U.K. Dash for Shale Gas a Test for Global Fracking

Thomas K. Grose in London

The starting gun has sounded for the United Kingdom's "dash for gas," as the media here have dubbed it.

As early as this week, a moratorium on shale gas production is expected to be lifted. And plans to streamline and speed the regulatory process through a new Office for Unconventional Gas and Oil were unveiled last week in the annual autumn budget statement by the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne.

In the U.K., where all underground mineral rights concerning fossil fuels belong to the crown, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, could unlock a new stream of government revenue as well as fuel. But it also means that there is no natural constituency of fracking supporters as there is in the United States, birthplace of the technology. In the U.S., concerns over land and water impact have held back fracking in some places, like New York, but production has advanced rapidly in shale basins from Texas to Pennsylvania, with support of private landowners who earn royalties from leasing to gas companies. (Related: "Natural Gas Stirs Hope and Fear in Pennsylvania")

A taste of the fight ahead in the U.K. came ahead of Osborne's speech last weekend, when several hundred protesters gathered outside of Parliament with a mock 23-foot (7-meter) drilling rig. In a letter they delivered to Prime Minister David Cameron, they called fracking "an unpredictable, unregulatable process" that was potentially toxic to the environment.

Giving shale gas a green light "would be a costly mistake," said Andy Atkins, executive director of the U.K.'s Friends of the Earth, in a statement. "People up and down the U.K. will be rightly alarmed about being guinea pigs in Osborne's fracking experiment. It's unnecessary, unwanted and unsafe."

The government has countered that natural gas-fired power plants would produce half the carbon dioxide emissions of the coal plants that still provide about 30 percent of the U.K.'s electricity. London Mayor Boris Johnson, viewed as a potential future prime minister, weighed in Monday with a blistering cry for Britain to "get fracking" to boost cleaner, cheaper energy and jobs. "In their mad denunciations of fracking, the Greens and the eco-warriors betray the mindset of people who cannot bear a piece of unadulterated good news," he wrote in the Daily Telegraph. (Related Quiz: "What You Don't Know About Natural Gas")

Energy Secretary Edward Davey, who is expected this week to lift the U.K.'s year-and-a-half-old moratorium on shale gas exploration, said gas "will ensure we can keep the lights on as increasing amounts of wind and nuclear come online through the 2020s."

A Big Role for Gas

If the fracking plan advances, it will not be the first "dash for gas" in the U.K. In the 1980s, while Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher battled with mining unions, she undercut their clout by moving the nation toward generating a greater share of its electricity from natural gas and less from coal. So natural gas already is the largest electricity fuel in Britain, providing 40 percent of electricity. (Related Interactive: "World Electricity Mix")

The United Kingdom gets about 10 percent of its electricity from renewable energy, and has plans to expand its role. But Davey has stressed the usefulness of gas-fired plants long-term as a flexible backup source to the intermittent electricity generated from wind and solar power. Johnson, on the other hand, offered an acerbic critique of renewables, including the "satanic white mills" he said were popping up on Britain's landscape. "Wave power, solar power, biomass—their collective oomph wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding," he wrote.

As recently as 2000, Great Britain was self-sufficient in natural gas because of conventional gas production in the North Sea. But that source is quickly drying up. North Sea production peaked in 2000 at 1,260 terawatt-hours (TWH); last year it totaled just 526 TWh.

Because of the North Sea, the U.K. is still one of the world's top 20 producers of gas, accounting for 1.5 percent of total global production. But Britain has been a net importer of gas since 2004. Last year, gas imports—mainly from Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands—accounted for more than 40 percent of domestic demand.

The government hopes to revive domestic natural gas production with the technology that has transformed the energy picture in the United States—horizontal drilling into deep underground shale, and high-pressure injection of water, sand, and chemicals to create fissures in the rock to release the gas. (Related Interactive: "Breaking Fuel From the Rock")

A Tougher Road

But for a number of reasons, the political landscape is far different in the United Kingdom. Britain made a foray into shale gas early last year, with a will drilled near Blackpool in northwest England. The operator, Cuadrilla, said that that area alone could contain 200 trillion cubic feet of gas, which is more than the known reserves of Iraq. But the project was halted after drilling, by the company's own admission, caused two small earthquakes. (Related: "Tracing Links Between Fracking and Earthquakes" and "Report Links Energy Activities To Higher Quake Risk") The April 2011 incident triggered the moratorium that government now appears to be ready to lift. Cuadrilla has argued that modifications to its procedures would mitigate the seismic risk, including lower injection rates and lesser fluid and sand volumes. The company said it will abandon the U.K. unless the moratorium is soon lifted.

A few days ahead of Osborne's speech, the Independent newspaper reported that maps created for Britain's Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) showed that 32,000 square miles, or 64 percent of the U.K. countryside, could hold shale gas reserves and thus be open for exploration. But a DECC spokeswoman said "things are not quite what it [the Independent story] suggests." Theoretically, she said, those gas deposits do exist, but "it is too soon to predict the scale of exploration here." She said many other issues, ranging from local planning permission to environmental impact, would mean that some tracts would be off limits, no matter how much reserve they held. DECC has commissioned the British Geological Survey to map the extent of Britain's reserves.

Professor Paul Stevens, a fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, said the U.K. is clearly interested in trying to replicate America's shale gas revolution. "That's an important part of the story," he said, but trying to use the American playbook won't be easy. "It's a totally different ballgame." In addition to the fact that mineral rights belong to the crown, large expanses of private land that are commonplace in America don't exist in England. Just as important, there is no oil- and gas-service industry in place in Britain to quickly begin shale gas operations here. "We don't have the infrastructure set up," said Richard Davies, director of the Durham Energy Institute at Durham University, adding that it would take years to build it.

Shale gas production would also likely ignite bigger and louder protests in the U.K. and Europe. "It's much more of a big deal in Europe," Stevens said. "There are more green [nongovernmental organizations] opposed to it, and a lot more local opposition."

In any case, the U.K. government plans to move ahead. Osborne said he'll soon begin consultations on possible tax breaks for the shale gas industry. He also announced that Britain would build up to 30 new natural gas-fired power plants with 26 gigawatts (GW) of capacity. The new gas plants would largely replace decommissioned coal and nuclear power plants, though they would ultimately add 5GW of additional power to the U.K. grid. The coalition government's plan, however, leaves open the possibility of increasing the amount of gas-generated electricity to 37GW, or around half of total U.K. demand.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that Europe may have as much as 600 trillion cubic feet of shale gas that could be recovered. But Stevens said no European country is ready to emulate the United States in producing massive amounts of unconventional gas. They all lack the necessary service industry, he said, and geological differences will require different technologies. And governments aren't funding the research and development needed to develop them.

Globally, the track record for efforts to produce shale gas is mixed:

• In France, the EIA's estimate is that shale gas reserves total 5 trillion cubic meters, or enough to fuel the country for 90 years. But in September, President Francois Hollande pledged to continue a ban on fracking imposed last year by his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy.
• Poland was also thought to have rich shale gas resources, but initial explorations have determined that original estimates of the country's reserves were overstated by 80 percent to 90 percent. After drilling two exploratory wells there, Exxon Mobil stopped operations. But because of its dependence on Russian gas, Poland is still keen to begin shale gas production.
• South Africa removed a ban on fracking earlier this year. Developers are eyeing large shale gas reserves believed to underlie the semidesert Karoo between Johannesburg and Cape Town.
• Canada's Quebec Province has had a moratorium on shale gas exploration and production, but a U.S. drilling company last month filed a notice of intent to sue to overturn the ban as a violation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
• Germany's Environment Ministry has backed a call to ban fracking near drinking water reservoirs.
• China drilled its initial shale gas wells this year; by 2020, the nation's goal is for shale gas to provide 6 percent of its massive energy needs. The U.S. government's preliminary assessment is that China has the world's largest "technically recoverable" shale resources, about 50 percent larger than stores in the United States. (Related: "China Drills Into Shale Gas, Targeting Huge Reserves")

This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.

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Royal Hoax: Station to Give $500K to Nurse's Family

The Australian radio station that employed the DJs who prank-called the London hospital where Kate Middleton was being treated has cancelled their show and will donate at least $500,000 to the grieving husband and children of the nurse who took the call and later apparently killed herself.

Australia's 2Day FM released a statement today saying it hopes to "help [Jacintha] Saldanha's family with the support they need at this very difficult time."

After days of suspended advertising, the radio station at the center of a global firestorm announced it will resume airing commercials Thursday. All its profits for the rest of the year will go directly to the family of the unsuspecting nurse at the center of that joke.

The Sydney-based station also issued a company-wide suspension of prank calls after the nurse who initially answered the hospital call was found dead.

Saldanha's husband and two teenage children met with officials at the hospital Monday, and spoke publicly for the first time, although via a member of the British Parliament.

Royal Hospital Hoax: End to Shock-Jock Pranks? Watch Video

Australian DJs Apologize in Wake of Nurse's Suicide Watch Video

"This is a close family," Keith Vaz said. "They are devastated by what has happened. They miss her every moment of every day.

Although radio pranks have been a staple of shock DJs for years, DJs Mel Greig and Michael Christian of Australia's 2Day FM might have crossed the line last week when they pranked the hospital, prompting the question of whether this is the end for radio pranking.

"Entertainers try to use real-life everyday circumstances and try to find humor in them," Radio DJ J Niice of B96 in Chicago, who does regular pranks on his show, told ABC News.

DJ Niice says his station has no intentions of pulling the plug on prank calls because it doesn't need to.

Based on U.S. law, such calls only become problematic when any resulting damage or injury could have been foreseen.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was famously pranked while running for vice president by a notorious Montreal-based comedy duo, who pretended to be then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

"You know, I see you as a president one day," one of them told Palin, to which she replied with a giggle, "Maybe in eight years.'"

A prank caller even managed to make his way through security to speak to Tony Blair while he was still British prime minister. But it was no laughing matter in 1998 when Opie and Anthony, DJs from a Boston radio station, were fired for telling listeners on April Fools' Day that the city's mayor had died in a car accident.

While the Australian DJs' show has been terminated, it's still unclear whether they will be.

They could face criminal charges if police determine their call was illegally recorded. And the same joke at which they initially laughed is now the reason for their tears.

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Security strike hits German airports

BERLIN: Airport security personnel in Germany staged warning strikes on Monday in a dispute over pay, bringing disruption to several German airports and causing dozens of flight cancellations.

Around 1,000 security staff went on strike at airports including Berlin and Frankfurt, Europe's third-busiest, the giant services union Verdi said, although some resumed work shortly afterwards.

A spokesman for Berlin's airports said 42 flights had been cancelled at Tegel Airport but passengers at the capital's other hub, Schoenefeld, experienced only delays.

At Duesseldorf Airport, where the strike lasted six hours, 11 flights were shelved and 45 others were hit with delays of three hours maximum. Cologne Airport was forced to cancel three flights and also experienced delays.

However, there were no cancellations at Frankfurt, according to a spokesman from Fraport, which manages the airport.

Air traffic was also affected by heavy snowfall in several parts of Germany.

Verdi said it called the warning strike over what it said were stuttering negotiations on a collective wage bargaining agreement for its 15,000 members employed as security staff at airports in Germany.

"We want employers to work with us towards a constructive agreement," a Verdi spokesman told AFP.

"Then there will be no need to strike," added the spokesman.

-AFP/ac

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India has to accept China's presence in 'exclusive' areas: Salman Khurshid

NEW DELHI: India will have to accept the "new reality" of China's presence in areas it considers exclusive as it converts the relationship into a "meaningful partnership", external affairs minister Salman Khurshid said on Monday, while stressing that greater collaboration between the two would define Asia's role in the 21st century.

As India and China move forward in "finding resolution to the issues, and in converting their relationship into a meaningful partnership, India will have to accept the new reality of China's presence in many areas that we consider an exclusive area for India and its friends", Khurshid said at the inaugural address of the annual convention of the Indian Association of International Studies.

The convention was titled Dawning of the Asian Century: Emerging Challenges before Theory and Practices of International Relations in India.

"The rules of the game will change, and China will add to the richness with its presence and participation in many areas... A combination of their strengths is called for... I believe the real praise of India's foreign policy will come in being able to combine the strengths without targeting the aspirations of any one else in the world... providing greater collaboration between the two will define Asia's role in the 21st century," he said.

According to the minister, Indian Ocean Rim countries, or those countries with a coastline along the Indian Ocean, constitute a very important part of Asia and India "is a point of pivot".

He said many countries were "desperate" to have a closer link with the Indian Ocean, considering its importance in maritime and security issues, and China would "give its right arm to be as closely placed as India". "The pivot that India provides to the concept is the stepping stone for links" to other countries around it, said Khurshid.

In spite of the "changing balance between principles and pragmatism, India's approach to international relations - of enlightened self-interest has survived... an idea articulated by India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru", the minister added.

On Saarc, Khurshid said the bloc's eight nations "are emerging realities, and India can't expect a stand-alone or stand-still policy of countries".
He termed as "very sad" the fact that very few Indians were interested in international relations. He hoped that the two-day convention would help "excite the juices of an average Indian" towards foreign policy.

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Plants Grow Fine Without Gravity

When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.

Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity. (Related: "Beyond Gravity.")

Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.

"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity." (See a video about plant growth.)

The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.

Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.

Root Growth

Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.

"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.

Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.

"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.

The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.

"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. (Related: "Alien Trees Would Bloom Black on Worlds With Double Stars.")

The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.

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Royal Hoax: DJs 'Shattered' After Nurse's Suicide

The two Australian radio DJs who prank-called the London hospital where Kate Middleton was being treated last week said they were "shattered" and "gutted" after the nurse who answered their call apparently killed herself.

Shock jocks Mel Greig, 30, and Michael Christian, 25, cried as they spoke to Australia's Channel 9 overnight in their first public interview since Jacintha Saldanha, 46, the nurse who last week connected the pair to the duchess' room, was found dead Friday morning.

"I'm shattered, gutted, heartbroken," Christian said. "Mel and myself are incredibly sorry for the situation and what's happened. I had the idea. … It was just a simple harmless phone call. It was going to go on for 30 seconds. We were going to get hung up on."

FULL COVERAGE: Royal Baby

The host of the "2Day" FM radio show pretended to be Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles, asking for an update on Middleton's condition when they called up King Edward VII Hospital in central London. With no receptionist on duty overnight, Saldanha answered the prank call and put it through.

"It was just something that was fun and light-hearted and a tragic turn of events that I don't think anyone had expected," Christian said.

A Current Affair/ABC News

Jacintha Saldanha Dead: Could DJs Face Charges? Watch Video

Jacintha Saldanha Outrage: DJs Responsible for Prank Are in Hiding Watch Video

Saldanha was found dead Friday morning after police were called to an address near the hospital to "reports of a woman found unconscious," according to a statement from Scotland Yard.

Investigators have not said how she might have killed herself.

Greig cried today when asked about the moment she heard of the death of Saldanha, a mother of two.

"It was the worst phone call I've ever had in my life," she said through tears. "There's not a minute that goes by that we don't think about her family and the thought that we may have played a part in that is gut-wrenching."

The DJs said they never expected to get through to Middleton's nurse and assumed "the same phone calls had been made 100 times that morning," Christian said.

Grieg said, "We wanted to be hung up on with our silly voices and wanted a 20-second segment to air of us doing stupid voice. … Not for a second did we expect to even speak to Kate or even have a conversation with anyone at the hospital. We wanted to be hung up on."

The global backlash against the duo has been fierce, from online death threats to calls for prison time. Their radio station has announced it is banning phony phone calls altogether, and suspending advertising indefinitely.

Max Moore-Wilton, the chairman of Southern Cross Austereo, said in a letter Sunday to Lord Glenarthur, chairman of King Edward VII's Hospital, that the company is reviewing the station's broadcast policies, the AP reported.

"I can assure you we are taking immediate action and reviewing the broadcast and processes involved," Moore-Wilton said in the letter. "As we have said in our own statements on the matter, the outcome was unforeseeable and very regrettable."

Greig and Michael have been taken off the air, silenced indefinitely.

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Merkel rival fires up party for election battle

HANOVER, Germany: Chancellor Angela Merkel's rival, Peer Steinbrueck, on Sunday kicked off his bid to topple her in next year's German election, pledging social equality and a clear pro-European policy.

In a speech lasting almost two hours and punctuated with frequent bursts of enthusiastic applause, Steinbrueck said: "Freedom, justice, solidarity... with a commitment to these values, I am running to be chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany."

"It is time for a change," thundered the 65-year-old former finance minister, rewarded with an almost 10-minute standing ovation from his Social Democratic Party (SPD) supporters in the northern city of Hanover.

With 93.45 percent of the vote, SPD delegates officially nominated Steinbrueck as their candidate for the unenviable task of unseating Merkel, often called the world's most powerful woman, at federal elections expected in September.

Steinbrueck accused Merkel's party, the conservative CDU, of having no election strategy apart from relying on her and said her political slogans were "stickers on empty bottles" with little substance behind them.

"Mrs Merkel said she is running the best and most successful government since reunification (in 1990). I have rarely laughed so much," said Steinbrueck to tumultuous applause.

He pledged to put an end to what he said was "an increasing trend toward parallel societies" in Germany, the haves and the have-nots.

While he was forced to acknowledge that Europe's economic powerhouse currently enjoyed low unemployment, he stressed that many of those in work were not being paid fairly and pledged a legal minimum hourly wage of 8.50 euros ($10.98).

On the international stage, he vowed to "show his colours and go into the federal election with a clear pro-European stance."

"Europe is more than a common market, it is more than a currency union... it is more than a club of 27 European leaders. Europe is civilisation," he said.

He accused Merkel of fostering "isolation" in Europe with her policies against the debt crisis.

German media had seen Steinbrueck's speech as a final chance to kick-start his campaign after damaging revelations that he had pocketed some 1.25 million euros ($1.63 million) in fees for making speeches at private functions.

This topic continued to dog him even on Sunday, as a handful of campaigners from Greenpeace briefly interrupted the speech.

Steinbrueck himself briefly touched on the issue, saying: "My fees for speeches were rocks in my backpack that you have also had to carry on your shoulders."

But commentators seemed broadly impressed with what had been billed as "the most important speech of Steinbrueck's life."

The Bild mass circulation daily said Steinbrueck was "very focused, relaxed, very well prepared."

"Steinbrueck really got into his stride, became freer, more acerbic and more self-assured, but remained statesman-like," commented Europe's most widely read paper.

Newsweekly Spiegel said Steinbrueck clearly achieved the new beginning he wanted. "Now the SPD needs some success," wrote the influential magazine in its online edition.

Opinion polls point to the scale of the task facing the centre-left SPD against Merkel, who continues to be Germany's most popular politician.

A survey released by ARD public television ahead of the party conference showed the SPD still languishing some nine points behind Merkel's conservative CDU and CSU sister party from Bavaria.

Germans do not directly elect their chancellor but if they could, 49 percent would plump for Merkel and only 39 percent would vote for Steinbrueck in the election, the poll showed, although the gap appears to be narrowing slightly.

Steinbrueck vowed he would not join with Merkel in a so-called "grand coalition" and called on party members to "trust in ourselves and others will trust in us.

"If we stand side-by-side, then we'll get there," he pledged.

-AFP/ac

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India misguided, paranoid over China: Guha

Shreya Roy Chowdhury, TNN Dec 8, 2012, 06.12AM IST

MUMBAI: A good half-hour into the discussion on 'India, China and the World', historian Ramachandra Guha issued a disclaimer—all the three members on the panel had been to China only once. "We should learn their language, promote quality research, and have a panel on China driven by Chinese scholars," he said. And that was the general tenor of the debate—that the Indian attitude to China was influenced by a mix of ignorance, cautious optimism about partnerships and a whole lot of misguided paranoia. "Don't demonise the Chinese, please," Guha finally said in response to a question.

"China has existed in our imaginations," observed Sunil Khilnani, professor of politics and author of The Idea Of India. "There's been very little sustained engagement with the reality of China and very little of our own produced knowledge about China." It was after the events of 1962 ('war' in the popular imagination, 'skirmish' to the scholars participating in the discussion), explained Khilnani, that a miffed India "withdrew". It's the 50th anniversary of that exchange this year, and "what we haven't been able to do is learn from the defeat", observed Khilnani. Both could have benefited from greater engagement. "China has had a very clear focus on primary education and achieved high levels of literacy before its economic rise. It has also addressed the issue of land reform," said Khilnani. Guha added that China could learn from the "religious, cultural and linguistic pluralism" in India.

But China and India weren't always so out of sync with each other. Srinath Raghavan, a scholar of military history, got both Guha and Khilnani to talk about pre-1962 relations between the two when the picture was rosier. Tagore was interested in China and so was Gandhi. Both were very large countries with large populations and shared what Guha calls a "lack of cultural inferiority". "They were both," he continued, "also heavily dependent on peasant communities." Nehru was appreciative of China's will to modernize and industrialize and its adoption of technology to achieve those ends. In turn, Chinese politicians argued for Indian independence.

Things soured more, feel both Khilnani and Guha, after the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959. "He was welcomed here as a spiritual leader but the intensification of the conflict dates to the Dalai Lama's flight," said Guha. Both Guha and Khilnani argued that Nehru's decision to not react aggressively to China's occupation of Tibet was, in the long run, the right one and prevented further "militarization" of the region. An audience member wondered if that didn't make India "China's puppet". Guha disagreed. "If there's a Tibetan culture alive today," he said, "it's not because of Richard Gere. Don't believe in the hypocrisy of the Western countries. Will they give them land, employment, dignified refuge? The Tibetans is one of the few cases in which our record is honorable."

But the difference in levels of development and the lopsided trade relations between the two countries have only fuelled the suspicions many Indians seem to harbour about China. People were worried, said Guha, even about cricket balls made in China. Audience questions reflected those worries. A member asked about China's "strategy to conquer the world" and its likely impact on India. Guha cautioned against stereotypes; Khilnani explained, "History is littered with the debris of states that have tried to dominate the world. What we're doing may be more long-lasting."

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Plants Grow Fine Without Gravity

When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.

Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity. (Related: "Beyond Gravity.")

Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.

"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity." (See a video about plant growth.)

The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.

Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.

Root Growth

Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.

"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.

Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.

"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.

The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.

"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. (Related: "Alien Trees Would Bloom Black on Worlds With Double Stars.")

The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.

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Colorado Springs Doctor Rescued from Taliban

Dec 9, 2012 6:34am

ABC

The American doctor rescued from the Taliban in Afghanistan Saturday by U.S. Special Operations Forces is the medical adviser for a Colorado Springs NGO, his employer confirmed today.

Dr. Dilip Joseph and two colleagues were kidnapped by a group of armed men while returning from a visit to a rural medical clinic in eastern Kabul Province, according to a statement from their employer, Colorado Springs-based Morning Star Development. The statement said the three were eventually taken to a mountainous area about 50 miles from the border with Pakistan.

Morning Star’s crisis management team in Colorado Springs was in contact with the hostages and their captors almost immediately, the statement said.

On Saturday evening in Afghanistan, two of the three hostages were released. Morning Star did not release their names in order to protect their identities. Dr. Joseph remained in captivity.

Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, ordered the mission to rescue Joseph when “intelligence showed that Joseph was in imminent danger of injury or death”, according to a military press release.

Morning Star said Joseph was in good condition and will probably return home to Colorado Springs in the next few days.

A Defense Department official told ABC’s Luis Martinez that Joseph can walk, but was beaten up by his captors.

Joseph has worked for Morning Star Development for three years, the organization said, and travels frequently to Afghanistan.

“Morning Star Development does state categorically that we paid no ransom, money or other consideration to the captors or anyone else to secure the release of these hostages,” the organization said.

Joseph can be seen here in a Morning Star Development video:

“Due to security concerns, some cannot be named but their help will never be forgotten. Among these who cannot be named we include all of the courageous members of the U.S. military who successfully rescued Mr. Joseph as they risked their own lives doing so,” the statement said.

SHOWS: World News

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