allowed the construction of complex devices from simple, interchangeable parts.
If biology is to morph into an engineering discipline, it is going to need similarly standardized parts, Knight said. So he and colleagues have started a collection of hundreds of interchangeable genetic components they call BioBricks, which students and others are already popping into cells like Lego pieces.
So far, synthetic biology is still semi-synthetic, involving single-cell organisms such as bacteria and yeast that have a blend of natural and synthetic DNA. The cells can reproduce, a defining trait of life. But in many cases that urge has been genetically suppressed, along with other "distracting" biological functions, to maximize productivity.
"Most cells go about life like we do, with the intention to make more of themselves after eating," said John Pierce, a vice president at DuPont in Wilmington, Del., a leader in the field. "But what we want them to do is make stuff we want."
J. Craig Venter, chief executive of Synthetic Genomics in Rockville, knows what he wants his cells to make: ethanol, hydrogen and other exotic fuels for vehicles, to fill a market that has been estimated to be worth $1 trillion.
In a big step toward that goal, Venter has now built the first fully artificial chromosome, a strand of DNA many times longer than anything made by others and laden with all the genetic components a microbe needs to get by.
Details of the process are under wraps until the work is published, probably early next year. But Venter has already shown that he can insert a "natural" chromosome into a cell and bring it to life. If a synthetic chromosome works the same way, as expected, the first living cells with fully artificial genomes could be growing in dishes by the end of 2008.
The plan is to mass-produce a plain genetic platform able to direct the basic functions of life, then attach custom-designed DNA modules that can compel cells to make synthetic fuels or other products.
It will be a challenge to cultivate fuel-spewing microbes, Venter acknowledged. Among other problems, he said, is that unless the fuel is constantly removed, "the bugs will basically pickle themselves."
But the hurdles are not insurmountable. LS9 Inc., a company in San Carlos, Calif., is already using E. coli bacteria that have been reprogrammed with synthetic DNA to produce a fuel alternative from a diet of corn syrup and sugar cane. So efficient are the bugs' synthetic metabolisms that LS9 predicts it will be able to sell the fuel for just $1.25 a gallon.
At a DuPont plant in Tennessee, other semi-synthetic bacteria are living on cornstarch and making the chemical 1,3 propanediol, or PDO. Millions of pounds of the stuff are being spun and woven into high-tech fabrics (DuPont's chief executive wears a pinstripe suit made of it), putting the bug-begotten chemical on track to become the first $1 billion biotech product that is not a pharmaceutical.
Engineers at DuPont studied blueprints of E. coli's metabolism and used synthetic DNA to help the bacteria make PDO far more efficiently than could have been done with ordinary genetic engineering.
"If you want to sell it at a dollar a gallon . . . you need every bit of efficiency you can muster," said DuPont's Pierce. "So we're running these bugs to their limits."
Yet another application is in medicine, where synthetic DNA is allowing bacteria and yeast to produce the malaria drug artemisinin far more efficiently than it is made in plants, its natural source.
Bugs such as these will seem quaint, scientists say, once fully synthetic organisms are brought on line to work 24/7 on a range of tasks, from industrial production to chemical cleanups. But the prospect of a flourishing synbio economy has many wondering who will own the valuable rights to that life.
In the past year, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been flooded with aggressive synthetic-biology claims. Some of Venter's applications, in particular, "are breathtaking in their scope," said Knight. And with Venter's company openly hoping to develop "an operating system for biologically-based software," some fear it is seeking synthetic hegemony.
"We've asked our patent lawyers to be reasonable and not to be overreaching," Venter said. But competitors such as DuPont, he said, "have just blanketed the field with patent applications."
Safety concerns also loom large. Already a few scientists have made viruses from scratch. The pending ability to make bacteria -- which, unlike viruses, can live and reproduce in the environment outside of a living body -- raises new concerns about contamination, contagion and the potential for mischief.
"Ultimately synthetic biology means cheaper and widely accessible tools to build bioweapons, virulent pathogens and artificial organisms that could pose grave threats to people and the planet," concluded a recent report by the Ottawa-based ETC Group, one of dozens of advocacy groups that want a ban on releasing synthetic organisms pending wider societal debate and regulation.
"The danger is not just bio-terror but bio-error," the report says.
Many scientists say the threat has been overblown. Venter notes that his synthetic genomes are spiked with special genes that make the microbes dependent on a rare nutrient not available in nature. And Pierce, of DuPont, says the company's bugs are too spoiled to survive outdoors.
"They are designed to grow in a cosseted environment with very high food levels," Pierce said. "You throw this guy out on the ground, he just can't compete. He's toast."
"We've heard that before," said Jim Thomas, ETC Group's program manager, noting that genes engineered into crops have often found their way into other plants despite assurances to the contrary. "The fact is, you can build viruses, and soon bacteria, from downloaded instructions on the Internet," Thomas said. "Where's the governance and oversight?"
In fact, government controls on trade in dangerous microbes do not apply to the bits of DNA that can be used to create them. And while some industry groups have talked about policing the field themselves, the technology is quickly becoming so simple, experts say, that it will not be long before "bio hackers" working in garages will be downloading genetic programs and making them into novel life forms.
"The cat is out of the bag," said Jay Keasling, chief of synthetic biology at the University of California at Berkeley.
Andrew Light, an environmental ethicist at the University of Washington in Seattle, said synthetic biology poses a conundrum because of its double-edged ability to both wreak biological havoc and perhaps wean civilization from dirty 20th-century technologies and petroleum-based fuels.
"For the environmental community, I think this is going to be a really hard choice," Light said.
Depending on how people adjust to the idea of man-made life -- and on how useful the first products prove to be -- the field could go either way, Light said.
"It could be that synthetic biology is going to be like cellphones: so overwhelming and ubiquitous that no one notices it anymore. Or it could be like abortion -- the kind of deep disagreement that will not go away."
The question, if the abortion model holds, is which side of the synthetic biology debate will get to call itself "pro-life."
Friday, September 21, 2007
L.A. has worst traffic; drivers lose 72 hrs a year
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070918/us_nm/traffic_usa_study_dc_1
L.A. has worst traffic; drivers lose 72 hrs a year
By Joan Gralla
Tue Sep 18, 2007
The Los Angeles metropolitan area led the nation in traffic jams in 2005, with rush-hour drivers spending an extra 72 hours a year on average stuck in traffic, according to a study released on Tuesday.
The metropolitan areas of San Francisco-0akland, Washington, D.C.-Virginia-Maryland, and Atlanta were tied for the second most gridlocked areas, according to the study by the Texas Transportation Institute.
Drivers in those three areas spent an extra 60 hours on average during peak periods, defined as 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., the study found.
But drivers in other regions around the country were not much luckier. The report (http://mobility.tamu.edu) found traffic gridlock worsened in all 437 large, medium and small urban centers in 2005.
"What causes congestion? In a word, 'you.' Most of the Mojave Desert is not congested," wrote report authors David Schrank, associate research scientist, and Tim Lomax, research engineer.
The Texas Transportation Institute is an arm of the Texas A&M University System in College Station, Texas.
In the last 20 years, travel has increased by 105 percent in metropolitan areas but road capacity -- measured by freeways and major thoroughfares -- has only risen 45 percent.
Travel by public transportation in 85 urban areas climbed 30 percent in the past two decades.
The study found that drivers in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas, area had average delays of 58 hours.
San Diego drivers faced an average delay of 57 hours, and Houston drivers had an average delay of 56 hours. Detroit was in a three-way tie with San Jose, California, and Orlando, with average delays of 54 hours, according to the report.
Traffic forced U.S. urban dwellers to travel 4.2 billion hours more and buy an extra 2.9 billion gallons of fuel in 2005, for a total cost of $78 billion, the study said.
That worked out to 220 million more hours and 140 million more gallons of fuel than in 2004, with the total cost rising $5 billion.
Solving the problem not only includes focusing on "critical" corridors and easing choke points but making work schedules more flexible and building more areas where people can walk to work, the study said.
L.A. has worst traffic; drivers lose 72 hrs a year
By Joan Gralla
Tue Sep 18, 2007
The Los Angeles metropolitan area led the nation in traffic jams in 2005, with rush-hour drivers spending an extra 72 hours a year on average stuck in traffic, according to a study released on Tuesday.
The metropolitan areas of San Francisco-0akland, Washington, D.C.-Virginia-Maryland, and Atlanta were tied for the second most gridlocked areas, according to the study by the Texas Transportation Institute.
Drivers in those three areas spent an extra 60 hours on average during peak periods, defined as 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., the study found.
But drivers in other regions around the country were not much luckier. The report (http://mobility.tamu.edu) found traffic gridlock worsened in all 437 large, medium and small urban centers in 2005.
"What causes congestion? In a word, 'you.' Most of the Mojave Desert is not congested," wrote report authors David Schrank, associate research scientist, and Tim Lomax, research engineer.
The Texas Transportation Institute is an arm of the Texas A&M University System in College Station, Texas.
In the last 20 years, travel has increased by 105 percent in metropolitan areas but road capacity -- measured by freeways and major thoroughfares -- has only risen 45 percent.
Travel by public transportation in 85 urban areas climbed 30 percent in the past two decades.
The study found that drivers in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas, area had average delays of 58 hours.
San Diego drivers faced an average delay of 57 hours, and Houston drivers had an average delay of 56 hours. Detroit was in a three-way tie with San Jose, California, and Orlando, with average delays of 54 hours, according to the report.
Traffic forced U.S. urban dwellers to travel 4.2 billion hours more and buy an extra 2.9 billion gallons of fuel in 2005, for a total cost of $78 billion, the study said.
That worked out to 220 million more hours and 140 million more gallons of fuel than in 2004, with the total cost rising $5 billion.
Solving the problem not only includes focusing on "critical" corridors and easing choke points but making work schedules more flexible and building more areas where people can walk to work, the study said.
Monday, September 3, 2007
The Richest (and Poorest) Places in the U.S.
http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/103432/The-Richest-(and-Poorest)-Places-in-the-U.S.
The Richest (and Poorest) Places in the U.S.
by Les Christie
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Maryland knocked New Jersey out of the top spot this year, while Mississippi and West Virginia were the poorest states in the Union.
Maryland is now the wealthiest state in the union, as measured by median household income, according to the latest stats from the Census Bureau.
The typical Maryland household earned $65,144 in 2006, propelling it past New Jersey, which came in second with earnings of $64,470, but had led the nation in 2005. Connecticut finished in third place both years, recording a median income of $63,422 in 2006.
Maryland's income was nearly double that of Mississippi, which, with a median of $34,473, was the nation's poorest state. West Virginia, where the median household earned $35,059, was second poorest and Arkansas, at $36,599, was third.
The median income for the United States as a whole came to $48,451.
Income growth was highest in the District of Columbia, where it rose 6.4 percent for the year. Median income in both Nevada and New Mexico jumped 4.5 percent. Delaware, down 2.9 percent, took the biggest dip, followed by Rhode Island (down 2.0 percent) and Maine (down 1.6 percent).
Among places with 250,000 or more residents, the affluent Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas, boasts the highest median income: $77,038. San Jose came in second at $73,804 and San Francisco was third with $65,497.
The list of the 10 poorest cities was filled with mostly old, northeastern and mid-western industrial locales. Cleveland had the lowest median income of any city in the nation with more than 250,000 residents; households there earned just $26,535. Miami was the next poorest at $27,088, followed by Buffalo ($27,850), Detroit ($28,364), St. Louis ($30,936) and Cincinnati ($31,103).
Other poor sun-belt cities included Memphis ($32, 593) and El Paso (33,103). With median income of $33,229, Philadelphia was the only city among the nation's 10 biggest that was also among the 10 poorest cities.
Among towns of between 65,000 and 250,000 in population, Yorba Linda, California, where six-figure incomes are the rule, had the highest median income at $121,075. The Orange County town is considerably wealthier than the second place city, Pleasanton, California, in the Bay area, which had a median income of $105,956.
The lowest income town of any with more than 65,000 population was Youngstown, Ohio at $21,850, which finished last by a large margin. Muncie, Indiana was its closest rival for this dubious distinction, with residents there earning $25,859, a difference of 18 percent.
Top 10 wealthiest states
Here's where the median household income is highest
State Income
Maryland $65,144
New Jersey $64,470
Connecticut $63,422
Hawaii $61,160
Massachusetts $59,963
New Hampshire $59,683
Alaska $59,393
California $56,645
Virginia $56,277
Minnesota $54,023
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
The 10 poorest states
The states with the lowest median household income
State Income
Montana $40,627
Tennessee $40,315
Kentucky $39,372
Louisiana $39,337
Alabama $38,783
Oklahoma $38,770
Arkansas $36,599
West Virginia $35,059
Mississippi $34,473
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
CNNMoney.com
The Richest (and Poorest) Places in the U.S.
by Les Christie
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Maryland knocked New Jersey out of the top spot this year, while Mississippi and West Virginia were the poorest states in the Union.
Maryland is now the wealthiest state in the union, as measured by median household income, according to the latest stats from the Census Bureau.
The typical Maryland household earned $65,144 in 2006, propelling it past New Jersey, which came in second with earnings of $64,470, but had led the nation in 2005. Connecticut finished in third place both years, recording a median income of $63,422 in 2006.
Maryland's income was nearly double that of Mississippi, which, with a median of $34,473, was the nation's poorest state. West Virginia, where the median household earned $35,059, was second poorest and Arkansas, at $36,599, was third.
The median income for the United States as a whole came to $48,451.
Income growth was highest in the District of Columbia, where it rose 6.4 percent for the year. Median income in both Nevada and New Mexico jumped 4.5 percent. Delaware, down 2.9 percent, took the biggest dip, followed by Rhode Island (down 2.0 percent) and Maine (down 1.6 percent).
Among places with 250,000 or more residents, the affluent Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas, boasts the highest median income: $77,038. San Jose came in second at $73,804 and San Francisco was third with $65,497.
The list of the 10 poorest cities was filled with mostly old, northeastern and mid-western industrial locales. Cleveland had the lowest median income of any city in the nation with more than 250,000 residents; households there earned just $26,535. Miami was the next poorest at $27,088, followed by Buffalo ($27,850), Detroit ($28,364), St. Louis ($30,936) and Cincinnati ($31,103).
Other poor sun-belt cities included Memphis ($32, 593) and El Paso (33,103). With median income of $33,229, Philadelphia was the only city among the nation's 10 biggest that was also among the 10 poorest cities.
Among towns of between 65,000 and 250,000 in population, Yorba Linda, California, where six-figure incomes are the rule, had the highest median income at $121,075. The Orange County town is considerably wealthier than the second place city, Pleasanton, California, in the Bay area, which had a median income of $105,956.
The lowest income town of any with more than 65,000 population was Youngstown, Ohio at $21,850, which finished last by a large margin. Muncie, Indiana was its closest rival for this dubious distinction, with residents there earning $25,859, a difference of 18 percent.
Top 10 wealthiest states
Here's where the median household income is highest
State Income
Maryland $65,144
New Jersey $64,470
Connecticut $63,422
Hawaii $61,160
Massachusetts $59,963
New Hampshire $59,683
Alaska $59,393
California $56,645
Virginia $56,277
Minnesota $54,023
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
The 10 poorest states
The states with the lowest median household income
State Income
Montana $40,627
Tennessee $40,315
Kentucky $39,372
Louisiana $39,337
Alabama $38,783
Oklahoma $38,770
Arkansas $36,599
West Virginia $35,059
Mississippi $34,473
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
CNNMoney.com
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