Lawmakers move to secure more life for 100-watt bulb

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The House of Representatives gave extended life to the 100-watt bulb Friday, voting to delay a ban on sales of the incandescent bulb for nine months, from Jan. 1 to the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30, 2012.

The House vote, which was part of a funding bill for water and energy programs in the 2012 fiscal year, effectively de-funds implementation of the phase-out of theincandescent bulb, which was part of an energy-efficiency provision of the energy law that President George W. Bush signed in 2007.

House Republicans, led by Texans Michael Burgess and Joe Barton, have been on a tear to undo the bulb provision, and though a Barton-led effort failed earlier in the week, Burgess' success opens the door for more.

Environmentalists and Democratic supporters, as well as some Republicans, are upset that gains in efficiency are at risk.

During the House debate, Burgess warned that "starting January 1, if Home Depot or your local grocery store has the 100-watt bulb in their inventory, they will not be allowed to sell them. That means they will take all 100-watt bulbs off the shelf, and they will never see the consumer. My amendment will allow the stores to continue to sell what they have in stock. The 2007 provision never said that these companies could not make the bulb; it said that they couldn't be sold."

"Further," Burgess said, "if a manufacturer should choose to continue to make 100-watt bulbs, they would be permitted under this language, as there is clearly a market based on the thousands of consumers who have contacted Congress upset about their inability to buy 100-watt light bulbs. This is about the consumer driving the market, not the federal government deciding the market."

Barton, who has been one of the most visible opponents of the bulb requirement, said of the House vote: "It is the first step in restoring consumer choice and ending government intrusion into our homes."

Barton's effort to repeal the light bulb standard - which calls for efficient bulbs by 2014 - failed in the House earlier this week on a vote that required a two-thirds majority, but he has vowed to bring it up again.

But David Goldston, the director of government affairs for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that Burgess and Barton had it all wrong.

"It's a step backward," Goldston said. "Companies that make the bulbs are all geared up to meet the standard and consumers would save $100 a year per household. It will mean potentially we have to build more power plants. It's a loss for consumers, it's a loss for health and it's a loss for the economy."

Goldston is hopeful the Senate won't go along with the House because, he said, "there is much more support for a light bulb standard in the Senate."

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, ridiculed House Republicans for the vote. "Now that Republicans are finished battling energy-efficient light bulbs, maybe they will focus that energy on finding a light at the end of the tunnel with the debt limit negotiations," he said.

David Jenkins, the vice president for government and political affairs for Republicans for Environmental Protection, warned that postponing the efficiency measure would hurt companies.

"If enacted into law, this ... would strand millions of dollars that lighting manufacturers have invested to produce more efficient incandescent light bulbs, cause confusion in the market and waste consumers' money," he said.

(c) 2011, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

Visit the McClatchy Washington Bureau on the World Wide Web athttp://www.mcclatchydc.com.

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RNA reactor could have served as a precursor of life

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In the RNA reactor, nucleotides accumulate in a narrow pore due to a temperature gradient. Due to bond formation and hybridization of RNA strands, weak information transmission can occur: information can be conserved beyond the lifetime of a single molecule. Image credit: Obermayer, et al. ©2011 American Physical Society

(PhysOrg.com) -- Nobody knows quite how life originated on Earth, but most scientists agree that living cells did not abruptly appear from nonliving cells in a single step. Instead, there were probably a series of pre-cellular life forms that arose from nonliving chemicals and eventually led to a living cell, one that could undergo metabolism and reproduce. One of the most well-known theories of pre-cellular life is the RNA world theory, which proposes that life based on RNA predates current life, which is based on DNA, RNA, and proteins. But recently, scientists have been wondering what may have preceded RNA. In a new study, a team of scientists from Germany has suggested that the ability to self-replicate may have first emerged in the form of an RNA reactor, which they show can transmit information.

The scientists, Benedikt Obermayer, Hubert Krammer, Dieter Braun, and Ulrich Gerland of the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, have published their study on the prebiotic RNA reactor in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.

The biggest piece of support for RNA molecules as pre-life forms is that RNA can act as both genes (to store information) and enzymes (to catalyze chemical reactions). Like DNA, RNA is made up of a long chain of nucleotides. However, scientists do not know how a self-replicating RNA system could have arisen from a pool of random polynucleotides.

To address this question, Obermayer, et al., have turned to RNA replicators. As described in previous research, RNA replicators can transmit information from one molecule to another so that the information survives even when the original carrier molecules have become degraded. Here, the researchers have investigated how RNA replicators may have arisen from simpler RNA reactors billions of years ago.

“We show that a combination of simple physico-chemical mechanisms can greatly facilitate the spontaneous emergence of a prebiotic evolutionary system, such as envisaged by the RNA world,” Gerland told PhysOrg.com.

Using computer simulations, the scientists analyzed a scenario in which a hydrothermal RNA reactor emerges with the ability to perform intermolecular information transmission. The scene begins inside porous rocks on the sea floor, where strong temperature gradients produce thermal convection, and the convective flow transports molecules inside the narrow pores. Due to temperature variations, nucleotides in the pores accumulate in a small region and randomly form bonds with one another. Through folding and hybridization, the polynucleotides can form longer sequences, eventually resulting in RNA strands. 

One of the key factors that allows the formation of RNA strands is the preferential cleavage (splitting) of bonds at unpaired bases. This effect creates a selection pressure for base pairing, and leads to an increase in the complexity and lifetime of RNA structures. One such structure that could emerge as a result is a primitive ribozyme – or “RNA enzyme” – which can catalyze chemical reactions as a component of a true RNA replicator.

Most importantly, the computer simulations showed that the RNA reactor can perform weak replication based on information transmission by hybridization of the RNA strands. As the researchers explained, evidence of information transmission appears as an unexpected increase in the lifetime of certain sequences.

“Hybridization simultaneously protects a sequence motif and its complement from degradation,” Gerland explained. “Thereby, it extends not only the lifetime of the sequence motif, but also the lifetime of its complement, which in turn can protect other copies of the sequence motif after dissociation. This constitutes a form of information transmission between molecules, since it can conserve the information in the sequence motif beyond the lifetime of a single molecule.”

Overall, the computer simulations showed that the prebiotic RNA reactor could serve as a stepping stone toward the emergence of a true RNA replicator. Acting as a filter to keep potentially useful sequences of nucleotides, the RNA reactor could lead to complex sequences, such as ribozymes. Once ribozymes emerge from an RNA reactor, they could establish an efficient self-replicating system in the form of an RNA replicator. In the future, the researchers hope that they might be able to experimentally demonstrate such a process.

“The experimental investigation of this scenario is indeed a very exciting direction to explore,” Gerland said. “We believe it is possible to realize essential aspects of the scenario in the lab, on a small scale. We are working towards that end.”

More information: Benedikt Obermayer, et al. “Emergence of Information Transmission in a Prebiotic RNA Reactor.” Physical Review Letters 107, 018101 (2011) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.018101

Copyright 2011 PhysOrg.com. 
All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed in whole or part without the express written permission of PhysOrg.com.

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Fast-growing India needs '2nd green revolution': PM

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Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called Saturday for a second "green revolution" to feed the country's burgeoning population that is forecast to overtake China in numbers by 2025.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called Saturday for a second "green revolution" to feed the country's burgeoning population that is forecast to overtake China in numbers by 2025.

Under India's "Green Revolution" in the 1960s and 70s -- seen as one of the world's most successful agricultural turnarounds -- planting of high-yield varieties of wheat and rice resulted in a sharp output rise.

"We all look back proudly to our green revolution which helped us overcome food shortages and banish the spectre of starvation," Singh told a conference of agricultural scientists.

But now, "we clearly need a second green revolution that is broad-based, inclusive and sustainable", he said, noting agriculture productivity has plateaued and "yields continue to be much lower than what is attainable".

Experts say India must increase yields to feed its population which already stands at 1.21 billion people. India is expected to supplant China as the world's most populous nation by 2025, according to Indian official projections.

Singh said the agriculture sector is growing at three percent annually -- one percent below target -- helping drive food inflation that has spiralled faster than in most major economies, causing huge misery for India's poor.

India is poised to introduce a food security bill aiming to guarantee cheap food grains for nearly 70 percent of the population which will impose even greater food production challenges.

Last year, India's premier economic policymaking body raised its estimate of the number of Indians living in poverty and unable to meet their nutritional needs from 28 percent to 37 percent -- representing some 440 million people.

The prime minister called for the spending outlay on agriculture research and development to double or even triple by 2020 as he projected demand for food grains will grow to 280 million tons by 2020-21.

The government on Saturday estimated the country's food grain output touched a record 241 million tonnes in the crop year that ended in June -- 23 million tonnes more than the previous crop year.

India recorded bumper food grain output during 2010-11, helped by abundant monsoon rains, and is hoping for another strong monsoon this year.

(c) 2011 AFP

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