Stocks rise following expansion in manufacturing

FILE- In this Sept. 20, 2012, file photo, trader Andrew Silverman, left, works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. European stocks edged higher on Monday, Oct. 1, 2012, as investors cautiously welcomed the result of stress tests of Spain's banks. But the threat that Moody's might downgrade the country's debt rating to junk status limited gains.(AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

FILE- In this Sept. 20, 2012, file photo, trader Andrew Silverman, left, works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. European stocks edged higher on Monday, Oct. 1, 2012, as investors cautiously welcomed the result of stress tests of Spain's banks. But the threat that Moody's might downgrade the country's debt rating to junk status limited gains.(AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

U.S. stocks mostly rose on Monday as growth in manufacturing provided more evidence that the economy may be picking up, or at least not getting any worse.

The gains came after news that U.S. manufacturing grew in September for the first time in four months.

The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers, also said its gauge of manufacturing employment rose following a decline in August. That's a hopeful sign that the government may report job growth in its monthly survey of the labor market on Friday.

Also Monday, the government said U.S. builders spent more on home construction in August, the latest positive sign for the housing market.

Investors are looking for signs that workers will have more money to spend, said Jerry Webman, chief economist for OppenheimerFunds Inc. That's a "virtuous cycle" that can generate some of its own fuel for a recovery.

"If you're going to manufacture more you're going to employ more people, and if you employ more people you're going to pay them money, and they're going to buy some stuff," helping the economy, Webman said.

It was still a choppy day on Wall Street. The manufacturing report came out half an hour after trading began, and sent stocks higher. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose as much as 1.1 percent.

But market indexes gave up most of their gains in the afternoon. The decline started after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the Fed needs to keep interest rates low because the economy isn't growing fast enough to reduce high unemployment. It wasn't clear whether investors were reacting directly to Bernanke's remarks or just taking profits from a morning where stocks showed their strongest gains in days. Monday was only the third day since Sept. 17 that the S&P 500 has risen.

The S&P closed 0.3 percent higher, rising 3.82 points to close at 1,444.49. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 77.98 points to close at 13,515.11. The Nasdaq composite fell 2.70 points to close at 3,113.53.

Goldman Sachs jumped $3.18, or 2.8 percent, to $116.86 after Barron's wrote that investors are too pessimistic on the investment bank's prospects.

Other financial stocks rose, too. Bank of America rose 13 cents, or 1.5 percent, to $8.96, and JPMorgan Chase rose 49 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $40.97.

Monday was the first day of trading of the fourth quarter, and the early gains were a welcome change of pace from the way the last quarter ended. U.S. indices fell on Friday for the fifth day out of the previous six.

Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial, said investors believe that the news about the economy has stopped getting worse. Besides the U.S. manufacturing news on Monday, she noted that recent data from China suggests that manufacturing has improved there as well.

"The numbers were still weak, but they were not as bad as before," Krosby said. "So that was a positive backdrop for the market."

Wendy's Co. fell 28 cents, or 6.1 percent, to $4.25 after a Janney Capital Markets analyst lowered his rating on the stock, saying there are seeing signs that the hamburger chain's revenue won't be as strong as expected.

Markets around Europe rose. An audit of 14 Spanish banks showed the lenders need an extra $77.6 billion in capital. That's roughly what was expected, and well within the amount Madrid can get from fellow European countries.

A slight improvement in a survey of the euro zone's manufacturing sector also helped.

However, credit rating agency Moody's might downgrade Spain's debt to junk status this week. That's likely to limit enthusiasm in Europe until the Moody's decision is known.

Germany's DAX stock index rose 1.5 percent, France's CAC-40 was up 2.4 percent, and Britain's FTSE 100 rose 1.4 percent. Spain's Ibex was up 1 percent.

The euro rose to $1.288.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell slightly to 1.62 percent.

Associated Press

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Microsoft Needs Windows Phone 7 ? Not WP8 ? To Win Significant Mobile Market Share

Microsoft's rebooted mobile OS, Windows Phone 8, arrives in a matter of weeks -- so it's a case of Windows Phone 7 is dead, long live Windows Phone 8 right? Not so fast. WP8 is certainly Microsoft's new weapon of choice for competing in the smartphone space -- with no further OS updates planned for WP7 beyond the customizable homescreen in the 7.8 release -- but the older of the two WP siblings could still have a vital role to play in helping Redmond gain significant marketshare.

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TSA pays mom $3.99 for seized peanut butter

By Bob Sullivan

When Stephanie Lambert packed peanut butter and jelly to keep her two small children happy on a cross-country flight in June, she didn't mean to pick a fight with the Transportation Security Administration. But after a long security line argument, and the confiscation of the peanut butter (but not the jelly), she felt she had no choice.??

Courtesy Stephanie Lambert

Stephanie Lambert got $3.99 from the U.S. Treasury after TSA agents seized her child's peanut butter at an airport checkpoint.

Then, after churning through the four-page ?SF-95 Tort Claim Package forms,? she got something else she never expected: a $3.99 refund from the U.S. Treasury Department.

Lambert was traveling with her husband, a 6-month-old and a 2-year-old on an ungodly early flight in June, and arrived at the airport about 5 a.m. She was flying from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh, and she needed the usual bag of distractions and food to keep her kids -- and other passengers -- sane during the trip. But, she says, her efforts to ensure a smooth flight were foiled when a TSA agent with a bad attitude singled out her family for additional screening. After the usual pat-downs and questions, discussion centered on the jar of peanut butter.?

"He just really fixated on the peanut butter and a jar of apple sauce I had," she said.? "I keep saying, 'It's not a liquid; it's pureed apples,' but we go went around and around.? He also screened my husband multiple times. I asked to speak to the terminal manager, but he never arrived. ... We were there 30 minutes."

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Eventually, the screener let the apple sauce (and the jelly) go, but he drew the line on the peanut butter.

"I said, ?Fine.? I left the peanut butter, but I took down names," she said. "The screener was asking for my all my details, so I figured I'd ask for his."

When the family arrived in Pittsburgh, Lambert asked a TSA screener on her way out about peanut butter -- Was it considered a liquid or not? -- and got a vague answer. So when she got home, she turned to the Internet and the found the SF-95 Tort Claim Package forms. Generally, they're filled out by fliers who think the TSA lost something valuable while screening bags, such as laptop computers. But Lambert was after satisfaction, and she didn't see why she couldn't make a claim for the cost of her seized peanut butter.

"At the airport, my husband kept saying, 'Would you just let go of the peanut butter? We're going to miss the plane.' But these things really fire me up," Lambert said. "So when I said, 'Honey, I'm going to file a claim,' he wasn't surprised."

Lambert is a rare consumer who was in a perfect position to file such a claim. For starters, she had the original receipt from Whole Foods showing the price she paid for the spread.?

Who keeps receipts for peanut butter?? Lambert explained that she started her family during the recession, and from the start has carefully watched her money. She saves receipts from every purchase, enters everything into a spreadsheet and tracks every expense. She also has a binder, where she records refunds, returns, rebates and any other correspondence that involves money.

"I fill out forms and keep track of them all the time, so this was easy for me," she said. "I'm responsible for the family finances. If it takes me months, it takes me months. I'm very firm when companies owe me money."

She had another motivation behind her ferocity regarding the confiscated peanut butter, however.

"When they first put in the liquid (security) rules on flights, a screening agent took a $7 lip gloss I had just purchased. Then, the very next day, they changed the rules and lip gloss was allowed. I was furious," she said. "I remember the TSA agent actually took a basketball shot with my lip gloss into the trash bins as I went through security. I'm still mad about that, and I was thinking, 'This is not happening again.'"

On her complaint form, Lambert said TSA agents unnecessarily screened her husband twice, and removed everything from her carry-on bags during the 30-minute ordeal.

"At the time I was carrying my 6-month-old and trying to keep my 2-year-old calm," she wrote. "(The agent's) behavior was completely unwarranted."

She submitted the claim on June 19.? To her surprise, she received a letter dated Aug. 24 from TSA that read: "Your claim against the United States in the amount of $3.99 has been granted in full." On Sept. 14, the "refund" was electronically deposited into her bank account.

Naturally, Lambert wasn't really after the money. She says she was trying to make a point.

"I think people really do need to fight for themselves," she said. "In this case, the peanut butter was important to me. I was thinking, 'Hey, I need that. If I have a crisis with a child on a five-hour flight this peanut butter may help me.? I wasn?t hopping to Phoenix, I was flying across country and there?s no food on the flight for children."

As it turns out, the TSA website does list peanut butter as a banned liquid/gel, if carried onto a plane in containers exceeding 3.4 ounces. Jellies, jams and "creamy dips and spreads" are also banned in bigger portions. There are some exceptions for mothers traveling with infants, however, involving breast milk, juice, baby food and other liquids and gels, which muddies the discussion considerably.

Part of the problem, Lambert says, is that the rules seem to vary from airport to airport, and even from agent to agent.

"I think it depends on how well the information goes down the chain," she said.?

Lambert said she spoke via telephone with a TSA representative as she was filling out her tort claim and thought the agent was very pleasant and competent. The agent even promised to review security tape to see if the incident required follow up. That conversation, and her refund, actually leaves her with more good than bad feelings about the TSA. The problem, she said, is that most of the trouble for passengers occurs on the front lines, in the chaos of someone rushing to make a flight with agents who sometimes are too eager to exert their power.

TSA spokesman David A. Castelveter told NBC News that peanut butter jars in excess of 3.4 ounces are generally not permissable as carry-on items, but that screeners can exercise "common-sense discretion." Exceptions generally involve medical needs, he said.?

He also pointed to a press release about TSA agents in Los Angeles who stopped suspects allegedly trying to sneak marijuana onto an airplane?in a modified jar of peanut butter last year.

The agency has no readily available statistics on tort claims, Castelveter said, but added that Lambert's peanut butter refund claim was "the first time I'd ever heard of something like that."

The Los Angeles Times investigated tort claims against TSA last year, and found that 1,702 claims were made against the agency by passengers traveling through Los Angeles International Airport from 2007 through 2010.? Most claims involved items that were damaged or disappeared from checked baggage. The average damage claim was $1,437, but most were denied.? Roughly 13 percent of those who claimed the loss of a laptop computer were granted relief, but less than 1 percent of those saying they lost or damaged digital camera were reimbursed.

RED TAPE WRESTLING TIPS

One key to having successful dialogs with TSA agents at checkpoints is time; passengers rushing to make a flight have no time to make their case. In Lambert's situation, she had time to put up a fight because, ironically, her husband is a frequent traveler and the family qualified for express screening.??

If you feel like the TSA has wrongly confiscated an item from you at a checkpoint, you can obtain the necessary forms at this page.

Note that if the TSA denies a claim, it can only be appealed by filing a lawsuit in federal court. By law, small claims courts have no jurisdiction over TSA cases.

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Uranium-contaminated site yields wealth of information on microbes 10 feet under

ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2012) ? University of California, Berkeley, scientists have sequenced nearly all the genes in an underground community of microbes at a contaminated uranium mill site in Rifle, Colo., providing information that could help scientists better manipulate the microbes that remediate heavy metal contamination or those that take up and store carbon from the atmosphere.

Each of the 150,000 genes from the sample was assigned to one of 80 different microbes in the soil, an unprecedented computational feat made possible by new genomic tools developed at UC Berkeley.

The findings could help improve clean-up at hundreds of sites around the United States where microbes are nurtured to convert toxic metals, including arsenic and mercury, into chemical forms that will not leech into aquifers and streams, the scientists said. It may be possible, for example, to add nutrients that would create the ideal mix of microbes to immobilize the metals, instead of just feeding all the microbes already present.

"In order to make this goal a reality, it is critical not to just detect the relevant genes in subsurface microorganisms, but to know enough about the lifestyles of the organisms with genes of interest so that manipulation of the system enriches specifically for that organism," said study leader Jill Banfield, UC Berkeley professor of earth and planetary science and of environmental science, policy and management.

The information in the genomes of the 80 microbes located 10 feet or more beneath the surface could also lead to improved methods for stimulating the uptake of carbon from the atmosphere by soil bacteria to reduce greenhouse gases.

"Our study turned upside down what we thought was happening at the bioremediation site," said lead author Kelly C. Wrighton, a UC Berkeley post-doctoral fellow who specializes in the physiology of microbes. "What these genomes have given us is amazing in terms of being able to look under the hood at the machine of these organisms that we never really knew anything about, except that we saw them in certain types of environments."

Wrighton, Banfield and colleagues at UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), report their metagenomic analysis in the Sept. 28 issue of the journal Science. Banfield is also a member of the Earth Sciences Division at LBNL.

The metagenomic analysis proves that methods developed by Banfield at UC Berkeley to take a jumble of sequenced genes and assign them to specific microbes works even when there are nearly 100 bacteria and Archaea in the sample. Most metagenome analyses generally leave the genes unassigned to organisms, which gives scientists little idea of the role specific microbes play.

"The techniques developed in Jill's lab for doing metagenomics of very complex microbial communities is giving us a much more accurate look at what the microbes are doing and how we can modify them to get them to do more effectively what we want them to do, which is reduce uranium to form a solid," said Philip E. Long, an LBNL geologist who manages research at the Rifle study site. "We are finding out from these studies that the subsurface microbial economy is different from what we thought."

The "dark matter" of biology

The microbes came from groundwater samples taken at a site once used to process vanadium and, during and after World War II, uranium. The site borders the Colorado River, which means that rain can carry dissolved metals into the groundwater and eventually into the river. Some microbes "breathe" the metals like we breathe oxygen, chemically altering them so they become insoluble and remain in the sediment, Wrighton said.

Banfield refers to microbe communities like these as the "dark matter" of biology, an analogy to the missing mass in the universe that has stumped astronomers for decades. The bacterial tree of life can be divided into about 60 phylum-level branches, but essentially nothing is known about half of them, she said.

"This new study provides new knowledge about the ecology as well as the evolution of a significant chunk of what could be considered the dark matter of the microbial world," she said.

Before now, Banfield had performed metagenomic analyses of eight microbes coexisting in highly acidic underground streams in a former California mine and current Superfund clean-up site. Such an analysis involves grinding up all organisms in a sample, sequencing all the genes and then matching each with a unique microbial species.

The new study involved the genomes of 10 times more organisms. All are anaerobic -- they don't breathe oxygen like most organisms on Earth -- and most, while not new to science, are totally unstudied because they cannot be cultured in the laboratory. Many are only a few hundred nanometers across, making them among the smallest known microbes.

Scientists at the Rifle site spread acetate -- essentially dilute vinegar -- in the subsurface to feed the underground bacteria that convert soluble metals to insoluble metals. They had assumed that they were culturing a colony comprised mostly of Geobacter bemidjiensis, a well-known metal-reducing bacterium.

Instead, Wrighton said, analysis of three samples obtained within 10 days of acetate application showed a healthy population of Geobacter, but a throng of other bacteria presumably feeding on dead Geobacter and other carbon in the soil from previous additions of acetate. These organisms use or ferment complex carbon, such as dead plants and dead microbes, and produce hydrogen, small organic carbon compounds and carbon dioxide.

"The fermenters producing hydrogen after multiple additions of acetate may be more important to the underlying microbial community than we once thought," Long said.

"What we found was like a microbial zoo," Wrighton said. "We thought that the respiring organisms -- those breathing metals and making carbon dioxide -- were our heavy lifters, but we found that fermentative organisms probably underpin their metabolism. These organisms produce as a bi-product acetate, lactate and ethanol as well as hydrogen and those are all components that these respiring organisms can use."

Wrighton, Banfield and their team are continuing metagenomic analyses of samples from the Rifle site, including some obtained before nutrients are added to determine what the natural population looks like. This will provide a comprehensive view of the metabolic potential of the subsurface that ultimately can be harnessed for bioremediation, Banfield said.

"Our research has lifted a veil on a large portion of bacterial life and enabled us to probe in great depth and detail these unknown and uncultured bacteria," said Wrighton, who hopes to use this information to raise the microbes in the laboratory. "We now have information, which is encoded in their genomic DNA, pertaining to what they look like, how they make their living in the environment, and the interactions they have with other organisms."

The work was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Biological and Environmental Research program. Coauthors of the paper include Brian C. Thomas, Itai Sharon and Christopher S. Miller of UC Berkeley; Long, Cindy J. Castelle and Kenneth H. Williams of LBNL; Nathan C. VerBerkmoes and Robert L. Hettich of ORNL; and Michael J. Wilkins and Mary S. Lipton of PNNL.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - Berkeley. The original article was written by Robert Sanders.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Kelly C. Wrighton, Brian C. Thomas, Itai Sharon, Christopher S. Miller, Cindy J. Castelle, Nathan C. VerBerkmoes, Michael J. Wilkins, Robert L. Hettich, Mary S. Lipton, Kenneth H. Williams, Philip E. Long, and Jillian F. Banfield. Fermentation, Hydrogen, and Sulfur Metabolism in Multiple Uncultivated Bacterial Phyla. Science, 2012; 337 (6102): 1661-1665 DOI: 10.1126/science.1224041

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/QOreq2RnlU8/120927141533.htm

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Wigan manager Martinez charged over ref criticism

Associated Press Sports

updated 9:55 a.m. ET Sept. 26, 2012

LONDON (AP) -The English Football Association has charged Wigan manager Roberto Martinez for publicly criticizing a referee.

Martinez was unhappy about a penalty being awarded to Manchester United, and about Danny Welbeck avoiding a red card in Wigan's 4-0 loss on Sept. 15.

The FA says Martinez was charged over "media comments which implied that the match referee and/or match officials in general are motivated by bias and/or brought the game into disrepute."

Martinez described Welbeck's challenge on Wigan forward Franco di Santo as "completely reckless," claiming there were tackles "if they had been the other way round ... would have been a couple of red cards."

Martinez said that at Old Trafford, Wigan "don't seem to be measured in the same manner as the team at home."

? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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