Polar bear cub Anori (R) shakes water off at the zoo in Wuppertal June 6, 2012. Anori was born on January 4, 2012.

OSLO | Thu Feb 14, 2013 2:06pm EST

OSLO (Reuters) - A thaw of sea ice floating on the Arctic Ocean last year sent extra plant food to exotic creatures on the deep sea floor in a shift that might leave polar bears hungry at the surface, scientists said on Thursday.

The study, using robot submarines down to 4,400 metres (14,400 ft) deep, could be a glimpse of radical changes for life in the sunless depths of the Arctic Ocean after ice thinned and shrank to cover a record low area in September 2012.

Scientists found large amounts of algae growing on the underside of the ice last year, apparently because more light was getting through as it thinned in a trend blamed on global warming, according to the study in the journal Science.

Much of the algae, of a type that forms strands up to a meter (3 ft) long, then sank to the seabed where they were food for brittle stars, which are related to starfish, and tube-like sea cucumbers that grow up to about 5 cms (2 inches) long.

"For surface life it could be bad news, for the deep sea floor it could be a feast," Antje Boetius, of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany and lead author of the study made on the research vessel Polarstern.

If the algae keep taking scarce nutrients from surface waters to the sea floor in coming years, then "the food for fish and eventually for the polar bear will be totally diminished," Boetius said.

In the Arctic food chain, fish eat algae, seals eat fish and polar bears eat seals.

"We were totally surprised that there were all these clumps of sea ice algae on the sea floor," she said. Scientists saw no fish there but many sea cucumbers were bloated with algae food.

On average, the scientists found that the amount of algae on the seabed worked out at 9.0 grams of carbon per square meter(0.03 oz per sq foot), nine times the amount measured in the 1990s in a sign of changes as the ice receded.

CARBON BURIAL

Boetius said algae were making a small contribution to getting rid of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas in the atmosphere emitted by burning fossil fuels, by burying it on the seabed.

"But it's too small to make a large difference," she said of the findings in Science, which is run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"Arctic climate models predict a further decline in the sea ice cover, toward a largely ice-free Arctic in coming decades", according to the scientists, from German, Dutch and Russian research institutes.

Ice has thinned to about a meter (3 ft) thick on much of the Arctic Ocean from perhaps five in recent decades, letting through more light in the May to August summer growing season.

Boetius said most studies of the Arctic relied on satellite measurements rather than observations under the ice.

"This study gives us some evidence that a system can change from the surface to the deep sea," she said. Some fish stocks are moving polewards because of climate change but their advance may be stopped by a lack of nutrients.

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average. White sea ice reflects sunlight and as it recedes it exposes water that is a darker color and soaks up more of the sun's heat, accelerating the thaw.

(editing by Michael Holden)

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Thu Feb 14, 2013 11:26am EST

n">(Reuters) - Inventors based in the United States led the world in nanotechnology patent applications and grants in 2012, according to a new study by law firm McDermott Will & Emery.

Nanotechnology involves manipulating matter that's measured at the tiny "nanometer" length level. The diameter of a human hair is between 40,000 and 60,000 nanometers, said Valerie Moore, a patent agent and one of the authors of the study.

Nanotechnology patents come into play in everything from aerospace to medicine to energy, the study noted. For example, the technology can be used to incorporate antibacterial material into wound dressings, to increase the strength of car parts while decreasing their weight, and to enhance paint colors.

U.S.-based inventors accounted for 54 percent of the nanotechnology patent applications and grants reviewed in the study, followed by South Korea with 7.8 percent, Japan with 7.1 percent, Germany with 6.2 percent and China with 4.9 percent.

The study also looked at the geographic location of the owner of the nanotechnology patents and proposed patents. If an inventor works in the Silicon Valley office of South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co, for instance, the U.S. is home to the invention, but the South Korean employer might own the patent.

McDermott's intellectual property practice includes more than 200 attorneys and patent agents, and is one of the top ten law firms for nanotech patent and applications filings, according to information provided by the firm.

McDermott partner Carey Jordan noted that the percentage of patents issued to U.S.-based entities is not quite as high as the 54 percent of nanopatents with U.S.-based inventors. About 45 percent of the nanotechnology patents in the study were assigned to U.S.-based entities.

The study examined published U.S. patent applications, patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trade Office, and published international patent applications that had the term "nano" in the claims, title, or abstract. Nanopatent applications were included to best quantify innovation occurring in nanotech, the study's authors said.

The number of nanotechnology patents has grown continuously since the early 2000s, the study said. Between 2007 and 2012 the total number of U.S. patent applications, U.S. granted patents and published international patent applications grew from about 14,250 to almost 18,900.

The United States, the European Union, as well as Japan and South Korea, have increased funding for nanotechnology education and research since 2000, the study said.

Computer and electronics companies garnered the most patents, with International Business Machines Corp and Samsung topping the list. The fields of chemistry and biological sciences, which include medicine and agriculture, were next in terms of the number of nanotechnology patents.

Other leaders in technology patent innovation include the University of California, Xerox Corp, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and 3M Co.

(Reporting By Erin Geiger Smith; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

(This story was corrected to fix dateline and name of law firm in the first paragraph)

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Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan testifies before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on his nomination to be the Director of the CIA, on Capitol Hill in Washington, February 7, 2013.

WASHINGTON | Fri Feb 15, 2013 6:59pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's pick for CIA director, John Brennan, promised senators who will vote on his nomination more openness about U.S. counter-terrorism programs, saying the closely guarded number of civilian casualties from drone strikes should be made public, according to his written responses to questions released on Friday.

Brennan was questioned sharply by Democrats and Republicans alike during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on his nomination last week.

Along with harsh interrogation techniques, Brennan was questioned about drone strikes against terrorism suspects in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere. These strikes have increased under Obama and included the killing in Yemen of a U.S.-born cleric suspected of ties to al Qaeda and his U.S.-born son.

The U.S. government, without releasing numbers, has sought to portray civilian deaths from these strikes as minimal. But other organizations which collect data on these attacks put the number of civilians killed in the hundreds.

"I believe that, to the extent that U.S. national security interests can be protected, the U.S. government should make public the overall numbers of civilian deaths resulting from U.S. strikes targeting al Qaeda," Brennan wrote in response to a question from Senator Dianne Feinstein, the committee chairwoman.

"In those rare instances in which civilians have been killed" reviews are conducted and, if appropriate, condolence payments are provided to the families, he wrote.

Such casualties from drone strikes have created profound anger among civilian populations overseas and severe tension between the United States and Pakistan and Afghanistan.

During last week's hearing, Feinstein said she had been trying to speak publicly about the "very low number of civilian casualties" and to verify that number each year has "typically been in the single digits." However, she said she was told she could not divulge the actual numbers because they were classified.

The New America Foundation said the number of civilians killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan was 261-305 from 2004 to 2013. (here).

A former intelligence official said the reason for the discrepancy between the U.S. government's apparently lower figures on civilian deaths and those collected by other organizations may be due to what is counted as a civilian death.

The government assumes "military-aged" males in the proximity of a drone strike are combatants unless it finds out otherwise, the former official said.

Asked whether the government could carry out drone strikes inside the United States, Brennan replied: "This administration has not carried out drone strikes inside the United States and has no intention of doing so."

U.S. legal authorities have not limited the geographic scope to a war zone for using force against al Qaeda and its affiliates, he noted, adding: "This does not mean, however, that we use military force whenever or wherever we want."

YEMEN LEAK PROBE

On another topic, Brennan said he had been advised by the Justice Department that he is a witness in, and not a target of, a criminal investigation into media leaks last year about the disruption of an underwear bomb plot by al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen. He said he had spoken to investigators, but been advised they have no plans to speak with him again.

Brennan said the Justice Department had provided his lawyer with a transcript of a conference call about the plot which he held last May 7 with former counter-terrorism officials who serve as TV news analysts.

At his confirmation hearing, Brennan confirmed the accuracy of a report by Reuters that during the conference call, he told the pundits that the alleged plot was never a real threat because the U.S. had "inside control" over it. But he vigorously disputed that he had leaked classified information.

Within hours, one of the analysts on the call appeared on TV saying that the U.S. government was implying that it had "somebody on the inside" of the alleged plot "who wasn't going to let it happen." News reports then proliferated saying the U.S. or its allies had succeeded in planting an informant inside al Qaeda's Yemen branch.

Brennan said in his written responses that he had given a transcript of his conference call with the pundits to the committee. Congressional officials said the Obama administration had requested that it be kept confidential, even though Brennan testified that nothing he told the pundits was classified.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for a copy of the transcript.

The committee's vote on Brennan's nomination has been delayed until after a congressional recess next week.

(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball. Editing by Warren Strobel and Christopher Wilson)

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1 of 4. The United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas-V rocket with the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) spacecraft onboard is seen as it launches at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, February 11, 2013.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Mon Feb 11, 2013 4:26pm EST

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - - A new satellite to keep tabs on Earth's changing landscape rocketed into orbit on Monday, ensuring continuation of a 40-year-old photo archive documenting urban sprawl, glacial melting, natural disasters and other environmental shifts.

The eighth and most sophisticated Landsat spacecraft blasted off at 1:02 p.m. EST (1802 GMT) aboard an unmanned Atlas 5 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The launch was broadcast on NASA Television.

The so-called Landsat Data Continuity Mission, or LDCM, will join the sole operational 14-year-old Landsat 7 spacecraft in providing visible and infrared images from an orbital perch 438 miles above Earth.

The satellites circle the planet every 99 minutes, relaying pictures showing details down to about the size of a baseball diamond.

The images, which are distributed at no charge, are used by federal, state and local governments and planning boards worldwide to monitor crops, assess damage from fires, floods and other natural disasters as well as to track coastlines, glaciers and other areas impacted by global warming.

"LDCM will continue to describe the human impact on Earth and the impact of Earth on humanity, which is vital for accommodating 7 billion people on our planet," project manager Ken Schwer, with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, told reporters during a preflight press conference.

Monitoring food production, for example, is essential to sustaining Earth's growing population, added Thomas Loveland, a senior scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, which is partnered with NASA on the Landsat program.

"Our federal programs that map the type and extent of crops needed to understand what the food supply will be and the impact on the market will benefit greatly from this," Loveland said.

Landsat's commercial customers include Google, which uses the images in its popular virtual Google Earth program, and the insurance industry which, for example, taps Landsat data to assess risk exposure to wildfires in the western United States and gauge crop production.

The Landsat program has been providing imagery since the first satellite's launch in 1972. LDCM was built by Orbital Sciences Corp.

Once operational, the satellite, which cost NASA $855 million, is expected to relay 400 images per day to ground stations in South Dakota, Alaska and Norway.

The Atlas rocket is manufactured and launched by United Launch Alliance, a joint partnership of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

(Editing by Paul Simao)

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WASHINGTON | Sun Feb 17, 2013 5:11pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lawmakers complained on Sunday that President Barack Obama had failed to protect Iranian dissidents from persecution by Tehran following a deadly attack on their camp near Baghdad, and urged they be allowed back to their long-time base in Iraq.

A congressional delegation led by Dana Rohrabacher, chairman of the Republican-controlled House subcommittee on Europe, said that the Obama administration should not have backed the movement of members of Iranian dissident group Mujahadin-e-Khalq, or MEK, to a place where they would not be safe.

At least five people were killed in a February 9 rocket attack on their base in the former U.S. military compound "Camp Liberty" in the western part of the Iraqi capital. The attack was condemned by the United Nations.

"It was unethical for the United States to have endorsed the relocation of the people whom we promised to protect to Camp Liberty, where we knew they would not have proper protection, just because it wants to please Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the ruling mullahs of Iran," the delegation said in statement after meeting Iranian dissident leaders in Paris.

The MEK, which calls for the overthrow of Iran's clerical rulers and fought alongside the forces of former Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, was relocated last year from its long-time Iraqi home in exile at Camp Ashraf.

The MEK is no longer welcome in Iraq under the Shi'ite Muslim-led government, which came to power after U.S.-led forces invaded and toppled Saddam in 2003.

But some U.S. politicians view it as a potential opposition force to replace Tehran's rulers and have taken up their cause in Washington. The congressional delegation issued its statement after meeting with Maryam Rajavi, who heads the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

"Iran needs regime change and the MEK can help bring it about," the congressional delegation said, sharply criticizing the U.N. mission in Iraq for failing to grant more MEK members in Camp Liberty the status of refugees.

"The U.S. Government, the Secretary General of the United Nations, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees should give top priority to resolving the security situation of the residents of Camp Liberty - which can be ensured by their return to Camp Ashraf."

(Reporting By Alister Bull; Editing by Philip Barbara)

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