GENESIS II: EXTRATERRESTRIAL OCEANS COULD HOST LIFE

NASA's battle cry behind the small armada of orbiters, landers and rovers dispatched to Mars is "follow the water!" Where there's water, there could be life, which needs a solvent like water to assemble the complex macromolecules needed for living systems.

Mars is covered with geological evidence that it was once a soggy planet. But no longer. One of the most exciting findings to date from the roving field geologist, the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity, was the detection of a dried up ancient stream where water once flowed billions of years ago.

The irony is that if you travel a couple hundred million miles beyond Mars' orbit you cross the solar system's frost line, the boundary beyond which there is plenty of water preserved from the planets' birth.

At least six outer moons have subsurface oceans that could potentially be cozy places for life: Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan, Enceladus and Triton. Each of them could have as much if not more water than found in all of Earth’s oceans. In fact Earth is a comparatively dry world.

ANALYSIS: Europa, Jupiter's Moon, Could Support Complex Life

The idea of a stellar habitable zone, where water can remain stable on a planet's surface, was scientifically spelled out and popularized by Michael Hart in the late 1970s. Since such a zone is a narrow slice of the solar system's real estate, Hart used his widely cited research paper to support the Rare Earth hypothesis: that the evolution of complex life would be hard to replicate in the cosmos.

Today, the concept of a habitable zone is old fashioned says Ken Hand of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "The Goldilocks scenario is outdated. There are new ways to mediate habitability via tidal interactions."

This new paradigm is further bolstered by the emerging realization that there is a tremendous diversity of life on Earth in extreme environments. In fact, the so-called "exteremeophiles" were probably the first inhabitants of Earth -- and will be the last survivors 1 billion years from now.


Finding samples of life in extraterrestrial oceans is no small task. It requires burrowing through miles of a thick ice shell. But in actuality that would be far less difficult than sending an industrial drilling rig and astronaut crew to Mars to penetrate deep into subsurface aquifers.

NEWS: Will NASA Boldly Go to Europa?

More importantly, finding life in a Europa ocean would unequivocally prove that a Genesis II took place in the solar system. And that would mean that life is an inevitable spinoff of an evolving universe.

Even more profoundly, if Europan microbes incorporated RNA and DNA into their biological machinery it would demonstrate that the concept of convergent evolution beats out contingent evolution that favors a purely random sequence of events (as in the Rare Earth hypothesis).

Convergent evolution predicts that the universe defaults to the same molecular template for life regardless of the initial starting conditions and biological constraints. No doubt creationists would embrace such news as evidence for intelligent design.

Why can't finding Mars microbes lead us to the same solution? The problem is that if Martians were found to use DNA and RNA, it would be tempting to think that they are really our cousins. The early solar system may have seen planetary cross-fertilization via dispersal of hitchhiking microbes between Earth and Mars meteorites. Or, less likely, Mars may have been contaminated by poorly sterilized spacecraft from Earth.

This would not be the case for any of the outer solar system oceans that have been encapsulated for billions of years.

VIDEO: Goin' to Europa, The Film

The Saturnian moon Enceladus is one of the most promising places to go "microbe fishing" though it is a staggering one billion miles away. The Enceladus ocean "jumped out at us," says Hand. Geyser-like plumes spewing off the moon from slush fill surface cracks contain water and organics. The moon is tidally heated and this has been brewing an ocean for billions of years.


WATCH VIDEO: Will the real ET be little green men or little green bacteria?
At half Enceladus' distance, the Jovian moon Europa seems a better destination for astrobiology hunting. Europa has two to three times more water than Earth. Where Earth's oceans average a depth of a few miles, Europa's ocean is at least ten times deeper.

The European Space Agency's planned Jupiter Icy moons Explorer (JUICE) will tour all three Jovian ocean worlds, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto beginning in 2030. Looking beyond 2030 the mother of all sample returns would be to land on Europa and dispatch a nuclear-heated cryobot probe to melt its way though a thin portion of the ice shell. Ultimately, samples of the Europan ocean would be returned to Earth for study at a class 5 biocontamination lab.

Sterilization would be no problem because the probe would be irradiated in Jupiter’s seething radiation belts. The moon's hydrogen peroxide would further sterilize the probe as it burrowed through the ice.



However, a Europa lander and penetrator presents numerous engineering challenges and no doubt would be costly. A less expensive proposed mission called the Live Investigation for Enceladus (LIFE) would be a descendent of the Stardust mission that captured dust grains from comet Wild-2 during a flyby. The $200 million NASA Stardust spacecraft trapped the grains in a disk of aerogel. LIFE would use a similar method to gather samples from zooming thorough the geysers (shown above) of Enceladus and then return to Earth.

Search for life in buried Antarctic lake called off

After fighting with the Antarctic ice for 20 hours through Christmas Eve, a British Antarctic Survey team has reluctantly called off its mission to retrieve water samples from an ancient subglacial lake.
The decision to halt drilling through the ice down toward Lake Ellsworth came after the team failed to connect the project's main and secondary boreholes, Martin Siegert, the lead investigator for the project, said on the project's blog.

Lake Ellsworth lies under 2 miles of ice and has been sealed off from the outside world for up to 1 million years. Scientists with the survey have been engaged in a 16-year attempt to drill down and take water samples from the lake. They say that if microbes and other forms of life are living in the frigid water, away from sunlight, those life forms may help researchers better understand the origins of life on Earth and the possible forms life could take on other planets.

The scientists were trying to connect the boreholes via a cavity located 300 meters below the ice surface. The cavity recirculates water from the main borehole and would have equalized pressure had the drill penetrated Lake Ellsworth.

The camp has been on the ice since Nov. 22, and drilling started on Dec. 13, using a specially designed hot water drill. The effort to establish the connection took so much hot water and fuel that the scientists must now return to the United Kingdom and regroup for next year.

"For reasons that are yet to be determined, the team could not establish a link between the two boreholes at 300 meters depth despite trying for over 20 hours," wrote Siegert, a glaciologist at the University of Bristol. "During this process, hot water seeped into the porous surface layers of ice and was lost. The team attempted to replenish this water loss by digging and melting more snow, but their efforts could not compensate. The additional time taken to attempt to establish the cavity link significantly depleted the fuel stocks to such a level as to render the remaining operation unviable. Reluctantly the team had no option but to discontinue the program for this season.

"This is, of course, hugely frustrating for us, but we have learned a lot this year," Siegert said. "By the end the equipment was working well, and much of it has now been fully field tested. A full report on the field season will be compiled when the engineers and program manager return to United Kingdom."

Life Line Animal Project seeking donations

Life Line Animal Project in Avondale Estates is seeking year-end donations for its two Atlanta Metro clinics. The money will help increase the discounted animal welfare work they've been doing for a decade now.

A local company, Anisa International, an Atlanta cosmetic brush design firm, will match donations up to $25,000.

If donations are made by the Monday deadline, that would add $50,000 to spend on low-cost spay and neuter surgeries, vet care and adoption of homeless pets.

"There are a lot of families especially in these economic times that really are in dire need of these services," said Chris Mitchell, who manages the College Park location.

For 10 years now, the staff at Life Line Animal Project Clinic has been helping to ease that financial burden and helping to control pet overpopulation at the same time.

"We do what we do because we love animals. It's our passion - all of us," said Mitchell.

"It's that passion and their solutions that sparked this 'Double Impact Campaign,'" said Anisa Telwar, with Anisa International.

It's an end of the year donation challenge by Anisa International. The Atlanta-based cosmetic brush design firm is offering to match donations to the clinic - dollar for dollar up to $25,000 - which could mean $50,000 is low-cost animal care.

"The numbers are staggering of animals that are euthanized at shelters because there are too many and not enough homes. The only way to stop that is through spay and neuter," Mitchell said.

Life Line has performed more than 55,000 spay and neuter surgeries since its founding a decade ago.

Can I borrow from my life insurance policy?

Dear Insurance Adviser,
I have a life insurance policy and would like to know: Can I borrow money off it?
-- Shaking the Trees
Dear Shaking,

There are basically two types of life insurance: term life insurance, which pays off only if you die within the policy term; and permanent, aka whole life, insurance, which has you paying considerably more per year in the early years so that your premium stays level in your older and more high-risk years.

What you overpay in the early years is set aside and referred to as "cash value." In the first 10 to 15 years that you have a whole life policy, the insurance company is allowed to assess "surrender charges" to recoup its sales commissions and related costs. The difference between the cash value and the surrender charges is what is known as the "surrender value." That's usually the amount you can borrow from the policy -- also known as the "loan value."

You asked the question, "Can I borrow against my life insurance policy?" The answer is "yes," though only if it's a whole life policy with cash values and only up to the amount of the surrender or loan value.
One caution: Whatever amount you borrow from the life insurance policy reduces the amount your beneficiaries will receive when you die. So try to get on a repayment plan to put the money back as soon as you can. At a minimum, you'll have to pay interest on the loan annually.

She pins the can-do on you

Ruby Brower says in a grave voice that she has "bad news," and Marie Holley hangs her dejected head.

Brower, a life coach who's trying to inject self-empowerment into five women at the Mishawaka Food Pantry who are poor, down on their luck and at wit's end, says in a deadpan voice: "Santa ain't real."

Holley's tears flow because she cannot take any more setbacks.

"I need a place to stay," she sobs. "I've got income."

She bemoans the fact that, at 53, she receives Social Security disability payments since she's on dialysis and has seizures but is sleeping on a hard couch in someone else's home.

She moved from Michigan City to South Bend about three years ago and stayed first with her mom, then in a nursing home and then with other people.

"Every time I move, someone beats me out of my money," Holley says.

Then Brower tips her off to a one-bedroom apartment next to hers that's open. Holley jumps at it, and her relief emerges as a wide grin.

Two of the other women suggest apartments, too, but Holley wants this one so she "has someone to talk to."

Like the others who sign onto Brower's program, Holley had come to the pantry since she was hungry. But she was just picking at her food, she recalls, and "Miss Ruby came up to me and made me feel good."

Brower doesn't normally provide what the clients in her small-group sessions need. She calls her nonprofit effort I-FACD and explains with missionary zeal: "It's exactly what it says: I faced it. There's no E in I-FACD because there are no excuses. .... I'm not a counselor. I do not diagnose. I do not fix your problems. You do."

Santa surely won't.

"Come to a decision, make a plan and use your resources," Brower urges. "And don't leave out the support of the people here."

Hugs come easily. So does Brower's stack of clippings from The Tribune about free help and cheap entertainment. And so does the brainstorming among the group.

"This is all about relationships," she adds.

I-FACD stands for Individual Family and Community Development.

It's a holistic approach that factors in things like faith and good health. When desired, she advises clients on starting a business.

Brower says she holds a bachelor's degree in behavioral sciences from Andrews University and studied ministry for a while at Bethel College.

Marilyn Waumans, who's worked with the needy in Mishawaka for many years, read about Brower in an article in The Tribune several years ago, when Brower was running her program in Benton Harbor.

It's a Wonderful Life Was a Winter Wonderland – in July

It's the sentimental family favorite that easily induces tears for its heartfelt final scenes, but when it came to creating a winter wonderland for his 1946 It's a Wonderful Life, producer-director Frank Capra was one tough taskmaster.

He wanted real snow – not the painted corn flakes Hollywood was accustomed to passing off as the white stuff – to blanket his setting, the town of Bedford Falls, reports Life.com in its special feature with never-before-seen on-set photos from the holiday classic.

To achieve his goal, Capra – who trained as an engineer as a student at Cal Tech before becoming the talkies' first true stylist, as an Oscar-winning director for Columbia Pictures – collaborated with RKO studio's special effects expert Russell Sherman.

Together they created a product that quelled the crunch of cornflakes and replaced it with their own gentle falling (and sounding) snow to cover the fictional town where James Stewart's George Bailey helped affect the lives of everyone around him.

Their recipe? Mixing Foamite, a material used in fire extinguishers, with sugar and water – or, say some accounts, with soap flakes.

As for the Bedford Falls set, according to Life.com: "It covered four acres of the RKO ranch [in Encino, Calif.] and included 75 stores and buildings, a tree-lined center parkway with 20 fully grown oak trees, a factory district and residential areas. Main Street was 300 yards long, or three full-length city blocks."

Most surprising of all, the snow scenes were shot on a series of 90-degree days in June and July 1946.

Still when It's a Wonderful Life first opened, it didn't set the box office on fire, or even warm the hearts of critics. Subsequent TV showings made it the hit with audiences it is today.

As Capra, who died in 1991, said about the picture in his 1971 autobiography, just as the reputation of his movie was being revived: "I didn't give a film-clip whether critics hailed or hooted Wonderful Life. I thought it was the greatest film I had ever made. Better yet, I thought it was greatest film anybody ever made … my kind of film for my kind of people."

How to Evaluate Term Life Insurance

The simplest type of life insurance to understand and purchase is term life insurance. Term life insurance provides protection for a specific period of time, such as 10, 20 or 30 years.

"Term life insurance works well if you're looking solely for a death benefit to provide income for your beneficiaries," says Kevin Finneran, vice president for Life Product Management for MetLife in Bloomfield, Conn. "It's best suited for people who want insurance coverage for a short duration. For example, if you want to cover your income until you retire and you're 45, then you can purchase a 20-year term policy." (See: "Understanding life insurance table ratings.")

Term vs. permanent life insurance
If you die while your term life policy is in effect, your beneficiaries receive the face value of the policy tax-free. Your insurance coverage ends when the policy expires, so you'll have to purchase a new policy if you still need life insurance.

"The biggest advantage of term life insurance is that it is the cheaper alternative when compared to permanent life insurance," says Finneran. "The trade-off is that you lose the ability to grow cash value in your life insurance policy, which is one advantage of permanent life insurance policies."

If you need life insurance for a longer period of time than your initial term, your premium could go up substantially and you may have to undergo a new medical exam, says Finneran.

"Permanent life insurance offers protection for the longest time," he says. "However, most term policies offer the option of converting to a permanent policy at some point."

Some consumers opt to purchase a term insurance policy to supplement a smaller permanent policy in order to cover a specific need such as a mortgage or college tuition.

Level premiums vs. annual renewable premiums
Finneran says most people prefer level premiums for a term policy so that their premiums stay the same for the entire duration of the policy.

"With level premiums you're essentially overfunding your insurance costs in the early years and underfunding the later years to level out the premiums," says Finneran.

Annual renewable premiums will typically rise each year as you age.
"If you're buying insurance for a shorter time horizon it might be more cost-efficient to choose an annual renewable premium policy," says Finneran. "One example would be if an employee lost his job and his group life insurance coverage and needed stop-gap life insurance until he's covered under a new group policy." (See: "Insurance smarts during a layoff.")

Life-size hobbit Bag End made of 2 million Legos

I've tried what I thought were some ambitious Lego builds in my childhood, but I never got close to making anything that could be considered life-size. That's why I'm tipping my hat to the insane quest of the Lego builders who made a life-size Bag End in honor of "The Hobbit" movie.

The Bag End creation is impressively detailed. There's a big round door and life-size characters running around, including Bilbo and Gandalf. If you look closely in one of the photos, you can even see smoke coming out of the chimney. I don't think that part is made out of little plastic bricks.

'The Hobbit' cast poses with Lego mini-fig lookalikes
How much would you cough up for a Hobbit home?
The Hobbit's Bag End imagined with balloons

A feast is laid out on a table while dwarves stand with their weapons at the ready. There's an unexplained pretzel in the scene, but it still looks pretty tasty.

It took 3,000 hours of work and 2 million bricks to put the scene together. The photos all show it hanging out in a big warehouse, but there's no indication yet of where or when it might go on display. I would like to suggest it go on display in my backyard where I can play with it for hours on end.

If you don't have 2 million Legos and 3,000 hours of spare time, you can always pick up a Lego Bag End kit that's a little more down to size. The official movie tie-in kit sold at retail contains just 652 pieces.

In 2013, Learn How to Say 'No'

This will be a special new year for me. With a December 31 birthday, I'll start 2013 as a newly minted 50 year old.

That marker has given me both pause and resolve to live a successful life. And here's what I've discovered: Success is grooving with the right rhythm of Yeses and Nos. A successful 2013 is not simply saying Yes to a series of new resolutions.

Several years ago, I learned firsthand the peril of too many Yeses.

I found myself on a treadmill for the purpose of generating an EKG. This on the recommendation of my doctor: "The pains you feel in your chest might be something more serious. Let's have your heart get checked."

With electrodes strapped to my chest in a Manhattan cardiologist's office, worried and confused thoughts filling my mind: "What? Me? Is this serious?" I was young with no previous health problems.

It may be sacrilege to say in our current technology-crazed world, but saying a constant Yes to technology partly caused the problem. It was the hundreds of emails I'd receive after a week of vacation, the fact I could listen to calls on my cell as I walked home from work, and the experience of being "wired in" at all times in a fast-paced, technologically advanced city where (I've been told) "you're 55% more likely to have a heart attack if you're a New Yorker."

But soon enough, I heard the words: "Your heart is fine. Any problems you're experiencing are elsewhere." (In fact, I later found it's a genetic predisposition toward hypertension.) That day I felt elated. Grateful. But I also realized that I needed strategic Nos to support the important Yeses in my life.

Canadian Life Companies Split Corp.: Monthly Dividend Declaration for Preferred Shares

Canadian Life Companies Split Corp. ("CLC Split") declares its monthly distribution of $0.05208 for each Preferred share ($0.625 annually). Distributions are payable January 10, 2013 to shareholders on record as of December 31, 2012. There will not be a distribution paid to the Class A shares for December 31, 2012 as per the Prospectus which states no monthly dividends or other distributions will be paid on the Class A shares in any month as long as the net asset value per unit is equal to or less than $15.00.

Since inception Class A shareholders have received a total of $5.70 per share and Preferred shareholders have received a total of $4.09 per share inclusive of this distribution, for a combined total of $9.79.
CLC Split invests in a portfolio of four publicly traded Canadian life insurance companies as follows: Great-West Life, Industrial Alliance, Manulife Financial and Sun Life Financial. Shares held within the portfolio are expected to range between 10-30% in weight but may vary at any time.

Should older couple shed term life insurance?

My husband and I are retired or close to it. We are 62, and we have no dependents and no debt. Our retirement savings are adequate. We have term life insurance of $300,000 each. Is it worth it to continue that?

I don't believe in car insurance if you no longer own a car. Similarly, I don't believe in life insurance if you have no one financially dependent on you.

That being said, because you have the policies currently in force and they probably have a price guarantee for a few more years, I would probably recommend keeping them at least until the guarantee ends. Find out also if they are convertible to permanent life insurance and what the final conversion date is, in case you need insurance beyond the end of the price guarantee.

You used the word "adequate" in describing your financial circumstances. "Adequate" in my vernacular usually means "getting by." If that's all you're doing, the $300,000 you currently have in life insurance would probably come in handy to the survivor. "Comfortable" is nicer.

If you have outgrown your life insurance needs, consider investing in long-term care insurance. You're both at an ideal age to start such a policy before it gets too expensive. Chances are great that one of you will end up needing long-term care for at least six months or more. Without a policy, you will end up spending down your assets to get federal Medicaid coverage for the care you need.

I recommend that you meet with a long-term care insurance specialist and ask about your state's partnership program. It would allow you to protect assets and still get government assistance with long-term care.

All the best as you review those term life insurance policies and your overall insurance needs!

Increased life expectancy 'not benefitting everybody'

Life expectancy, which has risen dramatically in the past 40 years, is not benefitting everybody equally particularly adult males from low and middle-income countries are losing ground, researchers including Indian-origin scientists say.

People are living longer on average than they were in 1970, and those extra years of life are being achieved at lower cost, the researchers, led by U of T Chemical Engineering PhD candidate Ryan Hum, said.
However, the costs for an extra year of life among adult males in lower-income countries are rising, Hum and his colleagues say, while the costs for an extra year of life among children worldwide and for adults in high-income countries continues to drop.

Hum along with co-authors Yu-Ling Cheng, Prabhat Jha from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Anita McGahan of the Rotman School of Management made the discovery when they took the Michaelis-Menten (MM) equation - a well-known mathematical model first used to analyze enzyme kinetics in 1913 - and applied it to adult and child mortality at different incomes.

They reasoned that just as chemical catalysts affect enzyme velocity; the public health catalysts react with income to affect life expectancy.

"We noticed the similarity in the curvature and became fascinated with the beauty of the analogy," Hum said.

"The MM equation is standard curriculum for biochemistry, biology and most chemical engineering undergraduate students and we knew there could be added knowledge that we could decipher purely from the math," Hum said.

Hum and his colleagues concluded by recommending that society invest in research and treatment of adult chronic disease, most notably the control of smoking and other risk factors for chronic diseases, and low-cost, widely useful treatments for these diseases.

In the paper, the authors expand on the analogy between enzymes and incomes.

"Income directly enables certain technologies, immunization programs, epidemiological knowledge, education, and sanitation systems and other areas, which may themselves be interpreted as 'catalysts' - agents that accelerate the rate of a reaction without being fully consumed in the process," the researchers wrote.

They came up with a new parameter, critical income, which they define as the level of income needed to achieve half of the maximal overall life expectancy found in high-income countries.

However, that good news is due mostly to improvements in children's health and to increased life expectancy in high-income countries, the researchers say.

For adults (aged 15 to 59) in lower-income countries, critical income has actually risen since 1970. In other words, adults in low- and middle-income countries need to have higher incomes on average in order to add an extra year of life.

Life Expectancy Rises Around the World, Study Finds

A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and infectious diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a report published on Thursday, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases mostly associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.

Children in Nairobi, Kenya. Sub-Saharan Africa lagged in mortality gains, compared with Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are striking: infant mortality declined by more than half from 1990 to 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.

At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.

“The growth of these rich-country diseases, like heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes, is in a strange way good news,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It shows that many parts of the globe have largely overcome infectious and communicable diseases as a pervasive threat, and that people on average are living longer.”

In 2010, 43 percent of deaths in the world occurred at age 70 and older, compared with 33 percent of deaths in 1990, the report said. And fewer child deaths have brought up the mean age of death, which in Brazil and Paraguay jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 30 in 1970, the report said. The measure, an average of all deaths in a given year, is different from life expectancy, and is lower when large numbers of children die.

But while developing countries made big strides the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries’ female populations between 1990 and 2010. American women gained just under two years of life, compared with women in Cyprus, who lived 2.3 years longer and Canadian women who gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990. Life expectancy for American women was 80.5 in 2010, up from 78.6 in 1990.

“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research organization financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at the University of Washington that coordinated the report. Rising rates of obesity among American women and the legacy of smoking, a habit women formed later than men, are among the factors contributing to the stagnation, he said. American men gained in life expectancy, to 75.9 years from 71.7 in 1990.

Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed to the report, which provided estimates of disease and mortality for populations in more than 180 countries. It was published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

The World Health Organization issued a statement on Thursday saying that some of the estimates in the report differed substantially from those done by United Nations agencies, though others were similar. All comprehensive estimates of global mortality rely heavily on statistical modeling because only 34 countries — representing about 15 percent of the world’s population — produce quality cause-of-death data.

Sub-Saharan Africa was an exception to the trend. Infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternity-related causes of death still account for about 70 percent of the region’s disease burden, a measure of years of life lost due to premature death and to time lived in less than full health. In contrast, they account for just one-third in South Asia, and less than a fifth in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa also lagged in mortality gains, with the average age of death rising by fewer than 10 years from 1970 to 2010, compared with a more than 25-year increase in Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

Globally, AIDS was an exception to the shift of deaths from infectious to noncommunicable diseases. The epidemic is believed to have peaked, but still results in 1.5 million deaths each year.

Over all, the change means people are living longer, but it also raises troubling questions. Behavior affects people’s risks of developing cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and public health experts say it is far harder to get people to change their ways than to administer a vaccine that protects children from an infectious disease like measles.

“Adult mortality is a much harder task for the public health systems in the world,” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist at the World Health Organization.

Tobacco use is a rising threat, especially in developing countries, and is responsible for almost six million deaths a year globally. Illnesses like diabetes are also spreading fast.

Mysterious origin of life needs a rethink, scientists argue

Scientists trying to unravel the mystery of life's origins have been looking at it the wrong way, a new study argues.

Instead of trying to re-create the chemical building blocks that gave rise to life 3.7 billion years ago, scientists should use key differences in the way that living creatures store and process information, suggests new research detailed Tuesday in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

"In trying to explain how life came to exist, people have been fixated on a problem of chemistry, that bringing life into being is like baking a cake, that we have a set of ingredients and instructions to follow," said study co-author Paul Davies, a theoretical physicist and astrobiologist at Arizona State University. "That approach is failing to capture the essence of what life is about."

Living systems are uniquely characterized by two-way flows of information, both from the bottom up and the top down in terms of complexity, the scientists write in the article. For instance, bottom up would move from molecules to cells to whole creatures, while top down would flow the opposite way. The new perspective on life may reframe the way that scientists try to uncover the origin of life and hunt for strange new life forms on other planets. [7 Theories on the Origin of Life]

"Right now, we're focusing on searching for life that's identical to us, with the same molecules," said Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at the NASA Ames Research Center who was not involved in the study. "Their approach potentially lays down a framework that allows us to consider other classes of organic molecules that could be the basis of life."

Chemical approach
For decades, scientists have tried to re-create the primordial events that gave rise to life on the planet. In the famous Miller-Urey experiments reported in 1953, scientists electrically charged a primordial soup of chemicals that mimicked the chemical makeup of the planet's early oceans and found that several simple amino acids, the most primitive building blocks of life, formed as a result.

But since then, scientists aren't much further along in understanding how simple amino acids could have eventually morphed into simple, and then complex, living beings.

Life Without Parole: Four Inmates’ Stories

Of the 140,000 prisoners serving life sentences in the United States, about 41,000 have no chance at parole, a result of laws that eliminated parole in the federal system and for many state prisoners. These rules, along with the mandatory sentences decreed for some crimes and some repeat offenders, were intended to make punishment both stricter and fairer, but judges complain that the rigid formulas too often result in injustice. Here are four prisoners sentenced to life without parole by judges who did not believe the punishment fit the crime.

John Tierney, the Findings columnist for Science Times, is exploring the social science of incarceration. Future articles in this series will look at the effects of current policies on families and communities, and new ideas for dealing with offenders.

The first two times Kenneth Harvey was caught with drugs in California, he was given probation. Then, to earn $300, at the age of 24 he took a flight in 1989 from Los Angeles to Kansas City to deliver a vial of cocaine strapped to his leg. This time he went to prison for good.

When Judge Howard Sachs imposed the mandatory sentence of life without parole in federal court in Missouri, he said he was troubled by the disproportionate punishment.

“I do not think it was fully understood or intended by Congress in cases of this nature,” the judge said, “but there is no authority that I know of that would permit a different sentence by me.”

The judge recommended that Mr. Harvey be considered for clemency after he served 15 years in prison — a recommendation that was later seconded by the appeals court, which urged prosecutors to deliver the recommendation to the federal office in charge of clemency. But his 15th anniversary passed, and his clemency petition was denied.

“I do not like my current situation, but I got myself here,” Mr. Harvey, now 47, wrote in a recent e-mail from his prison in Beaumont, Tex. While saying he did not want to blame anyone else, he judged his life sentence unfair, “especially when compared with child molesters, rapists, murderers and those along that line.” After more than 22 years behind bars, he wrote, “I feel very strongly that I’ve been rehabilitated.”

In his early 20s, Scott Walker became addicted to methamphetamine and paid for his habit by selling drugs along with friends in Carbondale, Ill. When he was found guilty of being part of a conspiracy to distribute marijuana and meth, it was his first felony conviction, but federal law required Judge J. Phil Gilbert to impose a sentence he considered “excessive and disproportionate.”

“Maybe somewhere down the line Congress will relieve the people in your position,” he said to Mr. Walker, then 26, at the sentencing hearing in 1998. Today Mr. Walker is 41, and Judge Gilbert looks back on the sentencing as “one of the most difficult moments in my judicial career.” The judge, a former prosecutor, has written a letter toPresident Obamasupporting a commutation of the sentence, and praising Mr. Walker’s record as a model prisoner.

“His unbroken spirit in the face of a life sentence is an example of the human spirit at its strongest,” Judge Gilbert wrote. “As a judge, as a citizen and as a taxpayer, I see no reason that this individual should spend the rest of his natural life incarcerated.”

After the drug-related death of his mother, a heroin addict, Reynolds Wintersmith moved to his grandmother’s home, which was a brothel and a crack house. There, as a teenager, he was taught to cook crack by his aunts. He spent a little more than a year in a drug ring selling crack in Rockford, Ill., until being locked up shortly after his 19th birthday on drug-conspiracy charges.

“You were 17 years old when you got involved in this thing,” Judge Philip G. Reinhard said to Mr. Wintersmith when he imposed the mandatory sentence in federal court. “This is your first conviction, and here you face life imprisonment. I think it gives me pause to think that was the intent of the Congress.” He urged Mr. Wintersmith to “hope something will change in the law.”

Mr. Wintersmith is now 38 and has spent half his life in prison, becoming a highly regarded tutor and counselor who helps other prisoners prepare to return to society. He looks back on his teenage self as a social menace but also as someone quite foreign. “I am no longer that person,” he said. “I ask only for a chance to contribute as a positive, productive human being in society.”

Robert Riley was a follower of the Grateful Dead who sometimes sold drugs to fellow Deadheads in the 1970s and ‘80s. Convicted several times for possession of small amounts of marijuana and amphetamines, he spent short periods in county jails in California and Wisconsin. In 1993, he was convicted in a federal court in Iowa of conspiring to distribute hits of LSD dissolved on pieces of blotter paper.

The weight of the LSD was minuscule, but prosecutors also counted the blotter paper’s weight, putting it over a 10-gram threshold that — with the previous convictions — meant a mandatory life sentence without parole.

At the sentencing hearing, his lawyer complained that Mr. Riley was being punished more severely than most violent criminals, even murderers. Mr. Riley described mandatory drug sentences as “governmentally sanctioned, personalized terrorism” and said, “Hopefully after my death, someone will want to read this.” The judge, Ronald E. Longstaff, listened sympathetically.

“It’s an unfair sentence,” Judge Longstaff said as he imposed it. Nine years later, in 2002, he wrote a letter supporting a petition for presidential clemency.

“There was no evidence presented in Mr. Riley’s case to indicate that he was a violent offender or would be in the future,” the judge wrote. “It gives me no satisfaction that a gentle person such as Mr. Riley will remain in prison the rest of his life.”

The petition was not granted. Mr. Riley, now 60, has been behind bars for 19 years.

Recalling Lives Altered, in Ways Vivid and Untidy

Alice Munro, one of the foremost short-story writers of her generation, creates tales that have the scope and amplitude of novels: whole lives are condensed into a handful of pages, the progress of love is charted over the years as passion gives way to restlessness or deeper commitment or something more ambiguous.

Her most powerful stories (in collections like “The Moons of Jupiter” and “Friend of My Youth”) have the complexity of small orchestral pieces: they move back and forth in time, gradually uncovering the patterns in characters’ lives; revealing how emotions are handed down generation to generation; how relationships between men and women and parents and children mutate over time; and how disappointments, hopes and losses reverberate through the echo chamber of family.

Ms. Munro’s latest collection, “Dear Life” — like her lumpy 2004 collection “Runaway” — gives us stories that have a similar density but that are less elliptical and less psychologically complex. With the exception of four revealing semi-autobiographical pieces that close the volume, most of the stories here pivot around a melodramatic event, and many have ironic, O. Henry-esque conclusions that can feel overly stage-managed.

People’s lives often change abruptly in Ms. Munro’s stories (by accident, bad luck or calculated risk), but her earlier tales tended to give us a kaleidoscopic views of such events, conveying both the precariousness of daily life and the subjectivity of memory. Ms. Munro, now 81, seems to have increasingly turned toward stories with more tightly plotted narratives, more closure and more Aesop-like morals — in sharp contrast to the many artists, like Tennessee Williams and Claude Monet, whose work grew increasingly abstract in later years. There is a terseness to these tales (more than half of which have a single word for a title), a sense of impatience on the part of the author.

As for the people in these stories, they too are drawn with sharper outlines and less chiaroscuro than their predecessors. Though Ms. Munro has not become judgmental exactly, she seems more focused on the selfishness, irrationality and carelessness people are capable of.

“To Reach Japan” describes how a poet leaves her young daughter alone on a train to have a quick assignation with a young actor she’s just met, only to return to the compartment and find her daughter missing. “Corrie” tells how a wealthy young woman with a bad leg becomes involved with a married man, who tells her that they are being blackmailed by a former employee who’s threatening to tell his wife about their affair. And “Amundsen” recounts how a doctor methodically sets about seducing a young teacher who has arrived in his remote town to teach children with tuberculosis — how he invites her to dinner, gets her into bed, proposes marriage and then coldly dumps her and puts her on a train back to Toronto.

Many of these stories are set in small Canadian towns — much like the ones in which Ms. Munro has spent much of her life — and many look back on childhood or youthful events from a vantage point decades later. The teacher in “Amundsen” is now a married woman — not happily it would seem — and still a bit in thrall to the dastardly doctor who hurt her so many years ago.

As for the narrator of “Gravel,” she remains haunted by her 9-year-old sister’s decision to throw her dog and herself into the chilly waters of a gravel pit to get the attention of their adulterous mother — and her own failure to summon help promptly. Instead of getting help from her mother or her mother’s lover right away, the narrator recalls that she just sat down in front of their trailer “and waited for the next thing to happen.”

A woman in “Haven” is more passive-aggressive than just plain passive. Although it’s the 1970s, the narrator’s aunt spends most of her time obediently deferring to her antisocial husband and his peremptory opinions. Then one evening she recklessly invites the neighbors and her husband’s estranged sister — who is performing in a concert at the local town hall — over for drinks while her husband is at the County Physicians Annual General Meeting and Dinner. Her story, however contrived, echoes that of many of the women in Ms. Munro’s fiction: they are caught on the margins of changing cultural mores, and torn between freedom and domesticity, independence and the need to belong.

When Daily Stress Gets in the Way of Life

I was about to give an hourlong talk to hundreds of people when one of the organizers of the event asked, “Do you get nervous when you give speeches?” My response: Who, me? No. Of course not.

But this was a half-truth. I am a bit of a worrier, and one thing that makes me anxious is getting ready for these events: fretting over whether I’ve prepared the right talk, packed the right clothes or forgotten anything important, like my glasses.

Anxiety is a fact of life. I’ve yet to meet anyone, no matter how upbeat, who has escaped anxious moments, days, even weeks. Recently I succumbed when, rushed for time just before a Thanksgiving trip, I was told the tires on my car were too worn to be driven on safely and had to be replaced.

“But I have no time to do this now,” I whined.

“Do you have time for an accident?” my car-savvy neighbor asked.

So, with a pounding pulse and no idea how I’d make up the lost time, I went off to get new tires. I left the car at the shop and managed to calm down during the walk home, which helped me get back to the work I needed to finish before the trip.

It seems like such a small thing now. But everyday stresses add up, according to Tamar E. Chansky, a psychologist in Plymouth Meeting, Penn., who treats people with anxiety disorders.

You’ll be much better able to deal with a serious, unexpected challenge if you lower your daily stress levels, she said. When worry is a constant, “it takes less to tip the scales to make you feel agitated or plagued by physical symptoms, even in minor situations,” she wrote in her very practical book, “Freeing Yourself From Anxiety.”

When Calamities Are Real

Of course, there are often good reasons for anxiety. Certainly, people who lost their homes and life’s treasures — and sometimes loved ones — in Hurricane Sandy can hardly be faulted for worrying about their futures.

But for some people, anxiety is a way of life, chronic and life-crippling, constantly leaving them awash in fears that prevent them from making moves that could enrich their lives.

In an interview, Dr. Chansky said that when real calamities occur, “you will be in much better shape to cope with them if you don’t entertain extraneous catastrophes.”

By “extraneous,” she means the many stresses that pile up in the course of daily living that don’t really deserve so much of our emotional capital — the worrying and fretting we spend on things that won’t change or simply don’t matter much.

“If you worry about everything, it will get in the way of what you really need to address,” she explained. “The best decisions are not made when your mind is spinning out of control, racing ahead with predictions about how things are never going to get any better. Precious energy is wasted when you’re always thinking about the worst-case scenarios.”

When faced with serious challenges, it helps to narrow them down to specific things you can do now. To my mind, Dr. Chansky’s most valuable suggestion for emerging from paralyzing anxiety when faced with a monumental task is to “stay in the present — it doesn’t help to be in the future.

“Take some small step today, and value each step you take. You never know which step will make a difference. This is much better than not trying to do anything.”

Dr. Chansky told me, “If you’re worrying about your work all the time, you won’t get your work done.” She suggested instead that people “compartmentalize.” Those prone to worry should set aside a little time each day simply to fret, she said — and then put aside anxieties and spend the rest of the time getting things done. This advice could not have come at a better time for me, as I faced holiday chores, two trips in December, and five columns to write before leaving mid-month. Rather than focusing on what seemed like an impossible challenge, I took on one task at a time. Somehow it all got done.

Possible Thinking

Many worriers think the solution is positive thinking. Dr. Chansky recommends something else: think “possible.”

“When we are stuck with negative thinking, we feel out of options, so to exit out of that we need to be reminded of all the options we do have,” she writes in her book.

If this is not something you can do easily on your own, consult others for suggestions. During my morning walk with friends, we often discuss problems, and inevitably someone comes up with a practical solution. But even if none of their suggestions work, at least they narrow down possible courses of action and make the problem seem less forbidding. “If other people are not caught in the spin that you’re in, they may have ideas for you that you wouldn’t think of,” Dr. Chansky said. “We often do this about small things, but when something big is going on, we hesitate to ask for advice. Yet that’s when we need it most.”

Dr. Chansky calls this “a community cleanup effort,” and it can bring more than advice. During an especially challenging time, like dealing with a spouse’s serious illness or loss of one’s home, friends and family members can help with practical matters like shopping for groceries, providing meals, cleaning out the refrigerator or paying bills.

“People want to help others in need — it’s how the world goes around,” she said. Witness the many thousands of volunteers, including students from other states on their Thanksgiving break, who prepared food and delivered clothing and equipment to the victims of Hurricane Sandy. Even the smallest favor can help buffer stress and enable people to focus productively on what they can do to improve their situation.

Another of Dr. Chansky’s invaluable tips is to “let go of the rope.” When feeling pressured to figure out how to fix things now, “walk away for a few minutes, but promise to come back.” As with a computer that suddenly misbehaves, Dr. Chansky suggests that you “unplug and refresh,” perhaps by “taking a breathing break,” inhaling and exhaling calmly and intentionally.

“The more you practice calm breathing, the more it will be there for you when you need it,” she wrote.

She also suggests taking a break to do something physical: “Movement shifts the moment.” Take a walk or bike ride, call a friend, look through a photo album, or do some small cleaning task like clearing off your night table.

When you have a clear head and are feeling less overwhelmed, you’ll be better able to figure out the next step.

New York Life Announces Executive Promotions in the Agency Department

New York Life announced today that John O’Gara and Richard Simonetti have each been elected senior vice president in the company’s Agency Department, reporting to Executive Vice President and Head of Agency Mark Pfaff.

Mr. O’Gara is responsible for New York Life’s wholesaling operations across all product lines within the Agency distribution channel including life insurance, annuities, investments and long-term care insurance. He also oversees New York Life’s Dallas-based Advanced Planning Group, a team of experienced attorneys, certified public accountants and other professionals with whom New York Life agents can exclusively work when serving affluent clients.

Mr. O’Gara joined New York Life in 1984 and has held sales and marketing positions across various business operations. Mr. O’Gara is a graduate of Iona College with a major in business and finance. He resides in New Fairfield, Connecticut with his wife and three children.

Mr. Simonetti is responsible for agent and manager recruitment, training and development. This includes growing the company’s field force and sales among New York Life’s key markets, including women, cultural markets, the LGBT community and young professionals.

Mr. Simonetti joined New York Life as an agent in the Long Island General Office in July 1996. Since then, he has held several positions with increasing managerial responsibility, including serving as sales manager in that office from 1998 to 2002, managing partner of New York Life’s Vermont office from 2002 to 2005, and managing partner of the Greater Detroit office from 2005 to 2008. Mr. Simonetti earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is an active member of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (NAIFA), the Association of Advanced Life Underwriting (AALU) and the General Agents and Managers Association (GAMA). Mr. Simonetti lives in Westchester, New York with his wife and their three children.

New York Life Insurance Company, a Fortune 100 company founded in 1845, is the largest mutual life insurance company in the United States* and one of the largest life insurers in the world. New York Life has the highest financial strength ratings currently awarded to any life insurer by all four of the major credit rating agencies.** Headquartered in New York City, New York Life’s family of companies offers life insurance, retirement income, investments and long-term care insurance. New York Life Investments*** provides institutional asset management and retirement plan services. Other New York Life affiliates provide an array of securities products and services, as well as institutional and retail mutual funds. Please visit New York Life’s Web site at www.newyorklife.com for more information.

Filmmaker Cameron Expedition Finds Weird Deep-Sea Life

The deepest place on the planet may also hold the clues to the origin of life on Earth.

The discovery of microbial mats — bizarre-looking, filamentlike clumps of microorganisms — living off chemicals from altered rocks 35,803 feet (10,912 meters) beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean comes from samples and video collected by an unmanned lander, part of movie director James Cameron's mission to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Researchers have speculated that a similar setup may have sparked the chemical steps that lead to life on Earth, and possibly elsewhere in the solar system.

"We do think that this chemistry could be the roots for metabolism," said Kevin Hand, an astrobiologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "It could be the driving engine that leads to the emergence of life," he said. "Perhaps not just here, but also on worlds like Europa," an icy moon of Jupiter.

Cameron's Deepsea Challenger expedition made dives to the New Britain Trench and the Mariana Trench in the southwestern Pacific Ocean between Jan. 31 and April 3, with one manned dive to Mariana's Challenger Deep, the dark, flat pool that scientists now know houses a surprising array of life. A peek at results from the expedition were presented to a packed audience here Tuesday (Dec. 4) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

The filmmaker journeyed inside a steel sphere encased in foam — dubbed the Deepsea Challenger — built to withstand the crushing pressures below the ocean's surface. The expedition traveled with two unmanned seafloor "landers" — large contraptions hoisted over the side of a ship and dropped to the seafloor. Once on the bottom, bait attached to the lander lured seafloor creatures to the craft, and a suite of instruments took samples, photographs and data.[Images: James Cameron's Historic Deep-Sea Dive]
When he emerged, Cameron told reporters the view was "bleak" and "looked like the moon." But scientists who examined data collected during the deep dives, both manned and unmanned, soon discovered there was life in the coldest, darkest sea.

Bizarre, never-before seen creatures
Along with the discovery of thriving deep-sea mats, several new species swam by the expedition's high-definition cameras and into its collection tubes. Scientists are now analyzing bacteria and other organisms brought back to the surface.

Giant, 7-inch-long (17 centimeters) amphipods, a shrimplike crustacean that may scavenge fallen logs in the trench,were trapped at nearly 7 miles (11 kilometers) below the surface in Challenger Deep and hauled back to the ship. Tests reveal the creatures contain compounds that help tissues and proteins function better at high pressure, including scyllo-inositol. The compound is identical to a drug used in clinical trials to break down the amyloid plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease, said Doug Bartlett, a microbiologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

Some 20,000 microbes from the trench are being picked over and will undergo genetic analysis, he said. There were also abundant numbers of xenophyophores, a giant amoeba that is among the largest individual cells in existence.

Could you love a worm?
The expedition also spied unusual species during practice runs in the New Britain Trench near Papua New Guinea. The submersible reached 26,900 feet (8,200 m) at its deepest dive in the trench on March 7, Cameron said.

The biggest species of the deep-sea trench was a type of sea cucumber called a holothurian, Bartlett said. "They have been implicated in the past to exist at these depths, but not filmed and reported. We saw one that we think could represent a new species," he said.
The higher elevation walls of New Britain, which extend to a depth of around 12,467 feet (3.8 km) depth, anchored hundreds of acorn worms, a deep- sea invertebrate that leaves distinctive spiral traces of poo on the seafloor. "If you've never thought of loving worms, if you've seen these videos, you would love worms," Bartlett said.

Clues to early life
The high-definition video provided close-up images of not only the world's deepest sea life, but also the planet's oldest seafloor. At 180 million years old, rocks at the bottom of the Mariana Trench were molten lava when giant dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

Cameron's imagery from the New Britain Trench, shown at the meeting, may be the deepest pictures ever taken of pillow lavas, formed when lava erupts under water, said marine geologist Patty Fryer of the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. And in the Sirena Trench, where an unmanned lander made a descent to 35,761 feet (10,900 m), researchers unexpectedly discovered outcrops of chemically altered rock called aragonite, lizardite and brucite, said JPL's Hand.

Though the lander's rock sampling arm wasn't functioning properly, Hand later deduced the rock's composition by sieving a few grains of sediment from a water sample brought back to the surface. "It was akin to Mars sample return for me," he said. "Though it's not much, it was plenty to do some great analysis. The analysis was very consistent with seeing those alteration products," he said.

Feeding on hydrogen
The altered rock is part of the younger tectonic plate overlying the ancient Pacific seafloor, Fryer said. The Mariana trench is a subduction zone, where two of Earth's tectonic plates meet and one slides beneath the other. Water percolating up through the rocks alters the minerals through a process called serpentinization, releasing sulfur, methane and hydrogen, which can feed bacteria — the last, in particular, is "like cotton candy" for microbes, she said.

The outcrop was covered in part by a few meters of thick, filamentlike organic mats. "There was an astonishingly bizarre microbial ecosystem populating these talus blocks," Hand said. "To see this kind of structure, this kind of mat in organized form was quite a surprise."

In recent years, researchers have speculated that early life on Earth arose 4 billion years ago at subduction zones similar to the Mariana Trench. Temperatures were cooler in the deep trenches, and serpentine rocks may have provided the necessary chemical jump-start.

"These deep-sea trenches are places were life might have emerged on Earth," Cameron said. "These mysteries need to be unraveled. Hopefully, we will dive again."

There are no plans for another dive as yet, but Cameron said the submersible and landers are operational and sitting in a barn on his Santa Barbara, Calif., property. "The question is where the funding is going to come from," he said. "I'll have to aggregate funding to do it. I've also got this hobby I do occasionally where I make movies about Pandora."

Filmmaker Cameron Expedition Finds Weird Deep-Sea Life

The deepest place on the planet may also hold the clues to the origin of life on Earth.

The discovery of microbial mats — bizarre-looking, filamentlike clumps of microorganisms — living off chemicals from altered rocks 35,803 feet (10,912 meters) beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean comes from samples and video collected by an unmanned lander, part of movie director James Cameron's mission to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Researchers have speculated that a similar setup may have sparked the chemical steps that lead to life on Earth, and possibly elsewhere in the solar system.

"We do think that this chemistry could be the roots for metabolism," said Kevin Hand, an astrobiologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "It could be the driving engine that leads to the emergence of life," he said. "Perhaps not just here, but also on worlds like Europa," an icy moon of Jupiter.

Cameron's Deepsea Challenger expedition made dives to the New Britain Trench and the Mariana Trench in the southwestern Pacific Ocean between Jan. 31 and April 3, with one manned dive to Mariana's Challenger Deep, the dark, flat pool that scientists now know houses a surprising array of life. A peek at results from the expedition were presented to a packed audience here Tuesday (Dec. 4) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

The filmmaker journeyed inside a steel sphere encased in foam — dubbed the Deepsea Challenger — built to withstand the crushing pressures below the ocean's surface. The expedition traveled with two unmanned seafloor "landers" — large contraptions hoisted over the side of a ship and dropped to the seafloor. Once on the bottom, bait attached to the lander lured seafloor creatures to the craft, and a suite of instruments took samples, photographs and data.[Images: James Cameron's Historic Deep-Sea Dive]
When he emerged, Cameron told reporters the view was "bleak" and "looked like the moon." But scientists who examined data collected during the deep dives, both manned and unmanned, soon discovered there was life in the coldest, darkest sea.

Bizarre, never-before seen creatures
Along with the discovery of thriving deep-sea mats, several new species swam by the expedition's high-definition cameras and into its collection tubes. Scientists are now analyzing bacteria and other organisms brought back to the surface.

Giant, 7-inch-long (17 centimeters) amphipods, a shrimplike crustacean that may scavenge fallen logs in the trench,were trapped at nearly 7 miles (11 kilometers) below the surface in Challenger Deep and hauled back to the ship. Tests reveal the creatures contain compounds that help tissues and proteins function better at high pressure, including scyllo-inositol. The compound is identical to a drug used in clinical trials to break down the amyloid plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease, said Doug Bartlett, a microbiologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

Some 20,000 microbes from the trench are being picked over and will undergo genetic analysis, he said. There were also abundant numbers of xenophyophores, a giant amoeba that is among the largest individual cells in existence.

Could you love a worm?
The expedition also spied unusual species during practice runs in the New Britain Trench near Papua New Guinea. The submersible reached 26,900 feet (8,200 m) at its deepest dive in the trench on March 7, Cameron said.

The biggest species of the deep-sea trench was a type of sea cucumber called a holothurian, Bartlett said. "They have been implicated in the past to exist at these depths, but not filmed and reported. We saw one that we think could represent a new species," he said.

The higher elevation walls of New Britain, which extend to a depth of around 12,467 feet (3.8 km) depth, anchored hundreds of acorn worms, a deep- sea invertebrate that leaves distinctive spiral traces of poo on the seafloor. "If you've never thought of loving worms, if you've seen these videos, you would love worms," Bartlett said.

Clues to early life
The high-definition video provided close-up images of not only the world's deepest sea life, but also the planet's oldest seafloor. At 180 million years old, rocks at the bottom of the Mariana Trench were molten lava when giant dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

Cameron's imagery from the New Britain Trench, shown at the meeting, may be the deepest pictures ever taken of pillow lavas, formed when lava erupts under water, said marine geologist Patty Fryer of the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. And in the Sirena Trench, where an unmanned lander made a descent to 35,761 feet (10,900 m), researchers unexpectedly discovered outcrops of chemically altered rock called aragonite, lizardite and brucite, said JPL's Hand.

Though the lander's rock sampling arm wasn't functioning properly, Hand later deduced the rock's composition by sieving a few grains of sediment from a water sample brought back to the surface. "It was akin to Mars sample return for me," he said. "Though it's not much, it was plenty to do some great analysis. The analysis was very consistent with seeing those alteration products," he said.

Feeding on hydrogen
The altered rock is part of the younger tectonic plate overlying the ancient Pacific seafloor, Fryer said. The Mariana trench is a subduction zone, where two of Earth's tectonic plates meet and one slides beneath the other. Water percolating up through the rocks alters the minerals through a process called serpentinization, releasing sulfur, methane and hydrogen, which can feed bacteria — the last, in particular, is "like cotton candy" for microbes, she said.

The outcrop was covered in part by a few meters of thick, filamentlike organic mats. "There was an astonishingly bizarre microbial ecosystem populating these talus blocks," Hand said. "To see this kind of structure, this kind of mat in organized form was quite a surprise."

In recent years, researchers have speculated that early life on Earth arose 4 billion years ago at subduction zones similar to the Mariana Trench. Temperatures were cooler in the deep trenches, and serpentine rocks may have provided the necessary chemical jump-start.

"These deep-sea trenches are places were life might have emerged on Earth," Cameron said. "These mysteries need to be unraveled. Hopefully, we will dive again."

There are no plans for another dive as yet, but Cameron said the submersible and landers are operational and sitting in a barn on his Santa Barbara, Calif., property. "The question is where the funding is going to come from," he said. "I'll have to aggregate funding to do it. I've also got this hobby I do occasionally where I make movies about Pandora."

Life Partners Holdings, Inc. Announces Quarterly Dividend

Life Partners Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq GS: LPHI), parent company of Life Partners, Inc., announced that it would pay a quarterly dividend of $0.10 per share to be paid on or about December 17, 2012 for shareholders of record as of December 14, 2012.

Life Partners is the world’s oldest and one of the most active companies in the United States engaged in the secondary market for life insurance, commonly called “life settlements.” Since its incorporation in 1991, Life Partners has completed over 145,000 transactions for its worldwide client base of over 29,000 high net worth individuals and institutions in connection with the purchase of over 6,500 policies totaling approximately $3 billion in face value.

Hulk happy with life at Zenit St Petersburg

Zenit St Petersburg forward Hulk says he is enjoying life at the club after scoring in the 4-2 win over Spartak Moscow.

The former Porto man moved to Russia for a reported 55 million euros during the summer, and had admitted to struggling to deal with the pressure of justifying that price tag, but feels he is now beginning to get back to his best.

"It was really nice for me to take part in a derby match like that," he told reporters at the post-match press conference. "I was especially happy to score. It was really important to me to help the team, so I'm really satisfied."

The Brazil international played as a lone striker in the victory, which saw Spartak reduced to nine-men following the dismissals of Nicolas Pareja and Juan Insaurralde, and he revealed he is happy to play in any number of positions.

"If I play on the wing, that's great, and if I play in the center that's excellent. I just enjoy playing football, and I do everything to help the team," he added.

Hulk then gave a low-key reaction to Luiz Felipe Scolari's recent appointment as Brazil coach and highlighted how he will continue to give his all for club and country.

"He is known around the world as a great coach who has already won the World Cup," the forward said. "Not much changes for me though. I will continue to play at my best for my club, and will try everything to make the national team, giving my all in every match."