TROY, Mich. – The bad bets made by executives at Independent Bank of Michigan are on display in spots across the state: a defunct bowling alley, a new but never occupied shopping center and the luxurious Whispering Woods Estates, which offers prime lots for never-constructed dream homes. Now it is the federal government making the big bet here. The Treasury Department has invested $72 million out of the $700 billion in federal bailout funds to help prop up this community bank, which traces its roots back 144 years in Michigan. It is a small chunk of the giant rescue fund being wagered by Washington to encourage banks like Independent to resume lending and jump-start the frozen economy. But Independent, hard put to find good borrowers in a suffering economy, and fearful of making the kind of mistakes that got it into trouble in the first place, is not doing much lending these days. So far it is using all of the government’s money to shore up its own weak finances by repaying short-term loans from the Federal Reserve. ‘It is like if you are in an airplane and the oxygen mask comes down, said Stefanie Kimball, the […]
One of life’s greatest mysteries is how it began. Scientists have pinned it down to roughly this: Some chemical reactions occurred about 4 billion years ago - perhaps in a primordial tidal soup or maybe with help of volcanoes or possibly at the bottom of the sea or between the mica sheets - to create biology. Now scientists have created something in the lab that is tantalizingly close to what might have happened. It’s not life, they stress, but it certainly gives the science community a whole new data set to chew on. The researchers, at the Scripps Research Institute, created molecules that self-replicate and even evolve and compete to win or lose. If that sounds exactly like life, read on to learn the controversial and thin distinction. Know your RNA To understand the remarkable breakthrough, detailed Jan. 8 in the early online edition of the journal Science, you have to know a little about molecules called RNA and DNA. DNA is the software of life, the molecules that pack all the genetic information of a cell. DNA and the genes within it are where mutations occur, enabling changes that create new species. […]
President Nasser, who has a taste for anniversaries, was expected to celebrate one at Gaza last weekend. It is exactly a year since the Israelis left the strip, and prophets had whispered that he might declare a Palestinian republic there. Instead he made only a weak gesture; perhaps he is not sufficiently sure of his strength in the refugee areas not under his control to claim the allegiance of Palestinians everywhere. He gave Gaza a legislative council dominated by Egyptians and Egyptian-appointed members, and an executive council appointed by the Egyptian minister. This is far short of the independent status he might have used to rally all dispersed Palestinians. What held him back? Even within the narrow confines of the Gaza strip, he has to contend with a struggle between the indigenous land-owning families and the refugees. The Gaza families have a way of keeping on both sides of the fence, and the refugees have produced no real leaders. The former Mufti of Jerusalem can no longer be dusted down and brought forward as the leader of all Palestinians; he is now heard from only when it suits his Egyptian hosts. He has recently said that his ‘All Palestine […]
Rapidly warming climate is likely to seriously alter crop yields in the tropics and subtropics by the end of this century and, without adaptation, will leave half the world’s population facing serious food shortages, new research shows. To compound matters, the population of this equatorial belt – from about 35 degrees north latitude to 35 degrees south latitude – is among the poorest on Earth and is growing faster than anywhere else. ‘The stresses on global food production from temperature alone are going to be huge, and that doesn’t take into account water supplies stressed by the higher temperatures,’ said David Battisti, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor. Battisti is lead author of the study in the Jan. 9 edition of Science. He collaborated with Rosamond Naylor, director of Stanford University’s Program on Food Security and the Environment, to examine the impact of climate change on the world’s food security. ‘This is a compelling reason for us to invest in adaptation, because it is clear that this is the direction we are going in terms of temperature and it will take decades to develop new food crop varieties that can better withstand a warmer climate,’ […]
WASHINGTON — People who sleep less than seven hours a night are three times as likely to catch a cold as their more well-rested friends and neighbours, U.S. researchers reported on Monday. The study supports the theory that sleep is important to immune function, said Sheldon Cohen and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Volunteers who spent less time in bed, or who spent their time in bed tossing and turning instead of snoozing, were much more likely to catch a cold when viruses were dripped into their noses, they found. People who slept longer and more soundly resisted infection better, they reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine. ‘Although sleep’s relationship with the immune system is well-documented, this is the first evidence that even relatively minor sleep disturbances can influence the body’s reaction to cold viruses,’ Cohen said in a statement. ‘It provides yet another reason why people should make time in their schedules to get a complete night of rest.’ Cohen’s team tested 153 healthy volunteers, locking them in a hotel for five days after infecting them with a cold virus. They had been interviewed daily for the previous two […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
