NEW YORK – Remember Ida, the fossil discovery announced last May with its own book and TV documentary? A publicity blitz called it "the link" that would reveal the earliest evolutionary roots of monkeys, apes and humans. Experts protested that Ida wasn't even a close relative. And now a new analysis supports their reaction.
In fact, Ida is as far removed from the monkey-ape-human ancestry as a primate could be, says Erik Seiffert of Stony Brook University in New York.
He and his colleagues compared 360 specific anatomical features of 117 living and extinct primate species to draw up a family tree. They report the results in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
Ida is a skeleton of a 47 million-year-old cat-sized creature found in Germany. It starred in a book, "The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor."
Ida represents a previously unknown primate species called Darwinius. The scientists who formally announced the finding said they weren't claiming Darwinius was a direct ancestor of monkeys, apes and humans. But they did argue that it belongs in the same major evolutionary grouping, and that it showed what an actual ancestor of that era might have looked like.
The new analysis says Darwinius does not belong in the same primate category as monkeys, apes and humans. Instead, the analysis concluded, it falls into the other major grouping, which includes lemurs.
Experts agreed.
"This is a rigorous analysis based on many features," said Eric Sargis, an anthropology professor at Yale. He said he'd found the argument of the Darwinius researchers unconvincing, so the new result came as no surprise.
In fact, it confirms what most scientists think, said David Begun, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toronto.
Jorn Hurum of the Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway, an author of the Ida paper, said he welcomed the new analysis.
Darwinius is an example of a group of primates called adapoids, and "we are happy to start the scientific discussion" about what Ida means for where adapoids fit on the primate family tree, he wrote in an e-mail.
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On the Net:
Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature

WASHINGTON – A former government scientist arrested earlier this week tried to provide Israel with classified information on satellites and early warning defense systems, says a grand jury indictment.
The grand jury indictment follows Monday's arrest of Stewart D. Nozette, who spent 16 years doing sensitive defense work for the Energy Department, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
The information Nozette allegedly tried to provide Israel in an FBI sting operation dealt with "satellites, early warning systems, means of defense or retaliation against large-scale attack, communications intelligence information and major elements of defense strategy," said the indictment, which did not elaborate.
Earlier this week, a former colleague said that Nozette was primarily a defense technologist who had worked on the Reagan-era Star Wars missile shield effort formally named the Strategic Defense Initiative.
The former colleague, Stanford University professor Scott Hubbard, said Nozette worked on the Star Wars project at the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. According to the indictment, Nozette worked there from 1990 to 1999.
One aspect of Nozette's work on the Strategic Defense Initiative involved a project called Timber Wind, an effort to develop a rocket engine powered by a nuclear reactor, said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.
"On a number of occasions I asked Dr. Nozette about the program, but he was always quite scrupulous about rebuffing my inquiries," Aftergood wrote on his group's Web site. "Timber Wind was canceled shortly after it became public, and other nuclear rocket initiatives likewise faded away in the 1990s, as the effort to develop nuclear rocketry for military or civilian applications surged and then collapsed."
At the Energy Department, Nozette had a "Q" clearance, which is equivalent to the Pentagon's Top Secret clearance.
Nozette, who received a Ph.D. in planetary sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983, faces a court appearance next Thursday before a federal magistrate. He is jailed without bond.
Neither a criminal complaint filed earlier this week against Nozette nor the indictment allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf violated U.S. law. The grand jury indictment alleging two counts of attempted espionage was handed up Wednesday.
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On the Net:
Federation of American Scientists:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2009/10/nozette.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
Two more senators on Thursday urged President Barack Obama to pursue a regional trade deal in the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region.

"The Asia Pacific region holds tremendous potential for American manufacturers, farmers and service suppliers," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and Senator Charles Grassley said in a letter to Obama.

They urged him to complete the Transpacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPP) begun by the administration of former President George W. Bush in 2008.

That would build on existing free trade deals with Singapore, Peru, Chile and Australia by creating a regional trade pact that also includes Vietnam, New Zealand and Brunei.

The TPP would create a high-level regional trade framework "that has the potential to further open new and emerging Asia Pacific markets to U.S. exports," Baucus said.

"Trade needs to be part of the economic recovery effort, and finalizing this agreement would send a message to the world that U.S. trade policy is back in business," Grassley said.

Grassley has strongly criticized Obama for failing to push for congressional approval of free trade deals with Panama, Colombia and South Korea.

Obama administration officials say those pacts are on their agenda, but each has problems that need to be fixed. They have not offered any timeframe for sending them to Congress and some observers think they could languish for another year.

Obama will be in Singapore next month for the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. That 21-member grouping also includes China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.

Senator Richard Lugar has urged Obama to use that meeting to launch negotiations with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on a regional free trade.

That group includes Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and other countries in Southeast Asia.

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk was noncommittal when asked about Lugar's proposal last week.

(Reporting by Doug Palmer; Editing by Eric Walsh)

RENO, Nev. – Vice President Joe Biden visited economically troubled Nevada on Friday to promote the progress of the federal stimulus program and boost the re-election campaign of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has troubles of his own.
Hundreds of backers and a handful of protesters gathered early Friday outside the arena at the University of Nevada, Reno, where Biden and Reid were to speak after a $2,400-a-plate fundraising breakfast.
Biden arrived with a message that the Democratic leader is working successfully in Washington to help his home state, which has been hit hard by the recession.
But Nevada tops the list of the most economically stressed states, according to an analysis by The Associated Press, and that could spell trouble for Reid, whose pitch to voters has relied on what he can do for the state from his position in the Senate.
Republican critics seized on the fact that the 13.2 percent jobless rate is at an historic high and Nevada leads the nation in the rate of foreclosures and bankruptcies. The casino industry, the economic engine that drives the state, has been battered by reluctant tourists and gamblers pinching their pennies.
"Nevadans know that Sen. Reid pushed hard to get this stimulus package through the Senate, but their state has lost over 43,000 jobs lost since the legislation was signed into law," said Jahan Wilcox, Republican National Committee spokesman.
"The people of Nevada deserve to know why the leader of the Senate wasted hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars just to lose tens of thousands of jobs in the Silver State," he said.
A group of four protesters stood across the street from the motorcade's arrival area outside the Lawlor Events Center with signs that read "Biden-Reid on a bankroll — ours," "No more spending — broke," and "How's the penthouse on the Ritz, Harry?"
A newspaper poll earlier this month showed Reid trailing two Republicans who are running to unseat him: former state GOP chairwoman Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian, son of former UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian.
Reid, who is running for a fifth term, had 39 percent to Lowden's 49 percent, according to the survey of 500 registered voters conducted by Washington, D.C.-based Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The poll had a sampling error margin of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.
Reid lagged behind Tarkanian in a head-to-head matchup 43 percent to 48 percent.
Lowden sponsored a free breakfast of coffee and donuts in a Reno hotel-casino parking lot Friday to people who brought food for the local food bank — a move intended to underscore the contrast to Reid's pricey breakfast.
Lowden said Reid's clout as majority leader is exaggerated. She said Nevada currently gets back 65 cents for every dollar taxpayers send to Washington, D.C., compared with 98 cents on the dollar while former Republican Sen. Paul Laxalt represented Nevada from 1974 to 1987.
About 500 people lined up to get into the Biden-Reid appearance at the Lawlor Events Center.
Among them was Cloyd Phillips, executive director of a local community services agency that he says has received stimulus funds in the past. He said the money has been used to provide funding for computer training classes for seniors, financial literacy training and other workplace development programs.
He told the Reno Gazette-Journal he wanted to make sure he got word to Biden and Reid that smaller groups are benefiting from the recovery act, not just large corporations.
Biden's visit comes five months after resident Barack Obama traveled to Las Vegas to headline a celebrity fundraiser for Reid featuring performances by Bette Midler and Sheryl Crow.
Obama urged Nevadans to return Reid for another six-year term, saying his leadership was crucial to passing the $787 billion stimulus package and an expansion of children's health insurance earlier this year.

Reid "knows how to get things done," the president said.