News article:

After first testing the idea of using drones to deliver packages to extra remote locations, UPS is making its move into more residential skies with octocopters that can be launched from roving trucks.

 The company says it successfully tested the HorseFly drone yesterday in Lithia, FL, along with the company that built both the drone and the electric UPS vehicle that launches it, Workhorse Group.

 The drone docks on the roof of the delivery truck, and a cage suspended beneath it extends through a hatch into the vehicle. A driver on the inside loads a package into the cage, presses a button on a touch screen, and sends the drone flying on a preset autonomous route to its destination.

 The battery-powered HorseFly drones recharge during docking, and have a 30-minute flight time limit, carrying a package weighing up to 10 pounds.

 For this test, UPS launched the vehicle from the roof of a truck about a quarter mile away to a blueberry farm. The octocopter delivered its payload at a home on the property and then flew back to the truck, which had moved down the road to allow its driver to make another delivery.

 UPS says the system is different from its other drone work thus far, and could make the company’s network more efficient while reducing emissions.

 “It has implications for future deliveries, especially in rural locations where our package cars often have to travel miles to make a single delivery,” said Mark Wallace, UPS senior vice president of global engineering and sustainability. “Imagine a triangular delivery route where the stops are miles apart by road. Sending a drone from a package car to make just one of those deliveries can reduce costly miles driven.”

 As always with these tests, it’s worth noting are still obstacles to drone deliveries: Federal Aviation Administration regulations don’t allow commercial drones to fly over any humans not involved in operating them, and requires them to stay within line of sight of their pilots at all times — something drivers could ostensibly do from their trucks in this case, depending on how far away the destination is.

 Elsewhere in the delivery-drone-filled skies, Amazon completed its first residential drone-delivery in England in December, and recently filed a patent for a drone that could drop off packages by way of parachutes, electromagnets, or spring coils. ||||| On a blueberry farm outside of Tampa, Florida, on Monday, UPS tested the use of drones for residential delivery for the first time.

 The logistics juggernaut specifically launched an octocopter, or multi-rotor drone, from the top of a delivery van. The drone delivered a package directly to a home, then returned to the van which had now moved down the road to a new location. The van pulled the drone down with robotic arms, to dock on its roof.

 The drone used in Monday’s test was made by Ohio-based Workhorse Group Inc., already a UPS technology supplier. Workhorse builds commercial, hybrid electric trucks, batteries and develops aerospace technologies as well. UPS has purchased 350 of its electric hybrid trucks, 125 of which are already on the road today. The company’s new HorseFly UAV Delivery system used in the UPS test was tailored to work with its vehicles.

 The truck for the test was custom-built to be able to launch the HorseFly drone from its roof, then grab it upon its return with robotic arms. A cage suspended beneath the drone extends through a hatch in the truck, where the drone can be lowered down and loaded up with another package. While docked, the drone recharges through a physical connection between its arms and the truck’s electric battery.

 The concept of delivery vans that launch drones is not new. Mercedes Benz and drone tech startup Matternet revealed plans to develop “Vision Vans,” which launch Matternet’s delivery drones from Mercedes-Benzs trucks, back in September of 2016. They unveiled a real world version of the delivery vans at CES, as well.

 According to UPS Vice President of Engineering, John Dodero, the company’s goal is to have drones work off of any type of vehicle, whether gas-powered or electric, to make last-mile deliveries. “That nest that we have on top of the car would be able to be put on any car, but we have to make sure it has the capabilities and it’s set up to do the charging,” he explains.

 As for the HorseFly itself, the 9.5-pound drone features a carbon fiber construction, is powered by a proprietary lithium 18650 battery pack, and capable of a 30-minute flight time at a top speed of 45 miles per hour, the company says. By contrast, most consumer drones will only fly for about 22 minutes. The HorseFly can carry a package up to 10 pounds, allowing UPS to handle a wide range of residential deliveries. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Don't be too nervous if you were in Lithia, Fla., earlier in the week and spotted a UPS truck launching a device from its roof to a nearby blueberry farm. It was all part of a test of a new drone-delivery feature the company hopes to bring to residential areas, Consumerist reports. The Workhorse Group's HorseFly unit—which can buzz along for about a half-hour, carrying packages that don't exceed 10 pounds—traveled a quarter-mile or so from the truck to the farm, dropped off its package, then circled back to find the UPS truck, on its way to a new destination. TechCrunch reviewed the test runs and said the process "still needs work," noting that interference caused one launch to be aborted. Reuters reports the experiment followed on the tail of a UPS announcement that automation and new technology were high on the company's priority list. Mark Wallace, a UPS senior VP, explains to Consumerist that rural areas could be a particularly viable place for the truck-launched drones, as a truck could settle in the middle of a "triangular delivery route" and send the drone to different destinations. Another UPS exec, John Dodero, tells Reuters that there's no set timeline for getting the drones into wider circulation because federal regulations are in flux. FAA rules, for example, currently require commercial drones to stay in operators' view, and they can only buzz over their operators, not other people. (Inc. notes the risk to those below if the drone malfunctions and drops the package.) One thing Dodero can speak clearly to: "UPS is never looking to replace our UPS drivers," he tells Reuters. (Amazon has also been experimenting with drone delivery.)


Article:
The mobile company is expected to post a net loss for the first fiscal quarter and could continue those troubles in the coming quarters.

 (Credit: RIM)

 It's no secret that Research In Motion is in deep trouble. But most analysts expect the company to only further prove that point later today.

 After the market closes, RIM will announce its fiscal first-quarter earnings, which consensus among Wall Street analysts pegs at a net loss of 3 cents per share on $3.1 billion in revenue. During the same period last year, RIM posted a profit of $1.33 per share on nearly $5 billion in revenue.

 As one might expect, the more bearish analysts out there have been chiming in on their expectations for RIM's earnings. In fact, Jefferies analyst Peter Misek told All Things Digital in an interview published today that the earnings announcement is "going to be terrible with a scoop of worse for August," seeming to indicate that RIM will be providing guidance for its next quarter that could look even more concerning to investors. Well, for those investors who are actually left, that is.

 Over the last year, RIM has suffered through a fire sale, shaving off 68 percent of its stock value and watching its market capitalization fall to $4.8 billion yesterday. Since the beginning of this year alone, the company's shares are down 37 percent.

 Those troubles, coupled with plummeting device sales and a seemingly confused management team, have prompted many to wonder if it's time for the company to sell. Recently, rumors surfaced saying RIM might try to unload its devices business to focus on services and leverage its intellectual property. However, Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair said earlier this week that his company doesn't "believe that RIM has much to offer."

 "Yes, the company has real intellectual property around email delivery, and they still do some things that companies like Apple can't (ever try to delete an email on an iPhone when not connected to the network?) but overall, their manufacturing capability isn't worth much in our view," he wrote in a research note.

 Regardless, RIM must look to the future and decide once and for all how it can extricate itself from its current decline. Wedge analyst Brian Blair has an awfully dour view, however, on where he sees RIM heading in the coming year.

 "RIM finds itself in such a situation with an aging product line and nothing that appears able to change its fate in the pipeline," Blair wrote recently in a note obtained by All Things Digital. "We see a steep drop off in revenues and units near term, punctuated by a drop in subscriber adds, and an OS refresh that is largely ignored by carriers and consumers alike, driving RIM into a forced sale in 2013." ||||| WATERLOO, Ontario—As the BlackBerry smartphone fell steadily further behind app-loaded rivals like the iPhone in recent years, it was time for an unambiguous response from the chief executive's office.

 RIM is expected to report an operating loss following a decline caused partly by overconfidence in its keyboard devices amid the rise of touch-screen smartphones. Will Connors reports on digits. Photo: AP.

 At Research In Motion Ltd., however, that was complicated. The BlackBerry maker had two chief executives. Moreover, their offices were about a 10-minute drive apart. Meetings with both of them present were rare, say former RIM executives and people who dealt with the company.

 Many forces have combined to bring RIM to the point of reporting a quarterly operating loss, as is expected on Thursday, but one of them was a split personality in the executive suite, former executives say. As investor pressure mounted at the company recently, one CEO, company founder Mike Lazaridis, was focused on a make-or-break push to launch a next-generation BlackBerry with a new operating system. His co-CEO, Jim Balsillie, started pursuing a separate strategy that envisioned licensing out some of the company's proprietary technologies.

 Both men are gone from the CEO suite now, replaced in January by former Lazaridis lieutenant Thorsten Heins. He is slashing costs. RIM says it is committed to seeing through the rollout later this year of its next BlackBerry. But Mr. Heins has hired investment bankers to explore options and hasn't ruled out a sale of a company, whose stock has tanked nearly 70% in 12 months and pushed its market value, at under $5 billion, to less than one-fifteenth of its peak.

 RIM still has a comfortable cash cushion of more than $2 billion, which it said last month is likely to have grown in its fiscal first quarter ended June 2. It also is debt-free, giving it more breathing room to get out its new phone, with an operating system called BlackBerry 10 that RIM says "sets the standard for reliable, secure mobile computing." RIM has told its bankers it is focused on that rollout, said a person familiar with the matter. If the phone is a hit, the company will recover some of its lost value, and the new technology will be a boon to any possible sale or partnership in the future, this person said.

 According to interviews with more than a dozen former RIM executives and industry executives who worked closely with the company, it was a blinding confidence in the basic BlackBerry product that was at the root of RIM's current troubles. Compounding that, as they describe the events, were a drawn-out internal debate over who their core customer was; a series of catch-up products that didn't really catch the company up; and tensions within parts of the company.

 The bet long made by RIM was that both corporate and individual customers would continue to favor the BlackBerry's easy-to-use mobile email over the multiplying features and apps on Apple Inc.'s iPhone and devices running on Google Inc.'s Android operating system. When it saw consumers starting to gravitate away from BlackBerrys, RIM moved tentatively.

 At one point, RIM worked to challenge the iPhone with telecom carriers that were fearful of Apple's dominance. The new models that came out of these collaborations, however, failed to generate iPhone-like buzz.

 RIM isn't alone in failing to adapt quickly to the transformation of smartphones from devices to talk and email into pocket-size computers. Once-dominant Nokia Corp. has been forced into a partnership with Microsoft Corp. to equip its phones to compete, and is slashing thousands of jobs as its share of the global smartphone market erodes.

 At RIM, executives eventually brought in outside talent, but that raised tensions inside the ranks of a company that already harbored separate Lazaridis and Balsillie fiefs, some former RIM executives and executives who have worked with RIM say. According to them, the separate teams sometimes clashed, especially as the onetime smartphone leader slipped further behind.

 RIM, in a statement, said the split-personality characterization wasn't accurate. "As with any innovative company there were times when various people within the organization disagreed, but this was not the norm," it said.

 "The CEO structure worked well for many years and allowed each of the co-CEOs to focus on their areas of strength," RIM added. It said the co-CEOs started out sharing an office, had offices next to each other, and then, "as RIM grew, they each took offices closest to those areas each supervised in order to stay close to their teams. At all times, they had an efficient, professional working relationship and were in close communication."

 Read More Investors Brace for RIM's Results

 Mr. Heins, soon after taking over as CEO early this year, put an end to the strategy pursued by one CEO: Mr. Balsillie's licensing initiative. RIM said it doesn't discuss nonpublic internal deliberations.

 Mr. Balsillie has given up his board seat. Mr. Lazaridis remains nonexecutive vice chairman.

 "Successful companies take what they can learn from every situation and use that to push forward," Mr. Lazaridis said, noting that he and Mr. Balsillie "felt it was the right time in RIM's life cycle to turn the leadership of the company over to someone else." Mr. Balsillie didn't respond to requests for comment.

 RIM didn't make Mr. Heins available, citing a quiet period before the earnings release.

 RIM essentially invented email on the go. Founded by Mr. Lazaridis in 1984 with a $15,000 loan from his parents, the company grew to a stock-market value of more than $80 billion at its zenith in 2008, controlling about half the U.S. smartphone market.

 Enlarge Image Close David Manning/Reuters RRIM CEO Thorsten Heins

 RIM hosted lavish banquets for its inventors. To mark milestones, it treated employees to concerts by bands such as U2 and Van Halen. At the company's campus of low-slung gray buildings 70 miles from Toronto, employees got free ice cream on "Frosty Fridays."

 Amid its cost-cutting, RIM isn't giving up entirely on ice cream days. "Ice cream is a relatively low-cost way to build stronger bonds within our team," RIM said.

 Mr. Balsillie, who came aboard in 1992 after having explored a takeover bid for the company, and Mr. Lazaridis became Canada's best-known billionaires, each funneling chunks of wealth to pet projects. Mr. Lazaridis built a theoretical-physics institute. Mr. Balsillie started a school for global governance and tried unsuccessfully to buy three professional hockey teams.

 Behind the success was Mr. Lazaridis's unrelenting vision for robust engineering and innovation and Mr. Balsillie's push for market expansion. But former executives say there was also an aversion at the company to innovations that didn't buttress its core strengths: its proprietary network and reputation for security.

 At an investor meeting about a decade ago, analysts asked Mr. Lazaridis whether RIM was moving to a color screen, a feature popping up on devices in Asia. "Do I need to read my email in color?" he replied, according to Brian Blair, then an analyst with Banc of America Securities.

 Enlarge Image Close Mike Cassese/Reuters Former co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie in January

 RIM says that at the time, color screens were impractical, with high costs and high battery drain. It says it was among the first to adopt color displays just a few years later.

 RIM's customers then were overwhelmingly companies, which gave their employees BlackBerrys for email. But a growing number were individuals, often eager for features such as cameras, games and Internet browsing. RIM brought out devices with cameras and MP3 players including the Pearl in 2006 and the Curve in 2007—the year the iPhone came out.

 Still, RIM's carrier partners worried that the wild popularity of the iPhone could give Apple outsize influence in the market. Executives at Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC approached RIM to work together on a phone that could compete with the iPhone, say people familiar with the matter. The collaboration resulted in RIM's first touch-screen device, the Storm.

 "Vodafone started really rushing around saying, 'Helps us build an innovative competitor to the iPhone,' " said Pieter Knook, a Vodafone executive at the time. He said Mr. Lazaridis came up with the Storm's marquee innovation, a touch screen that physically clicked.

 The Storm "sold very well," but wasn't a strong competitor to the iPhone, said Denny Strigl, at the time president of Verizon.

 In 2010, AT&T Inc., then Apple's exclusive carrier partner, approached RIM about a plan to develop a touch-screen rival to the iPhone, said two former RIM executives. The chief of AT&T's mobile division visited RIM's research and development team in Waterloo to stress how important it was for AT&T to have a successful BlackBerry product to sell, according to people familiar with the visit. RIM said the objective of the visit was to develop "a differentiated, unique BlackBerry experience for AT&T customers."

 "We work with all device makers to bring the best products to market for our customers," AT&T said.

 A RIM-AT&T collaboration resulted in the BlackBerry Torch, say people familiar with the effort, but it was hobbled by hardware and software shortcomings.

 RIM executives also missed some internal warnings. The sales division produced a research report in 2010 on the future of tactile keyboards, the thumb-friendly feature that was a favorite in the early days of the BlackBerry. The report warned that in the era of Apple's touch-only devices, keyboards would make up a diminishing share of the market, according to a person familiar with it, who said the warning was ignored.

 During a meeting the same year, Mr. Balsillie asked if RIM should be worried about a new trend: consumers bringing their own smartphones to work and asking their employer to let them work on the devices. Some executives said the trend was a threat; a few said they weren't worried. Mr. Balsillie went with the latter view, said a person close to the company. RIM said it doesn't discuss nonpublic "internal company deliberations."

 As Apple and Android devices ate into BlackBerry's market share, Mr. Lazaridis started looking outside for innovation, bringing in a new marketing team and other top executives. In April 2010 RIM bought QNX Software Systems, a maker of operating systems for cars and medical devices. RIM was readying a tablet to compete with the iPad, and executives decided that they would use QNX to power the device, called the PlayBook.

 According to people close to the company, the acquisition stoked tensions between the teams led by Mr. Lazaridis, who was in charge of product development, manufacturing and R&D, and Mr. Balsillie, who ran carrier partnerships, sales and marketing.

 The two CEOs met in person fairly regularly, and would send instant messages or call each other to bounce ideas around or get progress reports when they weren't in the same room. But as RIM hit trouble, they were more often than not toiling in very different worlds, according to these people, who say the teams reporting up to the two didn't communicate effectively if at all. Some projects would go astray before either co-CEO noticed, these people say, and disagreements between the two sides sometimes devolved into shouting matches.

 The QNX leadership team reported directly to Mr. Lazaridis, bypassing Mr. Balsillie and other top RIM officers, rankling them, according to people familiar with the situation.

 Meanwhile, by late 2011, Mr. Balsillie was deep into his own project, an effort aimed at licensing some of RIM's proprietary technology, such as its security network and its popular BBM messaging tool, to outside companies. Some analysts had long suggested such a move to boost revenue and buy the company more time as it readied its new phone.

 Mr. Balsillie and a team under him struck licensing agreements with several partners, including carriers, according to people familiar with the effort. The deals would have allowed other smartphone makers and the carriers to use RIM's network for a fee.

 But by the end of last year, RIM shares were hitting eight-year lows. On Jan. 22, the board, led by Messrs. Lazaridis and Balsillie as co-chairmen, said the two would step aside. They remained big shareholders and each kept a board seat.

 Within a week of becoming CEO, Mr. Heins, a Lazaridis lieutenant, scuttled the licensing plan, people familiar with it said. He said he would focus a slimmed-down RIM on rolling out its new BlackBerry phones.

 —Anton Troianovski, Jessica E. Vascellaro and Anupreeta Das contributed to this article.

 Write to Will Connors at william.connors@wsj.com |||||Summary:

– Research in Motion is announcing its earnings today, and they're "going to be terrible with a scoop of worse for August," an analyst tells CNET. How did things get so bad for the BlackBerry maker? It started at the top, the Wall Street Journal says in a lengthy piece detailing RIM's woes: For years, the company had two CEOs, each pulling the company in different directions. Their offices were a 10 minute drive apart, and they rarely attended the same meetings. RIM insists the two-CEO structure worked fine, though both have since been replaced. But that wasn't the company's only woe: Analysts and ex-executives alike say the company put too much faith in its core BlackBerry product, and resisted innovations that didn't fit its paradigm. At an investor meeting 10 years ago, for instance, an investor asked founder and then-co-CEO Mike Lazaridis if the BlackBerry would get a color screen, then just emerging on phones. Lazaridis replied, "Do I need to read my email in color?'


News article:

Seth Meyers‘ baby boy made a dramatic entrance into the world in the lobby of the comedian and his wife’s apartment building on Sunday.

 The Late Night with Seth Meyers host, 44, welcomed his second child, son Axel Strahl, with Alexi Ashe on April 8, and regaled the audience with the incredible story of his birth just a day later.

 Meyers, who also has a 2-year-old son named Ashe Olson, told his audience Monday that his newborn son Axel couldn’t wait for his parents to arrive at the hospital to make his debut.

 The host thanked the New York Police Department — who arrived just after the baby did and helped cut the cord — and his neighbors, who put towels in the dryer to keep Axel warm until more help arrived.

 “I called 911 and over the course of a minute conversation, I said, ‘We’re about to have a baby — we’re having a baby — we had a baby,’ ” Meyers said.

 Want all the latest pregnancy and birth announcements, plus celebrity mom blogs? Click here to get those and more in the PEOPLE Babies newsletter

 The proud new dad began to cry as he spoke about his wife but attempted to play the tears off by joking, “I’m getting choked up thinking about how brave I was.”

 Meyers explained that his son‘s middle name honors Alexi’s grandparents, who met in a hospital in Austria the day after they were liberated from a concentration camp.

 He also showed off a photo of the birth on the show, which depicted his wife lying on the ground holding their son to her chest as emergency personnel held an oxygen mask to her mouth. Meyers knelt beside her, grinning away at the camera.

 Mike Shoemaker Twitter

 Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic

 RELATED: Seth Meyers and Wife Alexi Ashe Expecting Second Child

 People on social media congratulated the couple on their new addition and couldn’t help but marvel at the birth story, with one user tweeting, “@sethmeyers you had me weeping with joy tonight. Congratulations to you and your growing family. Welcome Axel. A beautiful story to erase all the bad news from my head.”

 Another tweeted, “@sethmeyers Congratulations on your Baby Boy, Axel!! Man, I really enjoyed your story of the delivery! You’re a good man Seth! #TearsOfJoy #ItsABeautifulThing #LateNight #SethMyers.”

 @sethmeyers you had me weeping with joy tonight. Congratulations to you and your growing family. Welcome Axel. A beautiful story to erase all the bad news from my head. 💙💙 — Lisa Donovan O'Dwyer (@lodawake) April 10, 2018

 RELATED: Host Seth Meyers and Pregnant Wife Alexi Walk Golden Globes Red Carpet

 Meyers announced he and his wife were expecting their second child on his show in November. The couple welcomed son Ashe in March 2016.

 “A couple years ago on this show, we announced that we were having Ashe and so I wanna take this opportunity now … my wife and I are expecting a second baby,” Meyers said. ||||| Published on Apr 10, 2018

 Seth Meyers tells the dramatic story of his second son's birth.

 » Subscribe to Late Night: http://bit.ly/LateNightSeth

 » Get more Late Night with Seth Meyers: http://www.nbc.com/late-night-with-se...

 » Watch Late Night with Seth Meyers Weeknights 12:35/11:35c on NBC.

 LATE NIGHT ON SOCIAL

 Follow Late Night on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LateNightSeth

 Like Late Night on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LateNightSeth

 Find Late Night on Tumblr: http://latenightseth.tumblr.com/

 Connect with Late Night on Google+: https://plus.google.com/+LateNightSet...

 Late Night with Seth Meyers on YouTube features A-list celebrity guests, memorable comedy, and topical monologue jokes.

 NBC ON SOCIAL

 Like NBC: http://Facebook.com/NBC

 Follow NBC: http://Twitter.com/NBC

 NBC Tumblr: http://NBCtv.tumblr.com/

 NBC Pinterest: http://Pinterest.com/NBCtv/

 NBC Google+: https://plus.google.com/+NBC

 YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/nbc

 NBC Instagram: http://instagram.com/nbctv

 Seth Is a Dad! Again!- Late Night with Seth Meyers

 https://youtu.be/BYG1qf3XJNM

 Late Night with Seth Meyers

 http://www.youtube.com/user/latenight... |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Seth Meyers is a father for the second time, and new son Axel Strahl made his arrival on April 8 in dramatic fashion. Meyers told his audience Monday the story of how he and his wife, Alexi Ashe, were heading to their Uber to take them to the hospital when his wife informed him that she couldn't make it, reports People. (See the clip here.) Back they went into the lobby of their apartment building. "I called 911 and over the course of a minute conversation, I basically said, 'We're about to have a baby—we're having a baby—we had a baby," Meyers said. New York City police and fire crews arrived soon after the birth and helped cut the cord, and both mom and baby are doing fine.


News article:

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Joy Milne was tested by researchers to see if she could detect people with Parkinson's through a tell-tale odour

 Meet the woman from Perth whose super sense of smell could change the way Parkinson's disease is diagnosed.

 Joy Milne's husband, Les, died in June, aged 65.

 He worked as a consultant anaesthetist before being diagnosed with Parkinson's at the age of 45.

 Image caption Joy first detected the odour on her husband Les, who was diagnosed with Parkinson's at the age of 45

 One in 500 people in the UK has Parkinson's - that is 127,000 across Britain.

 It can leave people struggling to walk, speak and sleep. There is no cure and no definitive diagnostic test.

 Joy noticed something had changed with her husband long before he was diagnosed - six years before.

 She says: "His smell changed and it seemed difficult to describe. It wasn't all of a sudden. It was very subtle - a musky smell.

 "I got an occasional smell."

 Joy only linked this odour to Parkinson's after joining the charity Parkinson's UK and meeting people with the same distinct odour.

 By complete chance she mentioned this to scientists at a talk. They were intrigued.

 Edinburgh University decided to test her - and she was very accurate.

 Image caption Doctors tested Joy's sense of smell by using t-shirts which had been worn by six people with Parkinson's and six without

 Dr Tilo Kunath, a Parkinson's UK fellow at the school of biological sciences at Edinburgh University, was one of the first scientists Joy spoke to.

 He says: "The first time we tested Joy we recruited six people with Parkinson's and six without.

 "We had them wear a t-shirt for a day then retrieved the t-shirts, bagged them and coded them.

 "Her job was to tell us who had Parkinson's and who didn't.

 "Her accuracy was 11 out of 12. We were quite impressed."

 Dr Kunath adds: "She got the six Parkinson's but then she was adamant one of the 'control' subjects had Parkinson's.

 Image caption Dr Tilo Kunath was impressed with Joy's results and is undertaking further research into the phenomenon

 "But he was in our control group so he didn't have Parkinson's.

 "According to him and according to us as well he didn't have Parkinson's.

 "But eight months later he informed me that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's.

 "So Joy wasn't correct for 11 out of 12, she was actually 12 out of 12 correct at that time.

 "That really impressed us and we had to dig further into this phenomenon."

 And that is exactly what they are doing.

 Scientists believe that changes in the skin of people with early Parkinson's produces a particular odour linked to the condition.

 They hope to find the molecular signature responsible for the odour and then develop a simple test such as wiping a person's forehead with a swab.

 The charity Parkinson's UK is now funding researchers at Manchester, Edinburgh and London to study about 200 people with and without Parkinson's.

 Image caption Katherine Crawford, of Parkinson's UK, said it was an incredibly difficult disease to diagnose

 A simple test for Parkinson's could be life-changing, according to Katherine Crawford, the Scotland director of Parkinson's UK.

 "This study is potentially transformational for the lives of people living with Parkinson's," she says.

 "Parkinson's is an incredibly difficult disease to diagnose.

 "We still effectively diagnose it today the way that Dr James Parkinson diagnosed it in 1817, which is by observing people and their symptoms.

 "A diagnostic test like this could cut through so much of that, enable people to go in and see a consultant, have a simple swab test and come out with a clear diagnosis of Parkinson's.

 "It would be absolutely incredible and life-changing for them immediately."

 Ms Crawford adds: "They and their professional colleagues would be able to discuss and arrange a treatment programme, be able to monitor the progression of the disease and treat it appropriately as it went on and it would potentially offer more opportunities for people living with Parkinson's to get involved in research."

 It might have been an accidental discovery but Joy hopes it will make a real difference to people starting out on their own journey with Parkinson's. ||||| A ribbons molecular model of Botulinum Toxin, commonly known as Botox. This protein produced by the botulism bacteria is highly neurotoxic. Yet it's commonly used in cosmetic surgery.

 In Madagascar, about 500 people every year contract the plague.

 The widow of a man who suffered with Parkinson’s has triggered new research this week into the condition after she discovered she could “smell” the disease.

 Joy Milne, 65, told researchers that she had noticed a change in the odor of her late husband, Les, years before he developed symptoms of Parkinson’s.

 He passed away from the disease, a nervous system disorder whose symptoms include shaking and slowness of movement, earlier this year at the age of 65.

 12 Diseases That Just Won't Quit

 Play Video Is a Killer Virus Out There? Virus hunter Dr. Ian Lipkin explains how they track down dangerous bugs. iStockPhoto

 “I’ve always had a keen sense of smell and I detected very early on that there was a very subtle change in how Les smelled,” Milne, from Perth, Scotland, said on Thursday.

 “It’s hard to describe but it was a heavy, slightly musky aroma. I had no idea that this was unusual and hadn’t been recognized before.”

 About one in 500 people suffers from Parkinson’s, a degenerative illness that is difficult to diagnose and for which there is no cure.

 She went on to tell researchers, who dubbed her “super-smeller” after finding that she could identify Parkinson’s sufferers from T-shirts they had slept in.

 5 Disease Outbreaks Linked to Vaccine-Shy Parents

 Milne made the connection between the smell and the disease after picking up the same scent from other sufferers.

 That prompted research charity Parkinson’s UK to this week launch a project to find whether the disease and odor are linked.

 “It’s very early days in the research, but if it’s proved there is a unique odour associated with Parkinson’s, particularly early on in the condition, it could have a huge impact,” said Arthur Roach, director of research at the charity.

 “Not just on early diagnosis, but it would also make it a lot easier to identify people to test drugs that may have the potential to slow, or even stop Parkinson’s, something no current drug can achieve.”

 Robin Williams: Is Parkinson's Disease Linked to Suicide?

 Researchers are investigating whether the condition triggers changes in sebum, an oily substance secreted by skin, and aim to recruit 200 people with and without the condition for the study.

 Swabs taken from them will be analyzed by machine at the molecular level, and will also be scrutinized by Milne and a team of smell experts from the food and drink industry. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Joy Milne noticed a small difference in her husband just before he turned 40. "His smell changed," the Scottish woman tells the BBC. "It wasn't all of a sudden. It was very subtle—a musky smell." He was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease six years later and died in June at age 65. Milne found herself supporting the Parkinson's UK charity, where she noticed others had the same distinct smell. She happened to mention her observation to scientists at a talk, and they later put her to the test, presenting her with T-shirts worn by six people with Parkinson's and six without. "She got the six Parkinson's, but then she was adamant one of the 'control' subjects had Parkinson's," says a scientist. Researchers were impressed and dubbed her a "super-smeller," per AFP. Then eight months later, that one control subject returned to tell scientists he had just been diagnosed with Parkinson's. Because of Milne's sniffer, scientists now theorize that changes in the sebum—an oily substance produced by the skin—may occur in people with early Parkinson's. Now Parkinson's UK is funding a study that will see swabs taken from 200 people with and without Parkinson's and studied by a team of smell experts, including Milne. The swabs will also be studied chemically. A proven link between an odor and the disease could make for an easy and clear way to identify a disease that is "incredibly difficult ... to diagnose," as the Scotland director of Parkinson's UK puts it. "It would be absolutely incredible and life-changing." Currently, doctors diagnose the disease largely as they have for the last two centuries: by observing a patient and his or her symptoms. (The human nose really is amazing.)


“I am devastated to learn that we have lost Agnes,” said Susan Lucci, veteran of 1,000-plus episodes of “All My Children,” in the wake of daytime drama pioneer Agnes Nixon’s passing Wednesday at age 93.

 Posting a picture on Instagram of herself with Nixon, the actress best known as Erica Kane continued: “I adored her and admired her — and I am forever grateful to her! May this liveliest and loveliest of women rest in peace.”

 Obituary: Daytime-drama pioneer Agnes Nixon dies at 93 »

 Nixon was “a true trailblazer,” tweeted “The Young and the Restless” actress Melissa Claire Egan.

 Lucci, Egan and others in the soap opera community, both in front of the camera and behind it, were pouring their hearts out on social media once news of the “One Life to Live” and “All My Children’s” creator’s death began to spread.

 https://www.instagram.com/p/BK6Z1yngr2K/

 https://twitter.com/MClaireEgan/status/781250725636546560

 Nixon was “a force of nature,” said Dena Higley, head writer for “Days of Our Lives.”

 https://twitter.com/DenaHigley/status/781232316022558721

 “General Hospital” executive producer Jack Valenti expressed his condolences, and “GH” script coordinator C.J. Hoke offered context for Nixon’s achievements.

 https://twitter.com/valentinifrank/status/781227722815205376

 https://twitter.com/rainbowspy/status/781251832240828416

 Actress Alicia Minshew played Kendall Hart on “One Life to Live” and more than 950 episodes of “All My Children.” Actor Scott Evans appeared on 137 episodes of “One Life to Live,” from 2008 into 2010. Cady McClain has been on “As the World Turns,” “All My Children” and “The Young and the Restless.”

 https://www.instagram.com/p/BK6cYnKgx7V/

 https://twitter.com/thescottevans/status/781238007898710016

 Carrie Genzel appeared on “All My Children” and “Days of Our Lives” in the ’90s. Jean Passanante served as a writer on “All My Children,” “As the World Turns,” “One Life to Live,” “The Young and the Restless” and “General Hospital.”

 Wendy Riche executive produced “General Hospital” and “Port Charles” in the ’90s.

 https://twitter.com/carrie_genzel/status/781216500627628033

 https://twitter.com/canyoncatz/status/781242041044836352

 https://twitter.com/PFossil/status/781246617399812098

 Follow Christie D’Zurilla on Twitter @theCDZ. |||||

 Agnes Nixon arrives at the Daytime Emmy Awards in Las Vegas in 2010. (Chris Pizzello/AP)

 In 1962, daytime television viewers were treated to a shocking story — a pivotal, historic moment for the medium.

 At the time, as Deadline noted, Agnes Nixon, the chief writer for “Guiding Light,” wanted to write a plot line in which its character Bert Bauer is diagnosed with uterine cancer after waiting too long to undergo a Pap smear.

 But she wasn’t allowed to use the words “cancer,” “uterus” or “Pap test.”

 Somehow, she pulled it off what is considered the first health story line in a daytime drama. And it paid off — thousands of women wrote in to thank her for letting them know the importance of such a test.

 In 1968, Nixon shared part of one such letter in the New York Times. It came from a Santa Barbara, Calif., woman, and it read, “Like Bert, I had not gone to my doctor in twelve years. After what happened to her I did go for a Pap test and found that I, too, had uterine cancer. I have now had a hysterectomy, am feeling wonderful and I want think you for saving my life.”

 In 2002, she received a Pioneer for Health Award by Sentinel for Health for the episodes.

 This was just one of the many informative, progressive moments created by Nixon and neatly fitted into a soap opera. In her career, she would tackle child abuse, AIDS, racial segregation, racism, abortion, addiction and the Vietnam War in the two soaps she created: “All My Children” and “One Life to Live.”

 All after honing her TV skills on as a writer on shows like “As the World Turns” and “Guiding Light.”

 Nixon died on Wednesday at the age of 93 in Haverford, Pa.

 It’s arguable that soap operas had long been subtly political, a counterpoint to feminism. Even in the early soaps Nixon worked on, she was creating mostly escapist fantasy for housewives, as the New York Times noted.

 That was no secret to those working on the shows, either.

 Irna Phillips, creator of “As the World Turns” and “Guiding Light” and Nixon’s mentor, explained this in the New York Times in 1968 when discussing the success of the former show.

 “[Character Nancy Hughes] finds her happiness within her home and herself, and she believes that this is woman’s true function. Nancy is my answer to the ‘feminine mystique.’ ‘Why,’ she once asked, ‘do I need to go out and prove myself at a political rally?’ I believe that ‘As the World Turns’ is successful because millions of women are against the ‘feminine mystique,’ and Nancy is their spokeswoman.”

 But Nixon pushed against the norm, first by guiding the Pap smear episodes then by creating “One Life to Live” and “All My Children.”

 These shows would feature gay characters, transgender characters, characters with AIDS and alcoholism and drug addiction, characters who abused children or were abused as children.

 But, perhaps because of soap’s escapist origins, the shows — and their creators — got little respect.

 In a screed against this, Nixon wrote in the New York Times in 1968, “The syndrome persists that soap opera is a Never-Never Land where hack writers and their inferior producers, directors and actors serve melodramatic pap to a lunatic fridge of female children who grow older but never grow up.”

 In that piece, she discussed the Pap smear episode:

 The soap opera has been able to do stories which have performed a public service to the national community in a way which no other kind of television entertainment could achieve.

 She also held herself and the rest of the industry accountable for the lack of black actors in soap operas, writing:

 It would be fatuously dishonest to pretend that daytime soap operas have, in the past, done as much toward providing jobs for Negro actors as they should. There have always been some parts played by Negro actors over the years but certainly when compared with the number of white parts and the degree of involvement in the story, it could not help but appear as a token gesture, no matter how sincere individual attempts to improve the situation may have been.

 So she cast two black actors in the lead of “One Life to Live.”

 It still didn’t earn her immediate respect.

 A year later, in an article explaining that with a six-figure salary, Nixon was one of the highest compensated writers in television, the New York Times — the same publication in which she wrote that scathing op-ed — referred to her as a “Philadelphia Main Line house-wife-writer.”

 But, as she told the New York Times after “One Life to Live” aired with its prominent black actors: “I’m not afraid. I introduced the theme of racial integrations into my last show — “One Life to Live” — and, while a Texas station canceled the show, we received far more compliments than complaints.”

 “On the social issues, whether the Vietnam War or abortion or racism, I never thought I could change the way most people felt,” Nixon told the magazine America in 2002. “I just wanted to show the unfairness of it, the inequality, the injustice.”

 The article’s first paragraph was, “The day time television serial, or soap opera, is in the process of going activist.”

 For Nixon, it had gone “activist” years before. The critics simply hadn’t noticed. ||||| Like their predecessors, the new Nixon soaps were disturbing, fascinating and addictive. Because she presented various sides of a controversy, they were more complex. But she tried to avoid preachy dialogue, letting action and plot speak for themselves. The conundrum was no longer simply whether Tara was pregnant, but whether Phil, home from Vietnam and scarred by the horrors of war, could still love her.

 Advertisement Continue reading the main story

 Many Nixon stories were based on reality. In 1964, after a friend died of cancer, she created a “Guiding Light” character who was found, after a Pap smear, to have cervical cancer. Despite misgivings by the sponsor, Procter & Gamble, the character appeared onscreen, though the words “cancer,” “uterus” and “hysterectomy” were never uttered. Even so, thousands of women wrote in to express gratitude for the information that a simple test might save their lives.

 On “One Life to Live,” which began in 1968 and ran for 43 years, Ms. Nixon created a tale that reflected the nation’s changing social structures and attitudes. It had many ethnic characters, including Jews, Polish-Americans and African-Americans. A woman assumed to be white was revealed after months to be a light-skinned black, turning the story, and the audience, sharply to questions of racial prejudice.

 Photo

 Ms. Nixon’s revolutionary changes were widely copied by other soaps and other networks, and helped capture new audiences at a time when the traditional base of daytime viewers — 20 million to 30 million daily, the vast majority of them homemakers — was being eroded by women entering the work force. Increasingly, men and college students drawn by their topicality were tuning in.

 “It was a kind of first,” Lewis Antine, a graduate student at the City University of New York, told The New York Times after watching a 1974 episode of “All My Children” featuring a Vietnam War veteran. “It was a sense of your stuff being on TV for the first time, like, ‘Hey, they’re talking about us on Mom’s show.’”

 Ms. Nixon was an unlikely source of tales of infidelity and divorce, let alone racial and antiwar conflicts. The mother of four children, she was married to the same man for 45 years. And she wrote not in the caldron of New York or glitzy Hollywood, but in her suburban home in Rosemont, on the Philadelphia Main Line. (She died in a nursing facility in Rosemont.)

 Rosemont and adjoining Bryn Mawr, Pa., were the prototype for Pine Valley, the setting for “All My Children,” which had its premiere in 1970 and ran for 41 years. (For that entire time, its best-known cast member was Susan Lucci, one of daytime TV’s best-known and highest-paid stars, as Erica Kane.) In 1973, a character on the show was the first on television to have a legal abortion after the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. The show also tackled drug addiction, depression, child abuse and AIDS. In 2000, it introduced a lesbian character, who shared the first lesbian kiss on a soap opera. In 2007, a transgender character appeared.

 “Life is fascinating,” Ms. Nixon told The Milwaukee Sentinel in 1983, “and if you look at your family and your friends and you have a writer’s viewpoint, you can see each person’s life as a soap opera in itself. The really amazing thing is they are basically similar.”

 Today’s Headlines Wake up each morning to the day’s top news, analysis and opinion delivered to your inbox. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. Sign Up Receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.

 She was born Agnes Eckhardt in Chicago on Dec. 10, 1922, the only child of Harold and Agnes Dalton Eckhardt. Her parents were separated when she was an infant. She and her mother moved to Nashville, where she attended St. Cecilia Academy, a Roman Catholic prep school. She studied writing at St. Mary’s College in South Bend, Ind., and attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

 Her father, who manufactured burial garments and paid for her education, wanted her to join his firm. He tried to dissuade her from a writing career by arranging a talk with Irna Phillips, a well-known creator of radio soaps and serials. The tactic backfired. After reading a script she had written, Ms. Phillips offered her a job in New York. She began in 1948, writing radio scripts for a hospital drama, “Woman in White.”

 Advertisement Continue reading the main story

 In 1951, she married Robert Henry Nixon, an auto dealer who later gave up his business to join his wife in a television production company. He died in 1996.

 Photo

 She is survived by their three daughters, Cathy Chicos, Mary Nixon and Emily Nixon; their son, Robert; 10 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

 In the early 1950s, Ms. Nixon wrote for major dramatic programs, including “The Philco Television Playhouse,” “Robert Montgomery Presents” and “The Hallmark Hall of Fame.” She eventually succeeded Ms. Phillips as lead writer for “The Guiding Light.” She was the head writer for the NBC soap opera “Another World” from 1965 to 1967.

 For decades, the lucrative advertising revenues of Ms. Nixon’s best-known creations, “One Life to Live” and “All My Children,” helped support ABC’s evening programming. But in the 1990s, the popularity of all soaps fell steadily as cable networks and the internet provided new sources of entertainment, and after 2000 their audiences and revenues went into steep declines.

 In 2008, Ms. Nixon appeared on the 40th-anniversary episode of “One Life to Live,” and the 10,000th episode of “All My Children.” Both shows, with only 2.5 million viewers a day each, were canceled in 2011.

 Fans bombarded ABC with protests and petitions and picketed network affiliates. An online production company, Prospect Park, offered a reprieve, announcing plans to continue both programs, with Ms. Nixon’s participation, online. The plans were delayed, suspended and revived as union and financing problems arose and were resolved. Both shows went into production in 2013 and were available via Hulu and iTunes, but they lasted only a few months before being canceled that November.

 Because of both her success and her longevity, Ms. Nixon was often called the queen of the modern soap opera. From the premiere of “One Life to Live” in 1968 to its finale in January 2012 (four months after the last episode of “All My Children”), shows she had created or had a hand in writing, producing or shaping as a consultant were on the air every weekday for 43 years — more than 11,000 days.

 The recipient of many awards, including a Daytime Emmy for lifetime achievement in 2010, Ms. Nixon often spoke of soap operas as ensembles and would share credit with actors, directors, producers, camera crews and other writers. Her own contributions, she said, had no unrealistic objectives.

 “On the social issues, whether the Vietnam War or abortion or racism, I never thought I could change the way most people felt,” she told the Catholic magazine America in 2002. “I just wanted to show the unfairness of it, the inequality, the injustice.” ||||| Agnes Nixon, 'Queen Of Modern Daytime Drama,' Dies At 93

 Enlarge this image toggle caption Chris Pizzello/AP Chris Pizzello/AP

 Soap opera pioneer Agnes Nixon, who created All My Children and One Life to Live, has died at the age of 93. She is known for highlighting challenging and taboo social issues through daytime television.

 Her son Bob Nixon told The Associated Press that she died at a physical rehabilitation facility in Haverford, Pa.

 Nixon "was one of the few powerful women in television in the 1960s and 1970s," NPR's Neda Ulaby told our Newscast unit. And as she was presented with the 2010 Daytime Emmys Lifetime Achievement Award, All My Children actress Susan Lucci called her the "queen of modern daytime drama." Actor Cameron Mathison said, "Without her, there would be no daytime."

 She is also widely credited with shining a light on issues such as homosexuality, AIDS, interracial relationships and abortion in her storylines. "Agnes was probably the first one in television to deal with socially relevant issues," All My Children executive producer Julie Hanan Carruthers said during the 2010 Daytime Emmys ceremony. "She's not only taught the audience tolerance, but acceptance."

 Nixon reflected on her writing in a 2010 interview with Morning Edition. "I wasn't trying to change the genre, I was just trying to write what I thought, what was interesting to me," she said.

 She explained that the first social issue that she wove into a storyline was uterine cancer after a friend died of the disease. She wanted women to know about Pap smears, and said her storyline proposal was initially met with resistance from the owner and network of Guiding Light (one of the other programs for which she wrote). But they eventually allowed her to do the show. "That hooked me," Nixon said. "That made me realize, gee, we could do something."

 Nixon described homosexuality as the last "holdout" issue on television. Almost 20 years ago, she decided that Bianca, the daughter of All My Children lead character Erica Kane, would be a lesbian:

 "When we did Bianca, we made the audience love her, and respect her. We knew we had to make the lesbian a daughter of a popular character. And of course we let the audience know first before Erica did, so everyone was waiting to see how Erica would react. And that character, Bianca, became the most popular woman on daytime. I thought that was the last thing that I could think of. If you can think of something else, send me a postcard."

 Agnes Nixon: A Soap 'Goddess' On Getting Serious In The Afternoon Agnes Nixon: A Soap 'Goddess' On Getting Serious In The Afternoon Listen · 7:19 7:19

 As The Associated Press reported, both shows were canceled by ABC in 2011. "All My Children had aired for nearly 41 years, while One Life to Live had made it to 44 seasons," according to the wire service.

 Throughout that time, Nixon wrote episode after episode. She described her process to Morning Edition: |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Agnes Nixon, the woman who helped create the soap opera as we know it, is dead at age 93. Nixon rose to prominence during the '60s and '70s, and NPR describes her as one of the only powerful women in the entertainment industry during that era. Just like Nixon herself, two of her more famous creations were well-loved and and long-lived: All My Children ran for over four decades, while One Life To Live aired for 44 seasons. Both ended in 2011. Nixon was well-known for using her shows to draw attention to controversial social issues. Her plots addressed everything from cancer to abortion to homosexuality, issues often elided by many TV shows of the era. As the New York Times notes, Susan Lucci's character on All My Children was the first on TV to have a legal abortion—in 1973, just after Roe v. Wade. "I wasn't trying to change the genre, I was just trying to write what I thought, what was interesting to me," Nixon told NPR in 2010. The Washington Post asserts that she "quietly made soap operas relevant," noting that a story line she wrote about a Guiding Light character's uterine cancer in 1962 is considered the first health plot in a daytime drama. Alumni of her shows have responded to Nixon's death with an outpouring of love, support, and admiration, notes the Los Angeles Times, which rounds up examples of the tributes to the woman known as "Amazing Agnes." Lucci, for instance, writes that she is "devastated" but "forever grateful." Nixon died of pneumonia, a complication of her Parkinson's disease.


Write an article based on this summary:

– Two horrified anti-abortion county commissioners in Oregon have ordered a waste-to-energy plant to stop burning any medical waste until it can be sure that no fetal tissue is being incinerated. The Marion County plant burns large amounts of biomedical waste from British Columbia, and the commissioners say they were disgusted to learn from a report in a Catholic newspaper that some of the 14,000 fetuses aborted in the Canadian province every year are "incinerated to provide electricity to the people of Marion County," the National Post reports. The commissioners say there has to be "a process to figure out how we can accept legitimate medical waste," including amputated limbs and cancerous tissue, but accepting fetal tissue is out of the question, reports the Oregonian. "It's inappropriate to put them in the trash," one commissioner says. A spokeswoman for the incinerator firm says that while the medical waste may have contained fetal tissue including umbilical cords or placentas, it did not contain whole fetuses. She says the company is cooperating with the order to stop accepting medical waste while new procedures are put in place, the AP reports. Last month, the UK banned the incineration of fetal remains after learning that thousands of fetuses had been burned for power.

Two pro-life county commissioners in Oregon have reacted with horror to a Vancouver newspaper story that claims aborted fetuses from B.C. are routinely shipped to a waste-to-energy incinerator near Portland, where they are “burned to generate electricity.”

 An article that appeared Monday in The B.C. Catholic newspaper, published by the Roman Archdiocese of Vancouver, reported that “aborted and miscarried children” are “ending up in an Oregon waste-to-energy plant, likely mixed with everyday trash” and “incinerated to provide electricity to the people of Marion County.”

 The account was picked up by media outlets in Oregon, where it spread like wildfire. It caught Marion County’s two elected commissioners off guard; both expressed disgust and said steps are being taken to end the alleged practice.

 “We are outraged and appalled that this material could be included in medical waste received at our facility,” Councillor Janet Carlson said in a statement Wednesday. “We did not know this practice was occurring until today.”

 The two councillors held an emergency meeting Thursday morning and agreed that the county would temporarily stop all biomedical waste shipments to its waste-to-energy incinerator, and would amend local ordinances to bar any future shipments that could contain fetal tissue.

 While county officials don’t know how much fetal tissue from B.C has actually been transported to the plant and then burned, they felt they had to take immediate action, says Marion County spokeswoman Jolene Kelley. “We don’t want to exclude all human tissue, but we want to draw the line somewhere,” she told the National Post. “This is a disrespectful way to dispose of remains.”

 Ms. Carlson and her fellow councillor, Sam Brentano, are both pro-life and are particularly sensitive to the issue, Ms. Kelley added. Mr. Brentano is also familiar with waste disposal, having worked in the industry for 30 years. Neither councillor responded Thursday to interview requests.

 Marion County’s incinerator is owned and operated by a private company, Covanta Marion Inc., and is located eight kilometres north of Salem, the Oregon capital, and about an hour’s drive south of Portland. The plant burns 500 tonnes of solid waste every day, “providing 11 megawatts per hour of electricity to Portland General Electric Company,” according to Covanta documents.

 The 28-year-old incinerator was recognized by industry peers with a “waste-to-energy excellence” award in 2012. Covanta says the plant disposes of all kinds of refuse including confidential documents and law enforcement material, through a supplemental waste program. The program provides both the company and Marion County “additional revenues streams the [sic] support Covanta’s and Marion counties [sic] bottom line,” according to Covanta.

 The biomedical waste may include lab cultures and vaccines, human fluid and blood products, and small amounts of human waste and tissue

 In a statement Thursday, the company blamed Marion County for the fetal tissue controversy, and said it has “no responsibility” for the medical waste program at its incinerator. “Covanta is shocked by these allegations and is discontinuing the receipt of this waste stream until we have been assured by the County that this alleged material is not being delivered to the facility,” the statement reads.

 According to The B.C. Catholic, 14,000 fetuses are aborted in the province each year, and “the likeliest destination for their remains is the Covanta Marion” incinerator. That was left uncorroborated.

 But B.C.’s Ministry of Health did reportedly confirm — to the newspaper and to the Associated Press wire service — that regional health authorities in the province have contracts with a Canadian waste removal company that ships biomedical waste to the Covanta Marion plant, where it is burned.

 The biomedical waste may include lab cultures and vaccines, human fluid and blood products, and small amounts of human waste and tissue. It may also include fetal tissue from miscarriages and abortions, according to the ministry. “All biomedical waste from B.C. hospitals is incinerated outside the province,” reads a ministry response to questions about disposal practices.

 Stericycle Inc., the Brampton, Ont.-based company that ships B.C.’s biomedical waste to Oregon for disposal, did not respond to questions sent to it on Thursday.

 National Post ||||| PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — County commissioners gave final approval Thursday to an order to stop an incinerator in Oregon from receiving medical waste until procedures are in place to ensure no fetal tissue is burned to generate power.

 While taking the action, Marion County commissioners Sam Brentano and Janet Carlson said they were horrified to learn that the Marion County Resource Recovery Facility in rural Brooks might be burning medical waste that includes fetal tissue to generate electricity. Both strongly oppose abortions.

 "We're going to get the bottom of it," Carlson said. "I want to know who knew, when they knew, how long they had known this was going on."

 Brentano, however, noted that the county ordinance that sets the parameters for what can be accepted at the waste-to-energy plant allows for all human tissue.

 "No rule or law has been broken, but there's an ethical standard that's been broken," he said.

 The decision came about a month after reporters in the United Kingdom discovered that health authorities there used fetal remains to generate power at medical facilities. The Department of Health quickly banned the practice.

 The Oregon facility is a partnership between the county and Covanta, a New Jersey-based firm that operates energy-from-waste power generation plants. The Marion County plant processes 550 tons of municipal solid waste a day, with only a small portion coming from medical sources. It sells the power to Portland General Electric.

 Jill Stueck, a Covanta spokeswoman, said the company is cooperating with the suspension, and it does not seek out the waste that mortified commissioners.

 "No one is saying bring us fetal tissue," Stueck said.

 Some of the fetal material came from the Canadian province of British Columbia, where regional health authorities have a contract with waste management firm Stericycle and send biomedical waste, such as fetal tissue, cancerous tissue and amputated limbs to the Oregon facility, said Kristy Anderson, a spokeswoman with the British Columbia Health Ministry.

 Stericycle, based in Lake Forest, Ill., has been criticized by anti-abortion groups for years because it disposes of aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics. Company officials did not return phone calls seeking comment.

 Jeff Bickford, environmental services division manager in Marion County, said the facility there has been taking material from British Columbia for five to seven years. He said clinical waste providers such as Stericycle bring in medical waste ranging from syringes and body parts to laboratory cultures and bodily fluids after hospitals and clinics place it into red bags and sealed containers.

 "You've got biological agent and infectious diseases in there, so they're never opened once they're sealed," Bickford said.

 Brentano said the county plans to rewrite its ordinance to spell out that no tissue from fetuses can enter the incinerator, and the providers will have to develop a workable system.

 He stressed that other medical waste would be accepted.

 "So if someone loses an arm, loses a finger?" Carlson asked at the meeting.

 "That should go in and be burned," Brentano replied. "As gross as that is." |||||


Stock Chart for Starbucks Corp (SBUX)

 Coming soon to a Starbucks near you: Greek yogurt.

 In a partnership with Danone SA (BN), the world’s largest coffee shop operator will start selling the dairy product in its cafes next year and in food retailers in 2015. The plan helps address two of Chief Executive Officer Howard Schultz’s key concerns: offering healthier fare and helping Starbucks Corp. colonize the grocery store.

 “Starbucks is venturing into becoming a house of brands,” similar to Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) and Unilever, Bill Chidley, senior vice president at Interbrand Design Forum in Dayton, Ohio, said in an interview. The move is risky, he said.

 “When you start to get too diverse with your portfolio, investors just have a hard time characterizing what you are,” Chidley said. “Are they a house of brands or are they about beverage experiences?”

 Starbucks has steadily been moving into the grocery business since 1995, when it began selling ice cream in such flavors as java chip frappuccino and caramel macchiato. It has since added packaged coffee, Tazo brand tea and Via instant packets. Since wresting control of Starbucks (SBUX)’ supermarket business from Kraft Foods Inc. in 2011, Schultz has accelerated his rollout of new items into grocery stores with Keurig K-Cup pods, Evolution Fresh juice and Refreshers energy drinks.

 Danone, the Paris-based maker of Oikos and Activia brand yogurts, will make the new products for Starbucks, which will be branded “Evolution Fresh, Inspired by Dannon.” The financial terms of the partnership weren’t disclosed. Starbucks bought juicemaker Evolution Fresh in 2011 for $30 million in cash before snapping up Teavana Holdings Inc., whose products it also plans to sell in grocery stores.

 Grocery Expansion

 Starbucks’s grocery business has been expanding faster than its cafe sales. In the year ended in September, revenue from selling items in supermarkets and other retailers jumped 50 percent to $1.29 billion, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Total revenue that same year increased 14 percent to $13.3 billion.

 The shares fell 1.2 percent to $68.19 at 12:02 p.m. in New York. They had gained 29 percent this year through yesterday, compared with a 19 percent increase for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

 Starbucks will start selling Greek yogurt parfaits in its company-owned U.S. stores next year. The coffee-shop operator is considering selling the yogurt internationally and may create other foods with Danone, said Jim Olson, a Starbucks spokesman.

 Big Step

 “This is really the next big strategic step in our health and wellness evolution,” he said.

 Sales of yogurt are increasing -- even more so for the Greek variety. Greek-style yogurt sales in the U.S. surged 48 percent to $2.65 billion in the 52 weeks ended June 8, according to data from Nielsen. Sales of all yogurt increased 6.1 percent to $6.3 billion during the same time, the data show.

 Chobani Inc., General Mills Inc. (GIS)’s Yoplait and Fage Dairy Industry SA also sell Greek yogurt.

 “It’s certainly crowded,” Interbrand’s Chidley said. “A new entrant is going to have to have something compelling.”

 To contact the reporter on this story: Leslie Patton in Chicago at lpatton5@bloomberg.net

 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Robin Ajello at rajello@bloomberg.net ||||| Starbucks Corp. is making another move to get on more grocery shelves, this time partnering with Danone SA to sell Greek yogurt parfaits and other similar items.

 The yogurt products will be co-branded as "Evolution Fresh, Inspired by Dannon," referring to the European company's U.S. line of Dannon yogurt and Starbucks's juice line, Evolution Fresh. The items will first be sold in Starbucks cafes next spring, then in supermarkets in 2015, the companies said Tuesday. Sales overseas are a possibility, eventually.

 Starbucks says the yogurt segment in the U.S. is a $6 billion business, with room to grow significantly. U.S. consumers on average eat about half as much yogurt as Canadians consume annually, and a third as much as Europeans, according to Euromonitor. "With a fast-growing but still low penetration of the yogurt category, the U.S. remains a key growth opportunity for Danone," Danone Chief Executive Franck Riboud said in a statement.

 Competition will be tough. Chobani Inc.—the leading maker of Greek yogurt, with sales that topped $1 billion last year—recently came out with 14 new items, including flavors like coconut, key lime and orange vanilla. Chobani's founder, Hamdi Ulukaya, has said annual sales of yogurt could double over the next three to four years. The hope is that Americans will start eating yogurt more often during the day—as a dip with a meal, or as a dessert after dinner—rather than just at breakfast.

 Starbucks has been working to diversify its traditional coffee business by expanding into more packaged products and food. It acquired Evolution Fresh in November 2011 for $30 million. It also recently purchased a loose-leaf tea retailer, Teavana, for $620 million, and has taken on other new ventures, including a line of energy drinks, a San Francisco Bay-area bakery, and its own single-serve coffee espresso brewer.

 In addition to helping Starbucks get a piece of the action in the fast-growing yogurt market, the parfait plan could help build awareness of Evolution Fresh.

 Danone's Oikos brand Greek yogurt topped the list of best-selling food products launched in the U.S. last year, according to an annual poll by IRI published in April. Danone says its growth will be accelerated by having access to millions of consumers through Starbucks's cafes.

 Starbucks didn't disclose the financial terms of the deal, but said Danone will handle the distribution, so it doesn't expect to face additional capital expenses. The coffee giant is scheduled to report its quarterly earnings Thursday.

 Corrections & Amplifications

 Starbucks bought Evolution Fresh in November 2011. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the acquisition was last November. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– If the booming sales weren't enough to convince you that Greek yogurt is a thing, try this: Starbucks wants in. The company plans to start selling the yogurt in its stores next spring, and then start stocking supermarket shelves around the country after that, reports the Wall Street Journal. It will be sold as as "Evolution Fresh, Inspired by Dannon," a reflection that Starbucks is teaming with Dannon parent company Danone. Evolution Fresh is the name of the Starbucks juice line already being sold. Why Greek yogurt? It probably has something to do with the fact that US sales jumped 48% to $2.65 billion in the year ending June 8, reports Bloomberg. But one analyst thinks the Starbucks move toward becoming a "house of brands" is a risky one. “When you start to get too diverse with your portfolio, investors just have a hard time characterizing what you are,” he says. “Are they a house of brands or are they about beverage experiences?” (Maybe Starbucks can help figure out what to do with the nasty byproduct that results from the making of Greek yogurt.)


SANTA ROSA, Calif. (AP) — A Northern California sheriff's official says a mother suspected of attacking a 12-year-old boy she said was bullying her daughter at school may have targeted the wrong child.

 Sonoma County sheriff's Lt. Steve Brown said Monday that investigators have not found anything linking the boy to the bullying allegations.

 The girl's mom, Delia Garcia-Bratcher, was arrested Saturday on suspicion of inflicting injury on a child after sheriff's deputies say she came to Olivet Elementary Charter School in Santa Rosa on Friday and grabbed the boy by the throat.

 Garcia-Bratcher was released Saturday on $30,000 bail. Telephone listings for her were disconnected.

 School district officials are also investigating the possible bullying.

 Sonoma County prosecutors said Monday they were still awaiting the sheriff's report before deciding on any charges. ||||| SANTA ROSA, Calif. (AP) — A Northern California woman is facing charges that she grabbed a 12-year-old boy by the throat while confronting him about bullying her daughter, authorities said Sunday.

 Delia Garcia-Bratcher, 30, of Santa Rosa came to an elementary school around lunchtime Friday and asked her son, who also attends the school, to point out her daughter's alleged tormentor, the Sonoma County Sheriff's office said in a statement.

 The mother grabbed the boy by the throat in front of a number of children, the statement said.

 No adult saw the confrontation, and Garcia-Bratcher apparently had not checked in with the school office before coming on campus, authorities said.

 The young witnesses later told a deputy the mother threatened the boy about bullying her daughter. The staff at Olivet Charter Elementary School took photos of red marks on the boy's neck as soon as they learned about the alleged assault, authorities said.

 Garcia-Bratcher was arrested on a charge of felony child abuse. She was released from jail after posting a $30,000 bail.

 A telephone number for a Delia Bratcher was disconnected. But on a Facebook page that said it belonged to Bratcher, she posted that she was hurt by the accusation and asserted that "the truth will be told."

 Lt. Mark Essick told the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat (http://bit.ly/1mL5FFV) that deputies were looking into the bullying claims but have not substantiated them. ||||| A Santa Rosa woman is accused of grabbing a 12-year-old boy by the throat after confronting him on an elementary school campus about bullying her daughter.

 Delia Garcia-Bratcher, 30, was arrested on suspicion of felony child abuse in the Friday incident at Olivet Charter Elementary School on Willowside Road, said Lt. Mark Essick of the sheriff's department.

 Garcia-Bratcher came to the 320-student campus about lunchtime and asked her son to point out a boy she suspected of bullying her 10-year-old daughter, Essick said.

 She approached the boy in front of other students, grabbed him by the neck, shoved him and warned him to stop, Essick said.

 “It's pretty unreasonable for a parent to go storming on campus like this,” Essick said.

 The boy ran to a classroom, told a teacher and the two went to the office where school officials took pictures of the injuries.

 Essick said red marks were still visible when deputies arrived a short while later.

 “You can see fingerprints on his neck,” Essick said.

 Garcia-Bratcher was arrested Saturday on a charge of inflicting injury to a child. She was released later in the day on $30,000 bail.

 She is scheduled to appear in court Thursday.

 The woman told arresting officers she was on campus to enroll a third child in school, Essick said.

 She spotted her 11-year-old son on the playground and asked him to identify the boy who was allegedly bullying her daughter, he said.

 No adults witnessed the confrontation, and the woman had apparently not checked in with the office before coming on campus, authorities said.

 Essick said deputies were looking into the bullying claims but so far have not substantiated them.

 But, he said, even if bullying was occurring, Garcia-Bratcher had no business confronting the boy directly.

 “To take it into her own hands was absolutely the wrong thing to do,” Essick said.

 Jennie Snyder, superintendent of Piner-Olivet Union School District, said it is rare to have a parent confront a student on campus.

 “Thankfully, it's not something that occurs,” she said.

 She said policy requires visitors to sign in to the office and wear a badge.

 A letter was being drafted about the incident and would be emailed to parents Monday, she said.

 She also said she was looking into bullying claims.

 “Student safety is our first and foremost concern,” Snyder said. “We have safety procedures in place and we will be following through on them.”

 You can reach Staff Writer Paul Payne at 568-5312 or paul.payne@pressdemcrat.com |||||

Write a summary.

– A California mom went vigilante on Friday by grabbing and shoving an alleged 12-year-old bully on school grounds, authorities say. Delia Garcia-Bratcher, 30, was visiting Olivet Charter Elementary School in Santa Rosa, Calif., at lunchtime and asked her 10-year-old son to point out his tormenter. Seeing him, she grabbed his neck, gave him a shove, and told him to cut it out. Well, it wasn't long before the boy ran and told on Garcia-Bratcher, who was charged with inflicting injury on a child, the Press Democrat reports. "It's pretty unreasonable for a parent to go storming on campus like this," said a sheriff's department lieutenant. "You can see fingerprints on his neck." What's more, Garcia-Bratcher may have grabbed the wrong boy, as investigators haven't yet linked him to the bullying, the AP reports. Another AP story notes that a phone under the mom's name has been disconnected, and a Facebook page with her name on it says she was wounded by the accusations and "the truth will be told." Released on $30,000 bail, she's due in court on Thursday.


Here is a news article: The mother of Jacob Hall said the 6-year-old will have a funeral service that is a fitting send off for her superhero son.

 Jacob was wounded during a shooting on Sept. 28 at Townville Elementary School. After three days on life support, he passed away on Saturday.

 Renae Hall met with reporters outside the Greenville Memorial Hospital on Saturday to speak about her son, who she said “wanted to save everybody,” just like the superheroes he loved. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were his favorite heroes.

 As the grieving mother plans to lay her son to rest, she said the funeral service for the young boy wouldn’t be any ordinary service.

 “I don’t want suits and ties and all that,” Hall said. “There will be a lot of children there and I don’t want it to be scary for them. Jacob will be dressed in his superhero costume.”

 Hall said the pallbearers, Jacob’s uncles and brothers, would also be dressed as superheroes, and she invited anyone who wants to say goodbye to Jacob to attend and wear their superhero costumes or t-shirts.

 She’s certain that Jacob has a new super power: flying with the angels.

 “Jacob loved God,” She said. “Jacob taught me to love God. He was not afraid to go home to God.”

 Hall is holding strong to her faith as she struggles to let Jacob go. She’s also offering forgiveness to the teen accused in the shooting, something she said Jacob would have wanted.

 “No matter what you and your family go through… Always be able to forgive because you're not guaranteed tomorrow, no matter how angry or hurt you are,” Hall said.

 The family said visitation will be held Tuesday evening from 5 to 9 p.m. at Oakdale Baptist Church.

 The funeral service will be held Wednesday at 11 a.m., also at Oakdale Baptist Church. The service is open to the public.

 Batman and a special Batmobile will be traveling from West Virginia to be a part of the funeral service. Read more here.

 The Townville community came together and participated in a balloon release in Jacob's memory on Sunday evening, following a special service at Oakdale Baptist Church. Read more.

 More: Townville Elementary shooting victim Jacob Hall passes away

 Copyright 2016 FOX Carolina (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved. ||||| Story highlights Jacon Hall died after being shot last week at Townville Elementary School in South Carolina

 His family decided to have superhero-themed memorial services

 (CNN) Superheroes of various affiliations filled the pews of Oakdale Baptist Church in Townville, South Carolina, on Tuesday afternoon.

 Boys and girls dressed as Batman, Superman and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sat among adults and teenagers wearing capes and logo T-shirts.

 Amid the festive atmosphere, a coffin resting in front of the altar, surrounded by pictures of a smiling boy, was a somber reminder of the reason for the gathering.

 Mourners had come to remember 6-year-old Jacob Hall, who died after being shot last week at school.

 Zowie Sanders gives a fist bump to John Suber of Greenville, dressed as Superman, at Tuesday's visitation.

 Jacob was shot on September 28 when a 14-year-old boy opened fire at the playground at Townville Elementary School, southwest of Greenville. After three days on life support, he passed away on Saturday. His death led prosecutors to upgrade an attempted murder charge to murder against the accused shooter, who is not being identified because of his age.

 Read More ||||| Zowie Sanders, gives a fist bump to John Suber, left, of Greenville, dressed as Superman, with her sister Lindsey Sanders, center, and their mother Brooke Starks, right, of Townville, during a wake service... (Associated Press)

 Zowie Sanders, gives a fist bump to John Suber, left, of Greenville, dressed as Superman, with her sister Lindsey Sanders, center, and their mother Brooke Starks, right, of Townville, during a wake service for Jacob Hall at Oakdale Baptist Church in Townville, S.C., Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2016. Jacob, a... (Associated Press)

 TOWNVILLE, S.C. (AP) — A 6-year-old boy who died after a teen gunman opened fire at his South Carolina elementary school was dressed as Batman in his small blue casket on Wednesday.

 Jacob Hall's family encouraged mourners at his funeral to dress as superheroes as well.

 "We want to honor Jacob, celebrate Jacob, in a way he would love," his great-aunt, Rebecca Hunnicutt, told the Anderson Independent-Mail (http://bit.ly/2dPTSqO).

 Jacob died from a bullet that struck the main artery in his thigh after a 14-year-old boy opened fire at Townville Elementary School. Authorities say the boy killed his own father and then drove a pickup truck to the school, crashing into a playground fence. A classmate and a first-grade teacher also were struck by bullets, and were treated and released from a hospital.

 Jacob had told his family he wanted to be a preacher one day, the Rev. Tim Marcengill told a crowd that packed the pews at the family's Oakdale Baptist Church. "He's preaching today," Marcengill said.

 "Jacob Lee hall, Townville's very own superhero, was born into our world, given to us as a gift and through those 6 years up until the very last moment of his life with us, God was and still is today accomplishing his purpose with Jacob," the reverend said.

 A fellow 6-year-old, Lily Gunby, sat in the pews wearing a pink and black Superman shirt. She said Jacob "was really sweet," and "knew a lot about Jesus."

 Lily's uncle Derek Gunby says Jacob was "the cutest thing ever" at the church's Bible school.

 John Buckland drove his Batmobile from West Virginia to attend the funeral. Wearing full Batman garb, he gave the kids posters saying "Tough things make me stronger."

 "We're here to celebrate," Buckland said. "Take what we've learned from Jacob; let it make you a better husband, better father ... better everything."

 "Keep an eye on each other. Care about each other, love each other. If someone's in trouble, reach out and give them the help they need, because Jacob would," he added.

 Townville Elementary school teachers also attended, wearing handmade blue capes with a Ninja Turtle face and Jacob's name on the back. Jacob's casket was decorated with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle stickers, and figurines of Ninja Turtles and Captain American were in a floral spray on top.

 The 14-year-old faces two murder charges in the deaths of his father and Jacob. He also is charged with three counts of attempted murder, as well as five counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime.

 District Superintendent Joanne Avery announced a district-wide moment of silence at 1:42 p.m. Wednesday to mark one week since the shooting. Supporters also released hundreds of balloons Sunday in his honor, and people also crowded into the church Tuesday evening for Jacob's visitation.

 Students won't return to Townville Elementary until Thursday.

 But the district's other five schools planned to honor Jacob by participating in Superhero Day. All employees and students were invited to come to school in costume, and anyone wanting to attend the funeral would be excused, Avery said.

 According to a Facebook page created for Superhero Day, schools across the state planned to participate. But schools in central and coastal South Carolina were closed for the rest of the week because of the approach of Hurricane Matthew.

 Family members said Jacob told them he was out saving Townville as others slept.

 "He loved anything to do with goodness," Jacob's mother, Renae Hall, told WYFF (http://bit.ly/2drFQvL). "He loved anything to do with being able to help somebody. That's why I say Jacob was going to make a difference and he still is going to make a difference." |||||
A summary of this is?

– No sadder news emerged in the aftermath of the Townville school shooting last month than the death of 6-year-old Jacob Hall. But though his family and friends lost the South Carolina first-grader much sooner than they should have, they didn't lose his spirit—which is why a variety of superheroes flooded Oakdale Baptist Church Tuesday to mourn Jacob and celebrate his life, CNN reports. The Tuesday visitation was the prelude to Jacob's Wednesday funeral, where his mother, Renae Hall, said she wanted everyone to pay tribute to her son in the way he would've wanted it. "I don't want suits and ties and all that," she told reporters Saturday, per Fox Carolina. "There will be a lot of children there and I don't want it to be scary for them." The AP notes Jacob was dressed as Batman in his tiny blue casket during Wednesday's service. The superhero theme was also dominant at Tuesday's visitation, which CNN notes more resembled a child's birthday party than a memorial service: There were balloons, flowers filled with stuffed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and family members in their own superhero attire greeting visitors in front of Jacob's coffin, which the AP notes was adorned with Ninja Turtle stickers. One man even drove his Batmobile from West Virginia to pay his respects at the funeral. "Jacob Lee Hall, Townville's very own superhero, was … given to us as a gift, and through those six years up until the very last moment of his life with us, God was and still is today accomplishing his purpose with Jacob," said the reverend who spoke to the gathered well-wishers Wednesday.


Here is a news article: Abstract

 To discover interordinal relationships of living and fossil placental mammals and the time of origin of placentals relative to the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary, we scored 4541 phenomic characters de novo for 86 fossil and living species. Combining these data with molecular sequences, we obtained a phylogenetic tree that, when calibrated with fossils, shows that crown clade Placentalia and placental orders originated after the K-Pg boundary. Many nodes discovered using molecular data are upheld, but phenomic signals overturn molecular signals to show Sundatheria (Dermoptera + Scandentia) as the sister taxon of Primates, a close link between Proboscidea (elephants) and Sirenia (sea cows), and the monophyly of echolocating Chiroptera (bats). Our tree suggests that Placentalia first split into Xenarthra and Epitheria; extinct New World species are the oldest members of Afrotheria. ||||| Humankind’s common ancestor with other mammals may have been a roughly rat-size animal that weighed no more than a half a pound, had a long furry tail and lived on insects.

 In a comprehensive six-year study of the mammalian family tree, scientists have identified and reconstructed what they say is the most likely common ancestor of the many species on the most abundant and diverse branch of that tree — the branch of creatures that nourish their young in utero through a placenta. The work appears to support the view that in the global extinctions some 66 million years ago, all non-avian dinosaurs had to die for mammals to flourish.

 Scientists had been searching for just such a common genealogical link and have found it in a lowly occupant of the fossil record, Protungulatum donnae, that until now has been so obscure that it lacks a colloquial nickname. But as researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science, the animal had several anatomical characteristics for live births that anticipated all placental mammals and led to some 5,400 living species, from shrews to elephants, bats to whales, cats to dogs and, not least, humans.

 A team of researchers described the discovery as an important insight into the pattern and timing of early mammal life and a demonstration of the capabilities of a new system for handling copious amounts of fossil and genetic data in the service of evolutionary biology. The formidable new technology is expected to be widely applied in years ahead to similar investigations of plants, insects, fish and fowl.

 Given some belated stature by an artist’s brush, the animal hardly looks the part of a progenitor of so many mammals (which do not include marsupials, like kangaroos and opossums, or monotremes, egg-laying mammals like the duck-billed platypus).

 Maureen A. O’Leary of Stony Brook University on Long Island, a leader of the project and the principal author of the journal report, wrote that a combination of genetic and anatomical data established that the ancestor emerged within 200,000 to 400,000 years after the great dying at the end of the Cretaceous period. At the time, the meek were rapidly inheriting the earth from hulking predators like T. rex.

 Within another two million to three million years, Dr. O’Leary said, the first members of modern placental orders appeared in such profusion that researchers have started to refer to the explosive model of mammalian evolution. The common ancestor itself appeared more than 36 million years later than had been estimated based on genetic data alone.

 Although some small primitive mammals had lived in the shadow of the great Cretaceous reptiles, the scientists could not find evidence supporting an earlier hypothesis that up to 39 placental mammalian lineages survived to enter the post-extinction world. Only the stem lineage to Placentalia, they said, appeared to hang on through the catastrophe, generally associated with climate change after an asteroid crashed into Earth.

 The research team drew on combined fossil evidence and genetic data encoded in DNA in evaluating the ancestor’s standing as an early placental mammal. Among characteristics associated with full-term live births, the Protungulatum species was found to have a two-horned uterus and a placenta in which the maternal blood came in close contact with the membranes surrounding the fetus, as in humans.

 The ancestor’s younger age, the scientists said, ruled out the breakup of the supercontinent of Gondwana around 120 million years ago as a direct factor in the diversification of mammals, as has sometimes been speculated. Evidence of the common ancestor was found in North America, but the animal may have existed on other continents as well.

 The publicly accessible database responsible for the findings is called MorphoBank, with advanced software for handling the largest compilation yet of data and images on mammals living and extinct. “This has stretched our own expertise,” Dr. O’Leary, an anatomist, said in an interview.

 “The findings were not a total surprise,” she said. “But it’s an important discovery because it relies on lots of information from fossils and also molecular data. Other scientists, at least a thousand, some from other countries, are already signing up to use MorphoBank.” ||||| What's cute and furry and has a name only a paleontologist could love?

 A tiny theoretical creature dubbed the "hypothetical placental mammal ancestor" is stealing the hearts of some evolutionary biologists — and annoying others — as it raises new debate over just when our early mammal ancestors began diversifying across the globe.

 In a paper published this week in the journal Science, an international team of researchers described how they used a vast database of fossil and anatomical data, as well as DNA evidence, to reverse-engineer an ancestor to the largest group of living mammals.

 The scientists theorized that this hypothetical critter would have begun to diversify into new species of mammals after the demise of the dinosaurs roughly 66 million years ago — a concept at odds with some current thinking.

 "This is fairly novel, to reconstruct an ancestor," said study coauthor and paleontologist Mike Novacek, the provost of science at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. "I don't know of any other."

 Placental mammals, including humans, make up the largest branch of the mammalian family tree. Only marsupials and a small number of egg-laying mammals are excluded.

 For the last several decades, scientists have debated just when it was that placental mammals began their explosive proliferation. Estimates based on DNA, or so-called molecular evidence, suggest that placental mammals appeared in the mid-Cretaceous period when dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops still trod the Earth.

 However, scientists have yet to uncover evidence of placental fossils during this period, according to the authors of the new study. They argue that this is because placental mammals began to diversify only several hundred thousand years after the demise of non-avian dinosaurs, in the Paleocene epoch.

 "An environment that radically changed may have offered more opportunities for a new group to take form and radiate," Novacek said.

 Using a vast online database called Morphobank, the team of 23 scientists built a composite of the hypothetical ancestor based on the morphology, or appearance, of existing and extinct animals, along with the DNA data. Study coauthor Maureen O'Leary, a paleontologist at Stony Brook University in New York, likened the process to reassembling a crime scene from thousands of bits of evidence.

 Over a period of six years, the researchers developed a highly specific picture of an unassuming little animal whose descendants would one day include whales, bats, lions and people.

 "The placental ancestor was a scampering species that had a diet of insects, a fleshy nose, a light underbelly in its fur, and a long tail," O'Leary said. "It was larger than a mouse, but smaller than a rat."

 Based on their findings, the scientists said placental mammals began their spread about 36 million years later than estimates based on the DNA-derived molecular clock model.

 The research team also contradicted the molecular clock-based theory that placental mammals developed into different species because of the fragmentation of the supercontinent Gondwana, millions of years before the dinosaurs vanished. In addition, the study concluded that a subset of placental mammals known as Afrotheria, which includes elephants and aardvarks, did not originate in Africa as commonly believed; instead, authors say they arose in the Americas.

 Not all evolutionary biologists have fallen in love with the furry, hypothetical bug eater, however. Argument over the rise of placental mammals is likely to continue for some time.

 "The bottom line is that this study is not convincing and will not settle the debate," said Mark Springer, an evolutionary geneticist at UC Riverside who was not part of the research team.

 Using fossils to establish branches of a family tree can result in mistaken groupings of species, Springer said, because some traits are passed along by related species while other traits develop in parallel with more distantly related species. This is known as convergent evolution, and Springer said he was not convinced that study authors had addressed that issue.

 Study coauthor Novacek said he did not expect the paper to end discussion on the matter, but he hoped it would add weight to an ongoing argument.

 "I think this will reinforce the notion that the fossil record is not in agreement with what's been reconstructed by molecular clocks," Novacek said. "As data accumulates, the case for this late origin becomes better and better."

 Another debate is brewing over whether the hypothetical creature deserves a less cumbersome moniker.

 "People who think this organism is cute have asked me for a name," Novacek said. "I tell them we can't give it a Latin name, because it never really existed."

 monte.morin@latimes.com |||||
A summary of this is?

– Say hello to your great-great-great-great-great-grandparents (times a few million or so)—Protungulatum donnae, a rat-sized insect eater believed to have lived 66 million years ago. A new six-year study of the mammalian family tree, looking at DNA and anatomical evidence in greater detail than ever before, has identified Protungulatum donnae as the most likely common ancestor for all 5,400 placental mammal species, reports the New York Times. The critter, however, is only hypothetical, notes the LA Times, explaining that scientists used data to "reverse-engineer" it. The study examined 83 mammals and fossils for more than 4,500 traits, creating a database 10 times larger than any previous database. Because Protungulatum donnae would have emerged 200,000 to 400,000 years after the great extinction that ended the dinosaurs—about 36 million years later than previous estimates—scientists say this is a clear sign the rise of the mammals was tied to that mass extinction. The abstract to the original article is at Science magazine.