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CFO Jon A. Elde is leaving GTB Invest ASA. Deputy CEO Garup Meidell will take over the
roles of CFO. The transition will at the latest take place 31. October 2010.
GTB Invest ASA – Sjølyst plass 2, NO-0278 Oslo – Norway
Office: +47 23 01 49 73 – Fax: +47 23 01 49
www.gtbinvest.no http://www.ggs-spectrum.com/
Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mamut ASA, Martin Kværnstuen, will step down from the
position during 2H10. The company has started a process of strengthening the management
team, including the recruitment of a new CFO. Kværnstuen will serve as an advisor to the
company in order to ensure an efficient transition.
This information is subject of the disclosure requirements acc. to §5-12 vphl (Norwegian
Securities Trading Act)
HUG#1427941
London, May 12 (ANI): A British transsexual, who made a bid to boost her breast size on the NHS but was refused, has taken the matter to the High Court.
The woman, referred to only as Miss C, was seeking to overturn a refusal of funding for the treatment through a judicial review, reports the Daily Express.
Miss C, who began hormone treatment 12 years ago, says she was left in physical and psychological limbo by West Berkshire Primary Care Trust’s decision not to pay for her “breast augmentation”.
A case review committee ruled there was no compelling health reason for the procedure, which it described as cosmetic.
The court heard medical experts told Miss C her current size was insufficient to secure the “final transition from male to female”.
The hearing continues. (ANI)
Cancer Council Queensland (CCQ) has welcomed new funding from the Federal Government for chemotherapy services in Bundaberg, in the state’s southern region.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was in the Wide Bay last week announcing more than $8 million in funding for 14 new chemotherapy chairs at Bundaberg hospital.
Thirty-four new transition care places were also announced for the Wide Bay health region.
CCQ spokeswoman Anne Savage says it is great news.
“We welcome this funding. It’s an excellent outcome for Queensland,” she said.
“We were heavily involved in consultation with Queensland Health and various other organisations in making the applications for the funding so we believe these are the right outcomes for cancer patients.”
Former Queensland State of Origin centre Adam Mogg has returned to the NRL with Canberra after more than three years with French Super League side Les Catalans.
Mogg, who scored two tries on his Origin debut when he replaced an injured Greg Inglis in 2006, has agreed a deal with the Raiders until the end of this season after leaving the club at the end of 2006.
The 32-year-old will be a welcome addition to David Furner’s side, which has centres Joel Monaghan (thumb) and Justin Carney (leg) on the sidelines.
“I’m here to play footy,” Mogg said.
“I’ve missed the last two weeks with the transition of finishing off in France and coming here, but I’m ready to go.
“It’s going to be a challenge and a step up in class but that’s what sport’s all about.”
Mogg said he had added to his game playing in the Super League.
“I’ll sit down with the coaches and see what they think is best for me,” he said.
“I’ve developed my game a bit overseas. I’ve definitely changed and improved my game and I’ve played a lot of footy in the halves, but I’m coming back here and stepping up a class so we’ll wait and see.”
Mogg secured a release from his contract at the Perpignan-based Dragons.
“I got the call from Dave Furner two weeks ago and to be back here is a bit surreal but it’s something my family and I are happy about,” he said.
“I’ll finish this year off and see if I’m enjoying it and playing good footy and well see (about next year).”
- AAP
The Australian Defence Force Chief says he believes East Timorese forces will be able to take full responsibility for the country’s security in the near future.
The number of Australian troops in East Timor has been recently reduced to 400.
Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston says the East Timorese military are continuing to improve their professionalism.
He has told Australia Network that he is confident they will be able to take care of their own security.
“I think as we look forward they’ll reach that stage in the not too distant future,” he said.
“What we’re seeing at the moment is the United Nations transition a lot of the police stations around Timor Leste to the Timorese police service.”
New Delhi, Sep 16 (ANI): Union Environment and Forest Minister Jairam Ramesh said on Wednesday that India has developed a comprehensive Road Map and Action Plan to phase-out of production and consumption of Hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) in various sectors.
Addressing the gathering during the 15th International Ozone Day here Ramesh said: “The Government of India has taken a number of policy measures, fiscal and regulatory, to encourage the early adoption of alternative technologies in this area by existing and new enterprises.”
Ramesh hailed the Montreal Protocol as the most successful international treaty to ever achieve universal participation.
“At a time when the world is trying to solve the problem of climate change, the International Ozone Day provided a timely reminder of how international cooperation can help to solve major global environmental problems,” Ramesh added.
India is one of the first developing countries to join the Montreal Protocol and pledge its commitment to protect the Ozone Layer.
As a part of the accelerated phase-out of CFCs, India has completely phased out the production and consumption of CFCs as on 1 August 2008, 17 months prior to the agreed schedule.
Ramesh informed that over 97percent of controlled Ozone Depleting Substances (ODS) have been phased out by the Montreal Protocol.
“The end of 2009 will mark another significant milestone in the history of its implementation, with the use of potent ODSs -CFCs, Carbon Tetra Chloride (CTC) and Halons, except pharmaceutical-grade CFCs used in the manufacture of Metered Dose Inhalers (MDIs) – being ceased completely,” he said
The CFCs required for manufacturing for MDIs used by Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) patients are still available in India, a national transition strategy to phase them out by 2013 is currently under implementation.
“The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), with support from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the World Bank recently also launched the India: Chiller Energy Efficiency Project to accelerate the conversion of CFC-based chillers using new, more energy efficient technologies,” Ramesh said.
This year’s theme for the ozone day was ‘Universal participation – Ozone protection unifies the World.’ (ANI)
Washington, September 14 (ANI): In a major research study, the link between declining carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the earth’s atmosphere and the formation of the Antarctic ice caps some 34 million years ago has been confirmed for the first time.
The research was carried out by a team of scientists from Cardiff, Bristol and Texas A and M universities, in a small East African village, where they extracted microfossils in samples of rocks which show the level of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere at the time of the formation of the ice-cap.
Geologists have long speculated that the formation of the Antarctic ice-cap was caused by a gradually diminishing natural greenhouse effect.
The study’s findings confirm that atmospheric CO2 declined during the Eocene – Oligocene climate transition and that the Antarctic ice sheet began to form when CO2 in the atmosphere reached a tipping point of around 760 parts per million (by volume).
According to Professor Paul Pearson from Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, who led the mission to the remote East Africa village of Stakishari, “About 34 million years ago, the Earth experienced a mysterious cooling trend. Glaciers and small ice sheets developed in Antarctica, sea levels fell and temperate forests began to displace tropical-type vegetation in many areas.”
“The period, known to geologists as the Eocene – Oligocene transition, culminated in the rapid development of a continental-scale ice sheet on Antarctica, which has been there ever since,” he said.
“We therefore set out to establish whether there was a substantial decline in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels as the Antarctic ice sheet began to grow,” he added.
The team mapped large expanses of bush and wilderness and pieced together the underlying local rock formations using occasional outcrops of rocks and stream beds.
Eventually, they discovered sediments of the right age near a traditional African village called Stakishari.
By assembling a drilling rig and extracting hundreds of meters of samples from under the ground, they were able to obtain exactly the piece of Earth’s history they had been searching for.
According to co-author Dr Gavin Foster from the University of Bristol Earth Sciences Department, “By using the rather unique set of samples from Tanzania and a new analytical technique that I developed, we have, for the first time, been able to reconstruct the concentration of CO2 across the Eocene-Oligocene boundary – the time period about 34 million years ago when ice sheets first started to grow on Eastern Antarctica.” (ANI)
Melbourne, Sep 12 (ANI): Driving a silver car is a statement of success, but still white car, which is synonymous with change, has become the most popular colour for people’s vehicles around the world.
A yellow or red car screams that the person behind the wheels is a confident extrovert.
Colour and confidence go hand in hand, said University of Delaware psychologist Dr Peter Weil, who charts the psychology of car colours.
In his opinion, owning a white car may be taken to mean that one is bland and institutional.
But, in a recent study for DuPont, Weil discovered that white has become a popular global colour coinciding with the start of the global financial crisis.
“White is associated with transition,” the Herald Sun quoted Weil as saying.
Until 2006, silver, which is connected with high status, was the most popular colour and had been for six years.
On the other hand, younger drivers were likely to take risks with smaller cars by specifying bright, attention-seeking colours. (ANI)
Washington, September 10 (ANI): Scientists, in a new research, have found that about 34 million years ago, Antarctica had more room for ice than previously thought.
Scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara, US, carried out the research.
About 34 million years ago, during the Eocene-Oligocene transition, Earth’s climate shifted from warmer to cooler.
Models for the growth of the Antarctic ice sheet during that transition show a lot of ice in East Antarctica, but very little in West Antarctica.
Other data, however, indicate that much more ice must have existed than those models predict, so climate scientists had trouble explaining where all the ice formed.
To resolve the issue, Douglas S. Wilson and Bruce P. Luyendyk from the University of California, Santa Barbara, created a new model of the topography of Antarctica around 34 million years ago, taking into account several geologic factors that have affected topography since the Eocene-Oligocene transition but have not been considered in other models.
Their reconstruction shows that West Antarctica had a higher elevation 34 million years ago than previously thought.
This adds about 10-20 percent to the total land area above sea level, creating additional area that could have held ice during the formation of the Antarctic ice sheet.
According to the researchers, the study will help improve understanding of the formation of Antarctic ice and will be useful for global climate models. (ANI)
Washington, Sep 9 (ANI): An over-expressed protein can convert active but non-invasive breast cancer into a different cell type, and thereby turn it into invasive breast cancer, according to scientists at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.
The researchers say that overexpression of the protein 14-3-3? (zeta) launches a molecular cascade that removes bonds that tie the pre-malignant cells together, and hold them in place, converting them from stationary epithelial cells to highly mobile mesenchymal-like cells.
This epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is recognized as a crucial step in metastasis, the spread of cancer to distant organs that causes 90 percent of all cancer deaths.
“We have discovered a key molecular mechanism for the deadly transition of non-invasive breast cancer into invasive disease,” said senior author Dr. Dihua Yu.
The researchers have shown that the zeta protein teams up with the oncoprotein ErbB2, also known as HER2, in a two-hit process to convert normal mammary cells to invasive cancer cells.
The findings of the study also provided a biomarker in zeta to identify high-risk patients for more aggressive treatment before their noninvasive breast cancer converts to invasive disease.
The researchers also got new therapeutic targets among the components of the molecular pathway launched by zeta.
According to Yu, some drugs already aim at these targets.
In addition, they found a solution to a puzzling mystery about how a subset of non-invasive breast cancer with excessive presence of an ErbB2/HER2 develops into invasive breast cancer.
Earlier, the researchers showed that zeta is over-expressed in many other cancer types, like lung, liver, uterine, stomach cancers.
“Our findings might have broader implications relating to the mechanism of invasion and metastasis in other types of cancer,” Yu said.
The researchers said that it would be very challenging to target zeta by drugs because it also regulates other important proteins in normal cellular processes.
The study has been published in the journal Cancer Cell. (ANI)
New Delhi, Sep 8 (ANI/Business Wire India): Microsoft India and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) – a leading IT services, consulting, business solutions and outsourcing firm today announced a strategic alliance between the two companies to launch Microsoft-TCS virtualization Center of Excellence (CoE) in Chennai.
Designed to help customers experience the right approach to applying and managing virtualization across IT architectural layers (namely server, machine, application and desktop) in their business environments – the CoE will leverage best of breed Microsoft technologies (such as Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008) to showcase virtualization scenarios to customers.
The Microsoft-TCS virtualization CoE is a joint initiative by the companies to accelerate the adoption of virtualization technology in India.
“Virtualization is one of the most disruptive technologies in the world today. Though there is adequate knowledge on the benefits of virtualization – only 5% of the world’s servers are virtualized today! There is a clear gap between awareness and adoption of this technology – which has emerged from the lack of guidance among customers around actual implementation of this technology and their inability to demystify the conceptual transition from physical to virtual environments. Through our partnership with TCS to launch the virtualization CoE, we will address this crucial market need and help customers land the benefits of virtualization technology in accordance with their business requirements”, said Rajan Anandan (Managing Director, Microsoft India).
“We are always looking to enhance the services we provide to our customers. Virtualization has clearly emerged as a revolutionary technology with wide reaching implications for global as well as Indian businesses – one that our customers are showing a great deal of interest in. Due to its key benefits such as improved performance, reduced total cost of ownership and increased availability of IT infrastructure – virtualization is increasingly being viewed as an imperative technology by customers, specifically in these challenging economic times,” said P. R. Krishnan (Vice President and Global Head IT Infrastructure Services, TCS).
“The Microsoft-TCS virtualization CoE is an initiative aimed at enabling our customers rapidly realize the advantages of this revolutionary technology. Based on robust virtualization solutions from Microsoft – the CoE will leverage best of breed technologies that are best suited to help our customers stay ahead in today’s competitive market environment”, added Krishnan.
The Microsoft-TCS virtualization CoE will deliver a heightened user experience that will help customers demystify Virtualization: migration from physical to virtual environments, user experience and performance, management of physical and virtual infrastructure from a single console – and experience how virtualization technology deployment in the datacenter can enable improved performance, higher availability and lower cost of ownership of IT infrastructure.
With a holistic approach to virtualization, Microsoft addresses its customers’ end-to-end virtualization requirements – with technologies and solutions spanning across the datacenter to the desktop, and from implementation to management (both virtual and physical resources). (ANI)
Washington, September 8 (ANI): A new report by an international team of researchers has determined that aquaculture, once a fledgling industry, now accounts for 50 percent of the fish consumed globally.
The findings are published in the Sept. 7 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
“Aquaculture is set to reach a landmark in 2009, supplying half of the total fish and shellfish for human consumption,” according to the authors.
Between 1995 and 2007, global production of farmed fish nearly tripled in volume, in part because of rising consumer demand for long-chain omega-3 fatty acids.
Oily fish, such as salmon, are a major source of these omega-3s, which are effective in reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease, according to the National Institutes of Health.
“The huge expansion is being driven by demand,” said lead author Rosamond L. Naylor, a professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Program on Food Security and the Environment.
“As long as we are a health-conscious population trying to get our most healthy oils from fish, we are going to be demanding more of aquaculture and putting a lot of pressure on marine fisheries to meet that need,” Naylor added.
To maximize growth and enhance flavor, aquaculture farms use large quantities of fishmeal and fish oil made from less valuable wild-caught species, including anchoveta and sardine.
“With the production of farmed fish eclipsing that of wild fish, another major transition is also underway: Aquaculture’s share of global fishmeal and fish oil consumption more than doubled over the past decade to 68 percent and 88 percent, respectively,” said the authors.
In 2006, aquaculture production was 51.7 million metric tons, and about 20 million metric tons of wild fish were harvested for the production of fishmeal.
“It can take up to 5 pounds of wild fish to produce 1 pound of salmon, and we eat a lot of salmon,” said Naylor, the William Wrigley Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
One way to make salmon farming more environmentally sustainable is to simply lower the amount of fish oil in the salmon’s diet.
According to the authors, a mere 4 percent reduction in fish oil would significantly reduce the amount of wild fish needed to produce 1 pound of salmon from 5 pounds to just 3.9 pounds. (ANI)
Washington, September 3 (ANI): In a new research, scientists have identified ‘tipping points’ at which sudden shifts to new conditions occur in the world.
The research was done by Martin Scheffer of Wageningen University in The Netherlands and co-authors, including William Brock and Stephen Carpenter of the University of Wisconsin at Madison and George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.
They found that abrupt changes in ocean circulation and Earth’s climate, shifts in wildlife populations and ecosystems, the global finance market and its system-wide crashes, and asthma attacks and epileptic seizures share generic early-warning signals that indicate a critical threshold of change dead ahead.
The team found that similar symptoms occur in many systems as they approach a critical state of transition.
“It’s increasingly clear that many complex systems have critical thresholds – ‘tipping points’ – at which these systems shift abruptly from one state to another,” according to the scientists.
Especially relevant, they discovered, is that “catastrophic bifurcations,” a diverging of the ways, propel a system toward a new state once a certain threshold is exceeded.
A system follows a trail for so long, then often comes to a switchpoint at which it will strike out in a completely new direction.
That system may be as tiny as the alveoli in human lungs or as large as global climate.
“These are compelling insights into the transitions in human and natural systems,” said Henry Gholz, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Division of Environmental Biology, which supported the research along with NSF’s Division of Ocean Sciences.
“The information comes at a critical time – a time when Earth’s and, our fragility, have been highlighted by global financial collapses, debates over health care reform, and concern about rapid change in climate and ecological systems,” he added.
It all comes down to what scientists call “squealing,” or “variance amplification near critical points,” when a system moves back and forth between two states.
“A system may shift permanently to an altered state if an underlying slow change in conditions persists, moving it to a new situation,” said Carpenter.
According to scientists, “In systems in which we can observe transitions repeatedly, such as lakes, ranges or fields, and such as human physiology, we may discover where the thresholds are.”
“If we have reason to suspect the possibility of a critical transition, early-warning signals may be a significant step forward in judging whether the probability of an event is increasing,” they added. (ANI)
Washington, Sept 2 (ANI): NASA’s Orion spacecraft has passed a significant design milestone by completing the Orion Project’s preliminary design review (PDR), and thus taking a major step toward building the next crew exploration vehicle.
Orion is being designed to carry astronauts to the International Space Station and other destinations.
The preliminary design review is one of a series of checkpoints that occurs in the design life cycle of a complex engineering project before hardware manufacturing can begin.
As the review process progresses, details of the vehicle’s design are assessed to ensure the overall system is safe and reliable for flight and meets all NASA mission requirements.
The Orion features a capsule-shaped crew module designed for maximum crew operability and safety, a service module housing utility systems and propulsion components and a launch abort system for improved astronaut safety.
The preliminary design review evaluated the vehicle’s capability, as currently designed, to support three types of missions: flights to the International Space Station (ISS), weeklong missions to the moon and missions to the moon for up to 210 days.
“This is the successful culmination of all of the design trade studies and activities to date,” said Mark Geyer, manager of the Orion Project Office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“As a project, a program and an agency, we are reviewing the design maturity, strategy and plans for NASA’s next human spacecraft and agreeing that this is the architecture we are going to build,” he added.
Teams representing each subsystem of Orion conducted focused reviews from February to July before proceeding to the overall vehicle-level review.
The preliminary design review lasted about two months and included reviewers from all 10 NASA field centers to evaluate the hundreds of design products delivered by the Lockheed Martin-led industry partnership.
According to Cleon Lacefield, vice president and Orion project manager at Lockheed Martin in Denver, “To date, we have completed more than 300 technical reviews, 100 peer reviews and 18 subsystem design reviews.”
The PDR process culminated with a review board that concluded on August 31 and established the basis for proceeding to the critical design phase of Orion.
NASA will continue the review process with an independent agency-level evaluation to validate the PDR results and gain formal approval to transition the project into the next life cycle phase. (ANI)
Washington, August 26 (ANI): A New study ahs shown that the brain predicts what one is going to see before the eyes take in a new scene.
Published in the Journal of Vision, a research article on the study reveals that people participating in it were asked to shift their eyes to a clock with a fast-moving hand, and to report the time on the clock when their eyes landed on it.
The report says that the average reported time was 39 milliseconds before the actual time.
As a control task, the clock moved instead of the eyes, and the reported arrival times averaged 27 milliseconds after the actual time.
“We’ve revealed a moment in time when things are not perceived as they actually are. These findings serve as a reminder that every aspect of our experience is constructed by our brains,” said lead researcher Dr. Amelia Hunt, of the University of Aberdeen’s School of Psychology.
The study suggests that the prediction is a result of remapping, where neurons involved in visual perception become active or dormant to help the brain maintain a stable visual environment despite the constant shift of images on the retina.
The report says: “Remapping allows locations to be continuously represented across the eye movement by maintaining both current and expected locations simultaneously, facilitating the transition between the two.” Hunt added: “The finding implies that we experience the predicted consequence of an eye movement as though it is actually occurring, albeit just for a moment.”
Hunt said that the research might lead to more investigation of the brain’s ability to predict and its role in perception, as well as the link between brain activity and actual experience.
She said that the next step might be to examine under what circumstances predictive processes occur, what function they serve, and to what degree they influence the perception of events. (ANI)
London, Aug 25 (ANI): The stupendous success of Danny Boyle’s ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ is unlikely to be repeated, say insiders.
The ongoing credit crisis has hit independent film companies quite hard, as 59 such companies have wrapped up in past 18 months, while others are struggling for funds.
According to the report released by PricewaterhouseCoopers, indie companies such as Lucky 7, which made film Modigliani about the life of the Italian artist and Palm Tree UK, behind feature films Lost in Landscape and Winter Warrior, have gone bust.
The company Stormrider Films, which had scheduled to bring out “a British sci-fi feature film like no other ever produced in the UK” with CGI effects, called Kaleidoscope Man, has also gone bankrupt.
Christian Colson, producer of Slumdog Millionaire, fears that the trend might ultimately leave Britain drained of creativity
“It will be easier to get a 100m dollars film made than a really good 15m-dollar film,” The Independent quoted him as saying.
John Woodward, chief executive of the UK Film Council, admitted that independent film companies “are facing something of a perfect storm”.
“The debt which essentially financed their films is harder to secure… and the transition to digital has prompted a rise in piracy – so there’s a real strain on traditional fund raising.”
He, however, added that despite these challenges, the best projects were “still getting financed”.
The economic downturn has discouraged banks and high-risk investors to put in their money.
“Investors are more risk-averse than usual, so are either looking for more genre-driven material, more established directors, or bigger name cast before they’ll invest…,” said Andrea Calderwood, an independent film producer with Slate Films who won a BAFTA for the film The Last King of Scotland.
“Films are also taking longer to come together – either because the top talent is not available, or because financiers are taking longer to make decisions,” Calderwood added.
The PwC report stated that while big studio blockbusters were drawing huge audiences to cinema multiplexes, indie films were deteriorating.
It said: “The recession has sent hoards of consumers to the cinema and therefore large scale, expensive films such as Harry Potter remain in production and eagerly awaited. However, due to the credit crunch, sources of financing for smaller indie films have dried up – meaning many plots remain on the story board.” (ANI)
Washington, August 25 (ANI): Archaeologists at the University of Bradford are all set to lead an exploration into how prehistoric people made their living in Italy at the end of the Ice Age.
According to a report in Bradford Telegraph and Argus, the research aims to find out how hunter-gatherers in Mediterranean Europe survived before farming became widespread and why the transition to agriculture was a smooth one.
Researchers will use high-precision dating to accurately age occupation layers in archaeological cave sites and identify which animals were being hunted by the prehistoric people by studying bones found at sites. he team will also use isotope analyses to identify if the hunted animals migrated seasonally.
“This project brings together cutting edge scientific analyses and traditional archaeological approaches for understanding in the past,” said lead researcher Dr Randolph Donahue.
“It will assist us in explaining how and why people shifted smoothly towards adopting agriculture in Mediterranean Europe following its introduction from the Near East,” he added.
The work will include a study of the production and use of stone tools discarded at the sites to understand how prehistoric people were using the caves.
The results of these combined methods will evaluate which of two theories best explains the food procurement strategies of hunter-gatherers in Mediterranean Europe during the end of the Ice Age.
The first theory suggests prehistoric people followed herds of animals year round in order to hunt them for food while the second theory suggests people moved around the landscape far less by relying far more heavily on small animals, fish and plants.
The project involves more than 20 researchers at ten universities and research centres in the UK, Italy and Germany. (ANI)
Washington, July 7 (ANI): A new study of ancient fossils has determined that the earliest land vertebrates, also known as tetrapods, were more diverse than we could possibly imagine.
The study was done by Jennifer Clack, a paleontologist at the University of Cambridge, who has studied the fossils of these extinct creatures for more than two decades.
Long before mammals, birds, and even dinosaurs roamed the Earth, the first four-legged creatures made their first steps onto land, and quickly inhabited a wide range of terrestrial environments.
“These early land vertebrates varied considerably in size and shape,” said Clack.
To understand the anatomical changes that accompanied this diversity, Clack teamed up with two biologists who work on living fishes – Charles Kimmel of the University of Oregon, and Brian Sidlauskas of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in North Carolina.
The researchers focused on 35 early tetrapods that lived between 385 and 275 million years ago.
As a proxy for body size and shape, they examined the dimensions of a number of bones in a region of the skull known as the palate.
By tracing changes in the length and width of interlocking bones in this part of the skull, the researchers hoped to get a more fine-grained picture of skeleton evolution as a whole.
“I tend to think the genetic instructions for making a skeleton come from how you make individual bones first, and then how you fit those bones together as a refinement of that,” said developmental biologist Charles Kimmel.
When they mapped the changes in bone length and width onto the tetrapod family tree, the researchers discovered that not all bones changed size at the same rate or in the same direction.
This phenomenon can result in an overall reshaping from one lineage to the next, explained Sidlauskas.
“Sometimes a change in size can have indirect consequences for the shape of the animal. When different parts of an animal’s body change size at different rates over evolutionary time, that can generate changes in body shape from one species to another,” he added.
Moreover, some changes are consistent with an evolutionary quirk known as paedomorphosis, in which species retain in adulthood the youthful dimensions that their ancestors had as juveniles.
“Paedomorphosis is definitely there – the descendents of some groups are retaining the proportions that their juveniles had in the past,” said Clack.
These results not only help explain why early tetrapods were so diverse in size and shape, but also shed light on an important chapter in the evolution of life on land – the transition from fish to amphibians. (ANI)
New Delhi, June 29 (ANI): Bhutan’s Prime Minister, Lyonchen Jigmi Y. Thinley, will pay a four-day working visit to New Delhi from June 30 to July 3, 2009.
He would be the first Head of Government to visit India during the second term of the Prime Minister, Dr. manmohan Singh.
Prime Minister Thinley had paid a state visit to India in July 2008 as the first democratically elected Prime Minister after Bhutan’s historic transition to a Democratic Constitutional Monarchy. He, thereafter, visited India in November 2008 to participate in the 2nd BIMSTEC Summit in New Delhi.
During his visit, Thinley will call on President Pratibha Devisingh Patil and meet with Dr. Singh, Sonia Gandhi,the Chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and External Affairs Minister S.M.Krishna.
e will arrive in the Indian capital on Tuesday morning. Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon will call on him at the Hotel Taj Mahal at 6 p.m.
On Wednesday, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee will call on the visiting dignitary at 11.15 a.m. Thereafter, the Bhutanese Prime Minister will call on President Patil at noon.
External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna will call on Prime Minister Thinley at 4.15 p.m., while Leader of Opposition L.K. Advani will meet him at 5 p.m.
At 6 p.m., he will meet Sonia Gandhi.
Delegation-level talks between the two countries will take place at Hyderabad House on the same day at 7.15 p.m.
He will return to Thimpu on Friday afternoon. (ANI)
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