Monkiboi - Quality Scientists Blog

The late astronomer Carl Sagan popularized the saying that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” in reference to reports of alien visitations. Generating low-cost commercial fusion power, isolating antimatter and tracing reverse-time causality aren’t as far out there as UFOs, but a similar rule might well apply: Extraordinary science requires extraordinary effort.

With that in mind, here’s a progress report on three extraordinary science projects that have popped up in the news:

Reverse-time causality
It’s been more than a year since University of Washington physicist John Cramer proposed to test a spooky corollary of quantum theory: that it might be possible to receive a laser signal before you send it. The problem was that Cramer didn’t really have enough research money to build the experiment, which required sending entangled photons through prisms, filters, optical fibers and other devices. What’s more, Cramer worried that the apparatus he planned to use would be available only for a limited time.

Once the general public found out about Cramer’s plight, the contributions started flowing in: Donors provided more than $40,000 - which allowed Cramer to move forward with the backward-time research. He was also able to find alternate lab space, which meant he didn’t have to worry so much about running out of … well, time.

Cramer’s backward research took the No. 2 spot in our recent Weird Science Awards competition. So how have things turned out?

It’s taken longer than he expected to set up all the equipment for the first phase of the experiment, but this week Cramer told me that he’s finally setting up the avalanche photodiodes required for making the fine measurements of single photons that will be required. “They’re sort of like little geiger counters, made of silicon,” he explained.

Cramer expected to start making measurements this week, but it will take still more time and effort to track down the retrocausality effect, if it exists. Happily, money is no longer an immediate concern. “I’m fine for the moment, as far as financial support goes,” Cramer said.

Trapping anti-atoms
During last summer’s visit to the CERN particle physics center on the French-Swiss border, I looked in on the ALPHA experiment to trap stable atoms of antihydrogen - which would afford the first-ever opportunity to study the properties of antimatter in the lab.

The ALPHA team, led by University of Aarhus physicist Jeffrey Hangst, has been engaged in a friendly competition to achieve the feat, vying with another team of researchers headquartered just a few yards away at CERN’s Antiproton Decelerator. “As usual, it’s a race here - it’s a race hour to hour,” Hangst told me.

By all accounts, the race continues. Hangst e-mailed me this progress report just before Christmas:

“… The short answer is that we don’t have any headlines for you. We made some nice progress this year, and our understanding improved greatly, but we did not yet succeed in trapping antihydrogen. We gave it a go at the end of the run. Although we see lots of evidence for positron-antiproton interaction in the magnetic trap, we have as yet no evidence that antihydrogen atoms can be caught.

“The good news is that we have much-improved techniques for manipulating antiprotons and keeping them in a very small radius cloud in order to maximize the chance of catching the produced antihydrogen. We also began commissioning our imaging detector for antiproton annihilations. This should really help us next year in diagnosing what is going on.

“I’ll keep you up to date on our progress next year. We are looking forward to it.”

Low-cost fusion power
Every time I write about the quest to develop a nuclear fusion reactor, I’m reminded that the $13 billion international ITER project in France is not the only game in town. Over the past year or so, there’s been a lot of buzz on the Internet about under-the-radar research into what some believe could be a low-cost fusion technology. The technology, known as inertial electrostatic confinement or Polywell fusion, was championed by physicist Robert Bussard - who passed away in October after a long battle with cancer.

Bussard’s mantle has been picked up by a small team led by Richard Nebel, who has taken a leave from Los Alamos National Laboratory to head up Bussard’s EMC2 Fusion Development Corp. Backed by a Navy contract, Nebel’s five-person team is trying to pick up the technology where Bussard left it.

“What’s there is interesting, OK?” Nebel told me today. “And the bottom line of it is, what we’ve been charged to do is reproduce that. Find out if it’s real. Find out if or if not all this stuff is what it seems to be.”

EMC2 Fusion has built an upgraded model of Bussard’s last experimental plasma containment device, which was known as WB-6. (The WB stands for Wiffle Ball, a whimsical reference to the structure of the device.) “We got first plasma yesterday,” Nebel said - but he and his colleagues in Santa Fe, N.M., still have a long way to get the WB-7 experiment up to the power levels Bussard was working with.

“We’re not out trying to make a big splash on any of this stuff at this point,” Nebel said. But he said he’s hoping to find out by this spring whether or not Bussard’s concept is worth pursuing with a larger demonstration project.

The initial analysis showed that Bussard’s data on energy yields were consistent with expectations, Nebel said.

“We don’t know for sure whether all that’s right,” he said, “but it’d be horrible for Mother Nature to give you what you expect to see, and have it all be bogus.”

Sure, there’s a chance that all this - a low-cost route to fusion power, the ability to trap antimatter atoms, the potential for quantum causality to turn back the clock - will turn out to be bogus. But maybe that’s what extraordinary science is all about. Stay tuned.

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Thanks to scientific and technical advances over the last hundred years, most people are today materially wealthier than their forefathers. Yet, by their own accounts, the improvement in the quality of their lives has not matched their material gains. In fact, it may be argued that people once were happier and more fulfilled. For some, material affluence breeds anxiety, a gnawing fear that if someone doesn’t take away their hard-earned acquisitions, the end of their days will prematurely arrive to finish the job. Others find death easier to face than a lifetime of assembly-line slavery, while most, in a less dramatic fashion, simply buckle down to lives of quiet desperation. Most individuals have no real grasp of the factors governing their existence. And yet, simply stated, if they had a greater understanding of themselves and their fellows they would be able to improve conditions and thus live happier lives. This, then, is the purpose of Scientology: to enable man to improve his lot through understanding.

 Before Scientology, the tremendous scientific advances of this era were not matched by similar advances in the humanities. Man’s knowledge of the physical universe had far outdistanced his knowledge of himself. The resulting pressures from such an imbalance account for much that has unsettled society and threatens our future. What Scientology represented to many when it appeared in the early 1950s was a restoration of the balance.

 Despite its many successes, science has not provided answers to questions man has been asking himself since time immemorial: Who are we? What do we consist of? Where do we come from? Where are we going? What are we doing? These questions have always been the province of philosophy and religion, but traditional answers became inadequate in the face of the H-bomb. Scientology, drawing on the same advances in knowledge that led to the understanding of nuclear physics, provides modern answers to these questions. And it supplied workable methods of application which made it possible for man to reach the ancient goal he has been striving toward for thousands of years: to know himself and, in knowing himself, to know and understand other people and, ultimately, life itself.

Scientology is a religion. It holds in common many of the beliefs of other religions and philosophies. Scientology considers man to be a spiritual being, with more to him than flesh and blood. This, of course, is a very different view to that espoused by prevailing scientific thought which views man as only a material object, a complex combination of chemical compounds and stimulus-response mechanisms.

An oil is any substance that is in a viscous liquid state (“oily”) at ambient temperatures or slightly warmer, and is both hydrophobic (immiscible with water, literally “water fearing”) and lipophilic (miscible with other oils, literally “fat loving”). This general definition includes compound classes with otherwise unrelated chemical structures, properties, and uses, including vegetable oils, petrochemical oils, and volatile essential oils. Oil is a nonpolar substance.

Etymology

Oil is a non-scientific term used to refer to certain diverse and unrelated compounds sharing the same physical properties (such as viscosity and a hydrophobic nature), while ignoring related compounds. The compounds found in cooking oil are chemically very similar, almost identical, to those found in butter and very different from those found in diesel, but while diesel is an oil, butter is not. Indeed diesel is once again very similar to natural gas, but gas is certainly not oil! This disparity stems partly from the fact that oils must be liquid at room temperature, and thus only certain liquid chemicals in many unrelated families are recognised, collectively, as ‘oil’. Scientists, instead of using the term ‘oil’, adopt the terms lipids and other terms such as alkanes and alkenes, to denote them instead.

Types of Oils

Mineral oils

All oils, with their high carbon and hydrogen content, can be traced back to organic sources. Mineral oils, found in porous rocks underground, are no exception, as they were originally the organic material, such as dead plankton, acumulated on the seafloor in geologically ancient times. Through various geochemical processes this material was converted to mineral oil, or petroleum, and its components, such as kerosene, paraffin waxes, gasoline, diesel and such. These are classified as mineral oils as they do not have an organic origin on human timescales, and are instead derived from underground geologic locations, ranging from rocks, to underground traps, to sands.

Other oily substances can also be found in the environment, the most well-known being tar, occurring naturally underground or, where there are leaks, in tar pits . Others include asphalt and bitumen.

Petroleum and other mineral oils, ( specifically labelled as petrochemicals ), have become such a crucial resource to human civilisation in modern times they are often referred to by the ubiquitous term of ‘oil’ itself.

Organic oils

Oils are also produced by plants, animals and other organisms through organic processes, and these oils are remarkable in their diversity. Oil is a somewhat vague term to use chemically, and the scientific term for oils, fats, waxes, cholesterol and other oily substances found in living things and their secretions, is lipids.

Lipids, ranging from waxes to steroids, are somewhat hard to characterize, and are united in a group almost solely based on the fact that they all repel, or refuse to dissolve, in water, and are however comfortably miscible in other liquid lipids. They also have a high carbon and hydrogen content, and are considerably lacking in oxygen compared to other organic compounds.

Applications

Food oils

Many edible vegetable and animal oils, and also fats, are used for various purposes in cooking and food preparation. In particular, many foods are fried in oil much hotter than boiling water. Oils are also used for flavoring and for modifying the texture of foods e.g Stir Fry.

Health advantages are claimed for a number of specific oils such as omega 3 oils (fish oil, flaxseed oil, etc) and evening primrose oil.

Trans fats, often produced by hydrogenating vegetable oils, are known to be harmful to health.

Fuel

Almost all oils burn in air generating heat, which can be used directly, or converted into other forms of energy by various means. Electricity, for example, can be generated from the combustion of oils through a steam-powered generator. Oils are used as fuels for heating, lighting (e.g. kerosene lamp), powering combustion engines, and other purposes. Oils used for this purpose nowadays are usually derived from petroleum, (fuel oil, diesel oil, petrol, (gasoline), etc), though biological oils such as biodiesel are gaining market share.

Heat transport

Many oils have higher boiling points than water and are electrical insulators, making them useful for liquid cooling systems, especially where electricity is used.

Lubrication

Due to their non-polarity, oils do not easily adhere to other substances. This makes them useful as lubricants for various engineering purposes. Mineral oils are more suitable than biological oils, which degrade rapidly in most environmental conditions.

Painting

Color pigments can be easily suspended in oil, making it suitable as supporting medium for paints. The slow drying process and miscibility of oil facilitates a realistic style. This method has been used since the 15th century.

What are the United States presidential candidates’ positions on scientific topics ranging from evolution to global warming? A special news report, which is being published in the 4 January issue of the journal Science, addresses these questions and profiles the nine leading candidates on where they stand on important scientific issues.

The 10-page special report, “Science and the Next U.S. President” profiles Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson and offers voters a glimpse at each candidate’s views on science.

“Science felt that it was important to find out what the presidential candidates think about issues that may not be part of their standard stump speeches but that are vital to the future of the country–from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to improving science and math education,” said Jeffrey Mervis, deputy news editor, who oversees election coverage for the magazine’s news department. “We hope that the coverage may also kick off a broader discussion of the role of science and technology in decisions being made in Washington and around the world.”

Mervis writes in the article’s introduction that “the issues seem likely to remain relevant no matter who becomes the 44th president of the United States.” Here are some of the reports from Science’s news writers:

Hillary Clinton gives “the most detailed examination of science policy that any presidential candidate has offered to date” emphasizing innovation to drive economic growth, writes Eli Kintisch. She has proposed a “$50 billion research and deployment fund for green energy that she’d pay for by increasing federal taxes and royalties on oil companies. She would also establish a national energy council to oversee federal climate and greentech research and deployment programs.” And, “her science adviser would report directly to her.”

John Edwards would end censoring research and slanting policy on climate change, air pollution, stem cell research and would increase science funding, write Jocelyn Kaiser and Eliot Marshall. He would oppose expanding nuclear power and proposes “to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050, using a cap-and-trade system to auction off permits as a regulatory incentive.”

Rudy Giuliani’s “campaign successfully discouraged key advisers from speaking to Science about specific issues,” writes Marshall. On abortion, he would with reservations let the woman decide what to do. And, that the “League of Conservation Voters reports that Giuliani has ‘no articulated position’ on most of the environmental issues it tracks.”

John McCain views global warming as “the most urgent issue facing the world” and makes climate change on of the top issues of his campaign, writes Constance Holden. On the human embryonic stem cell issue, “he draws the line at human nuclear transfer, or research cloning, arguing that there is no ethical difference between cloning for research and cloning for reproduction.”

NEW YORK (AFP) - Oil prices slipped Friday after a shockingly weak US employment report fanned worries about recession and demand in the world’s biggest energy consumer.

New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in February, dropped 1.27 dollars to close at 97.91 dollars a barrel.

In London, Brent North Sea crude for February shed 81 cents to settle at 96.79 dollars

A lackluster US jobs data triggered profit taking a day after oil prices briefly struck intraday record highs.

On Thursday, the benchmark New York contract hit 100.09 dollars and Brent touched 98.50 dollars.

The US Labor Department reported the US economy gained 18,000 nonfarm jobs in December, the slowest job creation since 2003, as the unemployment rate rose to 5.0 percent, more than a two-year high.

The reading toppled market expectations of a 70,000 jobs increase and a 4.8 percent jobless rate, up from 4.7 percent in November.

The surprisingly weak report was a fresh warning flag of a slowing economy and prompted speculation that the Federal Reserve would lower interest rates again, after a combined one percentage point reduction since September.

“There should be every reason to think that the poor jobs number will return the focus to the economic slowing theme,” said John Kilduff of MF Global.

“While the bull run in the energy markets may have a last gasp or two, the report will underscore the trouble on the economic front.”

Despite the pullback Friday, some analysts said oil prices remained well supported and could soon strike new all-time peaks.

Sucden analyst Andrey Kryuchenkov noted a “favorable” combination of declining inventories, a weak dollar, soaring oil demand from Asia and geopolitical risks had helped to propel crude prices to 100 dollars.

“It seems that these factors will continue to dominate oil headlines in the foreseeable future. And even if we see a deeper correction in oil prices, in the longer term, the bullish trend is likely to prevail, as spare capacity on the supply side is very limited and demand is still growing,” he added.

Thursday’s declines were largely fueled by a US government showing American crude inventories had fallen by 4.0 million barrels last week, stoking supply concerns.

It was the seventh week in a row that stockpiles had dropped.

For Phil Flynn at Alaron Trading, the oil rally is being driven by “a kind of bullish inevitability in the press.”

“What is clear based on yesterday’s report is that oil needs a piece of news to drive us through 100 dollars a barrel or that new money that expects instant gratification will have to cover” when prices do not go much higher, he said.

Meanwhile the oil-producing cartel OPEC was expected to face fierce pressure to help calm the market at a special meeting on February 1.

The 13-member Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries shrugged off demands at its last meeting in December, despite a public plea from US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman for an output increase.

The Saudi-led cartel pumps about 40 percent of world oil supplies but restricts the output of its members through a quota system that is regularly reviewed.

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PARKLAND, Fla. - Free hybrid-car parking. Cash rebates for installing solar panels. Low-interest loans for energy-saving home renovations. Money to tear up desert lawns and replace them with drought-resistant landscaping.

Frustrated by what they see as insufficient action by state and federal government, municipalities around the country are offering financial incentives to get people to go green.

“A lot of localities recognize they’re going to get a lot more done using carrots and incentives rather than regulatory means,” said Jason Hartke, director of advocacy for the U.S. Green Building Council.

In Parkland, where the motto is “Environmentally Proud,” the city plans next year to begin dispensing cash rebates to its 25,000 residents for being more environmentally friendly.

“We will literally issue them a check,” said Vice Mayor Jared Moskowitz. “We’re sick of waiting for the federal government to do something, so we’ve got to do what we can.”

Residents who install low-flow toilets or shower heads will get $150. Replacing an old air conditioner with a more energy-efficient one brings $100. Buying a hybrid car? An additional $200 cash back. And the list goes on.

Based on an estimate of 1,000 residents participating in the rebate program during the first year, the city predicts it will cost up to $100,000.

“Could this bankrupt the city if the program grows by leaps and bounds?” Moskowitz asked. “I can only wish that so many residents want to go green that that becomes an issue.”

Many states already offer similar rebates and incentives through tax breaks, loans and perks such as allowing hybrid-car drivers to use car pool lanes.

Utilities have long provided incentives to buy energy-efficient appliances, solar panels and toilets that use less water. The federal government, too, offers tax incentives for purchases of many hybrid vehicles and energy-saving products.

Still, for many cities, it’s just not enough.

“In terms of waiting for the federal government, we’ve waited a long time, and frankly, we haven’t gotten very much,” said Jared Blumenfeld, director of San Francisco’s Department of Environment. “And how do you change someone’s behavior? The simple answer is cash.”

Starting next year, San Francisco will offer homeowners rebates of up to $5,000 for installing solar panels if they use a local contractor. Coupled with state and federal incentives, that could cut in half the $21,000 cost for an average household, Blumenfeld said.

The city will also cover up to 90 percent of the costs of making apartment buildings more energy-efficient, and will pay residents $150 to replace old appliances.

The neighboring city of Berkeley is financing the cost of solar panels for homeowners who agree to pay the money back through a 20-year property tax assessment.

Nearby Marin County offers a $500 rebate to homeowners who install solar systems.

Baltimore offers at least $2,000 toward closing costs for people who buy new homes close to where they work. It is called the “Live Near Your Work” program.

“Just living near your job and taking transit or walking to meet your daily needs provides basically the same environmental benefit as buying a hybrid car,” said Amanda Eaken of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Residents of Albuquerque, N.M., get fast-track building permits and other perks if they agree to make their homes more energy-efficient.

In Arizona, many cities pay residents to replace grass with artificial turf or plants that use less water. Scottsdale, outside Phoenix, will pay up to $1,500.

“We’re in the middle of a desert and water is absolutely the most precious resource we have,” said city spokesman Mike Phillips.

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Second receptor complicates efforts to understand hormone

Sarah C. Williams

The mice in Jan-Åke Gustafsson’s lab are obese, their bones are brittle, and their spleens are unusually big. The female mice produce fewer and smaller litters than normal mice. They also are more likely to develop high blood pressure and a disease that resembles human leukemia. In fact, problems of one sort or another afflict almost every major organ system in their fragile, overweight bodies.

What these mice lack is the gene for an important molecule needed to fully respond to the hormone estrogen. Known as estrogen receptor beta (ERb), this molecule mediates most of the effects of estrogen not traditionally associated with the hormone. By genetically engineering both male and female mice without the receptor, researchers are digging up clues to its many important roles in people.

Discovered only a decade ago, the beta receptor has been found to protect against cancer, keep the immune system in check, help serious trauma patients survive their injuries, and keep people from being too anxious. A recent spate of studies on the receptor could lead to a new generation of hormone-based drugs for infertility, breast cancer, irritable bowel syndrome, depression, and a myriad of other conditions.

“Estrogen receptor beta, in particular, is involved in many, many tissues. It shows that estrogens are extremely important not only in reproduction, which everybody knows, but in other aspects of health as well,” says Gustafsson, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.

Estrogen, a hormone that circulates in the blood, comes mainly from the ovaries, but is also made in small quantities by the placentas of pregnant women, the liver, adrenal glands, and breasts. In males, certain cells in the testes produce low levels of estrogen.

Estrogen affects various organs by entering cells and attaching to receptors inside them. Stimulated by estrogen, the receptors activate genes that change how the cells behave. But in every organ system, the changes may be different.

Understanding estrogen’s effects has been complicated by scientists’ long-held assumption that the hormone bound to only one type of receptor, now called estrogen receptor alpha (ERa). The uterus boasts a high concentration of the alpha receptor, and since researchers thought estrogen was only important for female reproduction, they had no reason to go looking for a different receptor in other organs.

But in 1996, while searching broadly for new hormone receptors, Gustafsson stumbled on estrogen receptor beta. That finding turned the field of estrogen research around, says Kenneth S. Korach of the National Institutes of Health.

At the time, Korach was studying mice missing the alpha receptor. It had been a surprise that these mice could even survive. “The prevailing view was that you needed to have estrogen and you needed to have estrogen receptors,” he says.

The discovery that there was a second receptor seemed to explain his results. If the mice missing the alpha receptor still had a functional beta version, their bodies still could respond to estrogen. At first, “everybody thought alpha was covering for beta and beta was covering for alpha,” says Korach.

But when Korach bred mice lacking both receptors, the new mice survived too. “That clearly indicated that one does not need to have estrogen-receptor function to live,” he says, “or for any type of developmental biology.”

Though mice without the beta receptor can live, they are plagued by a list of health problems—a list that continues to grow as researchers observe the mice aging.

Bonnie Deroo, of the University of Western Ontario, in London (Canada), studies one impact of the missing beta receptor in female mice-fertility problems. Though these engineered mice can produce offspring, their litters are few and small. “Understanding how estrogen regulates ovulation may reveal causes of infertility in humans,” she says.

Deroo’s research focuses on estrogen in the ovaries, the female egg-producing organs nestled above the uterus. Ovaries, Deroo has found, have both alpha and beta estrogen receptors, but not in the same cells.

Deroo thinks the beta receptor may be involved in ovulation, the monthly release of an egg into a woman’s uterus. Normally, estrogen produced by the ovaries causes the pituitary gland to release another hormone, called luteinizing hormone (LH) that directly triggers egg release. Deroo is trying to figure out what part of this cascade of hormones malfunctions in mice lacking beta receptors.

Korach studies this process to help women with infertility problems too, but he also points out another potential payoff from the research: estrogen receptor beta could be blocked in women as a form of birth control.

Cancer watchdog

Produced by plants, estrogen-like compounds called phytoestrogens are found in foods including soy and coffee. Some scientists have speculated that phytoestrogens played a key role in the lower incidence of prostate and breast cancers found for many years in Asian populations with soy-based diets.

Recent sonar surveys off the southeastern coast of the United States have detected dozens of broad furrows on the seafloor—trenches that were carved by icebergs during the last ice age, researchers suggest.

FLOW REVERSAL. Currents driving the icebergs that scoured channels in the seafloor off South Carolina at the height of the last ice age ran almost exactly opposite to today’s prevailing currents. Channel shown in inset is about 100 meters wide. Hill, et al.

The channels, roughly parallel to the coast, are between 10 and 100 meters wide and typically less than 10 m deep, says Jenna C. Hill, an oceanographer at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, S.C. She and her team discovered the enigmatic features while conducting oceanographic surveys about 100 kilometers off Georgetown, S.C., in the summer of 2006. Waters in the area range between 170 and 220 m deep, she notes.

Most of the trenches run along straight paths for several kilometers, and one lengthy furrow stretches almost 20 km. Short berms alongside each groove are presumably composed of material that was plowed aside when the channels were carved, says Hill.

The seafloor features generally run in a southwest-northeast direction. However, the researchers noticed that some of the channels they discovered during a second survey last summer ended with a semicircular pit at their southwestern terminus. Suddenly, says Hill, the features made sense: Icebergs had plowed the furrows, and pits marked the sites where the ice masses became grounded and later melted.

The seafloor culs-de-sac indicate that the currents driving the icebergs flowed to the southwest, opposite to prevailing currents today. At present, warm waters of the northeast-flowing Gulf Stream bathe the region, says Hill. However, she and her colleagues suggest that an offshore shift in the Gulf Stream at the height of the last ice age—when sea levels were more than 100 m lower than they are now—would have allowed glacially fed, iceberg-rich coastal currents to penetrate this far south. Hill and her colleagues presented their findings last month in San Francisco at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

The team’s theory “makes dynamical sense,” says John M. Bane, Jr., an oceanographer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Even today, he says, a seafloor feature about 100 km southwest of the berg-scoured region—a broad area called the Charleston Bump—can cause instabilities in the Gulf Stream that deflect the current offshore for a few weeks at a time, causing reversals in the coastal current. At the height of the last ice age, when sea levels were substantially lower, the Gulf Stream may have been more frequently, if not permanently, deflected offshore.

MOSCOW (AFP) - A top Gazprom executive voiced opposition on Wednesday to foreign ownership of Russian energy reserves, saying it could deprive Russian consumers of much-needed natural gas, news agencies reported.

“We do not like foreign companies developing reserves,” Alexander Ananenkov, deputy chairman of state-owned Gazprom, was quoted by Interfax and RIA Novosti news agencies as saying during a visit to Novosibirsk.

His comments came as the Russian state continued to reassert control over the lucrative oil and gas sector, large parts of which were privatised and sold to foreign companies under former president Boris Yeltsin.

Ananenkov accused two projects with foreign participation — the Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2 fields in far eastern Russia — of wanting to sell natural gas exclusively to international markets and therefore cheating Russian consumers.

“These producers, companies with foreign participation, do not want to do anything for consumers in the Russian Far East. They just want to sell gas to foreign countries,” Ananenkov said.

“A Russian consumer in the Far East cannot get the gas that he desperately needs,” he said. “We’ve come across this problem when the exploration licences are in the hands of foreign companies.”

Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov appeared to distance himself from Ananenkov’s comments, saying they were likely aimed only at the Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2 projects.

Although the United Nations has officially designated 2008 as the International Year of Planet Earth, the 3-year celebration actually began a year ago and will continue through December 2009. The program’s ultimate goal: “to build safer, healthier and wealthier societies around the globe” through a better appreciation for and harnessing of Earth sciences. The UN describes this focus on the interrelatedness of climate, natural resources, and living communities as helping to support its mission to foster sustainable use of Earth’s materials and “better planning and management to reduce risks for the world’s inhabitants.”

Go to: http://www.yearofplanetearth.org